FIC: Ho, Ho, Ho! Sank Royal Palace [Gundam Wing, Instructor H & Relena & Kids]

[omnicat]

Title: Ho Ho Ho!
Author: Omnicat v''v
Rating: K+
Genre: General, Humor.
Spoilers & desirable foreknowledge: No serious requirements, but let’s just make it everything, so you’ll be able to enjoy the more subtle references and won’t be confused by the Denial.
Warnings: AU, Denial (i.e., characters who are supposed to be dead are still alive). But actually not, for this fanfiction follows the best of Gundam traditions. If you don’t stick to a dead (wo)man all the way from the moment they draw their dying breath to the moment they get staked to their coffin, they’ll come back! Alive! Muahahahahaha! Prominent OCs.
Pairings: Heero Yuy x Relena Peacecraft, Milliardo Peacecraft x Lucrezia Noin, hints of Trowa Barton x ?, Wufei Chang x Sally Po, Duo Maxwell x Hilde Schbeiker, Quatre Winner x Dorothy Catalonia, Treize Kushrenada x Lady Une.
Disclaimer: Out of proper Christmas Spirit, could we skip this? No? Bleh. All right then, I hold no rights to Gundam Wing, this story is not meant for commercial gain.
Summary: H has drawn the shortest straw once again. He must now execute J’s evil, charitable Christmas schemes and visit six households before daybreak in order to save his own behind. See how this lab–potato with no sense of direction fares.
Author’s Note: For those who liked the previous instalments, I hope you’ll like this one too. For those who didn’t, the torture ends at the bottom of this page. ^_^ This is the last of my utterly disgraceful use of Gundam Wing characters and settings for purely humorous and torturous purposes.

 Ho Ho Ho!

Epilogue/Chapter; Sank Royal Palace

The palace was dark and deserted. Of course, one would not expect buzzing activity in the wee hours of night. In this palace, however, with the king-spouse as - to put it bluntly - paranoid as he was, such quiet could only be the result of sabotage. And H was on his way to the saboteur(s) right now. He owed him - most probably them - a favour the size of a colony.

Rendezvous point had been decided on the Peacecraft family’s personal quarters, third room to the left of the dining room - or was that the library? It was a good thing security was so low in the entire building, because H would have collected quite the string of guards-on-his-tail if there had been any, wandering around like a sense-of-direction-deprived tourist like he did. He didn’t think he could have handled another ‘adventure’ tonight.

He found the Peacecraft-Yuy quarters easily enough. The Peacecraft-Noin quarters had to be adjacent to those to the north. No, south. Er, west. No, east, apparently. He wasn’t going to get lost in the very last house, was he? What did royalty need such ridiculously large houses for anyway?

He popped his head around yet another doorpost. Ah, there they were.

H smiled as he stole into the parlour. The light of a softly crackling fire illuminated the forms of the Yuy-Peacecraft and Peacecraft-Noin children. Teens. Whatever, they were all young, and they always would be, to him. And since when did he bother calling anyone anything else than ‘boy’ or ‘lass’?

Odin Yuy, a boy in his early teens who bore a striking resemblance to his father, except for the neat brown-blond hair, was slumped in an armchair to an almost vertical position. Sprawled over the loveseat across from him was Zechs Peacecraft, who liked to pretend he really was almost an adult. His platinum blond hair covered almost all of his face now that his head was tilted so sharply to the side, and the locks wafted on his deep, rumbling snores. Another boy, aged somewhere between his lighter haired brother and cousin, lay curled up on the rug, his back to the fire.

The only one still awake - though just barely - was both the youngest of the group and the only girl. Her thick chocolate hair was pulled into two tiny pigtails, which gave H cold chills for a moment as they reminded him of their blond counterparts, whom he had faced not an hour ago. Katie sat between her brother’s sprawled legs, staring into the fire with glossy eyes.

H stood there for a while, just looking at them. Children could seem so innocent when sleep was chaperoning and their fiendish minds weren’t busy scheming. These four were the perfect example.

Katie’s small hand absently reached out to the plate of cookie-crumbles sitting on the coffee table in front of her. She didn’t seem to realise she was groping in thin air until she incidentally knocked over an empty glass, that had once contained milk. Her big, inky blue eyes blinked into focus and she looked up at H in surprise.

“Uncle H?”

“Hi there, sweetie.” He ruffled the girl’s already wild hair. She smiled widely and jumped up to hug him.

“Uncle H, you did it!”

You didn’t think I would? H thought upon hearing her tone of voice.

“Odin, Odin, wake up! Uncle H is here. Zechs, Sieben, Uncle H made it through!”

The boys stirred and awoke. Well, two of them, at least. Sieben just mumbled something and stuck a thumb in his mouth. Odin grumbled and tried to shake his sister’s hands off. Too bad there was no way to turn the sound off. H cast skittish a glance around the room, expecting Heero Yuy or Milliardo Peacecraft to pop up any second, mood best not to be thought of. Zechs rolled off the couch and was awake faster than Katie’s shrill voice could have ever achieved.

“Hey, Harry old chap. You look pretty intact.” Zechs said drowsily.

If you say so, lad. H thought sourly. Zechs yawned and stretched, before sitting up and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “How’d it go?”

“Better than it would have without Odin’s help.” H answered neutrally. He didn’t think what he had to say was suitable for these children. They might just get inspired.

Odin grinned a cocky, albeit sleepy, grin. “No surprise there.”

“C’mon, Horace, we wanna hear your story.” Zechs urged. He prodded his sleeping brother with his slipper. “Oy, wake up. We need your ‘charm’ here, Sieb. Hillbilly won’t spill.”

“No, no! No need to turn the boy’s Charm on me!” H said, thoroughly frightened. And with good reason. Sieben Peacecraft’s ‘charm’ was no trifle matter. He cast a weary glance at the grouchy boy, who brushed his dark, longish hair out of his face along with his brother’s foot. “I’ll tell you about it, no problem.”

Zechs beamed at him pointedly. “Good.”

Despite the feeling that he was like a puppet in these children’s hands - or maybe because of it - H shooed Zechs away to make room for himself on the couch and finally sat down. He took plenty time to put down his now nearly empty gunny bag, tear off his boots, accept a remainder of milk, and lastly, hesitantly, take off his hat.

The result was as expected. One collective gasp, followed by a short, stunned silence, and huge bellows of laughter. H couldn’t see the humour in it. He couldn’t help how the Maganacs where used to apply a head bandage. Turban style...

“What happened to your head, Instructor?” Sieben, now wide and eagerly awake, gasped.

“Diana Winner.” H whispered flatly. A shudder shook his pudgy form as he remembered how Dorothy had pulled her tweezer-browed daughter into a hug and cooed over the grinning little girl, praising her and saying she had made Mommy so very proud. At least the father had had the decency to be angry over such use of the family’s priceless ancient silver candlesticks.

“O dear.” Katie said. She looked up at H, her eyes full of concern. “Should I play cute with Grandpa, Uncle H?”

H smiled. Whatever deity it was that had made Heero Yuy’s daughter such an angel, despite her father’s devilish looks, was to be praised. “No need, my dear. Uncle Quatre and Aunt Dorothy promised to keep it a secret from J.”

“Just like last year, huh?” Zechs asked, smirking now that his breath couldn’t supply for guffaws anymore.

“Yes.” the old man sighed, half relieved, half amused. Little did H know of the cards being printed at that very moment, which would circulate the entire Earth Sphere the following morning, and the footage that would pop up on parties and get-togethers and bring tears of mirth to even the most sober eyes for years to come. “I take it, seeing as how terribly loud you lot are being despite my headache, that we needn’t worry about getting caught here?”

“Nope. Father and Uncle Milliardo were drugged at dinner and won’t be coming down any time tonight.” Odin said smugly. “After Mother had brought Father upstairs I hacked into the security programme and changed the night shifts. All of the regular security personnel think they’ve gotten a surprise night off and that someone else has taken over their shifts. And the burglar alarm was almost too simple to deactivate.”

“Easy.” Zechs concluded.

“I didn’t see you do anything but stare at the screen stupidly while I was working my ass of to dodge Father’s tracker systems, though.” Odin said sharply. Zechs turned a faint shade of red and gained an eerie resemblance to his father upon hearing his cousin’s tone of voice.

H cut in before another one of the infamous hereditary 01/06 quarrels could break out. “I thought you wanted to hear about my night?”

“Yes, we would very much like to, Uncle H.” Katie said, with an edge to her voice that brought the boys back from the way to bloodshed immediately. O yes, she definitely took after her mother. She smiled sweetly at them before turning her attention back to H. “Well, sir?”

H sighed. “Yes... well...”

H was a coward. He knew that very well. He liked his behind the way it was, pudgy and all. And around these kids, he didn’t blame himself one bit. They were the next generation of Doctor Js...

“Well... nothing much happened, really.” He saw the faces drop dangerously, and his resolution-of-steel to tell them absolutely nothing, so they would not be able to spread his humiliation any further, changed course dramatically. Boy was he traumatised by now. He continued hastily: “Most of the time, that is. I started off with the Blooms, as they have alighted nearest to my own home. No problems whatsoever, there. Everyone in the camp was asleep. The only setback was the cold when I was looking for Aunt Catherine’s and Uncle Tri- Tro- T-you-know-the-guy, their trailers.

Then came the Maxwells.

I don’t think I will need to elaborate on this, however, as your friend Solo will undoubtedly tell you all about the little traps laid out in there before long.” H gave Odin a penetrating look, which was met with the calm of someone who has grown up with much better. “But I would like to find out who was responsible.”

“I’m not going to tell on Solo, or his sisters, or his parents for that matter, Uncle H.” Odin said. “Not even if you tell our parents about what we did tonight.”

Damn the kid’s righteousness. No, wait. Maybe like that I can get him to -

“Solo telling on you is another thing altogether, though.” the boy mused.

Damn just the kid.

Sieben and Zechs exchanged looks. “I think we’ll leave this part to Solo and Hell’s Twins, indeed.” Zechs said. “Bet they’d tell it a lot better than Hayden here ever would.”

“I’m not taking up on a losing bet.” Sieben warned.

“No need to, no need at all, brother dear. Pagan will.” Zechs chuckled evilly.

H sighed and resolved to leave the man a warning note before leaving. “Fine, fine. I won’t stop you. I don’t have the energy left to do anything else but stumble home after this.

At that moment, I thought it was a good thing I was able to blow off some steam at the Chang residence.”

“Huh?” Sieben looked confused. “But I thought the whole reason you asked Odin for help was because you had to keep a low profile.”

“Wufei’s a sour puss.” Odin said. “He wanted to know beforehand. Doesn’t like surprises. Remember what happened last Halloween?”

“Oh, yeah.” the kids replied in unison.

H did too, and he was glad it had been Master O then. “Yes. Little Meiran was certainly impressed when I punched her father’s sandbag off its chain and through the paper wall. Though I bet you can imagine Wufei himself was less pleased.” A small round of laughter followed. Good. Maybe he could get out of this one with a whole skin. “But I regretted it by the time I got to the Winners’ Christmas tree.”

“Is that where Diana -” Katie cut herself off when she saw the speed with which the colour drained from H’s face. He nodded numbly. “I really need to have a talk with that girl.” Katie mumbled.

“Yeah, me too.” The Yuy siblings smirked. Zechs and Sieben chuckled.

H sighed shakily. “I fell down the chimney and one thing let to another. That woman -”

“Those women, sir.” Katie corrected him. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Her brother and cousins put an excessive amount of hands over her mouth and hissed for her to shut up. H saw his mental image of Saint Katerina in a white gown, cradling a dove in her hands and beautiful wings sprouting from her back, gain a set of elegant but razor-sharp horns, for some reason.

“I’m quite alright, my dear. No need to worry, Rashid took care of my head...” he mumbled, but not lowly enough not to rouse another round of snorting. “And now I’m here. And Odin, I have noticed, already pilfered your presents when I came to pick up my equipment, so that’s all for tonight.” H concluded.

“That’s all you have to say, Hugh?” Zechs asked, incredulously.

“Hm. You know guys, I think we’d have gotten a better story if we’d asked Uncle Triton’s pet lion.” Sieben said sceptically.

“Have you been to Mariemaia, Victoria, Lokai and Ares yet, Uncle H?” Katie asked suddenly.

“Huh? ...oh, Author!”(1) H squeaked despairingly. The night was all but spent, there was no way for him to get to the Kushrenada household before sunrise. J was going to kill him. Then another thought struck H, and he nearly peed his red pants. NOOOOOOO! No more ballet lessons, Mr. Treize! Please, no more!

Odin, Katie, Zechs and Sieben were in stitches. H was in hysterics.

“What are you laughing about?” he wailed, jumping up. “This is a disaster! J and Treize - they’re - they’re -”

“They’ve been taken care of!” Katie laughed. “Didn’t you notice, Uncle H? Odin took their presents along with ours, and we’ve been to Uncle Treize’s house.”

H stared at her. Then at the boys, who were still rolling around with laughter (“Did you see Hank’s face? Priceless!”).

Then he keeled over.

The laughter died down abruptly.

“Hans?”

“Uncle H?”

“Sir, are you all right?”

“Urghlegh... I’m afraid so.” H mumbled while being rolled over onto his back.

“Phew!”

“You had us worried there for a minute, Henrico.”

“I’d like to go home now.”

“All right, sir.”

“Here, let us help you up.”

The suddenly o so considerate young Peacecrafts hoisted H up and helped him sort out his things, while Odin and Katie cleared the sitting room of the dishes, candy wrappers and other leftovers of their little party, and put out the fire.

“Do you want us to call a cab, Heath?”

“We could ask Pagan to bring you home, if you don’t feel up to it.”

“No thank you. I have a chauffeured vehicle waiting for me outside, courtesy of Doctor J. I’ll be fine, you go off to bed now, before anyone notices.”

“They won’t, Uncle H! I sweet talked my way into the kitchen and put the grinded pills in Dad and Uncle Milliardo’s food myself!”

O, Katie thou too? H thought as he looked at her proud expression. “All right then. See you kids at the New Year’s party.”

“Bye Uncle H!”

“Goodbye, sir.”

“Bye.”

“See ya, Heidi.”

The children snuck upstairs - H noted they hadn’t drugged their mothers - and H smiled a little. Nothing like a good scare to bring them back into line. He turned away and walked out of the room.

“That little trick worked out well.”

And nearly had a heart attack.

“Miss Relena!” he exclaimed, clutching at his heart.

“Oh, just Relena will do.” she said. Relena smiled as she stepped from the shadows. He was very sorry, but ‘just Relena’ would not do for H to address a former Queen of the world, former Vice Foreign Minister of Earth and current Queen and representative of the Sank Kindom, even when she stood before him in a bathrobe and fuzzy pink slippers, with her hair mussed and looking positively exhausted.

“How long have you been here, Miss?”

“It’s Relena. Heero passed out an hour or so ago, and I’ve been keeping an eye out for the kids - and catching my breath - ever since. I thought it was a little suspicious. Guess I was right.” H saw her blush slightly as she pulled the bathrobe more tightly around her.

H didn’t understand, but he nodded politely. “If you say so, Miss Relena.”

“Thank you for all your kind efforts tonight, Instructor. Is there anything at all I could do for you?”

“No, thank you. There really is a car waiting for me outside.”

“Okay. Oh, and don’t worry. I’ll warn Pagan. You just go home and get some rest. You look like you need it.”

Observant little lady. “Thank you, Miss Relena. So do you, if I may be so bold.”

Relena smiled and blushed. “Indeed. I’ll have to thank Katie... Goodnight, sir.”

“Good night.”

She shook his hand and walked away. H noticed her steps were somewhat unsteady.

H sought his way out of the palace, thinking: What kind of pills did Katie put in her father’s food to do that to her mother?
 

PSAN: Instructor H torment, complete. Feel free to hate Doctor J. Or me. Malicious praise would be welcome as well, naturally. x3

Oh, yeah... ehm, this story is set somewhere very close to Christmas, some twenty, twenty-five years after the canon. Dorothy was being picky about the Christmas cards again. And fortunately, it worked out very well this time. Treize just... popped up, somewhere along the road. You know how those things go. Didn’t think you would mind, seeing as I had the brought the Freaky Five in without protest already. And on how H was able to go from who knows where Trowa and Wufei live to the colony where Hilde’s Scrapyard is settled, L4 and the Sank kingdom in one night; Santa magic. Secret of the trade, the muse wasn’t allowed to tell me either.

Additional Notes

* “Huh? ...oh, Author!” Once again, no so-called omniscient, omnipotent, worshipper-rich, creative entity is going to steal Omnicat’s praise! :P

Legend

Zechs - Milliardo and Noin’s firstborn son, named after his father’s alias. Sechs is the German word for ‘six’.
Sieben - Milliardo and Noin’s second son. Sieben is the German word for ‘seven’.
Katrina ‘Katie’ - Odin’s younger sister. Named after Relena’s biological mother.
Diana - Roman Goddess of the hunt.
The infamous hereditary 01/06 quarrels - Heero versus Zechs Merquise/Milliardo Peacecraft speaks for itself. Odin (Germanic/Norse one-eyed god of wisdom and war) and Zechs (see above) carry on the tradition of wanting to blow each other up one minute, backing each other up for the common - ahem - good the other. With relish.
Meiran - Wufei and Sally’s firstborn daughter. Named after Wufei’s first wife, who died when they were both only fourteen.
Victoria - The first daughter of Lady Une, Treize’s second. Roman goddess of victory.
Lokai - Treize and Lady Une’s oldest son. Derived from Loki, mischievous Germanic/Norse god of fire.
Ares - Treize and Lady Une’s youngest son. Greek god of passionate war (as opposite to Minerva, the goddess of smart, intellectual war; Ancient Greeks knew the difference between men and women).
Harry, Horace, Hillbilly, Hayden, Hugh, Hank, Hans, Henrico, Heath, Heidi - Since nobody knows what the Freaky Five’s letters stand for, Zechs Peacecraft, among others, has taken up the habit of calling them by a different name starting with that initial every time.

Ho, Ho, Ho!
Winner Residence
Hilde's Scrap Yard and the Maxwell Maze
Sank Royal Palace
H has drawn the shortest straw once again. He must now execute J’s evil, charitable Christmas schemes and visit six households before daybreak in order to save his own behind. See how this lab–potato with no sense of direction fares.