Not long ago, Siegfried had tied up his hair after a shower, and she had pointed at the clear scar on his head and asked how he got it. "I was beaten by Hilde when I was a kid because I would not behave," he had said. No one knew if Cagalli really took that answer to heart, but the fact that Hilde pinned her to the floor with one hand and one knee made the difference between people very clear.
The argument turned physical, and Qisaka could not keep watching. He stepped out of the shadows and was about to say something gentle to calm things down when Hilde released her grip. The sudden change made the room feel awkward instead of tense.
"This young lady," Hilde said, "no matter what, we covered for you when Archangel questioned your identities. Is this really how you treat people?" Her tone was flat, but the meaning was clear. Qisaka felt a headache coming on.
He had been doing fine in North Africa, giving some military advice to Dawn Desert, when Archangel suddenly descended from the sky. That alone would have been fine, but then he received encrypted messages from Orb saying that Cagalli was being kept on this ship. With no better option, he boarded under the excuse of helping connect Dawn Desert with the Earth Alliance Forces.
After meeting Cagalli, he planned to send her straight back to Orb and end the task. Instead, this princess who did not act like one insisted on staying, saying she had to witness her father's mistakes with her own eyes. The childish tone made this battle-hardened colonel from Orb worry about the nation's future.
Another thing that worried him was how much attention Cagalli showed toward the boy in the room. He knew her father, the former prime minister Uzumi, was not rigid or narrow-minded. Still, as a soldier, he instinctively opposed her getting too close to an unknown boy, an unknown girl, and an even more unknown mobile suit.
Facing Qisaka and his adult male build, Hilde stepped back a few paces to leave room to strike. She silently judged the path and chance of knocking him down with a single punch. A meaningless groan sounded from behind her, and she relaxed her muscles and stepped aside to open a path for Cagalli.
"If there is no need, come less often," Hilde said. The warning brushed past Cagalli's ear as she hurried to the bed and checked Siegfried's forehead with her hand. Her carefree behavior made even the emotionally flat Hilde feel irritated.
"Oh right," Cagalli added, "Marduk asked me to check if the GINN's password lock can be removed." The warmth under her palm told her that Siegfried was out of immediate danger, and only then did she remember the task she had been given.
"It can be removed," Hilde replied. "But he cannot pilot it, and I will not pilot it either." "Captain Ramius is not that heartless," Cagalli said. "It is that Coordinator prisoner, what was his name, Regret?"
During their stay in the desert, specialized mobile suits like Ba's BuCUE put heavy pressure on Archangel and Dawn Desert. Even with Kira and the Assault, things were not easy. Perhaps because Siegfried had been helping all along, Kira's growth as a future top ace was not going smoothly.
In the Desert Tiger's first probing attack, Kira finished adjusting the OS in a rush but still could not adapt to desert combat. Mu had to scramble in the half-tuned Skygrasper to support him. The result was damage to the Skygrasper, and Kira shut himself in his room afterward, only speaking with Flay.
When Hilde was asked whether she could sortie in a mobile suit as Siegfried's acquaintance, her answer was simple. She said her genetic adjustment was not suited for that, saving Siegfried was already her limit, and desert combat was out of the question. Unable to judge whether it was true, the crew of Archangel could only drop the matter.
Left with few options, Regret approached Murrue. He said that as a wanted criminal of PLANT, there was no way back for him, and he offered to help Archangel in battle. In exchange, he wanted to be released after leaving North Africa, since going to Alaska or back to PLANT would both end badly for him.
After discussing it with Badgiruel and Mu, Murrue learned that there were many Coordinator within the Alliance Forces who had defected for various reasons. She agreed to let him assist in combat under "limited" conditions. That limit lay in the password lock Siegfried had set on the GINN.
The maintenance team suggested transferring the final control authority of this unlucky mobile suit to the bridge. That way, whether Regret had truly surrendered or was pretending, Archangel would not be led around by the nose. To Hilde, the request was effortless.
Without even bringing Haro, she quickly reworked the GINN's OS and reset its space-use parameters for desert combat. She then walked over to the black mobile suit she piloted herself. "So this is a Martian mobile suit," Captain Furada said. "The style is pretty different from those around Earth."
Thanks to the Eighth Fleet resupplying two Skygraspers at once, Mu could tune one while the other was under repair and be ready at all times. Knowing this girl was close to Siegfried, the talkative Captain Furada started chatting again. Hilde explained that because of gravity, Martian mobile suits did not need strong ground mobility, so leg design mattered less for air superiority.
"So it can fly in atmosphere?" Mu caught the key point at once. With what he knew, very few mobile suits could fly independently under gravity. Hilde said it was nothing special, since ZAFT's DINN had long been used in combat.
"But the DINN has huge wings on its back," Mu said, "nothing like yours." "In physics, there is a saying," Hilde replied. "If the thrust is big enough, it flies. Think about it."
She left him as he was about to say more. The ship's alarm rang again, and Hilde did not care whether it was a real attack or a feint. Because she had to go to Ganaku to modify the GINN's OS, she had briefly left Siegfried with Cagalli, but she did not want her to stay any longer than needed.
After finishing the GINN and checking that her own mobile suit was still locked, she rushed back. Siegfried had already woken up from the explosions and found that the person beside him had changed to Cagalli. Before he could speak, a huge pressure almost ended him on the spot.
"Stop, stop, I cannot breathe," he said. After crying out once, Cagalli remembered she was pressing on a patient. She wiped her eyes in embarrassment, and when she looked at his pale face, the words of concern she had prepared came out as scolding instead.
"Are you crazy?" she said. "Fighting in gravity with a GINN, are you crazy? Do you even care about yourself?" "Come on, it was an accident," Siegfried replied.