Y Gundam (c) 2001 Heero and Duo were having sex again. Liz grimaced and looked at her fingernails for the fourth time. It distracted her from the goings-on on the screen, dimly illuminating the room. Her friends sat there, giggling. She didn't know why she was watching this stupid show. *** "Lianne? Why did you make me watch that show last night?" Liz pointed her straw accusingly at her friend. Lianne and Mary and Jung all broke into laughter. "You didn't like it?" Lianne asked. "No!" The patrons of Budget Burger turned around at the shout and Liz blushed terribly. She continued in a lower tone, "The show has no plot! I mean, two guys hardly know each other, don't act gay in any way, and all of a sudden jump into bed together! And then the desert kid and the circus guy fight in these rejects from Gekigangar, and two minutes later are doing it! In front of their sister!" "Yeah!" Mary yelled, again attracting the attention of the customers, "That was cool! Trowa is so hot." Mary didn't seem to mind that everyone in the place was staring at her, but she was that kind of girl. She went on at a low shout, "I mean, it's yaoi! It doesn't need to make sense." Jung chimed in, "Yah. What? You think Heero or Duo should end up with Relena?" Heavy groans from Mary and Lianne punctuated the sentence. Liz made a show of hiding behind her dirty blonde hair. "Well.. no, I guess not. But couldn't they do more with her? She's supposed to be a princess..." She trailed off weakly, and Lianne was already on the attack. "Relena is so stupid! She stalks Heero, she refused to fight, she's ugly, and she gets between my little Gundam Pilots doing each other." Liz looked bleakly at her friends, "So why should I be watching this?" Her Korean friend adjusted her glasses and spoke patiently, "Gundam Wing is the first real Yaoi to show up on television. It doesn't have to be good. Besides, all the boys are so cute." Well, they were cute, Liz had to admit. And there was something compelling about the show, as if something could have been made from it. Who knows--maybe it got better later on. All the hints of something interesting. Space colonies, big Gundams, that guy Treize was pretty cool, but except for that foursome with him, Lady Une, Lady Une, and Wu Fei, they hadn't done much with him. Liz munched on a burger, promising for the hundredth time that she'd cut down some time. It was hard to cosplay impossibly skinny girls with twenty extra pounds of padding. At least that's what Lianne told her. Of course maybe the fact that Lianne looked just like Asuka warped her perspective a bit. She looked up at her friends who stopped chatting to look at her. "Are you coming to see the rest of it tonight?" Lianne's blue eyes were glowing. Liz nodded and tried to smile. *** She couldn't understand why they were all crying. It was sick! They were hugging each other and their cheeks glistened in the reflected tv light as the credits rolled past. Episode 49 had ended with a tremendous sex scene, boys on one side, girls on the other. Except for Relena. She'd been ejected into space and her death had been depicted in loving and disgusting detail. "That was so great!" Mary said. "I'm so sad it's over!" Lianne said. "I love Trowa!!!" Jung said. "What the hell is this?!" Liz shouted. They stared at her, shocked. Then they all started at once. "It was moving!" "It was beautiful!" "How could you not cry when Heero pushed Relena into the airlock and said "Babe, stop following me..." "...Yeah! Yeah! And then he put his hand on Duo's and they both ejected her into space. That was like... perfect!" Mary and Jung looked at each other and nodded. Liz opened her mouth to argue, but she realized the fight was already lost. She didn't like confrontations anyway. But she was furious. And she was still mad when she got home. She was going to do something about it. *** Letters whizzed by, reflecting off her glasses. With inspired energy her fingers flew over the keyboard. She was the lone crusader. She would make it all better. And apparently she was the first. She'd scoured the web, searched fanfiction.net, and she had found virtually no Gundam Wing fanfic. Maybe nothing had been left unresolved. Maybe people who watched that show couldn't write. She discarded that thought. After all, there was plenty of illiterate fic for most other shows. The story wrote itself--and it was huge! She'd started from the same premise as the original show: Some sort of conflict between the Federation and the colonies with Treize in the middle pulling the strings. But this time the plot was the focus, the characters almost incidental. Zechs was a tragic hero and in a touch Liz was proud of, slowly lost his strength and turned traitor. Her biggest thrill came from the ressurection of Relena. She wasn't some whiny girl who stalked little boys--she was Queen of the World, a pacifist heroine as strong and admirable as Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. And it was Heero stalking her! Liz sipped from the diet coke next to her mouse pad. The stuff really didn't taste so bad. And it gave her the caffeine she needed to write. 3:32 am, the clock read. Well there'd be time for sleep tomorrow. *** "You wrote a fan fic?!" Lianne even wore those red Asuka thingies in her hair at school. It was a little embarrassing. Liz smiled smugly. "Yup. Sure did!" Jung ran up. "Let me see! Which show did you do? Who did you pair?!" Her smile didn't change. "I did a Gundam Wing fic." Mary gave her an odd look, "Why? Nobody does Gundam. Unless...." her eyes widened, "Did you make it really dirty?!" All three of them squealed. "Nope!" Liz said confidently, "And what's more, I'm not going to show it to you." And she walked past them into Ms. Hurkey's english class without another word. *** At least she'd been smart and given them an alternate e-mail when she'd submitted the story. Liz checked fanfiction.net again. 1235 reviews. 15 of them were positive. She smiled in satisfaction. She'd read those fifteen e-mails over and over again. One had had proclaimed, "I finally found somethin good to read!" while another praised her for "writing Treize way more sexy." Liz was really pleased with the one which applauded her handling of Lady Une's multiple personality disorder, and she was flattered, if a little embarrassed by the girl who called her "the muse of fanfic." The best result of her hard work though was the rise in Gundam Wing fic creation. From just 3 stories, the total had risen to 25--and most were based on her universe. A *ping* from the computer's speaker told her another story had been written. This one was by one of her new friends and was called Endless Waltz. She couldn't wait to read it. Liz caught sight of herself in the mirror on the wall. Now that she saw herself without glasses she saw that she really did look a little like Relena. That had bothered her before but now the fact filled her with pride. Perhaps it was time to give cosplay a try. Idly she clicked through the various Gundam Wing fan sites, gloating. She felt a tiny twinge of guilt, the same feeling she'd felt several times while writing her story, silly as it was. Heero and Relena did make sense as a couple, and it was a clever twist, her take on their relationship... But she had to admit, Heero and Duo did look kind of cute together. FINIS fagin@earthlink.net