Gundam WFM: Coordinator From SEED

Cradle Planet 1

The orbital base PebiColombo 23 rotates around Mercury with a fine balance, despite the instability caused by the sun's gravity.

Because Mercury is only 57,910,000 kilometers from the sun, direct contact with the planet's heat would instantly boil human blood.

But on other hand, when you enter the planet's shadow, the extreme cold drops below minus 100 degrees. There's no way that humans could live on Mercury.

The powerful charged particles that come flying from the sun cause intermittent system malfunctions. These solar winds are deadly on this planet, where the slightest error can result in death.

A buzzing sound rings out, and the hangar lights turn dark red.
A solar flare has occurred, causing the alarm to go off and switching the entire base to emergency mode.

Suletta makes her way through the pitch-dark base. Still only six years old, Suletta is afraid of the dark red lights.

At times like this, Suletta often climbs inside me.

"Aerial, will you let me in?"

Aerial.
That's my name.
It's a secret to the outside world, but I'm a Gundam-type mobile suit. And the little sister of the White Devil, Strike.

Suletta comes to me when Okaa-san is busy with work. At present, there are no other children at Mercury besides Kira-nii, so I'm one of the only friends she has.

"Aerial, call up a game."
She works the controls on my console and brings up a game screen.
I wonder what she wants to play today.
"A shooting game! I'm going to beat Okaa-san today."

Suletta's mother is my developer, as well as a Gundam test pilot. Okaa-san, Kira-nii, Nyla-nee, and Suletta are great at these kinds of games.

Wasn't Suletta about four years old when she chose this game for the first time?

Two years have passed since then, and Suletta is the best player at Mercury--except for Okaa-san and Kira-nii, of course. Nyla-nee sucks at these. It's also the same year that Nyla-nee was now a mechanic at Asticassia School of Technology.

Whoa, she's getting a terrific score. It looks like she's gotten even better.

"Look, Aerial, look!"

Ah, a high score. She's jumping up and down happily in her seat.
That's my Suletta. My little pilot.

-Linebreak-

One day Suletta, who is now nine, comes to me in tears.
She says one of Mercury's elders has been mean to her.
But she hasn't told Okaa-san. Why not?

"Because she'll worry."

Okaa-san came to this planet with her daughter, seeking refuge.
People had hidden them, but that didn't mean everyone had been friendly, and some elders had argued for expelling them to avoid trouble.

Still, this was the only place that they could go.
They had to live here. There was no other choice.

"Hey, Aerial?"

Yeah?

"What's Earth like? Kira-nii-chan taught me but the way he's teaching sucks."

Suletta had been too young to remember living anywhere but Mercury. But I had to agree, Kira-nii sucks at teaching... It's been a year since Kira-nii's awake. His sickness has been stabilized by pills that Okaa-san has given to him.

So she's very curious about life in the Earth Sphere that she's seen in my library.
Schools, cities, friends, children--people take those things for granted in the Earth Sphere, but here, they're nonexistent.

All you have here are days spent mining for resources while dreading the solar winds. Living like that, it's no wonder Mercury's elders are cranky.

I bring up a menu to see if Suletta wants to watch something in my library. She chooses her favorite anime.
Anime, movies, novels--everything in my library is set in the Earth Sphere. I think watching them lets Suletta forget about Mercury for a while.

Thirty minutes later...

Suletta finishes watching her favorite anime, and quietly mutters to herself:
"If you run, gain one. Move forward, gain two."
Okaa-san taught her these words.

Suletta had been five at the time, trying to get away as Okaa-san was about to give her an injection and Kira-nii and Nyla-nee are trying their best to constrict Suletta, despite her size.

"Listen, Suletta. If you run away, you won't have to get this shot, right?"

"Right."

"You'll gain the avoidance of pain."

"Yeah."

"What'll happen if I do give you this shot?"

"I won't get sick."

"Right. What else?"

"What else?"

"There are other things you'll gain if you don't run. For example, you'll make your mother happy."

"Hmm."

"You'll impress the people of Mercury. They'll accept you, thinking you're amazing."

"They will?"

"You'll level up, and shots won't hurt you anymore."

"Really?!"

"Really. That's why grownups aren't afraid of getting shots."

"They aren't?"

"No. So, you see, you'll gain a lot if you don't run."

"So if I move forward, I gain two?"

"That's right. More than two."

Since that day, those words have become a magical charm to push Suletta forward.
Those words must have had the same effect on Okaa-san. They were her own spell, for a single woman who had to struggle here at Mercury while caring for her young daughter.

"If you run, gain one. Move forward, gain two."
Suletta repeats the words in a soft voice, as if trying to untangle a mess of knotted threads.

I wait for the spell to take effect. That's when Suletta's entire being will brim with courage and break the curse of fear.
It's okay. She'll be able to step out of me on her own--because Okaa-san's words are powerful.