This is the story of dust.
It is one with no beginning, nor an end.
Just mere fragments swirling in midair.

CHAPTER.01 ASH AND LION

The story unfolds with a young girl backed into a corner holding a cat Haro. A rather menacing mobile suit is reaching out towards her. Background dialogue indicates that the mobile suit belongs to a group of bandoleros who infiltrated the colony. The young girl watches in horror as the mobile suit slowly reaches towards her. She keeps telling herself that she cannot look away, however absurd it may be, because there is no reason to as death is closing in. But, she doesn’t want to show fear (despite crying). Just as the suit is about to grab her, another mobile suit comes out of the shadows. It punches the odd quad-eyes Marasai-type mobile suit in the head, sending the suit to the ground and the head bouncing away. The girls savior stands up, it’s vents opening up to release steam. Just then, the cockpit opens up and the pilot calls out to the girl.

“You’ve got quite the eyes. Hop on, if you like.”

The man says, extending his hand out to her. The girl is dumbfounded and asks who he is. He asks her what it matters and warns her that there’s another one of the bandolero out there. The girl notices another mobile suit streaking across the sky so she scrambles up the suit and into the cockpit with the strange man. He hoists her up into his lap telling her she’s a good girl.

The year is Universal Century 0169. The story unfolds on the 27th Banchi colony in Side 5 during the Warring States Period of Outer Space. The colony was dangerously on the verge of collapse. There was a giant gash in the side of the colony that was causing air to leak out into space; a product of the bandoleros infiltration into the colony. The decline in public order and longstanding scattering of mobile suits facilitated the rise of outlaws. Colonies did not have the strength to withstand the violence.

People are seen fleeing down the streets, grabbing what they could to escape the madness. As the young girl looks on from the cockpit, she begins to cry saying that her world is disappearing. The pilot asks her if she was born here but the girl says no, she moved here five years ago. But this colony, much like the one she was born on, was disappearing as well… together with her mom and dad. Here on this colony, she was finally able to make friends and stop having terrible nightmares, but it was all slipping away again right before her very eyes and she couldn’t do anything. Her inability to do anything bothers her immensely.

During her sob story, the man locates one of the other “idiots” that infiltrated the colony. He tells her to hold on that things are going to get bumpy and that he’s gonna smach the guy. He draws out a blade pistol and slashes the cockpit of the bandolero. As citizens flee beneath him, he tells the girl his name: Ash Gray. He asks what her is and she stammers out Leo Tail. Insert a joke about Leo the Lion here and you have him questioning her name. She isn’t pleased and asks him if it’s strange for a girl to be named Leo.

He continues to assail the mobile suit. The sleeve of his left arm pops up and turns into a spinning blade-like drill. He obliterates the enemy mobile suit with no problem. In the meantime, he starts helping some of the civilians who didn’t get away in time (like lifting a car off of one who got stuck). Meanwhile, his comrades pop up on the scene. Ash is surprised to see them and asks where they’re at. One of them chides him by calling him out for having ANOTHER girl in the mobile suit with him. They basically call him out as a pervert, saying that he’s just after her boobs. At this point he explodes on them and yells at them to only talk about work.

His teammates tell him that there’s a total of six mobile suits that infiltrated the colony. The bandolero belong to a group known as the “Black Fox”. Ash asks if the mobile suits with cat-like eyes and V-shaped heads are here to which his team says they are no longer in their possession. Since Ash took out three of the mobile suits, his two teammates took out one and the guards took out another, that only leaves one more. But, there’s more bad news. While repairs to the hole in the colony are being done, they’re not being done well enough. That and the head of the colony fled the scene earlier. Just as Ash thinks that things couldn’t get any worse, his team chimes in that there’s a new job. Perking up, Ash is stoked for it! Unfortunately he finds out that it’s to deal with the last remaining vandal who is standing in front of a school demanding ransom. Ash fights over what to do because no matter how small the job, he’ll take it on.

Standing outside the school is an RX-160 Byarlant. The pilot is demanding a ransom, no funny business and that because his unit is a legendary “Gundam”. Ash scopes out the scene from afar, his teammates chatting away that it’s a Gundam and that things are looking bad. Ash brushes it off by saying the guy is an idiot just because he got his hands on a huge mobile suit (and that Gundams aren’t that big of a deal anyways). He tells them to prioritze saving the citizens.

Here, Ash tells the “lion” to get off and hide somewhere. Leo thanks Ash for saving her and he just scoffs and says it was his job and that she has sharp eyes. Cue other jabbering about life or death situation, blah blah. He leaves Leo to fend for herself and confronts the Byarlant. The pilot says the brats are holed up in the gymnasium. He points out to Ash that he has a beam cannon and that he can turn him to cinder the minute he responds.

Ash calls him out and says there is no ransom money. The pilot is stunned. Ash tell him that there’s no one left and to look around that the colony is collapsing. After further calling him an idiot and what not, the pilot realizes who he is. He’s the bodyguard that protected 18 autonomous colonies of Side 5.

The two begin their standoff when all of a sudden Ash notices Leo crawling along behind some bushes. Leo is creeping along towards the gymnasium thinking to herself that she has to do something, she has to set the kids locked inside free. Ash is perplexed on what to do as the bandolero tells him to come at him. Just then, Leo makes her break towards the doors when the pilot of the Byarlant fires off his arm towards her. Ash makes a made dive towards her in his suit in an attempt to save her, but she gets pinned between the claws. Just as he goes to reach for her, the pilot jerks his arm back up into the air away from him. With his other arm he grabs onto Ash’s face and slams his mobile suit into the ground.

The Byarlant pilot starts taunting Ash by saying he should cut off her head. Just one little snip is all that it would take. As Ash is getting taunted, rage slowly builds up inside of him. He has a terrible flashback to the past of being dragged in front of a guillotine. With this rage exploding out of him, his mobile suit starts emitting a blinding light and the V-fin type antenna begins spinning around, blowing off the claw of the Byarlant.

Ash starts screaming at the pilot that he dares to cut off the head of someone in front of him and starts to counterattack. Leo regains consciousness and notices that Ash is enraged, yet also crying… or so the mobile suit appears to be…