“New orders, sir,” the radio technician announced, turning in his seat.

A ship moved through the blackness of space, a star-strewn view broken up only by the pea-sized orb of Earth off in the periphery as they slowly left Sector 3 and advanced into open territory.

The Federation. The Republic. Even when confronted with the infinite expanse of the cosmos, humans still managed to find a way to draw invisible borders to keep themselves separated into these superfluous groups. With these thoughts, the admiral stood at the nose of the bridge, looking straight ahead through his own severe reflection as a voice relayed commands through his headset.

“... Understood.” He pulled the headset off and held it in his hands as he absently continued to stare out at the stars.

The technician still had his seat turned expectantly, but the admiral was silent for several more moments.

“Stay on that channel. If any new orders, any communique of any kind come in, you get me immediately, got it?”

“Yes, sir!” the technician replied with a snap salute, masking his growing concern with obedience.

The admiral clasped his hands behind his back and walked away with a heavy gait, deep in thought. He paused at his seat, putting a heavy hand on its back as he looked around. The stations around the perimeter of the bridge were full of young men. Good men. His men. “We wait until the very last moment, do you hear me? You wait on my order.”

He didn’t want the glory of giving the final command. He just wanted to spare his crew the epithets posterity would give them. If anyone would have to be remembered for pushing the button, it would be him.

+++

“Seulgi…”

There was no reproach in her soft voice, almost too quiet for Seulgi to hear across the side yard. It must have been the expression on her face that made Irene look so surprised, as she stood there in her shadowy bedroom, paused in the middle of ing her uniform. Even in the failing afternoon light, the patches and embroidery of the Earth Federation showed clearly against the white material.

Seulgi turned and wordlessly left Yeri’s bedroom. Irene sighed and went back to her buttons, that look on Seulgi’s face etched into her mind’s eye. What was it that had made her heart nearly stop when she had turned to catch Seulgi watching her? Was it the anger? The disgust? The look that seemed to express betrayal as they stared at each other? But Irene didn’t have a chance to pick apart Seulgi’s reaction any further as she heard a knock from downstairs.

She quickly grabbed a shirt off a hanger from her closet and went to answer, knowing full well who was waiting for her, but having no idea what to say. After the argument she had had with the prisoners today, though, Irene thought perhaps, just maybe, she should try listening.

When Irene opened the front door, Seulgi was indeed standing there on her stoop, silhouetted in the twilight as the face of the colony revolved away from the sun and artificial night fell.

“You’d better come in,” Irene murmured as she stepped back into her living room. “I’m sure you have some questions.”

Seulgi paused on the threshold. She did have a lot of questions, though now she also had several answers, too, like why Irene had gotten so heated about Zeon’s attack. She stepped inside and shut the door, plunging them into near darkness. Irene didn’t seem to be in a hurry to turn any lights on, but Seulgi wanted to see her face. She wanted to see how Irene really felt about being a member of the Earth Federation.

“Yeri thinks you’re taking classes on earth.” A sharp click and a flash of light made Irene flinch as Seulgi found a lamp and pulled the cord.

“I was taking classes,” Irene defended. “For certifications.”

“And then?”

Irene looked at Seulgi levelly. “It’s classified.”

Seulgi grimaced. “It’s classified?” Just how far up the chain of command was this girl? Seulgi wished she had gotten a better look at her uniform before barging over here, but another part of her didn’t care. What difference was it if Irene were a commander or a private? How could she keep something like this from her? And why did it have to be Irene? “Yeri idolizes the military, and she doesn’t know you’re with… with the Federation?!”

“That’s why I didn’t tell her!” Irene snapped. “I’m not blind, Seulgi. I know she looks up to me as a sister already, so imagine if she knew I… if she knew what I was apart of.”

“So you’re ashamed?” Seulgi asked, trying to keep a rein on the venom in her voice. Was she just going to lie to them both? For how long?

Irene stood up to her full height. “I’m not ashamed. I just don’t want this life for Yeri.”

“The life of an oppressor?”

“How dare you.”

“Oh, me?” Seulgi sputtered, gesturing at herself. “Why are you here, Irene? Why is someone from the Earth Federation’s military here, on Libot, a neutral colony?” When Irene mutely continued to watch her with her brows furrowed in anger, Seulgi pressed on. “You know why Zeon attacked, but when we talked about it, you made it seem like they were just monsters, terrorizing innocent people.”

Irene looked away, her frustration shadowed in guilt and Seulgi let the silence draw out. As she waited for some sort of retort from Irene, a small voice in the back of her own mind accused her of also lying. Seulgi was also hiding the truth. Was it really fair to attack Irene like this? And why did she feel so disappointed?

Why did it hurt?

“Do you know how many lives are in danger because of that base?” she asked in the growing silence, watching Irene’s profile. “Everyone in this colony is at risk because of it.”

Irene’s brows knitted together in confusion as she slowly turned back to face Seulgi. “The base? What do you mean everyone’s in danger?” How did Seulgi know about the Federation base?

Seulgi caught herself, but quickly found a way around her near-admission. “That attack from Zeon. It obviously wasn’t a coincidence. And knowing them, they won’t stop there,” she finished bitterly.

“They are the ones responsible for those civilian deaths!” Irene growled defensively, gesturing as she came closer to Seulgi. Her mind was racing, facing the pincer attack of both Seulgi’s accusations and her knowledge of the base. “Their recklessness- the attack was sloppy and-!”

“-But it was Libot’s Patlabor who had to stop them! The base did nothing to protect those people!” Seulgi interrupted, her own voice raising as she stood up to Irene’s advance. She glowered up at Seulgi, her jaw flexing as she ruminated on the retort, but before Irene could speak, Seulgi continued. “The Earth Federation would rather keep their illegal base a secret and let civilians die than own up to the fact that they’re in violation of the treaty!”

“You’re not their champion,” Irene said. Though her scowl was firmly fixed, her voice was much calmer than before. “I know you’re from Munzo, but you don’t need to defend their actions. Seulgi, the Republic… The Federation didn’t just decide to build a base here,” she finally admitted, waving her hand in a gesture Seulgi missed as she stared down at Irene. “This is just one more consequence of the war. A long chain of actions and reactions. On both sides.”

“The war’s over,” Seulgi commented quietly, the heat of her anger snuffing out in an instant.

A hint of Irene’s uneven smile revealed itself finally. “Yeah.”

Seulgi didn’t want to be Zeon’s champion. That wasn’t why she joined the military’s special operations unit. She wanted to prevent war from breaking out anew by participating in pointed strikes to check the Federation’s encroaching threats. She wanted to finish things before they could even begin, before more people would get hurt and tallied up as ‘collateral damage’.

She didn’t realize Zeon had other plans when she began, but now it was too late. She only had one day left until all of this - Yeri, Irene, the colony - would become just another data point on a report. One day left before Seulgi was sure she’d be imprisoned for life once she was caught, or worse. She may not be the Republic’s champion, but… “Does it feel right, Irene?”

“What, arguing with you in my living room when we’re supposed to be on a date?”

Seulgi could see the exhaustion in Irene’s expression suddenly, revealed behind her apologetic smile in the unflattering lamplight.

“I guess this really does makes me a war criminal.” Irene thought she was safe behind titles like ‘engineer’ and ‘test pilot’, not a real participant in the war even if deep down she knew her inventions made her complicit in its outcomes. Oh yes, she knew the truth; the better she was at her job, the better the war went for her side. But as she looked up at Seulgi, she wondered about the cost. What made Seulgi talk about the Federation so bitterly, and how much responsibility should she be made to shoulder?

What if neither side was right?

Seulgi watched Irene silently wrestle under the weight of their conversation, but she was prevented from falling into her own thoughts when Irene stepped closer and put her arms around her shoulders.

“It’s all such a mess,” she whispered as she rested her forehead on Seulgi’s shoulder.

Seulgi softened and brought her arms up to carefully hold Irene. “It’s been a mess. For years,” she admitted quietly. “And no one’s completely innocent.”

“Except for you, and everyone else who keeps getting caught up in it,” Irene said as she leaned back to look up at Seulgi.

Seulgi frowned a little. She wasn’t innocent. She wasn’t a simple victim caught up in the sputtering skirmishes that still happened across the sectors. She was an actor - a primary actor - in some of the Republic’s most notable gains in the last year. She didn’t even know what her own kill count was. Should it include those ‘collateral’ casualties she had promised herself to prevent?

“Let’s stop fighting,” Seulgi suggested as she pressed her forehead to Irene’s.

Irene didn’t know if Seulgi meant this argument, or if she was trying to convince her to drop the war, but as their noses brushed Irene was becoming increasingly convinced to cease both. Her answer came in the form of a kiss, and another click of the lamp plunged them into darkness once again.

I’ll finish this last assignment, and that’s it, they both thought.

+++

“This isn’t going to fool anyone,” Wendy grumbled as she once again tripped over the hem of her oversized Federation uniform.

“It’s not meant to fool the guards,” Joy hissed back at her quietly while she worked on the lock. “It’s just meant to confuse them long enough for us to either run or take them out.”

“Did you at least bring enough for us?” Key asked as he impatiently watched Joy struggle with the keycard panel. “They’ll probably fit us better,” he said, hooking a thumb back at Kyungsoo.

An electronic beep told the group that Joy had finally got the cell door unlocked, reuniting the four imprisoned Zeon pilots.

“Thank GOD,” Key nearly yelled as he stepped out of the cell, his hands stretched above his head.

“Keep it down,” Kyungsoo admonished in a harsh whisper, though truth be told he couldn’t express his joy after being confined to a cell with Key for nearly 72 hours straight.

“You’re welcome,” Joy said to herself as the boys pushed past her. Wendy put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder and Joy begrudgingly followed, though not without a significant amount of pouting. “Do you even know how hard I worked to get this card…” she whined to no one in particular.

Key paused at the end of the hall, peeking back and forth where it T-ed off, looking for a way up out of the basement. “New plan, we grab our suits and go home.”

The rest of the group quieted behind him. Key was effectively calling a retreat, and a retreat meant Zeon would fall back on its contingency plan. They knew he wasn’t making such a call lightly.

Hearing nothing but silence behind him, Key hoped his team understood. They didn’t know exactly how long they’d been held in detention, they didn’t know the condition of their suits, and they didn’t know where Seulgi was, or if she was even still alive. This mission had been a complete failure and now they would all have to feel the weight of it. “Come on,” he said in a low voice. “I see a service elevator this way.”

The Earth Federation’s small contingent of soldiers was no match for the Republic’s special ops team as they fought their way to the ground floor. Through the scuffling, the team acquired weapons and other useful items, but as soon as they entered the hangar, they realized their cover was blown. The moment the doors to the elevator opened, shots rang out as soldiers took aim at them from behind crates and machinery.

“Find your suits and go!” Key yelled over the gunfire. “We’ll meet at the spaceport in ten minutes! After that, don’t wait, just take off.”

They made ready to bolt in separate directions but Wendy could already see her suit through the door. It hung suspended in a massive hoist crane… or at least its torso did. Her suit had already been taken apart for inspection.

“Key!” she shouted, pointing at her dismantled suit across the hangar.

But it was Joy who answered while their captain’s mind raced. “Come with me! You’re small, I can squeeze you into my cockpit.”

Wendy was a little heartbroken at the thought of leaving her Hygogg behind, but she could mourn its loss later. “I’m not sitting on your lap,” she muttered as Joy took her by the hand and they ducked out of the elevator.

“Go, go, go!” Key shouted as he shoved Kyungsoo out in the opposite direction before making a break for it himself. They ran, ducked, and shot their way up the suspended walkways and scaffolding on their way to reclaim their suits, but Wendy’s wasn’t the only one that had been taken apart for examination.

When Kyungsoo finally reached his own Hygogg, he saw it was missing one of its arms. “,” he cursed as he pistol-whipped an engineer blocking his path. He quickly climbed in the open cockpit and examined his controls. Despite his helmet being nowhere in sight, everything else seemed to be in order. He began powering up and could see Joy’s Z’gok ripping itself from its massive suspension crane just before his cockpit closed. After a moment, his displays came online and his roving camera revealed the chaos surrounding him in the base. With his auxiliary communications live, he shouted through the radio. “I’m missing an arm, but everything else is online. I can still fight.”

“Copy that,” Key answered. “Joy, lead us out if you still have your-”

A loud explosion and a hiss of static over the line cut the captain off as Joy blasted a massive hole in the bay doors of the hangar.

“... Ok,” Key sighed through the comm. “Good to know that’s working,” he said as he used his Hygogg’s clawed hands to tear himself from the cords tethering his suit to its crane. “Though now the Patlabor suits are probably on their way.”

“They were probably already notified,” Wendy replied from her cramped position behind Joy’s pilot seat. “If that’s true, we’ll have less than a few minutes before the base is surrounded.”

“Copy that,” Key said absently as he swept a bunch of soldiers off the suspended walkway with a long arm. “Kyungsoo?”

“I’ll catch up, go first and draw their fire for me,” he answered, still struggling to free his suit from its hoist. Only having one of his Hygogg’s long arms was throwing off his balance and making it difficult to maneuver, but he’d been in more tense situations than this one. With a grunt of impatience, he finally flicked on his booster rockets and blasted his way out of his tangle of tubes, crashing through the engineers’ machines and cargo all over the floor of the hangar. He knew it was useless for the Federation to worry about a few busted computers when the whole colony was about to get nuked. He just hoped he could escape before the whole place went up in flames.

Joy didn’t hesitate as she smashed her way through the ruined doors and emerged into the bright midday sun. “Hang on,” she said gleefully to Wendy behind her as she rocketed off towards the main part of the spaceport. “We’ve got a train to catch!”

“No we don’t-” Wendy corrected as she fell back from the acceleration.

Beeping from the monitors immediately alerted the two girls that Wendy’s supposition was correct: Libot’s Patlabor suits were already on their way. Heavy machine gun fire erupted from the approaching units, but the spray was fairly meaningless from this distance and Joy flew on, undaunted. Key wasn’t too far behind and prepared to lay down some cover fire from his vantage point. His Hygogg’s amphibious origins were revealed in a pair of torpedoes that launched from its helmet. Unfortunately, the missiles were not intended for surface use, and though the smaller Patlabor units were rocked with the explosions he only managed to buy the Zeon pilots a precious few more moments to try and make their escape before they were pinned down by more machine gun fire.

Much in the same way Yeri had been hiding barely two days before, Seulgi crouched in the tangle of brush on the outside of the Federation base’s perimeter fence. She knew something was happening inside when she saw all the soldiers rush inside from their patrols she had been carefully timing. And more pertinently, Irene’s phone had been buzzing incessantly in her pocket with missed calls from all sorts of unlisted numbers. It wasn’t until Seulgi saw a blast rip through the hangar’s massive bay doors though and saw Joy’s Z’gok emerge that she realized her team’s escape plan was well underway. She stood up, ready to vault herself over the fence until she saw the colony’s defense units on the horizon. Her team got captured by Libot’s Patlabor once already. She wasn’t going to let that happen again.

She turned and ran, letting fear for her teammates’ lives drive her straight back to Yeri’s neighborhood where her own suit lay in wait, finally ready to be put to use.

+++

Yeri stirred, a familiar song interrupting a dream she was already forgetting in the haze of wakefulness. Wait. Yeri bolted upright looking for the source of the song. It was her alarm, from her phone. She felt around her bed and then her nightstand, before spotting it across the room on her desk. She scrambled out of bed, almost falling to her knees as she reached for it. A sticky note pasted to the phone crumbled in her hand as she grabbed it. She stood there in the middle of her room, staring at it a little dumbly as she tried to make sense of the writing, but her grogginess necessitated a few extra moments for processing.

Don’t let Irene go anywhere near the base today. I’m counting on you.

- Seul

So that was it. She was already gone. Seulgi had left and didn’t even wait to say goodbye. She read the brief message again and crumpled it up in her fist. She was alone again. Like a child, she brought the back of her hand up to hide her eyes as she felt the first tears run down her cheeks. A sudden thought occured to her and she leaned down until her forehead touched the carpet. As she peered beneath her bed, she was shocked to see Seulgi’s jumpsuit and helmet still there, where she had hastily tucked them away several days ago. Was Seulgi heading into battle in street clothes?

Yeri pulled the helmet out and held it in her lap, gazing at the dark visor. She remembered wearing it herself when she first met Seulgi. Their time together felt so brief, like a dream, and now Seulgi might be gone forever. She cursed herself for falling asleep. She had tried to keep a vigil most of the night, wondering if Seulgi was going to try to attack the base under cover of darkness. Why hadn’t she stayed with the pilot? Why had Seulgi just disappeared when they got back to the house? Was it all on purpose? Did she trick Yeri into staying behind?

No. Seulgi promised she’d come back for Yeri. A quiet voice in the back of her mind reminded her that Seulgi said she’d try, but it was good enough for her. In the meantime, Seulgi had given her a job to do, and she had to make sure she fulfilled it and was ready for when she returned.

Yeri got up off the floor and set the helmet on her bed as she busied herself about the room getting ready to head next door.

+++

Irene was genuinely surprised to wake up alone. And to wake up so late, judging by the slant of the light through her window, even though Seulgi had kept her up well into the early hours of the morning. With a lazy smile, she quietly thanked her grueling weeks at basic training for helping her endurance. Maybe Seulgi had gone to check on Yeri? After all, Seulgi was her new babysitter. She rolled onto her side and stretched to her full length with a little gasp. If Seulgi was smart, she’d return, and bring food.

“What time is it, anyway?” she murmured to herself, as she flopped back against her pillow. She blindly d around for her cellphone, her movements becoming more impatient with each passing moment. With a huff, she rolled onto her stomach to have a look around her room. Had it fallen on the floor somewhere? With a bit of a blush, she recalled the struggle last night and realized her phone could be anywhere, tossed away haphazardly much like her clothes had been.

It was in the middle of a search on her hands and knees, pulling things out from under her bed that she hadn’t seen in years that she heard a knock on her door. She pulled on an oversized t-shirt and hastened downstairs, thinking Seulgi might have returned, and was quite embarrassed seeing Yeri standing on her doorstep. Yeri’s anxious expression and red eyes banished her embarrassment immediately, however, and Irene pulled her inside.

Before Irene could even ask what was wrong, Yeri blurted out the only question that mattered to her in that moment: “Where’s Seulgi?”

Irene blinked, still looking over Yeri’s distraught figure. “Where? I don’t know. I thought she was with you?”

And Yeri tried really hard not to cry again. She had a job to do. Seulgi had asked her for one simple favor: keep Irene away from the base. She took Irene’s hand and led her over to the couch, sitting on it with a heavy sigh.

“Yeri? What’s going on?” Irene asked, her voice growing less sympathetic and more serious.

But how could Yeri even begin to explain? “Seulgi… left. She’s gone.”

Confused silence answered her. Yeri turned to look at Irene to see how she might be processing this information. She knew that vague statement wasn’t going to satisfy someone like Irene, but she had a sliver of hope that she wouldn’t need to reveal any more.

And through Irene’s blank expression, Yeri could see the wheels turning. “What do you mean she’s gone? Where did she go? Back to earth?”

With any luck.

“Yeri-”

Irene was about to press for more when a siren startled her. A long, uninterrupted wail was screaming across the colony.

“Are we under attack?” she asked unconsciously, as if Yeri would have the answer. They hadn’t even had time to use the siren during the Republic of Zeon’s attack a few days ago, so this must be very serious.

Yeri threw her arms around Irene’s middle, seeing the other girl stand up from the couch suddenly. “Wait, where are you going?” Yeri cried fearfully. She didn’t even want Irene to turn on the T.V., just in case they saw Seulgi’s face on the news.

“Yeri,” Irene said distractedly, “Please let me go. I have somewhere I need to be, but don’t worry, I’ll explain everything when I get back.”

“No!” Yeri shouted. She definitely couldn’t let Irene leave the house. How did Seulgi know she’d need to keep Irene away from the base? “Stay with me, I’m… I’m scared!”

That made Irene turn in Yeri’s desperate grip and look down at her sorrowfully. “I’m sorry, but I’m doing this for both of us. Please trust me,” she begged as she pulled Yeri’s arms off of herself.

Yeri helplessly watched Irene run upstairs, presumably to finish getting dressed, but when she saw her babysitter come back down into the living room in an Earth Federation pilot’s jumpsuit, Yeri gasped.

Irene saw the stricken look of confusion on Yeri’s face, but she didn’t have any more time to waste. She had a feeling that whatever was causing that alarm had something to do with the base and she was Gundam Alex’s only trained pilot. “I’m… I’m sorry, Yeri. I’ll explain everything later!” And with that, she bolted from the house, leaving a stunned Yeri on the couch, with the constant whine of the siren ringing in her ears.

As Irene rushed into her garage to grab her car, she paused as she felt a rumble beneath her feet. The telltale roar of a mobile suit soon drowned out the siren and she looked up just in time to see a hulking metallic figure fly overhead.

“A Zaku,” she said numbly.

+++

Seulgi powered up her Zaku for the first time since it crash-landed in the forest. Only her drills made her shot nerves perform the routine flight checks to make sure all of her systems were online before she took off, flying right over Yeri’s neighborhood towards the base. A panel to her left displayed her suit’s current damage status and she could see her main rockets blinking in red, but she was still able to make long hops across the colony to where the Patlabors had her team pinned down.

As she came up behind the Patlabor suits, she switched on her auxiliary radios to the sounds of Joy and Kyungsoo arguing. She spared them smallest smile as she levelled her machine gun at the back of a Patlabor suit and fired.

The shock of being shot from behind was enough to distract the other suits and they turned away from the base towards Seulgi’s Zaku, drawing the Zeon force’s attention with them.

“Who’s that? Wait, is that Seulgi?!”

“About freaking time!”

“What have you been doing this whole time?”

“Probably sleeping.”

“Hey!” Seulgi radioed back indignantly, though she couldn’t express how happy she was to hear their voices again, even Wendy’s, though she couldn’t readily see the third Hygogg anywhere around the base. “I’ve been working my off trying to figure out how to rescue you, but we can catch up later! We have to take out the Gundam!”

“No, Seulgi,” Key says soberly, cutting through the banter. “We’re retreating. The mission now is to get everyone out of here safely.”

As Seulgi ducked her suit behind a building as the Patlabors returned fire, she protested. “But what about the colonists?”

“What about them?” he asks pointedly. “We’re not here to play hero, Seulgi. It’s time to go.”

But Seulgi knew she wasn’t going to be able to follow them, not with her suit damaged the way it was. She wasn’t only fighting for the lives of everyone on the colony, but she was also fighting for her own. “I’m going to lay down some cover fire so you guys can get to the spaceport.”

“And what about you?” Key asked, already availing himself of Seulgi’s distraction as he rocketed towards the launch pads of the spaceport.

“I can’t give up on these people. They didn’t ask for any of this. It’s thousands of lives, sir!”

“Seulgi I’m ordering you to meet us at the spaceport and retreat,” Key insisted.

“I can’t do that, sir. Besides, my Zaku’s too damaged. I’d be lucky if I could fly a thousand feet in this thing.” Seulgi didn’t let up in her argument nor on her machine gun bursts as she turned the tables on the Patlabor suits and pinned them down behind another disused hangar.

“Then hop in my suit; Wendy and Joy are already sharing,” Key offered, also not backing down.

“No, just let me stay - let me try to finish what we started. If I can confirm the destruction of the Gundam, we can save everyone.”

“Seulgi! This isn’t up for negotiation!” Key shouted, though it was more from anxiety than conviction as he thought the scenario through. They didn’t have enough firepower to escape with all these Patlabor suits surrounding them, and how were they supposed to coordinate getting Seulgi out of her Zaku and into his Hygogg in the first place? Every second counted, especially now that he knew what hour it was. They needed to get away from the colony as soon as possible. There just wasn’t enough time.

“I’m glad you guys are ok,” Seulgi radioed, her voice crackling calmly through his helmet’s speakers. “Now let’s get you out of here.”

With the Zeon special operation team’s combined effort, the Patlabors were quickly cowed, but more were on their way as the siren constantly wailed. It seemed like the strike team might just make their escape after all when Kyungsoo shouted wordlessly through their radios. Slower than the rest in his damaged suit, he had been hit by a burst of heavy machine gun fire and at his cry, Seulgi turned to see Gundam Alex emerge from the base.

“I’ll cover Kyungsoo,” Seulgi called over the comm, trying to keep her voice steady. “The rest of you go on ahead! Now!”

“Go, go!” Kyungsoo agreed, urging the rest of the team on. He cursed to himself as he assessed the damage to his suit. The long legs of his Hygogg were barely functional after being riddled with the armor-piercing rounds.

The Gundam moved with terrifying agility, bounding over the other buildings on the base and into the battle. Seulgi barely had time to react before the Gundam raised its machine gun again and unloaded at Kyungsoo’s limping Hygogg.

“Bail out! BAIL OUT!!!” Seulgi nearly screamed through her radio as she watched in horror as the burst of gunfire ripped right through the abdomen of Kyungsoo’s suit.

“Motherer!” Key shouted from his vantage point on the launchpad. He swung his machine gun in a haphazard arc, sweeping a spray of bullets across the Patlabors as they attempted to chase him and Joy’s Z’gok down.

Seulgi didn’t have any time to check on Kyungsoo’s status as she watched Gundam Alex barrel down on their position with more Patlabor suits close behind. She raced up in her Zaku and grabbed onto the Gundam’s arm before it could shoot again. “Kyungsoo,” she shouted breathlessly as she struggled against her controls. “Bail out! Run for cover!” If you’re still alive. With her Zaku’s brute strength, Seulgi tore the machine gun from the Gundam’s arm with an ear-piercing whine of shorn metal. What she failed to notice was that while the two suits wrestled against each other, the Gundam had drawn its beam saber. The Zaku's helmet camera swiveled up just in time for Seulgi to see the Gundam bury it into the shoulder of her suit.

Seulgi cursed and released her grapple, retreating dozens of yards away, but the saber had cut too close to her cockpit and her displays crackled and sparked. Without warning, one of the panels shorted and exploded, sending a piece of the screen right into her unprotected face. She screamed, blood coating her fingers as she instinctively reached up to cover her face with her hands. In a panic, she tugged the shard of plasglass out of the wound, nearly passing out from the sensation. The blood coursed freely down her cheek and dripped from her jaw, soaking the front of her shirt, Irene’s shirt. It was in as she spat and cried out in pain, and though she kept wiping at the wound with a shaking hand, she couldn’t see.

She couldn’t see anything out of her right eye.

“Seulgi-?!”

“Alive,” she coughed as blood continued to spill over her lips and into . “I better not see you standing on that launchpad when I turn around.”

With one of the Z’gok’s bulky, taloned fists, Joy pushed Key’s Hygogg back into action and he immediately jumped into the air, the massive, amphibious mobile suit taking off with its rear rockets roaring with life. Key spun as he soared through the colony’s only exit, and he felt the resistance of the colony’s artificial gravity give way to the weightless expanse of space. His displays caught the movements of Joy and Wendy crammed in the Z’gok right behind him, and a handful of Patlabor suits launching from the pad just behind them. Farther away on his readout, he could see the dots of Kyungsoo’s gutted Hygogg and Seulgi’s Zaku motionless back near the base.

Watching the Zaku standing still, the Gundam paused, and inside its cockpit, Irene was heaving with adrenaline. She just killed a man. She was sure of it. She brought down a fully armored Hygogg with just two machine gun bursts. The sheer power shot through her nerves, tempered only by the surreal knowledge that she had ended someone’s life today. Her first battle. Her first kill. She was supposed to be a test pilot. An engineer! Not a soldier, not… not a murderer. But the Zaku was moving again and now her machine gun was destroyed and nearly the entire arm with it. All she had left was her beam saber and she held it out in front of herself, unsure of the Zaku’s remaining capabilities with its heavily damaged torso.

But there was something else Irene was unsure of that gave her pause: the Zaku’s pilot. The timing of the last few days struck her as impossibly convenient. A missing Zeon suit, Seulgi’s sudden appearance, her hometown in Munzo, Yeri’s evasiveness this morning… the fact that it might be Seulgi in that mobile suit made her hesitate. She couldn’t kill Seulgi. She wouldn’t. And while these thoughts ran through her head, she watched as the Zaku raised its own machine gun level with her Gundam, and fired.

+++

Yeri stumbled, her legs weak from running towards the sounds of the firefight. With Irene gone, too, there was no way Yeri was going to let herself be left behind. Not again. She had barely wasted a moment after Irene’s car had driven off, racing after it towards the spaceport, and the Earth Federation’s base. It seemed so far away from her neighborhood on any other day, but today the colony felt especially small as she saw the massive figures of the mobile suits towering above the buildings.

The closer she got, the more people she saw out in the streets, though most were running in the opposite direction. Several tried to stop her, but she twisted away from every tug on her sleeve in her determination to reach Seulgi. She had no idea what she’s going to do, but she couldn’t let Irene get involved. If she was a pilot, there was no doubt that she’d end up fighting Seulgi. That much seemed certain, and she couldn’t let them kill each other. She had to stop the fight.

Yeri slowed as she reached the spaceport’s main road, counting at least six Patlabor suits chasing down a couple of Zeon suits on the launchpad. But what drew her attention, was Seulgi’s Zaku near the Federation’s secret base. It was fighting some suit Yeri had never seen before, slimmer and more agile even than the long-limbed Hygoggs. But even as she stared at the pair, she saw the Zaku raise it’s arm open fire on the new suit. “No-!” she huffed to herself as she started running once again, straight at them.

Irene felt her suit list and fall to one knee, her displays showing critical damage the Gundam’s lower right leg. The Zaku was too close for its pilot to make a mistake like that. Why hadn’t the pilot aimed for the chest? Had her beam saber done so much damage to the Zaku that its calibrations were off?

Or was it trying to immobilize her?

But this was a serious battle with dire consequences. She couldn’t lose focus. What if she was wrong? If that wasn’t Seulgi in that Zeon suit, then she could be seriously misjudging the situation. With an assist from her booster rockets, she pushed her Gundam forward, bodily tackling the Zaku in a groan of bruised metal.

Yeri watched the Zaku topple backwards onto the ground and screamed as the two suits struggled with a beam saber between them. She stood on her tiptoes watching the fight play out not a hundred yards away when she heard someone cursing. There was a man beside her, leaned up against the tire of a service vehicle, but what drew Yeri’s attention was the streak of blood drawing a line from his reposed body to the smoldering ruins of another suit some yards off. It turned his green jumpsuit a deep rusted brown and pooled in his lap where he held a gun loosely in his hand.

With a grunt, he raised the weapon at the two battling suits, squinting one eye shut. Yeri watched him release a few rounds before dropping the gun to his side with another curse. She carefully went to kneel next to him, though she could do little more than stare at his wounds in horror. It was one thing to see it on T.V., the violent images of the war back on Earth, but to be so close, to smell it…

“Get outta here, kid,” the man growled through his pain.

“B-but-”

“I said beat it. It’s over,” he grunted, shoving her away. “It’s over.”

Yeri fell back on the tarmac, watching his heaving chest still, his eyes shut tightly in pain relax a little as he finally found relief. She couldn’t move. She could barely look away, and it was only very slowly that the sounds of the fight drew her attention from the grisly scene and back to the struggling mobile suits. All she could do was sit next to the dead Zeon soldier and watch.

The Gundam’s lightweight design was no match for the bulky Zaku, especially with its compromised arm and half-destroyed leg. Seulgi used her suits bulk to roll them over and reverse their positions, though every moment the fight drew on, the weaker her movements became. She had lost a lot of blood, and it ran viscously onto her displays as she stared down at the Gundam beneath her. With a shaking hand, she switched her comms to the external speakers and spat again.

“Yield pilot! You don’t have to fight!” She cut the feed before a grunt of pain escaped through gritted teeth.

Irene was stunned, hearing Seulgi’s voice so clearly. So she was right. Seulgi really was the pilot of the missing Zaku. She didn’t want to fight Seulgi, but she couldn’t afford to lose the fight, either - she couldn’t let Gundam Alex be destroyed. The years of research and testing, the billions of dollars… The dream of the past few days had shattered, and she had awoken to some horrible nightmare.

The Zaku raised a massive metallic fist and hammered on the Gundam’s helmet, crushing one of Irene’s cameras. One whole side of her display was static now. She felt the impact of the Zaku’s fist, again and again, bashing her suit, weakening its light armor. She wished she hadn’t declined those extra plates of armor now, but, she recalled in her growing panic, it was for a reason. Like this, she was far faster than a bulky Zaku.

Scorching the ground beneath her, she blasted her rockets and tried to fly out from underneath the Zeon suit, but Seulgi grappled on to the Gundam’s legs, not about to let it get away. Desperate to put some distance between them, Irene charged her beam saber again as the sheer weight of the Zaku pulled her from the sky, and she stabbed at the back of the Zeon suit, trying to dislodge it. Her hesitation to doing too much damage to Seulgi cost her, however, and they fell heavily back to the ground. The whole bottom half of the Gundam crumpled beneath the Zaku’s weight, and Irene was afraid if she tried a move like that again, her booster rockets would cause an explosion. The Zaku hadn’t fared much better from the impact, its torso dented from falling on the Gundam’s legs, and Seulgi’s roving camera in the Zaku’s helmet had shattered nearly beyond use.

Seulgi’s cockpit was a cacophony of warning beeps and flashing lights as most of her suit had taken at least some form of damage from the extended brawl. She took a deep breath and switched on her comm again. “This is your last chance, pilot. Bail out. My suit’s gonna blow any minute and I’m taking this Gundam with me.”

Irene felt her fingers trembling from adrenaline as she flexed them on the grips of her controls. The sweat was pouring down her temples and the back of her neck beneath her helmet, catching in the collar where it connected to her jumpsuit. She could give up. She had tried her best, hadn’t she? She wasn’t a real fighter pilot, so no one expected her to win, right? And what did this fight even prove? What was she trying so hard to accomplish? Was it really worth dying over?

Her hand hovered over the switch that would release the cockpit’s hatch, even as she could smell the electrical fires inside her Gundam’s armored plating.

+++

Key and Joy made quick work of the Patlabors as they came through the colony’s space gate one by one. It was barely a fight as they fired down at the defense units, but even as he mercilessly fired down on them, Key was keeping track of Seulgi’s Zaku out of the corner of his eye. He had forced himself to ignore the fact that Kyungsoo’s Hygogg hadn’t moved since it had been shot down by Gundam Alex.

“Let’s get some distance between us and this place,” he ordered grimly, knowing full well what he was preparing for. If Seulgi failed, if she couldn’t destroy the Gundam, then the whole colony would face the wrath of the Republic. Even as he turned and propelled himself away from Libot, he could see in the far distance, against the backdrop of the small blue sphere of Earth, the small pinprick of light that was another ship approaching.

He could guess its purpose.

As they flew farther and farther away from the colony, Seulgi’s struggle with Gundam Alex dropped off Key’s displays and all that was left was the quiet hums and rhythmic beeps of his panels monitoring his own suit. His Hygogg had come out relatively unscathed in the battle to escape, and he could already feel the creep of survivor’s guilt color his thoughts. It was a thin facade that was soon melted away in a roil of anger. His somber features were broken in a roar as he slammed his fist down on the armrest of his seat.

And maybe it was because they were a team, and they had been on so many of these tense missions together in the past, but almost on cue, he heard Wendy’s soothing voice through the radio.

“There was nothing we could do.”

“Damn right there was nothing we could do,” he snapped. “Why did I let Seulgi stay down there?” he cursed through the comm. “Look, I think that’s the Zeon’s frigate up ahead. If she doesn’t finish that fight up soon, that whole colony’s toast.”

“Should we… radio them and let them know the status? Tell them to wait?”

Key didn’t answer right away. Would they listen to reason this late in the game? A timetable for their mission had been handed down by the highest levels of the Republic of Zeon’s military, and they were just actors, pawns in the scheme. Their status was either ‘success’ or ‘failure’. Was there room for something like “please wait while we possibly finish the mission”? Key smiled humorlessly, his lip curling in something more like a snarl than a smirk.

“Captain?” Joy prompted.

“...Key?” Wendy pleaded.

Seulgi’s argument came back to him, about saving the thousands of lives in Libot, and his prejudices crumbled. He had spent his time in the secret base’s holding cell festering with the thought that the colonists were complicit in the Earth Federation’s presence in Libot. But he knew that wasn’t entirely true. The local government may have struck a dangerous bargain with the Federation, but that didn’t mean the colonists themselves were guilty. As he turned these thoughts over in his mind, a soft buzz and a report blinked onto one of his displays.

Seulgi’s Zaku was offline.

“Key,” Wendy said with more urgency.

“.”

Joy’s voice came through the comm, “It doesn’t mean she’s dead. She could be hiding again. We thought she was gone before. Maybe she’s just-”

“Zeon’s not going to stop the mission for one pilot,” Key stated. His brows were creased so hard he was giving himself a headache.

“But Key,” Wendy tried again.

“Wendy-!” he shouted suddenly.

“CAPTAIN, THE GUNDAM IS OFFLINE, TOO,” she shouted back in a rare display of defiance.

Shocked, Key turned his full attention to the report, looking over the readouts. A red message above the outline of both suits read [TOTAL SYSTEM FAILURE].

“... She did it,” he breathed.

He leaned on his controls, ing his Hygogg forward straight for the frigate.

“Admiral?” the technician tentatively called from his computer.

The admiral stood up out of his seat immediately, having been deep in thought as the soap bubble-like colony of Sector 3’s Libot grew ever-larger in the bridge’s window. “What is it?” he barked as he felt the blood rushing in his ears.

“Uh, it’s… it’s not Munzo, it’s a signal from a Hygogg. It’s Captain Kim Kibum of the special ops team.”

The admiral stiffly walked over to the technician’s console and leaned over him, staring at the display. “Well? What does he want?” His voice carried more than a little impatience with tensions on the ship running so high.

“Shall I patch him through? I have him on a secure line.”

“Fine.” As soon as he heard the comm connect he barked a severe: “State your business, Captain,” through his headpiece.

Key was a little taken aback at the brusque tone, but nevertheless made his report. “Sir, we’ve just come from Libot. We… we have confirmed the destruction of Gundam Alex.” He paused abruptly, surprised at how his own voice was failing him.

The Admiral’s face was stony. He didn’t look down at the technician beside him. “Copy that, Captain. Good work. Have your team rendezvous at the lunar base and wait for more orders.”

Key was a little confused. He heard the line disconnect, but the frigate wasn’t changing course.

“Captain?” Joy asked.

The Zeon ship loomed larger on their screens as they drifted there on the edge of that invisible boundary separating Sector 3 from the rest of the colonial clusters. Key watched its approach through his helmet’s camera for another few moments, mentally begging it to correct its course before pinging the ship again.

“Admiral?” the technician called again.

The admiral angrily stalked over to the computer and picked up the headset. “Put him through,” he grumbled, already seeing the same hailing signal on the screen.

“Excuse me, sir-”

“What are you still doing out here, Captain? You have your orders. Report to the lunar base and await further instruction. Was I not clear?”

“Uh, no sir. You were very clear, but-”

“But what.”

“The Gundam, sir. It’s been destroyed. The mission is a success.”

“The mission,” the admiral relayed quietly into the mic, “the mission has changed. Orders from the top.”

“Sir?”

The Admiral walked to the nose of the bridge, wondering if he could pick out the two Zeon suits from amongst the ubiquitous backdrop of stars. But no, they must have been too far off still. All he could see was the dome of Libot and the soft hues of blue and green and grey within.

“The Republic has decided to make an example of the colony. A punishment to both the Earth Federation and colonies who help them break the treaties.”

As realization dawned on Key, he felt his breathing accelerate and his heartbeat hammering in his chest. It felt like he was drowning. “But sir, the Gundam- all those people…” Seulgi and Kyungsoo. Were their sacrifices for nothing? Seulgi’s impassioned speech came back to him and he couldn’t believe it was all for nothing. “It’s over, you need to stop the ship.”

“I don’t take orders from a captain,” the admiral spat.

“I’m not trying to give you an order, sir! I’m trying to appeal to your humanity!”

“My humanity? My humanity? What’s humane about my crew perpetrating the execution of a civilian colony on one end, or a court martial for treason with a lifetime sentence on the other? Where's the humanity in that?” he roared back through the line.

Key swallowed. “We already lost two good soldiers today to take down the Gundam. They did it to prevent more needless deaths, and not just the civilians, but to prevent war from breaking out all over again. Do you think the Earth Federation will take this punishment sitting down?” He stared at the dark silver frigate through his suit’s camera until his eyes burned. “I’m trying to prevent more Zeon deaths, too.”

“Stand down, captain,” the admiral commanded quietly. “Your part in this mission is over. Go home.”

Before Key could gather his wits for another attempt to persuade the admiral, he saw Joy’s Z’gok streak past him, her rockets silently roaring in the vacuum of space as she charged straight at the frigate. He quickly switched to their team’s channel. “Joy?! Joy, stop!”

Even as he yelled, he saw beams of light streak from her suit towards the Zeon war frigate, causing ripples of light where it struck the ship’s shields. Her enhanced artillery was doing an alarming amount of damage to the war class ship.

“If he wants to prevent more Zeon deaths, more innocent deaths, he’ll stop right here,” Joy shouted back through the comm, “Or I’ll end this mission for him!”

“Captain Kim, order your team to cease fire immediately! This is treason!” The admiral gripped the back of his chair as the blasts rocked his ship. He waved his hand at the awaiting gunnery team and they immediately turned to their station and readied the ship’s defenses.

Key watched as Joy pummeled the ship with blasts, each ripple of the shields getting weaker until it looked like the tension was too much to withstand. With one last shot, the shields fizzled and popped, great arcs of electricity looping along the frigate’s hull as their defenses were shattered.

“This is wrong, sir, and you know it. If you won’t retreat, then you are responsible for the outcome of this fight,” Key finally responded, pushing his controls to rocket ahead to Joy’s side. He switched his comm over. “Watch out for their turrets.”

“I’ll go for the engines first,” she replied, diving along the side of the frigate towards its stern.

As cannon blasts began to damage the hull, and with his crewmates screaming at him from their consoles with damage reports, the Admiral thought silently to himself. Finally, instead of calling for a return of fire, an order his gunners were desperately waiting for, he uttered a quiet, “Abandon ship.”

No one heard him.

He shouted it out loudly across the bridge, and for a beat everyone was silent.

“But sir-”

“Don’t. Talk back to your superior officer,” he bit off, each word revealing his barely-restrained rage. “You heard me: prepare for immediate evacuation. All stations.” When still no one moved, all eyes on him, he exploded. “Say it. SAY IT. THAT’S AN ORDER SOLDIER.”

The soldier who had tried to protest flinched but turned back in his seat to announce the command across all of the ship’s frequencies.

Key, still on the call, heard the order, and he radioed a halt to Joy and Wendy while the crew escaped. The jettisoned pods began to zip past, one by one as the different teams abandoned their stations. He watched them stream out into the black void, on an auto-piloted course back to Munzo. As the flood of pods began to slow down and eventually stop, Key hailed the ship again.

“Admiral?”

There was silence for a moment, and Key hoped his suspicions were wrong, but after a beat, the admiral radioed back.

“I have my orders, captain.”

“Sir-”

“I’m doing what I need to do to protect my crew. You do what you need to do to protect Zeon’s humanity.” And with that final command, the line shut off.

The ship, damaged as it was, still followed its course towards Libot, and Joy finally pinged Key’s comm.

“Key.”

With a heavy sigh, he finally replied as he raised his machine gun at the silvery hull.

“Bring her down.”

It was easy for the enhanced Z’gok to tear right through the hull like tinfoil now that the shields were destroyed. They rocked the ship with a barrage of blasts and bullets, and the lights on the bridge flickered before going black. The ship drifted a little farther, riddled with holes, before it crumpled and silently exploded. Total mechanical failure.

They watched the pieces slowly drift past, the gravitational pull of the small colony not nearly enough to bring any danger to itself.

For the first time since this fight began, Wendy’s voice crackled through Key’s speakers. “What now?”

Key turned his Hygogg away from the wreckage and boosted towards the penny-sized sphere of earth. “Now? We start over.”

+++

Yeri didn’t know what else to do. She couldn’t stay home. She couldn’t be alone, and after everything, she especially couldn’t face Irene.

So Yeri went to school.

It had barely been a day since Yeri witnessed Seulgi’s Zaku take the Earth Federation’s special suit out in a violent explosion. In the quiet of the neighborhood as she walked towards the school she could still hear the ringing in her ears.

It had barely been a day since Yeri saw Irene stumbling away from the scene, her jumpsuit torn from the middle of her thigh clear down to her ankle revealing a long bloodied gash from the blast’s shrapnel. It had confirmed the worst of Yeri’s fears, but she still hadn’t been able to help herself from running into Irene’s arms, sobbing with relief that she was alright.

And it had been a day since Yeri had had any contact from Seulgi.

As she rounded the gate of her school, she saw all of the students were actually gathered out front on the expansive lawn, talking together in small groups while the teachers and administrators all stood together near the bottom of the steps of the school building. Was it some kind of special assembly because of the fight? She numbly wandered through the crowd, regretting coming, until she heard a familiar voice cut through her tinnitus.

“Yeri!”

“Oh, thank god you’re okay!”

She was caught up in the arms of Jiwoo and Nayeon, squished between them as they both hugged her.

“Hey,” she said quietly, her voice hoarse. She couldn’t see for all the hair in her face. “What’s going on?”

But instead of either of her friends answering, she overheard a group of boys nearby loudly begin exclaiming.

“I’ve already got it downloaded. Let’s ditch and go watch it!”

“They’re calling it a ‘Gundam’, but did you see the way that Zaku just,” and he finished his sentence with some noises that may have been trying to replicate metal twisting and breaking.

“Zakus are ugly as though. Did you see how cool the Gundam looked? Like one of those samurai from Earth!”

“in’ nerd. It didn’t last ten seconds against that Zaku. Who cares how cool it looked?”

“Ha! Yeah, it looked real cool when it exploded.”

“Dude, whatever. I can’t wait to graduate. You’re gonna see me in one of those things and I’ll show Zeon what a real pilot can do!”

“Oh yeah? And what makes you think they’ll take a shrimp like you?”

And their conversation devolved into them shoving each other and making shooting noises as they roughhoused.

Yeri recognized their vigor and enthusiasm, and to hear it echoed back at her after everything that had happened reduced her to tears all over again.

“Yeri?”

“Yeri!”

+++

Irene was a little annoyed when her driver opened the door for her. Her leg was injured, not her arms. And even her leg had only required a few stitches after the hospital had examined her and cleaned up the wound. She wouldn’t even need the crutches after a week or so. With their assistance, she hoisted herself out of the car and looked around at the neighborhood. It was completely untouched by the fight, almost like it’d never happened at all.

It was still the rich green, manicured lawns, fenced off in nice squares house by house, the shady trees that broke up the monotony of the squat, two-story houses evenly spaced all the way down the street. It was still the ‘nice neighborhood’ Seulgi had remarked on during their walk to the deli.

Seulgi.

“Uh, I’ll put your things on your porch, then?”

Irene had already forgotten about her driver, a petty officer who had been assigned to take her to and from the hospital and the base to pick up her things. He would have to return soon to finish helping the Federation clear out of Libot’s spaceport. The discovery of their base had been condemned by the people of the neutral colony, and upon threat of rioting, the local government had agreed to expel them from the sector.

Unlike their flight from Antarctica, however, Irene would not be joining this time.

She watched the man walk back and forth from the trunk of the car to her front door, carrying briefcases and file boxes full of miscellaneous paperwork and items she had been allowed to take from her makeshift office in the hangar. The rest was considered the classified property of the Earth Federation, and frankly, she was glad to have it off her hands.

She never wanted to see another mobile suit schematic for the rest of her life.

Finished, he came back and stood beside the car, awkwardly waiting to see what she would do or say, but she waved him off. She wanted to be alone. He got back inside as she finally made a move towards her door. The rhythmic click-clack of her metal crutches punctuated each step as she swung herself along to the base of the steps where she stopped and turned, sitting herself down. She let her crutches rest beside her, setting them against the steps with a clatter, her movements slow and absent as the quiet street swallowed up the noise of the car driving off.

Her gaze followed the sidewalk next door to Yeri’s house. The gauzy curtains of the living room picture window, similar to her own. The painted wood siding, a muted soft grey, inoffensive and approved by the neighborhood association. She followed it up in the direction of Yeri’s bedroom window, just out of sight from her perspective beneath her porch awning. It was strange to think of all that had transpired in that house in the past couple days.

When had Seulgi arrived exactly? Probably right after the first attack? It seemed like a lifetime ago. To hear her voice come out of that Zaku, the same voice that had called her name so softly in her ear the night before…

She had lost so much more than just the fight.

She missed that idiot.