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.)
Well, I am getting very close to the point where I won't have anything written ahead any longer. This will slow down the updates as I'll have to actually write them before I can post 'em! I will keep the pace as quick as I can but employment does chew up a large chunk of my time. However, paying the bills is a necessity so don't expect me to quit my day job to write fanfic, ok?
Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Seed.
"Astray Pilot Juri to Archangel. I have something odd here."
"This is Archangel, go ahead Astray Juri. What have you found?"
"I have a badly burned GINN clutching three other wrecked ZAFT mobile suits. I'm getting life signs in all four cockpits. They won't last much longer though. They're all running on the last of their reserves."
"Astray Juri, this is Captain Ramius. Can you take them to the Eternal?"
"Eternal has its deck occupied right now helping with the emergency repairs for our Astrays. You have the only open deck that can take a mobile suit."
"Have you tried to speak to any of the ZAFT pilots? Are they willing to come aboard what they will see as an Alliance ship?"
"Sorry Captain Ramius but I'm not getting any response. I can't get very good readings but they may all be unconscious."
"All right, bring them in. I'll alert medical and security."
"Yes, Ma'am!"
"Chief! Which one first?"
"This GuAIZ. It'll be the easiest one to get out of the group. Are either of the ZAFT kids here yet? I don't want to open this only to have the pilot panic on us."
Adrian stared at his blank comm screen in some confusion. Who the hell was talking? And what ZAFT kids were they talking about? Why should he need reassurance?
There was a slight jar, then he was aware of movement. He was also aware of pain. His left arm didn't want to move. He looked at it, realized that it was bending in places it shouldn't and decided it was a very smart arm. He didn't want to move it either any more.
So, maybe he could move his head safely? He gave that a try and was relieved to find he could. He also quickly learned that trying to move it too far had a negative effect on the broken arm. He could get it high enough to see his screens though.
The first thing he registered was a tall blond in an Earth Forces uniform. The man was talking to a Chief Petty Officer whose uniform was likewise Earth Alliance. So was everyone else's in sight. All right, now he understood why someone was worried about his panicking on them. He was seriously thinking about doing just that.
There was a very gentle bump when the GuAIZ touched the deck. The Chief and the blond officer came over along with several unmistakably medical personnel with a full crash cart and gurney. So they already had enough of a sensor reading to know he was injured. What was missing from the party was heavy security. There was only one man standing as backup and he was holding a stun gun, not a pistol or rifle. They obviously wanted a live prisoner here.
He forced his head higher and endured the pain it sent slamming through his shoulder, arm and left side to get a look at the rest of the hanger. This was one of four such teams he noticed. They were all set up to capture and treat whomever they found inside the machines they'd brought aboard their ship. He could see them already lowering Yuri's shattered GINN and others working to free Captain Thoms GuAIZ from the hold Kayla's GINN had on it. Her machine looked like it had been in a major fire. It looked like they were setting up to take the medical team up to the cockpit rather than try to bring the GINN down to the deck.
A series of clicks drew his attention back to his own hatch. The Chief had a code breaker attached to his external emergency hatch lock. It was a damned good one because he could watch it flipping the correct numbers up in seconds. He had a few more moments to make up his mind and no more.
It was the lack of overt hostility that kept his hand off his sidearm. These people didn't look like they wanted him dead. They didn't look angry, or like they were anticipating a chance to hurt him. Besides, he wasn't sure he could actually draw and fire the thing right now. Then the hatch began to open and it was too late to change his mind. He let his head fall back onto his right side where it had been when he'd regained awareness and waited to see what happened.
"Huh, an Elite like the other kids. Hope he's as reasonable."
"That would be helpful Chief but we can't count on it." The second speaker came closer. "Looks like the left arm is pretty busted up. Left leg is broken too. The safety harness has torn loose on that side. Chances are if he weren't a Coordinator, he wouldn't be alive right now. The whole inside of this GuAIZ looks about as good as the outside does."
"Lt. Commander, if we may please?"
"Eh? Oh, yeah, sorry."
Adrian stayed limp and quiet, just listening as the Alliance medical team did a surprisingly careful examination before they cut him out of the ruin of his safety harness. So he learned that in addition to the broken arm and leg, he had cracked at least two ribs on the lower left side as well. They checked his neck very thoroughly before they tried moving his head to be sure he had no damage there. He was very relieved to hear them pronounce his spine undamaged.
One of them took his helmet off with the same care they'd done everything else to this point. There was a touch of an injection needle at the back of his neck, then he lost most of the feeling in his body. The relief from the pain was welcome but the abrupt loss of any physical control was not.
"All right we've got about seven minutes if this dosage is correct. Lets get that arm in a proper transport splint and then we can get the leg secured too."
"I'm reading pretty clean breaks here. This shouldn't be too bad."
"Then let's not be wasting any time."
Adrian let his eyes slit open just enough to watch them gently prod the bones of his forearm back into places that looked a lot more normal. A heavy white inflatable wrap went over the arm as soon as they were satisfied with what they'd done. A second one went on his upper arm when they had that lined up as they liked as well. He closed his eyes again as they splinted the leg.
By the time they were done, feeling was returning to his body. It wasn't full feeling by any means but he was very aware of his broken and cracked bones. He was glad they were done moving them around before whatever it was they'd given him had worn off. His splinted arm was secured to his body before they gently worked him out of his cockpit.
As they floated him toward the gurney, he risked a slit-eyed look around again. He was just in time to see one gurney leaving quickly, a full emergency team deployed around it. That was probably Yuri. It was a small miracle he was still alive. Captain Thoms was lying on another, face a bloody mask and one leg also sporting one of the inflatable splints. They were getting set to move him out as well.
He was rotated and lowered toward the gurney. Before he touched it, the security man he'd noted earlier reached over and undid his belt, taking it and his sidearm. He also claimed both combat knives from his boot sheaths. Although he'd already decided against using any of them, he regretted their loss. Then he was down on the gurney being secured to it for transport. As he rolled out of the hanger, the last thing he saw was the Chief up on a gantry connecting his code breaker to Kayla's GINN, the blond Lt. Commander beside him.
The GINN was a mess. Correction, it was a totaled mess. Kayla was sprawled in the seat on her left side, tangled up in the safety harness that was still attached at only one point now. Her right arm was useless, her left was numb, and her head felt kinda like someone had been using it for a drum.
All her screens were dark. The cockpit had one, count it, one very dim emergency light working. And she was somewhere. She knew that because someone was bumping around outside. The thousand dollar question was; where?
The light that came in as the hatch cracked open was blinding. So she shut her eyes and played 'dead'. The sounds she heard told her she was in some ship's hanger deck. The directional quality of much of the sound told her she was well off that deck too. So the GINN was upright and on it's feet.
"What do we have this time sir?"
"A total wreck. This machine is probably beyond even your skill, Murdock. Looks like most of the boards are burned out. I'm amazed there wasn't a real fire in here."
"How about the pilot? He still alive?"
"Well, this one's a girl and yeah, she's breathing. There's something wrong with the right shoulder. I'm not sure what but it doesn't look right. I think the arm may be broken too. She's all snarled up in what's left of the safety harness. It's gonna be hard to tell much until we get her out of that."
"Mu! You sent for us?" That was a much younger voice and the owner was down on deck by the sound of it.
"Yeah kid. Could the three of you go on up to the infirmary? We've already sent three of the ZAFT pilots up there and they'll need to know they aren't gonna be shot as soon as they wake up. Well, as soon as two of 'em do that is. I dunno if that one kid's gonna make it. He's in real bad shape. Doc called Waltfeld to see if he could send someone over from the Eternal who knows how to treat a Coordinator hurt that bad."
"Do you know who they are, Lt. Commander La Flaga?" Another young voice asked.
"Sorry Zala, the medics didn't stop to grab id tags."
Kayla opened her eyes again. Mu La Flaga? Here? But that was exactly who was sitting on her hatch.
"Hey, Hawk, you want to get this damned helmet off? I wanna talk to you!" She croaked, dismayed at the sound of her own voice.
"Wha?" She'd startled him all right.
"La Flaga, will you get this helmet off?"
Hands suddenly moved the helmet, unlocking it from the suit collar. Then it was lifted carefully away. And Kayla found herself looking up into two of the bluest eyes in the whole of the Earth Alliance. Yep, it was really him and boy, did he look surprised!
"Grayhawk? Kayla Grayhawk? What the hell are you doing here?"
"Very long story. Ultra short version; I was captured at JOSH-A and, uhm, 'borrowed', this GINN to make my departure from ZAFT's company. My timing turned out to be open to question."
"Where did you learn how to fly a GINN?"
"Part of the very long story." She found her self beginning to run a bit short of air. "Look, I'm not doing so well right now, the story can wait. You wanted some names. The Elite pilot is Adrian Ito. The Captain is Lance Thoms. The badly hurt guy is Ito's friend, Yuri. I think his last name is Lubbok or Lubbek or something like that. I feel like shit. I think I'll just pass out for a bit, ok?"
"Mu? Is something wrong?"
"No Kira, not wrong, just real strange!" La Flaga called back to the enquiry from the deck. "The pilot of the GINN is one of our people! Technically I guess you'd have to call Tomahawk an escaping prisoner of war. But I don't know where she got the GINN or where she learned to fly it!"
"DAMN IT LA FLAGA! MY NAME IS GRAYHAWK!"
"She's a bit unfond of the nickname by the way."
"All right, I won't use it!"
"You see? I always knew you were a smart kid Yamato."
One of these days she was gonna kill that man. His sense of humor was a menace to society! But it wasn't going to be today. Today, everything was getting very dark and very quiet. Maybe, maybe yelling at him had been a mistake . . . . .
There was something about medical facilities that was simply unmistakable. Adrian wasn't sure just what it was though. They were usually very quiet and they usually had a faintly medicinal smell to them. Right now the one he was sure he was in was neither particularly quiet nor medicinal but he knew it was an infirmary just the same.
"Doctor, what do you want us to do for him?" The speaker sounded disconcertingly unsure of himself.
"At this point, just administer the medications on schedule, watch for the possible complications on that list, and wait. We tend to either die or recover very quickly from this kind of injury. He has an excellent chance; your people did everything right and they did it fast. It's too bad about the eye but that would have had to have been treated almost as soon as it happened to have saved it. I'll send a pair of experienced ward nurses over so you don't have to try to handle three injured men without trained help."
"I appreciate that! Coordinator medicine is simply not something I've had much experience with at all. We've been very lucky. The very few times young Yamato has had problems, he's pulled through them with minimal help."
"Doctor, I would have been shocked if you had. Lets be honest, the Alliance isn't in the business of treating Coordinators. There is no reason you would have been offered the training in your service. I would have a similar problem if I had several Naturals on my ward. We don't learn much about what your medical needs are either."
What was he listening to? Was this really what it sounded like? Adrian Ito tried to very carefully open his eyes just enough to get a glimpse of what was going on around him. The lights were fairly bright but indirect so while his eyes wanted to water a bit he wasn't blinded by them.
Yes, he was in someone's infirmary. The colors and the setup were not like anything he'd seen before on any ZAFT ship though. That however went with the middle-aged man in the medical lab coat with Earth Alliance insignia on the shoulder and a good half dozen people in Alliance uniforms who were working here. It was the unmistakable Coordinator doctor with his pure copper hair and ZAFT insignia who looked completely out of place. Yet the two medical professionals were just standing there conversing amiably, with no sign of any threat anywhere.
Without turning his head, Adrian could see Lance Thoms' bronze-blond hair in the next bed. Thoms eyes were closed and his long, slow breathing indicated sleep while his peaceful face spoke for a lack of pain that in turn indicated he'd gotten good medical treatment. His own lack of pain told him he'd also been given effective treatment. And the discussion between the two doctors was probably about Yuri, so he'd been helped as well. Whatever was going on here, he was grateful for it.
"Did you send for me Doc?"
The Natural medic turned to someone just out of Adrian's line of sight. "Ah, yes. You heard about the Astray pilot who brought in the damaged GINN with three other ruined ZAFT mobile suits in it's arms?"
"Word's all over the ships. They say all four pilots survived too."
"Yes they have. That's what I need you for if you can spare a couple of hours. Two of them should be waking up before long. I'd rather they had one of their own on hand to reassure them."
"Sure. I've done all I can on the Kusanagi right now so they sent me back here to stay close to my Buster just in case anyone moves out there. What about the other two pilots?"
"Well, the one boy is badly hurt. He probably won't regain consciousness for a while yet. The fourth pilot turns out to be one of ours. And before you ask, no I don't know where an Earth Forces officer acquired a GINN or learned how to fly it."
There was a rather long moment of silence, then the other asked hesitantly, "That was a joke right? You don't expect me to believe some Natural was actually flying a GINN."
The doctor shrugged. "She was found in the cockpit, in the pilot's seat, hands on the controls. You'll have to ask Lt. Commander La Flaga for the details. He's the one who knows her."
"Ask me for what?" The tall blond from the hanger, now in a blue and white Alliance flight suit and a cheerful smile walked up to the medical personnel but his attention was on whoever was standing just beyond the screen at the foot of his bed.
"Some Natural girl was flying that fried GINN?" The question was both incredulous and defiant at the same time; the questioner didn't want to hear yes for an answer but he already half believed it anyway.
"Oh she's not 'some Natural girl', Dearka! No, that GINN was 'liberated' and flown by the Tomahawk! Kayla passed out before I could get her to tell me much of anything but she apparently was captured at JOSH-A. Where she picked up the skill to fly a GINN between then and now, I don't know yet, but she was definitely the pilot of that machine."
"Someone stopped at that disaster to pick up a prisoner?" This was a new voice.
The Alliance pilot turned slightly. "Apparently they did. That's not a story someone like Kayla Grayhawk would make up. Although why they would do it in that fight is beyond me."
Adrian's eyes widened suddenly as a very tanned blond in a ZAFT Elite's red flight suit suddenly stepped into his line of sight. The other moved past the doctors to stop and eye the patient in the bed beyond Captain Thoms'. By the expression on his face, he rather liked what he saw. All right, now he had a pretty good idea where Kayla was.
"Well, well, I had no idea there was anything like this hiding among the Astray pilots!"
La Flaga's eyebrows rose and his grin got positively evil. "That's because there isn't. Dearka Elsman, meet Lt. Kayla Grayhawk, 421st Air Wing, 3d Moebius Squadron. Second best Zero pilot in the entire Alliance and now, ZAFT GINN pilot too."
The look on Elsman's face was priceless. He actually backed up a step. The other pilot was obviously something of a ladies man and now he'd met something female he was seriously not sure about. This was outright funny. Others thought so too as Adrian heard more than one suppressed laugh.
There were two more pilots here now. One wore ZAFT red and the other Alliance blue and white. Yet if they weren't a team, Adrian would eat his arm brace. He could see it in the knowing glances they exchanged at the hapless Elsman's expense and the easy way they stood together.
If that weren't surprise enough, the ZAFT pilot was Athrun Zala, the Chairman's wayward and supposedly traitorous son. So who was the other in the Alliance suit who stood so confidently beside one of the best in all of ZAFT? Adrian studied the young officer with his unruly brown hair, warm violet eyes, and friendly face. Then the other looked over at him.
"Athrun, one of the GuAIZ pilots is awake."
La Flaga looked over as well. "That's the Elite kid."
Ito had a very odd moment of déjà vu. For a split second he was back on the unknown Alaskan island and the Archangel's people were calling him 'GINN'. The same reaction popped out of his mouth before he even thought about it.
"My name is Adrian Ito, not Elite, all right?"
La Flaga and the Alliance pilot went very still, eyes widening slightly. Then they looked at each other. He couldn't read that look. But when they looked back at him he saw speculation in La Flaga and open welcome in the pilot.
"And your name isn't GINN either, is it?" The younger pilot asked with a smile.
Suddenly Adrian recognized the voice. It wasn't loaded with combat stress anymore, but it was the same one, he knew it. He was looking at Freedom's pilot. Yeah, that guy could stand with Athrun Zala any day.
"So do I get your name this time?"
"I'm Kira, Kira Yamato."
