Turn, Turn and Turn [A]gain! (Turn A Gundam Quest)

[X] "Who are you, really?"
[X] "What do you mean by 'the corpses'?"
[X] "What is wrong with the Turn A?"


You take a step forward, drawing everyone's attention. "Who are you, really?"

The Dragon appraises you, red visor meeting blue eyes for a few long seconds before she spreads her arms in a mocking fashion. "I am a dragon, really."

Is this really the time to be passive-aggressive? "I was hoping for something more substantial." You frown.

She simply nods her head in return. "I am sure you were, boy, but that is all you are getting from me on the subject."

Her answer annoys you, but not enough to make you force the issue. "Fine then. What do you mean by 'the corpses'?" And why does that sound so familiar?

"I mean your dear acquaintances, boy: Nander, Gunhale, and the animals. Who else?" The Dragon snaps. "That which is dead should stay that way, and those four lost their reason for violating this principle two thousand years ago." She hesitates. "Speaking of violating principles, that Ghingham boy sat his ass down in that infernal machine…"

"What is wrong with the Turn A?" Besides everything, you mentally note as Vestige scoffs from their vessel.

"Besides everything?" Huh, that was odd. The Dragon waves her words away. "No, no. The Turn A functions just fine, though it took centuries for it to recover from its battle with Kreis to the point where it could be piloted. Junno and I never dared to allow anyone to pilot it of course, or try to pilot it ourselves. We were too afraid of the Ghost."

You can hear the way she verbally capitalized that word, but it is not you who answer her: "Ghost?" Asks Queen Dianna. "What do you mean by 'Ghost'?"

"With extended use, a powerful psychic creates an imprint into the Psychoreactive machinery they are connected to. This imprint can survive the psychic's death, your Majesty, but usually only as a vague echo of lingering sentiments." The Dragon patiently explains. "However, Gidae Sang-Sang of the Turn A was a First Human, a member of the original human civilization that once dominated our corner of the galaxy. Junno and I sensed his psychic screaming as he fought with Kreis Kreuz of the Turn X and feared that he might have formed a Ghost capable of dominating any fool that tried to pilot the Turn A, if not outright move it on its own."

She shrugs. "Luckily our fear that the Turn A might act with no pilot proved to be unfounded, even after it had recovered to the point where it should be able to move, but we still sealed it away and allowed none but the late Lord Ghingham to know of its existence." Her explanation halts, as if she is remembering something old, unhappy, and far off. "…It was not a pleasant coverup, but we could not risk anyone knowing about the Turn A. Especially since we lost track of the Turn X in that chaos following the Calamity."

Another moment of hesitation comes before she turns back to you. "Speaking of the Turn X…did you ever-"

Vestige strikes before you can answer her, bursting out of their T-shaped vessel to manifest beside you.

Yes. He did.

For the first time the Dragon seems taken aback, along with Queen Dianna, Lieutenant Harry, and Lord Guin, who squints at the area where Vestige is floating. The non-psychics in attendance merely look and feel confused at what you and the others are staring at.

"That thing again…" The Lieutenant mumbles as Vestige stares the Dragon down.

The Dragon takes a step forward. "So, you are the reason for the boy's growth."

Vestige shakes their head.

Not quite. Turn X did remove his and the girl's limiters, but they made good progress on their own before he put me back together.

They float away from you to peer at the console standing alone in the center of the room.

The rest of him is in here, is it not.

The Dragon nods. "It is. We recovered some of the pieces that were torn off when the Turn A blew the Turn X's head in two, but even with the anchor he provided most of his being was lost with his Mobile Suit."

Vestige nods.

Yes…I noticed you were not wearing your necklace.

She seems oddly out of sorts, her previous calm compromised as Vestige inspects the console. After a slight pause she moves to stand beside your ghostly mentor and applies a burst of Pressure to it, causing red lines flash across the floor, ceiling and walls of the room-

And a Psychoframe Ghost, radiating the exact kind of Pressure that Vestige does, appears to hover above the console. It spots Vestige and, with an aura of fulfilled resignation, taps one of the red lines. A panel opens, revealing glowing red circuitry resembling that of the NT-D Mode as it rearranges itself to fit a small T-shape.

Vestige tugs at you.

Loran. It is time.

...

…This is farewell.

Vestige senses your hesitation, and brings an ethereal hand to brush your cheek.

Loran, do not weep for me. While I enjoyed our time together, I was never meant to exist, and I should not exist if by doing so I endanger the world.

With gentle touches and wordless encouragement, they lead you towards the console. Slowly, hesitantly, you bring the T-shape to the indentation.

I embrace death, just like I once embraced life without fear.

For a moment you see Vestige and the other Psychoframe Ghost of Kreis Kreuz stand opposite each other before they burst apart at the seams, sending their component Pressure Shards flying apart as the lights contained within them flow together into a detailed humanoid shape. The black shards shoot inward, coating the figure in darkness as they are absorbed by it.



And then the psychic lightshow ends, revealing a man clad in the same armor as you.




He looks over all those assembled in the Dark History Archive, his eyes revealing nothing until he raises a neutral eyebrow at Queen Dianna. Those same eyes grow a touch pained when he looks at the Dragon, but it is when he examines you that they gain such an exquisitely complicated gleam.

And then he speaks:

To be honest, I am more angry with myself than anything.

The actual ghost of Kreis Kreuz releases a deep sigh, amplified by the room's speaker system.

But there is no time like the present. Queen Dianna Soleil.

Queen Dianna, who has been standing transfixed by the display, comes awake with a start. "Yes?"

Kreis Kreuz smiles as gently as he can while gesturing at the console.

I am afraid your late mother has changed the access codes to the archive since I last found myself here. I could brute-force the system, but I would rather you did it lest I risk damaging the data within.

Dianna nods resolutely as she walks forward. "Thank you. We all need to see this."

Maintainer finds this moment to rediscover his voice. "Wait! If you revealed the Dark History now after such a huge gap in time, the Terrans probably won't be able to comprehend it!"



He walks forward after Queen Dianna, Kihel and Lord Guin at his heels, until the four of them stand together by the console. You move aside to let the others pass.



"Once you know something, that doesn't mean you will just live with that knowledge." Maintainer insists as holographic screens begin to appear throughout the room. "Sometimes, when you know something, it is bound to have consequences."



Indeed. But they must know nonetheless. I am Kreis Kreuz, maker of the Turn Units, the last of the First Humans, the Dark History Witness!

Bathed in the light of the surrounding monitors, the ghost bellows its titles.

I am the one that sheds the Tears of Time!

The Dark History is being revealed, but there are questions that remain.


Choose 5

[] "Who were you before all of this?"

[] "I am yours, aren't I?"

[] "Who was Gidae?"

[] "Don't you think it is time to take off that helmet?"

[] "What happened between you and Queen Junno?"

[] "How did you defeat the Turn A?"

[] "What is in that pod behind you?"

[] "What happens now?"

[] Write in.


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This scene with Kreis has been nibbling at me since I started the first iteration of this quest.

[X] "I am yours, aren't I?"
[X] "Who were you before all of this?"
[X] "What is in that pod behind you?"
[X] "How did you defeat the Turn A?"
[X] "What happens now?"


A holographic screen displays footage of a Island 3 space colony entering the atmosphere to hit a city, the light from the impact swallowing everything before the eyes of the astonished terrans.



"That object was a space station designed for human habitation." Explains Queen Dianna as the footage repeats itself. "It was deliberately deorbited as an act of war hundreds of thousands of years ago."

"You mean this actually happened?" Lord Guin interjects, eyes wide with shock. "This is not just a film?"

Kreis sighs.

I am afraid not, Guin Sard Rhineford. What you see is the end result of Operation British, the penultimate act of the Principality of Zeon's campaign of terror against the Earth Federation.

To the side the Luziannan pilots stare transfixed at a pair of screens, one that displays footage the Florian Gundam fighting a Zaku while the other has it fighting a Dom. There are other screens that feature the same Gundam, but they also feature strange Mobile Suits you have never seen before.



"Heh." Smirks one of the pilots. "Borjarnon and Luziraiders have fought proudly throughout the Dark History!"

Kreis scoffs.

Indeed. They proudly fought for a nation who opened a war by deliberately murdering billions of civilians, the very people they claimed to be liberating, in an effort to terrify their enemies into surrender. Within the span of one month, they had killed off half of humanity and caused, massive ecological damage to the Earth.

"But that can't be!" Protests the RETT Team man, who must have come down with the Militia.

"That is impossible." Agrees his partner, who like him is staring wide-eyed at a scene of battle between two large fleets among a colony cluster. "The Gundams were tools of the Earth, used to oppress the people of space in ancient times!"

The ghost of Kreis Kreuz raises an eyebrow at them.

A lie. The Principality was hostile to the Federation from the start, and their war of independence was waged decades after they had gained it.

Kreis points to another screen, where five objects fall to earth, red flames trailing behind them as they pass through the atmosphere.



Or to be exact, it was a lie until it became the truth in later cycles. Partially at least. Memory Relationships are funny that way.

There is a brief pause, and you take the opportunity to speak with Kreis directly.

"I am yours, aren't I?"

Kreis nods in an eerily bashful manner.

Yes.

"No." Says the Dragon, making Kreis flinch a little.

It is complicated, but she is correct in the broad sense of things. At the point where Laura and I met, I was really just a human-shaped colony of psychoreactive nanomachines. Since we could not conceive normally, and Laura didn't want to resort to artificial insemination, I cooked up a small swarm of medical nanomachines to do the job. To make a complicated answer really, really simple: You are an opposite sex clone of your mother.

…What.

What.

What…what are you even supposed to answer to that? While you cannot sense her Pressure, even the Dragon seems put off by Kreis' words. And you think you know why-

Don't worry, Loran. The nanomachines made sure that you and your potential offspring will not suffer any defects. I programmed them to clean up the damage caused by-

Desperate to change the subject, you interrupt him by asking the first thing that comes to mind. "Who were you before all of this?"

Kreis hesitates before he sighs.

My era died more than a million years ago, Loran. Does it really matter who I was?

He clearly senses your moment of frustration, for he relents a second later.

Fine. I was born Vierrand Kreuz on one of the colony clusters dotting the Jovian Sphere, learning to fight and build among the great dockyards and manufactories around Titan. When I became an adult I took the name Kreis Kreuz and became the leader of the group in control of one of the central orbital drydocks thanks to my talents at engineering and workplace organization.

It was relatively quiet, all things considered. The old empire has disintegrated before I was born, and even our home system lacked an Exarch.

The RETT man pipes up in confusion at the mention of the alien term. "A what?"

Someone in charge of a whole system. They are placed above Archons, who govern a planet and its sphere. But back to my story: It was a quiet life, but things changed when the Archon of Earth was defeated in battle and replaced by a warlord by the name of Satang Sang-Sang. Satang moved on to assert his authority over the Sol System, and when he reached Jupiter my Archon surrendered and joined him without a fight. I caught his eye as he was inspecting the great forges, and I was invited to join his inner circle.

During Satang's reunification of Humanity I rarely took the field. As Fabricator Marshal I made sure that ships were built on time, that we stayed on the bleeding edge of Mobile Armor development, and the like. After decades of war we were the ones standing alone in the ring with our fists raised high, and Satang ruled Humanity alone.

For a moment Kreis falters, lost in the memory, but he quickly rallies.

But it was not to last. My people's Psychic group links were never meant for interstellar connections, and in time the Exarchs began to chafe under the rule of an overlord whose presence they could barely feel, and on Earth we all knew that there would be another disintegration once Satang died. His son, Gidae Sang-Sang, was just not the right sort to rule Humanity, so Satang called on me to design a weapon that would keep the rebellious systems in line.

You have heard this part before. "The Turn A Gundam."

Exactly.

Queen Dianna, who has been telling the others about the later parts of the 'Universal Century' while you and Kreis were talking, points to another holographic screen.

"This Universal Century period happened after the Advanced Generation, and during its later stages the people of space decided to flee the chaos by repurposing their space colonies as starships and leaving for interstellar space."

They did not get far.

Everyone looks up at Kreis' interjection.

Leaving the solar system was tried by many across the cycles, but Gidae hunted down every attempt and slaughtered them to the last.

He points to a screen of the Turn A, flying across a city while trailing two great streams of multicolored light. Everything touched by the light is instantly reduced to dust.



I present to you the Moonlight Butterfly, the main weapon of a Turn Unit. A cloud of nanomachines that can reach targets up to a range of almost one billion kilometers. While its primary function is to rapidly dismantle enemy buildings and technology, the versatility of Turn Nanites, and their ability of limited faster-than-light travel and Psychoreactive nature, give them many, many more uses.

With it, the Turn A has repeatedly reduced our species back to a pre-metalworking state over the course of the past million and a few hundred thousand years.

...

You address Kreis again in the ensuing silence. "What is in that pod behind you?"

Kreis turns to look at it and shrugs.

Honestly, I haven't the slightest. It wasn't there the last time I checked. Any ideas, Laura?

The last part is said with a meaningful look towards the Dragon, who simply sighs in response before she takes off her helmet to reveal-

"Mom?"

Laura Cehack, your mother, meets your eyes with a resigned expression. While you did suspect from the way that she and Vestige were talking that it was her, to have it actually happen is…something else entirely.

It does, however, explain how she managed to sneak up on you the night you met Ivory, and why her Pressure felt so muted (like Midgard's, in retrospect) when you and Sochie came to visit. Speaking of Midgard, the man is busy hyperventilating on the floor next to a pair of worried militiamen.

"I wish you didn't have to see this, Loran." She sighs before looking over to Kreis. "But to answer your question, Kreis: Inside this pod is my solution to this mess. A way to keep the next generation from dooming everything we have built since you and Gidae tore the world asunder."

That sentiment is even older than me, Laura, and trust me, it rarely ends the way you intend it to.

"How did you defeat the Turn A?" You interrupt, not wanting your parents(?) to fight when there is so much that still needs to be cleared up.

Kreis smirks.

By turning Gidae's favorite trick against him. The Moonlight Butterfly's ability to trap the souls of the recently dead and use them as batteries gives its pilot an enormous boost of Psychic power with every psychic being they kill. I refused, however to amass a killcount comparable to him, however, so I found an alternative:

"The Dark History Veterans." You finish for him. "They were never meant to just back you up, were they?"

Kreis smiles at your observation.

Correct. With the humanoid Psychoframe inside their bodies and their willingness to help me, their souls would be caught by my own Moonlight Butterfly should they fall to the Turn A, bolstering my own psychic might. Gidae might have been the stronger Psychic when we fought two thousand years ago, but the ability to think has its advantages over relying entirely on berserker rage and addled Psychic instinct.

It was not an easy fight, of course. I destroyed the Turn A's cockpit while spiritually eviscerating Gidae, ending him and the Turn A to boot. Or so I thought. I could have gotten the job done properly if he didn't manage to do the same to me as a final act of spite. My soul was splintered by that final attack, and the Turn X's head was split in two by that last shot from the Turn A's shoulder cannon. Some pieces gravitated to Laura's pendant and were sealed up in here-

Your mother brings a hand to her neck but does not avert her eyes from Kreis' ghost.

-While the rest of it remained trapped within Turn X, which crashed into a mountain in what would later become the Vicinity Region of Inglessa.

Kreis shrugs again.

And now we are here.

And now we are here, indeed. You sigh, tired from the sheer weight of what has happened and what is about to come. "What happens now?"

Kreis frowns.

I don't know. The Turn A must be destroyed, but the circumstances have changed in ways I had not predicted since all my plans relied on the Turn A being destroyed for good. And with me unable to leave this place, and not long for this world for that matter, you will have to figure out the details on your own.

He perks up before he turns snarling towards another door into the room, unopened as of yet.

Speaking of the Turn A, it and its pilot are about to make a visit. Loran, can you reach the Turn X with Psyco-Control from here?

You hurry to check. "Yes."

Good. You might want to keep it under control. With the Turn A here its automated systems might act up and make it start shooting, which would be bad news for all the people stuck in cryosleep around here.

That would be bad news, yes, so you reach out to seize control of the White Doll before it does something you will regret for the rest of your life.

"The enemy is here?!" Demands lord Guin, who has torn his attention away from the holoscreens for long enough to listen to your conversation with your father (a word you are going to have to get used to). "Did they break through our defensive line by the palace?"

A moment of terror crosses your mind, but you are instantly relieved the moment you extend your psychic senses to the palace above. "They didn't." You assure him. Sochie, at least, is still alive, and you cannot sense any fighting above you. Your feelings are confirmed when your remote viewing gets through the rock, revealing that the Borjarnaught and its guards are unscathed. In fact, it is the Ghingham Fleet forces that are pulling back.

Up there, that is. Down here the Turn A is spearheading a squadron of Mahiroos, as well as Gadget's Gundam, towards the Dark History Archive.

And yet…you cannot sense any hostile intent from the pilots, only confusion from Gadget and the Mahiroos and joy from the Turn A.

There is a tense standoff between the Militia and the Ghingham Fleet before they are allowed entry without bloodshed thanks to Dianna's quick thinking, and soon enough you finally come face to face with the pilot of the Turn A.


You easily pick him out of the four Ghingham Fleet members that enter the room. You can feel the touch of a mad, unearthly hatred trailing off him, as if he was touched by something old and raging, but even more than that it is the white armor he wears. Armor of similar make to your own. His helmet is set to its collapsed mode, leaving his face free, and with his sword there is an odd sense of familiarity about the man.



Your eyes meet, and suddenly it is like that one time when you and Sochie confessed your feelings to each other, no barriers to separate one from the other. You and this man see each other completely as you are.


[] You kinda understand where he is coming from.

[] What the hell is this man you don't even…

[] This man is completely and utterly insane.

[] You have never, EVER, hated someone as much as you do this man.

[] Oh God, you are going to be sick-!

[] This man really needs a hug.

[] Do…do you really have to kill each other?

[] …You would never cheat on Sochie, but…wow.




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In order:

Understanding.

Confusion.

Rejection.

Hate.

Disgust.

Pity.

Sorrow.

Love.