Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Legend of Shinigami and the Angel of Death ❯ Market Day ( Chapter 1 )

Title: Legend of Shinigami and the Angel of Death 1/?
Author: Makiko Igami
Archive: ...
Category: AU, Supernatural
Rating: this chapter... PG? May go up soon...
Pairings: It might take a whole chapter to put all in here... but main: 1x2
Warnings: Yaoi, a bit angst, ... more to come
Spoilers: Since this is AU... none.
Notes: My first try on a AU... I always liked the legend of Atlantis... I kinda make my own one up here, it may not fit into the ones you know... And I don't know exactly what might happen further on...

"..." spoken words
*...* emphasis
{...} Author's comments
______________________________________________________________ _________

Heero glared at the merchant he was bargaining with.

"These eggs are old, even a baka like you should see that!"

"But syr," The merchant said with a slimy smile, bowing deep. "I took them just this morning from underneath the hen that lay them. Fifty Nailsen for one of these beauties is an appropriate price, don't you think so?"

Heero growled and tried to hold back any comment on how inappropriate this usury was. He looked around, checking if anybody in this crowded place was looking at them, but as he expected, nobody was paying attention to them, they had better things to do like taking care of their own business.

With another growl he grabbed the merchant's simple tunic at his throat, and pulled him close, glaring him straight into his face.

"I *think* that I will tell these Temple-guards over there that you charge prices that are overly expensive. You *do* know what they will do with people who charge overly expensive fees?"

The poor merchant's eyes widened in fear, knowing that he would be thrown to the dungeons which would be flooded twice a day with the tide as they were below sea level. Heero smirked in satisfaction but didn't let got of the man's tunic and twisted his fist a little bit more.

"Alright! 30 Nailsen!!!"

Heero growled once again and twisted his fist a bit more.

"20!! But that's my last word!"

Raising an eyebrow, Heero whispered in a deadpan voice, "Oh, I'll make sure it will be..."

"10!!!"

Heero let go of the man's collar all of a sudden, all threat vanished from his face.

"I'll take thirty, then."

He looked away and batted his hands free of non-existent dirt from the man's tunic and waved to one of his servants to come over and fetch the eggs he had just purchased. He counted 3 Erui into the merchant's greedy hands and waved casually before he turned around once again.

"It was nice to do business with you."

The merchant bowed respectfully, grim eyes but the slimy smile back in place. The moment Heero was out of hearing range he spat out, "Bastard!"

Unfortunately for him, Heero's ears were a bit better than those of average people. He well heard the silent curse, chose to ignore it though. He got what he wanted and for a very good price, way below standard, so he granted this moron his time to swear. If he needed it...

His special abilities were also responsible for who he was.

Just because he heard the muffled cries of somebody drowning he was suddenly engaged to the daughter of his former master, now his future father-in-law. Thus he was made to delegate people that did his former job. He wasn't even sure if this was an advantage.

Relena was a nice girl and he could tell she liked him but he felt not much for her. He didn't feel much at all. But being part of an influential family, having the chance to say something in their business was better than being a mere servant of said family. At least he still had his friends.

As if on clue, Trowa nudged his elbow in his side.

"Oh, Mr. Relena Peacecraft likes threatening poor merchants to get eggs below the standard price? Heero, I never thought you could fall so low."

"Trowa. Shut up."

Trowa smiled, one eye hidden behind his thick bang that stick up against all laws of gravity that the High Priests shared with the people. He was the only one that could get away with this simple comment on such an insulting sentence. Despite the fact that Heero had been a servant once, even more a slave than free, didn't prevent him from developing a very heated temperament. And being freed after rescuing this girl meant for him that he could show this temper whenever he liked to. Trowa loaded the palette of eggs to the little cart he was pulling behind him, filled with various vegetables, some fish and fowls. They even got some beef from the continent today.

It wasn't usual for Atlantis to have meat. The small island didn't have enough space to provide meadows for cattle. Some people said it was enough for them to eat fish, but whenever there was a new shipment of meat, the same people would run to the markets and buy it as if they would die if they didn't.

Atlantis had some fields of crop though, and the best bakeries in the world. Everybody on the continent craved for the special Atlantean Bread, a specialty everywhere. In exchange for this and other handcrafted things the Atlanteans got meat, wood and stones, which they used to build the most magnificent buildings in the world. The few trees that had managed to grow on this small island a long time ago were chopped down as soon as Atlantis had figured out how to build ships and sent sailors out to determine if there were other creatures like them behind the big water that surrounded them.

It wasn't long until the first adventurers returned with the happy news that there was a much bigger land that almost surrounded them. They also reported that there was a small passage in this land around their sea that led into a much bigger sea.

More sailors were sent out to explore this bigger sea but for a long time nothing was heard from them.

People prayed to Taiyou and Hisakata, the God and the Goddess that had once lived on the high mountain in the middle of Atlantis that they were safe and after two months one single battered ship was lucky to make it back home. The crew told the ones at home about the wonders they had met on the other side of this big sea and how hard it was for them to make their way over there. They encountered various monsters and had to sail through the most outrageous storms. Most of them didn't survive it.

But since the day that Taiyou and Hisakata had brought the craftiest people to Atlantis to teach them their technology, the Atlanteans didn't give up this easily. They created better ships with reinforced hulls that would withstand those dangers more easily than the ones they used to travel the small sea surrounding their island.

Over the years though the knowledge that was given to the people by the Gods before they went back to their home in the stars was long forgotten and the technology that was brought to them was said to be magic. Nowadays only the High Priest and the disciples of the Temple knew how to repair the devices that opened doors without anybody touching them, the ones that made rooms lighten up when you stepped into them and all those other strange things that happened in Atlantis.

People say that the God and the Goddess still visited the High Priest once in a while but High Priest Zechs knew nothing of that. His predecessor had always said how nice and merciful the God and the Goddess were when they came down from the stars to talk to him but when he had died he had confessed to Zechs that he had never seen them in person. He just heard from his predecessor what they had been like.

Right now Zechs was sitting in his study, leaning over his desk, staring at the window-like glass in it. Well, he was rather staring at the luminescent signs on it. He was totally terrified by what he read there, the certainty that the days of Atlantis would be over in less than a year and this time there was no device from the Gods that would rescue them.

Somehow even the Gods were unable when it came to the uncontrollable powers that this savage planet bore. The beast inside has slept too long.

Zechs straightened with a sigh, long platinum hair falling back over his shoulders and turned the device in his desk off. He stood a few moments in complete darkness before he turned around and opened the heavy curtains that prohibited the sunlight to come in.

He was greeted with the sight of the circular city's Northern Side, the Inner and the Outer Channel that separated the Inner Circle with the Temple and the Palace from Uptown and Uptown from Downtown. It was a bright sunny day and you could hear the gulls in the harbor on the South Side screeching as they fought for the remnants of fish from this morning's catch.

Zechs didn't show the slightest hint of emotion on his face. All he could see was a city that was damned to vanish in the waves of the ocean surrounding it in less than a year.

He turned around and called his assistant Noin to arrange a meeting with Shuhan Treize for him, no matter if he wanted to see that man again or not.

But instead of a woman with short violet hair he was greeted by a young man with very short black, curly hair.

"Sir, Miss Noin is at the Peacecraft's house, educating the only daughter in the ways of the Temple. But if you wish, I can arrange this meeting for you. In fact, Shuhan Treize is impatient to see you again," he said quietly.

Zechs nodded. He should have known where Noin was at this time of the day. She wanted to spread the knowledge of the Temple to the people in the city. She hated the fact that everybody had ascribed scientific devices to be magic and made it her duty to travel around to teach stuff that you were only supposed to know when you gave yourself freely to serve at the temple. Zechs had allowed her to do this because the temple desperately needed new disciples. People nowadays were somehow scared by the preconditions that were posed. Or they thought they were ridiculous.

One precondition to enter the temple's services was that you were a virgin, in body and soul. But recently they had to make exceptions to that. People didn't know what to be virgin meant anymore.

Zechs himself knew for sure he was no virgin anymore.

But he had lost his virginity when he was already the High Priest and nothing had changed for him since then. So he supposed this rule was only to get the young ones and the frustrated into the Temple at a certain time in history.

But then again... There were certain rituals for which you had to be pure...

Zechs shook this thought away as if he was trying to get some flea out of his shoulder-length hair, not noticing how the young man's jaw dropped open in awe.

.oOo.

Meanwhile Heero was bargaining with another poor merchant, this time about some vegetables of which you could make a powder that was ingredient of one of the sweetest sweets on Earth. The Atlanteans had found it on one of their travels over the ocean, the big one behind the continent that surrounded Atlantis. They had a colony on the continent over there and regular supply of exotic fruits, manufacturing them into products that were highly craved at their continent.

This particular sweet, called "cocoa" was one of those.

Especially young women paid the most outrageous fees to obtain what was a called a "bar of chocolate". They kept saying that it made them happy. Well, most of them just got fat but they didn't seem to notice so it was rather likely for this dark brown mass to make happy.

Trowa watched how Heero lost his temper once again and threatened the poor woman with a deadly glare as he suddenly noticed some movement to his left.

He shrugged it off since things like that happened every day on the main market place of Easter Uptown. It was probably just another thief who didn't get away with his loot without being noticed.

He shrugged and focused his gaze on Heero again.

"Those fruits traveled three weeks over the big water and you want to tell me those are fresh? I've never heard such a brazen statement. Do you know what happens to liars nowadays?"

Trowa sighed. He knew Heero liked to threaten people but couldn't he use another line each time he did that?

But in the end this bad tempered young man got what he wanted and nodded to Trowa to come and fetch the cocoa-fruits which he purchased for a song. Trowa nodded apologetically towards the poor woman, trying to find a place for the fruits on the jammed wagon. The woman glared though, unhappy that she had lost to such an inexperienced-looking boy.

Said boy was looking rather happy now as he strode through the crowd, halting for a second in the middle of a rather deserted place, waiting for Trowa to catch up with him.

But Trowa was much too busy to balance the fruits on top of all the things they had bought earlier. One more item and everything would crash down, plastered to the cobblestone pavement in less than a second.

Heero watched him fighting with the wagon for a moment before he looked up into the sky, cherishing one of the first bright days of a seemingly nice year with a lot days like this.

"Excuse me."

Somebody tapped him on the shoulder. Heero turned around to see who it was, a grumpy comment on his lips, but he didn't even get as far as to let them slip off.

Instead his lips were sealed.

Whoever had tapped him on the shoulder cupped his face and pulled him into a kiss faster than he could have reacted.

He blinked several times, eyes about to fall out of their sockets while his mind processed that this was his first kiss. As he checked who it was he was greeted with a face framed by long chestnut bangs, hair floating all over her back in chestnut-colored waves. But the most incredible things about this face were the eyes.

Determined dark blue eyes, shimmering with the slightest violet possible to still look natural, fluttered shut at this particular moment with a slight groan.

The person kissing him wrapped one of her arms around his neck, the other hand in his hair, pulling him closer to deepen the kiss as it got incredibly quiet around them. If this was because people started staring at them or because Heero just didn't pay attention to it anymore, he couldn't tell. He wasn't even aware how he closed his eyes as he felt the other person pant onto his lips.

Slowly his arms rose to wrap themselves around the other's waist, to pull her closer, to feel her entirely. Never before had he had the urge to feel somebody as close as this long-haired beauty. But before their chests could touch the girl broke the kiss, smiled at him and whispered, "Thank you", before disappearing in the crowd again.

Heero tried to make out the waving chestnut mass of hair but all he could see were moving people that minded their own businesses but none of them looked like the person who had just kissed him on the lips as if he was the air she needed to breathe.

Slowly he touched his own now slightly swollen lips with his fingers, still staring off to the distance, not noticing how people were rushing around him.

"You're welcome..."

To be continued...
______________________________________________________ _________________

I SO wanna do something like that! Just walk up to some stranger and kiss him fully on the lips, but I am HELL to shy to do that...
Oh... ^^;; Please Read & Review!