 In the 70th year of the Cosmic Era, mankind s reach for the stars has granted him great leaps and bounds into the unknown... and fatefully divided him into two camps. Those of humankind who have stayed on Earth and the Moon, those of the nations of the Earth Alliance, have grown jealous of their more ambitious space-faring companions. These explorers are known as the Coordinators, an elite group of humans who have had their genes altered to bring out superior performance. Living in specially designed space stations called PLANTs (Productive Location Ally on Nexus Technology), they have been free of the discrimination they faced on Earth at the hands of unmodified  Naturals.  For a while, both sides shared an uneasy peace. Then, on February 14th, CE 70, day of the Bloody Valentine tragedy, the bonds of humanity were shattered and the blood of the innocents spilt. Militant leaders of the Earth Alliance on this day used nuclear weapons upon an agricultural PLANT, and since that time, full-scale civil war has broken out. Forming a militia known as ZAFT (Zodiac Alliance of Freedom Treaty), the Coordinators have fought against the vastly numerically superior Earth Alliance forces. For 11 long months, war has raged, both on Earth and amongst the stars. Now, in the neutral space colony of Heliopolis, a young boy named Kiro Yamato watches the war news and thinks of his friend Athrun Zala, who he parted with some time ago and is now with the PLANTs. Little does he know that the peaceful colony is about to become a war zone as ZAFT comes searching for a secret Earth Alliance weapon, and the horrors of battle threaten to replace the old memories of friendship with new nightmares of Athrun... carrying a gun, and dressed as an enemy.