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The cockpit of Machu’s Gundam had felt alive, buzzing with energy and thought. It had been a warm, calming embrace, accepting Nyaan even when she was bowled over by fury. The cockpit of the GFreD is, by contrast, cold and dead. When Nyaan straps herself in, it’s like tying herself to a coffin, ready to be tossed overboard for the sea burial. God forbid that she’s still alive when the coffin goes under, filled up with water sponged up by her worthless lungs. Her eyes slide shut as she sighs. There had been no credence to those rumors that the GFreD was cursed. The analogies to death wouldn’t help her dispel their lingering spectre. Nothing for it: to live, she has to work, and to work is to infuse the GFreD with life.
The training regimen is fierce, and after it’s over, she floats out into the grav-reduced loading bay with a sigh of relief. Standing there on the catwalk is Xavier, who crosses his arms as he stares up at her and the GFreD.
“Yo,” she says once she’s close enough, taking out the in-ears the R&D team makes her wear to shout instructions at her while she’s piloting the GFreD. “How many more times are you going to come see me and the GFreD after we practice?”
“You always call it that. ‘The GFreD.’ It’s just GFreD.” Xavier’s tone is critical, but laced with a degree of friendliness that Nyaan can’t recall hearing from him before he stained his hands red on her behalf. “Call it ‘Fred’ if you can’t get used to that.”
“Yeah, because that,” Nyaan casts her hand out like a fishing line, gesturing vaguely at the giant figure stood before them, “just screams to be called a name like ‘Fred’.”
“You never know,” Xavier teases, his boots sending echoes careening across the empty loading bay as he walks towards the door, “you could always ask him.”
Nyaan scoffs, following him without gracing his comment with another word. The GFreD isn’t a him, she rebuts mentally, and her name would be something cool, like Bastet, or Nefertari, or Athena, or Boudica. Or even Kycilia.
“And what’s the story with your name, anyways?” Xavier continues after they’ve walked through a few hallways of maze-like corridors. “I can’t imagine that your name is really Nyaan. That’s what cats say, not what humans name their infants.”
“So what if it is? Like you just said, if you want to know someone's name, just ask. But when I give it to you, you want to ask again? What’s that?”
“You’re fucking prickly as ever,” Xavier sighs. “Whatever. See you at 2200 hours for the team sortie. We might not be MAVs, but we can get as good as a pair of ‘em. Let’s keep at it.”
With a rough pat to her shoulder, he leaves her there, scowling at her own door.
She prefers the cockpit of the GFreD to her quarters. The tall bay windows and stunning views mean nothing to her. The dead space beyond is worthless to her. At least in the GFreD, she can remember freedom. She’s never felt it, save for when Machu’s Gundam let her.
Does she deserve to call Amate Machu anymore, after their falling out? Her eyes still burn with shame when she thinks of it, Amate’s scream as she realized that Nyaan had violated her space. Was she that close with her Gundam, that the cockpit had been her inner sanctum? There’s no way Nyaan will come to have that relationship with the GFreD. She can’t, because unlike the liveliness of the Gundam and its beautiful sparkling heart, the GFreD is cold, dark, and as empty as the space that surrounds them.
The door of her quarters holds no answers nor condolences, no companionship nor rivalry. She sighs and checks her watch. It’s only 1900 hours… Maybe she should just go back to the GFreD and try harder with it.
“What the hell was that?!” Nyaan screams into her cockpit, watching as a rain of shrapnel pings off GFreD’s purple paint. Another scuff, another scratch; that will buff out, and Nyaan takes pleasure in doing the hard work herself, these days, so she can keep getting closer to GFreD. The trauma her useless partner inflicts on her, though… “You clearly had them, but you waited until they almost killed me, you jackass!” The wave of pressure and force from the explosion has pushed her off-target, and she struggles to right herself.
Xavier’s voice scratches and bites as it comes in over her intercom. The Minovsky particles must be drifting into their flight path for it to sound even this bad. “I --d t-- they sh-- --, … get over he-- before --ey get me killed too, … --iot!”
Nyaan lets out a wordless wail of frustration. God, she hates Xav sometimes. Most of the time. All of the time, really. She still yearns, in her heart of hearts, for that easy command of the field she and Shuji had when they teamed up. They had been like two perfectly choreographed dancers. She and Xavier, on the other hand, are like two drunk puppies falling down a waterslide. And Shuji is probably dead, so this is the best she’s going to get. After six months training with Xavier, and three more training solo before she was allowed to do team exercises, she’s accepted that.
Gyan shoots across the darkness of space, white and shining as she imagines a comet might when seen from the ground. She’s never seen a comet, only scuttling transporter ships and mobile suits and huge military ships drifting across inky blackness or artificial atmosphere. The Red Comet notwithstanding -- she has learned that Shuji’s Gundam is that Red Comet, but he didn’t pilot it with this force or speed. He treated it not as an expensive thoroughbred to break, but a friend to nurture.
Gyan homes in on their next target and pushes its thrusters to full-barrel stab the enemy Zaku in the chest; the jet fuel that spills out and stains Gyan’s lance dark blue quickly ignites.
Nyaan sighs, resigning herself to taking out the remaining rogue mobile suit. Its operator, left unawares by the sudden onslaught from Gyan, twists its visor back and forth in terror as Nyaan swipes him from behind with GFreD’s sidearm.
The first thing that she hears after they safely land and depilot is, of course, a reprimand. Nyaan’s head is still spinning from the idea of orienting herself back to pseudo-gravity, so she doesn’t speak when their C.O. and the lead of the R&D team give them an earful. They’re doing things unsafely, they aren’t using proper communication, they’re not as good as a MAV team would be, and can’t they show some results so that this isn’t such a damn waste of time and resources? They’re dismissed sharply and with nothing to soften the blow.
Her mood is a dark cloak she draws tight around her as she exits the loading bay. Maybe Xav will just leave her alone… but no, because he’s not her MAV (and moreso because he is emotionally unintelligent and an idiot all around), he jogs up to her, hot on her heels as she rushes to the elevators.
“Hey, listen, I’m sorry about what happened out there,” he says. She doesn’t turn to look at him. “We’re actually doing really well, I think. I never thought I’d get to work with GFreD’s pilot, not after Miguel…”
Nyaan doesn’t grace him with a response. She knows she should, because this gig is her only ticket, and normally she would… but she can’t bring herself to care right now. This environment pisses her off. She punches the button for the elevator. Xavier’s hand reaches for hers, but she crosses her arms.
“So listen, want to get a cafe au lait or something? It’s the weekly special in the cantina.” Xavier stammers.
Nyaan glowers at him. He’s got this awkward half-smile on; it pulls at the corners of his mouth and shows too much teeth. “What is this, a come-on?”
“No, no,” Xavier laughs, waving a hand in front of his face. His smile seems more natural all of a sudden. “I’m not, that is, well. I’m just trying to be friendly after the day we’ve had.”
“You should save that for someone who wants your friendship,” Nyaan bites, “not me. We’re not MAVs, and we’re not friends.”
Xavier wilts a little, his hand falling to curl before his chest. “The fact that we’re not MAVs is the very reason we should be friends. We should be going over our mistakes so we can get better from them, not yelling at each other. How are we supposed to work together?”
“Here’s how: you look at what I’m doing and you don’t almost fucking kill me by getting in my way.” The elevator dings its arrival, and she stomps into it, turning and jabbing the button for the second-highest floor. Before the doors close, she watches Xavier roll his eyes very exaggeratedly at her. Her hand itches with the desire to flip him off. But this location is public, and he outranks her. If someone sees her, that’d be two formal reprimands in one day - something she doesn’t want if she can help it. Kycilia may find some value in her ability to pilot or her knowledge of Shuji and Amate, but she’s replaceable. The fact that GFreD has gone through multiple pilots already is proof positive for that proposition.
The further the elevator climbs, the more she leaves behind the raging inferno that she felt down in the loading bay. Her shoulders drop. Was she wrong to be mad, when Xavier had come so close to letting her be gunned down? No. Still, maybe she should be trying harder. If this fell through… it’d be back to living under the radar. She’d have to go back to studying endlessly for entrance exams she always failed, applying for refugee visas that always got denied, picking up under-the-radar jobs so that she wouldn’t be found by the M.P.s.
Her frown is more thoughtful than angry as she exits the elevator into her private floor. Kycilia has given her much. The spacious floor plan of her quarters are testament enough of that. Xavier never stopped gawking over her floor-to-ceiling windows or her in-suite kitchen, and she had more than enough closet space to house the sparse civvies she’d picked up from the station’s commissary. It was so much more than she’d ever had on Side 6, or even before then. It was so much more than even Amate had, those few times she’d been asked over to her house for karaoke and pizza. But Amate had been free, and what is Nyaan? Compared to Amate, she is a bird in a gilded cage.