I almost couldn't believe that Lightwing had given me two thousand push-ups. Mostly because I'm pretty sure that the Lt was scared shitless of me, but also because upping it from one thousand to two didn't make a lick of a difference. As many would realize, in space you don't have weight.

So push ups it didn't amount to a fuck lot, at least compared to how much did usually do.

But given I was trying to help Lightwing gain respect from everyone else, I went along with it anyway. But I did plan on making fun of him over this later, in private so I didn't end up ruining the respect that we were trying to build up.

Gullar had a laugh about this, at least I think it was about this. I'd yet to develop the power to read minds so it was more than a little bit of guesswork that it was why he was laughing.

Afterward, lunch was a rather quiet affair. Lightwing seemed like he was all ready for me to tear into him, maybe even to physically attack him, over the increased punishment. If I was a worse man, I would've glared at him, made him nervous, and humiliate him without ever opening my mouth. Instead, I smiled and greeted him as if all was normal.

This turned out to be worse than glaring at him. The Lt just got more and more nervous with each passing second. It was more than a little funny, but also sad. Giving him my red jelly, apparently a favorite among people, only added to the humor as he suddenly grew paranoid about me poisoning him.

Again, this was a guess on my part. I'd yet to develop that mind-reading ability.

But eventually, Lightwing ordered me to stay in a combat-ready state, since I had been so eager to sortie beforehand. Which was good, it meant that I could see some combat before Amuro goes out with the 'Alex' and monopolize the good action. Not that I was sure when I started to consider fighting for my life against numerous and deadly foes to be 'good action' but that was apparently the type of man I was now.

In other words, I was a moron.

It wasn't long before I was joined by Gullar. My fellow Ensign dropping down beside me with a huff. By this time, the Zeon Gyan was sent off to Solomon, where it would be transported to a research facility on Luna. So it was just my GM Command and his GM Cannon in this part of the hangar while the Lt's GM was being fitted for the Sniper Custom's head in the other.

Unlike with my unit, where I'd received only the spare parts in order to repair my GM. The Lt was receiving the full head and even some of the equipment of the Sniper Custom, but not the modified leg thrusters for some reason. This pretty much proved to me that his backer still had big hopes for the young man if they were giving him so many resources.

But I wasn't without new equipment myself. The Gyan's Beam Saber was installed in my unit's backpack, not replacing the one already installed but supplementing it. It gave me much greater cutting power than most standard machines.

It would be interesting to see how it works out.

"Colasour," Dull started up as crossed his legs as he floated in the air. "Do you think we'll get a transfer soon? We were already understaffed before. But with Bandager's death, we've got three units for the whole ship. I know you're good, but come on. We could use the help."

"Not sure," I answered honestly. "At this stage, we could be given more but it is also possible that given we're going to be with the same group as the White Base, that the higher-ups might expect us to go on by ourselves and use the fact that they operate more efficiently in combat than any other ship to make up for the limited number of us in the battle group."

"Why understaff us? Wouldn't the operation work better if we were fully staffed? Sure White Base is powerful, but your better safe than sorry."

Gullar closed his eyes and huffed in frustration. These were questions that I didn't have any real answers to, some guesses yes, but nothing definite. Most likely it came down to cheapness in some manner.

I hoped that we would get at least one other pilot before we left Solomon. The Vanquishment was supposed to be able to carry six mobile suits, so it was annoying to me that we weren't being given at least two spares, it would make damage to them much less dangerous to our health.

In this universe, most classes of ships really needed that support too.

So we settled into silence, only moving onto our feet every once in the while to stay limber and forgo only cramps that could've popped up in a battle otherwise. It became rather boring, the few hours or so we were waiting for something to happen.

The only thing that broke it was Lightwing checking in on our mood. And the Lt was many things, but he wasn't the best at casual conversation, at least not around me. He stuttered too much to keep up with my rapid pace.

It was only when Lightwing started to leave, after a lengthy discussion with Dull about some girl the two had met over in Luna II that I just had to meet for some reason, that we were finally called to action.

The alarms sounded, signaling that we'd spotted or noticed an incoming enemy. This time Lightwing didn't bother giving orders to wait, instead, the three of us leaped off to our machines and got to work launching.

Our operator had given us the orders. A partol ship had possibly been spotted, great use of language, and we were to support the White Base to intercept.

This time, I was the first to launch, my GM Command and there was something more than magical to be launched out of the ship just as the White Base launched their units. The red of the Guncannons only heightend my awe, but what threw it into heaven itself was how I could witness the launch of the RX-78-2 Gundam.

It wasn't like I could hear tunderous music, it wasn't like what I was seeing was anything other than a Mobile Suit launch out of a ship. In that way, this was a plain event, no different from seeing a GM launch… but the fin, the color and especially the yellow eyes on the unit.

I couldn't breath, this was The Gundam.

But my excitement didn't last for long as Lightwing and Gullar sooned joined me in formation, at my three and six respectively. I fell in alongside them without much concern, we let the White Base units form infront of us, and then it came over us.

The 'Alex'.

It would be hard to tell from a distance that the 78-2 and the 'Alex' were even separate machines given their similar builds and color schemes. But up close it was plain. Seeing it out there in flight was revealed to anyone with a keen eye for detail that it was a different machine.

It even had a nice juicy stylized 'A' on one of its shoulders to set it even further apart.

There was much time that passed before the 'Alex' was head of the formation. This was probably the most confident about such a small force of Mobile Suits I'd ever be. There wasn't anything in the OYW that truly had a chance against this arrangement of pilots and machines, not in reasonable numbers.

But that was when reality decided to kick me in the teeth.

It felt like spiders had started to crawl up my spine, like such a thing I could tell exactly where the feeling was coming from. It was still far off from our location, but we were heading towards it. I didn't even get a chance to warn anyone about the approaching danger before Amuro Ray's voice piped in.

"Stay back! Whatever's coming is completely different from what we've faced before!"

The order worked for everyone to back of and allow for the 'Alex' to break off from the group. I was tempted to continue forward anyway, as this new Zeon weapon would've been a good taste of the other Psycommu equipped machines that their forces could potentially field against me.

From what I could recall, this machine we were about to fight was known as the Braw Bo. It was a Mobile Armor that was larger than the majority of Mobile Suits and used wire-guided long-range remote-controlled beam weapons that were controlled by a New Type thanks to the Psycommu system.

It was a deadly enough machine, though weaker than the Elmeth that Zeon had already fielded a few hours ago. As that machine had remote weapons that didn't require wires to function.

In canon, Amuro Ray destroyed the Braw Bo while being limited by the Gundam's reaction speed being slower than his own. Making it react too slow for his liking, but given that, I have watched the series, I knew that this was not the impression that the pilot of the Braw Bo while fighting the Gundam.

Which was to be amazed by the reaction speed, claiming that only someone that could predict the future could've known where the shots of his remote weapons would come from in order to react to the attacks in time.

So you can imagine the horror that I could feel the Braw Bo's pilot, a Challia Bull, emit into the out into space as the 'Alex' didn't just dodge his remote weapons. He preempted every single shot the other man could've made blasting the remotes.

If Amuro was originally meant to be only a hair too fast for the other man, here he was almost like light itself. He zoomed around beams like they weren't moving, he fired back like they were a Carnival's "shooting targets" rather than high-speed weapons.

With an aileron roll, the 'Alex' dodged and fired back out into the distance. It was only the powerful optical sensors of my GM that allowed me to track that beam… and spot the resulting explosion that followed after it.

This entire thing lasted only ten seconds.

"Okay," Amuro announced over the comms, his face popping up in the corner of my screen to go with it. "That should be all, I can't pick up any other enemies on the sensors. Should we return?"

Dull was the only one among us all that knew how to respond to that event.

"That was insane."

We'd finally given permission to dock with Solomon, where we were going to disembark, at least some of us were, and our Captain would receive his newest orders. This did give me some opportunity that I hadn't had before now, I could meet the crew of the White Base.

It was a somewhat nerve-wracking concept though, given how odd it would be to just walk up and introduce myself without much reason… or at least without anything other than introducing myself to people that I'd be working with in the future.

Thankfully for my socially moronic self, I had Dull with me. The man had no fear of embarrassing himself and our team, something that some would find annoying but was relieving when I didn't know how to open my mouth in order to talk to people. Unfortunately, Dull had misinterpreted why I wanted to talk to the White Base pilots.

So when he walked up to Sayla Mass as we all disembarked from our ships, Dull did so with a smile on his face and a wink to me. She wasn't alone, with a young girl in a pink outfit that I assumed to be Frau Bow stood beside while a small guy was standing not to far away would glancing at the brunette of the pair every once in a while.

Sayla Mass was a rather striking figure. There wasn't anything about her physically that made her magically attractive, at least not more than any other hot person I'd meet in my life. There was something else about her, something that grabbed my attention.

I could only guess it was her Newtype capabilities I was sensing… or I was more attracted to blonds than I would've otherwise guessed.

Something that I needed to keep in mind was that Char and Sayla are actually brother and sister, the children of the Zeon Founder… Zeon, whose true names were Casvel and Artesia respectfully. Zeon Zum Deikun, the full name of their father, was the founder of the Republic of Zeon that eventually formed the Principality of Zeon after that man's death. To make a long story short;

Char was convinced that the current Zeon(the nation not the man) rulers, the Zabi Family, were responsible for the death of their father and joined their military in an effort to get close to the family for vengeance-related goals. Right now, he'd helped kill one out of five Zabis, with another killed without his influence at all.

Meanwhile, Sayla eventually joined the Federation Forces thanks to a complicated set of events that had also lead to Amuro Ray getting in the Gundam. Both were hiding their true identities with their current aliases. And both were on opposite sides of the war.

"Hello, I'm Ensign Dull Gullar, expert wingman," Dull pointed his thumb at himself before doing the same with me. "This is my insane friend, Ensign Patrick Colasour. We're the GM guys over on the Vanishquishment backing you all up."

"I'm Ensign Sayla Mass," The blond appeared to be semi-stoic. I guessed she was trying to gauge what we were here for in order to know how to interact with us. It could've also been a response to how her recent interactions with her older Brother, the Zeon's Red Comet himself. "I'm the Gundam Pilot."

"I thought the Gundam pilot was a guy?" Dull replied.

"Dude, we just delivered them a new machine," I groaned aloud, annoyed by the lack of thought in even asking the question. "Obviously, the old pilot is in the 'Alex' now."

Probably not wanting an argument erupting between me and Gullar, and probably not knowing that we would've moved on by our own initiative, the other girl introduced herself.

"Frau Bow…" The brunette had said, before suddenly blinking as if she realized that we were also introducing ourselves with our ranks. "Oh, I'm a communication officer."

The third member of the White Base crew I'd spotted walked up alongside us.

"I'm Ensign Hayato Kobayashi," The small young man introduced himself, going as far as to extend his hand for the two of us to shake. I shook it before Dull could, wanting to be polite. "I pilot one of the Guncannons, but I used to pilot a Guntank."

"A Guntank? A serious piece of hardware," I complimented him, at least I attempted to. Kobayashi didn't seem very pleased by my comment for some reason. I wonder if it was due to my rather large height advantage making it so I was literally looking down at the man.

Maybe he thought I was figuratively doing so as well?

"Is there anything that you guys wanted from us?" Sayla interceded, stopping the conversation from going any further. She glared at me… and so I had a cunning idea.

I didn't want to be outed as a Netype, but Sayla already was suspected of being one. She could get a warning to General Revils about his incoming death… by way of giant Solar Cannon made from a Space Colony.

If I could find a way to warn her about it, she could use her known Newtype-ness to excuse the knowledge, and then we might just save the life of one of the greatest Earth Federation Officers. With this in mind, I concentrated hard on my memories of the event while also thinking of the young blond before me.

There was a sudden hop from the blond pilot, one that most would've missed. But one that I saw clearly thanks to the attention that I had heaped onto her. Her eyes slowly met mine as I attempted to ask for a private conversation with my mind.

…

It didn't seem to work as instead I just spent time looking at her instead like a deer caught in the headlights.

"We merely thought that it was a good idea for us to get to know each other if we were going to be working alongside-"

"-That and Colasour thought that Ensign Mass was hot," Gullar interrupted me with a mischievous glint in his eye. "He's just too shy to say it."

"No, I'm too smart to flirt with a fellow pilot," I elbowed the man in the stomach while smiling sheepishly. "I meant what I said, I only wanted to get to know my fellow pilots. How about we all take a break and visit the cafeteria together?"

Sayla took a glance at her White Base crewmates before her harsh eyes met with mine once again.

"Ensign Colasour, if I may have a moment alone with you?"

This time it was Dull that elbowed a person, that person being me as he grinned and wriggled his eyebrow suggestively. I ignored him and followed after the blond as she walked away from her crewmates, all of whom wore stupefied expressions on their faces.

It didn't take long before we were outside of our respective crewmates' hearing range but still within sight. In spite of my larger size, Miss Mass struck a rather impressive authoritative figure, more so than either my Captain or especially Lightwing. Poor guy.

"I'm disturbed," She glared at me with passion. "I knew the Federation had some sick freaks in the ranks, but I didn't know that they would get someone so… monstrous."

"I'm sorry?" This is a rather confusing response, was it due to Dull claiming that I was interested in the young woman romantically… or had he meant sexually?

"There was so much death, I couldn't have imagined it if you were to give me a hundred years.

"I never imagined that a Newtype-" She took a large breath, her finger tapping my elbow. "-could've ever been so deviant to think that sending me imagines like that would… what? Get me off?

"That-"

"It's not so much the death that even bothered me, but why was it all animated? Why the Motobike style battleship?"

Motorbike Battleship? That's from Gundam Victory! How much did I even show this girl?

"And the all-female bikini-wearing team of Mobile Suit pilots! What was that about?"

"Ahhhh… I only meant to show you the immediate future, the parts with the Solar Cannon," I belted out, hoping to stop the young woman from revealing my Newtype status in anger. "I didn't mean to also show seventy years from now. I swear!"

Salya's bow rose in response, her eyes briefly glancing over to the concerned form of our respective crewmates. Her rant against me had gotten rather heated, and my response to it probably looked to be equally so. Eventually, Sayla waved to them, not in a 'come over' gesture but rather one that told them that things were fine.

"Talk then."

I took a breath, glanced around the dock to make sure that no one would be able to overhear us. I even spotted a brunette floating out of the White Base to join the other two crewmates, his massive seventies hair told me exactly who that was. But I swallowed my excitement to focus on the moment.

"I'm in a Newtype closet," I said, using the 'closet' analogy to infer meaning. Then I quickly explained to her that I had limited power of premonition. I had foreseen the Zeon's superweapon killing General Revils, but since I didn't want the Federation to know that I was a Newtype, I needed someone on board of the White Base to be the one to reveal this information.

When I was done with all this, the blonde held a hand to her hip, her eyes running up and down my frame for a few moments.

"How do I know that you're not just a crazy man as well as being a NewType?"

I had a single insight that would instantly prove that I knew things that I shouldn't. Only one of them could be used here, two depending on how one counts this secret up. My finger beckoned her to come closer, as this wasn't even my secret to tell.

"Char Azanble's real name is Casval Rem Deikun," I whispered into her ear, causing a loud gasp to be let out. "You're his sister, Artesia. It stays between us. Merely proof that I've seen things."

She took a step away from me, her eyes widened in sheer horror at the information that I knew. I wasn't sure if the young woman had even come out to her superior, Lt Bright Noa, yet? So it was possible that someone knowing this was a massive shock to her system.

"Hey!" I suddenly found myself turned around, a glare of a hostile teenager replacing the sight of the hidden Zeon Heir. "This guy bothering you, Sayla?"

Seeing him up close, it was obvious why when Char first met the boy in person that he didn't think much of the young Amuro Ray. Not until he learned about him being the Gundam Pilot. Seeing Amuro Ray glare at me… was a little disheartening.

Obviously, he thought that I was harassing Sayla and walked over to rescue her. Very brave of the young boy that I can't recall ever defeating someone outside of a cockpit in the original series.

But I didn't let Amuro's aggression stop me from being stroked to meet the kid.

"I've heard all about you!" I smiled, trying to appear disarmingly. "You're the Gundam Pilot. It's an honor to meet the White Devil himself," I held out my hand for the other man to shake, but found that I was left standing there.

"It's fine, Amuro," Sayla piped in, standing between the two of us. She turned to face me, her back facing Amuro. Her eyes were one-third pleading, one-third fear, and another third stern rage. It was like she promised I think she was under the impression that I was blackmailing her? Not true, but if it gets her to take credit for learning about the Solar Cannon, I would take it. "I'll think about the lunch offer if you survive the war. Come on, Amuro."

I let the pair walk off, wondering if I needed to hedge my bets in some other way. That interaction was… only a few nocks down from me ending up on the wrong side of an interrogation. It wouldn't be bad if someone else tried to get Revil's attention towards the Solar Ray Cannon. In fact, multiple sources would give some credence to the warning.

Dull clapped me on the back, his grin wide.

"Well, a future maybe is better than a present no," He ruminated, as if I had been asking the blond girl. Though, it was better that Dull believed that it was what just happened. "If she ghosts ya, I know this nice nightclub on Luna II. I'll be your wingman."

"..." I took a large breath, closing my eyes. "Thanks, Dull. You're a sound man."