AN: My first serious long fanfic. It is also unbeta'd (heh) and might have some English weirdness in it.
All in all I do hope you enjoy this crossover of mine that wrecked my brain since the day I finished reading Muv-Luv Alternative. I think it will be quite a ride.
Enjoy!
Prologue
To the crew, it looked like space itself was burning. The various explosions that occurred around them shook the ships with various degrees of force, forcing some crewmembers to grab their panels in an attempt to not fall off their chairs.
“More space-class BETA coming from the right!” One of the bridge officers yelled over the deafening sound of their enemies exploding into chunky pieces. They had planned this invasion for a long time now and finally having the means to put this plan into action caused them all to be itching for a fight. They had already retaken one of their territories in outer space, so now they would put all they had into recapturing this planet as well.
The planet Mars.
The crimson planet glowed an ominous red as more and more of the BETA’s fleet exited its orbit and attacked the human fleet. But humanity had been ready for them for a long time now. Reloading the main cannons once again, the bridge officers continuously shouted out more and more updates from the developing situation. At the moment, it seemed that they were at a stalemate with their long-hated enemy, the BETA. The BETA in the past conquered much of the moon and the Earth, forcing humanity to the brink of extinction. Humanity’s end seemed almost certain at any moment.
Until that one fateful day.
And now, humanity was fighting back in full force. More and more shells were fired and more and more TSFs engaged the enemy in closer combat.
“It seems we cannot advance much further than this at the moment.” A voice spoke out from behind the bridge crew.
“Admiral!” said the Captain, saluting his superior officer.
“At ease.” Replied the admiral. The captain lowered his hand and updated the admiral on the situation. Their enemies were not pushing them back, but they could not break through their incredibly strong frontline either. Both sides were gaining and losing forces at an equal rate, but humanity had less to spare than the overwhelming BETA. Therefore, they had to deal with the situation as fast as they could.
“It seems we will have to use our trump card, won’t we?” The captain asked his admiral, who was processing the information the captain had given and what was on screen. It took a few minutes and a few more violent rockings until the admiral reached a decision.
“…heh.” Answered the admiral, grinning widely. “It seems that we will.”
“I see.” Said the captain. He was worried a bit for the admiral, but he had to trust in the admiral’s words. Their trump card was one of a kind and they could not afford to lose it…But who was he to deny their admiral this plan of action.
“Captain, please prepare it.” Commanded the admiral, who turned back towards the elevator.
“Prepare the trump card!” yelled the captain to his bridge crew. Even with all the explosions around them and the risk of certain death, the bridge crew could not help but smile at the prospect of seeing that thing in action again. It was a great experience every time they had.
The elevator went down towards the belly of the ship quickly, reaching the hangar.
“Your machine is ready!” said one of the mechanics to the admiral upon arrival. They already knew exactly what they had to calibrate and what they had to fine-tune every time the admiral went out in that thing, so they could get it done in record speed at this point.
“Good,” Replied the admiral to his crew. The admiral gazed at the red planet through the protective screen of the hangar, taking the sight in. “It’s time we took the fight to you, beasts.”
The admiral quickly climbed up the machine and entered its special cockpit, a cockpit the admiral had been inside many times already, and took pleasure entering every time.
Powering up the machine to its outmost power, the admiral yelled out.
“Let’s go, Gurren Lagann!”
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“Haaa…” Shirogane Takeru sighed loudly. It was the only sound the young man could make at the moment. He was tired, damn tired, and going through all those lessons that he had already experienced a million times did not help him at all. He also couldn’t banish the feelings that he had felt when he jumped back to his own world. At first, it felt very good, seeing his friends again, even from afar. Not only that, but he had managed to obtain the equation Yuuko needed in order to further her development on Alternative IV, and had spoken to Sumika along the way even though it went against what Yuuko instructed him.
It was a good feeling in the beginning, but now he could feel the weight of the world on his shoulders more and more each passing day. He believed he had already tampered more than necessary with the future; his extraordinary skills that he had picked up from the many loops he went through helping his squad pass every test they had with relative ease, even the Comprehensive Combat Evaluation. But he couldn’t get rid of the nagging feeling that the future held far more for him than he could handle.
And with these thoughts in mind, Takeru continued to walk into the ruins of old Hiiragi town. That morning, he decided he would go back to his old home, just for the hell of it. It was a day off and he wanted to cool his head down from all he experienced for the past few weeks.
It didn’t take him very long to reach his ruined home. It looked like exactly as he remembered it, with the front entrance destroyed and a TSF crashed into Sumika’s house right next to it. He approached the downed machine and placed his hand on its frame, feeling the familiar cold steel. If there was one thing he was still grateful for was the fact that Sumika did not exist in this war-torn world, so she would not suffer the same pain as he had. Moving closer to the machine, he placed his forehead to it. He stayed in that position for some time, clearing his head from all thought. He just needed some time to himself to finally relax and get rid of any worries, even for a bit.
Slowly but surely, the sun began to set on the horizon, and he realized he probably should be starting to head back. Everyone would be worried about him at this rate. Removing his forehead and hand from the machine, he began to walk back towards the base when he suddenly heard a strange groaning sound behind him. He turned back to the downed machine, and looked at it curiously.
Suddenly, the machine’s huge frame groaned loudly and collapsed, scattering metal pieces and dust all around. Takeru quickly put his hand up to protect his face from the cloud of dust that blew over the area. A minute later the dust settled, and he brought his hand down to look at the remains of the now wrecked machine.
“Ah, oops.” Was the only thing he could say about the situation.
He examined the wreckage further, thinking that he probably should have been a bit more careful with it. Even ruined, a TSF could provide resources for the building of additional TSFs from its spare parts. He walked towards the ruined machine looking over the crunched up metal when a strange light blinked in the corner of his eye. He turned towards the source, finding it buried underneath the collapsed frame.
Deciding that he should investigate the light, he climbed onto the TSF, and began to remove the metal pieces covering the source of the light. He found some difficulty in the task, but the various metal parts that made up the TSF were already slashed or crushed into various smaller pieces that he could remove by himself, even though they were heavy.
He continued to remove more and more pieces of metal until he finally uncovered the source of the blinking light, and froze.
It was a machine. At least, he thought it was a machine. He had never seen anything like it in his life. It was fairly small from his perspective, but the top part of the machine was open, as if a person could ride in it. There was an obvious chair in the middle of it, and two handles blotted out from each side inside of this ‘cockpit’. It had a strange design, but the cockpit was the least interesting feature of this machine.
It had a face. Its front had a clear visage of a human face with a color resembling closely to normal skin color. The jawline and nose were painted a reddish color, reminding Takeru of the communicator an Eishi wore along with their suit. Yet the machine’s eyes were closed, as if it was sleeping.
“What the heck is this thing?” Takeru said to himself “I have never seen anything like this before. Is it a discarded prototype?”
He brought his hand forward to touch the strange face. All of a sudden, the green light returned, so now he could discern its exact origin.
It came from the machine’s closed eyelids. The blinking was slow and emitted a low humming sound. Takeru could not for his life understand what this blinking meant. Is it waking up? Is it sending a message? He did not know.
Wracking his brain for a solution, Takeru eventually decided to go to the one person who was familiar with strange objects: Kouzuki Yuuko.
In his original world, Kouzuki Yuuko was his eccentric physics teacher who would often came up with strange theories in the middle of class and then run off to write them down before she forgot. She was energetic and sarcastic, amusing herself by making fun of him at every opportune moment or teasing him about a fictional relationship with his homeroom teacher Jinguuji Marimo.
But in this world, she was way different. Now she was cold and calculating, taking her research incredibly seriously and managing to reach amazing results with her genius. She was the mastermind behind Alternative IV, the main plan of action to ensure humanity’s survival until it was discarded in favor of Alternative V in the previous timeline. When he found himself thrown back in time, the first thing Takeru did was tell Yuuko about his experiences and everything he knew in order to make Alternative IV work. He did a lot of things she asked, and she went as far as creating a machine that could send him back to his own world for some time in order to gain an equation from her other self that would advance her development of the crux of Alternative IV, the 00 Unit.
Takeru did not know what the 00 Unit was, but he did know it was a crucial part of the plan, so he agreed and did as she had asked and retrieved the equation for her.
All in all, if there was anybody Takeru could trust to deal with strange findings and phenomena, it was her. Having returned to the base, Takeru went down to the lower floors to reach the genius professor’s lab.
He reached the door of Yuuko’s lab and opened it.
“Yuuko-sensei, you here?” He asked.
Entering the messy room with papers thrown about everywhere, he saw her sitting at her main desk, typing something on her computer.
“Oh, Shirogane? What are you doing up so late?” She asked him, not bothering to look up from the screen. He figured that whatever it was that she was working on it must be important, but he still had to tell her his amazing find. Yuuko loved amazing finds.
“I just came to tell you that I found something interesting in next to my house.” He answered her.
Then, she stopped typing. When she did that, it obviously meant she heard something interesting. That was good for him he guessed.
“Ho…what is it this time Shirogane?” She asked him half-mockingly. He really hated that tone of voice of hers, but he was used to it by now. It wasn’t very different from her tone in his original world, but it was annoying every single time.
“Well, I don’t really know how to describe it.” He said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head with his hand. “But I think it was some kind of machine, maybe a TSF prototype.”
Staring at him quizzically, she said “You know that if there was some sort of prototype TSF in the works in the area I would know about it, right? It obviously can’t be a prototype TSF.”
“Yeah well,” he replied “Whatever it is, it’s strange. It seemed like it can be piloted, and it’s fairly small, but it was only a face and it looks like it doesn’t work at…”
“Stop.” She said suddenly, stopping his description of the machine. “Say that last part again.”
“Huh? You mean the part that it’s only a face?” He asked her.
“Yeah, that part.” She answered curiously. Yuuko put her hand on her chin in thought, putting the pieces together. Reaching a decision, she got up from her chair. “Alright, let’s go see it.”
“Eh, right now?”
“Yes, right now. I want to see it now and there is nothing you can do about it.”
“…Alright.” He said with a sigh. Yep, as soon as she hears something interesting she wants to hear all the details, or if there are no details to tell, then to see them. A genius will always pursue the unknown after all.
“Go wait outside for a second. I need to get something.” She told him.
“Hm? Ok.” He answered. And with that, he exited the lab.
He waited a bit outside of the lab door, hearing the occasional drawer or cupboard opening from behind him. Whatever it was she was looking for, it looked like she misplaced it, or forgot where it was. After a bit, the sounds stopped and the door opened.
“Alright, let’s go.” She commanded.
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It was nearly midnight when they reached the wreckage of his old home. The stars shone beautifully in the night sky, although the moon was nowhere to be seen. In this world, the moon was the first place where humanity had encountered and fought against the BETA. The losses were great and eventually humanity had to retreat from Earth’s natural satellite, leaving it for the BETA to populate. It didn’t take too long for the BETA to start constructing their hives upon its surface, and now the once beautiful moon that meant so much to the people of Earth only gave them a grim reminder of where the BETA first decimated them. Not long after their conquest of the moon, the BETA landed on Earth as well, quickly annihilating countries with their superior numbers and reaching to the many corners of Asia and Europe. Their hives riddled the Earth, and humanity’s population dwindled to a new low. It was only a matter of time until the BETA completely and utterly conquer every corner of the world, and humanity will be facing extinction.
“So, where is it?” Yuuko asked, snapping Takeru out of his stupor.
“Oh, right. It’s here.” He said, leading her to the ruins of the TSF. Not much had changed since he had been there a few hours before, except that it was getting a bit harder to see. He climbed on the ruins of the TSF again. Reaching down, he gave Yuuko a hand in climbing the wreckage. Once she was on, he carefully led her through the wreckage until they reached his aforementioned find.
Upon seeing it, Yuuko could not help but be amazed. “This…is one heck of a find you have here Shirogane. “She told him, still amazed.
“Yeah well, even if it is, I don’t know what the heck it is. I was hoping you could tell me.”
“This…is what I’ve been looking for.” She told him. He didn’t understand what she meant by that. She has been looking for it? So she did know what it was.
“Well…what is it then?” he asked her.
She remained quiet for a bit, thinking. “I will tell you once we bring this back. For now, let’s take it to the base. No wait, it will be bad if someone sees it. We need to do this quietly.”
“Quietly?” he said curiously. “How can we bring something like this through the front doors quietly? It’s too big to carry and it will definitely make a whole bunch of noise if we try to move it.” After saying that, he touched it in order to prove his point. It moved a bit from his touch, causing the wreckage around them to make a slight groaning noise.
But then its closed eyelids start to blink with the strange green light again, humming quietly.
“Eh?” Yuuko said, looking at it. “It’s…responding.”
“Responding? How the heck is it responding? All it’s doing is making some lights and noise. It will be even harder to move it now!”
“You don’t understand Shirogane. It is definitely responding. But not just to anything,” she began. “It’s responding to you.”
He stared at her for that. Responding to him? How the heck does that even work? He didn’t do anything other than touch its frame. “Are you for real?” He asked her.
“For real.” She answered. Suddenly, the pocket of her lab coat started to glow the same strange green light as the machine. It blinked in sync with the machine’s blinking. Yuuko and Takeru noticed this, and curiously, she pulled the glowing object from her pocket.
It was a drill. A small yellow drill lay in the palm of Yuuko’s hand, glowing green in sync with the machine Takeru had uncovered. The two looked incredulously at the glowing drill, thinking about what this meant.
“Take it.” She told him, handing him the drill.
“Huh?” He replied stupidly.
“I said take it. The machine responded to you, and then this thing started reacting as well. I think this might be what is needed to get this thing moving.”
“Are you sure about this Yuuko-sensei? I don’t want to do something dangerous and suddenly explode or grow new arms or something.” He said skeptically.
“Don’t be such a bore Shirogane. You never get to experience enough exciting things in life, especially in your case. This one thing won’t kill you, and if it does, I’ll make sure to dissect you to uncover your secrets~” she responded dangerously.
“You are not making this any easier you know.” He said, squinting his eyes at her.
“Just take it damn it.” She said to him, forcing the drill into his face.
“Alright,alright!” he said back, taking the small drill into his hand. As soon as he took it, the drill began to glow brighter and in greater frequency than before, puzzling the two.
“Well? Are you gonna get in?” she asked him.
Hesitantly, Takeru sat down in the seat of the strange machine. He studied the panel before him, noticing a small round hole in the middle of it. He stared at the hole, which glowed as well in sync with the drill in his hand. He swallowed hard, and in one motion, inserted the drill into the hole and turned.
And then, the world was filled with green light.
A white spiral appeared around the drill in the panel, extending outward. The machine’s eyes opened widely, and green energy poured powerfully from the bottom of it. Yuuko had to cover her eyes from the bright light with her hand while Takeru instinctively grabbed the handles on the side of the cockpit.
“Wha! What is it doing Yuuko-sensei!” Takeru shouted over the sound of the machine’s engine.
“I have no idea! But whatever it is doing, it powered up!” She shouted over back to him. Deciding to try it out, Yuuko jumped down into the machine, right into Takeru’s lap.
“Wha-wha-wha-what are you doing?!?!” he screamed embarrassingly. What the hell was she thinking in a time like this?!?!
“Quiet down Shirogane and let’s see what happens!” She answered back.
The machine began to hover over the ground for a bit, and then did something that amazed them both.
Arms appeared. Arms slid over from the back of it to its side, growing from what appeared to be shoulder guards, and underneath it, legs extended from the bottom and grew small feet. All that while the machine hovered slightly over the ground with the green light filling their vision.
“All right! It works!” Shouted Yuuko.
And then the machine shot forward. Grabbing on for dear life, Takeru grasped the handles of it while Yuuko grabbed on to him. The machine shot past the wreckage of Takeru’s old house and deeper into the ruins of Hiiragi Town.
“Whoaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!! !!!!!!!” Takeru screamed while panicking. He didn’t know what the hell was going on but he sure as hell wanted it to stop. The machine kept on flying forward with great force and he had no idea how to make it stop.
“Shirogane!” Shouted Yuuko. “Think of it like a TSF! What do you do to get a TSF to stop moving?! It should work the same way!”
Still grabbing on to the handles for dear life, Takeru channeled all of his military experience in dealing with fast and furious machines, he ran through his mind the command to stop.
At his mental command, the machine descended down to the ground, throwing dust and dirt behind it until it slid into a complete stop.
“Now that was quite a ride I have to say.” Yuuko said, breathing a bit harder than normal. It seemed like the machine’s sudden acceleration unnerved her a bit as well.
“That was a lot less fun than I thought.” Takeru replied sarcastically.
“You are still such a bore Shirogane. Do you think you can get it to move normally? I want to take this thing back to the hangar.”
“Uh, I think. It kind of works like a TSF like you said so it shouldn’t be too hard.”
“Good, then let’s get moving. I’ll show you where to go.”
With the matter resolved, the two walked back to the base inside of the strange machine.
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“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa~~~~” Takeru sighed loudly.
“Takeru! It’s rude to sigh without covering you mouth!” Mikoto scolded him.
Takeru was currently in the cafeteria for breakfast with the rest of his squad. He went to sleep pretty late yesterday night after his wild adventure with Yuuko-sensei. After they had reached the outside entrance of the hangar, Yuuko told him that she would take it from there and sent him off to sleep. He took the drill out of the panel and handed it back to her. After that, he quickly went off to his room and crashed on his bed, not even bothering to change clothes. That’s how tired he was. He was one hundred percent sure he would miss roll call in the morning but luckily, Kasumi came to wake him up like every day.
Kasumi was still an enigma in his eyes. In the previous timeline, right before ----- boarded the ship out of Earth, he went looking for her and found her in the lab, hugging the eerie brain-in-a-tube. Once he tried to get her to come with him, she spoke with a tone so similar to Sumika that he was stunned. It was a moment he can never forget. He began to think that Kasumi was some kind of parallel to Sumika in this world, but in the end nothing connected, so he dropped it from his mind.
After being woken up, he fixed himself up a bit to look presentable and headed to roll call, which was followed by breakfast.
“Honestly, where did you learn your manners Shirogane?” Chided Chizuru, AKA Class rep.
And what came first thing in the morning? Being lectured by the rest of the squad.
God dammit.
“Takeru, did you not sleep well?” Meiya asked worryingly.
“It’s not that,” He began. Before he could finish his sentence Kei cut him off.
“Played with himself…” She quipped.
“Don’t say things that can cause a misunderstanding!” He returned to her.
“Heh.”
“As I was saying before Ms. Pervert cut me off,” he cleared his throat. “Yuuko-sensei called me for something and I stayed up really late so I barely got any sleep.”
“Ah! That’s no good Takeru-san!” said Miki. “You need to take care of yourself! We need you in top shape you know!” She added, swinging her arms up.
“I know I know, but her words are absolute and all that, so I can’t really go against her.” He replied
“We cannot understand the XO’s reasoning, but whatever it was I am sure it was of great importance.” Meiya added in a dignified tone.
“Well, yeah…maybe.”
They continued in relative silence, sometimes with one of them talking about meaningless topics until suddenly Kasumi came up next to him. He had to give it to her; this girl knew how to sneak up to him without him noticing. Only once she began talking did he actually notice she was there.
“The professor is calling you.” She said softly.
“Ah, I see. Thank you Kasumi.” He said to her. Nodding once, she walked away. Taking that as his cue to leave, he picked up his tray and went to throw it out.
“I’ll see you guys later then.” He told his squad.
“Yes,” Meiya answered him. “See you in class later.”
Takeru quickly cleared out his tray and went straight ahead to Yuuko’s lab. His instinct told him it had to be about that machine he had found.
“You’re late.” She said impatiently as soon as he arrived. Together the two of them went to another elevator. Pressing the button to go down to the hangar floor, the door closed and the elevator began to go down.
“I have discovered something really interesting about that machine you found.” She began.
“Like what?” He asked her.
“For starters, it really is different from regular TSFs. Other than its size, it has completely different controls and interface, although seeing that it stopped once you mentally commanded it to stop, it seems that is also works on the thought-based control. Also, when I had tried to power it up myself with that little drill, it wouldn’t work at all. It seemed to completely refuse my access to it.”
“So what does that mean?” He asked.
“My guess is that since yesterday you are the one who powered it up, it will only respond to you now. It is a peculiar little thing. It has a tiny engine yet it managed to output such power with such a small frame. Even more peculiar is that I did not feel even a bit of motion sickness. I never rode a TSF before so I should be susceptible to it yet I did not feel it even a little bit.”
“So what does it mean?”
“It means that if we can reverse engineer it, we can try and isolate all of these unique features it has and apply them to mass-produced TSFs. It will grant us a huge advantage either way. We did manage to figure out its name.”
“It has a name?” Takeru asked. He felt that Yuuko was not exactly telling him everything, but he was used to that. She never told him what exactly the 00 Unit was either and a bunch of other parts of her grand design. He understood her reasoning behind it though. If he knew too much and discovered something he didn’t like, he would no longer cooperate with her like she wanted, and so he played along.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s called Lagann.”
“Lagann? As in enveloping face?”
“Exactly. A fitting name don’t you think? It is nothing but a face with an engine after all.”
“So why exactly are you telling me all this?” He asked her. Generally, whenever she called him it was in order to tell him something she was willing to share or give him some sort of mission.
“Because it is a part of something even bigger.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, confused.
“I’ll show you now.”
As soon as she finished speaking, the elevator stopped and the door to the hangar opened. He personally never stepped foot in this hangar in the other timeline. For him, it was one heck of a revelation.
“I personally didn’t want to bring you here until later, but it’s important that you will be. It doesn’t respond to anyone other than you after all.” She said to him, taking a step out of the elevator. Following her, he stepped out as well.
The hangar he found himself in was gigantic. The ceiling was incredibly high up, and he figured that several TSFs could stand on top of each other and they would still not reach the ceiling. Separated inside of this hangar by giant concrete walls were several huge bases, serving as what would have been on a smaller scale for TSFs, but right now many of them were empty except for two. In one of them was what seemed like a TSF under construction, although he couldn’t really tell what it was.
It was the other hangar that they approached. As they walked up to it, he noticed two things. The first was the aforementioned Lagann, sitting on the side with a few mechanics apparently working on it. The other was the TSF sized red machine that he had never seen before in his life. It had a face too, with obvious teeth and shoulder guards that sported a flaming red skull with black shades.
Yes, shades. And the machine itself sported these shades on its eyes.
“Say hello to the other half of Lagann,” Yuuko said. “Gurren.”
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Originally Posted by asterism42
