I don't own any of the GW characters (such a shame too) and I don't own 3x3 Eyes and all that other stuff that goes into disclaimers.
Yeah, um, This is a GW crossover with 3x3 Eyes. Um, sorry, there's prolly not going to be any Pai or Yakumo popping up anywhere (Sorry fans ^_^) but I am using their concepts and so on and so forth. There is YAOI in here so if you don't like it then don't read, ne? Um, pairing's are 1xOC, 2x5, 3x4. It's KINDA an AU cuz there's magic and stuff but... not really.
A very special thanks to all the people who have read this story and a VERY special thanks to all those who have reviewed! Thanks a lot for your support. Special thanks goes to Killy and Katie. You two have reviewed the most ^_^
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Chapter 6
Heero and Li Mei were the
last to arrive at the hangar of the safe house, Wing slowly walking into
the large metal shed and backing into its corner. Heero waited for a few
moments before he shut off the engine, turning his camera around to view
the other four gundams. They were already powered down, their pilots waiting
by the feet of their gundams watching Wing as it settled down. A low whirring
sound marked its powering down and they watched warily as the cockpit door
opened with a burst of steam, the soft hiss the only sound. A long, pale
leg came out first, followed by a skirt and then the rest of Li Mei, she
looked towards them, a look of uncertainty on her face as she clasped her
hands in front of her, her long slim fingers clenching and unclenching
around each other. Heero quickly appeared next to her and gave them all
measuring looks. They stood like that, Wufei, Quatre, Trowa and Duo by
the feet of their gundams staring upwards at Li Mei and Heero, their eyes
filled with mixed emotions.
"I guess you'd all like an
explanation." Li Mei said softly, her eyes moving downwards as she squeezed
her hands together.
"Damn right!" Duo replied.
Li Mei seemed to wince slightly but she tilted her chin up and nodded.
"Hn. Let's go inside." They
watched as Heero picked Li Mei up, bridal style, and jumped off his gundam.
He landed lightly, his knees bending to take the brunt of the fall. Without
a backwards glance, he continued out of the hangar, Li Mei still held tightly
in his arms. They got a brief look of her eyes as she glanced over Heero's
shoulder. There was a look of regret on her face before Heero turned to
walk towards the house.
"I think we should follow
them." Quatre had already started to follow Heero and Li Mei out of the
hangar as he spoke. Trowa followed behind him silently. Duo started to
follow too, but when Wufei hesitated, he turned back.
"What's up Fei-chan?"
"There's something wrong here."
Wufei said, annoyance lacing his voice as he stared at the hangar doors.
"What?"
"I don't know. There's just
something very strange..." Duo rolled his eyes and grabbed Wufei's arm.
"Of course there's something
strange going on. Heero's girl friend has three eyes." He dragged a reluctant
Wufei back to the safe house.
"Where do you want me to start?"
She asked. She sat on the end of the couch, her hands folded neatly in
her lap, her right leg crossed over her right. Heero sat right next to
her, practically glued to her side. His arm was draped over the back of
the couch and around her. The other pilots were sitting opposite them.
Wufei was sitting on a single chair while Trowa, Quatre and Duo sat on
the other couch.
"What's going on? Who's Shing?
And why does he want you?" Wufei asked tightly, his eyes watching her with
mistrust.
"Ah. I'll have to start of
by telling you about my... my people. Or what's left of them." She said.
It was only then, did they realise how soft her voice actually was. It
had dropped down a little at the mention of 'her people' and they had to
strain to hear it. She visibly took a deep breath.
"I am one of the last of a
dying race. We are known as the Sanjiyan Unkara, or the Triclops." She
paused. Duo, ever curious, opened his mouth to ask a question but she put
up a hand and gently shook her head. "Please Duo, Mr. Maxwell, let me finish.
If you have any questions after that, you may ask them."
"All right." Duo replied a
little reluctantly. Li Mei gave him an apologetic smile.
"I'm sorry, I just have to
finish telling you about my race before I lose my nerve. We are not meant
to reveal ourselves to humans."
"I can imagine." Wufei said
dryly. Heero frowned as Li Mei sighed and continued.
"We are a race of beautiful
and long living creatures. We are very closely related to the spirits of
your world in the way we can move between planes of existence and wield
magic in our own rights. We are quite capable of communicating with spirits."
She looked up, her face calm, neutral, and looked at them. There were varying
degrees of disbelief and scepticism, but they didn't interrupt her.
"Despite our powers, we have
slowly become a degenerate race. Most our Elders have become decadent,
callous and lazy while the young have become extremely emotional and will
often develop split personalities. What I mean by split personalities is
that we have dual natures. Some may be extremely kind but once their Sanjiyan
awakens, they become blood thirsty monsters. Or it may be vice versa. Some
of my people believed that this mental death would bring about the death
of our race, the ultimate end of our people." She looked down at her hands
again, her face filled with different emotions.
"We are ruled by a monarchy,
a male or female, it doesn't matter. A single line has ruled the Sanjiyan
for over three thousand years. The last Kaiyanwang, the title we give to
our rulers, was a female Sanjiyan by the name of Yin Feng. She and her
consort, Zhijian, were great leaders who saw how our race was dying." She
paused and looked up with sad eyes.
"You must understand, our
race, small as it was to begin with, only a thousand or so four hundred
years ago, and Kaiyanwang would do anything to save our people. In a final
bid, she suggested that we interbreed with humans, therefore shortening
our life spans but also continuing our race. It was not taken well by many
Sanjiyans." She sighed deeply and spread her hands.
"There was a great revolt
among the Nobles who were disgusted at the thought of actually condescending
to consort, let alone breed, with humans. It split our race in half. Many
of the young ones and a few older and more experienced ones followed Kaiyanwang
while almost the entire Noble class defied Kaiyanwang and decided to establish
their own kingdom of sorts. They moved to Europe. We, the ones in Tibet,
never heard of them again. Until the massacre. Because we had begun to
interbreed, our powers and our attributes that made us different from other
races, began to weaken, as our bloodlines mixed with yours." She took a
deep steadying breath.
"We lived for hundreds of
years without hearing from our brethren in Europe and we began to spread
out across the Asian region, many of us moving around China and Japan.
For years we lived among humans, learning about your culture, about your
tendencies and beliefs. It may have taken us a few years, but we quickly
adopted your ways and began our lives as 'humans'." She smiled slightly.
"We had no problems in finding
mates and quickly began to interbreed. Don't get me wrong, those who did
find mates loved and cherished them, protected them and kept them happy.
We did not use them as objects necessary for life. Sanjiyan have a very
low birth rate to compensate for our incredibly long life spans so there
were no children born from those unions for many, many years."
"Because we do not age at
the rate humans do, our continued youthful looks confused many people.
We grow very slowly. We will take many years to even grow from infants
into toddlers, a great disadvantage. Despite the love and caring between
the Sanjiyan and human couples, there were serious questions to be asked.
Not only because of our ageing, but also because of little things. Our
ability to communicate with spirits gave us insight into many things that
lead to our slight ability to predict the future and our intense dislike
for places of worship also gave much to question. With no other choice,
we told the humans that had become part of our families about who and what
we really are. Surprisingly, they were very understanding and quite supportive.
Many of them insisted that we write down our history in order to help the,
if any, children that were born from the unions. And so we did. We wrote
a book about ourselves and the many things we can do and have done. That
book has been lost in the past century though." She sighed. "A great loss."
"But soon after we told our
humans about our people, the first children were born and there was great
rejoicing within our families. When the children rapidly grew like normal
human babies, we were very happy, convinced that they would age at normal
rates and live as long as humans." She smiled in remembrance but then her
smile slipped and she shook her head. "But it wasn't to be. When they reached
puberty, around twelve to fourteen, they stopped growing, slowing down
until they didn't seem to age at all. Because we had told them from birth
what we were and had told them about our history, it didn't seem to matter
to them but it did cause severe problems. Adults can lie about their age,
they can say that they just age well. Children and preteens however, cannot.
There would be serious questions raised about their health and that would
cause unwanted attention that would most likely be very bad for our people.
We were forced to become a nomadic race, moving from place to place when
it became apparent that people were noticing how we never changed."
"But the greatest sorrow that
we met was when the human mates began to grow old and die. We do not care
about physical beauty as we are a race that are surrounded by beauty, but
when the spouses began to die, we began to despair. The younger Sanjiyan
didn't know what to do and so Kaiyanwang and the Elders told them of a
spell. This spell made the human, or whoever it was cast on, immortal as
long as the Sanjiyan who cast it lived. But immortality comes at a great
price. In exchange for this immortality, the spell demands the soul of
the person the spell is being cast on."
"The soul?!" Duo burst out.
"You eat people's souls?"
Wufei grated out. She shook her head vehemently.
"No! We do it with the permission
of those we cast the spell on. We would never do it without the permission..."
She paused and then looked at Heero. Her face fell and she bit her lip.
"I, that is, we do not do the spell unless both parties care for one another
and are willing to give up their lives to save the other. It doesn't work
without consent. They are then marked with the Sign of Wu." Heero squeezed
her shoulder and she gave him a small smile.
"Many were wary and reluctant
to use the spell on their mates and some never did. The humans were quite
prepared to become immortal if it allowed them to stay with their families
but some were not and the Sanjiyans and their children sadly watched them
die."
"Despite this, we lived in
peace for several centuries. But peace, as you all well know, does not
come without a price. The new generation of Sanjiyan became less powerful
and therefore less inclined to use the power that was their heritage. As
a result, they were not strong enough for the battle that was to come."
She looked up, her large eyes filled with sorrow and anger. "We originally
come from another dimension that runs parallel to yours, a land that we
all called home. In this land, a great war was fought. Thousands died,
both Sanjiyan and humans alike. The Nobles and their followers, both Sanjiyan
and human, got it into their minds that with their superior powers, they
could take over the world and rule it, changing it as they saw fit." She
shook her head.
"This lead to a new discovery
about Wus to happen. As well as becoming immortal age wise, we found that
a Wu can also survive death through injury. Their bodies would not die
and they took upon themselves a completely new role. They became protectors
of their Sanjiyans." She shook her head. "But it didn't stop the deaths.
The Sanjiyan knew what was the source of their invincibility and took full
advantage of that, many young Sanjiyans far too weak to put up a decent
fight. They were slaughtered like pigs." Her hands clenched into fists
and she bared her teeth in anger, her dark eyes flashing with fire. "Shing
and Ballard lead the attacks and killed many with their own hands, my parents
included. And enjoyed it. He tried to marry me in an attempt to become
my consort and take over the title of Kaiyanwang."
"Your mother was Kaiyanwang?"
Quatre asked in surprise.
"Yes. I was the next in line
to the throne of the Sanjiyan. He tried to convince me that he was not
insane, he was merely looking for a way to turn this world in a place that
would show the Sanjiyan the respect and fear they deserve."
"Why would he think that you
would marry him?" Duo asked. She looked away and sighed deeply.
"There was a time, long ago,
when we were expected to marry."
"You were engaged to him?!"
She winced from Quatre's outburst.
"Yes, my parents decided it
would be a good match. He wasn't... always a blood thirsty murderer. He
was an Elder, one of the few that joined Kaiyanwang. He's several centuries
older than me. But a century or so before the great war, he went insane.
Because many Sanjiyan's desired to become human, he started to experiment
with spells and certain artefacts that could possibly grant their wishes.
He soon found one that had the capabilities to do so. It was an artefact
called the Ningen no Zou, or the Statue of Humanity. It had been used before
by demons and other supernatural beings to become humans. Shing thought
that it might help us. He did a lot of research, travelling all over the
world for many years. When he returned, he brought with him the statue
and the instructions on how to perform the ceremony. It required three
Sanjiyan. Two would have their powers stripped from them and then it would
be passed onto the third. Shing volunteered to be the third as he was the
only one who knew the spell. Two other elders decided to try to become
humans as they felt that they had lived and done all they could and they
had nothing to lose." She looked away.
"The process did work and
the Elders became humans, but the overload of power to Shing caused an
accident and he... he went insane. He murdered the two Elders and fled
with Ballard to Europe to join the other Sanjiyan's as he said that he
had seen how weak humans were and how they were meant for nothing other
than slavery. That was the last we had seen of him until the war began."
She paused.
"The rest is history. Neither
side had enough leverage as though they had power, we had sheer numbers.
The war ended with no winner as there were too many casualties." She spread
her hands and looked up, her eyes telling them she was done. There was
complete silence. They stared at her, not quite sure what to make of what
she had said. Quatre coughed into the awkward silence and Li Mei sighed,
her eyes falling to her lap.
"Let me get this straight."
Duo looked at her as he scratched his head with a small frown. "You're
a Sanjiyan Un..., uh, Triclops. You're the heir to the throne of the Sanjiyan,
you're really old," Li Mei cringed, "and this psychopath called Shing is
trying to get you to marry him."
"Is a round about way, yes."
"So how old are you, really?
You don't look older than fourteen."
"I'm two hundred and fifty-seven
years old." Duo whistled.
"Man... you're old." Quatre
choked and looked at Duo.
"Duo!"
"It's okay." Li Mei replied
with a small smile.
"Just before we left that
base, you had three eyes. How come you only have two now?"
"Ah. A Sanjiyan can choose
to open or close their third eye. I am a younger Sanjiyan," She laughed
a little at Duo's sceptical look at the word young, "Yes, I am young. My
mother was... was over one thousand years old before she was killed, my
father older still by two hundred or so years."
"You acted different when
you had three eyes. Do you have a split personality?" Quatre asked.
"Ah. As I said before, the
younger Sanjiyan's did have split personalities. In my case, and the case
of many others, we share our bodies with another being. I don't know why,
but many Sanjiyan's are born with two... what's the word, minds I guess.
No, souls. My other personality's name is Shirin. She's very... um, interesting."
"Why would you have two souls?"
She shrugged.
"I guess, from what Shirin's
told me, that my ancestors believed in reincarnation and that meant being
reborn in the body of another Sanjiyan. Shirin's very old, far older than
my mother. Or so she says."
"So what's her personality
like."
"Ah. She's a very, um, forceful,"
Heero snorted and Li Mei rolled her eyes slightly, "and stubborn. She's...
interesting." She finished off.
"Can we talk to, uh, her?"
Li Mei shook her head.
"Trust me, I don't think you
want to. She doesn't like humans."
"Oh."
"Hey... you said that Sanjiyans
made their mates their Wu's... Does that mean that Shing and Ballard were...
you know..." Duo paused and raised his eyebrows. Li Mei looked at him blankly.
Duo coughed.
"You know..." Duo tapped his
index fingers together.
"Ah..." Li Mei tilted her
head. Heero smirked slightly. He leant over to whisper in her ear.
"He wants to know if they
were in an intimate relationship." Li Mei blushed bright red.
"Ah! Oh no! You have it all
wrong!" Li Mei composed herself and smiled. "Shing and Ballard weren't
in a relationship. Shing had made Ballard his Wu long before I was born.
Ballard had saved his life and in return, he offered Ballard immortality.
Obviously, Ballard accepted."
"Oh."
"What's this Court and who
were those people in those tubes?" Quatre asked, his face paling at the
thought.
"The Court was a group of
people that protected the Royal Family. They're sort of like the Praetorian
Guard of the Roman Emperors. I-most of them were killed just before my
Mother and Father died and the remaining seven took me before Shing could
and they hid me and locked me in the crystal until Heero found me.
"Found you?"
"We were separated. He forced
the Court to take me away while he played decoy."
"Wait, wait. Hold up. You
said before you were locked in that crystal thing for four hundred years.
That means..." Duo turned to Heero, his eyes wide. "That means he's over
four hundred years old!"
"Are you a Sanjiyan, Heero?"
Quatre asked carefully. Heero shook his head.
"No."
"So how could he be alive..."
Quatre trailed off, his eyes wide.
"You're a Wu." Trowa said.
Heero nodded.
"Where's your mark of... uh,
Wu? We've never seen it." Heero brushed the hair away from his forehead
and there, against the pale skin was a dark red symbol. The Sign of Wu.
"What did you do to Heero?"
Wufei asked in the lull of the conversation, a frown on his face. Li Mei
looked away.
"I didn't mean to. It was
an accident." She said softly. Heero shook his head and gently squeezed
her shoulder.
"I've heard of the Sign of
Wu and it doesn't seem like you described it. I quote, 'Wu, or the sign
of nothingness. When a Sanjiyan consumes a soul, the "Wu" mark appears
on the victim's forehead. The "Wu" is a near-indestructible, soulless
being who will only die when the Sanjiyan does. The status of "Wu"
can be revoked or changed via extremely powerful magics, like the humanification process...'" Wufei said bluntly. "I have heard of your kind before."
"I..." Li Mei bit her lip.
"I-He would have died!" She said, her eyes filling with tears of guilt.
Quatre put a hand on his chest and looked at her sympathetically. Her guilt
was eating away at her.
"Wufei." Heero said coldly,
his eyes glaring at him. "I said she could."
"Right. Keep telling yourself
that. Anything that steals souls is a demon." Wufei suddenly found himself
hauled out of his chair and dragged to his feet. He looked into the icy
prussian blue of Heero's eyes and felt a tinge of fear at the protective
anger he saw.
"She. Is. Not. A. Demon."
Heero bit out. Li Mei grabbed his arm.
"Hey! Cool it Heero!" Duo
said as he stood up.
"Heero!" He could hear his
friends calling his name, asking him to calm down but he wouldn't, not
until he made Wufei see that he was wrong.
"Heero! Stop it!" Heero continued
to glare at Wufei.
"Do you know how hard and
how long she fought to save her people? To save the humans who got caught
in the crossfire?" He tightened his hold on Wufei's shirt. "She almost
died, she almost married Shing", Heero spat out the name, "just to stop
the blood shed."
"Heero, please, that's enough."
Heero let go of Wufei, shoving him so that he fell back into his chair.
"I understand where you're
coming from Wufei, but we aren't demons. Making a Wu is not a thing we
take lightly. You can ever only have one Wu. That's why we do not take
it lightly. We only ever take the soul of someone who is willing. I took
Heero's soul in an effort to keep him from dying when he tried to save
me from dying."
"How did you two meet?" Quatre
asked. Li Mei looked at him for a long moment.
"That's a very long story."
"We have a lot of time." Wufei
said as he straightened his shirt and glared at Heero."
"I see. Very well. I will
start at the beginning." Li Mei took a deep breath another deep breath
and told their story.
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A.N Mm kay, most of my info
comes from the 3x3 Eyes Digest (http://www.sazan.net/digest/). If you want
to know more about the actual series of 3x3 Eyes, got there. Its a VERY
helpful site if you wanna know anything 'bout 3x3 Eyes. ^_^
Yes, the next few parts will be
about Li Mei and Heero. The other pilots won't appear. I'm really sorry
if you don't like that, but I have to tell Li Mei and Heero's past. It'll
prolly be split up into three or four parts, mm kay? Just be patient and
before you know it, there will be moer action and stuff. I'm really sorry
if you don't like that.
