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When it comes to Sai Saici’s role in the Thirteenth Gundam Fight, there’s a lot of planning that has to be done. Zuisen and Keiun, his de facto advisors and guardians, try their best. It is an unfortunate fact of life that most of this preparation is in regards to how they’ll react when their initial intentions are inevitably foiled by the young Fighter himself. When he was young he was sent away. His training was rigorous, they said. He became a Fighter, in action and in law, when he was given the Dragon Gundam. He was delivered back to them on Earth from Space to salvage the remains of their temple, to perhaps imbue it with life yet again. But he’s been troublesome, to say the least. Zuisen and Keiun are adaptable though, and they’ll not object to the occasional lie or cheat in service of the greater good.
Their methods clash against each other, fluttering cards and wings. Sai Saici’s struggle is lepidopteran. For Zuisen and Keiun, it’s more like a game of hold’em. It goes like this:
HEADS-UP
To gain the strength to undergo radical change, a caterpillar eats tens of thousands of times its own weight over the course of its youth. It’s the beginning of a journey, an embarkation. When its life is within the control of others, it’s easy to ensure that it gets the food that it needs to survive. Its glass-dome existence can be exacted down to a science. It can be given an array of plants in order to thrive. Growing will be just about all that the caterpillar does as a result. This change will be less rapid and obvious than it will be during the moment of its metamorphosis, but it’s significant in its own way. He couldn’t have stayed on the colony forever, lest the zenith of his growth be stunted. Caterpillars don’t pupate right in space. Without the caress of the planet’s gravity, they strain to expand their newly grown wings. He needs to fall back to battle-scarred Earth, to let it strengthen him the way zero-gravity couldn’t. He’s learned much in his time there, though.
He’s always getting better. But his attitude isn’t.
SMALL BLIND
A caterpillar’s entire body is liquified, utterly destroyed in the process of reforming. Its exoskeleton dissolves inside of itself. The caterpillar’s entire being is reduced to its fundamentals. What remains are the imaginal discs—the foundations upon which its final form is built. It all starts here. It’s simple biochemistry.
Knowing it’s for the best doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt to watch.
To force a soon-to-be butterfly out of its chrysalis before its time is beyond inadvisable, it is dangerous. It’s frustrating though, to watch from the outside. So they try to influence him, to put him through trials that bring his emergence ever closer. They watch his enemies. What they learn, they share with him as his strategists. Its their way of showing they care, as best they can. Honoring the last wish of his late father is a difficult task at the best of times, and Sai Saici never really seems to care. They can’t get him to understand the gravity of his role, no matter how well the two of them can synchronize. Half of the time Zuisen and Keiun finish taking their turns to end a sentence, he’ll have already scurried off into more trouble. However bizarrely he wanders, though, he’s changing. In ways they’d have never expected, he’s even exceeding their expectations. He’s maturing. The chrysalis is cracking, and they hadn’t noticed until it burst.
BIG BLIND
It is not unheard of for a butterfly to be carnivorous. For some, this only presents in situations of utter desperation. For others, obligation. Sometimes the former leads to the latter. It was his father’s will, Zuisen realized first. They fretted about the realization, with so much on the line. They’d tried in vain to withhold that letter from him, knowing that the idea of paternal pride would be pressure on him that he didn’t deserve. His coping appeared miraculous, but they knew what it really was. It was the respect and support of the others and their teams. The bond they’d forged iron-wrought and sealed by Fighting.
Lantau Island loomed monstrous in front of the tiny boat upon which they’d been rescued. Zuisen and Keiun found themselves united with the others as well, crowding in front of a small computer. They stood next to Nastasha Zabigov, another of the Alliance’s advisors. They cast helpless gazes between the distant clashes of metal and the screen. The competition the Alliance had participated in pledged an allegiance they hadn’t really understood until they were there, side by side, alike in their distress. Her face twitched and contorted, she was struggling to form words. They were much the same. Prayer beads tumbling onto the deck, snapping like a tendon, caught the light of a golden-white explosion. The Dragon Gundam and Bolt Gundam caught fire.
NEXT ORBIT
Sai Saici died. That seemed the only logical conclusion from the point of view of the audience, but not to Zuisen and Keiun. They rushed to his side, held him steady. Then he was off, leaving them behind, but not on his own. He was with his Alliance as the one responsible both for their formation and near-death to meet his own end. By the nourishment of sunrise, Sai Saici’s wilted newborn wings were pumped with stabilizing hemolymph. The mountainous terrain of Lantau Island proved the perfect ground for the solidification of his final form.
With newfound experience, Sai Saici had learned all that they could teach him and more. In the moment poured his heart out to the Alliance, they were struck by his growth. They’d set off for space not long after.
Some species of butterfly undergo magnificent long-distance migrations. The culmination of all this growth is a journey, where they set off together in droves. A butterfly on its own is one thing, but en masse they are truly a spectacle. Zuisen and Keiun understand that now. Their guidance could only take Sai Saici and his Dragon Gundam so far. What they’d done most vitally as his mentors was provide him with the opportunity to meet Fighters like himself, to unite and take flight. The Earth and the Heavens bend to welcome this coalescence.