}
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This morning, Bombardier officially presented the first of three TRAXX multi-system electric locomotives for the Rhenus Group. During a small ceremony at the transport & logistic fair in Munich, the […]
Bombardier Traxx Rhenus Rail
[EU] Rhenus Rail orders TRAXX MS locomotives [updated]
Rhenus Rail has decided to order three TRAXX MS locomotives, equipped for Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. Title Image: Railcolor. No official relation to Bombardier […]First Things First: Author's Notes
[For those of you worrying about my other updates, don't worry. Parts 1 - 18 are already written.}
This story was born January 4th, 2004, and I raised it carefully to be entered in the One True Pairing {OTP} Novella Contest sponsered by So far, this little expedition of Heero's has taken more than seven months to document, and no, I was not able to finish it in time to enter it in the sole reason it had been concieved. Mostly because this is the longest damned thing I've ever written, and beyond that, it started taking on a life of it's own and grew even larger. You see, the contest's minimum amount of words is 25,000, and now I'm about 70,000 words in, and there's still much more to be written. I might have been able to meet the deadline, but I got so attached to the story that I felt I couldn't do the story justice in the time I had to finish it if I wanted to enter. So I let the deadline go, and now I'm free to make an unabridged version. Another warning, though; there is one very moody Duo Maxwell in this one, though not like you would normally expect when I would write a'moody Duo'. And a physically passive and more relenting Heero than most are used to seeing. In this fiction, he has had absolutely no exposure to military training or war in the traditional Gundam Wing sense, so I went ahead and made him a little more indecisive, a little shy, and passive-agressive, like I thought he might be if he were just another youth trying to discover a place in the world for himself. I only hope you'll enjoy yourself reading it.
::Summary:: It's a time of high tensions and paranoia for mankind, and an aimless one for Heero Yuy. While trying to remedy the sense of something missing in his routine life, he suddenly decides to study a suspicious and rather notorious con artist, Duo Maxwell, on his paper on humanity.
::[Another] Warning:: Gratuitous use of the word 'bohemian.' --;
The One-Eared Neko
Part 1 THE REALITY OF THE SITUATION
As the last bell of the year rang out above his head, there was a moment of hesitation before the collage class stood from their seats around the various tables and began to file out. With good biddings exchanged, phone numbers and displays of affection slipped between bright-eyed couples, and papers stacked and organized to be forgotten, they were ready to leave this place. It was the middle of an especially balmy July and the beginning of the long-awaited Peace Commemoration holidays. They chatted boisterously within the echoing white washed walls as they slipped their thesis requisite sheets in books and hurried out. The stream of students left the doorway and split and scattered into the open air like lines of anxious ants.
Heero Yuy remained apart from the rest of his peers, though, standing beneath the expansive shade of an old tree in the center of campus. In his hands he held the requisite sheet on the short thesis to be due over the Peacetime vacation. Humanity. A vague enough subject, he thought, glancing down the lines of print. Broad enough, with opportunities to expand.' He arched a lip at it.
When he left the campus and committed himself to a twisting beeline through the traffic and crowded business streets, the sun had just peaked above a low roll of clouds, beating down on the back of his neck. The Japanese boy never had difficulty with the naturally hot and humid conditions and often wore loose dress shirts and tank tops to the campus and along the route he traveled after classes had ended. A regular, beaten path. There was no doubt in his mind of where he'd go. Once he crossed the busy intersection that centered the large, mostly business-dominated city, he would travel along the sidewalk of Main Street for two blocks weaving through many other students and working citizens. At the junction of Netherland Drive and Main, he would turn right through a series of smaller, one-level businesses. People would flow back and forth through the opening and closing doors, their shopping bags and young children in tow behind them. A few blocks later he would be traveling through the colorful and colorfully loud farmer markets, littered with hundreds of stands and open-air shops steaming and ringing the with the clashing of cooking-ware. He didn't like cars anyway, and the exercise and scenery made up for any discomfort he had walking.
He'd often stop near the small yellow wooden stand on the fringe of the market and on the corner of his apartment. As usual, he would smile graciously if not noncommittally at the small Puerto Rican woman and ask for his usual assortment of fresh fruit and vegetables. She would collect her 7.50 in currency and he would nod thankfully before moving on, all in relative silence. On shopping days, he would go home with six oranges, six apples, two packs of strawberries and celery, and a peach. But this day, he settled for just a single, perfectly ripened peach and waited until he had scaled the stairs and stepped inside his large studio apartment to eat it.
Being a man very conscious of his vegetarian preference, Heero would never even consider the idea of buying a supply of raw, pounded hamburger which would last him longer for a smaller cost than weekly or monthly purchasing a supply of fruits, vegetables, pastas, and tofu. But he felt he could afford it to feel at ease with the fact he didn't need to take life to sustain himself. After washing his freshly bought food in the sink and putting it all neatly away, he would walk across the expanse of undecorated, white-walled and wood paneled floors into his bedroom. He would change out of his school clothes and take another shower to relieve him from the heat of air-conditioning-challenged classrooms. Upon returning, he would dress in the clothes he laid out upon his bed and descend the five flights of stairs to head out to work.
By this time everyday the sun would be creeping closer to the low horizon, arching toward the jagged cut line of buildings set against the sky. And Heero would be entering the doors of the banking corporation for which he acted as a computer technician, in a traditional dress shirt and clean, business-savvy tie. There would be an equally predictable and familiar rhyme and rhythm through his workday, as he went about fixing abused computers and failed technical endeavors and rebooting overloaded servers. He would also answer calls from different branches, as he was seen as a natural savant of all things and a general good person to handle problems. He would clock out at the same moment every night, as the plain black hand of the clock would sweep down to half-past seven, and descend the flights in an empty and silent elevator. By that time, the sidewalks would be vacant and cooled, lined with the bright car lights going up and down the roads. He would perhaps detour, on the warmer nights, a block to the left to visit a local street musician who played John Lennon and the old Beatles songs on an old acoustic emblazoned with poetic lines by a black Sharpie. But even that moment of spontaneity' was always planned in advance and thoughtfully weighed against other options.
Yes, Heero Yuy seemed perfectly aware of his place in this world, perfectly in tune to the natural rhythm of work and life. He never tripped while traveling to work; he never fell behind in his schoolwork, never found himself even a hair out of place. There was a pristine plate of food on the table every night; a book lay faithfully beside his bed, and a steady rising with the morning sun every morning. He had money, a girlfriend, school, intelligence and a good-looking face. All those things automatically bought him a chunk of happiness.
But it was Hell. And there was no getting around that.
There was a time of rest for him after he had finished his plain and organic vegetarian dinner and before he would settle in for the night, committing himself to a chapter out of a book before he fell asleep. At that time every night, he would be out in the broad, undecorated living room on a black and white quilt with a lamp and the glittering white beads of city light against the black sky. Then he would routinely study his physics and advanced law studies with ease and boredom. And all the while, writing neatly on a legal pad and turning the pages in silence, he would loathe the ease and boredom that comprised his life. The simplicity that he thrived effortlessly within, but at the same time was rotting him from the inside out like a terminal disease without fail.
It had always been this way as far as he could recall, as far back as his memory went. Routine and wealth had dictated his early years with a pair of very affluent, but very private parents, always being shuttled around to different structured activities with no