The Ceres docked at a base in New South Wales, west of Sydney where it had retreated to from Perth. Marcel stood on the outside deck of the ship staring out across the base, watching mobile suits carrying large boxes of weaponry, parts and supplies between buildings. His undone jacket flowed gently around him in the light breeze, his hair following suit. "Garret..." he said quietly, his hands tightening on the ship's railing. He tuned when Victoria approached from behind him, her eyes were rimmed with red, he knew she'd been crying. The two stood in silence side by side watching the tasks going on in the base below them.
On the bridge, Aston stood with Captain Phillips examining the ammunition stock. "We need a full stock of Dispar missiles and a half stock of Parsifals. Make sure we also refill our supply of Anti-Beam Depth Charges" the red haired commander told the Captain.
"Yes, I think that's about all we need. I'll get that list to our suppliers along with our rations list" Richard said in response. "How are Marcel and Victoria doing?" he asked the white uniformed pilot.
"It's hard for them, it's the first time they've lost a comrade to the fight" Aston replied, sitting on the seat that was behind him.
"What about you? It can't exactly be easy for you either" the Captain pointed out.
"It's not. Losing a friend is something no one should ever be able to get used to. Garret was the last comrade I had left from my old squad, it's quite painful to have lost him now too. He truly was a great person, in and out of a mobile suit" Aston sighed, putting his hand to his face and into his fringe. "I wish I could have gotten to him in time, I feel like it's partly my fault" Aston said quietly.
"I suppose we'll have to send his belongings back to the PLANTs along with an incident report of what happened" Richard sighed, leaning back in his chair. Aston nodded to the Captain, rose to his feet and left the bridge.
"So, what are you going to do once Lord Alastair comes back? Will you give him an answer?" Hilde asked Garret who was still staring at the roof of the room he was confined to.
"Why are you so interested? Aren't you meant to hate Coordinators?" Garret asked in reply.
"I was trying to make conversation, it's boring as hell in here" the female pilot replied.
"What's your take on this war then? Do you think it's really the right thing to do? Are you fighting for the right people?" Garret asked, sitting up.
"I don't see why you're concerned about that but I'll satisfy your curiosity. I do not fight in this war because I particularly hate the Coordinators. I do it for Lord Alastair. He took Allen, Harrison and myself away from a life on the streets not long before he started Purity. He saved my life, fighting for him is what gives it meaning, protecting his ideals is the least I can do in return for him taking me in" Hilde explained, leaning on the hind legs of the wooden chair.
"You want to wipe out an entire group of humanity just to pay back one man?" Garret asked.
"You could never understand" Hilde said curtly, glaring at the young Coordinator.
"I really hope that what you're fighting for is the right thing. It would be sad to see a life wasted for nothing" Garret spoke. Swinging his legs over the side of his bed opposite to Hilde. "But me... I'm not going to sit back and watch as my friends and family are slaughtered by you people. Not a chance in hell" Garret said, looking at Hilde, the conviction in his eyes clear. He got to his feet and started towards the door.
"Where do you think you're going?!" Hilde demanded, rising quickly to her feet. The purple haired girl ran towards Garret, reaching for the gun in her hip holster. Garret's reflexes kicked in immediately. He quickly bent his knees and then barged his good shoulder into Hilde's side, flicking his wrist out to steal her gun. He stood up straight, pointing the weapon at the girl who quickly regained her balance.
"Tell your 'lord' I made up my made, I'd rather die before fighting for Purity" Garret spoke, Hilde could see the fire in the young man's eyes. Garret winced as he used his injured arm to open the door to the room and then ran out, Hilde's gun at his side. "Well, I got out of that room... now what the hell do I do from here?" he asked himself as he ran through the deserted corridor before him. He took a quick glance behind him and saw Hilde running the opposite, probably going to alert to Alastair he thought. He ran past a large window which he looked out, there he saw his escape route. Mobile suits. "Gotta be a door for that hangar somewhere" Garret whispered to himself as he continued to run along the corridor. He stopped after a few seconds and kicked open the first door he saw and ran through it. Garret ran down a flight of stairs and then through a second door through which he found himself in the hangar. Instantly the Purity soldiers around noticed the newcomer, looking at his red pants and long white boots. "This can't be good..."Garret murmured, watching as the soldiers began reaching for guns.
Garret took advantage of their slow reaction times and made a break for the closest mobile suit to him, a DINN. He quickly leapt to the lift in front of it and hit the button with the butt of his pistol. He crouched behind the console as the lift began to rise and the Purity soldiers fired a barrage of bullets at him. He leant over the top a few times and let loose random shots at the soldiers, not really trying to hit them, just stop them for a second or two. When the lift finally reached the cockpit of the DINN Garret leapt inside and closed the hatch. "Alright, time to get out of here" Garret said to himself, grasping the controls and wincing slightly from the pain in his injured arm. He booted up the mobile suit and looked down at the Purity soldiers running for their own mobile suits. In the window he had passed before he could see Alastair shouting orders to soldiers behind him, Allen and Hilde were at his sides. Garret broke free of the clamps holding the DINN and walked towards the door of the hangar. He opened up the launchers on the suit's shoulders and fired several missiles, easily destroying the doors. "Soar!" he yelled, transforming the DINN into its flight mode and taking off through the hole he had created.
As Garret left the hangar, he quickly took in the cityscape before him, he was in Sydney. The base he had escaped from was just on the outskirts of the city on the opposite side to the one the Ceres and Minerva had destroyed only days earlier. "Oh man, this Natural OS is really holding the suit back" Garret said, looking over the status of the DINN. He turned and saw that the Purity suits were only just launching from the base, he had to get away quickly. The other DINNs that were coming he knew he could probably overpower or outmanoeuvre, it was the Murasames he could see that worried him. "Those Murasames would have the same OS as this thing meaning they won't be able to fly at their best standards. If this was a ZAFT DINN I could probably beat them, but with this damn Purity OS I'm not sure" he said to himself, pushing forward on the controls a little more. He ignored the pain in his shoulder and arm as he flew the mobile suit forward. It was only then he realised he had no idea where the Ceres had gone after leaving Perth, he had no idea how to reach them and the closest large ZAFT base was probably in Victoria. "Screw it, I'm not about to die just running from these guys, if I'm going down I'll get rid of as many of them as I can!" Garret roared, spinning his DINN around and pulling out both the suit's machine gun and shotgun.
The Purity mobile suits also pulled out their own weapons. Garret was up against three DINNs and two Murasames that also drew their weapons. The five Purity suits were all in their flight forms like Garret and they were approaching him quickly. Garret closed his eyes and took a deep breath, relaxing his grip on the DINN's controls. "Let's do this" he said when his eyes opened again. He flew forward, firing the shotgun at the DINN at the front of the Purity formation. The swift attack struck home, destroying one of the mobile suit's wings and some of the shrapnel from the shit hitting the cockpit, sending it crashing into the city below where it exploded. Garret dodged a burst of shots from the machine gun of one of the other DINN's before retaliating with his own, destroying the head of the mobile suit. Seeing the swift defeat of two of their comrades, the three remaining Purity pilots backed away from the ZAFT pilot slightly.
"I'll take him from the front, you two circle around behind him" the DINN pilot said to the two soldiers in the Murasames. They acknowledged the order and backed off from their comrade slightly. The Purity DINN flew head-on at Garret, opening up the launchers on its shoulders and firing off a wave of anti-air missiles.
"Not a chance!" Garret said, firing his machine gun in a wide arc and destroying the missiles before they reached him. With the explosion as cover the two Murasames quickly split off to Garret's flanks and transformed, readying their beam rifles. "Shit!" Garret yelled seeing the mobile suits. He saw the enemy DINN with its guns raised as the smoke from the missiles cleared and the young ZAFT pilot's eyes widened when the guns fired. He closed his eyes and he saw multiple images of his friends in his mind. Marcel, Lucian, Aston and Captain Phillips were there. The last two faces he saw were Victoria's and Cecil's. Garret felt his grip on the DINN's controls tighten and his eyes flicked open, his pupils dilated in the centre of a sea of silver. "I won't let you... defeat me" Garret spoke and he pulled back and down on the controls, speeding backwards towards the ground. As he was falling, Garret pulled out the keyboard of the mobile suit and typed across it with lightning speed. Within seconds he rewrote the operating system of the DINN and regained his grip on the mobile suit's controls.
Garret's DINN flew forward at top speed, heading straight for the Purity DINN. He reached it and slammed his shotgun against the other purple suit's cockpit and pulled the trigger. He quickly kneed the other DINN away before it exploded and then turned to the Murasames.
"W..what the hell is with this guy? Where did that speed come from?" one of the Murasame pilots exclaimed, trying to line a shot up on the DINN. Garret saw the mobile suit lining up its gun, turned and headed straight for it. He spun around the few shots the Purity pilot could fire before he reached him and grabbed the Murasame by the head. He placed his machine gun against the cockpit and held down the trigger until the clip was empty. He quickly flung the mobile suit away before turning on the last Purity pilot. Learning from the mistakes of trying keep the ZAFT pilot at a distance, the last remaining pilot pulled out his suit's beam sabre and flew towards Garret.
"Not gonna work" Garret said, dancing to the side as the Murasame attempted a vertical strike on him. The DINN quickly pulled up its shotgun and fired through the side of the mobile suit. Garret watched as it fell most of the way to the city below before it exploded and then began to fly away from the base.
The Purity soldiers in the base stood speechless as they saw how the single DINN decimated five of their suits while being flown by and injured pilot. "Lord Alastair, do you want me to mobilise in the Aegis and take him down?" Hilde asked, turning to the man in the white suit.
"Yeah, I'll take a Murasame and we can take another team to shoot that ZAFT bastard down!" Allen said, raising his hand and curling it into a tight fist.
"No, let him go. I'm not going to risk anymore pilots. Besides, I'm curious to see what will happen with him" Alastair said as he turned and walked away from the two pilots. "Garret Kross, it would seem he too bares the Seed like the 'heroes' of the last wars. How interesting" the man said quietly to himself, a thin smile crossing his lips as he walked.
After getting a decent distance from the city, Garret landed his DINN in a large open plain and let go of the controls. "What happened?" he asked himself, placing his hand on his forehead. "I feel like I wasn't even in control of my body for the last part of that fight" he said, looking at his palm as he lowered it. "I need to find ZAFT forces somewhere before this DINN runs out of battery. Dammit, where am I meant to go?" he sighed to himself, bringing up a map on the mobile suit's screen. "Victoria seems like the closest ZAFT occupied area around but there's no way I'll make it there. Wait a second, there's a small base west of here that the map says is occupied by ZAFT, that'll do!" Garret said, closing the map and grabbing the controls once more. He began the slow walk to the west, trying to conserve as much of the DINN's power as possible.