Disclaimer: I own no part of Gundam Wing or its characters and wrote this story exclusively for the enjoyment of fans. I do not intend to profit from it in any way.
Note: This is one of many scenarios that attempts to explain the somewhat foggy past of our main man, Heero Yuy. I hope you enjoy it. Please Read and Review!!!
Gundam W Fanfiction
-The Awakening-
Chapter 2-Reborn once more
The renegade experiment known as Crying Boy slept soundly as his shuttle drifted across the farmlands of colony Lx-12110502. Beneath him, some farmers were herding oxen, sheep, and cows. Others were digging up silt around fields of grain and rice. A few looked up questioningly at the craft passing low overhead, but most were engrossed in there everyday tasks, unaware of the modern technology that had crept into their culture like a thief in the night.
Crying Boy woke suddenly from a vivid dream involving a strange girl. She was pleading for something, and the charred buildings around her seemed to be the ruins of her homeland.
The boy's rigid mind pushed away such distractions. His priority right now was the thing that had awoken him in the first place: the fuel light was on and an annoying buzzer was sounding somewhere in the distance. When Crying Boy checked the on board reactor diagnostic, he saw that the shuttle was losing fuel far too quickly. The control rods must have been hit by one of the soldiers in the hangar.
Crying Boy waited until the shuttle had dropped to 300 meters above the colony surface then calmly released the shuttle's canopy and ejected the cockpit section.
The parachutes opened and the ejected cockpit descended toward the river.
Inside, Crying Boy was being thrown about violently in his seat. He could hear whistling air thermals being thrown around the rapidly descending cockpit. A monitor turned on above him, showing the cockpit's descent toward a large river.
Crying Boy knew he would not survive a water landing at the rate this ejected segment was following. The landing parachutes were torn to pieces when the cockpit ejected, he thought. I'm in a terminal free fall.
Crying Boy smashed his fist down on the auxiliary burners. They might cushion the impact enough to let him survive. The commands that swept through his mind, that were becoming fainter by the minute, told him that his chance of survival was slim, but also instructed him to fight, not to panic or loose hope but to employ the burners and hope for the best. For once, Crying Boy was thankful for the cold, calculating force behind his eyes; it gave the confused child within him a sense of focus.
The cockpit's descent was slowed somewhat by the thrusters, but it was still coming down toward the water dangerously fast.
Crying Boy crossed his arms over his chest and braced for impact.
The cockpit blasted down through huge, arching waves and was swallowed in a bubbling froth.
It was not until the cockpit hit the riverbed beneath the surface that Crying Boy felt the force of the impact. It threw him forward so abruptly and with such force that he tore right through his safety harness.
Crying Boy's jaw impacted against the pilot's console and he involuntarily spewed forth a mouthful of blood and a tooth. This time, his mind and his body could feel the pain of the experience. He was slightly alarmed by the fact that he almost enjoyed the sensation.
The cockpit settled down at the bottom of the river and the disrupted waters slowly calmed to their usual, tranquil state.
At last, I am at peace, Crying Boy thought.
The ejected cockpit waded through the dirt and sand of the river bottom for the rest of the day and on through the night. Just as the sun began to rise the next morning, it was swept up by a slanted rock shelf and emerged on the water's surface. A giant's hand reached out into the river and plucked it from the current like a delicate flower petal. The hand was made of metal, and shimmered with red-gold flecks of sunlight.
Wavering rivulets of water spilt between the metal giant's segmented fingers as it lifted the battered cockpit and dropped it onto the grassy field by the river.
A man hobbled up toward the giant, who was kneeling by the field. The man was strange looking. He had severe arthritis in his back, and his spine had forward so much that he almost seemed to be hunchbacked.
The man's eyes had been destroyed in an accident involving a laser cutter. It had been taking in too much power from the colony's main generator grid. He was blinded and his retinas ended up being damaged beyond any repair. Therefore, they were removed and replaced with a pair of goggle-like screens.
The man's arm had also been removed, this time amputated when he had served in the colonies general infantry. He was once part of the group of rebels who launched terrorist attacks on earth, but he knew he had become too old and weak for such foolishness even then. His right arm was now an eerie, spider-like, metal prosthesis.
The strange old man could hardly contain his excitement when he saw the ejected cockpit.
"At last, a visitor!" He cried; then rushed out into the grassy field at a pace he hadn't attempted in years. He felt younger, his weary bones felt lighter and less brittle, and the colors of the world around him seemed more vibrant than ever before.
This old man was actually a scientist and a mobile suit engineer. His code name was simply 'J,' but he couldn't bear to give up his doctorate title. At the age of two hundred and thirty, he was the oldest of the original mobile suit engineers and his real name was a distant formality. He liked 'J' though; it was simple and easy. He always countered the criticism that it didn't really represent him with a fact that described his entire existence:
Nothing in this life is perfect.
Dr. J had been sent to this remote colony to help with the engineering of a new breed of soldiers. Just as he had helped bring the idea of the Mobile Suits to the Earth and Colonies, he would take part in introducing a second revolution of warfare to mankind. However, these new projects were a failure, and he had decided to find a remote part of the colony (it was mostly farmland), and try to create some semblance of a normal life after two centuries of chaos.
The weary scientist came to regret his decision though, for he was too social of a creature, being human after all, to live as a hermit. He had only his last creation, the mobile suit called 'Gundam' to keep him company. It was poor company, at the least.
But the capsule that was now only a few feet away shattered all of those lonely times. It was Dr. J's first possible contact with another person in five years.
He reached the cockpit and commanded his Gundam to open it with a small remote. The sealed canopy and metal frame peeled back to reveal a young boy.
The boy was unconscious and looked terrible. Dr. J was impressed by the young man's will to survive even with five gunshot wounds, a broken jaw, and a dislocated shoulder.
"Hello, my friend. You are safe now," Dr. J whispered. "I will tend to your wounds."
The sound of another voice triggered something deep within Crying Boy. He snapped up immediately, leapt out of the cockpit, and was bewildered that the river he had been floating in had transformed into a grassy field. No time for confusion, there is your enemy! The voice within him yelled. He saw the old man in front of him and doubted that this person was actually hostile, much less a threat, but he was compelled to draw his gun nonetheless.
Dr. J was somewhat confounded when the boy whipped out a handgun and pointed it at his throat. The ancient scientist did not fear dying or much else at this point, but was surprised by this sudden and unprovoked act of aggression.
The boy's eyes were sharper than a thousand knives, sharper than lasers, sharper than the sun's glare. They scooped out the contents of your head and left you as a drooling idiot. The gun in the boy's hand seemed like a childish threat to Dr. J after he had stared into those eyes.
"My mission is not complete," Crying Boy stated coldly. "You must die."
Dr. J thought the boy's voice sounded too mature for his age. In fact, it seemed too deep and harmonious to be contained in any person's vocal chords. Dr. J knew the voice that the boy was spouting: It was the master command. The original, the first, the command that had brought one being under the control of another since the beginning of time. The voice was laced with death, for it had given the orders that sent countless men to countless dreary ends on countless scarred battlefields.
"Why should you kill me, boy?" Dr. J asked. "I am no threat to you. You must see that." Meanwhile, Dr. J's thoughts were fuming with rage. How could those Alliance bastards do something like this? They butchered my work and used it to alter an innocent child!
Crying Boy saw the logic in the stranger's words and hoped the voices in his head would agree. They did, and Crying Boy was allowed to put away his weapon.
"...Mission Accepted. I will see to it that your lifespan is extended until I no longer have a need for you."
Dr. J relaxed and breathed a quiet sigh of relief. This seemed strange to him though, as he had longed for death many times over the past few years.
"I'm glad you came to your senses, young one. By what name might I call you?" Dr. J tried to be friendly, and found he was quite out of practice with human pleasantries.
The question of a name brought up an interesting debate in the boy's mind. He despised the name Crying Boy; it sounded fragile and weak. But if not that, what then? He was trying to think of some unusual and powerful name that would suit him when he felt a stinging sensation in his clenched fist.
He opened his hand and saw a large burn from where he had touched the red electronic eye in the laboratory. The burn spelled out a company and its logo, "Hero Youth Synthetics-Better Than Human." The boy had learned to read at some early stage in his life, but additional instruction into literacy had not yet been placed in his brain when he escaped the incubation tank. Bringing back the skill was not easy; his early life was a dim shadow.
"H...He...Hee..." he began, trying to sound out the charred letters. "Hee...row," he finished at last. Then, he began the second word. "Y...Yu...Yuuu..."
The scientist's mechanical eyes widened with his surprise and he interrupted the boy quite suddenly and emphatically.
"Did you say Heero Yuy? Are you telling me that you are of some relation to the savior of the colonies?"
"I...Don't...Know," the boy responded hesitantly. Even so, this Heero Yuy seemed like the kind of person he would be related to. He decided to take the name as his own.
"I have a vague recollection of my past," the boy began, "but I shall take the name Heero Yuy from now on."
"Splendid." The scientist replied. "You may call me Dr. J. It is an honor to meet you Heero Yuy."
*****
Dr. J showed Heero the underground storage unit he had created to hide his Gundam. He triggered it by the same remote that he used to control the suit, and the storage site appeared in the middle of the field in an eruption of turf and dust. It was nearly twice the size of the giant hangar that Heero was in prior to his escape from the lab. He was noticeably impressed by the old man's resourcefulness.
"Why did you build a mobile suit, Dr. J?" The scientists wrinkled features curled into the first warm smile he had made in years.
"When I was younger, I had some ridiculous ideas in my head about honor, justice, and other varieties of bullshit. This Gundam was going to help me achieve my goals and free the colonies. But I am too old for any such flights of fancy now," he said, whispering the last part with a bit of regret."
Heero was quite swept up in Dr. J's well-remembered past when a searing pain in his legs and arms reminded him of his wounds.
"How far is your house from here?" Heero asked, beginning to grow weary from his injuries.
"Not far. You can make it."
The old man was right, but Heero felt like dying by the time he reached the doorstep of a humble wooden shack. Heero opened it and fell forward, greeting the friendly surface that was racing up to embrace his face.
*****
Heero's eyes opened slowly once more, and this time there was a face to greet him. Heero was in a surprisingly comfortably bed, he knew at least that it was preferable to an incubation tank. Dr. J had dressed his wounds and put his shoulder back in place. He had also cleaned the blood and mended the tears in Heero's clothing.
"I'm sure you're hungry," Dr. J said. Heero nodded slightly and got out of his bed with some difficulty.
A table was set and ready in the main room. Despite his grumbling stomach Heero's attention was grabbed not by the meal, but by the utensils at the table setting. When Dr. J had turned his back for a moment to examine a bubbling pot of stew, Heero tested the sharpness of a knife left on the table by running its serrated edge under his finger. It will be sufficient, but you must work at it, the voices inside told him. Heero nodded to himself and then plunged the knife into his wrist, carving away to get at the major veins and arteries. You must ignore the pain.
When Dr. J turned his attention back to Heero, the misguided young man had already hit a pair of major arteries. Blood was flying from his wrist in a thick and constant stream.
"What are you doing?" Dr. J yelled in shock. Heero stopped cutting and looked at Dr. J with his intense, cobalt-colored eyes.
"My mission is incomplete. I believe it will stay that way permanently, as I have lost sight of my mission's original purpose and objectives. The voices in my head only chant for my death. It's easy this way, and you will survive. Be thankful for that."
Dr. J acted quickly, rushing into his study and coming back with an object that resembled a staple gun. It had a pouch filled with liquid and a needle at the end for intravenous insertion. Dr. J shoved it in and the bag of liquid began to slowly replace blood lost in Heero's arm by the cut. He then put pressure on the wound and wrapped it in a quick bandage. After a few minutes, Dr. J put on more bandages and injected a second I.V. implant into Heero's arm.
Heero made a slow recovery, refining his reading and writing skills in the meantime. He also spent many hours in bed or on the couch in Dr. J's study, reading the works of William Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott, Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert A. Heinlein, Quarantam Noventa, and even the published letters of OZ leader Trieze Kushrenada.
Heero noticed that, as he had not engaged in any painful or physically strenuous activity since he tried to kill himself, the voices in his head were fading.
During the month that Heero was recovering, Dr. J built him a small training area to test his reaction times, strength, and dexterity.
Heero spent many hours training even before he had fully recovered. Building up his physical abilities resurrected the stringent, militaristic voices that cluttered his mind. He found that the more he trained, the more the voices in his head became clearer, louder, and harder to resist.
Heero's accuracy with a gun and a longbow steadily increased. In a matter of weeks, he was able to bench-press three hundred and forty pounds. His reaction times had increased far beyond the abilities of normal humans. His brain wave patterns were five times as complex as those produced by an uninitiated human cerebrum.
Heero also told Dr. J of his interest in piloting the Gundam that was hidden away in the vast crop fields. Dr. J devised a special chair in which he could experience G-forces and simulate piloting the Gundam in space, Earth's atmosphere, and even underwater.
Of course Dr. J was grateful to at last have some company, but whenever he saw the boy, he also felt guilt and sorrow in his tainted, old heart. He was the one who created the Hero Project's genetic alteration codes in the first place. He was to blame for robbing this boy of his childhood and any hope of a normal life. He knew that he must atone for his sins, and he decided to take up one last cause. He would wipe the blasphemous Hero Projects from the face of this colony and all existence. A pure, innocent boy had been corrupted by his inventions; he would let no more suffer. It was ironic that this boy called himself Heero Yuy, sharing the name of a famous peace ambassador. Dr. J prayed that this boy would not become a martyr to a bitter, old scientist's whims, and die in sacrifice just as the real Heero Yuy had.
*****
Heero felt an immense weight bearing down on his chest. He tried to fight it, but that caused a horrible, burning sensation in his lungs. He pressed even harder and felt a thousand fiery stilettos piercing his ribcage. At last, he gave in, and the weights on the G-force chair lightened. Heero already knew how to pilot the Gundam, but it was taking time to adjust to the atmospheric pressure, especially with his residual injuries.
Heero calmly walked out of the little shack and nearly bumped right into Dr. J. The old scientist had a grave look on his face. He was holding his head low like a wrinkled, old leaf that had drooped, and was barely holding on to its tree branch.
"Heero Yuy, I have a favor to ask of you." He grimaced a bit then continued. "It is a rather large favor. It is a mission of great personal importance to me. Your life will almost certainly be in jeopardy throughout it."
"As you may have already seen," Heero replied with a chuckle, "My life is not what you'd call a valued commodity."
"It is not a commodity!" Dr. J burst out suddenly. "You are a living, breathing, free human being. You can make your own choices." Heero smiled at the old man's kindness, and for a moment, he felt they were so similar, and shared a bond stronger than he had ever thought possible with another person. Alas, it was only a brief moment. A second later, he fell to his knees and screamed. He felt like his head was going to explode.
LIES! HE IS A LIAR!! KILL HIM! KILL HIM NOW!!! The voices in Heero's head were deafening explosions, sending his mind into a void, awash in pain. DRAW YOUR WEAPON!! KILL HIM!! It felt like someone was upending a bucket of rusty nails on his skull. As he groped for the gun in his back jeans pocket, he felt relief. But that is what it wants, Heero thought. Dr. J is right. I can make my own choices. No man controls me. Not even a formless one inside my head.
Heero quickly stopped reaching for the gun. The painful voices became far louder than ever before. They recalled every injury he had lived through in the short time of his awakening, and injected the pain from those injuries into his body. Heero felt the soldier's bullets exploding into his shoulder and legs. He felt his jaw break in the ejected cockpit. He felt his nose breaking from when he fell on his face in the doorway of Dr. J's cottage. He felt the pain of cutting his wrists, and the emotional pain that forced him into that act. And finally, he felt a new kind of pain, the worst of them all: The pain of failure.
Heero did not kill Dr. J that day, nor did he even draw his gun. This was largely because of a fact that was unforeseen by the voices in his head: His gun was not in his back pocket. It had slipped out when he was training in the G-forces chair.
End of Chapter 2
Note: This is one of many scenarios that attempts to explain the somewhat foggy past of our main man, Heero Yuy. I hope you enjoy it. Please Read and Review!!!
Gundam W Fanfiction
-The Awakening-
Chapter 2-Reborn once more
The renegade experiment known as Crying Boy slept soundly as his shuttle drifted across the farmlands of colony Lx-12110502. Beneath him, some farmers were herding oxen, sheep, and cows. Others were digging up silt around fields of grain and rice. A few looked up questioningly at the craft passing low overhead, but most were engrossed in there everyday tasks, unaware of the modern technology that had crept into their culture like a thief in the night.
Crying Boy woke suddenly from a vivid dream involving a strange girl. She was pleading for something, and the charred buildings around her seemed to be the ruins of her homeland.
The boy's rigid mind pushed away such distractions. His priority right now was the thing that had awoken him in the first place: the fuel light was on and an annoying buzzer was sounding somewhere in the distance. When Crying Boy checked the on board reactor diagnostic, he saw that the shuttle was losing fuel far too quickly. The control rods must have been hit by one of the soldiers in the hangar.
Crying Boy waited until the shuttle had dropped to 300 meters above the colony surface then calmly released the shuttle's canopy and ejected the cockpit section.
The parachutes opened and the ejected cockpit descended toward the river.
Inside, Crying Boy was being thrown about violently in his seat. He could hear whistling air thermals being thrown around the rapidly descending cockpit. A monitor turned on above him, showing the cockpit's descent toward a large river.
Crying Boy knew he would not survive a water landing at the rate this ejected segment was following. The landing parachutes were torn to pieces when the cockpit ejected, he thought. I'm in a terminal free fall.
Crying Boy smashed his fist down on the auxiliary burners. They might cushion the impact enough to let him survive. The commands that swept through his mind, that were becoming fainter by the minute, told him that his chance of survival was slim, but also instructed him to fight, not to panic or loose hope but to employ the burners and hope for the best. For once, Crying Boy was thankful for the cold, calculating force behind his eyes; it gave the confused child within him a sense of focus.
The cockpit's descent was slowed somewhat by the thrusters, but it was still coming down toward the water dangerously fast.
Crying Boy crossed his arms over his chest and braced for impact.
The cockpit blasted down through huge, arching waves and was swallowed in a bubbling froth.
It was not until the cockpit hit the riverbed beneath the surface that Crying Boy felt the force of the impact. It threw him forward so abruptly and with such force that he tore right through his safety harness.
Crying Boy's jaw impacted against the pilot's console and he involuntarily spewed forth a mouthful of blood and a tooth. This time, his mind and his body could feel the pain of the experience. He was slightly alarmed by the fact that he almost enjoyed the sensation.
The cockpit settled down at the bottom of the river and the disrupted waters slowly calmed to their usual, tranquil state.
At last, I am at peace, Crying Boy thought.
The ejected cockpit waded through the dirt and sand of the river bottom for the rest of the day and on through the night. Just as the sun began to rise the next morning, it was swept up by a slanted rock shelf and emerged on the water's surface. A giant's hand reached out into the river and plucked it from the current like a delicate flower petal. The hand was made of metal, and shimmered with red-gold flecks of sunlight.
Wavering rivulets of water spilt between the metal giant's segmented fingers as it lifted the battered cockpit and dropped it onto the grassy field by the river.
A man hobbled up toward the giant, who was kneeling by the field. The man was strange looking. He had severe arthritis in his back, and his spine had forward so much that he almost seemed to be hunchbacked.
The man's eyes had been destroyed in an accident involving a laser cutter. It had been taking in too much power from the colony's main generator grid. He was blinded and his retinas ended up being damaged beyond any repair. Therefore, they were removed and replaced with a pair of goggle-like screens.
The man's arm had also been removed, this time amputated when he had served in the colonies general infantry. He was once part of the group of rebels who launched terrorist attacks on earth, but he knew he had become too old and weak for such foolishness even then. His right arm was now an eerie, spider-like, metal prosthesis.
The strange old man could hardly contain his excitement when he saw the ejected cockpit.
"At last, a visitor!" He cried; then rushed out into the grassy field at a pace he hadn't attempted in years. He felt younger, his weary bones felt lighter and less brittle, and the colors of the world around him seemed more vibrant than ever before.
This old man was actually a scientist and a mobile suit engineer. His code name was simply 'J,' but he couldn't bear to give up his doctorate title. At the age of two hundred and thirty, he was the oldest of the original mobile suit engineers and his real name was a distant formality. He liked 'J' though; it was simple and easy. He always countered the criticism that it didn't really represent him with a fact that described his entire existence:
Nothing in this life is perfect.
Dr. J had been sent to this remote colony to help with the engineering of a new breed of soldiers. Just as he had helped bring the idea of the Mobile Suits to the Earth and Colonies, he would take part in introducing a second revolution of warfare to mankind. However, these new projects were a failure, and he had decided to find a remote part of the colony (it was mostly farmland), and try to create some semblance of a normal life after two centuries of chaos.
The weary scientist came to regret his decision though, for he was too social of a creature, being human after all, to live as a hermit. He had only his last creation, the mobile suit called 'Gundam' to keep him company. It was poor company, at the least.
But the capsule that was now only a few feet away shattered all of those lonely times. It was Dr. J's first possible contact with another person in five years.
He reached the cockpit and commanded his Gundam to open it with a small remote. The sealed canopy and metal frame peeled back to reveal a young boy.
The boy was unconscious and looked terrible. Dr. J was impressed by the young man's will to survive even with five gunshot wounds, a broken jaw, and a dislocated shoulder.
"Hello, my friend. You are safe now," Dr. J whispered. "I will tend to your wounds."
The sound of another voice triggered something deep within Crying Boy. He snapped up immediately, leapt out of the cockpit, and was bewildered that the river he had been floating in had transformed into a grassy field. No time for confusion, there is your enemy! The voice within him yelled. He saw the old man in front of him and doubted that this person was actually hostile, much less a threat, but he was compelled to draw his gun nonetheless.
Dr. J was somewhat confounded when the boy whipped out a handgun and pointed it at his throat. The ancient scientist did not fear dying or much else at this point, but was surprised by this sudden and unprovoked act of aggression.
The boy's eyes were sharper than a thousand knives, sharper than lasers, sharper than the sun's glare. They scooped out the contents of your head and left you as a drooling idiot. The gun in the boy's hand seemed like a childish threat to Dr. J after he had stared into those eyes.
"My mission is not complete," Crying Boy stated coldly. "You must die."
Dr. J thought the boy's voice sounded too mature for his age. In fact, it seemed too deep and harmonious to be contained in any person's vocal chords. Dr. J knew the voice that the boy was spouting: It was the master command. The original, the first, the command that had brought one being under the control of another since the beginning of time. The voice was laced with death, for it had given the orders that sent countless men to countless dreary ends on countless scarred battlefields.
"Why should you kill me, boy?" Dr. J asked. "I am no threat to you. You must see that." Meanwhile, Dr. J's thoughts were fuming with rage. How could those Alliance bastards do something like this? They butchered my work and used it to alter an innocent child!
Crying Boy saw the logic in the stranger's words and hoped the voices in his head would agree. They did, and Crying Boy was allowed to put away his weapon.
"...Mission Accepted. I will see to it that your lifespan is extended until I no longer have a need for you."
Dr. J relaxed and breathed a quiet sigh of relief. This seemed strange to him though, as he had longed for death many times over the past few years.
"I'm glad you came to your senses, young one. By what name might I call you?" Dr. J tried to be friendly, and found he was quite out of practice with human pleasantries.
The question of a name brought up an interesting debate in the boy's mind. He despised the name Crying Boy; it sounded fragile and weak. But if not that, what then? He was trying to think of some unusual and powerful name that would suit him when he felt a stinging sensation in his clenched fist.
He opened his hand and saw a large burn from where he had touched the red electronic eye in the laboratory. The burn spelled out a company and its logo, "Hero Youth Synthetics-Better Than Human." The boy had learned to read at some early stage in his life, but additional instruction into literacy had not yet been placed in his brain when he escaped the incubation tank. Bringing back the skill was not easy; his early life was a dim shadow.
"H...He...Hee..." he began, trying to sound out the charred letters. "Hee...row," he finished at last. Then, he began the second word. "Y...Yu...Yuuu..."
The scientist's mechanical eyes widened with his surprise and he interrupted the boy quite suddenly and emphatically.
"Did you say Heero Yuy? Are you telling me that you are of some relation to the savior of the colonies?"
"I...Don't...Know," the boy responded hesitantly. Even so, this Heero Yuy seemed like the kind of person he would be related to. He decided to take the name as his own.
"I have a vague recollection of my past," the boy began, "but I shall take the name Heero Yuy from now on."
"Splendid." The scientist replied. "You may call me Dr. J. It is an honor to meet you Heero Yuy."
*****
Dr. J showed Heero the underground storage unit he had created to hide his Gundam. He triggered it by the same remote that he used to control the suit, and the storage site appeared in the middle of the field in an eruption of turf and dust. It was nearly twice the size of the giant hangar that Heero was in prior to his escape from the lab. He was noticeably impressed by the old man's resourcefulness.
"Why did you build a mobile suit, Dr. J?" The scientists wrinkled features curled into the first warm smile he had made in years.
"When I was younger, I had some ridiculous ideas in my head about honor, justice, and other varieties of bullshit. This Gundam was going to help me achieve my goals and free the colonies. But I am too old for any such flights of fancy now," he said, whispering the last part with a bit of regret."
Heero was quite swept up in Dr. J's well-remembered past when a searing pain in his legs and arms reminded him of his wounds.
"How far is your house from here?" Heero asked, beginning to grow weary from his injuries.
"Not far. You can make it."
The old man was right, but Heero felt like dying by the time he reached the doorstep of a humble wooden shack. Heero opened it and fell forward, greeting the friendly surface that was racing up to embrace his face.
*****
Heero's eyes opened slowly once more, and this time there was a face to greet him. Heero was in a surprisingly comfortably bed, he knew at least that it was preferable to an incubation tank. Dr. J had dressed his wounds and put his shoulder back in place. He had also cleaned the blood and mended the tears in Heero's clothing.
"I'm sure you're hungry," Dr. J said. Heero nodded slightly and got out of his bed with some difficulty.
A table was set and ready in the main room. Despite his grumbling stomach Heero's attention was grabbed not by the meal, but by the utensils at the table setting. When Dr. J had turned his back for a moment to examine a bubbling pot of stew, Heero tested the sharpness of a knife left on the table by running its serrated edge under his finger. It will be sufficient, but you must work at it, the voices inside told him. Heero nodded to himself and then plunged the knife into his wrist, carving away to get at the major veins and arteries. You must ignore the pain.
When Dr. J turned his attention back to Heero, the misguided young man had already hit a pair of major arteries. Blood was flying from his wrist in a thick and constant stream.
"What are you doing?" Dr. J yelled in shock. Heero stopped cutting and looked at Dr. J with his intense, cobalt-colored eyes.
"My mission is incomplete. I believe it will stay that way permanently, as I have lost sight of my mission's original purpose and objectives. The voices in my head only chant for my death. It's easy this way, and you will survive. Be thankful for that."
Dr. J acted quickly, rushing into his study and coming back with an object that resembled a staple gun. It had a pouch filled with liquid and a needle at the end for intravenous insertion. Dr. J shoved it in and the bag of liquid began to slowly replace blood lost in Heero's arm by the cut. He then put pressure on the wound and wrapped it in a quick bandage. After a few minutes, Dr. J put on more bandages and injected a second I.V. implant into Heero's arm.
Heero made a slow recovery, refining his reading and writing skills in the meantime. He also spent many hours in bed or on the couch in Dr. J's study, reading the works of William Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott, Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert A. Heinlein, Quarantam Noventa, and even the published letters of OZ leader Trieze Kushrenada.
Heero noticed that, as he had not engaged in any painful or physically strenuous activity since he tried to kill himself, the voices in his head were fading.
During the month that Heero was recovering, Dr. J built him a small training area to test his reaction times, strength, and dexterity.
Heero spent many hours training even before he had fully recovered. Building up his physical abilities resurrected the stringent, militaristic voices that cluttered his mind. He found that the more he trained, the more the voices in his head became clearer, louder, and harder to resist.
Heero's accuracy with a gun and a longbow steadily increased. In a matter of weeks, he was able to bench-press three hundred and forty pounds. His reaction times had increased far beyond the abilities of normal humans. His brain wave patterns were five times as complex as those produced by an uninitiated human cerebrum.
Heero also told Dr. J of his interest in piloting the Gundam that was hidden away in the vast crop fields. Dr. J devised a special chair in which he could experience G-forces and simulate piloting the Gundam in space, Earth's atmosphere, and even underwater.
Of course Dr. J was grateful to at last have some company, but whenever he saw the boy, he also felt guilt and sorrow in his tainted, old heart. He was the one who created the Hero Project's genetic alteration codes in the first place. He was to blame for robbing this boy of his childhood and any hope of a normal life. He knew that he must atone for his sins, and he decided to take up one last cause. He would wipe the blasphemous Hero Projects from the face of this colony and all existence. A pure, innocent boy had been corrupted by his inventions; he would let no more suffer. It was ironic that this boy called himself Heero Yuy, sharing the name of a famous peace ambassador. Dr. J prayed that this boy would not become a martyr to a bitter, old scientist's whims, and die in sacrifice just as the real Heero Yuy had.
*****
Heero felt an immense weight bearing down on his chest. He tried to fight it, but that caused a horrible, burning sensation in his lungs. He pressed even harder and felt a thousand fiery stilettos piercing his ribcage. At last, he gave in, and the weights on the G-force chair lightened. Heero already knew how to pilot the Gundam, but it was taking time to adjust to the atmospheric pressure, especially with his residual injuries.
Heero calmly walked out of the little shack and nearly bumped right into Dr. J. The old scientist had a grave look on his face. He was holding his head low like a wrinkled, old leaf that had drooped, and was barely holding on to its tree branch.
"Heero Yuy, I have a favor to ask of you." He grimaced a bit then continued. "It is a rather large favor. It is a mission of great personal importance to me. Your life will almost certainly be in jeopardy throughout it."
"As you may have already seen," Heero replied with a chuckle, "My life is not what you'd call a valued commodity."
"It is not a commodity!" Dr. J burst out suddenly. "You are a living, breathing, free human being. You can make your own choices." Heero smiled at the old man's kindness, and for a moment, he felt they were so similar, and shared a bond stronger than he had ever thought possible with another person. Alas, it was only a brief moment. A second later, he fell to his knees and screamed. He felt like his head was going to explode.
LIES! HE IS A LIAR!! KILL HIM! KILL HIM NOW!!! The voices in Heero's head were deafening explosions, sending his mind into a void, awash in pain. DRAW YOUR WEAPON!! KILL HIM!! It felt like someone was upending a bucket of rusty nails on his skull. As he groped for the gun in his back jeans pocket, he felt relief. But that is what it wants, Heero thought. Dr. J is right. I can make my own choices. No man controls me. Not even a formless one inside my head.
Heero quickly stopped reaching for the gun. The painful voices became far louder than ever before. They recalled every injury he had lived through in the short time of his awakening, and injected the pain from those injuries into his body. Heero felt the soldier's bullets exploding into his shoulder and legs. He felt his jaw break in the ejected cockpit. He felt his nose breaking from when he fell on his face in the doorway of Dr. J's cottage. He felt the pain of cutting his wrists, and the emotional pain that forced him into that act. And finally, he felt a new kind of pain, the worst of them all: The pain of failure.
Heero did not kill Dr. J that day, nor did he even draw his gun. This was largely because of a fact that was unforeseen by the voices in his head: His gun was not in his back pocket. It had slipped out when he was training in the G-forces chair.
End of Chapter 2