[repost] [fanfic] Nor In Heaven Above
I wrote this Unbelievably Wrong Christmasfic a few years ago, and I thought today was an appropriate day to repost it.
-title- Nor In Heaven Above
-authorial credit- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-fandom- Shin Kidou Senki Gundam Wing
-category- Vignette, humor
-timeline- Post-EW
-pairings- N/A
-warnings- May not be suitable for those unable to endure humor concerning the first third of the second chapter of the good news according to Luke.
Nor In Heaven Above
"I do not see," Trowa said firmly, "that this parallel-world string theory of yours has any backing beyond a few radical hopes and wild fantasies."
"If you look at the mathematics as described by Professor Ou-yang -- " Wufei began for the third time. This reunion idea of Winner's, while good in principle, had faltered on the reality of five young men who really didn't have much else in common. If Maxwell had carried through on his threat to bug the room, the resulting tapes would doubtless be of value only to those suffering from pronounced insomnia. Even the unexpected shared interest in abstruse physics seemed to be pulling them apart more than it might have brought them together.
"Anyone can prove anything if they pull the parameters out of nowhere."
"They. Are. Not. Being. Pulled. Out. Of. Nowhere. The Professor's theories clearly state -- "
"I think I went to a parallel world once," Hiiro remarked.
All four of his former compatriots turned and stared at him.(Duo took the opportunity to remove a sheaf of blue fifty-hundcred notes and the deed to Connecticut Avenue from the "bank" box.)
"When," Wufei finally demanded on behalf of the four, "was THIS?"
"Are you making this up?" Duo said sharply.
"Of course not. It's in my logs -- "
"Sorry, stupid question."
Hiiro glared at him and began. "It was when I was battling some Aries near Mesopotamia."
The other four quickly began working out when that would have been.
"There was an anomaly like a rip in the sky, and the battle took us right through it."
"A rip in the sky?" Quatre repeated.
"Similar to a right triangle, with its base parallel to the earth's surface, the right angle on the left as I looked at it, and an altitude roughly two-fifths of the base. Within that field, the stars were different. When we passed through, the land looked much the same, except that the glow of the distant city lights to the east was not there; the stars, however, were both far brighter and subtly different in location, in patterns that they had not been firmly set in for well over two millennia -- a few centuries over, as best I could determine, although I could not narrow it more closely."
"Dude," Duo breathed, staring. "You fell into the past?"
"Of course I did not 'fall into the past,' as you put it. Time travel is firstly, impossible, and second, would be highly paradoxical even were it possible."
"Professor Ou-yang," Wufei added, "hypothesizes that any possible journey into the past would automatically split off at least one if not several parallel worlds, but adds that the effort of doing so would be exponentially greater than the already prohibitively expensive task of attempted para-dimensional travel -- "
"Which you couldn't do anyway," Trowa interrupted.
"Not with present technology. Not unless aided by cosmic accident," Wufei countered.
"I don't believe in accident," Quatre said. "What happens is what's meant to happen."
"How depressing," Duo said. "Well, maybe you fell into the past of a parallel world. So what happened next?"
"Having destroyed two Aries," Hiiro continued in the near-monotone that he still used for events pertaining to the war, "I found that the first one was fleeing westward and gave chase."
"It couldn't have been that far ahead of you, then," Trowa observed.
"No, it was. I was only able to notice it because of the surprising lack of noise."
"Noise?" Quatre asked.
"The general amount of radio waves and television broadcasts and tight-beam chatter and visible light from towns and cities and roads -- it was not there. The stars were far brighter, as I said, and the Aries showed up on my screens as if it were many miles closer, and I must have looked like a meteor or a small comet as I pursued."
"I bet it was the past -- well, somebody's past," Duo corrected himself as Trowa and Wufei appeared ready to start up again. "And what was with all the bright streaking?"
"Any ground-based observers could only have noted the presence of a high, fast-moving object. I felt it more critical to destroy the Aries before it could report back to its base -- communications were apparently out, as I could detect nothing from the other side of the rift, and nothing in this new place."
"Sensible," Quatre agreed.
"I eventually caught the Aries, low in altitude in some hills west of a small river, and destroyed it. I then noticed that we had, apparently, been seen by a group of nocturnal herders. As I moved closer, they were near-paralyzed with terror."
"Did you kill them?" Trowa asked.
Hiiro, for the first time, looked uncomfortable. "The thing is, you see, that they looked to be poor herders, not even laborers, and that such are reputed seldom if ever to willingly tell authority anything."
"That's right," Quatre and Duo said together.
"So I approached them yet more closely, and told them not to be scared."
"Told them how?" Duo inquired.
"I turned the external speakers up as far as they would go, and said -- " Hiiro snapped out a phrase in some language Wufei had never heard before: it was neither Japanese nor European, and certainly no flavor or cousin of Chinese whatsoever.
"Your accent is terrible," Quatre said critically, "but yes, that is barely recognizable as 'Fear not.'"
Duo snickered. "I bet that was real effective."
"So then I told them to go home and look after their livestock and dwellings and children, and beware telling the king, because I couldn't remember the word for government." Hiiro added a long phrase in the same language. "And then I picked up all the recognizable pieces of Aries I could find and started flying back."
"Hiiro -- " Quatre said.
"What?"
"Ah -- next time you want to say something in Arabic, please remember that nouns do have plural forms, and plurals ought to be used." He was obviously half-choking on something, but did not elaborate further -- probably in order to be polite.
"What do they want to use them there for? At any rate, when I returned to the rip, it had shrunk. I threw the pieces of Aries through it, and went down to locate any debris of the earlier battle." A mildly inquisitive expression crept across Hiiro's face. "So what did I say?"
"If you had pronounced it correctly," Quatre said, trying not to laugh, "you would have told them to go home and see the baby in the livestock dwelling, and to be something that if you tweaked it enough might be 'respectful,' and to say 'king.'"
Wufei happened to be looking at Duo Maxwell at the time, and thus saw the exact moment that muffled snickers choked into an expression he had only seen on the other's face twice before.
Once, after certain elements had hijacked Vice Foreign Minister Darlian's shuttle as it left L2. The Vice-Minister had not only missed her connecting bus and thus never boarded the ill-fated shuttle, but had calmly, assuming that she would have to find a ticket on the next one somehow, taken public transportation through some of the worst slums of the colony without being overly concerned for the safety of her person and eventually walked blithely into the Maxwell & Schbeiker Salvage Yard, asking for the use of their com-unit and perhaps the loan of their couch for the night if necessary.
Once, after Hiiro Yui had managed to catch a beam cannon, blow a large portion of Libra to bits, and then recover himself safely. And even then, honest joy at the other's survival had quickly overcome that look of -- awe?
Hiiro grunted. "Most of the debris had burnt up in descent or melted into unrecognizability, but I was able to collect a few large pieces and make it back through the rip shortly before it became too small for a Gundam to fit through. It closed soon afterwards, silently -- it was high enough in the atmosphere that there would have been very little sound in any case. Aside from my log, there was never any record of the anomaly -- Duo, what has gotten into you?"
Duo Maxwell, as mentioned above, was not designed for sustained awe. In this case, it had passed through a few snorts and chuckles to outright howling laughter, causing him to rock back and forth in his chair.
"Never schmever -- looked in th-th-the wrong places," he gasped between bouts of laughter. "Don't believe it -- course I believe it -- 'ts SO you -- tolja it was the past -- or the you from there came here while you went there -- oh God... " He slipped off his chair, kicking one table leg in the process and sending the tokens bouncing and jittering into the general vicinity of Free Parking.
Quatre frowned in distaste at the mild profanity.
Hiiro blinked at whatever of Duo could be seen behind the table, completely bemused.
"Always DID have th'bad habit... sendin' folk off to deliver messages 'thouta by-your-leave..." Tears were coming to his eyes with the force of his guffaws.
Four pairs of eyes regarded the howling nutcase with the sort of gaze one would bestow on an unexpected layer cake sitting in the middle of one's bed.
"God, you guys had a deprived childhood..."
"No, I don't know what he's talking about either," Quatre answered Trowa's raised eyebrow. "It sounds vaguely familiar... as if I heard something once..."
"I have no idea," Wufei pronounced, fixing his erstwhile comrade with a gimlet stare as the young man in question hiccuped "Sucky Arabic... sucky Aramaic... six-a-one, alla same fam'ly..."
Undoubtedly it was some Western thing.
Logically speaking, there's no real reason why any of the rest of them should recognize it...
-title- Nor In Heaven Above
-authorial credit- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-fandom- Shin Kidou Senki Gundam Wing
-category- Vignette, humor
-timeline- Post-EW
-pairings- N/A
-warnings- May not be suitable for those unable to endure humor concerning the first third of the second chapter of the good news according to Luke.
Nor In Heaven Above
"I do not see," Trowa said firmly, "that this parallel-world string theory of yours has any backing beyond a few radical hopes and wild fantasies."
"If you look at the mathematics as described by Professor Ou-yang -- " Wufei began for the third time. This reunion idea of Winner's, while good in principle, had faltered on the reality of five young men who really didn't have much else in common. If Maxwell had carried through on his threat to bug the room, the resulting tapes would doubtless be of value only to those suffering from pronounced insomnia. Even the unexpected shared interest in abstruse physics seemed to be pulling them apart more than it might have brought them together.
"Anyone can prove anything if they pull the parameters out of nowhere."
"They. Are. Not. Being. Pulled. Out. Of. Nowhere. The Professor's theories clearly state -- "
"I think I went to a parallel world once," Hiiro remarked.
All four of his former compatriots turned and stared at him.(Duo took the opportunity to remove a sheaf of blue fifty-hundcred notes and the deed to Connecticut Avenue from the "bank" box.)
"When," Wufei finally demanded on behalf of the four, "was THIS?"
"Are you making this up?" Duo said sharply.
"Of course not. It's in my logs -- "
"Sorry, stupid question."
Hiiro glared at him and began. "It was when I was battling some Aries near Mesopotamia."
The other four quickly began working out when that would have been.
"There was an anomaly like a rip in the sky, and the battle took us right through it."
"A rip in the sky?" Quatre repeated.
"Similar to a right triangle, with its base parallel to the earth's surface, the right angle on the left as I looked at it, and an altitude roughly two-fifths of the base. Within that field, the stars were different. When we passed through, the land looked much the same, except that the glow of the distant city lights to the east was not there; the stars, however, were both far brighter and subtly different in location, in patterns that they had not been firmly set in for well over two millennia -- a few centuries over, as best I could determine, although I could not narrow it more closely."
"Dude," Duo breathed, staring. "You fell into the past?"
"Of course I did not 'fall into the past,' as you put it. Time travel is firstly, impossible, and second, would be highly paradoxical even were it possible."
"Professor Ou-yang," Wufei added, "hypothesizes that any possible journey into the past would automatically split off at least one if not several parallel worlds, but adds that the effort of doing so would be exponentially greater than the already prohibitively expensive task of attempted para-dimensional travel -- "
"Which you couldn't do anyway," Trowa interrupted.
"Not with present technology. Not unless aided by cosmic accident," Wufei countered.
"I don't believe in accident," Quatre said. "What happens is what's meant to happen."
"How depressing," Duo said. "Well, maybe you fell into the past of a parallel world. So what happened next?"
"Having destroyed two Aries," Hiiro continued in the near-monotone that he still used for events pertaining to the war, "I found that the first one was fleeing westward and gave chase."
"It couldn't have been that far ahead of you, then," Trowa observed.
"No, it was. I was only able to notice it because of the surprising lack of noise."
"Noise?" Quatre asked.
"The general amount of radio waves and television broadcasts and tight-beam chatter and visible light from towns and cities and roads -- it was not there. The stars were far brighter, as I said, and the Aries showed up on my screens as if it were many miles closer, and I must have looked like a meteor or a small comet as I pursued."
"I bet it was the past -- well, somebody's past," Duo corrected himself as Trowa and Wufei appeared ready to start up again. "And what was with all the bright streaking?"
"Any ground-based observers could only have noted the presence of a high, fast-moving object. I felt it more critical to destroy the Aries before it could report back to its base -- communications were apparently out, as I could detect nothing from the other side of the rift, and nothing in this new place."
"Sensible," Quatre agreed.
"I eventually caught the Aries, low in altitude in some hills west of a small river, and destroyed it. I then noticed that we had, apparently, been seen by a group of nocturnal herders. As I moved closer, they were near-paralyzed with terror."
"Did you kill them?" Trowa asked.
Hiiro, for the first time, looked uncomfortable. "The thing is, you see, that they looked to be poor herders, not even laborers, and that such are reputed seldom if ever to willingly tell authority anything."
"That's right," Quatre and Duo said together.
"So I approached them yet more closely, and told them not to be scared."
"Told them how?" Duo inquired.
"I turned the external speakers up as far as they would go, and said -- " Hiiro snapped out a phrase in some language Wufei had never heard before: it was neither Japanese nor European, and certainly no flavor or cousin of Chinese whatsoever.
"Your accent is terrible," Quatre said critically, "but yes, that is barely recognizable as 'Fear not.'"
Duo snickered. "I bet that was real effective."
"So then I told them to go home and look after their livestock and dwellings and children, and beware telling the king, because I couldn't remember the word for government." Hiiro added a long phrase in the same language. "And then I picked up all the recognizable pieces of Aries I could find and started flying back."
"Hiiro -- " Quatre said.
"What?"
"Ah -- next time you want to say something in Arabic, please remember that nouns do have plural forms, and plurals ought to be used." He was obviously half-choking on something, but did not elaborate further -- probably in order to be polite.
"What do they want to use them there for? At any rate, when I returned to the rip, it had shrunk. I threw the pieces of Aries through it, and went down to locate any debris of the earlier battle." A mildly inquisitive expression crept across Hiiro's face. "So what did I say?"
"If you had pronounced it correctly," Quatre said, trying not to laugh, "you would have told them to go home and see the baby in the livestock dwelling, and to be something that if you tweaked it enough might be 'respectful,' and to say 'king.'"
Wufei happened to be looking at Duo Maxwell at the time, and thus saw the exact moment that muffled snickers choked into an expression he had only seen on the other's face twice before.
Once, after certain elements had hijacked Vice Foreign Minister Darlian's shuttle as it left L2. The Vice-Minister had not only missed her connecting bus and thus never boarded the ill-fated shuttle, but had calmly, assuming that she would have to find a ticket on the next one somehow, taken public transportation through some of the worst slums of the colony without being overly concerned for the safety of her person and eventually walked blithely into the Maxwell & Schbeiker Salvage Yard, asking for the use of their com-unit and perhaps the loan of their couch for the night if necessary.
Once, after Hiiro Yui had managed to catch a beam cannon, blow a large portion of Libra to bits, and then recover himself safely. And even then, honest joy at the other's survival had quickly overcome that look of -- awe?
Hiiro grunted. "Most of the debris had burnt up in descent or melted into unrecognizability, but I was able to collect a few large pieces and make it back through the rip shortly before it became too small for a Gundam to fit through. It closed soon afterwards, silently -- it was high enough in the atmosphere that there would have been very little sound in any case. Aside from my log, there was never any record of the anomaly -- Duo, what has gotten into you?"
Duo Maxwell, as mentioned above, was not designed for sustained awe. In this case, it had passed through a few snorts and chuckles to outright howling laughter, causing him to rock back and forth in his chair.
"Never schmever -- looked in th-th-the wrong places," he gasped between bouts of laughter. "Don't believe it -- course I believe it -- 'ts SO you -- tolja it was the past -- or the you from there came here while you went there -- oh God... " He slipped off his chair, kicking one table leg in the process and sending the tokens bouncing and jittering into the general vicinity of Free Parking.
Quatre frowned in distaste at the mild profanity.
Hiiro blinked at whatever of Duo could be seen behind the table, completely bemused.
"Always DID have th'bad habit... sendin' folk off to deliver messages 'thouta by-your-leave..." Tears were coming to his eyes with the force of his guffaws.
Four pairs of eyes regarded the howling nutcase with the sort of gaze one would bestow on an unexpected layer cake sitting in the middle of one's bed.
"God, you guys had a deprived childhood..."
"No, I don't know what he's talking about either," Quatre answered Trowa's raised eyebrow. "It sounds vaguely familiar... as if I heard something once..."
"I have no idea," Wufei pronounced, fixing his erstwhile comrade with a gimlet stare as the young man in question hiccuped "Sucky Arabic... sucky Aramaic... six-a-one, alla same fam'ly..."
Undoubtedly it was some Western thing.
Logically speaking, there's no real reason why any of the rest of them should recognize it...