Disclaimer and Notes of Ownership: I do not own the Gundam Franchise, or any of the characters from said franchise. If I did, I would probably use the massive fortunes resulting from that to develop real-life mobile suits and conquer the world, with a corresponding level of glee and madness.
("He actually drew up plans for it last week too.")
I do however, own all the technical designs labeled with PGAT, XHMA, MMA, XSBF, XABF, PMU, MLWS, CI and SDDGN in their alphanumeric designations, along with a portion of those labeled XGAT. I own Jack Kagizaki's mind, body and soul, as well as those of Captain Gary Shimizu and his Shoki Team. Along with that goes the Abaddons, the Grigori, and good ol' David Sariel. Draco too. If anyone should use any of these without my permission.....well, I'll mope. And then I'll find you and crush you underneath a tank. Filled with high-explosives. And all the mopey, whiny Gundam protagonists that didn't grow something resembling a spine (Shinn).
Similarly, Velshard has dibs on almost the entire line of replacement units for ZAFT, excluding one. He has administrative privileges over the Noctoraptor (Enhanced), Ferox, and Verin Gundams. He also has ownage over the horrifying abomination or deification (depends on your point of view) of all that's good and pure in this universe, otherwise called the Tetsujin. The beings of Andrew Victor Payne, Karlton William Hertz, and the Van Dalygon family are belong to him.
The Megalodon design belongs to....well Kojiro Kun gave me the idea.
The ZONGS design belongs to animefan29.
00virtuezero's contributions include the Gundams Repulse and Outlaw, and his OCs Wesley Mercis, and Michael Archer.
Gundam Seed: Killer's Realm
Phase 26: Brutality, Part 1
Orb, Main Island, Zenopolis City, Maglev Metro
February 19, 71 CE
9:32 AM
Tap. Tap. TapTap. TapTapTap. TapTappityTapperTapzee.
This was the sound that Yzak heard, piercing the light hum of the Maglev Train, and even the conversations of his fellow Redcoats.
t-t-t-t-t-t-tttttap-tap-tap-ta-t-tap-tap-tap-taptaptaptaptaptaptaptap-ttttttt-t-ta-tap.
"For the sake of my sanity and the safety of your skull, couldn't you Glenndamn wait until I'm FAR AWAY from you to do that?" Yzak shouted at Kira. The Prince of Orb didn't even look up from his laptop, still incessantly typing away at a speed of about 396 gross words per minute, judging by the sound. Growling, the white-haired Coordinator got up and walked across the aisle towards Kira.
In the seat next to Kira's, Jack was sleeping. Thus far in the trip, it was a peaceful and quiet rest, without any loud or annoying sounds that distracted Yzak from his current target of Kira.
"And.....now!" Chimamare ordered gleefully, causing Jack to let out a very loud and obnoxious snore. Just as Chimamare predicted, Yzak snapped, going for Jack's throat. Instead, Chimamare wrapped one of Jack's hands around Yzak's neck, squeezing hard, without Jack himself noticing the action and continuing to sleep. By now Chimamare was guessing he'd only need a few more seconds to permanently imprint Jack's fingers into Yzak's neck.
"AH! Jack, let him go!" Nicol cried, grabbing Jack's arm and tugging.
"Kira! Help us here!" Dearka jumped on Yzak, trying to wrestle him away from Jack. Finally, Kira saved what he was working on and looked up.
"I told you guys not to get too close to him!"
"What you didn't tell us was that he sleep-strangles!" Athrun hissed, just before Yzak accidentally kicked him in the gut. Cagalli caught Athrun and pushed him back, joining him in grabbing Yzak and helping Dearka pull him away. Yzak's own struggles to get Jack's hand off of his jugular were actually impeding his comrades' efforts to do the same.
Kira astonished them all by drawing his balisong, flipping out the blade and pressing the flat to the back of Jack's neck. Instantly, the schizophrenic's arm went limp and floppy, falling from Yzak's neck to rest on Jack's side.
"Grrrrrrr WHY DON'T YOU KEEP A LEASH ON THAT THING!" Yzak roared somewhat hoarsely, massaging his neck.
"I did at one point. He used it to strangle someone." Kira answered, to the astonished and disturbed looks of the ZAFT Redcoats and to the sighs of Cagalli.
"Why did he stop when you pressed your knife to his neck?" Dearka asked, glancing over the head of the seat Jack was sitting in. To the casual observer, Jack would appear to be sleeping like a baby. Actually, even a trained spy would conclude that he was perfectly harmless at this moment, disregarding the earlier throttling.
"I don't know why, but the feeling of anything cold on that part of his neck tends to calm him down from one of his rages." Kira supplied, shrugging as to why that would have any effect. In reality, that was an unfortunate side-effect from the Alliance experiments in nano-technological augmentation that had made Jack as he was. A sudden decrease in temperature on the epidermis on the back of the neck, where the central nanomachine control was, would cause the nanomachines assigned to the muscular system to temporarily malfunction, ceasing the progress of conscious signals to the muscles before being repaired by maintenance machines.
"We're here!" Cagalli celebrated when the train stopped, dragging Athrun with their luggage behind her as she raced up to street level, completely bypassing the other departing passengers and would-be boarders, barreling up the escalators.
"Damn she's fast." Dearka noted, with Nicol nodding sagely next to him. "I wonder how all that energy translates to their experiences in bed...."
"Pardon?" Kira asked, turning his head swiftly away from his packing to glare at the duo with a glare that promised instant torture should they delay in responding.
"I-I-II-It's just a joke! Hahaha..." Dearka blurted, holding his hands up in an attempt to fend off the horror of that glare.
"Coward." Yzak grunted, tugging his luggage past the sweating pilot of the Ferox and heading towards the surface himself. "Damn, why is this thing so heavy now?" The reason was apparent to the onlookers, as Jack had woken and somehow grabbed onto the end of Yzak's suitcase and laid himself on a skateboard, allowing the white-haired Redcoat to pull him along.
"Weirdest thing you've seen him do?" Dearka asked Kira, sounding hopeful in the extreme.
"Not even close." Kira shook his head, grabbed his suitcase and backpack and walked out with his laptop under his arm.
- Quis est a Iuguolo nisi a Iuguolo? -
Universal Street, Century Apartments
About the only thing that could be said about the building that could in any way be taken as even relatively complementary was that it was rather big compared to the ones surrounding it. The original paint, whatever the color, had pretty much flaked completely off, to be replaced by at least a mobile suit's worth in spray-paint of graffiti. Parts of the facade were crumbling or had crumbled, leaving an entire centimeter of the windows' frames exposed and leaving an actual hole next to the door where someone could stick their arm through and unlock it.
So the Redcoats were surprised when Kira and Cagalli entered without hesitation.
Athrun went next, followed shortly by Nicol and then Dearka. Yzak took a few seconds, glancing from the run-down building to the view of the Chief Representative's estate, north-west of the city, before grumbling harshly and heading in. The group was now in what appeared to be the lobby, with Kira having moved behind the desk and hooked his laptop up to a wire of some type. Jack was nowhere to be seen.
After clicking and typing a few times in succession, he closed the laptop, got up with his luggage, and headed for the elevator on the right side of the lobby.
"Aren't you gonna-"
"He doesn't need it." Cagalli interrupted Athrun, tugging on his arm to follow after Kira. After exchanging looks, the rest of them stepped onto the elevator with the Orb Royalty (and former ZAFT 'Royalty') and waited. And waited. And waited. Until.....
"Well, what floor is it?" Yzak fumed. The elevator then began to move downward without anyone touching the buttons. Fast. It caused the Redcoats to temporarily lose their balance.
"B100." Kira replied, with a completely straight face. "On a rail-guided elevator with hybrid hyper alloy armor plating and ballistic shock gel, integrated nano-machine based biometrics and four machine gun turrets concealed in the ceiling heading down at sixty kilometers per hour." No more than five minutes later, the elevator stopped and the doors opened, revealing a technophile's wonderland.
It was a room that was filled with displays, readout, and-
"BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" The freaky frightening laugh practically stopped their hearts, and drew their gazes to the left side where they saw Liene was.
"Liene? Did you- Were you-" Nicol stuttered, trying to control his startled heart.
"It's Jack." Liene replied irritably. He was currently monitoring what looked like a screen filled with esoteric characters and alphanumeric script. Liene himself looked eerie, with his cybernetic eyes glowing bright blue. "He does that every time someone new comes down here when I'm working." He gestured vaguely off to the side, focused on the screen. Looking where the mechanical prodigy pointed, the group beheld Jack holding a microphone connected to a set of speakers.
"KEK" He uttered, before dropping the mic. Kira coughed. Liene stepped away from the terminal, his eyes ceasing to glow, and stood before the group. Resuming their inspection of the room, the Redcoats saw that it was maybe a hundred square meters in size, roughly octagonal in shape, with consoles covering the walls except for four doors set equidistant to one another, and the elevator. In the center was a large circular table made primarily of some titanium alloy, although its top surface appeared to be made of some crystalline substance. There was a similar structure on the ceiling, placed perfectly over the table with the exact same construction. Liene cleared his throat, drawing their attention back to him.
"Welcome to Facility X18999. Colloquially known as 'Enma's Locker." People began swarming into the room, all dressed in what looked like less bulky versions of the armor that Gary wore, and had visors instead of those creepy skulls. Three of them ran at the group, causing the Redcoats to tense up into fighting postures.
They totally bypassed them, targeting Kira for a glomping.
"Kira!" Was the speaker-shouted cry, as a metric ton's worth of power-armored female pilot pressed the Ultimate Coordinator and Ace Pilot into the floor.
"Hello Asagi, Juri, Mayuri." Kira grunted out. "How have you been? Please get off me."
"Meet the three primary Tetsujin test pilots, Asagi Caldwell, Juri Wu Nien and Mayura Labatt" Kira introduced, pointing to each in turn. They removed their helmets, revealing a blond girl with hair like a messier Mu, a dark blue-haired girl with glasses, and a short-red haired girl, respectively.
"What's this they're wearing?" Dearka wondered, moving closer to them and studying the armor. "It looks like what that friend of Kira's, Gary was wearing."
"It's the pilot version." Liene said. "Nothing you need to know about......yet."
"Er.....ok."
"So, how long have you guys been using this?" Athrun said, drawing Liene's attention. "It seems like you'd have to spend a lot of time building it."
"Oh, we've had it for years." Mayuri said, eyes glimmering. "We just have to pay rent."
"Rent?" Nicol asked, not getting it.
"Yeah, Andrew had to negotiate with Lucifer to get this space." Jack said, grinning as per usual. "He got a pretty good deal. Ten pure Orb virgins sacrificed per year so long as we promise to use this place for the purposes of death and destruction. It's better than the terms OMNI got for their Debris Belt places. They have to spend eight hours a day praising the landowner. It's wonder they ever get anything done."
The Redcoats stared at him.
"Who the hell is Lucifer?" Yzak asked.
"Oh right, you guys were raised in the PLANTs. You didn't have to deal with all that crap." Jack said, before going on to mutter about jihads and nuking Jerusalem or something.
"Anyway, let's get onto the reason Kira's brought you here." Liene interjected, his eyes briefly flaring blue again. Taking the hint, the Tetsujin Testers flooded back out of the room. The 'table' and its ceiling-mounted counterpart in the center of the room suddenly sprang to life, their crystal surfaces glowing a blue similar to Liene's eyes before shifting through what seemed the entire spectrum. Slowly, in the air between them, images coalesced out of the light, showing.....
The Gundams ZAFT had claimed.
Each one, The Bastion, The Ferox, The Noctoraptor, and The Enmity were displayed at maybe a twentieth of their actual size, with every detail perfectly rendered.
"As you know, The G-Project units, now commonly called 'Gundams' were mostly complete when you stole them from Heliopolis." Even Yzak shuddered under the somewhat grim look Liene leveled at them. "However, the level of technology and the designs themselves were mostly done to the Earth Alliance's specs, not to Morgenroete's. As such, you're here to help us update them." He continued coolly, as frames opened up next to the holographic Gundams, briefly scrolling through what seemed to be a complete readout of each Gundam, before closing and being replaced by another image of the Gundam. However, these new images were different. "In order to ensure that we can upgrade each Gundam to the exact specifications, you're going to be serving as-"
"Our guinea pigs." Jack butted in with a grin, as always. "Although, the Bastion's just going to be left to rot."
"What? Why?" Athrun asked in an astonished tone, not noticing the smirk Cagalli had behind his back. He did notice Kira's sheepish grin. "Kira! What's he talking about?" He demanded, moving in on his best friend.
"It's not what you think!" Kira protested. "Come on Liene, show them!"
"Hold up." Jack said, placing a hand on Liene's shoulder. "I got a bet running with Kikuchi. I get fifty creds if Kira accidentally beats the snot out of Athrun." In order to remove Jack, Liene resorted to the tried and true method of zapping him in the side with a tazer.
"Anyway," Liene picked back up, "The item Kira refers to is this." The holograms of the Gundams and their upgraded versions flashed, to be replaced by two new units. They all crowded around the emitters, getting a closer look at them.
"This," Liene continued, gesturing at the unit on their left, "Is the Principes." The Principes had all the standard Gundam features, the V-fin, the samurai-inspired head design, and the basic body structure. It apparently took its coloring from the Bastion, being colored mainly red with iridescent gold highlights and a deep orange secondary coloring. However, its armor was formed similar to the Kiba's, with curved surfaces and no sharp lines or angles. However, the most arresting feature was the twin wings structures attached to its backpack part.
"Aren't those the Kuro Tenshi's wings?" Nicol asked.
"Yes and no." Liene replied. "Structurally, they are almost an exact replica of the Kuro Tenshi pack's wings. In regard to equipment though, they are far more advanced. Instead of using standard thrusters, the wings utilize the Hybrid Plasma Pulse Jet Engines that the Tetsujin uses, along with Ramjets modified to utilize magnetic fields to improve their thrust."
During Liene's mini-lecture, the Redcoats noticed other features of the Principes, including the oval structures on its forearms, what looked like blades of some kind sticking out from the knee, and even arms extending from its hips.
"This unit is the Magatama," Liene stated, "And it is assigned to Cagalli." Those who weren't in the know turned to stare at the Princess of Orb.
"What? You don't think I can pilot a Gundam?" She huffed.
The Magatama was similar in overall construction to the Principes, including the wings and the curved armor. Unusually, its thruster and engine exhausts were flared wide, almost as though to spread the expelled plasma out further. The most outstanding feature of the Magatama was its coloring. It was gold. Pure, bright, shining gold. Another feature was that it apparently took some cues from the Bastion, with elongated elbow and knee armor flanges.
"The Magatama is primarily designed for C3 duties, while also disrupting enemy forces using a system that I'm working on now." Liene explained.
"Hold up. If Cagalli gets this Magatama, then what's Kira doing." Dearke asked, frowning as he pointed his thumb over his shoulder at Kira.
"Due to issues of intelligence security, all parties involved have agreed to keep Kira's new Gundam a secret until circumstances dictate otherwise." Spake the engineering guru. "Now, if you don' have anymore questions.....It's time to start."
- Quis est a Iuguolo nisi a Iuguolo? -
A/N: Alright, I can explain. As you all know (I hope) The new Unicorn Gundam OVA came out a while ago. I only found out about it about a week after it came out. And while some of you may say that doesn't explain a two-day tardiness in updates-
("You're sick, sick I say! As a living, breathing human being without cybernetic augmentations, aren't you supposed to be attracted to human women and not highly advanced weapons designs?")
I could say the same thing about you little robotic pervert. As a miniature Gundam/Knightmare Frame hybrid, shouldn't you prefer machines over well-endowed women?
("Point taken. But at least I just chase after them, whereas you stare longingly at a frozen image and mast-")
*BLAM!
Shut it. Anyway, in other news, I now have a disclaimer. I hope it makes you giggle and/or shake your head at me.
G. Wager: Strange. Most people tend to enjoy the crazed fighting. Ah well, now we're back with Kira and Co.
Nivek Beldo: Nice to hear from you again Nivek.
We still have a ways to go, but yeah we're getting there.
Thank you. Personally, so do I.
New factions are always interesting, especially when something interesting (cough, Gundams, cough) result.
Akalon: I'm glad that you like it. Over 140,000 words in less than a day? Damn.
Thank you, I was beginning to think no one else was getting them. Hope to hear more from you.