I do not own the rights to Gundam Seed, Iron Blooded Orphans, Wing or Gundam Build Fighter/Try. All characters that are not my original characters are owned by their respective series creators. Please enjoy! Credit to the original plot device and the zero system goes to Nemesis Astrea. Any custom Gunpla credit also goes to their respective creators and developers unless stated otherwise.
Amy's house was a mess of activity. Lily had just been shot down and her cockpit had finally opened to reveal her instead of empty space. When lily came out she was able to take about 2 steps but the moment the alaya-vijnana system was disconnected she collapsed, seizing temporarily before she went limp and was out cold.
EMS was called and they rushed her to a local hospital. When asked about the spike in her back amy could only say it was part of an experiment gone wrong. After dealing with the police and the ems hauling lily away, Amy went back to her computer, hoping to isolate whatever code allowed lily to leave when she was shot down. All the while she also got on comms with asny and informed her that lily was out of the simulation.
"That's good. I hope she is ok. Sounds like getting shot down hit her hard. But at least she is out. Keep me informed of her condition and work on getting me out without me having to be shot down." responded asny before the comms were cut.
Amy would do just that, working hard to get the code to allow asny to leave on her own.
Break
Lily slowly woke up to the sound of a heart monitor beeping. She was slightly confused. Where was she? Last she remembered she was in amy's house, having just been shot down and forced from the simulation.
But who shot her down? She didn't remember that either. Atleast she didn't know the pilot that did. Tearing up, she finally realized something as she went to use her right arm. She couldn't move it at all now. And on top of that she couldn't feel her right leg. She couldn't move it either. As she turned onto her left side, still able to use it atleast and cried into her pillow.
Finally a doctor came in and blinked as he looked over her chart. "Well well welcome back to the land of the living miss solace. We were worried about you. How are you feeling?"he asked and lily just curled up and gripped her blankets. The doctor looked to her and sighed.
"Listen. I know it's gonna be hard to adapt to life now but the good news is you're alive. We honestly thought we had lost you a couple times. But as your friend said, you're a fighter."said the doctor as he checked lily's IV and stood by her.
"Is there any chance of recovery?"asked lily quietly, to the point the doctor had to lean in to hear her.
"Well the good news is from all our scans and tests none of the damage is permanent. The only permanent thing is that spike in your back. We did all we could to remove it but it's too deeply embedded in your a full recovery is certainly possible."he said as lily rolled back onto her back and looked at him.
"Not permanent? Doc i can't feel or move the right side of my body." said lily as she started to cry again.
That got his attention and he immediately went back to checking her charts. "No, none of our scans indicate any brain damage. And the spinal cord is intact aside from that spike. So unless that's causing it. I should also mention you have been unconscious for the better part of a week. So perhaps this is just temporary while your brain sort of reboots."he said as he gently poked and prodded her right shoulder, getting no response from her aside from a glare.
"So what…its all in my head?"she asked angrily as she wanted to reach out and throttle him. It was the VA all over again about her being mute and deaf. It was all in her head. She was faking it.
The doctor shook his head. "No no i`m not saying that at all. Given i don't know exactly what happened in this experiment you went through, I can't say there's damage we can't see. But as of this moment it does appear to be psycho-symatic." he said as he pocketed his pen and sighed. "Listen. While there isn;t much we can do now except see where things go from here, the bottom line if you're alive. That's what counts. " he said as he tried to placate lily.
Lily just started crying and couldn't stop herself. She couldn't believe she was in the same boat mikazuki was by the end of iron blooded orphans. Grabbing the nearby bed remote she slowly set it so she could sit up and looked out the window. It was raining. Fitting given the last thing she remembered hearing from the cosmic era was the rain hitting her gundams armor.
As a nurse brought her in some food she realized one major thing. Her dominant arm was her right arm. She would need to train herself to be ambidextrous at best if this ever went away…and left handed if it didn't. Looking at her food she slowly lifted her left arm and decided it was best to start now.
It took her almost three times as long to eat, and half of it ended on her bedside tray…but she ultimately was able to eat her food. Drinking was another thing. Her hand shook as her body wanted to use her right arm to grab the cup but she was forcing herself to use her left. By the time it reached her lips her gown was stained with apple juice and she got about half the cup to drink.
As the nurses came to help her change and take her food away she just cried, still unable to grasp the fact she may never be able to walk or use her dominant arm again.
Recovery
"Tolle! Kira! Lily!" shouted mirailia as she tried to disprove their destruction. They weren't gone. They couldn't be. After all they had been through together and after tolle spent so long training there was no way he could be gone…
"Tolle! Kira! Anyone…answer me. Please!" she called out as the mood on the bridge was one of varying degrees of somberness.
Over the radio mu asked, " what was that explosion?" murrue turned to see him on her private monitor. "It…it was the strike. As well as the demon king. Skygrasper 2 is gone too. We lost our links with all three."stated murrue as she looked out the window. She could see the desert viper standing over the remains of the demon king, looking down at it like they knew lily or at least like they had deep respect for the demon king. With the rain it almost looked like the enemy machine was crying.
"Tolle…kira…answer me. Lily….someone!" continued miriallia as she tried to get someone to respond. Finally lieutenant badgirule came over and shut off her comms.
"Thats enough i think."said natarle as she looked to miriallia. Miriallia looked to her with sorrow and confusion.
Natarle, for how cold hearted and rules oriented she was, felt bad for the tech students. "All of you take a 15. Go get some air or something to eat…just be back asap."said natarle and all the tech students immediately got up and headed off the bridge.
Meanwhile down further in the ship dearka groaned as he was forced to walk handcuffed through the ship. Asny was behind him with a handgun trained on him and two marines had rifles. He wasn't going anywhere but the brig.
In the hangar the buster was being loaded on board as well as the torment. It was a shame they couldn't get rid of the duel in the same fight but the fact it got heavily damaged by sai in a one on one fight was victory enough supposedly.
Sai had already been loaded with the flauros and was currently in the ready room getting changed.
Back on the bridge as the tech students came back kuzzey called out from radar, "three contacts approaching!" followed quickly by flay ID'ing them. "Three DiNN's! They are already on top of us!" cried out flay. Everyone watched as the DiNN's flew past the bridge and landed around the desert viper. They seemed more concerned with protecting it than coming after them so as Neumann announced that they had power again natarle ordered them to take off, maximum thrust.
Recovery
Tsuga sighed as she sat in her cockpit. Her power levels were all over the place so she had lit off a distress beacon. When she was surrounded by three DiNN's she knew the sub wasn't too far behind. The three DiNN's took up tactical positions around her, one specifically watching the archangel as it took off. Sure they could go after it, sink it, and be heroes. But they had orders to protect her since she was now a VIP. she had taken down the demon king. And with 2 more machines of it's type onboard the archangel she knew they would need her desert viper even more.
Pulling her broken heat shotel out of the wreckage of the demon king she noticed something odd. While yes she had stabbed the cockpit region or where she thought it was….there was no cockpit. Using her gundams hands she grabbed the frame that was the demon king and began to examine it. The more she moved it and twisted it the more it fell apart, becoming brittle which was odd for a mobile suit.
Finally she set it down and watched as the former enemy machine slowly broke down, it's armor and parts of the frame breaking down into a fine dust. What was left was…well it wasn't the demon king. It appeared to be a whole nother unit.
Confused, Tsuga looked the gundam over more and was surprised when she found the cockpit section had returned, only for it to contain a young boy who looked to be long dead.
The unit he was in was similar in built to the demon king, however its arms had faded to dust and left only the legs and core of the unit. It's vents were still there but the armor covering the cockpit was completely gone instead of rent like it should have been with her attack.
As a gust of wind blew through and was blowing the storm away she could hear the wreck creaking till finally it fell over onto her machine, the once proud gundam unable to stand on it's own two feet. While she was confused by the boy being inside instead of the crushed remains of the woman who should have been her lover from the other night she felt sorry for them both and ultimately wrapped her machines arms around the wreck.
"Miss?"asked a DiNN pilot over the radio. She just stayed silent and said a small prayer, both for the boy and for the woman she had such a unique connection with.
Finally she let the wreck go and sniffled some. "Lets go. The bltiz and aegis are a bust, pretty sure both pilots are dead too. Buster was captured and so was the pilot. This machine is a wreck, no point recovering it."she said before turning and starting to head towards the beach where the zaft sub had surfaced to recover her.
Recovery
It had been about a week in reality and lily was now living with amy. Amy felt responsible for lily's injuries and so she had insisted she take care of her. Wheelchair bound and stuck to the first floor of the house, Lily mostly sat in front of the TV, honestly moping and unsure of what to do with her life.
She thought back to her time after she was discharged. She remembered how much she fought and tried to speak. She tried to be able to hear. But the doctors insisted it would take time to heal the traumatic damage to her brain. It wasn't even real brain damage it was just trauma which had shut off her sense of hearing and her verbal abilities.
She had had to learn ASL and fought that too, trying instead to stick to using her phone to type out messages and show them to people. But the lack of hearing made it difficult to have full conversations without them taking forever.
She remembered a particularly difficult day when she was trying to order food.
Her VA assigned aid was trying her best to work with lily but as lily typed away furiously at her phone she snapped her fingers in lily's face.
"Lily…lily! Hey come on we have to practice or you will never get better."she said, knowing lily couldn't hear but it still seemed to get her attention.
As lily looked up from her phone the aid signed to her, what would she want to eat? Lily just flipped her off and then showed her her phone. It had her full order on it by now. The aid shook her head.
"No. your gonna sign it or else we are going home."she said, signing this as well. Lily had picked up reading sign language quickly, but was having trouble signing back to the aid.
Lily just shoved her phone in her face like a toddler wanting to get their way and the aid just shook her head again.
"No. sign it or no food."she said/signed and lily silently groaned.
Beginning to sign to the aid she had trouble making out the words for a burger with extra bacon on it, extra hot sauce, and a large drink and fries. The aid chuckled and triple checked the order to lily's annoyance but lily just signed it over and over till the aid turned to the cashier and made the order.
After a 15 minute wait they had their food. As they sat down the aid signed, "it's good to see your trying. But you should try signing first not last." to which the aid was flipped off again.
Chuckling the aid continued. "No really." she signed. "Your getting better with each line you sign. I can tell. Before you know it you`ll be having full conversations in sign language and it will be like you never lost your ability to speak or hear."
Lily just rolled her eyes and began eating her food.
A few months later lily could hear again and it came to her during a baseball game. The rush of sound and everything going on around her she had had a small panic attack. When she realized what it meant she also tried to speak. At first her voice was hoarse from lack of use but she found her voice as well. She was so excited she started signing like mad to her aid but then realized she could talk and began to chat her ear off about how happy she was.
Shortly thereafter her aid was removed and she tried to go back into the service. But she was denied due to if she had that much of a PTSD episode hit her from the incident previously mentioned then what would happen next time something like that happened?
Sipping on a sippy cup, which she had resorted to adult sippy cups meant for the elderly when she couldn't stop spilling with her left hand, but sipping on some soda she listened to a commercial about some new medical treatment that would give paralyzed folks use of their limbs again. She laughed. Like that was ever going to happen.
Recovery
As they fled the area asny was in the hangar watching the torment get tuned up. Well tuned up wasn't exactly the right wording. She was watching it get a fresh coat of paint in certain spots where the diffusion of the blitz's beam had scorched off paint. Otherwise the torment had barely been scratched.
she turned though when she heard the LT commander trying to console miriallia. she walked over and saw her fall to her knees and start crying, the commander even turned and punched the skygraspers training simulator.
"Hey kid. Come on. Pull yourself together. I just lost one of my best friends. You can't go all crazy on us just because you lost your boyfriend and your good friend. They both knew what they were risking when they climbed into those cockpits today. Any day could have been their last. Today just happened to be it."said asny as she tried her best to not slap miriallia.
Miriallia went wide eyed and just broke down crying even more. Asny sighed and patted her shoulders. "You will recover from this. Trust me…it will get better."said asny as she tried to comfort miriallia. The main reason she wasn't crying herself was she knew lily wasn't dead. She had already heard from amy that lily was somewhat safely out of the simulation.
Mu walked over and sighed. "So is lily really gone?"he asked, reminding asny he knew about the actual situation her and lily had been in. asny glared at him but ultimately shook her head.
"Thats a relief. She may be gone from our world but at least she's in a better place."he said, recovering when he almost spilled the secrets to miss haw.
Asny nodded and looked up at the ceiling. "Yeah…a better place…."she said, really wishing she had some form of stress relief like smoking at the moment. Sadly she was against such a thing so she did not.
Sai walked over to them and blinked. "Hey I heard a large explosion as I was coming in, a couple of them actually. What happened?" asked Sai as he glanced back at his damaged flauros. Him and the duel had gone at it pretty hard, but he had won the day with a strike with his assault dagger that damaged one arm at the shoulder and he had managed a close range peppering on the duels leg with his flak chaingun, shredding the leg from the knee down.
The flauros on the other hand had received minor scuffs and had one of it's shields cut off. There was a large burn mark across the torso where yzak had almost gotten a killing blow in had the nano laminate armor not diffused the beam saber and allowed it to just glide across the torso. Still it had dealt some damage.
Asny looked to sai and nodded to the demon king's bay. "Lily got shot down…so did kira. As far as we know both machines and pilots are gone."she stated which seemed to upset sai.
"Why are we moving then? Shouldn't we try to recover the demon king!? Or the strike?" he exclaimed as he threw his arms towards the demon kings bay.
"And why would we recover them if they were shot down? To remove a corpse and then repair it for the next person? If they were shot down the machines are likely beyond repair."said asny. She was being a bit harsh but the tech student was a gundam pilot now. He needed to understand death happened…even if asny knew the only person who died was tolle. Even nicol was still alive.
Still sai needed to understand death happened. And he caused death with each machine he shot down. If he didn't learn that then he was setting himself up for failure and to get shot down the moment it hit him.
Recovery
Cagalli couldn't help but grab her stomach with one hand and cover her mouth with her other as she walked onto the beach of the island the coordinates the archangel gave them lead to. She looked around and saw mechanical parts, scarred ground, even burnt out forest everywhere. Whatever happened here not only trashed the machines involved but it also trashed the island itself.
The thoughts that ran through her head…as she stood there it was all she could do to keep herself from losing her lunch. After a moment though she saw the remains of the strike, pretty well intact if charred to all hell.
"it appears the aegis self-destructed and tried to take the strike with it..."said kisaka as he walked up next to her only to have cagalli run off and shove one of the orb rescue workers out of her way before climbing up onto the remains of the brave multi-purpose war machine. "cagalli!" he shouted, running after her, knowing she likely wasn't ready to see what likely would be inside.
He never got a look inside before cagalli's stance spoke of sadness. "Kira…"she said with sorrow in her voice. "I'm sorry…"he began to say but she stopped him. "He's not here, the cockpit's empty. He must have been thrown somewhere, or maybe he ejected in time…" she stated before running off after hearing someone call HIS name, not hers…HIS…reckless girl. Before following he glanced inside and prayed she was right.
The cockpit wasn't fried or charred as it likely should have been, but still the blast had melted almost everything inside, the leather seat was even melted, not dry and crispy but melted.
Finally he jumped off the machine's mainly intact leg and went after the girl. In its condition the mobile suit likely would be repaired which gave kisaka hope that Kira was in fact ok, having enjoyed seeing cagalli interact with him.
He followed cagalli to the group of orb marines and was surprised to see a zaft red uniform instead of Kira's blue flight suit. He could only frown and worry for his fiery charge as she looked down at the young man. To think a group of kids her age gave the archangel hell…
What would she do now though…
It was then his men called out that they had found someone else. Who could it have been? He had heard that the demon king was also vanquished here. Was it lily?
As he followed the calls of his men he saw what looked like a severely destroyed and somewhat different version of the demon king. He wasn't privy to any details of the battle so he wasn't sure what happened but he noticed his men pulling a young boy, about cagalli's age, out of the cockpit.
Running over the marines were already examining him. He had shrapnel all over his body, and he was topless aside from the same mound on his back as lily wore. His pants were long cargo pants and he had combat boots on.
"Whats his condition?"asked kisaka as he looked the boy over. A medic looked to kisaka and shook his head. "Not good. He's in shock, has to have been out cold for some time. He should have bled out by now, only reason he hasn't is alot of this shrapnel looks almost healed around it. He is gonna need surgery and lots of it to remove the shrapnel, not to mention a blood transfusion."said the medic.
Kisaka nodded. "Get him onboard the plane and start whatever you need to save him." he said as he motioned for them to get to work. They nodded and started shouting orders to the other medics and marines.
Recovery
Lily sat at a park in her wheelchair. She didn't know why amy seemed to wanna torture her, or so she thought. It was a nice sunny day and amy had her nephew so the two of them decided to push lily to a nearby park. Of course amy was off playing with her nephew but they had positioned lily in a way she was almost forced to stare at a family fawning over a new little one.
Her eyes teared up as she watched them bounce the baby, play with it. Hearing it giggle and laugh. Lily wanted to use her one useable arm to turn herself but she was just so depressed she almost felt it better to torture herself by watching.
Finally amy came over, panting and stood infront of her. "Hey lily. You see that? Just beat him 2-1 in some hoops. My athletic skills are getting better don't ya think?"she asked panting still. Lily nodded and amy finally noticed her tears.
"Hey whats got…oh…oh you still wanna have a baby huh?"she asked as she heard the baby giggle and turned to see where lily was looking.
Lily nodded and slowly began to sob. "but how can I if I can't even hold it? What's the point?"she cried as she began to in all honesty make something of a scene but luckily everyone was ignoring them.
Amy sighed and said, "i have had so much patience with you. I have tried and tried to get you to understand that with a little effort, according to your docs you could walk and everything again…LILY!" she said before slapping lily.
Lily blinked and brought her hand up to hold her cheek. "You…amy…what was that for?"she asked.
Amy glared at lily. " that is for making a scene like a child not getting their way. That is for making me change adult diapers and take care of your sorry ass for almost 2 months now when you know damn well exactly what you need to do to get use of your limbs back. THAT IS FOR BEING A WHINY LITTLE BITCH LIKE SHINN!" yelled amy which she instantly blushed and turned lily around, pushing her somewhere more private.
Lily was…well shocked at this side of amy. She had never expected her to say such things. It was also then she noticed a slight tingling in her leg. Her body was screaming at her to stand up, to fight back. She felt her fight or flight response demanding retribution for that slap.
She had been so certain that the docs were wrong. That they were just like the VA doc's, saying her injuries were all in her head. She had never once thought maybe they were right. With no brain damage, and no official spinal cord damage, she had no real reason to be paralyzed.
As amy stood before her once more, yelling at her about how she finally understood why the military had discharged her and just insult after insult. Lily finally stood up for the first time in almost two months, and with her left arm decked amy, sending her to the ground. But still…she stood….until a moment later she fell back into the chair.
Panting amy looked up at lily who was also panting. "Holy shit….you stood….i didn't think it would actually work…but you stood up. You can use your leg again at least. I bet with some physical therapy you could easily have full use of your body again."said amy as she got up, touching under her nose to check her bloody nose she surely had.
Lily nodded. "Yeah…it looks like it."said lily as she looked to her arm and sure enough with a little focus she could just barely move her fingers.
Recovery
Murrue sighed as the whole ship seemed to finally be able to relax. They had had fighters circling them for some time, a protective screen against any form of zaft attack even though they were so close to alaska.
As the fighters left kuzzey called out that they were being scanned at radar point 18.
"It's just alaska trying to make sure it's us. Send them some of our data so they can confirm we are who we are. Then they shouldn't have a problem."she said as she tried to mitigate potential worry.
"Man, we dodged a bullet there. If those fighters hadn't shown up when they did i wonder if zaft might have tried attacking again." said a crewman before another responded with. "Even zaft isn't crazy enough to try and attack us this close to alaska, not with one prototype and who knows how many DiNN's."said the crewman which had them both laughing.
Laughter….it had been quite some time since murrue heard any of her crew in such a jovial state.
Murrue called the ship down from level 2 battle stations and switched over to a half watch to allow the crew to rest.
It was then she got a ping from the hangar. Opening it she saw nadi from the tekkadan crew.
"Hey, listen. I know it's none of our business what you do with your people, but could you send someone down to talk some sense into sai. He's insisting we repair the flauros and let him go. I try to tell him it's too far even for a gundam but he is insisting."said nadi.
Murrue nodded and sighed. "I`ll be down in a moment."she said before she got out of her chair.
"Natarle you have the bridge while i go deal with crewman argyle."said murrue as she left the bridge.
Down in the hangar sai was running calculations on the flauros to see if it could make sure a trip to the island. Everything said no because the water was not a solid enough surface for him to hover on long term. But asny did it for cagalli so why couldn't he for his friends. One of them had to survive and if they didn't then lily should have.
"Crewman argyle. What are you doing?"asked murrue as she walked over the gangplanks to the flauros' bay.
"Since no one else seems worried about recovering the gundams I figure it's up to me. No one else seems worried that one of them may have survived if not all of them!" shouted said and murrue was tempted to reach in and slap him.
"Crewman argyle you are a member of the earth alliance forces. I am your commanding officer. I am ordering you to stand down NOW!"she commanded as she tried to reason with his usual rule following self.
"Fuck that. I don't care who my commanding officer is..kira….he can't be…and tolle.."said sai as he finally began to break down in his cockpit.
Murrue sighed and reached in. patting his shoulder she said, "i understand….but if you go out there….and we lose you two. How will your friends feel?"asked murrue.
Sai looked up at her, tears in his eyes and nodded. " yeah…yeah your right. Ok. i`ll power down and wait for further orders."said sai as he began the flauros' power down sequence.
With that the ship was coming into alaska's waters.
Meanwhile in space tsuga was on her way back to the plants, intent on being awarded a faith position and potentially a new mobile suit. She was proud of her actions for her home land sure…but she also had a nagging sensation that something wasn't right. Like she was forgetting something
.
Recovery
Thats another chapter down! As usual please read and review!