Authors note: Hi, it's me. Now for those of you that haven't read one of my fics before, I will warn you now. 1) I love pestering people for opinions and how they want the story to go/end, so I will be asking for people to VOTE!!! 2) I am a big fan of 1+2, HOWEVER if people object to it, and I get enough votes in my reviews saying no 1+2 please, then I will not write it. 3) I love getting reviews, and put an authors note at the beginning of nearly every chapter. 4) Good luck reading this!
Disclaimers: If I get this out of the way now, no one can sue me heheheheh! (You won't get much anyway.) I do not own Gundam Wing or the song I will be using at the beginning of each chapter, if I infringe on any more copyrighted things, I do not own them either. The storyline however, is my own.
Just to explain the Greek terms.
Ares: God of war.
Hades: Lord of the underworld. (Where souls were said to go.)
Uranus: The magician god.
Apollo: Sun God.
Right, you can read now.
Everybody nice! Everybody nice!
Believe in the shining of tomorrow,
Everybody chance! Everybody chance!
Grab onto my hand and carry on…
The large airy room with white marble walls was packed from ceiling to floor with deities of all kinds, from the sun god Apollo to the lowly Hermes, messenger for them all. The birth of a child to the deities was so rare; it was always celebrated with much happiness. The birth of four boys, all born at the same time, well, the gods had thrown the biggest celebration in the history of the world.
There was no such thing as a christening; however, there
was the naming ceremony, done when the child was one. The small blond-haired
boy with blue eyes and rosy cheeks was the son of Apollo and his wife
Aphrodite. The second child had light brown hair that bordered on red, with
sparkling emerald orbs. He was the son Uranus and Hyppolita. The third child
was dark-haired with deep blue eyes; the child's parents were Ares and Emmanui,
and lastly the chestnut-haired violet-eyed little boy that belonged to Hades
and Persephone. Already the small child had a braid that snaked halfway down
its back.
Each child was given its name by the parents and each
time a round of applause broke spontaneously from the assembled gods and
goddesses. Child number one was named Quatre, meaning the re-born sun. The
second child was named Trowa, meaning un-broken spell, the third child was
named Heero, which means the undefeated. Then came the naming of the last
child. "And what do you name this child?" Asked Wufei, chief of the gods,
chosen because of his fairness and sense of justice. "We name him," Began
Hades, looking at his beautiful wife for reassurance, "We name him, Shinigami."
A collective gasp arose from the crowd; this time however there was no
applause, just a shocked silence.
"Are you sure about this?" Asked Wufei, "You have surely
heard the legend, do you wish to place a burden like that on the child?"
Hades looked up proudly from where he had been gazing at
his son, "My child is strong, unlike the weak one's over there." He sneered slightly,
lip curling in obvious contempt. "My son will be the god of death, not of the
underworld perhaps, like me, but death all the same."
"Are you calling my child weak?" Asked Apollo in anger,
it was a deadly violation of propriety to insult another god's child.
Hades looked at the angry God. "Your child is weaker than
mine, if you interpret it that way, then yes, I am." For a second time that day
a gasp rose up around the hall.
This was only the beginning, from then on, whenever one
of the parents saw the parent of one of the other children, they would insult
them, and make fun of them.
This went on for about six months until matters finally
came to a head when Ares staged a fake kidnapping of the other children,
meaning it as a joke, but provoking all the gods into full scale war. Every
Deity took sides and there was no rest neither night nor day until Wufei
intervened.
Instead of banishing the leading deities like everyone
expected him to, Wufei found a way to punish them even more than that. Ares, Uranus,
Hades and Apollo had their children taken from them and cast down onto the
earth. The children were doomed to be mortals, unless they managed to perform a
heroic deed that would prove they were capable of being a god once more…
Far down on earth, just after this event, four children
appeared, each in the care of someone, once they were there, it seemed it had
always been so…
Violet eyes flew open, searching the surrounding darkness frantically. Soft, panicked breathing issued in the otherwise silent room, as slender fingers groped for a tinderbox to light the candle with.
As the flame flickered into existence the boy known as Duo Maxwell heaved a trembling sigh of relief. It had been the dream again. Usually he led a happy life in the temple dedicated to the lord of the underworld, where (according to the high priest) he had been abandoned by his mother as a tiny child. However, once every so often he would have The Dream. It consisted of nothing more than blackness, and then a woman's voice, screaming in anguish, the terrible burden of something precious that had been lost laying heavy in her tones. And then…nothing.
For some reason, although this does not sound at all frightening, it scared him terribly. And it only ever occurred after he had had one of his "turns."
He could never remember what happened during them, and no one would tell him, but for at least two days afterwards, people would avoid him.
He had once overheard the High priest talking to one of the acolyte's; he had merely been walking past the open doorway when he heard his name mentioned, curious he had paused, listening intently. "The boy is a demon, he's not a human!" The acolyte had cried, sounding like he was trying to make the older man see sense. "He becomes completely in-human during his turns, it's like he's possessed! I bet his mother gave him away when he was born because she saw he was evil!"
The High priest had paused for a long time before saying. "You are in this temple to learn wisdom, here is your first piece. No person, no matter who, or what they are, is born evil, no one. Duo has been with us all his life, and the boy is safe from the outside world, he is protected. Now was there any other business you wanted to attend to?"
And Duo had stolen away on silent feet, grasping his symbol of serenity so hard, the sharp edges had pricked his fingers, allowing a single rivulet of red blood to run down one hand.
That had been then, this was now. Now, the same high priest was ruling the temple, but he was becoming old, and soon they would elect a new one. Then what? Would he be thrown out? What would happen?
He didn't know, but one thing was certain, he could earn his keep almost anywhere, so, if the worst came, he'd be able to survive.
Settling back down under the covers, Duo smiled sleepily to himself. It was nice knowing you were a survivor.
***********
Gasping for breath Heero Yuy backed up to the far wall, sweat running down his face and falling to the floor with a soft splash.
Across the room his opponent stood taunting him. "What's the matter Yuy lost your 'magic touch' already?" Zechs sneered, casually leaning on his training rapier.
Heero gritted his teeth and walked back to the centre of the room. Training in the palace to become a squire was hard, however, his life was made much harder with Zechs bothering him all the time.
The older squire tossed his long blond ponytail over one shoulder before facing Heero in the en garde position once more. "Ready to lose again Yuy?" He asked, sneering elegantly. "Hardly." Heero replied, lunging at him before attacking in the crescent moon drill, followed by the rising sun pattern. Zechs's eyes widened slightly and he had to work hard to fend Heero's sword point off.
But there was no stopping Heero when he became angry, you might as well have tried to stop a raging bull with an ant. That's how effective it would have been.
Heero's eyes watched constantly for an opening in Zechs's defence, he found one: Lunging forward his sword point flicked up and slid to a halt, barely gazing the base of Zechs's throat. Heero smiled grimly at the obviously enraged older boy. "I told you I wasn't prepared to lose Zechs."
Instead of acknowledging that Heero was the winner like he was meant to, Zechs gave a yell of frustration and drew a small dagger, plunging it between Heero's ribs into his chest.
Heero's eyes widened in something bordering on amazement as
he fell slowly to the floor. The last thought he remembered before darkness
engulfed him was, damn, I lost to Zechs, the training master's gonna kill me
for that one…
**********
"Duo?"
"What?" Duo looked up from the book he had been studying by the window, violet eyes questioning. The young acolyte who had been sent to fetch him shifted nervously under the steady un-wavering gaze. "The High Priest sent for you, it's another poor victim of the dark lord I'm afraid."
"Ah, I see." What the acolyte really meant, thought Duo, as he headed for the temple mortuary, was that Hades had claimed another soul, and he was the only one brave enough to prepare the corpse for the next life. They had had a hell of a job finding someone before he had volunteered.
As he entered the cool stone room with it's bare walls, he
saw the body lying on the stone block. Right, he thought, rolling up his
sleeves, let's see what this one's like, old man I'm betting. Oh well,
whatever it is, all bodies end up here eventually.
However, as he approached it, he found, much to his surprise, that it wasn't an old man, or even, a middle aged one, the boy couldn't have been older than him. Intrigued he moved closer. Yes, the boy was no older than him, with dark brown hair, cut rather short and sticking up all over the place. Eyes were closed, and the boy had full rose pink lips set in a rather discontented frown.
Feeling rather sorry for this youth, no older than he, and yet with no more life to enjoy, Duo reached out to cross his hands over his chest. However, when his fingers touched the other boy's wrist, there came a huge flash, Duo could have sworn he felt something being…sucked out of him, before a force picked him up and threw him ten feet away into the nearest wall.
"Uuuungh." He moaned, blinking as spots danced in front of his eyes.
*********
Heero opened his eyes to find himself not, as he had first supposed, in his room, but in a bare stone cubicle, grey walls surrounding each side with no windows. Sitting up he stretched slightly, wincing at the stiffness in his muscles.
A small noise attracted his attention to the opposite wall, where he found a boy about his own age blinking dazedly up at him. "Excuse me," Heero said politely, "But where am I? And if you've kidnapped me, there will be hell to pay."
The other boy kind of gazed at him for a minute before saying in an equally polite manner. "Excuse me, but you're meant to be dead, and I'm meant to be preparing you, so what are you doing alive?"
"Huh?" That's right! Zechs stabbed me, so…what am I doing alive again? Heero thought about this for a while, then decided to ask the boy, well, he was the only one who might hold the answer.
"How…how did I become living again then?"
"Well…see, I touched your wrist to put your hands in the correct position and…there was…" The violet-eyed boy wrinkled his nose a he struggled to describe it, "A…flash, then, when I opened my eyes, you were…moving."
Heero looked at the braided youth for a couple of seconds before saying, "You're not scared? You're not going to cry or faint or something?"
"NO!!" The boy looked shocked at this, "Boy's don't cry baka! And why would I faint, you're not scary!"
Heero grinned at the outright indignation in his eyes. Bet
Zechs would have.
"So, what's your name?"
"Duo, Duo Maxwell, what's yours?"
"Heero Yuy." Memory stirred in Heero's brain, "say, aren't you that boy everybody keeps talking about?"
Duo grinned, "That'd be me!"
"How you managed to start that…"
"Horse stampede." Duo chorused with Heero.
"And how you managed to insult the high priest of the temple."
"Yup."
"The one they call…" Heero trailed off, suddenly realising he had said too much.
"The Maxwell demon." Duo finished for him with a sigh, "Yeah that's me, the one and only."
"Sorry, if it's any consolation, you don't act like a demon, so your probably not one."
Duo grinned, perking up slightly, "Thanks…Heero wasn't it?"
"Yes."
The braided boy began to pace the length of the room; a worried frown creasing is forehead.
"What's the matter?"
"Well, how on earth am I going to explain to the high priest that you've come back to life?"
"Um…."
"Exactly. I'm already branded as something of a monster with supernatural powers, and as soon as the high priest is dead my time is up, the other acolytes will not let me stay, in fact they'll probably hire some mercenaries to kill me." Duo swallowed, "So you see, whatever happens, I have to come up with an explanation."
Heero thought for a while before saying, "What about saying there was never a body here? At least then somebody else will be blamed."
Duo thought about this, "Well…I don't like lying, but desperate times call for desperate measures right?"
"Yup."
Curiously the violet-eyed boy looked at Heero. "Why are you helping me anyway? I mean, you only just met me, and already you're the nicest person I've spoken to in a long time."
"Well…it's funny but…" Heero hesitated, feeling himself blush slightly, "I feel like I've met you before, like I should know you from somewhere…um…"
Duo nodded enthusiastically, "I feel the same, like we've met before, and, we know one another."
Suddenly a loud knock sounded on the outside of the ancient wooden door. "Duo Maxwell, open in the name of the chief acolyte."
Duo paled visibly, "that's Althalus, the highest acolyte, he has nearly as much power as the high priest, and he hates me."
"Why?"
"Just because I accidentally stuck some salt in his tea instead of sugar, and ran over his prize vegetable garden with a cart, it wasn't really intentional honest!"
"So in other words, we're in deep shit."
"Uh…yeah. Quick, lie down and pretend to be dead."
"Open up!" The hammering on the door had begun to grow louder now. Gulping Duo walked towards, and opened the door.
"H hello Althalus."
The pale-faced man with the balding head looked down his beaked nose at the young man standing in front of him. "Duo Maxwell, you are under arrest in the name of the new High Priest…me."
"WHAT!!! What happened to the other one?"
The sallow faced man rubbed his balding head with an index finger. "He died not an hour ago, naming me his successor with his last breath."
Even from where Heero was laying, pretending to be dead, he could hear the malicious glee in the older man's voice.
"So…what's going to happen to me now?" Asked Duo, a hint of fear creeping into his voice.
"You are under arrest for high treason of sorcery within our holy walls." If anything, the bald man sounded even happier…
To Be Continued…