Preventer Phoenix Part Two

Preventer Phoenix Part Two

From the Ashes

Disclaimer: I own nothing except the original characters and the clothes on my back and I actually think my mom bought these pants.

Notes: Sorry this took so long, I don't have excuses, I'm lazy. I actually kept cursing to a minimum and no too much violence. Yeah for me! Okay please review this thing; I really do need constant evaluation to survive. Enjoy, minna-san!

Italics indicate flashback

The child Suria touched the cool glass with a single finger, trailing it down gently. She pressed close to the window and watched the smoke rising inside, mesmerized by the slowly twisting tendrils floating toward the ceiling. Her eyes traveled down the column to the source of the smoke that was quickly filling the small room. What she saw chilled her to the bone. The control board was sparking like mad, tossing golden sparkles into the air. As she watched the frequency of this sparking intensified and a single offshoot blossomed into flame and traveled quickly across the board. Her breath caught, heartbeat echoing violently in her ears, and she turned away from the glass and began running, a split second before her world exploded into flames and pain.

* * * * *

" Trowa, help us, damn it!" Catherine screamed as she tried to hold the violently struggling, screaming girl down on the bed so Rowan could actually remove the bullet from the girl's arm. The girl bucked hard against Catherine and sent her flying into Trowa as he finally stepped alongside the bed. He steadied her gently and proceeded to the bedside, firmly pinning the girl's shoulders. Catherine returned to Rowan's side and waited expectantly for instructions. Meanwhile, the girl ceased her struggles and her screams returned to harsh, ragged breathing.

"Here", Rowan said handing Catherine a metal bowl containing several pieces of steel from the splintered bullet and no small amount of blood. "It's the best I can do for her, the damn thing practically exploded on impact. Get rid of that, outside. Now girl!" Rowan barked at Catherine when the girl showed no signs of moving, staring at the wounded woman with fear in her eyes. Catherine startled and quickly left the room. Although sorry to lose an assistant, Rowan was relieved to see Catherine leave the room, the girl looked as though she had been about to cry. Rowan turned back to her patient, threading a long, curved needle with black thread and proceeded to stitch the bullet hole up. The girl hissed, but otherwise behaved, eyes closed, trying to regulate her breathing. Trowa let go of her shoulders but stayed close at hand.

Rowan cautiously began to unwrap her final wound, the potentially fatal shot her chest. Under normal circumstances she would have treated this first, but had wanted to remove all the shrapnel she could from the arm wound before it was pulled further into the body. Now as she gasped sharply and loudly at the wounds severity, she regretted that choice.

"How bad is it?" a voice she had never heard before rasped, breaking the silence of the room. Her head snapped up realizing the voice belonged to the girl, who she had assumed merely passed out minutes ago when the screaming stopped.

" I don't know" Rowan answered truthfully, avoiding looking into her eyes at any cost.

"Then how come you can't look at my face?" the voice continued with an almost amused lilt.

Rowan looked from cleaning the wound to study the face presented to her. The skin was pale and yellowish, her lips cracked and raw, a red too bright to seem natural. Her thick black locks were slicked back from her face with sweat and a glossy sheen coated her features. Half-lidded, golden eyes looked deep into hers before the girl let her head flop back down with a sigh, eyes becoming unfocused once more.

Rowan began to work again but suddenly the girl pushed her out of the way with surprising strength that sent her careening into the wall. She banged hard against it and felt all the air leave her lungs with a single violent puff as she slid down the wall to sit in a crumpled heap on the floor. Gasping for air, she glanced up just in time to see the girl grasp Trowa by his shoulders and pull herself up so their faces were mere inches apart.

"Listen to me," she spoke quickly and sharply but still managing to keep her voice level and calm, eyes boring into his, "if I die you have to get this information to the rest. They call themselves the Terran Alliance; they want revenge against the colonies. They'll get it too; they have both the means and the intelligence to do it. There are enough Mobile Suits in Seville alone to destroy a colony and they have bases all over the world. Tell Une not to hold back, destroy them all or peace will exist only as a pipe dream once again!" Her voice wavered suddenly and she fell back against her pillow, still pulling Trowa with her. "Please", she whispered, dropping her hands from him, "you must." Her head rolled to the side, eyes closed once more, mouth open with a ribbon of bright blood beginning to trickle from her lips.

Trowa stared at her prone form, eyes wide, lips parted, breathing deeply suddenly. He moved to place his fingers along her neck. "No pulse" he said, something akin to anger creeping into his voice. He began to pump her chest with both hands counting to himself before bending to cover her mouth with his. Rowan watched him from her position on the floor, scared senseless. If that girl was telling the truth… she couldn't even think about it. Trowa looked at her then and she was startled by the ferocity in his eyes. "Help her," he yelled, his sharp voice and blazing stare bringing her back to her senses.

Gathering herself into a standing position she moved to the bedside again and pushed away the mass of bloodstained sheets. Deftly she pushed two fingers into the girls open mouth and sent a piece of clear plastic tubing down her windpipe. Pushing on a clear balloon type bag to the top of the tube she instructed Trowa to pump it while she worked on the ragged bullet hole. At this point blood was pouring from the wound at an alarming rate, soaking into the mattress beneath her. Rowan grunted harshly as she pushed aside skin and muscle around the wound, no longer worried about being gentle. She felt for any internal damage, concluding that there had been minimal damage to her organs and little damage to the surrounding muscles and tissue. The collarbone was broken in two places but fixable. The bullet had nicked the top of her left lung but it would heal easily if stitched up now before any more blood found it's way into her lings. Rowan worked fast and furiously, her needle flying in and out of the open cavity, Trowa pushing air back into the girl's lungs all the while. She sealed the entry wound on her chest and the exit wound on her back, praying the girl would hold on long enough without a blood transfusion.

Rowan pushed back from the body and looked at Trowa who met her eyes expectantly. "Did we get a pulse back?" she asked her voice weary.

"Yes, but it's faint."

"As long as it's there the poor child has a chance. I don't know if she can survive the blood loss." Rowan brushed tendrils of the girl's hair away from her face tenderly. "Fight for a little longer, child," she whispered to her still frame, smiling sadly. When she straightened Trowa was already inserting a long needle connected to a thin plastic tube into the veins in the crook of his left elbow. "What the hell are you doing?!"she demanded in horror as his blood began to enter the tube.

Trowa ignored her question and slid a second needle into the girl's arm and squeezed his hand into a fist to fill the tube faster.

Rowan nodded silently, resigned to his actions, her eyes suddenly watery. Her body and soul were exhausted; she had no will left to fight him. He was right after all, the girl had said that there were bases all over the world and right know the only person who knew their location could very well be dying in a circus trailer in Spain.

* * * * * *

Gabriel felt the explosion rock the building and immediately knew where it had come from. Dropping his now forgotten mug of fresh coffee he took off for dead sprint for the room in which he had left Suria. He punched his code into the plate outside the door and the smoking door to the control room slid opened. He jumped back as flames rushed into the hallway, eager for more oxygen. Once the initial burst subsided, he stumbled forward into the room, arm held over his eyes to protect him from the licking flames.

"Suria! Suria answer me!" he yelled, desperately hoping she had somehow survived the explosion. A glance into the room stole this illusion from him. The huge screen that had stretched across the ceiling to broadcast images had fallen directly onto the metal table the tiny girl had been securely strapped to. This piece of machinery had too burst into flame, obscuring his vision of the remnants of the table. A yell of pure grief tore itself from his throat. The scream was wordless, a simple unnerving shriek of tortured anguish. "You little bitch, you can't be dead yet, do you hear me?! Do you hear me?!!"

Gabe hung his head as tears filled his eyes, stinging from the heat. Looking once more at the flame filled room, he yelled her name in desperation one last time and flew from the room, letting it slam shut beside him. Once in the hallway, which was slowly beginning to catch as well, he cracked open a glass case on the wall and pulled out the fire extinguisher form within. With tears leaking down his face he put out the fire in the hall then reached back into the case. There he pressed a button, one that signaled the release of a fire quenching and lethal chemical into the control room and the adjoining area. With Suria dead he could at least try to save some of the expensive equipment in the room, knowing his employers would be angry if they lost both such an exceptional operative and millions of dollars worth of machinery. He laughed bitterly to himself at the thought and wiped the tears from his face with the backs of his fire-blackened hands. Maybe he was no better than those bastards after all.

He sat in that hallway for what seemed like hours but was in fact only a few minutes before a small light beside the button that had released the chemical began to glow green. With this he ran his fingers through his hair and stood to set about the inevitable task of retrieving Suria's body. His mind wandered slightly to her parents and brothers, such a happy blind little family. Never noticing just how incredibly smart their daughter was, nor how much trouble she was in. In the end they loved her, he could imagine their reactions when they were told some bullshit story about her death, it would probably be set up to look as though it were her fault, too much investigation into this school and they would be found out. They would cheapen her memory to cover their own asses and he would go along with it anyway. He slid open the control room door.

He was immediately hit with a puff of ash that filled his lungs and caused him to break into a hacking cough. He broke the remaining shards of melted glass from the window frame and jumped into the room sending more clouds of ash into the air. There was practically nothing left. Even with his quick response time he had barely managed to salvage the machinery that was the farthest away from the control room. Everything was covered in a fine gray layer of ash and the now neutralized chemical compound. He slowly made his way toward the center table, dreading finding that tiny body, most likely crushed completely by the falling screen. It was then that a small movement in the far corner caught his eye.

A sheet of metal heaved up and down as though it were breathing. The sheet was suddenly thrown aside with tremendous force, sending up clouds of gray dust. When they cleared he saw a small figure standing erect, silhouetted against the falling ash. Suria Giotto stepped forward into the light and Gabe stepped back, tripping in his shock and landing on the floor hard. She was completely gray, covered head to foot in the fine powder except for the bright red gash leaking down her forehead and the blackened bloody burns on the right side of her back and stomach. He crossed himself fervently as she continued to walk toward him.

"I thought you were dead," he whispered.

She stopped in her tracks her face completely calm, eyes empty, devoid of any life. She looked at him silently for a moment with those unnerving eyes before speaking.
"I was," she sighed before continuing past him to step through the shattered window and into the light of the hallway. Gabe sat stunned in the center of the room panting as the dust settled on him. In his shocked state an after image burned onto his retinas, Suria rising from the floor, rising from the dead, and then suddenly this image was swallowed by a second: a shining red bird rising from the flames. His lips parted and an almost inaudible word slipped out.

"Phoenix."

* * * * * *

The harsh light of midday woke her from her deep peaceful sleep. She felt the heat blazing through her closed eyelids making her see infinite blaze of red and orange. The coarse fabric of the sheets rubbed soothingly across her bared skin as she began to shift. Without opening her eyes she turned her head away from the light and was once again bathed in cool twilight. It was then she felt the searing pain in her chest, a product of her movement. She groaned in pain and finally opened her swollen eyes to survey the damage to her body. Glancing at her heavily bandaged shoulder and arm she decided that whoever that old woman had been, she had done a decent job of patching her up.

She sat up instantly when she remembered where she was and what she was doing there. "Shit!" she exclaimed at the pain when she moved so quickly, the magnitude multiplied a hundred fold. She gritted her teeth and breathed deeply, air hissing between her teeth. Whimpering slightly, she clutched her shoulder and realized that in addition to the gunshot wounds her collarbone had to be broken. She tested this by raising her arm, an exercise in futility that resulted in another string of nearly yelled profanity.

She took a moment to take in her surroundings while recovering from her ill-advised movement. The room was nearly empty, furnished solely with the hard bed she lay on, a single metal-framed chair, a small television set against the bare wall, and a desk with an complex looking computer and video phone set on top. A single door off to the left provided the only entrance and exit to the room. The computer perked her interest, the expensive machinery belaying the seeming simplicity of the room. She eyed the computer hungrily, wondering if she should chance breaking into it to get in touch with Sally.

Suria began lifting herself form the bed, her good arm tightly clasping the sheet tightly about her chest to hide her nudity. As she swung her legs over the side, the single door to the room opened, banging into the wall loudly. An elderly woman she barely recognized as the same woman who had saved her life stood in the doorway precariously balancing a basket brimming with freshly laundered bed sheets. She stared openmouthed at the girl sitting up in the bed, long legs sticking out of the sheet twisted around her body. A long silent moment passed between the two women as they stared at each other.

"What in God's name do you think you are doing?" Rowan exclaimed dropping her basket to the floor and moving quickly to her side. "You nearly died, actually you should have died, yesterday morning and you've been unconscious ever since, yet you are still stupid enough to try to get out of bed! What is running through your mind child?!" Rowan shrieked at the girl, a mixture of anger and fear in her eyes as she forced the young woman back into a lying position.

"Please, I have to…" Suria began but was cut off immediately.

"You have to stay in this bed until I tell you differently" Rowan said with an air of finality, pushing her down as she struggled to sit up once more. Suria collapsed against the thin white pillow, exhausted from even such slight movement. She sighed resignedly as the woman rattled on.

"You're lucky, you know that? Here let go of that sheet and let me have a look at the wounds." Suria complied with the request and let the woman poke and prod the slowly forming bruises around her major wound. "I don't know if I even want to know what happened to you. Roll onto your side. It's your own fault though, going around with that boy, you're bound to get yourself into trouble…"

"What boy?" Suria asked, genuinely puzzled by the woman's statement. Vague images, fuzzy at the edges formed in her mind: a long body arcing in the air trailing a thin line of blood, the sun glinting off light brown hair and a sharper memory of the most beautiful green eyes she had ever seen.

"Trowa," the lady responded, not understanding the girl's question. "You are his friend, right? He saved your life, I assumed you knew him…"

Realizing what the woman was hinting at, Suria shook her head, remembering the deep soothing baritone that accompanied those bottomless eyes

If you must call me something my name is Trowa Barton.

When she had first met him she had been too delirious to realize the importance of the name, but now she had the clarity to remember what it meant.

He was a Gundam pilot and he was in terrible danger.

Just then she felt Rowan's soft touch move from the back of her shoulder and trail down her smooth skin to settle on the lower right side of her back. Suria knew the woman was looking at, the fine web of burn scars that trailed across her lower back and around to her stomach. She stiffened noticeably and Rowan stopped her examination to roll the girl onto her back and look into her face.

"Are you all right?" Rowan's voice was quiet and accompanied by a tiny smile.

"Absolutely. I… I'm worried about his wound, that's all." Suria grasped for something to hide her true thoughts, wondering just how much the woman knew.

"What wound?"

"He was shot, in the leg."

Rowan cursed under her breath in a dialect even Suria, who prided herself on her extensive knowledge of languages, couldn't decipher.

"That idiot!" Rowan said with a certain fondness that betrayed her anger at Trowa. "My name is Rowan Sayers by the way."

"Phoenix," Suria said extending her hand as far as possible without causing the searing pain to cross her body. "Thank you." Rowan disguised her surprise at the girl's name but not soon enough. Suria saw the familiar widening of the eyes that came when she said her name, a mythical creature she took on as her persona long before she joined the Preventers. The bird that died a spectacular death only to rise from the ashes of it's own demise. It fit her perfectly.

Rowan reached to grasp Phoenix's outstretched hand, lacing her gnarled hand with the girl's flawless youthful fingers. She felt the strength of the young woman's hold, the calluses thick on her palm. Rowan looked into the girl's eyes and was immediately sorry she had. They were beautiful, yes, but in that instant she could have sworn they held the flames of hell itself. Dropping her gaze at the same second she dropped Phoenix's hand, Rowan backed away from the bed, nearly stumbling over her own feet. Collecting herself she busied herself by picking up the basket of sheets she had been carrying in and pulling a select few out to lie neatly folded on the chair.

"I'll go get you some water and tell Trowa you're awake. He wanted to speak to you immediately after you woke up, if you woke up at all. You are…lucky." She left with basket once again tucked under her arm, swinging slightly against her hip as she leaned heavily against her cane.

Suria watched her go and then closed her eyes and stretched her legs out, toes touching every corner of the bed. Arching her back she felt several vertebrae pop as she tried to wake her body up. She sighed heavily and turned onto her side again, careful to not put too much pressure on her injured limbs. Only someone as unlucky as she was could manage to injure both arms so badly. She smiled bitterly to herself, Rowan had called her lucky. From this angle she could just barely see out the window to the gorgeous blue sky above, framed to the left by the dark tips of evergreens. Up until now she had been so focused on her wounds she hadn't noticed the sounds filtering in from outside the trailer. Loud birds cried from the nearby forest. Friendly calls filled the air, interspersed with laughter. The occasional trumpet of an elephant reached her ears.

'Wait a second, elephants?!'

.