Mobile Suit Generation

Alarm

"I bought a one way ticket to space

Let's get outta here

I heard Jupiter's nice this time of year

Out in the wild, find our Eden

Let's stay a while, then I'm leaving

Sound the alarm

In my heart

Aaaah, we're taking off

Sound the alarm

In my heart

Aaaah, we're taking off"

- Alarm by Lookas

May, A.C. 218

Marina Yuy hopped up onto the concrete block wall that surrounded her private school. From her vantage point, she could watch the other students walk through the front gates and cross the courtyard towards the school's front entrance. She could see the Cherry Blossom trees with pink flowers, finally blooming now that the weather was spring-like. The fountain in the center of the courtyard sprouted up water at regular intervals, occasionally splashing passersby with droplets of water.

Marina smoothed her skirt over her knees and checked her watch. It was nearly time for the first bell. But she wasn't ready for another day of sitting in a classroom, listening to the teachers prattle on and on about history and math and literature. She longed for something else, something more, to fill her life. She drew a hand through her long, brown hair and sighed.

From across the courtyard, two more students passed through the front gate. Marina smiled. About time they arrived. She hopped from her perch on the wall and walked towards the set of fraternal twins, her cousins, Naina and Milou Peacecraft. They each raised a hand in greeting and smiled.

"Good morning," Marina said. They echoed her greeting, in sync, as usual. Marina envied her cousins; now that they were eighteen, they'd be graduating from high school and making their own way in the world. Most likely, they would get the chance to travel to Mars with their parents, something Marina wished for since she was a child. But her parents always told her 'no.'

Marina entered the school with Naina and Milou. They parted ways in the main hall and headed to their classrooms. Marina hitched her bag up higher on her shoulder and waded through the sea of faces of other students. She barely knew any of them. Marina tended to be a loner, except for a select few people, like her cousins. Her mother said she got that trait from her father.

She reached her classroom and passed through the door, taking a seat near the front of the room. She nodded to a few classmates with whom she was friendly and went about pulling out notebooks, tablet, and textbook. Her first class of the day was Introduction to Diplomacy. Another class her mother made her take.

Marina dropped her chin in her hand and glanced out the window. It was going to be a beautiful day, and she was stuck inside. The professor of the class appeared at the front of the room, carrying a stack of papers. It looked dangerously like a pop quiz. Marina wrinkled her nose and glanced around the room, checking if anyone else had noticed. A few of her classmates had similar expressions on their faces. Marina turned back towards the front of the room and sighed. She had a feeling it was going to be a long day.

The stack of papers was indeed a pop quiz, and the professor handed out the quiz, much to the chagrin of the class. Marina looked down at the page, only to have the words swim together into incomprehensible squiggles. She hadn't done the reading that was assigned, which meant every question was unfamiliar to her. She silently cursed herself, but picked up a pen and began to fill out the answers as best as she could guess.

Marina had struggled through half the quiz when a loud commotion outside of the door drew the attention of the class. The door burst open, revealing a professor from a neighboring classroom. She appeared frazzled and in great distress.

"Turn on the TV!" she cried, pointing to the large, flat screen television mounted in the corner of the room. Marina's professor gave the woman a dark look.

"You're interrupting my class," he said. The woman shook her head and pointed again to the television.

"This is more important than some quiz! The ESUN building has been attacked!"

Gasps and cries erupted from the class. Marina's professor dropped his pen and grabbed the remote for the television and turned on the news. Sure enough, footage of the ESUN building appeared, smoking from one side. Something hovered in the air near the building. A blast erupted from the thing in the sky and hit the side of the building. An explosion burst from the side of the building, causing debris to fall from the upper floors down to the streets below, and more smoke poured into the sky, black as night.

Marina's hand flew to her mouth. Her immediate thoughts turned to her mother. Was she at the ESUN building? Her classmates cried out in horror at the images on the screen. She knew many of them were children of ESUN diplomats and ministers, just like she was.

In her bag, her phone rang. Marina grabbed it and saw "Mother" on the screen. She answered the call, despite being in the middle of class.

"Mother!" she cried into the phone.

"Marina - are you at school?"

"Of course I am. Are you alright?"

"I'm fine. I was home today. I'm coming to pick you and your cousins up from school," she said.

"Mother, what's happening?"

"We don't know yet."

"Hand me that wrench."

"Get it yourself."

A sigh.

Heero Yuy rolled his eyes and reached for the wrench near him on the floor. He lay underneath a small space transport pod, trying to fix the engine. His cohort was being particularly unhelpful.

"Duo, we know you're upset, but you need to help out here," a third voice said. Milliardo Zechs Peacecraft. "Otherwise, why are you even here?"

"I don't want to be alone in that house," Duo said, sullen. He sat in a chair nearby, leaning the chair back on two legs, his feet kicked up on the table. He twirled a screwdriver around his fingers. Zechs stood near the pod, looking over the design specs, trying to locate the cause of the problem that Heero was currently trying to fix.

Zechs' phone rang. He drew it from his pocket and answered without looking.

"Hello?" A frantic voice could be heard on the other side of the line. Zechs drew the phone away from his ear and adjusted the call volume. "Calm down, honey. What's going on?"

Duo stopped twirling his screwdriver, and Heero slid out from under the pod. Both men stared at Zechs, waiting to find out what was going on.

"What do you mean the ESUN building has been attacked?" Heero and Duo exchanged a worried glance. "What about the Preventer HQ?" A long pause. "I see. We'll be right there." Zechs hung up his phone and met the eyes of Heero and Duo.

"There's a major problem, and we're needed at Preventer." Heero, Duo, and Zechs abandoned their efforts on the space pod and ran from the warehouse that housed Zero-Seven Transport Co.

ESUN Vice President Dorothy Catalonia sat on a couch, watching the events in Brussels unfold from a hotel suite in New York City. She stared at the screen, eyes wide. Beside her, Mariemaia Khushrenada gripped her tablet so tightly she was liable to break it at any moment.

The top portion of the ESUN building collapsed down, breaking into pieces that scattered down below. Employees of the ESUN rushed out of the building, some breaking windows and jumping from the lower floors to get out faster. The news anchor stated that at any moment, the rest of the building could collapse on itself.

Dorothy's phone rang. She picked it up and answered the call. A voice on the other line confirmed her fears. Dorothy hung up and glanced at Mariamaia.

"The president is being hospitalized right now," Dorothy said. "He was injured trying to escape from the building." Mariemaia bit her lower lip.

"What do we do?" she asked, her voice desolate with loss. Dorothy turned back to the television screen.

"We wait. There's no way Preventer is going to allow me back to Brussels, so we'll have to take care of matters from here," she said.

The door to the suite opened and several Preventer agents entered the room. They were upright and tense. The head of Dorothy's security detail stepped up to the two women.

"Miss Vice President, we're going to have to remove you to this hotel's basement area. This hotel could be the next target."

Dorothy rose and smoothed her skirt over her thighs. Mariemaia rose beside her, adjusting her blouse and grabbing her bag. The agents circled the two women and led them from the room down to the basement shelter, built for precisely these situations.

Commander Une watched as the Preventer Headquarters emptied, the employees evacuated to the streets. Her agents and employees were scared and confused, and so far, Une felt the same way. She had little information about the attack on the ESUN building, and was worried that by the time she did receive intel, that another building would be attacked.

Her phone beeped. She checked the text message that came through. VP Catalonia was safely transported to the shelter in the hotel's basement in New York. Une released a sigh of relief. At least one of them would be alright. She couldn't imagine the chaos if both the President and VIce President were injured in the attacks, or worse, killed. Not to mention the VP's aid, Une's own adopted daughter, was in danger as well.

Glancing up at the sky, she could see still the attackers hovering over the burning, crumbling ESUN building. Her stomach sank lower as she observed the specks in the sky, their wings, their humanoid shape. She had not expected to see a mobile suit again in her lifetime, but there it was, hovering in the air, firing shot after shot at the ESUN building. The worst part, the thing that clutched at Une's insides, was the fact that they had no way to defend themselves.

"Quatre! Look!"

Katherine Oud Winner cried, pointing to the television. Quatre looked up from his tea and newspaper, and his mouth fell open. The footage on the screen showed the ESUN tower smoking and crumbling. Helicopters zipped around the open air space, filming the wreckage. Among the assembled aircraft were machines that looked suspiciously like mobile suits.

"No…" Quatre breathed, watching intently. Katherine glanced at him.

"What's happening? I don't understand," Katherine said, rising from her chair. She went around behind Quatre placed her hands on his shoulders. Quatre covered one of her hands with his own.

"I don't know, Katherine," Quatre answered, still gazing, unblinking, at the television screen. His phone began to ring. Quatre picked it up and held the device to his ear.

"Hello?"

"Quatre, it's Heero."

"What's going on?" Quatre asked, still staring at the television screen. Just then, the roof collapsed inward onto the upper floors of the building, sending a cloud of dust and particles up into the air. Smoke swirled with the cloud above on the otherwise beautiful day in Brussels.

"We're going to need the team in Brussels. Can you take the prototype to the spaceport?"

"You know it's not entirely legal to by flying these things," Quatre replied.

"Yeah, well, this is an emergency."

"I'll be there."

Heero hung up the phone without saying goodbye, as usual, and Quatre stowed his phone in his pants pocket. He glanced at Katherine

"We're going to Brussels."

Though her lips remained in a straight line, Quatre thought he saw a spark of excitement in the young girl's eyes.

-SE