Gundam SEED Destiny: Kira

by Tellemicus Sundance

He had no memory, found drifting amongst the final battlefield. Two years of peace have passed since that day, unrest and distrust are again rising. This is the story on how he recovers what he lost, what he forgot, and what he never knew he had. DISCONTINUED

24. Identity

Gundam SEED Destiny
Kira
By: Tellemicus Sundance
Phase 24: Identity

January 26, 74 CE
Minerva
9:42pm

One of the better perks to being assigned to FAITH was being able to be assigned single quarters. This allowed Athrun the chance to watch the feed of Shinn's battle during the Operation that had just apparently been completed.

He just couldn't understand it. Why did Chairman Durandal order the Archangel's destruction like that?! They caused more chaos than was needed on the battlefields a few times, but that shouldn't have been enough to warrant this. Especially considering they were some of the first people to able to react to the Destroy's rampage. While all these questions were spiraling through his mind, his brief conversation with Tolle and Cagalli kept jumping back to the forefront of his mind. He just didn't understand the Chairman anymore. But he was definitely going to have a long conversation with the man the next time he saw him!

However, this controversial operation was part of the reason he was in his room now, watching the footage taken of the battle between Shinn and the rogue GOUF. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but there was something…vaguely familiar about its fighting style.

So, after Shinn had been rushed to the infirmary when the Core Splendor, on autopilot, had landed with his unconscious form, Athrun had requested a copy of the battle record from the mechanics as they set about checking for damage and any necessary repairs. It seemed that due to Shinn's reckless piloting, the number of Chest and Leg Flyer modules was being steadily decreased at a fairly alarming rate. They'd have to do some major repairs quickly on what they had or resupply as soon as possible at Gibraltar.

From the viewpoint of the Impulse, Athrun watched as the GOUF came charging forward with its Tempest sword in one hand, swinging forward towards the Gundam but missing as the Impulse outmaneuvered it. He'd seen this style before…somewhere.

Hearing his door opening, Athrun paused the recording and turned to his visitor. It was Lunamaria and Heine.

"So this is what you've been doing, Athrun?" Luna asked with a hint of annoyance in her tone.

"Uh, yeah," he answered, turning to better greet his fellow pilots. "…I just wanted to see just why and how Shinn was beaten so easily."

"Don't we all?" Luna muttered in a surprisingly dark tone as she glanced away, earning questioning glances from both of her superior officers, though only Heine had any idea what had caused that kind of reaction. But glancing back, she asked in her normally cheerful tone, "Any progress yet, sir?"

"No, not yet," he answered truthfully. "Though I think I'm getting close to figuring it out."

"Oh?" Heine asked, moving up to Athrun to better see the screen. "How so?"

"Watch how it moves," Athrun stated as he rewound the video. After only a few moments of viewing the screen, Heine's eyes widened as he too recognized certain similarities. But unlike Athrun, Heine had a much easier time guessing, especially since he'd recently fought side by side with a pilot who fought in a practically identical manner as the GOUF's pilot.

"I see," Heine said, leaning forward slightly. "An impressive use of the thrusters and AMBAC verniers, the fluidity of his swordsmanship shows a high familiarity with piloting, and his reaction time is nothing short of superb…He flies it like it's an extension of his own body."

"Not many people can pilot like that," Luna pointed out, watching over Athrun's shoulder with interest as she too spotted the portions that Heine had remarked on. "I bet it is Iyadomi flying."

Both young men turned to look at her with carefully schooled expressions. For just a moment, Luna felt as though she was a mere ten-year-old who'd said something either extremely silly or unintelligent in front of someone she'd wanted to impress. This caused her to blush ever so slightly under their scrutiny before her patented outspoken-self reasserted itself. "Well, come on! We all know that the Archangel had been the ones to take the Neo Freedom aboard when it crashed! Maybe Iyadomi survived somehow!"

Turning back to the screen as it once again replayed the part of the final confrontation, Athrun quietly stated, "Kira does have a tendency of surviving the impossible."

KIRA – Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny – KIRA

Infirmary, Minerva
6:00am

He was losing.

Realizing that his swings weren't even coming close to touching his enemy, Shinn snapped his Kerberos up and opened fire…only to miss yet again as the GOUF neatly sidestepped it. As it hovered there in midair, it raised its arm and gave a simple 'come on' gesture.

"You just don't get it, do you?" the enemy pilot said.

"Get what?!" he demanded angrily, mostly angry at himself.

With a quick lock, he fired the four remaining Firefly missiles at the GOUF. Immediately, the GOUF opened fire with its remaining Draupnir beam wrist cannon. How could he be losing a battle to such a generic mobile suit?!

"You are far from being worthy of the title 'super ace pilot'," his enemy said as he once again danced out of the way of a plasma blast.

Facing his enemy again, he fired his Deluge railguns at the machine, which were predictably dodged.

"You may possess super-Coordinator reflexes, but you obviously can't think fast enough to keep up with that reaction speed! You're just fighting on instinct, on impulse."

No, that wasn't true. It wasn't true!! He was the best pilot ever, wasn't he? Of course he was!

"OH YEAH?!!" Shinn yelled in rage as he rushed forward and made a decisive swing to slice the cockpit apart. He missed once again with the GOUF merely rolling backwards, away from the slash. As it rolled, its leg lashed out and kicked heavily into the Blast Impulse's torso, knocking the Gundam awkwardly to the side.

"That's why I can predict your actions," the pilot continued idly as he watched Shinn recover. "Reflexes and thought must be one. This synthesis is the mark of a true super ace!"

The GOUF swooped behind him and used its sword to chop a diagonal slash through the remaining Kerberos and caused critical damage to the Silhouette and the Impulse's engines.

He lost. He, a ZAFT super ace, had been defeated. And not just simply just defeated, but completely and utterly humiliated on the battlefield, twice over. First to an obsolete mobile armor, and now to a stolen GOUF. Why? Why?! WHY?!!

"You are no super ace," the GOUF pilot's voice declared calmly, echoing through his consciousness.

Eyes snapping open, Shinn sat bolt upright as he was momentarily disoriented. His instincts were screaming at him to find his enemy and fight him again, to avenge his loss. But what he saw around him wasn't the familiar boxy and slightly cramped cockpit of the Core Splendor. Nor was he lying on the ground next to the destroyed debris of Impulse. He was lying on an uncomfortably stiff bed in a room that was currently darkened, likely due to the earliness of the hour. It took only a moment before he recognized the room he was in, the infirmary of the Minerva. But how did he get here?

"Why you!!" he yelled, swinging the Excalibur up in a disemboweling slash through the GOUF's entire left side of the torso. But the GOUF's Tempest sword chopped a diagonal slash downward and caused critical damage to the Silhouette and the Impulse's engines.

Both units were blown apart from one another from their own respective explosions.

That's right, Shinn realized. I must've been knocked unconscious from that explosion and the Core Splendor had returned to the Minerva on autopilot…I'm so pathetic to have lost like that.

Letting out a low sigh as he forced his battle instincts to settle down, Shinn dropped back down on his bed. With nothing else to do, he silently let his thoughts drift off.

He couldn't believe it, and he couldn't understand it. He was Shinn Asuka, super ace pilot of the ZGMF-X56S Impulse. How and why was he able to not only lose not one, but two battles against two separate opponents, both of whom were using weapons that should've been inferior to his own? Sure, he had mostly toyed with the Skygrasper, but that was because technologically and truthfully the jetfighter shouldn't have been able to survive any truly damaging blows. And yet it had managed to return and disabled one of his Impulse's beam sabers as well as the Impulse itself due to its surprising tactics and clearly overpowering need to fight and win.

The traitorous GOUF was both the same and yet different. It wouldn't quit, it wasn't any easy enemy to defeat, and it was able to predict his every move. Yet the pilot of the GOUF hadn't really fought back, now that Shinn was calmly remembering the battle. All the pilot had done was react to whatever attacks that he took against it, only really attacking when Shinn got too close. That was partially excusable because he knew GOUFs were largely close-range mobile suits, but still…

And what was up with that bastard of a pilot anyway? Now that he could think about it, Shinn was confused. That traitor was truly something else. If there was one thing that Shinn hated even more deeply than anything else, including his hatred towards the Athha bitch and Iyadomi, were traitors. Just like that man from two years earlier, Justin Johnson, if that even was his real name!

But like the pilot had said, he had mostly been able to predict Shinn's every move well before he actually made it. With a pilot of that kind of skill, why hadn't he or anyone else known of his presence being on the battlefield, whether he was a friend or enemy? In fact, the man had fought almost as well as…Iyadomi?

That thought made Shinn pause. Could that pilot of the GOUF (and maybe even the Skygrasper too) possibly have been Iyadomi? Even though it was still officially unknown whether he had survived the Neo Freedom's crash after firing that final shot at the Destroy, Shinn had heard that the Archangel had been the ones to collect the Gundam's remains afterwards. It wouldn't be completely out of the question to believe that they may have saved his life…would it?

The thought of the fabled warship put a larger frown on his face. The Archangel was the personal warship of Cagalli Yula Athha, and a considerable thorn in ZAFT's side in this war because of its unpredictable and unexplainable actions. And just the thought of the beautiful and lively blonde was enough to make Shinn's jaw clench in anger and shame.

Being an Orb-born Coordinator, Shinn had grown up seeing Cagalli in newspapers and television quite frequently due to her high-social status as a Princess of the Orb Union. In fact, there use to be a time where he couldn't go a single day without seeing or hearing or even thinking something about her. The fact that she was a very beautiful, fierce yet beautiful, had done much to catch his eye. But then the Battle of Orb and the deaths of his family had happened.

The sudden thought of his family caused a near-instant need for him to grab Mayu's cell phone and scroll through pictures that he had long since memorized. But he wasn't in his room, where the phone was easily and always within reach. He forcefully suppressed his need to get up and rush to his and Rey's room.

Carefully rolling over, Shinn stared into the darkness in front of him. His eyes had long since adjusted to the lack of lighting, allowing him to spot a familiar shape resting on the bedside table near him, Mayu's phone. Rey, he guessed with a small smile of appreciation. His best friend knew him very well.

Flipping it open, he brought the pictures up and began idly switching through them, studying the faces of those on the screen. Upon reaching the second to the last picture, he shut it down. That last picture was one that he really didn't want to see now. Because he knew that if he did, a whole torrent of inexpressible emotions would rush through him. Emotions that, with all honesty, he didn't want to experience now…or ever again. Just the sight of her face…

Shaking his head to clear the thoughts of her from his mind, Shinn clenched the phone to his chest. As much as he wanted to, Shinn just couldn't bring himself to erase the picture from Mayu's phone. And as much as it hurt to keep it, it would've hurt a lot more to do such a scandalous act, no matter how much he had come to resent her.

Instead, he began trying to remember the fading memories from before that terrible day. Back to times he'd spent with those he had loved and lost. As he had done countless times before, Shinn silently renewed his original vow. He would fight to bring about a better tomorrow, a tomorrow free of war or death or any other kind of tragedy.

He would fight for that future with all his heart and soul, and he would let no one stand in his way to reach that goal!

KIRA – Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny – KIRA

Infirmary, Archangel
6:12am

He was leaning against a stone balcony railing staring out at a beautiful golden-red sun that seemed vaguely familiar to him. He'd 'seen' this view before…hadn't he? But where, when, and…with whom? It was then that a gentle presence next to him made itself known to him.

Glancing over at the person, he felt an awkward smile of happiness slide over his lips as he found himself staring at a beauty that was even more breath-taking than the scenery in front of him. His pink angel, Lacus Clyne, was positively glowing from the golden light of the sun. Even though he'd seen this same image before, it still stunned him.

She was smiling happily at him, completing the angelic image she probably unknowingly portrayed for him. He could see she was extremely content with where she was, standing next to him and watching the sunset. By why? Why would an angel like her be at all interested in a monster like him? Was she so accustomed and protected by this wonderful haven that she lived in that she didn't really understand or even know about the magnitude of just how much danger she was in by being near him?

Oh, he'd never intentionally harm a hair on her lovely head, but War and Death spared no one. And he'd already escaped more than his fair share amount of close calls and he'd been so near to Death on several occasions that he'd actually thought that he'd felt the wind of the deadly scythe a few times as it continuously swung ever closer towards him. He didn't want to think of himself as arrogant, but by now Death must've felt fairly hard-pressed to finally claim his life, and probably put it on display like some kind of trophy.

As morbid as his thoughts were, he was immediately drawn out of his musings when he heard Lacus' soft voice as she asked, "Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could stay here…forever?"

'Yes, it would be,' that was the thought that immediately came to his mind. But he merely answered with a small, uncertain smile of his own. But a killer with Death chasing after him like himself didn't deserve to be in the presence of such an innocent angel.

Opening his eyes slowly, the collected moisture that had been building up under his eyelids as he slept finally fell free and descended in arcs across his cheeks and towards his ears from the angle he was laying at.

The sight that greeted his tear-streaked eyes was the same as the previous time he'd woken. Only this time it was quite different, the room wasn't rocking uncontrollably. There were no loud battle announcements being transmitted over the intercom. He was still doped up on pain and his body felt very sore. But the most reassuring aspect of all to Akira was that there was no overwhelming sense of danger that was filling the air. No, it was actually as remarkably close to peaceful as it could get.

Noticing a presence near him, Akira shifted his head gently to the side. Sitting in a chair next to his bed was a semi-familiar blonde young woman who had apparently dozed off where she sat, probably not accustomed to the early hour or had unintentionally spent the night there. But even without her Orb military uniform and the patch hanging over her left breast, Akira was easily able to identify the young woman as Cagalli Yula Athha. What was she doing here?

"Yeah right, little brother," Cagalli muttered after snorting at his previous comment. "You're the side-kick here."

Snapping back to reality, Akira shook his head to clear his mind of the jumbled thoughts. Cagalli had called him her brother back there. But what did that mean exactly? Had she merely been talking figuratively or literally? Had she truly known him for who he was before…whatever had happened to him? And she had called him 'Kira'.

Absentmindedly, Akira's hand began to drift up to his ring necklace to hold it, using its presence to reassure himself. As he was staring at it without really comprehending what it was, a small reflection of light off its smooth interior caught his eye. There, proudly shining in the light, were the initials L.C., as clear and crisp as the day he'd first seen them more than two years ago. This ring and the Neo Freedom were really the only things that he could've truly called his own personal possessions, items that he'd cherish and protect with all his heart and soul.

He was standing in a mobile suit hangar in front of the mighty bulk of a ZAFT Gundam, the Freedom. But he was staring at the pink angel next to him as she smiled and said, "My name is simply Lacus Clyne."

Freezing, Akira felt…something suddenly slide into place as that memory fragment made itself known to him. He had known that Lacus Clyne had been responsible for the original Freedom's theft from a ZAFT military facility in the last war. Though the identity of the pilot had never been 'officially' announced to the public, rumors were like viruses in how quickly they spread among the populations.

He blocked the blue Gundam's beam saber with his shield. His enemy similarly blocked his saber as they continued to fall through the atmosphere. The interior of the cockpit was very quickly becoming an oven from the friction, but he ignored it as his attention was trained solely upon his enemy.

"You're finished!" his opponent snarled over the radio.

"You won't defeat me!" he growled back as they separated.

He knew that the Freedom's pilot had been an Orb teenager named 'Kira Yamato,' who had also been the original pilot of the seemingly-unstoppable GAT-X105 Strike. And in order for a teenager to be pilot a mobile, Coordinator or not, they'd need to at least be partially familiar with computer programming and engineering.

Brimfield turned to look sharply up at the slightly embarrassed teenager. "How is it that you cannot remember your real name, yet are a genius of computer programs and mobile suit designs, Iyadomi?"

Akira Iyadomi wasn't his real name, he knew that full well. Back on the Mathilde Colony with the Early Harvest, he had merely been using it as a substitute until he'd found his own name. Then he got involved in his own war against the oppression of innocents. Somehow, over the course the ensuing battles…the name of Akira Iyadomi had become a badge of great honor and great shame to him. Yet it was a badge he could no longer separate from his being. He may not be the original of course, but regardlessly the public would forever remember the name in association with his actions. A name used by a seemingly-unstoppable freedom fighter who had no past, no friends, and was little more than a loose cannon on the battlefield.

Kira Yamato, according to rumors and what little history there was available, had been a simple, albeit brilliant, college student and a good person who valued life and peace. He was pacifist at heart. When he first piloted a mobile suit, it had been in defense of his friends and innocents against the then-heavily racist ZAFT Forces. And, in the end, his determination to bring peace had helped clear the path for the ceasefire.

"Your name shall be Akira Iyadomi," Brimfield stated, resolutely nodding his head to his own statement. "Until you find your own name, I would be honored if you bore this one in its place…"

Yes, he remembered that day very well for it was the first day of his life that he truly remembered. The day that he had awoken; a young man in a pilot suit with no name, no past, and a blank future. He may have not had a true identity, but everything he'd done since then had been decisions and actions that he'd taken of his own free will!

But was he, who he was now, really even this person, Kira Yamato, anymore? All he remembered was that he, Akira Iyadomi, was an amnesic teenager who had been found, raised, and trained by pirates, and had piloted of one of the most powerful Gundams to have ever been built. He was a freedom fighter at heart. A reluctant warrior to be sure, but still a warrior.

Thoughts racing at a million miles per hour within his mind, Akira let out a quiet groan as he slowly sat up. Reaching up, he gingerly rubbed his savagely throbbing head. All these thoughts and questions that were plaguing him…were so depressing. And though he was still injured, it wasn't the throbbing agony that it had been. He needed to get out and clear his head so he could think straight and come to a rational decision about these new possibilities and the repercussions of whatever decision he'd make.

Carefully climbing out of the hospital bed, Akira turned again to study the sleeping face of the blonde. He knew from past experience that she was likely going to regret falling asleep in that position, but perhaps he could at least alleviate some of the stiffness she was going to feel later? It was a staggeringly slow process for Akira to maneuver the young Representative out of her chair and into his bed without waking her or causing his injuries any unnecessary pain.

After tucking the sheets over her, Akira silently left the infirmary and the two sleeping blondes within to their dreams. With nothing else to do, he let his feet carry him where they would as his consciousness shifted back to his earlier internal debate.

Whether it was by muscle memory, desire, or chance, Akira found himself standing in the large mobile suit hangar of the Archangel, looking up mournfully at the remains of his Gundam.

KIRA – Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny – KIRA

7:43am

Cagalli ran down the halls, a large frown on her lips as she reached the elevator. 'I swear I'm going to strap him down to the bed if he's going to keep on doing this!' she mentally ranted to herself. Why was it that Kira seemed completely unable to remain in one place for more than a few hours? Perhaps it was a habit he'd picked up from all the fighting he'd been doing over the past few months. If that was the case, Cagalli was going to break him of it if it was the last thing she ever did!

It was the thought of all the battles that he'd been involved in that was now guiding Cagalli through the warship. Truly, there was only one place that he could possibly be at this time in the morning, if he had even shed of Kira Yamato left inside him. That was why Cagalli was now riding the elevator down to the mobile suit hangar.

When the doors opened, Cagalli paused to catch her breath as she surveyed the chamber. Like usual, the hangar was bustling with the early-risers of the mechanics, engineers, and several pilots who tending to the duties of maintaining the Orb Murasames.

'If I was Kira, where would I be?' she asked herself as she marched imperiously into the hangar, shifting her gaze from one Murasame to the next, searching for her brother.

"Good morning, Lady Cagalli!" someone called out over the din of the activity, attracting everyone's attention momentarily.

"Morning, everyone," she answered loudly.

"Something we can assist you with, Mi'lady?" one of the closer pilots asked as he approached her, bowing his head slightly in respect.

"Has anyone seen Kira come in here lately?" she asked, still continuing her visual search. Inexplicably, her gaze landed upon the burned and warped husk of the Neo Freedom as she received her answer.

"Iyadomi came down earlier," the pilot stated as he gestured towards her brother's machine. "I think he's still over by that thing."

"I see, thank you," she responded, moving towards the ruined Gundam.

The closer she drew towards it, the more severe its true damage became apparent to her. Reduced to less than a third of its original bulk, the Neo Freedom made for a sad sight as it lay upon its backside on the hangar floor. There was not a single portion of its surface armor that wasn't charred, scratched, warped, or melted in an unnatural angle. The blast damage from the beams it had taken were jagged and looked like they would've been terribly painful wounds had they been inflicted upon an actual person.

Just as she was less than a few meters away, a brown-blond haired head rose into view from the interior of the nuclear powerplant vents upon the chest of the Freedom. It didn't stay visible long, just enough for the person to fling an armful of fired circuit boards, shattered ion pumps, and other unidentifiable scraps of metal off to the side before plunging back inside.

"Kira!" she called out. "Hey, Kira!"

Popping back out after only a second, brown-blond turned to her. "Good morning, Miss Cagalli. What can I do for you?"

"What are you doing here?" Cagalli demanded as she gazed forlornly over the wreck. "You should be in the infirmary resting! Besides, the Freedom's pretty much been destroyed."

"I'm gonna fix it," Kira stated. Though his voice didn't waver, there was a clear glimmer of remorse and need in his gaze as he looked upon the corpse of his beloved Gundam.

"Fix it? How're you gonna fix this?" Cagalli gawked as her gaze traced the wreck once again. Was he serious?!

"With grit, spit, and a whole lot of duct tape," Kira answered with a perfectly straight face. "I could probably have it up and running in about six to nine months."

"Sixty-nine months eh?" Cagalli asked, grinning slightly. She hadn't misunderstood, but this was just too funny to pass up. "Yeah, that sounds about right. Maybe you should just wait for us to make you a new one."

Scowling at Cagalli's apparent misunderstanding, Kira climbed out of the Neo Freedom and carefully descended towards the floor. "No, six to nine months and maybe even sooner if I could…borrow a few parts from those Murasames."

"Like I said," Cagalli repeated. "Just wait for us to make a new one. It should be ready in about three to four weeks."

A small smirk crossed Kira's face, warning Cagalli just a second beforehand, as he said, "Thirty-four weeks? I think I'll stick with my Gundam, but thanks anyway."

Cagalli couldn't help pouting slightly as she realized he'd won this round. "Why aren't you in the infirmary, recovering like normal people would be when they get shot down? Three times, no less!"

"Hey now!" Kira barked, looking horribly offended. "I resent that! It was a tie with the Impulse, I'd ejected from the Skygrasper because the GOUF hadn't expected such an attack, and the Neo Freedom's reactor was having a few issues what with being nearly driven to the point of meltdown and all!"

"In other words, you were shot down each time," Cagalli pointed out, her superior smirk growing slightly. "Now you get back to the infirmary or I swear I will exercise my authority as Chief Representative to make sure you are forcefully restrained and secured to that bed until you've properly recovered!"

"Aw, but you're forgetting one very important thing, Mi'lady," Kira said, a cocky sneer forming broadly on his face. "I'm the Gundam pilot: Akira Iyadomi."

Just as the last time he'd said that line, Akira received a slap to the cheek. "I may have deserved that," he muttered more to himself than the blonde.

"Come on, you," Cagalli ordered, grabbing a hold of his right ear and imperiously strutted back towards the elevator, Akira awkwardly following at her side, slightly doubled over from the angle which she was pulling him from. She paid his cries of pain and for mercy no mind as she continued speaking to her brother. "If you're not willing to return to the infirmary right now, then you're at least going to have breakfast with me while you tell me exactly what you've been doing these past two years. And after that, I don't care if we have to drag you back in handcuffs and at gunpoint; you're going back to the infirmary, where you'll stay until you've recovered. You got that, mister?"

"Gah! That hurts! Let go! Ugh! Please! Let g-Ow! Stop it!"

Akira's cries of agony echoed through the hangar, even long after they'd left, earning more than a few grins and sympathetic winces from the other men and women in the hangar who'd heard them. Though quite a few of them did remark about how Miss Cagalli seemed to be quite a bit livelier now than she had been in the past few years.

KIRA – Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny – KIRA

January 27, 74 CE
Mathilde Colony
10:30am

The colony seemed to give off a weird combination of foreboding doom and a warm, homey environment. The first feeling came from the surprising amount of wreckage that surrounded the small asteroid, a grave of unknown numbers of destroyed ships and mobile suits. However, once they'd bypassed the debris field and the space mines that had been hidden within the debris and actually landed on the space rock, they found themselves observing the movements the occupants within. Rather than big, brawny, and vicious-appearing monsters of men, the people living within the colony seemed almost normal. There were even a small number of children with them!

Some of them, despite being professional soldiers who obeyed every command given to them, just couldn't help but ask: was this the right colony? If it was the wrong colony, this would be a truly…embarrassing beginning to the newly-christened Operation Harvest Reapers.

Following the layout of the colony, which had been provided by a former spy, the soldiers silently moved towards their designated targets. They didn't use their radios, relying on hand signals and body language, to convey messages on the possibility that the pirates would detect them.

It was almost time for the attack to begin.

KIRA – Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny – KIRA
By: animefan29

Firing Range, near the Factory District

Target range: 200 meters

Wind speed: 0 km/h

Wind direction: none

Zero G drift: none

Sight the target. Line up the shot. Clear the mind. Pull the trigger. BANG!

Henry lowered his rifle and recalled the target. It moved along the electric track that was bringing it closer. But even before the mobile suit commander yanked the paper target off its clip, he knew that his shot had been off his mark. He missed by a full two inches and under such easy conditions as well.

'What is wrong with me?' He asked angrily in his head. But it was rhetorical question; he knew was wrong with him. His mind wasn't clear, which was what he came here to do. But no matter how many times he shot his rifle, he just couldn't get into the sniper's mindset. And he knew what was keeping him from it.

It was guilt. Guilt that he was living peacefully up here on the Mathilde colony with the rest of the crew of the Early Harvest and their families. Guilt for not having been down there on Earth when the Destroy was unleashed on western Eurasia. Guilt for having left the military in the first place and thus not being there when his home was attacked.

Henry was not like the other Coordinators of his generation who lived on the Mathilde colony. They had all been born and raised in the PLANTs. He, however, had been one of the few Coordinators to be born on Earth. Specifically he had been born in the Eurasian Federation, in a small town just outside of Berlin.

As a Coordinator on Earth, he had been lucky. The people of his hometown knew what he was, but to them he was just another kid. It was the kind of town where something needed to happen that actually put someone in the hospital to get the people riled up.

It was a good place to grow up, and Henry loved it and Eurasia. Because of that when he left school, he joined the military.

Flashback

Henry stepped off the bus with the rest of the new recruits. They had come to the military base where they were all assigned to do their basic training. For the next year, this place would be their home.

"Fall in line, maggots!"

And those were the first words ever spoken to him, well more at his general direction, by the man he would come to known as Serge. The men and women who had arrived on the bus immediately headed in the direction of the man who would be in charge of their lives for the next several months. Once they had the Sergeant, who was very tall, broad, and more than a little intimidating, took the time to exaggeratingly inspect each and every one of them, constantly shaking his head and making sounds of disappointment. At the end of the line, he immediately turned on his heel.

"You lot are without a doubt the sorriest lot of trainees that I have had the displeasure of laying my eyes on!" He shouted as he walked slowly back down the line. "I'd like nothing better than to wash all of you out and get back to training real soldiers. However I am obligated to at least attempt to take you stringy little worms and try to turn you into the physical and mental pinnacle of humanity. In order to do so, you will all undergo a rigorous schedule of physical and psychological training, all of which have been designed to train you to undertake physically and mentally demanding tasks with utmost precision while under severe stress." At that moment he stopped walking and turned to face the group, coincidentally right in front of Henry, at which point he got close and personal. "Do you have a problem with that!?"

"Sir! No Sir!

"Good! You will go to the barracks, pick a bunk and store your stuff. After that report to the barber to get your head shaved. You will then eat dinner and after that you had better get some shut eye because we're starting bright and early tomorrow at 0500. Meaning you had better be up and ready before then." The Sergeant stopped there and was silent for a second and looked over the new cadets. "Well!? Did I stutter!? Move your butts, maggots! Move! Move! Move!"

Flashback End

Serge had not been kidding about that rigorous schedule. Calisthenics, bi-weekly hikes, surprise inspections in the middle of the night, long classes on the equipment used by the military, their use, and maintenance. All of it accompanied with the rather abusive teaching style of the Sergeant.

Not physical abuse of course. Rather he was rather verbal in his disapproval of the recruits' performance, the majority of it seeming to be directed to those who were actually better at the training, namely Henry.

Being a Coordinator and a man worked hard to bring out his potential Henry was the fastest, strongest, and most proficient of them all, quickly outshining older recruits and actual soldiers. Yet Serge constantly berated him over the tiniest detail. If he was so much as a millimeter out of step, if there was a speck of dirt on his dress uniform, Serge would notice it and point it out in the loudest, most abusive way he could.

However despite early assumptions the old soldier did not have anything against Henry or Coordinators. In fact these days he could hardly believe that despite his supposedly superior intelligence he had completely failed to see the subtle lesson the Sergeant was administering.

The lesson was simple. Humans are naturally competitive against one another. Individuals compete against one another, seeking to hone their skills and increase their natural abilities. This leads to confrontation as the best way to sharpen a skill is to pit it against another of equal level. This is naturally a good thing, but there are occasions when competition is done in a high pressure environment where the winner's prize is clearly seen by all and the loser gets nothing or possibly a punishment. In such a situation resentment and hate can develop between the competitors, especially when one stands above the rest clearly outshining the competition again and again.

What's the best way to prevent those dark feelings from developing? Simple, give the people a common enemy. When there is a common foe that must be defeated people will ban and work together. Then those who are gifted are praised and admired as their fellows strive to be like them.

That was the lesson. Since Henry was so much better than his fellow recruits, doing difficult tasks so easily, he could have been praised and held as the standard for what they all should try to be. And that would have instilled resentment in the others probably made worse by the fact that he was a Coordinator, thus creating a gulf that would likely never be bridged and ultimately ruin any of the unit's cohesive efforts. Instead he was targeted for negative responses the most despite being the best, thus everyone else saw him as one of their own. A fellow recruit who was going to show their devil of a drill sergeant that he was indeed a true soldier. That despite being a Coordinator, he was just one of the guys.

He was respected by them for putting up with the abuse and not quitting. And despite some early hesitation from the others because of what he was, Henry had actually come to be friends with other recruits on base and not just those that he trained with.

The Serge did eventually lighten up, though not before a couple of voodoo dolls of him were found boiling in a kitchen pot. But he did ease up and eventually start complimenting the recruits and saying that they just might make it yet. It was around that time that everyone started drifting towards a combat specialty, and Henry, despite expectations that he would be a fighter pilot, found himself attracted to the specialty of Serge. Using a sniper rifle.

Flashback

BANG!!!

Henry looked up from his rifle's scope, wishing to see the actual distance to the target from beneath the cover of the various foliage camouflage. He had already seen that he hit his target precisely where he wanted, and at best only off by a centimeter or two.

Serge had also seen the shot through his binoculars. "Not bad Siemer. But not good enough. Do it again."

Normally Henry wasn't one to question orders, but he had already repeated this maneuver a dozen times and Serge had said the same thing each time, and curiosity had gotten the best of him. So he asked what it was the sergeant was waiting for.

Henry expected the answer to be something along the lines of Serge yelling at him to not question orders and do the maneuver right this second or else get latrine scrubbing duty again. However what he got was, "I'm waiting for you to start feeling the shots. All you're doing is the calculations you were taught which are probably easy for your Coordinator brain. However you have yet to reach the point where you stop calculating the trajectory of your shot and start feeling it. The ability to feel out that perfect alignment and wait for the perfect moment to pull the trigger. That is the difference between a good sniper and a great sniper. Now do it again and keep going until I tell you to stop or else I'll put you on latrine scrubbing duty!"

Flashback End

And Henry did shoot again. He kept shooting, and shooting, and shooting and eventually, without even noticing, the conscious calculations of wind direction and speed, angle, and other various factors were being replaced into an instinctive knowledge that gathered the variables and figured out how they interacted within less than a breath's amount of time.

By the time training was complete Henry had become a combat sniper specialist. And because of his high marks in the theoretical combat and tactical classes he had quickly become a noncommissioned officer. For years he served proudly in the military, managing to work his way up to a regular officer rank.

Then tensions began to rise between Earth and the PLANTs, leading to the formation of the Earth Alliance. The formation of the new alliance came with a restructuring of the military. This left Henry with the rank of First Lieutenant.

All too soon after that came the tragedy of Junius 7 and the beginning of the Bloody Valentine War.

Did Henry have difficulty fighting in a war on the side against his own people? No, because Henry believed that it wasn't genetics that determined who your people were. To him, his people were those whom he had lived with and had accepted him. Though the fact that he could almost be considered a separate species from everyone else around and was fighting against those who were genetically like him did make the issue a bit muddy at times.

That was probably what started the mutterings. The fact that he was a Coordinator was hardly an everyday topic of discussion, but it also wasn't something that was being kept secret. And so people started to talk, wondering why Henry fought with the Earth Alliance, why he went against other Coordinators, and other such things. And some of the more Blue Cosmos-minded people would often state the possibility that he was a spy who only pretended to be loyal to the EF and other such nonsense.

Henry ignored it all as best he could for he knew that he didn't have to explain himself to anyone, though it did sadden him to hear his fellow countrymen question him because of circumstances he couldn't control. So he kept on doing his duty, fighting in both the East Asian and African fronts, usually as a sniper who tripled as a lookout and operations field commander, and led a number of successful missions. With his rifle he had killed over thirty enemies, including at least a dozen high ranking officers who were mission targets.

But as the months wore on and the Earth forces suffered defeat after defeat at the hands of ZAFT, the things for Henry starting getting worse. While his sniping missions and commando raids were successful, they had little overall impact on the enemy except to disrupt their chain of command and supply lines as they had to bring in new personnel and material to replace that which was lost. And often with the new personnel came an increased mobile suit presence, against which snipers and commandos could do very little damage. And at the same time, ZAFT and Coordinator were beginning to become synonymous, which led to an increase in the mutterings and rumors about him truly being loyal to OMNI Enforcer.

People would begin to angrily whisper about Henry, supposedly out of his hearing range, and question why he was wasting his time with that sniper rifle instead of doing something more useful like climbing into the cockpit of a captured mobile suit and using it against ZAFT. The possibility wasn't that farfetched as there were several mercenary groups that made use of mobile suits and were willing to be hired out by the Earth Alliance to perform a mission or two. Then there was the Coordinator ace that fought for the Earth Alliance in a white GINN, Jean Carry or the "Glittering Star J" as he was called.

Despite some rumors that Henry was afraid to move out of the shadows and fight in a way that makes a difference he had thought of doing what others had suggested. But there was a reason he held back from doing so and it was because he was afraid. But not of death, or at least not his own death. He was afraid of the deaths of others, the people he would fight against. There was something that he had discovered as a sniper. The way you kill a person has an effect on your soul, or at least his soul.

To this day, he could recall every detail he ever saw about each and every one of the people he killed with his sniper rifle. He could remember the names of each specified target. But most importantly he could remember their faces as the bullet strikes their chest and pierces their heart and they breathe their last breath.

Perhaps it was the realization that he, their killer, would be one of the last people to ever see that person alive. Perhaps it was the way he could kill them safely from a distance without giving them a chance to fight back. For whatever reason it was, Henry had determined that killing a fellow human being was, more often than it should be, an evil. But a necessary one during a war to defend your home and your people. That was why he had never fought in a mobile suit, because he was afraid that if he could no longer see the face of those whose lives he took, if he could not be the witness for their final moments on this plane of existence, that there was a possibility that killing would become 'easy' and carried out without remorse.

But that didn't stop him from hurting from hearing his comrade's whisper about him in such ways. Especially when he saw that one of the people whispering behind his back was a buddy of his from basic training. One of the guys who he had united with and stood against Serge with. They both knew what the other was capable of almost as well as they knew themselves, and both knew what the other believed in and how far he would go to carry out those beliefs. Yet here was that buddy questioning both Henry's courage and his willingness to protect the lives of his comrade's because of his choice to stay as a sniper in the shadows.

That was the final straw that broke the camel's back. Before Henry knew it, he was volunteering to use his abilities as a Coordinator to pilot a mobile suit for the Eurasian Federation forces.

Henry had expected to receive a captured GINN or possibly a DINN, so he was surprised to learn that he would be going into space to be part of the Eurasian Federation's mobile suit development program, a program developed in response to the Atlantic Federation's mobile suit program that was just reaching mass production.

The location of the program was Artemis base, the formerly impenetrable base, where Henry received the advanced CAT1-X 3/3 Hyperion Unit 3. He was surprised again to learn that the individual assigned to Unit 1 was also a Coordinator, albeit a rather angry and dissociative person.

Artemis base's commander, Garcia seemed like a nice enough fellow, if a little leery around him and Canard. Later he learned through scuttlebutt that Garcia had been humiliated badly and injured slightly because of a Coordinator who had piloted an Alliance mobile suit that came though here seeking refuge from ZAFT. Artemis had almost been lost and Garcia had almost lost his command because of that incident. Supposedly the fact that the development program was stationed at Artemis was meant to both increase base defenses and test to see Garcia should remain in command.

The training began and things were going well, although Henry wished that he could swap out the mobile suit's beam sub-machine gun for a sniper rifle, but there was nothing he could do about that. Despite not having his weapon of choice Henry scored highly on the simulation runs and continually bested the pilot of Unit 2. However he never once defeated Canard Pars who piloted Unit 1, although it was close a few times.

That's when things began taking a turn for the worse again. It began when Garcia had become obsessed with capturing a ZAFT mobile suit that was equipped with an N-Jammer Canceller. Canard had been the one ordered to accomplish the mission, and he had done so successfully. However he didn't do it fast enough, for when Garcia reported the success in he was told that the Atlantic Federation and Eurasian Federation would be cooperating with each other on future mobile suit R&D, that the development program under Garcia's command would be disbanded, and the Atlantic Federation already had N-Jammer Canceller technology. So all of Garcia's efforts to retrieve a unit to redeem himself in HQ's eyes had been futile.

Garcia snapped, he ordered Canard arrested, the charges never being specified. But it went deeper than that. Henry happened to be nearby Garcia's office at the time and happened to overhear (was eavesdropping). Not only was Garcia intent on throwing Canard in the brig and hopefully executing him for something but he also started rambling how all Coordinators were liars, thieves, tricksters, out to get him, were going to discredit him, and other paranoid ramblings, and saying how he would get rid of any Coordinator that he crossed paths with. At about that time, the man stopped rambling, though was still talking out loud, and had remembered that there was another Coordinator on base. Paranoid that Henry was also out to get him, Garcia set up a plan. Once Canard was arrested, he would falsify some documents to make it seem that both Canard and Henry were attempting to sell military secrets to ZAFT, a crime for which he could get them executed.

Henry could hardly believe his ears, but it was true. And if he did nothing, he would be killed. Unfortunately, his list of options was woefully short. He couldn't get in contact with HQ, at least not on his own. He could try seeking help from other people here on Artemis, but the majority of the staff and soldiers were probably loyal to Garcia, and with the rising anti-Coordinator sentiments they probably wouldn't help him even if they weren't loyal.

If he wanted to keep living his best bet was to steal a shuttle and make a run for it. So that was the course of action he decided to take. He quickly made his way to a shuttle bay where he could grab one of the long range models, trying to improvise a plan on his way there. Sadly, the best he could come up with was to simply walk calmly to a shuttle as if he was supposed to and if anyone tried to stop him, shoot them in a non-lethal location and run.

However it seemed fortune smiled upon him as he managed to get to the shuttle bay without incident, and slipped aboard an empty shuttle. There wasn't any time to do a lot of preflight checks so he did the absolute basics before powering up the shuttles engines. That got the attention of the maintenance crews and guards but by then it was too late. He luck continued for at about the same time the Oltugia was flying as fast as it could out of the hangar, drawing the attention of Artemis's defenses. Both ships managed to get beyond the Umbrella shield before it could be opened.

As the shuttle flew out into space beyond the reach of Artemis, Henry was struck by waves of duel emotions. On the one hand, he was alive and for that he was glad. But on the other, what he had just done guaranteed that he would be labeled a traitor who could never hope to go back to his beloved home again.

Thus a new quandary developed. What should he do now? He couldn't go to a country that was Earth Alliance territory, which now was essentially the entire Earth. And he wouldn't feel entirely right going to the PLANTs, considering all he had done in the fight against ZAFT. Yet, given his options, that was probably the best and closest place he could go.

Alas, it was not quite close enough. Only a few hours into the journey, the ship's computer warned of that the fuel level was dangerously low and that to conserve power the engines and non-essential systems would be temporarily shut down. And so there he was sitting in a darkened shuttle, no food, no water, and a distress beacon calling everyone to his position. With the way his luck was going, he had surmised, it would be pirates that picked up his signal first.

Henry was right. After nearly a day of drifting, it was pirates that picked up his signal. The Early Harvest pirates. The ship had detected the distress beacon and Captain Brimfield had decided to investigate. More importantly, Brimfield was willing to let Henry to come aboard his ship and meet with him. When the two were in the privacy of Brimfield's ship office, Henry explained to the officer why it was he was alone on a shuttle with no emergency provisions. Henry then offered to try and buy passage to a colony, preferably the PLANTs but even the abandoned Mendel colonies would do. And if he couldn't buy passage, he tried to at least buy the needed fuel.

Brimfield quickly poked a hole in that idea by saying that Henry had no form of compensation except to use the shuttle itself as a bargaining chip, which wasn't the best idea. Instead, he set up a counter offer. Henry had been in the military and had even managed to get some training with a mobile suit, and Brimfield could always use another good hand with a mobile suit for salvage and 'other' operations. So Brimfield offered to take Henry to their home base where he could be fed and sheltered. In exchange, Henry could work as a mobile suit pilot, along with doing a few extra chores on the side.

Henry was hesitant about the offer. He didn't like the idea of piracy, but most pirates would have killed him and taken the shuttle for their own already. And, from his point of view, even going to the PLANTs wasn't all that much better of an alternative. So he agreed, however he made it clear that he was uncomfortable with the idea of participating in a pirate raid.

Brimfield said that was fine, and that hopefully Henry would change his mind after seeing how they conducted their business.

Years had gone by since that day and although Henry had come to see the Mathilde colony as home and the crew of the Early Harvest his people, he still couldn't help but miss his old home and his old life.

And then the news about the Destroy came within reach of his ears. Several Eurasian cities burned to the ground, thousands of civilians dead, and all at the hands of a single machine. Berlin, just a stone's throw from his home town, had nearly met a similar fate as Junius 7, and Henry wondered if this was how survivors of that tragedy felt, knowing that so many people died, some who could have been his friends and family growing up.

His homeland had burned and he had not been there.

Shaking his head, Henry quietly growled to himself. He was annoyed with himself for slipping back into memories that he hadn't really wanted to visit again because of the complex emotions attached to them. Grabbed his rifle again, he quickly set up the target. He needed to clear his mind, and falling back into his sniper's mind set was always a comforting experience for him.

KIRA – Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny – KIRA
By: Tellemicus Sundance

Approaching the Factory District

If there was one thing that could ever be said about the demon that lived in his skin, it was that the higher the danger level, the more that Charley enjoyed doing it. And now, as he was rocketing through the old colony interior assembly shaft on a jet-powered sled, the only thing that was going through his head was sheer ecstasy as he screamed out a deafening cry of joy that only a young child could possibly generate.

Maneuvering the high-speed jet-sled proved to be tricky at best, especially when taking into account that he was traveling at nearly one hundred and fifty kilometers per hour and the slightest bump had the potential to send it flying through the air in the extremely low gravity of the asteroid. Thankfully the old colony assembly line was long and spacious enough with no real obstacles to be all that hazardous for the Extended Coordinator. It wasn't fighting and murder, but it was still enough to give Charley a powerful adrenaline rush that he'd only ever experienced on the battlefield. Laughing hysterically as he approached the factory district, he braced himself for what was to come.

Blasting out of the open entrance like a bat out of hell, Charley let out a loud cheer. As he was shooting across the floor, he could feel the gazes of numerous engineers and personnel watching his progress as he went rocketing towards the end of the factory level and the large open elevator shaft used to lower large construction pieces to the deeper or higher levels of the district for processing.

Grinning like a madman, Charley quickly slapped on the brakes and cut off the jet engines. Of course, with his accumulated momentum, he was still flying towards the elevator shaft. Standing up on the sled, he snatched up a rope and hook and impatiently waited as the end of the shaft drew closer. Timing his throw perfectly, the hook snagged on the railing as he and the sled went flying out into open air. With a mighty jerk, the rope pulled taunt against his safety harness…and promptly snapped from the sheer stress.

Falling at a slightly different angle than the sled, Charley's grin didn't falter in the least as he fell towards the lower levels of the factory. Where the sled crashed into the level immediately below the top floor, Charley landed in a tumbling heap on the third level down, crashing into a random engineer before he finally came to a halt some hundred meters away.

Bouncing to his feet, Charley let out loud, almost maniacal, laughter. That was the best! He needed to do it again!

"Goldie, what do you think you're doing?!" a familiar voice demanded loudly from the top level. Standing imperiously next the railing with her arms crossed demandingly, Professor K glared down at the bipolar pilot.

"Hey, Lady K-O!" Charley called out. "Your rocket-boggan works like a charm! I wanna keep it!!"

"Charley, get Goldie out here right this instant!" K ordered, not the least bit amused.

"Goldie has currently stepped out of the office at this time," Charley answered, leering widely. "Please leave a message with the receptionist and he'll be sure to get back to you at a later date!"

Turning to walk away, Charley spotted the engineer he'd crashed into as he was tumbling still laying on the ground. The man was stumbling badly as he attempted to climb back to his feet, while muttering quietly about the 'pretty stars' circling his head. "Hey, what's with you? I'm the one who crashed it, dumbass!"

The spectacle that was also known as Charley drew mostly a series of annoyed headshakes and sighs of resignation from the observers. But some of the ones who were hidden in the shadows of the factory couldn't help but chuckle silently as they watched scene from a distance. Hurriedly, they refocused their attentions and resumed their mission.

KIRA – Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny – KIRA
By: FictionReader98

Residential District

Lieutenant Dalen Bertelsen was in his quarters going through a set of drills as he punched and kicked in the air. He wasn't an expert martial artist, but he liked to think he was adequately skilled and able to hold his own against the best. Admittedly, he hadn't practiced as often as he should but he was by no means rusty. Though today was one of his off days; just not able to focus or concentrate no matter how hard he tried.

He just took a deep breath as he worked on the next set. He wanted to improve his skills now that he was back in a mobile suit. It was his way to incorporate martial arts when piloting a mobile suit, which is why his machines typically had a large number of kicks and punches. It probably seemed foolish in the eyes of most people. After all, with beam rifles, beam sabers and all sorts of creative weaponry for mobile suits these days, the odds of someone being able to get close to punch or kick seemed laughable.

But that was exactly why he did it. Because it gave him a surprise and unexpected advantage, a quick kick, even if it missed, was often enough to disorient an enemy or move a protecting shield out of the way, leaving the cockpit vulnerable. And with a Gundam like the Honor, which required the pilot to be a close combat specialist, it fit perfectly with his martial arts.

A sad smile appeared on his face. He could remember trying to teach his way of thinking to… he shook his head, not wanting to think about it. The young man most certainly hated his guts by now and that was not something he wished to dwell on.

After a few more minutes, it became apparent that it was futile to try and train today. He was just too restless, too uneasy. He blew out his nose as he walked to the sink and splashed his face, as if that would whittle away his thoughts. Dalen grabbed a towel and wiped his face before walking out of his quarters.

That's what he did when he found himself restless, unable to concentrate or focus. He just walked around the colony, no real destination in mind. It was a way to trick his mind and get him out of his thoughts as well as try and relax.

"YAAAAAAHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOO!!!!!" echoed through the colony shafts.

Dalen felt the urge to both roll his eyes and give a smirk. Goldie (or was it Charley? He could never keep it straight…) was doing something insane and reckless again. Part of him was a bit envious of the guy to just be able to do what he wanted without a care in the world. He had no idea what Henry was doing. Not that he disliked the guy, but Henry just liked to keep to himself. At least… that was the impression Dalen got from him. Maybe that was because he didn't know much about the guy. He was an excellent pilot, tactician and marksman but beyond that, he knew nothing about his fellow Gundam pilot. He gave a mental shrug, figuring he was hardly the one to say such things of his fellow pirate. He didn't exactly go around sharing his past either, so he could hardly fault anyone else for doing the same.

At that, he gave to a stop just outside the entry way to the port, looking out of one of the colony windows into the depths of space, in the general direction of the Heaven's Fortune. After the surviving Blood Fins had been placed in the Early Harvest's brig, that's the place Brimfield had dropped the lot of them off at. With Commander Sansui dead, their fleet decimated and mobile suits destroyed, the remaining few left were no threat whatsoever, so Brimfield had transported the remaining Blood Fins to the pirate space station and let them go on their way.

Though not before informing the Blood Fins that if any of them tried attacking the Early Harvest crew again, they would get no leniency. Period.

That's when the colony shook.

KIRA – Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny – KIRA
By: animefan29

Henry's thoughts were interrupted as the room shook, sound and shock waves from explosions being carried through the walls.

'What is going on!?' He thought as he grabbed his various guns and pushed himself to the door in the low gravity room. Getting out into the corridor Henry didn't see anyone who may know what was happening. Not surprising considering that the shooting range, like a number of other special use rooms, was an addition made by the Early Harvest personal when they moved into the colony. Since a gun range isn't that useful unless you have a considerable amount of space, space that wasn't available in the asteroid facility, the Early Harvest engineers had created the space by hauling a smaller asteroid and fusing it to the colony. It was a very out of the way spot that no one went near unless they had a reason.

Unfortunately it was also a fair distance from the port where the EHG-X1 Courage currently was.

Henry sped down the corridor that led to the closest major facility, the factory where he could get a briefing on the situation. He quickened his pace as several more tremors that were undoubtedly caused by explosions shook the asteroid. 'Damn it! Is this an attack!?'

That was a logical assumption, and one that was about to be proven correct. The sound of shooting reached his ears. In response Henry stopped, pulled out his pistol, and took up a low profile position near the wall. Barely a second later had a guy in an Early Harvest engineer's uniform come barreling around the corner in a blind panic, narrowly avoiding a brief spurt of gunfire.

The engineer saw Henry who was just beginning to mouth the words "Get Down!" Henry didn't know if the guy actually understood what he was saying or simply panicked at the sight of another gun but he did exactly that and just in time as a pair of individuals holding sub-machine guns came around the corner in pursuit of the engineer. Henry barely registered the fact that they were wearing ZAFT space suits as he unloaded his clip into the pair.

It was over in seconds and by the end the two soldiers were dead, a fact that Henry double-checked. When he was done and had reloaded his gun, Henry turned to the engineer who had taken cover behind him. "What happened?"

"Sir, it's a ZAFT raid. Soldiers got into the factory, their shooting at everyone in EH colors."

"A ZAFT raid? Why didn't the alarm sound?"

"I don't know sir. I was just coming off my shift when the first explosion happened. I went back to the factory to see if an accident happened and by the time I got there everyone else was running away, closing the doors behind them, with ZAFT soldiers shooting at them. I don't know who all escaped, but not everyone."

'Damn it,' thought Henry, 'this is bad. They've cut us off from our new Hizacks. And if ZAFT could attack the factory without raising the alarm then they most likely also hit the port. However there should be some of our pilots in the port, possibly even Dalen and Goldie. My priority is to remove all hostiles in the factory and secure the area.' At that moment Henry heard some scuffling coming from within the ceiling. He looked up and wondered for a second what it was, then it hit him. The maintenance ducts.

The battle had only just begun, and already it seemed the odds were against them!

---

(AUTHOR'S NOTE) Well, this chapter is finally out. And look at that! The Mathilde attack is FINALLY commencing! Originally, I wanted to post the entire attack in one chapter, but I decided that this would serve as a good introduction scene to the coming chapter. Thouch, technically I still have finished it, I hope this'll be a good enough kick in the balls to get my juices flowing again. And, as you have probably noticed, animefan29 and FictionReader98 are having bigger roles in writing this chapter than the previous Early Harvest one. Let's hope we can continue the good thing we've got so far.

And just in case you have missed my posted warning on my profile, I have recently been hired full-time at Ashley Furniture and their hours are simply terrible. They leave me practically exhausted and no inspiration to write during the week. So my next coming chapters will likely be even fewer and farther between (and like posted on weekends).

One final note, if you haven't already voted there's a new poll up on my profile in regards to (A)Kira's next Gundam. Please vote, I would like see what you personally hope to see his next machine possessing in terms of abilities and weaponry.