A confession.
I have some disadvantages.
This might come as a surprise to some of you, but my disadvantages cause a lot of problems for me.
Mom says that in order to solve these problems, I’ll need to sort things out. Maybe sorting them out one by one will fix my disadvantages?
Well, first off, I’m a Natural.
I was born that way, so there’s not really much I can do about it. It would be nice if we could decide these things for ourselves before we were born, but the reality of it is that we can’t.
Second, I’m a girl.
This was also decided when I was born, and wasn’t my decision. (Well, I feel like the fact that I’m a woman is a disadvantage for me, but I don’t hate it, so I can live with it.)
Third, I’m a kid.
It’s been six years since I was born. I think I’m more mentally mature than other kids my age, but I’m physically about the same. I’m not strong, and my small size makes it impossible for me to pilot any machines (my feet can’t reach the pedals!!).
As for the kid part, time could solve that problem, but I can’t just sit and wait to grow up.
I can’t think of real solutions to any of these problems.
These disadvantages are enough of an obstacle to get in the way of me pursuing my dream.
My dream is to become a full-fledged member of the mercenary group, Serpent Tail…
My name is Kazahana Azure.
I’m a six year old girl, 135 centimeters tall. Which I think is tall compared to other kids my age. On the other hand, I’m pretty frail. (Mom says living in outer space for a long time can make kids frail.)
My hair and eyes are black. I’d like to grow my hair out, but it gets in the way when you live out in space, so I keep it short. People used to mistake me for a boy because of my hairstyle, but it doesn’t really happen anymore. Not because I’ve gotten more girly or anything, my mom is just too famous for that now.
My mom is Loretta Azure, she’s a pretty well known person in the seedier parts of the world. She’s the bright flower of Serpent Tail, a first-class mercenary group. Along with being a single mother.
The world of mercenaries is almost exclusively made up of men. In a world like that, a woman with a small child (as much as I hate to admit that I’m small) stands out.
Mom isn’t just famous, she’s also super popular. There’s no end to the number of men who come talk to her and try to be her friend. They don’t even care that a kid like me is there. Some of them even offer to be my dad without even asking me what I think about it.
Well, it’s no surprise that mom is so popular. Even though I’m a kid, I can understand that.
She’s not just a super competent mercenary, but she also has great motherly instincts. When I was a kid (well, I still am, but…), I didn’t like seeing strange men I didn’t know make passes at her. One time I cried “Mama is mine!” at one of them.
But I get it now. The men who live out in space are usually lonely. It’s so dark and empty that you can feel like you’re being swallowed whole. Living next so close to death like that, you’d want someone to live by your side. It’s only natural that they’d want a motherly woman.
I don’t know anything about my dad.
As long as I can remember, I’ve only ever had mom, and she never told me about my dad. Either they were never married to begin with, or he died.
Whenever I ask people about it, they usually give the same answer.
“Is it not one of the other members of Serpent Tail?” They say.
They do have a point.
Mom is obviously very close with the other members, and they’re all very nice to both of us.
Not counting mom, Serpent Tail has three members, and all of them are men.
If I really had to make a guess, it’d be the leader, Murakumo Gai.
Even though he’s a Coordinator, he was originally with the Earth Alliance, and still wears their uniform out on missions. He’s pretty handsome and, for a soldier, he has pretty long, wavy hair, which I like a lot.
He’s always wearing these orange sunglasses on his face. Coordinators aren’t supposed to have bad eyesight, so it might be because he was injured in battle or something (or it could just be for fashion-reasons).
Gai isn’t mute, but he’s not the type to waste his time chatting, so since I’m a kid, I haven’t really talked to him that much.
As a man, he might be a little too stiff and uninteresting, but as a father, that amount of strictness is probably ideal.
Some people say that he’s the most likely to be my real father, because of our names.
My name, Kazahana, is a word from a country down on Earth called Japan, and his name, Murakumo Gai, also comes from there. So, it became a simple bit of evidence for him being my dad.
By the way, the meaning of the name Kazahana comes from the natural phenomenon where snow is blown about by the wind even though it’s sunny out (sadly, I’ve never been down on Earth, so I’ve never seen any snow).
Mom was so impressed when she saw it on Earth that she named me after it.
If Gai really is my dad, then that’d mean I’m half Coordinator and half Natural.
Children of Coordinators are born with pretty high Coordinator abilities. I wonder if that would mean I have half the ability of a Coordinator. If so, that’d make me really happy…
I don’t have any Coordinator-like features yet, but I hear that Coordinators aren’t that different from Naturals when they’re kids, so maybe I’ll get more of them in the future…
I do wonder about the other members too, though.
Like Elijah Keel.
He’s a Coordinator like Gai.
But he’s a little different, he doesn’t have any of the exceptional abilities of a Coordinator. I don’t know if they did this by design or if there was some kind of failure, but his beauty more than makes up for it. He has battle scars all over his body, and even one on his face, but it doesn’t seem to make him any less beautiful.
Maybe women of all kinds are drawn in by Elijah’s beauty.
For me, I could want him to be my boyfriend, but I wouldn’t really want him to be my dad.
Plus, Elijah kind of has a dark side to his personality. Like he seems to worry too much about his own abilities. I’m not really satisfied with how I am right now, and I worry about it a bit, but I’m nowhere near as gloomy as he is.
It’s also really unlikely for him to be my father.
Elijah is 15 years old, and used to be in the ZAFT military, which hasn’t been around for very long. He must have still been a student on the PLANTs when I was born.
I don’t think there’s much of a chance for Elijah to have had any kind of romantic relationship with my mom, who was a Natural mercenary, no matter how beautiful he is.
That makes sense, doesn’t it?
The last member is Reed Weller.
Personally, I don’t want him to be my dad.
My problem is his history, he had a drinking problem and was forced to leave the Alliance because of it, which is why he became a mercenary. I also don’t like that he still drinks every day and always stinks like beer.
He also doesn’t call me by my name, he says “Kazappana” instead, I don’t like that.
One time I told him to stop, and he said “I’m just tryin’ to be friendly!” But I think it’s rude to call somebody a name they don’t like, no matter how friendly it is.
There are other things I don’t like about Reed, too. Like his appearance. He was tubby, like a barrel of wine. If he was my dad, I’d question mom’s taste.
But it’s not like Reed is a bad person or anything, of course.
He’s a competent mercenary and maybe the best in the world when it comes to gathering information (that’s what mom says, anyway).
Besides, it’s not good to judge people by their appearance, I wouldn’t want anyone to judge me by how I look either.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to tell grown-ups “I might look like a little kid on the outside, but I’m actually way smarter than all of you!”
But that’s a generalization, and I think it’s okay to put a little bit of importance on appearance when choosing your own dad.
When it’s your own father, the cooler he is, the better, obviously. And if a dad isn’t good-looking, it could have a negative impact on his daughter’s growth… Maybe that’s why mom kept my dad a secret…?
✥✥✥
I’ve been on the battlefield with mom for as long as I can remember.
It’s only been about a year since this war between the Earth Alliance and the
PLANTs that has been shaking the world started. But, since long before that, battles were being fought all over the world, and mom, who was an excellent mercenary, was never short on work.
Why mom became a mercenary in the first place, I have no idea.
I asked her one time, and her answer was “Do you not like that I’m a mercenary?”
Responding to a question with a question, I don’t think it was very fair of her, but I was even more of a child back then than I am now, so I answered her honestly.
“No, it’s okay.”
Because of my answer, mom’s face grew a happy smile.
“I like my job. So I keep doing it. I’m glad you don’t hate what your mother does, Kazahana.” She rubbed her warm cheek against mine as she said it.
If the conversation was gonna go on like that, I couldn’t pester her about why she did it anymore.
So, I still haven’t been able to ask.
Though, there was another time when we talked about it.
She was answering a simple question I had asked.
“Mom, how are you and the other mercenaries so strong?”
Mom answered my question with a big smile on her face.
“We’re mercenaries, we only fight for the things we love. Some of us fight to protect the things that are important to us, others fight for what they think is right. None of us are forced to fight by anybody else. That’s what makes us mercenaries strong.”
At the time, I didn’t really understand what she was talking about.
I thought that even regular soldiers probably fight because they have something to protect. When I asked her about it, she just said “You’ll understand someday.”
I’m sure that mom has things she wants to protect and thoughts that she wants to follow through with, which is why she’s still a mercenary.
Since my mom is a mercenary, an unusual job to have, the environment around me is unusual too.
To start, there aren’t any other kids around me.
As long as I can remember, I haven’t met anybody my own age.
Well, I don’t really want to meet people from my generation. The way that other adults treat me shows that kids my age are generally treated like idiots.
If these children are stupid enough to deserve being treated like this, then I don’t think I could deal with them.
Mom usually keeps me close to her at all times.
She doesn’t take me onto the battlefield, but I go with her to places where I wouldn’t be directly caught up in a battle.
Since the beginning, many people didn’t like the idea of mom bringing me with her.
Their reason was that it was “not good for a child.”
The people who said things like that would always say “Poor kid.” whenever they saw me.
Poor kid.
I hate when they say that. I’m sure that the people who say that so lightly have never thought about how the person they’re saying it about feels before they say it.
When they say “poor” they mean “unhappy,” nobody would feel good if someone told them “You are unhappy.”
So, whenever these people say “Poor kid,” I reply with the same words.
“Thank you for your sympathy, but I’m satisfied with my life, don’t worry about me.”
I say this because I’m trying to respond respectfully while still giving them the benefit of the doubt, but sometimes they get angry and say “I knew this was bad for the kid.”
Apparently, what’s “good for a child” to these people is “letting children be childish and stupid.”
✥✥✥
The members of Serpent Tail don’t all act the same way.
They team up if they ever need multiple people, but they don’t really go out of their way to call on their teammates on missions that they can handle by themselves.
The other day, each of the members were out on their own missions in different parts of the world.
Mom was off-duty.
Reed was giving support for Elijah’s mission.
Gai was on a job from the Earth Alliance, and Elijah was on a job from ZAFT. They don’t really tell me the details of their missions, but I can usually tell what they’re doing when I’m with them.
But, even though they were on different missions, Gai and Elijah finished their missions and came home at the same time.
Apparently their missions happened to be in the same place.
The biggest surprise when they came back was that Elijah’s GINN looked different than it did before.
Its basic style, including the large buster sword on its head, hadn’t changed, but for some reason, it had been painted red on each part of its armor. But it wasn’t painted evenly, and I have no idea what rules they went by while painting it.
“What’s wrong with it?”
At my question, Elijah smiled lightly. “During the mission, it got damaged. We had to fix it up with some parts from my friend’s MS.”
Apparently, Elijah’s friend piloted a red GINN, and let Elijah use parts from his GINN to fix his own, so some of the parts are red now. But then why didn’t he just repaint the red parts? Well, if Elijah is fine with it, who am I to complain?
But still, I never knew Elijah had a friend!
When did he make this secret friend?
“What kind of person was your friend?”
Elijah looked over at me, he seemed a little troubled.
“He likes music. He’s a good person.”
I like music too. Living with mom, we don’t get the chance to buy new music CDs very often, but I’ve listened to the few discs I do have so many times that I sometimes worry they’re gonna break.
“Yeah… if he likes music, I’m sure he’s a great guy.”
“Yeah.” Elijah nodded with the brightest smile I’ve ever seen.
This must be a really nice guy if he can make a gloomy guy like Elijah (sorry, but it’s just a fact) smile like that. I’d love to be his friend too. Hopefully he’ll let me borrow some of his CDs.
“Maybe you could introduce me to him next time!”
“…..”
As if his smile until now had been a lie, the troubled look on Elijah’s face returned, and he fell silent.
I couldn’t talk to him anymore after that.
I have no idea what I said that bothered him so much. He was so proud of his friend a minute ago.
A grave silence passed between us. Which was broken when Reed barged in.
“Yo, Kazappana!”
He called me that name I didn’t like, as usual. But he got rid of the gloomy vibes, so I was fine with it.
“What do you want, Reed?”
“It’s Elijah that I want. We’ve got a new job. It’s been a while since we were all together.” After telling Elijah about this, he turned over to me, seeming like he had just remembered something. “There’s not gonna be a battle this time, and it’s gonna take a while, so Loretta says we should take you with us, Kazappana!”
“Really!?” I was seriously happy.
I know that they never take me along because they actually need me, but if I stay with everyone, someday I’ll prove that I can be useful!
At the time, I secretly hoped that this would be my chance to do that.
But when my chance actually came…
✥✥✥
The next day, me and the other Serpent Tail members went to a debris belt.
Debris belts are areas where space debris is pulled together by the Earth’s gravity to form into a belt. Some of the debris moves really fast, and if a spaceship accidentally hits the wrong one, it can get smashed to bits.
The Earth’s gravity is also really strong in them, so they take a lot of skill to pilot a ship or Mobile Suit through.
Because they’re such dangerous places, freelance mercenaries are sent to work in them a lot.
Elijah sneakily told me that this was gonna be a joint operation with some other mercenaries to collect something from the debris belt. Which means that as long as we’re careful about accidents, it won’t be life-threatening the way battles are.
Even though they’re mercenaries, about half of their jobs don’t involve combat at all. But, like combat, these jobs are still dangerous.
Maybe it’s a mercenary’s job to collect danger.
When we got to our designated spot in the debris, the unexpected happened.
Obviously, I was the only one who didn’t expect it, and the other members had probably predicted it to some extent.
BABABABOOOM!
The ship rocked violently.
Our ship was attacked by enemies that were hiding nearby.
At the time, the whole crew, including me, was gathered on the bridge.
“What’s going on!?” Elijah shouted as he was tossed around by the violent shaking.
Even while shouting, Elijah is amazing. I was busy falling on my butt, grabbing onto whatever I could reach. If I had even tried to open my mouth, I probably would’ve bit my tongue off.
Mom immediately answered Elijah’s question.
“It was a mine. They totally knew we were coming here.”
Mom was already back in position and operating the ship’s controls.
I do know that this is her job, but I’m amazed at how well she can stay calm. At the same time, I’m also a little proud.
“The only ones who knew we were comin’ here were the other mercs who took the job with us. Which means…” Reed’s tone was calm too, but his fat body was being thrown about by the rocking of the hull, which looked kinda funny.
He’s definitely not my dad.
“Looks like this whole mission was a trap.” The last member to open his mouth was Gai. It seemed like he was waiting until he had a complete grasp of the situation.
But it’s hard to believe that we would be betrayed by other mercenaries. At least, I couldn’t believe it. If anyone knows how strong Serpent Tail is, it’s other mercenaries.
But I think we really were betrayed. Because I’ve never seen Gai simply guess something. If he’s the one who said it, there’s nothing else to it.
“The hull’s not gonna hold! We need to get out of here, now!” Mom’s eyes were desperately reading the panels of the shaking hull. “Eight minutes left!”
Hearing her words, everyone immediately sprang into action.
Mom left the ship’s controls and flew toward me.
Still floating, she held me in her arms.
You can’t walk in zero-gravity. The fastest way to move around is to kick the floor or a wall and use the force of the kick to move forward. It sounds simple, but it’s actually pretty difficult to move quickly or precisely that way. Especially when the hull of the ship is shaking like this.
Despite this, everybody made it to the hanger in exactly two minutes. They all knew what they needed to do without anyone having to say it.
Everyone needed to put on a Normal Suit. Even I had to put on a special Normal Suit made for kids to wear. It was only when I had to put on the transparent helmet that I needed mom to stop for a second to help me.
Once our Normal Suits were on, Elijah got in his GINN and Gai got in his Blue Frame.
Holding me in her arms, mom went with Reed to the escape pod.
But, at the pod’s entrance, mom hesitated.
She turned to Gai.
“Gai, I have a favor to ask!”
Gai, who was about to take off in the Blue Frame, nodded.
“Got it. Give her here.”
“Thank you!”
Mom and I flew toward Gai, with Reed pushing on mom’s feet so that we would go faster.
I didn’t know what was going on, only that I was going to have to be apart from mom.
“What’s going on!? Why!? Mom!!”
I was seriously concerned. Honestly, I should have used my head to figure it out, but in a situation like this I couldn’t think that far ahead.
“I want you to escape in Gai’s Blue Frame! You’re small enough to fit in the cockpit with him!”
Riding in a Mobile Suit with Gai!
Normally, something like that would have made me happy. But now, weirdly, the joy wouldn’t come. Only unease.
My body was shivering, and it wouldn’t stop!
Mom must have noticed this, because the arms she was holding me with started to squeeze me more tightly.
When mom held me tight, the shaking stopped a little bit.
“Listen closely, Kazahana. The enemy might attack again to finish us off. You have a better chance of surviving with Gai than in the escape pod with me. No matter what happens, I need you to survive.”
“But what about you, mom…!?” My voice was muffled. It was at that moment that I realized I was crying.
“It’s alright. Don’t cry. We aren’t gonna die either. I’m sure that Gai and Elijah are gonna beat the bad guys and come save us.”
Mom stared at me with a serious look on her face.
After what felt like forever, I was handed over to Gai.
“Gai. I’m counting on you.”
“Right.”
Gay’s reply was blunt, but mom gave him a satisfied nod and went back toward her escape pod.
A single word from the leader of the mercenary unit known as Serpent Tail, Murakumo Gai, is worth more than a million words from anyone else. If he says he’ll protect me, he will.
“Is this your first time in a Mobile Suit?”
I nodded silently at Gai’s question.
Gai gave me a simple explanation of what to do while I’m in the cockpit with him.
Don’t move unless he says.
Hold onto Gai’s waist with all my might.
Don’t open my mouth.
If you feel nauseous, don’t hold it in or you might choke (the helmets have a device inside of them that sucks up and removes any vomit).
I nodded after each thing he explained, and vowed not to throw up. Gai wouldn’t be upset at me if I did, but my pride would never allow it.
“Alright, let’s go.”
Quietly, the Blue Frame began to move, with me and Gai inside of it.
✥✥✥
The moment we went out into space, the feeling of acceleration immediately assaulted my entire body.
There was a large monitor at the front of the cockpit that showed the scenery outside.
It felt like I had been thrown out into outer space naked. The monitor behind me still showed the ship that we were just on.
Even to me, who didn’t know anything about machines, it was obvious that the ship wasn’t going to last much longer. Fire was coming out from various spots.
The view of the ship was getting smaller and smaller as we sped away.
The Blue Frame was moving away from the ship, which was on the verge of exploding, at full speed.
As I dealt with the acceleration, I was happy that I wasn’t nauseous.
“Wow, good job, Kazahana!” I praised myself in my own mind.
“Here comes the impact!” As if his words were a signal, the rear monitor showed the ship being enveloped in light.
After that, the Blue Frame shook violently.
It shook my head and stomach, which gave me the urge to throw up. I know this is stupid, but while I fought the urge, I tried as hard as I could to remember what the last thing I ate was. Once you throw up, it’s all the same. There’s no such thing as clean or dirty puke, but if I’m gonna throw up, I wouldn’t want it to be something gross!
While I was busy fighting back my nausea, Gai was operating the Blue Frame.
Just because we had made it off the ship before it blew up didn’t mean we were safe. The danger had only just begun.
Debris of all sizes was flying toward us.
If even one of them hit us, we’d be finished.
Gai moved the Blue Frame as if it were his own body. He dodged the large chunks of debris and used the shield to brush the smaller ones away.
“Looks like Elijah, Loretta and Reed are safe.” Gai looked at the edge of the main monitor, which showed two green markings.
Maybe one of them was Elijah’s GINN and the other was the escape pod my mom was on. The two were quickly coming closer to each other.
“Elijah is going to grab the escape pod.”
But my gaze was already drawn toward something else.
Something had appeared at the bottom of the main monitor. An enormous blue object.
The Earth.
We were already in a place where the Earth’s gravitational pull was strong. It’s an overwhelming presence that would be felt whether we liked it or not.
Even inside of the Blue Frame’s cockpit, I felt like I was being drawn toward the gigantic Earth below us.
The planet where mankind was born.
People often compare the Earth to a mother, but this was far scarier than that. Mom can be scary sometimes, but never like this…
“There’s an enemy.” The words Gai uttered were quiet, almost too quiet for the kind of thing he was saying.
A red dot appeared on the monitor.
“Alright… first of all…” Gai turns on his comms.
Comms don’t work as well in areas with lots of obstacles like a debris belt. But in this case, probably because of how close we were, the comms came through pretty clearly.
“Yo, you’re as good as I thought you’d be, leader of Serpent Tail! I’m pretty proud to have a guy like you as a fellow mercenary… though, that’s gonna end today! Hehehe!”
Just like Gai thought, the enemy was another group of mercenaries.
“What is your goal in doing this?”
Gai’s tone was as calm as ever.
“Oh, how composed! Are you thinkin’ you’ll be able to beat a lowly little mercenary like me!?”
He sounded furious. Gai was calm, despite his ship having been destroyed, and it clearly annoyed him. What a simple-minded guy! Even a kid like me was able to tell his mood changed.
“Screw it, I’ll tell you. Business is bad for us with you around, Gai. Haven’t you made enough money by now? It’s about time for you to take a long vacation, don’t you think?”
“I think you’re overstepping a bit.”
“That may be true. But can you blame me!?”
“Do you really think that you’re going to win this?”
“Of course I do! “Cause I’ll do whatever it takes to win!”
There was a twinge of teasing in the other mercenary’s voice. The type of voice I hate the most. The kind of voice people only use when they’re at a disadvantage.
How many times have I heard this tone of voice?
“And how will you do that?”
“It’s simple. I might not be able to beat you, but I can beat your friends. An unarmed escape pod with one GINN defending it? Piece of cake! But this is where you come in. I’ll let ‘em all go if you drop your weapons and give up!”
He’s keeping them hostage? What a coward!
“And once I’ve laid down my weapons, you’ll kill me?”
“That’s right. And then I win. With you gone, even if the other members are still alive, Serpent Tail will collapse. Then I’ll have more and more good jobs coming my way!”
“And you think I’m going to take you up on that offer?”
“I dunno. But my life is on the line here too. If you’re not gonna go along with it, I’ll take your friends out with me!”
If Gai accepts his offer, mom and the others are gonna die. Only me and Gai will survive… Did mom leave me with Gai because she knew this would happen?
“So do we just throw away the weapons?”
“You know that won’t be enough. You can’t just toss away your beam rifle and be done with this.”
“So what do you want from me?”
“Mobile Suits are weapons too.”
“You want me to get out of the Blue Frame?”
“Sounds like a reasonable request to me.”
Don’t do it, Gai!
Just as I was about to cry out, Gai put his hand out and covered the front of my helmet where my mouth was.
“Fine. I’ll do what you want.”
“So obedient! Well, it’s not like I left you with much of a choice.”
Turning off the laughter of his victorious enemy, Gai shut off the comms.
And then turned to look at me.
“Kazahana. I’m going now.”
“…But th-!”
“It’s okay. He doesn’t know you’re in here. I have a job for you.”
“Wha?”
This was what I’d always wanted, I was gonna work for Serpent Tail. My dream came true in a place I never expected.
“All he wants is for me to die. I can give him what he wants by leaving the Blue Frame.”
I gave him a big nod. We were under the effects of Earth’s gravity. Gai would slowly be pulled toward Earth and enter the atmosphere. Of course, he might be out of oxygen by that point. Either way, if I let him go, Gai would die.
“But I won’t. He won’t just sit back and wait for me to die. He’ll definitely move in to finish me off. That’s when we attack.”
“Attack? What are you gonna do!?”
“Use the Blue Frame.” At first, I didn’t understand what Gai meant. Gai was getting off of the Blue Frame, so how was he going to attack the enemy? When I realized this was my job, I got dizzy. I had to use the Mobile Suit to attack the enemy.
I’ve always dreamed of becoming an official member of Serpent Tail. I’ve even imagined myself piloting a Mobile Suit and defeating an enemy.
But… having to attack an enemy with the Blue Frame without any practice was far too big of a leap.
“You can do this. That’s why I’m trusting you with it.”
Gai looked at me with serious eyes. There wasn’t a hint of insecurity in them. Gai truly had faith in me, he was counting on me.
“Okay. I’ll do my best.” I nodded.
“There’s no need to do your best. Just do as you’d normally do, and that will be enough.”
“…Okay.”
Even I was surprised by how calm I was.
If Gai believed in me, I couldn’t mess it up.
“Okay, I’ll explain the plan.”
✥✥✥
How should I explain the scene that unfolded in front of me?
Gai left the cockpit of the Blue Frame and was just floating around in the space just outside.
The cockpit hatch was left open, because there’s no point in closing the cockpit if nobody is inside of it.
But I was in there, crouched down on the seat.
It was a little awkward, but if I sat normally, my face wouldn’t have been able to reach the scope to aim.
Almost immediately after Gai was out of the Blue Frame, the enemy started to move.
As it got closer, the silhouette became clearly visible. It was one of those PLANT units they call a GINN.
Most of the Mobile Suits you see out in space are GINNs. It’s Elijah’s favorite too (though his looks a bit different because it’s been modified).
Elijah’s GINN was watching us from afar. The escape pod my mom and Reed were on was in its arms.
The Blue Frame’s position was changing rapidly. Earth’s gravity was pulling it without any input from me.
In the cockpit, there was a quiet buzzer, repeatedly warning me of that fact. The sound felt like it was coming from somewhere far away, it didn’t feel real to me. There wasn’t anything I could have done about it, and I had too many other things to focus on.
The enemy was getting closer and closer.
If the enemy had looked closer at the open cockpit, he surely would have noticed me on the seat. But he was distracted by Gai, drifting in the void.
That’s right. To the enemy, Gai’s body drifting weightlessly was more of a threat than the Blue Frame was.
On the scope I had placed over my eye, the enemy appeared.
He moved exactly as Gai had predicted.
I’m a Natural, not a Coordinator.
A girl, and a little kid at that.
But, Gai said I can do this.
Which means I absolutely can.
“He’s here!”
When the moment came, it was unexpectedly simple.
When the enemy comes to this spot on the scope, you pull the trigger. These were Gai’s instructions for me. If this were some sort of TV show or movie, there would have been some exciting music and sound effects at that moment, but that’s not how things are in the real world.
It wasn’t a dream or a fantasy, it was a real battle.
I would pull the trigger, and the arm of the Blue Frame would ready its beam rifle and fire a beam.
Close your eyes, then pull the trigger. That’s what Gai had told me to do, but I didn’t close them. I thought that I should look at what I had done.
A ray of light flashed beyond the open cockpit door.
Without a sound.
As it went, it shot right through the area where the enemy had once existed.
That was when I closed my eyes. Even with my eyes shut, I could see the flash of the beam I had shot twinkling through the darkness.
I’d bet that the enemy didn’t even have time to understand what happened.
I doubt he’d ever imagine that a little girl like me could have done that to him.
“Goodbye, you stupid mercenary.”
My mom once told me that the first rule for surviving as a mercenary was to only fight battles that you know you can win.
And he had failed to follow that fundamental rule.
You should never make Serpent Tail your enemy.
✥✥✥
When the traces of the beam had vanished as if melting away, I slowly opened my eyes.
I checked the monitor and saw Elijah’s GINN approaching me.
Gai was riding on its hand.
I guess Elijah must’ve rescued him while my eyes were closed.
I checked my watch and saw that only about five minutes had gone by since Gai left the Blue Frame. I couldn’t believe it. It felt like an eternity.
In those five minutes, the Blue Frame was being moved by the Earth’s gravitational pull quite a bit.
It hadn’t reached the atmosphere yet, so there wasn’t any re-entry heat, but there would be soon if we didn’t do anything about it. Obviously I wasn’t planning on giving that a shot, though.
From the GINN’s hand, Gai came into the Blue Frame’s cockpit.
He sat down and got straight to piloting the Blue Frame to leave the atmosphere.
I called out to him as he silently operated the machine. I really wanted to ask him something.
“Gai…”
“What is it?” Gai’s voice was calm, as if nothing had even happened.
“Why did you trust me with something so important?”
“Because I knew you could do it.”
“But, I’m a Natural. And a girl. And a kid. Was it because I’m Loretta’s daughter? Is that why you thought I could do it?”
Gai was silent for a moment, but eventually opened his mouth.
“My view of you as a person has nothing to do with who your mother is. You’re two different people.”
“But then, why…?”
“I trusted you to do it because you’re Kazahana.”
“Because I’m… me?”
“You know your own limits, and you never overexert yourself. I wouldn’t have trusted you with anything if you were overconfident or reckless, but you know yourself well. And because you are the way you are, I knew that you would definitely be able to do this.”
Gai’s words resonated with me.
He didn’t see me as a Natural, a girl, a kid, or as any other label. He saw me as Kazahana Azure.
At that moment, I realized that I had been mistaken this whole time.
My dream. My lifelong wish was to become a member of Serpent Tail. But that was wrong. I thought that if I became a member of Serpent Tail, it’d mean that my abilities would be recognized by others. But I didn’t need to be a member for that to happen.
As long as I could have someone who recognized me for who and what I was. Yes, myself, as the human being named Kazahana Azure.
That dream had been a reality all along. Gai had always seen me as the human being that I was. I just hadn’t realized it.
Yes, I have some disadvantages.
But they’re all a part of me.
I’m only the person that I am if I have all of it, the good and the bad.
The Blue Frame was already free of the Earth’s gravitational pull.
And my heart had been cleared, as if free of all of its burdens.
Below me, the Earth, whose terrifying gravity had frightened me before, glowed, as if to congratulate me.
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Translated by TrafalgarLog
Editing by celico, ciel (nonbinarysunset), and Watt
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