Tomoya Aki did fear to char aznable realize he lying.
Fortune for him char buy it.
When he left that corridor, when the weight of Char Aznable's presence finally receded behind sealed bulkheads, he let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. His hands were shaking. He tucked them into the pockets of his pilot suit so no one would see.
If anyone asked him how he was doing, he already knew what he would say.
"I'm fine. My lie's perfect."
It was a lie he had learned to deliver smoothly.
Perfect meant alive. Perfect meant not being dragged into an interrogation room. Perfect meant still having a name instead of a serial number stamped onto a coffin. In a war like this, perfection was measured in breaths.
Still, fear clung to him like static.
He was scared—of A Baoa Qu, of dying unseen, of freezing again when it mattered. He was scared that when the cockpit sealed and the world shrank to monitors and alarms, his legs would refuse to move no matter how well his mind understood the machine.
But this time, he wasn't alone.
That was the difference.
For the first time since being torn out of his old life, there was someone he could rely on—even if that person would never say the word "rely" back. Char Aznable was terrifying, distant, and wrapped in layers of secrets, but he was real. Decisive. A leader who did not hesitate, even when the world burned around him.
Having someone like that to follow felt like luck bordering on a miracle.
Tomoya walked deeper into the hangar levels until he found it.
The Gelgoog.
It stood inactive, mono-eye dark, armor scarred from testing and hurried refits. This was the machine assigned to him during Solomon. The machine he never launched in. The machine that waited while others died.
He stopped in front of it.
For a moment, he wasn't a pilot in Zeon colors. He was a boy sitting in a cluttered room, controller in hand, complaining about balance patches and bad adaptations. He could almost hear the voices—arguments over anime endings, lazy afternoons lost to games, Eriri shouting over something trivial, Kasumigaoka's dry remarks cutting through the noise, Megumi quietly holding everything together while pretending not to care.
That life felt impossibly far away.
Not gone.
Just unreachable.
"I miss it," he whispered, fingers brushing the cold metal of the Gelgoog's leg. "All of it."
There was no dramatic answer. No sign. Just the hum of distant generators and the distant echo of a war preparing its next act.
Tomoya straightened.
"I don't get to choose comfort anymore," he said quietly. "So I'll choose survival."
His eyes hardened—not into courage, but into resolve.
"I'll live," he promised the silent machine. "I'll live through A Baoa Qu. I'll follow Char. I won't hide again."
Because if he was going to lose his old life—his games, his anime, the people he'd never see again—then it wouldn't be for nothing.
The Gelgoog's mono-eye flickered briefly as systems cycled in standby.
Tomoya Aki turned away, fear still in his chest, but no longer alone with it.
In a war that devoured the uncertain, having someone to follow was luck.
Surviving long enough to matter—that would be his fight.
On other side of zeon.
Tanya arrived at the laboratory without ceremony.
No guards challenged her. No alarms announced her presence. Jason Arkadi's workspace sat buried beneath layers of reinforced bulkheads and improvised shielding, lit by floating holos and skeletal frames of half-built machines that looked nothing like Zeon engineering doctrine. The air smelled of ozone and coolant—fresh work, not abandoned dreams.
Jason didn't look up at first. He was adjusting a projection, lines of unfamiliar equations folding into three-dimensional schematics that twisted space in ways Zeon physicists would have called impossible.
"So," Tanya said flatly, arms crossed, eyes scanning everything at once, "this is where you've been hiding."
Jason glanced over his shoulder. "Not hiding. Preparing."
She stepped closer, boots echoing on metal plating. The designs didn't resemble mobile suits, warships, or anything in Zeon's catalogs. They were… infrastructure. Transit. Energy containment on scales that made fortress reactors look provincial.
She stopped beside him.
"Where did you get this technology?" she asked, voice sharp, suspicious. "No institute in Zeon can produce this. Not Granada. Not even Gihren's black labs."
Jason finally turned to face her.
"My mind," he said simply.
Tanya stared at him.
For a long second, she searched for the lie. A deflection. A half-truth. Something she could dismantle.
There was nothing.
He wasn't lying.
Not because it was all his—but because to him, it truly was. The system, the knowledge, the designs that surfaced unbidden when he needed them—none of it existed anywhere else. No records. No data trails. No witnesses.
In Jason's head alone.
Others could look. They could analyze. They would never understand the origin.
And they would never know the secret.
Tanya exhaled slowly, rubbing her temple.
"…Unbelievable," she muttered. "Zeon produces someone like you, and we still manage to lose."
Jason raised an eyebrow. "You sound bitter."
"I am," she replied without hesitation. "Zeon didn't lose because the Federation was righteous or stronger. We lost because the Zabi family strangled itself." Her eyes hardened. "Idiotic power struggles. Political purges. Hoarded resources. Genius buried under loyalty tests and paranoia."
She gestured sharply at the lab.
"With even a fraction of this applied correctly, the war would already be over."
Jason didn't argue.
He just said, "That's why we're leaving."
Tanya turned to face him fully now.
"And how sure are you?" she asked. Not challenging—measuring. "Mars. Beyond Earth's gravity well. Beyond Zeon, beyond the Federation. One mistake, and we die in silence."
Jason met her gaze without hesitation.
"Relax," he said calmly. "It's one hundred percent."
She blinked.
"…That confident?"
"Yes."
No bravado. No sales pitch. Just certainty.
Tanya studied him the way she studied battlefields—searching for cracks, for overconfidence, for divine interference. What she saw instead was something rarer.
A man who already knew the ending.
She laughed quietly, once, shaking her head.
"You know," she said, "if Zeon had ten people like you, history would look very different."
Jason shrugged. "History doesn't reward potential. It rewards timing."
Tanya turned back to the glowing schematics, eyes reflecting impossible trajectories—Mars, Jupiter, points beyond charts and dogma.
"…Then let's make sure we leave before history buries us with everyone else," she said.
Jason nodded, already returning to his work.
And somewhere beyond the walls of the lab, Zeon prepared for its last great battle—unaware that its greatest escape route was already being built beneath its feet.
Jason Arkadi stood alone at the center of the hangar, hands behind his back, staring at the skeletal frame of what would never be mistaken for a Zeon warship.
It had no intimidating silhouette. No oversized cannons. No I-Field emitters screaming dominance.
Instead, it was long, lean, and asymmetrical—built around a massive circular spine where superconductive rails and field anchors were already taking shape.
"A magnetic sail…" Jason muttered.
The principle was elegant to the point of absurdity.
Instead of brute-force propulsion, the ship would ride stellar wind and artificial magnetic fields—borrowing momentum from stars themselves. With the right calibration, it could accelerate continuously without burning reaction mass. Slow at first, yes—but relentless.
Mars was trivial.
Jupiter was feasible.
With the right vector alignment, even interstellar drift—Alpha Centauri included—was no longer science fiction. Just patience and math.
"And cheap," Jason added dryly. "Annoyingly cheap."
The design had surfaced from the system without friction, as if he were remembering something he had always known. No exotic materials. No impossible alloys. Just precise engineering and time.
Time, however, was the problem.
Jason's eyes shifted to the resource estimates floating beside the hull schematic. Structural mass, superconductors, reactor cores, fabrication throughput.
He frowned.
"…Where the hell do I get this much material in a collapsing war economy?"
Zeon was bleeding resources. Granada was rationing. Side 3 was preparing for a final, desperate battle. Anaheim wouldn't sell to him without strings, and Yashima might as well be a black hole of bureaucracy.
For the first time in hours, Jason stalled.
Then his console chimed.
An encrypted channel opened automatically.
LELOUCH.
Jason raised an eyebrow. "Timing's suspicious."
The message unfolded as text, precise and characteristically understated.
> I can secure the resources.
Shinomiya Corporation.
They will deliver within three days.
Jason stared at the screen.
"…Shinomiya?" he repeated aloud.
That name did not belong anywhere near mobile suit development. It wasn't Anaheim. It wasn't Yashima. It wasn't one of the military-industrial behemoths shaping the war.
He frowned, scrolling through archived data.
"Small conglomerate… diversified assets… shipping, finance, construction…" He paused. "Civilian-facing. Conservative growth. No major MS contracts."
Then it clicked.
"…Wait. In-law?"
Another message appeared, almost lazily.
> Technically.
Don't ask.
They owe me favors. Very large ones.
Jason leaned back, exhaling.
"So Gundam has a Shinomiya Corporation now," he muttered. "Figures."
He snorted quietly. "Either they lost hard to Anaheim in the MS race, or they were smart enough not to play."
Either way, he didn't care.
Resources were resources.
And three days was absurdly fast.
Jason's fingers flew across the console, recalculating timelines. Hull completion. Sail deployment. Reactor integration.
Three days of materials meant—
"…We can make it," he said softly. "Barely. But we can."
Then his gaze drifted upward, to the distant starfield projected across the hangar ceiling.
Zeon had three days.
Maybe less.
He thought of Char in the Great Zeong. Of Griveous in Elmeth. Of pilots who could bend battlefields by existing.
"They're strong," Jason admitted under his breath. "Strong enough to slow the Federation."
But then he remembered the Gundams.
Strike. Alex. Aegis. Buster. Blitz. Full Armor monstrosities that ignored conventional logic.
"And those things…" he continued, expression darkening, "…aren't normal anymore."
Another alert flashed—confirmation pings from Shinomiya logistics. Cargo manifests already locked. Transit lanes cleared.
Jason closed his eyes for a moment.
"…Hold the line," he murmured, not sure who he was praying to. "Just a little longer."
He turned back to the ship frame, issuing rapid commands as fabrication drones awakened around him.
Mars wasn't a dream anymore.
It was a deadline.
And whether Zeon survived or burned at A Baoa Qu, Jason Arkadi was no longer planning to be there to find out.