shiningboxofjustice | PSL Post - Athrun Zala and Yukari Takeba

[ Yukari not's exactly happy that they weren't able to make it out of the forest before nightfall, but it's not like they really had much choice. It was either this or continue on in the dark, and... continuing on was pretty dumb.

So yeah. Sleeping. Or eventually sleeping anyway. This whole situation was still weird. At least back in the Pokemon center it hadn't been out here in the middle of nowhere...

She was shaken from her thoughts though by Athrun's words, and she turned her head to look over at him. ]

Hey, don't mention it. I mean, we're both stuck in this place together, right?

That's true. Nevertheless, it took a leap of faith to join forces with a complete stranger. I wouldn't have blamed you if you had chosen to not trust me since you didn't know me.

[Athrun is just looking up at the sky. The trees here are thick, but at least they aren't thick enough to blot out the stars.]

[ Well, it's not like knowing someone and trusting them managed to keep her from being stabbed in the back before. But... he does raise a good point there. ]

I know. Honestly, I probably shouldn't be trusting you as much as I am right now. [ She pauses for a moment, before shrugging a bit in her sleeping bag. Part of it might be because Athrun sounded like, well, him, but that still wasn't a good reason. Like, at all. ]

Then again, I don't usually end up thrown into strange worlds where I know absolutely no one either. This is a weird situation all around.

It really is. It's downright unprecedented.

[Pause.]

Come to think of it, we wouldn't know that for certain, would we?

Probably not, no. I mean, it's not like we're from the same place, and if it had happened before with people from where we're from, who'd really believe them if they mentioned it?

Not only that. We can't rule out the possibility that no one has ever returned.

Though I certainly hope that isn't true.

Well, yeah. But that one kinda goes without saying...

Of course, I doubt anyone else like us would mention it here either, especially if they've been stuck here a while.

Possibly. But, on the other hand, it's also possible that they'd form their own community. It happens with people who immigrate to a country other than the one they grew up in, so it would make sense for the same to happen here.

I think the key to look for would be people who either know things that the natives of this world would have no way of knowing, or they won't know all of the things that the natives should.

Well, that can't hurt, at least. We'd have to really be on the look out when we're in towns though, but I guess it should be relatively easy to notice someone who... doesn't fit, I guess.

[Silence for a few more minutes. Then...]

You ever go camping like this?

... No.

Still... first time for everything, and all that.

[ Thankfully nothing involving shadows had actually needed them to camp out anywhere before, but she had to admit it did feel a little weird to be doing this now. ]

Yeah. I've only done it once before, and that was in an emergency. I'd been stranded on an uninhabited island and had to set up camp in a small cave for the night before my unit found me.

[ Yukari's not really all that sure what to say to that, but... she had to say something. ]

That must've been pretty rough. How long did it take them to find you?

I think it was about fifteen hours. I spent the night, and first thing in the morning my unit found me. I activated the distress signal within my mobile suit and they were eventually able to track it.

... For some reason I was almost expecting you to say that you had been stuck out there for days. Though I'm glad you didn't have to go through the hell that would've been.

It could very well have. It would have been a different story if the radio waves were clear...but ZAFT is to blame for that itself.

... What happened with the radios?

The Neutron Jammers that ZAFT dropped on Earth created too much interference for reliable radio use. Generally, they could only be used across short distances.

Neutron Jammers?

[ There's only one thing she can even remotely think that it could relate to, but that couldn't be right, could it? ]

Devices that inhibit nuclear fission reactions. ZAFT dropped them en masse on Earth during the early stages of the war in order to prevent the Earth Alliance from using its nuclear arsenal against them. They were also set up around the PLANTs to prevent nuclear weapons from being used against them again.

Oh.

[ That was... yeah, she could see why they would want to do that. Not that she knew how the hell that could POSSIBLY work, but he was from the time with giant robots so who knew what else they could do. ]

I'm... surprised that things actually got to the point where either side would actually use nuclear weapons though.

...

[Athrun hesitates. Was it all right to tell her? They had only known each other for a couple of days. But they had spent every waking hour together, and they were in a strange situation. So it couldn't hurt.]

What if I told you...that my world possessed the technology to alter human DNA?

[ Yukari blinked, frowning a bit as she thought it over for a moment. ]

... That I'm confused about why that really matters with what we're talking about, honestly.

It was the entire crux of the war. My society was able to use the procedure to create humans who possessed far superior potential, both physically and mentally, to the average human who underwent a natural birth. People who received the surgery -- or were the offspring of two parents who both received it, such as myself -- are known as Coordinators, and those who didn't are called Naturals.

The procedure was first made available to the public nearly fifty years ago. Since then, Coordinators have led the way in virtually every scientific field. Unfortunately...this came at the cost of polarizing humanity.

[ Wow. And she thought that the giant robots were something out of some stupid sci-fi anime. ]

Oh. That's... yeah. That'd definitely make things... get pretty decisive. From what I've heard about genetic engineering in my world, there's a pretty big debate about what should be allowed about it.

[ But there was one thing that she didn't get. ]

... But how exactly did get to the point of open warfare like that in the first place? Shouldn't there be both... Naturals and Coordinators on Earth and in the PLANTs?

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