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.)

New Years was a blast! Driving home, that is another story altogether. However I did get back in one piece, the car is in one piece, and so all is actually right with my world at the moment. So everyone who is following this gets updates.

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Seed.


"They're coming with what?" Kayla demanded flatly, unsure she'd heard the old coot correctly. "When did our people develop this tech?"

"They didn't." Dr. Ito snapped. "It was given to them by a traitor of ours. The N-jammer canceller is our tech. Your fleet is on it's way to Boaz. Once they have disposed of that obstacle, they will bring their nukes here. Adrian insisted I tell you. I've no idea why."

She glared at the man. "Well, no you wouldn't would you? He told me a while ago you were shit for brains when it came to how people work. Great on how the little bits that make us up go together but hopeless on how the final assembly handles life."

The affronted geneticist stared at her as she added insult to injury by adding; "I do love the idiot, you have figured that much out haven't you?"

"What would someone like you know of love?" Roland Ito shouted.

"Enough to be willing to get pregnant with his kid!" She shrieked back. "Or are you also dumb enough to think I couldn't get rid of it if I wanted to? I don't want to, you old goat! I want this kid! Adrian's kid! MY KID! And if you can't handle that then stuff you!"

"You are carrying twins you ignorant sheep!"

"Well thank you for getting around to telling me that you arrogant, pig-headed, know-it-all! Have you even bothered to determine who they take after or the genders yet or is that some big government secret you plan to sit on for nine months, eh?"

"One of each and they are their father's children!"

Dr. Ito suddenly stopped. Kayla had no problem understanding why. She'd just insulted him out of information he hadn't intended to give her. The cranky old goat was annoying as hell but he was Adrian's grandfather and one of only two living relatives he had left. She hadn't met his mother yet and if this antique coot was anything to go by, she wasn't sure she wanted to. Still, she was going to have to come up with a way to get along with the old fraud somehow since Adrian valued him. Until then though, any and all tricks that got her the information she needed were fair in this little running war they had going.

"So," she said quietly. "Son and a daughter. Both Coordinators. I can live with that. Adrian will be very happy. I don't suppose you've told him yet have you?"

"No, I haven't determined what they will be like yet. You are too early in the pregnancy for me to safely take samples. I've found trying to test a Natural pregnancy early is very dangerous to it."

"My count makes me something over a month along. What does yours say?"

"Forty-seven days. You apparently released two eggs late, after I had collected the early eight because it would appear you became pregnant from that first, very enthusiastic evening."

"Huh, yeah, I can believe that. He definitely put out the effort that night."

"Yes." Dr. Ito agreed drily. "So my staff told me."

Kayla gave him a very dirty look. There were things that really should be private. The old goat didn't honestly need the details of his grandson's love life.

"So as things stand, Adrian and I are expecting parents who now have a real good chance of being blown back to our constituent components by some fanatic with a nuke sometime in the next couple of days, right?"

"Correct."

"Bundle of good news you are."

"Sarcasm will not alter reality. I would not have burdened you with this. You are pregnant, you do not need this stress. I've told you because he insisted."

She nodded. "You're right, I could do without the stress, and news like this is definite stress. But I do prefer to deal with reality stressful or not. Living in a cocooned fantasy is stupid. You never see death coming that way. This way, you can see it, and maybe evade it."

"Perhaps. At any rate, Adrian will be back as soon as this is over."

Kayla turned grim eyes on the geneticist. "Don't live in fantasy land yourself either, old man. He's going out in a mobile suit to stop fanatics with nukes. The casualties are going to be very, very high on both sides. He's damn good, but on the battlefield good will only take you so far. Then you have to have the luck on your side too or you won't get home. I spent a year going out in a mobile armor that couldn't measure up to what my enemies were sending against me. I know what I'm talking about."

Dr. Ito turned away without another word and just walked out. Kayla let him go without comment. He wanted to believe Adrian was immortal, that he would always come back. She knew better. It didn't matter how good you were, how well equipped or how many people you had at your back. When your luck ran out, that was the end of it. She'd seen it happen too many times to have any delusions that her needs or desires could protect the father of her unborn twins. But that didn't mean she had to like it.

She went back to her room. The place suddenly closed in around her. She saw Adrian everywhere here. No, she couldn't deal with this. She needed a much more neutral space right now. She grabbed the heavy lunch tray and headed for the library. There were tables there and comfortable chairs. And she'd never been in there with Adrian, not even once.

Besides, she really needed to think about all this. What he'd told her bordered on the incredible. N-jammer cancellers? Did those really exist? What was fact and what was the old goat making up to cover for something else? What might that 'else' actually be? She had too many questions and not enough data to be confident of finding any answers.


"That's it? We're reserves? What the hell is this?" Trace Holman's shout was audible over all the other protests in the room.

For the first time since he'd joined the Team, Adrian found himself in complete agreement with Trace. Just what pencil pushing rear echelon idiot had decided the Thoms Team was only qualified to be reserves? They were a veteran Team! They had an outstanding record! What the hell were they doing in the reserves?

"YOU WILL ALL SHUT UP AND SIT DOWN!" Captain Thom's bellow over-road everyone, Trace included.

Adrian was the last man of the Team on his feet. He'd shut up all right; he wasn't a complete fool, but now he was at attention and next to demanding his commander's notice. There were polite ways to ask the questions everyone had been so profanely screaming after all.

Thoms gave him a very nasty look that repeated the 'sit' order non-verbally. He ignored it. Damn it, they deserved some answers here!

"Ito?" The tone of voice was dangerous.

"Sir, requesting information regarding logic of designating a superior and experienced Team to the reserves, Sir!" Adrian snapped out clearly, eyes front and none of his anger allowed to show in voice or stance.

"So someone is left who can clean up the mess." Lance Thoms said bitterly. "Now sit down and all of you, pay very close attention."

The Elite pilot sat slowly. There was something wrong here. Something a lot bigger than just being designated to the reserves.

The Captain sat on the corner of his desk. "You have all had the official briefing now and you all know our status. Now I'll tell you something not part of anything official at all. There is a suspicion, unconfirmed but coming from a source significant enough to cause worry, that the Naturals may have found a way around our N-jammers. If this is true, then the force coming will be bringing nukes. We're reserves, along with a number of other top Teams, because if they do have nukes, there will have to be someone left uncommitted after the start of battle who can be counted on to come in and stop them."

His eyes swept them all, a bitterness and a fear in their amethyst depths Adrian had never seen before. "We aren't being shunted aside gentlemen. We're being asked to save our entire people."

"What?" He wasn't sure who asked that, the voice was too strained to recognize.

"They may have nukes again." Thoms repeated the part that really mattered.

"How, . . . . . . . . . . . how good is this intelligence?" Adrian managed to ask.

"I don't know. I don't know if anyone knows. But the source is reliable enough to have a lot of people running next to petrified. And now you know."

He looked at them one by one. "I expect every man on this Team to do his job and do it better than he's ever done it before. I expect you to keep this information to yourselves. I haven't told any of our support staff and I do not intend to. There is no place to run on a Plant when the weapon is a nuke. If word of this gets out, it will set off panic and we do not need that. So no one talks. In fact, everyone will go out to his mobile suit, get into the cockpit and wait for further orders. There will be no transmissions that can be picked up beyond this hanger and no discussions that are not carefully worded in the messages you pass among yourselves. Go, everyone is going to need some thinking time on this one. Your cockpit is as private a place as you'll be getting for a while."


Reading and eating in the silent comfort of the library did not really distract Kayla Grayhawk's mind. Nor were there any answers on the shelves here. Everything was just too out of date. She had come to a couple of decisions though. She'd realized Dr. Ito was just too upset and sincere not to be telling her the truth as he knew it.

He believed there was an attack coming at Boaz and the Alliance would be bringing nuclear weapons again. Adrian was going out to meet that attack. If they came with nukes, it would be Blue Cosmos leading them. They would not be taking any prisoners, period. She could lose him. The kids could lose him before they ever knew him.

She tossed the book on the table, the simple romance completely unable to hold her attention any longer. Instead, she pulled out a small stone on a thin chain the ZAFT people had ignored when she was captured. It was a simple tiger-eye pendent set in a bezel decorated with a feather pattern. Or that was what anyone looking at it saw.

According to Grandmother Spotted Horse, ex-Marine, Kendo teacher, mother of nine, and medicine woman, this was her spirit talisman. Kayla had never been able to make up her mind about it. She knew some of the old stories, Grandmother had seen to that, but she had no particular faith in them. She had no particular faith in anyone's gods really but the concept of the natural spirits, that called to her and bugged her both at the same time.

She'd done the vision ceremonies as Grandmother had asked. But if she ever saw anything, she sure didn't remember it. Yet Grandmother told her she had, that she'd come out of the lodge talking in the old language – which she didn't know a word of – and had told her who her guiding spirit was. So now she had this small piece of polished stone and orders never to let anyone take it from her.

Nukes. Adrian. The babies. The whole damned war! There were so many questions and no f'ing answers!

There was supposed to be a way to get this stone to help her find those answers. Well, oh yeah, she was going to find a sage smudge bundle up here on the Plants. And a drum, and a lodge too! Not very likely!

She growled at the stone. What good was it if the answers never came out? She tossed it on the table on top of the book and slapped the lamp to turn it off.

Instead of shutting off, her strike set it to wobbling. The light hit the stone and threw bright sparks of gold and rich bronze across her vision. Her hand grabbed the lamp and steadied it as she eyed the talisman stone thoughtfully.

Maybe what she should do was dump worrying about what she didn't have and work with what she did. No, light hypnosis was not the ancestral tradition but what did that matter if it would work? More importantly, she didn't have the traditional materials but she could rig up either a swing or a twist for the hypnosis with what was right here.

Yeah, this was crazy. And the chances were all she'd get out of it was a headache. But honestly, at the moment, it was better than doing nothing or just letting her mind run in ever smaller circles until she wound her self up in knots.

Minutes later she was ready. The pendent and chain now hung from the lamp. The lamp was positioned so that the stone hung at eye height in front of her. She was carefully settled in the most comfortable chair in the whole library. And the steady, somewhat harmonic tremor she knew was heavy machinery on the move was jiggling the lamp almost perfectly. She gave the stone a very gentle tap to set it twisting and sat back, eyes focused on the flashing rock.

Gold and bronze, gold and bronze, gold and bronze, gold and bronze. The pendent twisted in a now steady rhythm. The colors flashed, faded, flashed, faded, flashed, faded, flashed, expanded, flashed, faded, expanded, faded, expanded, faded, expanded.

She was looking at the dry land below the Coopers grazing lease. It was late in the summer, everything was dust, gold, bronze or dingy white. She was thirsty and standing in the creek. She dropped to one knee. ZAFT flight suits were handy for some things. You could kneel in the creek to drink from the deepest part without getting wet.

Satisfied, she stood up. She moved under the shade of a massive old cottonwood that stood alone beside the bank. There had been a second tree there at one time, growing tightly against the remaining cottonwood. All that was left was a weather-smoothed stump that resembled a chair. Kayla relaxed onto it.

There was a huge white owl sitting on a low branch beside her. She looked at him, then sat up abruptly as she recognized him. Snowy Owl, the Spirit of Owls!

"Soaring Hawk Woman, why are you surprised to see me?" The Owl asked calmly. "You came here seeking knowledge. Did you expect no one to meet you?"

"Ah," She stared at him. "What did you call me?"

The huge bird clacked his beak in irritation. "I called you by your true name, Soaring Hawk Woman. Red Tailed Hawk did warn me that you saw but did not believe and so did not remember."

Red Tailed Hawk? An image came flashing, of an impossibly large gold and red-brown raptor grasping a vast tree branch explaining her place in the Spirit World. Hawk, her . . . . . . . . . totem?

"So you do remember some of it. Good." Owl said briskly. "Now watch and I will show you what you must do."

The sky beyond the tree darkened. Dolls moved across the sky and fought with one another. Stylized metal birds struck at the dolls and at each other. Small, glassy spiders carrying evil cocoons protected by three very distinctively different dolls attempted to attack ranked hourglasses. They were opposed by dozens of the other dolls. The three strange ones broke the common dolls, letting the spiders ever closer to the hourglasses. Then there were two more unusual dolls. They came from two different directions but both opposed the first three. The common dolls began to destroy some of the spiders. But the two new dolls were not able to control the first three and they returned to breaking the common dolls and letting the spiders ever closer. They began to throw their cocoons at the hourglasses.

Kayla stared in horror. Something terrible would happen if those cocoons reached the hourglasses. Thunderbird raced down on the cocoons from nowhere. His blue and white wings spread wide, then lightenings flashed. The cocoons before him vanished in puffs of brilliant light. A second Thunderbird swept in behind the first, red wings spread. More lightenings flashed. There were only a few cocoons left, the pair of odd defender dolls, joined by a third, and the common dolls destroyed those remaining. The Thunderbirds turned on the three evil dolls, who fled.

As the Thunderbirds drove off the evil ones and the last of the cocoons were destroyed, she saw a group of four dolls suddenly grow larger. Three were damaged. The fourth was trying to complete their destruction. A fifth doll raced up and broke the wicked one. It gathered the damaged dolls and fled as an unseen force of destruction began to tear apart dolls and metal birds, barely missing the two Thunderbirds as it passed.

"So you have seen. So you know what you must do. Do not fail. When you are given a doll, take it to the skies! If you do not, there will be no one to save Eagle's Heart, Longsight, or the loyal White Jay!"

"Owl, there were two Thunderbirds! Grandmother said there is only one!"

"That was not Thunderbird. They are only his mortal Children."

"But . . . . ."

"Hawk's Daughter! When the moment arrives, remember what you have seen!"

The pendent flashed gold and bronze, gold and bronze, as the lamp gave a heavier than average bounce. Something not too far away had hit the ground unusually hard. Kayla's eyes blinked. What had happened?

She looked at the time. She'd been here at least three hours! What had she been doing all that time? Something about an eagle, a jay and a hawk and something else but what about them? And why was she picturing Thunderbird in blue and white or red? Those weren't his colors at all!

Kayla stared at the pendent, suddenly sure she knew. There had been a vision. But she didn't remember it. But that was right too. She was no shaman and no believer. She wouldn't remember until she needed to. That was the way of these things. At least she had been given an answer!

She took her pendent off the lamp and put it back where it belonged. Then she put the library's stuff back where it belonged too. Whatever happened, she'd lost a chunk of time somewhere and that bothered her. She grabbed the silly book she'd been reading and headed for her room.

"Head's up Thoms Team! We launch right after Mynobo Team! Everyone to their stations!"

Adrian waited with what ever shreds of patience he could muster for the rest of the Team to get into place. The Captain would be first out and he would bring up the rear. The Gagarin was dropping off almost twenty full Teams here along the back line. The others so far had dropped without a hitch. He did not intend to have Thoms Team cause the first backup.

As soon as they were lined on the catapult ramp, Adrian began his checks for the six units he was responsible for. To his relief, everything was still in good order. It had been a short trip. Even so, the ship was heavily overcrowded and it would have been very easy for one suit to bump another just wrong in this jam and cause damage no one would notice until now, when he could see all the way around each unit. He took his place at the end of the line only after Yuri had checked his suit over for damage as well.

Then it was their turn. One by one, Adrian watched the GINN's of the Thoms Team launch smoothly behind their commander's GuAIZ. As his own suit cleared the Gagarin flawlessly, he breathed a small sigh of relief. They had not held up the four remaining Teams.

Space ahead and to his far right was torn by eye-searing bolts of light and punctuated by equally brilliant explosions. The battle for Boaz was well under way. The filters on his GuAIZ did a better job of compensating for the different light intensities than the ones on his old GINN had; he had a better view of the fight than part of him really wanted.

"Positions on the beacon people! Standard scatter formation beta." Captain Thoms ordered. "We need to be set quickly here! Ito!"

"Yes sir?"

"You have the scanners for this; keep an eye out for anything strange in the Natural attack. If they have what I'm afraid they do, they'll bring it in with a separate team. They'll never get that crap through the middle of that firefight!"

"Right!" Wonderful, now he had to watch this bloodbath whether he wanted to or not. And it was definitely a bloodbath all right. The Naturals were losing more than his people were, as usual, but, also as usual, they had the reserves with them to make the losses less significant for them than each ship and suit lost to ZAFT was. The thing was, the scale of death here was greater than he'd ever seen before in all the eight months he'd been on active duty. Yes, someone intended this to be the final battle all right.

"Thoms Team reporting to Sector Command. We are set." Adrian heard the Captain without paying any serious attention. It wasn't an action order and he didn't have to do anything about it. He was still trying to get a good handle on how this battle was going. It looked like the main defensive line was bowing but still holding. He wasn't sure how though given the raw pressure the Alliance was putting on it! The sheer number of the enemy was more than a bit frightening.

Then he saw it. A small group of five ships just edging into his line of sight. They had been covered from his vector by several of the large asteroids that had been pulled in around Boaz as raw materials sources back in the days when it had been a resource satellite, not a fort. His mouth ran dry as he realized there was already a significant clump of very small vessels pouring out ahead of the five ships. They'd launched already!

"Captain! Lance! They've launched! Those are mobile armors! They're coming at Boaz from Blue Two, ninety-three degrees!" He shouted wildly over the general combat frequency, hoping someone close to Boaz could intercept. "One Archangel class and four Agamemnon's!"

"NO!" Thoms' scream of denial was forever too late. They'd been even closer to the fortress than Adrian had realized. The first, hideously familiar, brilliant flash burst against the backdrop of the stygian fortress.

In his mind's eye, Boaz changed into Junius Seven. Adrian screamed helplessly, unable to turn away, unable to stop it, unable to do anything at all. The universe vanished again in terrible light.

"FATHER!" The shriek tore out of him. "DAAAAD! ROBIN! DUNNNCANNN!"

He lost all track of where he was. He tried to throw himself up, out of his seat to go to them. But the safety harness held him solidly in place.

He had no idea what was holding him down. He tried again and again. He could not get free. The hell-lights kept flaring in front of his eyes! He had to get to them! He had to get them out! He had, . . . . ., had . . .to, . . . .had . . to . . . . . .

It was so dark.