the story then being about how the geopolitical climate shifts with the advent of the 13 Gundams and their chosen pilots, and why the Gundams came here
I like the idea of the 'mid-season upgrade' being the kid having to cobble together a working Gundam from the corpses of his gundam and whatever is on hand
My mind went to Gundam X where the protagonist is a scavenger with a Delete Army button but usually can't use it and that's what makes the story interesting
the masked man claims to be an empty vessel through which a perfect machine delivers untold destruction in the name of a design beyond comprehension, and has a fight to the death with a scrappy wasteland orphan in a Gundam he patched together from multiple wrecks
the Masked Man hollows himself out to be a puppet of the machines, Wasteland Orphan never exchanges a word with his Gundam but they form a real emotional connection based on vibes
major setpiece battle where a Gundam pilot goes insane and lashes out with full Gundam force, while in the middle of a civilian population center, and has to be stopped before he kills everyone in a 200km radius
The hero is trying to fight another gundam but it's in a cramped space, some kind of giant church, and he has to watch where he steps because there are dozens of worshipers on the ground and they are NOT leaving
2. The pilot is a kid who is scared to death but has to pilot because the cult told them to and the Gundam also told them to and they have no real power
since this is never gonna be a valor game or novel or anything what if I just turned it into a full collaborative OC world thing. Like we put our heads together and come up with 13 Gundam Pilots and the flow of the story so we can imagine the cool parts in our heads
first: in one of the more civilized areas with very little war, a single mother was raising her daughter the mother was never in a relationship, but she wanted a daughter, so clone then the mother died but the gundam can't tell the difference between them so now another child is in a cockpit
second: a technomilitary who is making a small army of clones they order the clone soldiers to go in, dive as deep as they can during a sortie, and the gundam consumes them and they're dead, but there's a million more of them. the actual goal here is that however unfathomably huge the gundam's intelligence is
so the goal is to sacrifice human after human after human to the dive until the gundam's intelligence has been subsumed by the gestalt Clone Human Consciousness.
she dove in and there was the gundam intelligence offering power but there was another intelligence saying "you aren't replacable, you are an individual" and she was booted out of the dive unharmed and is suddenly going "wait, am i a person"
while the gundam's intelligence is far less of a threat now the clone gestalt still also has all the individuals in it so it makes up for lacking the same deep dive ability with just an extreme adaptability. rather than one intelligence, it has a hundred previous clones in there who all learn from battles and like
gundam legion is feared as an invincible gundam because it did shit that should have killed its pilots instantly (it did kill them) and it can never be hit by the same maneuver or weapon twice
i think the current protag clone is trying to understand her own place as a Human, while also surrounded by dozens of other clones who are identical to her and she's trying to understand the concept of Individuality
gundam: /just out of nowhere commits a giant atrocity
irrelevent to them, maybebromance between Some Guy and a horrible space abomination that is slowly deciding it wants to be chillthe mother was never in a relationship, but she wanted a daughter, so clone
then the mother died but the gundam can't tell the difference between them so now another child is in a cockpit
they order the clone soldiers to go in, dive as deep as they can during a sortie, and the gundam consumes them and they're dead, but there's a million more of them.
the actual goal here is that however unfathomably huge the gundam's intelligence is
i feel like it has the most thematic relevance but i'm also not sure it's not, like. too wild?
because the clone gestalt in the gundam is now actively opposing killing more clones
the clone gestalt still also has all the individuals in it
so it makes up for lacking the same deep dive ability with just an extreme adaptability. rather than one intelligence, it has a hundred previous clones in there who all learn from battles and like