06-Aug-2000
Category: Mystery
Rating: PG
Pairings: Well ...
Warnings: AU
Feedback: C&C
Notes: This is my attempt at a mystery as part of J. Wakabayashi's fic challenge. I've written the whole thing up, but I'm posting in parts. Part One is more or less an introduction.
Disclaimer: Gundam Wing and its characters belongs to Bandai, Sunrise and Sotsu Agency and are only being used for non profit entertainment purposes.
212B Baker Street. In these offices resides a clever detective. No, not the one everyone thinks of. We get that confusion more often than not. It's probably because of the mix-up of street addresses. We do know of and on occasion have worked with the famed Holmes and his chronicler Watson. Although they have very little regard for us. No, I talk of the not-so-famous Sally Po. I am her assistant and now I guess chronicler, Chang Wufei.
Miss Po and I have been living in London for the past ten years now. We find our existence here more of a challenge than we presumed before leaving our homeland of China. We each have our crosses to bear. Her history is that of mixed blood. Her father Edmund Hargreaves Poe was a well-known missionary assigned to save the heathen souls of China. Although there are many christian churches in China, I don't know that Mr. Poe really succeeded in doing anything beyond marrying the lovely Xia Ling. He never returned to his post in England, thus was considered a lost soul in his parish. Po had high ambitions. She wanted to be to become a doctor. Most medical schools find the idea of women taking up such a profession absurd. Especially in China. She moved to England in hopes the anti-woman feeling wouldn't be so severe. She was wrong.
If Sally Po (she dropped the "e" in her last name as an act of defiance to the stern English environment) thought living in England as a mixed breed woman was difficult, being a full-blooded Chinese man was even worse. I am forever being mistaken for being a servant. You may wonder how two misfits to English society has acquired a partnership in a detective agency. It all began in China, years earlier.
There was a war, there always seemed to be wars breaking out in our country. This particular coup was a bloody one that resulted in the near demolishment of my village. There was a mysterious brown-haired woman with strange blue eyes helping any villager she could. She had all but set up a mobile hospital near the action. I was a soldier with some medic training who found himself helping her out. I was impressed with her medical knowledge, much which seemed to only come from a book. It was then I discovered she had a photographic memory of facts for things she felt were important. No medical school would take her and she often told me she considered disguising herself as a man in hopes of getting a formal training. She convinced me one day that our luck may be better in the noble lands of England. Her father had filled her head with the idyllic appeals of the faraway island. I was a bit more skeptic about its charms, but I didn't want her to travel alone to a strange land, so I accompanied her.
As I predicted, life in London was anything but pleasant. One evening at a party given by an old friend of her father, a necklace was stolen from one of the party guests. Police were called in. We were all forced to stay. Naturally all eyes and fingers were pointed to the Chinese heathen. Sally convinced the police and the guests that the thief was none other than the host's wife. She had noticed the agitated behavior of the woman and she had even deduced where the hiding place was. The woman was arrested. Her husband asked us never to darken his doorstep again and a career began.
We found offices off of Baker street. It was sheer accident that our address is so similar to 221B Baker Street. We get some work from those seeking Mr. Holmes, our rates are rather reasonable. And we're not near as judgmental as that pipe-smoking, cocaine taking scoundrel.
End Part One
(:./babaca/purloined1)
