FIC: How Not to Kidnap a Vice Foreign Minister III [Gundam Wing x Ranma ½]
Title: How Not to Kidnap a Vice Foreign Minister
Author: Omnicat
Rating: K+ / PG
Genre: Humor, Parody
Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge: Gundam Wing in its entirety and some rudimentary knowledge of Ranma ½.
Warnings: None.
Pairings: Coming pretty close to Heero Yuy x Relena Darlian-Peacecraft now.
Disclaimer: I hold no rights Gundam Wing or Ranma ½. But I’m being nice to them this time around, so they probably won’t mind if I borrow some characters to play with. :P
Summary: When you get kidnapped about three times a day, it tends to get boring. Repetitive, you know? But some incidents still stand out...
Author’s Note: The last of this ‘trilogy’ of crossover ‘kidnappings’. And it’s a wrap!
How Not to Kidnap a Vice Foreign Minister; During Dinner
Relena would have preferred not to eat another bite all day, but a politician’s gotta do what a politician’s gotta do. And sometimes what she had to do was keep down a three-course meal made up entirely of acquired taste foods she had never been able to acquire a taste for. She had to. World peace was at stake. All Hell would break loose if she didn’t.
One more sheep’s eye in essence of slug and she was going to cause the next nuclear war. With no hands!
The screeching scrape of her chair caused the room to go deadly silent. Relena stood and conjured up her most charming smile. "Excuse me, I’ve got to go powder my nose. Don’t let me keep you from your meals and conversations."
She turned around and upon exiting the room grabbed Heero, who was standing right outside the door with his pocket-sized recording equipment (a bit less inconspicuous than usual), by the arm. "I need some change. Now!" she whispered urgently in his ear.
That he was a bit out of it and needed some time to gather his wits, Relena could understand. But when he opened his mouth to ask a question ("Whuh?", judging by his expression), it became too much. Snarling between her teeth, she stuck her hands into the pockets of his jacket. When she pulled them back she held an unbelievable amount of junk between her fingers; the wires and batteries of his equipment, paperclips and a bunch of pens, a coil of iron wire and a square brown mass that could only be meant to make plastic bombs, blank stickers, clear stickers, stickers with "my bomb, get your own" on them, a wrapped bit of leftover chicken, a jojo, thumb-sized circle and star presses, crinkled leaves of folding paper, several brightly coloured plectrums, fish-bait, a mouse trap...
For a moment Relena could only stare at her hands and wonder where she had gotten it all. Heero’s pockets looked perfectly flat from the outside. Then she deposited the entire mess into Heero’s own hands unceremoniously, and stuck hers into his pants. Pants pockets. Not that there was much of a difference, except that even Heero Yuy probably didn’t carry his wallet that close to his skin. Amidst the fall of junk raining down from Heero’s fumbling hands, Relena found his wallet, and before the last rubber band had so much as hit the floor, she had put it back, a handful of change short.
Relena leaped down the stairs at the end of the hallway and Heero, clutching his head, which was still sore and prone to spinning from his fall earlier in the afternoon, slid down to the floor along the wall.
"This is not my day." he groaned.
A few minutes later, Relena crumpled an empty soda can with a satisfying metallic crunch. She let out a burp behind her hand and, eyes closing, leaned back against the side of the vending machine in the hotel lobby.
Dignity-schmignity, she thought. Next time they serve me something that disgusting I will demand carbon dioxide in the cooler. And if they have a problem with that, they can go and declare war to each other. What do I care.
"Excuse me."
Relena jumped upright in surprise. A boy of her age, maybe a little older, was suddenly standing in front of her, sporting thick black hair and an ochre tunic. He wore a bandanna around his head and his pants were tied tightly around his shins. A large backpack with a red umbrella on top was strapped to his back, and he looked scruffy and blown about. For a moment Relena wondered whether she was still in the right hotel; travellers like this guy didn’t usually stay at such a ridiculously expensive place.
"I’m in Paris right now, aren’t I?" he asked urgently. "The French capitol?"
"Yes, of course." Relena answered, astonished. Then she remembered her manners and added more kindly: "Are you looking for any particular address? I’m not that familiar with the city, but maybe I can help."
"Really?" He beamed at her. "Then can you tell me where I can find the Louvre?"
"That’s not far from here."
Relena walked the boy to the steps at the hotel entrance, pointed down the street, and explained the route to the Louvre street by street. Never before had she met anybody who was so glad to be told the way. He was almost literally bouncing when he repeated the instructions.
"That’s right." Relena confirmed.
The boy grabbed her hand and shook it wildly, grinning from ear to ear. "Thank you so much. You have no idea what it means to me to finally know how to get there."
"You’re welcome." Relena laughed. The boy nodded, raised a hand in goodbye, marched down the steps - and froze where he stood. Relena watched as he looked from one side of the street to the other, like he wanted to cross over, and heard him mutter to himself. It was too faint to be intelligible, but she thought she heard the sounds of ‘left’ and ‘right’, and something that sounded remarkably like a question mark.
Abruptly he turned back around to her. "Could you take me there?"
Relena gaped.
"Please!" He looked at her pleadingly. "It’s really important to me."
Suddenly Relena’s bewilderment turned into suspicion. "This isn’t an attempt to kidnap me, is it?" she asked, taking a step backward just in case. It was about time for number three.
The boy looked surprised. "Why would I want to kidnap you?"
"I don’t know, I’ve heard just about every excuse imaginable by now. Some want me to marry them, others want me to personally help their political party get into power or support their charity cause or put an autograph on their pet! Sometimes it’s like half the world thinks that in a democracy with the right to petition and input on all fronts and I don’t know what else, the only way to get results is by kidnapping some random minister from a random ministry and threaten to dangle them over a tank full of lobsters or take pictures of them in fetish outfits if they don’t get their way." She needed a deep breath after that. "Even during the war it wasn’t this bad! And during the war the people on my side thought the best way to get things done was by blowing yourself up at every opportunity. We didn’t put up with all the property damage and shouting back then to keep going like that now!" she finished.
After that tirade, the boy stared at her wide-eyed. "I... I just want to make sure I don’t get lost between here and the Louvre."
Relena shrugged, said "Fair enough.", and skipped down the steps.
"What?!" he spluttered.
"As annoying all those kidnappings may be, my superiors and co-workers are just as bad. Just with more ego and less explosions. A walk through the city is most welcome. However -" She turned to him and raised a warning finger. "If this is a trap and you’re trying to lure me away through trickery, know that I stand by what I said at the press conference last month. I think it’s very rude for people to jump the que in such a way, but if you refrain from using force I promise to put your cause in an open slot in my agenda, just like all the others. For some reason they don’t like it when I plead for convicted criminals, so I advise you to just voice your concerns to the government the legal way.
Well, let’s go."
Her cocktail dress swished around her legs, her heels clacked against the pavement, and Relena stretched her arms above her head, into the sultry evening air, until her shoulders popped. The travelling boy fell into step beside her, thinking it wiser not to comment on what had just happened.
"So, what brings you to the Louvre?"
"Da Vinci. Apparently there’s a work of his there that can help me." he said. "I’m Ryoga, by the way. Ryoga Hibiki."
"Relena Darlian." Relena replied with a smile. "Help you with what, if you don’t mind me asking?"
"My sense of direction." Ryoga rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "I always get lost. Always. Sometimes even indoors. My entire family suffers from directional dysfunction, but when I found my house back recently there was a note waiting for me from my brother, saying he’d found a solution. He also left an address, but except for that one time I haven’t been home in years, so I’m not sure if he’s still there. But once I can find the way it’ll be a lot easier to find him."
The way Ryoga smiled, with his thick eyebrows raised from their seemingly naturally downward slope, felt familiar to Relena. They do have their charm, those grouch’s smiles, she thought, with Heero before her mind’s eye.
"That must be a relief." she said.
"It is."
They talked about the weather and other such things while they walked. Just when the Louvre came into view, Relena’s phone rang. Frantically she turned around and stuck a groping hand down her front. She put the ear piece she pulled from her bra into her ear, fastened the transmitter to the hem of her dress, and was stammering her apologies even before Heero could say "WHERE ARE YOU WHAT HAPPENED IS EVERYTHING ALRIGHT WHO DO I NEED TO SHOOT?!".
"Oh Heero, I’m sorry! I’d forgotten all about you!"
For a moment, stunned silence reigned - from both Ryoga and Heero - and then Heero said "WHERE ARE YOU WHAT HAPPENED IS EVERYTHING ALRIGHT WHO DO I NEED TO SHOOT?!" after all.
And that guy claimed to be unpredictable.
"I’m on my way to the Louvre - we’re on the front steps now. I’ve just gone to stretch my legs with someone who appreciates my company, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t shoot him. And I’m fine, Heero. Best part of the evening so far."
"I’ll be right there." he said, and terminated the connection.
"I hadn’t expected any differently." she sighed with a smile. She turned to Ryoga, who was still watching her, bug-eyed. "My bodyguard is coming over in a minute. Don’t worry, he’s not as dangerous as he looks."
"I can handle him. I’ve studied martial arts all my life." Ryoga assured her.
Grinning, Relena pushed open the doors to the museum. "Even better. I’m sure you’ll get along fabulously."
They paid the night attendant and scoured the museum for Da Vinci until Heero came running their way, as always with the accuracy of a bloodhound on a trail, and with his gun drawn. But when he caught sight of Ryoga he halted abruptly enough to almost trip over his own momentum.
"Ryoga?" he asked incredulously.
"Heero?" Ryoga echoed.
"You two already know each other?" Relena said. It immediately dawned on her that they had the exact same eyebrows. When Relena looked more closely, she was amazed she hadn’t noticed the similarities right away. Such an extraordinary brand of eyebrow-tufts wasn’t something you saw every day. Heero and Ryoga, meanwhile, went through a process Relena had experienced before, and which she had dubbed Long Lost Sibling Exclamation-Slash-Question Mark; she had personally gone through it with Milliardo, as had Heero’s friend Trowa with his sister Catherine, and Quatre Raberba Winner, having twenty-nine older sisters, still got caught up in it from time to time. Relena watched quietly from the sidelines until Heero introduced her.
"Relena, this is my older brother, Ryoga. Ryoga, this is Relena, my..." He trailed off, uncertain.
"Employer. But only while on the clock." a winking Relena finished for him. Nothing had exploded, been perforated with bullets or brought into contact with a human body at an unhealthy velocity, so she felt safe to assume there was no bad blood between the two that could lead to scary knife throwing acts or attempted genocide.
"So Heero is the brother you were talking about?" she asked with a wide grin. "The one who left the note?"
Heero nodded. "I would have gone looking for you, but it’s hard to track down people who don’t even know where they’re going themselves."
"Were you in the hotel where I met Relena?" Ryoga asked eagerly. "It only took you a couple of minutes to get here! You have to show me that Da Vinci."
Heero nodded, grinned wider than ever to his brother and more-than-employer, and confidently led them through the museum. When he quietly slipped his hand in hers a few hallways down, Relena thought that if she had to be kidnapped three times a day anyway, this wasn’t such a bad way for it to happen at all.
PSAN: I don’t think I’ll ever be able to unsee the connection between Ryoga’s condition and Heero’s "I’ve been lost since the day I was born." line in Endless Waltz. Don’t want to, either! Hope you liked the fic. ^_^
How Not to Kidnap a Vice Foreign Minister...
Before Breakfast
After Lunch
During Dinner
Author: Omnicat
Rating: K+ / PG
Genre: Humor, Parody
Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge: Gundam Wing in its entirety and some rudimentary knowledge of Ranma ½.
Warnings: None.
Pairings: Coming pretty close to Heero Yuy x Relena Darlian-Peacecraft now.
Disclaimer: I hold no rights Gundam Wing or Ranma ½. But I’m being nice to them this time around, so they probably won’t mind if I borrow some characters to play with. :P
Summary: When you get kidnapped about three times a day, it tends to get boring. Repetitive, you know? But some incidents still stand out...
Author’s Note: The last of this ‘trilogy’ of crossover ‘kidnappings’. And it’s a wrap!
How Not to Kidnap a Vice Foreign Minister; During Dinner
Relena would have preferred not to eat another bite all day, but a politician’s gotta do what a politician’s gotta do. And sometimes what she had to do was keep down a three-course meal made up entirely of acquired taste foods she had never been able to acquire a taste for. She had to. World peace was at stake. All Hell would break loose if she didn’t.
One more sheep’s eye in essence of slug and she was going to cause the next nuclear war. With no hands!
The screeching scrape of her chair caused the room to go deadly silent. Relena stood and conjured up her most charming smile. "Excuse me, I’ve got to go powder my nose. Don’t let me keep you from your meals and conversations."
She turned around and upon exiting the room grabbed Heero, who was standing right outside the door with his pocket-sized recording equipment (a bit less inconspicuous than usual), by the arm. "I need some change. Now!" she whispered urgently in his ear.
That he was a bit out of it and needed some time to gather his wits, Relena could understand. But when he opened his mouth to ask a question ("Whuh?", judging by his expression), it became too much. Snarling between her teeth, she stuck her hands into the pockets of his jacket. When she pulled them back she held an unbelievable amount of junk between her fingers; the wires and batteries of his equipment, paperclips and a bunch of pens, a coil of iron wire and a square brown mass that could only be meant to make plastic bombs, blank stickers, clear stickers, stickers with "my bomb, get your own" on them, a wrapped bit of leftover chicken, a jojo, thumb-sized circle and star presses, crinkled leaves of folding paper, several brightly coloured plectrums, fish-bait, a mouse trap...
For a moment Relena could only stare at her hands and wonder where she had gotten it all. Heero’s pockets looked perfectly flat from the outside. Then she deposited the entire mess into Heero’s own hands unceremoniously, and stuck hers into his pants. Pants pockets. Not that there was much of a difference, except that even Heero Yuy probably didn’t carry his wallet that close to his skin. Amidst the fall of junk raining down from Heero’s fumbling hands, Relena found his wallet, and before the last rubber band had so much as hit the floor, she had put it back, a handful of change short.
Relena leaped down the stairs at the end of the hallway and Heero, clutching his head, which was still sore and prone to spinning from his fall earlier in the afternoon, slid down to the floor along the wall.
"This is not my day." he groaned.
A few minutes later, Relena crumpled an empty soda can with a satisfying metallic crunch. She let out a burp behind her hand and, eyes closing, leaned back against the side of the vending machine in the hotel lobby.
Dignity-schmignity, she thought. Next time they serve me something that disgusting I will demand carbon dioxide in the cooler. And if they have a problem with that, they can go and declare war to each other. What do I care.
"Excuse me."
Relena jumped upright in surprise. A boy of her age, maybe a little older, was suddenly standing in front of her, sporting thick black hair and an ochre tunic. He wore a bandanna around his head and his pants were tied tightly around his shins. A large backpack with a red umbrella on top was strapped to his back, and he looked scruffy and blown about. For a moment Relena wondered whether she was still in the right hotel; travellers like this guy didn’t usually stay at such a ridiculously expensive place.
"I’m in Paris right now, aren’t I?" he asked urgently. "The French capitol?"
"Yes, of course." Relena answered, astonished. Then she remembered her manners and added more kindly: "Are you looking for any particular address? I’m not that familiar with the city, but maybe I can help."
"Really?" He beamed at her. "Then can you tell me where I can find the Louvre?"
"That’s not far from here."
Relena walked the boy to the steps at the hotel entrance, pointed down the street, and explained the route to the Louvre street by street. Never before had she met anybody who was so glad to be told the way. He was almost literally bouncing when he repeated the instructions.
"That’s right." Relena confirmed.
The boy grabbed her hand and shook it wildly, grinning from ear to ear. "Thank you so much. You have no idea what it means to me to finally know how to get there."
"You’re welcome." Relena laughed. The boy nodded, raised a hand in goodbye, marched down the steps - and froze where he stood. Relena watched as he looked from one side of the street to the other, like he wanted to cross over, and heard him mutter to himself. It was too faint to be intelligible, but she thought she heard the sounds of ‘left’ and ‘right’, and something that sounded remarkably like a question mark.
Abruptly he turned back around to her. "Could you take me there?"
Relena gaped.
"Please!" He looked at her pleadingly. "It’s really important to me."
Suddenly Relena’s bewilderment turned into suspicion. "This isn’t an attempt to kidnap me, is it?" she asked, taking a step backward just in case. It was about time for number three.
The boy looked surprised. "Why would I want to kidnap you?"
"I don’t know, I’ve heard just about every excuse imaginable by now. Some want me to marry them, others want me to personally help their political party get into power or support their charity cause or put an autograph on their pet! Sometimes it’s like half the world thinks that in a democracy with the right to petition and input on all fronts and I don’t know what else, the only way to get results is by kidnapping some random minister from a random ministry and threaten to dangle them over a tank full of lobsters or take pictures of them in fetish outfits if they don’t get their way." She needed a deep breath after that. "Even during the war it wasn’t this bad! And during the war the people on my side thought the best way to get things done was by blowing yourself up at every opportunity. We didn’t put up with all the property damage and shouting back then to keep going like that now!" she finished.
After that tirade, the boy stared at her wide-eyed. "I... I just want to make sure I don’t get lost between here and the Louvre."
Relena shrugged, said "Fair enough.", and skipped down the steps.
"What?!" he spluttered.
"As annoying all those kidnappings may be, my superiors and co-workers are just as bad. Just with more ego and less explosions. A walk through the city is most welcome. However -" She turned to him and raised a warning finger. "If this is a trap and you’re trying to lure me away through trickery, know that I stand by what I said at the press conference last month. I think it’s very rude for people to jump the que in such a way, but if you refrain from using force I promise to put your cause in an open slot in my agenda, just like all the others. For some reason they don’t like it when I plead for convicted criminals, so I advise you to just voice your concerns to the government the legal way.
Well, let’s go."
Her cocktail dress swished around her legs, her heels clacked against the pavement, and Relena stretched her arms above her head, into the sultry evening air, until her shoulders popped. The travelling boy fell into step beside her, thinking it wiser not to comment on what had just happened.
"So, what brings you to the Louvre?"
"Da Vinci. Apparently there’s a work of his there that can help me." he said. "I’m Ryoga, by the way. Ryoga Hibiki."
"Relena Darlian." Relena replied with a smile. "Help you with what, if you don’t mind me asking?"
"My sense of direction." Ryoga rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "I always get lost. Always. Sometimes even indoors. My entire family suffers from directional dysfunction, but when I found my house back recently there was a note waiting for me from my brother, saying he’d found a solution. He also left an address, but except for that one time I haven’t been home in years, so I’m not sure if he’s still there. But once I can find the way it’ll be a lot easier to find him."
The way Ryoga smiled, with his thick eyebrows raised from their seemingly naturally downward slope, felt familiar to Relena. They do have their charm, those grouch’s smiles, she thought, with Heero before her mind’s eye.
"That must be a relief." she said.
"It is."
They talked about the weather and other such things while they walked. Just when the Louvre came into view, Relena’s phone rang. Frantically she turned around and stuck a groping hand down her front. She put the ear piece she pulled from her bra into her ear, fastened the transmitter to the hem of her dress, and was stammering her apologies even before Heero could say "WHERE ARE YOU WHAT HAPPENED IS EVERYTHING ALRIGHT WHO DO I NEED TO SHOOT?!".
"Oh Heero, I’m sorry! I’d forgotten all about you!"
For a moment, stunned silence reigned - from both Ryoga and Heero - and then Heero said "WHERE ARE YOU WHAT HAPPENED IS EVERYTHING ALRIGHT WHO DO I NEED TO SHOOT?!" after all.
And that guy claimed to be unpredictable.
"I’m on my way to the Louvre - we’re on the front steps now. I’ve just gone to stretch my legs with someone who appreciates my company, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t shoot him. And I’m fine, Heero. Best part of the evening so far."
"I’ll be right there." he said, and terminated the connection.
"I hadn’t expected any differently." she sighed with a smile. She turned to Ryoga, who was still watching her, bug-eyed. "My bodyguard is coming over in a minute. Don’t worry, he’s not as dangerous as he looks."
"I can handle him. I’ve studied martial arts all my life." Ryoga assured her.
Grinning, Relena pushed open the doors to the museum. "Even better. I’m sure you’ll get along fabulously."
They paid the night attendant and scoured the museum for Da Vinci until Heero came running their way, as always with the accuracy of a bloodhound on a trail, and with his gun drawn. But when he caught sight of Ryoga he halted abruptly enough to almost trip over his own momentum.
"Ryoga?" he asked incredulously.
"Heero?" Ryoga echoed.
"You two already know each other?" Relena said. It immediately dawned on her that they had the exact same eyebrows. When Relena looked more closely, she was amazed she hadn’t noticed the similarities right away. Such an extraordinary brand of eyebrow-tufts wasn’t something you saw every day. Heero and Ryoga, meanwhile, went through a process Relena had experienced before, and which she had dubbed Long Lost Sibling Exclamation-Slash-Question Mark; she had personally gone through it with Milliardo, as had Heero’s friend Trowa with his sister Catherine, and Quatre Raberba Winner, having twenty-nine older sisters, still got caught up in it from time to time. Relena watched quietly from the sidelines until Heero introduced her.
"Relena, this is my older brother, Ryoga. Ryoga, this is Relena, my..." He trailed off, uncertain.
"Employer. But only while on the clock." a winking Relena finished for him. Nothing had exploded, been perforated with bullets or brought into contact with a human body at an unhealthy velocity, so she felt safe to assume there was no bad blood between the two that could lead to scary knife throwing acts or attempted genocide.
"So Heero is the brother you were talking about?" she asked with a wide grin. "The one who left the note?"
Heero nodded. "I would have gone looking for you, but it’s hard to track down people who don’t even know where they’re going themselves."
"Were you in the hotel where I met Relena?" Ryoga asked eagerly. "It only took you a couple of minutes to get here! You have to show me that Da Vinci."
Heero nodded, grinned wider than ever to his brother and more-than-employer, and confidently led them through the museum. When he quietly slipped his hand in hers a few hallways down, Relena thought that if she had to be kidnapped three times a day anyway, this wasn’t such a bad way for it to happen at all.
PSAN: I don’t think I’ll ever be able to unsee the connection between Ryoga’s condition and Heero’s "I’ve been lost since the day I was born." line in Endless Waltz. Don’t want to, either! Hope you liked the fic. ^_^
How Not to Kidnap a Vice Foreign Minister...
Before Breakfast
After Lunch
During Dinner