Chapter Text
“Challia, tell me you’re pulling my leg. Do that, and I won’t consider having your head examined.”
Challia frowned, glancing back through the two-way mirror. “I’m afraid you’ll have to send Zeon’s finest, Commander, because everything I said is entirely true.”
Char shook his head, utter disbelief in his tone. “They are not Newtypes. They can’t be.” He gestured to the mirror, and the two watched as the inhabitants of the interrogation room set down yet another domino—it looked like they were making some sort of dragon out of the things. Where had they even gotten that many dominoes? “They’re no more than thieves—”
“They hijacked two mobile suits and used them to commit bank robberies and gave the money to at least…” Challia checked his notes again. “ Twenty orphanages, all while evading our pursuit through what can only be described either as Newtype insight or divine intervention—” He leveled a glare at Char. “Franky, I know which one I would prefer.”
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” Char groused. “Why use such skills and talent for such outlandish schemes?”
“I seem to recall someone else who stole a mobile suit in search of his ambitions,” Challia replied.
Char bit his lip, but did not argue. “...what’s the evidence?”
Challia ran a finger down his notes. “They have all the hallmarks—heightened response time, the ability to activate the prototype mini-bits on their mobile suits, and their testing shows the same scholarly and emotional intelligence results as when you and I underwent it. For all their… oddities, they seem like the perfect examples of Newtypes.” Challia hesitated as his finger reached the bottom of the page. Char sighed, and rolled his hand, gesturing for him to get on with it. “That’s not the only anomaly. We found that their physiology is… well, you recall that in our last engagement with them, we fired straight through the cockpits of their units.”
Char crossed his arms, his brow furrowing. “Yes—they managed to slip out right before the blast.”
“...no, they didn’t.” Challia’s expression darkened. “Our cameras show, very clearly, their bodies being burst out of the back of their respective mobile suits—mangled and broken.”
“But… we arrested them. They looked no worse for wear.” Char could feel his eyes widen behind his mask. “If that’s the case, how are they still alive? Cybernetics?”
“No—their blood work shows them to be completely human… but that very same blood work shows that statement might be misguided at best.” Challia flipped the page on his notes, turning them toward Char. A set of images dotted the page—blood cells. “These images were taken during testing: before, during, and after we used a high-powered, precision laser to destroy these particular samples—the kind being used in biomedical research to eliminate cancerous cells from the body.”
Indeed, the first image showed cells that were fully intact; the second showed the damage in question.
“...there’s a misprint, Challia,” Char murmured. He didn’t quite believe his words. “That last image is the same as the first.”
“...no, Commander.” Challia stared at his MAV in utter, deadly seriousness. “It isn’t.”
Char paled. “We cannot allow them to leave. If we’re aware of this now, it’s highly possible the Federation is performing human experimentation, and we—”
“About that,” Challia interrupted. “They’ve already been bailed out.”
“You’re joking.” Char couldn’t hide his surprise. “Who paid for it?”
“Honestly,” Firo groaned, his wallet a few thousand credits lighter, staring at the mass of dominoes lined up around the holding cell, “How do you two get yourselves into these messes?”
“They started it!” Isaac complained, like a five-year-old who was just caught pushing a fellow kid into a sandbox.
“Yeah, they started it!” Miria parroted, putting her hands on her hips. “One of those Zeonic jerks tried to take our hard-earned money for military funds!”
Firo pinched the bridge of his nose. The grunt assigned to guard the interrogation room merely offered a raised eyebrow at the new arrival, who waved him off with a sigh.“Miria, not that I’m a fan of them,” he whispered, “But you’re the idi—” He cleared his throat, catching himself. “You’re the ones who made the choice to move to the one colony that decided to pull an America on the Feddies. They were tax collectors. I ain’t a fan, but that’s how they got Capone, y’know? Hell,” he asked, “How’d you even wind up here to begin with? New York not enough for ya?”
Isaac beamed in that way he always did before he launched into a story. “Oh, well, you see, it all started when we met this lovely fellow by the name of Daikun—”
A loud bang burst through the room, and the mirror shook. Even the guard seemed startled enough to stare at the thing like it was going to eat him. “The fuck?” Firo muttered. “What’s on the other side of that?”
“Just piping, or so we were told.” Isaac held up a hand to his face in a stage whisper. “Truthfully, I presume that it was the Rail Tracer,” he explained, “Since Miria and I told the story to our captors on the way here.”
“O’course you would.” Firo sighed, rapping his hands on the table. Those ‘captors’ better show up fast with the release papers; Ennis will kill me if I’m not back on Earth before tomorrow. Glad she’s made a friend, but immediately accepting a double-date was a little surprising. Must really like this… the hell was her name? Icelandia? “You know spaceships aren’t the same thing as trains, right? How would the Tracer follow you?”
“What is a spaceship but a train for the stars?”
“The stars, Firo!”
The guard offered Firo a sympathetic look. Pal, you don’t know the half of it.
He loved Isaac and Miria to death and would go through hell or high water for them until this elixir finally decided it was done with them— but good lord ; next time, Luck was on babysitting duty. He needed a break.
The door opened, and Firo had to hold back a snicker. I didn’t realize the Power Rangers were in town. Behind the door frame stood a man with a light-blue beard and hair to match, and some guy in red wearin’ a mask across his eyes, along with...
…wait a minute.
“Hey, I have the same hat!” Isaac crowed, pointing at the horned helm on the newcomer’s head.
Miria’s eyes sparkled. “Yeah! I didn’t realize they came in silver!”
“Well, Miria, silver was a prime export from Japan from the 20th century to the mid-21st!”
“Amazing! I never knew that!”
This time, Firo laughed aloud, uproariously. The baffled expressions on the faces of anyone new to Isaac and Miria as a concept never got old.
The masked man cleared his throat. “I… presume that you are the one who posted their bail, Mister…?”
“Alonzo. Alexander Alonzo,” Firo repeated, for the fifth time that day. Why did I go for alliteration this go’around? It’s a pain in the ass. “Rolls off the tongue, don’t it? A little more than The Red Comet.”
“You’re familiar with me?” the man he presumed to be Char Aznable asked.
“Bud, if there’s anyone livin’ on Earth or space who doesn’t know you, I’ll eat my hat.” His eyes shifted to Isaac and Miria. “Present company excluded.”
“Isaac, I didn’t know hats were edible!” Miria exclaimed, utterly oblivious to the confused stare from Char’s companion.
“Anything is possible in the Space Age, Miria!” Isaac replied, completely seriously, as Char’s fingers visibly twitched.
Char glanced at the guard and gestured for him to exit with a nod of the head. The man, clearly pleased to have the excuse, immediately dipped out of the room. The door shut with a slam, the noise echoing through the small room.
Firo cleared his throat. “So, somethin’ wrong with the bail payment? Or are we bein’ detained?” He asked, emphasizing the word ‘we’.
“No,” Char’s companion began. “It went through a moment ago. We just had some… questions we wished to field with these two. You are not obliged to stay while we finish up—”
“Like hell am I lettin’ these two knuckleheads stick around here by their lonesome with the Zeonic…” Firo snapped his fingers, looking for a word. “Commander?”
“Captain, though I’m flattered by the presumption.” Char’s eyes betrayed no emotion behind his mask, but Firo wasn’t fully paying attention to those.
Not when the man’s hand was reaching for a gun.
“Captain!” Isaac’s glee at the very word was cleared. “All the greats in this world were Captains, once! Like Captain America, or Captain Marvelous!”
“Oh, or Captain Kangaroo!” Miria supplied, “Or even Captain Crunch!”
“...yes, right,” Char’s companion muttered. “Captain, may I…?”
“In a moment, Challia.” Char crossed his arms, his attention fully on Firo. “I highly suggest you leave. Now. We have business with these two.”
Firo snorted. “You can take’em over my dead body.”
The former Cammora executive was perturbed by the man’s sudden, malicious smile. “Well, that makes this much easier. Challia?”
BANG!
Firo’s body flung itself backward from the force of the shot, crashing into the assorted dominoes. Their black and white became stained with red as they scattered across the room. Miria let out a horrified scream. “Firo!” She shrieked, rushing over to his body.
It was too late. Blood seeped out of the middle of his forehead onto the flooring—he was gone in an instant.
“No… no! ” Isaac stood up, ramrod straight, with absolute fury in his eyes.
“What kind of lunatic are you?!” the thief demanded of Challia, clenching his fist. “Is this what justice is in the Space Age, huh?!”
“Based on the information we had available, your friend ‘Alonzo’—or rather, Firo?—was involved in some kind of criminal enterprise in Federation and Zeonic space,” Challia replied, his hand still raising the smoking gun. “We have strict policies for that sort of thing.”
“It wasn’t going to be our first option,” Char admitted, “But he already has a kill-on-sight order from the Feddies, so we don’t think he’ll be very missed.”
“Firo… Firo, get up! ” Miria demanded, tears welling in her eyes. Firo’s head slumped to the side, pointed away from her. “Please, you’ve got to get up!”
Challia approached the body, grimacing. He narrowed his eyes at Miria for a moment, as she continued to plead to the corpse, before turning his attention back to Isaac. “Most people can be killed by mortal means. You are not most people.”
“His death is on your shoulders, seeing as you already took two bodies away from the Reaper.” Char turned to lock the door in full, to ensure total privacy. “We’ll want some answers as to how, and then, we can start on addressing the matter of your sente—”
WHAP!
Char was aware of the gun heading toward his face a mere second before it reached him, only missing a broken nose thanks to his helmet taking the brunt of the initial impact. The gun ricocheted off the central part of the helmet, spinning off to some corner of the room. He saw Challia take a step back, his hand brought up to his mouth—as if he were stifling an oncoming bout of nausea.
Given how the corpse’s leg was pointed upward in Challia’s direction, as if rigor mortis was a mere suggestion, Char could understand why.
“What in the world…?” Isaac slowly turned his head to the—
That wasn’t a corpse, Char realized.
“F-Firo?” Miria asked, her words shaky. “Firo, are you...?”
“You know,” the younger(?) man replied, almost in a defeated tone, “I would hope over a hundred years would make it pretty clear I wasn’t normal, you two.”
“I—I merely presumed you were—that you augmented yourself scientificall-like!” Isaac stammered. “You’re like us?!”
“You’re the ones who made me this way, way back when!” Firo complained, sitting up with a frown. “Well, technically, it was Szilard—or one of his cronies—but you served the damn booze, you know! Not that anyone really complained…”
The bullet hole was gone.
The blood was gone.
He was like the thieves, Char realized.
There are more like them.
“...tell me the truth,” Char ordered, in a much colder tone than he had anticipated. “I need to know. Now. ”
Before it turns out that one of the Zabis is also…
Firo looked between Challia, who seemed like he was due to hurl any second, and Char, whose lips had pursed into a thin line. He smirked. “How much time y’got?”