CHAPTER I- The Excavation and the New Arrival

A/N: New Port City was indeed the capital of the Sanc Kingdom. Please note that this is A.C. 1136, and much of the records of the time period in which Gundam Wing took place have been lost or destroyed. The key is that we don...t yet know why...

Elen pulled the hard hat on over her sun bleached hair, blinking away the dust that was kicked up by the cranes and machinery. The air, while just as dry and bland as the day before, seemed suddenly fresh with a hint of mystery.

"Can...t you just feel that excitement, Trae?" she asked, looking down at her similarly blond companion. Trae, a man with a sensitive nature and spindly build, seemed very unfit for life in the desert. He was said to be more gentle and caring than most women, and hsad been recommended to Elen by several other women as an excellent lover.

But the spunky archeologist could not bother with a love life, for she was far too buried in the past to think about the future. Back in the cities, life was so constraining, you worked at a set time, ate at a set time, and slept at a set time.

But Elen had always been drawn to this place- as if a small hand was tugging at her bones to come her, to excavate, to uncover the past. There were so very many things that had been lost when the infant ESUN had fallen under military control. There was so little known about the time period- and some of it was too hard to believe. While it was generally acknowledged that humanity had been far more advanced at that time, their exact capabilities were unknown, and even less was heard of the people who were governing at that time.

Many spoke of a great woman who bridged the gap between the colonies and Earth, who had abolished weapons and war machines.

Elen could not imagine why someone would waste resources to build such destructive objects- for thoughts of this sort were virtually unheard of in her time period.

Trae rose his arms and the company of Arabs halted their activity, "We believe it...s the foundation to a palace, Elen. We...ve uncovered pottery and-"

Elen rose up a hand, motioning to a marked off part of the building, "Get me a brush, quick!"

Something was calling to her, almost, and she felt as if she knew exactly what she was doing.

Three hours later, the miraculously preserved object had been eased out of the dirt. No one could explain how it survived, for erosion should have surely destroyed it.

But there was no mistaking visual evidence.

The ESUN archeological team had uncovered a teddy bear. Actually, it look more like a corn husk than a teddy bear, but it was obvious what it had been originally. Carefully, Elen stretched out a finger and brushed the nose, opening her mind to a horrible memory.

"Leave the teddy bear, Relena, we don...t have much time," the man was telling her.

"What...s going on, Heero?"

He shook his head, "There...s no time, Relena. We have to leave now."

"We, the Preventers under the direction of the ESUN United Peace Core, have declared Relena Darlian-Peacecraft a threat to national security and a suspect under the charges of attempted murder of the second degree of Colonel Une. The building has been surrounded. We will open fire."

He grabbed her hand, "Happy?"

She dropped the bear by her bed and ran after him.

"Elen? Are you alright?" Trae was asking carefully, "Elen! Can you hear me?!"

Elen blinked up at her friend and brushed a hand across her forehead, "I...m sorry...I just had the strangest daydream...it was so intense..."

He looked at her strangely, "Let...s get you back to the-"

"Elen! Trae! Look at this!" a worker exclaimed, motioning to a black corner of a device they had uncovered, "Low grade gundamium! This could be a video counsel or..."

There was a buzz of excitement as murmurs of surprise and hypotheses flew around like the yellow sand.

Elen took charge, far more composed than she had ever been in her life, "Alright everyone, let...s calm down! I want water crew to come around here now and start dousing the sand around the artifact- I don...t want anymore sand getting into the machinery. If we can hook it up with some batteries- see if it works-"

Trae was looking over the exposed corner with mastery, "We found something similar on the Luxemborg excavation. We believed it might have been a communication device of some sort." He picked up a pick and begin carefully removing grains of sand from the groove along the side, "It had been blown up, so we couldn...t piece it back together. However, if this one...s intact-"

"But we could never get it to work!" Elen exclaimed.

Rashid, leader of the diggers shook his head, "We might, ma...am. After all, their technology was far more advanced than our own of this time. They had some strange alloys that were not of this Earth gundamium, neo-titanium, and so on, that were believed to come from space. These metals don...t degrade like ours do over extended periods of time. If this one was sealed properly, we may be able to boot up the computer."

"Such a find...why, it would be like those records found in London thirty years ago." Elen sighed. She was looking straight at her path to history books.

"No," Trae countered, "It would be far better. I...m not talking about messages stored in computer code. Perhaps even auditory and visual records. It...s simply unheard of!"

A man slid down the side of the basin, walking carefully towards the center of excitement. There was a tap on her shoulder, and suddenly, Elen was face to face with the field artist, Triton.

"What is it?" she dared.

"Ms. Elen...the ESUN mission director has come to check on our progress."

"That...s great, show him down! We have quite a show to put up for the ESUN!"

Triton shook his had, resettling long, light brown hair over his green eyes. Elen vaguely wondered why he hadn...t bother with a haircut.

"No, Elen, he wants to speak with you. Supposedly, funding is going to get cut again."

She narrowed her eyes, "First in Brussels, then Luxemborg, then here. It...s almost as if they don...t want us to find anything."

Triton looked at her quietly and then reminded her, "They don...t like to be kept waiting."

She heaved a heavy sigh, and then headed up the slope.

The tightness in her gut had not been put down to fluttering of premonition, but to the lack of breakfast, so when Elen walked into the mess tent, she was not expecting to be hit by such a tremendous wave of nostalgia.

A man was seated at the table, looking over her written log with great interest, a mass of dark hair hiding his face.

"Hn." He said, not bothering to look up, "This reads more like a dream diary than a mission log."

Elen was furious, but she kept that anger inside, for what with the wave of sentimental emotions coursing through her, she didn...t really trust herself to act rationally. She took three deep breaths before continuing, "Well that...s what it may seem to you, Heero, but those dreams seem to have led us to success," she said coldly, "Just today we have uncover the remains of a building. We believe it may even have been a city. Something perhaps leftover from the Great Purge-"

He looked up, vivdly blue eyes meeting her own, "It...s Reo actually. Reo Lowe."

"Why?" she asked curiously, "What did I call you?"

"Heero."

She shrugged and smiled as she tried desperately to place his face, "Triton mentioned something along the lines that you might be cutting funding to our project." Her eyes were serious, and the message she wanted to say was quite serious- if he were to cut funding, he would die.

"No, the ESUN is not cutting funding, it...s cutting the project. The people do not need to bother themselves with the past."

Elen narrowed those eyes, "How much time do I have left until a formal declaration?"

"One week. Maybe two."

"Do you take bribes?" she asked hopefully.

He shook his head grimly.

"Not even with a bit of convincing?"

"Perhaps," he replied drily.

He was intrigued, and if not with her project, then perhaps with her pretty face. Either way, it didn...t matter. She needed to find some way to get him to speak on her side. A mission director supporting a project made it harder to put down...and far more public, which was exactly what Elen wanted.

She decided she would try and get him into the project first. If all as failed she could always fall back on plan B.

Besides, she decided as she looked him over, I could do much worse.

"Follow me then." She said, and was surprised when he did.

(A/N: So the kitty got a little naughty with the end of this chapter. Thank you all for your interested reviews. This one has been cooking for a while in my head.)