Quote:No, he just hardcoded the Gundams to obey only whichever person was currently sitting in their cockpit, with the full awareness that changing that would require ripping the entire machine apart and rebuilding it from the ground up, since that would be the only way to completely purge the computer system. Unfortunately, he was wrong about three of them being empty.
Did Kira just give his DNA codes to the Atlantic Federation?
Hey, I have to keep him and Blaze on the front lines somehow.
"Yeah," he answered, "but there wasn't supposed to be anybody in the other three! It was the simplest way to keep them from obeying anybody..."
The window changed, now showing a handsome man with curly blond hair and an impressive set of bruises. "What was?" he asked, "and who are you?"
"Kira Yamato," he answered as the communication display changed for a second type, this time giving him his first good look at the infiltrator who had given the commando team access to the prototypes.
She was surprisingly ordinary, though quite pretty, with brown hair and an a slight softness to the lines of her face that suggested that her current, entirely businesslike efficiency wasn't her usual demeanor. "He set the main passwords to alter themselves randomly ever time they were queried, then locked the secondary control condition to whichever pattern the cockpit's DNA scanner was reading at the moment the system received the command. We - and these two - are the only pilots these machines will accept now."
"Huh." The blond man was back. "I guess that means that you two kids are going to have to come with us," and if his voice was slightly regretful then there was also absolutely no give in it at all.
"We're not that young," Blaze said, with a snarl and a glare that made her eyes look even more like a big cat's than they usually did. "I hate to drag Kira into it, but there's no way I'm going to abandon the country my family helped build to some political hack in Washington, or leave any of its people open to Blue Cosmos' 'Final Solution'."
There was silence for a moment, and then Kira heard a scream of tearing metal echo into his towering alloy and composite coccoon through the catwalk holding it up against the wall. "That's your duty," said the third Federation pilot, a pretty woman with features that were somewhere between elfin and hawkish and a vicious gash down her cheek and throat that was bleeding even through its bandage. "But it's ours to make you." On the main display Kira could see the suit that had been nearest warehouse-sized hanger bay's doors standing silouetted by the outdoor sunlight, with a massive cannon nearly as long as it was held in either hand and trained straight towards the two students' suits.
The muzzle aimed at him, Kira realized, somehow seemed like the largest and darkest ring he'd ever seen.
"Dying here won't do anything for you country, Miss Attha," said the blond man. "And without training, you won't be able to manage anything else. A live Princess can do a hell of a lot more for peace than a dead martyr."
Attha?! He called Blaze... It took a moment for the absurd idea to penetrate, another to compare his friend's features to those he remembered from the pictures and telecast of the reclusive princess's last public appearance, and yet a third to force acceptance past the incongruity of that dignified, ladylike poise coming from the same person who had terrorized half of the campus's intramural sports teams and had to be physically restrained from wrecking Miriallia's room when their mutual friend had tried to persuade her into a dress for a blind date... But in the end, the structure of her face, the shade of her eyes, the vague things she'd said about her life and family, even her status as a non-expressing Coordinator - all of them fit too well to deny.
Not that that changed anything about her status as his friend, or his willingness to back her up even in something as crazy as this situation. He shook of his surprise and hoped, idly, that his parents would be all right without him.
Then the mobile suit - its silouette looked like one of the ones he'd seen in the news stories about the PLANTS home-made military - landed behind the suit that had been threatening him and everthing started to happen too quickly for even a Coordinator to do more than react on instinct.
Hmm. I'm really not sure about letting this bit of information slip this early, but Mu sort of up and decided he'd recognize her face, so I ran with it.
By the by, my computer has decided to BSOD every time I try to boot it up, so I'll probably be erratic for the few days until the parts to finish the one I was building anyway arrive.
Ja, -n
(and next time: explosions)
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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"