Gundam Wing: The Highlander
CHAPTER 10 - Beware the Past
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Author: Ravena Kaiou
Email: KakyuuStarLt@aol.com
Genre: Sci-fi/Action
Crossovers: The Highlander/Gundam Wing
Warnings: OOC, language, hints of 4xUne
Disclaimer: This series is meant to be a novelization of the Highlander Movie using Gundam Wing characters. Some things have been changed a bit, others have not. Highlander belongs to Rysher Entertainment, Gundam Wing belongs to Sunrise Animation. Don't sue me! *sobs*
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Quatre sat dumbly in his sunken living room, surrounded by the past that he so desparately had tried to escape. Everywhere he looked, objects from a distant place and time intensified his isolation, triggering a cacophany of voices and sounds that echoed in his brain, gathering in volume with each repetition.
"My beautiful man, my husband..." Une's dying voice called over a cheering crowd...a shot of cannon-fire was punctuated by Relena's cries of "Devil! Devil!"...police sirens howled as an officer spoke of how a poor victim's head had been chopped off two nights ago..."600 B.C. It's not supposed to exist," Brenda's voice said quietly, nearly drowned out by the horns in the background...now a baby cried, and he could hear himself saying to Dorothy, "Tell them I'm immortal"...pipes and drums played a lively Highland tune as a metallic voice gurgled "There can be only one!"...
It finally became too much for Quatre. In a torrent of anger and sorrow, he picked up a vase, whirled around in fury,and threw it against the wall behind him. The frail porcelain shattered into a million pieces.
He remembered other times that the same frustration had been vented, though all were lost among the sea of previous centuries he had lived through.
Today it was the vase. In the 1880's, it had been a marble statue. A wine bottle had been destroyed when it came in contact with a French castle wall in the 1700s, and finally, the beer glass he had hurled at his attackers in the Scottish tavern.
The explosion of pottery fragments seemed to reverberate for longer than Quatre thought could be possible in the stillness of the room.
The blonde man struggled to control his feelings as he watched the final shards hit the floor. Sinking back down into the couch, he stared out of the window, trying to ignore his shaking hands.
Totally oblivious to the dramatic scene occurring on Hudson Street, Lieutenant Heero Yuy and Detective Duo Maxwell stood at Tony's burger stand on 59th and Lexington, munching aimlessly on their lunch. Crowds of locals and tourists surged around them, their chatter lost in the discordant blare of car horns and curses that emanated from a traffic jam.
The owner of this stand, Tony, was a large man, who wore an apron and a baseball cap nearly every day. This day was no exception. As he ate another plastic fork-ful of his coleslaw, he snickered over the bold headline of the newspaper.
"Head Hunter 3 -- Cops Zero," the author had aptly titled the feature.
"Hey, Yuy. Have you read what it says here?" Tony asked his friend slyly.
Heero rolled his eyes. He had neither the time nor the patience for this today. "Come on, Tony," he sighed. "You know cops can't read."
Tony ignored his response and checked the story again. "Hey, what does 'incompetent' mean?" he cackled.
Yuy swallowed a few comments with a bite of his burger as he eyed Maxwell.
"The damn mayor's calling my apartment at two in the morning," Heero grumbled. Duo nodded sympathetically as he finished his hamburger, crumpled up the wrapper, and tossed it into a nearby trash can.
The two men got into their green Dodge, Duo, at the wheel, firing up the engine.
"Hey, Heero! What does 'baffled' mean?" Tony asked again without looking up from the paper.
The Dodge peeled off into traffic.
"So you do see him every once in a while?" Heero asked, strolling about the antique shop and occasionally pausing to look some relics over.
Heero and Duo's ride had taken them to Quatre's antique shop, and, much to Dorothy's dismay, the secretary's desk. The middle-aged blonde woman eyed the lieutenant nervously.
"Rarely," she answered after a moment.
Heero nodded. "How do you reach him?"
"I don't."
Yuy's interest peaked as he sat down across from Dorothy. "He kind of...keeps you in the dark, right?" he asked, then answered his own question after a moment. "All right, Miss--or, is it Mrs...?"
"Miss. Dorothy Catalonia," the woman said, suspicion edging on her every word. "Why?"
Heero shrugged. "Just curious. I'm a bachelor myself, you know." He rose and made his way to the door. "If you see Winner, have him call me, okay?"
Dorothy nodded. "Okay, Sergeant."
"Lieutenant," Heero said with a small smile as he left.
Meanwhile, in the Hall of Records, Hilde found herself faced with the task of searching through a file labeled "Certificates of Birth, 1941-48."
She flipped through a few papers absently, then found the photostat she had been looking for.
"Quatre Raberba-Winner," she breathed as her eyes scanned the yellowing document. She learned that he had been born at 11:17 in the morning on October 22nd, 1945 at Mercy Hospital in Syracuse. His mother was Quatrine Raberba-Winner, and her attending physician had been Dr. J.
Hilde's eyes sparkled triumphantly as she replaced the file and headed out the door.
The man simply known as Dr. J, now in his early eighties, thumbed through various files in his cluttered study. Hilde sat nearby on a sofa, shifting uncomfortably as his gaze turned to her long, gorgeous legs once again.
She breathed a sigh of relief as he turned his attention back to the files. "Here we go," he said, glancing at a piece of paper. "Quatrine Raberba-Winner. I was still practicing in Syracuse at the time."
A pause and a chuckle.
"We didn't get many of these."
Hilde's curiosity got the better of her. "Many of what?"
"Unwed mothers," Dr. J said, taking a moment to ogle the woman's legs again. "Nowadays, that's no big deal. But back then in Syracuse, it was a stoning offense."
He chuckled again and adjusted his glasses.
"So? What happened?" Hilde prompted the old man.
"She had the baby. Then she died."
"Quatre was illegitimate, then?"
The doctor nodded. "Sure, he was illegitimate. For about a minute and a half." Sensing Hilde's confusion, he continued his explanation. "He died right after she did."
"He died?" Hilde asked, stunned.
A bit later, Hilde got out of a yellow cab at 42nd and 5th, dressed for the chilly weather in a coat, fur hat, gloves, and scarf. She moved briskly through the lunchtime crowds and walked up the steps leading to the Public Library.
Inside, Trowa Barton sat at his computer console. Here he was the chief archivist of New York State.
He eyed his old friend with curiosity as she perched on a stool at his elbow, coat, hat and carf draped over her arm.
"I did what you asked, Hilde," he said. "And do I have something weird for you."
Hilde raised an eyebrow.
"The computer will display certain documents on microfilm," he explained, indicating the second screen that sat before them. "They'll pop up there."
"Trowa, what's weird?" Hilde asked impatiently.
Trowa entered a bit of data, then leaned back in his chair. "This guy Winner's signature. He's the legal owner of the property on Hudson Street."
Hilde nodded. "I know that."
The man suddenly became a bit touchy. "He could have been renting," he huffed. "Or leasing. You don't know."
Hilde sighed. Sometimes talking to Trowa was a real pain in the ass.
A document appeared on the second screen. "Okay, here we go," Trowa continued calmly. "This is the original deed to the Hudson Street property. Dated 1796. Check out the signature."
Onscreen, a dramatic scrawl read 'Adrian Montague.'
"Who's Adrian Montague?" Hilde asked.
"The first owner of Hudson Street." Trowa paused and checked the computer printout. "An English immigrant."
Freezing with the chill that pervaded the air both inside and out, Hilde put her coat back on. "Can we cut to the chase, Trowa?" she asked boredly.
Trowa sniffed. "I'm taking you through a process here, Hilde," he said in a hurt tone. "I spent hours on this, okay?"
Hilde shivered in the cold.
"Adrian Montague left his property to Hamilton Kopp," Trowa said, cracking his knuckles. "Even in the old days, if somebody left you something, you had to sign a receipt."
The second screen now showed a recepit signed 'Hamilton Kopp.'
"This shows that Kopp actually received Montague's inheritance," he explained, a small smirk coming over his face. "Look at Kopp's signature. Familiar, no?"
Hilde nodded. "It looks a little like the first guy's...Montague."
"Brilliant," Trowa chirped, then returned to the console. "The next thing I did was see if I could find a Hamilton Kopp who died at birth some time before the receipt was signed by Montague."
"Why?" Hilde interrupted.
"Logical minds search for connections," Trowa said, tapping his forehead. "And I've got a logical mind. The Winner kid died at birth, right?"
A death certificate for Hamilton Kopp flashed across the screen.
"Here you go. Hamilton Kopp. Born January 16th, 1819. Died at birth...twenty years before he allegedly signed the receipt inheriting Hudson Street from Montague."
A chill went down Hilde's spine, but it wasn't from the cold. "It's a coincidence," she muttered. It's got to be a different Kopp."
Trowa grinned. "Think so? Watch this."
He typed in a few more data fragments, then looked at the second screen again, which now showed a receipt signed 'Alfred Burgess.'
"Kopp died and left his worldly goods to one Alfred Burgess. In turn, Burgess left his possessions to Wallingford Benoit."
A new receipt read 'Wallington Benoit.'
"And Benoit left his stuff to your guy. Quatre Raberba-Winner," Trowa finished, swiveling in his chair as a receipt signed 'Quatre Raberba-Winner' came into view.
"In all five instances, Montague through Winner, I found a death certificate for a kid with the same name, who died at birth...years before he pretended to sign for his inheritance." Trowa paused dramatically, then looked at Hilde. "Still think it's a coincidence?"
Hilde replaced her gloves and put her fur hat back on. Never in her life had she been so cold.
"Jesus, Trowa, isn't there any heat in here?" she complained, sure that her teeth were chattering.
Trowa shook his head. "Nope. Heat's bad for the circuits." He tapped a few more keys. "And now, just in case there's any doubt..."
Hilde examined the second screen as five magnified signatures came into view; Adrian Montague, Hamilton Kopp, Alfred Burgess, Wallingford Benoit, and Quatre Raberba-Winner.
The man ran a second program, overlaying individual letters from the combined signatures -- T's on T's, N's on N's, and so forth down the line.
Hilde's eyes widened.
They were identical.
Trowa spun around in his chair and rested his feet on the desk. "So what you've got here, Hilde, is a guy who's been creeping around since at least 1700. Pretending to croak every once in a while, leaving all his possessions to kids who've been corpses for years...and then assuming their identities."
Hilde shook her head slowly. "It's not possible," she whispered.
CHAPTER 10 - Beware the Past
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Author: Ravena Kaiou
Email: KakyuuStarLt@aol.com
Genre: Sci-fi/Action
Crossovers: The Highlander/Gundam Wing
Warnings: OOC, language, hints of 4xUne
Disclaimer: This series is meant to be a novelization of the Highlander Movie using Gundam Wing characters. Some things have been changed a bit, others have not. Highlander belongs to Rysher Entertainment, Gundam Wing belongs to Sunrise Animation. Don't sue me! *sobs*
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Quatre sat dumbly in his sunken living room, surrounded by the past that he so desparately had tried to escape. Everywhere he looked, objects from a distant place and time intensified his isolation, triggering a cacophany of voices and sounds that echoed in his brain, gathering in volume with each repetition.
"My beautiful man, my husband..." Une's dying voice called over a cheering crowd...a shot of cannon-fire was punctuated by Relena's cries of "Devil! Devil!"...police sirens howled as an officer spoke of how a poor victim's head had been chopped off two nights ago..."600 B.C. It's not supposed to exist," Brenda's voice said quietly, nearly drowned out by the horns in the background...now a baby cried, and he could hear himself saying to Dorothy, "Tell them I'm immortal"...pipes and drums played a lively Highland tune as a metallic voice gurgled "There can be only one!"...
It finally became too much for Quatre. In a torrent of anger and sorrow, he picked up a vase, whirled around in fury,and threw it against the wall behind him. The frail porcelain shattered into a million pieces.
He remembered other times that the same frustration had been vented, though all were lost among the sea of previous centuries he had lived through.
Today it was the vase. In the 1880's, it had been a marble statue. A wine bottle had been destroyed when it came in contact with a French castle wall in the 1700s, and finally, the beer glass he had hurled at his attackers in the Scottish tavern.
The explosion of pottery fragments seemed to reverberate for longer than Quatre thought could be possible in the stillness of the room.
The blonde man struggled to control his feelings as he watched the final shards hit the floor. Sinking back down into the couch, he stared out of the window, trying to ignore his shaking hands.
Totally oblivious to the dramatic scene occurring on Hudson Street, Lieutenant Heero Yuy and Detective Duo Maxwell stood at Tony's burger stand on 59th and Lexington, munching aimlessly on their lunch. Crowds of locals and tourists surged around them, their chatter lost in the discordant blare of car horns and curses that emanated from a traffic jam.
The owner of this stand, Tony, was a large man, who wore an apron and a baseball cap nearly every day. This day was no exception. As he ate another plastic fork-ful of his coleslaw, he snickered over the bold headline of the newspaper.
"Head Hunter 3 -- Cops Zero," the author had aptly titled the feature.
"Hey, Yuy. Have you read what it says here?" Tony asked his friend slyly.
Heero rolled his eyes. He had neither the time nor the patience for this today. "Come on, Tony," he sighed. "You know cops can't read."
Tony ignored his response and checked the story again. "Hey, what does 'incompetent' mean?" he cackled.
Yuy swallowed a few comments with a bite of his burger as he eyed Maxwell.
"The damn mayor's calling my apartment at two in the morning," Heero grumbled. Duo nodded sympathetically as he finished his hamburger, crumpled up the wrapper, and tossed it into a nearby trash can.
The two men got into their green Dodge, Duo, at the wheel, firing up the engine.
"Hey, Heero! What does 'baffled' mean?" Tony asked again without looking up from the paper.
The Dodge peeled off into traffic.
"So you do see him every once in a while?" Heero asked, strolling about the antique shop and occasionally pausing to look some relics over.
Heero and Duo's ride had taken them to Quatre's antique shop, and, much to Dorothy's dismay, the secretary's desk. The middle-aged blonde woman eyed the lieutenant nervously.
"Rarely," she answered after a moment.
Heero nodded. "How do you reach him?"
"I don't."
Yuy's interest peaked as he sat down across from Dorothy. "He kind of...keeps you in the dark, right?" he asked, then answered his own question after a moment. "All right, Miss--or, is it Mrs...?"
"Miss. Dorothy Catalonia," the woman said, suspicion edging on her every word. "Why?"
Heero shrugged. "Just curious. I'm a bachelor myself, you know." He rose and made his way to the door. "If you see Winner, have him call me, okay?"
Dorothy nodded. "Okay, Sergeant."
"Lieutenant," Heero said with a small smile as he left.
Meanwhile, in the Hall of Records, Hilde found herself faced with the task of searching through a file labeled "Certificates of Birth, 1941-48."
She flipped through a few papers absently, then found the photostat she had been looking for.
"Quatre Raberba-Winner," she breathed as her eyes scanned the yellowing document. She learned that he had been born at 11:17 in the morning on October 22nd, 1945 at Mercy Hospital in Syracuse. His mother was Quatrine Raberba-Winner, and her attending physician had been Dr. J.
Hilde's eyes sparkled triumphantly as she replaced the file and headed out the door.
The man simply known as Dr. J, now in his early eighties, thumbed through various files in his cluttered study. Hilde sat nearby on a sofa, shifting uncomfortably as his gaze turned to her long, gorgeous legs once again.
She breathed a sigh of relief as he turned his attention back to the files. "Here we go," he said, glancing at a piece of paper. "Quatrine Raberba-Winner. I was still practicing in Syracuse at the time."
A pause and a chuckle.
"We didn't get many of these."
Hilde's curiosity got the better of her. "Many of what?"
"Unwed mothers," Dr. J said, taking a moment to ogle the woman's legs again. "Nowadays, that's no big deal. But back then in Syracuse, it was a stoning offense."
He chuckled again and adjusted his glasses.
"So? What happened?" Hilde prompted the old man.
"She had the baby. Then she died."
"Quatre was illegitimate, then?"
The doctor nodded. "Sure, he was illegitimate. For about a minute and a half." Sensing Hilde's confusion, he continued his explanation. "He died right after she did."
"He died?" Hilde asked, stunned.
A bit later, Hilde got out of a yellow cab at 42nd and 5th, dressed for the chilly weather in a coat, fur hat, gloves, and scarf. She moved briskly through the lunchtime crowds and walked up the steps leading to the Public Library.
Inside, Trowa Barton sat at his computer console. Here he was the chief archivist of New York State.
He eyed his old friend with curiosity as she perched on a stool at his elbow, coat, hat and carf draped over her arm.
"I did what you asked, Hilde," he said. "And do I have something weird for you."
Hilde raised an eyebrow.
"The computer will display certain documents on microfilm," he explained, indicating the second screen that sat before them. "They'll pop up there."
"Trowa, what's weird?" Hilde asked impatiently.
Trowa entered a bit of data, then leaned back in his chair. "This guy Winner's signature. He's the legal owner of the property on Hudson Street."
Hilde nodded. "I know that."
The man suddenly became a bit touchy. "He could have been renting," he huffed. "Or leasing. You don't know."
Hilde sighed. Sometimes talking to Trowa was a real pain in the ass.
A document appeared on the second screen. "Okay, here we go," Trowa continued calmly. "This is the original deed to the Hudson Street property. Dated 1796. Check out the signature."
Onscreen, a dramatic scrawl read 'Adrian Montague.'
"Who's Adrian Montague?" Hilde asked.
"The first owner of Hudson Street." Trowa paused and checked the computer printout. "An English immigrant."
Freezing with the chill that pervaded the air both inside and out, Hilde put her coat back on. "Can we cut to the chase, Trowa?" she asked boredly.
Trowa sniffed. "I'm taking you through a process here, Hilde," he said in a hurt tone. "I spent hours on this, okay?"
Hilde shivered in the cold.
"Adrian Montague left his property to Hamilton Kopp," Trowa said, cracking his knuckles. "Even in the old days, if somebody left you something, you had to sign a receipt."
The second screen now showed a recepit signed 'Hamilton Kopp.'
"This shows that Kopp actually received Montague's inheritance," he explained, a small smirk coming over his face. "Look at Kopp's signature. Familiar, no?"
Hilde nodded. "It looks a little like the first guy's...Montague."
"Brilliant," Trowa chirped, then returned to the console. "The next thing I did was see if I could find a Hamilton Kopp who died at birth some time before the receipt was signed by Montague."
"Why?" Hilde interrupted.
"Logical minds search for connections," Trowa said, tapping his forehead. "And I've got a logical mind. The Winner kid died at birth, right?"
A death certificate for Hamilton Kopp flashed across the screen.
"Here you go. Hamilton Kopp. Born January 16th, 1819. Died at birth...twenty years before he allegedly signed the receipt inheriting Hudson Street from Montague."
A chill went down Hilde's spine, but it wasn't from the cold. "It's a coincidence," she muttered. It's got to be a different Kopp."
Trowa grinned. "Think so? Watch this."
He typed in a few more data fragments, then looked at the second screen again, which now showed a receipt signed 'Alfred Burgess.'
"Kopp died and left his worldly goods to one Alfred Burgess. In turn, Burgess left his possessions to Wallingford Benoit."
A new receipt read 'Wallington Benoit.'
"And Benoit left his stuff to your guy. Quatre Raberba-Winner," Trowa finished, swiveling in his chair as a receipt signed 'Quatre Raberba-Winner' came into view.
"In all five instances, Montague through Winner, I found a death certificate for a kid with the same name, who died at birth...years before he pretended to sign for his inheritance." Trowa paused dramatically, then looked at Hilde. "Still think it's a coincidence?"
Hilde replaced her gloves and put her fur hat back on. Never in her life had she been so cold.
"Jesus, Trowa, isn't there any heat in here?" she complained, sure that her teeth were chattering.
Trowa shook his head. "Nope. Heat's bad for the circuits." He tapped a few more keys. "And now, just in case there's any doubt..."
Hilde examined the second screen as five magnified signatures came into view; Adrian Montague, Hamilton Kopp, Alfred Burgess, Wallingford Benoit, and Quatre Raberba-Winner.
The man ran a second program, overlaying individual letters from the combined signatures -- T's on T's, N's on N's, and so forth down the line.
Hilde's eyes widened.
They were identical.
Trowa spun around in his chair and rested his feet on the desk. "So what you've got here, Hilde, is a guy who's been creeping around since at least 1700. Pretending to croak every once in a while, leaving all his possessions to kids who've been corpses for years...and then assuming their identities."
Hilde shook her head slowly. "It's not possible," she whispered.