Relena's Hero

Part 2: Amiable in the Air

By Nanaki

January, After Colony 197

Heero pulled his jacket a bit tighter around him as he looked out the window. Apparently, no one in Los Angeles believed in heaters, even though it was pretty cold. January, in the early morning, on the beach. Oh, there was no need for heaters in here! The soldier part of his brain seemed to be telling him to forget about it, and focus on more important things. 'Screw you, Soldier Heero!' Heero thought, narrowing his eyes at his reflection in the window. 'I'm not a soldier any more, and I want a God damn heater!' It really was remarkable, all factors considered. Yuy International Airport occupied a 15 square mile area right on the beach. It never got much above 70 degrees right on the shoreline, even in summer. Heero guessed it was about fifty out there right now. Finally, light from the rising sun began to break through the fog outside, and sunlight streamed in the window. Heero stopped shivering, and put his hands in his pockets.

"Attention all passengers traveling to France!" The airport loudspeaker buzzed. "All flights to France this morning have been cancelled. Apparently, a car full of drunken Germans made their way to Paris last night, and ended up accidentaly conquering all of France. The German prime minister has apologized profusely, and promises the occupation of France will be over by this afternoon. Any of you who have relatives in the French police need not worry. Amazingly, the French actually managed to surrender BEFORE the Germans arrived in the country. They've set a new world record." Heero resisted the urge to laugh out loud. Yes, the French would DEFINITELY benefit from universal disarmament.

Heero smelled the aroma of coffee from the nearest airport restaurant, and suddenly wished he'd had more than a donut for breakfast. He glanced at his watch: 7:15. The plane would probably start boarding pretty soon. Where was Relena? Looking back and forth, he finally got up from his seat by the gate, and headed over to the snack bar. Heero ordered coffee, scrambled eggs, and bacon, and paid with his "universal" credit card. It was "universal" in that anyone in the universe who tried to track him down and get him to pay the charges would be disappointed. He sat down at a table next to the main walkway, where anyone could see him, and quickly assembled some toast, eggs, and bacon into a sandwich. He took a huge bite, and- Oh yes! This was almost as delicious as the sight of Relena in the sunset had been last night!

"Heero!" Heero looked up, cheeks stuffed with food, to see Relena standing at the entrance. She smiled. "You look like a scared chipmunk." She observed.

Heero chewed a couple of times, then swallowed in one big gulp. "Yeah, well... I was hungry."

"So I see." Relena set down a large suitcase, then sat down in the chair across from him. Her eyes widened as she got an accurate picture of just how large the mound of food on his plate was. "Are you going to be able to finish all this before we have to go?"

"Watch me." Heero grinned. He pointed to his watch, and began to wolf down the food. Relena kept track of the time on her own watch.

"Two minutes and thirty four seconds!" She exclaimed as Heero gulped down the last of his coffee. "I wouldn't have thought that was humanly possible."

"When you could be called away on a mission at a moment's notice, you don't always have a lot of time to eat." He explained, wiping off his mouth with his napkin. He stood up, and started to pick up his tray, then got a funny look on his face. 'Did I just try to impress her with how fast I could EAT?'

"Something wrong, Heero?" Relena asked.

"No, it's nothing." He dumped his trash in the garbage can. "Let's go." He picked up his own duffel bag, and then grabbed Relena's suitcase without a second thought. She was about to protest that she could handle it herself, but she was surprised into silence. Walking just behind Heero, she could tell from his posture that the suitcase didn't seem to be weighing down on him at all. She knew it was pretty darn heavy, but he was carrying it as if it was filled with helium.

'Wow.' She thought. As she walked along, she recalled that she had seen and heard of Heero doing things that bordered on super human. Right after Duo shot him in the arm, which should have caused a near-incapacitating pain, he'd gotten right up and made a dive for his gun. Then, he'd jumped up onto a trio of torpedos, and ridden them a fair distance before being thrown off. Duo told her later than Heero had broken his femur in the escape from the hospital, and he'd set the bone back into place himself, immediately following. A broken femur. Himself. With no anesthetic. And, of course, Heero had stood on a Gundam as it self destructed, and he'd lived through it. When she thought about just how strong he was, she began to almost feel a little worried...

Relena stopped short as Heero stopped in front of her. They'd reached the seats by the windows, where Heero had been waiting before. Then, she realized that while her mind had focused on thoughts of Heero, her eyes had been focusing on his butt. Heero turned around slowly. "Um... Is there something I can help you with?"

"Oh, no. I'm fine." Relena quickly turned around and sat down in one of the cheap plastic airport chair-benches, feeling her face turn a little red. She hadn't meant to stare at his butt... Well, not really... But she found that she certainly didn't mind. Wow, those jeans were tight. Thankfully, before she caved in to the urge to have another look, the loudspeaker buzzed.

"This is the first boarding call for flight 714 to Acapulco. We ask that only children traveling alone and the disabled board at this time. Thank you." Heero stood up, and grabbed his bag.

"Where are you going?" She asked.

"To avoid the rush. Come on." With that, he grabbed her suitcase, and walked off toward the gate. "Do we qualify as "children traveling alone?" Heero asked, giving the attendant a grin that showed he knew he was not following the regulation in the spirit it was intended.

"Well..." She eyed them warily. "Are you both under 18?"

"Yep." Another grin.

"All right." She sighed. "Go ahead." Heero smiled at Relena over his shoulder, and he walked on up the ramp, into the giant airplane. Once inside, Heero pulled down one of the large storage units from the center of the roof, and put Relena's suitcase inside it. He shoved his own duffel bag into one of the smaller, side overhead compartments.

"I can't believe we weren't recognized, much less that you actually pulled that off." Relena said as she sat down in her luxurious first class window seat. Her right hand idly clutched at the leather.

Heero stood in the aisle, leaning on one of the seats. "Well, when the war's over, the general populace forgets about it pretty quickly. I think the only time I ever appeared on camera worldwide was when Wing self destructed. And I guess the majority of the people only saw you during your "Queen Relena" phase."

She sighed, looking out the window. "I looked ridiculous."

"Ah, I'd call it elegant." Heero turned to look at her now. "Bordering on ridiculous." She couldn't help but laugh at that.

"Where's your seat anyway Heero? I'll try to sneak back to your section after we take off."

"Well, that'll be easy." He dropped down into the seat next to hers. "Because it's right here."

Relena treated him to another look of pure amazement. "But how...? A lot of people from the Los Angeles conference are heading down on vacation right now. This flight has been booked solid for weeks! How did you get a first class seat at..." She trailed off, finally realizing it was a silly question. "Ah... I give up."

"I went to the Saint Gabriel Institute, the ritziest school in a 400 mile radius, for free, and you don't think I could manage to arrange a seat on one flight?" He turned to look at her with a wounded gaze, one hand over his heart. "Relena, give me my due credit!" She laughed again.

"Well, you're in an unusually lighthearted mood this morning." She observed.

"I knew I'd be spending time with you." He said, serious now. "How could I not feel good?"

'Wow.' Relena thought simply. She tried to think of something to say in response, but before she could, the main group of passengers started filing on. She turned to look out the window.

She'd begun to drift off into daydreams, when her thoughts were interrupted with, "Oh my God, there's something on the wing!" She whirled around, and saw Heero sitting calmly, with a big grin on his face. "Looks like a fuel pump."

She smacked him in the shoulder. "You drank that coffee too fast."

"Yeah, maybe." He admitted. They both stared idly out the window for a few minutes. The sun had risen completely now, and the remaining wisps of fog glowed brightly. The ocean could occasionally be seen through them. Relena seemed to jerk back to awareness suddenly. "Hmm?" Heero made a noise by way of inquiry.

"I just realized, I kind of just left you sitting there last night. I was so tired, and I knew I had an early flight, so I didn't even think about it, but I should have asked if you wanted to do something."

"Relena, it's okay." Heero held up a hand to stop her before she said anything else. "I plan on being around for a while." Then, he lowered his upheld hand until it covered hers on the arm rest. "We don't have to try to cram everything in right at the beginning."

Relena wriggled her hand around until her fingers intertwined with his, as she felt her heart fluttering. 'We...? The beginning?' She slowly looked up from their hands, until her gaze met his. "Heero... I-"

"Time to go over the safety instructions!" Relena was jerked roughly back into awareness of the world around her, and she felt Heero stiffen just the same. But he didn't let go of her hand. Looking up, she saw a stewardess was standing at the front of the plane, holding an oxygen mask. "In case of a sudden drop in pressure, a mask like this will drop in front of every seat in the plane. Place the elastic over your head like so..." She demonstrated quickly. "Please be sure to put your own mask on before trying to assist those around you. Now, in case of an emergency landing, the cushion you're sitting on can be used a flotation device. If a Gundam shows up in midair and looks like he's about to slice the plane in half-" Heero groaned audibly. "Well, we're not sure what you should do, but you should definitely not say "Now young man, don't be foolish." History has shown that just doesn't work."

"Looks like you were recognized after all." Relena put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

The stewardess finished her demonstration, and walked toward coach as the plane began to move. As she passed Heero, she said, "Actually, I say that on every flight."

Heero groaned again, more loudly this time. His head sank down until his forehead was smashed up against the seat in front of him. "Heero?" Relena asked "Are-"

"Nah, it's fine." He sat up slowly. "It's something I'm going to have to deal with for the rest of my life. I really did kill a lot of people. Really, I'm lucky I haven't been shot like a dog in the street already."

"Heero!" Relena tightened her grip on his hand. "Don't talk like that! It was war! Every side involved did some things they're not proud of. Even me!"

"True." He said calmly. "But the catch here is, there was no war until I came along."

"But! Operation Meteor..." She protested. "You saved countless lives by altering the missions! All of you did."

"Yep." He nodded. "And there's another catch. The public doesn't know that. And even if they did, a lot of them wouldn't care."

"Well that's a cynical way to look at it."

"Maybe. But I affected a lot of people indirectly. Right off the bat, we wrecked a lot of important industrial centers, and we completely collapsed the economies of several nations before the world mobilized to fight against us." Heero sighed. "People don't care that I prevented a great disaster, because I did prevent it, and they haven't experienced what I saved them from. They only care about the disasters I caused myself."

Relena sighed as the plane taxied onto the main runway. The engines began to grow louder. "We're on vacation, okay? You don't have to think about this stuff now."

"I won't dwell on it." Heero dismissed that concern. "I have all the rest of my life to do that. But it may come up again in conversation." With that, the plane began to move forward, and it quickly accelerated, until the runway fell away below them. They found themselves staring out the window, looking at the beach below, and the water glistening in the early morning sunlight. "What a great day for traveling." Heero finally said as he momentarily tore himself away from the view. He closed his eyes and leaned back in his seat, feeling the vibrations of the plane. "You know, I never get tired of flying." He remarked. "No matter how calm the air is, how straight your course is, or how big the plane is, it's never still enough to trick you into thinking you're still on the ground. There are always those small vibrations that let you know you're hurtling through the air at 600 miles per hour." Then, he opened his eyes, and smiled. "Or 2700 miles per hour, in Wing's case."

"That was quite the suit, all right." Relena nodded. "You should have seen how many trucks it took to clear away the rubble after that Aries attack." She told him. "And yet, Wing saved me from it just by holding a hand out. Well, I guess it was technically you holding a hand out, but it felt like... Oh, I don't know how to describe it."

"It felt like he was alive." Heero finished for her. "It's the face that does that. All the mass produced military mobile suits just had a sensor plate. But the face on the Gundams, and the Tallgeese, made them seem alive." They sat in silence for a few minutes, feeling the plane slowly level off from its takeoff angle. The intercom suddenly came to life.

"Daaaaaaaah, this is your captain speaking. We've reached our cruising altitude of 35,000 feet. Daaaaaah, the in-flight flatfilm will begin shortly. Today's film is the comedy smash hit of 196, daaaaaah, "The Wizard of OZ!"

"Oh no." Heero buried his head in his hands.

"What's wrong with it?" Relena asked.

"Well, there's nothing wrong, per se. I saw it with some guys from work last year, and, well... You'll see."

The interior lights of the plane dimmed, and the film began playing. As it opened, an actor who looked remarkably like Treize Khushrenada was sitting at a desk, tapping a pen boredly on it. A song began to play in the background.

"Treize Khushrenada!

Treize Khushrenada!

What is there to do

When you're a rich, noble baka?

"You're so stinking rich,

You can't even see

That your top aide is a bitch

With split personalities!

"What are you going to do

With all your time and money?

Keep in mind, this is a comedy,

So your answer better be funny!"

At this, "Treize" stood up from the desk, and began to sing himself.

"I know!

Before this year is done,

My plans will be unfurled!

By the dawning of the sun,

I'll take over the world!"

The number went on for several more minutes, and eventually ended with about a hundred dancing women, several water fountains, and an elephant in the background. Heero saw that Relena was trying hard not to laugh, and failing miserably. "I sort of see what you mean." She said when she noticed he was looking at her. "It's odd to see a serious world leader portrayed in a humorous light. I almost feel guilty for laughing."

"Yep." Heero nodded. He stood up and rummaged around in the overhead compartment for a few moments, before coming back down with a book. "It wasn't so funny that I want to watch it repeatedly." He said by way of explanation.

Relena quickly peered at the title. "ANATEXIS? I haven't heard about this one."

"It just came out a few days ago." Heero said as he opened it, looking for the place where he'd left off. "Since it deals with Mariemaia's takeover, I'm surprised it's out this soon. The author must have come close to writing it in one sitting."

"How does it deal with Mariemaia's takeover?" She asked.

"It's basically a what if scenario, where Wufei won the battle in the atmosphere, instead of me. Wing Zero and I never showed up to win the day, and... well, the world got screwed."

"Yeah... I bet." Relena ran the implications of that over in her mind.

"According to the story, Trowa and I are dead, and from what I've read so far, it does look like we're REALLY dead, and not just hiding somewhere. It's kind of disconcerting, really."

At his dour expression, Relena returned her hand to his. "I'm glad you're not-" She was interrupted as, in the flatfilm, General Septum blew his nose, accidentaly drowning Field Marshal Noventa in a river of mucous. She could tell that Heero tried, really TRIED, to maintain his serious expression. In the end, he couldn't help laughing out loud.

"I'm sorry." He wiped the tears from his eyes. "It's just so over the top..." He laughed a few more times, then settled in to read the book. That sobered him up real quick, she noticed. She'd have to give that book a read herself. If Heero was dead, what had happened to her? Probably still in Mariemaia and Dekim's clutches. She shivered at the thought. Finally, she settled in to watch the movie. Heero was right: It was funny, but not so much that she'd want to watch it repeatedly.

About an hour later, Heero suddenly looked up from his book. She'd thought he was completely absorbed, but now he was watching the flatfilm again. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, really. But this scene coming up puzzles me. I'm going to see if I can figure it out this time." Relena turned back to the film expectantly.

Zechs was on the bridge of Peacemillion, pointing to a blueprint of the Tallgeese on a computer screen. "So Howard, I need to-" Suddenly, a door whooshed open behind Zechs. Another oddly masked and uniformed man stood there. "Char Aznable!" Zechs gasped. "What are you doing here?"

"I might as well be here, for all the difference you're making." Char responded. "Face the facts, Zechs: You look like me, you talk like me... You don't have an original bone in your body!"

Relena turned back to Heero, looking for an explanation. He frowned. "I still don't get it! I mean, who the hell is Char Aznable? It's like the writers were indulging in some in joke that only they knew about."

"Well, writers tend to do that." She smiled softly.

Later, as the flatfilm was wrapping up, the nose of the plane began to tilt downward, and the captain's voice came over the intercom again. "Daaaaaah, we're beginning our descent now. Please fasten your seatbelts." Heero put the book away, then sat back down.

The moment she heard the click of his seatbelt, Relena turned to face him. "Heero, there's something I want to ask you." He raised an eyebrow, expectantly. "Why are you here, precisely?"

"What a loaded question," he responded, smiling, mainly to buy time. Her face was beginning to turn a little red, so apparently this was a spur of the moment thing, not something she'd planned ahead.

"And your answer is?"

"To see with eyes unclouded by hate." He turned back to face forward.

"How about an answer that doesn't ripoff the greatest flatfilm ever made?" She turned back too.

"What?" He whirled around again. "You've seen 'Mononoke Hime'?"

She let a crooked smile escape, on the side of her mouth he couldn't see, and felt her heart begin to slow down. 'All right, I'll give you that one.' She thought at him. "Of course. The Saint Gabriel Institute tried to cover all possible areas of education."

"Huh. Dr. J had me watch it when I was fairly little. Of course, I was supposed to idolize San, not Ashitaka."

"Of course." She sighed.

"What?"

"It's nothing." She turned to look out the window.

'All right, I'll give you that one.' He thought at her. He tilted his seat back, and also turned toward the window. Pretty much all he could see was the back of her head and neck, but he found himself not minding very much. He slowly reached out and took her hand again. She turned back toward him, and he was relieved to see her smiling again. He smiled back.

They sat that way in silence, through the landing, until the plane had come to a stop on the runway. As the other passengers hurried to grab their things and get off, Heero lazily brought his left arm up to look at his watch. He stretched his neck, then finally sat up. "We've got two hours until we have to be at the boat." He reported. "There's no need to hurry." He slowly got up, and brought her suitcase back down.

She stepped into the aisle, picking it up herself. "Yeah, you're right. There's no need to hurry about a lot of things." She started to walk toward the exit, but then turned back toward him, smiling. "Even so, I will get a straight answer out of you, Heero Yuy."

He smiled softly as he brought down his own duffel bag. "Yeah, you will." He said sincerely. She clearly hadn't been expecting that one. His grin broadened.

However, as most of the other passengers had already gotten off, now he could hear what sounded like a large crowd outside. "I don't like the sound of that." Heero said, and climbed back into a row of seats to look out a window. He saw what looked like an unruly mob, being kept back only by a hastily erected chainlink fence.

"What on earth is going on out there?" Relena asked, peering out from the next row. "I know there are a lot of important officials getting off here, but even so, I can't imagine anyone attracting this much attention."

"I can," Heero said, sounding grim. "Me." At her questioning look, he explained, "We were recognized."

"You mean, they're all waiting for us."

"Yeah." He said, in the same tone of voice he had always used when threatening to kill her. "Well, now I think there's a need to hurry." He slung his bag over his shoulder, hurried to the exit, and quickly hopped down the stairs. Cameras began to click as he appeared in the bright sunlight. However, the questions only began to be shouted when Relena appeared at the top of the stairs, moving more slowly because of the suitcase.

"Ms. Darlian, why are you traveling with a Gundam pilot?"

"Are you two involved romantically?"

"Are you aware that he's one of the worst war criminals in the history of the human race?!" At this question, the sea of reporters parted to let one individual through. He had several laptop computers strapped around him, and he quickly grabbed one. Turning it on, he continued. "That's right! This terrorist killed thousands of Earth Sphere, OZ, and Romefeller soldiers, plus hundreds of innocent bystanders! Furthermore, I have evidence pointing to his involvement in terrorist activities dating back more than ten years? The only reason he has yet to be brought before a war crimes tribunal is that there are so MANY charges against him, it's taking a while to get all the court documents ready!"

"Now just hold on a second!" Relena approached the fence, where Heero was silently glaring at the reporter, looking like he wanted to bash him on the head with his own laptops until his skull caved in. "That may be true, but you're only telling-" She was cut off as the hoard of reporters tripled its noise output.

"Tommy, tell me you got that!"

"Ms. Darlian, are you saying you're comfortable gallavanting around with a known war criminal?"

"No!" Relena shouted. "If you'll just let me get a word in-"

"Has he kidnapped you and forced you to defend him?"

"Don't be ridiculous, I just-"

"Just what are you two doing together anyway?"

Heero stepped in front of Relena, and they finally shut up, expecting him to say something. "Enough." He said, in a venom-filled voice. "Let's just say she's keeping her mind open to all possibilities."

Relena took a step back, scrutinizing him. Up until a few minutes ago, he had seemed so carefree and lighthearted. Now though, the old, bitter soldier had returned. Which one was an act? Were they both an act? And which one was she going to have to deal with?

.

"I wear two masks." - Milliardo Peacecraft

.

(Nanaki's extremely long note: Most of this chapter was written not long after the first, but I didn't actually finish it until the fall of 2001. At the time, I had no internet access, which is one reason it wasn't posted up right away. The reason it wasn't posted up soon after though, is that I wasn't happy with it. I couldn't quite put my finger on why at the time, but I can now: It's too wacky. This would make a great chapter for a comedy fic, but for a story that was meant to be serious drama, it's terrible. I still think the core of the chapter, Heero and Relena being excited about being together while trying to figure out what the other expects, is solid. But as they say, the devil is in the details, and the details are pretty strange.

Let's see, we start with a car full of Germans accidentally conquering France. Wow, real original humor there, my nineteen year old self! Next we have Heero's Twilight Zone reference, which is as out of place as a Trump joke would be. Don't get me wrong; The Twilight Zone was an amazing show for its time, and still holds up well today. I hope that people centuries in the future still remember it. But the context it's used in here, one seventeen year old joking with another, makes no sense. It would be like two teenagers today making each other laugh with Shakespeare quotes. Unfortunately, things don't improve from there. Next we have a flight attendant making light of a very tragic event that the general public would almost certainly never have known about, if only because Treize would have wanted to hide the fact that he manipulated it into happening in the first place. Very odd, but at least that one is in-universe.

Things really go off the rails with "The Wizard of OZ!" This would be like a musical comedy about September 11th coming out in the spring of 2003, if September 11th had taken place all over the world and killed 100,000 people. In short, it just wouldn't happen. (And yes, Treize's song is absolutely sung to the tune of the "Pinky and the Brain" theme.) In the midst of that comes a shout-out to "Mission Acknowledged: ANATEXIS", which is an absolutely amazing story that couldn't possibly have been written in such a short time as this story implies. Again, it would be very bizarre for it to be released so soon after the events in question. Picture a book called President Gore being released before Christmas in 2000. After that comes a massive poke at the fourth wall just to point out the fact that Zechs Merquise and Char Aznable are a lot alike. Wow, what an amazing insight! It's worth mentioning that when I wrote that, the original Gundam series had not yet been released in the US, so it was a bit more clever at the time, but not nearly enough to justify bringing the story to a screeching halt for it.

After that comes a reference to Princess Mononoke, which to this day remains the best movie I've ever seen. Even so, it's just as out of place as Heero's Twilight Zone reference earlier. At least this one says something about Heero as a character, but still, doesn't make much sense. Then, just when it seems the chapter is finally getting serious again, we have a Saturday Night Live reference, of all things, with "Tommy, tell me you got that!" Though if you didn't watch SNL back then, you probably didn't notice that one. Overall, the only joke in the chapter that holds up is Heero's 'Did I just try to impress her with how fast I could EAT?' moment, which also happens to be the only joke that is both in-universe and realistic for the story. I don't know why I was throwing so many jokes in anyway, considering that this was meant to be a serious drama.

Even laying the issue of the bizarre jokes aside, there are a few other problems with this story. One is my surprising lack of knowledge about Gundam Wing facts. As you probably noticed, at the time I wrote this story, I was unaware that Gundam Wing officially begins on April 7th, which, if we pay attention to the first few episodes, means that Relena's birthday is almost certainly on April 9th. I found it somewhat hard to believe that the whole series takes place in a single year even if it did start in January. Having it start on April 7th is absurd, yet that's the canon start date, which makes this story wrong. Also, in the fall of 2000, the only Gundam Wing manga that I'd read was Ground Zero, simply because that was that only one that had been released in the US at the time. Nothing in the other manga volumes really makes anything impossible in this story, though they kind of contradict my claim from chapter one that Heero tried to avoid Relena during the "intermittent year".

Now, if you're still reading at this point, you're probably hoping I'll go over what would have happened in the rest of the story, if I'd ever finished it. Well, never fear, I'm going to do just that. This was meant to be my first story that was entirely character driven. There weren't going to be any bad guys. Heero wasn't going to rescue Relena from kidnappers yet again. No squad of mobile suits was going to suddenly show up, making Heero choose between Relena and his duty to protect the world. This was going to be a pretty straightforward story about two teenagers who both had to grow up way too fast finding themselves alone together on a cruise ship in Mexico.

The only wrinkle was going to be Wufei showing up, as a Preventer agent in charge of security for all the dignitaries on the cruise. Never mind that Wufei should have been in jail after Endless Waltz, awaiting his war crimes trial. That's true for all the Gundam pilots, and especially Zechs, so Wufei gets a pass there. Heero and Wufei were going to be very wary of each other, and have a few intense philosophical debates, but that was the extent of their interaction. No fist fights or anything.

But the highlight of the story was always meant to be Heero and Relena getting intimate. As mentioned in the summary, this story was meant to be a lemon (In other words, rated X), back when FFN still allowed that sort of thing. I told myself it was going to be done tastefully, but they were going to have good, intense, satisfying sex. In other words, not even a remotely accurate depiction of two virgins getting it on for the first time. Considering that I hadn't actually had sex myself at that point, I don't know why I thought I was qualified to write such a scene. But from age seventeen to about twenty two, I pretty much thought I knew everything. (Well, compared to the buzz-cut sporting, country music lovin', tobacco chewing meth addicts I went to high school with, I sure did.)

(Long digression warning) I imagine that most readers of Gundam Wing fan fiction these days are women close to my own age, but on the off chance that any teenage guys are reading this, I'd like to impart a little advice that you didn't ask for: Your first time is not going to go well. I don't care how much porn you've watched in preparation, once you add a second person into the equation, everything changes. Also, it's important to keep in mind that porn is emphatically NOT what sex is like. Porn is what the kind of people who make porn wish sex was like. The only way to both improve your performance and figure out what your particular partner really likes is practice. And that's okay, because the practice is wonderful. (/Long digression warning)

Anyway, the culmination of the story for Heero was the realization that it was okay to finally let his guard down, to open up to Relena and let her know how much she meant to him, how much he regretted the way things had been between them up to this point. The culmination for Relena was knowing that her feelings hadn't been misplaced, that she hadn't just been attracted to the bad boy because he was the bad boy, that she hadn't just been imagining the subtle hints that indicated Heero really cared for her.

And, that was pretty much it. This wasn't going to be a particularly long story, just what I thought of as a fitting epilogue to the Gundam Wing saga. Unfortunately, I was unhappy enough with chapter two that the story was put on indefinite hiatus. Then, when FFN changed their rules so that X-rated stories were no longer allowed (Which was absolutely the right call, by the way.), that was pretty much the nail in the coffin. I am occasionally tempted to write a story like this one for Setsuna and Marina Ismail from Gundam 00. Although such a story would require me to pretend that Awakening of the Trailblazer never happened, that is something I would be happy to do. In fact, I'd bet that nine out of ten people who've seen it already pretend that it never happened!

I did briefly return to writing in the Gundam Wing universe in the spring of 2005, when I did a lot of brainstorming and started working on "Zeta Gundam Wing", a story set twenty one years after the original series. The main character was Heero and Relena's son, Odin Yuy, who everyone of course calls "Villain". At the start of the story, Milliardo Peacecraft is about to retire as governor of Mars, and the likely winner of the election to succeed him is Mariemaia Khushrenada. The Yuy family, along with Preventer director Wufei Chang, arrange to visit Mars for the election. On election day, a squad of black mobile suits show up, led by the pilot originally intended to receive the DeathScythe, Dosan Barton. In the ensuing chaos, an injured Wufei ends up handing over Altron (which he never actually blew up) to Villain, and the series begins in earnest. In occasional lulls in the mobile suit action, Villain (who is nineteen) and Mariemaia fall in love. I was toying with the idea of having Villain die tragically somewhere in the last third of the story, but I doubt I would have gone through with it. After all, Gundam Wing pilots don't die even when they're inside exploding mobile suits!

I still think that story has a lot of potential, not least because my ideas for the Wing Zero Zeta Custom would have made it something like the love child of the Strike Freedom and Anubis from Zone of the Enders. However, not long after I started working on the story, I got my hands on the limited edition DVDs of Zeta Gundam, and soon after "Zeta Gundam: The Victorious Universe" took precedence in my mind. Then, when I was moving from Florida to Arizona and my original computer got destroyed in transit, I lost what little I had done of that story. Since I've done absolutely no work on the story since then, I think it's safe to say I'm not going back to it. However, if I ever acquire the ability to freeze time so I can spend as much time as I want writing, I may give it another go. For everyone who was looking forward to reading the rest of "Relena's Hero" back in 2000, I'm sorry I didn't deliver it for you. For everyone who had no idea this story existed until just now, I hope you enjoyed what there was. Until next time, this is Nanaki, signing off.)