(The earlier picture was too small)
(Posting them separately)
[Kira in casual clothes looks great too]
[The most exquisite part is that under the plain coat is the skintight combat suit—that forbidden thrill of it hidden beneath the everyday is the best part!]
[I hereby dub our Inori a Gundam fashion designer]
[The combat suit doesn't show anything at all, but worn under a loose ordinary coat, it just has this really provocative feel]
[AI understands the human heart best]
[Inori-san, I'm your dog!]
[Pathetic. I'm different—Inori's my wife!]
[You all chat, I'm taking Kira]
[You all chat, I'm taking Cagalli]
[Damn, someone can actually stomach that one]
[Don't knock it—I'm into teaching bratty little girls a lesson]
The audience was still happily debating Kira's clothes, but aboard the Archangel, the whole atmosphere had shifted because of one sentence from Mu.
"Yes." Kira answered, head bowed. At her words, the surrounding guards couldn't help gripping their weapons. Tolle rushed to the front, shielding Kira behind him, glaring at the Earth Alliance soldiers.
Cagalli, holding herself back in the rear, saw this and couldn't take it anymore either. "Hey, we're citizens of Orb! Earth Alliance—don't push your luck!"
[Tolle really is a great aniki]
[Sai usually comes across as reliable, but when it counts you've still gotta rely on Tolle]
[A whiff of Flag in the air]
[Here comes Cagalli again]
[Tolle, little angel, 233]
[Miriallia's been holding Kira's hand this whole time]
[I hope Cagalli holds it in—I'm so scared she gets hot-headed and blurts out her identity]
"Even if Kira's a Coordinator, she's not an enemy! Did none of you see what just happened? That white MS—Kira drove it off! What is going through your heads?!"
[Tolle chews out the masses]
[Their heads not working right is the real story]
[Feeding himself to the enemy]
Inori walked over to Kira's side. "Kira, may I have authorization?"
Authorization? Authorize what? Cagalli turned her head. She suddenly remembered how Inori had earlier turned some kind of black coffin into a shield to block an attack. Could it be that again?
[Catching on now—Inori's been asking for all sorts of authorizations from the start]
[Inori seems to know a whole lot]
[Did Cagalli just tap into some beastly intuition?]
[So we're all just defaulting to Cagalli being a beast now?]
[Hey now, you're not wrong]
[Honestly, from what the Black Monolith's shown, she could definitely suppress everyone here—but Inori didn't raise the shield, she asked for authorization instead]
[Authorization's obviously to suppress the enemy, right?]
[Damn, don't tell me it turns out Inori's the final boss? Please no!]
[That trope's out of style now—I don't think so]
"Lower your weapons, now!" At this critical moment, it was Murrue who stepped in to defuse the situation. She looked at the wary Badgiruel. "There's no need for all this. Heliopolis is the colony of a neutral nation—it's no surprise if Coordinators who don't want to be dragged into the war have relocated here."
"Eh…?" Cagalli's face was one big question mark again.
—Hold on, this is a little different from what you said before?
Cagalli's brain was starting to overload.
[Pig-brain overload]
[Liking Murrue more and more]
[She said some harsh things before, but now she's the first to jump out and defend Kira and the others]
[Wasn't it Murrue who brought them to the Gundam cockpit in the first place, all to save them?]
[Murrue—this is a woman who could be my mother!]
[So gentle]
[Only Cagalli's out of the loop, 2333]
[Such a tense scene, and watching Cagalli, I suddenly don't feel tense at all]
Inori hadn't expected Cagalli to have such a talent for performance. She was practically a walking comic-relief machine. Cagalli's "act" nicely added a touch of levity to the whole stage.
Having finished speaking, Murrue immediately looked at Kira beside her. "Right, Kira?"
"Mm… I'm a first-generation Coordinator." Seeing this, Inori finally spotted the problem. Kira… she seemed to feel inferior about being a "Coordinator." In the "original," even if Kira had similar feelings, she'd never expressed them like this. But this somewhat gloomy girl definitely had a reason behind it.
"Is it… because of your body?"
Back when Inori was still "Ouma Mana," she'd worked up a set of Knights of Sidonia biotech for Ulen Hibiki, and that technology seemed to have been applied to Kira. And one key feature of that tech was literal biological sex fluidity.
It all made sense now. Kira had probably grown up different from everyone else—even from other Coordinators—and that difference was likely what had driven her transformation. Though from the very first time Inori met Kira, Kira's body had already shifted largely female.
"Could it be because of Athrun?"
And over the year since then, Kira's transformation had only accelerated. Inori pulled up the Memory Archive.
"Mm, it started changing after I showed that I preferred girls. Interesting."
While Inori was retrieving the archive, Mu spoke up. "First-generation, huh—meaning your parents are Naturals."
Then he turned to the rest of the Archangel's crew. "Sorry for stirring up such a fuss. I just wanted to ask, that's all." He lifted his head toward the Strike. "On my way here, I watched those reserve pilots' simulation training. Just getting the machine to move sluggishly took them real effort."
Mu didn't finish the thought. But his memory flashed back across the audience's screens. The moment Le Creuset saw the Strike, he immediately broke away from Mu and attacked it. And in that instant, the Strike had actually struck first—as if it knew Le Creuset was about to attack. Through that telepathy-like sensation, Mu could even feel Le Creuset's shock.
—Even the notoriously formidable Rau Le Creuset had actually had his attack read by an enemy.
Unfortunately, at that point Kira hadn't understood her own weapon's power, and after blasting through Heliopolis she'd panicked. But she recovered quickly, switching to controlled bursts with the assault rifle. From Mu's vantage, she scarcely missed a shot, suppressing Le Creuset's CGUE with the assault rifle alone.
"What a remarkable kid."
[Thought he'd be the playboy type]
[A handsome older guy—rough around the edges, but surprisingly observant]
[It's just that his voice gives off a might-defect-at-any-moment vibe]
[I think he's the reliable type]
[Hold on—have none of you noticed this guy's name? Flaga—Flag]
[Grass (a type of exclamation)—now that you mention it, you're right]
[The Natural-Coordinator conflict really does look massive, though]
[Definitely a flashpoint]
[Piloting an MS in this world really is hard—UC people probably couldn't manage it]
[UC has the Psycho-Frame, it's different]
[They're both Gundam, but better not to compare across series]
[Actually, I'm more curious about what kind of technology Inori's artificial body uses]
[Right, and what technology do the Black Monolith and Inori use, anyway?]
The audience sank into curiosity, and the Stage's view once again cut to ZAFT…