::angel of insanity:: ::written works:: ::e v e n t h o r i z o n one::

I was laying in my bed on July 4, 2001 when a train hit me. Of thought. I was hit by a train of thought. It smacked me like a two by four upside the head, a slap in the face, a steel toed boot up the... arse, if you will.

This thought occurred to me: I want to write the ending of Shin Kidousenki Gundamwing - Tamashii no Meian. The ending only. Therefore: Why in the sweet name of Kami am I screwing around writing the beginning? The parts that I don't really need to have written; The parts that have been an uncomfortable proverbial thorn in the brain, as opposed to my other writings which, until I wrote them, were a comfortable thorn in the brain? I dunno.

That, my friends, is the problem at hand.

This, my friends, is the answer at hand.

I am discontinuing TnM. I'm sick of it. Kage's sick of it.

Kage: Damn straight!

Be quiet! Let me finish my rant in peace!

Kage: *sticks out his tongue*

The pilots are... to put it lightly: Hoping to God I will burn in the fires of hell.

Pilots: *waving flame throwers* BBBBBBBBBUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRNNNNNNNNNN!!!!

Dilandau: *using a flame thrower* BBBBBBBBBBBBUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRNNNNNN!!!!

Uh... yeah.

So, without further ado: The Replacement!

~*~*~

e v e n t h o r i z o n - p a r t 1

~*~*~

My name is Meian Lowe. I am nine years old and live with my mother, Isis Lowe, across the street from my uncle, Odin Lowe, Jr., and his family.

I am an unusually precocious child, and as a result I am schooled by my Aunt Relena Dorlian Lowe in her home. Every morning Mom and I are up by 6:00, after which we get dressed, eat breakfast and walk across the street to Odin's house. Soon after, he and Mom drive to work, Relena gets a few more hours of sleep and I entertain my triplet cousins: Makoto, Mikomi and Ai. At about noon my lessons begin: Algebra, Biology II, World History, German II, Economics and Creative Writing. A full plate for a nine year old, ne? At three I'm finished and Aunt Relena and I have stimulating conversations about anything that comes to mind. Poor Auntie Rel is starved for conversation since her husband is a man of few words. At 6:00 Mom and Odin come home, we all eat dinner, and then back across the street and home again for sleep and another day.

A year ago, Okaasan's best friend, Duo Maxwell died. He was a day shy of twenty-nine. He had been on a mission for the Preventers when he took a bullet to the Carotid artery; the sniper who shot him had apparently wanted his target to suffer. He never came home and his teammates Uncle Quatre and Uncle Odin told us how he had died; Quatre in his soft tenor and Odin in his usual monotone. Nothing they could say made Momma feel any better, as she still sees her psychologist at work three times a week.

She works with the Preventers as a strategy specialist. She had planned the mission Duo went on.

For all her problems, I still love her. She is my Mother after all, and without her I wouldn't exist. Neither could I exist without a Father, however I do not know him. I feel I will never know him because when I ask her, her eyes glaze over and she becomes strangely mute after which I usually leave the room. After I go, I can often hear her quiet sobs wherever I am in the house.

This morning didn't look all that different from the rest, but I had decided something the night before. Two years ago I studied Astronomy and I learned during that time about black holes. It was by far one if the most interesting passages in the book:

"Imagine a more massive star that shrinks to a smaller size and density than a neutron star. As the surface gravity increases, the deflection of light increases too. Eventually, the star reaches a size at which a horizontal beam of light enters a circular orbit. A surface at that radius is called the photon sphere.

"As the star shrinks to a smaller size than the photon sphere, to escape the star, light most flow into at cone of half-angle a . The angle a; becomes smaller and smaller as the star collapses, until the radius of the star is about two-thirds that of the photon sphere, near which a; becomes zero, and no light at all can escape. At this point, the velocity of escape from the star equals the speed of light. As the star contracts still more, light and everything else is trapped inside, unable to escape through that surface where the escape velocity is the speed of light. That surface is called the event horizon... It is this surface that is the boundary of the black hole. All that is inside the event horizon is hidden forever from us; as the star shrinks through the event horizon, it virtually disappears from the universe."

In short, the event horizon is the point of no return. Using this loose definition of the term, I had decided that this would be my personal event horizon.

Walking across the street with Mother, I continued to think on my decision. Was I doing the right thing? I must be; if I left it up to her I'd never find out. Would it hurt her, going behind her back like this? Most likely, but I was sure she would feel better once I knew.

We reached the porch and let ourselves in. Relena was right in the entryway, with a firm hug for Momma and a warm smile and ruffling of the hair for me. Inside their cozy two story house, in the kitchen at the table was Odin munching on his morning Trix. It always brought either a smile or a tease to my Mother's lips to see her gruff older brother eating a kid's cereal. This particular morning, it was a tease.

"Silly Odin, Trix are for kids."

"Hn... "

"Yes, I know I'm particularly beautiful today and that you worship the ground I trod upon - "

"Tread indeed" Odin scoffed "with little goat hooves, spawn of Satan."

"Oh, hush" Momma laughed "you couldn't hurt me. You'd be so bored you'd make Relena give you a daily wedgie just to liven things up."

We were treated to one of Uncle Odin's rare smiles. His whole face lit up like a sun when he did it, and you could see why Aunt Relena fell in love with him. I felt the corners of my own mouth turn up in response.

"Whassap Uncle Odin?" I ventured giggling.

"Whassap yourself Muppet." He replied, doling out a patented bear hug.

"Now Meian" Momma said, with a mock serious face "What did I tell you about that? Always abuse gooder English."

Relena threw up her hands in despair and stalked off muttering. "It never fails... no matter what I teach.... you two... undoing five years work... "

"Has she had her coffee yet?"

"No Isis, she hasn't" Odin's clear tenor monotone replied.

"Make your Aunt some coffee, darling."

"Yes'm."

~*~*~

School was over. It was time.

"Aunt Relena, who was my Father?"

The question caught her completely off guard. She had been knitting peacefully and I was presently sitting at her feet, just watching the needles fly.

Her jaw tightened. She dropped a stitch. The utter silence was broken only by the happy squeals of play from the girls upstairs. Her eyes turned to mine, and breathing deeply, she responded, carefully and with deliberate slowness "Ask your uncle, Meian."

I had expected no less, but had to bite back the protest nonetheless. I wanted to know; why would Odin know more than Relena? Relena and Mom were so close, like sisters; they told each other everything. How could she not know? It never occurred to me that perhaps, things had not always been this way.

~*~*~

"Uncle Odin, can I ask you something?"

"Anything, Muppet."

Dinner had been eaten, and Mother and Relena were chittering away pleasantly at the kitchen table over steaming mugs of coffee. Odin and I had left them, moving to the living room and currently soaking up the warmth of the fire with a bag of marshmallows. The girls were in bed, and had been for an hour, since Momma had read them some of their favorite Hank the Cowdog book.

"Aunt Relena said I should ask you this... " I paused and tried to phrase the delicate question. I couldn't just say it any old way like I had with Relena, or Odin would never answer it.

As usual, he won the race before I had even registered the fact that we were racing.

"You want to know all about your father don't you?"

"Yes. Very much. I've always wanted to know, but Momma won't say, it seems that Relena doesn't know and... " I trailed off, full of a hope that burned like a bonfire in my soul.

"I was the only one you felt you could turn to, ne?" His face did not shift into the relaxed smile he usually wore before he told someone a good story.

I just nodded.

"I suppose I should start at the beginning... " He trailed off and stared into space for a minute or so, while I hastily put a lid on my joy. I don't think it worked too well because "Take that silly grin off of your face Meian, this is not a happy story.

"It starts thirty years ago on L1 where your mother and I where created to protect the colony from the Alliance forces. Isis was essentially backup in the circumstance of me being killed during training or battle. They kept her around a year or two, I don't remember well: we were both so young, but by then it was obvious she wasn't needed, so, after implanting her with a tracker, she was given up for adoption.

"I don't know many details about her life after that, just that she was adopted by one of Quatre's older sisters and lived with the Winners on L4 for a time as Serena Zahatra Thompson. Her adopted parents died and she was institutionalized when she was about your age. Six years later the Eve Wars began.

What does this have to do with my Father?

"I was a Gundam Pilot in the war: Pilot 01. Duo was 02, Quatre was 04, and Wufei Chang was 05. You haven't met Chang yet but when you do... let's just say you won't like him much at first but you'll love his wife Sally."

I laughed. "But who was 03? Or did they skip a number?" Or did you?

"03 was your father. His name was Triton Bloom and he was the best man to replace the real pilot."

"The real pilot? Who was the real pilot?"

"He was the son of patriarch, Dekim Barton of the Barton Foundation. His name was Trowa Barton and due to some intrigue and that sort of thing... Well, it's a long story, but he was assassinated by one of the good Doctors and Triton was asked to take his place; He being the only witness to the murder. At this point, your Father was suffering from amnesia so he had no idea really who he was or what he was doing... He always was a lucky bastard."

I blinked. Odin didn't say things like that much.

"Well, again cutting a long story short, we, the pilots, won the Eve Wars and the subsequent Maremaia uprising. A couple years of peace passed when the Angelou showed up."

I nodded, having heard Relena's stories about how she had found Odin after the three years of fighting that battle, beaten and mangled, and had restored him to health, later marrying him and, still later, having three beautiful girls with him.

"During the Angelotic Revolution, Isis showed up once again, having been trained by a Dr. X to pilot, and pilot well at that... She saved our ass many a time. It was during this time... I won't bore you with battle details and such... that your Mother met your Father. They were absolutely inseparable and you could never find a pair of more loving, dedicated people anywhere. I had never seen either of them so happy: They were even planning a wedding.

"Then, one day, we got word that the Regina..." He trailed off, seeing my blank look.

"Oh, the Regina was the Queen Angelou, their leader. She controlled them all with the power of her mind and they did whatever she wanted them to" he saw that I understood and continued "We got word that the Regina had left her base on board her battleship above the atmosphere and was currently inhabiting people's minds downtown. It was decided that if we went there and found her, away from the protection of her ship, we could destroy her and end the conflict for good.

"Finding our way downtown, we discovered that the epicenter of activity appeared to be around the tallest skyscraper: the SHV building. We split up. Duo and Quatre took the bottom levels. My team, comprised of myself and Isis took the middle levels. Wufei and Triton took the top. I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but the Regina completely took over your Father after incapacitating Chang. Triton managed to use the strength of his will and mind to hold her off from causing damage for a time, but by the time I got there she had most of him under control. I took a powerful blow to the head and was knocked to the ground, but before I passed out, I saw your mother arrive on the scene and aim at Triton with her pistol.

"As far as we knew, you had to kill the Regina to destroy the Angelou... and at the moment, you had to kill Triton to kill the Regina. Your Mother had to make a choice.

"She made the choice, and it nearly killed her, especially since she was pregnant with you at the time, but to this day: I'm not sure if she made the right one."

Odin fell silent. I decided I should say something "Thank you Uncle Odin, you've given me a lot to think about."

He remained quiet, staring into the fire and thinking about the past long gone and, as I had just discovered, very dark.

~*~*~

I lay in my bed and thought until my head ached.

My mother saved the world but had to kill my father, the only person she had ever truly loved, to achieve it. What if there had been another way? Was there another way?

Things would be so different had my father lived. I wish Duo has here, he had always made things seem all right.

I relaxed into a fitful sleep.

~*~*~

2002.10.07 - Damn this has been a looooong time in coming... I was major hung up on the history part. I had almost forgotten what the whole deal was going to be about! WHA! -_-;;

Hopefully, I'll get the next part out much, much sooner.

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