Summary: A team of five young anthropologists are recruited by the notorious Romafeller Foundation to investigate something long lost; instead, they find each other and much more than they had bargained for. 1x2, 3x4, 5xS, other. AU. WIP.
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters; however, the concept and the plot are of my devising. No profit has been made or will be made from this venture, and no infringement of rights is intended.
Note: All coincidences are purely coincidental; this short story is not meant to infringe or insult any anthropologist anywhere. As I am not acquainted with ethnographers and I have just begun my first anthropology course, all of the anthropological activities are my creation and any passing similarity to established protocol is just that, passing and no more. It is my sincere hope that true anthropologists are more diligent and less self-centered that the characters portrayed.
Chapter 1: The Team
So, he had come to the base in order to get a new water filter, an axe that could hold an edge, and a new pot because the last one had been stolen. The message light had been blinking red for the first time since Jay died, and Heero had answered and accepted without thinking. Conditioning was still that strong. So, that was the why and the how of ending up here, in a miserable hotel room, waiting for the next plane and his anthropological team.
"Oi, I found it." A young male muttered, and there was the scrape of metal against metal as the key slid into the lock. "Finally."
Heero stiffened, and stared at the door.
Kicking his bag across the perimeter, the young male grouchily muttered something and flipped the light on. Seeing Heero, a look of unmistakable surprise flitted across his expressive features, and settled into his sharp grin. "Oh, sorry, man. I must have gotten the wrong room."
"113." Heero said, flatly.
Anyway, the young male glanced at his key, look a good look at the door, and then stared at Heero very suspiciously. "It's the right room. Why are you in my room?"
Heero blinked. "It's mine."
"Huh…" The young male flopped down onto the bed, his long braid of chestnut hair trailed across the metal bedframe and settled onto the cement. It must have been at least a yard long. In a light baritone that echoed in the small room, the young male queried, "So, if this room is yours, and this room is mine, it's gotta be both of ours, right? How come we're sharing? Did they run out of rooms, or something? Least they could have done was told me, man. This bed's tiny, bony, and small. Can't even fit my feet on."
"Hn." Heero grunted an acknowledgement of the sound, and continued to reconfigure his laptop to solar saturation mode that would make it self-sufficient.
"Talkative, aren't you?" The young male snorted, flipped around, and leaned up, bracing his face on his hands, to stare at the laptop. "Damn, you must be dumb as all get out to bring that to a jungle. I mean, have you seen these raindrops? Fuck. I mean, forget cats and dogs. It pours cows out here. Do you think they have cows?"
Heero finished fastening the screw, studiously ignoring the chatter. It took all of his self-control not to strangle the adolescent, then and there.
"Is this room 113?" Yet another young male stood at the door, squinting at the lettering, making his dark narrow eyes far more narrow. Strangely, though his clothing was quite travel stained, his hair was pulled back into an impeccably tight tail.
"Yup, this is it! The famous room 113, right?" The young male on the bed grinned widely. "Don't tell me you got it, too!"
Wordlessly, the adolescent at the door held up a key.
"Shit, man." The boy on the bed scooted over, and then slammed his hand down onto the pallet in what he obviously thought was a friendly manner. A moment later, though, he was wincing and messaging his palm. "Damn, did they stuff this fucker full of rocks and shit, or what?"
The adolescent at the door set down his bags, and then sat down gingerly on the bed. It was obviously not comfortable for either of them, and it seemed very silly to Heero that both still bothered to sit on it.
"So." The new adolescent checked on his dark hair, and seemed momentarily at a loss when his hands found the tail. "You don't act like a missionary."
"A WHAT?" The adolescent with the braided hair sat poker straight.
"Oh." The other boy blinked. "Well, that explains it."
"Oh, excuse me." A slight, nearly alto voice, sounded back in the vicinity of the door way. An adolescent with the general features of a prepubescent, nervously glanced into the room with wide blue eyes. "I don't mean to imply a lack of care, but, surely, I wonder…is this the right room?"
A very tall adolescent, with attractive but anonymous features and obscuring hair that was a gingery shade between any coloring, tapped on the door and nodded, once.
"Oh, well…" The preternaturally pale adolescent looked at each of them, seeming quite lost. "Um, yes…well, there doesn't quite seem like there will be enough room for all of us to stay here, really."
"Yo!" One of the adolescents on the bed sat up quickly, fiddling with his long braid and looking around. "You don't happen to be anthropologists, do ya? I sure am one, that's for sure."
There was a chorus of assent.
Heero Yuy carefully set aside his laptop, and looked at the adolescents. It was a primate peer group, he was sure. He had forgotten how horrible Homo Sapiens truly were, and he wondered how long he would last on this "team assignment."
Silence entered the room, and no one seemed to know quite what to do with it. They just looked at each other.
The pale one was finally stepped forward, and cleared his throat a little. "I'm Quatre Raberba Winner, with a forte of medical; in addition to my anthropology Ph.D., I have masters in psychology, sociology, nursing. Oh, yeah, and um, a business with a minor in law, though I hope that Allah will never give me the reason to use it."
Heero blinked. That Caucasian male was Arabic speaking Muslim?
"I've heard of you!" The braided one bounced back onto his heels.
Quatre looked pained. "You have?"
"Yeah." Nodding with painful alacrity, the braided one grinned and pumped Quatre's hand enthusiastically. "You're the man who wrote that fantastic paper on cross-cultural comparisons about naming kids after dead people."
"Oh! I am." Quatre fidgeted, and relaxed a little. A small, self-effacing but genuinely pleased smile played across his mouth. "I've never quite heard it described that way before, but, yes. That about sums it up, I guess."
"Way with words, eh?" He grinned proudly. "That's me. Duo Maxwell, at your service as long as it isn't too nasty. Major in linguistics, classical and modern languages, and a sociocultural anthro! I wrote my paper on death rituals—intensely fascinating, you know—and have been studying Western euphemisms, allusions and mythological death beliefs since. You wouldn't believe what I've unearthed!"
"Duo!" Quatre looked slightly nauseated and pleasantly shocked.
"If that disgusting effluvium of words has finished, Maxwell," the adolescent male sitting beside Duo looked disgusting, "I will tell you that I am Chang Wufei, a prehistoric anthropologist."
"Trowa Barton." The tall adolescent inclined his head. "I am a professional ethnographer."
"Dude, more like spy! You can get into any camp, no matter how tight!" Duo bounced up, and grinned at Trowa. "You even had the Romanys putting their genealogy cards down on the table, if you know what I mean, and the mafia, too, and…well, just about everyone who no one can talk to! That is too cool for words, man."
"I work with nomads." Trowa said, stiffly.
Quatre looked over, his blue eyes bright with curiosity. "So, how about you?"
"Yuy." Heero pulled his laptop over him, and began the careful process of setting the various waterproof sealants across the second layer of casing. It would be a found few pounds heavier, but he personally thought that the electronic addition to his gear would prove to be invaluable.
It was still quiet, so he looked up. "Heero Yuy. Physical, focus variance from forensic to primatology."
"Heero Yuy?" Duo asked, curiously. "As in the guy killed by WTO peacetalkers when advocating for aboriginal rights?"
"Hn." Heero shrugged. "I didn't choose it."
"Jesus, you must have had weird parents." Duo shook his head, and it caused his braid to move strangely. The braid must be heavy.
"That was very informative." Wufei said, dryly.
"Hm, well, he's got an Afrikaaner accent—you're the guy with the gorillas, huh—but I'd guess that he's had a thorough grounding his Swahili and that he spent a great deal of time in Yugoslavia and Indonesia. I bet his dad was British, but it sounds like, hmm…" Duo paused in thought. "I think his primary language may have been Japanese. It's in the rs and ls, buddy, and you just can't get the nasal out of your ns."
"Japanese?" Heero tackled the adolescent, stretching his fingers across the narrow throat, pinning Duo to the wall. The adam's apple was pointy in his palm. "Japanese."
"Yes." Duo croaked. "Can't help…hearing…"
Heero released him and looked deep into Duo's eyes. They weren't exactly blue or purple or anything, but more of an indigo. It was a primal sort of a color. An old and very valuable color. Slowly, he nodded and backed off. A dangerous sort of color.
Nervously, Duo massaged his throat, and croaked, "What for?"
"Hn." Heero returned to his laptop, and started carefully stretching the plastic film over the case.
"Jesus fucking Christ, Yuy! I think I have the right to know, man." Duo started up, angrily. "Shit! You almost throttled the fuck outta me."
Heero didn't respond.
Calmingly, Quatre smiled and spoke in his girlish contralto. "Hey, Duo, do you think you could tell us what else you hear in our voices?"
"Yeah, sure!" Duo grinned, settling down onto the lumpy mattress, and began happily telling each of the anthropologists their life stories. Over the course of the conversation it was revealed that Quatre had twenty-nine sisters, had learned Hebrew illicitly, gone to school in Texas, and, by benefit of a dual citizenship, had survived bootcamp to become a U.S. marine.
Heero was impressed. He'd never been impressed with someone before, and he was impressed with this…this petite cherubic boy. It was unnerving, and he didn't like either of those sensations at all. And, he really didn't like medical anthropologists, but that was for another reason entirely.
On and on, Duo prattled, asking the most inane of questions and getting the most miraculous of answers, "Hm, Hong Kong? Cool. Say your name, again, would you? Neat, that's the dragon clan. Could you give me a list of breakfast foods? That's what I thought. Home schooled. Went to high school in Japan, went to two years in Brooklyn, transferred to England, finished your degree and did an ethnography in Venezuela. Why Venezuela?"
Wufei was startled enough, and he answer the personal question. "Visiting the Yamomano people."
"Why?" Duo leaned back on his heels, pensively contemplating the ceiling.
Wufei savored one word. "Justice."
"Er. Okay." The moment was broken, and Duo's questions moved in crazy circles, spinning concentric circles around Trowa. Apparently, Trowa spoke all Eastern European languages with great fluency, although his native tongue was Russian.
"And, you did spend some time with the Italian mob." Duo nodded, decisively.
"Oh?" Quatre asked, glancing over at Trowa.
Trowa shrugged.
"Yup." Duo answered the question, even though it wasn't directed at him. "I'd guess about six months, maybe a year. I can tell the way you say your ch's."
Curiously, Trowa blinked. Heero tried to remember any ch's in the conversation, and failed utterly.
"You idiots!" Duo laughed, and the sound echoed strangely in their tiny boxlike room. "I have great hearing, Trowa. I heard you call me a chatterbox."
Trowa looked mortified.
And, for some reason, Heero wished that he knew how to snicker. It was a strange thought, and so he pressed himself more deeply into his work.
Bouncing up, Duo stretched until his joints cracked. Wufei, hearing the sound in his sleep, murmured and curled into the wall. It was undoubtedly kinder that the lumpiness of the bed. "Yo, Q-man, you look asleep on your feet. Take the bed."
"Oh, I couldn't possibly…" But, Quatre was nonetheless looking longingly and the dingy mattress.
"I ain't gonna use it." Duo shrugged, and settled onto the floor next to Heero.
So, Quatre settled out to sleep on the bed next to Wufei, and the room was so small, that with Duo and Heero sitting on the floor, Trowa had to crawl beneath the bed to get enough room to lie in. "I hate spiders."
"Am I glad or am I glad that I'm not under there!" Duo jerked his thumb at Trowa, who was already beginning to squirm a little. A small house spider was already crawling through the filaments of his gingery hair, and it looked like some of the cockroaches were thinking of coming out of hiding again.
"Hey, Heero?"
"Hn." Heero supposed it was polite to respond when spoken to.
"How long until the next thingy comes to get us?"
"Three hours and thirty two minutes." Heero checked his infallible internal clock, and fitted some more pieces to his machine.
"Three and a half hours?" Duo whined. "That's like the wrong amount of time to try to do anything. Hell, I've had quickies that were longer than that."
Heero did not even know how to respond to that one.
"How do you like this place, huh? I mean, look at these accommodations. It's real funny, in a not funny way at all, that those corporate ass wipes were practically bending down and grabbing their ankles so I'd take the job, and then they give us this. Where's the fucking five star hotel, man, the Hawaiian girls with easy-access grass skirts. I mean, really, I wouldn't even touch the junk food in this place, and that's saying something. The plane was pretty good, I mean, if it hadn't been, I might've bailed completely. You know, I've got myself a whole system back home, you know. Kit and caboodle. That sort of deal, and so I wouldn't just hop into some plane for nothing. Hey, anyway, you were a good few minutes here before us, and we were all on the same plane. Ninety-seven Cancun from Southwest, with a layover here. We were some of seventeen passengers to get of, and most of them look like political officials who keep their kids here, you know. So, like, how did you get here?"
"Independent transport." Heero grunted, and continued working.
"Dude. That was six whole syllables, man! Hell, I'm a linguist and we're supposed to be the mouthy ones, and even I can manage more than that!" At this point, Heero hoped Duo was joking. He thought he was, but wasn't sure. "So, man, like, what do you think of this whole deal? I think the Q and Tro are down with it, and getting a pretty same snazzy deal as me, but I don't know."
Heero did not know if that was a question, but felt obligated to respond. "Hn."
"Dude, I can totally see why some gorillas would be all over you. It's that delicate British accent in your grunt. Really." He shook his head, and it made the heavy weight of his braid move. "I'm going to nap, okay. Wake us up, will ya, when the time is right, baby?"
"Sure."
It wasn't until eleven o'clock, when Heero pushed aside his outfitted laptop and stretched out beside the braided boy; only then did he realize that he did not know anything about Duo Maxwell at all. The anthropologist had chattered incessantly, filled the air with bright and colorful words, recited and evoked their comrades' life histories, and not spoken a single word about himself beyond name, credentials, and purpose.
Clever, Maxwell. Clever.