Title: As Mars Turns
Author: Juuhachigou-chan
Part 1/?
Pairings: None
AC 196. An investigation team was on its way for Mars shortly after the Great War between Earth and the space colonies. The team's purpose was to see if colonization on Mars was possible, and if so, to establish these colonies.
Now, AC 197 has come and the colony of MR-18 has been built. The research team and twenty other families have been chosen to start new lives in this colony, and to perform research on ways for man to possibly move past our solar system, or perhaps make contact with any life forms present besides the human race…
"Dum, dum, dum, dum…" Duo peers down at his table of food. He smirks as he plays with two animal crackers: one shaped like a lion and one like a bear.
"Maxwell, what are you doing?" WuFei demands.
Duo looks up at WuFei. "Want to bet on who wins?" he asks cheerfully.
"Maxwell, I don't think cafeteria food was meant to be used for your premature entertainment!"
"Then what's it for?"
"You're supposed to eat it."
The five (ex) Gundam Pilots sit at circular tables in a school cafeteria. Heero quietly eats his food, Quatre stirs his tea, Trowa stares at nothing, and WuFei glares at Duo.
"RAAAR!" Duo screams, smashing the animal crackers together. "Oooh, help me, help me!" Duo says in a squeaky voice, as the bear. "He's gonna eat me! AAAH! BAM! BAM!"
Duo starts flinging his arms wildly and screeching. The students turn around and stare as Duo screams animal noises and makes faces. Quatre stares, then slides his tray towards him, gets up and walks away to another table, embarrassed. Trowa turns his head, deciding to stare at another wall in the opposite direction of Duo. WuFei tries to control his anger while Heero just calmly eats his food.
"MAXWELL!" WuFei screams, slamming his hand on the table, standing up. "WILL YOU QUIT IT AND ACT YOUR AGE?!"
Duo stares at WuFei, blinking. "You hurt his feelings!" Duo says, sticking the lion animal cracker in his face. "Now, say you're sorry."
WuFei blinks, then snatches the animal cracker from him. "AAAAGH!" WuFei screams, slamming the animal cracker on the ground. He jumps from his chair and steps in front of the animal cracker, glaring down upon it.
"NOOO!" Duo screams, sitting up to see WuFei launch himself in the air and stomp on the animal cracker. WuFei steps back, revealing the crumbs of the once lion animal cracker.
Duo grits his teeth and glares at WuFei, angry. His eyes look at Heero, who is eating ice cream. Duo smirks, snatches the ice cream from Heero. "I need that," Duo says, ripping the spoon from the Perfect Soldier's mouth. Duo stabs the spoon deep into Heero's ice cream and pulls up a giant blob. "Take THIS!" Duo shouts, flinging the ice cream right at WuFei.
And misses completely.
Duo stares in shock as the ice cream flies through the air and hits a girl in the back of the head. "Oh, crap!" Duo winces.
Heero takes his ice cream back and continues to eat it, having ignored what just happened.
The girl moves her hand up slowly and to the ice cream in her hair. She stands up, turns and glares in the direction of which it came. "Who… did… that…?!" she demands.
Duo laughs nervously as she walks to his table. Her eyes notice the ice cream in front of Heero. Her hand snaps down, snatches the ice cream, and even before Heero or Duo can do anything, the ice cream is slammed on Heero's head.
Duo stares. "Uh… uh…"
Heero stares at nothing as ice cream drips down his face. He stands up and looks at the girl. His hand whips up, grabs some of the ice cream on his head, and snaps it in her face. Duo jerks back, nervous. Oh crap, what have I done?! He thinks.
The girl calmly wipes the ice cream off her face, then stares at Heero. "Die."
The girl launches herself at Heero, shoving them both on the ground. The two of them roll on the ground, punching and kicking each other. "Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!" students chant as the two combatants compete.
What the hell is this, Heero thinks to himself. She's actually blocking me!
With a battle cry, Heero throws her on her back and pins her to the ground. The girl stares, surprised. "Why did you dump my ice cream on my head?!" Heero demands, pissed.
"Why did you fling it at me?!" she snaps back.
"Because you dumped it on MY head!"
"No, before that!"
Heero blinks, then looks at Duo. "Duo…" he says tonelessly, remembering that Duo had snatched his ice cream from him. "Did you fling ice cream at her?"
Duo steps back, laughing nervously. "I-I didn't mean to! I was trying to hit Chang! I didn't want to!"
The girl turns her head from Duo to Heero. "Get off me," she snaps.
Heero lets go and gets off her. The girl stands up, cracks her knuckles, and then walks towards Duo. "Uh… uh… eheh…"
WHAP!
PUNCH!
SLAM!
CRACK!
As the girl walks away, Duo winces. "I need to see a chiropractor…" he whimpers.
"Who is that?" Trowa asks no one in particular.
"Alita Yuuki," another girl says as she walks to Duo. "Need some help?"
"Yeah…" Duo winces.
The girl sits Duo up, then starts cracking his back and limbs. "Yep, as usual, she twists the joints backwards. As you can tell, I'm the one who fixes up her victims."
"That girl needs anger management!" Duo snaps.
"Just like you need to grow up, Maxwell," WuFei says.
Duo moves his upper body from side to side. "Hey! I'm cured!" He smiles at the girl who helped him. She is about his height and had long, fire-red hair. Her eyes were round and a cat-like green. He looked her up and down. She seemed nice enough, wearing a black knit shirt and a brownish red sarong. He held out his hand. "I'm Duo!" he says cheerfully.
"I'm Stephanie-lé," she says, extending her hand to help him up. "Don't mind Alita. She's really nice. She's just a violent maniac."
"That makes a LOT of sense," Duo sighs as she helps him up.
"Hey!" Stephanie-lé gasps, recognizing the five of them. "You're the Gundam Pilots!"
"Yep, yep," Duo smiles.
"Oh, wow, and you're Duo Maxwell! I'm a fan of yours!" Stephanie-lé says, smiling, excited that she had met Pilot 02.
"Really?" Duo asks, blushing. He thought this girl was cute, and she was a fan nonetheless.
"Yet another Duo fan," Trowa points out.
Duo sighs. Yes, they certainly had their fans. People thought of them as heroes, but now, all they wanted was to start a new life, without the training and exhaust of war. Wasn't that why they came to Mars? To forget about Earth and the colonies and escape all the memories of war, even though it seemed like a dream?
As Duo and Stephanie-lé talked, the other former pilots stood in a circle, each contemplating their new futures that lie ahead, a future, perhaps, without fighting. But, with people like Heero Yuy and Chang WuFei, there would always be soldiers.
Heero sighed as he thought of this. Life seemed boring, almost pointless now, without battle. He wasn't sure what to do with himself. He saw no future, nothing to look forward to, no life ahead of him. Chang WuFei felt the same way. Quatre, on the other hand, felt relaxed and more able to associate with others without worrying about the upcoming battle. He was determined to make a good future for himself, and he promised he'd study and pay attention in school so as the Winner heir, he could become even more liked and respected. Trowa had feelings similar to Heero and WuFei, but he also, deep down inside, longed for the circus. He longed for that clown mask and the sounds of the crowd cheering, much friendlier sounds than the sounds of MS fighting and the sounds of hypocritical high school students.
As for Duo, well, Duo was always perfectly happy, so, there's no explaining of Duo's feelings about a new life. He's just glad he doesn't have to spend hours polishing D-Hell anymore to make his Gundam better than WuFei's. The Chinese boy and the braided wonder were always competing because of their clashing personalities. Duo thought of it as fun to compete with him, WuFei thought of Duo as an annoyance along with the rest of the former pilots thinking him slightly immature as well, but that's another story.
This had been their first day in the public school on this colony. Heero sighed to himself. Already they had made an enemy here, and she was likely to attempt to start a fight again.
WuFei narrowed his eyes at Heero. "That woman," he sneered. "She could have beaten you if you didn't pin her down and get her talking."
"Don't be stupid," Heero replies, toneless as usual. "She can't beat a Gundam pilot."
"Oh, can't I?"
Heero sighed and turned to see Alita standing behind him. She flipped hair behind her left ear and frowned at Heero. The look she shot at him said, "Mess with me, and I kick your ass, pretty boy!" Not that Heero was necessarily a pretty boy, but nonetheless, that's the look she was giving. "I could take you."
"There should be one day when you're not allowed to fight," Stephanie-lé said, quickly stepping in front of Alita. Heero sighed. His predictions were right. She was already asking for a fight.
"You want a fight, I'll give you one," WuFei smirked as he stepped in front of Heero. He pushed Stephanie-lé aside and gave Alita his most intimidating stare.
Unfortunately for WuFei, Alita was not in the least bit imitated. She calmly stepped into a fighting position.
"Ali, Ali, Ali, fighting again," a male voice said. A tall boy with brown-bleached-blond hair and sunglasses walked up behind her. He put his hand on her shoulder. "Haven't you nailed enough guys in the balls for one day?"
I don't like this girl, Duo thinks to himself. She scares me! And that would hurt!
Stephanie-lé shook her head at her friend. Unlike her, Alita wasn't the most social person, and enjoyed fighting quite a bit. She wasn't exactly feminine acting, but certainly looked feminine with black leather pants and a red stretch-material top. The boots she wore could definitely crush a man's pride, Duo thought to himself as she stepped back from the fighting position. She looked up at the boy who came up to her. "Yo," she said to him. "Josh."
Josh lifted up his sunglasses. "You shouldn't waste all that energy on fighting. Go do some guy. Now that's a good use of energy!"
Alita and Stephanie-lé laughed. Duo looked over at Stephanie-lé and listened. Her laugher had a beautiful ring to it. He smiled, just thinking about it. And then it clicked. He had a little crush on Stephanie-lé. How ironic she's my fan, he thinks. I'm gonna have to do a little investigating of this girl.
"C'mon, Ali," Josh said, putting his sunglasses back on. "Let's go chill by the vending machines."
"Oh, ho," WuFei smiled. "Women! All of them are cowards!"
Alita stopped right in her steps. She whipped around, fiery eyed. "Want me to beat you like I did girly-boy over there?!"
"HEY!" Duo snapped, offended that he had been referred to a girl. Again. For the third time in one hour.
"Guys, let's not fight!" Quatre says quickly, waving his arms up and down. "It won't solve anything! Let's just all get along, okay??"
No one says anything. Alita raises an eyebrow. "Are you a freshman?"
Quatre stares, then starts to whimper as tears come to his eyes. "I'm a SENIOR!" he shouts and runs off, crying.
"Wow," Alita gasps, feeling bad she actually upset someone who didn't do anything to her. "I didn't mean to make him cry…"
"Well, you did," Trowa says in a low tone, narrowing his eyes at Alita. Alita frowns at Trowa.
"Ali, let's go before everyone thinks you're more of a bitch than you really are," Josh says. Alita nods and they start walking towards the door.
"Look at that! Running from a fight!" WuFei shouts. "I won't stand for that injustice! Alita Yuuki, I will defeat you! You will fight me!"
"Someone's a little obsessed," Stephanie-lé comments, laughing nervously.
"I can see them as a potential item," Duo nods. "Two psycho battle-obsessed freaks…" Duo shudders at the thought of them fighting together. "The world would be doomed."
Stephanie-lé sighs, not knowing what to do to fix what her new friends think of Alita. Only time, she tells herself. Only time will fix this.
Only time, Duo thinks. Only time and I will have gotten to know Sara-lé and I can ask her out!
Only time, Trowa thinks. Only time and the circus will arrive here and I can go live with my lion friends again.
Only time, Quatre thinks as he washes his face in the bathroom. Only time and these embarrassing red marks will go away from my face. AHH! It's spreading!
Only time, WuFei thinks. Only time and I will be able to fight that girl and win!
Only time, Heero thinks. Only time and we will all be thinking words besides 'only time'.
Only time…