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 still get you ignored.)

No, this story is not dead. Yes, I WILL finish it. It's just taking longer than it should.

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Seed. On the other hand, the OC's are mine. Kindly to not borrow without permission.


The morning had already been a three ring circus from Hell and it wasn't even seven a.m. yet. Dad, John and Doug had all been up by five as they had stock duty today. Just why little Judy, Jamie's two year old, had decided to get up too was anybody's question. But when she'd come stumbling back up the stairs, wailing that Two-Great Grammy was all cold and stiff in the living room the day went straight into the toilet. And that was a thought neither Mom nor Dad would appreciate right about now.

General Grayhawk couldn't bring herself to care enough to censor her mind. It was hard enough controlling what came out of her mouth at the moment. Great-Gran Agnes had been an enduring fixture her whole life. And now, with no warning, she was gone.

Mom and Dad were both useless, too shocked and upset to function. First Kay was no better. Gran Spotted Horse was functional but impaired; Agnes Bear had been her Medicine teacher after all. Which dropped the whole mess in her lap, and damn it, she wanted to go off in a corner and cry too!

"Maria, did Doc Hughes give you any idea how long it was gonna take him to get here?" Jamie asked fretfully. "Mom's falling apart because we can't touch her until the Doc and the coroner get here."

"The whole grand parade should be here in the next fifteen minutes." Maria wanted to slap some sense back into her twin but it was too easy to understand why he was so adrift at the moment to allow real anger a place. "The Sheriff is coming with them. Has anyone started the coffee going yet? We're going to need gallons of it before dark."

"Alys and Todd are making coffee, toast and scrambling half the eggs in the county. I don't know who they expect to eat them. No one has any appetite."

"You're probably right about most of the eggs but the toast and the coffee will come in handy as the day wears on." She made a quick decision and grabbed his arm.

"Look, we need the stock taken care of. Just because we've taken a body hit doesn't give us the right to neglect the animals. Round up John, Richard, Crystal, and Doug and the five of you tend to the barns and the pastures. I think Dad has a couple weeks worth of hay set out on wagons; you can just tow one or two of them out and toss the bales into the feed bunks. If you fill them to the top, we can get away with just watering the horses tonight and there might be enough left to not have to feed tomorrow morning either."

Jamie nodded heavily, obviously in his own way, grateful to have a defined job to do for a while. He turned and rounded up the others, taking five bodies out of the way and a lot of grief and tension out the door with them. Gran Spotted Horse was managing Mom, Dad and First Kay. Carol had the children in the kitchen, where Maria discovered there were a lot fewer eggs being scrambled than Jamie had implied. Alys and Todd were rather white around the edges but their judgment wasn't completely shot.

The dying wail of a siren coming from somewhere up the drive warned her that the rest of the circus was about to arrive. She watched through the glass in the new front door as the EMT ambulance pulled up. It was flanked by Dr. Hughes car on the one side and Coroner Hsia's monster truck on the other. The Sheriff, all too familiar with how that behemoth of Mia's handled, elected to park beside Dr. Hughes. Then she had the door open and a small flood of officialdom poured in.

Kirby Rennie went to join her parents at once. The Sheriff really wasn't here so much for the death as he was as a decades long friend. She showed the others to the living room and then simply couldn't stay. She'd fought one gut ugly, genocidal bloody war but she couldn't make herself stay and watch them do their legally necessary things to her own great-grandmother. She found a chair in the dining room and just got herself out of everyone's way for a while.

The Bronze Spider was still staring at the pattern in the dining room rug when a soft cough arrested her attention some uncounted time later. She looked up to find her Great Uncle Matt and Charlie Yellow Dog standing just inside the door. They both looked a good ten years older than they had just the day before. Uncle Matt just raised one bushy eyebrow in question.

Maria shrugged. "Something got Judy up when the guys were getting ready to go feed the sheep. She found her."

"No idea what happened then, eh?" Charlie asked quietly.

"None. And nobody's suggested anything reasonable for why she'd be sitting there behind the drum in the first place."

The two old men exchanged a very grim look that caught her attention instantly. "What do you know?"

"Don't go gettin' ideas here," Charlie told her. "We don't know nothin' yet. But we both can't help but notice there's someone missin' from this disaster right now an' somehow, I don't think he's out feedin' sheep."

Maria felt her jaw sag slightly. How could she have missed that? He was such an unwanted and obnoxious presence; was it just relief that he'd kept his nasty mouth to himself for a change?

"Shit!" She hit her feet and bounded to the stairs. Great Uncle Jerome didn't have that kind of courtesy! He should have been down here, making a bad situation outright ugly. The two old shamen were right on her heels.

Maria Jean Grayhawk ignored all polite conventions and slammed the door of her great-uncle's bedroom open. Her right hand slapped the wall twice before it found the light switch. And from the moment she hit the door until the lights came on, there was no sound from the room.

Jerome Spotted Horse lay still in the bed. Her battle-trained eye recognized that he wasn't dead almost immediately but there was something terribly wrong just the same. Long strides brought her across the room, and into the unmistakable odor of urine and feces. His eyes were still closed. But once she got a look at his face, she understood everything.

The right side looked perfectly normal, an elderly man asleep. The left side looked like someone had taken a wax life mask of that same man and better than half-melted it. Every single muscle on the left side of the face was completely slack. It was eerie and, quite frankly, damn disturbing to look at.

"Stroke," Matt Spotted Horse said quietly.

"Massive one," Charlie agreed grimly. "By the smell an' the way he looks, happened better'n an hour ago too."

Matt nodded, eyes sad. "Yeah, this one Jerome isn't going to be talking his way out of."

"Man'll be damn lucky if he ever says a comprehendible word again." Charlie said absently, his usual exceptionally casual diction suddenly missing.

"You saw the drum, Charles. He won't be recovering from this, ever."

"What was she told, that she'd make that choice?"

"Don't ask, it isn't our right to know as it wasn't our choice to make."

"I'm hearing you say Great-Gran did this," Maria said grimly.

Her Uncle turned a bleak stare on her but the General just stared flatly back until the old man smiled bitterly. "She did. Agnes called on the Spirits to judge Jerome's heart, to weigh his intent against the intent of those he would harm and to deal with him accordingly. It's just this side of a true curse only because the shaman or medicine woman doing the calling does not make any suggestion at all regarding what the Spirits should do with their findings. And it isn't easy to do nor cheap for the caller."

"Does it usually kill?" She asked quietly.

"No," Matt replied. "But it takes a very heavy toll in the body's energy. Your great-grandmother no longer had the reserves to survive that and she knew it when she decided to do it. So something she saw made this worth the last of her life to her."

She stared icily at the ruin of a man lying in the bed. It wasn't really all that hard to imagine what Great-Grandmother had seen if you were honest with yourself about the man's corroded character. He would have gone to Blue Cosmos. He would have told them about Kayla, her children, her husband, his too-loyal friends. And they would have hunted them down before they could get off the planet and slaughtered them slowly. Then they would have come here, and done the same to her family. Because they'd allowed a Natural to chose to marry a Coordinator and bear him children.

She made no effort to either control her face or hide her thoughts as she turned and stalked for the door. "I'll let the EMTs know they have a case up here too."

"That's a very ugly attitude, Maria." Matt Spotted Horse held his arm out, stopping her. "Jerome ruined his soul with it. I don't advise you to keep it."

She turned her polished metal eyes on him and smiled, an expression that had backed down a would-be assassin once long enough for her to change the plans regarding just who died. "Don't worry. However it goes from this point on, what's been done now is a more fitting judgment than anything I could have ever come up with. I am actually content with it."

"Maria!"

"Matt, let her go." Charlie said flatly. "Then take a look across the bed."

With an order like that, the General turned as well. But there was nothing there that she could see. One glance at the two old men though said something was there.

"One of you want to enlighten the blind here?" She asked evenly.

"Later," Charlie snapped, voice iron hard. "This ain't no place for the blind. Ya get yerself outta here and fetch them EMT fellas. We'll deal with this afore they get up here. An' don't ferget ta close the door on yer way out!"

There were times to make a stand and there were times to retreat. This was a time to retreat. She couldn't see anything but the longer she faced the bed her great-uncle was lying in the stronger the feeling grew that something very old, very powerful, and damn angry was standing there. The wise soldier didn't go into battle unarmed, and if there was going to be a fight here, she was. The Bronze Spider made an immediate and strategic withdrawal. There were too many exceptionally powerful evil spirits Uncle Jerome's bitter soul could have attracted for her to be getting in the way of the medicine people when they had to deal with them.

As she closed the door though, she got her explanation in full as Charlie asked, very respectfully, "Coyote, why are you still here?"

She vacated the second floor of the house immediately. Really, if she dared, she'd have gathered everyone and run for the Arizona state line. COYOTE was upstairs, and he was mad! She staggered into the dining room and melted into a handy chair, shaking like she hadn't since her earliest training days when a live fire exercise had gone horribly wrong, leaving her one of only fifteen survivors. She had no idea how long she'd been sitting there when she was dragged back to reality by worn and aggravated voice.

"Oh gods, not you too?" Gran Spotted Horse growled.

Maria looked up to find the old woman standing there, grief and irritation about equally mixed in her expression. "Gran, Coyote is upstairs."

"Excuse me?" The crow dark eyes suddenly narrowed sharply.

"Uncle Matt said Great-Gran called his soul into judgment and died of it. He's had the kind of stroke you never come back from. And he and Charlie threw me out of the room. As I left, I heard Charlie ask Coyote why he was still there. Coyote. In our house. What the hell is going on in this nutso world?!?"

Maria Spotted Horse's eyes widened abruptly, grim understanding flaring in them as she realized just what the Spider was telling her, but all she said was, "Stay here. I'll get the EMTs."

Grateful for the chance to just let someone else take charge, she did as ordered. She was a soldier, give her a conventional battlefield and she would have no problems. But this was Spirit business and Maria Jean Grayhawk was brutally familiar enough with her own abilities to know when she was in over her head.

She heard the exclamations as Gran announced the new discovery and the tramp of feet and squeaking of equipment as the official cavalcade hastily made its way upstairs. She heard old Charlie's voice telling them that Uncle Jerome was still alive and letting them into the room. Coyote must have left then; he wouldn't endanger the EMTs by having them in if the angry Spirit was still there. It was only a few minutes later that she heard them all trooping back down, the drop and click of the gurney as the back wheels touched each step sharp enough to leave no doubt it was carrying a load. She didn't look around to verify it though. She'd already seen more than enough as it was.

It was perhaps a minute later that a mug of very hot coffee was waved under her nose. The aged hand holding it wore a massive turquoise ring and the arm was covered in a sky-blue shirt. It was Charlie then, Uncle Matt's shirt was green today. She took the offered drink without comment and managed a hefty swallow of the searing and viciously over-sweetened liquid. Well, yeah, her blood sugar probably was a bit low right now.

"Damn fool was gonna tell Blue Cosmos 'bout the boys and the babies." Charlie said quietly. "I don' know why they're so important but seems they are. Coyote weren't happy with Jerome anyhow. Agnes just gave him the excuse to do somethin' he'd been plannin' for a long time here. Once she started drummin, weren't nothing anyone coulda done 'bout it."

"That part isn't what's got me spooked," Maria admitted.

"Ah, yeah, sharin' space with Coyote in a bad mood'll ruin 'bout anyone's mornin'," the old man agreed calmly.

"We in any trouble with the Spirit?" She was worried about that. He wasn't anyone to have pissed with you.

"No," Charlie said flatly.

"Do I want any details?"

"No."

"Where do we go from here then?" Maria knew when to cut her losses, if Charlie didn't think they should discuss Coyote's attitude, she wasn't going to be fool enough to push.

Charlie gave her a very evil grin. "Why, we make that Blue Cosmos lawyer lady who's gonna be comin' by in a couple hours real not welcome."

Oh great! They'd lost Great-grandmother. Great-Uncle Jerome was headed for the hospital with a stroke he'd clearly not be permitted to recover from. And now they had Larry's undoubtedly 'charming' lawyer coming too?

"What the hell did we do to deserve this?" The General tossed back the rest of the coffee when Charlie didn't bother to answer the rhetorical question and rolled to her feet. If they had this incoming too, it would behoove her to make sure as much of the family wasn't home as possible. Neither Mom or Dad would likely be able to stay civil to the woman but she knew she could get them to go to the funeral home with out much prodding. It was the other military members of the family she needed to get out of the house now. It would do no one's career any good to let grief and anger open a mouth too wide. Two hours Charlie had said here, ok, she could work with that.

She turned to the old man. "You plan to warn Gran and First Kay?"

"Yep. Matt'll be goin' with yer parents. He weren't here for the dust-up an' he don't need to be here for the fool. He'll tell 'em about the woman afore they hit town. They don't need to have to worry 'bout her today too an' they'll do a lot less of it if they ain't told until they're outta the house. I'll take care of the kids an' make sure they know to keep their big traps shut. 'Specially Alys. She's way too fond of the Fox to take much off any Blue Cosmos lawyer."

She nodded, reaching for her mobile phone. "I'll call Jamie. He can make sure the stock chores run a lot longer than they usually do. Think I'll suggest he take the others next door for breakfast too. I know Dad called Kit Two Bird to let him know why all the official equipment was going to be here. He and June'll feed the lot if we ask."

"We got a plan then."

The Bronze Spider just nodded, wondering how much of it would survive first contact with the enemy.


The middle of the night was generally not considered the best time to be doing delicate work. It was especially frowned on when one was both mentally and physically worn. On the other hand, it was the time when it was least likely that the opposition would be up to interfere. And Serin would most emphatically interfere if she caught him doing this. He was going to have to mislabel and hide the results too.

But she was wrong and he was not going to have her blocking this. Oh, her moral arguments were as sound as they came all right. And he was genuinely NOT a god and NO he didn't have some 'right' to make such decisions for the future.

But someone was going to make them and that was what she refused to see. The sheer existence of Coordinators made this inevitable. If it was possible, some damn fool would do it just to see what happened. Didn't matter if you were talking about art, architecture, machinery or biology. If there was something new that some idiot could think up, there was another idiot out there that would build it. And the idiots of the universe could imagine a lot.

One of them had imagined young Yamato. He still wasn't sure how they'd missed disaster with that boy. It would be so easy for someone with his abilities to become a monster. Instead, he was closer to being a saint, although he was quite human enough to miss that mark too. It was almost enough to convince him there might be something to the concept of religion.

Roland Ito was experienced enough to know that if the data on the boy got out, there would be deadly serious efforts made to duplicate, then to exceed him. Nor did he doubt that somewhere along the line, some research and development team wouldn't succeed at both.

The only thing that would stop this was making the genetics too widespread to make them interesting anymore. Oh, not all the genetics of course. He really, really did not want to be the one who built the monster. But if he saw to the spread of the main 'advances' Kira represented, then the extras were a lot less likely to be correctly added.

He grinned wolfishly at the dish in front of him. No, give them the good base and they'd be too busy tucking in talents for music, art, or advanced mathematics to plan out the next Ultimate Coordinator the way Hibiki had. That someone, someday, would continue that work was possibly inevitable but he'd delay it as long as he humanly could.

A delicate touch brought the genetic materials into contact. For all their advances, it still wasn't really possible to guarantee the two sources would combine. Some eggs did refuse the sperm packet offered to them. But it was not common. And this one was accepted.

He sat back, satisfied. The Mendel genetics weren't going to go all that far. Too many of the cells had turned up damaged in one way or another when he really got down to trying to sort out some for this night's assembly line. Out of fifteen lines, it didn't look like he was going to get more than four or five viable offspring from any one. Two of them had only produced a single live cell out of the hundred or so in the package, another seven, only two. So there weren't going to be more than about fifty of these children no matter what he did. Any others, he was going to have to take the Mendel models and create for himself.

He would too. But that was for the future. Right now, he was using up their entire supply of Morrison genetics on as many of the viable Mendel cells as he could.

These future children were now the heart of the Ito Program. They would be naturally reproductive, freeing them from the chains of the lab bench. And they would, over time and a few generations, free all other well planned Coordinators as well. The not so well planned would eventually die out, victims of their ancestors' failed foresight.

He watched as the newly fertile zygote completed its first mitosis. He patiently waited until it reached the sixteen cell stage, then transferred it into the cryo unit. It would be possible to double the number of children by splitting this sixteen cell stage into a pair of eight cell units. But that many identical twins was not necessarily wise. He would have to give that very careful thought sometime soon. For the moment, it was good enough to get this far.

He yawned. Damn it! He didn't need this. He needed to get it all done tonight. But his hand was shaking enough now to tell him any more work wouldn't be possible. Not if he didn't want to seriously risk ruining what he was attempting. That was an unacceptable threat.

So instead, he carefully put everything away. The lab had to look like he hadn't done a thing here after Serin had left. Well, not a thing with the actual materials that was. He did intend to leave some theoretical work out for her to find. It was unlikely to change her mind, but it should distract her from thinking too hard about just how determined he was. When he turned out the lights, the lab was exactly how he wanted her to find it.


"The desired result is a healthy and physically sound child. This will require patience. It will not be possible to achieve this goal in a single generation. There is still too much about the human genetic code that we do not fully understand and we must not remove any code that could be beneficial. Still, there is much we do know and we may confidently act upon it."

Eileen Canaver shook her head slowly. Who would have thought there were two programs running when Coordinators were first being made in significant numbers! Dr. Morrison clearly knew what he was talking about here. He just as clearly understood how some people would take his suggestions.

"It is a significant temptation to do the most through job one can on the first generation. It would be unwise in the extreme to do so though as the aforementioned ignorance could very easily lead to a potentially lethal mistake, ruining the work and either killing the child or causing unintended deformity. It is much safer to work across two or more generations. Five would be my personal choice to maximize the safety factors. However, it should be possible to do this in three and still maintain a solid safe margin."

"For all the safety we can provide for this, it must not be overlooked that this work will be violently opposed by a noteworthy portion of the global population. The mindset that holds humanity as a perfected thing, neither needing nor requiring further evolution, must not be disregarded. Such people have an unfortunate tendency to be murderously ferocious when their unforgiving attitudes are crossed. It is for that reason that I advocated the degree of secrecy noted in the previous chapter."

"It is impossible to overstate this: do not ever ignore those who oppose this kind of progress for they will execute you for it."

"There are colleagues of mine who are promoting an even more radical approach to improving the general human condition. They have already begun to produce children that have been enhanced by not only the removal of known defects but by the addition of genes that should produce a far stronger and more intelligent individual. The first such experimental children do appear to live up to their expectations. However, a careful computer analysis of these changes forces the recognition that such children will not grow into naturally reproductive adults. The depth of change is so severe that the newly restructured genes will not behave correctly at mitosis, resulting in broken strands that will be unable to produce another generation. Thus, these children, while truly wonders in and of themselves, will be doomed to requiring a complete laboratory to have any hope of producing another generation. It is not to be forgotten that any group so dependent can be controlled by this means. The question of who should have the right to direct the genius of these children will be a political nightmare for the future with furious debate inevitable and outright war quite probable."

The old Natural geneticist had been almost as good a predictor of the future as he was skilled in his field. Nor was she at all sure this war was going to be the only one fought over the existence of Coordinators. And there was very little she was going to be able to do about it.

Eileen was good at facing facts. One of the biggest she had to contend with was how briefly she was going to be functioning as Chairman of the Supreme Council. Not only could she not make long-range plans, she was exceptionally limited in the short-range ones she could push through as well. She was a caretaker, no more, no less, and everyone knew it.

It made it easy for those with a harder outlook on the Council to oppose her. Just getting the final treaty approved was going to be her most significant public accomplishment. There were going to be elections scheduled within four months of the signing of that treaty, she knew it. And she couldn't afford to lose that election. But she lacked the support to win it. If she was going to be able to retain any influence at all, she couldn't even run. She would have to stand down and work from the sidelines.

She looked at the old book in her hand again. This copy of "Genomic Health" had come to her courtesy of Miranda Thoms. Unfortunately, it seemed Gilbert Dullindal already knew all about both the book and the Naturals who had been following its advice for at least three generations now.

According to Serin, he had some plan involving this too. Well, when hadn't that man had a plan? He just thought too far ahead. She would lay good odds that he'd been working for this chance for at least ten years already.

Her eyes narrowed. How much further had that information gone? Commander Thoms had sent copies of this report to at least five people at the Science Institute as well as the one he'd sent her. Fortunately, those people tended to be rabidly paranoid about data leaks. It was very unlikely the information would get out of there. Not even Gilbert was going to be spreading it. He didn't need the problems it would cause any more than she did.

For no one needed the panic this would throw the radicals into. It was hard enough to get them to understand that the Plants hadn't won the war any more than the Alliance had lost it. They weren't good on the concept 'draw'. Give them this data and they'd be seeing super-Naturals everywhere! They might never get to the treaty stage at that rate.

She looked at the report in her hand. She could solve this quickly enough at least. The office boasted a shredder/grinder. Eileen just dropped the pages through it, ending that much of the risk immediately.

If she just returned the book to Miranda along with that awful novel the older woman had been pestering her to read no one was likely to give it a second look. That would remove the other printed danger from the office. It wasn't very probable that Dullindal would believe she didn't know anything about the Morrison Plan but if it was done carefully, it should be possible to convince him she had less information than she did and that she didn't really understand what little she knew. He had a very healthy regard for his own abilities, a regard that had led him to dismiss other's input before. And she was no geneticist; he would be more liable to believe her lack of background had deceived her regarding the importance of the information.

The Interim Chairman smile thinly at the thought. She was going to have to ignore this data. There were genuine Naturals down there who could keep up with most Coordinators. And she couldn't give any hint that she knew this or that she recognized the long term danger. Because there was one Coordinator up here who would very probably kill her if he grasped how much she did know. And that Coordinator was quite possibly going to be her successor. It was an especially bitter pill. When had their own people become more dangerous to them than the Alliance?