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, the exhaust system fell off the SUV today. So I didn't make it in to work. Car's at Midas, I'm at the computer, you get the chapter a lot sooner than I ever thought I'd have the time to get it done. Next one will take a while. I don't do fights well and have to go over them several times before I'm happy with them.

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Seed.


Up in the Plants, a brilliant old man bent his intellect to the task of writing a letter. He had another, possible just as bright in his own field, to deceive. It took him two days to compose a letter he was confident portrayed the image he needed to send. His daughter-in-law reviewed it and he spent a third day rewriting the sections where he was shocked to discover he'd said more than he should have. Only then was it sent off.

Very secret copies of that letter were sent to select allies. The copies lasted long enough to be read perhaps two times before the oxygen in the air destroyed them. The notes that accompanied the copies explained the need for the precautions and then destructed themselves. What this small group would later call 'our Pict time' had officially begun.


The man who received the letter considered it in silence and no small satisfaction. Time and this war had done his work for him. It would never do to take his eye off this enemy, the man was far too intelligent and far too opposed to his own goals, but he was no longer the danger he'd once been.

To make things even better, the old man had a goal of his own now. It was even a useful one that could be incorporated neatly into his much larger, personal plans. The difference in their ages was all in his favor now as well. The elderly geneticist could see his time coming to an end; it had focused him more intently than ever before. Between that and his last heir's strange choice in wives, he had a solid grip on the man the old one wasn't going to be able to break.

He smiled down at the chess board. It was one of three he had set up in the small room. They tracked his progress on three different fronts. He reached across to the right hand board and moved the black queen's bishop across to take the white queen's rook. He lifted the defeated piece off the board. He had one less problem to concern him now. A glance at the time propelled out of his chair. He had a recital to attend.


Four small ships approached the abandoned L-4 colony. They showed no markings and no navigational lights. They slipped into the colony's harbor and kept going. The main airlock cycled them in one at a time. It was a tight fit but they proved to be just small enough to make it into the interior of the ruined place.

The directions they had been given were surprisingly precise. They enabled the ships to locate their designated landing site with complete accuracy. Once down, they immediately began to unload the ships into the building that would be their headquarters and work site for a good while. As each ship was unloaded, it was moved to a less visible spot nearby and carefully shut down. They would operate off of the existing power supply as long as it held out.

Within two days they were up and running. The data they were being paid for was being rapidly collected and nothing was being left behind as per the contract. None of them liked this place and in part that set the pace of their work. For the faster they tore this place apart, the sooner they could leave.

True to his promise, their employer's special coded instructions data-tablet decoded a section for them on the third day. It led them to the promised vault and it did indeed hold the first payment they had been guaranteed for this job. Moral improved immediately. Moreover, they had their employer's full permission to salvage whatever they wanted that was not on his destroy list as long as they waited until after they had the data out before they started marketing anything from the place. That it wasn't his to give away was of no concern to either party. The first data shipment went out a week later.


The feast was over and so was most of the after-dinner talking. It was down to clean-up now. The rule was if you cooked, you didn't have to do clean-up too. Since she'd been drafted to replace Jamie in the kitchen when Pop threw Larry out she counted as a cook and was off duty now. Just as well, she didn't have much time and there was a lot of stuff to pack yet.

Kayla had no intentions of taking any of this with her. It was going to have to come out one box at a time as her folks thought it safe. But only she could decide what was to go in those boxes. Last night it had been most of her clothes and her library that vanished into the boxes. Tonight she was starting on the craft stuff. If she had time, she'd worry about the bric-a-brac later. Only essential clothing and her jewelry was going with her.

She laid out four boxes and proceeded to mix her craft materials in them. Beads were heavy and she had a lot of them. Fortunately, she also had them stored in fairly small units with three drawers each that could be put fully loaded into the bottom of a box. Cleaned and carded wool on the other hand was relatively light and it packed neatly around the bead boxes to hold them securely in place without adding too much extra weight. She left a space in the center for whatever selection of supplies came to hand that would fit; be it leather dye, her wood carving knives, a box of the specialized stamps for working designs on leather, or extra bobbins for her spinning wheels.

She worked steadily, reducing the clutter on the shelves of her workroom to a stack of neat boxes. As she did, she wondered if she was completely wasting her time. Would there even be a demand at all for true, hand-crafted items up in the Plants? Was she nuts to have disassembled and boxed a pair of actual spinning wheels? Did they even know how to do any hand-crafts up there? Yet she couldn't imagine trying to live in a strange place without something familiar to work on. So she kept on packing.

When she heard the door open behind her she jerked up and around, immediately taking a defensive stance. Larry might have been tossed out but he wasn't the only member of the family who strongly disapproved of what she'd chosen to do. But it wasn't Richard or Jamie who quietly closed the door behind them, it was Mom.

If Adrian had any questions about what Kayla was going to look like in a few years, he would only have to look at his new mother-in-law to be. The face shape was identical save only for Kayla's well-defined widow's peak hairline where her mother's was straight. Time and a life lived at least half out in the elements had aged the skin and put wrinkles where her daughter had none. Yet it was well-cared for skin, still soft and still supple despite the passage of time and the additions of wind and weather. And they shared the same shade of emerald in their eyes, making the very rare fights between them things the rest of the family ran from. The big difference between them was the amount of steel gray mixed in with the raven black in Janet Grayhawk's hair; there was none at all in Kayla's yet.

She looked around at the results of a good two hours of applied work. "Are you really going to try to take all this with you?"

"No, of course not." Kayla said quietly. "But I was going to ask you to ship it to a friend of mine in Aube when I could get the money together for it. He'll send it on as I can afford it."

She caught the look on her mother's face and knew she had to cut that thought off immediately. "Kira's only a friend, Mom. And that's all he's ever going to be. Besides, he's a Coordinator too. And he's going with Lacus Clyne. Her late father was the Plant's Supreme Council Chairman before that nut, Patrick Zala took over. They're very attached to each other. I'm not stupid enough to try to get in the middle there."

Janet sat down at the now clean worktable. "You seem to have met quite a few Coordinator boys in the last few months."

"Yes, I did. Most of them were ZAFT and most of them turned out to be human."

Her mother had the grace to nod acceptance to that. "I've never said they weren't dear. But by the same token, they most surely aren't our kind of human either."

Right. She'd tried to avoid this conversation but it didn't look like she was going to get to. She sealed up the box she was working on and took the chair across from her mother. If Mom was determined to have this talk, then she'd give it the undivided attention it was going to need.

"Mom, I didn't plan this you know." Kayla said flatly. "I was a soldier, Mom. I spent a year going out in a Zero killing Coordinators in ZAFT uniforms! Falling for one was the last thing I ever thought would happen."

Her mother held up one hand, stopping her before she could get up a good head of steam. "I know that. Yet it did. And you've come home and asked us to accept this. After we lost four of your brothers and sisters to them. I'm at a loss to understand you at the moment."

She sighed. "I know. But it's interesting, when I was up in the Plant, how his people couldn't understand how he could fall for a Natural after losing all but two of his family at Junius Seven."

Kayla saw her mother's eyes widen at that. "Yeah," she nodded. "He's from Junius Seven. He was on his way home when the nuke went off right in front of his eyes. Everyone but his Mom, Grandfather, and him were home for the holiday. He lost them all in that unprovoked attack by our people. He was blind for a week, had vision problems for a couple more, and joined the ZAFT just as soon as they cleared up. He's spent most of a year in a mobile suit, killing Naturals in Earth Alliance uniforms. He had no plans to fall for one of us either."

She picked up a brilliantly dyed chicken feather that hadn't made into a box yet to give her hands something to do. "So you see, the 'how can you, we lost family' card cancels out on both sides. We can accept each other because we both understand what it means to lose those we love to the senselessness of hate and bigotry. And because we both have, we will never be able to destroy ourselves with it either. 'Cause neither can tell the other they don't know anything about it you see. They may have engineered themselves nowadays to be smarter, faster, and stronger but they haven't been able to do anything about how much it hurts to lose friends and family. Because they're still just human beings. Like the rest of us."

"Are they really? Like us?" Janet asked quietly. "When you can do so much more, how can you relate to those who can't?

"Well, they sure seem normal enough. They pair off, although that's being arranged by a government agency now because of genetic compatibility issues, they have families, they have jobs." She looked up at her mother earnestly. "I had nothing to watch but their entertainment and news channels. I got quite a feel for how they operate and Mom, they're so normal it's scary. Maybe in a few more generations they'll evolve a separate society but right now it's just a reflection of our own. And even if the appearance of the society changes, some basic things may not. I mean, someone's gonna hafta operate the grocery stores and pick up the garbage! Yeah, maybe a lot of their jobs are more intellectually challenging than many of ours are, but they all aren't! And whatever they do for a living, they still have a workday, they still come home at the end of it, and they still have to fit a family life in around it, same as anyone down here does."

She waved the feather as she got going. "They have social stratification too. There are very important families and there are middle-class families and there are dirt poor families up there. We just never hear about it. They pretend it doesn't exist. The Plants are perfect you know! They tell the same lies and use almost the same words as some Earth-side governments I could name."

"I, . . . . . . . I see." Janet said.

"Oh, and they're no better at love than we are either!" Kayla jabbed the feather up in the air. "Their relationships fall apart just like ours do. People are unfaithful up in the Plants like they are down here. They just have rigidly effective birth control so you never see the usual consequences that you see here!"

She flopped back in the chair. "They do have some complications we don't though. They've bred themselves into a hole with their genetic enhancements and now they have to strictly regulate who is allowed to reproduce with who to prevent creating a generation that can't reproduce at all. The Ito Project I told you about is dedicated to saving them from themselves and the 'more is better!' delusion of the past couple of generations. Unless some idiot closes it down too soon, it will too."

She shook her head. "The crown jewel of human science and it was strangling itself with good, old fashioned, human stupidity and arrogance. Blue Cosmos would have been smarter not to have started this war. The Supreme Council wouldn't have listened to someone as 'radical' as Dr. Ito if the war hadn't forced them to face reality on so many fronts. They would probably have let things slide this generation only to find there was no solution open by the time the fourth generation was getting ready to want to start the fifth. Then they'd have died out on their own. Without any need for the mass murder and destruction those bastards have brought us in the name of their 'blue and pure world'!"

"Kayla, why do you want to save the Coordinators? Setting aside the entire issue of the war, large as it is, what has led you to want to save them?"

She stared at her mother in puzzlement. Save the Coordinators? She didn't have any plans to save them. They could save themselves. They already had it figured out.

"You lost me here. I'm not planning to save the Coordinators. What ever gave you that idea Mom?"

"Then why are you so determined to have these children? Aren't they part of the plan, that Ito Plan, to save those people?"

Her jaw dropped in shock and it was several minutes before she could manage to talk again. "MOM! They're MY kids! Mine and Adrian's! They aren't about some stupid political plan! They're about our future! We didn't even plan them! They just happened! They didn't come out of any lab; they came out of our love for each other! The same way you and Pop got me!"

She grabbed her hair and gave it a good yank in total frustration. "How could you come up with something that stupid? I've only been telling you since I got home that I love him and I want his kids! Yes, Adrian Ito is a Coordinator. So what? He's the man I love! Is that so damned hard to comprehend?"

"Yes, actually, it is." Her mother replied steadily. "It is very difficult to comprehend that my daughter has fallen in love with, slept with, is pregnant by, and intends to marry one of the people who killed four of this family!"

She looked over the table and said coldly. "Then ask yourself how his mom took it when he told her he'd fallen in love with, slept with, gotten pregnant, and planned to marry one of the people who killed twenty three of his family!"

Janet Grayhawk went as pale as someone of her coloring could. The silence stretched. Kayla stared straight into her mother's eyes, genuinely angry now. Damn it! What was the point of talking if nobody ever listened?

"Paul, Mitch, Steve, and Sandy were all serving military Mom. They'd made a deliberate and informed choice to accept the risks of putting on that uniform." She said slowly. "The Ito's were all civilians, all of them. He lost three of four grandparents, father, brother, sister, aunts, uncles, cousins, some of them babies. They never made any deliberate or informed choices about accepting risks. The two don't compare. And if they did, it wouldn't favor us."

Her mother stood and turned to go. Kayla spoke once more before she could leave.

"The losses that matter to anyone are the ones they knew; their family, their friends. Few give a rat's ass about what the enemy is losing other than to hope it's a lot more than they are. But if you make the mistake of getting to know the enemy, then those losses become people too. I made that mistake. I can never see either side as faceless monsters again."

"Ah, that's why you really resigned your commission, isn't it?" Janet asked softly. "Because any battle you might fight from now on wouldn't be against a mobile suit, it would be against the living pilot inside. A pilot you now recognize as human. And to be victorious, or even to just survive, you'll have to kill that human."

"That's half of it." Kayla agreed. "The other half is my kids. If I stayed in the service, I would have been forced to abort them. I will not do that."

"No, I understand that now."

She watched the door close quietly behind her mother. "Yeah Mom, you understand now. But will you accept it ever?"


Adrian sprawled in the one almost comfortable chair in the motel room. Both Voril and Yuri were sound asleep, each managing to spread rather trim bodies all across the large beds. He was supposedly on guard duty. However, he knew he wasn't doing the best possible job of it at the moment. It was just as well they had those Dreyfus bodyguard kits and all their detection gear because he couldn't detect much of anything right now.

He made a mental note to himself never to overeat like that again. He was so bloated and sluggish one of the Natural maids around here could take him out with her mop! He grinned at the dark; it had been wonderfully tasty though!

Captain Ito still wasn't sure just what Thanksgiving was all about or why it was still celebrated. The explanations from the people in the restaurant this evening hadn't made all that much sense to him. But then, he knew he lacked the historical background to put them against too.

However, he did understand that it was about a harvest dinner and a sharing of food between Europeans and Native Americans. And it very clearly hadn't lost any of those associations over the centuries since that first meal. It seemed to have picked up a lot of extra foods along the way as well judging by the enormous buffet the restaurant had set up. He was familiar with perhaps a quarter of the list at best.

Voril, for whom any food item was a treat waiting to be discovered, wandered up and down the buffet and brought his findings back to the table to share. So they tried the turkey, the ham, the gyros, the pot roast, the lamb chops, the meatloaf, the dressing, the mashed potatoes, five different gravies, the candied mashed yams, the noodles and cheese, the burritos, the lo mein, the corn, the peas, three different kinds of beans, two kinds of squash, something called succotash, carrots, olives, eight kinds of cheese and fried won-tons. Then they discovered the very best thing on the menu.

It really didn't look all that promising when Voril brought it back. The dark orange wedges on some kind of crust with white stuff on top quite frankly looked possibly poisonous. But then, those fried won-ton things hadn't looked all that delightful either and they'd been delicious! So they'd tried them.

Chocolate was good. Pumpkin pie was better. Much better! No, make that the best thing on this whole stupid planet!

They'd been pretty well out of room when they discovered this amazing delicacy. So they'd only been able to down about three slices each. However, Adrian had had the forethought to go over to the bakery counter on the way out and buy three of them for breakfast tomorrow. They were stacked neatly in the room's small refrigerator right now.

He sighed. This was the last night on the road. They were only about two hundred kilometers from the Double Hawk Ranch now. Tomorrow, he would know how things were going to go, or not go, between Kayla and him. And he still didn't have any good ideas on how to approach her! Sometimes he was so hopeless!

Still, their luck had been remarkable ever since leaving that damn shaman's place. They'd found the roads he'd told them about with no problems even though they weren't marked by road signs. The van had handled the rugged tracks with no difficulties despite not being designed for such roads. They'd found fuel stations open when they needed them and the owners willing to sell to three Coordinators. And the last two shepherds Yuri had needed to visit had been ready to deal as well. So he had two more contracts signed for his father at fair prices all around. Lastly, they had found this place, one of a large chain of 'motels' common in this part of the country that had rooms and was willing to rent one to Coordinators. Then it was all topped off with that incredible meal. It was almost enough to make you at least wonder about that crazy old man and his spirits.

Adrian straightened himself up in the chair and checked the readings on the screens of his scanner box again. Everything was still clear and calm. So they were still lucky there too.

He pulled his talisman over his head and thoughtfully studied it as it lay in his hand. It really didn't look like something magical. It was an old piece, yes, but that didn't have anything to do with magic. And it was a very simple piece, just a silver oval with an eagle's talon mounted in a protective silver bezel and set with a pair of very deep blue turquoise, one to either side of it. There wasn't even any real background pattern on it. Yuri and Voril had much more elaborate pieces than his.

Yet over the last two days he'd become very reluctant to be away from it at all. Nor did he want anyone to see it. It was a private, personal thing, not something to be shared. He was at least as intent on keeping this out of sight as he ever had been with his grandparents wedding rings. It made no sense, but he couldn't deny that the feeling was very real.

With another soft sigh, he put it back on. It simply wasn't comfortable if he wasn't wearing it. He wished he understood this though.

"You depend too much on science." Golden Eagle told him sharply.

Adrian stared. Where had this meter and a half tall bird come from? And why could he see through it?

"I am Golden Eagle, your Spirit Guide. You will see more of me from time to time. For now, understand that you and your people depend too much on science. You neglect the spirit. This is foolish. You are human and humans who neglect their spirits eventually lose touch with the ability to truly know right from wrong. Your people are starting down a dangerous path. They must be brought back from it."

"What?" Adrian floundered, too startled to thing coherently.

"You must be brought back from this path that neglects the spirit. You think of yourselves as self-created but you are not. At best you have moved some small bits about. You, your souls, they still come from a place you can not explain. Some call that God, some the Great Spirit. Your people must learn to recognize the limits of science and the place of spirit."

"We don't need religion or superstitions!" Adrian snapped. "They cause endless divisions and warfare over the unprovable and untestable!"

The Eagle looked at him reprovingly. "I did not say religion, I said spirit. They are not the same. Learn the difference before you tell me what is or is not good!"

"I . . . . . ." He looked around wildly but he was suddenly talking to a room empty of all but himself and his two sleeping companions. The giant, transparent eagle that had just been there, was gone! He blinked but it stayed gone.

A careful check of the security recordings very clearly showed himself talking to thin air. Somehow, it was no surprise that Eagle hadn't registered on the equipment. But it did prove one thing; he had been reacting to something. He just didn't want to believe it was what it claimed to be.

They depended too much on science? He wasn't sure just what Eagle meant by that. Coordinators and the Plants existed because of science! They continued to exist because of their investments in research and development in many fields, including human biology. He couldn't see where they could step back from any science and survive.

Nor did he understand why Eagle would want to bring religion to the Plants. It was a terribly divisive force that had caused . . . . . . No, that was not true, he did not say that. He said spirit. And he said religion and spirit were not the same thing. It was Adrian Ito, not Golden Eagle, who was trying to make them one and the same!

But what was the difference? And how could it possibly matter? It was still all about things that could not be seen, tested, or proven in any way and that people had a nasty tendency to believe in passionately and kill each other over wasn't it? 'Learn the difference before you tell me what is and is not good!' Apparently he had a whole new field of human endeavor to research now!

Adrian slouched in the chair irritably. He had no interest in this subject and he never had. Why did this stupid Eagle have to foist this stupid project off on him? He already had enough to do damn it! When did that feather-head think he was going to have the time for this? He was Second for the Thoms Team! That ate his life right there! And he was planning to marry this girl he was here to see! If he did have spare time, that's where it was going to have to go, to his new family, not to some idiot research project on some ridiculous subject the whole species should have outgrown a few hundred years ago!

He let himself rant and rave about it for a good couple of hours. By then he was getting very repetitive and boring even to his own mind. Besides, he was pretty sure if the Eagle was real, and he was no longer willing to bet against it, that there was no way out of this assignment. He wondered how long it was going to take and what the research materials were going to do to his budget. But most of all, he really wondered why Eagle thought he should be doing this.