Birds of a Feather (fanfic)

Birds of a Feather, by Solid Shark, is a Gundam SEED fanfic that takes place in an Alternate Universe where there was a sixth Super Prototype under construction at Heliopolis, and where former ZAFT Ace Pilot and Strategist Kenneth "Falcon" DiFalco joins the Archangel's crew as part of a wider plan he's running... one that will end the stalemated war...

One of the recommended fanfics for tropers, and possibly one of the most popular Gundam SEED fanfics around, Birds of a Feather takes the existing SEED setup and looks at it in a different light, while suceeding in telling an entertaining story that rivals canon. The author has described it as Ace Combat meets SEED, with a dash of Metal Gear Solid and Honorverse levels of scheming.

Is followed by a sequel, Cry of the Falcon, an AU of Destiny, and a prequel, Soldier of ZAFT, covering Ken's ZAFT career before Birds of a Feather began.


 * Absurdly Sharp Blade: Crossing with Katanas Are Just Better, Kenneth DiFalco and the Gray Demons use blades forged from beam-deflecting armor - the same material as Astray Red Frame's Gerbera Straight katana.
 * Ace Pilot: Canon aces, OC aces (the Gray Demons), MSV aces... the author was clearly demonstrating his love of Ace Combat.
 * Animal Motifs: Several, most notably Ken's own alias. Not touched upon much, though fics inspired by it frequently take the motifs Up to Eleven.
 * Ascended Extra: A few, most notably Shiho Hahnenfuss. Outside of a couple of obscure manga appearances, she has two or three non-speaking background appearances in canon. Here she plays a sizable role, culminating in
 * Ascended Fanboy: In-universe example with Shinn in Cry of the Falcon; here he's an admirer of the Grimaldi Falcon, and when he finds out that he gets to fly with Ken in combat... he doesn't quite squee, but the hero worship is obvious.
 * The Atoner:  in Cry of the Falcon.
 * Back from the Dead: Also  Much to the displeasure of most of the world, including most allies of the man who gave the order.
 * Badass Crew: The Gray Demons are mentioned to have been this before most of them were killed at Endymion. The Le Creuset Team are also this, which is why Ken makes a point of recruiting them into True ZAFT. On the Earth Alliance side, we have the Frighteners, based off of the British SAS. All six members are Naturals who have trained their bodies to Rock Lee levels, giving them the ability to pilot mobile suits without the special OS.
 * Not quite. The Frighteners are an all-elite unit, but only their commander, Major -later Colonel- Karen Willet is actually able to use a Coordinator-type OS.
 * Badass Longcoat: Really applies to just about any ZAFT redcoat; more traditionally, Ken and Waltfeld both usually wear trench coats over their uniforms.
 * Badass Normal:.
 * Big Damn Heroes: When a battle goes badly awry for the Archangel's group late in the story,
 * Bigger Stick: Ken seeks for, and attains, the biggest stick in mecha technology...  The Earth Forces and ZAFT learn from his example in Cry of the Falcon, constantly attempting to one-up each other.
 * In Cry of the Falcon, ZAFT's latest toy is the TRVF-51 Fianna, a variable fighter. Section Nine goes for the TRVF-51A model with nuclear reactors, N-Jammer cancelers and VPS to have a bigger stick... and because the full-spec Fianna is more complex than the basic Fianna & thus has a longer assembly time, they can only deploy four units in the time it takes for ZAFT to deploy two squadrons.
 * Break the Haughty: Falcon begins the series in full confidence in himself and his abilities. Subsequent events do much to strip him of this, leaving Ken a wiser person at the end of BoaF. (Refer to What the Hell, Hero?, Omniscient Morality License and Nice Job Breaking It, Hero).
 * Chekhov's Boomerang:
 * The Chessmaster: Ken, fullstop. The man is always running one plan, and has at least two backups.
 * Doesn't quite qualify for Magnificent Bastard status, though, if only because when his plans do fall apart, so does he.
 * Cloning Blues:
 * The Cameo: Destiny's Heine Westenfluss appears in the final battle, playing a small but notable role,.
 * Cold Sniper: Saito fills this role in his appearances. Also,  when he's operating in that capacity.
 * Colonel Badass: Technically a Commander, but arguably Rau Le Creuset. In addition to his canon Magnificent Bastardry, during the Grand Finale
 * Common Knowledge: Thanks to the author naming the Neutron Stampede platform as the Marie Curie, almost everyone now believes that to be the name of the ship, despite being officially unnamed.
 * Creator Breakdown: The reason for the fic's massive Schedule Slip.
 * Curb Stomp Battle: In Cry of the Falcon, the  is assisted by a half-dozen Forbidden Vortexes. Their target is covered solely by , with a rusty   at the controls.
 * Custom Uniform: Instead of the white coat and uniform worn by ZAFT Commanders, Ken prefers to wear the red uniform and a Badass Longcoat. The Gray Demons have a subtler modification, using feathers on the collar of their uniforms & flightsuits.
 * Deadpan Snarker: Ken, as part of the Stoic persona that he uses at the beginning of the fic.
 * Death Seeker: Ken himself, for  Eventually,   is revealed to be one as well, during
 * Also
 * Defrosting Ice Queen: Ken spends the first half of the series addressed as DiFalco or Falcon; as he begins to lose his stoicism and form closer bonds with the people around him, they call him Ken.
 * The Determinator: Heavily discussed in-story; borderline Author Filibuster, since it's largely an expression of the author's then-opinion of Kira's canonical tactics--see Flanderization--but it's still in-character for the person usually saying it, seeing as it's Ken. This discussion culminates in
 * Does Not Like Guns: Ken, partly as a result of being nearly killed with one in a botched robbery before the series. Ironically,
 * The Dreaded: To some extent, several of the top aces of the old True ZAFT. An example on the Earth Alliance front appears to be Major Karen Willet, who shut up and cowed even trigger-happy Oscar Goldberg just by showing up and uttering a few harsh words.
 * Drives Like Crazy: Ken, as noted once in Birds of a Feather and then referenced again when his subordinates refuse to let him drive during the escape from
 * Easy Logistics: Subverted. Despite having their own warship construction facilities, True ZAFT still has to raid Earth Forces convoys to stay supplied.
 * Expanded Universe: A few authors have played with the Falconverse setting and certain elements have been canonized:
 * Cry Of the Falcon. Solid Shark's sequel to BoaF, covering the events of the Destiny period.
 * Soldier of ZAFT. A prequel to BoaF, intended to cover Ken's time in ZAFT, leading up to BoaF. It's on the back burner while CotF is being worked on, but the author intends to complete it.
 * Rebellion, by Ominae. Set in the interquel period between SEED and Destiny (Or rather, Birds of a Feather and Cry of the Falcon), detailing a rebellion within the Equatorial Union against the EA leadership. Canonized in broad strokes.
 * That story is only slightly connected to the Falconverse as far as its own continuity is concerned. The only Falconverse element to appear is Ken's sister Sophia. In the Falconverse, Rebellion is -with broad strokes- canon, but within Rebellion the Falconverse isn't quite that connected although it is.
 * Beware The Left Eye, by Wild Goose. A pair of sidestories focused on CotF side character Saito, with shoutouts to Full Metal Jacket and Ghost in the Shell. Considered fully-compliant with Falconverse canon.
 * March to the Future, an AU Time Travel fic by Wild Goose, featuring characters from Beware The Left Eye as Shell Shocked Veterans thrown back to the start of BoaF by a freak accident, and trying to survive the past while trying to keep the plot from running off the rails.
 * Owaru Day by Day by Ominae. It's a fic based on Richard Yamato Chung, Kira's Japanese-Chinese-Filipino cousin after he was recruited by Ken in Section 9. He gets more action for a while than in some of the chapters in BOAF, leading some of the S9 officers after Orban special forces launch the initial attack on S9 headquarters. Even the infiltration stage of the commandos is based on the End of Evangelion when JSSDF commandos launch a raid on NERV headquarters. The author admits that he got carried away with the character crossovers.
 * Expy: Ken's Mid-Season Upgrade, the Preybird, is an expy of the Gundam X.
 * In Cry of the Falcon, the Earth Alliance's Project Zeta brings forth the Zeta, Nova and Sigma - expies of the Zeta, GP02, and F91.
 * Also in the same fic, Earth Forces pilots Allen C. Hamilton and Luc Bernadotte
 * In the same fic, ZAFT drops the DOM and goes instead for the TRVF-51 Fianna, which is the SV-51 of Macross Zero.
 * Ken himself is also a partial expy of the Honorverse's Victor Cachat, whose signature traits ended up defining the final version of Ken (who went through several incarnations in the planning stages of the fic, and was not originally envisioned as military at all).
 * In Cry of the Falcon, Jonas Pike and Oscar Goldberg's interactions are evocative of longsuffering Krindi Fain and aiming-impaired Erkum Pol from the Prince Roger series. (Though Goldberg's a lot more eloquent than Erkum ever was.)
 * Eyepatch of Power: Ken. In Beware the Left Eye and March to the Future, Saito.
 * False-Flag Operation:  attempts to assassinate Siegel & Lacus Clyne using Section Nine weapons in Cry of the Falcon. They fail.
 * Fix Fic: Cry of the Falcon appears to be giving Destiny this treatment.
 * Word of God states the intent is to salvage the potential the author saw in the Destiny plotline, believing there was still something worthwhile about the premise -- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot.
 * Flanderization: Of Kira's so-called Thou Shalt Not Kill policy. It was only long after completing Birds of a Feather that the author realized he'd misinterpreted Kira's preference for disabling attacks for an unwillingness to kill, when in fact Kira does not hesitate to do so even after acquiring the Freedom, when the need arises.
 * Game-Breaking Injury:
 * Gorn: The  is considerably bloodier than anything else in the Falconverse, and frequently touches on this trope.
 * General Failure: Several, for the Earth Forces, in Cry of the Falcon. They tend to be removed from service after their incompetence becomes obvious.
 * Zig-zagged with Admiral Chernock: he led the 4th Fleet in the attempt to blockade the PLANTs, was scapegoated for the subsequent defeat and spent Birds of a Feather on a beach in Mexico. He's rehabilitated and returned to active duty in Cry of the Falcon.
 * Gratuitous German: The inscriptions on the Gray Demons' swords are all in German, albeit probably with atrocious grammar, being the product of online translator programs. (The author originally wanted Elvish, but was unable to find translations for many of the required words.)
 * Gray and Gray Morality: While the author considers ZAFT to hold the moral high ground, the Earth Alliance and ZAFT are portrayed as having both dedicated soldiers fighting for their country and Complete Monsters. By the endgame, both sides have abandoned all claim to the moral high ground.
 * As an example,  have no problems with assassinating a former head of state and his daughter, but draw the line at killing children, even if it risks blowing their False-Flag Operation.
 * Half the Man He Used To Be:  Also,
 * Heel Face Turn: In Cry of the Falcon,
 * Heroic BSOD:.
 * Heroic Sacrifice:
 * He's Back:, in the aforementioned Curb Stomp Battle.
 * He's Just Hiding:
 * I Call It Vera: The swords wielded by the Gray Demons and veterans thereof.
 * I Have No Son:
 * Also
 * Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Oscar Goldberg, the pilot given the machine with a nuclear bazooka because he couldn't hit the Moon if he was standing on it with anything smaller.
 * Implausible Fencing Powers: Just about anyone with a sword in this 'verse, but most notably Ken himself. Attempts are made to justify his deflecting bullets in-story--at the least, his sword would survive, due to being made of a material usually used for mobile suit weapons--but the author fully acknowledges it's mostly Rule of Cool.
 * Laser Guided Tykebomb: Victor Tempest aka Huckebein the Raven, is brought back to life for the express purpose of killing Ken.
 * Marth Debuted in Smash Bros: Some reviewers thought that Sigma's Variable Speed Beam Rifles were inspired by VARIS ammunition from Code Geass, not realising that the F91 made its debut in 1993.
 * The Mentor: Ken to Kira, before the latter begins to surpass the former and their opinions on tactics diverge significantly.
 * Mentor Occupational Hazard:
 * The Mole: Section Nine has one, leaking very important information to the Earth Forces. We just don't know who it is yet.
 * My Country, Right or Wrong: A major theme of the Falconverse as a whole. Of the major characters who aren't Complete Monsters, many struggle with the implications of remaining loyal to nations whose actions become increasingly extreme. Some decide all they can do is fight as honorably as they can themselves, while others abandon their previous allegiances entirely. A handful in between decide loyalty to the military is not the same as loyalty to the nation said military protects, and take the view that they can best protect the nation by breaking with the military. Such a viewpoint is, in fact, what kicks off the entire story.
 * My Greatest Failure: In the backstory, Ken was in a position to  This, of course, led directly to the next candidate for his greatest failure, in which his efforts to prevent a repeat of the situation ended with him
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: When you get right down to it, almost every single problem  has was his own fault.   And, as if that weren't enough,   Oops.
 * No Sense of Direction: Having been born in space, with little time spent on Earth, Ken is almost incapable of navigating on planet in daylight without computer assistance. This
 * Not Quite Dead:
 * Nuclear Weapons Taboo: Averted.
 * Nuke'Em: A favored tactic of the Earth Alliance. It gets progressively less effective as the storyline progresses, however, and  It does eventually get his successor   after a particularly spectacular failure.
 * Omniscient Morality License: Ken displays this at times, mostly due to his towering confidence in his own intelligence and ability. It typically does not go well, having cost him a career, almost a planet, and nearly his own life several times over.
 * Paper-Thin Disguise:.
 * Poor Communication Kills:
 * Also occurs just after Operation Spit Break, when
 * Pride: Along with Revenge, this particular character flaw is responsible for most of the big problems of the story.
 * Ramming Always Works: Twice. First,  More prominently,
 * Red Baron: Ken is known as the Butcher Bird to the Earth Forces. More commonly, though, he's known as the Grimaldi Falcon, after the battlefield where he first became widely known.
 * In Cry of the Falcon, apart from being hailed as ZAFT's Broken Blade, the Earth Forces proclaim Ken to be the Demon Lord.
 * The author considers the section of the story wherein Ken is first dubbed "Broken Blade" to be something of an Old Shame; he was reading The Lord of the Rings at the time, and allowed it to influence his writing to a degree he now wishes it hadn't.
 * Retcon: No, . Why do you ask?
 * A retcon that caused the author to nearly tear his hair out several times, and finally resulted in him having a character with the requisite knowledge state outright that  A reviewer of some note promptly assumed the author was, rather than attempting to put an end to controversy, trying to be sneaky.
 * To be fair, there's a certain degree of Incest Subtext in early interactions between Kira and Cagalli in canon, before the Squick Tease revalation that they were related. One wonders if this influenced the writers of Kamen Rider Den-O and Kamen Rider Double, both which featured significant Ship Tease that turned into Squick Tease at the reveal of blood relationships. Though there are some who don't care the characters are related...
 * The Revolution Will Not Be Villified: Essentially the entire point of Ken DiFalco's existence. This is the defining aspect of his character, and keeping the Revolution like this causes his desertion and everything that follows from it.
 * The Rival: Victor Tempest in the first story, Neo Roanoke, and Karen Willet in the second.
 * Royals Who Actually Do Something: Rather than the brief, fairly unimportant piloting opportunity she gets in canon, here Cagalli enters the fight as early as the Desert arc, acting as Ken's gunner during the battles against the Waltfeld team. Moreover, she gets her own mobile suit much earlier, acquiring the Strike Rouge in time for the Earth Alliance attack on Orb.
 * Rule of Funny: The riotous, eye-damaging combination of colors chosen by Oscar Goldberg for his Nova, inspired by an AC design from Armored Core that the author once came across.
 * Running Gag: Any time Ken enters combat outside of his mobile suit, he will get shot. Also, in Cry of the Falcon, he never gets to use his new rifle very long; it's always destroyed almost as soon as the battle begins.
 * Another example crosses with Black Comedy: the Earth Alliance's Fourth Fleet has been destroyed twice while attempting to carry out nuclear attacks on the PLANTs, and the Atlantic Federation's Fourth Fleet was the one humiliated in the Blockade, as shown in Soldier of ZAFT.
 * Ken has a tendency toward long-winded speeches. This is not a gag by itself, but rather the frequent lampshading by other characters and his own obliviousness any time someone points it out.
 * Schedule Slip: Once updated frequently, as of this edit over two years have passed since a chapter was published. Word of God is that a Creator Breakdown is responsible, and that updates are fully intended to resume once the author's situation stabilizes.
 * Shadow Archetype: Neo Roanoke's GAT-X505 Nightwing is a dark copy of Ken Di Falco's ZGMF-X 00 A Preybird, and Karen Willet's GAT-X510 Reaver is a copy of Kira Yamato's ZGMF-X 10 A Freedom.
 * Ship Tease: Early in Birds of a Feather, between  and  . The former, being largely oblivious doesn't even notice until it's pointed out later. Ironically, the latter gets caught up in an assassination attempt on someone else in the sequel due to having come back to Orb for the former's wedding to
 * Shoot the Hostage:
 * Shout-Out: Many to the Ace Combat series:
 * The Gray Demons are inspired by the Demons of Razgriz, from Ace Combat 5.
 * The prototype for the Eternal is named Arkbird.
 * Victor Tempest's alias, "Huckebein the Raven", shared by Wolfgang Buchner/Peter Beagle, the Old Master of Ace Combat 5.
 * Actually somewhat accidental; the author originally intended to call him Huckebein the Vulture, but forgot when actually writing the character's introduction.
 * In Cry of the Falcon, Ken's first callsign? Moebius One. Later, he's tagged by Hamilton as the Demon Lord. Both were considered the best pilots of their respective Ace Combat games (04 & Zero).
 * When Halberton and Ken meet prior to the Orbit Battle, they remind each other that  "There is only one rule in war: Survive." This was Ace Combat Zero's tagline.
 * In Cry of the Falcon, one of Ken's former ZAFT teammates begins her story by saying "It was a cold and snowy day."
 * Ken frequently refers to the PLANTs as "The Homeland" and to "The Revolution", ideals close to the heart of one Victor Cachat.
 * "The Homeland" is actually used in canon several times, particularly early in the series.
 * Ken destroys GENESIS by flying inside the satellite and blasting it with Preybird's antimattor cannon, an homage to the penultimate stages of various Ace Combat games.
 * Section Nine's primary small arms supplier is Seburo.
 * Ken's repeated statement that surprise is achieved by the commander's misinterpretation of data could well be considered Honor Harrington's catchphrase.
 * Construction of an enormous sandwich as a light snack; a shoutout to a similar scene in Miss Midshipwoman Harrington, Honor's Lower Deck Episode in the Changer of Worlds anthology.
 * The "Falcon's Lessons of War" frequently quoted in Birds of a Feather were inspired by remarks made by Kevin Usher in the Honor Harrington short story From the Highlands, and many of the lessons themselves are shoutouts to various other sources.
 * The  emblem is a direct reference to Final Fantasy VIII.
 * The name of Ken's sword,, is another reference to the above RPG.
 * The Shiva Option is a nod to the third of the Starfire books.
 * The nickname and eventual ship name Asmodeus, in addition to the obvious demonic reference, is specifically a Shout-Out to a perhaps obscure fantasy novel called Ariel, which is where the author originally came across the name.
 * Cry of the Falcon reveals Ken's personal swordsmanship style to be of the Ganryu School.
 * The
 * Nick "Red Lightning" Drallig of Soldier of ZAFT is a dual Shout-Out to Crim the Red Lightning of .hack//Sign and Jedi Master Cin Drallig.
 * The Frighteners are named after a group in Armored Core 2.
 * The commanding officer of the   is named Jason Chance, though he doesn't share his namesake's treacherous nature.
 * Several Earth Alliance flag officers in Cry of the Falcon are named after extras in the Starfire and Empire From the Ashes books, and Wing Commander games.
 * Spanner in the Works: Ken recognises the Archangel crew's potential to be this and works to add them to the plan, as well as recruiting them. True ZAFT and Shiva Option Three are intended to be this to the Earth Forces and mainline ZAFT.
 * Shrouded in Myth: Ken's master Sasaki Kojirou, who uses an obvious pseudonym and appears to be more than meets the eye. His only explanation: "I wasn't always a ronin."
 * Super Prototype: Subverted.
 * Suspiciously Specific Denial: In early chapters, Ken's adoptive sister Sophia, an Earth Forces officer, repeatedly stresses that she has no space combat experience..
 * Kind of Hilarious in Hindsight; the author didn't come up with that particular twist until the chapter in which it was revealed. A case of Throw It In that meshed well with established information.
 * Taking You with Me:
 * Technician Versus Performer: Discussed in-story. Being an Ultimate Coordinator, Kira (Performer) edges out Ken (Technician) in terms of natural ability and raw talent; in terms of training, tactics and experience, the advantage goes to Ken.
 * Theme Naming: Almost anything to do with the Gray Demons will have a name either avian or demonic in origin.
 * There Are No Therapists: Most of them seem to be on the battlefield; unfortunately, several of them are people who really need therapy themselves. The lack thereof is one of the triggering factors for the entire plot.
 * There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Ken's tactical philosophy throughout most of the story. Subsequent events show why taking it to the extreme was a Bad Idea.
 * The Verse: As noted under Expanded Universe, Birds of a Feather has spawned its own series of spin-offs, with several authors playing around with some elements of the Falconverse. To date, however, the only canonical stories are the original, Soldier of ZAFT, Cry of the Falcon, side-story Beware the Left Eye, and a yet-to-be-titled sequel to CotF. March to the Future is set within the canonical universe, but is not itself canonical for obvious reasons.
 * Warrior Poet: Ken, sometimes to extremes; possibly Justified by the Heroic BSOD he spends most of the first story recovering from. By the time the reader meets Ken, he's not entirely sane, making his forays into philosophy more understandable. Also, they sometimes serve a point, as he's additionally a...
 * Warrior Therapist: Several characters, including Ken himself. Sometimes backfires, though; in Cry of the Falcon, he's successfully taken Shinn under his wing--so far, at least--but in Birds of a Feather, the results of espousing a philosophy very different from the person he's talking to are shown
 * The War Sequence: The  in Cry of the Falcon. Probably the most violent event in the series thus far, standing out in a 'verse usually focused on the relatively bloodless combat of Humongous Mecha battles.
 * What Could Have Been: In the earliest concepts of the story, Ken was an Atlantic Federation citizen living on Heliopolis as a hacker, whose only connection to the conflict at large was his Earth Forces engineer sister
 * In the first draft of the actual published chapters, Cagalli accompanied Ken to the hangar containing his first Gundam, and boarded the Archangel at Heliopolis; this was scrapped when the author couldn't think of what to do from there.
 * What the Hell, Hero?: Kira calls out Ken on attacking lightly defended Earth Forces supply convoys; Ken's justification is that the convoys are soft targets carrying supplies they need, and that they can't afford to leave witnesses. Kira disagrees.
 * This and other events lead to a massive What the Hell, Hero? during
 * A milder event occurs in Cry of the Falcon.
 * Word of God: Occasionally invoked for clarification of plot points. Most notably with the aforementioned Retcon,
 * Xanatos Speed Chess: Ken spends the entire fic doing this.
 * X Meets Y: Ace Combat meets Gundam SEED.
 * You Have Failed Me...: As something of a nod to the character's canonical... lack of total competence -at least compared to his predecessor from SEED- this happens to  after a particularly spectacular debacle that not only fails to achieve its objective, but actually results in   Cue summary execution.
 * And the Fandom Rejoiced, both out an in-universe: Djibril's replacement is a more pragmatic villain who understands her strengths and weaknesses, and gains the respect and willing cooperation of her military forces.
 * You Have Failed Me...: As something of a nod to the character's canonical... lack of total competence -at least compared to his predecessor from SEED- this happens to  after a particularly spectacular debacle that not only fails to achieve its objective, but actually results in   Cue summary execution.
 * And the Fandom Rejoiced, both out an in-universe: Djibril's replacement is a more pragmatic villain who understands her strengths and weaknesses, and gains the respect and willing cooperation of her military forces.