Bonus Chapter for Cumulative Tips: Xia Ya's Resolve to Fight

Although reason repeatedly told Michel that his most important task now was to understand every detail of the current situation and plan ahead for the battle that might soon come, a powerful impulse rising within him urged him to ask a question—not as a traditional soldier, but as a person.

Even though he was aboard an Earth Alliance vessel, and Xia Ya was neither on his side nor had anything to do with him, that mysterious, unconventional man remained shrouded in an indescribable haze of doubt born from the countless paradoxes he brought with him.

Yet as a resident of PLANT and a ZAFT soldier, Michel felt an unrestrainable, almost groundless yet utterly real confusion welling up inside him.

Michel took a deep breath. Suddenly, he felt the urge to tear open those complicated doubts that had lingered in his heart since he first boarded this warship—doubts that had troubled him countless times, yet had been forcibly suppressed by military discipline.

Because Xia Ya, who clashed so profoundly with everything he knew—his origins, motives, principles of action, everything about him seemed veiled in mystery, yet was unfolding so vividly before his eyes.

For the first time, cracks had appeared in Michel's self-consistent system of beliefs, cracks that logic could not rationally mend.

His ever-vigilant, perceptive gaze drifted over Xia Ya's calm face, trying to decipher more clues hidden behind this unfamiliar youth.

But the more he tried to analyze him, the more confused he became.

This mysterious man, outside the formal chain of command yet possessing such cutting-edge combat power, who dared to disregard the Earth Alliance's higher-ups and act as he pleased—what truly drove him?

The urge to ask burrowed into Michel's thoughts like ants gnawing at bone, tangling itself around his heart.

Perhaps he merely wanted to satisfy