" Duo talked about his training like it had all been in a rush, crunched down in a peculiar sort of misery he had been surprised Odin wasn’t familiar with. Then again, Duo also hadn’t realized that Odin had spent more than twice the amount of time with J as Duo had with G; personally, he couldn’t decide if Duo or Quatre’s history was more impressive. Duo had dropped out of grade school a few months before Odin died and described a chaotic spiral of heists and piracy through two major quadrants for three years before stumbling across Professor G and a fledging frame for Deathscythe in February of 192. Quatre had been years ahead of where he and Duo were now for general bookwork in the summer of 193, but it didn’t change the fact that he met H less than two years before Operation Meteor launched, with competitive fencing as his only strenuous physical activity. Both had been forced to shore up completely new avenues of their education on a timeline he was coming to realize was absurdly unrealistic. As lacking as his father had been in many ways, teaching had never been one of them; and even then, he had spent more than six years under J." you know, i never actually thought much about this, but you are right, they really did do a lot within a very small timeframe. Odin's skill and genius-like abilities are more obvious but these two really aren't that far behind, wow.
I FORGOT ODIN DOESN'T KNOW LEIA IS STILL ALIVE AND WELL D: oh baby now i'm sad for her even though I know Leia is fine (and living with Odin's brother, lol, they really are all intertwined in a big ass net, aren't they?)
"a thing that happened now. It was fine. It was just a cerebral version of his new hard limit on the amount of cockpit time he could log without severely diminished returns and debilitating aftereffects. Frustrating, but now that he’d solidly proven those limits couldn’t be expanded… It was fine. " Odin darling, the more you have to say it's fine, the less fine it actually is.
Odin's convo with Irina is hilarious btw, Irina is like, trying to drop hints and they're all sailing so far above Odin's head XD
oh but I love love love how quickly Odin came up with a solution for Taylor's problem, and that his "zen garden at the center of the universe" (love that description btw) is of help for others and not just Cat (also really funny how he's the opposite of Jake, who has to let people know when he's around so the space-hearts can leave XD)
PORN EARRINGS LMAOOOO
“And if you want to pick out a bracelet or something, I don’t mind being an empathic battery.” Odin is the funniest guy in the universe, I swear XD... wait, no, Adam is the funniest one; Odin can be second.
"If people were important to him, it made sense that on some level, he was important to them too. " I feel like this is an absolutely huge step in Odin's self-care
"“I,” Taylor announced cheerfully, “Have made a friend for life.” Odin grinned. “Is that what happened?” “Absolutely,” Taylor insisted. “I’m buying you nice things so you can turn them into priceless artifacts and you don’t want payment, so you’ve been adopted instead.” " he just has so much family now, it makes my heart all soft and warm
"He had always known the arrangement with Marie wasn’t permanent, had never really sought to make it so, but… As much as she claimed him, Marie wasn’t really his. She was meant to outgrow their dynamic and move on; it was right. But it still hurt nearly as much as it made him happy to see her thrive anyway, and with Leia gone… " dumbass Odin, Marie *is* yours! Just because the shape of the relationship changes doesn't mean it stops! She's not going to move on! She's just busy!!! I want to shake him so badly lol
Odin's mind twisting itself into a pretzel trying to figure out Jack's angle and why he hasn't confronted him about the gundams yet, meanwhile Jack being like: "the past doesn't matter, I am just happy to be in my boy's life, I am not going to push him like I pushed Jake, I learned from my mistakes" it truly shows how much context matters and informs their respective decisions and points of view.
hmmm I don't have much to say about the Nick and Skye interlude except I think some kind of shit is going to go down in America and it's going to be fantastic from an entertainment perspective but horrifying from the perspective someone who is rooting him and the guys at Rubato.
Relena and the girls are cooking~~
" Which meant they were going to have to release something about just who Odin Lowe Senior had been. " oh... dear... that's going to be... yeah, that's going to be a doozy, i feel
"This, in turn, meant the brothers needed to have an actual conversation; one involving delicate matters on at least her and Jake’s end, but probably both. Which ideally meant they needed to have a handful of normal conversations first – that first phone interaction, as had been described to her, did not count. Frankly, getting the two bothers talking was a goal in and of itself that she was not above trying to recruit her future father-in-law for. She understood that she was going to need to steer clear of it in the early stages since she and Jake were in this odd limbo between being public and yet also not, but it had to break one way or another; the sooner the better. " i wonder if Odin's voice has changed enough in the intervening years that Relena couldn't recognize it even if she heard him through the phone? Though, his speech-patterns are rather distinctive too, so she might still recognize him... lol imagine if she had been in that first convo and immediately was like "Heero?" xD that would have gotten the cat out of the bag so fucking fast lmao
"Particularly if Stanton decided he was willing to publicly come back from the dead – they could swing the hero angle." Oh the irony! Though, come to think of it, Odin and Quatre being who they are might actually be good for the PR, funnily enough xD
"Also, he needed to finish befriending the person he was chatting through email with that they were all fairly sure was both Cat Wilson and Robby Stanton," i keep fucking cackling at all their identities and how they intercept at various points xD it's just really funny for some reason
oh, the stairs... yeah they're gonna have to make some renovations to make them handicap friendly, or at least friendlier.
you know what? i wish i had a butler do my shopping for me too : (
egg in a nest!!! i am having the cravings right now, so many cravings, i shall have to make one soon xD
aww man, Odin is trying his hardest to not make Jack worry but Jack worries because of course he does, that's his son :(
"He needed… really needed… to not lose it right now. Because as much as Junior seemed to find his occasional outburst of temper amusing, he got weird about overt concern. Which said all sorts of shit he needed to not think about too hard right now either, but all the same? " Jack has such stressful sons, he really does. Well, he lives in stressful times too, but the fact that his sons are *like that* really doesn't help matters at all.
Jake could've been Sakura??!!!! I am howling with laughter, that is the most cliche name ever XD he really dodged a bullet there
"Settled as he seemed to be, Junior felt like a flight risk in a way that Jake could never eclipse, and the kid obviously had some major hang-ups about family that, considering his easy relationship with Moira, he was starting to think might be directed toward men. " yikes, that's... yeah, Senior really fucked him up... and J, can't forget about J.
"Odin nodded seriously, leaning forward. “What, besides the ring, denotes a ‘proper’ proposal?” " HOLY SHIT HE'S GOING TO ASK HIS DAD TAT I'M SO PROUD OF HIM, YOU HAVE NO IDEA
Orbital Fucking Bombardment Hell yeah!
"Military use aside… it was likely the start of an entirely new branch of modern engineering. He could go in any number of original directions with it. But apparently his first thought was to catch live missiles, which struck her as a very Heero sort of solution. " lmao, yeah, that's very him xD
Quatre being equivalent to Zero System is... like, I knew that already, but having it spelled out like that just makes me go "woah, my baby is grown up" XD
WUFEI RETURNS!
what in the world are they working on? I am so damn curious, I feel like this is going to be big at some point in the future but I can't even begin to imagine what it is
"Am I supposed to see this much of myself in my apprentices? Wufei mused. The fact that it was as endearing as it was annoying made him appreciate Kailì more, even as the urge to strangle him rose. Not that that was new. Or unique to him – Kailì had married Xiu Juan. Given that woman’s disposition, he was fairly sure the man had to have survived more than one literal attempt in the last sixteen years." LOL just LOL
" At least, he supposed, that was coming to an end soon. Whether he was behind or not, he would find out then. " We are ALL going to find out soon, things are heading up to the climax and I am at the edge of my seat!!!!
Thanks again for the wonderful chapter, loved, loved, loved it!
*grins* I really loved Odin's internal moment of "I have such cool friends." Because that's absolutely what that was. The gundams pilots are all five very unique and talented, but... yeah. The circumstances they all come from vary pretty dramatically.
Odin's mental landscape is... mostly good, but still oh so troubled, seriously. He and Leia weren't especially close, exactly, but she established herself as a major anchor for him and... well, he feels the loss it it more and more. And it's not helping the abandonment issues that Jack has absolutely keyed into correctly. He's making progress on the self-care, as you noted, even as he's going backwards and sideways on trying to read the people around him? He... is still very new to the idea of any kind of permanence. Meanwhile, Jack is absolutely twisting himself into just as much of a pretzel trying to not push but also figure out wtf is up, because he has the simple "Dekim would have killed him, and he's not dead, so..." lynchpin blocking him from sorting it out. Which... he doesn't realize he has to point out. Yay misunderstandings! Super complicated net interweaving everyone indeed. There's a reason this story got the "identity porn" tag.
I really feel sorry for Irina. Any attempt at tact and trying to read her new boss before committing to an issue is just going straight over his head. She's getting a read on him that's fairly accurate through the rest of this, though?
Empaths just like Odin - that's... going to be a thing for the rest of his life. Both he and Jake are exceptionally loud empathically for reasons no one is sure of (possibly genetics, Quatre has implied that Jack is pretty loud too, but just... no real idea), but Odin is also extremely level-headed and CALM while being loud. These days, he's calm AND content/happy while being emotionally loud/deep. On the other end, though, Jake went and got happy after nearly two decades of severe depression and issues he was covering with a candy-coating of whatever he felt was socially appropriate, and I think it was the contrast there as much as the depth of his issues that upset empaths? So... they probably won't mind him so much now, and that trend will continue to get better? But uh.... as much as Jake is on something of an empath blacklist, Odin just got put on a whitelist. And, well... Odin just likes fixing/resolving things.
Odin's voice has NOT changed much, and I'm pretty sure Relena would recognize him by it immediately. Otherwise, well... at least their plans will all end up slotting nicely together? The public eventually learning that Rubato was co-founded by the guy who literally saved the world might not be their first idea, but it's definitely one that Quatre has bookmarked, shall we say, for the long-term plans.
Poor Jack. His sons are just.... a LOT. Lot of gain too, but... in some ways, I feel like Odin's lack of understanding of social graces is just as bad as Jake's sometimes aggressive mismanagement of them. Odin just... has so much mental SHIT left over from Senior and J. Jake's mental baggage was done far more delicately over time by a wider range of sources, but, like... he's also had more time to temper it, and a personality that leads to him leaning into the intricacies, where his brother just ignores the pain and rushes through it to an end goal. And while I think Jack is on the money about Junior directing the mistrust at older men specifically (though it didn't take him long to throw Leia under the same bus of 'everyone leaves' if we're being honest), I don't think Odin's realized that he's more open/receptive to women than he is men? Then again, the first female he spent more than five minutes with in his entire life was RELENA, and that... probably shouldn't count. Sally's not far off the mark with the whole "took turns stalking each other" stance.
Wufei is VERY MYSTERIOUS. Have fun with that.
Thank you so much for the comment! I've had an awful day, and you made it so much better!
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Aki_no_hikari on Chapter 1 Thu 25 Apr 2024 12:18AM UTC
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Niko_Nightwind on Chapter 1 Thu 25 Apr 2024 12:56AM UTC
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