(New Cover Candidate)
"Yes! We're the first ones here!"
Junk Guild salvager Lowe Guele piloted his compact recovery mech into the abandoned Mendel Colony.
"Apparently Mendel had a biochemical incident before that killed a ton of people, and it wasn't decommissioned until after they'd sterilized the whole place with gamma radiation… But what if those bio-agents are still around?!"
His companion, Kisato Yamabuki, was on edge.
"I heard it was Blue Cosmos behind the incident. There's no biochemical crisis—relax." Lowe scanned their surroundings with casual confidence.
"But, think about it—Junius Seven just got nuked by the Earth Alliance, and right after that, rumors pop up saying there's some kind of world-ending weapon stashed in abandoned Mendel Colony. Doesn't that strike you as suspicious?" Kisato felt the whole commission had smelled wrong from the start. "Besides, this place was a genetics research facility, wasn't it?"
"Hey, the client said to find the thing. The deposit alone was insane—if we actually locate it… then—then—"
Lowe stopped mid-sentence.
Because there, floating right before their eyes, was a black object.
Shaped like a coffin.
"LUCK! This is the real deal! Black_Monolith—the Black Monolith—and we just stumbled right into it!"
Lowe immediately lashed it with a tow cable and started hauling it toward the exit.
"Something feels off, though." Kisato sensed something was wrong. "Our comms have been dead since we came in."
"They'll come back once we're outside… Oh—!"
Lowe rounded the corner and froze. A squad of GINN mobile suits was parked outside, guns trained on the exit.
Being stared down by a pack of machines towering dozens of meters tall was not a pleasant experience.
"No wonder we couldn't reach anyone outside…"
Now Kisato understood why their communications had been cut.
—Because ZAFT already had the perimeter locked down.
"ZAFT…"
Lowe's jaw dropped.
The intel had been right all along.
He didn't dare make a move.
PLANT's agricultural satellite had just been blown to pieces by the Earth forces. ZAFT might be "militia" in name, but they were the de facto military arm of PLANT.
"Leave the cargo. You can go."
"But—"
"Lowe… we have to pull out. They're showing restraint by not killing us on the spot!"
Lowe wanted to argue, but Kisato talked him down.
She was right. Hundreds of thousands of people had just been incinerated—the fact that ZAFT soldiers hadn't lost it already was a miracle of discipline.
So he had no choice but to let go, watching helplessly as the Black Monolith was carried off by ZAFT.
"Dammit! I just got my hands on it!" Lowe couldn't help shouting.
"Look on the bright side—if we hadn't found it, they might've shot us full of holes instead."
"Ugh…"
In a way, you could call it dumb luck—at least they'd kept their lives.
"Whatever. The client did say there was no pressure if we came up empty."
"True," Lowe conceded, though the loss had actually made him more curious than before. "But what even is the Black Monolith?"
"Beats me…"
Kisato didn't know either.
"Lowe—! Are you okay?!" Just then, their comms finally came back online.
The two breathed a sigh of relief and dropped the subject…
---
CE 70, February.
Heliopolis. Kira was watching the news.
"Junius Seven… It really was destroyed by the Earth Alliance."
Junius Seven—one of PLANT's agricultural satellites. Just recently, it had been wiped from existence.
Who knew how many people had simply… died, just like that.
"Kira! Kira!" Miriallia tapped his shoulder.
"Oh—Miriallia. Good morning."
(Kira, Manga Version)
(But Actually, Athrun Looks More Feminine)
(Kira the Pretty-Girl Enjoyer, Lol)
"'Good morning,' nothing." Miriallia brushed Kira's messy hair aside for him. "School already let out."
Miriallia glanced at Kira's laptop screen. "Junius Seven, huh… It really is terrifying. The war barely started and something this horrible already happened. At least we're safe, though—we're a neutral nation."
"Yeah." Kira was scared too.
But at least this was Heliopolis. Neutral territory.
Nothing would happen here.
"Oh! Right, right—speaking of which, have you seen that super trendy Phantom Songstress MV, Kira?" Miriallia suddenly remembered something.
"Phantom MV?"
"Yeah! Apparently it's an MV from over a decade ago, but nobody noticed it until recently, and now everyone says it's gorgeous. You'll love it too, I bet!"
Mid-sentence, something else came to her.
"Ah, forget that for now—Tolle's looking for me. Check it out yourself and tell me what you think later!"
"Mm."
Miriallia dashed off.
"Phantom Songstress?"
Due to the interstellar scale of communications, compounded by social division and war, this world's networks were fragmented beyond recognition. A true "internet" had long since splintered into isolated shards. The infrastructure still existed, but information silos were everywhere.
In the peaceful enclave of Heliopolis, though, digging up resources was still doable.
"Ah, here it is."
Kira found the MV.
"Euterpe? From Greek mythology?"
The girl on the thumbnail was really pretty—cute, too.
So Kira hit play.
An ethereal melody began.
[Marking my spot before this blows up!]
[New anime premiere!]
[Holy crap, it's a Gundam show?!]
[No way—Gundam's back from the dead!]
[This'll flop, guaranteed]
[Oh great, another Episode 0 like The Witch from Mercury—hype everyone up and then crash and burn, right?]
[Forget mecha already. Gunpla Battle Nexus Online is about to shut down. Might as well make a VR girls' band game instead]
[The ones in the worst spot right now are the GBN arcade operators—all those cockpit rigs just gathering dust, headed straight for the scrapyard]
[Gundam's still solid, honestly. GBN's just in a slump. Why are you all writing it off?]
[Old guard, please—stop coping. Dead is dead. Mecha is finished!]
The instant Kira pressed play, the Episode 0 premiere went live.
The audience was noisy as ever.
But as that ethereal melody swelled, every last voice fell silent.
(It's the MV!)
"咲いた野の花よ"
O flowers blooming across the fields—
"ああ どうか 教えておくれ"
Please, won't you tell me—
"人は何故 伤つけあって 争うのでしょう"
Why do people wound each other and fight?
(Beautiful Song)
(Beautiful Singer)
(Hehehe)
The peaceful nightscape of a space city.
Then, slender fingers reached over and turned up the volume on a laptop.
On the screen, an MV was playing.
A girl with pink hair was singing inside the frame.
But the scene cut—plunging into a hail of gunfire.
The girl from the MV appeared on-screen again.
This looked like the hangar of some spacecraft. Soldiers pursued her from behind; more waited ahead.
The bay flashed red with emergency lighting.
The girl glanced left, then right—then vaulted over the railing, leaping down from the hangar deck.
And was consumed by the blaze.