*Serena woke some number of minutes later. As she looked around the room where she was, she discovered it was not the same room she had been in when she and Nimbus had been swept through the rip in the space continuum. This room was much the same as the first, but there were no decorations, and certainly no giant… well…whatever they had been, there weren’t any of them in this room. ‘This is a prison cell. I wonder why I was put in a prison cell?’ thought Sai as she looked around the room. She noted the five men sitting across from her, none of which looked overly concerned for her well being, but more concerned over the booms and lights that were sounding behind the door and under the walls. She took a deep breath and nearly gagged. There was hardly any air in the room. As the booms got closer, she stood and took a good look at the one man who was finally coming towards her.
“ My dear girl, why were you in the middle of the docking bay repair room?” He asked her with both slight amazement and annoyment in his old rusty voice.
“ I just was. Where am I now old man?” ‘And you had better give me a reason too.’
“ You’re in the prisons of the Luner Base. Apparently, they stuck you in with us because they thought you were working with us. Those fools, they never get anything right.”
“ Luner Base… I’m on the moon? And they thought I was working with you? What sorts of business do you old men run? Maybe I want to join you after all.” Sai smirked slightly. “ Then again, after I kill these bastards for imprisoning me, I might just kill you all too, seeing as how I just have had a very bad day.”
“Hmm, J, she sounds like one of our boys. She could be useful in a number of ways if we were ever to…”Spoke on of the other old men sitting in the room.
“ I’ll decide if I want to help you or not, I don’t need a grandfather giving me orders on how to run my life.” Sai was almost intrigued by these old coots. Maybe they were just plain crazy, or maybe there really was something worth getting involved in here.
“ Yes, I do see you point, Professor O, but we must first get out before we do anything of that nature.”
Sai had heard enough. Just as she was about to offer to help the old men get out of the cell, the door opened and though there were men in uniforms running all around, no one cared enough to do anything about the prison doors opening. “ Tell you what old man: I’ll get you out alive, and I want details on the battle that’s raging outside.”
“ Details? For those you would have to work for us and only us. Specifically, work for me. That includes letting this ‘grandfather’ run your life for a while.”
Sai thought for a few moments, weighing all of the consequences. ‘Well, I did say I wanted adventure and fighting. And this will keep my mind off of leaving Capsule…’ “ Old man, you have yourself a deal. I’m yours, but remember, I want details once we’re home free of this base. And if I don’t agree with your moral fight, I might just kill you instead of working for you. Is that a chance your willing to take?”
“ So be it.”
“ Alright listen up. Though the door is open, we’re leaving through the ducts above your head. You will wait up there until I return to get you out of here.”
“ Where will you be?”
“ I’m going to number one, get my belongings from these bastards, and number two, a layout of the base so I can get you out of here in a minimal amount of time. While I’m at it, I may just stop to check their computer data banks and secure some transportation. Have any place in mind?”
“ Not anywhere on Earth. We would be content just to drift in space for a while. How long will all of this activity take you? Two hours? Three? Four maybe?”
“ I’ll be back in forty five minutes old man, count on it.”
“ Well, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, but I don’t think even the Perfect Soldier could do it that fast. Hour and a half at best for him.”
“ Well, I’m not the Perfect Soldier. I’m the perfect killer and thief. Ciao.”
“ You know she’ll never make it, why did you let her leave. She’ll probably be shot within twenty minutes out there.”
“ Maybe. But maybe not.”
Sai ran through the halls. She had to continuously shoot ki blasts at soldiers who interpreted her as an intruder. ‘ That’s what I am though’ she thought ‘ an intruder and a murderer, not to mention thief. Oh well, they did knock me out after all.’ She opened a door and was happy to find her sword in it’s natural pristine condition and her bag of capsules that she and Bulma had made for her trip away from home. She walked over to the computer and took out one of her capsules. Pulling the pin and dropping it to the ground, a laptop computer appeared from the capsule. After some intense hacking, Sai made it into the mainframe of the base and quickly downloaded over half the information before she was rudely interrupted. A strong shock wave shook her off balance, and she saw that the computer systems had been severed by the damage caused.
“ Damn. Well, I got half. Time to get moving.” She recapsuled the computer and placed it back in the small leather bag that she knotted at her waist.
Once again shooting at soldiers who were in her way, she made it back to the old men in the prison cell, who seemed more than mildly shocked to see her, right on time no less.
“Let’s move it, it’s hell out there and getting worse.” She shoved the men up the hole in the roof of the room and had them crawl straight toward one of the hangers she had seen a diagram of. As they stepped out of the ventilator shaft, She looked up in amazement as she once again saw the giant metal things that were one by one standing up and exiting the hanger door.
“ They’re just mobile dolls. Nothing else special. Why must you stare at them like you’ve never seen one in your life?”
“Well gee, maybe because I haven’t. Never mind, we don’t have time to mess around with these things.” She ran over to a normal looking shuttle and jumped aboard. Seeing that there was plenty of room for her needs, she jumped back down and started putting the old men on the ship. Suddenly from behind, she felt a searing pain go through her side. She turned her head and shot the soldier.
Then she swerved around fully and stared at the soldier. It was a young boy who had shot her, and then stood there looking at his hand, then her, and that was now slumped to the ground. ‘ He was innocent. Sure he shot me, but I was probably the first person he ever shot. I’m a murderer now. Selene, I’ve killed an innocent boy.’ A sharp pain brought her back form her reverie of self-pity. She brought her hand to her side and then up to her face. It was covered in red, sticky blood. As she looked at her hand, her eyes that had been light lavender while thinking about the boy she had killed, became a royal violet. Her face hardened and she ignored the pain and jumped aboard the shuttle.
“ Let’s go. She said, quietly and coldly. As she went into the cockpit, she recognized the basics in aerospace that Bulma had taught her to look for, and was able to easily ignite the engine and then avoid being hit while zooming out into space.
As soon as she thought they were safe, she went into the passenger section of the shuttle and sat in front of the old man whom with she had made the deal while on the base. “ Details old man.”
“ You’ve been shot my dear, and you can call me Doctor J. Allow one of the others to look at that wound, it looks quite painful.”
“Look, Doc J, I could care less about the shot wound. What I could care about is why I got shot saving your asses in there. She met his eyes in a stare.
“ Yes,” he finally said, breaking the staring contest. “ I’ll tell you all about Operation Meteor and why we are not following it as planned. But while I do, please allow Doctor G to look at your wounds.”
“ Fine then. Start.”
“ Operation Meteor was created by a man known as Dekiem. He wanted to rule the world in a different military fashion than it was being lead today. You see, the Alliance from the old days has now become to crushing on the colonies in space, to wary of what they will do if they are allowed too much access to things. Dekiem has created a small army, and all of us doctors were a part of it. Bt when we saw he was planning to destroy Earth by crashing the colonies into it, we split from the original plans. True, we still did what we were supposed to do; create giant killing machines, much more advanced than the ones you saw in the hanger this morning, and train five boys to with stand the pressure and stress that came with the job of piloting. In fact, Each of us built a machine separately, and each of us trained our own pilot for our specific machine. Then, Instead of waiting and letting Dekiem use our boys and machines for his purposes, we sent them to Earth, pretending they stole our machines, Gundams we called them. On Earth, a new power was rising. And now, instead of Dekiem who had challenged Earth, it is an organization on Earth called OZ that has challenged both Earth to destroy it’s old government, and space to work for them and only them. Few people fight against both those sides, both the Alliance and OZ, but those who do are known as the rebels, and our pilots are some of the most highly feared rebels around.”
“Don’t forget to tell her what a mobile suit is.” Some one spoke in the background.
“ Yes. A mobile suit is a giant robot a person can sit in to fight with. It is often equipped with many guns and buster rifles.”
“ All of this sounds interesting. I want in on the war, and on the side of the rebels too.”
“To let you partake of the war, you would have to be a highly skilled fighter and learn to pilot a ms.”
“ I am a highly skilled fighter. As for training, teach me. I don’t want anything fancy, none of those Gundams will do for me, but one of what I saw should work just fine.”
“ Are you sure…”
“ Positive.”*