by ChibiQuatre (1/2/01)
Yet another GW disclaimer: well, do you all REALLY want me to write a disclaimer?! We all know that I don't own GW (though God KNOWS I wish I did!). The GW boyz r'nt mine, never were, never will b. They are owned by their respective creators; Sunrise, There...happy!!! ((oh, and any trouble translating the japanese, I'll b happy to help!))
*A/N: no yaoi intended (yet), although you may take it as you will. Don't ask me how I know about the wines, I just...uh...I just do ^_^* yeah......oh, and don't quote me on Howard's background. I just made most of it up, well, only about his family and stuff. I really don't know much about him; if anyone knows anything, feel free! My e-mail inbox is waiting, teehee. And please PLEASE review! I'm getting discouraged ((don't know what the readers wat ::looks around anxiously::)) A discouraged ChibiQuatre has trouble writing these things, you know. So please, review! ^_^ Arigatou!!
* * *
Brandy. Vodka. Whiskey. So many choices to drink. Suddenly, my eyes settled on a green glass bottle, unopened in the corner of the refreshment table. On closer inspection, I discovered it to be Raspberry Champagne. There was no date on the label, so I could tell that the drink had been bottled from a mixture of various champagnes.
I had never before figured myself a man of champagne; the stuff was too bubbly. The taste was too clean for my taste buds. No, I always handled hard liquor much better, as if the after-dinner wines were too pure for my ways, too gentle.
I reached for the whiskey instead but was unable to even grab it, for someone had just locked onto my shoulder. "Howard!" a cheerful, slightly boyish voice screamed in my ear.
Although unnerving, the voice was not to be ignored. I turned around and could not help but smile as I was met by bright eyes and a cheeky grin. "Hey there, Duo," I paused to take off my sunglasses, as they had become restrictive duting the festivities, "How's it going?"
Duo winked, as I knew he would, and shook a finger in my face. "Ne, Howard! What do you think? We've won the war man!" With the proud statement, Duo, who hadn't consumed any alcohol as of yet, released my shoulder and wrapped me in a hug instead.
I laughed with him and said, "I knew we would." There was a lot of noise in the small room, the party had been going a little over an hour, but Duo heard me. "Congrats," I finished.
His only response was a smile and a peace sign before he swiftly turned on his heels and rejoined his friends, namely the boy named Heero, who seemed impartial to the celebration but graced the braided-boy with the smallest beginnings of a grin.
I stared in on the festivities, of which I was only a tiny part of, and sighed. Looking at this particular hour and minute, I was convinced that this was how life was to be from now on. My mind was involuntarily pulled into the dark recess that was the past...
* * *
Years ago, many decades before the Gundam pilots were born, I lived my life under the peaceful control of the United Earth Sphere Alliance. My grandmother was my only source of background, having lived longer than my parents, and she had a knack for telling stories about the "good 'ol days," as she would call them.
She and her parents, my great-grandparents, lived on the earth towards the end of the AD years and were around to witness the beginnings of the terrestrial wars that eventually spawned the Colonies and started the new dating system, the AC years.
Life as it was on earth, as I heard, was for the most part peaceful and uninhibited. It was a nice life; people had jobs, ran their own businesses even, and fueled the now democratic societies that each individual country had eventually voted and elected upon.
Wars, when they came, were moderately destructive and considerable ineffective. The world existed in a sort of equilibrium, where not one country gained more power than another, nor was the succession possible. When the attempt was made, the other countries allied to stop the menace from accomplishing anything.
Life was very good. But nothing good can last forever. And so, towards the beginning of my mother's married life, the world began to fall apart. Wars became more frequent and numerous; the battles were bloodier, ruthless in the killings. Many men and even some women disappeared from society's natural order to become a soldier in recruit for the bloody wars.
Around that time, a century after the colonies were made and settled into, a new organization was formed called the Organization of the Zodiac, or OZ. OZ toppled the Earth Sphere Alliance, which had fought for the unification of the Earth citizens and the people of the colonies. This new organization undermined the Alliance's noble intentions and replaced them with a corrupt need for power.
Strangely enough, Treize Khushrenada was elected a few decades after OZ fully settled itself in, with the false front of the elite aristocrats of the Alliance. About the same time Trieze came into the world, the dreamworld of OZ became a reality. Gone was the honorable government established by the old Alliance, replaced by power-hungry OZ and its sponsor, the Romefeller Foundation.
When the peaceminded Heero Yuy, the original Heero Yuy, was assassinated during one of his leadership conferences, all hell broke loose. The death of the colony leader disrupted the false, temporary peace that OZ managed to set up among all the citizens of the 'New' life and 'Old.'
At that time, I was engaged in the management of a garbage scrapyard. My salvage yard was located in the Mediterranean, and if not for my scrapyard, I would have never met Duo Maxwell.
Including repairing Gundam Wing and creating Tallgeese, I also worked on Gundam Deathscythe, a truly impressive peace of machinery. At first, Duo's bright personality shocked me; his Gundam of choice and his war slogan, "Anyone who sees me has got a date with his maker," totally contradicted his actions. He wore a priest's collar and a silver cross for Heaven's sake!
Contrarily, when I met Zechs Merquise, everything about him put me on awares. From his ever-present mask to his soldier's uniform, the "Lighting Baron" struck me as a man who had had too many hardships in his life to actually enjoy a hearty, civilian life. Even after the war was over, I had long ago bet myself that Zechs would likely be lost, with nothing left to fight for.
With that in common with both Zechs and Duo, they became two of the greatest friends, allies, that I could ever ask for. Although I had never directly fought in any war before, I was connected to the battlefield in the same way that the stars were connected to the universe. Civilians and soldiers alike shared a common link to the battlefield whether they wanted to or not; it was inevitable. The only difference between the two was that soldiers acted upon what the ordinary people said. Soldiers were the representatives of the citizends and a result of those citizens' beliefs.
In a way, I guess you could say that soldiers were also different because the 'cared' enough to sacrifice themselves in the battle. Every single soldier, ever last one, was admired for his or her bravery and honor, regardless of whether or not they survived the war. And while normal civilians could train for such duties and even be raised to the praised status, not all men 'cared' to fight. I should know: some of my friend, of who shame me now, refused fervently from being recruited. The hid like dogs with tails between their legs, knees trembling and teeth chattering all the while when the brave men fought and died for them. Cowards, the lot of them.
Well, I'm proud to say that I have good friends too. Ironically, the men I once knew in my youth are now dead, despite their attempts to stay alive. And it's funny that the young Gundam pilots, only five of them, have become the true heroes.
When I think back on it, I'm startled to find that the five boys have had more fight, more determination, more bravery than anyone else directly involved in the war. I do not include myself, although it certainly makes no difference had I been included.
I did nothing but provide temporary shelter in my Peacemillion battleship. The only other thing i did was refuel the Gundams and resupply mobile suits. Anything else, the ramming of Peacemillion into Zech's battleship Libra comes to mind, was the result of the brillian tactics for by the true heroes of the war: Heero Yuy, Pilot 01; Duo Maxwell, Pilot 02; Trowa Barton, Pilot 03; Quatre Raberba Winner, Pilot 04; and Chang Wufei, Pilot 05. And I'm not sure that the Gundams had anything to do with the victory of the war, first against Treize and more recently against Mariemaia Khushrenada, the former Alliance leader's daughter who added a twist of dramatic irony to the battlefield.
The five young Gundam pilots had enough strength to make believe that they had single-handedly won the war, fair and square.
* * *
I blinked and looked around the room. My eyes rested on the other side of the room, where five young es-pilots were gathered in a cluster, laughing respectively within their own little conversations.
Duo was trying unseccessfully to make Heero laugh. His efforts were successful when the stony boy checkled at Duo's comical 'trick,' if you will, of making Orange Brandy shoot out his nose and out the front of his clean, white dress shirt. That Duo...
Quatre and Trowa had paused their mini-dialogue to laugh at Duo's silliness. After each had had their share of poking fun at Duo, they turned back to each other. Quatre was having a much easier time of make his companion smile. Unrestricted by the Black Muscat they were both sipping, they let loose and chattered incesantly about everything, nothing, and all the good times to come.
Suddenly, I blinked. While Wufei was with the other ex-pilots--I could call them that now--he was nowhere in sight now.
A voice far to my right barely caught my attention. "Wufei, don't worry about a single thing! We'll have plenty for you to handly at Preventer headquarters."
I turned my head to see an annoyed Wufei answer: "Ms. Sally Po! I worry about nothing! I was merely inquiring on the sort of position I would be appointed."
"That's all?" Sally raised a questioning eyebrow, managing to further ruffle Wufei's proud feathers.
He nearly screamed. "Hai, onna! You women always read far too much in the simplest questions, I swear!" Sally looked on in mock indignance, saying only, "We do not!" in her defense.
Wufei eyed her, a small smile on his face as if he were enjoying the playful banter. "Yes, you do. And that's another thing, onna. Why is it that you must fight everything I say? Talking to you is like fighting a war, everytime. You always want the last word!"
Sally grinned, ralizing her opportunity. "And yet," she drawled the word and used the time to pour them both a glass of Chardonnay, "You still talk to me, even initiate a few conversations sometimes." Here she winked and put a hand on her waist. "Men. I can't understand them. Can you answer my question, Wufei?"
Wufei blinked, astonished, then glared at Sally, who looked smug. I smiled; either way Wufei could not answer her precisely aimed question nor could he grace her with silence. He'd lost; apparently, he knew it, for he downed has his drink quickly and stalked off. I had a sneaking suspicion that the bluch on his cheeks was not from the quick consumption of wine. Rather, it was from the leveling defeat that had left Sally, as Wufei complained earlier, with he last word once again.
As they walked away with a drink in their hands, I suddenly ralized taht another hour had almost passed and still I hadn't gotten myself a drink. How odd of me to forget the alcohol. I had gotten so caught up in the memories of all the winters of the past that I almost disappeared from the winter of present day, perhaps the most important winter I have ever lived through. Certainly nothing short of amazing.
My eyes travelled over my choices one more time before I did the opposite of what I was thinking; I reached for the green bottle of Champagne. Having no trouble with opening the cork, I was, however, stunned at the 'pop' generated by the small cork. Bubbled proceeded after the loud noise and splashed on the floor, fizzling at my feet.
I poured the golden drink into my glass, which I had had to exchange from a shot glass to an appropriate blown-stem glass. For a while, I stared that the glass in my hand, hardly moving for fear of disturbing and destroying the bubbles clinging to the sides of the glass and floating to the surface slowly, as was the fate of all carbonated beverages.
No big deal, I told myself, and took a tentative sip of the drink. The fizz startled me at first, but the champagne itself was pleasant, and the hind of raspberries was absolutely delightful when combined with the subtle alcohol.
Perfect. Who would want more than this? I was a hero, then and there, surrounded by loving friends and allies, and drinking to the winters of the past, present, and future.
~OWARI
E-mail ChibiQuatre @ pandahgirl@aol.com! Ja~