Nyaan’s priority has been the same since chemical weapons that could’ve been Zeon or could’ve been Federation razed her home at age eleven: survive; at any cost, survive. No amount of bribery or rosy promises would change that. For the chance of a continued future, she’d jump whatever hurdles were put in her path.
The hurdle, this time, is a little more complicated than the persecution and abandonment of being a refugee. Kindness, even if it’s clearly an adder under a flower, feels so much more despair-inducing than unveiled hostility. Machu and Shuji had been, at least, genuine in their nonsensical whiplash emotions and paint fume dreams, but Zeon is all smiles and warm food and poison and knives.
Being in Lady Kycilia’s employ is a gilded cage, a siren offering her safe passage, and Nyaan knows better than to trust her, but it’s hard to ignore the hole in her heart when she’s on her knees before this woman who is supposedly her Major General now, for little reason other than a display of condescending care. Acolyte, she calls her, but Nyaan knows she’s a sacrificial lamb. Lady Kycilia has no concern for her survival so long as Nyaan can give her access to a Zeknova.
A Zeknova took Shuji, burned to pieces the dream of escaping to Earth with him and Machu, somewhere they’d be truly safe and free. But is safety ever real in the world of Mobile Suits? It’s not real on Side 2, it’s not real on Side 6, and it certainly is not real in Zeon: Is it naive to think the Earth would be any different? That ever present danger is a curse of Spacenoids rather than a given of life?
Kycilia’s hand is cold as it pets Nyaan’s hair as if she is a kitten, a moment of alleged comfort before sending her to confront Machu and the GQuuuuuuX with the GFreD, which is Kycilia’s spitting image with the devil dancing in its Psycommu. And yet, whatever Diablo Miguel had wanted to keep Nyaan from becoming seems like it’s her only chance at staking out her claim on her own life.
What guarantees one’s survival is not power, it is not support, and it is not luck. It is skill, flexibility, the ability to slip through the hands of power like water.
For all that she’s had a cushy life, Machu has as much of this liquid quality as Nyaan herself, and it’s a double-edged knife that can either lead the two of them to true freedom or to an explosion not even air could escape.
So thank you, Lady Kycilia, for having faith in swaying the heart of a girl with nothing to her name through gifts and flattery. That is the naivete of those in power, that loyalty is something that can be bought. But feral cats are loyal to no one, and no promise of a home will tame them.
FILL: TEAM TOKUSATSU
Fandom: Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX
Ship: Kycilia Zabi/Nyaan (manipulatively), background ShuMachuNyaan polycule
Words: 500
Nyaan’s priority has been the same since chemical weapons that could’ve been Zeon or could’ve been Federation razed her home at age eleven: survive; at any cost, survive. No amount of bribery or rosy promises would change that. For the chance of a continued future, she’d jump whatever hurdles were put in her path.
The hurdle, this time, is a little more complicated than the persecution and abandonment of being a refugee. Kindness, even if it’s clearly an adder under a flower, feels so much more despair-inducing than unveiled hostility. Machu and Shuji had been, at least, genuine in their nonsensical whiplash emotions and paint fume dreams, but Zeon is all smiles and warm food and poison and knives.
Being in Lady Kycilia’s employ is a gilded cage, a siren offering her safe passage, and Nyaan knows better than to trust her, but it’s hard to ignore the hole in her heart when she’s on her knees before this woman who is supposedly her Major General now, for little reason other than a display of condescending care. Acolyte, she calls her, but Nyaan knows she’s a sacrificial lamb. Lady Kycilia has no concern for her survival so long as Nyaan can give her access to a Zeknova.
A Zeknova took Shuji, burned to pieces the dream of escaping to Earth with him and Machu, somewhere they’d be truly safe and free. But is safety ever real in the world of Mobile Suits? It’s not real on Side 2, it’s not real on Side 6, and it certainly is not real in Zeon: Is it naive to think the Earth would be any different? That ever present danger is a curse of Spacenoids rather than a given of life?
Kycilia’s hand is cold as it pets Nyaan’s hair as if she is a kitten, a moment of alleged comfort before sending her to confront Machu and the GQuuuuuuX with the GFreD, which is Kycilia’s spitting image with the devil dancing in its Psycommu. And yet, whatever Diablo Miguel had wanted to keep Nyaan from becoming seems like it’s her only chance at staking out her claim on her own life.
What guarantees one’s survival is not power, it is not support, and it is not luck. It is skill, flexibility, the ability to slip through the hands of power like water.
For all that she’s had a cushy life, Machu has as much of this liquid quality as Nyaan herself, and it’s a double-edged knife that can either lead the two of them to true freedom or to an explosion not even air could escape.
So thank you, Lady Kycilia, for having faith in swaying the heart of a girl with nothing to her name through gifts and flattery. That is the naivete of those in power, that loyalty is something that can be bought. But feral cats are loyal to no one, and no promise of a home will tame them.
It is all about survival. It has always been.