GW/T XPrompt f/Evapilot00

Transformers/Gundam Wing project
: For Evapilot00



Prompt One: Blue Cord (Queen Relena Peacecraft, of the World; 213 words) {Colony-verse}

They hang honors in Peacemillion's mess.

There are not enough honors to give out to the dead, of course. They don't have a comprehensive list to give out to, even if there were. In the end, the survivors just kind of make it a memorial wall around what's there. Pictures and recordings everywhere. There are no tombstones or even mass graves on Earth-- there was no time.

Greatly Uninhabitable was a set of words that sent people into disbelief and then shock, and shock made them easy to move, so long as it stayed as shock and didn't give way to anger. But what could be called the end of the war had left bodies littered in the streets, beyond recovery.

The Pilots hadn't had a priority. Some people on Peacemillion had.

Relena caressed the blue cord-- honor to the dead, all the dead, all the civilians who had no idea what they were getting into, who had died not knowing, or who had died as collateral damage, or just simply died.

Honor to the people Peacemillion hadn't made it in time to save.

Relena will not be unthankful for being rescued. But she is-- was-- Queen of the World.

She wished she had been the last person picked up, not the first.



Prompt Two: Hellfire (Wing; 270 words) {Colony-verse}

They don't win.

Oh, they kill the enemy. That was easy enough. Mission complete. It had been a target rich environment, after all. But they don't win. The world-- their soft fleshlings' world, their world, too, now; that's gone in all the destruction, just a hunk of a planet barely capable of life. Unlivable, really.

His name is Wing, and the hanger is patiently quiet save for the the beat of his fleshling's heart through the sensors, deep into his spark. They've killed the enemy; they have accomplished the mission.

There are maybe a thousand fleshlings left. Around the world, all of it, and Sandrock and Eypon fly to find them all.

Wing doesn't; he doesn't feel like it. His fleshling is numb; his-- their-- offspring, Wing Zero, is numb, too. So many are. So many hurt.

Sandrock hurts. But Sandrock’s spark weeps for joy at the survivors, it doesn't ache for the sheer loss. Not yet. It will-- but not yet.

His fleshling just feels empty. So Wing stays in Peacemillion and holds his fleshling close to his spark and waits.

But some of the survivors the others bring back are children, foolishly without fear and very good at getting in the hangers, and one day a little girl runs in and his fleshling is no longer empty at all.

Someone follows her one day, irate and yelling, and anger flares across the bond that they share like a wash of hellfire, and his fleshling channels it into one single, hard stare as he gathers the girl-child up into his arms.

Wing thinks, then, that things will be okay.



Prompt Three: Saint (King Millardo Peacecraft, of the Sanq Kingdom; 330 words) {Colony-verse}

Zechs is no Saint. He is aware of that, and he tells people such. Millardo wasn't, either; might have been, in another life. But Zechs certainly isn't.

Zechs was a soldier born from blood, the moment Sanq went up in flames. Despite his status as Crown Prince, and then later as King of Sanq, Millardo had never quite gotten the full story of what had happened. Most of it, sure; an attack from the enemy, for hiding one of the coalition inside their boarders. Maybe.

It was not like anybody had ever taken credit for it, after all. Not like they had ever given a reason for it. Just a huge hunk of something, dropped on the Palace.

Relena had had a play-date with a noble's son. Millardo had been at school.

Their parents had been inside.

As far as Millardo had cared, it had been an act of war. For all his parents had wanted him to, he had never been able to comprehend Total Pacifism. It simply didn't make sense. Turn the other cheek, while someone killed his people?

He couldn't.

Wouldn't.

But he couldn't sit behind and let young soldiers go to war, either. Not if he wasn't willing to go. So Zechs had been born, while Millardo had been crowned. He had pulled on the mask to hide his identity in classes, teenagers and young people taught not the theoretical art of war but the practical, from old soldiers who were well and truly tired, but unwilling to let innocents suffer. He'd had to hire them from other nations.

He hadn't expected, later, for when his mask broke, that the people of Sanq would regale their warrior-king as a hero, as a true leader.

It had been... a pleasant surprise.

The first generation of soldiers in Sanq's military were the youth, rebelling against parents and outdated policies, the Lightning Count at their head.

The second generation had joined the first, beneath the banner of the King.



Prompt Four: Stampede (Trowa Barton; 271 words) {Space}

There was always a stampede to the mess-hall during mealtimes. A number of harried workers dishing out trays and filling requests, basically the entire living populace flooding tables and jockeying for space.

There was a reason, after all, that Trowa Barton didn't eat with the masses. A startling number didn't; scientists, pilots on their rotation, other militarians... The variables were everywhere.

He glanced up from Heavyarms' open cockpit as the communication relay rang with people calling out departures, heading to hang out with friends and family for lunch. Pilots were only attached to it, pilot-to-suit to suit-to-pilot. It was easy to talk to his brothers-in-arms that way, and he could always hear the chatter on an open channel. Like the old CB radios.

The mechanics he couldn't hear, of course. But Heavyarms had a solid line of sight either way, and he could see the flood of people to the door.

Not everyone was leaving. None of the pilots in this bay were on duty, so there was no reason for someone to stay behind.

Trowa was. He'd eat after the main crowd had eaten and departed from mess. Maybe that's what they were doing?

It didn't matter. He was going to stay hidden in Heavyarms' cockpit. The zoo had had a new tiger cub this morning, and he wanted to get the memory on paper before it began to fade. Not that he had to-- the mother would doubtlessly be expecting him again later this evening, and every day for the next few weeks, but that wasn't the point.

Heavyarms might have ever-clear memories, but human memories faded with time.



Prompt Five: Nine Eyes (Quatre Winner; 900 words) {Colony-verse}

Quatre has, Sandrock tells him, a thirty minute gap in his memory. This is because, he elaborates, of information overload.

Quatre doesn't ignore him so much as let Sandrock's words wash over him, taking in the familiar sight of a tiled ceiling as he carefully goes over what he does remember. Because a blackout requires a recap, he knows that, he was a Gundam Pilot, after all. Blackouts can be issues.

He had been, of all things, having tea with the five most Sensitive people on Peacemillion. Five people who could hear, or be heard, by basically everyone linked to a mech. Five people just like himself. Then...

“You guys want to tell me whats going on anytime soon instead of just laying there like bumps on a log?”

Quatre blinked and pushed himself upright, turning to look at the source of the voice. It was a pilot, a former third-branch rebel of a rank nobody was inclined to tell anybody, and a young woman; Natasha, No Last Name Listed. She still sat at the table, holding a large glass of tea wrapped in both hands, looking for all the world perfectly board.

But Quatre could tell she wasn't. Her knuckles were white and her face was pale, the part of it that he could see. One of the battles had taken her right eye, and an eye-patch hid the cavity for more squeamish stomachs. It still hampered her on occasion, but her day to day life didn't provide her with a lot of reason to go anywhere, now. The meetings with Quatre and the others were basically the only reason she went out anywhere, except on off-hours to the mess for meals. And while she had a room, she usually slept in her Suit, the Hekate, just like most of the pilots did.

For a long moment, Quatre didn't answer her. He looked at the others, still coming too, a little groggily-- James, Michael, Rebecca, and even Steven, of all people-- and then looked back at Natasha, who certainly wasn't. Why?

Quatre ran over the minutes before his blackout and then reached to Sandrock, brimming and bubbling with excitement to check his information. Then he smiled at her, soft and reassuring. “Tea please.”

Natasha scowled at him and poured him a new cup. There was a towel on the floor under the edge of the table. When she handed it over to him, he took a careful sip and then reached out to touch the other four, testing and checking against them, too. They had all been soldiers; certainly, they had all followed the same procedure.

Natasha's scowl deepened. “I can hear you all talking around me, you know.”

Off to his side, James grinned at her. Quatre watched the exchange closer, watching Natasha's whole form slowly relax a little. Disarmed, in a way Quatre apparently wasn't capable of. “Sorry! Acquiring a consensus of what happened.”

“I can tell you what happened. You five keeled over. I'm amazed I managed to find a heartbeat in your bodies with how fast mine was beating. Thought for sure the MC was going to walk in and think I had killed all of you.”

“Would be the perfect setup for you! Why, liquid everywhere. Could have just slipped in a little poison...”

On the other side, Steven blanched. Natasha unwound some more.

Quatre rested back against the cushions and took it in, as James exchanged precise barbs at her and she relaxed more and more. Of the five of them, only James and Natasha had come from the same group, so of course James knew her better than he did. Quatre had read the files that had managed to be collected on them, but files were not the individuals.

After several more moments of back-and-fourth, Natasha forked her mug of tea over to her associate, looking considerably healthier than she had moments ago. James took it without any protest, downed about half of it, and passed it back. Then she frowned at them all.

“Now does anyone want to tell me what happened?”

“We received a transmission.”

Optimus. Sandrock had told him once about the mech, shared what memories there were to share. Now Quatre's heart ached with longing and respect and hope, because he had heard that voice himself now, and he had heard the words that had been carried on it.

But as Natasha stared at them, Quatre's heart began to sink with the realization that she had not heard any such transmission at all. He recounted everyone who was here, and checked their differences, and felt ill.

Only the most Sensitive pilots might have been capable of catching such a long-range signal themselves. It hadn't come from anywhere remotely nearby. And all those pilots were in this room right now.

Five of six had caught it. The only real difference that could have mattered was a painfully sharp reminder that the world they had crafted and carved in this universe didn't exist outside it right now.

Everyone here had a suit which had been an Autobot before the war had made them require a new body and some hefty rewiring. Back when they could propel themselves, and didn't require a human to aid them even a little.

But not Natasha.

Natasha was different. Natasha was different because her suit was Hekate.

Before her refitting, Hekate had been a Decepticon.



Prompt Six: Sorrowful Joy (Quatre Winner; 103 words) {Colony-verse}

Quatre was the first to notice. Or maybe he wasn't; maybe he was just the first to try to respond. Maybe Heero was the first one to notice, the one willing to die and kill to keep the secret from their enemies. Maybe it was Treize who knew, when he crafted Epyon's whole shell.

Maybe it didn't matter. Maybe it only mattered to Quatre, as he settled back into the seat and leaned his head against the rest.

It might have been the space-heart that let him reach out. It might have been empathy. It didn't matter.

What mattered was Sandrock reached back.



Prompt Seven: Grey Wolf (Duo Maxwell; 995 words) {Space}

Truth is, Peacemillion is a city-ship. It was designed that way; it was designed to house suits and pilots in space for extended periods of time. It was basically a colony.

It looks like a colony, too. There is even a zoo. Not that L2 had had one, of course, but Duo Maxwell had always liked zoos. He knew what they were. It had been his first non-mission-related place of visitation when he had first hit Earth.

But right now he leans against the barrier that keeps him out of the wolf enclosure and watches the inhabitants, soaking in the sound of the various aviaries while his mind drifted. It was a soothing thing. Easy. Relaxing. The idea of a nature-ish environment had probably been Quatre's idea. Or Wufei's. Though maybe not; more likely it had belonged to someone older, someone who had actually had a serious plan from earlier in the war.

Probably dead now. Privately, Duo liked to believe it had been one of them. Winner Corp or Dragon Clan. The Khushrenada foundation, maybe. Treize would have had the vision.

He hooked his fingers into the barrier and felt Deathscythe lean away from his vision, focusing more on Duo himself, checking on him. From all the way in his hanger bay.

He had been feeling it long enough now not to shiver, but it didn't stop the echo of wrongness that came with it. Deathscythe wasn't apologetic, and Duo wasn't asking for one, but...

Whatever. It wasn't like there weren't stranger things that could happen beside a big robot in his head.

It wasn't like the five of them had been the last, either. The Dragon Clan had provided a lot of soldiers for the Suit project, son and daughter alike, and a lot of them were even still alive. Wufei had been the first for them, but there had been others. The Winner's had been mostly support staff, of course; Duo saw them in the hangers often, as mechanics, digging fingers in to repair or keep maintained. The had been there for most of the war, too. And doctors-- Quatre's family thrilled at playing with needles.

There were so many. They had all started getting numbered. They all shared Suit register numbers. Which was weirder than sharing head-space with one.

Well. He had always been Duo.

Animals didn't have numbers, of course. Which made them fun to watch. Also their shapes were a source of freedom, too; a part of him, the part that wasn't him at all, missed having other shapes. Missed changing. Maybe one day they'd have it back.

Duo's lips quirked down into a frown. Deathscythe slid closer to him, inside him, in a way of apology, and something settled inside Duo that was actually his own.

“I do not mean to sound whimsical,” which coming from a Suit was downright nearly philosophical, though Deathscythe would have denied it. Considering the miles between them, Duo was surprised with how clear it all came in, Deathscythe to Duo, Duo to Deathscythe. Words, emotions, images.

It bothered him. But only a little, now.

“I was Recon. Camouflage was important, so I had a lot of forms to... blend in.” A hesitance, and then a sense of wryness came through. Dry humor, but honesty; like he was reading Deathscythe's florescent coding. He could tell the difference. “Invisible is better, tactically. I don't have to change anymore.”

If I change, Deathscythe didn't say, though Duo heard it anyway. If I change, We wouldn't be Us.

It helped. A sort of balm.

Duo leaned his forehead into the fence and closed his eyes. He was going to have a few chain-link indentations later. “You're not really invisible. It's mirror refraction or something. Camera circuitry.”

“Close enough,” which meant that it was. They might as well be invisible in reality. The enemy had never been able to see them coming-- and neither had their allies. Despite his official flares, he didn't show up with an IFF or any of the pings for any of the CID radars. Sonar could find him, if he was the only thing out there, but usually he wasn't, so.

Usually they had had to open comms to let their allies know who they were, which took precious seconds in combat usually needed for devotion to actual combat. So they were an invisible hunk of metal fighting in a field, virtually a third party. How they had managed to keep from getting mutually killed was beyond Duo's comprehension. Calling oneself the God of Death didn't exactly make it anything real, after all.

Though communications had gotten a lot easier when intent could suddenly be projected. Quatre could do it easily; could talk without talking, and hear without being anywhere around, and if any of the Suit Pilots wanted actual privacy they needed to be in the suits or otherwise somewhere wave frequencies couldn't pass or in the area of effect of an EMP-- nobody actually knew what an EMP would do to them.

Point was, Quatre had himself a Wifi Hi-def receiver dish set complete with a microphone he could turn on and off. Charles Xavier, eat your heart out.

Duo was still calibrating a soap-box radio. And the only reliable channel was Us; himself and Deathscythe. Pfft.

“Telepathy would be fairly accurate for this phenomenon. We transmit radio waves to and from each other.”

Duo reluctantly opened his eyes to stare at the wolf enclosure again, not really seeing anything but greenery. Trowa was the wild animal guy; Duo did lockpicks. And robots, apparently. “You guys spend way too much time on the internet. Technophile.”

Deathscythe's voice twisted into a smile. Duo could hear it. “I believe that is Wing's partner. We would be... hemophiles, I believe.”

Pilot 02 groaned. “Oh my god, I am so not having this conversation with you right now.”

That smile turned smug. “Cherries for dinner. You can lick that stain away without feeling guilty.”



Prompt Eight: Blissful (Shenlong/Nataku; 544 words) {Colony-verse}

Her partner isn't her partner until later. Not officially. Not that she's being officially made, either; the Earth Alliance is mass-producing casings, of course, those are official, and almost-pretty in their uniformity, but they're mostly dead husks, because that's mostly what's floating around in the debris belt, now. She knows because she's been there, floating mostly-dead around corpses of hollow comrades and shattered enemies.

The man making her casings isn't her partner. But he's generous enough; nice armor plating, and he's playing into what was already there, salvaging what he can and replacing what he can't or what's gone, and she gets to rest next to another half-dead ally he's doing the same thing for.

She and he don't talk a lot. There's less damage to him, physically; most of it's probably memory. When the strange native isn't there, the conversations are quiet, humming quietly to themselves and browsing through the limited source of native information, sharing stories when they grow bored. They don't tell each other their names; their old designations belonged to their old forms, and so what if he has most of his? They'll get new ones.

The youth who will be her partner visits fairly often. Lingers, watching, frowning over the edge of a-- a book at them. Always in white.

Their armor starts shiny and polished until they start to paint it, and the base is white. They talk about that when it happens, wonder what it means.

One day the youth comes in in colors that are not white. They're bright and patterned; reds and greens and blues. Their sources decry what these colors mean, what his armor means. The natives have strange armors, interchangeable, that's just how it works.

This armor is-- Oh. Sparkmates.

They get excited about the prospect, because that means he might bring another visitor. The man leading their rearmament is nice enough; his medics are magnificent, piecing them back together. But visitors in the med-bay are always a treat.

He doesn't.

Time goes by.

Her armor is fully painted first, finished. His is in progress, but he's already got his weaponry online. Hers is still a work-in-progress. One day when the native who'll be her partner visits, the man putting them back together asks for names. She gets Shenlong. He gets Tianlong.

They use these names a lot, until one day the med-bay shudders and a youthful woman climbs into the hollow they've made before Tianlong's spark-chamber, runs all the processes for battle. He pings her when he engages the enemy.

She waits.

The youth who will be her partner comes in shortly after, not long at all, a few rattles of the med-bay, and he climbs inside her and they are partners suddenly. He keys on everything she has-- she has no weapons. It doesn't matter to her. It doesn't matter to him. She knows, suddenly, what's going on, and why her baleful partner is even here.

He's no warrior except when he has to be, but Tianlong's partner is his sparkmate, and he'll not sit and let her die.

She will fight for that, if she needs a motivation.

She doesn't.

There was beauty and grace in battle, and that she gets to take on the enemy once more-- that's bliss.



Prompt Nine: Red Arrow (Lord Treize Kushrenada; 735 words) {Colony-verse}

Treize is the Lord of the House of Kushrenada, a noble from a royal bloodline, a decorated veteran, a consummate soldier. He was awarded numerous medals, ribbons and shields, and not all of them from the Court of Albion. He held land, and titles, and a military command.

But, when Treize is honest with himself-- and he usually isn't-- he is aware that titles and medals don't mean anything.

Especially now.

The future Queen of Albion is a princess of five. She is Treize's cousin on his mother's side; his grandfather had been the third Prince of the family. Technically close enough he could have had the throne, potentially, but for now the Queen-Consort of the late King Arthur-- Treize's aunt in all but title, really, the same way Arthur had been when his uncle when he could be-- rules in her daughter's stead, helping quell the people from Albion that survived. Her oldest child, the princess, is the eldest of two, and the Queen-Consort is pregnant.

The title doesn't actually matter. Albion no longer exists as a nation; Earth is uninhabitable, and the colonies? Well. Most of the colonies are gone. The ones that survive might not last much longer.

“Albion exists as a people, Treize,” Minerva says, smoothing down the lapels of his formal uniform. He has to be dressed in full honors. It's a formal dinner, an evening for the adults to decompress. Treize lets her mother him, despite their closeness in age. It's healthy for her, and an unconscious gesture; he'd be remiss to ruin it for her. “And people are resilient. As long as they call themselves from Albion, it's not my place to say it doesn't exist.”

People were resilient indeed. Initial estimates of the fallout had proven to be false; a thousand had turned into a few thousand, and the few thousand had turned into a couple thousand and then some.

Most of the survivors were children, of course. Lots and lots of children. Someone, Treize wasn't sure who, was supposed to be working on an apprenticeship program to foster them later. But right now most of the children stayed in a central daycare, while teenagers and adults worked hard on making ships and shuttles live-able long term. Nobody knew when the colonies would be repaired, or if they even could be.

Long-term plans would be part of the discussion at dinner tonight. So would short-term plans. He wasn't sure how he would deal with it.

Minerva smiled at him. “Thinking about someone special?”

He closed his eyes and tried not to think about the first time he had seen suits in the sky, when the battles pressed through the atmosphere. The arc of red and white falling like arrows to earth, struck down by their opposition, years later.

The way, like fate, he had met a bristling young man under a mask, and a soft-smiling protege, and a dear, Lady Une, who had all become his closest friends.

He tried not to think about the day he had met Miss Barton, who's death still ached in his chest.

Minerva patted his chest once more, then stepped back to check the medallions were in their proper places. “It's alright. Come on, lets get the children to their party, and then you can walk me to dinner, Sir Kushrenada.”

He smiled and turned with her, striding forward to get the door. They shared a suite, because space was tight; three rooms and a small housing unit. His bedroom, hers, and the children's. But right now her two children and his own daughter sat in the community room. Mariemaia had her young cousin on her lap, letting the girl play with her tie. The older princess sat on the couch next to her, fiddling with her dress.

His niece was the first one to notice them. She squealed, pleased, and threw herself off the couch to come attach herself to his leg in greeting. “Uncle!”

His own daughter, more refined, inclined her head and held on to her charge. “Father. Aunt Minerva.”

“Are we all ready then?” Minerva laughed, quiet, and went to fetch her youngest while he scooped up the heiress. Mariemaia nodded, a little embarrassed, then smoothed the blanket on her lap and tucked in the corners so they would not catch in the wheels.

Treize went to open the door for them.

Alright. Some titles meant something.



Prompt Ten: Rattle Snake (Heavyarms; 252 words) {Colony-verse}

The old Trowa Barton had been a rattlesnake, Heavyarms mused, quiet like a low hum in the back of his pilot's cockpit as the human sat in the chair. It was a good comparison, from his browsing of this world's digitized databases and communications. Lots of noise when scared, lots of venom to bite back, lots of slippery tendencies and a lookout for himself and no one else.

The new Trowa Barton was younger, but not by so many years. He hadn't had a name when the old Trowa Barton had died. The humans who'd rebuilt his shell and gave him his new designation had killed him, when they had realized what the old Trowa Barton had planned to use him for.

He could have told them. He could have warned them. He'd tried, but nobody had listened.

Except the young mechanic, who nobody also listened to. But by then his armor was complete, and all warnings were too late-- until the scientist pulled the trigger. And his mechanic had stepped up to take his new designation.

Though the old Trowa Barton had been a rattlesnake.

The new one was a mongoose, Heavyarms decided, flicking the page open on his interior console screen, the one that communicated his data to his pilot; armor-plate readings and energy outputs and hundreds of other little tidbits hidden under the Wikipedia article.

The teenager flicked his attention up from his book at the screen, face impassive as he read it.

“...very well.”

Heavyarms closed the screen.