"Continuing food shortages are threatening 1.2 million lives in South African refugee camps."
"Next up—the ongoing conflict in the Kaohsiung region…"
"Morning, Kira. Oh—Inori!"
The next morning, Kira and Inori arrived at the transit station and immediately ran into Tolle and Miriallia.
Heliopolis's vehicles were all autonomous taxis. Convenient.
"Morning, Miriallia. Morning, Tolle."
Kira greeted them both.
"Good morning." Inori followed a half-step behind.
Tolle noticed that Inori was still in her goldfish dress—but with a long coat on top and her hat pulled down.
—Probably trying not to trigger a campus incident.
"Ah, Miriallia! Kira!"
While they were talking, a girl with a long wine-red ponytail came over laughing and chatting with two others.
(Flay)
(SEED ghost girl)
"Hey, Flay!" Miriallia called back.
Miriallia was a social butterfly—she got along with everyone.
"G-Good morning."
Kira lowered her head slowly.
Miriallia had dragged Kira along to various events over the years, and through all that, Kira had come to know Flay. Flay felt like a warm older sister—and every time Kira saw her, she felt something she couldn't quite name: admiration, maybe, or something close to it.
"You two already know about the thing, right?" Flay's two friends grinned.
"Don't! Stop it!" Flay went red.
But they'd already started: "She got a letter. From Sai Argyle. And she's been playing dumb about it!"
"Wait, really?!"
Miriallia's eyes went wide.
Kira's did too.
(Kira's mom—practically identical)
[I smell a love triangle]
[This social circle is a mess]
[So is Kira into Athrun, or Inori, or Flay?]
[Kira: I choose the Gundam]
[This girl is actually really something too]
[She gives off serious fake-innocent vibes]
The girls' banter was still going when three people came down the corridor from behind them.
"Ahem." The woman at the front cleared her throat. "If you're not boarding, could you move aside?"
"Of course." Tolle stepped out of the way immediately.
Those three were future members of the Archangel's crew—including the future first officer, Natarle Badgiruel, and their helmsman, Arnold Neumann.
The interruption broke up the commotion around Flay, and she and her friends hopped in a taxi to go shopping downtown.
"Kira, why do you look so hurt?" Tolle asked, puzzled.
"Flay's kind of always looked after Kira and led her around—like an admired older-sister type," Miriallia said with a soft smile. "Kira's always looked up to her."
Then Inori spoke.
"Admiration is the emotion furthest from understanding."
—Bliss.
Inori felt a deep, bone-deep satisfaction.
Back when she was still Hyuga Hanabi, she'd been sitting on that line for ages, looking for the right moment to deploy it on Uzumaki Naruto. The opportunity had never come.
Here, she could at least use it to tease Kira a little. That would do.
"…" Kira froze.
"And also—Flay Allster has a significant problem with Coordinators. According to the files…"
"Stop." Kira's fist tightened.
At first, Kira had gotten close to Flay. But after learning how Flay felt about Coordinators, Kira had quietly started pulling back—carefully, without making it obvious. Kira hadn't let Flay get any closer since.
Flay was someone Kira admired. Of course Kira didn't want her to find out about being a Coordinator.
"Come on." Tolle patted Kira on the shoulder.
Kira's Coordinator identity was known only to this small circle of friends.
"Anyway, let's get moving. Professor's waiting on us."
"…Yeah."
Kira nodded.
[Something bad is coming, I can feel it]
[This feels doomed]
[Dead, insane, or gone dark—pick one]
[Can't we just get a good ending for once]
[Did anyone else notice the self-driving cars?]
The camera cut to Natarle.
It was a different atmosphere from the lighthearted scenes before—quiet, weighted.
"It's so peaceful here," Natarle said, removing her sunglasses. "People their age—some of them are already on the front lines."
The scene ended, and the feed shifted again. This time, to a port in open space.
"Axis correction—right 6.51 mark, approach vector confirmed nominal."
"Braking thrusters disengaged, magnetic clamp control transferring…"
A ship eased into the Heliopolis dock.
The captain removed his hat. "That completes our mission. Thank you for the escort all this way, Captain Flaga. It was a long road."
The camera moved to a young blonde officer in military uniform: "Not at all. Thankfully, we had no trouble on the way. Now then—current ZAFT positions?"
"Two ZAFT vessels followed us into port. Nothing to worry about, though—once we're inside a neutral port, ZAFT can't move on us."
The captain was confident.
Mu La Flaga smiled. "Because it's a neutral nation. Sounds almost laughable when you say it out loud."
"Ha. But it's precisely because of that laughable fact that we've made it this far. Orb is, at the end of the day, an Earth nation." The captain continued, "After the ZAFT 'GINN Invasion' incident a year ago, they haven't dared try anything here again."
Mu nodded. "The 'Grim Reaper,' you mean. If I hadn't seen the footage myself, I would have thought it was science fiction."
A standard GINN was powerful, no question—but a standard GINN couldn't achieve pinpoint accuracy on every shot, couldn't construct a 'silent zone' in the middle of a battlefield where nothing moved. The ZAFT commander at the time had been dumbstruck. The word "Grim Reaper" had sprung up organically, and it had stuck as the unit's unofficial callsign ever since.
Who had been piloting that GINN remained a total mystery.
ZAFT claimed it had been commandeered. But when Orb returned the wreckage, their inspection turned up zero evidence that anyone had been in the cockpit.
It was as if the GINN had moved on its own.
The incident had been quietly closed without resolution.
Mu recalled, though, that someone had traced that ZAFT vessel's prior movements—it had passed through the ruins of the Mendel colony.
"Someone suggested the 'Grim Reaper' might be a legacy from Mendel," Mu said.
"Nonsense. Mendel was a genetics research facility—the place that birthed the abominations they call Coordinators. Not a secret weapons program." The captain shook his head.
"Abominations…" Mu murmured.
[Naturals seem to universally look down on Coordinators]
[It's not even contempt at this point—they treat Coordinators as a separate species]
[Finally some large-scale Gundam drama. The older installments always felt too small-scale for me. I wanted this.]
[Has anyone else noticed the animation quality here is absolutely insane? Even background characters are fully rendered—individual wrinkles in fabric, individual strands of hair]
[Right? This has to be the sharpest-looking Gundam ever produced]
[The production team really threw everything at this one. They want to restore mecha anime to glory.]
[I just want more MV content. Can we get more of that?]
The viewers kept murmuring.
And then a voice came through the audio feed.
"Captain—we'll head out now."
Five people stepped up, gave a salute, and departed.
(Instant cannon fodder)
Mu continued: "You're sure it's fine sending just those few in?"
"They may be rookies, but they were handpicked to pilot the G units." The captain replied. "Honestly, letting you loose out there would draw far more attention. You're our ace—stay put."
Mu looked out at the colony and went quiet.
The camera shifted one last time—to a shadowed room.
Athrun and his team had assembled. They'd changed out of their previous clothes.
"These are the forged IDs. This route leads directly into Morgenroete, Inc. We need to get inside before the Earth Alliance takes possession of the G units. So then—move out!"