The Six Stars of Orion
By: Virginia
Rating: PG, for now
Summary: On a routine search, Duo and Wufei come across something that could change the lives of the five Gundam Pilots forever.
Warnings: Okay folks, mild violence, nothing much, yet. Most likely swearing. I mean, how can you have a story with Duo Maxwell and no swearing? Yaoi sometime in the near future, mild slashiness, I'm not sure how much there will be. Hinted 1x2 and 3x4. 5x? Also, another huge warning! This might turn out to be a sort of Mary Sue thing! Not too bad on the Mary Sue level though. I am going to do my best to give this character some depth! Ahem. That is all for now.
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters except for one. So let's take all of these Gundam Wing characters and safely say they do not belong to me. Leaving the one, that happens to be a character of my own creation! Woo hoo! So don't sue me, okay?
"I'm telling you, there's no one alive here, Maxwell!"
"Just do it, Wu-man, for me?" The man with long chestnut hair pulled back into a braid that fell past his waist spun around and walked away into the desolate city.
The man accompanying the braided one sighed, rolling his eyes and pulling out a small box.
"For someone who was Shinigami during the wars, you seem awful insistent on finding life to save now, Duo." The man muttered to himself in Chinese, as he flicked a switch on the box and started walking. This was absolutely ridiculous. Hundreds of searches had occurred in this particular city, and not once had anyone turned up any sign of human life.
Suddenly a beeping on the box brought the man to a halt. "No way," he whispered, "It couldn't be." Yet there it was, a strong steady beeping light on the small screen. It couldn't be Duo, because the braided baka was moving around, and he could see the other dot of light staying absolutely still.
"Maxwell. Maxwell!" The man called urgently into his head-com.
"What is it, Wufei?" the reply crackled through.
"There's something alive here."
"Human?"
"As far as I can tell. But we have to be careful, you know there are some species out there capable of imitating…"
"Yeah, I know, Wu-man, calm down. It probably is human. Maybe someone got lost and ended up here...well, we'd better check it out, what do you say?" He sounded impatient. Wufei shrugged, even though he knew Duo couldn't see it.
"Fine. Here are the coordinates of the spot the life source is coming from." He said, typing on the keypad attached to his arm. "Don't do anything until I get there."
"Righto, see you there, Wuffie!" Duo said brightly.
~*~*~*~
Wufei climbed through the rubble that had once been one of the greatest cities on the planet Earth. Goddamn wars.[1] He thought as he pulled himself carefully over what used to be a chain-linked fence. True, he himself had once been involved in a war, more so than he like to admit. The fact that he piloted one of the most feared Gundam suits in the universe…well, only feared by those without honor. He had worked with four other pilots tirelessly in an attempt to free Earth and her outer space colonies from the tyranny of the evil empire Oz, then against White Fang, then the Romefeller Empire.[2] Now, Nataku, his mobile suit, was gone, destroyed after the last and final tyrant emerged in the deceptive form of the child, Mariemaia.
And here he was, great hero of the Final Wars, climbing through debris looking for something that might not even be there, all for the sake of a company he didn't even know how he'd gotten involved with.
Wufei found himself walking across the sandy ground of what once was the Hudson River.[3] He remembered having read about the drying of the river during his studies on the L5 colony. It happened sometime during the Third World War, a nuclear war that devastated most of Earth and left the colonies worrying if their mother planet would eventually die and leave them stranded in space. Somehow, the river dried, probably when the ocean receded greatly.
Wufei followed the beeping looking at where he was going. Ahead, half-buried in the sand on its side was a symbol of what had been the world's strongest nation, its burnished green skin wearing away, and in some parts revealing the skeletal work beneath.
"What the…?" Wufei muttered as the beeping indicated the life form was somewhere near the buried statue. He spotted Duo heading towards him and waved him over, indicating to remain silent. He then pulled out his laser gun, and though he would have preferred using his cherished katana, he had learned it was usually safer to keep some things at a distance rather than fight them in close combat.
Wufei waited until Duo came up to him, thanking Buddha Duo had finally decided to remain silent. Together they walked forward, their handguns out, ready for trouble.
As they moved closer, they could pick out a small form huddled near the face of the statue. From this distance they could see it was human, and while they knew other species were capable of fooling biological readers, they weren't able to take on the form of a human being. However, both former pilots kept to their fighting instincts, not dropping their vigil for a single second. Soon, they were close enough to see it was indeed human, and a male, kneeling next to the statue, though they couldn't clearly see as the person's back was to them.
The human had its hand against the statue, stroking the copper metal gently. They heard the person muttering, and it had a deep voice, usually an indication that it was in fact a male. Suddenly, he stopped stroking the metal, and rested his forehead against it.
Wufei was unsure of what to do and just as he was going to step forward with Duo covering his back when man pulled his fist back and slammed it against the statue. He threw his head back and howled one word to the sky. Wufei glanced back at Duo, whose eyes were wide in surprise, neither comprehending what the man had said. He turned back to see the man staring at him.
He had a shock of red hair, somewhere between the shades of auburn and carrot and from here Wufei could see chocolate brown eyes, rimmed red from obvious crying narrowed suspiciously at he and Duo. For some reason, Wufei found himself lowering his gun and putting it away before raising his hands in a sign of peace. The man stood on shaky legs, backing away until he encountered the metal wall behind him.
As Wufei moved forward, he watched the man tense, the Flight or Fight instinct obviously kicking in. Wufei kept his hands raised in the peace offering, and tried speaking in a calm, low voice.
"We aren't here to hurt you. Please relax, we're friends."
The man didn't relax. In fact he grew tenser as Wufei drew near, and suddenly turned and fled.
"Stop him!" Wufei heard Duo cry, but he didn't move as the man sped away across the riverbed something whizzed by Wufei's ear and a second later the man collapsed to the ground. Wufei threw an irritated look over his shoulder at Duo, who simply shrugged, before moving over to the crumpled figure.
There was still a pulse beating in the man's vein, a good strong pulse that indicated immediately to Wufei that other than the wonderful headache he would have in the morning, the strange red-head was healthy in every sense of the word. Wufei picked up the rock that lay less than a foot away from the man and looked questioningly at Duo.
"Hey, I couldn't help it. He was about to get away, and we couldn't let that happen especially after having found him here. What would you rather I'd done, huh? Shoot him? I don't think so. Besides, I think the people back at the base will be curious about him. He's not wearing clothing I recognize, and he didn't seem to understand what you were saying to him. He's obviously not from around here, though he seems to have some kind of strange attachment to Lady Liberty there. You'd think he'd never seen her like that before. I mean, everyone knows what happened during WW3, even people out on L20, and they're somewhere near Pluto."
As Duo rambled on, Wufei sighed and dropped the rock, before turning again to the unconscious figure.
"HQ, this is Dragon and Shinigami reporting in. We need a med lift sent down to NYC sector 338. Yes, I'm sure. No, neither of us have need of it. We found someone here, and there's been an…accident. Right, thank you Po. Over and out." Wufei clicked off his headset and started slightly as the man moaned and rolled onto his back.
He spoke in a cracked voice asking a question and holding his head with two hands.
"Just relax. My friend here hit you with a rock, so the headache is normal." Wufei said, even though he didn't understand the question he'd been asked. The man groaned and cracked open his eyes looking up at Duo and Wufei. Duo was grinning sheepishly and gave a small wave. Wufei simply frowned at his partner and reached into one of the pockets in his khaki uniform, before pulling out a syringe filled with some clear liquid. The man's eyes opened wide and he scuffled backwards, saying something in almost a scream. Wufei arched an eyebrow at Duo who simply grinned and moved around so that he could hold the man where he was. The man struggled against Duo's grasp, who looked hard pressed, even for a Gundam Pilot, to hold him there. Wufei moved forward slowly, trying to indicate he wasn't going to hurt the redhead, who continued to fight.
"Calm down, there. This is just a sedative. Now, just give me your arm…" The man jerked it out of his grasp and flailed wildly about trying to avoid Wufei's hand holding the needle.
"Guess he's got a problem with needles." Duo offered cheerfully. Wufei rolled his eyes and continued to reach for the waving arms, his patience being tried.
"Kisama!" He finally exclaimed before going off on rant in Chinese about what a woman this man was being, not allowing one tiny needle near his arm.
To the surprise of both Gundam pilots, the man calmed and listened to Wufei. Taking advantage of his sudden stillness, Wufei grabbed his arm, found the vein, and plunged the needle in. The man gave a yell of pain before relaxing into Duo's grip.
As he once against became an unconscious bundle, Duo grinned at Wufei. "Well, Wu-man, whatever you said seemed to work." Wufei shrugged and stood back as the sound of sirens came towards them.
"We'll just hand this guy over and file our report." He said dispassionately, staring at the man's sleeping face.
[1] As much as it seemed that Wufei was a great pilot and all that, the theory is that he's really a pacifist at heart. He would be far more content studying than fighting, and only took on the mantle of Gundam Pilot when his wife, Meiran (or Nataku as she renamed herself) was killed while trying to protect L5. In taking on her mantle, he also took on her philosophies of war and all that. Having two life philosophies at once has gotta be rough, that's probably why Wufei was always such a wreck. Poor Wu-man.
[2] I am not sure if it was called the Romefeller Empire. I haven't finished the series yet, but I just had to write this. Gah!
[3] As I said before, I haven't seen the entire series, so I don't really know what happened to the Earth. Maybe there was a war? I honestly don't know, so I decided to create a reason for New York to be like this and the Hudson River dried up and the Statue of Liberty buried in sand. Kind of Planet of the Apes- esque, don't you think?
A/N: Okay, so this is the first GW fic I have ever written. It's just been an idea that's been bugging me, and I started typing, and realized it does indeed have great Mary Sue potential. Jaysus, I was trying to stay away from that. And I will continue to try, though it'll be quite difficult. Hope you've enjoyed, reviews are welcome, but not required. ^_~ Oh, and it goes without saying that flamers will be laughed at. Quite heartily.