Chapter Text
"Cockpit pressurised, fusion reactor output at one hundred percent."
The Zeta's controls are slick with the sweat pooling in Fa's palms. Her knuckles are white. If she loosens her grip, even a little, her hands are going to shake right off the control sticks. Her heartbeat thunders in her chest, a chaotic rhythm out of sync with Gundam's thrumming, mechanical pulse.
Don’t think about Lieutenant Roberto. Don’t think about Lieutenant Apolly. Don’t think about Captain Henken.
Every inhale is shallow, her breath coming in ragged bursts as she fights to keep her mind from spiraling. Memories of her fallen comrades flash violently across her thoughts, their faces a tormenting blur.
Don't think about Katz; don't think about Ensign Reccoa or Lieutenant Emma.
Each name rings louder in her mind, like a relentless drumbeat. She can’t help glancing towards the hospital. The weight of Kamille’s absence presses down on her harder than even Earth’s gravity, squeezing out any remaining calm. It should be him in this cockpit, not her.
“Fa, Fa, do you read me?” The radio crackles with Astonaige Medoz’s frantic voice, the urgency cutting through her haze of anxiety. “Fa, the Zeta’s armaments are almost fully depleted! The Vulcan’s empty, and there are only three packs for the Beam Rifle!”
She hits the response button with a force that almost breaks it. "It's fine, Astonaige, I'll be careful." There has never been time to be careful in the chaos of the battles she's survived, only the desperate struggle to destroy enemy mobile suits before they kill her or her friends. The reassuring lie falls off her tongue without hesitation.
She's already too late. Distant, piercing cries of agony and fear echo around her. A colossal shadow emerges, obliterating the warm glow of the sun. The hairs on her arms and the back of her neck tingle and rise like a wave. A powerful surge of pressure crashes against her, and she jerks in her seat. Despair lingers in the air like the final droplets of autumn rain. Nothing is waiting out there for her except more misery.
“Fa Yuiry, Zeta Gundam, launching!”
Fa slams the throttle forward. The catapult’s jarring thrust slams her back into the seat, the acceleration squeezing the air from her lungs. Her vision narrows as the cockpit’s restraints dig into her shoulders.
As the Zeta Gundam streaks through the skies of Shangri-La, Fa’s eyes dart to the location of the broadcast. The city below is a tangled mess of humanity, and she curses the person causing this chaos. Whoever they are, they’re either a reckless fool or a sadistic monster. Maybe both.
Two Gaza-C mobile suits are circling high above her target location, and she pulls up short. An unknown grey mobile suit stands in the playground of a school. The roof’s been smashed up and a bright red smear paints the fractured surface.
A wave of pure anguish, despair and nausea crashes over her like a tidal wave. She vomits violently, the little breakfast she’s been able to manage splattering across the cockpit floor. The only thing saving her from collapsing out of her seat is the tight grip of her harness. Her chest and her throat burn. Sobs wrack her body, and she wipes her tears desperately away.
She's going to kill him. She's going to kill him, and she can't kill him if she's too weak to stop crying!
Her finger stabs at her view controls as she fights back her sobs. Shinta, Qum and Leina appear on her display, huddled against the debris of the staircase. Leina has both the kids tucked under her arms, shielding them from the horror in front of them. Her eyes are wide, and tears are pouring down her face as she stares up at her brother’s killer.
The grey mobile suit fills her crosshairs, waving its arms in the air erratically as it stomps about the schoolyard. Fa's heart thumps in her chest. Her finger hovers over the trigger. She can't. Not here. No matter how much more she's forced to endure, she will never cross that line. The mobile suit freezes in its tracks. The single red eye stares directly at her. Now's her chance.
The acceleration pins her as she slams the thrusters to full. The Zeta rockets over the school and under the circling Gazas. Banking hard to her right, the inertia squeezes her chest like a vice through the dampeners. Fa screams, forcing the air from her lungs before sucking a deep breath back in. Her ragged breaths even out with the turn.
Blinking away the blurriness, she glances at her six o'clock display. The cold satisfaction of seeing the grey mobile suit wraps itself around the knots of anxiety in her stomach. With a ragged exhale, Fa eases off the boosters. She can feel the prickle of his eye on her. Triumph at gaining on the Zeta. The other two mobile suits hang back, trailing behind him. Good.
They’re out over the mountains now. He still thinks he’s gaining on her. Fifty meters. Thirty meters. Twenty.
Fa flips the Zeta into a heart-stopping one-hundred-and-eighty-degree reversal, her entire body screaming in protest as inertia pushes her to the edge. Her vision blurs at the edges, dark flecks dancing at the corners as she fights to stay conscious. The impact with the grey mobile suit sends her crashing against the harness, every jolt and shudder reverberating through her bones like a violent, relentless tremor. Alarms blare with an insistent, high-pitched wail, their shrill cries slicing through the cockpit's confined space, signalling the heat spike of a reactor’s I-field failing.
The cockpit shakes violently as Fa grips the controls white-knuckled, her fingers slick with sweat. Her breath comes in ragged gasps, each inhale feeling like it might be her last. She can almost feel the heat of her beam sabre buried in the bastard's chest. Its piercing red eye and waving hands fill the viewscreen, and her heart pounds with a mix of adrenaline and fear.
Fa launches the Zeta into a climb, lifting the suit with a desperate, forceful heave. She can feel the strain, the Gundam vibrating and groaning under its weight. Finally, she dumps the bastard into free fall, her breath hitching as she watches the mobile suit plummet. The explosion erupts in a blinding flash, a deafening roar of destruction that sends a shower of debris cascading across the colony's fields, a grim testament to the fierce, violent struggle she has just survived.
No time to worry. No time to think. Her beam rifle is already in Zeta’s hands as she lines up her shot on the hovering Gaza-C.
The pink mobile suits scatter into a hasty retreat.
Fa watches them go, struggling to get her ragged breathing under control.
It’s over.
Pounding on her door jerks her awake. She rolls out of bed, barely awake and rushing towards the next emergency. The absence of the mobile suit scramble alarm stumbles her as she reaches for her normal suit. Fa rubs the sleep out of her eyes and curses. If they’re not under attack, who the hell is banging on her door?
Her uniform is sticky from being slept in, and she feels disgusting. No idea how long she slept. She stumbles over her discarded boots as she makes for the door. The pounding continues. She slaps the lock release and opens her mouth to tell the asshole outside to go to hell, but a furious Elle halts her words, storming past her into her room.
The door hisses shut behind her.
Elle looks like shit. Her eyes are red and puffy from crying, and her cheeks are blotchy pink and white. There is a tear across the left sleeve of her beloved jacket. Elle sniffles and glares at her with a fire that Fa dreads.
“Teach me to pilot the Zeta.”
A petulant demand from a naive child.
“Why?”
"Why?!" Elle cries, her face lighting with anger, "Judau and Mondo are dead! Axis killed them, and I'm going to make them pay!"
"Go home, Elle." Fa sighs, walking over to the girl. The baby fat of her checks diminishes the fury on Elle's face. God, she's so small. Fa stands almost half a head above her in height. The cockpit of a mobile suit is no place for a fifteen-year-old. "Don't get yourself involved in this war."
“Home!” Elle jabs her finger out towards the city, “Back to my mother who can’t keep her head out of a bottle long enough to stop the men she brings home from eye-fucking me every time she leaves the room!? Just so she can fill the hole my deadbeat dad tore out after fucking off when I was five years old! That home?”
Silence fills the room. Neither Kamille nor she had had great childhoods, but certainly nothing like that. It still wasn’t too late for her, though.
“You’ll die if you get in a mobile suit.” Fa doesn’t shout back. She doesn’t need to. It’s a simple truth. “There are plenty of other ways for you to get off this colony that don’t involve throwing your life away.”
"I don't care! I'd rather die fighting than rotting away here!" Elle stamps her foot as she thrusts her arms back down at her sides. "I can't get a passport until I'm eighteen! None of the junkers will take a girl on for work, and I barely make enough to save any money." Tears flow freely down her face. She scrubs them away angrily. "The only good thing this colony had was Judau, and now he's dead! So I either spend the next three years doped out of my mind and on my back, spreading my legs for cash, or you take me with you."
What the hell was she supposed to say to that? Fa buries her face in her hand and massages her temples. She’s too young to be dealing with this kind of shit. Shinta and Qum are already enough of a handful, and now she has a suicidal teenager to deal with.
God dammit, she’s going to regret this.
“The Argama’s duties come first, training after that if there’s time. If you don’t take this seriously, I’ll have Captain Bright throw you off the ship.”
Elle's posture relaxes, tears replaced by a steely determination. She throws herself at Fa, catching her completely off guard in a tight hug. "I won't let you down, Fa!"
As quickly as she’d grabbed her, Elle breaks the hug and dashes out of her room.
Fa collapses back onto her bed and stares at her clock. It's been four hours since she scrambled in the Zeta. She landed back at the Argama, and then… she's here. She needs a shower. She needs food. She needs to figure out how she's going to stop Elle from getting herself killed.