"Hah, go ORB! Right Akira? ...Kinda sounds hypocritical though - we could've joined the ORB military as pilots... Me n' tri-tails only joined ZAFT instead because Izzy didn't want to get special treatment - she's practically royalty." Lucia chattered along, pushing herself through the corridor until they came upon a room with a large table in the centre. This was the briefing, conference, whatever room. It was quality, too! Leather seats! "Uh, you two take a seat. I'll be with you in just a sec'," Lucia said as she began searching through recent action recordings, the large monitor changing between different pilot's views. As Cronic from the CSC and Captain Rush, the ship's captain left, Lucia gave them both a short salute. The date of the recordings said it was only two weeks ago, during the most aggressive combat between humanity's forces and the ET Armada. After scrolling back through videos quite a ways, it came to the conflict's moment of first contact.
'VALENTINE, LUCIA R.' was printed on the top left corner of the recording, with the date and time on the top right corner. As it began playing, Lucia went to sit with the two replacement pilots. There was a large ship peppered with various communications apparatus that was supposedly going to help Lacus Clyne speak to the ETs. As of this moment in the recording, nothing had happened - not a single shot. Hopes were high, hostilities unexpected... It played for about 2 minutes until a large beam tore through the envoy ship, supposedly killing Lacus Clyne and everyone on board, not even an escape pod made it out of the explosion.
"Aunt Lacus... Wh... What the fuck did you do that for?! She just wanted to talk to you!" Izumi's voice picked up. Between Izumi and Zerenis, there was enough rage to go around - Lucia was silently preparing for battle before the ETs opened fire on the three-ship escort. In what seemed like no time at all, the Minerva's mobile suit team was getting swarmed by remote-controller mobile suits that came from the ET fleet. Despite Izumi and Zerenis taking down a damn Carrier by themselves, the 'mobile dolls' as they'd became known just kept coming until the order to retreat was finally issued. The dolls were fast, but their weapons weren't very powerful, their armour was light. The whole video took about fifteen minutes to play over.
When the recording finished as the Minerva's team returned, Lucia stood up and pressed a button on the bottom of the large monitor and span around on her heel, "Okay! So, are you guys shivering yet? Kinda hard to fight something your eyes can't keep up with, huh?" she asked, eager for the two replacements' reactions to their challenging enemy.
"Correction: There is only so much you can carry." Izumi sharply replied, the grin on her face indicating she was just kidding around. It quickly faded though. It was a tad weird for this kid not to be smiling like an idiot on shore leave... Something felt off to Izumi personally, damned if she knew what it was. It just felt... familiar. That's all the feeling was. Shaking her head dismissively, that 'Izzy' spring in her step returned as if nothing was wrong at all.
"Where to first...? Drinks are heaviest so we'll grab those last. Let's go see what games n' music they brought aboard the Cradles!"
"More playing, less fighting~!" Izumi's personal Haro chirped from behind the two as the robotic ball rolled along the sidewalk. Izumi crouched down and let the Haro roll into her arm, before they continued on toward the shopping district.