Gundam: Pilots of harmony.
Operation 2: Learning Curve part 2
A shadow passed over the ship known as ‘A New Hope’ that was rather small compared to the ship yet quite a lot faster. Purple light lanced out from a weapon that the figure the shadow belonged to carried. It lanced down towards the ship only for another character to get in front of the ship raising a shield which blocked the lance of light. Finally, the figures revealed themselves in the light of a nearby star as the ship traveled close to it.
The first figure stood at 50’ feet tall wielding a rifle in its right hand, and a shield in it’s left. On its hips were two beam-sword holsters capable of being unsheathed in the time it takes to blink. Its body was a deep purple with navy blue and hot pink stripes down one side. This was the Gundam known as ‘Strike Freedom,’ sworn to defend freedom at any cost.
The figure that was currently lowering their shield was slightly smaller, standing at 40’ feet tall. Instead of a lance rifle in its left hand, it was holding a much more modest gun that was only meant for short range to mid-range fighting. And sadly the weapon didn’t have that much of a charge to it. The Gundam was a bright blue color on the parts of it that had more armor which included the shoulders, arms, and legs. The rest of it was a beautiful silver color for the elements with less shielding. Great red wings rose from the back of the Gundam in a sort of angel way. This was the Destiny Gundam which always helped its pilot to find their destiny.
“So I see you have been hiding on this ship like the traitor you are.” The pilot of the Strike Freedom Gundam stated.
“Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t. The only thing that matters is my destiny to destroy this pathetic ship.” The pilot of the Destiny Gundam replied.
“Very well. Then I must do what I must. You will never again terrorize those you deem inferior to your destiny,” Strike exclaimed, before holstering its rifle and unsheathing the beam swords, “I will cut you down here and now for the galaxy to be free of your evil.” and with that, the Gundam charged for destiny.
“We’ll see. I won’t let you get in the way of my destiny.” The pilot of Destiny replied. The Gundam threw its beam rifle to the side before reaching behind it with its right hand and latching onto the handle of something that was right behind its wings. It pulled the object back in front of it and swung its arm out to the side to reveal lengths of blade unraveling before clicking together to form the sword that Destiny Gundam was best known for. The edge of it lit up with purple plasma energy as it brought its left hand onto the grip with its right side. It then burst forwards at high speed towards the taller Gundam swinging with all its might.
The battle between the two titans reached a fever pitch and-
“You two coming to eat or not?” A voice sound behind the two figures played with a couple of Gundam figurines.
A blush erupted from the faces of Sparkle and Eclipse as they put down their figurines. After having read up on the Gundams created, Sparkle was curious as to what they could do. Unfortunately, she wasn’t allowed to touch the Gundams nor fly them due to both species incompatibility and security risk. Although she may not have been allowed to learn how a Gundam worked, she was allowed to try making a toy Gundam. The Gundam she decided to make was destiny, because she felt it would be better if she at least got to know her ‘daughter.’ Sparkle still cringed at the mere thought, silently hoping they found the girl’s birth parents soon so she wouldn’t have to keep acting for too long.
Eclipse looked up at Sparkle as the blush stayed on her face, ”Thanks for playing with me Mama. That was fun. I hope I get to pilot one of these someday,” She said as she put down the Strike Freedom she made, “I just hope I can fly for real once these wings start to grow.”
That was another thing Sparkle had to get used to, Eclipse’s transformation. About two days after her little ‘ahem’ freakout’ Eclipse started complaining about her back starting to itch and the no matter what she did to try and relieve it would just make it worse. After checking with one of the doctors on staff, Sparkle was shocked to find that in addition to the horn growing from Eclipse’s forehead, she was also growing a pair of wings. Eclipse was turning into an alicorn, making her transformation all the more worrying than Sparkle’s own when she got over her little freakout. She didn’t even realize that she had wings until she tried turning over and ended up laying on them.
“Mommy?” Eclipse asked as she got to the door before realizing Sparkle wasn’t following, “You coming? I hear they’re making pancakes today~” she singsonged, knowing just how to get her mother out of her thought bubble.
Sparkle’s eyes quickly refocused on Eclipse as she shook her head for a moment to snap herself out of her daze. “Of course dear.” She got up from where she had been sitting as her magic put the figurines they had been playing within a glass case on the wall. She trotted out the door right behind Eclipse, while Eclipse was singing some song as best she could that belonged to the Gundam franchise.
Sparkle’s thoughts drifted to what might lay for her in the future. There had to be some way to convince the leaders of the ship to allow her into their mech bays to study one of the giant machines up close. There was just so much that she could learn from all this technology around her. She had been given an okay to go through the courses they offered to children and adults to teach them about mobile suits in general, but they had denied her entrance to their mech bays and to learn more about the unique mobile suits they called Gundams.
The other mobile suits were fine and all, but they didn’t seem to hold that same exciting spark for her that these mysterious Gundams did. It was rather strange to her because she had never experienced a level of curiosity quite like this. Maybe she could get a peek at even a basic mobile suit if she could just somehow sneak her way into the bay. Perhaps she could sneak a glance when there was a change of the guard or something like that.
Her thoughts were interrupted when she looked up after entering what she thought was the cafeteria. In her unfocused musing Sparkle managed to get separated from Eclipse and Cinder and somehow found her way into the very place she wanted to go, the mech bay. And there before her eyes was one of the very Gundams that she remembered reading about; The Strike Freedom. Ironically it was also the very same one as the figurine, which Eclipse has been playing with minus the color scheme.
The giant mech stood on a sort of metal platform, which its large feet were attached to. The metal platform had another piece attached to right behind the big suit so the whole section could act like a sort of improvised bed that would lower the Gundam onto its back or back onto its feet. This way the engineers could work on more delicate pieces when they needed too. As it was right now there appeared to be a couple of engineers working on it right at this moment. She was standing on a walkway that led right up to the mobile suit and more specifically to a hatch that was set right in the stomach area of the Gundam where the cockpit was located.
Her ears flicked this way and that as she tried to catch what the engineers were saying as she quietly snuck closer to the giant mech. Finally, she made it halfway across the walkway when she was able to hear the engineer’s talking without having to strain her ears. She listened as carefully as she could while they talked.
“Have you been able to figure out why this mech keeps issuing errors every time someone tries starting her up?” Th engineer closest to the mech asked.
“No. I just can’t figure out where the problem is. It’s almost like the mech is refusing to work with the pilot, but that’s impossible since these mechs aren’t sapient, ”The one on the left said holding a clipboard in his hands listing the various problems encountered, “However, there is one thing that’s bothering me. Some of these readings show that every time the mech starts up, it starts emitting a strange energy, the same energy that we’ve recorded coming from the creature and the anomaly.”
Sparkle’s mind went into overdrive as she processed what she had just heard. If the mechanics were right then, this giant mech was emitting magic the same way that she and Eclipse did. She had figured out that the energy which Cinder had talked about before was magical energy that she and other creatures from her world emitted. So to hear that this giant mech before her was also radiating the same kind of magic energy was somewhat curious to her. Her horn glowed with its soft magenta color as she performed a scan on the mech using a spell that she had devised herself. It would give her information on the mech’s internal workings in a way that she could understand.
However, as soon as Sparkle’s magic touched the mech, all hell broke loose. First; the mech activated itself in a manner of a pony just waking up. Second; one of the arms closest to the platform Sparkle was standing on grabbed her and placed her in the cockpit. And Finally; the entire thing launched into space so fast that it took, as one rainbow colored pegasus would say, ten seconds flat. There wasn’t even enough time from the opening and closing of the airlock to move the air that would have pulled the mechanics from the bay.
What the suit was not prepared for was the fact that the airlock didn’t lead to space it only led to a closed off area connected to the actual launch ramps used to propel mobile suits off of the ship. But it fixed that quickly enough as the same magenta hue that came off of Sparkle’s horn connected with the airlock door closing it behind the suit. That’s when the alarms started to blare throughout the ship, and the suit moved around somewhat frantically. The bells were loud blaring klaxons that rang throughout the ship as the lights went to more emergency type lighting with red lights blinking all over the inside of the ship. The magenta hue of the suit’s prongs then worked its way to the elevator that would lead lift it onto the ramp where mechanical clasps would lock onto the legs to give a secure grip as it moved along the slope. What’s more is that the magenta hue had worked its way into the ship’s systems and was systematically hacking it to activate the launch protocols used for launching a mobile suit in the first place.
To say that the humans were panicked would be an understatement. The humans on the bridge rushed around quickly while the ones at their terminals were frantically typing away to stop the hacking. They were too late to do anything as the elevator came down faster than it ever did from the ramp. The mobile suit stepped right onto the elevator, and massive metal walls came down around it as the elevator slowly moved back up to the ramp. This part couldn’t be rushed as the procedure was automatic and no amount of hacking could speed it up. Many different mechanical tools that you could see in an assembly line for cars and of course more futuristic ones popped out of these massive metal walls and checked the mech over. They applied several more layers of armor to it as well as adjusted pieces of its wings. Slots opened on the sides of the metal walls to reveal the suit’s weapons which of course included a small shield that attached to the left arm of the Gundam and its two large beam rifles meant for long to mid-range combat. The suit reached out and grabbed hold of the beam rifles as more implements came out and attached a handle for a beam saber on each hip right above the two large beam rifles that were built into the suit directly below each hip. Finally, a mechanical port reached out from the back wall and connected with its back and gave it a last-minute refuel so it would be topped off to move about.
After all this the process was complete, and the metal walls slid away as the elevator finally connected with the ramp. The ramp was still locked up, but the hacking from the suit managed to unlock the ramp, and it quickly unfolded from the right side of the ship. The ship itself was modeled after the Celestial Being ship in the Gundam anime. The model of the ship was called the Ptolomea Mark 2. The ramp finally unlocked entirely, and the suit stepped onto the ramp where metal clasps clamped right onto its feet. The suit crouched down and leaned forward as it waited to be launched. The launching sequence was engaged, and it was rushed forwards along the ramp until the clamps released and it was flying under its power away from the ship.
All the while, Sparkle was once again unconscious. As a bonus, the magic still coursing thor the mobile suit was changing its color to match its pilot, as well as it’s shaped. The prongs on its head were usually in a v pattern when not in weapon mode slowing morphed into that of a unicorn horn. The wings on its back morphed as well to mimic a pegasus’ wings. Once the wings had finished morphing, an enormous halo of light emitted right above the wings as they stayed out to the sides in leveled flight. It formed a perfect circle of the wings and sparkling light emitted from it softly.
Sparkle herself had gone through a change as well. The suit’s operator system had booted itself up. The system was just like the system used in the Mobile Suit G Gundam season. A circular metal ring had come down out of the top of the cockpit and circled down around her. The interior of the ring was covered with some black liquid material that didn’t move even as the ring circled on down. When it came into contact with her body, it made the unconscious Sparkle cry out in pain as the black liquid came into contact with her. From the first second, it touched her it had run a scan of her body to know best how to fit on her. But this process in and of itself was somewhat grueling as one wrong move from the pilot could cause significant damage to the pilot’s body. The ring circled down slowly as the liquid started to stick to her body. The bodysuit formed around her as the circuitry was also embedded into the suit through the fluid that hardened around her so she would sync up to the Gundam altogether. Finally the ring connected with the floor of the cockpit and disappeared from view as the suit finished solidifying around her. Purple lines ran down all over the suit combining to her chest to form her cutie mark as her cutie mark also appeared on the flanks of her suit. A special helmet had developed from the black liquid around her head that was airtight in case the suit was damaged enough to expose her to space itself. She would be fine now in case that happened. The last thing the suit did was give her a good jolt to wake her from her impromptu nap.
Back in the ship, the bridge crew was frantically trying to find who, what, and how someone managed to hack their systems and steal a mech from under their noses. The klaxon alarms continued to blare throughout the intercoms of the ship which only increased the panic and franticness of the bridge crew.
“Has anyone got any leads on who the hell stole that Mech!” the captain bellowed out to her subordinates.
“We don’t have any leads yet Captain, ”One of the operators, named Feldt Grace called back to her. She was in charge of the ship’s weapon’s division on the ship. She was currently at a terminal typing away trying to get some lead as to who the heck was out there. Finally, she figured out just who it was and turned back to the Captain, whose name was Sumeragi Lee Noriega.
“Captain, it would appear the perpetrator is none other than the alien creature who calls herself Sparkle. The camera footage shows she wandered off from Chief Engineer Cinder and the anomaly. She got into our mobile suit bay while the guards were slacking off playing poker again and did something to the suit. It was as if the suit itself just came alive and picked her up. The hacking came from the suit itself.” Feldt finished as she looked up from her terminal.
Captain Lee was stunned to hear that horse creature thing had that audacity to attempt to steal a mech. “WHAT!” She yelled, hoping she just heard things, “Are you telling me that the purple creature stole the only Gundam frame mobile suit that was still under repairs?! How did it even bypass the security codes required even to unlock the cockpit, let alone the ship?!”
Feldt scratched the back of her head nervously as she replied in a bit of an apologetic tone,”Well…The engineers left the cockpit open and unlocked as they ran maintenance on the machine. And as for the codes, they forgot to change them from last week, so the machine still had all the codes it needed.”
Unknown to all of the humans there was a figure watching the ship and the proceedings all from the astral plane. It was rather silent, and it sometimes showed up as a faint silhouette in space. The figure was none other than a reaper. Underneath its black cloak, one could see skeletal bones peaking out with what looked like the remains of ice blue fur in some places. And a great scythe rested on its back shaped like a grim reaper’s scythe in personal fairy tales. The cloak moved a bit in a non-existent wind which revealed the skeletal being’s flanks which still had patches of its old coat on them. Enough of the skin remained on the sides to show what had been the figure’s cutie mark in life. This cutie mark was an image of a pony that was lying on the ground shattered into pieces. In other words, this reaper was formerly a pony known as Shattered Souls. A being from another world and dimension who had ended up in this one such a long time ago. He had taken the place of the former manifestation of Death and was now in charge of it himself. He was an observer who watched everything throughout the universe and kept a strict balance between good and evil.
The reason for him watching the ship and its inhabitants right now was because the balance had been tipped far too sharply in favor of evil. It was an incredible force which had done so, and so he was forced to intervene and cause things to be set in motion which would bring the scales of good and evil back into perfect balance. Thus he was responsible for the engineers, who had been working on the suit, for forgetting to lock the cockpit up and change the codes for the ship. And he was also the one who had caused one of the guards in the poker game they had been playing to have an unusually high winning streak. All of this led to Twilight being able to get into the suit now when it was emitting the energy rather than later where she would have been denied getting close to the mechs. And although Souls could manipulate destinies to a degree, he could only do each scenario once.
“Cinder Blaze, Get up here, Now!” Captain Lee yelled into the intercom, which in turn silenced the alarm to indicate that the situation was now being handled by the captain and its crew. The red alarm lights continued to blink throughout the ship which stated that all non-essential personnel should stay in their rooms until the situation was resolved.
The intercom crackled with static before a frantic reply came through, ”Right away Captain Lee! I just have to make sure that Eclipse is secure back in Sparkle’s room.” He hurried through the hall of the ship tugging young Eclipse along as the headed back for her and Sparkle’s room. As he ran, he began wondering what the trouble was this time. ‘Come to think of it, where the heck is Sparkle? I could have sworn she was right behind me.’
Cinder was tugging rather hard on Eclipse’s wrist as he pulled her along, which caused her to squeak out in pain with every significant step. She cried out with a pained voice, ”Mr. Cinder, stop pulling so hard. It hurts when you do that.”
Cinder blinked as the words registered in his mind and he slowed down a bit,”I’m sorry Eclipse. But we have to get you back to your room now. I’ll find your Mom for you and send her your way. We have a bit of a situation going on at the moment, and I need for you to stay in your room so you’ll be safe.”
Eclipse’s mouth turned downwards into a frown as she looked back up at him with eyes laced with pain,”Yes Mr. Cinder.” She ran a bit faster so his insistent tugging wouldn’t hurt her as much even though he had slowed down a bit.
Cinder Blaze quickly arrived alongside her at her assigned room. The blinking red lights of the ship blinded him a bit, which caused him to press a couple of the numbers on the keypad by her door incorrectly. The display lit up red and beeped, indicating that the code had been input wrong. He growled a bit before he retyped the code again a little more slowly. Eclipse looked up at him with worry in her eyes as her frown deepened just a little bit more. The door to her room slid open with the soft mechanical hiss, and he tugged her inside the room. He brought her over to her bed before picking her up and setting her lightly down on it.
“Ok Eclipse. I have to get up to the bridge now. I’m going to lock the door to your room so you won’t just wander out. I’ll make sure to send your Mom to you as soon as possible ok?” Cinder asked her in a hurried tone.
“Yes Mr. Cinder,”Eclipse repeated in an unhappy tone. She pulled the blanket off her bed closer to her with her small hands.
Cinder Blaze stood back up entirely with a small nod before turning towards the door,”Good. I’ll see you later Eclipse.” With that, he ran out of the room before turning back to the door and locking it by inputting a new code into the keypad which caused this to happen.