Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing.
Gundam Wing: The Little Princess
Chapter 1: The Little Princess
Relena Darlian walked slowly down the street, the sounds of the ocean calming his heart. Just to his right, water stretched as far as he could see, painted orange by the setting sun. But instead his attention was inward as he contemplated his recent trip into space. His father was an Ambassador between the Earth Sphere Alliance, the Organization who ran the planet whose name they borrowed, and the Space Colonies that surrounded and orbited the planet. Ambassador Darlian believed in allowing his only son to learn personally about the politics of the world and they weighed heavily on him constantly. Things weren't getting better, no matter how much negotiating went on. The Earth Sphere Alliance threatened and oppressed the Colonies, which weren't even armed. And in the Colonies people were starting to get anxious for freedom. There had even been mutterings of plans to break free from the Earth, violently.
Relena gave a sigh, turning to watch the ocean. His attention was once more brought away from the breath taking sight by something washed up on the beach. It was a bright yellow blot on the otherwise pristine beach and something about it just drew Relena to it. He stared for a moment through the fence separating him from the beach until it dawned on him what the object was.
"There's a person down there!" he exclaimed, rushing to the nearest entrance to the beach. As he ran he dialed for an ambulance, telling them where to meet him. Forcing open the gate he rushed down the stairs and onto the sand, the fine particles coating the bottom of the legs of his school uniform.
It was only as he reached the person that he realized just how small they were. They were laying, unmoving in a space suit and Relena feared that he had arrived too late. Kneeling down by the person he reached out and removed their helmet. He was surprised by what he saw underneath.
"He's just a boy!" he gasped.
Relena could hear a siren approaching and he hoped it arrived in time. He glanced over his shoulder, hoping to catch a glimpse, but his attention was once again drawn back to the boy, who groaned as they awoke. Relena stared right into his eyes as they opened, and were immediately filled with fear. The boy recoiled from Relena, bringing a hand in a futile gesture to block his face.
"Did you see?" he asked, his voice high with fear.
"Don't worry, help is on the way," soothed Relena. The ambulance siren got louder and he could seeing the flashing of its lights as it parked right by the entrance to the beach. Several EMTs jumped out and started to run hurriedly down the stairs.
Things took an unexpected turn as the boy suddenly flipped open a spot on his suit and pushed a big red button. Something clicked and ignited inside, causing a small explosion near his heart that did no damage to his or the suit. His eyes widened even larger and he hopped to his feet and rushed away from Relena. The Boy rushed up the stairs and fought his way quickly through the EMTs, kicking all four of them out of the way and onto the sandy beach below. Relena heard a scream as the driver of the ambulance was thrown out of the vehicle. The tires screeched as the ambulance shot away, taking the mysterious boy with it.
Relena just walked slowly up the stairs and stared after the retreating vehicle. He stuck out his hand, as if offering it to a girl to ask for a dance.
"My name is Relena Darlian, what's yours?"
The next day Relena sat in his usual seat in class, waiting for the lesson to start and wondering about the boy from the beach. All around him students were talking excitedly to each other. He heard something about a rumor about a transfer student but that wasn't an altogether uncommon rumor to hear. The instructor chose that moment to walk in, calling for silence.
"Before we start I have an announcement to make!" he yelled, the students throughout the hall quieting down. "We have a new student joining us today. Come and introduce yourself to the class."
The mutterings throughout the class started again as a girl with short, messy brown hair walked into the class, the standard puffy red school dress seeming much too large for her. She walked in calmly and coolly and turned to face her fellow students, an air of detachment about her.
"Hello, my name is Heero Yuy," introduced the girl curtly. She turned back to the instructor to find out where to sit, leaving the class mesmerized by her lack of any real introduction. Except for Relena, who was instead shocked for another reason.
"It's the boy from the beach," he muttered to himself, surprised. "He's a girl…"
It was later in the day at lunch that Relena finally went to confront the strange girl. He had distracted himself by passing out the invitations to his birthday ball, in priority order of those whose social status demanded they be attended to first. Having to deal with dancing around people's egos was a pain, but a necessary precaution for the higher social sphere of life. Finally Relena got to the person he really wanted to hand an invitation to, the mysterious Heero Yuy.
Other students watched in anticipation as he approached the mysterious transfer. Heero for her part just turned and stared at him with emotionless detachment, aware of his approach long before he reached her. Relena stopped in front of the girl and they just stared at each other for a moment. Then Relena put on his friendliest smile and held out his hand, an envelope held firmly in it.
"My birthday party is coming up and I would like to invite you to it," he said cheerfully.
Heero slowly took the envelope from him. The crowd of students around them started to clap at the display of friendship. Everyone was immediately silenced through as Heero deftly tore the letter in half, letting the pieces fall to the ground. Relena could only stare blankly in shock at the display.
"Why?" he asked, feeling tears start to fill his eyes. He had just wanted to befriend the girl, to find out more about her. Why was she so cold to him? Heero moved forward as if to walk past him. Instead of walking fully past though she reached over and wiped a tear from his eye, flicking it to the ground. As Relena started to feel hope again though, Heero leaned over and whispered in his ear.
"I'll kill you," she said calmly. Relena felt himself chilled at the ominous words as Heero just walked away, never staring back over her shoulder.
Author's Notes: I've been re-watching Gundam Wing and this was my little experiment to see what would happen if I gender-swapped my favorite pair(and pairing) of characters in the series. The answer I came to? Basically absolutely nothing. The female characters already look more masculine than the Gundam Pilots in general (except for Dorothy who's pretty feminine appearance wise). And creator comments have said that Heero was designed after a woman (Yuki Uchida), who looks basically exactly the same. Fun fact is that Relena is based off of the Actress Audrey Hepburn. The urge to just turn this into Yuri was almost too great.
Also as I see it being male or female wouldn't really affect their personalities. Heero's an emotionless (in theory) assassin who could be any gender, sexuality or of basically any appearance and it wouldn't matter to the character unless it got in the way of the mission. As a guy I just imagine Relena looking like when she has her Peacecraft Uniform on. And personality wise, her quest for peace in the world is unaffected by what her gender is.
I also imagine that female Heero is shorter than male Relena, with a higher pitched voice, which makes the final exchange kind of hilarious in my mind.
Also going to attempt to release a new chapter of this each week. See if I can keep up consistency. I claim free reign to change character's genders, or not, during the course of writing this. Feel free to try to guess in reviews on who will become what, even I might not know ahead of time. Characters will be kept as in-character as possible, except for Trieze because he's an inconsistent sociopath who drags down the characters of Wu-Fei, Lady Une, Zechs, and Noin. Seriously, re-watch the show, he has no consistency in what he says and yells at anyone who thinks they have an inkling of his ever shifting ideals. He's a bi-polar man-child who yells at Une consistently for doing wrong, doesn't matter whether it's threatening the colonies or trying to take them by peace or with mobile dolls. Then he claims she's his favorite even though it makes no sense with the amount of times she's disobeyed or failed him. So yeah, not a Trieze fan.