Characters: None
Parings: None
Time frame: Battle of Messiah
On the danger of presupposition
Four names; two mobile suits, two assault ships.
No army, no fleet. Not even an especially strong force. But when one adds names… the Justice, the Freedom, the Archangel and the Eternal. Suddenly it is imposing.
The Red Knight, the White Angel, the ship of Lady Lacus, the indestructible Bane of ZAFT.
An army they are not.
Sending mobile suits against the princess' knights is like leading lambs to the slaughter.
An army they are not needed to be.
They might be outnumbered a hundred or a thousand to one, but victory… Tying them in place with numbers, yes, hoping to win a game of time, yes, but taking them out is not possible.
In the beginning there is only a sense of detached surrealism and a persistent shadow of apprehension. Those are legends. Living legends and labels of their tales of skill are at the forefront of everyone's mind. But they also know that things are different now. That ZAFT is in the right this time, that two years have passed and things aren't the same. Pilots are different, more experienced, some have survived Jachin Due. Mobile suits are more powerful, stronger, more agile. Freedom has been shot down once.
Then, as time passes and no results come about, it is seen, wildly displayed that nothing has changed at all.
The two machines outmatch and outgun everyone and everything to a degree where it hardly makes a difference if the foes are just scrapped pieces of metal or if highly educated soldiers control complex machines.
And it is seen that the labels attached have never been enough to convey the feelings forced upon them by the skill, the ability, the raw talent. Only in person it is understood that the labels are paling compared to the dread and terror, the sheer fact of being hopelessly outclassed that is being experienced now and that has given birth to the tales two years ago.
And that, while the labels alone are already enough to nurture hesitation and cold sweat and numbing fear.
The Freedom and Justice.
The Strike Freedom and Infinite Justice.
There is no difference at all.
The soldiers left in their suits, out of battle, damaged and immobile, can only watch and wait to witness the end of the war, left behind and alive, adrift in empty space.