Prologue Start

At the start, there was the beginning of all that was made.

And the beginning was beautiful. The eternal aurora of humanity, our bright colors swirling in a rushing tide through the blanket of ever comforting space, with the stars serving as waypoints for us to reach for. I was there, in that intangent stream of consciousness, communing and understanding the bright soul lights around me. When I had joined this stream, how long had I been in it, all began to simply not matter. How could it, in the face of such beauty, or such magnificence?

Soon I became aware that I had lost any resemblance to a physical body, merely moving along as a glowing blue soul. Knowing that I could commune with my brothers and sisters, I asked my question to the closest souls, who exhumed green and yellow.

Only the strongest. Only the leaders. They spoke/thought to me. Only the best of the newtypes could manifest as they had been in life. And why should they not be granted the honor? The collective around me echoed.

Those chosen few were the ones who had brought about the collective. It was only right. There could be no disunity in the Newtype collective, the many said to me.

I agreed, it was only right. Whatever personal doubts I had, I willingly cast away. Humanity could not afford to have its differences continue on after death anymore. Now only the chosen leaders would direct the stream of human consciousness towards that distant place we traveled to, and the rest of us could relax in harmony; bearing no need for action or responsibility for whatever may come. Then a hand, a very big hand, grasped me by my….. Shoulder, and hauled me out of the stream of souls, breaking, no freeing, my soul from the aurora.

"Well it has certainly been a while since I've seen one like me mixed in with that lot." A slow and deep voice addressed me, using speech instead of thoughts. The instinctual, disturbing, weirdness of that made me shiver.

"But it shouldn't", a part of me whispered/shouted, "This is human, this is real. Don't forget what you are.

Instinctually, I worked my jaw and tongue, attempting to talk to the man who had pulled me out of the aurora, but the words would not come, not the way I wanted them to. The Man must have noticed or sensed my mounting frustration at being unable to do this basic thing and broke it

"Don't worry about that issue, you just haven't been outside for long enough." Hands grasped both my shoulders this time, and I was pulled closer to the Man. "Hmmmm. It appears you haven't yet regained your sight. Let's fix that."

The Man's statement of me being unable to see, and suddenly realizing that I wasn't seeing anything physical around me, just the soul of the Man and the combined souls of the aurora, made a panic seize my mind. As such the next thing I knew, the Man was speaking again.

"Now let's try again." And then a finger jabbed me very hard in between my eyes. My head snapped back and I rapidly blinked, trying to clear the white that clouded my vision.

And then I could see again.

What I saw was just as awe inspiring as the first time I joined a mass commune with the souls in the aurora: The Earth, spinning it's merely way around the sun.

And then, I saw even more: The two cities on the moon, the second moon(when had that happened?), several groupings of large, rotating cylinders that I could see ships flying in and out of. I saw asteroids with humans living inside of them. Large fleets of ships that made impossibly long travels to the outer reaches of the solar system. I saw humanity, reaching for the beyond.

Amazed, I turned to my companion, questions untold ready to fall from my lips…...and I stopped dead. I raised a shaky hand to point at the man, the bald, stout man, those utterly silly spectacles adorning his face and wearing an eerily familiar uniform.

"Yo-you're Degwin Sodo Zabi." I stutteringly said in disbelief, almost in denial. "Sovereign of the Principality of Zeon."

The now named sovereign nodded in agreement, acting as if it was entirely normal to come across a space dictator just floating in space.

"You're dead." I told him.

"And so are you." He calmly replied. What did ...what did he mean by that?

As the horrifying realization dawned on me, I slowly looked over my shoulder knowing deep in my core what would be there, and so it was: the bright stream of souls coursing away from the Earth Sphere, chanting its siren song that called for me to rejoin it.

Yet before I had even begun to listen to the call, Degwin was speaking. "Stop that." He demanded of me, and such was the power of his voice that I immediately gave him my full attention. "Now listen closely, I've taken you out of the Aurora but it's only temporary without an anchor." He arched a single eyebrow in response to my opening mouth, and continued after I had shut it. "I do not need an anchor because I am not a Newtype, and as such have more autonomy when in the company of Newtype souls. Does that satisfy your curiosity?"

"No!." I replied indignantly. "No it does not! How can I be a Newtype?! I'm not even from here!" The utter vagueness of the statement made me cringe, but somehow Degwin knew what I meant.

"No you are not from here, but you would be surprised with the number of souls that have been added to the Newtype collective that do not originate from this place." Here Degwin gestured grandly to the Earth Sphere. "Most of the time those souls leave the collective rather quickly and go on their way, wherever that may be. But you, on the other hand, did not. For a decade or more, you've been in the Aurora, accepted by your fellow Newtypes as one of their own." Degwin shrugged his shoulders. "If that does not make you a Newtype, the lost soul of foreign lands, I don't know what else would." Damn but he did make sense.

"A decade? But I don't-"

"Feel like you've been dead for that long?" Degwin interrupted, again. "That appears to be the benefit of not having to worry about time's stress on a body." He moved-floated?-over to my side and grabbed my shoulder once more. "Now enough of this topic, we have places to go."

Before I could protest that this topic was very important to me, my vision cut to pure white again. A twisting noise-how does twisting make a noise exactly?-rushed into my ears, and then the white obscuring my vision dissipated. I saw an entire Side before me, a Side that was hidden behind the Moon and lacked the colony windows of every other side.

Degwin had taken me to Zeon. His old home.

An apparently unknown benefit of being dead was a great increase in eyesight. My eyesight was so good now that despite being what had to have been thousands of kilometers about Side 3, I was able to make out the individual names of each colony. I could even see the mobile suit defense force of the Autonomous Republic of Zeon patrolling among the colonies.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Degwin commented next to me. He was right, Side 3 just had a form of beauty to it that took my breath away, and I told Degwin so.

"Now, let's get down to business." said Degwin as I turned to look at him. "Oh you don't think that I released you from the Aurora merely out of the kindness in my heart, do you? I am afterall a tyrant." This jab at himself, Degwin said with a wry twist of his lips.

"No my nameless friend, I brought you with me for a purpose." Degwin continued. "You see, the universe is in a constant balancing act, attempting to make sure the scales of every action are equally weighed out. Some actions, however, incur a payment that the universe cannot balance off by itself upon which the excess is sent to someone else related to the event so that they might equalize the payment." Here he buffed his fingers on his military jacket. "Of course with all that equalizing, the universe comes to give said individual some favors to call in at times."

Naturally when faced with something that made zero sense, like this, I was befuddled but was able to mostly understand how that related to me.

"Are you saying that because you've helped 'the universal spirit' that I was put in a brainwashing soul group for a decade?!" I asked Degwin.

"I hardly asked for you to be a part of the Aurora or even picked you, personally, out. My only involvement with you has merely been taking you out of the Aurora and to this place." replied Degwin. "And now that you are here, I am informing you that because I, Degwin Sodo Zabi, rescued your soul's individuality, You, unnamed one, are in my debt."

As the Zabi patriarch proclaimed how I owed him, my soul began to thrum with the undeniable truth of his statement. There was no escaping it.

Because Degwin Sodo Zabi had served as some kinda loan shark to the universe-what a fucking vague statement as well-the universe had given him a blank check to use.

A cheque that had my servitude to his wish written on it.

Now Degwin was silent, awaiting my response to his statement. Gritting my teeth, I confirmed his statement.

"Okay so you can make me do whatever you want. I get it. So what is it?" I said through clenched teeth.

"Simple really." Degwin said jovially, as if he hadn't just spiritually enslaved my soul to his wishes. "I want you to save Zeon, and not this mockery that currently exists. My Zeon, I want you to save that Zeon. Not the Zeon Gihren tried to create, a Zeon that preached extermination, or the Zeon of the wretched Aznable"-and he suddenly wasn't so jovial anymore.-"You will restore a Zeon that was the guiding light for all spacenoids."

Well shit, Degwin really hated Char which made sense as Char had murdered Degwin's favorite son.

"And how exactly do you expect me to save Zeon, if I'm just a soul" I, rather mockingly asked. Shoulda just kept my mouth shut.

Instead of saying anything, Degwin merely started to direct us towards Side 3, swooping over and around various closed-type colonies until we reached one that was rather far off from the rest. The name written on the colony's rotating frame was Kudelia. Degwin took me to the far side of Colony Kudelia and then in yet another demonstration that I was currently not a physical being, we both passed right through the shell of the colony and into the interior.

It was a relatively quick journey through the colony, so quick that I had no time to take in the details of Colony Kudelia before we were in a lab of some kind. The lab was deep in the superstructure of the colony and guarded by what had to be two whole squads of mobile suits, along with the innumerable guards of the facility itself. Still we traveled so quickly that I had no time to observe much about the lab except that it was big.

"We have arrived." Degwin announced. I looked around and there wasn't much to report home about. We were at a door that was in a hallway with many doors in it. The door had 'CHA-1' stenciled in white on it.

Degwin then phased through the door, taking me with him as always. Then I saw what was in the room, and desperately wished I had not.

In the room there was a pod filled with blue fluid along with several machines-monitors from the looks of them- whose cords ran into the pod itself.

The cords were then plugged into a man. The man had what looked to be curly, shoulder length blonde hair. Based on looks, I would guess that he was around the late-twenties age wise.

So a blonde-haired man with various scars all over his body, in a pod in a secretive Zeon lab. Only one person in the totality of the UC Gundam fit that description.

"Full Frontal", I breathed out. A full on clone of the recently deceased-and it would have had to be recent-Char Aznable aka Casval Rem Deikun.

"Oh you know this one?" Degwin asked me rhetorically. "Good, that might make the next part easier. To put it simply" He told me. "You are going into that one." Now he pointed straight at Full Frontal with his distinctive cane, which had not been there a second ago.

Setting aside questions about whatever methods Degwin had used to gain this kind of power in the afterlife, I focused on becoming a body snatcher.

"You want me to possess this body? What about the soul already in it?"

A disdainful scoff. "There is no soul in that body, merely fragments of whatever bits of Aznable's personality they were able to scavenge from his last mobile suit."

"There quite clearly is a soul in that body." Now I referenced the Will of Char at Degwin, falling back to subconscious truth.\

"A Will is not a Soul. It shall merely add to your own soul, along with whatever benefits the Cyber Newtype process has already granted this body."

"Okay, okay that's fine." I racked my brain for something to get me out of this. I did not want to go into Gundam's most famous nihilist. And then, one of those make or break ideas came into my head and I rolled with it.

"So once you've stuffed me in that body over there and all that good stuff, how exactly do you intend to prevent me from just not leading Zeon? I mean souls can't affect the physical world aside from mental communication and even that's limited to Newtypes, of which you are not a part of as you said yourself." I said, confidence in my words growing. "So what I will do with my new body is just hop in a mobile suit or a transport ship and just go off and live in one of the Sides. Afterall, there are plenty of blonde hair and blue eyed men in humanity. I'll blend in just fine."

Yet despite my show of planning to utterly defy his plan, Degwin merely looked amused like a parent hearing about how their child was going to be an astronaut or some such idea.

Degwin sighed unhappily. "Now we come to the part I truly regret having to do. You see, unnamed one, I did ask myself those questions before implementing this plan. I do recognize that it is simply impossible to ask one to take up a cause that they know nothing about."

Now the tyrant of Zeon just looked worn down, nothing like the natural ruler I had seen earlier.

"So my solution is thus: I will make you experience Zeon. All of our struggles and tribulations. Our pain and deaths. Our hopes and dreams. I will show you why Zeon needs to be the guiding light for spacenoids everywhere and then you will be forged into the guiding light that Zeon needs to survive. I am sorry."

My stomach, despite not having one, dropped in horror. I tried to do something, anything to prevent the inevitable, but I could not move. My eyes were only able to merely widen in horror before Degwin warped directly in front of me and flicked my forehead with a finger that had become a vortex of swirling purple.

I flew across the lab, crashed through the pod, and right into the clone. My last glimpse of the outside world was Degwin Sodo Zabi, in full Sovereign regalia, staring at me.

I was there at Munson the day Zeon Zum Deikun started preaching his future. I was rail thin from lack of food, having given all of it to my family but still I knew that it was not enough. Yet here was a man who preached a hopeful future for us, the abandoned of space. That was the day I felt hope again.

I was cheering in the crowds when Deikun was elected to the position of Chairman of Side 3. I cheered as he announced that Side 3 had been recognized as the Autonomous Republic of Munso. Finally, we would be able to have a future again, something to pass onto the future.

I was being beat up by Federation soldiers on the day Deikun died. I hadn't even been in the crowds, just going to run some errands. It would be the last day I walked.

I was prospering as the Principality was proclaimed, the just rule of the Zabis breathing new life into Side 3. Finally we were being recognized as what we here in space had known we were all along: equals to the earthnoids.

I was bleeding out during the Independence Riots of 0077 as Federation soldiers, our so called protectors, fired indiscriminately into the crowd, heedless of where their bullets landed just as long as it landed in one more spacenoid. I was being run over by a tank, my flesh being pulped and my bones ground to dust until I popped like a piece of overripe fruit. I was there the day hatred was born.

I was fighting in the space of Loum as we fought for our rights against the Tyrants of Gravity. I was shocked as Revil spitefully proclaimed that the war must go on, if only to ease his own broken pride. I was charging the positions of the Federation and then wondering why my legs no longer responded. I despaired as the hope of Zeon was pronounced dead and cursed our enemies. I mutilated my limbs, one by one, so I could fight harder and harder as the hated foes crept closer to our home. I fought to the last on the lines of Solomon and A Baoa Qu, desperately trying to turn back the unstoppable tide yet knowing it was impossible while the Devil itself fought for the enemy. I surrendered as the last of our champions died. I fled to carry on the fight in their memory.

My flesh was burning as Globe was sacked. It charred black and began to melt off my bones in sloughs of crackling meat. The cries of my people around as they were murdered and raped echoed my own.

I was choking on gas as the Titans purged all of us for the simple crime of being alive. That damn Devil haunting my last moments again.

I had desperate and fleeting hope as our kin from Axis blitzed through the damn Federation yet it was pointless, our hopes crushed again.

Over and over again, our struggles proved to be for naught, every single champion and leader falling before our eyes when triumph seemed assured. Yet despite all that was inflicted on us, on our very souls and spirit, we rose again and again. We mustered again and again because we hoped.

We had hope that tomorrow should herald a new beginning. That we could lead all of us space trash to a true future, one we could be proud to leave to our children. A world that we forged and guided onward with that hopeful light at the front. And that light we call Zeon, the light of space and its people.

So over and over, again and again, we will chant our battlecry. For the victory of space.

sieg zeon. sieg Zeon. Sieg Zeon. Sieg Zeon! Sieg Zeon! Sieg Zeon! SIEG ZEON! SIEG ZEON! SIEG ZEON!

SIEG ZEON!

"SIEG ZEON!" I roared with fury, my clenched fist raised high above me. Then I felt a sharp prick in my left arm, and looked over to see a scared nurse injecting something into me.

Then I was too tired to ask any questions and fell into a fitful rest.

Prologue End.