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. Ah, interpersonal relationships! What joys they are. Rated T for language and off screen activity. (Reviews are welcomed but not required. This is written only for my own enjoyment. Flaming me will get you ignored.)
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Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Seed.
Well, it was a considerable improvement over the isolation room in the Ballard's sick bay. The bed was comfortable, there was a very comfortable sitting chair with a reading table and light and the room had its own bath. There was a small side table and chair set in front of the windows where she was told her meals would be served. The 'windows' were very well done vidplate fakes that showed a wide lawn overlooking a busy lake. The images looked real enough, but she'd be very surprised if they were local. There were no people in uniforms out there and they'd been entering a ZAFT base when Captain Thoms had cut the view in the transport.
There had been a kind of grand tour given by one of the area supervisors, a gentle faced older lady with copper hair and soft green eyes called Serin. She was going to be one of her 'guardians' while she was here. For all that Serin was actually the jailor; Kayla decided she was a rather nice person to have for a guide. At least she was willing to answer all the questions she asked, even if sometimes the answer was that she wasn't allowed to answer. Kayla made no attempt to find out what Serin's physical skills were. It wasn't time for that yet.
She was permitted access to a small library, a video room, and a surprisingly well set up game room. There was a physical fitness room around somewhere but she decided to skip that and Serin hadn't insisted. She hadn't met anyone else who was 'in the Program' as it were yet and from what Serin had let drop, she likely wouldn't for a bit. There had been one stop at a medical facility for a simple blood sample draw and that was it for the moment. Her meals would be provided in her room and she could sit back and relax for a while as the tests took a while to run. She wondered how long 'a while' really was.
A check through the library was instructional. These people did not want their sheep getting all riled up. The books were mostly inoffensive novels. What history there was was ancient, pre-twentieth century. There was nothing in it that could relate to the current conflict at all. The popular science stuff was similarly culled of anything that might cause controversy. There just were no biographies for anyone who hadn't been dead at least three hundred years. The best that could be said for it was it wasn't propaganda.
The video room was very similar to the library. Once again, if it might cause controversy or upset the sheep, it wasn't on the shelf. Still, the selection was surprisingly wide as they had left a lot of antique classics available. There was more hope of finding something interesting here than in the library; she would have to comb the place more thoroughly later.
The game room had something of just about everything, including, rather to her surprise, a very wide variety of combat games. Well, even sheep needed to take their sublimated aggression out somewhere.
She was way in the back of the place when she found a simulator she didn't think should be there. This one didn't have the look of a game unit. It had military training written all over its design and layout. What it looked like was the extracted cockpit of a mobile suit.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. There was no one around to tell her no. Kayla gave the hatch lock a try. It opened on the first attempt.
She was looking into a mobile suit cockpit all right. No, this was no game unit. Not even for Coordinators was this a game unit. She'd been in a real GINN cockpit after all and this was a near duplicate of Ito's machine.
She climbed in and slid into the seat. An overabundance of controls and screens confronted her. She studied the daunting array carefully, trying to make sense of it. Gradually the logic of the layout became clearer. Before long she knew she could shut down most of these systems for training purposes to concentrate on learning how to make the thing move. The setup was very different from her mobile armor but the basic needs were similar. Indeed, a lot of what she knew would transfer readily. The question was, could she do it fast enough to work a Coordinator machine?
She turned everything off and climbed back out thoughtfully. This could be important, damned important. How closely was she going to be monitored? She didn't know. Nor did she know if she was going to have a schedule or much of anything else yet. But she did know if she could, she was going to come back and use this machine. Oh, yes, she would be back. And perhaps, if she could learn what it could teach, and if she could get out of this place, she could also get off the Plant. Besides, it would let her occupy her mind with something other than the disturbingly interesting images of a mahogany haired Coordinator that had been taking over more and more of her brain this last week.
"Grandfather." Adrian tried for the third time to get Dr. Ito's attention.
"I am busy. I told you I would be with you as soon as I finished. Now cultivate patience!"
Cultivate patience, always cultivate patience, did Grandfather have no other advice to offer? Did he have any idea how boring it was to be cooped up in this lab watching someone doing painstaking work you didn't understand, passionately didn't ever want to understand, and couldn't help with? There were reasons why he hadn't gone into genetics in school after all! Mobile suits were much more his thing than lab benches. But moving his grandfather into a faster gear was well beyond him in this situation so he did the only thing he could, he waited.
"Alright, I've finished. Come to my office. There are comfortable chairs there. These stools are only good for making sure you don't fall asleep while watching test batches run."
He could agree with that. His butt was more uncomfortable after half an hour in this lab than it usually got after a couple hours of combat. And that knees spread position flying a GINN demanded got old after a while.
He coaxed the recalcitrant tea dispenser into releasing two large cups worth. Grandfather was always more willing to talk when he had tea at hand to sip. He poured in the creamer the old man had taken to adding in recent years, wondering once again how anyone could drink it like that, and carried it over to his desk before seating himself in the better of the two chairs not covered in notes or printouts.
A pair of DNA holograms were spiraling up from projection plates on the desk. Dr. Ito was watching them turn, his eyes jumping back and forth between them as he made some comparison only he could see. They were just colored shapes to Adrian and he'd fought very hard to keep them that way for years.
"You may have refused to join the family trade Adrian, but you seem to have learned a thing or two despite yourself."
"And that means what this time sir?"
"Your Earth Forces Lieutenant is a serious gem. I couldn't have done a better job of cleaning trash out of her genome than someone else has already done for me. I see no signs of any enhancements at all, just good, solid cleanup. She's not going to need any further work done on her material. Theoretically, you could do this the old fashioned way and produce healthy, Coordinator children with a Natural source this clean. I would, however, hesitate to bet on that theory myself." His grandfather's eyes never left the holograms he was studying.
"Why?" Adrian asked curiously.
"Why what?"
"Why hesitate to bet on the theory? Why wouldn't it work? Don't enhanced genetics dominate the non-enhanced every time? That's what they insisted in school."
The hologram stopped moving and his grandfather actually looked at him in mild surprise. "You paid enough attention to remember that? Given your stubborn determination not to learn anything about the subject, you amaze me that anything stuck at all."
He turned the images back on. "Unfortunately, while the schools insist on teaching that as an immutable truth, it isn't. In some, admittedly exceedingly rare cases, enhanced genetics have not dominated the non-enhanced. Since this is about the revival of my family line, I really don't see the point in taking even so rare a risk. Do you understand now?"
"Translation, the Grayhawk genetics are also very strong, very healthy, and might have more vitality than ours."
He was on the receiving end of a very unamused stare. "That was very rudely put."
"Yes, but I notice you didn't say it was wrong."
"No, I did not." The old man conceded. "Now, before you can go on, I have already determined that her cycle is due in the next two days. Your arrival time is therefore very fortuitous. The drug to stimulate additional egg release was administered two days ago by the medical team on the Ballard. We shall wait to see what we get shortly. This means by the by, that I will need your contribution no later than the day after tomorrow. If all goes normally, she will be pregnant by possibly as soon as the beginning of next week."
He stared at the far wall. By the beginning of the next week. Six days away. Grandfather was working very fast. Why? And why did this whole thing bother him so?
"Aren't you expecting a lot of the drugs? Four days isn't much time for them to work."
"Yes, yes, I know." Grandfather was frowning at the holograms now but the frown wasn't meant for them. "You don't understand the changes in fertility produced by the kind of drastic genetic cleanup the Grayhawk's have done to themselves. I would wager it is a very large family in her generation and there are several sets of twins. I suspect she is well supplied with aunts and uncles and cousins too. They are healthy, Adrian, healthy in a way humans have never been before. Healthy in almost the same way we are actually when you come right down to it. But we've lost many of the benefits of that health with our obsession over being so multi-talented."
He looked up again, his own golden eyes stabbing into Adrian's with an intensity he was completely unused to seeing from the old man. "She should be producing at least two fully fertile eggs a cycle. If she is anything like the others I've studied with such cleansed genetics, she will have stages when she will be putting out five to eight a cycle. She's the right age to be at or close to such a stage now. If so, the drugs will simply assure any egg close to maturity completes its development and is shed this cycle. I want as many as I can get before we shut off the supply by inducing pregnancy."
There was something in the voice. It went with the sense of haste and wrongness that had been nibbling on him ever since they'd arrived. This was supposed to be a very large Project, yet he'd hardly seen a dozen people. The sense of occupancy that a busy Project should give the place was absent as well everywhere but the clinic itself. Had, . . . . . . .
"Grandfather, has Chairman Zala shut the Project down?"
"Of course not! What maggot is eating your brain now?"
"Then where is everyone? Why didn't you give me the tour you promised me if I found a really good candidate? And what is the rush? Grayhawk isn't going anywhere. You could collect for a couple of months if you needed to before starting the children." He leaned forward to give the older man a very hard stare. "What is wrong? And don't say nothing. I'm not five any more. I won't buy it."
Roland shut the holograms off completely. He faced his grandson with a flat, unreadable face as he returned the intense study he was getting from Adrian. They had parted eight months ago very much elder and child in their relationship. But there had been some serious changes in himself in that time; Adrian knew he would never deal with his grandfather as a child again.
"So," he said slowly, "I sent out a boy and have back a warrior."
"There is something about killing to survive that makes changes in a person." Lieutenant Ito replied quietly.
"Ah, they call it war. It has been making such changes ever since the first hominid picked up a rock and brained another to secure food, shelter or a mate."
"Let's agree that I've changed and keep to the issue at hand, Grandfather. What's wrong?"
He sighed and rubbed his eyes. "What's wrong he asks. Nothing and everything. We are still fully funded. We are officially approved although the Chairman will not discuss us with anyone. We have unquestioned access to any and all captured female Earth Forces soldiers. All is as it should be."
"Yeah, and what is not as it should be?"
The eyes closed and the face collapsed into near despair. "It isn't going to work. They hate and fear us so; they would rather be dead than produce a Coordinator child. I have nearly three hundred and seventy embryos fully ready to implant, to develop into the children we need. And I can not find the Natural women to bear them. The Project is a remarkably successful failure."
Adrian was confused and left with the distinct impression he was coming in on the middle of a much longer story. "I don't understand. I thought you had all the women you wanted. Has the Council restricted your access to female prisoners of war?"
"Oh, no. We have access to whomever we want who meets the genetic criteria." Dr. Ito replied wearily. "The problem is, they fail your mother's psych tests. Very dramatically fail them. If we were to attempt to force these women we have taken the eggs from to become pregnant, we would have multiple suicides and highly innovative means worked out to cause miscarriage or abortions. The actual birth rate would be one in fifty. The loss rate anticipated is impossible. The Council would shut the Project down if we had a death rate like that."
"Oh." Now it made sense. He'd seen first hand just how irrationally terrified many of the Earth Alliance forces were of Coordinators. The propaganda of Blue Cosmos painted them as something vastly inhuman disguised in an attractive human package intended to lull unsuspecting Naturals into trusting them before taking what ever kind of peculiar advantage of them that particular propaganda sheet was aimed at.
A lot of it, in point of fact, was all about sexual abuse and how Coordinators wanted to use Naturals to make more 'space monsters'. He remembered a group of young soldiers, trapped against a cliff, who had chosen to jump to their deaths rather than allow themselves to be captured. Yes, he could believe the Project had hit exactly the roadblock Grandfather described.
"Have, . . . . , have there been any successes at all?" He asked uncertainly.
"One." Dr. Ito smiled bitterly. "The two of them were already more than half in love with each other. She was willing to have his baby, he insisted on marrying her. The Council was not amused but agreed to it as he had no good match anywhere in the Plants so no Coordinator woman was being denied a husband."
"And Kayla? What are your plans for her?"
His grandfather looked up with a sharp frown. "Eh?"
"What do you plan to do with Kayla?"
"Kayla? Not, Lieutenant Grayhawk?"
"All right, if you prefer; what are your plans for Lieutenant Grayhawk?" Adrian could feel his patience slipping and heard the anger in his own voice this time.
There was a very long silence, then Roland noted softly, "So, that's the way of it is it? Are you sure of this? She is an Earth Forces officer and a Natural, Adrian. Be very careful where you give your heart."
"I didn't give it Grandfather, it walked out on its own!"
What the hell was he saying? Adrian wanted nothing more in that moment than to be able to rewind time by only a few seconds and reclaim those words. He could not have said that! He was a ZAFT officer, a Coordinator! He believed in his people and in their right to exist with all his heart and soul. But with those words he'd just said he was putting a Natural girl equal to everything else he valued in the universe. An enemy soldier in time of war, equal to all of ZAFT, the Plants, Coordinators. What kind of treason was his mouth spitting out?
But Grandfather's face suddenly brightened with an amazing understanding. What was he understanding? Whatever it was, Adrian didn't understand it himself!
"Ah, so that is the way of it!" Roland Ito turned to him with the strangest combination of sympathy and congratulations his grandson had ever seen. "I see you are confused. Let me explain. You do remember what pheromones are, yes?"
"Well, yes, of course. Chemical messages essentially. Most commonly associated with insect communication although just about every species alive that spends any time in an air environment uses them at least some of the time. We have some too."
"We most definitely do. The most powerful of them are sexual attractants and those that create emotional bonds. Tell me, were you both under any extraordinary stress when you met? There has to have been some, one does not capture an enemy soldier in time of war at a garden party after all, but was this an unusually high stress setting?"
A chaotic mental cascade of images from the attack at Josh-A crashed through his mind. Unusual stress? Yes, he would call that attack and its aftermath very unusual stress!
"That would be one way to put it." He said with feeling. "It was at the attack at the Earth Alliance Alaska Headquarters, Josh-A. I chased her all over the sky before I finally could get a target lock and shoot her down. Then that new mobile suit, Freedom, suddenly warns everyone about the Cyclops bomb under the base! I had maybe five seconds to make a decision. I grabbed her because she's the kind of enemy I respect – well, that and because she's incredibly beautiful. I had a crazy fight on the lower hatch of my GINN just to get her into the cockpit. At the same time the Cyclops was going off behind us and we were running for our lives. There was more excitement on the way back to the carrier; I ran across the legged ship and Freedom, just me and my one GINN against the two of them. Thank gods they didn't want a fight! Some other minor things happened, yeah, there was stress."
"And for this time, you and your prisoner were together in the small cockpit of the GINN?"
"I had her on my lap. There was no other place to put her."
"Pheromones, beyond question it is the pheromones. You had your helmet off at one point didn't you? And you took hers off too."
"Yes. Actually, she took hers off before I captured her."
"So there was an unimpeded air path between you, a very short air path at that, while you both were being exposed to severe, life threatening dangers and the undeniable physical attractions of each other." Dr. Ito nodded briskly. "You did have an opportunity to do some minor examination did you not? An opportunity she has not shared?"
"Ah, I had to collect her id tag if that's what you mean." Adrian could feel his face getting red.
"And how far did you look for it?"
"Grandfather!"
"I ask because I am curious as to how quickly the pheromones began to affect you." He wagged a finger at his blushing grandson. "You have a very firmly rooted sense of honor Adrian. There are things you simply would not allow yourself to do in a normal situation. You were in a far from normal situation that day. If she had been in combat and a fight with you, she was heated and with no helmet on, already giving off ample pheromones. Now, I am waiting for your answer."
He sighed and gave in. "An Earth Forces flight suit has a very stiff upper breast section, like ours do. It's rather small on an EA man's suit. The women's model however is intended to provide all the, ah, support she could need in a combat situation. Their flight suits fit fairly snugly and I've noticed that most female pilots don't bother with, uhm, specific undergarments."
His grandfather didn't say anything, just waited expectantly. "I, ah, I, . . . . . , oh hell! I tried them for size and they fit very nicely in my hands. Is that what you wanted to know?"
"Exactly what I wanted to know. I assume she was not conscious at the time of this, eh, evaluation?"
"No!"
"How long did it take you to complete your – appraisal?"
"Few minutes." Adrian mumbled.
"Your conclusion?"
He just looked up. He didn't know what his face or eyes said. His grandfather however did develop a small half smile.
"That is a good enough answer."
"I didn't say anything!"
Roland Ito sipped his tea calmly, then noted, "Sometimes, boy, words really aren't necessarily as useful an answer as body posture and the look in a person's eyes."
He must be red all the way to his toes. This was the single most embarrassing conversation he'd ever had. Worse, he had no idea at all what he'd just told Grandfather.
There was something wrong with this setup. This was her seventh day here now and she'd not met another girl trapped in this Project yet. Her room was on a very short hallway, there were only two others on either side and hers on the end, but both of those seemed to be empty. She had access to three other living quarters' hallways and there was no sign of life on any of them either.
Meals were always served in her room. Yet there was a dining room for this block of twelve rooms at the end of the main corridor. She'd never seen the door unlocked or the window curtains up.
It was like that with the staff too. She saw the same three people every day. There were no new faces. And they covered all the jobs around here, including the library, video and game rooms as well as being her escorts on visits to the clinic and bringing her all her meals. They were very polite but they weren't much on casual conversation. Serin was the only one who would exchange more than a couple of words at a time with her and even she didn't talk all that much. She was willing to listen though whenever Kayla needed to vent.
The entire place had an air of disuse that was out of place for something as big as this Ito Project was supposed to be. Yet the clinic itself was definitely not out of use. That part of the building appeared to be full staffed and damn busy. It was the hallways between her room and the clinic that rang so hollow.
It was after lunch now. Unless the routine was going to change, there should be no one bothering her for at least three to four hours now. She headed for the game room. It had become a refuge from a portion of her own mind she was trying very hard to clamp a lid on. In there, she was fully occupied with a seriously challenging activity that might be a key to escape. It took every scrap of her attention while she was there and the analysis afterwards could keep her brain busy for hours more. It was important, honestly important, work she was doing. That it also drowned out increasingly intrusively traitorous thoughts of an amber-eyed Coordinator and very detailed fantasies of things she could do with him was not something she permitted herself to consider.
The disuse was perhaps even more obvious in the game room. The machines were kept dusted and cleaner 'bots did the floors but that didn't keep the dust from accumulating in the corners. She hadn't noticed it on her first pass through but when she'd actually sat to try out a few of the games, it became clear no one was playing them on any kind of regular basis. It had been her first big hint that all was not as described here.
But she no longer paid it any mind in here. No one had said a word about her use of the GINN simulator. No one seemed to care and they had to know what she was doing. Or if they did care, they seemed to think she was banging her head against a brick wall so it wasn't worth worrying about. Ha! Little did they know!
Kayla climbed in and settled herself comfortably in the pilot's seat. She knew where all the gear for this unit was now. She took the helmet and half-suit out of the locker that was built into the 'control bay' on her right hand and put it on before she secured the safety harness. Now the half-suit, really no more than a chest and back flap that reached just below her waist, was held solidly in place and the helmet wouldn't bobble. She closed the locker and the illusion of being in a real cockpit was complete again.
Now-experienced hands began to flip toggles and tap the buttons that brought the simulator to life. The heads-up display in the helmet came on and the exterior screens began to show her what lay 'outside' the GINN. As always, she was starting in a ground base hanger.
For ten minutes, Kayla let all the systems run at normal operating capacity. The data flow was overwhelming. She took in as much as she could, sorting and trying to understand it all as fast as it was presented. She was getting better at this each time she did it. Better, yes, but good enough to let the full system run while trying to actually do something, ah, no, not yet.
At the ten minute mark, she began to shut down the least essential reporting systems one at a time until she was sure she could process the information flow and still truly do something at the same time. It wasn't until a solid quarter of her boards were dark that she felt she could manage that trick.
Slowly and carefully, she walked the simulated GINN out of the hanger. Once outside, she joined a line of other 'trainees' and began to try to follow the instructions of the Master Chief teaching this 'class' of brand new recruits. An exhausting two hours of chaos was under way.
Her whole body was drenched in sweat and shaking by the time the 'class' was over. The Master Chief had called her just about every name in the book at least once, used her as a bad example for the class five times, and told her to go back to mommy a round dozen times. It was her best performance yet. Today she hadn't fallen on her own, hadn't tripped anyone else, hadn't shot any other cadet – either by accident or on purpose – and had managed to lift off the ground, hover, and safely land.
She was the worst in the 'class' by a fair margin. But she could make the GINN move with reasonable smoothness and she could now get it off the ground and safely back. Not bad for a brain-deficient Natural working with Coordinator software.
If she hadn't had a year's worth of combat experience in mobile armor, this would be impossible. She was using every skill she'd developed in the Zero nearly to the max to do this much. And she could just about make it walk correctly so far. Moving and doing anything else was out of the question right now. Still, this was a hell of a lotta progress for just seven days!
Tired hands shut down the simulator. Kayla unfastened the safety harness and pulled the helmet and half-suit off. There was cleaning gear in the locker and she used it. She was coming back tomorrow. This thing would be a stinky horror if she failed to disinfect it right now. So, weary as she was, the job got done and done right before she stowed it away.
She stumbled back to her room and a hot shower. Followed by clean clothes and large, fairly sugar heavy snack. Then she took a nap. She was tired enough that the sleep was dreamless.
