"The enemy of Coordinators… is the Earth Alliance, right?"
Athrun murmured to himself.
"Athrun…"
Cagalli could empathize with Athrun.
After learning that Athrun's surname was "Zala," Cagalli could now understand the pain he was carrying.
Athrun's identity meant that politics was something he could never truly escape.
"But… if it weren't for the Earth Alliance, we in PLANT would want peace too!" Athrun made one last desperate attempt to argue.
But Inori still spoke calmly, even coldly.
Compared with "Inori," she seemed much more like "Lacia" right now.
"After Junius Seven was struck by a nuclear missile, PLANT took eight days to create the Neutron Jammer. Neutron Jammers can suppress nuclear reactions."
That was right. The Neutron Jammer was terrifying technology that had been created in only eight days.
It had taken only two months to go from project approval to mass production.
And in fact, from the time the G series was acquired to the development of the Freedom Gundam, only a few months had passed.
The Heliopolis incident happened at the end of January, while in the original story Kira obtained the Freedom in May.
"Do you know how many people died at Junius Seven?" Inori continued.
"How could I not know?! Two hundred and forty thousand! Two hundred and forty-three thousand seven hundred and twenty-one people!" Of course Athrun knew.
His mother had died there too.
"Then do you know how many people died because Neutron Jammers crippled Earth's energy supply, causing famine, accidents, and wars over energy?"
"I—!"
Athrun did not know.
"Then why not try making an estimate?"
"That…"
Athrun did not make one.
It was not that he could not.
Coordinators had excellent minds. At a time like this, even a rough look at Earth's data would be enough for him to make an estimate.
But Athrun… did not dare.
He could not even say that those people had "deserved to die."
Because the people who died under the effects of the Neutron Jammers were innocent civilians.
It was not that Athrun could not estimate the number. He simply… did not have the courage to do it.
"Athrun-san, you cannot even give me an estimated figure."
Inori did not tell him the answer directly either.
There were many things that would not change a person's perspective simply because someone else told them about it.
Some things had to be investigated personally before they would leave a deep impression.
"That was… so we wouldn't be attacked by nuclear weapons…" Athrun's argument sounded weak and unconvincing.
"Then why were the Neutron Jammers not deployed only against the Atlantic Federation, the party responsible, instead of across the entire Earth? There were clearly many people on Earth who sympathized with and supported PLANT. Could deploying Neutron Jammers worldwide truly bring PLANT peace?"
Inori pressed him without letting up.
Athrun was already completely numb.
It felt as though something inside his mind had exploded.
He simply gave up on treatment.
"No. It would only intensify the conflict and make relations between Earth and PLANT even worse. It was a provocation—an act of extermination against Earth's population, including Coordinators, carried out from the moral high ground by people who believed themselves to be victims."
Once he stepped outside PLANT's frame of reference, Athrun realized… it really was that simple.
Provoke the enemy, then strike back.
It was revenge, but it was not merely revenge. It was a massacre.
[Hollow eyes]
[Athrun: Thanks for asking. I'm in space and I've given up on treatment]
[Grass (a type of exclamation), I only just realized that this world had already lost this many people]
[Actually, every episode has people talking about it in the background, and there are shots of other places too, but nobody really paid attention]
[So neither side is any damn good, huh]
[Then Lacus isn't secretly black-hearted underneath that sweet exterior too, right? Please don't let that be true!]
[Am I the only one watching Cagalli? Cagalli is even more stunned than Athrun]
[Cagalli: Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing?]
True Analog Hack was not about making the other person follow your line of thought and act accordingly.
It was about making the other person think.
Lacia-class hIE, Type-005, Lacia. A tool entrusted with humanity and meant to guide it.
In that respect, Inori was a remarkably faithful recreation of Lacia.
"It isn't only the Earth Alliance that wants war. PLANT also intends to wage war." Athrun began thinking from the perspective of a third party.
At that moment, some of the things he had never understood before suddenly seemed to fall into place.
For PLANT—or rather, for ZAFT—waging war itself was one of the objectives.
There were too many people on Earth. Although the productive output of space was roughly on par with Earth's, Earth had far more people. If PLANT truly intended to expand into a power spanning both space and the surface, that excessive population would instead become a burden.
Athrun did not know the Earth Alliance very well, but he had access to plenty of information about ZAFT.
"For the Earth Alliance, the ones who benefit most from the war continuing are… the military-industrial complex."
PLANT had factories too, and they could profit from the war as well.
But there was still a huge difference between the scale on the Earth Alliance side and the PLANT side.
"If the military-industrial complex wants the war to continue, then it needs the Earth Alliance to maintain its hatred of Coordinators. PLANT's Coordinators actually account for only a little over one tenth of the total Coordinator population, but they are enough to serve as a concrete target."
"In other words… Blue Cosmos. Organizations like that can be used to stir up conflict between people. Then, once the war begins, the military-industrial complex can reap substantial profits from it."
Athrun's face grew paler and paler.
Inori did not interrupt him.
All of this was Athrun's own speculation.
Because of his age and experience, Athrun could not fully reconstruct the truth.
But he was, after all, a scion of the Zala family.
Once he stood at a higher vantage point and looked down, many things became easy to understand.
What, exactly, did those in power intend?
If they had been forced to make a choice, what external pressure had compelled them to make it?
Athrun realized that whether he looked from the Earth Alliance's perspective or from ZAFT's, the answer seemed to be similar.
But what was hidden behind those similar answers?
Athrun could faintly sense something.
Behind those hidden clues, even the conflict between Naturals and Coordinators began to blur.
As though that conflict itself… was merely a tool.
"What exactly is hidden behind all this?" Athrun murmured.
"When an entity needs to resolve internal conflict, the usual methods are to redirect that conflict outward, or deliberately manufacture a different conflict so the new one replaces the old."
Inori stopped there.
The rest would depend on Athrun's own ability to understand.
"Athrun-san, what is the greatest difference between Naturals and Coordinators? I mean on a social level."
This was the final push.
"On a social level…"
Other differences were hard to say for certain.
But a true Coordinator would definitely be able to create more value, live a better life, and have a greater chance of preserving the assets inherited from previous generations.
"…Wealth?"
No. Not merely wealth. Something deeper than that.
Once he understood this, Athrun suddenly felt that the war before his eyes had become almost absurd…
He did not intend to stop at merely understanding that much.