In Zeon's homeland docks, Tanya von Zehrtfeld stood at the head of a quiet exodus.
Five thousand civilians—most aligned with Lelouch's circle—moved in ordered lines, followed by two thousand soldiers and three thousand ship crew. No panic. No speeches. Just controlled urgency. Tanya preferred it that way. Mars was not a dream; it was an operation.
Her eyes settled on the ship.
It dwarfed anything she had served on before.
Jason Arkadi stood nearby, visibly exhausted, dark circles under his eyes, yet wearing the unmistakable expression of someone who had crossed the line between theory and reality.
Tanya approached him. "Specifications."
Jason straightened, pride cutting through fatigue. "Length: nine hundred fifty meters. Width: two hundred. Internal volume optimized for long-duration travel. Thirty mobile suits capacity—but the interior prioritizes habitation, hydroponics, manufacturing, and medical bays. This is not a warship pretending to be a transport. It's a colony that moves."
Tanya nodded once. Impressed, but disciplined.
"Weapons?" she asked.
"Point-defense only. Anti-missile, anti-debris, sensor jamming. Survival-first doctrine." He paused, then added, "And an invisibility system. Inspired by the Blitz Gundam. Not perfect yet—but good enough to disappear when it matters."
Cima Garahau, standing beside Tanya, raised an eyebrow. "You can build a Mirage System?"
Jason smiled thinly. "I can finish it en route."
Tanya looked back at the ship, then at the civilians boarding with quiet faith.
"This vessel changes the rules," she said.
Jason exhaled. "That was the idea."
For the first time since the war began, Tanya saw a future that did not revolve around the next battle.
Inside Tanya's mind, for the first time in years, the noise began to fade.
No artillery timetables. No casualty projections. No divine mockery whispering from the edge of reality. Just motion—steady, controlled, forward. Peace, or at least something close enough to taste.
She deserved this. Training, combat, survival against impossible odds—she had paid for it in full. Now, distance from the war gave her room to breathe, even as concern lingered for Lelouch and Machu. Worry, yes—but no longer obedience. She had severed herself from the Zabi family the moment she stepped onto this path.
Loyalty to Dozle, Garma, any Zabi had always been transactional. Trust earned, exploited, and discarded when necessary. Survival required masks.
She studied the people around her.
Her own squad followed her with professional discipline—soldiers to the core. Reliable, lethal, but not leaders. Not builders. Not visionaries.
Then there were Lelouch's people.
Cima Garahau, a woman shattered by the British Operation, now standing straighter than Tanya had ever seen her—loyal not out of fear, but conviction. Jason Arkadi, a mechanical savant who had done what entire Zeon bureaus could not, finishing a ship capable of redefining human migration. Liam, with administrative precision sharp enough to move thousands without chaos. Rezen, an ace whose instincts rivaled veterans twice his age.
And Lelouch himself.
Tanya hated admitting it—but her twin possessed a gravitational pull she lacked. Charisma without effort. Authority without rank. Even Zeon's secret orders from Gihren had quietly aligned around him.
This was already his third life, and he wore leadership as if born to it.
She exhaled slowly.
If Zeon won, another war would follow. If the Federation won, corruption would rot it from within. The cycle was inevitable.
Unless someone like Lelouch broke it.
Maybe he wouldn't need the front lines at all.
And for once, Tanya allowed herself to hope she could stay far from the battlefield—and let someone else change the world.
Jason Arkadi was exhausted in a way no battlefield could replicate.
One month. One ship. Two simultaneous super-projects ordered by Gihren—the Solar System, and A Baoa Qu's defense grid. Any one of them should have crushed a normal engineering corps. He had done it with a skeleton team, and a system that helpfully handed him blueprints and then… disappeared.
Then because his own idea he must build this vessel, not easy but he very satisfy even with stolen resources from earth by lelouch he smile at proud at himself.
Then he stared at the ship's internal status readouts, eyes burning.
He wanted to curse Lelouch for not send any one to help. He wanted to curse Gihren for his stupid order variant MS so mechanic very busy even not finished the projects that suppose finished earlier. and Mostly, he wanted to curse fate for thinking this was reasonable. Still, he pulled it off. Somehow.
His system icon blinked—an unread message from three days ago. Typical. It never talked like those convenient novel systems, never summoned miracles or barked quests. No voice, no hand-holding. Just data. Tools. Then silence. At least he wasn't enslaved by it, but building everything from scratch while knowing better systems existed was its own kind of torment.
He exhaled and leaned back.
Despite everything, he was grateful. Whoever sent him here had given him more than a cockpit. He met Lelouch—not just Amuro, a soldier to the bone, or Char Aznable, the man who would one day drop Axis on Earth. Lelouch was different. Dangerous in a quieter way.
Jason hoped—no, prayed—that Lelouch would build something real. A nation. A power structure like Celestial Being, or Lacus Clyne's influence network. Maybe even an empire like his father's in another world—flawed, ruthless, but responsible enough to prepare successors before stepping away.
That mattered. Leadership with an exit plan.
Jason closed his eyes.
He didn't want this life to end like the anime he'd watched—cycles of war, ideology, and graves. This time, he wanted humanity to move forward.
And if this ship was the first step out of the solar system, then every sleepless night had been worth it.
Jason finally opened the unread system message.
His expression went blank.
Not shock. Not excitement. Just… a long, quiet processing delay, like an overheated CPU deciding whether to shut down.
Does this universe actually need this? he thought.
The system wasn't offering another ship or a weapon platform. It was offering paths—ingredients, procedures, thresholds. Genetic engineering packages. Human enhancement trees. Spartan programs. Super-soldier serum formulas disturbingly close to Captain America's. Power suits designed not for Mobile Suits, but for people.
That was the part that bothered him.
In Gundam, power belonged in the machine. Newtypes didn't win because of muscle; they won because of perception. Psychomu, NTD, bio-sensors—those amplified human intent through steel. Even Cyber-Newtypes, Coordinators, X-Rounders, Alaya-Vijnana… all of them ultimately existed to control Mobile Suits better, react faster, survive higher G-forces.
The human body was the interface, not the weapon.
But this?
The system clearly didn't share that philosophy.
He scrolled further and felt his jaw tighten. Gene-seed schematics. Warhammer-level augmentation. Space Marines—scaled down for this universe, but still absurd. The price tag was insane, but the implications were worse.
Infantry that wouldn't be obsolete. Pilots who could survive MS destruction. Commanders who could fight outside the cockpit.
He imagined it—Space Marines piloting MS units, not slow like Titans, but fast, brutal, flexible. Layer NTD-like psycho-frame feedback on top. Primearch-level output synchronized with a Mobile Suit's limiter release.
It was… terrifying.
Jason leaned back, rubbing his face.
"Are you planning for aliens?" he muttered. "Or for humans turning on each other again?"
Maybe both.
He understood Gundam power. This other stuff? It wasn't wrong—but it changed the rules. Once humans themselves became weapons, wars stopped being about territory and started being about who was allowed to exist.
Jason closed the menu.
Not now, he decided. Maybe never.
But the fact that the system offered it at all meant one thing: this universe's future would not stay confined to Mobile Suits forever.