Respect between Enemies – The BetanWerecat
Gundam Seed: "Descending Sword" and after. OCs with appearances by canon characters. The actions of Kira, Athrun, and the others have far reaching effects. Not all things that begin as acts of war must stay such. Rated T for language and openly acknowledged but off screen activity. (Reviews are welcomed but not required. This is written only for my own enjoyment. Flaming me will get you ignored.)
Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Seed.
Waking up had come with some very unpleasant surprises. Years of training with Grandmother Spotted Horse enabled Kayla to maintain both a limpness of body and a gentleness of breathing typical of the unconscious. Because one of the first things she understood was a voice nearly shouting "My name is Lt. Adrian Ito, not GINN!"
The man was distracted enough not to notice her very, very cautious testing that told her she was quite well secured. Once she had established that the bonds were not going to be easily shed, she quit all efforts to do so. Ito was a ZAFT officer, a Coordinator. Unless she could hit him hard, fast, and by complete surprise, he was going to win any fight she started. She was too well tied up to achieve surprise; she'd lose before she began under these circumstances.
She had no idea who he was talking to other than they had to be Earth Forces. It was a strange conversation but not one to suggest she'd get any support if she let them know he was holding her either. Whoever it was, they had a real gift for psych warfare. She was sitting on Ito's lap; she could feel just how badly the words the stranger spoke hit him. And how much being permitted to pick up his friend's body meant to him.
And some damn fools tried to claim Coordinators weren't human! Ha! They were just as human as the next guy. Their behavior proved it all the time; both the positive and the negative behaviors! At the moment, this Ito reminded her of Jimmy Stoltz, the teammate who had brought her brother Paul home to her family so they too could bury a brother and a son. The memory sent a shiver through her that she instantly fought to suppress.
Kayla let her eyes crack open just enough to make out what was in front of her. Most of her line of sight was occupied by a lean, muscular looking arm in a green ZAFT flight suit. There was the armrest of the pilot's seat and unknown control panels beyond that. She could see part of one view screen that had nothing but green shapes on it. It took her a few moments study to realize this was the other mobile suit, the one his friend was laying on, and she was seeing it in magnified close-ups.
The view abruptly backed out and judging by the movement in the cockpit, the GINN did too. Now she saw sand, sea, sky, and about half of a severely damaged, headless GINN. Yeah, if the other guy had been in that it was no surprise he hadn't survived. Something had stressed all the joints and seams on the machine nearly to complete separation. It was a wonder it hadn't fallen apart.
Then gravity was loading her down a bit and she knew the GINN was heading up and out. The sand and sea vanished almost immediately, leaving only sky. Interestingly, it was a very empty sky. Where were all the rest of the ZAFT assault forces? She continued to watch as time went by but the viewplate stayed empty of all human built devices.
"So, are you ready to admit you're awake?"
Kayla almost jumped when Ito suddenly spoke. His voice was so clear, he must have his helmet off. But she managed to control it, to stay limp and quite on his lap. It was as good an answer as she was going to give him.
"You should know, I've got a med scanner in here. It picked up your change in heart rate a while ago. Your real good at faking it but you don't seem to be able to do much about your heartbeat. It just gave a nifty spike a second ago too. And it's speeding up a bit as you're listening to me right now."
Oh shit. He dropped his left arm a bit and let her see the med-screen. He wasn't lying. She could see for herself that it was reading two heartbeats, two rates of respiration, two blood pressures. And both of them were solidly inside the range of conscious people.
"Sit up." Ito ordered. "There is some data you need to see."
Should she? Kayla wasn't sure. But Ito was and when she didn't move fast enough, he took both hands off his controls briefly to lift her slightly and turn her so she was facing forward. Instead, she twisted around to look at him.
Whoa! They bred them handsome in the Plants. She'd noticed that before when escorting the rare prisoner or, more commonly, helping collect the dead from the battlefields of space or the moon. This Ito was no exception.
The just shoulder length hair was a rich mahogany, not a color you'd find on a normal human but definitely one you'd find a topflight salon trying to duplicate. His eyes, well, best color match there would be high quality Baltic amber. As his name suggested, there was a good deal of Oriental in him. It was most obvious in the shape of those amazing amber eyes and the wide but fairly flat cheekbones. The nose was straight and the mouth strong. The jaw, a bit tight at the moment, was well shaped and gave good definition to his oval face. He was a bit darker than any Oriental she'd ever seen before but then, Coordinators tinkered with their genes. Or he could just have one damn fine tan. The shoulders were well proportioned to the body and the flight suit indicated muscle, not fat beneath it.
"So, done staring?" He asked with open amusement.
He thought this funny did he? There was a cure for that. Having her feet tied limited her a lot but she was still able to toss herself a few inches in the air. And she made sure she came down, hipbone first, right where no guy wants any girl landing with a hard object.
"Shit!"
He had Coordinator reflexes all right. He'd gotten one hand off the controls and under her. She didn't hit what she aimed at with anything like the force intended. Still, she hit cleanly enough to wipe the amusement off that handsome face.
"You will respect me, ZAFT-man. I am not a joke." She hissed at him.
The amber eyes had gone stone cold. "Two DINNs and a pair of GINNs with a Zero? No, you're no joke."
"Three DINNs." Kayla corrected. "You must have missed my exit from the hanger. I had this obstruction in the doorway to clear you see."
"Five? That's quite a claim."
"Target saturated environment." She said bleakly. "It was hard to miss hitting something if I fired at all."
"Ah, yeah, it would have been from your viewpoint." He agreed grimly.
After a couple moments he spoke again. "All right, let's try this again. I won't treat you as a joke ok? And you won't try hitting me like that again, also ok? Because I haven't done you any favors by picking you up today. And you need to watch this to understand why. If you want to survive, pay attention. This will be going in fast forward through most of it. I'll slow it to real-time for the important sections. So let me turn you around again and just sit quietly this time."
He picked her up carefully and set her in place with rather exaggerated care. The last thing she remembered was a strange mobile suit defending the Archangel with a fantastic display of power. Yet when she woke up, the Archangel and that mobile suit were willing to just talk to a lone GINN. And the sky was empty of EA and ZAFT alike. Something drastic had happened. He was willing to show her, and she wanted to see.
So she watched her Zero take the hits that brought it down from his point of view. And discovered in doing so that Ito was the one who had finally managed to get the targeting lock that shot her down. Somehow it didn't surprise her. Watching her ship crash in fast forward was almost more frightening than it had been while it had been happening.
The recording went to real-time for the arrival of the strange mobile suit and its rescue of the Archangel. But it was the warning of the Cyclops bomb that nearly stopped her heart. Ito left it in real-time for the beginning of the bomb's explosion and the expansion of the ring of total destruction, then he kicked it back to fast forward.
She saw herself snatched up by the GINN only seconds before it launched to escape the blast front. She didn't bother to watch the failed fight at the cockpit hatch; what was happening behind the machine as the blast expanded grabbed and held her attention. Ito magnified that part too. You could see the machines just blowing apart as the shock wave hit them. The destruction was immediate and total. Nothing it touched survived. What was left of the Eurasian fleet was obliterated. And so was every single ZAFT unit caught inside the explosively expanding circle. The sea spouted great gouts of water as it proved able to destroy submerged ships as well.
When Ito finally stopped the recording, there was almost nothing left of the ZAFT attacking force. The Alliance forces were gone altogether except for Archangel and that new mobile suit. An immense column of smoke, ash, and fine debris was climbing in a roaring rocket into the formerly pure sky, feeding a growing mushroom cloud that dwarfed all previous nuclear blasts in Earth history.
"Bait." Kayla whispered.
"Very effective bait." Her captor agreed grimly. "And my people are coming down off the first shock now, sliding into rage."
"How many of our own did those stinking bastards murder for this?"
"No idea. Nor will most of ZAFT give a damn."
"I GIVE A DAMN!" She twisted around and screamed in his face. "THEY SOLD US! THEY SOLD US LIKE SHEEP AND RAN OUT ON US! YOU BET YOUR ASS I GIVE A DAMN!"
Those emerald eyes were incredible. Lit with rage and pain, they were twin points of living fire. If any of those responsible for the mass murders back there at Josh-A ever crossed this girl's path, they were dead meat. She would not forget and she might never forgive.
She twisted back around to face the screen again, trembling like a leaf with emotions overrunning body and mind. With no warning, she threw herself back against him and just screamed. The sound filled the cockpit, obliterating all other sound, drowning the very thoughts in his mind. It was pain, it was wrath, it was grief, it was a soul betrayed. It resonated through his soul, lancing some canker of pain he hadn't realized he had growing there. And it seemed to go on for hours.
Eventually, she ran out of air in those powerful lungs. The sound ended. The girl sobbed once, then slid limply back into his lap into much the same position she'd been in most of the trip. He checked the med-scanner. It said overstressed but not endangered body, temporary emotional collapse and semi-consciousness. He realized he had tears running down his cheeks and wished he could just pass out too.
"Incoming GINN, this is the Ballard. Identify yourself. I repeat, identify yourself immediately." The voice crackled thinly up from his helmet resting against the control board beside him.
Adrian looked up, blinking the tears out of his eyes. The carrier was sitting on the surface perhaps two kilometers ahead. He was almost home. He grabbed his helmet and jammed it back on.
"Ballard, this is Thoms Four. I repeat, this is Thoms Four. I'm returning with one casualty and one Ito Plan prisoner/candidate."
"Roger, Thoms Four, one casualty and one, . . . . . . , what?"
He didn't blame the communications tech. The Ito Plan might have Council approval but it did not have much in the way of Council publicity. What little there had been trickling out to the troops on the lines, and in a position to find and bring in suitable prisoners, had dried up completely when Patrick Zala had been elected Chairman.
A visual overlay abruptly popped up on his main screen. Captain Lance Thoms was glaring at him. Oh and now the fun started.
"I hope that last was some kind of very inappropriate joke, Ito."
"No sir."
"You stopped, in the middle of "Operation Spit Break", to pick up some Natural girl who caught your eye?" There was a very dangerous edge to his commander's voice.
"No sir, I did not. I shot down an amazingly skilled Zero pilot and she turned out to be someone who matches Grandfather's spec's almost perfectly. He's been after me to find a candidate forever. I grabbed her up just as the Cyclops bomb went off."
Captain Thoms put the data together with his usual remarkable speed. One eyebrow went up, a sure sign of intense interest. The anger had vanished.
"This is the same Zero pilot who took Holman and Lubbek out?"
"Yes sir."
"Uhmm, I'll meet you in the hanger. Thoms out."
One hurdle past. The Captain wasn't going to toss the girl over the side without checking her out. This would include a thorough review of his combat records for the whole of "Spit Break". Adrian couldn't help but wonder what Thoms would make of his encounter with the Freedom and the legged ship. That had been a very unsettling meeting. He hoped the older man would have some advice for him after he'd looked the data over.
The girl shuddered, shifted slightly as she came out of her daze, then began to slide off his lap. She hissed softly and tried to push herself up. The GUUL was settling into the tube; Adrian could spare the hand, and since she was pushing against him it would be more comfortable anyway, so he grabbed her belt and lifted her back until she was sitting squarely in his lap again. She accepted the help without comment.
The back mounted life support unit of the flight suit was in the way but still and all, she was a very pleasant armful. Even in full combat gear she wasn't all that heavy. The curves were all in the right places and nothing was either overdone or shorted. Whatever she used on her hair had left it with a light floral scent that he could pick up even with a flight helmet on – once he'd opened the filters that was.
She wasn't very soft though. Oh, her skin was soft, a wonderful, silken thing to touch. But under that beautiful skin was lean, rock solid muscle and very sturdy bone. He had learned that much when he'd opened her flight suit to search for her id tags. He'd checked a bit more than strictly necessary at that point perhaps – eh, be honest with yourself here Adrian, there was no 'perhaps' about it! - but he hadn't actually removed any clothing to do it so he was inside the law when it came to treatment of prisoners. He wasn't responsible for what Earth Alliance female pilots chose to wear, or in this case, not to wear, under their flight suits. The id tags were now in the pocket of his flight suit.
They were in the main hanger now. If he'd needed proof that "Spit Break" was a disaster, it was all around him now. Rank after rank of mobile suit stands were empty or held one or two suits. The majority of those that had made it back were damaged, most far more severely than his own unit.
He was walking the suit back to the section reserved for the Thoms team slowly and carefully to keep the pressure on the damaged leg to a minimum. The pace let him see everything with pitiless clarity. No more than twenty percent had made it home.
"This is bad." She said quietly. "This will set you guys off like nobody's business. You've never been big on taking prisoners at the best of times. If this is what it's like everywhere, you aren't going to even think about accepting surrenders next fight. This is getting so damn genocidal all the way around!"
"You're right." Adrian agreed just as quietly. "Remember that insight if you want to survive here. I've put you in a very special category, one that should keep you alive and untouchable until you get up to the Plants, but you aren't going to like it. Just think about the alternatives before you open your mouth, eh?"
Sharp green eyes were suddenly staring into his as she twisted around to glare at him. "What are you talking about?"
"You'll learn all the grubby details soon enough. In the mean time, keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. No one is going expect you to be happy to be here. They will, however, demand that you keep quiet about it."
She was sitting on his lap. No way was he going into detail on the Ito Plan with her there! She might be tied up but this girl had already demonstrated far too much ingenuity in destruction for him to even consider that risk! A flight suit offered considerable protection but not absolute protection, especially not where it counted with an enraged female. She'd confirmed that once already. And he had no doubts about the enraged part when she learned the whole story.
He reached his suit rack with relief. There was a med team waiting quietly with a gurney beside his place. He bent the GINN no further than absolutely necessary to put Lon Baki's body at an easy to reach level for them. Even with that care, everyone could hear the creak of metal in the damaged leg as too much weight came on it at the wrong angle.
While he could see the questions the Earth Forces body bag immediately brought to every face, no one wasted a moment getting Lon off the GINN's hand. Adrian straightened his mobile suit very carefully and stepped back into its rack. Heavy support members closed around the suit at once, securing it and making sure it was no longer in any danger of falling.
"We've arrived." He told the girl grimly. "I can't say this often enough; keep your mouth shut if you want to live."
"Yeah, I understand." She replied. "I'll study the situation and decide if it's worth it before I say anything."
"Excuse me? You'll do what?"
She half turned to look at him out of one cold gem eye. "Ito, the price of survival can get too high. That's a fact you will do well to remember too."
He went through the drill of shutting down the GINN very thoughtfully. It didn't take long and he came to no conclusions by the end of it, just a realization he was going to have to do more thinking. She was more than he'd expected. Her attitude, her mindset, these were typical of real veterans. He hadn't thought she was that old. There was a maturity here that went much deeper than the age her face implied. She was far more dangerous in many more ways than he'd ever considered when he'd captured her on impulse.
Someone suddenly pounded on the hatch. Ah, must have the foot gantry in place. It was time to get out and face everybody. He reached over to pull the combat recorder's data disk out before he did anything else. Captain Thoms was going to want that immediately if not sooner.
He popped the hatch. Captain Thoms and a pair of armed guards were standing on the gantry waiting for the two of them. It was only then that Adrian realized that while he'd gotten the girl into the GINN unaided, he was probably going to need help to get her out if he didn't want to bang her up pretty badly.
"My, that looks cozy."
He winced, the sarcasm cut like a knife. It was meant to. His commanding officer was not happy with him.
"What is, sir, is jammed." Adrian said as evenly as he could. "The Lt. here is a skilled enemy combat officer and I have taken precautions in securing her. It does leave me with a problem getting her out though as she is in no position to help her self."
"You actually worry about a Natural girl?" The amusement had a nasty undertone and it wasn't coming from the Captain. So Trace Holman had made it home already. Shit. This he could have done without.
Then his teammate's over refined face appeared in the hatch. The expression in his eyes went greedy as he got a good look at Adrian's prisoner. Without waiting for permission from Captain Thoms or Adrian as the official captor, he reached in and grabbed the girl's bound ankles. One vicious jerk later she was laying flat on her back on the lower hatch with Trace leaning over her, one hand supporting him against the upper hatch and the other taking very indecent liberties with her body.
"Well, well. Who'd ever have expected dull old Ito to bring us any entertainment? Oh, yeah, you'll entertain the whole ship, won't you, you dirty little Natural whore."
"Holman!" Thoms snapped.
Adrian was out of his harness and lunging forward when the girl took matters into her own hands. Her knees came up and she kicked out with a speed to rival any Coordinator. She caught Trace just above the critical zone with both booted feet and serious power. He folded over her.
Her strike drove him back so that his face passed over her hands as he shot toward the gantry rail. Both hands turned up and ten surprisingly sharp nails raked that face as it went by. The force of her kick shot her body back into Adrian as he charged forward. The jarring blow as they met made him into a backstop for her, enabling her to put still more power into the end of the kick.
Captain Thoms grabbed the GINN's landing rope with one hand and his abused subordinate with the other. Only his fast action prevented Holman from going straight back over the gantry rail to the deck nearly twelve meters below. As it was, the man teetered on the top rail for several seconds before his commander could get the proper leverage to pull him back.
Thoms gave Holman a quick once over before he turned and shouted to the med team below. "Get another gurney and a second team up here on the double! Get this idiot to sick bay as fast as you can! And you don't have to be gentle about it either. Anyone this stupid deserves the pain. It's the only thing that can teach them not to do something like it again."
Adrian shook the girl hard. "You idiot! What the hell do you think you're doing? Are you trying to get shot?"
She turned the same single cold gem eye on him again. "Were you paying any attention to what I told you about the price of survival? Well, that bastard's is too high, you got that?"
"Uhmm." Adrian looked up to find Captain Thoms studying his prisoner with speculative interest. "I begin to see why you thought she meets your grandfather's specs."
The Captain focused on the girl, who if the tightening of her shoulders was any indication, didn't care for being the object of his consideration. The staring contest, if that was what it was, ran for a couple of minutes. It ended with one of Thom's enigmatic little smiles that told you absolutely nothing of what he was thinking.
"All right, Lieutenant. I will cut these hobbles if and only if you will give me your word that there will be no more demonstrations of your fighting style between here and medical. Refuse and you will ride there secured on a gurney. You tell me which it will be."
She sniffed at him. "Your attack dogs stay leashed and there won't be any need for a demo Captain. I will not pledge not to defend myself. I will agree not to attack anyone. You tell me if that meets your requirements."
After several seconds of silent study, the Captain nodded. She nodded back. Thoms whipped a fighting knife out of who knew where and slashed twice. The carefully constructed hobbles fell off, leaving the boots under them completely unmarked by the passing blade. Adrian let himself breathe again. The Captain led and the two guards followed as the five of them made their way to sick bay.
The hostility around her was heavy enough to slice and serve for dinner. Kayla kept her head up and her eyes to the front as she followed the nearly metallic bronze haired Captain with the deep amethyst eyes. This was not the place to be glancing around and catch the wrong man's attention. Ito's warning had been fair, the ZAFT personnel were still pretty much in shock but where shock was wearing off, anger was replacing it. She'd taken down that one fool at the GINN's hatch only because he came after her with such towering overconfidence. If he'd been watching at all, she'd never have managed it. She cherished no delusions about doing again.
Every bone and muscle and nerve hurt. First there had been the stress of high intensity combat. Then she'd had to eject in the bottom of a gravity well. After that she'd spent an unknown amount of time tied up and held in basically one position. Her body had gotten over-heated fighting, over-stressed in the emergency ejection, and had set like concrete sitting cramped in the GINN. Walking was an exercise in pain. But she wasn't going to let these damned Coordinators know that.
So she strove to move smoothly, as though everything was normal. She made herself take a full stride each and every step. And she did not even consider asking them to slow down. Nor did she allow herself to make one sound.
She could not see herself. So she was unaware of how pale she was. Nor did she know how tightly she was holding her mouth. She didn't know she was favoring her right leg slightly. But the Coordinators around her saw it. Some could even yet let themselves recognize bravery in an enemy. She won no hearts but she made no new enemies either. And on the Ballard that day, that was a remarkable performance for a Natural prisoner of war.
