History FanFic / WingsToFly

** The standard rifle of a Super Leo, common to the colonial militias, cannot penetrate the armor of a Gundam. Their 203mm [[ShoulderCannon shoulder-mounted guns]] ''can'', as a Deathscythe Guilty discovers when a squadron of Super Leos blows its reactor and cockpit out its back. In small pieces.

* BadassNormal: The unnamed pilot last survivor of the Io Militia Taurus squadron. Sixteen suits go into Mars' atmosphere; thirteen of them die before they can even defend themselves. Two more are killed seconds after they're able to maneuver. The lone remaining pilot manages to stand off Noin and her wing, trading fire with them on nearly even terms. Even when two more of Noin's squadron joins the fight, they manage to survive and [[KnowWhenToFoldEm make a run for it]] after a pair of Outer Colonies Gundams join the fight.

* BeingEvilSucks: Zechs certainly seems to think so, but retroactively; he's trying to be good again. Mostly...

* {{Expy}}: [[MahouSensiNegima Chao Lingshen]] is a pilot in the Mars Colonial Militia.

* BayonetYa: The standard Preventer Taurus beam rifle includes a bayonet lug for one of the suit's beamsabers. It's treated as an emergency weapon, giving a pilot a chance to parry or counterattack while they draw their own beamsaber.

** Richard Dyer's Taurus is painted in a single-color flat grey, different from the standard Preventer grey; it's stated the paint is Alliance lunar camouflage, meaning that like Noin his suit counts as having a custom paint job because the entity it's ''standard'' to is defunct.

* ReallySeventeenYearsOld: Noin lied about her age to join up and has been on active-duty service since sometime in her early teens, which is why she's a squadron commander at twenty-two. She implies that this was actually very common to her generation and thinks it likely at least one other member of SMS 22 did it as well. Hilde Schebeiker also lied about her age to get her slot in the OZ Colonial Militia during the actual GundamWing series. Contrast this with Duo and Hilde: ''everyone knows'' they are actually seventeen in the story's present, but it's treated as a non-issue because both proved able to fly combat when they were fifteen.

** The wing pair dynamic is one of the central themes of the story, as a deliberate contrast to the solitary nature of combat for those who use Gundams: the two pilots of a wing pair depend on each other totally and form close bounds. A wing pair is responsible for each other in ways that allow a lesser-ranked wing to address a senior lead in ways that might otherwise be impertinent or even insubordinate from someone else.

* WingMan: Forsythe to Noin, performing the traditional duty of pouncing on anyone foolish enough to attack her lead. Among other things.

* BeingEvilSucks: Zechs certainly seems to think so, but retroactively.

** Richard Dyer's Taurus is painted in a single-color flat grey, different from the standard Preventer grey; it's implied the paint is Alliance lunar camouflage, meaning that like Noin his suit counts as having a custom paint job because the entity it's ''standard'' to is defunct.

** Dyer has shades of this towards Noin at first; OZ killed nearly his entire extended family during Operation Daybreak.

* RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething: Noin's father is the Duke of Aosta, and though he corrects someone for using the title as the family has not in about a hundred years, they point out that he still nominally retains his position as a Prince of the House of Savoy (the Italian royal family). Depending on possible siblings and succession laws, Noin may be the Duchess of Apulia or hold a lesser family title.

* HadToBeSharp: Any pilot who fought in the Eve Wars and survived is looked at differently by their peers.

* AGoodWayToDie: Dyer's mother, who died fighting off an Aries raid on her carrier group on day five of Operation Daybreak. When Noin points out the practice of wearing a gun in the cockpit wasn't lucky for her, Dyer responds that making ace inside five minutes and successfully saving the battlegroup isn't a failure, regardless of whether you live through it.

* BiTheWay: Forsythe, apparently, given the fact she's both hit on Noin and had fling with Dyer in the past.

* DueToTheDead: The squadron's "anthem" is a version of The Revel, usually (incorrectly) credited to Bartholomew Dowling.

** Noin's Taurus still wears the colors it had in Sanq Kingdom service, which manage to ''retroactively'' count as a flashy paint job.

* ArmorIsUseless: Averted from the original; an Aries 90mm chaingun can't penetrate most of the armor on a Preventer Taurus. At the same time played straighter than the original as well: certain parts of a Gundam can be penetrated with standard Preventer weapons, but they prefer to arm themselves with either highly focused lasers or heavy beam rifles that have better armor-piercing

* DueToTheDead: The squadron's "anthem" is a version of The Reveal, usually (incorrectly) credited to Bartholomew Dowling.

* ArmorIsUseless: Averted from the original; an Aries 90mm chaingun can't penetrate most of the armor on a Preventer Taurus. At the same time played straighter than the original as well: certain parts of a Gundam can be penetrated with standard Preventer weapons.
** Knowing that the opposition is composed of Gundams at one point, the Preventers switch out for weapons that can actually hurt most of them.

** My Missiles are Better.: The only scene involving missile use so far has had most of them evaded, or worse, jammed without much particular effort.

* AffectionateNickname: Noin is "Boss" to Duo and Hilde, and "Skipper" to her wing Forsythe and Richard Dyer. [[CultureClash She doesn't actually know what "Skipper" means the first time she hears it.]]