A/N: So, here you got another chapter of this fanfic. Once again: HAVE FUN READING AND PLEASE REVIEW.
Phase 8: Interlude
At an unknown location on earth:
"We're receiving an encrypted comm. signal." a brown haired girl said. Her hair was bound in two pigtails and she wore a Celestial Being uniform with a yellow jacket.
"What code is being used?" another brown haired woman asked. She let her hair fall free and just wore white pants and a top that gives a good look at her cleavage.
"Code Sigma 5, Miss Sumeragi." Mileina Vashti said.
"That high…" Sumeragi paused a second. "… ok, put it through."
"All right, comm. line's open. " Mileina pressed a few buttons. "We're reading you, Gabriel."
"Alright. " a male voice sounded over the speakers. "I've got new orders, a new destination and valuable intel for you."
"Orders? And where should we pick you up?" Sumeragi asked.
"You are to pick me up at 15 kilometers east of Banadiya in two days." Gabriel said.
"Alright, we'll be there. " she replied sighing.
"One more thing, I want you to send Setsuna with his Exia to the coordinates I'll send you right away." That surprised Sumeragi. She never expected them to reveal anything so soon.
"Setsuna on his own? Why's that so suddenly."
"Well, we've got quite a problem over here. And I don't think that the Archangel will be able to stand through that on its own." Gabriel took a deep breath. "Apparently the pilot of their Gundam was injured by another, which emitted black GN particles."
Setsuna, who had just come to the bridge, heard that last part and muttered a silent curse. He had no doubt that Sumeragi would think of his words as lies, but it was better now that there was at least some kind of evidence. But he was curious. How the hell did anyone get their hands on the blue prints for the GN drive. As far as he knew the only ones who had any knowledge of that technology were Ian and a handful of scientists from this earth. And those were nearly shut off from anything besides the bases that so called Angel squadron had here on earth.
Archangel (momentary at the Desert Dawn HQ) one day later:
"… and since this is the first time I treated a Coordinator, I don't know how long it's going to take for him to wake up or how the medications will affect his body." the doctor finished.
Every one of his friends wore a sad expression on their faces, especially Lacus. She wasn't allowed into the room while the treatment was going on, but she never left the room afterwards. Not to eat, not to sleep.
That moment the door opened and Mu stepped in.
"What's with the all the sad faces?" he asked.
"Oh, I just told the kids how our friend here is doing." the doctor answered.
"And?"
"The only thing I can say for sure, is that he isn't going to die. "
"And his girlfriend?" Mu leaned over as he whispered his question.
"I don't know, but their friends said that she was here the whole night." the doctor whispered in return.
"And from the looks of it, she didn't even sleep." Sai joined in on the whispered conversation.
Truth be told, Lacus really didn't look good. Red, swollen eyes, black rings under her eyes and dried streams of tears visible on her cheeks.
5 hours later
"…a, …ra, … Kira!" a voice called, but as he opened his eyes the voice was gone.
The lights in the room were dimmed and with the bandage around his head he couldn't see much more then vague silhouettes. But even if he couldn't see, he still felt a familiar warmth on his chest. After their friends, Mu and the doctor left, she had fallen asleep pretty fast.
Even though she hadn't slept the night before, she had an unusually light sleep and noticed his movements. She slowly lifted her head, opened her eyes and looked in his only visible eye.
Lacus bit back gasp as she saw, what looked like electric circuits, running through his eye. She blinked. His eye was normal. She put it off as imagination, even for a Coordinater it would be unnatural to have electric circuits in his eyes.
"How do you feel?" Lacus asked him concerned, but still a little bit sleepy.
"It hurts less than I imagined." Kira answered whispering dryly.
"I'm going to get you something to drink. Your voice sounds awfully dry." Lacus said as she stood up.
"You'll be alright in no time."
It was a dark night and Kira was standing alone in a wide field. No stars in the sky, no city to be seen on the horizon. Only a strong wind blowing steadily, swaying the grass back and forth.
Well, it wasn't completely dark. He could see about ten to fifteen meters… at least figures at that distance and mostly black and white, but he could see. The strangest thing was, that he couldn't remember what he was doing or how he got there.
Still, he felt somehow safe and comfortable out here. And somehow familiar. Also he thought that he heard a voice carried by the wind. He turned around, looking if he could make out the direction the voice came from. But with no result. He started walking in the direction the wind came from. He walked for what felt like hours but as he stopped, everything looked the same as before. The only thing different was that the wind was now blowing stronger and right in his face instead of changing directions ever now and then.
There was the voice again. But this time obscured by the wind, so that he could only make out there was a voice. Then, suddenly everything went black.
Kira shot up in his bed as he heard the door opening, groaning regretfully as he did so. He slowly lowered himself back down, so that it wouldn't hurt anymore than it already did.
"No sudden movements. I don't want your wounds to open up again." A concerned Lacus scolded him as the door closed again.
"I'll try my best." Kira answered trying to smile.
However he soon felt that wasn't that easy because the stitches under the bandage were tugging on his skin and he stopped it. Lacus pulled another stool besides his bed and laid down the tray she had brought with her and helped him slowly into a half sitting position. She sat down on the other stool already at his bedside and reached for a cup and slowly lifted it up to his mouth so he could drink something.
"I think I can at least do that without much help." Kira objected after the cup was moved away from his mouth.
"The doctor said you should take it easy." Lacus said as she put the cup back onto the tray. "And until he says otherwise, I'll keep helping you."
"But…" Kira couldn't finish what he was about to say because Lacus put a finger to his lips.
"No buts, I want you to recover as soon as possible. And don't forget about your friends. Even Lt. Badgiruel was here and asked how you were doing." Lacus said smiling.
Three days passed at the base of the desert dawn…
Meanwhile somewhere in space:
"Sir we've got an unknown on the radar." An officer announced.
"Distance and affiliation?" the commander asked.
"About 80 kilometers and no match in our library." The same officer responded.
"This is strange…" he murmured.
"Sir, it seems to be drifting."
"Out here?" the commander asked out loud.
"Get me our pilots to meet in the briefing room. We're going to investigate."
The comm. officer did as she was told.
"Yay!" exclaimed the female officer at the flight controls.
"Finally some variety out here."
"Easy Ensign." The commander laughed.
"Keep your eyes and ears open, it might be a trick to lure us out."
"In the middle of nowhere?" his second in command asked.
"It's very unlikely that most people even know that we're out here."
"Better be safe than sorry." The commander turned to the comm. officer.
"Send a message to Foreigner that we're leaving our sector to investigate an anomaly."
"Right away sir." She hit a few buttons but stopped midway.
"Sir, pilots are all in the briefing room." She then continued in her assigned task.
"I'll leave you in charge of things here while I brief the pilots." The commander ordered his second in command.
20 minutes later:
"Found anything suspicious?" the commander asked his pilots over the radio.
"Only that it seems to be cut off from something else and is not build by any nation on earth or the PLANTS." The pilot in charge of the outer observation answered.
"Col., we've found two people in there. One seems to be in some sort of stasis-capsule and a young woman floating around the room unconscious. Reason for that is believed to be the thin air in here."
The leader of the search party reported over the radio.
"You heard that General?" the Col. asked.
"Every word of it. Captain, get that gal into a spacesuit and bring her over here. The rest of our pilots will push that thing towards Foreigner." The General ordered.
"Yes sir." Replied a chorus over the radio.
A whole two hours later the unknown object was secured just outside Foreigner and portable life-support-systems were brought into the interior to make the thorough investigation easier. The woman was brought into the infirmary to be treated properly after floating god knows how long around without a healthy amount of oxygen in the atmosphere.
The said woman had purple hair which was chin-length at her face and got shorter on the way to the back of her head. She was about 1,68 meters tall and had a very attractive body. Also she wore a strange purple bodysuit that and nothing else. The other person in the stasis-capsule was about 2,30 meters tall, that was, if there was a person in the strange armor at all.
Since they didn't understand how the technology on this 'spaceship' worked they better left the computer systems alone until the woman would wake up, to ask her to help release the person in stasis.
The battle raged on outside and floating through the hallways seemed endlessly slow and never ending. The next door opened and suddenly, there was no hallway anymore. Instead there was the cockpit of a mobile suit.
Not any cockpit though. It was the cockpit of the Michael… and a very warm and safe feeling emanating from within.
As soon as she sat down in the seat, she was clad in a monotone grey pilot suit without any insignia or symbol on it and the door she through was replaced with the closed hatch of the cockpit.
"Turn left!" called a voice suddenly.
Mostly out of instinct Alice ripped the controls and turned the mobile suit leftwards and saw a beam narrowly passing by before the screen.
"Next time, try to be a little more gentle, would you?" the voice said again.
"Who are you?" Alice asked as she dodged the constant beam fire from all directions.
"You awakened me not to long ago, don't you remember?"
Alice was about to answer as she was awoken by the yelling of one Chief Murdoch.
"Hey, wake up. The cockpit of a mobile suit is nothing to take a nap in." he asked.
"What are you doing in my room?" she asked still a little sleepy.
"Stop blabbering nonsense, you're sitting in your mobile suit's cockpit."
It took her a moment to fully come to recognize where she was. She looked disbelievingly at the mechanic in front of her.
"How did I get here?" she asked surprised.
"Hell, that's what I want to know." The chief mechanic replied while helping her out of the seat.
"I was going to check if the Strike was ready when I saw you sleeping. You ever sleepwalked before?"
"Not while I was at the academy."
"Either way, you better get dressed properly. Those 'pyjamas' aren't exactly something you should walk around with on a warship."
Alice looked down on her clothes and blushed somewhat ashamed. Her 'pyjamas' consisted of a t-shirt two numbers too big for her and pants that were equally over her size.
Alice hastily made her way back to her room and changed into her uniform… if you could call it that. It consisted of a white earth-forces-officer pants and shoes and a black t-shirt. Over that she wore the jacket of her father's ORB uniform, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows.
After changing, Alice decided to get something to eat in the mess hall.
A/N: I'll leave you to guess what I used as crossover material here ^^