CHAPTER II- Up in Smoke

BTW, I know everybody's names are a little weird. What I basically did was take their names in Gundam Wing, throw them into a blender, and you are reading the end result. Enjoy!

Reo tried to clear his head of the woman, this Elen Lain, that he was walking beside. It wasn't that she was exactly beautiful, not in any physical sense, but she carried a sort of radiance about her like a cloak. It was almost as if she was quite modestly drawing attention towards herself, the brightness of her soul permeating her body and touching everything around her.

He shook his hair out of his eyes in a distracted manner. Reo Lowe did not fall for women. There were far more important things to do- like trying to help run a government.

Ignorance is a very healthy state of mind. This quiet, confident man was certain he knew of such things. The reason, he believed, that people fought or grew angry was because somebody pointed out to them to them that fighting was an excellent way to get what you wanted. Therefore, he had decided, if people did not now about these things, they would have not motivation to fight or kill, or any idea that such a thing could be useful.

It was for this reason that Reo did what he did. It was for this reason that he had joined up with ESUN in the first place.

The sun was hot and scorching, baking across the Earth and drying it into yellow dust, forcing every person to the shade even in the early morning hours. Elen led him to the briefing tent, where she entertained him for a short while by giving a brief overview of the project, all the while pointing out interesting setbacks they had faced in the area and all those other horribly time consuming reasons why funding needed to be increased on the project instead of dropped. He found her very convincing. It must have been the way she expressed herself with her face, open and innocent and demanding. She was articulate and demonstrative, often parrying his rebuttals with words he had previously stated.

He liked that. It made her interesting.

No matter how intriguing the woman that was speaking to him was, forgetting his mission in life was unacceptable. His on-site informants had mentioned that they were on the verge of discovering important and revealing artifacts that could reveal the truth that Reo Lowe had devoted his life to covering up.

She smiled at him. Reo grasped at his train of thought desperately.

"-And just in here was our first discovery of today, Dr. Lowe. After two months of sifting through the sand, I think we've stumbled across the jackpot," she was saying, "I think it's time to show you some real action."

They were standing outside of a tent, and she was wringing her hands with excitement while he merely stared ahead blankly.

Reo gave her one searching look before pushing aside the flap and ducking in, blinking rapidly at the gloom. Behind him, Elen switched on a light, and a brownish lump could be seen under glass on a steel table.

He walked towards it, and Elen trailed him hesitantly, "It's under the glass for protection from erosion. In fact, we're not quite sure how it survived. Sometimes you get miracles but this one is pretty special-"

A doll? A lump of cloth? Reo was not certain what it was until he came closer. It had once been a stuffed bear, all of its parts had been carefully assembled.

The boy was walking down the street, eyes darting around the neighboring shop windows with disgust.

The boy beside him blew a puff of smoke with a stolen cigarette, "So, if you don't like this girl, why are you getting her a present?"

"Smoking causes cancer, you know. All of this horrible black stuff gathers in your lungs, stains your teeth, you know. It's highly addictive, you can't quit."

The braided boy took another drag of the addictive drug, "Don't I know it. Hilde sent me to all of these rehabilitation doctors. They call it ...Post-traumatic Stress Disorder' or some shit like that."

"So you're going to quit?" the boy asked his friend absently. That was it. He found the perfect gift!

"Nah, they gave me these nicotine-free ones to smoke to help deal with it. Hilde monitors the amount I get."

"So why does it smell so bad?"

The braided boy wearing the priest's collar grinned, "I already smoked all my nicotine-free ones. These are the ones Hilde doesn't know about."

The other person stopped, resting his hand on the glass of the toyshop, "You'll kill yourself, Duo."

Duo shook his head, "Nah, I already died in the war, man. All that remains is leftovers." He finally noticed that they had stopped, "Ah Heero-man, what are we looking at?"

Heero brought his fingers to the glass, "The perfect gift."

He had died in the war, yes, but within the girl that teddy bear in the shop was for was his salvation.

He narrowed his eyes, "How did it survive?"

Elen looked nervous, flipping her hair over her shoulder and running her fingertips across her thumb.

Her job was, after all, very much at stake.

"We believe that the environment of this area was previously temperate, perhaps a deciduous forest before it had been cleared away as the site for New Port City-"

He raised an eyebrow at that.

She glared at him, nervousness wiped away with a simple slant of eyebrows. She had a glitter in her eyes that seemed very familiar..."You are the ranking officer, Dr. Lowe. Surely you know the surviving blueprints of New Port City found one hundred years ago by Dr. Arnold Lanstrom in London. The foundations we have uncovered so far depict a marketplace, a downtown area, that fits Dr. Lanstrom's prints exactly. Furthermore, we've begun digging into what seems to be the New Port City Palace. Our surviving records indicate an important person lived here, someone referred to as a princess and then later Queen of the World and the Places Beyond.'"

"'Queen of the World and the Places Beyond?'"

She pretended his voice did not contain sarcasm, "We know that we did have colonies in space for a time before the Purge, but how one woman could control all of that space is unimaginable. Was she a dictator? Perhaps she had an army so vast-"

At this, Dr. Lowe shook his head dramatically, "This seems like a waste of resources, Dr. Lain. Pursuing fantasies about magical queens is not an efficient use of ESUN resources. Instead, we can be using the money you have squandered for more important and useful-"

Elen grabbed his arm passionately, "The past is just as important as the present! We can learn from and avoid mistakes in the future by paying attention to similar occurrences long ago-"

Dr. Lowe effectively removed her hand from her forearm, "Please, Dr. Lain, do not make even more a fool out of-"

But they were interrupted by the toss of a tent flap and the desperate expression of Trae's face.

"Elen, we-" he began, nearly shouting. He looked questioningly at Reo like he was a cancer that had grown from the sand, "Oh. I see you're entertaining the funding cutter himself. Sorry to interrupt, but we've unearthed the main counsel."

Elen nearly hurt him, "What? So soon? That should have taken us two days to unearth!"

Trae grimaced slightly, "One of the diggers got a little crazy with a shovel saying it was heresy to unveil it. We had to pull it out as quickly as possible in order to salvage it."

She looked over to Reo excitedly, "Trae, entertain our friend for a minute, would you? I've got to see this!"

She wiped her hands on her denim shorts and ran out like an eager child.

Trae looked up to Reo, and he nodded. With unspoken agreement to two other men walked out to follow her.

"Hand me the RC12 converter, Jinn. The RB doesn't work."

They were staring at the machine that had been carted to a tent nearby, a small counsel with a vidscreen and assortment of buttons underneath it. It was full nighttime, and Elen had become obsessed with the unresponsive object, her drive pushing everyone on into the depths of the night, even Reo, who wasn't quite sure what he was doing there.

The Arab handed the woman her machine, and she tried to hook up the batteries to the object with a wrench, a bit of wire, and, to everyone's amusement and shock, a great deal of swearing.

Trae stood by her the whole time, explaining details his team had discovered, voicing his own opinions to the woman who would not give up.

This was precisely the type of object that the ESUN was nervous about. This was precisely the type of object that could fracture peace.

Reo would have done something, but a small part of him longed to see this link to the past, and Elen reminded him a great deal of himself before he had been told the truth.

He wondered what he would have done if he were in her shoes, besides limp at the small size of the hiking boots she was wearing.

"That's-" Elen growled, but there was a sudden spark, and a fuzzing sound. The recently cleaned vidscreen was alive with static.

She screamed with joy, and a roar of other voices joined in.

"Computer?" Trae asked carefully, praying the extended inactivity hadn't fused the device's circuit boards, "Please display most recent recording."

There was a pause. A world held its breath.

"Complying."

Reo felt the icy ball in the pit of his stomach expand and send its chill throughout his body.

A face flickered onto the screen, the face of a blond teenage girl, finely boned and delicate.

Trae let out a breath nervously, "Elen...she looks like you."

The screen fuzzed again, but the image was restored.

"My name," the phantom image said in a clear, resolute voice, "is Relena Darlian-Peacecraft."