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.)

I actually got some of the story worked on over New Years as a friend very kindly loaned me use of her laptop. So I can post another chapter today and still have something left for another day! Good, eh?

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Seed.


Kayla walked slowly toward her room. She had a bit of a headache. She only wished she could remember anything from the vision. This business of knowing something was going to happen, and knowing that she had the data on it locked up in her head was vastly irritating!

"LISSA! DO YOU HAVE THE KEY?"

Kayla stopped in shock. That was Anya screaming like that! What the? She took off up the hallway at a run. Something was very, very wrong!

"LISSA!"

"SERIN HAS IT! SHE'S COMING!"

She shot around the last corner before the game room to see Anya and Lissa both standing in front of the door she knew led into the gardens. Serin was coming from the other side at a dead run, passkey in hand. The part of her brain that constantly processed information noted that despite her age, Serin was still a candidate for an Olympic sprinter.

By the time Kayla got to the door, the three Coordinators were already through it. She caught it before it could close on her and forced her way out as well. Whatever was going on, it was out here and she did not want to stay ignorant of something that could have Anya and Lissa the silent shrieking in the halls like this!

"NO!"

She didn't know which woman shouted the denial but she had no question what they were talking about. On the horizon, about two hand-spans above the trees at the end of the garden, an evil light blazed in the sky. She watched it pulse and flair irregularly. There was no question what it was, none at all.

"Those bastards!" Kayla didn't even know she was talking.

"Those god-damned gutless BASTARDS! COWARDS! YELLOW-DOG SPINELESS COWARDS!" She screamed at the sky. "YOU CHICKEN THIEF BLUE COSMOS BASTARDS! HOW CAN YOU POUR THAT SLIME OVER EVERYONE ON EARTH? I'LL KILL YOU FOR THIS!"

She was shaking so hard she could barely stand. The sky and its malevolent new light washed over with red. Those dung-holes had brought nukes; and used them! Kayla Grayhawk had never experienced rage like this before. It was taking her breath away and putting great, multi-hued spots in her vision. She never felt herself crash to the ground.

She became aware there was something cool on her forehead. Her head was still pounding slightly but nothing like she remembered it doing. And she wasn't standing anymore either. No, she was laying flat, on something pretty soft. And it was dark.

"How are you doing Kayla?"

"Serin? What the hell happened?"

"What do you remember?"

Good question. What did she remember? Well, there had been waking up to a very amorous Adrian this morning. That was fun! Breakfast, that was nothing unusual. Oh, yeah, Captain Thoms had called. Her mind came to a stop. Yeah, Thoms had called. Everything had gone downhill from there hadn't it?

"Kayla?"

"Yes or no, Boaz is gone 'cause my people nuked it."

"Yes." Serin replied softly.

"How long have I been out?"

"About half an hour."

"What's happening now?"

"Both sides are regrouping. The next phase of the battle will start in a few hours."

"Adrian?"

"The Thoms Team came back whole this time."

"But no one can count on that forever." The veteran pilot whispered. "Someday, we all lose. Some die, some get hurt, some get caught. But we all lose someday."

"Yes." The Coordinator woman spoke so quietly Kayla barely heard her.

"You have someone out there." She stated it as a fact, because that was what the older woman's voice told her was true.

"My last child."

She shuddered at the fear in Serin's normally calm tones. "I can't imagine that. My first are barely started. I can't imagine losing them and having the very last one going out there."

"He must. They will come here if he can't stop them."

"That's so wrong! They should leave you people alone!"

"You are generous. You remind me at this moment of Lacus Clyne. She too, in her own very different way, is a warrior for peace."

That, that was one hell of a compliment. She'd seen enough footage of the Clyne girl to have some grasp of how much influence the other girl had once wielded here in the Plants. Warrior for peace? Was that what Owl wanted her to be?

Kayla slipped back into sleep before she could remember anything more.


Lance had studied the twelve men of his Team carefully during their second briefing of the day. None of them had sunk into shock or, worse, jumped into blind rage. Oh, there was plenty of both shock and rage there all right; but none of it slipped out of anyone's control. At least, not so far. Even Ito was back under control now.

That had scared him. He depended on his lone Elite to be his right hand and most of the left in a battle. To have the younger officer disintegrate into emotional splinters, that had hit him hard. Yet once the light of the blasts had died back, so had his near-dementia. Without the nuclear light burning his eyes, he'd snapped out of it, able to remember where he was and why.

How any of them would do when it came down to fighting was a very open question. Bloody Valentine had scarred the psyche of every living soul in the Plants. Now the Earth Forces had come with nukes again. The Captain was honestly unsure Team discipline would hold if they came face to face with any of the attacking forces carrying the nukes or those guarding them. The smoothly oiled, destructive machine that was the Thoms Team might well disintegrate into twelve insane berserkers hell-bent on individual obliteration of the enemy force; throwing their effectiveness away in their blind need to kill.

He strode swiftly through the hanger, pausing at each mobile suit to be sure the crew had everything in full readiness and the pilot was just as prepared. They could afford no short-cuts today. The pause for resupply by the Earth Forces had given them this unanticipated window of opportunity to bring every machine up to full power themselves. They weren't going to get another chance. Once in this fight, the only way out was probably going to be death or energy depletion – something likely to be nothing more than a slow death this time. Victory was an event only the lucky few would live to enjoy.

As he stopped to talk to each man, Lance decided he was grateful they hadn't received the rest of the promised GuAIZ mobile suits to replace their GINNs. Yes the new suits were more powerful and considerably more maneuverable. But they were also unfamiliar. Only two of the suits had reached his Team so far. He had let everyone try them once but had seen immediately that the change over would require serious practice with the new weapons before most of the Team was going to be effective with them.

Because they were considered prestige equipment, he'd almost been forced to keep one for himself as Team Leader and assign the other to Ito, the Team's only Elite. Fortunately, he'd taken the time to practice until he was genuinely comfortable with the GuAIZ and Ito was a natural with it. Just as well in his case since the boy spent far too much time up at the Project practicing something else with that too-willing Natural girl he'd idiotically lost his heart to.

"Sir, what, ah that is, if we do run low on power and the battle's not over, ah, . . ." Yuri Lubbek stumbled over his question.

"If you run low on power, or if your GINN is severely damaged, I want you to play dead." Lance told him calmly. The boy was the youngest in the Team and tended to be the most nervous before battle. He was rock steady once the shooting started but he could talk himself into quite a state ahead of time if given half a chance. The trick with Yuri was to give him something to think about, some activity to plan for. In this case, survival.

"There's going to be a lot of wreckage created by this fight." Thoms pointed out coolly. "If you become disabled or lose power, just pretend to be another fragment of it. There will be a good many bits and pieces that show low or residual power levels. If you shut down everything but minimal life support, you'll just drop into the background of junk metal. You will want to look as defenseless as possible though, so don't try to keep a weapon in your GINN's hand! Even the most stupid Natural will shoot something like that just on general principals! You may be able to get away with leaving a beam gun floating near the hand, but never in it. Sit quietly and wait for either a chance to signal for help or someone to come by and pick you up"

"Yes sir, I understand." Lubbek's nerves of moments ago were already fading as he began to turn the idea over in his mind; building numerous scenarios that he could file in the back of his mind ready for use at need.

Lance realized that was actually something he should have mentioned at the briefing. He included it in his instructions with the rest of his pilots. He'd have to swing back to the first few and make sure they got the word as well. As things fell out, he had plenty of time for it.

The specialty of the military throughout history has been 'hurry up and wait'. Today was proving itself no exception to that rule. The Team was fully ready, almost over ready, by the time they were scheduled to load. And, of course, there was a delay.

Considering just how many ships, men, mobile suits, and tons of supplies they were trying to move out today, it was a wonder things hadn't snarled up hours earlier. This wasn't even a snarl, just the accumulated slippage in turn around time that had been building up since the loading had started. The schedule was gradually falling behind with every small mishap and glitch that slowed any given ship in any given loading bay. By the time his team was ready to go, the delay was nearly up to an hour.

Captain Thoms knew this would do some of his people no good. There were already more than enough nerves around the group just because of the nukes. Having to stand – sit actually – around in their mobile suits an extra hour with nothing to do and no way to burn off those nerves had left some very hair-trigger tempers among the Team.

Every resource in ZAFT was going out this time. There would be no reserve. Honestly qualified or not, if there was a working mobile suit at hand and someone who could get it off the ground and shoot at the same time, they were going out together. The cadet barracks was being emptied of any student soldier who met those very, very limited qualifications.

He knew this was going to lead to trouble and dead kids. So when he saw the line of cadets marching toward their loading transport wavering close to his troops, Lance tried to get his GuAIZ up the line to keep the shambling youngsters clear of his people. He wasn't quite fast enough.

A cadet piloted GINN put a foot down awkwardly. The machine lurched toward the high wall on its right side. The inexperienced pilot overcorrected the mobile suit and used far too much power at the same time, sending it staggering out of control to its left and hard into one of the Team's units. By very bad fortune, the suit the cadet hit was piloted by Trace Holman. Of all the short fuses on the Team, the youngster crashed into the very shortest.

Holman's GINN did not go down as the falling student's unit slammed into it. For a wonder, this one time the arrogant fool managed to do everything correctly himself and kept both his unit and the cadet's from falling. Then he ruined his moment of success by slamming both hands against the student mobile suit and shoving it off at nearly full power.

The hapless cadet fought for control but never had a chance to regain it. The GINN took three giant steps to the right and crashed into the wall. The wall failed, collapsing inward quickly enough to prevent the pilot from using any rebound effect to stabilize the staggering machine. The cadet tried, he sincerely did. He managed to keep the suit upright most of the way to the low building across the garden everyone could now see was in there before it finally tipped too far and fell over on its right side. Thoms could feel the crash shudder up through his own suit. The head and shoulders of the GINN struck the building, crushing the structure. Oh, there would be hell to pay for this!


Kayla had eaten as soon as she woke up, run herself through her afternoon session in the simulator, and then elected to go for a bit of a swim. Lunch had not been a good meal what with trying to deal with everything that had happened this morning. The simulator class had been much better. It demanded total focus, forcing the worry about the nukes to the back of her mind. It also gave her a place to dump off all the nervous energy that worry had been generating.

She'd run a small battle sim this time with less than ten percent of the board blacked out and had handled the constant data onslaught successfully. She was still near the bottom of the class, a place any Coordinator cadet would be heartily ashamed to be, but she was feeling damned triumphant about it. If this simulator was anything like reality based, she was probably good enough now to go out in a real GINN and stand a decent chance of survival in a smallish fight with something like even odds if the people around her were experienced pros.

The swim was just to get the simulator-tensed muscles loosened up again. So the water speed was lazy and so was her pace. It was part of her concentrated effort to not think about how soon the next phase of the battle would start. But honestly, it should be in the next two to three hours at most. It wouldn't take any longer than that now to resupply all the mobile suits, feed the crews, and rearm those god-damned false-named Peacekeepers!

She'd pretty much met her objective when she noticed a shock transmission in the water. Somewhere not too far off, a very heavy object had hit the ground pretty hard. The whole building had had something of a tremor for most of the day from the movement of large numbers of mobile suits. It was the source of the twist she'd used for the hypnosis trick earlier. She hadn't been told the cause but only an idiot would fail to put together all the data she'd picked up over the last month plus and not realize the Project was hard against a decent sized ZAFT mobile suit base. So the building tremor was no surprise. This shock, however, was not something normal.

She stood up in the water, not sure if there was a problem or not. Several more small shocks hit the water. Was someone losing control of a suit? This was a lot like it felt when she was getting ready to 'fall over' in the simulator.

Three shocks of gathering strength reverberated through the pool. Whatever was causing this was getting a bit closer. Then a much larger jolt hit. This one was not as clean as the earlier ones. It suggested a collision and, as it kept on for several seconds, perhaps a collapse of something.

Kayla had no time to analyze the shockwaves in the water. The confused one hadn't really ended before there was another, stronger one. It was followed quickly by four more, each gaining strength. What the hell! This was coming right down on her!

She could hear the last two as well as feel them. Yeah! There was a damn mobile suit stumbling around here! The sound of those massive machine feet hitting the ground was unmistakable!

It was the scream of over-torqued metal that sent her dropping into the shallow water grabbing for the side bar as she pulled herself as tightly against the cold tile as she could. That mobile suit was coming down! Right here and right now!

The howl of overdriven machinery vied with the crashing of collapsing structural materials as the mobile suit came down on the building. The sheer noise was overwhelming. The lights flared and died. The water stopped flowing around her. And there was suddenly dust everywhere. But nothing larger fell on her.

For several minutes, Kayla didn't move. She couldn't open her eyes for the dust and she could hardly breathe through it. Her ears rang, making it difficult to actually hear anything. Yet she could tell the situation was not an immediate threat to her and that conditions were improving by the second.

The air cleared enough that breathing eased to almost normal in what she estimated was about five minutes. Only then did she stand again and shake her head carefully to dislodge as much dust as she could. With her hair mostly free of the loose material, she gently brushed her face and eyelids until she thought she could safely try opening her eyes.

The lights were out of course but she could still see a surprising amount of her surroundings. The wan emergency lights were not faring well under the layer of dust but that really didn't matter since the door and about six feet of the outer wall beside it were both gone, letting daylight in. She could see the roof was gone over the hall. And looming over everything, blotting out the sky, was the back of the head of a GINN.

Kayla waded through the now filthy water to the steps and climbed out of the pool. She found her slippers and knocked the dust out of them before putting them on. The stack of towels was still neatly standing on the rack, assuring her of mostly clean ones in the center of the pile to wipe off with. The similar stack of warm cover-ups likewise held clean ones in the pile. Once she was sort of dressed and at least dry enough not to have the dust turn to mud on her skin, Kayla went to see what had happened.

In the hall she got her first good look at the extent of the damages. The dining room was flattened under the GINN's head and shoulders. The game room door was gone and a good section of the wall was down but it didn't look like anything in there had taken a direct hit.

The corridor leading back to her room was blocked by debris and the tall fin that was part of the GINN's head crest. Looking at the angle, she judged it likely most of the rooms close to hers were destroyed. Hers might be gone as well but she couldn't be sure from here. Looking down the body, it was plain the gardens she'd enjoyed with Adrian were a near total loss. And down at the end of the gardens there was a brand new gaping hole in the stone wall. A hole with several mobile suits standing around in the gap just looking in at the fallen GINN.

She could hear voices shouting on the other side of the huge machine. Apparently the pilot was either injured or trapped or both. She sighed, she really wasn't in the business of rescuing ZAFT personnel but right now, with crazy fools maybe coming here with nukes, she rather thought she should make an exception and see if she could help. So she headed around the lower end of the fallen suit. The smashed vegetation was going to be easier to go through than the wreckage of the building.

By the time she got to the front of the GINN, the small rescue team of two had managed to extract the pilot. They had the young woman up on an emergency field gurney and were carefully pealing her out of her flight suit. As Kayla got closer, she could see the broken ribs and the unnatural bend in the arm that explained why they wanted the girl out of the suit. One leg was also sitting at an odd angle as well.

"Just be careful!" the older of the rescuers snapped, apparently at the one trying to work the busted arm out of the sleeve. "It opens, idiot! Don't pull it down like that!"

"I'm sorry sir! I've never worked with a flight suit!" the frazzled junior protested.

"I have." Kayla told him. "Move. I'll get it open and you can take care of her."

The young ZAFT soldier stepped aside immediately. Kayla had seen ZAFT suits before, she knew how they went together. It took her only seconds to have this one open to the wrist for him. She moved aside herself as soon as she was done and went around to open the other sleeve. The older man stood back and waved at the lower half of the suit when she'd finished with the sleeve. So she went ahead and opened both legs to the feet and very carefully slipped the soled boots off the girl's feet.

Just about the time she finished, a real ambulance arrived. Kayla immediately got herself out of the professional's way. Within scant minutes of their arrival they had moved the badly injured girl onto a secure transport gurney, started basic field treatment and had stabilized her injured limbs enough to get her safely to the hospital. Then they and the pilot were gone, leaving Kayla with the one young soldier and an empty flight suit on the abandoned gurney.

"Gods, now what do we do? Who's gonna get this suit back up and take it out to stop those butchering Naturals?" The trooper muttered.

The question opened a memory. What had Owl said? "When you are given a doll, take it to the skies!" A doll? What a thing to call a weapon like a mobile suit! Wait! This was part of the vision! The green ZAFT flight suit she'd been wearing!

She looked at the suit carefully. It might be a bit large but it should be a reasonable fit. She had been using that simulator for just this kind of opportunity after all. Most important of all, Owl had told her to do this!

"You want this cleaned up?" She asked the soldier as casually as she could, jerking her thumb at the splayed out flight suit. "There's a simulator inside and it's got cleaning gear for one of these."

The young man looked up gratefully. "That would be a big help. The Commander is going to be pissed to hell as it is. I'd just as soon not have him see this. It would only make it worse."

"Sure, no problem. Got the helmet? I can do that too."

"Right over here! Thank you, thank you! You are saving my butt girl!"

More like going to get it hauled in front of a firing squad if things went badly but while she didn't enjoy tricking a kid like this, it was necessary. She could only hope he came out of it all right. Moments later she was heading for the game room with the folded suit, helmet and the gloves the soldier remembered had been left in the cockpit.

The game room was a dusty mess like everything else. Kayla wasn't worried about it. She planned to do this inside the simulator where it would be much, much cleaner. She got to the machine and opened it carefully, trying not to get any more dirt inside than she absolutely had to. She dropped the suit, helmet and gloves off and closed the simulator back up. There were a few other things she was going to need.

The small locker room in the physical fitness area had stayed surprisingly clean, making the emergency lighting adequate enough to work in. There Kayla found, much to her surprise, that the showers functioned and she could get a bath. She took probably the fastest one of her life, including washing the crud out of her hair. She was planning to go out in a mobile suit. Doing that crusted in dust was asking for unending physical torture.

She towel-dried the hair and put it in a neat, tight braid, the ties for it supplied by the stocks in the locker room. She took the means to pin the braid up on her head so it would be secure inside the helmet too. The selection of underwear was skimpy but she found some that fit and that was all that mattered. Unlike last time, she was never going to wear a flight suit without a bra again. Not after she'd realized that someone, and it was her own fault he'd had the chance, had let his hands roam where he shouldn't when she was unconscious in his GINN!

She dashed back to the simulator to clean the flight suit. Opened all the way like this, it was a simple job. She was very surprised and quite pleased to discover the injured ZAFT girl hadn't gotten around to hooking up the suits plumbing yet. So she didn't have to try to find a way to sanitize that. In something just under half an hour, she was ready to try to lie her way out of the Ito Project and into a GINN cockpit.

The suit was indeed slightly large on her. However, judging by what she could see in the only mirror she could find, the backplate on a shooting game, it wasn't immediately apparent that this wasn't her suit. The swim wrap she'd also decided to wear under it filled out the size difference enough to let her get by with it once she'd tightened the fittings as far as they would go. She was really going to have to pull the safety harness down tightly though to make up for the looseness or she'd get tossed around inside this suit every time anything bumped the GINN.

She slipped out of the damaged Project building and worked her way down the back of the GINN. Once down by the feet, she peeked around to see how things looked. The first thing she noticed was the lack of gaping mobile suits by the break in the wall. There were still suits out there, but these were moving in purposeful lines, paying no particular attention to the broken wall they were passing. They had to be heading for an embarkation point. She smiled grimly; their attention would be focused on the upcoming battle. They weren't going to notice much else unless it intruded itself on them.

An examination of the downed GINN showed her she could climb over the right 'ankle' and drop to the front without having to risk exposure by walking all the way around the feet. She promptly clambered across the shortcut. She did pause at the top though to study what was going on up by the cockpit.

There were several ZAFT soldiers there now and a couple of officers. Kayla did not see the young man she'd charmed out of the flight suit. That was good. She didn't need to meet him again today.

The officers were too far away for her to hear their conversation clearly but enough floated her way for her to understand that she'd caught one of those streams of fortune that sometimes came to favor the bold. They were talking about the pilot, or rather the lack of a pilot for this GINN. Here was her golden chance. She checked the angles, then dropped down in the most shielded point of the ankle. Her looks were distinctive and she had little to hide them so she put the helmet on and lifted the faceplate. Now her hair was out of sight and her face was defined more by the shape of the helmet than by it's own natural one. She took a deep breath, and started briskly toward the ZAFT group.