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Sure enough, it was there in the vehicle bay - the Freedom. At 18 meters tall, it wasn't the largest craft in the cavernous hangar, but it certainly did present an imposing figure... particularly next to the squadron of low-to-the-ground fighters that Kira didn't recognize.

It was a tool of war - of killing, Kira reminded himself - but it was also a tool which he could use to help people; he could use it to protect people. To protect a world that might truly be gone... it was almost comforting to see something familiar. A reminder of home (and of Lacus, still sleeping in the pod caverns), even if it was a war machine.

Computers were the young man's forte, but he'd become familiar enough with the machine to do a bit of physical maintenance on it too. So anyone in the hangar bay would see the machine's cockpit open in the center of its chest, as he gave everything a cursory inspection, making sure things were in shape.

Unfortunately, the plantsuits didn't make the best toolbelts, even when fashioning makeshift loops at the waist - but when one's was in a cramped crawlspace up to the waist, it made it possible for even enhanced Coordinator reflexes to catch a wrench that slipped out from one of said loops, skidding across the sloped metal of the Mobile Suit's skin before plummeting to the hangar floor below.

He didn't think anyone had been in here with him, but Kira gave a warning shout nonetheless. "Hey...! Look out!"

(ooc: There may be a wrench heading in your character's direction. Especially so for any of the Rogues, since the Freedom Gundam is ~~conveniently~~ next to the X-Wings. WATCH OUT BELOW!)

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Asuka had been in the middle of tinkering with what she had dubbed "her" X-Wing. It was factory new and she wasn't doing that much to it - just poking around the engines after her learning experience in the Sensoriums. Besides, she had an engineering degree - she had to put that to work somehow. So, it was with a shriek of alarm that she jumped aside to avoid being brained by a falling wrench. She turned to glare in the general direction of "up", voice filling the hanger as she yelled, "Hey! Watch it! You almost killed me, you idiot!"

Kira scrambled out of the crawlspace, moving to the nearest edge to look down - a red-haired girl had come by when he'd been busy; he hadn't even noticed her. She seemed to be okay, but... still, that'd been too close.

"I'm sorry! Are you okay?"

Asuka glared up at him, arms akimbo. "I'm fine, no thanks to you! Watch what you're doing when you're working on your undergrown tin can!"

"Sorry..." he repeated again, giving a little sigh. "I didn't think anyone else was in here."

Well, might as well be productive. "Do you know where I could get a magnetic tool belt - or something like that?"

Asuka shrugged. At least he honestly was sorry. She was mollified. For now. "I don't know! Ask Commander Antilles or something!"

She frowned up at him. "Who are you, anyway?"

"All right, I will." A pause, as he moved over to the side to get a better vantage point down. "I'm Kira. Kira Yamato - I just woke up from the pods. What's your name?"

"I'm Asuka! Asuka Langley Soryu!" Asuka tossed her head back with a grin. "I'm a pilot! Is that tin can thing yours?"

"It's good to meet you. And you're a ... pilot?" Well, that would explain why she was working on one of the fighters. And besides, she didn't look much younger than he'd been - or some of the others on the Archangel, for that matter.

"...yes, it's mine. It's the Freedom."

"The Freedom? It's a bit... small, isn't it?"

Well, just about everything was small when you compared it to Unit 02. She grinned a bit nastily - her robot was better. "What do you fight with it?"

"Small? It isn't any smaller than most Mobile Suits." At least, not that Kira was aware of. Did she have bigger in her world?

"What do you mean, what do I fight with it? Do you mean the factions?"

"It's about half the size of my Eva," she replied breezily and waved her hand in the general direction of her bright red behemoth. "And yeah, that's exactly what I mean!"

"An Eva...?" Was that what that thing was? "I've never seen a Mobile Suit that looks like that before," he said, genuinely impressed.

There was a very short pause. "I flew against ZAFT pilots first, but we fought the Earth Alliance, too."

Asuka swelled with pride. She loved showing it off and she loved the reactions she usually got. "That's because it's one of a kind! The first combat Eva Unit! Not a prototype!"

She blinked and looked puzzled for a moment. ZAFT? Earth Alliance? Probably from an alternate universe. Everyone here was. "...I've never heard of either of those."

"That's impressive," he said with a nod. "The Freedom was one of a kind, too... it and the Justice had the only completed N-Jammer Canceler devices in existence."

Kira paused - of course, she was from another world. How to explain this? "In my world, humans don't just live on Earth, but out on space colonies in orbit, called PLANTs. There was a lot of hostility and prejudice between the people on Earth and the PLANT government, and a senseless tragedy led to a full-blown war."

"ZAFT was the military wing of the PLANT government, and I... started out flying for the Earth Alliance. But as it turned out, they weren't any better. Both sides wanted to wipe the other out of existence."

"What's an N-Jammer Canceler?" Asuka cocked a brow. Half of this stuff she'd never even heard of before. She listened for a moment and then shrugged.

"I worked for NERV. We fought... Angels." It was a long, complicated story, really. His world didn't sound much better, though. "We're not supposed to fight humans."

Oh, right, he'd have to explain this too. "The tragedy at Junius Seven that caused the war was the result of a nuclear explosion, so in response PLANT developed the Neutron Jammer, which projected a field that made it impossible for nuclear power or weaponry to function. They put them all over the Earth and space - and killed millions who relied on nuclear power."

"The N-Jammers made it so that all Mobile Suits had to run on battery power, which gave them limited operational time before they'd have to recharge. But PLANT also secretly developed the N-Jammer Canceler... meaning that a Mobile Suit could run on a nuclear engine."

His explanation, though, died off at her next statement. "Angels? You fought... Angels?" He suddenly had a vision, as silly as it was, of the giant red mobile suit swatting winged humans like flies - but that couldn't be what she meant, could it?

Asuka's brow furrowed in a frown as she listened. She was trying to figure out how half of that technology would even work in her head - the physics didn't add up. "...how do you jam a nuclear reaction? That seems impossible!"

Hooray for having a degree. She shrugged and trotted over to his mech. After examining it, she began climbing the gantry - yelling at him from the ground was getting annoying. "They weren't like the angels you're thinking of. They wanted to wipe out humanity - and I was the only line of defense!"

Well, her and Shinji and Rei.

Kira shook his head. "It's hard to say - it was all top secret. From what I can tell, though, it stopped the emission and movement of free neutrons, meaning that nuclear fission couldn't occur on the levels you'd need it to."

He still didn't know what exactly she meant by angels, but... trying to wipe out humanity? Maybe it was like what had happened between Naturals and Coordinators? "Why were they trying to wipe out humanity?"

Oh - she was trying to climb up? "Hey, wait a minute - there's a better way," he called down before moving to hit a button that lowered a cord with a loop on the end. "Just stand in that loop and hold on - I'll bring you up."

"That shouldn't be physically possible!" She replied as she snagged the dangling loop and set her foot into it. After a moment she gave it a tug. "Hurry up already!"

Asuka was used to heights. As she made her ascent she examined the Gundam - all metal and armored plate. Not exactly like her Eva, then. "I don't know why. I just know that if they made it past us - game over for the whole world."

"I'm sorry, I don't know how it worked other than that." Once Kira was sure that Asuka was in the loop, he hit the button again, lifting her up to the cockpit area.

He was quiet as the winch wound her up, thinking about that - being told that you were the last line of defense for all of humanity? Something about it didn't sit right with him, especially in light of how the OMNI leadership had deceived their own forces.

'You were the last line of defense; if they defeat you then our people die.' Was that what they'd told them, too? "That must have been difficult."

Asuka shrugged, muttering to herself. She'd think about it later. It wasn't that important anyway. She alighted next to the cockpit, peering inside curiously, only half listening to Kira. It didn't look all that different from an entry plug (minus the LCL fluid) - a couple of joysticks and an array of dials and status readouts. "Not really. I'm a prodigy and the best Eva pilot in the world - all in a day's work, you know!"

Of course, it had never really been that easy, but Asuka wasn't going to admit that. She craned her neck, trying to get a better look at the cockpit. "Doesn't look that hard to pilot."

"I think you'd have to be if you've been trusted with that..." Kira wasn't sure how to take her proclamation that she was a prodigy or the best in the world - he didn't disbelieve her, but it seemed kind of self-aggrandizing. "You're even younger than I was when I started piloting."

He moved to join her, looking inside the cockpit. "It's not hard to pilot, once you know what you're doing... I rewrote the OS to make it more efficient, too."

"Well, not everyone can be as good as I am~" Asuka replied as she prodded one of the control panels curiously. "I'm pretty sure I could pilot this thing - do you have to sync with it?"

"Sync?" Kira repeated, not quite sure what she meant. "Er... not that I know of. Anyone can operate it - it just might be a bit hard for Naturals, since the OS is written for Coordinators."

"Yeah, you know - match your brainwaves to the machine, all that kind of thing."

Wasn't that how everyone piloted giant robots?

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