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.)

And now to deal with toxic ethics and other future things. Some things referred to here will not be part of this story. I have no idea if I will write the story they are part of or not. They are noted here only because they are part of what is found when Roland Ito keeps his promise to show Kayla and Adrian what real toxic ethics look like.

Next update will take a few days. I may not have much writing time for a bit.

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Seed.


It would be interesting to know if that serenity trick of Lacus Clyne's was innate or something she could teach another. Because Kayla definitely could use it. The week had been something of a cross between nightmare and victory dance. The war, the shooting part of it anyhow, was over, done, period, fini. The diplomatic part was just getting started. Thank God she had no part in it!

But she did have her own life to live and at the moment it was all snarled up with a very fascinating group of people on board a set of three ships; two of which were considered rogues by their respective societies. Those people were both celebrating the end of the shooting war and deeply mourning lost friends. One never knew what mental state anyone was going to be in at any one moment and they all were subject to change without notice if the wrong trigger was touched.

The least stable of the lot was Cagalli Yuha Athha, Aube's erratic Princess and new Chief Representative. She had the temper of a cougar with a sore tooth and was just about as dangerous when she wanted to be. But she had remarkably clear sight and her approach to politics, while probably not viable in the long term, was refreshingly direct and did cut the red tape. She controlled their link to Earth. All their really serious terrestrial data was coming to them through Aube Intelligence.

The rock of constancy on the other hand was Lacus Clyne. Almost nothing ever seemed to get her ruffled. She could negotiate with the most intransigent idiots and somehow come out of the meetings not only cheerful but with most of the agreements she went in desiring. She controlled their principal link into the Plants. Yzak Joule had not cared for being stuck as their main information source but once Lacus had talked to him for a couple of hours, he'd agreed to it. He wanted Dearka back with his good name intact. To achieve that, Yzak was going to have to control the data flow. He could only do that by helping Lacus. It said everything about the depth of his friendship with the blond pilot of the now ruined Buster that he'd stick his neck out that far for him.

Everyone else fell somewhere in between those two extremes. With a rescue mission to focus on for the first few days, Kira and Athrun had been able to get through the days without coming apart. It proved to be just enough time for them both to make the adjustments in their minds that let them take up living again when it became plain there were no more survivors to find. Now Athrun stayed by Cagalli's side, a mostly silent shadow. Kira was usually to be found somewhere close to Lacus. He too was mostly somber but he was not as dark in outlook as Zala and he would talk to others sometimes.

Together with Cagalli, the three of them had located nearly two dozen Alliance survivors and about three times as many from ZAFT. But they hadn't found the one they'd searched for the hardest. They brought in very small pieces from the Strike, but not so much as a single hair from her pilot or a shred from his flight suit. Mu La Flaga, the Hawk of Endymion, like so many lost in space battles, was gone without a trace.

Kayla and Adrian had a cabin to themselves in officer's country now. Her arm was still healing but he was almost good as new. She was feeling a bit jealous of that rapid healing he enjoyed every time her arm decided to remind her that her bones were still in the 'broken but considering mending' stage.

She'd made a decision a few days before after listening to him talking to Yuri about responsibilities. Adrian would be going back to the Plants unaware that he was going to be a father in a few more months. She could just see the disaster she'd have on her hands if she told him. Either he'd try to hold her or he'd try to come with her. The first would make her a deserter and the second would get him shot.

No, silence was golden this time. His grandfather could tell him. And she could get messages from and to him through Cagalli and Aube, they'd work something out.

Kayla leaned back and stretched. She'd been reading one of the rescued Alliance pilot's description of the final battle of the war into the Kusanagi's main computer. Across the room, Captain Thoms was doing the same thing with the reports from the rescued ZAFT pilots, Kira leaning over his shoulder. She wasn't doing any data entry one handed but she could do these entries and this way the histories were available to Aube and the Clyne Faction too. They were interesting reading for her as well. She'd input about half of them now and she had a much better feel for what kind of absolute mess that last fight had become. She was glad she'd slept through it.

"Kayla! We have a message from Yzak! Grandfather is furious with you for running off like that." Adrian was grinning like a fool. "Mother says he never credited you with the skill to learn much of anything from that simulator and was caught completely by surprise when you took that GINN out of the garden and escaped. She says he stomped around the Project for days afterward in a real tantrum. Oh, and he sent the simulator back to the base."

"Talk about locking a barn after the horse is gone!" She snorted. "That old goat still won't use that head for anything but growing hair will he?"

Adrian's smile faded. "Mother says we were impossibly lucky have survived. Apparently Grandfather was sure Le Creuset was going to target the Archangel and was stunned to learn it hadn't been destroyed. He wants to know how it survived as he knows for a fact the Commander took out a prototype mobile suit armed with independently targetable Dragoons to make sure he could get past the ship's defenses. He's heard some, and Mother has this underlined three times, stupid story about Le Creuset being defeated in single combat by another mobile suit. He thinks that's garbage, the only one who could have done that was killed as an infant at Mendel Colony sixteen years ago and he wants the real story. We're to send it immediately."

Kayla stared at him quizzically. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"I haven't the slightest idea."

"What does your Grandfather know about Mendel Colony?" Kayla turned to see Kira standing beside Adrian all of a sudden, hand locked on his wrist tipping the letter so he could read it.

"I've no idea. I never heard him mention it before. What's so important about an abandoned colony?"

"He used to work on a major project running there." Thoms said quietly, snatching Kira's attention away from the letter.

"What kind of project?"

"How old are you Kira?"

"Sixteen."

"Does the name Hibiki mean anything to you?"

"Yes."

"Then I think you need to talk to a cranky genius of an old goat who thinks you're dead."

"Would someone be good enough to bring us into this loop or do we hafta get that old goat on the comm?" Kayla snapped.

Kira half turned to her. "When the Archangel and the Kusanagi first escaped Aube after the North Atlantic Federation invaded, we took refuge there to reorganize ourselves and get set up for the space battles we knew were coming. We weren't quite done when both the Alliance and ZAFT showed up. Just before we got into that fight though, Mu had one of his feelings that something was wrong and Le Creuset was involved. He headed into the Colony. Dearka and I followed to make sure he didn't run into more of the Le Creuset Team than Strike could handle alone."

He took a very deep breath, then plunged on. "Mu did get into a fight with the Commander all right. And Dearka met up with Yzak Joule. Remembering how things had gone with Athrun and I, he sent me after Mu while he stayed to try to talk things out with his friend. By the time I caught up, both of them were out of their mobile suits and into the Colony's interior. So I followed."

He blinked rapidly, whatever he'd seen, it hadn't been pretty. "The place was some kind of experimental lab. It was grotesque and disgusting and Rau kept taunting us, saying we should know this place, that I'd been born there. He claimed to be a clone of Mu's father! And he said I was the only successful experiment out of who knew how many hundreds! He said I wasn't the son of the Yamato's but of this Dr. Hibiki and his wife. He had some insane idea that I was supposed to be some kind of ultimate Coordinator! And he almost killed us both! I think he would have if I hadn't knocked his mask off."

"So Dr. Hathaway gave Roland Ito a straight story." Lance Thoms said wonderingly.

"So there's someone still alive who knows what happened at that place?" Cagalli demanded from the door.

"My grandfather apparently knows something he's never discussed with me." Adrian told her.

"We have to talk to him." The blond girl announced firmly.

"Oh, you plan to run the Kusanagi up to Aprilius One and politely ask to visit?" Kayla enquired sarcastically. "The war isn't exactly legally over yet you know."

Cagalli stopped with her mouth open. Before she could think of a useful direction to go in, Lacus Clyne spoke up. "We will send a message back to Dr. Ito and ask if he will provide us with more specific information. And we will tell him Kira is indeed alive and well."

"And what do we do in the mean time?" Cagalli demanded.

"We wait patiently." Lacus replied and glided out the door.

"What do you mean, wait patiently! I DON'T HAVE ANY PATIENCE!" The Princess of Aube shouted angrily.

"So noted." Kayla replied with a grin.

Cagalli turned around furiously. Kayla waved her hand at her, making moose horns on her head. Cagalli began to snigger. It degenerated into laughter.

"Do you know, . . . . how silly . . . . that looks with only . . . . one hand!"

"Yeah. My sister used to do it to me when she broke her arm falling off a horse." She kicked a nearby chair. "Sit down and quit yelling. Look, I've met this old fraud. Honest, you don't want him around any more than you absolutely have to have him. He's arrogant, stuck up, scary smart and impossibly sure he knows all the answers. He's also an old billy goat who desperately needs to be kicked in the butt."

"KAYLA!" Adrian roared. "That's my Grandfather you're talking about! Be polite!"

"Why? He's never polite to me."

She turned firmly to Cagalli, ignoring Adrian's irritation. Kira grabbed him by the sleeve and pulled him away. She saw him tow Adrian over to Captain Thoms and roust him out of his chair as well. Then the three of them slipped out the door. Good enough. The guys could talk now without interruptions as she intended to keep Cagalli busy right here for a bit.

And she did. The two of them got along surprisingly well as long as they stayed off the subject of Athrun Zala. Kayla didn't see what Cagalli saw in that gloomy fish. Well, besides his looks of course. There was nothing wrong with those! But then, Cagalli told her flat out Adrian bored her to tears so perhaps they were even. At least they each were sure the other had no eye for their guy! She had to apply herself to keeping Cagalli occupied for two days. Then a small, private, long range shuttle docked with the Kusanagi and Roland Ito got off.


The slow spin of the ruined colony ahead of them was not inviting. Adrian didn't like the looks of any of it. Kayla was giving it a very suspicious study as well he noted. As for Kira Yamato, well Kira was looking at ghosts. And his grandfather had the sourest expression he'd ever seen on his face.

"Do you remember that discussion we had a while ago about toxic ethics?"

"Yes, Grandfather, I do."

"Well, I promised to show you both what the real thing looks like. I assure you, you will not enjoy the experience. I strongly suggest anyone with even the slightest tendency to a weak stomach bring several 'sick sacks'. This place was created just for using 'em."

"We've all dealt with plenty of ugly things, Dr. Ito. I don't think we'll need them." Cagalli told him.

"You've dealt with war, girl. This isn't war. This is greed and unbridled ambition run amok. This is what you get when there are no ethical restraints at all on a project involving living human beings. War is clean next to this place. Bring a half dozen sacks, you'll need 'em. It's always the cocky ones like you who do." The old man snorted at her.

"What were you doing here then?" Cagalli challenged.

"Being a damned fool." Dr. Ito snapped back. "I was stupid enough to think if all I did was theoretical work, my hands would stay clean. Ha! Complete and utter self-delusion! Don't ever tell yourself that lie young woman! Because just as soon as you crack the theoretical end of it, they hand your work off to the applied teams. And they use it to create living nightmares. You might as well have thrown yourself in the cesspit to start with! You would have been more honest if you had."

The Kusanagi settled into the same bay she'd used before. She'd come alone this time. As a recognized neutral, she could travel with relative safety. Neither the Archangel nor the Eternal could move unchallenged yet.

Because he'd promised to take them, Dr. Ito insisted Dr. McIntyre rig secure splints that would allow both Kayla and Adrian to make the trip into the colony. This led to a meeting between the physician and the geneticist that lasted several hours. In the end, Roland Ito got his way, but only because the gravity in the wrecked colony was so low that letting Adrian walk on his half healed leg wouldn't actually stress it seriously. Their arms were simple to protect compared to the leg and they both promised not to do anything stupid like trying to lift heavy weights or pull something massive around.

The shuttles slipped deep into the colony accompanied by one of the Astrays. The pilot was one of the very few of their own wounded the Aube had recovered. He wasn't really up to a serious battle yet but he could stand guard and give warning if there was any threat to the shuttles. The party, by unspoken agreement, followed Dr. Ito into the structure.

The old man looked around with a savage frown. "Place hasn't improved any I see."

"Opinion noted. Now, where do we go from here, old goat? This is one big building. There's gonna be stuff everywhere. Where do we look for something interesting and not too stomach turning?" Kayla hissed, not liking this place already.

"Well, let's see if they overlooked any of my efforts to hide things in plain sight first."

"Beg pardon?" Kayla asked.

"Sometimes the best place to hide something is right out in the open. People look at it every day and don't think anything of it. It can't be something serious, not parked in the main hall for everyone to stare at. You get the idea now?"

"Sure. I just have no idea what kind of thing I should be looking for." She grumbled.

"You let me look. I'm the one who hid them after all."

He wasn't joking about the main hall either. Dr. Ito followed the ramps from level to level, never leaving the central shaft. No one was sure what he was checking for until he had them up several floors. There they finally found some of the decorative statuary mostly undamaged. He went straight to the statue of a bearded researcher holding a very old fashioned diagnostic tablet and wand.

He reached over the top of the tablet to start pushing buttons. Seconds later, the top of the tablet opened. Roland worked the fourth 'chip' free from its setting and turned it over. There were three small data discs on the back.

"Well, they missed these on the physical search. Now lets see if they swept 'em electro-magnetically."

To his immense frustration, someone had. And from the state of them, the pulse used had been a powerful one. All right, there probably wasn't going to be any lucky find out here. But Dr. Ito did look just to be sure. It was just as well that his expectations had been reset to a safely low level as the three other surviving hiding spots produced ruined data media too.

"Where do we look now?" Dearka asked uneasily.

"The only place left. Down in labs and the individual researcher's offices." He looked grimly at Kira. "I hope you can go there again."

"I'll manage." Yamato replied shortly.

This time they were following Kira. He led them swiftly through the old building until he reached one specific set of closed doors. He paused there to brush his fingers over a chip in the wall before he opened the doors and walked through them.

Kayla looked at the chip as she reached it and realized it was a bullet mark. Someone had fired a gun in here. Given the way he'd touched it, they'd probably been shooting at Kira too.

She walked through the doors and straight into hell. The vast space was filled with tanks. Each held a developing fetus. Almost every one had some visible defect. There were readout boards by each tank, running data in a steady stream. What the hell? Was this place still in use?

"They're dead." Roland Ito said harshly.

"What?" Kayla asked.

"Every one you see here, they're dead. They've been dead for the last sixteen years. They died when Blue Cosmos destroyed this place, looking for Kira here."

"But, the readouts! They're still going!" Cagalli cried.

"All they are telling you is that the content of the tank has been terminated." The old man replied bitterly. "You can't read the codes, I can. Hell, I wrote those codes! You look up and down here! Do you see a single gold light anywhere? No, you don't! They're dead I tell you! Now quit worrying about them. They're long past any help you could give and if they ever had souls, those have been free for a long time too."

"Thank you." Kira's voice was very soft.

"Eh?"

"Thank you. I couldn't tell, last time I was here, if they were alive or not. Mu was wounded and Le Creuset had escaped, I couldn't stop to find out. I'm glad to know I didn't leave any living thing in this place."

Roland sighed. "Kira, you are the only living thing that ever did come out of here. The others all died. And I have no idea why you didn't too. That's what I'd like to find out really. Did these idiots do something right with their artificial womb or is it all in your specific genetics? If it's the former, then perhaps we can go to mouse testing and actually perfect it. If its all you, well, cloning is illegal for some damned good reasons."

"The office where Le Creuset tossed that book at us is over here." Kira turned away immediately.

"Main Project offices." Dr. Ito identified it.

The place was a mess. There was trash all over, the furniture that was left was broken and there were large rents in the walls and ceilings where someone had evidently gone looking for something. Kira just stood in the middle of the room, his eyes bleak, lost in memory.

Dr. Ito however had places to search. He ignored the still Yamato to begin checking every data-containing unit left for any signs of remaining functionality. Kayla stuck close to Adrian. This was a bad place to be alone. Together they just looked in doors and did a general scan of the place.

It was larger than it looked. The hallways were surprisingly generous considering this was a space colony where interior room was always at a premium. The offices were on a scale with the halls, suggesting there had been a very great deal of both money and influence behind this monstrosity of a Project. Since the Colony still had power, many of the lights were still on even after all these years.

They met Dearka tagging along with Cagalli and Athrun a couple of times as they too were doing a survey. None of them had found any working computers and a lot of the cabinets that weren't torn apart were locked. It was at one of those hallway intersection meetings that Athrun noticed a name on one office door that rang a bell with them all.

The door said 'Hathaway'. This then was the office of Dr. Ito's talkative friend. They exchanged looks, then Athrun tried the door. It opened freely.

It was dark but when he touched the lights, several of them came on. The illumination wasn't great but it let them see they'd found a much bigger office than most. In fact, it looked to be an office suite as there were a couple of open doorways leading off this first room.

Like every other space in here, it had been ransacked years ago. But it looked as if whoever did this office was running out of either energy or enthusiasm or both as things weren't as broken up as usual.

A check showed them an inner office, probably Hathaway's own, and a small storage room lay beyond the two open doorways. The storage room had been stripped bare. Even the shelving had been torn out at one point and someone had knocked a hole in the wall. So this was where they'd spent the energy they'd normally have used to rip up the office. Kayla wondered what they'd been looking for.

By common consent, they started in Hathaway's office. There were more lights on in here, making it easier to see what one was looking at. Kayla began with a pile of journals tossed carelessly on the floor. It was quickly obvious to her that she lacked the training to really read them. But she did have enough biology background to understand that these were logs of individual experiments. Was Kira's in here?

She began to flip them to the last page to read the final status of the experiment. Only one was going to say anything but 'terminal'. Then she picked up a badly damaged one that had a different cover from all the others. She opened it carefully but found that it didn't matter; it was already pretty much past reading. The pages were torn and stained. Some had holes in them with large sections of the print or diagrams missing.

Yet what she could make out suggested this was a different kind of experiment from the rest. There didn't seem to be any section for the gene splice record for one thing. That was a major portion of every other journal she'd checked. This one was big on comparison, the experiment to some master source. It was almost like they were trying to make an exact duplicate.

An exact duplicate. A clone! Was this Rau Le Creuset's record? Kayla stared at what she was holding. Then she closed it carefully. This was going to Dr. Ito. She couldn't risk damaging it further by playing with it; she didn't know enough to get anything out of it and she could only justify going on if she could.

"Wow Athrun! It works!"

She turned at Dearka's exclamation to see the unmistakable double helix of a DNA chart suddenly twisting above the badly damaged desk.

"Yes, it works." Zala replied quietly. "But it has very little power. I'm shutting it down. We'll let Dr. Ito see what he makes of it."

He looked up. "Adrian, could you find your grandfather and get him up here? I don't want to risk trying to pull this unit out of the desk or I'd take it to him instead."

"Right." Adrian was out the door in a flash. He was back in less than five minutes. Kira and his grandfather were with him.

Old Roland had come prepared in more ways than one. He pulled an old fashioned power pack out of his shoulder bag and hooked it up to the damaged data unit. He also laid out all the cross patch lines to a small but powerful recorder he'd brought with him.

"All right Zala, fire it up again." He instructed.

Athrun brought the aged data unit back online as the old man watched over his shoulder. It was soon clear that while Athrun could get into a few of the programs, most of the data was well secured. Dr. Ito copied what they could get to before he let anyone try any code breaking that might have jeopardized the access they did have.

Once that was done though, he let anyone try any halfway decent sounding idea they had. Unfortunately, none of them worked. Even Dearka, who admitted computer lock codes were not a specialty, gave it a try. Kira, who was good at it, gained access to a couple more sections that were promptly copied but even he couldn't get them any further.

"All right, that's just about all I can do without spending some time researching the system itself." Kira finally said. "What we need is some idea what the man would have used for an emergency entry code. If we could tumble over that, we would be in."

"Ah, you mean a backdoor code?" Dr. Ito asked.

"Yes, that's another name for it."

"Well, Joel once told me he was going to program his machine to let me in if I'd input "rolandisastupidjerk". I think that was a joke but you never know. Funny, I hadn't thought of that bit of idiocy in years."

"It's worth a try." Yamato agreed and typed it in.

The computer shut off.

"That was helpful." Cagalli said acidly.

"Shut up girl!" Dr. Ito was on his feet suddenly. "We are looking for a projector and a sound system. That just triggered Joel's message system!"

"Outer office!" Dearka snapped, his head cocked in that direction.

They all dashed out there. It was Kira who saw the trash hanging from the ceiling that was blocking the projector and Dearka who found and began clearing a speaker. Kira boosted Athrun up to get a stubborn piece of metal out of the way. Once up, Athrun found a good place to work from in the ceiling while Kira tackled the rest of the mess from below.

By the time they had the projector clear, Dearka had found the speaker and was fixing the broken wiring. To everyone's intense disappointment, the projector shut down just as he got the speaker working. All they heard was a final electronic squeal.

"No! We missed it!" Cagalli shouted.

"Cultivate patience girl. Joel will have set this up to play several times." Roland barked as he found the wreck of a chair that was still sound enough to sit on.

"My name's Cagalli! Quit calling me girl!"

"Your name is loud noise at the moment. Now kindly shut up! That speaker isn't very good and I'll want to hear everything I can!"

Athrun put his hand on her shoulder and Cagalli subsided into angry mutters. Kayla put her ear over by the speaker and suddenly heard it begin to click. Well, the annoying old goat might be right again. It did look like the loop was going to repeat.

There was a bright flash and suddenly there was an image being shown on the far wall as the speaker likewise crackled to life. It looked like it had been recorded right here in this office. The man in the picture was a lean African with snow white hair. He looked half frightened to death.

"If you are seeing this, you are a friend of Roland Ito's. Please tell him what I'm about to tell you. I am Dr. Joel Hathaway, Deputy Director of Research for the Hibiki Reproductive Research Program. This recording is being made as the Program's facilities are being destroyed by Blue Cosmos. My colleagues are being murdered around me and all our years of work are being destroyed. I hope I can finish this before they get this far."

"Tell Roland that Hibiki and his wife are dead. The boy I told him about and the twin sister aren't here. They were sent to safety yesterday. I dare not say where lest Blue Cosmos find this. Trust me, it is a truly safe place. Arrangements had been made for the children to be placed in a safe house. I just called their refuge, they will be adopted out separately now instead and raised as members of other families with no knowledge of who they are. I am so sorry that I can not tell you any more than that."

The sound of a major explosion erupted from the speaker and the recording camera shook briefly. "That was the security charge on the main data storage unit. Now no one will be able to recover enough information to find either child by any DNA trace. Tell Roland the last version of the Artificial Womb was a complete success. However, it is, or was before those barbarians blew it up, a very delicate piece of equipment and would not have been useful for the kind of mass distribution and use the Program envisioned. So no, Roland, we never really succeeded in any way that counts."

There was another massive explosion but this one was more distant. It was much heavier though and the camera shook for at least twenty seconds. Dr. Hathaway clung tightly to his desk as everything vibrated. When the camera stopped shaking, raised voices could be heard in the distance.

"Damn! They're coming! Roland, just so you know, on that other Project, the buyer did purchase a second unit! It was completed two years after the first one and put in storage. Yuuren knew you'd leave the Program if you found out so you weren't told. Only after the first was finally declared beyond salvage was the second decanted and incubated. Dee and his people have it. Despite the changes made to the program, I believe the second one will have much the same flaws over time. Emotionally however, this one should come out better. The buyer won't have any input on the nurture of this one."

The voices were getting closer. Dr. Hathaway looked terrified out of his mind now. "Roland, they're coming! I must go! I pray you get this soon! You were smarter than any of us knew when you let yourself be hired away by the University! Goodbye my friend. I'll not see you again."

There was a sharp electronic squeal and both picture and sound cut off. Kayla chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip. If this was right, there wasn't going to be much of any data on Kira to find for him.

"THAT ARROGANT IDIOT!" Roland Ito screamed furiously. "Cloning humans is NOT something we can do yet! Every single one ever found was defective! Most physically and ALL of them mentally! Now there is another one out there made from that self-centered megalomaniac that graced us with Rau Le Creuset! What genocidal goal will this malformed monstrosity have?"

"Who is this Dee and can you find him?" Athrun asked calmly. "If he took the clone, he'll have the answers."

Dr. Ito settled back onto the broken chair grimly. "Oh, yes, I'm sure he will. But I'm not stupid enough to try approaching him directly! Not with the kind of influence and power he's collected over these last twenty years. No, that's not a man you want to remind that you might know something that could hurt him. He's very smooth, very polished, very civilized on the surface. But below that is a fanatic equal to anything lurking in Blue Cosmos. And this fanatic is a Coordinator, an exceptionally smart Coordinator."

He looked hard at Athrun. "Dee makes your father look like an amateur when it comes to both fanaticism and politics. Patrick was bluster and force; Dee is subtlety and precision controlled power. Your father would waste resources if it meant he could achieve his end quickly. Dee wastes nothing he can avoid wasting. He is much more intent on keeping his plans from being interrupted than he is in having them push ahead too swiftly. And that isn't his name by the way so don't go looking for him using that for a guide. It's a nickname Joel and I used."

"If this Dee is so dangerous and he's controlling another Le Creuset, then we will have to find him and stop him. We won't have a choice about it." Kira said quietly. "If we don't, he'll just do something that forces our hand in the matter eventually."

"You call this joker a fanatic." Kayla cut in. "Just what is he so fanatical about?"

"Dee is an absolute believer in predestination. He is sure past sanity that every individual comes into the world with their role in this life already written for them. And he knows, he just knows, that if he could force everyone to accept their life roles unquestioningly that the whole human species would live in peace and harmony forever."

"Uh huh. I see. And he plans to be the guy telling everyone what their predetermined role is, right?"

"Of course! After all, he's the only one with the vision for it!" Roland proclaimed with bitter grandiosity.

"Well, he's not telling me!" Cagalli snapped. "I can decide that for myself!"

"We all can." Dearka said uneasily. "But, hey, you know, someone to do the thinking, that'll attract a lot of people to him and not all of them will be dumb Naturals."

Dr. Ito eyed the blond pilot with surprise. "Now I wasn't expecting that from you, boy. So you're brighter than you let on. Good. You ought to use that mind more often. If you have one, you should never waste it."

Elsman gave him a look that suggested he wasn't sure if he should accept the backhanded compliment or return it on a stick. Athrun's face was a near perfect study in neutrality but his eyes were dancing with amusement. Kayla wondered how often he'd been on the receiving end of some witticism of Dearka's. He clearly was enjoying watching the other get zinged. Kira had a tiny smile on his face that was threatening to become a huge grin. He was watching the ceiling very intently, keeping his eyes well away from Elsman's face. Cagalli was glancing back and forth between all three of the guys, trying to get a read on the situation. For once, she didn't seem to be following the joke.

Before it could go far enough to slide from joke to something really not funny, Kayla remembered the one odd journal she'd found; and that she still had in her hands actually. She held it out to Roland.

"You want to take a look at this? I found it in the other room, in a pile of others that all seem to be records of the failed 'experiments'. This one is different. I can't really read it, but I think it may be for one of the clones, maybe Rau Le Creuset by the age of it."

He took it from her and opened it carefully. The mention of Le Creuset's name brought the other four in to try reading over his shoulders. For a wonder, he didn't throw a tantrum or run them off.

"Yes, this is Le Creuset's. But it's in terrible condition." Dr. Ito shook his head slowly. "I don't know how much I'll be able to recover out of here."

"What can it tell you?" Athrun asked. "I recognize just enough to understand that it's a genetic workup and comparison record; beyond that I'm lost."

"Well, if it were intact, it might be possible to use this to determine what went wrong with him physically. Why he aged so quickly, what the medications he was taking were really doing to and for him. This is the kind of data we really need to understand the real nature of human cloning. Which, as the universal failure rate shows, we most certainly do not."

"It's useless then?" Kayla asked, slightly upset at the idea.

"No, I didn't say that. I just won't be able to get anything like the quantity or quality of answers it would have given me intact. Something like this is so rare, even damaged as it is, it is still valuable and will tell us something unique."

The old man stood abruptly. "Let's leave. It's clear to me that there is little to be easily had here anymore. The only way to recover the information this place still has will be to tear it down bit by bit and search each bit down to its component atoms as you go."

"I won't argue with you." Kira said quietly. "I don't like this place."

Didn't like the place? Now there was an understatement if she'd ever heard one! He was radiating loathing and no little fear. In fact, no one was happy to be here. The knowledge that she was going to have to pass through that cavernous tank room with its ranks of the deformed dead to get out was making her more than a little nauseous.

They left, taking the data from Dr. Hathaway's computer, a copy of his message, and the ruined record of the creation of Rau Le Creuset. Knowing what had happened here, the place seemed to have filled up with ghosts since they'd come in. The wreckage was no longer random. Now that they knew, they could see the patterns in the destruction too.

Kayla shuddered. The sheer hatred that had destroyed this place was terrifying. Sixteen years later, the echo of it was still strong in the rooms and hallways. But the focused arrogance and monumental self-pride that had built it in the first place was almost as horrifying in its own way and that aura was even stronger than the hate. Toxic ethics indeed. More like no ethics at all really. It really did make the Ito Plan look almost benevolent by comparison. After all, Roland had never, ever planned to kill anyone or to permit any child to die.

She couldn't honestly remember when she'd been happier to see something as she was to exit the building and find the shuttle and the Astray waiting. She spent the trip back to the Kusanagi huddled against Adrian. He had no objections to her being there. She rather thought he was just as glad not to be alone himself.

The ship left the colony's harbor almost as soon as they were back aboard. The run back to rejoin Archangel and Eternal was quiet; too quiet actually for it left them all with too much time to rummage in their own heads. Kayla didn't know what, if any, conclusions the others came to but she decided this was one time when she just didn't want to know any more than she already did. There was nothing she could do about the ruins back at Mendel or about the missing clone or even to help Kira deal with what he might be. This time, she was going to step back. She would support her friend as a friend, not as an inept genetic spy of some kind.

It was just as well that she'd worked the issue through. For as soon as the Kusanagi joined the other ships, Lacus came over to join them. Once the initial greetings were over, she informed them she had negotiated safe returns for both the ZAFT and Alliance personnel. To Kayla and Adrian's shock, she told them the ZAFT transfer would begin tomorrow. They had gotten back just in time.