chapter! It's amazing how many more reviews this story has picked up, and it makes me
feel really good about my writing! Thanks again, and keep them coming!
----------------------------
The Scavenger Years-Part IV: By Any Other Name
By Chibi Acky
Disclaimer: I own Endless Waltz, and there ain't no'thing yous
can do about it! (no
really, I swear I do! I got it on DVD for my birthday a few weeks
ago! ^.^)
-----------------------------
I'm sure you're all thinking to yourselves "Wow! They found her
extremely fast!" and
"Boy, I'll bet she sure was glad to see her knight in shining armor
rescue her yet again!"
And in which, of course, the majority of you all would be wrong.
You see, it would have been much to easy for me if it had been Heero,
my brother, or any
of my closest friends. All the few weeks I spent on the
island I had been praying for a
miracle, or anything that would help me... well... live. As those
arms caught me before I
slipped into the depths of fatique, I realized my hopes and prayers
had been answered.
Where I had prayed for a miracle, I recieved an angel.
------------------------------
"Welcome back to the world of the living!" A rather cheerful voice
called from across
Relena. As her eyes adjusted, and those annoying spots of light
cleared from her vision,
she could make out the shape of what appeared to be a makeshift hut.
The hut, which would serve as her home, was made from the scattered
wood of the palm
trees that lined the island, it's roof, their branches, and shelves
had also been nailed to the
wall by what, Relena had no idea.
"Heero?"
No.
Instead of where the homicidal/suicidal Gundam pilot there was an old
man. His face was
sagging around his sapphire eyes, and his colorless lips were stretched
in a gargantuan
smile, almost hidden by a long beard. His face was worn almost
to the consistancy of
leather, and his long white hair was tied behind him with a scap of
cloth.
"Heero? Like the colony leader? How is he doing these days?"
His voice was soft and
kind, like a tone you'd expect to hear between a grandfather and granddaughter.
Dear God! How long has this man been on the island?> Relena
bit down on one of her
chapped lips. "He's.... dead." Oh great, WAY-TO- GO-RELENA!>
Her mind
screamed when the old man's face fell.
"...how?" The shock of her blunt statement had finally worn off,
and he handed her a
glass of water. Water? NO WAY! Where'd he get
it?!> Relena was drinking savagely
before she realized that it could be the only water he had.
"He was assasinated."
"Oh... I see... well, all good things have to come to an end.
And the Peacecrafts? Is their
luchious kingdom still prosperous as always?" His charming grin
had returned.
And it vanished just as quickly when he saw the mournful look on Relena's face.
"Demolished. The king and queen were assasinated." She took
in a deep breath, and the
man's face looked angushed.
"And the children? What about the children?" He grasped
her blistered palms and held
the tight, despite the pain it caused her.
"They survived." Relena favored him with a kind smile.
"Are you sure? How do you know?"
"Because you're looking at one of them right now."
_________________________________
"She's not down there." Wufei called from the pilot's chair, "I
don't know why we're all
wasting our time looking down in the ocean."
He was rewarded with angry stares.
"We just have to keep looking." Hilde insisted casting a look
to Duo that said, 'Back me
up, here!'
"Look... Babe.... we're almost out of fuel. We can only
make one more sweep." Duo
put a hand on her shoulder.
"And then we're just going to give up?" Hilde shouted, "Duo Maxwell,
I thought you had
more faith than this!" She jabbed an angry finger into his chest.
Duo, wounded by her comment about lack of faith, grabbed her hand and
held it tightly in
his, "Look Hildey! Look! There's no land, and if she's
out there, she'd be rotting at the
bottom of the ocean, getting eaten by all the little fishies!"
There was a loud *SMACK!* as Hilde, well, slapped Duo across the
face. "How dare
you! How disrespectful!" She stormed to the back of the
search plane, locking herself in
the bathroom.
Rubbing his sore face, Duo looked up, only to be met with a snickering Wufei.
"Wu-man, just shut up man. Just shut up."
Silence.
"She's been gone for almost a month... do you think she's really...
well, you know...
dead?" Duo stumbled over his words as he occupied the empty co-pilot
chair. It was just
Wufei, Hilde, and Duo making the swoops over the ocean now. Trowa
and Quatre had
left for the colonies trying to dig up any details they could, and
Heero and Milliardo...
were just being Heero and Milliardo. Sulking.
Heero spent most of his time in his room in the Peacecraft estate.
Duo figured he must be
doing something with that god-forsaken laptop of his. It was
a week ago that Noin had
officially declared Relena missing, and the media-hype was still abuzz
with curiousity. A
new man, by the name of Ihateu Presidentdubya had filled in for Relena
in her "absence."
Presidentdubya had come from the rough-tough-romping-south, also
know as Texas. His
twangy accent could penatrate the depths of your sanity, and his speaking
skills were less
than... apt for the job of peacekeeper between the colonies and earth.
"With all this... she should be. But something tells me differently,
that woman is too damn
stubborn to die." Wufei let out a bitter grin, and Duo clasped
his shoulder.
"Something is telling me the same thing, Wufei."
+++++++++++++++++++
"Princess Relena?!" The man fell to one of his knees, and clasped
his hand in hers, "Thank
the heavens I rescued you!"
No, thank you!> Relena smiled kindly, "You're too kind...
please, I'm not a Princess
anymore..."
"What?"
"I work as Vice Foreign Minister-"
"And Darlian? Was he assasinated too?" The old man's voice
was high and shrill, almost
with panic.
"Yes..." Relena fought oncoming tears, "The Darlians adopted me
when our kingdom fell.
They raised me like their own, and it wasn't until my father, Mr. Darlian
was dying that he
told me who I really was." The old man was in tears.
"You poor dear!" He wiped his tears away, "And what of your elder brother, Milliardo?"
"Milliardo... is well... Milliardo. We kinda went through some
rough times if trying to
destroy the would is considered "rough"> and we've come to make some
ammends with
the past."
"I think I've missed too many things..." The old man shook his
head and stared out of the
opening of the hut. Relena sat up slowly, "How long have you
been here?"
"Ten... fifteen... sixteen years maybe." Relena's mind was churning.
Would she be there
that long?
"How did you get here? On the island I mean?" The questions
were flying out of
Relena's mouth.
"I was flying back from a mission that your father-" he paused remembering
the fact that
the girl before had two fathers, "-King Peacecraft sent me on a dipomatic
mission and I
never got back." He laughed slightly.
"I remember... I remember! Father was so distraught about it!
He locked himself away in
his chambers, and even mother couldn't get him out of slump.
But I thought it was over
my uncle..." Realization dawned itself on her face, "Oh my god!
Uncle Ashler!"
__________________________
Okay, so I had forgotton about my dear uncle.
So sue me.
It was all uphill from there. The memories that came flooding
back... I'll have you know
that he was my favorite uncle (and also my only one... but that's besides
the point...). He
just smiled and laughed when I had it figured out. It didn't
surprise him at all.
I spent the rest of the day trying to fill him in on the current situation
of the government,
and he was only slightly fazed when I diplomaticly explained Milliardo's
behavior during
the Eve Wars. Uncle Ashler told me that Milliardo had redeemed
himself just by
returning, and I couldn't help but agree with him. One thing
did worry me though, and
that was his choice of a "pet."
This wasn't your normal house cat or dog, this was a panther. The same
kind in the
"Jungle Book" that had tried to eat that one little boy.
He named her Patience, saying it
was a virtue that he needed to work on with her.
Patience was a strange little thing, really. Totally wonderful
to humans, but ferocious to
all other predators and threats. At first, I couldn't believe
my eyes. I mean, come on!
How could you train a panther to carry water jugs for you? How
could you teach it not to
bite your head off when you were sleeping? I didn't know.
"I raised her." He had explained to me simply, "She knows right
from wrong... she's the
pacifist of the jungle!"
He had said it to amuse me, but I was right out of my mind with terror.
================================
"Oh come now, Relena! She won't hurt you!" Ashler called
from across the stream
running beside their hut.
"No, she'll only shred me to bits and then feast on my insides!"
Relena's uncle let out a hearty laugh, "What an imagination you have!"
Another laugh,
"Just reach out and pet her!"
Taking a shakey step forward with the makeshift brace her ncle had made
her, Relena
reached out a callused hand. Patience's head was nearly an inch
away from her, but she
knew she wouldn't be able to put forth that extra effort.
Seeing her mental delimma, Patience improvised by meeting her halfway.
From that day on, Relena never had a problem with stroking Patience's silky black coat.
_____________________________
"Hey look!" Sally Po pointed to the radar that she and Noin had
set up in a local coast
guard station. The radar in the search plane had been sending
signals back to the two
women who looked them over with more detail.
"Don't get excited, Sally. It's probably just another piece of
the Libra." Noin ran a hand
through her short hair, and slumped even further down in her chair.
"No, I have a good feeling about this! A really good feeling!"
Sally switched on the radio
signal, "Wufei, this is Sally, do you read me?"
"This is Wufei, I read you woman."
"Good, I want you to make one last circle back about an eighth of a
mile." She paused,
double-checking the coordinates, "There should be a fairly large piece
of metal. Pull it
up."
"I would, but we're running low on fuel."
"Then switch to solar power and don't complain."
"Woman, I hope you know what you're doing."
+++++++++++++++++++
If there was one thing that Wufei didn't like about the Earth, it was the ocean.
Endless and vast, when one was stuck in the center of it, it went on
forever. Somehow, he
was the one that had gotton sucked into going down to attach the bloodly
piece of metal
Sally had found. Normally, he would be more than enthusiastic,
however this was actually
the tenth one he had to go down for.
He sighed as another school of fish swam by him merrily.
Wufei was now well below the surface of the water and was too afraid
to pilot the small
sub any further.
"Stupid woman! Nothing! There is NOTHING!" In a fit
of rage, he slammed his fist
down on the control panel of the cramped sub, turning it violently
to the side. It's beams
of light flashed over the wreckage of a small plane.
And he felt his stomache flip when the half-eaten carcus of a man floated
across his line of
vision.
+++++++++
Author Note #2: And so ends my all too short Spring Break.
*cries* Anyways, I
thought I'd let you know that the Gundam Co. finding the wreckage of
the plane was all
Rose's idea. *hugs Rose* Not exactly what you had in mind
though, huh? I know in the
the prolouge (or maybe part one) I said Relena was alone on the
island for almost all of
the four years she was on it. That's totally true, and I'll make
it work (somehow!).
The next two stories I'll be working on for next week are: Heroes,
Golden Children, and
maybe Black Waltz if I have time.
Luvs and hugs
Chibi Acky
http://kupo.bored.org