Objective perspective:
Chapter 1: The scientist.
T: I have been a lurker in GDW fanfic for a while now and I thought it was about time I made my own contribution! I do not own the boys, mores the pity! Warnings of an original character, though this is NOT a sue! Slash of the 1x2x1 and 3x4x3 variety in later chapters, if you don't know what this means then avoid please as I don't appreciate flames! Vague angst, though this is expected with Heero and a slightly ooc Wu-fei.
I was the best at what I did, when I had had co-workers they had called me a Jack of all trades and I responded that, no, I was a Jill of all trades.
Not that it mattered much to me, I mean I am all too aware that there are some things that a woman cannot do, that no matter how hard she trains she will still be physically weaker than a man.
I was also very aware that I was doing something that was considered a man's job, but then this carer had found me rather than the other way about.
Back when I'd been Lana Fisher, Earth dwelling, Colony fearing, Lana Fisher, I'd worked to be a designer. For I'd always had the creative flair and though I'd majored in both Science and Design at university, Design had always been my calling.
That ment networking and networking ment travelling often to the Colonies, each trip pushing away a little of my fear until I was at home both upon Earth and in Space.
After I met Michale, Earth and my Designing dream took a back burner.
We married a year after meeting and once the honeymoon period was over I began to look again for a job.
I had no luck until Mike brought home some schematics one day and I with both my Designers flair and Scientific knowledge pointed out a few of the little flaws here and there.
Quickly I was assessed and then employed into the engineering business. I designed everything from an advanced climate control to smaller, more flexible bolts to hold the airlocks closed.
Thus when the war came I was the prime candidate for a Design position in the Alliance. A position I refused at first, not foolish enough to believe they would wish me designing bolts or other simple things.
Then Mike was killed and our little girl taken as hostage...
That's how I've come to be here, crammed in a small room with two computers and two guards, designing upgrades for their mobile suits.
The computer screen in front of me wobbles a moment and I take my glasses off and blink clear the fatigue before putting them back on again. Yet there is still a fuzzy edge to the bottom of the program I am running that warns something is not right.
A muffled pop and then the hiss of the door warns that the colony has been hit in our sector, firing the automatic coding and giving my bolts a workout.
As the radio of one of the guard's belts sparks into life I hear the word Gundam before he grabs it and begins to babble in code. Yet it is too late, I know that word and what it means. We are, after all, not a true Colony, but more of a resource satellite, stuffed to the gunnels with Alliance personnel. An obvious target for one protecting the true colonies.
Calmly I shut the computers down and reach for the respiration unit tucked in my back pocket, aware that should the door open the air from this room will also be drawn into the vacuum of space.
The guards look at me as if I'm mad and opened their mouths to question or comment, but the door clicks open and the vacuum soon suffocates them.
As they fall lifeless to the floor a figure enters the room, a short figure built in the slim awkwardness of adolescence. It comes my way and I stand up so that I might look it...him...in the eyes.
Such eyes, a bright violet that is slack and emotionless at the moment, yet I can see something pushed away at the back that tells me it is not always that way.
"Lana Snow?" He enquires through the mike of his helmet and I nod, unable to talk around my respirator. He smiles, the expression cold and empty and then before I know it I am staring down the barrel of a gun.
This I have expected and I drop to my knees, knowing well enough that if I am dead they shall have a harder time of advancing their weapons and their suits.
A thought comes to me as I prepare for death and taking in a sharp breath I remove the respirator so that I might say,
"Help my daughter..." Before my breath gives in and I have to place the thing back into my mouth.
Silence and then the barrel of the gun wobbles out of sight to be replaced by a curse and then the empty palm of his hand.
Taking the offer I gain my feet and fix his eyes again in my own, as I had expected they are full to the brim now with emotion, in fact such a riot of emotion is lined there that I feel nauseous and have to look away.
He has seen the enquiry in my look, however, and with a shake of the head informs me,
"I can't see others living my life." Before he turns and with a gesture of his hand bids me follow him.
We track a trail of destruction back along the hanger where a transportation unit is sat waiting, the engine running and a great hulk of a suit strapped to the back of it.
The thing is mostly black and I can just make out a weapon docked in a space on its back. Beam sabre, I guess, wrongly as I later learn.
Once the door to the transport is closed and we are out in space he relaxes just barely and clicking the thing to auto pilot removes his helmet.
Without the restriction I can see how young he truly is, through lines of worry and the trace of a scar here and there warns his youth has long since passed. His hair is an odd chestnut shade and is pulled back into a braid long enough so that its tip is lost within his suit.
"Well that's a little better. How about yourself?" He enquires and I realise that the respirator is clenched still between my teeth. Removing it carefully I pocketed it again and enquired,
"Will you tell me what you meant back there?" He looked uncomfortable and then smiled brightly. I saw this for what it was quickly, not a real smile but the mask of one to distract me, thus I did not pressure but instead said, "While I am alive they'll hunt for me and if I'm caught again..." Trailing as he nodded and replied,
"I know and I should not have aloud the weakness, but if I had known about your kid..." He trailed, a deepening of the lines informing me that he was thinking hard and then smiling another empty smile said, "You know your file had hardly any personal information in it. It was simply your name and your sector." I flinch at that, knowing well that such information as sector should have been removed from the files after the threat of hacking became more evident. That such information remained on my file...
"It was a set-up." I said.
"Yeh and quite an impressive one as well. You must really put them off,"
"I suppose I must," He brightened at this, the falsity falling away from his smile a moment before the mask settled back into place.
"Well geeze, it looks like it might be in our interests to keep you alive and that being the case I'm Duo. Duo Maxwell." He said, offering a hand. I look it and responded,
"Lana Snow, but you know that already."
"Well that's the introductions out of the way and now for the best bit. The running as fast as we can, bit." He states as he clicks the craft out of auto and fires the burners hard enough so that the g-force disallows talk for a while.
Once we are at a more constant speed he shifts a little in his seat and enquires,
"So will you give me your story?" The tone telling me he wishes to hear my voice rather than the words. Thus I relax and tell him as much as I think he wishes to hear and when the subject of my daughter is raised again he enquires,
"What's her name?" and I know that he has listened despite the fact that I have been rambling,
"Lyanna, Mike wanted something exotic to mark her mixed birth and to ensure they'd all know how much she ment to us." I continued on from there, telling him all that I could think of about how I had met Michale and of my younger days as a designer.
I began wondering somewhere in the middle of all of that how long it had been since I had seen my daughter. How long it had been since my hands had been coated in my husband's blood.
Time had stagnated in the little office the Alliance had given me and though I had heard about the dissolution of the Alliance and the take over of our base by Oz I could not recall the date of the take over or how long it had been since I had been working for Oz instead of the Alliance.
I felt a retracted panic cease me as I realised that I did not know how old my daughter was now, or if she had found a new mother in the family the Alliance had given her to.
"Lana?" The sound of Duo's voice pulled me out of the circle of despair and I flashed him a little false smile of my own. "Don't worry about it." I said and I watched his face fall at the words, watched and felt my heart fall with it.
He was only a boy, after all and he had believed that we trusted one another just a little after the initial bumpy start to our relationship. I had shattered that small hope and had only confirmed some suspicion lodged deep in his mind (this suggested by the acceptance beneath that hurt).
I was tempted to ask his apologies but before I could find the right phrasing the shuttle cambered sharply to the right.
"Damn it! They were quicker than I thought about sending search parties." He pushed the shuttle again into auto and fixed me in those bright eyes. "We're going to have to ditch this tin can and use my Gundam. It's only really built for a small fellow like myself so it'll be a squeeze for the both of us."
"I'll think of something." I replied.
"Good." As he said that his face blanked off again and I knew that I'd have to find my own way through until he came back into himself.
The cockpit of his Gundam was designed just as he had stated, with enough room so that his small form might move about in relative ease without adding unnecessary bulk to torso of the machine. Thankfully there was a little recess in behind his seat that I could just and just fit into once curled into a ball.
The position was uncomfortable and I was going to get buffeted something awful once the engines kicked in, but I'd be relatively well protected when we docked into a colony.
I could see little of the fight from my position, yet I could hear every word exchanged between the sides and that was enough to mark it well in my head, for through his words I learned that Duo was no longer himself. Or rather, he was no longer the boy who had saved me, but instead the colder emotionless entity that had come for my life in the first place.
This entity was called Shinigami and he worked with a crazed precision that was worthy of the name. His weapon of choice was a high-energy scythe modified from the workings of a beam sabre to fit into the image that he was as he claimed. Not simply death but the very god of death.
Shinigami was another mask, that I realised very quickly, one designed to hide the kinder Duo from the horror of war A mask to excuse the blood upon his innocent hands, for it had not been Duo, the jester, to kill these men or countless others, but Shinigami.
This I realised and I felt pity again in my heart for this boy, for though he was a killer he was still simply a child, a child that had had to age too quickly in a brutal world.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
T: Well there we go, the first part is well and truly over! Tell me what you think and visit my blog (the address of which can be found in my profile) to join in the madness and to see when the next part is due!
Oh and RR. Cheers.