The Shooting Star She Saw
A gravity shift around the colony clusters is detected by an observation satellite, and lt. Zechs is sent to investigate. Five objects is on a re-entry course to earth, and Zechs intercepts one of them. At the same time, and in the same area, a commercial shuttle is heading for earth, carrying vice foreign minister Darlian, and his daughter Relena. The pilot of the unidentified object sees the shuttle and has decided to destroy it when he sees Zechs ship behind it. He changes his plans, and heads toward earth instead. Mr Dorolin, in the shuttle, comments that this must be Operation M.
As the object enters the atmospere, it sheds its protecting shields (which is in fact a shuttle), and reveals its true form - a new type of mobile suit, unknown to the Alliance databases and Lt. Zechs. Zechs decides to shoot it down without warning it first, but before he gets to do that, the pilot of the new mobile suit discovers that his shuttle is a freight carrier and attacks. A battle begins, and it ends with Zechs' mobile suit, and the new mobile suit that is now identified as a Gundam, plunge into the ocean in the J.A.P. area. The pilot of the Gundam is presumed dead.
After Mr. Dorolin and Relena returns to earth, Relena finds an unconscious and spacesuit clad boy on the beach outside the naval base where they landed. She runs off to call an ambulance, but before they arrive, the boy awakens. Unknown to her, it's the pilot of the Gundam. He tries to self destruct, but the mechanism appears to be faulty. Instead he knocks down the crew of the ambulace, and hijacks it to get away. Relena is left clueless on the beach and introduces herself to air.
Meanwhile elsewhere, Lt. Zechs explains to Treize Khushrenada, his superior, why exactly he lost three mobile suits in the battle. They decide that the mobile suit is a Gundam, built by the colonies, and that they should try and locate it before there are political complications. At a Federation meeting later on, Treize gets confronted with the loss of "precious resources". Treize thinks the Alliance is too inexperienced, only the OZ could deal with the situation properly.
At different places around the earth, other Gundams suddenly appear and attacks various Alliance resources, such as airports and supply bases. The four new Gundams are piloted by Duo Maxwell, Trowa Barton, Quatre Raberba Winner, and Chang Wufei. Lt. Zechs gets a report of the new attacks, and realises there must be five Gundams. He also realise how lucky they are - no one else who has met Gundam is still alive.
Relena returns to her school where she gets introduced to a new classmate - Heero Yuy, the Gundam pilot she met earlier. As she invites him to her birthday party, he tears up her invitation in front of her friends, and says he'll kill her.