melredcap | WM Chapter 1: "...Not your average soldiers..." (part 1/2)

Oh look! A different fic for everyone to re-read! Yes, that means we're branching out. Chapters of Warped Mirrors go a lot faster than DoJ - for one thing, they're silly, and for another they're about half the length. (Except for this one. Five sets of pilot backstory gets LONG. :P)

*Mel eyes the text file*
...Egad. I was kind of in love with bold type when we wrote this, wasn't I?

Warped Mirrors
(Shameless Self-Insertion)
--------------------------

Evil Inspiration: All Christy's fault
Authors: Mel & Christy
Co-conspirators: Jay, Dan, and Asuka
Warnings: Weird humour, language, violence, and bad jokes. (Flee Christy's boxer shorts!)

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Prologue
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Life was good.

The various Principalities, Kingdoms, Republics and Empires were at peace. Tentative steps were being taken towards establishing colonies on the moon and Mars. There were rumours that a couple of scientific groups were close to being able to produce zero gravity in a laboratory environment, which brought up all sorts of exciting possibilities.

...And then the Theodorian Empire got serious about being an Empire. They'd always had a national philosophy of "Eventual World Domination", but they were pretty laid back about it. The emphasis was on eventual. After all, it was their destiny to-- eventually-- rule the world. It would happen sooner or later, without any need for war or bloodshed; the Theodorians weren't really sure how it would happen, but their leading philosophers generally agreed that the other nations would See The Wisdom Of The Idea and join up voluntarily.

Then the old Emperor died, and the new one had new ideas.

----------

Ten Years Later...

----------------
'Warped Mirrors'
Chapter 1
...Not your average soldiers...
----------------

"Yo! 'Scuse us... could you give us a hand? We're kinda lost."

Lieutenant Valeri turned and nearly choked. Strolling casually towards him were five of the most unmilitary-looking people he'd ever seen. In the lead was a tall teenaged girl with long brown hair in a plait, wearing cutoff jeans, flipflops and a t-shirt that read "Peace Through Superior Firepower". Right behind her was a short teenaged girl wearing black jeans, motorcycle boots and a tank top; her auburn braid was nearly as long as the first girl's, and she had a long black leather coat draped over her arm. Lieutenant Valeri would have wondered why she was bothering to carry the coat, since it would be far too hot to wear in the base's usual daytime temperatures, if he hadn't been boggling at the very non-regulation sniper rifle casually slung over her shoulder. Three more teens were trailing along behind the first two, looking around at the base's buildings with a general air of being on some sort of sight-seeing tour, but the lieutenant's assessment of them got to 'not in uniform' and stalled there.

"Well?" the shorter girl asked impatiently. "Can you help us out or not? We're looking for our barracks or rooms or wherever we're supposed to be staying. Mel, did you bring the e-mail?"

"Well, duh," the other girl said, rolling her eyes, "of course I did. 'Be prepared' is my motto, after all."

"I thought it was 'Never put off until tomorrow what you can postpone to next week'?"

"One of my mottos," Mel said, digging into a pocket and pulling out a battered piece of paper. "I have several. What's yours, Christy? 'Die, scum, die!'?"

"I hadn't thought of that one! That's a good one; I'll have to put it right up there with 'Close only counts with horse shoes, hand grenades and thermo-nuclear explosions'," Christy replied, smirking evilly.

"Riiiight. Anyway, we're supposed to be finding barracks--"

"Wha-- wha-- where the HELL do you think you are? ATTEN-SHUN!" the lieutenant roared.

"Eh?" The two girls blinked at him.

"I say old bean, does that gentleman think we're grunts, what?" one of the other teenagers called in an extremely fake Albion accent.

"SHOW SOME RESPECT WHEN YOU'RE SPEAKING TO A SUPERIOR OFFICER!"

Mel snorted. "Who stuck the hair up your ass?"

"That does it! I'm putting you on a charge!" Valeri sputtered, pointing a shaking finger. "Name and number, soldier, now!"

"Superior officer? Name and number?" the shorter girl said derisively. "Well, my name is Cristina Stepanopolous, and we only answer to Madame Garnier and General Petrenkovich."

"I don't have time for this!" Lieutenant Valeri yelled. "You're all on a charge! That'll get you lot into a cell and out of the way until after we've got everything ready for the Gundam pilots. I don't have to take insubordinate behaviour from a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears puppies when we're about to welcome the most important... warriors... of..." He trailed off, eyes widening as he belatedly processed what he'd just heard.

"That would be us," one of the two males in the group put in helpfully, smiling calmly behind his glasses.

* * * * *

----------
PILOT 01 - GUNDAM STARTHRASHER
DANIEL MARTEL
AGE: 19
HEIGHT: 5'8" (173cm)
ORIGIN: GREATER GAUL
ABILITIES: ADVANCED MARTIAL ARTS, HACKING, FURTHER ABILITIES UNKNOWN.
SPECIAL NOTES: EXTREMELY PROTECTIVE, HIDES BEHIND A HARMLESS FACADE. DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE.
----------

Dan adjusted his glasses once again. His hands shoved in the pockets of his khaki pants, and he regretted wearing his customary long sleeved hunter pullover.

"Good afternoon Sir," a young officer saluted the Gundam pilot. The man's eyes were wide in awe of actually meeting one of the five pilots. He shifted nervously before saluting the Gundam Pilot. Ross wondered which one of the Gundams was piloted by the boy.

"Gah!! Sir? Please don't call me sir, I'm not old enough," the young pilot replied, going into all sorts of hysterics. "Just call me Dan," he said while pushing up the wire glasses. His antics had worked in relaxing the young officer. In fact, he was glad to be interrupted from his wandering around the base. He didn't have anything to do. So he burned his time checking over the base's security, which was lacking. He was about to ask the officer if they had a library when a loud shout pierced the air.

"DAMN IT, STEPANOPOLOUS!"

Dan chuckled to himself as he heard Valeri yelling at Christy, he shook his head in amusement. "Looks like she's up to it again." He smiled as he imagined what the other pilot was doing to piss off Valeri.

"Sir...?"

"Sorry, she's a bit of a handful. Watch out for that one, and I thought I told you not to call me sir," Dan mildly scolded the older man. Brown eyes were shining with repressed laughter as the officer began to sputter and apologize. "It's okay, I was only joking. Carry on." With a casual wink, Dan left the furiously blushing officer.

~*~*~*~

"Mommy... can I have one?

"Baby, I don't know."

The little boy looked up at his mother with wide eyes, he really wanted one. It was the first time he ever saw a dog like that, it was cute. Soft brown eyes filled with tears, but he knew he couldn't have a pet. They couldn't afford one.

"It's okay mommy, I don't want it after all."

"Baby..."

The child sniffled and fought the tears, when he finally looked up at his mother he was wearing a smile. "Let's go see something else?"

She looked into his eyes, and knew what he was doing. Slowly she knelt before him. "I know what you're trying to do. I'm sorry that we can't give you what you want..."

"It's my fault, mommy. I shouldn't be so selfish."

"Dan, you're just a child. We should be able to give you everything you want, I'm sorry that we can't..."

"Mommy, I have you and daddy. That's all I need."

~*~*~*~

"After all this time..." Dan whispered to himself as he stared at the sky. He smiled, sadly, from the memory. A five year old child he was, and he knew about the hardships of life.

"Can I help you with something, Sir?"

What is it with these grunts and calling me SIR?? They're older than I am. The pilot turned to the speaker and noticed it was a Lieutenant. "I'm fine," he replied shortly before walking towards his designated bunk.

Nice going, just bite his head off. Calm down... Dan told himself, but it didn't help much. He had a feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"Something's coming..."

~*~*~*~

Two figures ran through the rain, trying their hardest to make it on time. The sound of snapping twigs told them their pursuers were catching up.

"Keep running, baby. We're almost there..."

"Mommy... why are they chasing us?" the boy panted. He was scared that they would hurt him and his mother. She told him everything would be all right, that nothing would happen to him.

"There it is! Hurry, we'll be safe on the helicopter..." The boy's mother ran faster, trying to get her son to safety. He was all that mattered, he had to survive. They had already killed her husband, shot him through the heart in front of their eyes. In that instant they both ran, the helicopter was waiting for them to take them back home.

I won't cry, she thought to herself, not in front of her son.

"Hurry son, get into the helicopter!"

Just as the boy got into the lifting helicopter, he reached out for his mother. Only then did he notice that the bad men had caught up. "Mommy!! Hurry up...!!"

"I'm sorry baby," she whispered before tossing a necklace to him and a final kiss.

"No!" he screamed as his mother turned around and pulled out a gun, giving the helicopter time to lift off. The tears fell down his cheeks as the men attacked his mother, he saw as she was forced to the ground. The boy wiped the tears away, knowing they wouldn't give back his mother.

"Mommy, I'll find you again. I swear," he vowed to himself.

~*~*~*~

I've spent everyday since then hiding who I was. Now I wear this facade, he thought while staring at his reflection. Slightly callused hands removed the nonprescription glasses and laid them on the small dresser. Gundam Pilot 01 stared at himself even more, smiling bitterly. He had done a little too well in creating a harmless image. The light gleamed off the dragon pendant around his neck, his hand rose to his chest and closed over his prized possession. It was the only thing he had to remember his parents, the only proof that he had a family.

< < Red alert, > > a calm female voice announced. < < Red alert. All personnel to battle stations. Unidentified mobile suits approaching from the east, visual contact only; no radar, no scanner returns, no response to our demand for identification. Assumed hostile until further notice. I repeat-- > >

Dan moved quickly, grabbing his glasses off the dresser. He ran down the halls and was approaching the rear of the hanger. He threw the door open and ran to his gundam. His fingers flew over the keys of his wrist-unit, "Starthrasher, Online." He threw the door open and ran to his Gundam.

The pilot grabbed onto the lift wire and was lifted to the open hatch. Dan climbed into the cockpit and buckled his safety-harness. "Activate weapon systems," he commanded. If only Christy had finished with the rest of the upgrade...

You're fucking with the wrong person, he thought while the hatch closed.

* * * * *

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PILOT 02 - GUNDAM HADES
CHRISTINA STEPANOPOLOUS
AGE: 17
HEIGHT: 5'1" (155cm)
ORIGIN: ATLANTEAN EMPIRE OF THERA
ABILITIES: SHARPSHOOTER, ASSASSIN, ENGINEERING, MECHANICS, PROGRAMMING.
SPECIAL NOTES: MULTIPLE PERSONALITY. MAY BE VIOLENT. APPROACH WITH CAUTION.
----------

"...and of course the base commander will be more than happy to welcome you," Lieutenant Valeri said smoothly, smiling at the woman sitting next to him in the back of the Jeep.

"I understand that the Gundam pilots have been based here for the last few months, since they started working together," she said, leaning forward slightly, recorder at the ready.

"Er, well, yes..." he said uncomfortably. "That's, ah, that fact isn't classified."

"My producer would really appreciate it if I got an interview with them. And I would too, of course," she purred.

"I'm afraid that won't be possible," he said quickly. "They don't, ah, speak publicly. And even if they did, you wouldn't be able to broadcast anything that might give a clue to their identity."

"But surely just a few words--"

"Sir! Gundam pilot at two o'clock!" the driver yelped, slamming on the brakes.

"Which one?!" the lieutenant screeched, spinning around to look just as a blurred figure jumped onto the Jeep's hood, clattered across, and then rollerbladed away across the ashphalt.

"...Which one do you think, sir?" the driver asked weakly.

"DAMN IT, STEPANOPOLOUS!" Valeri roared, standing upright and clutching the roll bar. "IF ANYONE ELSE PULLED HALF THE CRAP YOU DO, THEY'D BE DISCHARGED!"

"They're Gundam pilots, sir," the driver pointed out, putting the Jeep back into gear. "It's not like we've got spares..."

"...Stepanopolous, is it?" the reporter muttered under her breath. "That's... A member of the Theran Imperial family is a Gundam pilot?!"

As they moved off again, the driver glanced back at the reporter, a worried expression on his face. "Uh, sir... I don't think you should have--"

"Just shut up and drive, Corporal Seau," Valeri snapped, sitting down and folding his arms in a huff.

----------

"Damn stick-up-the-ass jerk," Christy snorted, swooping around a corner. "I'm not 'anyone else', I'm your fucking sacrificial lamb... Oh look, an obstacle course!" Grinning, she wove between the soldiers drilling on the practice ground, throwing their formation into chaos as they jumped and ducked away from her.

"HOLD FORMATION, damn you!" the drill sergeant bellowed. "If she runs over your lily-white toes, just suck it up and stay in step! Hey, Toots, come back in five minutes; I'll be making them do a wheel."

"Sorry, Sarge," she called back over her shoulder, waving. "Maybe next time. You know how it is; places to go, people to bother..."

The smile faded as she rolled away.

~*~*~*~

"Can we get on with it?" the five-year-old girl complained, slowly skating around the courtyard. "I have places to go and people to bother, you know."

"We can't start until you come over here and sit down, Christina," her tutor said, exasperated.

"Yes we can!" she insisted. "It's not like you need to wire me to anything, and it's an oral test. 'Sides, I'm s'posed to practice multi-tasking, right?"

"Rollerblading and mathematics are not two skills you'll have to combine in the future--"

"So?" The little girl sighed heavily, waving one finger in a blatant imitation of her tutor's most annoying mannerism. "Mr. Coniff, I'm surprised at you. It doesn't matter what the skills are, so long as it's a physical activity and one or more cer-- cerbr-- cerebral exercises. Mother said so," she finished, pulling out the clinching argument.

Her tutor sighed. "I suppose so. What is the cube root of--"

"Three."

"Huh?!"

Christina grinned at him. "You ask a question about cube roots first one-third of the time, and when you do, four-fifths of the time it's the cube root of twenty-seven. You're very predictable, Mr. Coniff."

~*~*~*~

"Stick up the aaaaa~ass," Christy whispered, smirking slightly as she picked up speed, approaching the motor pool. "Way too many people around here have sticks up their asses... I think it's time for me to pull something really outrageous again. Shake them all up a bit." She waved to a cluster of soldiers working on a truck's engine, smirk growing wider as she mused. "Maybe Mel and I can get together to market that 'Lieutenant-on-a-stick' lollipop she was talking about? Or I could roller-blade naked... that'd be a good start!"

Behind her, there was a coughing rumble as the truck started up, then a loud *BANG!* as it backfired; the next instant, she was crouched behind another truck, scanning the area with cold, hard eyes, gun in hand.

"Um... oops," a nervous voice called from the group around the truck. "Er... sorry, Two-- I mean, Christy-- I mean, uh, ma'am!"

Christy closed her eyes briefly, a shiver running through her, and when she opened them again they were back to normal. "Sounds like it needs a little more work, guys," she called, sliding the automatic back into the holster snugged against her spine (under the 'BITE ME!' Tasmanian Devil boxer shorts).

"...Yeah," the private called back, sounding relieved. "We'll, um, keep at it."

Blading away again, Christy laughed, a little shakily. "Took me by surprise there," she muttered. "You expect bangs in a battle... it's a bit different when you're somewhere that's supposed to be safe."

~*~*~*~

"Christina?! Christina, quickly, come here!"

"Mother? What's happening?" The eleven-year-old Christy looked up at her parents as they hurried her out of the building, eyes wide and scared. She could hear explosions, and the base's alarms were all going off...

"The Theodorians are attacking," her father explained quickly, "so we have to get to the shelters and get out of the soldiers' way. You remember the emergency plan, don't you, honey?"

"Of course I remember," she grumbled, swallowing nervously but trying not to show it. "Are they here because of your project?"

"They might be," her mother admitted, holding her back as her father checked around a corner before beckoning them on. "We've made some major breakthroughs recently, and if they found out--"

The building beside them exploded.

Christina screamed in shock as something ripped diagonally across her back, slashing through skin and muscle before it ricocheted off the ashphalt and bounced away. She found herself on hands and knees, watching blood patter onto the path beneath her, vaguely surprised that it didn't hurt.

"Mother?" she said muzzily, lifting her head to look around. Why weren't her parents helping her? "Fa--"

Then she saw them.

I'm... in shock? she thought with a strange sort of detached curiosity, staring at the bodies of her parents through the cold frost that seemed to have settled on her. Yes... it's the usual response. Apparently. The first aid textbook said... um. First aid isn't going to help, is it?

She inched forward to press bloody fingers against her mother's neck, checking for a pulse, then sat back. It was rather obvious that she didn't need to check her father, but she did anyway, just in case.

No. It's not going to do any good.

There was a tremor through the ground beneath her, and she looked up at the mobile suit standing in the burning wreckage of the building. She watched, quite calmly, as its head swivelled to point its main camera directly at her; then it stepped forward, one foot coming down barely inches behind her, and walked away.

----------

When she woke up, she was in a hospital, and the nurses wouldn't tell her anything, so she simply ignored them all until someone she knew she could trust turned up.

"Hello, Uncle Janus."

"Ah... hello, Christina," the Emperor said, blinking as he sat down. He'd expected a traumatised, withdrawn child who would have to be coaxed to respond, and then he'd expected a flood of tears and hysteria. He was prepared for tears and hysteria.

He wasn't prepared for a girl who looked at him out of flat, dead eyes and spoke in a perfectly calm, expressionless voice.

"Where are my parents' bodies?"

"Ah-- I, um--"

"I do know they're dead, Uncle Janus. You don't have to break the news to me."

"Ah. I... see. Your..." He swallowed and quickly rearranged his thoughts, discarding the comforting words he'd agonised over. "Your parents are lying in state in the Palace chapel. The funeral will be in three days."

"Thank you. For not trying to shelter me," she added. "I don't want to be sheltered."

"I understand, Christina."

"I don't think you do, Uncle Janus, but you will. He ignored me, you know," she said calmly.

"...Who?"

"The Theodorian who killed my parents," she explained, still in that deadpan voice. "He walked straight past and ignored me, because I wasn't a threat.

She looked up at the Emperor, eyes glittering with cold determination.

"I want to be a threat. I won't let them ignore me next time."

~*~*~*~

Christy ran on autopilot for a while, blading slowly (for her) around the base with a faint, surface smile on her face; then she blinked and shook herself, smirking for real as she heard Lieutenant Valeri screeching about something in the distance.

When the noise didn't stop after the first couple of sentences, she picked up speed and cruised in that direction, curious. Sounds like someone really pissed him off... and that's his 'something awful has happened to my dignity' squawk, not the 'dressing someone down' one. I might as well find out who did what, and congratulate them--

Alarms started to howl all over the base, and a nearby loudspeaker crackled to life.

< < Red alert, > > a calm female voice announced. < < Red alert. All personnel to battle stations. Unidentified mobile suits approaching from the east, visual contact only; no radar, no scanner returns, no response to our demand for identification. Assumed hostile until further notice. I repeat-- > >

Christy was halfway to her Gundam and accelerating when the message started to repeat, stabbing at buttons on her wrist unit. "Hades, prep for combat," she snapped into it. "Hades, cockpit open."

Skidding to a halt between her Gundam's feet, she grabbed the dangling lift wire and was hauled up. Clattering into the cockpit -- still wearing her rollerblades -- she threw herself into the pilot's seat and grinned, wriggling her arms into the waldo controls as the hatch closed and sealed.

"Ignore this, you bastards," she whispered, then raised her voice. "Hades! Cloak!

* * * * *

----------
PILOT 03 - GUNDAM MORKELEB
ASUKA (no family name)
AGE: 17
HEIGHT: 5'5" (165 cm)
ORIGIN: GLACIS
ABILITIES: KNIFE-THROWING, CLOSE-COMBAT, INFILTRATION, DEMOLITION.
SPECIAL NOTES: SOMETIMES DISOBEDIENT. TOTALLY ERRATIC AND UNPREDICTABLE. APPROACH WITH CAUTION. NEVER SURPRISE.
----------

The chestnut-haired teenager blinked slowly twice or thrice before putting on his shades. The light was so intense here, he was nearly blinded. The heat too bothered him a little. After all, while he had undergone training to learn to bear extreme conditions, his homeland wasn't a country where the general temperature was really high... He remembered that people were surprised if it didn't snow or freeze at least 200 to 250 days per year.

He'd gone out of his room because he had suddenly realised that he was so bored he was thinking of actually DOING the exercises on trajectory calculus his professor gave him before their departure. The second he realised what he had thought, he was in the corridor, intending on finding something, anything to do. But... In a military complex... Besides watching the trainees running in circles around the base, and be baked by the sun, there wasn't much to do. At least in his room, they had air-conditioning. Well, sort of.

He hid in the shadows of one of the hangars and amused himself by counting the number of trainees he actually saw in his position and how much sniper bullets he needed to kill them all. He wasn't near as good as the pilot 02 with a rifle (something to do with the patience needed to aim correctly at a moving target), but imagining the trajectories (and the resulting bloodshed) was fun. One bullet at exactly the right time and the right location and he could hit at least five of them before the bullet lost its speed. It was mentally interesting, but in a real combat situation, to save bullets wasn't his forte... and he definitely preferred blades, anyway.

Furthermore, he wasn't authorised to shoot at the trainees. Never mind that he, too, needed to train. It nearly made him pout.

He cursed mentally at this bloody heat that made him sweat so much, and redid the knot that kept the black pullover on his hips. Hell forbid that he lose this, even if it wasn't really needed at the moment. He would kill to keep it.

Even if because of it, his butt was a little too hot... And not the good kind of hot, sadly.

~*~*~*~

The little chestnut-haired boy tried to keep his balance on the chair's back to look through the window at the children playing in the snow, between swings and a slide he had never used in all the time he lived here. He wanted to go out too, to bury himself under this white coat, to make himself a little igloo, to catch snowflakes, things like that. Not necessarily with the others, after all he was used to playing alone, but...

But today, his mother hadn't even let him go out in the secluded garden where he could play. He didn't know why.

It wasn't as if his mother thought it was important that he knew beforehand. She didn't know how and even if it would work out. She observed the child from afar, not knowing what to do with him.

A light knock on the door surprised the child, who nearly lost his balance on the chair's back but regained it at the last second, before the chair could topple entirely. The woman didn't even try to warn him or scold him for this. He had a catlike grace and could walk on tightrope at four; she'd seen him go out of his room by the window more than once, climbing on the roof and running on the edge. Luckily, even if trying to forbid him this kind of exercise or any other thing was a dead end, the only instruction he followed was to go unnoticed.

Leaving the room, she opened the front door, and a man in his early fifties stepped in the house. She didn't greet him, only stared at him and nodded curtly; their affair had been terminated long ago and all her illusions of romantic love with it, the same second she told him, so happy, that she carried his baby.

"Karen..." saluted the man, a little nervous under the too-clear cold stare of the woman. She shrugged before turning again to look at the room the boy was in, but the man held her back.

"Hem... How is he?" asked the man while playing nervously with the collar of his black pullover.

"Correct," she said evenly.

"It wasn't what I meant," he tried to say.

"I know," she answered, voice flat. "Strange? Is that what you want to know? Yes, he is. But after all it's hardly surprising, with the kind of life he leads. Always moving, never authorised to play, without father..."

"A lot of children grow without a father!! And you know why I can't be his!!" protested the man, not realising that his voice had risen and that the boy could hear him now.

"A lot, yeah... But if you were dead, I could say it to him and then find another husband to replace you. Now, I can't even have a boyfriend. I can't even find someone who could take him if something happened to me. I can't even let him play with other children. Because their parents could ask about him. Because, officially, he doesn't even exist," she added venomously.

The boy dropped his hand off the doorknob and silently returned to the window. He didn't hear the man who was his father protest, "But I would take care of him!!! I can't really keep him with me, but I could find him something... Mathilda would help too."

"How kind of her," the woman answered back.

"...she knows it isn't his fault."

"She knows it would lead to a scandal. Her husband sowing illegitimate children everywhere."

The man sighed loudly. He didn't know why he tried, Karen would never forgive him. Even if he divorced to marry her... Which he couldn't do even if he had wanted. Sometimes he wondered why he had had an affair with her. Had she always been that cold and bitter? ...No, she was much more innocent, then, much more kind and happy.

"Enough, please. Can I see him?"

When they entered the room, the window was open, the curtains flapping in the cold wind, snowflakes slowly falling to the wooden floor.

The boy was nowhere in sight.

"A-kun?" called his mother.

No response.

"Asuka?" called his father, suddenly afraid.

~*~*~*~

The pilot unconsciously caressed the pullover he wore around the hips, remembering vaguely the day his father followed him onto the roof. He had been sitting under the chimney, staring at the snow fields, when the man climbed after him.

When Asuka told him he'd heard, he had talked to him, not like at a boy, but at an adult, explained to him the why and the how. With simple words, but the real reasons. He'd been grateful for that. A little bit.

For the pullover his father had put on him while they were talking too. Hell forbid he complain about the cold, and he put all his energy not to show his problem, but it had been kind of the old man.

And while they were 'bonding' on the roof, the assassin paid by the opposition who had been following the husband of the ruler of Glacis all day, waiting for an opportunity, was torturing Karen to death to punish her for not admitting where his target had gone.

A blur of colours passed through the training field and the recruits he was facing and the chestnut-haired boy started slightly, his memories fading and returning to the back of his mind.

Christy was visibly trying to beat her own slalom-at-top-speed record and her scaring-poor-recruits-to-death record. She was totally psycho. He liked her.

He shrugged and went to the hangar where his Gundam was stored. A bunch of mechanics were currently working on it... He had been a little careless the last time he trained in it. Leaning against the hangar door, he turned again to the exterior. He had thought that maybe under the building it would be cooler but he forgot about the motors. Shit.

Hell, he was so hot. Looking remotely at the psycho girl and cursing mentally at this bloody heat, he tried to decide if he should take off his red tanktop or his jeans first. The tanktop was lighter than the jeans so it would be a lesser benefit, but the jeans, unfortunately, had nothing under them. To flash everybody or not to flash everybody? The first answer seemed to become more and more interesting now that he thought of the reactions he could provoke in the poor mechanics and recruits...

A mechanic that was running arms full of pieces without looking nearly bumped into him, and he shot him a glare fit to kill all by itself.

"Sorry, I... *gulp*" the sturdy man choked when he recognised the small, lithe teenager as pilot 03. Three was a psychopath, it was a well-known fact. They made bets on him; like, if he hadn't become a Gundam pilot, would he have become a serial killer or a hitman?

Asuka lowered his shades and stared at him in silence, not showing how much it amused him to see a man twice his weight nearly wet himself in face of his frost-blue eyes.

The man ran. Asuka smirked, before following him inside and stopping in front of his Gundam. He admired the suit for a few minutes, terrorising the poor technicians who were currently working on it as they wondered if he was searching for errors in their repairs or scratches in the paint so that he could kill them for it.

"Is it finished?" he asked curtly, not looking at anybody save his Gundam.

"Yessir," came a trembling voice.

The teenager nodded imperceptibly and climbed to the cockpit, and closed the door behind him. Maybe he could put on the air-conditioning.

He turned on the hi-fi and let it shout. His favourite CD was in; a group of hard-rockish sort with gothic kind of lyrics. Evil warlords, dragons, dying unicorns and bloodied knights in quests for a refused peace. He had a hidden interest for this kind of stuff. The more blatant example was his Gundam, named Morkeleb after a black dragon in a
heroic-fantasy book he read at twelve.

~*~*~*~

The ruler of Glacis and her staff were discussing the choice of the pilot for the Gundam they were secretly working on. Their country was neutral in theory and hadn't that much political influence in the world area -- not that they wanted the influence at all, they were happy as long as they were being left in peace -- but with these bloody Theodorians better ten times safe than sorry, even if the current joke in the government said that the Theodorian's army would be seen here only if their Emperor took a shine to ice-skating. The project had been decided on ten months ago by the ruler herself, helped with some of her council that were faithful to her, and the mecha was nearly finished. It was a secret project; most of the population, mostly self-sufficient, didn't see the need at all and wasn't interested in even thinking of the other countries' problems. Well, a Gundam wasn't so expensive for an entire state after all. They lost much more money in other stupidities.

Asuka was wandering in the base where the man his father had put him with -- an ancient school friend who was being paid to pass as his father -- was currently working as a technician. Logically the boy had absolutely no right to do so, but he had always been a master at sneaking around and hadn't needed more than three days to learn the complete layout of the base off by heart.

But there was one sector the boy didn't know what was in two weeks after his arrival and he was curious. The security was so high he had needed all this time to find a way in, it had to be for something really interesting.

He kept totally silent and discreet while he was sneaking in, paying attention big time to the wanderings of the security and of the techs... until he nearly bumped nose first into something blood red and metallic.

He looked up... and up... and up...

"HEY KID!!!! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE?!??" shouted one of the guards who had never thought he would find a ten-year old skinny boy in front of the biggest weapon of mass destruction never built.

...And Asuka fell in love.

----------

After he was captured and sent to his father's wife, he just had to push a few buttons (namely his own existence in the world) to obtain the right to be put on the Gundam-pilots-to-be list. After that, it didn't take long before he was the only candidate left.

~*~*~*~

< < Red alert, > > a calm female voice announced, jerking him out of his semi-sleep state. < < Red alert. All personnel to battle stations. Unidentified mobile suits approaching from the east, visual contact only; no radar, no scanner returns, no response to our demand for identification. Assumed hostile until further notice. I repeat-- > >

Smirking slightly, Asuka brought the Gundam's systems on line, roaring the engines. The controls were cold under his hands, but he didn't even feel them under his gloves.

The music blared in his ears.

"I can hear the war cry over the hills
while dragons fill the sun
Rage in the wind at the touch of steel
blindness in their evil eyes

Another war another fight
to defend my kingdom
from the evil lords.

Eternal Glory you are my aim
ride in my heart again angel of revenge"

"Here we go, Morkeleb..."

* * * * *
(continued next post)