The Zekes have won the coin toss and elected to receive.
— The Unconventional Tagline
It is several months into the One Year War, the cataclysmic conflict between the Earth Federation and Zeon that has left billions dead. On the fringes of the war, Zeon raiders in their fearsome mobile suits have occupied a border town in the Rio Grande Valley, including the farm of one Veronica Jackson.
This proves to be a bad idea.
A frantic tale of revenge and determination that scrambles from Texas farmlands to Earth orbit Mobile Suit Zaku
by Pineapple on Sufficient Velocity is a more-or-less canon compliant fanfiction of Mobile Suit Gundam. It is followed by the significantly less compliant Uprising and Axis Shock.
Tropes:
- All for Nothing: The crucial data in Veronica's stolen Zaku that she goes through a lot of trouble trying to get to the Federation becomes irrelevant when the war ends before she can deliver it.
- Arrested for Heroism: Discussed. Veronica and co. are forced to take on new identities due to the war's end making their hijacking of the Salisbury less justified in retrospect.
- Big Damn Heroes: When she is about to be crushed in the hand of a Rick Dom, Veronica is saved by [spoiler: none other than Amuro Ray himself.]
- Bittersweet Ending: Veronica's town is gone and she is severely injured trying to deliver data that becomes useless, but the war is over, she and Brooke have survived, and they are able to start a new life with the other pilots.
- Combat Pragmatist: Veronica demonstrates this when she turns her barnshed into an improvised six-ton bomb.
- Heel–Face Turn: Dominic deserted from the Zeon military because of the trope-naming Colony Drop
- You Can't Go Home Again: Not after the Zekes blew up a dam and flooded the whole town.
