Gundam Seed Celestial Forge

[Limedalek]

I'm a bit surprised that the Morgenrotte team accepted Sai's ideas so quickly and, above all, that they are so inconspicuous.

I would have thought that if they are going to continue working with the Alliance again anyway (why would they?) they would at least be under strict orders NOT to reveal their new knowledge where no one in the Alliance can hear them and infer that they know something new.

Considering that the Earth Alliance is the Atlantic Federation, and the Atlantic Federation is Blue Cosmos for all practical purposes, it would be reasonable for Orb to be hesitant to put his new and improved knowledge in the hands of people who are screaming how much they want to kill all the Coordinators.

(It's not even necessary for the engineering team to particularly like Coordinators, just for them to think that there are Coordinators on Orb and therefore there is a risk that EA might decide to "cleanse the Earth of gene-spawn monsters" at any moment.)

EDIT: Expanding on the previous comment, I would say that the situation is framed as follows:

1) The Morgenrotte team has gained access to a new source of obviously superior designs and knowledge.

2) Not only that, but even though Sai explains himself in a terrible way, he has managed to convince them of the feasibility and superiority of these new designs.

but 3) Morgenrotte was also working with the Alliance on designing MS, which poses a double problem: keeping the Alliance team from finding out that Morgenrotte has access to superior designs, and at the same time not implying that somethinig weird is happening.

I assume the reason the Morgenrotte team returned to the joint facility with the EA team was because it was decided that their simply not returning would be highly suspicious. And it could lead EA to make a move to determine what exactly is going on. In this case, the normal thing to do would have been to get Morgenrotte's team together and stress to them the importance of keeping their mouths shut about their new knowledge.

But what we see here is that they can't keep their mouths shut and are constantly rubbing the Alliance team in the face "we know much more than you, your designs are rubbish next to what we can do".

Unless the author intends for the plot to follow this line of action and has EA's spy service intervene to investigate this, it seems like an extremely clumsy decision for what are supposed to be military engineers who should know the importance of not disclosing sensitive information.

Click to shrink...

The Alliance people on Heliopolis are not smart people. They honestly wouldn't notice much and would likely be to stressed out and over worked to think about what Orb technicians are saying very much. Lieutenant Murrue Ramius(who is listed as On-site development lead of first-generation G-Weapons) for example doesn't seem to know that they(the G project team) are in the same building as a school, the G project was based there for at least a year according to official sources.They also filled the cockpits of the G Weapons with dozens of completely unnecessary buttons and even a full keyboard which is just going to confuse the hell out of anyone who tries to pilot or train for one of these things.

Will the Earth Alliance find out stuff is happening most likely, will they have enough time or be able to do anything by the time they find out even a fraction of whats going on unlikely.

As for why they accept his ideas 1 The author has chosen to make Sai a noble among other things to explain why some random high-school kid would be in an arranged marriage with the only daughter of the Vice President of another nation. 2 He showed off a brand new state of the art mobile armor design(Gina could tell he is a Coordinator in-charge of a major arms manufacturer) and he showed the top Morgenrotte people a working natural use OS something which no one else in the setting has right now

EDIT- the noble thing is a really big deal. Nobles are allowed to own ships with Anti-Matter weapons.

 

[Darkchespin]

---A/N this fic has been building up to this moment. The most random Ball joke of all time. Also the battle of Heliopolis I guess.
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My day starts the same as any other for the past couple of weeks. Wake up thinking about how weird mobile suit design theory was before I started working, go TA for Professor Kato's advanced class, and then work on making sure our pre-production type Den'an Zon's were usable given what we were dealing with.

I call it a pre-production type because these are going to be made using standard foam metal like the Astray's were given. We don't exactly have the facilities to make gundarium or titanium ceramic composite armor. That was the only real compromise beyond us obviously not having enough helium-3 on Heliopolis to try making a Minovsky ultracompact fusion reactor. We had to use one of the other types available to us.

Said other type of reactor also meant we could change some of the plans the Balls were going to be using. Mainly because the other type of reactor was able to fit inside a Ball, so we could suddenly have a higher reactor output to put to use on our thrusters and whatnot. Only half the lot we made had them because they wanted to at least confirm that my reactor designs worked. They aren't directly available for our defense team as the design was made just to test the reactor's work in the first place. Why they didn't believe me when I pulled out the Gundam X I don't know, but they wanted to confirm it anyway.

I had considered making an integrated beam weapon for the design to be made right now, but making an assembly line for that would take more time and be harder than just going ahead with ballistic weapons derived from the Ball's cannon ala the Zanny. For now I both designed that gun and modified the hand plugs to use the current beam rifle design. We already have the infrastructure to make a ton of those rifles, so it's easier than waiting for the new beam rifles to finally be made.

The MAW-02a and MAW-02b Balls are being made right now to get rid of our aging Mistral line of worker pods with guns. I can't call them mobile armors with a straight face. We now have a contingent of Balls large enough to protect the colony. This was a massive improvement given the Mistral was never good enough to protect Heliopolis. I've heard that pirates and mercenaries have access to the GINN now, so why weren't there any here to protect us? Or even a single Izumo?

Orb has always been a big advocate of armed neutrality. It's what we practice near the homeland with our fleet. Why not do the same for our only civilian colony? We could have been attacked and have to wait days for support to arrive from Ame-no-Mihashira. Heck, that could still happen now, but at least we have 3 "functional" mobile suits and Balls to fight against enemies with. This doesn't include the couple of somewhat completed pre-production Den'an Zons we have here for frame verification. We haven't had time to fit in the beam shields and whatnot yet, but they have the beam sabers and can use the Astray series beam rifle, so they aren't exactly unarmed. The mainland even shipped us some of the Astray test pilots to have them test the units.

I feel bad for those test pilots. They weren't ready for a machine that could keep up with what they wanted. One of them crashed into a wall when testing the updated Astray OS from what I heard from the guys who keep in contact with the mass production team back in the homeland. Supposedly, the people back home have quite a few of those mass production Astrays which are going to be relegated to training machines for their entire service life if the Den'an doesn't have sudden problems in production.

If that happens, I can just use the early type Jamesgun. It's mechanically simpler, and is similar to the Astray in concept. It's only revolutionary size wise in comparison to having integrated beam weapons, having a beam shield, and being smaller than normal units. At least for the first models, the ones that were actually used in combat were changed to include beam shields and stronger reactors to compensate for the strain on the shields but on the original reactor design. I'm not counting the nuclear reactor as an advantage for the sake of argument, because otherwise you have the Zaku I be far ahead of everything here which is kind of wrong.

I guess I shouldn't be saying the Astrays are that terrible. They really aren't as bad as I make them out to be. Being fair to them, they have good performance for a first production machine. They skipped the machines which didn't have miniaturized beam weapons, and went straight to something that with a properly coded OS would be comparable to a GM Ground type. The Battery technology is impressive, and considering the amount of shock nuclear fusion caused people, a requirement following the N-Jammers. This was likely the best powerplant they could use which is honestly more impressive given the machine can run a beam weapon from its own internal battery. That's like running the RX-78-02 Gundam from just the beam rifles E-cap. It just doesn't seem that impressive considering I know how to make multiple different nuclear fusion reactors.

I was under the impression that fusion reactors were commonplace, but they clearly weren't and still aren't that common. Why they didn't figure out nuclear fusion is beyond me, but it's a thing for some reason. I wasn't even the one to discover it. I literally remembered the theory behind the Minovsky reactor right after I woke up one morning. I even remembered the full derivations of how Minovsky discovered his particle and how it was proven all the way to when the first reactors were made. I don't know how this is possible, but it's probably newtype space magic mumbo jumbo like all the other weird things in my life.

My life feels like it's ruled by newtype fuckery at this point. A couple days ago, I had to go out and buy stuff for dinner, and when I came home, time hadn't passed. Time hadn't passed when I was making the food either, but the minute I had finished cooking, time resumed. I only noticed because the market is an hour from my home, and I had to go and come back during the time right before the colony simulates night. It didn't change to night until I started eating. Time exists most of the time, except apparently cooking based on my testing.

I know from Anaheim's teachings that this isn't normal newtype behavior. We confirmed Newtypes under psychoframe boosting can manipulate time, but that mostly was reversal of time, and also possibly time travel based on some of the reports we received regarding the original RX-0's pilot. We assume psychoframe is speeding up whatever is supposed to come from newtypes, but I haven't been under any in my life. I own possibly one single piece of psychoframe, the key, but that shouldn't be powerful enough to cause this. Time distortion only occurred with full frame psycho machines like the RX-0 line, not small fragments. I'm not even sure the key is psychoframe either. I haven't had time to test what it's made of with all my work on our next generation defense technology. My existence raises so many questions that I am not prepared to answer.

The key forces me to ask other questions as well. I found an advanced processor fabricator in the space the key is connected to as well as a terminal which when I looked at it had data on a lot of random science by actual aliens. We knew that there was life on other worlds, but we hadn't confirmed that it was intelligent. Popular consensus regarding Evidence 01 was that the fossil was of some form of naturally occurring space creature similar to cows or whales. The database here was about an intergalactic empire which consisted of multiple species based on how there were multiple differing space suit designs, as well as an honest to god caste system based on some of the documentation on usage.

The database had a lot of technology as well, like ship designs, plasma weapons, infantry level railguns, some advanced cryogenics research and basically everything else you could ever really want. There were also some new mecha designs and an honest to god experimental antimatter reactor. Freaking insane stuff was in here. If we were having issues even producing beam shields, think about how long it would take to build the tools behind the tools behind the tools for the antimatter stuff. It just wasn't worth it at this juncture. Our production could only really take like less than one percent of the stuff here in a realistic timeframe. The current things being introduced were enough for now.

The weirdest part of the information in the database is that there is some stuff specifically designed for humans. As in, an intergalactic civilization had enough humans to design specific spacesuits for them. It's not even one of the previous members of the homo genus either. The data makes it explicitly homo sapiens. It includes a literal anatomic diagram of a run-of-the-mill human. The data doesn't label it as homo sapiens, but it is labeled human.

To add on to the mystery, humans are labeled as being primarily from a different galactic empire called the Imperium of Man. Of course the database didn't include much on them beyond the name being listed in some therapy documents as having traumatized people to run away from the empire made entirely of humans, and some notes about certain technologies being more effective on certain imperial weapons. There was also stuff relating to mind control to make the population compliant, so that is concerning and makes a lot of the therapy stuff suspect. I have to point out how the existence of this Imperium of Man is impossible. This planet is our homeworld, and we haven't even gotten past Jupiter yet. I'm terrified of the implications of this.

It gets even weirder though because there is a random shrine to the Machine God, and a quantum prayerbook. Said prayer book includes mentions of the planet Mars as holy. I'm also a qualified priest of this religion. I have cybernetics now. Kind of. It's complicated. It's like they are there, but they aren't apparent unless I think about it enough. Passively recognizing that I have bionic implants isn't enough to have them show up. It takes some significant conscious focus on them to force them to materialize. I've instinctually used one of the mechadendrites to get me a coffee without thinking about it, but when I tried to make my servo-arm pick up a large crate later it was apparent. I haven't tested if others can see them, but I'm willing to assume yes.

I only noticed them because the prayer book said stuff about replacing the flesh with mighty steel, and that all magi had implants which led me to realize I had cybernetics. I had to spend an hour calming down and reading some of the stories my family wrote in order to calm down. I realized I couldn't really feel the implants after that, so I thought they no longer existed. I had to be completely cognizant of how I had the cybernetics for them to be physical again. Most of the time they aren't there because you don't really think about how you have limbs that often.

I did have to upgrade my servo arm though. It had very little in the delicate handling department before I modified it. It was hard to do it because it was made of some stupidly strong material, but there were weaker parts made of steel so I managed. The upgrades boiled down to basically adding pressure sensors and modifying the way the arm changed the grip strength. The original intervals were, let's say excessively large. I also just added a third section when I realized that I could just add a finer arm instead. It came out less bulky and more refined than the other ones, but that also makes it somewhat against scripture. I painted it Rust Red to appease my religious leanings.

This is all mostly irrelevant to how today was going. Today, my students are still working on Kato's weird exoskeleton thing and trying to work on it.

I got here before everyone like usual. Then Professor Kato got here. He finally had come back a day or two ago. I was informed he had been working on the mobile suit technology, but he wasn't really that helpful from what I had heard. Probably because he taught classes instead of just being on the project. He hadn't yet shown up to any of my informal seminars either. He said something about some of his midterms requiring him to do extra research to determine if they were right. That complaint was common among professors who had a lot of coordinator students according to the other TA's i was acquainted with. I could agree with the statement, but it honestly felt the same as dealing with a really driven natural. Most of the coordinator students in the class I TA'd for were doing the bare minimum to have good grades like their natural counterparts. The only difference was how much effort constituted the bare minimum.

The Professor was happy with the progress our students had made on the exoskeleton, but he hadn't really discussed with me anything about the Astrays. He probably was just tired from all the proofs he had to grade and whatnot. I know I was whenever I had to grade stuff for his class.

Now we were stuck here waiting for the kids to show up.

Oh sweet, the door opened. Finally I can do something instead of just sitting here thinking about how strange my life is.

"Hey Kuzzey, you're the first one here." I said a little befuddled. Kuzzey is usually the last one to show up. He's the slacker of the group. "Go check in with Professor Kato and get to work."

I uhh, don't really know how to make this work with just him. Miriallia and Kira have most of the code on their laptops, and Tolle is the guy who pilots it. Kuzzey is a hardware specialist, and he has been done with his part of the project for a while. Kuzzey has been stuck doing maintenance for like a week. It's a shame he drew the short stick for who gets to be the guy in the suit.

"Professor what am I supposed to do?" Kuzzey said aimlessly looking around the room.

"I don't really know," I responded, scratching my head a little. "Go email Miriallia about if she can send you the code so you can do something. Or just mess around until she gets here. It doesn't really matter,"

"Thanks teach!" The shit eating Grin on Kuzzey's face told me all I needed to know about how much work he'd be getting done.

"Yo Kuzz, what's big in the gaming sphere recently? I've been swamped with work, so I haven't really had time to check on what's going on." I asked awkwardly trying to make small talk, he's not doing much else so we both might as well do something useful with our time.

"Nothing really new has dropped since Christmas to be honest."

"Damn, that sucks. Has anything really interesting happened since classes started up again?"
"It's the same as usual. People gossiping about who is dating who and all that jazz. The most interesting thing was a damaged pipe on the second floor of the chemistry building."

"Hey, that's something. Was it to the bathrooms?"

"No, one of the sinks just didn't work until they fixed it. Class ended early because of it." I said as I was interrupted by the door opening. Thank god, talking to Kuzzey is hard.

I turned around to go check who came in. As expected it was Toelle and Mirallia. The two were still in that cute honeymoon period where they did their best to be together as much as possible. I wish I had a relationship like that with Flay, but our majors are just too different to have that be feasible. She also doesn't wake up early enough for that to work either. I swear she sleeps like a cat or something.

"Miralia, you have the code right? I need you to pass it around so everyone else can work on it." She nodded, which was nice. Tolle and Kuzzey however both groaned simultaneously. "Guys, this project needs to be finished by March. We need it for that big engineering event. You are almost done, just suck it up for a bit."

The room had a bunch of extra disks to make hard copies of where we were now so it would be easier for us to hold onto. I thought it was a weird thing because emails existed, but who am I to judge the practices of the school? Copying the code took very little time, so we were mostly fine. Kira likely hadn't actually changed it since he left yesterday, so he was going to be behind on what it actually said. Miriallia actually works outside of class instead of watching the news all the time like some of the people in this project.

The codehad only slightly changed since I had gotten my abilities, but they had almost gotten it working fully, but they didn't need to know that. The sooner we are done the sooner I have free time. I was done with my version of a working code, but this was their project. I couldn't take away their achievements like that. Mine was only useful as something that could help me guide people to the correct version.

"Mirallia, how's it been?" I trusted her to have more information about stuff. She was social enough to not exclusively know about the people in this room. Mirallia also was close enough with Flay to know if she was doing fine or not. I honestly don't need to know about how Flay is doing, I could always ask her myself, but it's always awkward when we talk to each other. I think the whole being engaged thing is really messing with our ability to communicate.

"It's been going fine. One of my friends finally got asked out by her crush. It was agonizing watching the two of them dance around the question, but it's finally over!" She chattered enthusiastically. "There isn't any major homework yet either so this semester is going to be great!"

"That's good. It's the start of the semester though, so keep an eye out for when it does get harder. I know you'll do fine though. Tolle might be in for a beating though. Mechanical operations has a horrid spring semester for Freshmen." I said, causing Tolle to look over at me. "I think it has something to do with moving from simulators to actually using a Mistral. One of my friends had his unit break midtest last year. He still gets mad about it to this day."

"Relax. I did practice last semester. I made the whole squad do it and everything. You were there!" Tolle said butting into the conversation.

"I know. You almost hit like 4 separate asteroids. We weren't even that far from the colony." I said poking a hole in his confidence, to which he at least had the decency to look embarrassed about.
"That was because a ship had a cargo door malfunction. It wasn't my fault." He tried to bluster.

"I know, I'm just messin with you. You'll do better than most of your classmates. Now get back to work." I said putting the conversation to rest, of course I didn't want to mention the Ball because Tolle wasn't going into the military. I don't think we're going to be seeing civilian Ball designs for a while.

I got back to watching them do work. There wasn't going to be that much done compared to when Kira was here, but at this point I was fine with him being a little late. They were close enough to being done, I can spend a second working on my own project list. Mainly some aquatic units. I blanked out on those and just didn't make any. A simplified aqua-javelin would work. Converting the tech to work with the Den'an's design would be a challenge, but it's as good as I can do for now. Any other design would just not fit the MS doctrine I have advocated for.

"Mirallia, can you go get Kira? I need to talk to him about some work I gave him." Professor Kato said tiredly as he was grading the homework he assigned last week. I don't know why is asking the only person who's doing work to leave instead of Kuzzy and actually have him do something.

"Sure thing." Miriallia said as she walked back out of the room, to which Tolle left soon after that.

Which just left Kuzzey still working, which was a change of pace for the slacker but at least something was getting done.

"I'm going to a staff meeting in a minute. Sai, you're in charge. Before I forget about it, I need you to give this disc to Kira when he gets here. It's important."

I don't know what's on this and I don't need to know, it's between Kira and Kato so there's no need to be nosey.

"Man Kuzzey, why is everyone having to leave for a bit today?"

"I dunno, but it lets me slack off more."

"I'm going to ignore what you just said."

Someone else is coming in. Wait, this isn't anyone who should be in the room. This girl was clearly trying to look like the shadiest person in the world with that getup. Like really, a trench coat in brown and a newsboy hat? It's like looking at the world's worst spy.

I swear I know her from somewhere.

"Hey, why are you here?"

"I'm looking for Professor Kato."

"He's in a staff meeting. What are you here for?"'

She's shifting uncomfortably

"Uhh, class stuff."

"I'm a TA for most of his classes. You could ask me about it if it isn't about your grades." I had already moved closer to her, so that Kuzzey would be further away.

"Uhhh" she stuttered nervously, I could tell that wasn't why she was here. It's one of those newtype things. You could kinda feel people are lying even if they weren't newtypes. She also looked incredibly shady, so even basic intuition could see something was wrong. A student wouldn't be wearing this getup if they actually wanted to speak with him. For all I know, this is a spy probing for military secrets. "I know you're lying, why are you really looking for him.?" I am still moving closer and she was still fidgeting like this wasn't something she expected.

Wait, I DO recognize this person!

"Cagalli? What are you doing here? I thought you weren't going to technical college."

"I wanted to talk with the professor."

"Why? Is he involved in the drug trade? What business could you possibly have with him that couldn't be done via a conference call?"

"It's important, just tell me where he is. Wait, do I know you?"

"Cagalli we've known each other for 10 years and No I can't tell you. He's busy. and you look ridiculous. If you didn't want anyone to recognize you, you should have gone with an oversized hoodie and headphones instead of this mess. You stand out too much. Anyone who actually pays attention to the news or actually remembers that ORB has a nobility system would recognize you. You are incredibly lucky most people that would be going to this college don't care about that stuff, and that the majority of the people in ORB just forget we aren't their homeland half the time."'

"Wait, Sai? What are you doing here?" Cagalli asked, realization spreading across her face.

"I'm getting a degree in engineering. That and working here but I only started a couple weeks ago. I'm the one who is supposed to be asking questions here. I'm in charge, maybe I can help."
"I'm here looking into mobile weapons development…"

"You're here to talk about my Balls?!?!" As I said that, Mirallia, Toelle and Kira entered the room. "Wait, that came out wrong."

That sounded vaguely like an innuendo. I'm going to get my shit rocked and I can feel Kuzzey stare into the back of my head. There is no way I am getting out of this situation without either pissing someone off, or looking like I am in a relationship with someone. I've spent over a year carefully cultivating the image of someone who is single and unimportant. If Kira, the guy who spends time actually watching the news, notices who she is, I'm done for. Screw it, I can sacrifice the single angle to keep national security intact. My image is worth less than what is probably a military problem.

"So is this your girlfriend Sai?"

"Toelle, shut it."

That's about as evasive as I can be without explaining military stuff. I also am denying it which hopefully pacifies Cagalli, but will definitely confirm it from their point of view.

"Wait, she's a girl?"

Damn, Kira made the biggest mistake when dealing with Cagalli. Mistaking her for a guy. I swear I've seen her beat the shit out of people over it. Rest in peace. You will be missed. Well at least I don't have to worry about Kira recognizing her.

"Of course I am. What did you think I was?" Cagalli shouted indignantly, shooting him a scathing glare.

Luckily I have just the life line to save him from the mess he got into. "Kira, here is the stuff Kato wanted you to work on. I expect everyone to be working when I come back."

"Even more work? I barely finished everything yesterday."

"Kira, you are studying at a technical institute run by Morgenrote. This could be important."

"Like they would let teenagers do anything of value."

Oh, how wrong you are my friend. How wrong you are.

"I know, but take this seriously. You're probably going to get hired by Morgenrote post graduation, and this extra work is going to help your career. Do you have any idea what it is?"

"It's probably just a program analysis or something."

"Kira, I'm just going to warn you not to piss off that girl. I've known her for years, and she could very easily kick your ass." I whispered that to not attract too much attention.

He looked confused about why I was warning him, but that's fine. I have gotten the information across. "So anyway, I need to go finish my very important conversation in private. You people need to keep working while I'm gone."

Just move through the door and toward the weapons development stuff. I'm not entirely sure how she found out, but she could be working on behalf of her father, so I should be taking it seriously. The hallway, while not exactly secure, is practically deserted most of the time.

"If we are going to talk, can we at least use the other language and not Japanese? It's safer."

Back in the olden days, Orb was a thing that was separate from the rest of the world. It was never conquered, and no one really ever thought much of it. We had a unique culture and everything back then which included a language. You can generally track where and how the nobles of Orb came from in that era. Except for my family. We were always the Argyles, and just kinda showed up one day. It's weird.

This all changed a bit after World War 3. We had such a large influx of migrants from Japan we had to change the official language to it. A lot of that original culture got lost after that, but simultaneously Japan lost out on its culture to other things at the same time. The only people I know who still remember the old culture are the nobility.

"Fine. What the heck was with you going on about your Balls?" Cagalli snapped as she swapped to Orbian.

"You were asking about mobile weapons. I just designed one called the Ball a few weeks ago. I thought that's what you were talking about."

"No! I'm looking into ORB working on mobile suits for the Earth Alliance." Cagalli said, much to my bafflement.

Like, What? No really, What? Why on earth would we do that? The Alliance has no major technological advantage to offer besides the lightwave barrier stuff Artemis has, and that technology is somewhat considered a dead end. It's also the exclusive stuff of the Eurasians, and if they won't share that with their allies, why would they share it with us?

"That's fucking ridiculous. I'm working on our mobile suit development project, and nothing about it suggests we ever worked with the Alliance."

"So we do have a mobile suit development project?"

"Yeah, we technically already have a completed design. It's already being phased out for a better one called the Den'an Zon, but it's still in testing. It honestly shouldn't be, but for some reason no one ever trusts me when I say the design works and has been used before." Great, and now she is just staring blankly at me like I grew a second head. "Is it something I said?"

"Yes. Everything you just said sounds like a lie. There is no way you are working on top secret military projects."

"But I am. It's equally ridiculous that the equivalent of a princess made her way to a space colony just to check if her government was working with an alliance of nations and yet here we are."

"That's different."

"In what way is it different?" I responded indignantly.

"Weapons development is way harder."
\
"Yeah, but it's not like we are really developing anything new." I conceded. Hmm industrial constructor bits would be something new. Hmm "We are just kinda cranking out old designs with modernization."

"There aren't any old mobile suits. The earliest ones are like 5 years old."

That's both wrong and stupid, but whatever.

"Seriously, why didn't you just talk to one of the Sahaku's or something? They would know if this was happening or not. Morgenrote is the national arms manufacturing company. It would have taken like 5 minutes."
"I was literally told about the Alliance connection by the test pilots of the Astrays."

"You mean Juri and her weird friends? I literally worked with them on mobile suits, and asked them about the development of the Astrays. Why did they tell you and not me?"

"Because they are my friends, and they thought I knew about it already?"

"I'm literally their boss now. You don't leave your boss in the dark about important information like this. Unless they already expected me to know that stuff already…"

"So are we going to look for the Alliance Machines?"

"Wait, they are building their units here?!!?"

"As far as i know, yes that is what is happening."

"The fact we haven't been attacked yet is a miracle. Also no, we aren't. Alliance forces are trigger-happy, and we would be basically giving them high value political prisoners if we aren't shot on sight."

"So what should we do?"

"Take it up with Gina I guess? I'm going to push up some pilot training I'm supposed to be giving on mixed unit tactics. I have a feeling we are going to be attacked in the next couple of days."

*KABOOM*

"Or right now. Sure that might as well happen. We need to get outside."

"Wouldn't a building be safer?"

"If you want to get crushed by debris, stay here. That hallway should lead to the shelters in the factory district. I'm going to go get my machine to fight whoever is attacking us."

It's always annoyed me that the hallways leading outside the college don't have doors. I mean sure, it's convenient for students who are late to an applied engineering class, but there is always the chance someone would put a classified project there. Oh, that's where the alliance put their machines. Fun. How did I not know about this if their information security is so shit? So we reverse engineered the Astray from those units. I can see where we went wrong. We focused on stealing the one which looks under armed, but probably has optional equipment instead of what looks to be a transformable unit.

Why would they even design one right now? They aren't even fielding their own units, and they decided to make a transformable machine? Was it to easily transfer pilots from the mobile armor division to mobile suits? Heck that one over there has a bunch of nozzles all over the body to disperse something. Possibly beam chaff? Or maybe it's for that colloid stuff people have been passing off as a miracle technology. There could be potential in the Collid technologies. Whatever, just move away as fast as possible. Get somewhere else, and unleash one of my mobile suits, and defeat the enemy. Simple.

Oh great, and Cagalli decides now is the time to have a breakdown about us not being neutral.

"Cagalli, we need to move before they spot us. You'll have time to rue your father or whatever once we are away from here."

"Fine."

And so we moved away from the people packing up their equipment and went toward a more secure location. Said location was just a railing closer to one of the shelters built into the superstructure of Heliopolis which wasn't that far away from the open area that held the alliance mobile suits, but that's the Alliance's fault for having the shittest operational security i have ever seen.

"I'm so pissed I didn't know we were working with the Alliance. I could have better prepared us for a battle for an attack. I'm sure the Ball teams can hold the entrances to the Colony, but we don't know how many enemy forces have arrived."

"Can I have my breakdown now?"

"Yes. I'm going to summon my mobile suit"

"Your what?" I snapped my fingers as I focused on the image of the mobile suit as I Summoned the Jegan. It's not my most powerful Unit, and if we are about to fight a fleet or something I would prefer the Gundam X. It is too bad the Moon is on the other side of the planet, and I need a direct line for the Satellite Cannon to turn on. The Jegan however is meant for fighting around colonies, and has enough optional parts to overcome the enemy if i have to go resupply.

The snap wasn't required for the summon, but it looked cool.

The machine appeared with its cockpit open, and lucky for us the railing was the correct height to get onto the rope without any issues..

Was I entirely sure of how this ability worked given I just figured out this was possible? No, but this isn't the time for questions. It's the time for action.

Cagalli however, had plenty of questions.

"I… What… How?"

"Newtype bullshit."

"That explains nothing!"

"Ask me later when we aren't under attack. Go to a shelter or something. I don't remember you being qualified for vehicle combat."

"Neither are you."

"Actually, I am a qualified Mobile Suit Pilot and engineer."

I jumped to the rope and got inside my Mobile Suit. The best use of my time is going outside to take on the enemy trying to breach our defenses, but I can't be sure no one has infiltrated the colony and is trying to destroy the Alliance prototypes. However, these people brought war to my country. I'm not going to help them as much as they like.

Saving their asses might get us enough leverage to get the designs for the other prototypes. I want to know just how badly these people messed up the transformable unit. It can't be good given how my very casual look at some of the other prototypes tells me we corrected some of their flaws like the lack of beam sabers.
Now I just need to close the cockpit and get on with the battle.

"Wait your ass up."

"Why the fuck are you trying to get into my mobile suit???"

"I'm not fucking doing nothing while we are being attacked."

"Fine, get in the backseat. I don't have time to deal with this."

"This is Sai Argyle, Jegan, Launching!"

I've always wanted to say that.

"What do you mean Jegan? I thought the new model was called the Den'an Zon?"

"Yeah, this is a different machine. Much older."

"When did we build this? This isn't an Astray."

"No, it's the RGM-89R Jegan A type. Built by Anaheim Electronics way back in the day."

"Anaheim Electronics?"

"Yeah, the people who trained me in mobile suit design. They are based out of the moon."

She looked down like she was contemplating what I was talking about. Good for me as well so I can actively plan what I need to do.

I'm just going to go out there and disable the enemy ships. Getting prisoners is better than us just killing everyone. We get leverage out of the PLANTS for prisoner exchange, and if they ignore us… Well, Orb accepts coordinators as part of its population. Effectively flying around using the Jegan without really having to care if someone notices me is nice. My training of our current defense team has been going somewhat well, but I keep having to care if civilian traffic sees us. Sure, I've been using the Daughtress for the training, but it's nice to finally cut myself loose. I'm lucky that the colony doesn't really have large buildings or anything. Makes it very easy to maneuver myself through the sky toward the outside of the colony.

"Is this what being in a mobile suit is like?"

"Oh I would say the experience of a Jegan is like a six out of ten. It's no Gundam, but it's pretty ok. Especially for a sixty year old machine."
"A Gundam? Sixty years old?"

"The thing the Astray units were trying to copy, you uncultured swine. Read a history book sometime Also, i'm just talking about the design. This unit is a RGM-89R, so it's probably closer to thirty if this one isn't a refit variant."

"That doesn't inspire much confidence."

Great, she just had to start insulting my pride and joy. I mean I had time to paint the family crest on the shield and everything. That takes work.

"Zaku II's can last literal centuries with minimal maintenance, and this machine is much more economical than that. I also do vigorous maintenance with a giant water hose. Trust me, we aren't going to die in this thing unless I drop the ball and we die in the battle."

Ok, take stock of the current battle area. The Balls seem to be holding the GINNs off very well. It's nothing decisive, but it's clear we are holding ground. Must be the experience the GINN pilots have. A full year of combat does make you a competent pilot no matter how bad your machine is.

We are facing two ships, one Laurasia and one Nazca. I think that maps out to like twelve mobile suits total that our enemy can field. I'm only seeing three right now. Could they be trying to steal the prototypes? If so that knocks down the total number of enemies right now to four if they are trying to steal the Astrays as well, seven if we pretend they don't know about them.

Enemy mobile suits count up to three GINN and a CGUE that just got launched from that Nazca. That leaves the enemy either out of mobile suits or there are three enemy units that haven't been launched yet.
I guess if we want to consider anyone else as allies, we have a single Alliance Supply ship of a class I don't recognize, and 2 moebius's. Oh shit, there's also a Moebius Zero. Damn, that's wild. You don't see those that often.
The CGUE and Moebius Zero are busy dueling each other. I can safely ignore them. That supply ship is being focused on more than our people which is good I guess. No idea why it launched out of the Hangar, but whatever. Best course of action is to take out the Catapults. Make it harder for them to launch new units.

Damn, Comms are jammed. That's going to make things harder.

"Are you insane you're going to fight two warships with a machine gun?!"

"No. We've got a beam rifle, a grenade launcher, beam sabers, and missiles. Actually, you could look at it on the little screen next to your seat. It has labels for what we have on this suit. The screen is in training mode, so you won't be able to use the weapons or anything."

Just move with the flow of the Battle. Use the big beam saber, really mess them up. Ginn moving to intercept me. Okay, go for the head and arms. Keep as much of the enemy around as possible for interrogation or diplomatic favors. He's moving in with his sword. Good. Dodge the telegraphed swing, and use the upside down U slash to take out the arms and head in one motion.

One down.

I need to move on to the ships. You take out the motherships, you end the battle. The Crossbone Vanguard proved that decades ago. Take out the Nazca First, it's faster and could more easily run from this battle. It's where the commander of this operation probably is, and I need to take him down now. Force a cease fire before civilians get taken out. I don't have a bazooka or anything, but I do have a beam rifle. That's more than enough to take out the primary beam cannons. I can't leave those intact without risking some sort of suicide attack if the commander is salty.

*PCHEW*

*PCHEW*

Cannons down, now for the catapult. Removing the catapult gives more time to react to enemy machines which is very helpful given how green everyone around me is.

*BZTZ*

Shit, railguns. That was close. They almost hit me with that… Fine, I'll just go from underneath and take out the catapult that way.

*PCHEW. *

And that's a two for one special.

Next is the engines. I can't let these people get away. Funny thing about the Nazca class, two thirds of its primary engines are parallel to each other. Beam rifles are known to be extremely good at penetrating enemy vessels. Quick blasts here, here, and here. And now its thrust is crippled.

On to the Laurasia class vessel.

Laurasia's are just big gunboats that happen to have an MS catapult and storage location. I can tell the Ball team took great offense to the Laurasia attacking their home. It looks like shit. Multiple of its weapons are clearly no longer operable, the catapult is damaged, and I think part of the ship is venting atmosphere. I guess I can leave it to the Ball guys.

Ball team has finally cleared out the GINNs as well. I'm not seeing much on our side for losses which is nice. There's still a single CGUE out. Is it still distracted with that Moebius Zero?? God that is horrible. They've been fighting this entire battle and haven't done anything clearly relevant to this battle. Like how are they still around? Are these two newtypes? I can sorta feel them a bit, but it's faint. Yeah, I guess that explains how the CGUE guy is still alive. Newtypes are almost always good at piloting. And the fact he seems to just be dueling the Moebius guy which leaves the rest of the ZAFT force more or less undefended, and we clearly took advantage of that fact.

Honestly, it looks like the ZAFT forces were more occupied with fighting the Alliance forces than us. I don't know why, We are the bigger threat, but I guess they didn't know that. Rest in peace random Alliance Transport ship. You will be missed. Same as that one Moebius pilot. They could have waited and let us handle it, but clearly they didn't trust our top tier security.

We are still launching new Balls as well, so it's clear we are winning rather decisively at the moment. Some of the Balls are moving to take out the rest of the Nazca's weapons. I don't see the Astrays yet, but it could just be the communications jamming messing with our ability to organize.

Shit, the CGUE guy is breaking off from the duel. I think he's just realized his entire unit is either dead or about to be captured. And, of course he is coming for me. Great.

At least this one is trying to use a ranged weapon on me. Sure it's not apparent that my machine is a close combat specialist, but you would think these people would save fixing bayonets for when they run out of ammo. That's a lot of ammo he has. He keeps spamming it at me like that's going to significantly affect his probability of hitting me. He's clearly not thinking straight enough to properly lead shots on me or anything. Must be super angry his people got taken down by what must look like weird mobile armors.

I should probably start counter attacking or something. Letting him run out of ammo is fine and all, but I need to end this as fast as possible. I'm pretty sure they had people infiltrate the colony to cause those explosions, and we need to take care of them as soon as possible.

"Eat vulcan pod rounds." Are they good for taking out enemies? No. They are, however, good zoning weapons. I just need this guy to stay still long enough to stab him in his stupid face.

*Brrirring*

Oh sweet a newtype connection, I've never experienced one of these. I wonder what will happen

…

And he just got hit by one of the Ball cannons. It was only the close combat type, but it still fucked up the machine. This is the perfect time to swoop in and disable the enemy. Damn, Ball team is crushing it today. I shouldn't underestimate them as much as I have been recently.

"I'm going to try comms for their surrender."

"You should have done that earlier. You absolutely destroyed them. And you said this was an old machine?!? Since when have you been this good at fighting?"

"Are you going to surrender now? Your ships have been disabled, your mobile suits are trashed, and whoever is inside the colony will be found and captured shortly."

"This is Black Coat Fredrik Ades of the Vesalius. We surrender."

"Is the coat thing supposed to mean something? Are you the captain or something?"

"I am the second in command. The actual captain just got taken out while in his CGUE."

"That's good enough for me. The Orb Union accepts your surrender. You will answer for your crimes of breaking the neutrality agreement at some point to be determined later. You are to get your crewmembers to disarm and wait for us to board your vessels. If you try anything we will destroy your ships." I opened up a line directly to the people in charge of the colony. "Orb command, The enemy has surrendered. Someone go call up the space forces and bring them here. We don't have the facilities to hold all these people last I checked."

"This is going to get complicated isn't it?"

"Yeah think?!"
----Perks Obtained.
Workshop/3D Fabricator GUNNM
Powered tools for cyborg disassembly and repair. Bulky diagnostic computer, ten kilograms of miscellaneous spare parts, very rare compact 3D fabricator capable of milling custom components and printing or repairing circuitry.
The Dark Crystal (azeroth) 200
Draenei use crystals that are, possibly, native to their homeworld for almost all aspects of their daily lives. Even their technology, magic, and homes are made of these crystals. Certain Artificers are capable of 'Programming' these crystals to do certain things ranging from protecting an entire city in a shield or powering magitek spaceships that can travel the void of space. You now have their knowledge of these ancient arts and are capable of incorporating this magitek into your own technology or magic.
What's this Do? [200cp] (Discount Engineer)
The technology used in the frontier can be so complex and advanced it takes years for even the most<br />
brilliant minds to understand. Really now? That's good, you needed something to do after lunch today.<br />
Now, even if your in a dropship in the middle of a fire fight, you can decipher the inner workings of<br />
technology so long as you have the controls to scre- I mean analyze.<br />
Titan Hangar [Free]
A sophisticated auto-factory, this attachment to the warehouse will manufacture any Titan you have the plans for. The designator now causes one of these Titans to be deployed to the point you designate in a drop pod when used. Once deployed, another Titan won't be produced until you return it to the warehouse or it is destroyed.<br />
Additionally, a Titan is now constructed once a day for free, but if you want more than one Titan per day, it will still construct you more if you can feed it the necessary raw materials.
Constructor Drone and AI Kernel
This drone is an automated constructor unit, capable of building simple machines and buildings on its own and more complicated structures and technologies under your direct supervision, so long as it has materials to work with. Its tools can be easily customized or replaced with new or different technologies. Moreover, its software includes a kernel that can be used to grow specialized AI and VI systems optimized for various computational substrates and tasks that are always loyal to you.

 

[AverageMechaFan]

Is there a back log beyond the next chapter on ao3? Though you have been doing a great job so far.

 

[Toguro]

*Brrirring*

Oh sweet a newtype connection, I've never experienced one of these. I wonder what will happen

…

And he just got hit by one of the Ball cannons. It was only the close combat type, but it still fucked up the machine. This is the perfect time to swoop in and disable the enemy. Damn, Ball team is crushing it today. I shouldn't underestimate them as much as I have been recently.

Click to shrink...

"I am the second in command. The actual captain just got taken out while in his CGUE."

Click to shrink...

Wait, so that means the Char rip-off is ded? Nice

 

[wahrifson]

Pfffttt it seems 3rd faction incoming

 

[Darkchespin]

---A/N We are officially caught up with A03. The next chapter should probably be done in a few days if my writers block clears up. I expect that to happen.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
"Hey Athrun."

"Yeah, what is it Yzak?"

"You ever wonder why we're still here?"

"It's one of life's great mysteries isn't it? Why are we here? I mean, are we the product of some cosmic coincidence, or is there really a God watching everything? You know, with a plan for us and stuff. I don't know, man, but it keeps me up at night."

Both stare at each other in silence.

"...What?! I mean why are we out here, on this hill and not taking the alliance's G weapons?"

"We don't have the support required to take down the enemy. We have like ten people with submachine guns. The Alliance has missile trucks, artillery and like five times as many people as us. We'd get slaughtered."

"Where's our support anyway? They should have mopped up the defenses easily."
—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So, dealing with all the prisoners is gonna be problematic. We uhhh, don't have places to keep thousands of war criminals in this civilian factory colony. We have a jail I guess, but it is not designed to hold more than 100 people. We usually have maybe 2 people in there for things like public indecency or something. I'm guessing maybe 400 people are going to be suddenly interred in jail now.

I don't know how many people to be honest. I have no goddamn clue what the crew sizes of ZAFT military vessels would be. I'm not an all knowing god or anything. I know how many MS they can carry because it's relevant to the defense of Heliopolis, but I didn't feel it necessary to know estimated crew capacity. Really feel dumb for not thinking that was important

I uhh, need to figure out how this is going to work. I'm just going to fly back to the colony so I can stop worrying about my oxygen levels. I know I am nowhere near the amount necessary to run out, but I'm not in a pilot suit or anything, and it's making me feel anxious. I also have a passenger, so that also matters. They had finally stopped jamming us, so it's not like I couldn't talk to anyone anymore.

"Guys, how are we going to deal with all the prisoners?"

"I don't know. We can't kill them now though. That'd be a war crime. I've already contacted Ame to send us more ships to maybe hold them on the mainland or something."

"Maybe seal up their ships or something?"

"That's actually a good idea, Cagalli. Except for the part where they could repair their ships, but we have a garrison that could stop them from repairing the weapons or thrusters."

The inside of the colony didn't look that different beyond people running around like headless chickens around the Factory district.

The Alliance Gundams were just kinda in transport trucks trying to get through a tunnel that seemed to have collapsed in on itself. Why did we let them build those on our colony? They weren't in testing, and they are clearly being transported elsewhere. Why build them here? What possible advantage does that serve? You just create an unnecessary logistics issue where the prototypes aren't easily sent to any major front of the war. God one of these seems to be some kind of oversized F90 knockoff.

I hadn't had time to take in the designs of the machines with my frantic movement toward the battle at the port, but I can do that now. They have literally the most basic gundam ever, but in black and gray, basically the same machine but with a bazooka in black and gray, the weird nozzle one that looks like a not V2, a transformer that looks like it would snap in half, and the not F90.

It's hard to tell, but to my trained eye, I can tell the nozzle one and transformer are both built on completely different frames compared to the other three. For what possible reason do they need to have a transformable mobile suit at all? It certainly doesn't look flight capable. Or that separate frame for a machine that is using some form of possible smoke discharge, why make that exist when you had a serviceable unit already? You could just put them on the shield like the Geara Doga! There is no logic to having three things with no common parts.

The V project got away with it because they were attempts to perfect the idea of a mobile suit. They didn't succeed with the Guntank, so they made the Guncannon which still had mobility issues which lead to the Gundam.
They clearly got the mechanical idea down with the first one, so why go through the effort of designing two new frames at all? I mean you clearly know you can put more than one thing on the same frame. There are three of the basic ones, and you can tell one has a big gun attached. I'm assuming they have the same issue with the OS that the Orb team had because I don't see why else these units wouldn't have been put into service earlier.

"Ugggghhhhh, I'm gonna have an aneurysm."

Especially when one of the mobile suits is a transformable unit which likely shares no parts with any of its sister units. The complexity of transformation systems makes it very hard to make something usable by new pilots, or easily mass produced. The Alliance barely even uses captured GINN's based on the news and what Flay tells me, so why have one of the new ones use something that took valuable time instead of shitting out something like a GM based on the super basic one?

"Honestly, I have no idea what they're even going to do with these ugly pieces of shit. I bet they also use batteries like a ghetto build."

"Ghetto build? What are you talking about?"

"Look at those units down there. Those are probably shit based on what I'm looking at. Wait a fuck, that's the same fucking frame as the Astrays! That means either we stole them, or they stole our design? Either way, that's not great for them. There is not that much merit to the Astray plans because well they're kinda shit. The only compliment I can give is the theoretical possibility of Kamehameha attacks due to the specific handplug used. Even then, the battery life makes that a terrible idea, but in a reactor powered mobile suit, that's not as much of an issue."

"Ok, I don't understand most of what you said."

"Tl:dr, They built trash not worth the cost of development."

It's charming when a small island nation does it, but you're the Earth Alliance. You have control of the entire Western Hemisphere and most of Eurasia. You have the resources to actually build and develop reactors. No fucking excuse exists for them!

And now these guys are shooting at me with their stupid missile truck things. I can't even take these clowns seriously anymore. That thing looks positively ancient.

I'm lucky I still have a lot of ammo in my vulcan pod otherwise these could hit civilians or something.

"Holy shit, these are possibly the worst targeted missiles of all time."

I can like move an inch and make them lose the lock on. I know Minovsky Particles fuck with targeting, but I was at least assuming there was going to be an attempt to hit me.

I have speakers on this thing somewhere.

I am officially done with this.

"Can you please FUCK OFF. I'm a member of Orb's military. Any further hostile action will begin hostilities between us. You do not want me to start firing upon you."

Ahh, good they stopped.

Fuck what do I do now? Look for the ZAFT personnel who bombed us I guess? They would have to be idiots to come out without air support

Wait, aren't my parents coming here today?

Shit. Were they hurt during the attack? I need to check on that…

BOOOOMMMMMM

"What?! Who the fuck thinks they can blow a hole through the WALL of a FUCKING COLONY. I'm gonna fucking end them!"

Okay this thing is just a goddamn parody of a Pegasus class designed by a brain dead third grader. I finally have proof the universe is a comedy! The legs are too long and appear to have some form of giant beam cannon inside of them. They weren't connected that well to the main part of the ship that well either. Then there's all the engines like what phenomenal retard thought that was a good idea like what the fuck?!

Seriously, why is the vessel not continuous? Why is there so much fucking empty space everywhere?

"Wait, those were fucking Positron Cannons! We FUCKING GAVE THESE ASSHOLES OUR ANTI-MATTER weapons, and this is how they repay us? Fuck you Gina, you dumb ass motherfucker. You gave them one of our biggest technological advantages, you fucking son of a bitch."

"Sai, are you telling me Rondo Gina Sahaku is the one responsible for this?"

"He must be he's the one incharge around here and I've never seen those suits or this god awful ship before. The clear usage of Orb technology means those suits from the factory district have to be for this abomination."
I pulled up my beam rifle to start shooting the ship. I hate using beam weapons in colonies, but this is a fucking ship. I need to use my full firepower on the enemy.

"Shit, this fucker has Laminate Armor this will take awhile."

"It has what?"

"It's covered in shit that dissipates the energy of beam weapons; it's what Orb uses on its ships. All I have left is my beam rifle and the shield grenades. We may have to disembark…

Wait, could I…"

I can summon my gundam, that is a thing I know is possible. Can I summon a different one, like maybe my Jenice with its machine gun and heat hawk.

I still have energy in the rifle though. I might as well just find somewhere and spam shoot at it until the fucker breaks.

Like the overexposed structure connecting the thruster assembly to the rest of this parody of a warship.

Could I probably cut through it with the beam saber?

Yes.

Will I?

No, because it's just come off with a few repeated shots. The secret to beating laminate armor is never giving it time to cool down.

"Seriously, who designed this thing? It's CWIS placement is pretty fucking bad, and i can just constantly turn with this thing to kill it. How the hell is it supposed to turn in combat anyway? Where is the force supposed to come from? Invisible thrusters? Does something fold out?"

"Sai, can you pay attention to all the bullets and missiles they are shooting at us?"

"I am."

I have no idea why my vulcan pod has so much ammo. It's not even necessary either. It's very easy to maneuver the missiles into the path of the CWIS emplacements. This crew has no idea how these weapons work if they are constantly crossing these streams.

Also, I have a beam rifle next to a giant target. It's not rocket science to maneuver myself where the excess beam energy still hits the enemy.

"Hey, can I get support from the Astray team? We're fighting in the colony, and I think this would be good practice for anti-ship combat."

"You're calling this training!?! The thing where we are fighting for our life inside the colony against a ship that resists your primary weapon."

"Yeah, and when else will the Astray team get to train in anti-ship combat? I haven't been able to teach that effectively due to lacking an example ship. We were going to order the remains of one from the Junk Guild, but this is the perfect opportunity to do it live."

"Will they even be able to handle this?"

"Probably. I have confidence in them. Hopefully one brings the preproduction Den'an. I want to see how good it performs."

Playing with my food is bad, but here's the thing. I'm just stalling for reinforcements. They've had time to suit up, get over here goddammit.

I'm just gonna start shooting at their CWIS until help arrives.

"Sai, sir, let me show you what I can do. "

"This again? Juri, stop trying to get laid while we're fighting!"

"Shut it Asagi."

I don't know what she is talking about. It's always the same shit with these three…

"Can we actually focus for once? Where is the Gold Frame?"

"I dunno, Gina said he had to secure the perimeter or something."

At least I finally have some goddamn support from mobile suits. That took like 7 minutes since the fight started.

"Thank you Pilot Labatt.

Ok, here's the plan. Shoot the connection between the Engine block and the main hull. I'll take point and harass their weapons so they can't get a lock on you. Caldwell, you should focus on defending your teammates. You have higher agility with that prototype. Don't make me regret assigning you as its pilot."

She wasn't even my first pick. Gina didn't want it yet because of the testing. Said the Astray was proven enough for him. He did however send me some notes for his custom unit. He had some ideas for a variation on the shot lancer which would be retractable so as to keep it a consistent weapon throughout combat. The other major idea was to have energy absorbers so it can disable enemy units and power up its Ecaps.

It's uhh an interesting idea. He had a mockup of the planned stuff on an Astray. I'm still thinking of what to do to make the idea more awesome. Possibly the advanced sensor systems of the Dahgi Iris? He wants to be a commander, so that would fit the idea. Enhancing the capacity of the troops and whatnot.

Shit, more missiles.

"Why are we fighting them? Weren't we building weapons for them yesterday?"

"Look at that hole in the colony. If they were smart, they would have used communications after the jamming ended, but they didn't. I see that as an act of bad faith. Disable the ship."

The biggest issues are all the forward facing weapons. My teammates are going to move from that area, so getting as much damage on the beam turret and linear gun would be the best bet.

I'm not risking an antimatter containment breach inside a colony, and I don't think these people are callous enough to shoot those when they should be able to see their allies in the colony proper. Then again, my faith in others has been very shaken today.

"Remember the first rule of Ship Combat. Don't get boxed in by the guns."

I'm using the saber again, but I can't really take the risk on the beam cannons. A big enough explosion could be catastrophic. Stab mode is a go.

"Wait, they didn't armor the weapons? Oh my god. How do you fuck that up? Those are the most obvious points to attack."

Screw it Slash that thing off, I'm done playing with prey below my level.

"And that's number 2 of the beam cannons. Don't be in the primary vector of the Linear cannons. That's a bad idea. Ship combat Rule number 2: You have more mobility, make use of that."

The linear cannons also lack the armor that would help in anti-ship combat. Did they think beam weapons wouldn't advance to mobile suit size or something? If the Astray and their MS are as similar as their frames suggest, they should know it's possible.

"And now it is time for Rule 3 of ship combat, Focus on one spot against hard targets. Repeated attacks will weaken armor."

And here go the grenades from the top. My squad split evenly to hit above and below on the connector to make this go faster. My rifle was clearly doing more damage as well, but there's weren't doing too terribly.
"And that's pylon number 2. Goodbye, you will not be missed."

It also made the ship start sinking toward a convenient patch of forest no one really liked to go toward. That was intentional. Maneuvering a ship in a specific direction with a mobile suit team is easy.
"Honestly, I expected more fight out of this. I feel like I just stole candy from a baby or something."

"Why? I was scared for my life back there."

"MS combat against ships has basic expectations. Mainly that the enemy won't shoot down their own missiles. They did that repeatedly along with not adequately controlling the airspace. They missed a lot of shots that could have been averted with basic leading of a target. They wasted a ton of CIWS ammo taking hail mary shots instead of boxing me in for a missile. They had no clear strategy with their combat. It was just using the weapons and hoping the situation would work itself out.

I think this was a bunch of newbies. Or they had no crew or something. Perfect training fodder"

"We could have talked this out…"

We really couldn't have. No one respects neutrality anymore. How do I express that to someone who believes wholeheartedly in the idea?

"Cagalli, We tried with the other alliance group, and look at where that got us. A hole in the colony wall, and who knows how many fatalities from it. Focus on the fact it's over."
"Turn on your Comms."

"Why?"

"Do it."

"Fine."

The comms were a bit funky sounding, but that's minor M particle interference. It's going to still be legible enough based on earlier tests done with the Jegan.

"Attention ZAFT forces this is Ensign Natarle Badgiruel acting Captain of the Archangel we surrender".

"Maam, this is the orb defense team. We accept the surrender. Besides, your ship is totalled anyway. What are you gonna do, spacewalk to Alliance territory?"

"What?"

"Yeah, that's a bit of a dick response I know. I'm just having a fucking day with everyone attacking my home. You understand, right? And they all do it using the ugliest crappiest equipment anyone has ever designed, the Ginn makes Jurick look like the Jegan.
Nevermind, you don't get the reference. Just get that out to everyone else. I swear to god if I have to fight any more I'm gonna start committing to not minimizing enemy casualties for political gain."

Sensors are picking something up.

"Gina you piece of shit. Where the fuck have you been?"

"Dealing with the enemy mobile suits."

"But they never deployed them."

"They tried while you went to deal with the ship. Honestly, it wasn't worth the time I invested in fighting them. To describe them as bad, would be an insult to the concept of describing something as ineffective or unappealing. They have armor and nothing else. The technology would be better used in our hands."

I turned to look at the enemy mobile suits.

They apparently tried to be used, but clearly didn't do well. That's not saying they were heavily damaged or anything. It's just clear the pilots were pretty fucking shit. They were disarmed and left lying there with the container trucks kinda haphazardly flipped onto them. They were struggling, but couldn't do anything about it except for the weird transforming one that just appears to be stuck in its mobile armor mode flopping around like a fish.

"Nevermind then. Good job. I'm assuming you dealt with the other Alliance vessel."

"The Balls did. Apparently taking out two ZAFT vessels near single handedly makes people not mess with us."

"Well, these chucklefucks didn't get the memo."

"I can still hear you."

"I know that's the point. You guys had a whole five minutes to realize that the battle was over."

"That's an absurd ask. We assumed they would have steamrolled through everything."

"Why did you think we were that incompetent? If anyone is that incompetent, it would be the Alliance. Imagine not being able to make something capable of beating a GINN, the most ghetto mobile suit ever made."
"You seem to be the one making assumptions! Once the OS is completed those G weapons will turn the tide of the war."

"Right…… Well you know what they say about assumptions, They make an ass out of you and me. Besides, you people clearly wanted to leave today. What, were you hoping to land on a good OS in the middle of combat? Perhaps while the ship and everyone on it is getting blown up by machines made of burnt out cars and made by people who think that an OS is some kind of equatorial cuisine."

"..."

"Good talk."

"Cagalli, I'm gonna switch to the private Orb Commline. I need to coordinate whatever the fuck we are gonna do. It's probably gonna boil down to having MS guarding that wreck and the ships, but its better safe than sorry.
This would also be the perfect time to air grievances with Gina. Just saying…"

"Gina, I'm going to have words with you over this travesty."

"Why hello Cagalli Yula Athha, what are you doing in Heliopolis?"

"Waiting for a reason to not cause you a world of pain!"

"Does your father know you're here?"

I need to step in before this gets out of hand. That's one of Cagali's three triggers besides being called a boy and mayonnaise.

"Does your father know you sold our military secrets to another nation?"

"..."

Yeah that was bad, at least the Earth Alliance doesn't seem to know how to make a cooling system or a warship or even what the term 'structurally sound' means.

"Damn it." I just remembered.

"What?"

We still need to find the people who bombed the colony! I knew I forgot something important."

I still need to search for those ZAFT soldiers who infiltrated the colony. Bombs went off inside the colony, so there has to be a few around here somewhere.

Come on sensors, give me what I want to see.

There, on the outlook over there.

"Fuck me, we'll continue this in 10 minutes if that's fine with you Mina."

Yeeting myself over there isn't hard, but it's annoying.

"Your superior officers have surrendered. If you don't end hostilities, I will deal with you myself."

And they of course try using their handheld weapons on a mobile suit. This isn't even going to scratch the paint job. Is this how Zeon pilots felt during the beginning of the One Year War? This is just sad.

"That's it, eat Birdlime."

Birdlime is a very odd piece of technology. It's useful for both patching colony walls and incapacitating enemy infantry forces. It's very useful, as sticking your enemies in goop allows you to interrogate them about what was going on. It's also very subtle compared to 60mm guns and beam weapons.

"Are they going to die from that? Also that was Gina not Mina."

"No, they are just going to be stuck doing nothing until someone picks them up. And I can't tell them apart anyway. Besides, They deserved to be jested for their misdirection."

"Command, I found some ZAFT personnel inside the colony. Marking the location as Maintenance Entrance 27. Get someone to pick these people up soon. You're gonna need a hose. And a lot of guns. These guys are probably special forces."

That should be the end of it. I'm not sure if that is all of them, but in theory I've dealt with the best of the best. I'll just leave the rest to the colony defense force.

"Ok, now we can talk."
----Perks Obtained.
Scavenger (Ravenwood) (100cp)
Sometimes, you do not have the luxury of top of the line equipment and need to rely on what scraps you can salvage. You, however, have an advantage, being able to cobble together scavenged bits into functional equipment that work as well as the real deal. This talent will also inherently improve the durability of such improvised equipment to function even when such materials should not feasible hold up under the strains of use.
Survey (Green Worldz) (100cp)
A simple little survey that, when filled out, reveals the ideal weapon parameters for any given individual. The default length is 239 questions, but the survey becomes longer and more comprehensive as your crafting skills and resources become more diverse. As long as a person fills out the survey truthfully(and they are compelled to do so when faced with this version) , the resulting weapon will be a truly one-of-a-kind tool perfectly matched to their personality and fighting style.
ELDER TECHNOLOGY (The Culture Minds) (200)
Some civs just build to last, and it is not unusual for Sublimed civs to leave considerable artifacts behind. Any technological device, structure or vehicle that you create has an effectively unlimited usable lifespan. Not even organic matter that is a part of the device will decay, or even undergo effects like proton decay over the aeons. They will still need expendable reserves a gun still needs bullets, a laser still needs its power pack replaced or recharged but that gun's moving parts never wear out, and that rechargeable power pack can be reused for aeons and more without loss of performance.
-0-D for Dummies (Megas XLR) (200CP)
A set of textbooks that explains the basics of Hyper-dimensional structure, most potent in making spaces with overlapping existences in layman terms, use tech in making spaces and parts that don't exist in real space. Warning! Extremely energy intensive.

 

[James Wilt]

RIP Archangel, you were gone too soon...

 

[Darkchespin]

RIP Archangel, you were gone too soon...

Click to shrink...

Look at it this way. At least the Dominion will probably exist and be more relevant to Alliance military strategy.
Besides, A lot of the parts of the Archangel is intact. I wonder what is gonna be done with that?

 

[HellTeddy]

Thank you for the chappies!

I can't help but chuckle at what ZAFT and the Alliance must be feeling right now.
Special shout out to Sai's Balls for T bagging those idiots!

 

[Miles96]

I have been following this fic since it was released on ao3 I'm so happy it isn't dead

 

[Z3r0Sama]

Atleast MC apparent lunacy has a sort of maybe valid scapegoat with them spouting 'MS have existed for 60 years', 'Anaheim Electromics' and 'Fusion is most basic of basics'.


Can just hand wave it away as Newtype insanity of future Sai relaying future technological developments back down the timestream to past Sai.

 

[davelll]

Look at it this way. At least the Dominion will probably exist and be more relevant to Alliance military strategy.
Besides, A lot of the parts of the Archangel is intact. I wonder what is gonna be done with that?

Click to shrink...

looks at industrial smelter

 

[Retalom]

Atleast MC apparent lunacy has a sort of maybe valid scapegoat with them spouting 'MS have existed for 60 years', 'Anaheim Electromics' and 'Fusion is most basic of basics'.


Can just hand wave it away as Newtype insanity of future Sai relaying future technological developments back down the timestream to past Sai.

Click to shrink...

Wow your explanation is easier to explain than mine, and simpler for Sai to get away with it. In my head I was thinking like some Orb scientist will theorise that sai somehow synchronized his memories with those of his alternate reality selves which induced insanity as his brain struggles to parce how the fuck he's lived this many lives in the wrong body/reality.

 

[James Wilt]

Wow your explanation is easier to explain than mine, and simpler for Sai to get away with it. In my head I was thinking like some Orb scientist will theorise that sai somehow synchronized his memories with those of his alternate reality selves which induced insanity as his brain struggles to parce how the fuck he's lived this many lives in the wrong body/reality.

Click to shrink...

I mean, they wouldn't be that far off since The Forge basically does that, though usually the recipient can tell the memories apart from their original ones. Sai doesn't seem to be able to do that, which is one of the interesting things about this story. It's also why I hope things like Companions and resources show up, because it would just add to the insanity of it all. After all, at least one of the resources ones warps reality to ensure you have uninterrupted supply lines, up to refilling previously tapped out mines. Imagine what would happen in a space based setting...

Look at it this way. At least the Dominion will probably exist and be more relevant to Alliance military strategy.
Besides, A lot of the parts of the Archangel is intact. I wonder what is gonna be done with that?

Click to shrink...

Hopefully repaired and upgraded. Archangel was the Best Ship after all, surviving against all odds stacked against it...

 

[Retalom]

I mean, they wouldn't be that far off since The Forge basically does that, though usually the recipient can tell the memories apart from their original ones. Sai doesn't seem to be able to do that, which is one of the interesting things about this story. It's also why I hope things like Companions and resources show up, because it would just add to the insanity of it all. After all, at least one of the resources ones warps reality to ensure you have uninterrupted supply lines, up to refilling previously tapped out mines. Imagine what would happen in a space based setting...


Hopefully repaired and upgraded. Archangel was the Best Ship after all, surviving against all odds stacked against it...

Click to shrink...

Lol yeah rip Archangel, tho not sure about the companions and resources thing i've seen too many celestial forge stories die because the companions and resources basically broke the story in a way that forced the authors into a dead end corner or they simply lost interest because at that point they are just adding superficial tension and drama when the forge already gave the mc everything needed to end all long term and short term plots.

 

[Z3r0Sama]

Wow your explanation is easier to explain than mine, and simpler for Sai to get away with it. In my head I was thinking like some Orb scientist will theorise that sai somehow synchronized his memories with those of his alternate reality selves which induced insanity as his brain struggles to parce how the fuck he's lived this many lives in the wrong body/reality.

Click to shrink...

I was just going by the facts that we know when boosted by pyschoframe that Newtypes are capable of messing with Space/Time as demonstrated by Crystal Unicorn. Testing should be able to show that they can influence them to a vastly lesser degree unaided.


Been a long time but I don't remember dimensional shennanigans really being a thing Newtypes can manage.

 

[TheToFu]

Strikingly fun story, he is a little too scatter brained, but I'm enjoying the destruction of canon with the survival of colony and I do hope he has something to replace the ship with because there is alot of battles on the horizon.

Also is that the T'au tech he picked up because those way impressive and would lead to major improvements. Alot of their mech tech is compatible with gundams.

 

[Darkchespin]

PLANT Council POV

"Now the Supreme Council shall commence. For a special session on the disaster at the space colony Heliopolis, a territory of the ORB Union."

"So Patrick can you please explain why we're now at war with another nation."

"I didn't order it. Rau acted on his own."

"Bullshit Patrick, Rau is practically your wife. There is no way he didn't tell you about this shitshow in advance."

"Councilor Canaver, that is out of turn."

"No fuck you Zala, My son, no OUR sons, were captured in a raid against a neutral nation we had no quarrel with, and we lost two of our ace pilots against people who've likely never seen combat in their lives in machines which can't have been out for longer than a month. I'm sick and tired of this fucking war Patrick."

"Councilor Elsman, I understand that you're stressed Canaver, but we could just send more troops to rescue them."

"Yeah great plan Patrick why didn't I think of that? It's not like that will result in Orb handing the plans for their new 'Jegan' mobile suit over to the Earth Alliance or anything like that. No, that could never happen."

"They're clearly already working for them, the Jegan and these Alliance G weapons are clearly related".

"Yeah, and I'm the king of the pirates. Patrick, they are as much alike as any two mobile suit designs in that they all have four limbs and a head. What other amazing engineering knowledge are you gonna share with us? That we actually developed the Jegan and Orb stole it from us with their psychic space magic? OR what about the one that's seven and a half meters smaller than a GINN, the Den'an? That totally looks derived from the machines which could barely even fucking move."

"Regardless Councilor Amalfi, these Alliance-Orb machines are a threat to our forces. We must do everything to defend the PLANTS! Or else we shall know another Bloody Valentine."

"We haven't defended shit in this war Patrick, you limp dicked sausage. From Day 1 we have been on the assault. We haven't been attacked since Junius seven. We invaded Earth, We invaded the moon. We've destroyed neutral colonies. We've killed far more people than died at Junius Severn. Would your wife want that blood on her hands, you bloodthirsty piece of shit?"

"Patrick is right. Letting this go unanswered would be detrimental from keeping the PLANTS safe."

"Councilor Amalfi, with all due respect. Orb is still neutral in this conflict. Pissing them off means we have to fight the people with the antimatter cannons. I'm not taking those odds. I'm a particle physicist, trust me when I say antimatter is extremely dangerous, especially if they hand the technology over to the Alliance."

"While I agree with Councilors Zala and Amalfi that in an ideal world we shouldn't let such a thing go unanswered we simply aren't ready right now. The ZGMF-600 GuAIZ hasn't entered mass production yet and has even been delayed slightly for last minute design revisions in order to ensure this doesn't happen again. Add to that the upcoming second battle of Victoria…"

"Councilors White and Joule, can I suggest a different idea? Why don't we try diplomacy? That probably won't get us attacked."

"Of course you would say the Siegel."

"Yes, because I'm not insane enough to give commanders enough freedom to where they will attack neutral nations without orders. Get the military in line, Patrick.

Besides, we were gonna have that memorial at Junius Seven where my Daughter was supposed to sing her new song. We can make a quick trip to Heliopolis, and then double back for the ceremony. It's quick, barely messes with anything we were planning to do, and lets my daughter go to Orb. She's been begging for that for literally years."

"Isn't she like a massive weeb or something?"

"Yeah, it's super annoying. I swear she keeps watching that anime crap whenever I come home. Only the Orb stuff though, She hasn't watched any of the actual classics like Kaguya Sama Love is War. God, she's an elitist, except she's never watched anything good."

"Why is she the only actual entertainment we have again?"

"She isn't she's just the best we have."

"With all due respect, FUCKING HOW?!"
____________________________________________________________________________
POV: Admiral Duane Lewis C. Harverton Halburton.

We were watching the Orb New Network for all the information about the so-called Battle of Heliopolis.

"That wasn't a battle, Daune. It was a god-damn massacre".

Hoffman was right, there was no way to call that a battle.

The ZAFT forces who started the battle were annihilated in such a methodical manner that could never be replicated by even the best soldiers and tacticians the Alliance could offer.

"The sheer efficiency of this Jegan as it weaved through the battlefield, dismantling the ships and mobile suits with contemptuous ease, was beyond even the most ambitious expectations of the G project. To think it was done by a single unit piloted by a 16 year old natural."

"How the hell didn't we find the designers of it? We looked everywhere for the best of the best. How did we miss the designers and engineers? Why would Orb even take us up on the collaboration if we clearly weren't helpful to them?"

"It was the Sahakus that were helping us but remember they have five major noble families and a few smaller ones over in Orb. This could be a work of the Kious, the Mashimas or even those weirdos the Tokinos. The Ball definitely sounds like something they would come up with, at least based on what I've heard about them."

"Ah yes the Balls, they were already interesting without the on the nose name, but they were clearly held back by the pilot's inexperience. We've seen it countless times throughout the war with Moebius pilots who were fresh out of training."

I left out how they got slaughtered by the dozen on the regular. We both already knew how shit the Moebius was. That was the hardest part of this job. Sending people on missions that had a survival rate of 25% or less. Sending letters to their families of the fallen soldiers was tough. It's worse when you have to lie about their deaths mattering to the war effort.

Fucking Alaska and their nonsense orders. None of them understand how terribly the war is going. All cushy in their impossible to attack Fortress of Solitude. Not doing anything beyond letting them continue the G weapon project.

"No word had been given on mass production before this travesty, and this would probably be the death nail to the project, given the effectiveness of the Ball mobile armor."

"Yeah I'd assume they are thinking about that right now Hoffman, but they know natural use mobile suits are possible now. They will at least consider ground units, hopefully. Even if I have to drag them kicking and screaming toward the reality of modern warfare."
"You certainly have more faith in them than me, old friend."
"That's besides the point of this analysis of the Heliopolis freak show. You could tell the Ball pilots had some training, but the specs of the Ball as it is called by the news clearly were carrying the fight before the Jegan arrived. The Jegan was instrumental to the breakthrough in the space battle. It broke the stalemate between the GINNs and the Balls by taking a GINN out with a beam saber in one simple move. Then it moved on to fight and disable a Nazca by itself. It then took out Rau le Creuset, a notable enemy ace pilot. He might have been officially killed by a Ball, but that wouldn't have happened without the Jegan holding the machine still for long enough to get them the shot."

"The pilot reminds me of Mu La Flaga but more if that makes any sense, Hal. The way people who are blessed with enhanced spatial awareness as they call it, those pilots moved in a different way than the coordinators. Their piloting always feels more natural, like the machine is a part of them, you get me? Something no one has ever really researched beyond the people yapping about SEED factor or whatever the fuck that pseudoscientific bullshit was called, and even they didn't claim to have an explanation for it."

"Interesting point, Hoffman, but that's something we can theorize about later. We need to get back to the Heliopolis debacle.

It only got worse once the battle shifted to inside the colony. The chain of command had been knocked down to just a technical officer he had high hopes for, and some ensign he forgot the name of. This led to them attacking the ORB forces and getting the only dedicated MS carrier taken out by two enemy mobile suits, one of which isn't even finished yet. As well as all 5 G weapons captured by a nation we originally had as allies, but had thrown away due to no one in the Atlantic Federation besides us knowing how to use a fucking radio."

This could only be summarized in one single line.

"This is a disaster."

"No fucking shit Hal. We lost the so-called 'top guns' Alaska gave us, we lost the Archangel, and we lost the G weapons. What the hell are we gonna tell the top brass?"

"Maybe we won't have to go through them."

"You don't mean…"

"Yeah, I'm calling that short sighted idiot Garcia. God, we are desperate, and I can't see any reason we would be able to get someone from our side to go pick up our guys. That's never been the way the Atlantic Federation works, and you know that. Why else would we have standard procedure to activate the Cyclops whenever we feel vaguely threatened?"

I hate that guy so much.

"Ahh, Admiral Halburton. What can I and the Eurasian Federation do for you today?" God, he's smug, well I guess he's heard about Heliopolis, not surprising.

"You know what I need, Garcia."

"I do, but tell me why should I give it to you?"

"Because I have people trapped there, jackasses. For fucks sake, aren't you Eurasians supposed to be the nice member of the Alliance."

"We are, but only because of the Atlantic Federations zealous need to be comically evil. I'm not committing any Eurasian forces to a rescue operation that will lead to everyone either getting captured or dying horribly."

"Can you at least send someone qualified to negotiate over it? I'm up to my neck in ZAFT units, so I can't get there myself anytime soon."

"The best I can do is ask some guys to patrol a corridor, so you can get to Artemis. I'm not an admiral, or high command. You should honestly look for someone to negotiate ground side. That would be faster than whatever you're trying to do with me."

"Yeah, who in the Alliance could actually negotiate with Orb?"
____________________________________________________________________________
POV Cagalli
"I'm here without permission, my dad will kill me, no scratch that, Merna will kill me."

"Think about it this way, we are actual war heroes. Your dad legally can't be angry at you."

"Mayura I don't think you get it. My father is the Chief Representative of Orb, and I might have just helped start a war. He will not let me get away with adding this disaster to his work load, I am so fucked."

"Well, They started it. No one can blame you. Besides, you did jack shit combat wise. Just blame Sai. It's what I told my mother."

"Don't insult him like that, He is a great benefit to this nation. I want his number."

"Juri, You've been thirsting after him since we got here. You need to chill out."

"So have you. Besides, He's my exact type. Competent engineer, cute, great piloting skills. He fits that to a tee." Dear god, I need help, and my friends won't stop fighting over that lunatic.

"I haven't been."

"Then why have you cared so much about getting better after meeting him? You weren't nearly as motivated earlier back in the homeland."

"Shut up, I just wanted the rights to use the prototype!" The stupid tiny one?

"Sure… that's totally what you were thinking. It wasn't because of Orb's most wanted bachelor."

"I don't understand what you see in that wannabe middle-aged techbro."

"Techbros don't come up with actual innovative technology, Cagalli. They scam you of your money on a bunch of buzzwords that sound cool to investors, but which actually means jack shit. Fusion reactors fundamentally change human society. Fucking Mark DeWolfe and his stupid Multi level marketing bullshit didn't."

"I'm surrounded by horny idiots." The worst part is, I will have to deal with this for weeks, or possibly longer than that. For some reason, being in a state-of-the-art combat machine with another person while defending the colony makes people talk. Especially when the media gets involved when you get out of the giant robot.

Tabloids fucking suck.

"That is how it's been the last two weeks. I heard Sai had to like to use a disguise to get to work the past couple of days."

"Was it a trenchcoat and big hat?"

"Is everyone going to keep giving me shit about that disguise? God, it was one fucking time!"

"Well, Maybe next time you could use a disguise befitting my daughter."

"Fa-Father? You're here already?" Does this mean Merna's here too?!

"Yes and no respectfully, the PLANTS asked for Heliopolis to be the site of the negotiations. Probably so they could get their prisoners back as fast as possible. I've heard rumors of a major offensive taking place soon."

"Are you so sure? I've heard morale for the war is at an all-time low in the PLANTS."

"Military operations planning is done on a longer basis than a couple of days. If something is going to make them change their minds, it would have to be serious. For all we care about Heliopolis. This isn't that major of a defeat for them in a strategic sense. They lost 2 ships and a couple aces. That's a drop in the bucket compared to their entire war machine." Who?

"Ahh yes, Lord Argyle, thank you for meeting up with me. You, Gina, and I have much to discuss. I would like a couple of minutes to talk with my daughter."

"Of course. I understand. I'll meet up with him first. Set the mood for what we will be talking about."

"Wonderful thank you"

The man turned and left toward what was probably one of those boring meetings about military strategy her father always complained about.

"Now that that's over with Cagalli it's good to see you Merna, your uncle Homura and I have been worried sick". Oh god no.

He's gonna guilt trip me…

"That was highly dangerous. All of it. Coming to the colony without informing me. Letting yourself be in an unregistered military weapon.
…
But besides that. I'm proud of you"

"What?"

"I said I'm proud of you. Merna wants to ground you for the next five million years or so, but I'm proud. You stood up for Orb."

"I did literally nothing in that fight. I was only here to find out if you broke neutrality."

"I know. I read the after action report. But, you did start taking pilot training. I know you loved the aircraft training I required of you, but suddenly taking up mobile suit piloting is very interesting for someone who says they did nothing.

Oh, and one other thing. Even if I knew about the Astray project, It wouldn't have been against the neutrality agreement."

____________________________________________________________________________
POV Argyle

My son is Vlad, Voivode of Wallachia. Or at least a Newtype equivalent to the legend. Or King Arthur also fits. The once and future king who remembers all things.

He wasn't being subtle about it, either. An ancient Jegan was used, that's the exact opposite of subtle. I really should have taught him better than that.

But I clearly didn't.

Whatever, I can work with this. The ship's sensors detected irregularities consistent with the M particles of ancient myth in the area when we got there, so that's probably a good thing. Bad for sensors and Radio, good for the development of Newtypes.

There hasn't really been any since…

Since whatever ended the mythical Universal Century.

No one in the family had written down what actually went down. Only that a great power ended that age. Whatever it was had to have been destructive enough to end the newtype phenomenon for years as far as the records could tell.

The closest that anyone had come to those abilities had been the Moebius Zero Corps, and the Flaga family. One group was so weak they could only use incoms badly, which wasn't saying a lot. The others were only good at gambling, besides the Hawk of Endymion. Mu La Flaga was, to our intelligence network's best understanding, the only newtype that still existed.

I had wanted to look into them back in the day, but then the fire occurred, and we found out about the ultimate coordinator project, and we had to clean that whole mess up for Uzumi. I don't know why he wanted us to cover up a project our government wasn't involved with, but I wanted him to owe me a favor.

I just never expected the phenomenon to appear in my own son.

And it's weirder, too, he pulls up design after design from the forgotten era out from the metaphorical air. As far as the records go, that isn't normal. Then again, most of those records were theoretical technologies that aren't easily replicated in this day and age.

The designs we did have were from the Anaheim City excavation, and even then most of them are practically inscrutable half-complete gibberish.

Fusion reactors miniaturized enough to be used in something as small as a truck are hard to understand, who would have known?

We know so little about the past, but what little we know for certain has guided the family for generations.

But that's irrelevant to the discussion I'll soon be having with the young Sahaku.

"Lord Argyle, to what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Your operational security is shit. I've had my people working overtime to prevent the release of the fusion reactor design to any of the secret cabals running the world."

"I'm sorry, the secret cabals running the world?"

"Yeah, it's a Matryoshka doll of them. You have Blue Cosmos which is secretly run by the arms manufacturing industry, which is run by this clan thing run by a single family. Honestly, figuring this out wasn't that hard. Their main defense is being so convoluted, no one would believe they exist. However, Our people are smart enough to see through the ruse."

More like, They were off balance following the nightmare my son has made, but we had suspected for a long time anyway.

"What did you do to the leakers?"

"They have been forced to work in the refugee camps in South Africa."

"...
Ok, so what is the actual purpose of the meeting? I doubt it's just informing me of conspiracies."

"Well, My son has fundamentally shifted the balance of power in our favor. Multiple neutral nations are angling to create a defensive pact with us, neutral colonies are looking for our protection, and multiple rebel groups have been looking into acquiring our technology to free themselves from oppression. We are looking at a sudden Balkanization of the Earth and its colonies, and everyone is trying to curry favor with us."

"And why does that matter?"

"The old world order has every reason to keep their hold. We need pilots and weapons. We need to look as uninterested in war as possible, otherwise we will have a never-ending attack on the homeland from the Alliance, and a never-ending battle for Heliopolis and Ame from the Plants. Not only that, but we have to make sure the war ends within the next couple of months, or we are going to have problems. The good news is that we killed the guy manipulating everyone into putting their all into the war."

"Why are there so many manipulators in this?"

"To be candid, I have no fucking idea. Rau le Creuset was an individual we have no real information on beyond his double-dealing. His autopsy, if you could even call it that, shed some light on him. He is an imperfect clone of a man you might have heard of named Al Da Flaga. Shortened telomeres indicate he was experiencing advanced aging due to what we can only assume was imperfect methodology. We believe he was an agent of the clans due to their plan being 'A culling of mankind.'"

"What's the plan?"

"Simply, make sure the diplomatic visit we have confirmed will be happening from the Plants doesn't go tits up. And make sure the peace talks go through. Good news is that we think this will actually happen. The PLANTS have shifted towards ending the war due to how demoralizing their attack on Heliopolis was, and well, they were the only real obstacle in the talks. Beyond that, milk my son for as many designs and pieces of technology as possible. We are going to need every advantage in the case of a war."

"So, nothing I wouldn't have already tried to do?"

"You and i both know your plan is to put Orb at the forefront of the modern world. I came here because I needed to be sure you wouldn't fuck something up for your benefit. That's why you signed off on the Astray project, right?"

"That's fair enough, but can I ask one question?"

"Yes."

Please don't ask about where my son's designs come from.

"Where does your son get his ideas?"

FUCK make up an excuse quick

"Family secret."

----Perks Obtained.
Secrecy is the Key to Diabolical Success (400cp)<br />
It is critical that top-secret projects remain top secret, even from the people working on it. You are able to ensure that everyone carrying out a secret plan or project you have devised remain completely ignorant of what they are doing/making, without hindering their ability to carry out the plan. For instance, you could have each individual soldier make a single part in his spare time and have your general assemble them together in pitch darkness without peeking, and the secret superweapon will be constructed just as according to plan. That said, it won't work if you need to tell people what the plan is, and sometimes it's a good idea to let your allies know what's up before they reach(wrong)conclusions of their own.
---A/N
So, this is going to be a semi controversial chapter. On the easier side, Lacus being a weeb. There is a ton of evidence for this. Mainly she keeps using japenese cultural touchstones when she is ethnically scandinavian. Honestly, i think she chooses to date kira because he is the closest to dating a japenese guy given there was a massive disporra of japenese people to Orb in the lore.

 

[TheToFu]

lol thanks for the chapter, took some time but it was fun even if a little over the place. Also, his father reads as awesome.

 

[wahrifson]

Lol Sai truly throwing balance of power on geopolitics
Damn creation of 3rd block will wreck EA and PLANT policy

 

[ghost01987]

Loved this can't wait for more

 

[James Wilt]

Lol Sai truly throwing balance of power on geopolitics
Damn creation of 3rd block will wreck EA and PLANT policy

Click to shrink...

Don't forget doing it by using technology that's apparently from a long dead era, that only a select few seem to know about, instead of it being from a alternate timeline. Something that brings up even more questions than answers though...

At least LOGOS has been exposed earlier, if not publically. Which is better as Orb can remove certain agents and members within its borders discreetly now, instead of the cluster fudge that happened in Canon.

 

[wahrifson]

Don't forget doing it by using technology that's apparently from a long dead era, that only a select few seem to know about, instead of it being from a alternate timeline. Something that brings up even more questions than answers though...

At least LOGOS has been exposed earlier, if not publically. Which is better as Orb can remove certain agents and members within its borders discreetly now, instead of the cluster fudge that happened in Canon.

Click to shrink...

Right Argyle family will become centre of conflict on this alternate Seed Verse. IMHO Sai will become strongest candidate as 3rd Block Supreme Leader and most important figure head against EA and PLANT (Logos and Extremist Coordinator). It will goes like Gina prediction. ORC will be forcec to participate on war.

 

[AverageMechaFan]

Great to see that this isn't going to follow the weird and kinda stupid canon.

 

[Kris-71854]

I'm so confused about what's going on with the local timeline. I barely know Gundam stuff anyway. I could understand perks and what they gave him and all that.

I was thinking that it was all just the MC. Now, the MC's dad is aware of various bits of tech/lore and all that. If this was something like jump chain, I'd say his background picks altered his local family.

Family Secret actually works rather well. Don't have to explain shit. That's a bit classier than the dad just going, "It's fucking magic, we can't explain shit. It just works."

The son has mentioned various key words/terms that the dad seems to know of. I can't really believe its truly forgotten history.

I'm going to go with the family background actually being changed up as the MC gets his perks. The MC's memories get screwed up in the way we know so far. The rest of the family might get other background changes as well to make it plausible.

I was reading through the wiki for the MC and his arranged marriage candidate. He doesn't really seem attached to her that much. He thinks of her a bit, but she's not even come up yet.

One of the few times he thought of her it was more how she disliked anything of what he was working on. She hated all the war toys stuff and would spend hours whining about it in various forms. While, he was more like, but our war toy mechs suck ass. We need better, bigger, and more awesome mechs!

The only thing that I know of her is the summary and how she hooks up with the other guy until he gets killed. Then she tries to bounce back to the MC and be all like, but I really love you... Um, I really hope he can get a better relationship than that.

I'd be fine with him hooking up with that thirsty girl or even the girl that sat in his backseat. That's more than we've seen of the other girl. The backseat girl has sort of entered the race by using the classic mecha courtship trope. She got in the giant robot with the MC on his first combat mission. That's like mecha courtship101 right there. She might as well be his primary love interest as of now.

Then again, you could also play it with her being the noble childhood friend or within his social circle. She seemed to be lost and just hanging with the MC though.

That thirsty girl showed interest in him. We've yet to see any POV from his actual supposed arrangement.

There doesn't seem to be any actual interest between the two there.

It's usually fun to see who a Forge MC fits best with. You've given him a relationship, changed his personality, or maybe just memories. His family and her seem to be a bit of the few things that have been stable. Well, his knowledge of people anyway has been stable.

The fic has gotten easier to read and keep track of. I'm totally lost when you mention the history stuff, what he has been changing, or all the Gundam info.

One of the interesting things about this fic is that he hasn't seemed to have actually figured any of the perks as out side context things. They've all been inverse things.

I'm really curious if the Dad will show off that some of this is barely remembered ancient knowledge.

Usually, I don't like companions. I'd love to see the MCs reaction to something like girls frontline AIs. Could you imagine it if he got the Kerbals?

This MC really needs either a keeper or side kick.

 

[AldariSiradla]

Always enjoyed CF stories...
And always love my Gundam...
Here, take my Watch...
And all my Gundam love!

 

[Morkail]

I love everything about this story. Watched.

 

[Limedalek]

THIS IS IMPORTANT TO THE PLOT
I'm the editer btw
I don't think anyone here knows that

 

[Ryven Razgriz]

So basically the 'stache Gundam is a thing and Moonlight Butterfly's everybody and everything. Then the Argyle family is also basically the people who found ruins of old Humanity and became the Watchers of a kind just like in the Correct Century?

... How the fuck has Earth not ran out of resources and where the fuck all those old Humanity space stations? And where is Judau and crew? Pretty sure they went to the next star system over and... oh, yeah they weren't a colony ship... but hey didn't Old Federation sent an actual colony ship before their collapse?

 

[Conrad527]

Are you going to continue this novel, or are you moving to other things?