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. 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.)

Honest, we will get to the wedding and we will get to the running from Blue Cosmos part. It just isn't this part.

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Seed.


The small lab was empty now, Roland had finally admitted he was getting too tired and had gone to bed. She had the place to herself. Moreover, for the first time in a very long time she knew her father-in-law wouldn't be popping back in. That vile blue stuff had let him run almost sixteen straight hours but when it lost it's effectiveness it was as though the old man had slammed face first into a brick wall. She was willing to bet he's sleep close to another sixteen hours to make up for this marathon session too.

She sighed quietly. Roland Ito was a good man, a decent man, but he was also a driven man. His decisions were very much influenced by his obsessive need to see at least a solid base group of Coordinators come into existence who could safely and securely reproduce without a med lab. It made some of his decisions rather questionable. This was especially true as he was older than most realized as well and his health wasn't as good as most Coordinators was. For Roland had been born less than two years after George Glen himself; indeed was a product of that same team as they worked to refine their techniques. Some things they had improved, some they hadn't.

Roland was probably a good twenty to twenty-five intelligence points brighter than George but Glen was much better off physically. He was the stronger and the faster and the healthier. Roland had a more durable skeletal structure and keener eyesight with a slight improvement in nutrient absorption and utilization efficiency. George was more efficient in oxygen utilization. Despite all the other tinkering done, the rest was pretty much even.

They'd grown up very differently though. George had been encouraged to be the best he could be at everything he tried at all times and under all circumstances. Roland's parents had been much warier of their neighbor's reactions. He'd been taught to hide what he was. To lead only some of the time, to make deliberate mistakes so the Natural children around him wouldn't be too jealous of his abilities. He'd succeeded so well he was in his late twenties before his Natural brother and sisters discovered the truth. Fortunately, the family was a close-knit one and the information did not break those bonds. She shuddered to think what Roland would have been like if he hadn't had his family to support him back then when Coordinators were so very, very rare that they didn't even have their own name yet.

He had never been allowed to share George's naive optimism about people and that was probably very wise. For while George was off winning medals, Nobel Prizes and deadly jealous enemies, Roland was securing a wide-ranging education and a very lucrative job that had no spotlights attached to it. Then George opened his big mouth and altered the world for everyone living on the planet.

Serin sat at the desk and brought the computer up. George Glen's announcement had set her father-in-law's childhood trained tendencies to secrecy from simple caution to near paranoia. Time had done nothing to weaken the trait. And while it had probably kept him alive back then, it was no help in dealing with him right now. She wondered how many layers of code she was going to have to go through this time to find out just what he was up to.

Three hours later she sat back very unhappy and very thoughtful. There was nothing new on the computer. She could account for every single byte in use now and while she'd turned up some interesting tidbits, she hadn't found any analysis, not even the most basic bare bones of a preliminary outline, that pertained to the Mendel data or the recovered samples. And that was just wrong.

Roland didn't study things without noting down what he was finding and what he thought of it. He did that for everything. He'd done it before he'd fixed the stupid kitchen drain for god's sake! But there were no notes on the Mendel finds, none at all.

She folded her hands on the desk and leaned on her elbows. Removable memory was always a possibility but using that left tracks on the computer and there were no such tracks. Besides, it was idiotically dangerous to have this kind of information outside this room. Roland knew that. That was why all the Mendel data and the samples had been immediately pulled in here in the first place. Yes, she'd worked on the data in the other office but it had all been sent back in here just as soon as she was done for the day. Not one byte of it was left on the outside computer.

Handwritten notes? Possible of course but unlikely. Those would become too voluminous too quickly for this space and the same argument against moving the information outside the room would apply against them too. Of course, they could be electronically copied and reduced but that would be time consuming and a significant waste of paper, a waste that wouldn't go unnoticed by Gilbert's spies. She just couldn't see him doing something so silly.

Which left what? Putting it down in some kind of code? Storing it all in his head?

Serin came to a complete stop at that last thought. What had he found? She shivered. What had Roland Ito found that he deemed too dangerous to record? Because she was suddenly and absolutely sure that was the answer. And yes, he had the mind to store the data, at least for a while. He could keep it where only he could reach it. Where, she realized, only he could use it.

She turned back to the computer. This time she brought up the DNA records, one at a time, and began to look them over carefully. She was nowhere near as good as he was with them but after all these months as his most trusted assistant; she was a genuine expert now. If there was something truly unusual in these, she would find it.


The library in the Grayhawk house was an amazing place. It was a huge room for one thing. There were several windows, about a dozen overstuffed chairs, two genuine library tables, and the rest of the space was crammed with floor to ceiling bookcases, all of them full. It made a very good hideaway.

Adrian slipped carefully into the massive chair at the very back of the room. It was dimly lit back here and very quiet. In a house overflowing with people, quiet places were something to cherish, and to not mention to anyone else. He was getting very fond of most of Kayla's family but they were somewhat overwhelming when taken enmasse.

They were very overwhelming when they got some idea in their collective heads and ran with it as a team. And right now the idea they were running with was getting him married to Kayla under local law. It was outright scary how focused they'd become in the space of a single hour! Every one of them, even the Colonel, had some idea to contribute to the wedding. But none of them would listen to him at all.

'Sorry Ito, but you don't know anything about how things work here.' 'Thanks for the offer Adrian but that just won't do.' 'Ah, do they really do that at weddings up in the Plants?'

He'd given up and just retreated. He was outnumbered and outgunned and this time being a Coordinator wasn't going to help him win anything against the Naturals. Weddings were about the bride. The groom just got to show up and say 'I do'. They'd co-opted Yuri and Voril before either of them could even think of saying no so he didn't even have anyone to sit and commiserate with him.

A quiet but somewhat uneven step announced a visitor. There was only one person who walked like that right now. He looked up with a weary smile as Kayla peeked around the bookcase to check if he was there.

"Ah, I'd wondered where you'd slipped off to." She said gently as she came over to join him.

"I cut my losses and abandoned the field." He admitted, moving to the far left of the chair to make room for her.

She laughed softly as she slipped snuggly in beside him, his arm automatically going around her shoulders. "Gee, I can't imagine why. Mom's organizing the wedding itself. Gran's planning the dinner. Dad's working on getting hold of any relative he thinks he can invite who won't tattle. First Kay's setting Spirit Wards to protect the whole house. Maria's making mysterious phone calls. Jamie's got all the guys up in the attic digging out the folding chairs. Crystal has Alys and Carol up in the attic looking over stored decorations to see what could be used. Just about everyone is getting in someone else's way. Nah, I've no idea why you went into hiding."

Adrian shuddered. "Your family does nothing by halves do they?"

"Not when it really matters to us we don't."

"What have I gotten myself into?"

"A big, close, family."

He looked at her, eyes troubled. "Have I? Or am I taking you away from this? Kayla, your family, they're good people. I like them. But they don't trust me. I'm ZAFT to them and legitimately so. And your family has no cause to like ZAFT at all."

Very serious emerald eyes stared straight back at him. "No, I doubt we ever forgive ZAFT. But knowing you, Voril, and Yuri has done for my family what that stay on the Archangel did for you. Jamie may never admit it out loud but even he isn't going to see all Coordinators as a faceless, amorphous, killer mass again. We now know three, real, individual, ZAFT soldiers. And they turned out to be nice guys. You blew up the image. The evil space monsters turn out to be three rather shy kids in their teens who are polite, helpful, and almost painfully anxious to please. You really weren't supposed to be like that you know."

He blinked. "Shy? We aren't shy!"

Her eyebrow went up. "Ha! You should see poor Yuri try to deal with a conversation when both Doug and Crystal are after him at the same time. And have you actually watched Voril around Alys? He gets absolutely tongue-tied. He just sits there making sheep's eyes at her while she can't shut up! Whenever he's around, she's chattering a mile a minute. She'll talk about anything and nothing. This is how she gets when she's nervous and shy around someone. I think they have a thing for each other."

He opened his mouth to protest, then shut it. He'd seen that behavior a couple of times. He hadn't paid much attention to it, being focused on either Kayla or just walking at the time. But now that she put it that way, he could see that there might be something to the idea. This meant he had to get Joule back to the Plants as soon as he could. He'd only turned sixteen a month ago. That was far too young to be getting serious about anyone, let alone about a Natural girl who wouldn't be well received by the powers that be in the Plants.

"Penny for your thoughts." Kayla said softly.

"Sixteen is too young." He replied automatically.

"Ah, yeah, it is. Not to mention that Mom would be furious if she didn't graduate because she wanted to run off to the Plants and get married."

"I would imagine his Mom wouldn't be all that thrilled if he wanted to get married at sixteen either."

"Nope."

"And then there's his relatives. He is the nephew of Ezaria Joule, the Supreme Council member and his cousin is Commander Yzak Joule, well known for his very explosive temper. No girl should have to deal with either of them at sixteen."

"Ezaria may not be much of a factor. Last I heard she'd been forced off the Council and put under house arrest. And Yzak just might find Alys a bit more that even he could chew up and spit out. But even so, I don't want her doing anything stupid. One of us moving up there at a time is enough. If the attraction is still there in a few years, then they can consider it."

"Ezaria's off the Council? Since when?"

"Last week. You were still out of it when that news flash arrived. Voril spent most of the day just sitting on the fence, thinking about it. When he got off the fence he announced it was probably the best compromise they were going to come up with and hasn't said a word about it since. No one's been rude enough to bring it up again either."

"Ah."

When he didn't say anything else for a bit, she leaned her head on his shoulder. "You know, you did a nice job of redirecting the discussion there."

"Excuse me?"

"We went from talking about us to talking about Voril and Alys. Good job on changing the topic."

He rested his cheek on the top of her head. "I don't know what to say about us. I don't know where we are going or where we'll end up. I just know that I can't go anywhere without you any more. I can no longer imagine a life that doesn't have you in it. If the price of that is living with your fearsome family, then somehow, I will."

"You are a perfect blockhead sometimes, you do know that right?"

He smiled. "I suppose so. What other kind of soldier falls in love with an enemy soldier?"

"I'm gonna beat your grandfather's wretched pheromones right into the ground! This is about us, damn it!"

He hugged her, then unceremoniously picked her up and set her in his lap. He laughed at her startled emerald eyes for one second, then pulled her gently against him and kissed her softly. She let it stay a gentle, sharing kiss right up until they both ran out of oxygen.

"Yes," Adrian agreed quietly when he had his breath back, "it is about us."

His hand went down to rest on the still smallish but definitely noticeable bulge in her abdomen. "And it is about them."

"Yeah." She nestled firmly against him. "Adrian, do you have a home any more? I mean besides some ZAFT barracks. Is there someplace for us to live up there?"

"Well, Mother has a small house on the Project grounds. I stayed there when I was on leave; something that happened exactly once during the whole war by the way. The place is big enough for us to stay for a month or two while we look around for someplace you are comfortable with to move to as a permanent residence. But the answer to the question is no, I don't have a home of my own. I hadn't needed one before now."

"Eh, yeah, your Mom." Kayla said slowly. "Is she at all ok with this?"

"Mother likes you." Adrian said firmly. "There aren't many people who will stand up to Grandfather. You do. Mother rather admires that. Then too, she knows the attachment between us is very real and very two sided. But mostly I think she just likes you as you."

She sat up in his lap and twisted enough to stare at him, a sharp frown on her face. "When the hell did I ever meet your Mom?"

He grinned. "You remember Serin, the Project attendant?"

"Sure! Only one of the three who would ever talk to me or . . . ." She stared harder, eyes going very, very wide. "THAT WAS YOUR MOM!"

"Doctor of Psychology Serin Chu Ito, yes. Mother is in charge of evaluating the mental and emotional stability of every individual who is brought into the Project. She's Grandfather's right hand, most of his conscience, the cool hand on the Project's purse-strings, and the keeper of all of his secrets. And she really, really likes you. She told me so at the shuttle station just before I came down here to get you. She thinks you are an excellent match for me." Adrian smiled happily.

She flopped back against him grumpily. "Your Mom's underhanded."

"Of course she is, she's a psychologist. The entire psych field is underhanded. Be glad you didn't grow up with someone that tricky."

She shot him a 'oh please' sidelong glance. "And you think having a pair of Medicine Women under the same roof with you is any better? You wanna consider trading your sneaky Mom for my sneaky Gran Spotted Horse?"

The idea jerked him to a complete stop. "Ah, no, actually I wouldn't. Your grandmothers scare me sometimes. More than my Mother does in fact. Thank you but I don't think I want to make any such trade."

"You're smarter than you look." Maria Spotted Horse told him drily.

They both jumped, looking up to find the old Medicine Woman standing by the end of the bookcase. Neither had heard her approach. Both were a bit upset by that, Adrian especially as he knew how good his hearing was.

"Are we needed somewhere?" He asked quietly.

"Nope. Just checking to make sure I could lay hands on the pair of you when you were. Dropping out of sight like this is probably a very smart idea right about now. Keeps Janet from going into some kind of idiot mother of the bride frenzy and everyone else from demanding you approve what ever tom-fool notion they've come up with. No, you just stay right here. I'll be back in a few minutes with something for you to snack on and a blanket so you can nap later if you want to. 'Cause I'm not joking about the wisdom of keeping outta sight right now."

"Gran," Kayla asked as the old woman turned to leave, "is Great-Uncle Jerome really going to come and perform the wedding? Couldn't it have been anyone else?"

She sighed and shook her head. "Oh how I wish! But this has to happen tomorrow so you have two days to get away before that Blue Cosmos lawyer bitch gets her material witness warrants out. Jerome is the only qualified minister and Justice of the Peace we can both get hold of and force to do this in such an impossibly short timeframe. And it is a case of force. Your mother had to get on the phone herself and tell him directly just what she was prepared to do if he didn't cooperate. He's going to be in a very ugly mood when he gets here."

"He's always in an ugly mood. Even when he thinks he's happy, he's being ugly. I hope his God kicks his sorry ass to hell when he dies for all the abuse he's put His Name through."

Maria gave her a one-eyebrow up look. "Oh now there's a generous thought."

Kayla glared back, unrepentant. "Ya know Gran, this time I honestly don't care. This is gonna be my wedding and having him officiate is gonna wreck it! He's gonna be snide and superior and rude and who knows what else that he'll think of that'll let him think he's getting even for having to do it! I wanted to remember my wedding as a happy thing! Now it's gonna be this nightmare! No, I don't care if it's a wicked thing to say, because I mean it!"

"Kayla . . ." Maria began only to have Adrian interrupt her.

"The wedding will not be a nightmare." He said in an oddly dead voice. "I will speak to your great-uncle. He will understand the necessity of behaving himself when I'm finished. I'm sorry that I can't make it the joyous thing it should be but using fear will only take one so far. I can make him keep silent; I can not make him fake joy."

"Just what do you plan to do boy?" Maria asked flatly.

The cold amber eyes met hers bitterly. "Why, we will talk, that is all. I heard a name earlier, one that should shock him coming from me. And I will tell him nothing but the truth. Because it is true that all I would have to do to ruin him is to let his Church know that that name is known in the Plants. And once I'm back there, it will be. Only by one individual perhaps, but still, it will genuinely be known in the Plants. Even without any data attached, if the scandal was anywhere as serious as it seems, there will be evidence to find down here. And a man like that has enemies who will be only too happy to dig for it. All they will need is that one name."

The Medicine Woman studied him silently for a long moment. "If you can plan like that under this kind of personal, emotional pressure, you have a greater future in your ZAFT than you might think."


Serin looked up from the Mendel notes again to study the DNA spirals turning slowly before her. She now knew, just from the way he'd arranged them, just what it was Roland had found. And she knew something he didn't seem to have noticed yet as well.

She closed the Mendel files; she didn't need them anymore right now. In fact she spent a considerable time going through the system and making absolutely sure everything was back where she'd found it and that she removed all traces of her visits. Only the DNA files remained open. But then, everything that mattered was in those.

Her eyes watched the closest of the spirals, it happened to be Athrun Zala's, as it slowly spun the vital section past her gaze. There it was, four perfectly identical copies of a sequence that coded for four different proteins. Four brand new proteins never before identified in the human genome.

Serin could only shake her head. The genome had first been sequenced, imperfectly, at the close of the twentieth century, old calendar. It had been more carefully and fully mapped by the first quarter of the twenty-first century. But even then, some areas had not been completed. Wars and other needs had interrupted the work. And who bothered to look here, beside the sequence that coded for the proteins that would build, among other things, the appendix?

Even when the work had begun that led to the creation of Coordinators, no one bothered with this stable but pretty useless area of the genetic code. There was nothing around here to enhance that would be of any real benefit to a Coordinator. Most clinics' scanning programs would pass over this area and do no more than check for damaged code sections. She smiled a bit grimly. Some of the more sensitive might just identify this as bad code and it would be removed in the process of making a Coordinator child. She could only wonder how often that had happened and what they had lost because of it.

Serin turned and activated a completely different terminal. This linked to the computer in the private office. Much of this material was highly confidential but it was not as secret as the data stored on the lab unit. In moments she'd accessed a set of combat records Roland wasn't supposed to have.

She watched the Strike stumbling in defense of the Archangel as Kira attempted to ward off the Buster and the Duel. Then something changed. His performance level jumped impossibly. In moments he'd dealt both Duel and Buster enough damage to escape them both, then raced back to the ship in time to drive off the Blitz. Another segment, not as cleanly captured on the film, showed her the Strike down on Earth in a desert environment in a night battle with several BuCUES. Once again Kira went from barely able to survive to something just short of god-like in the blink of an eye.

The last of the combat records of the Strike was one recorded by Lowe Gear in the Red Frame. And she really, really wondered just how Roland had gotten his hands on that bit of data. She was quite sure Lowe hadn't given it to him!

Lowe had come up on the battle while it had been in progress. The Strike and the Aegis were very clearly out to kill each other. The speed and power of both attack and defense was just short of unbelievable. Both pilots were clearly operating well outside the normal parameters even for Coordinators. The segment ended with the explosion of the Aegis as it was clamped tightly around the Strike.

She skipped most of the segments involving Freedom to watch the brief one of the Strike Rouge and a bit of the Justice. She did watch the climax of the battle between Kira and Rau though. As she did, she wondered if the boy was using one gift there or two. And she also wondered just how much Kira himself was aware of when this activated.

Serin turned the terminal off when the last part ended. No, it wasn't a myth. The proof was on that film. And in those spirals behind her.

She turned and eyed them again. This time she focused on the one belonging to Kira Yamato. The same perfect set of four copies of the protein master templates rotated into view, located in the same place as the set Athrun had. The Mendel sample matched this too. So did those for Cagalli and for Lacus Clyne.

These four young people, three Coordinators and one Natural, were gifted with the SEED. Any child produced using the Mendel genetics would also have it. And Roland knew it. He was planning to give that advantage to their people. Without bothering to tell them he was doing it if she knew him.

This time she could understand why. This would create a subset within the Coordinator population that was truly gifted beyond the norm. It ran a very real risk of breaking them apart. Sooner or later someone with a big mouth was going to discover what was happening. But she knew Roland was hoping that could be put off for a couple generations, until the genes were widespread enough that just about everyone could expect to have the gift available to their children.

But had he noticed the other gift here? The one that came from the De Flaga line? The one Hibiki had so clearly lifted whole and grafted into his Ultimate Coordinator program? Because if he used these Mendel genetics he was going to be passing that one into the general Coordinator population too.

Serin pulled the spirals for Kira, one of the Mendel's, someone named Canard Pars, Rau Le Creuset, Mu La Flaga, and another unknown called Prayer Reverie to the front of the desk. She could only speculate on how Roland had come by some of these but she suspected he'd been busier on that trip on the Kusanagi than she'd known. She did know he'd spent at least one day aboard the Archangel itself comparing data with them when they got back. He probably got hold of something from La Flaga there. If there were likely to be physical mementos anywhere, it would be among that crew.

What these told her was just fascinating. She'd known Rau and Mu were related of course. But where did this Prayer Reverie come into the family? Pity the data was incomplete. It looked like he might be a clone but it was impossible to be sure or to tell of who if he was. But all three of them had the same mutation in the same location. Prayer had a double copy.

Kira, the Mendel sample and this Pars individual had the identical mutation but it was clearly grafted in to a different gene altogether. Like the data for Reverie, what Roland had for Canard Pars was incomplete. But what was there was enough to tell Serin that this was probably one of the 'failed' Ultimate Coordinators. He was definitely quite closely related to Kira but too much was missing to tell just how closely.

A check of random samples from other Project candidates had turned up single or double copies of the SEED factor in over sixty percent of them. So it wasn't rare at all. What was rare was having the four copies that let it be expressed. The prevalence of double copies suggested that it was beginning to ramp up in the general population. It might already be widespread enough to be past stopping. And wouldn't that give Blue Cosmos a kick in the nose? Them and their blue and pure world where human beings had stopped evolving, frozen into their imagined perfection for all time. Ha!

Too bad the La Flaga gift wasn't showing up like that too. But it had only turned up in one of her random checks. So that honestly was rare.

She brought up two more spirals. One was Adrian's, the other Kayla's. Both of them had almost made the elite club, they each had three copies of the new protein codes that she was sure was the heart of the SEED factor. Since both were missing different copies, there was a strong chance their children would have it without any tinkering on anyone's part. Kayla carried the same gift as the La Flaga line. Serin was quite aware the gift came from Mu's father but she wasn't about to name anything that was likely to have a lasting place in medical literature after that man. Adrian had nothing in his code that was likely to block it so that might pass cleanly to the children as well.

Serin didn't know all of what either gift would do but she did know the SEED would make a huge difference to anyone in a situation of high danger, like combat was. The La Flaga trait had to be the spatial awareness the Hawk had been so famous for. Hibiki wouldn't have bothered to lift any lesser gift. It was the ability that let him fly and fully utilize his Moebius Zero. Kayla had also flown and utilized the abilities of the Zero, so she had to have that same kind of spatial awareness, which was why Serin was so sure she knew what those genes did. Combine that with the combat gifts of the SEED and you'd have a formidable warrior indeed. Or, she thought wistfully, if the peace held perhaps they would be explorers instead.

Either way, her grandchildren promised to be something unusual and special. She quietly turned all the DNA files off and shut the computer down. How much could they be raised George Glen's way and how much would they have to be raised their great-grandfather's she wondered? Coordinators weren't any more immune to jealousy than Naturals were after all. She didn't know. And she wasn't going to until they arrived and she'd had a chance to do an analysis on what they'd actually gotten in their toss of the dice in the game of natural selection.

At least she knew what Roland was trying to hide this time. And she was going to force him to talk about it. She wasn't sure if adding SEED genetics to their population was a good idea or not. She knew she'd have a better feel for that if she argued it out with Roland for a bit. And he'd have a better feel for it too, whether he wanted to admit it or not.

She checked the time and was shocked to see she'd been in the lab almost seven hours. Thank goodness it was her official day off! She made one final sweep of the desk area to be sure nothing was out of place and left.

Once in the outer office, several things she'd not noticed in her single minded focus began to demand her attention. Simple things, like thirst, and a need for a restroom stop. Oh, and hunger was climbing the list to claim a fairly high importance too.

She dealt with the restroom necessity and got a very long drink first. Only then could she properly organize her mind to consider the rest of her priorities. She decided hunger could wait. There had been no message from Aube yesterday. She would check for that first and worry about food second.

But there was no message again this day. Only a brief note from Kira saying he wasn't getting any data from Colorado at the moment. Serin stared at it, suddenly sure something was going wrong, horribly, horribly, wrong.