Author's Note: I'm not sure if I should still put GX stories in the Gundam section, but here it is still --- the last one in quite awhile, until I actually get a new idea worth writing about. Gundam X fans who know who says the title quote will know who this fanfic talks about. Otherwise, read it anyway; although it does help to know what kind of world Gundam X is talking about, you probably won't need that to understand the fic. Again, if you haven't watched Gundam X, you're not spoiling anything by reading this. I'll shove off, now. Please give me some feedback if possible, okay?

-Cybaster

"Believe in the Sign of Zeta!"

Disclaimer: Garrod Ran and Gundam X belong to Sunrise, Sotsu Agency and Asahi TV.

* * *

"I Thought I was Going to Die"

* * *

"It's a Mobile Suit! Move away! Move it!"

Garrod didn't need to be warned again; with an almost mad, dazed dash, he ran, his ten-year-old form shuffling through other, longer panicking legs, leaving everything behind. He couldn't mind anything else, not his friends, not the small basketball he left behind rolling onto the streets behind him; the giant blue Mobile Suit behind him, standing in the middle of the street holding the entire town at machine rifle-point, took all the focus to itself. Garrod couldn't even stare the focus in the face for even a second if he valued his life. Or that was what he had been told by everyone else.

In the post-war world cratered and damaged by the mass colony drops only a decade ago, scavengers like the one in the Mobile Suit dominated the After War Earth, and since the possibility of a wandering Mobile Suit wrecking pointless destruction loomed constantly in that Earth the towns and cities had to constantly prepare themselves for an attack. It was done in two ways: verbally, and physically --- training the townsfolk for an attack and to counterattack a Mobile Suit without fear. Throughout his young life Garrod had been constantly 'prepared' for such an emergency through the former and he had been told that so much that he almost tired of it. His father's blood flowed in him; even at this tender age, Garrod had already taken an affinity and had an innate knowledge to the Mobile Suit, his father having had been a technician himself when he died in the Seventh Space War, so he was by all means not nearly as clueless to the Mobile Suit as most others were in town.

But this was the first time Garrod's town ever actually suffered a Mobile Suit attack, and as it was in wars, the 'real thing' was always much more horrid than what was 'preached'. And Garrod fled because he knew that. The imposing form of a Mobile Suit intend to destroy everything, the guns it and some townsfolk held, the sound of gunfire and explosions as Mobile Suit and townsfolk traded fire…despite all that Garrod had been prepared for, the reality of the world around him shocked him into fear, forgetting all he knew and cared about Mobile Suits, forgetting everything else other than running.

As Garrod fled, he heard the explosions draw closer and the thought that the Mobile Suit was out to kill him placed itself firmly in his mind despite the ludicrousness of it all, and he quickened his pace, all endurance passing beyond limits due to the intense fear of the Mobile Suit and dying by it. The sounds of combat nearly deafened him and Garrod found himself unable to think anything else or even see straight. Buildings and people, alive and dead, blurred right by him like flashes of light.

As if his body had a mind of its own, Garrod somehow managed to duck into something, away from the fighting, slamming what seemed to be a door behind him. Pitch black engulfed him and Garrod's mind managed to concentrate again, but he could still hear the explosions clearly and he was still in shock from them. The explosions drew closer, and now that he could think semi-clearly at least, Garrod whimpered hoping that all of it would stop. It was all a dream, Garrod told himself, and when he finally wakes up life would be normal again, but reality told him that it wasn't. In a vain attempt to drown everything out, he curled himself into a corner and covered his ears, his whimpering breaking into desperate, pained cries.

Something shattered violently around Garrod with a smoke-filled explosion, and a sudden flash of blinding white light hit Garrod's eyes through the darkness, blinding him. As his eyes shut themselves something hit him hard, and a sudden urge to sleep overwhelmed him. The white of the light turned sharply into black, and the last thing Garrod felt was the darkness --- and something else --- collapse around him. His last thought as the darkness did was that, at the age of 10, he was finally going to die.

* * *

An unknown time passed --- whether it was ten years or a few minutes, Garrod didn't know --- and the black shifted sharply back into blinding white.

Then Garrod felt something lift him up and moving him somewhere.

After a few moments the white of his eyes managed to fall back into focus, and the white began mixing with blue as his eyes opened. It was the sky --- blue, partly clear sky, once covered by grim black after the Seventh Space War. The sight of the blue sky and dormant dreams of soaring through it was pleasant to Garrod, and as he looked at it he briefly forgot about whatever had happened to him and his town, relishing in its beauty and returning to his dreams of flying freely in it, in a Mobile Suit all of his own.

Then Garrod turned his head and he was thrown back into reality, the devastation and the deaths around him. Almost all of the buildings in the town was damaged in some way; roads pelted with craters and rocks, buildings dented, cracked or even destroyed into rubble and ashes. Townsfolk milled about, around Garrod, but instead of carrying weapons they now carried a variety of tools or, at worst, white blankets, trying to save those who were still alive and place to rest those who weren't. Scrap metal and bloodied bodies of the victims --- most in varying forms of dismemberment, people who Garrod knew, people who Garrod didn't know --- nearly covered the horizon.

Shocked once more, Garrod began to feel again. It hurt a lot. His entire body hurt, paralyzed by intense pain and lying on what seemed to be a makeshift stretcher, and his heart hurt as he saw his precious town, and what he had lived with his entire life, become pulverized. His heart sank; although he had yet to see any of his friends, Garrod was almost sure that most of them didn't make it through the attack. The Seventh Space War had taken his father, and the black world in its wake took his mother and half of his friends. Now, the Mobile Suit had taken most of the half he had left. Garrod began to cry.

When he was finally confronted with the sight of the assaulting Mobile Suit, however, something snapped within Garrod and he began to cry harder: where the Mobile Suit once stood in full impressiveness, there was now only a pile of blue smoking junk metal, barely recognizable, whatever remained of its armor burning hot, blackened, and riddled with bullet holes. There was almost nothing of the pilot who drove it except a small hint of blood somewhere on its remains and a few townsfolk looking at it with very disgusted looks on their faces. The pilot was probably a pile of hamburger.

When Garrod was little, he had dreamed of piloting his own Mobile Suit to make a living in the post-war world. In the Seventh Space War the Mobile Suit was the hero who fought it, serving what the pilot believed in with fervant loyalty. With its array of weapons, the Mobile Suit decided the fate of the world and, in Garrod's perspective, was a symbol of pride and fame. Garrod had always believed that his father, a Mobile Suit technician during the Seventh Space War, had died a noble death for the Mobile Suit. However, seeing the Mobile Suit attack his town and reduced into rubble told Garrod something else about the Mobile Suit and served effectively to dash most of his own perspectives on the Mobile Suit's purpose in life.

Garrod had never, ever thought that the sole purpose a Mobile Suit was built for was as a weapon, designed to deal death in its most painful forms in the hands of anybody, but the scavenger Mobile Suit proved that fact. The Mobile Suit was no longer the noble hero of the Seventh Space War, but merely a tool for destruction, villainy, anarchy and plunder. The Mobile Suit hadn't defeated his enemies, but had taken his friends. The pilot wasn't a knight who fought for what he/she believed in, but merely a mercenary who fought to live through the misfortunes of others. And most of all, the Mobile Suit pilot didn't gain respect as one --- instead, he/she was reduced to robbery in the post-war world. If he had taken up the Mobile Suit, Garrod suddenly realized, he would end up like the scavenger: feared instead of respected, antagonized instead of trusted, fighting to live instead of fighting to believe. If he had taken up the Mobile Suit, he will be attacked by everyone who saw him, for any and all purposes, and Garrod would most likely end up a pile of hamburger himself in the end, his Mobile Suit scavenged and looted, his name forgotten.

Garrod could eventually bear no more and as the stretcher moved on, he turned away from the wreckage and looked upon the same blue sky into which he had dreamed so much before. The attack had told Garrod many things about the reality of Mobile Suit piloting in After War Earth, and had certainly changed his views on it. Where he had adored piloting the Mobile Suit in the past, he now loathed it. Garrod refused to end up like the scavenger, reduced to pillaging to live a disrespected life and bringing death to innocent people, to join a life where it was either that or his own demise. He will earn his living some other way, by Mobile Suits if necessary, but Garrod had sworn to himself then, by his tears and his late friends and parents, that he would never again enter the cockpit to earn his keep. His surviving the Mobile Suit's attacks was a miracle at best, Garrod knew too well, and it was surely an omen to him, a chance to change his ways and dreams before he fell into the disrespect that the Mobile Suit and pilot now had set for them in the After War world.

As the reality of the infamy of Mobile Suit piloting revealed themselves to the young Garrod Ran, his dreams and his future life had taken a new change of direction.

And for Garrod, it was almost destined to occur the moment he thought that he was going to die --- and almost did.