The Guardian of the Cosmos

(9) The Land of Peace...?

As we docked, the youngs can't help but wonder if they could take some day off, I don't really blaming them for having such thoughts. They are from Orb and get dragged into the war unintentionally, after all.

We will be amused minutes later as we see Princess Cagalli Yura Athha in her dress, not really something you gets to see from someone with a Tomboy-ish personality. Kira and I were then approached by people of Morgenroete Inc, an Orb-based NGO provice technical supports for Orb Union. They wants us to go with them at next day morning.

As we followed them through a hidden gate, we are brought down a MS-sized elevator to the bottom, where are are greated by Chief Simmons who lead us into a massive underground facility for their research on Orb-used MS, which they dubbed M1 Astray.

Cagalli also has her time to meet us at the base too, with a noticeble red at her right cheek. Which Chief Simmons mentioned as a slap for her shouts over the open channel yesterday. 

As we head deeper into the facility, we can see some actual test of the Astray, who really has a hard time to move and act smooth. She started explained the reason we were brought here: "To help develop a OS for them to act more smoothly.

Kira went off to change his uniform into a working jacket while I also changed my armor to a more comfort wear, I will act as a real-time advisor about the scripts he wrote, make sure that the Orb military, consist of both Natural and Coordiantors alike, can use it properly. I greeted Cagalli as she come to the factory part and check in on us.

When she mentioned about a organized meeting for the Heliopolis gang and their families, I can see his face dropped a bit, and I nudged Cagalli to have her dropped the topic and try to talk about something else.

We tried to talk about the war and Orb's neutrality as we taking a small break and head for a vending machine. Discrimination started wars here and there, and people died for that, it makes people started to think what happened if the pacifist faction joined the war and emerged victorius.

We head back to the testing ground and showed them the draft of the OS, which indeed have the M1 Astray moved smoother compared to their laggy movement hours ago. As the demonstration ended, Kira head back to Strike while I check up on him as there's not much people around within earshot. 

"Kid what happened back there, you know, when the Princess mentioned about the meeting?" "It's just... many people have different approach on me, a Coordinator, helping out the Alliance in the fight. And why my parents make me this" I put my hands on his shoulder: "Kid, forget what those people said, the war is not about black and white, there are people who genuely wishes to protect something or someone from harm, you are one of them, I understood that damn well because I have something I want to protect too, that's why I put my lives in harm and in the frontlines."

The green robotic bird that ofter rest on Kira's shoulder suddenly flew off in the distance, and we ran off to go after the bird, damn it was flying a bit too high that is out of my reach even with my jump boosts.

We ran off and see it resting on the hand of a blue haired teen, over the fence. As we get close to the fence, so was the teenager and his friends. An alert was raised as they are revealed to be the pilot of the stolen Gundams, the blue haired is Athrun Zala, pilot of Aegis, and the son of the second head of the PLANT council.

Kira saw him as well but he has a visible shock upon eye contact with Athrun. As he handed over the bird to Kira, kid murmured about how the bird is a precious thing he received from a precious friend, with record of Athuran studied at the moon, everything seems to be making sense, and why Strike and Aegis always fight, but never actually killed each other off.

In the remaining 3 days, we gave out best shot at the Astray OS and I personally made a handbook for better understanding. It's not that their doctrines are bad, but sometimes simplified might be better in many situations.

When we depart, Kira still wanted to have a last minute rest on the deck, but he told us that the ZAFT will strike when we leave, I decided to trust him this time, friends might be friends, but there is still a duty of being in a army.