White Devil Fleet

Chapter 3 - Universal Century No More

Royal Navy Mansion – Living Room Area

The Royal battleship and carrier were poised to give the Gundam pilot an extensive history lesson on the state of the world while the maid prepared some snacks for them. But before they began, Illustrious asked Curacoa to take out one of the albums on the bookshelf which contained pictures and illustrations so they could explain things with more clarity. Amuro noticed how the pictures' quality looked quite old, as if they were taken using old vintage photography as he read the title of the first page: "The First Invasion"

"When the Sirens appeared in the seas, they launched a massive attack across the world." Wales explained with a grim look. "As a result, over a billion lives were lost. We didn't know the exact numbers at the time, but it was estimated that more than half of the world's population had perished from the enemy's overwhelming assault."

Many pictures depicting the destruction of the cities caused by the Sirens' attack were scattered across the pages. Some of them even had the mangled bodies of the victims partially buried in ruins. Even worse, many of the bodies were missing limbs. Amuro was no stranger to collateral damage and civilian casualties in war, but seeing these pictures still gave the Gundam pilot a feeling of dread. It reminded him of the ruined city of New York during the One Year War. The slaughter of the Sirens' initial blitzkrieg rivaled the death toll reaped by Zeon prior to the stalemate.

However, he noticed something missing from these photos: where were the pictures of the Sirens?

"Miss Wales, how come there aren't any pictures of these Sirens you're talking about?" He pointed out.

The blonde woman gave him a deadpanned look. "Sir Ray, do you really think anyone would be brave enough to stand next to a fully armed alien that can kill you in seconds just for the sake of taking their photos?"

'Alien?! What is she talking about?' Amuro thought incredulously. 'And surely they could've just sent out drones or UAVs to take their pictures from a safe distance.'

Deciding to save the question for later, he flipped to another page. This one was titled: "The New Hope" with only two pictures: Two scientists carrying a metal container and the second one was a glowing cube-like object inside the container.

Curious, Amuro pointed at the cube. "What is this thing?"

Wales leaned forward a bit to look where he was pointing at. "That's a Wisdom Cube, Sir Ray. It's the key for humanity to fight back in this war against the Sirens."

"Wisdom Cube..." He looked at the picture again, wondering what made it so important. "What does it do?"

Both Prince of Wales and Illustrious smirked a bit before the latter answered him.

Illustrious giggled. "You will find the answer on the next page, Sir Ray."

Amuro raised an eyebrow as he flipped to the next page titled "Project KANSEN". The page had many pictures of women, young and mature standing alongside the sailors. However, what caught Amuro's attention were the strange contraptions -which looked like an exoskeleton with cannons and armor plates- attached to those women.

"Project KANSEN? What is it?" Amuro wondered aloud before he pointed at one of the pictures. "And who are those women with cannons on their backs? They look like some kind of combat gear."

A small smirk crept onto Wales' face as she answered him. "KANSEN was a research project which involved the use of Wisdom Cubes in the hope of creating weapons able to drive back the Sirens. It's short for Kinetics Artifactual Navy Self-regulative En-lore Node. And those women, Sir Ray, were the first generation KANSENs also known as shipgirls."