So, I'm working on
Walker's Account again. I even have half a new chapter worked out--in a number of jumbled, unconnected parts, and absurdly behind schedule. But I've realized my most serious "problem" isn't so much that I could easily fall into the trap of taking a single volume event of the manga--the conclusion of the Eve Wars, and the TV series finale, and stretching it out into multiple chapters (I did the same with the end of OZ's campaign against the principal Alliance holdouts in the Space Colonies, D-120, and frankly it's probably my favorite arc in my story so far, or close to it). It's that I have no way to work around one of the most melodramatic (and kind of pointless, though quintessential) moments in the whole of
Gundam Wing, that survived, almost unaltered, into the manga: the "final flight" of the original Wing Gundam.
It's a scene that serves almost no narrative purpose (beyond establishing Une's unstoppable love/obsession for Treize Khushrenada): Wing, which was abandoned as a mostly-wreck during the Battle of Luxembourg, when Heero obtains the Epyon, is repaired, and dropped at some unspecified OZ Space Forces base on Earth, which happens to also feature a hospital where...Une, after she was dismissed by the World Nation government and shot by Tubarov, was evacuated to and has been lying in medical coma. In his final declaration to the White Fang, Treize dares his old comrade Milliardo to either fight him in single combat, or fire on Tallgeese II with
Libra and kill him instantly, the second of which Milliardo unsurprisingly chooses; in maybe the most melodramatic moment of the series (peak
Wing Gundam, maybe even peak 90's
Gundam entirely), Une rises from her coma, steals Wing Gundam, launches it, and somehow throws herself into the path of
Libra's fire, given the Gundam its most ironic end and saving her beloved Treize-sama.
It's a moment that serves no other purpose besides to remind us this is
Gundam, the franchise that gave us the emotional battleground of the Char/Amuro rivalry and Newtype space magic. Unfortunately, it's also....fairly difficult to actually explain, element-by-element, in the final chapters of
Walker's Account, which I've largely used as a means of explaining the series "reasonably", if such a thing is possible. I could just ignore and leave it as an assumed event, but...I don't want to do that. Une, as Walker's disliked superior for at least a third of the story, was a major character before her removal from the plot, and Treize himself is featured very prominently. Walker was even involved partially in the
last time XXX-01W was restored, and his final task as an "engineer" was to outfit Tallgeese II for an expected devisive battle that he, and most of his comrades, expect Treize to die during. And I think it's a little bit of a disservice to just "put it out of mind" after I've spent the last decade+ writing this long, winding narrative as an acknowledgement of at least some of the ridiculousness of
Gundam Wing and that variety of 90's Sunrise ridiculous drama.
So, I've been ruminating about it, on and off, for a few months now, and I've tried to decide how I can possibly set this up; under what circumstances XXX-01W would've been partially restored (though not fully, or I would have to explain why it would not have been seized by OZ for one of their best pilots--a character like Emi--to fight in the Eve Wars), where it would've ended up, and why Une would be seemingly next door. To start, as a very minor concession to how reality "works" in the narrative, I will be doing a bit of rewriting of the chain of events for a seemingly possessed Une to stir several hours before Treize's ultimatum, even if means she ends up in the same spot and then in the arms of her beloved. I've settled on a historical location, not Diekirch, Luxembourg (where Walker works), but Buchel Air Force Base, today home of American nuclear-armed bombers in Germany and 200+ years later a convenient airbase for the former-Alliance to park their nuclear bombers and L.E.O. launch vehicles. Seems moderately fitting for an ex-weapon of mass destruction like Wing Gundam to absent-mindedly end up after being half-repaired (
@Night, I think you'd appreciate the mild historical irony, or at least the suitability if I'm not going to cram everything that happens for the last narrative arc into tiny 2,500 square km of Luxembourg). As for how the Iron Colonel and the Gundam that fell to Earth ended up in Buchel...I'm going to blame coincidence, and our old friend "Lieutenant" Nichol, Une's long-suffering subordinate who was already confirmed in the TV series and manga as having saving Une by bringing her body back to Earth after
Barge was destroyed. Nichol won't be at fault for the Gundam, though, as that was presumably seized by OZ loyalists (and not the Treizists) after they retreated from Luxembourg (and Heero in Epyon); in a different world, I might've written a few chapters featuring a salvaged Wing Gundam in the hands of the Treizists, but I never quite thought that through and I didn't really want to write in additional Gundam scenes amid OZ's civil war. Under the order of the World Nation (and the Romefeller Foundation), the Gundam might've been taken as a consolation prize, repaired, given to the likes of Walther Farkill or their other anti-Treize champions (if he wasn't dead by then); instead, it's sat half-restored in a hardened shelter for nuclear bombers, watched over by Alexander Fielding, Walker's foil (well, except he probably makes better decisions) from the Alliance loyalists in D-120 who surrendered peaceably to OZ, was drafted by the Treizists, and then eventually restored to the rank of captain by the World Nation after Relena's fall from power. Walker is at Buchel on a tip from Treize's favorite civilian journalist (Ms. Shion, who organized his first interview after the coup) where to find Une; the Gundam is just his consolation prize for having to put up with Fielding, an unpleasant reminder of his time as a POW at D-120, again.
So yes; even if you were familiar with this exceedingly long narrative in
Walker's Account, this would still sound very jumbled and messy, but seeing it written out is helpful, even for working out details (like how the hell Une actually flew that thing into an interception like that; I'm entertaining the possibility that Walker sat the Gundam, decided it was useless junk, and ordered that it be turned into a missile that Une decided to make manned).
