Gundam Wing is not mine. :-( Shut up! I can live in my own little world can't I?

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Author's Note: Well, I stayed up till 4 vowing I would write a chapter or a fic as soon as I got through my message boards, and here I am. Small problem: I don't feel like working on Death Becomes Him or Jack Frost Yuy--my Desperately-Need-To-Be-Finished-Active-Fics-Of-The-Moment--and nobody seems to be reading Earth Bound Wing Zero, (Not a single review for chapter 3 -_-;;) so I've decided to start on a new serial in the style of Death Becomes Him. As of this opening note, I have neither planned the story or thought of a title. So...let's just play this by ear, ne?

Shi-chan: Here comes the new fic, and guess who's the star?
Duo: Uh, Wufei?
Shi-chan: Nope.
Duo: Trowa?
Shi-chan: Nuh-uh.
Duo: *Grasping at straws.* Relena?
Shi-chan: .....

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Star Crossed, Forever Lost
~By Shimegami-chan
Part 1
Shounen-ai, and some stuff I haven’t thought of yet.





Shiseki Tezuka glanced out the window of the shuttle as it approached L2, the darkness of space seeming to close around her like a shroud.

(Shi-chan: An Original Character. This is a start, I think...no! Don't stop reading; it'll head for familiar ground soon!)

Shiseki--or Seki, as she preferred to be called--couldn't wait to get home. It had been months since she had seen her little apartment, since she had left her dog Aya-chan in the care of her next-door neighbour and her job as a journalist on hold, to chase an interesting story idea to L4. She had received a tip that Vice-Foreign Minister Relena Darlian had been on L4 in search of a man on the Missing Person's list, and Seki had been assigned to cover the report. Her boss loved any info they could get on Darlian, the once Queen-of-the-World and a woman well accustomed--after many years of politics and training--to staying out of the public eye and spotlight. Darlian going to L4 was a very big deal indeed; lately she rarely appeared in public at all.

Rumours had been flying the whole way back to L2, and Seki was glad to hear them--she hadn't seen Darlian at all on L4, and wondered if it was all a hoax. On the shuttle the two elderly women sitting in front of her had been discussing the very subject, much to Seki's delight.

"I heard," a red-haired woman said conversationally to her friend, "that Relena-sama was looking for that Gundam pilot. The one she consorted with a few years back."

"Really?" the other woman--a blonde--wondered. "He disappeared quite a while ago, didn't he?"

The redhead lowered her voice, but not to the point that Shiseki couldn't hear. "It must have been at least ten years back, I don't know. But my sister told me that he'd been seen on L4, and that was why Relena-sama went there. She's supposed to have been looking for him ever since he went missing."

"I wouldn't blame Relena-sama, although I always heard she was a little over-protective of him. They say one day he didn't come home from a Gundam mission. Relena-sama's always believed he was alive, though."

"I wouldn't have thought so," the first woman replied. "but they said that he had 'an angel watching over him, and Death by his side.' So the old story goes. Poor Relena-sama' been obsessive ever since though. I wonder what she'll do now? She must have left L4 by the time we started out, don't you think?"

"Maybe." The blonde shrugged and reclined her seat sharply into Seki's knees. "Oops, sorry about that dear."

"That's fine," Seki assured her, but the two gossiping females seemed to have said everything they needed to say.

A woman with long chestnut-coloured hair--much like Seki's own--glanced over at her. "Pfft."

"Hmm?" Seki looked up to meet the stranger's indigo eyes.

The young woman--she looked to be in her mid-twenties--smiled genuinely at Seki. "Wondering if she was gonna put the seat back up."

Seki quirked an eyebrow at the blonde head in front of her, much more visible now that her seat was shoved against Seki's already-cramped legs. The chestnut-haired woman let out a small yelp as the redhead lowered her seat in a similar fashion, pinning long black-slacked legs down.

"Oi, oi." Seki's neighbour sighed, pushing fruitlessly at the stiff plastic chair. "My own fault."

Seki offered a hand to the woman. "Shiseki Tezuka, of the Glory Voice."

"The Voice? I read that paper all the time!" The young woman took Seki's outstretched hand and shook it. "Mayumi Maxwell. Call me Yumi, ne?"

"Call me Shi, or Seki. Usually Seki." Seki looked curiously her new acquaintance. "That's an odd name, what colony are you from?"

"I'm from L2. Mayumi is the name I was given, but Maxwell is pure American. What about yours? It's definitely Japanese, isn't it?"

"It is, but I'm Canadian, from colony TK6412. I'm adopted."

"So am I..." Mayumi offered Seki a smile that was anything but shy. "So, what's a Voice journalist doing on L4?"

Seki heaved a sigh. "Checking out a lead on Miss Former-Queen-of-the-World-Darlian. Turned up absolutely nothing."

"I heard about that." There was something odd in Mayumi's eyes that unnerved Seki, just a bit. "I was visiting a friend on L4, and word got around that the Peacecraft was there."

"The Peacecraft, ne?" Seki giggled. "I take it you're not a fan of the vice-foreign minister, then?"

Mayumi looked as though she had bitten into a lemon. "Nothing against her, just...her."

"I see." Seki peered out the shuttle window. "Almost there! Did you...hear anything else, about Darlian?"

"I heard that she went to L4 to chase down her old boyfriend. He left her about 10 years back and she's been searching ever since."

"Oh?" So, maybe the rumours were true. "I thought that he died, not that he left her. That Gundam pilot, wasn't it? "

Mayumi looked wistful. "Yeah...Heero Yuy was his name."

Now that was a familiar name if Seki had ever heard one. "Seems I didn't have my facts straight. I read a lot on the war of AC 195, and on the Gundams in particular...but I didn't know that Darlian was with Yuy."

"He didn't have much of a say in it, as far as I know," Mayumi answered. "But the Gundams have always intrigued me too." She perked up as quickly as the frown had appeared and nudged the reclined seat in front of her with her knee. "Big mobile suits, fighting for peace, all that? Or are you one of those pacifists?"

"Not a pacifist, but I'm not out to start a war." Seki offered Mayumi a slight smile. "I just find the stories interesting. I'd love to know more about them, how much truth is in them, how much they've been manipulated by the media."

"Plenty, I'm sure." Mayumi grinned back. "You being one of those media-types would know, eh?"

"Unfortunately, yes," Seki laughed. A red light caught her eye and she looked up. "Whoops, looks like we're going to land soon."

Yumi glanced up at the 'fasten restraints,' sign above her. "Hai." She quickly buckled the belt around her slim waist.

Seki looked nervously out the window again. "I've never liked flying much."

"I love to fly, most of the time." Mayumi checked and double-checked her restraints. "But when someone else is flying and you can't be in control, it's different."

"Are you a pilot?" Seki asked curiously.

Mayumi's breathing seemed a little off all of a sudden, and Seki glanced down. Yumi's small hands were gripping the armrests so tightly that her knuckles were turning white.

"Maybe not." Seki corrected herself.

"Hold on," Mayumi warned.

Seki wished feverently that the blonde woman in the seat before her would raise herself to an upright position. I should probably tell her that we're about to land, she reflected.

The thought was cut short by Mayumi's strong fingers on her arm. "I said hold on."

"Why?" Seki obediently settled her arms on the armrests. "Are you okay?"

"To answer your earlier question, yes, I am a pilot. I think myself to be fairly good at what I do. And I would ask you to please hold on tightly, because there is something very wrong with this shuttle."

Ice shot through Seki's gut. "Something wrong? Like what? How can you tell?"

Mayumi's indigo eyes stared intently ahead. "One of the engines just blew, and took a stabilizer with it. Didn't you feel the weight shift?"

Seki hadn't noticed anything amiss. "No."

"It's going to be too much for the other engine...it's a good thing we're so close to the colony, or nobody would make it out alive. But if they manage to keep her going just a few seconds--"

Something exploded near the windows on the other side of the shuttle, cutting Yumi's words short. The passengers nearest the blast screamed.

"Shit." Seki tightened her grip on the armrests.

"It blew. Hang on tight, okay?"

Ahead of Seki and Mayumi, the two gossips had sat up in panic. "What was that?!" the redhead cried.

"Put on your restraints!" Yumi warned. Both women scrambled to fasten their belt as a second blast rocked the shuttle.

"That's two." Mayumi whispered.

L2's gravity reached for the small shuttle and yanked it downward eliciting screams from most of the passengers. Yumi gritted her teeth. "Here it comes."

Seki's stomach churned as the world seemed to drop out from under her, and then fire claimed the small craft.

The world went black.










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Shi-chan: Hmm, I think I like this. More very very soon, and you will see the more familiar G-boys. I said it was shounen-ai, ne?