Act One - Part 2:
Ocean waves washed upon an unspoiled beach encompassed by spectacular bluffs. Heero lay on his back, spread-eagle across the cold sand, his eyes closed as he listened to the swooshing of the sea. His expression was blank rather than serene. A soft breeze tousled his unruly bangs, swaying the chocolate-brown hair from side to side. His schoolbag was laid tossed next to him, a large golden trophy thrown against it, discarded for lack of care.
They won the game 3-2. The BI Canes were now the CPL's tournament champions. He had personally scored two out of the three goals that brought them the championship and therefore Coach decided that he got to take the trophy home "for a spin". Yeah, like he cared. He considered chucking the damn thing off a cliff and into the ocean just so he won't have to take it home and have his dad see it. The idiot probably won't shut up about it, acting all proud and shit. Whatever. He will bring the trophy back to school tomorrow. He didn't need it.
The whole town celebrated the victory last night. He just went home the minute the ferry docked into the harbor. He didn't call his dad to tell him about the win; he'll probably hear all about it when he comes back. It was all people talked about. He could imagine how they will praise him when talking to his father; he cringed just thinking about it. People were so annoying. They wouldn't leave him alone at school today. By morning recess he got so sick of it that he just took his bike and split. He spent the day at the beach, enjoying the silence.
His perfect sense of seclusion was interrupted by a loud roar of a jet engine. He opened his eyes, faced with a gloomy gray sky, and sat up quickly, leaning against the sand. His eyes searched the clouds above, but whatever aircraft had passed over him just now was most likely high above cloud-level. He let his gaze drop towards the murky ocean, and frowned warily.
A massive battleship was sailing in the near horizon.
That was new.
Again the sound of whirring jet engines thundered across the beach. This time, he could make out two black spots speeding towards the large ship. Mobile suits? All the way out here in the edge of nowhere?
They looked a lot like the OZ-07AMS Aries, built expressly for aerial combat. With its pair of jet engines and aerodynamic control surfaces, the Aries was fully capable of independent atmospheric flight. They were also one of the first transformable mobile suits capable of folding its legs up into its body for flight. Even when compared to an OZ-06MS Leo – which he was much fonder of – using a flight backpack, the Aries was still inferior in terms of speed and armor thickness, although it could maintain flight for much longer periods of time. It would be the perfect MS for a large-scale aerial scouting mission.
He was kind of a mecha-nerd. He knew everything there was to know about mobile suits after spending many hours online reading about them. The Aries used to serve as the primary aerial force of the Alliance for nearly twenty years, as well as OZ's special forces, but now that OZ has more or less turned against the Alliance, it was hard to tell if the Aries suits he just saw were OZ or Allied Forces.
He didn't quite follow the news so he wasn't certain who had the upper hand at the moment. The war has been raging for over a year now and at some point OZ military forces started a coup d'état against the Alliance, trying to overthrow the United Earth Sphere Alliance government and put some other bunch of idiots in power. Then there were those Gundams sent from space to fight against both or something like that. They've been raising havoc on Earth since last spring. It was all pretty complicated and he really didn't care because the war was just something vague that happened out there, way beyond the island. Nothing ever happened on the island.
He watched the two Aries suits land on the flight deck. Silence fell again. The ominous battleship continued circling the island.
His father was unusually quiet during dinner. He didn't even say anything about the trophy. They sat in the dining room, which always felt too large for only two people and even more desolate when illuminated dimly at night. It was very quiet and the sound of cutlery clanking softly against their plates was painfully loud.
"How was that thing with the rich guy?" Heero finally asked, looking up from his plate. His father sat at the other side of the hefty wooden table, shoving food around his plate with his fork. It took him a moment to realize he had been asked a question.
"Hmm?" he asked, looking up. He then seemed to process what he had been asked.
"Oh, it was good. No biggie," he mumbled and resumed eating. "They settled in the old Thomson's house. Really pimped that old crib."
Heero nodded in acknowledgement and continued eating in silence. He really didn't have anything to say about that. Usually his dad was the one to make conversation. His silence made Heero uneasy.
"How was school?" His dad asked after a while.
Heero shrugged dismissively. "Okay, I guess."
"Yeah?" His father looked at him sternly. "Then why did I haffta make an excuse for you cutting classes in the middle of the day?"
Heero cast his gaze down to his plate again. "You know about that?" he mumbled ruefully, poking his food with the fork.
"Your principal called. Wanted to make sure you're alright."
"I'm fine."
"Where were you all day?"
"Around."
His dad sighed, shaking his head slightly. "Don't run off like that. I hate it when you go AWOL."
"This place is 7000 acres big and surround by a fucking ocean," he muttered in dismay; "where could I possibly go?"
"Don't get snippy with me, Heero. It's been a long day and I ain't in the mood."
"Yeah well, no one forced you to do any parenting today, Duo. I know how to take care of myself."
His dad slammed his fork and fist on the table. "I told you a thousand times, Heero – I don't approve of you using my name like that. I know I ain't your real father, but I deserve at least that much. Show some respect."
Heero gaped at him, stunned. It was very rare for Duo to snap at him like that; he must have struck a raw nerve. He bowed his head down, staring meekly at his plate.
They continued eating in tense silence. After a while, Heero raised his head again and looked at his dad carefully. He hesitated, trying to find a way to bring up the next touchy subject.
"We have a school excursion next week," he said slowly, knowing he was threading on thin ice. "I need you to sign a permission slip."
His dad turned to look at him, frowning warily. "Where are you guys going?"
"The Museum of Natural History," Heero mumbled tensely.
"New York City?" his dad asked in dismay.
Heero nodded slowly; he could already see the answer in Duo's eyes. His dad didn't even stop to think about it. "No," he said and turned back to his plate, spearing food brutally with his fork. "Sorry, Heero, not this year."
"But it's for this science class in school," he insisted and his father heaved a frustrated sigh.
"My answer is still no."
"But it's only a school-trip... It's not like they'll let us do anything fun."
"Regardless, I'm still saying no."
"But—"
"No more buts," Duo snapped irately. "This isn't open for negotiation. I said no and that's my final answer. Don't test me on this one," he warned; "I'm your father and what I say sticks."
"Yeah, well, I didn't ask you to raise me," Heero grumbled petulantly.
Duo snorted nastily. "Right," he scoffed; "I suppose I shoulda just left you to live on the streets of that colony? An eight-year-old with an attitude. I'm sure you woulda done great for yourself!"
Heero cast his eyes down, subdued, and Duo sighed wearily.
"Jesus, Heero... what's gotten into you lately?" he whined, frustrated. "It's like you woke up one morning and decided to be a total dick. Since when did you become such a handful, huh?"
"Since you won't let me do anything!" Heero snapped and slammed his plate angrily on the table.
"I let you do whatever you fucking want!" Duo shouted back; "I have no fucking idea what you do all day!"
"Anything but go off this stupid island!" Heero retorted loudly, standing up.
"And where would you fucking go?" His dad scoffed sarcastically. "Back to space? Back to all the shit you had going on before?"
"Just shut up," Heero muttered nastily and stomped out of the dining room. He ran upstairs to his room and slammed the door behind him loudly. He threw himself on the bed, angry with the world.
He hated being reminded of his life before. He recalled very little of what life was like before Duo, but what he did remember was enough to make him wish he didn't. His earliest memories were those of fear and blood. He had spent half his childhood being raised by a man who utilized him as a weapon and nothing more, trained as an apprentice in the art of assassination, sabotage and stealth. It was a ruthless and painful life. No room for error. His every mistake was met with brutal punishment. Heero refrained from thinking about it as much as he could. The past could not be changed, but it could still be ignored. He hated it when his dad reminded him of Before. He hated that no matter how angry he was with the man who became his adoptive father, he could never stay angry for long when reminded that if Duo hadn't shown up after Odin died, his life would probably still be full of torment. Duo had saved his life, and he owed him more than he could ever repay in this lifetime.
After Odin died, he was stranded on a colony still undergoing construction. He must have been about seven or eight. It was supposed to be his last mission, Odin had said. Enough, he had said; a child was dead weight. He ordered him to settle down, go to school and live a normal life. Enough killing; he would be better off in some foster home.
That would have probably been for the best, but something went wrong. Odin died during the mission. He was left to fend on his own, struggling to survive on the streets. Odin had taught him how, but there wasn't much on the colony; just the military command center. He was starving, desperate. He roamed the colony for days, searching aimlessly without knowing what he was looking for exactly; a way out, maybe. On one of his many wanderings, he passed by an alleyway. An old man sat in its shadows. He noticed him and asked him to approach. He hesitated at first, but in his despair he found that he could not refuse the old man's request. He took a step into the alley and then suddenly – Duo came. He just popped out of nowhere, coming from behind him calling: 'There you are! I've been looking all over for ya!'
He had frowned at the strange braided young man who looked like one of the colony construction workers, dressed in the same brown jumpsuit and streaked with dirt. He was about to tell him to piss off, that he did not know him, but then Duo gave him this strange look before he leaned over him like some reprimanding parent and asked: 'What did I tell you about accepting candy from strangers?'
He was sure that the braided man was out of his mind, but then the old man in the alley turned to Duo and asked: 'Is he with you?' Duo then placed a hand on his small shoulder and pulled him close to him, as if protecting him somehow. 'Yeah, he's with me, so back off ya old fart. You ain't getting your dirty claws on him this time'.
The old man seemed surprised, and so was he because until that moment he hadn't even noticed that the old man was disfigured: with a metal claw for a hand. The sight frightened him and he found himself unintentionally inching closer to the young man who still had his arm around him protectively.
'C'mon, Heero, let's get outta here,' Duo said and he had turned around, looking up at the man. He realized that the man was referring to him, which didn't make much sense because he didn't have a name, and he didn't recall ever being called "Heero" by anyone. He was confused, so he thought back on the last thing Odin taught him before he died: 'However carefully you plan, you never know if some idiot is going to change the future, so you may as well do what your heart tells you so you won't regret it later.' [[i]]
He thought he finally understood what it meant. When the curious braided young man pulled him away from the alleyway, he had followed because it felt right. And, just like that, his life with Duo began. Ever since that strange encounter by the alley, Duo has been raising him as though he was his son and there wasn't a day that went by in which Heero didn't feel that if not for Duo, he would have ended up following that metal-clawed old man, and he would have probably regretted it.
While as a natural part of raising him Duo had disciplined him as one would discipline any child, he had never done so with anger and he had never mistreated him in any way. He had been nothing but kind and understanding towards him, even when he had given him hell, testing boundaries, trying to find the limit to Duo's commitment towards him. He had done every wrong he could think of just to see how much Duo could take before he too abandons him. Duo, however, never did and Heero learned to accept the man's love and care.
Duo was a fact he could not argue with; he was there, and Heero was grateful for it. Duo taught him many things he had never known before as a child. He had taught him about fun and games; he had taught him about hugs and loving caresses; he had taught him about laughter and joy, trust and security. He was safe with Duo; safe to just be a kid, to play and to smile, to live carefree and loved.
It was very difficult to trust Duo at first. He remembered that first night, just after their strange encounter by the alley. Duo took him someplace safe, he assumed that it was some sort of residence designated for the men working on the colony's construction. He was very hungry after days of starvation on the street. Duo made him soup from a can. He wolfed it down hurriedly. Then he felt sleepy so Duo took him to bed. He covered him tightly and sat down on the edge of the bed, simply looking at him with this strange look in his eyes. He stared back at Duo silently, unable to close his eyes to sleep. He rubbed them tiredly, wishing to sleep, however fear would not allow him to relax. He stared at the stranger sitting by his side, wondering what the man was expecting of him. Did he have to work for him now that Odin was gone?
Duo reached a careful hand to brush a few hairs out of his eyes. The soft caress startled him; he tensed fearfully under the bedcovers. Duo must have realized that he was making him nervous, so he pulled his hand away, smiling apologetically. The loss of the soft hand saddened him; no one has ever petted his hair before and he feared that now Duo won't dare to do it again.
'It's okay,' Duo had whispered softly, 'You can sleep. I won't harm you, Heero', he promised.
'I'm not Heero,' he whispered back, thinking that the man must have mistaken him for someone else, because he couldn't think of any other reason for receiving such kindness. Duo just smiled and nodded in understanding.
'Is there another name you'd like me to call you by?' he asked. There was none, so he shook his head 'no'.
'Then Heero it is,' Duo declared, smiling. He couldn't think of a reason to refuse the new name, so he just nodded back in agreement, accepting it.
'What's yours?' he dared to ask, rubbing his eyes sleepily. He wasn't sure why, but hearing the man tell him his name had calmed him somehow. Duo asked if it was okay if he'd pet his hair again, to help him fall asleep. He agreed and Duo had smiled. It was the best sleep he ever had, even to this day. He had finally realized what it felt like to be safe; to sleep calmly without being afraid. It didn't take long for Duo to teach him what it felt like to be loved as well.
He knew that he owed Duo his life; he felt guilty for giving the man a hard time. However, ever since the war reached Earth and those damn Gundams appeared, Duo hasn't been the same. Something changed. Heero couldn't quite put his finger on it, but something was wrong with Duo. He didn't know what to do about it. He was just trying to be a normal kid now, putting his past as far behind him as he possibly could.
Over the past seven years he had settled comfortably into his newly regained life. He tried to enjoy being just a kid and Duo being his... well his... his dad, sort of. Kind of. Almost. He would have liked it to be official somehow, but it wasn't. Duo and he didn't exist outside the trail of papers Duo created for them. In essence, their life was a lie.
He sat up and stared numbly at his room, at all the stuff he had accumulated over the years. His life used to be his only possession. The breath in his lungs was all he really had, but it still meant very little. Life came cheap. It was as easy to create as it was easy to terminate; Odin had shown him how. There wasn't much value in possessing life, not when it was all you had. But since Duo took him in his life was given substance; it meant something to someone. Suddenly, he had more than he could ever dream of. His father has spared him nothing. There were days when he was sure Duo didn't have a penny in his pocket, but he still managed to satisfy his every childish whim.
His eyes fell on a ragged penguin doll resting by his computer monitor. The old stuffed toy stared back at him blankly with a pair of tiny black button eyes. Heero smiled weakly.
Manny the Penguin and he went way back. It was the first toy his dad ever got him. When they had first arrived on Earth, they lived in a short-term apartment complex in New York City, until his dad bought the house on the island. One day Duo took him to Central Park Zoo. It was absolutely breath taking! He was fascinated by all the different animals. He had never seen any wildlife before and kept running from one habitat to another, pointing at the animals eagerly, asking 'what's this one called?', 'what's this one?' and – when he saw a Giraffe – 'Wow! What's this one called?!'. He was just like a kid in a candy store, only the store was that whole fucking world.
His dad took him to see the penguins' exhibit and that was the best part. He stood there the longest, watching the funny little black and white birds swim underwater, enchanted that instead of flying, the swam. He liked them so much that his dad bought him a stuffed toy penguin. Duo promised that they'd have many, many, more fun days like that day at the zoo, so Heero decided to call his new toy Manny.
That night, when his dad tucked him to bed, Duo had placed Manny next to him. He didn't understand why, so Duo said that it might be nice to sleep with such a cute and cuddly toy, so he tried. It was the first time he had slept with a toy by his side. It felt really weird, but he did it to make his dad happy. After a while, it became a habit and eventually he found that he couldn't quite manage to fall asleep without hugging Manny, holding onto Duo's promise while he slept.
Looking away from the little penguin doll leaning against his computer monitor, Heero ran his eyes over the rest of the room.
His colorful and vast comic book collection filled the shelves of a tall bookcase in front of him. Flashy posters decorated the blue walls with images of various vintage sci-fi movies. Science fiction was a dead genre, redundant in the age of space colonization, but he liked it. He liked how people used to see their future prior to the After Colony era; those movies represented different versions of mankind's future, imagined when everything was still a possibility. He found it fascinating, for it allowed him to picture a whole other life. His dad didn't get it, but he still brought home a copy of some old sci-fi flick whenever he stumbled upon one during his travels. They used to watch them together up until a couple of years ago, but now he just watched them alone in his room.
His room was a testament to his freedom; a sanctuary. It was the only place where it was okay to be himself – no inhibitions. An impressive collection of MS models stood proudly on a shelf above his desk. His dad grumbled that he wasted all of his allowance on those "damn things", but he liked them. He even got a job last summer, working in a small ice-cream parlor at the beach, just so he won't have to depend on the allowance his dad gave him and buy a very rare collector's-item kit: the old OZ-06MS-SN3 Leo-N model from the late AC 70s.
Leos were simple, but efficient; they had their own kind of charm. They've been in service for so long because of their adaptability: in addition to a wide variety of hand weapons, the Leo could be outfitted with a winged thruster pack for limited atmospheric flight capability. That entails some respect.
The old 06MS was his most prized possession. Placing the winning bid on the thing had been a major nergasm moment... not that he'd ever admit to it. Still, it was too bad he didn't have anyone to celebrate the win with (aside from a few online "friends"). His dad would never get it, because he never dared divulge anything about his life Before. He didn't do it to spite him, he just wanted to forget; maybe then it would be like it never happened.
He used to have a similar old Leo model when he was very little. He wasn't sure why he played with an MS model as toddler, but it was the only thing he remembered from before Odin, from before Before. It wasn't easy getting his hands on a mint-condition model just like his old one, and once he did he ignored all reason and took it out of the box so he could build it and place it on the shelf next to the others. He had every model in the book, except one. The latest MS model to make an appearance on the battlefield was banned by Earth manufacturers.
Heero turned to look at his computer. It was always on; the monitor currently displaying an internet browser open on a social network website and forums. A few IM windows were open as well, flashing to call for his attention. He was looking for one of those underground Gundam kits, only available through networking with the right people. Those illicit kits were amateur-made and extremely rare. Getting his hands on one was close to impossible, but he liked a challenge. Having one on his shelf would be the pinnacle of this dull, mundane, little life. It was all he had to go on, really.
This was his life now. And, considering what might have been the alternative, he knew that he should be grateful for it. Real or fake, it was still a good life. He was free to be a kid, complete with nerdy hobbies and boring schoolwork. That was enough for most, so why did he always feel like there should have been something more?
He dropped off the trophy at the principal's office before heading for class. He settled into his seat in the far back of the classroom. First period was math. He liked math. It was easy, methodical. It made sense. Every problem had a solution if you followed the rules. He sat quietly, hunched over his notebook, and concentrated on solving the exercise written on the whiteboard. He finished it rather quickly, so he tried to think of a different way of solving it instead of the method they had just been taught. He came up with two different approaches and solved the problem again, twice.
"Class," the teacher called for their attention. Heero finished the second solution he had come up with and only then looked up. He frowned when he noted that there was a new student standing in front of the class, next to the teacher. He was so focused on the math problem that he didn't even notice someone entering the classroom – a new face: a girl. She was wearing a white tailored blouse with a fancy bow-collar and a pinkish-red flared skirt. They looked expensive; a goody-two-shoes dress. Her long dishwater-blonde hair was half-down and half-up, gathered into a fine lace braid crowning her head. She was looking ahead at the class with a pair of glowering turquoise-blue eyes.
"I'd like to introduce you to a new student joining our class this year," the teacher said, gesturing at the girl to step forward. She took a small step towards the classroom, curtseying in front of the class. A few kids snickered. Heero cocked his head aside slightly, intrigued. She wasn't from around here, was she?
"Relena Darlian," the girl introduced herself quietly and straightened back up. "It's nice to meet you."
"Thank you, Relena," the teacher said. "You may take a seat. There's one at the end of the classroom."
Heero whirled his head over to his right, alarmed. The only vacant seat in the room was the one next to him. He had just lost single ownership of the empty row in the back. Damn it.
He watched the New Girl settle into the empty chair-desk. He must have been gaping like an idiot, because she turned to him, scowling crossly. Snob. Her eyes were fierce, angry. He looked away, turning back to his notebook and scowled deeply. He didn't like her.
[i]Episode Zero manga.