He took in the scene as best he could from behind thick lenses and the ever present ash and dust in the air. The scorch marks in the street and dead grass and crumbling buildings told him that one of these suits-probably the weird one-had some kind of thermal weapon. All the pockmarks told him that a lot of suits had been required to take the weird one down. That was probably who the fight was with, Alliance Leos against the weird one. The scattered pieces of the Leos were all over, and he wondered if there had even been more at the start of the fight, before the thermal weapon would've atomized them.

None of the Leos were salvageable. There were parts, yeah, but he'd need a truck to tow them away. He was saving the fuel he had left for emergencies. Until he found more, anyway. Probably someone else would get to the scraps before him, so he wasn't terribly concerned about it. It was a bit of a surprise to see this here at all, really, but he knew it meant at least one thing: he wasn't biking any further. Not with the cement all gouged and split and cracked. He let the bike coast to a stop beside a Leo's dismembered arms. He locked his bike to the wrist joint and tightened the tarp down over the small cart attached to the bike. A glance behind him showed only crumbling buildings, grey skies, and hazy air. The only noise was in his own head-his gum squelching slightly as he chewed it. Cigarettes were a lot harder to come by than boxes of nicotine gum and a fix was a fix. Nothing moved in the street, and he continued into the battlefield.

He couldn't place when it'd happened. He'd been used to the sound of gunfire and the heavy, rumbling thuds of mobile suits on the ground for as long as he could remember. A battle so far away from where he slept wasn't likely to wake him. If it'd been closer, he'd probably have heard it. Didn't want to end up crushed under the weight of these suits, after all.

On his left, he looked over the torso of a Leo. Something had sliced clean through it. He crouched briefly to touch a hardened glob of metal on the ground, something that had probably dripped from the Leo while it was still molten from the blow. It was a little warm. The hatch was half open, so he climbed to it. Charred corpse at the controls. He reached in for the standard issue pistol he knew all of the Alliance troops carried. He let the clip fall into his palm, counted off the number of rounds, and added it to his inventory back home before pressing the clip back into place. Battle must've been recent enough that no one else had gotten to it, otherwise the gun-and the soldier's boots-wouldn't still be there.

The next Leo was nearly whole save that the entire cockpit was missing. Just a gaping emptiness where it'd been. That death probably would've been quick, at least. There was another body just beyond the Leo, and he kept his distance for a moment, studying the exposed back for movement. His eyes drifted to another mangled Leo whose cockpit was open. Stepping closer to the man, he kept the stolen gun trained at about eye level before nudging him with the toe of his boot. Nothing. He rolled the man over with his foot. The ground under the body was coated in dark blood, and the front of the olive uniform was turned a nasty brown. He wrenched the pistol from the dead man's hand, popped out the clip, counted bullets, and slid it into his back pocket. He dropped the gun back down onto the man's body and it landed with a muffled clatter.

Now he stared up at the weird suit. White and blue with yellow detailing. A bright red shield. All these bullet holes in the ground and nearby buildings, but none on this thing. He knocked on the metal and it even rang differently in the air. He decided there were a few more possibilities as to what this was than an antagonist to these Leos. Maybe it had been a new Alliance suit, and it, along with its comrades here, had been taken out by an enemy. Or it was an OZ suit. They were churning out new suits all the time, according to whatever small bit of radio broadcast he managed to pick up. The Alliance troops and the OZ soldier could have taken each other out. Then he had to consider the non-Earth forces. It could be a Barton Foundation suit. He'd never seen one of those Serpents yet, but this thing didn't call to mind a snake. It had wings overlaying powerful vernier thrusters, which could have easily been built into the suit. The wings were a deliberate choice. So there was a fourth and possibly least desirable option. One of the Gundams. He'd never seen one before, but knew that they were colonists, part of the Barton Foundations elite shock troops come to wipe out everyone on Earth. What was left of everyone after the chunk of that colony hit the planet, anyway.

The suit wasn't in bad shape. He'd already noted there were no bullet holes that he could see. One of the lenses in its face was blown out, so the pilot probably lost visibility. That would've been an obvious set-back. Then he noticed the elbow joint hung at an odd angle. Not ripped away completely, but wires were definitely exposed, some hydraulic tubing snapped, too. He looked at the cockpit, stomach feeling a little empty. He wasn't afraid to die. There wasn't a whole lot to live for down here anyway. Living at this point was more like a force of habit, something to do, rather than a necessity. But when he looked at the cockpit and imagined a man on the other side, already holding a pistol at the ready to blow his brains out, he was suddenly rooted to the spot. If he opened the hatch, who would he be letting out? If he didn't open it, who would he be leaving to continue what work? And if the pilot was already dead in there and he abandoned the suit, who was he leaving it to?

He climbed up the arm of the suit. The machine was laid out on its side at an awkward angle, the shield arm thrust forward as if to protect itself from further damage, cradling the cockpit in its shadow. The shield dug into the ground, the machine's fist placed flush against the pavement, and he supposed a lot of the weight of the torso was placed there. The broken arm was closer to the ground, and that's the one he climbed. He hit the release at the neck to open the hatch, and he waited a moment before moving again, pistol trained on the point of air where the average height of a Colonial male's chest would be. He waited. They probably wore armored flight suits. Should he risk adjusting his sites? And waited. Aiming for the skull was riskier, a smaller target, and one he couldn't be as certain of. But how many chances would he get if the pilot came out shooting? And how many more breaths would he take here before moving? Nothing came out or even rustled quietly. Even the wind was absent.

Finally, he decided either the pilot was dead, unconscious, or forcing him to make the first move. It was obvious that he was present, so he may as well show himself. He lowered himself from the arm, walked beneath the shoulder joint, and moved into the line of sight of the cockpit.

The pilot was slumped forward against the harness. No armor in the flight suit. His head hung limp, dark hair in his face. Arms dangled loosely in the air. He moved a little more, trying to get a better look at the face to make sure the eyes were closed. He'd be lying if he said he wasn't surprised. The pilot was a kid, maybe about his age. Had he stolen the suit and attracted Alliance soldiers in the process? It was a possibility he hadn't thought of, that the suit belonged to the Alliance and had been captured. He was no stranger to child soldiers, having been one himself, but he knew official military organizations discouraged them. Or used to. Maybe times were just that desperate.

He got his hands on the edge of the hatch and hauled himself up. The pilot still didn't move. Briefly, he pulled off a glove and held a finger under the pilot's nose. He was still breathing. Pulling the glove back on, he looked the guy over for injuries, finally noting a bit of blood coursing over his cheek from his hairline. Must've suffered a blow to the head after some impact from another suit. Lucky timing, he decided, that the pilot managed to kill his opponents before passing out.

There was a handgun at the guy's hip, so he took it. A brief search yielded no other weapons. But when he felt over both of the pilot's legs, there was a knot on the left that was absent from the right. Further inspection revealed a large, ugly bump, not the explosive he'd been suspecting. Had the pilot broken his leg? No, that was impossible. He wouldn't have been piloting the suit if that was the case. That kind of pain would be unbearable, and certainly a handicap in a fight like this. Questions weren't going to be answered by observation right now, so he set them aside.

He went up on his toes and his fingers brushed the helmet that had fallen against the control panels on the pilot's left. He checked it over for any damage before sliding it over the pilot's head as best as he could. It wouldn't do an injured person any favors to breathe the air out here. The tubing from the rebreather stuck straight up from the pilot's shoulders, and he twisted them into place at the sides of the helmet. Securing his footholds, he placed his left shoulder under the pilot's chest and unbuckled the harness. The body fell hard, and he pressed his heels against the metal to keep them both upright. There was some hissing noise he couldn't place at first, and he thought maybe the pilot was jarred awake and in pain. Then he saw it, a thin jet of oxygen sending dust and ash dancing through the air. One of the tubes carrying clean air to the helmet had a puncture.

Glancing around for anything to use as a sealant got him nowhere, and he let a breath out through his nose. Then he muttered a little 'oh' to himself before taking a breath and peeling off his mask. He let his gum slip out into his hand, then spread it over the rift in the tube. The leak was plugged, the pilot was still unconscious, and he was ready to get out of here. After resealing his own mask, he got his arms around the guy's knees and put him over his shoulder. He wasn't all that heavy. And he knew it wasn't wise to move an injured person. But the pilot didn't have a lot of choice in the matter. Someone a lot more vicious could come along at any moment. Again he wondered who he was helping here, and if it would be so terrible to leave him to whatever would happen to him.

Then, maybe the pilot had some information. And he was just a kid, after all. Maybe he could be helpful in the end. Somehow.

His feet hit the ground and he let out a breath. The shock jolted through his legs and he looked around for any approaching strangers. The place was just as desolate as it had been since he got here. That weird suit was probably a nice prize to whoever found it. It was fortunate for him, then, that he was the first to do so. Climbing back into the cockpit, he went to work quickly, sabotaging the control panel and removing an essential component for starting the machine up. Most of the guts of the machine seemed to be analogous to the Leos and Aries he was so familiar with and that made things easier. It'd require a transport to move now, so it bought him some time to get the pilot back to his home before returning for the suit. Part of him wondered if it was really so wise to keep it for himself. If this kid was the real pilot, he'd probably want it back. That was fine enough, if he could figure out what the pilot intended to do with it. And if he wasn't, whoever owned it would probably take it by force.

It was something he needed to work out. Maybe he could end up bartering with whoever it belonged to. A suit like this had to be worth a lot of food and water. And if he had taken it from someone who stole it, its real owner would be indebted to him. Right?

He ran with that rationalization as he rushed back home with an unconscious body in tow.

When he woke, he didn't open his eyes. He let his body tell him what was wrong. Ankles were solid. Left leg broken but he could feel something stiff set on either side of it, wrapped in place. So someone else was here. Other leg was okay. Knees aching but fine. Right wrist strained but unbroken. Left wrist was fine. Neck stiff. Head ached. Nothing sharply painful in the way of puncture wounds. No bullets either. His own gun was missing, and his rebreather was gone from his back. He listened intently, gauging his surroundings. What the hell was that whistling noise? It would go on for a few seconds, stop, then repeat the same exact way again. A code, maybe. Was someone trying to communicate with him? Or someone else in the area? He listened intently, studying the whistling for a pattern he recognized.

Something fluttered overhead and his eyes snapped open, catching something brown dart just out of the edge of his vision. He looked for it, but couldn't find it, instead distracted by the room. He was in a bed. The sheets were fairly clean. The light was low and he wasn't sure if that was because he'd been unconscious and whoever put him here was aware he'd probably have a headache when he woke, or if there just weren't more lights available. The next thing he noticed were all of the plants. Some did better than others, but he recognized a few as food. Lettuce and celery were growing in jars of clean water. One looked like it wanted to be a tomato someday but didn't quite have what it needed to make it. Another was some yellow pepper that was barely the size of his own thumbnail, even though it looked ripe. Others just looked like grasses or succulents. There was a stack of books in the corner. Most were in Cyrillic and he could only decipher the contents based on pictures of plants on the spines or covers. The few in English were about growing herbs, plants for air purification, and even one about maintaining apiaries. A couple of Russian/English dictionaries were set on top of those.

That whistling noise came again, this time from outside of the room. He glanced that direction, but it wasn't helpful. He couldn't see anyone around the corner. But there was a dog in the doorway. A large one. It sat placidly, for now, watching him with upturned eyes, head on its paws. He had no doubts it'd be a lot less calm if he stood up, so that was going to be an issue.

Movement on the floor caught his attention and he let his eyes follow it. He wasn't sure if it was disbelief or shock that lit his eyes right now. But there was a turtle, a grumpy, angry looking old thing, and part of its shell looked smeared over with plaster of some sort. It scooted across the floor, and when he leaned in a little as if to verify it really existed and wasn't just a product of the blow to the head he'd suffered, it opened its mouth and made a hissing noise at him.

He ignored it, and started putting on his shoes. He pulled on one boot, but when he touched the second, something moved inside of it. A head peaked out and he couldn't suppress a startled grunt before he threw the whole thing at the wall. A brown snake slithered out, and he let loose a sharp exhalation. He'd known that Earth was full of dangerous animals, but he didn't know he'd be waking up with them in his shoes. What kind of maniac had taken him hostage and left snakes and dogs and turtles to keep him in place?

He took off his first shoe and held it tightly, ready to crush the thing's skull before it could bite him. The dog raised its head and made a sort of low whining sound. He refocused on his target as it slithered towards the opposite wall. An exclamation in Russian caught his attention and he looked up immediately. "Stop, put that down!" The thickly accented voice belonged to a guy about his own age, with green eyes showing a little too much anger for his liking.

Heero ignored his captor and launched the shoe at the snake. At about the same time, the other guy snatched up the nasty monster and clutched it to his chest like it was his only child. The shoe bounced harmlessly off the floor, landing on its side next to the books. "What did she ever do to you?"

"They bite."

"She is not venomous snahkye."

"What?"

The guy held the snake up again, and said, "She's a snahkye."

"Snake," Heero corrected, realizing what he was trying to say.

Embarrassment didn't seem to cross the other guy's mind and instead he repeated it the way Heero said it. "Snake. Oh. I never have heard it said in English."

Heero didn't care one way or the other, watching with a bit of disgust as the brown snake wrapped its way up the guy's arm before he set it on the ground. He didn't have all day to look at this lunatic's petting zoo, so he cut right to the chase. "You OZ?"

"No."

"Alliance?"

"No."

"Sympathetic to the Bartons?"

"No."

"Do you know who I am?"

The other guy shook his head. "I found your suit. Some miles from here. It has some damage but I may have enough parts to help you fix it."

Doubtful, but he didn't press the issue. He could fix it on his own, anyway. "Where is it?"

"Across the street. Old parking garage. Out of sight."

Heero nodded his understanding but said nothing else as he stood up, weight in his right leg. The guy backed away from him, and it didn't bother Heero. If anything, they were good instincts to have. He swept up his shoes, now certifiably snake free.

"What is that suit?"

"It's better if you don't know."

The guy held his cards pretty close to the chest, and Heero was having difficulty gauging his reactions. Unless, it seemed, he put a snake in harms' way. "You're a Gundam pilot, aren't you?"

Heero tensed. Obviously he'd given himself away when asking who the guy might be affiliated with. He didn't need his gun to kill this guy, but it would've made things simpler, especially with his broken leg. He bolted, but knew he wasn't able to move as fast as he normally could, the pain screaming in his leg seeing to that. And the other teen reacted quickly, unexpectedly so, dropping low and shoving a shoulder into Heero's chest. He felt his feet leave the ground before his back hit it seconds later, pain radiating through his leg all over again. Before he could right himself, he felt a heavy weight on his chest and a knee against each of his arms. Then there was the gun in his face. The kid did all this without much expression, as if this were just as normal a day as any. And maybe that's how things were on Earth now. For lone stragglers like this one, scattered in barely habitable areas, supplies and food would be hard to come by. Definitely not enough to share. He tried not to think about the sorts of encounters such situations lead to, but a voice in the back of his head mocked him with dark scenarios he'd failed to prevent.

"I don't know if I want to kill you yet," the teen said, again without any tone to indicate more than the plainly stated words.

"Lukewarm's no good," Heero responded. Something Duo always said that actually struck him as sensible for once. If he was going to die he'd rather get it over with. Maybe it was some kind of justice if somebody from Earth was going to pull the trigger.

"Neither is making decisions without as much information as you can get."

"What do you want?"

"Why did you want to destroy the planet?" That was the question Heero waited for every time he was around people here. No one ever asked, because no one in refugee camps or supply stations knew who he was.

"You can't believe everything you hear," Heero answered. He knew it was one of the few things OZ and the Alliance agreed on. That the five Gundam pilots committed genocide against nine billion people. Killing four point six billion. Leaving the rest to languish in barely survivable conditions that would end even more lives soon enough. Heero also knew the truth of the matter, a truth the two military powers didn't want getting out.

"And if I should believe anyone it would be you?"

"So shoot me already. If you aren't going to believe what I have to say, what's the point of any of this?" Heero said. The boy studied him for the space of a few seconds after that. Heero wasn't particularly good with reading subtle facial expressions, and his captor here took subtle to an entirely different level. But it was plain to him he was thinking about something. Something was keeping him rooted to the spot for a moment.

Then the pressure in his arms was gone and in a fluid movement, the guy was on his feet, gun still leveled at Heero's chest. "Then talk."

Heero sat up and glanced at the door. The dog looked back, ears forward, like it was waiting for things to escalate further. This boy had already shown that he had quick reactions, sharp instincts for conflict, and a lack of trepidation over killing a person. It was like looking in a mirror. His hesitation didn't stem from being afraid to end a life, but something different. Heero knew that running would probably get him a bullet buried in a kneecap, maybe a vital organ. And with his leg damaged, he probably wouldn't be outrunning the other, taller guy anyway. So he sat. And maybe a kid from Earth was owed an explanation, anyway. Had anyone else given one to him, and would they ever if Heero didn't now? His whole life was ruined, his whole planet ruined, so didn't Heero owe him, and every single person left on Earth, some kind of answer?

"Gundam pilot," he said, confirming the suspicion. "There are five of us. And four of us refused the order to drop the colony. You'll never hear about that, because it's easiest to fight wars when the issues are black and white. When the enemies aren't people but caricatures of evil. Four of us tried everything we could to destroy the colony before it hit the Earth." He stopped a moment, remembering the way Duo's voice rose frantically the closer that chunk of metal got to the Earth. The way Wufei's breathing became more and more erratic as he pushed himself beyond his limits to move his suit quicker and harder. Quatre's stunned silence. "They knew we were out there. OZ and Alliance. They were there too, doing what they could. But we couldn't stop it."

The other boy seemed to be considering Heero's story, at least. So there was something. No outright accusations of lying. "The fifth one?" he asked. "You said there were five."

"The Barton Foundation financed the Gundams. They dropped the colony. Dekim Barton, the head of the foundation, this is all his plan to make the Earth dependent on the colonies. To eradicate OZ and the Alliance and leave a power vacuum for him to conveniently fill. His grandson Trowa pilots the fifth suit. He's the one who wanted to see this through. He did everything he could to keep us from preventing it, him and the Serpents."

"Why are you here then, if not to kill us?"

"The four of us target OZ bases."

"Those were Alliance troops back there where I pulled you from."

"They attacked me. I'm their enemy, but they're only mine if they engage me. OZ is the main target."

"Why? Have you seen this planet? What little they have in their control is dying. Give it time. We'll all be dead soon."

Heero looked up at him and tilted his head a little. But then maybe it wasn't so strange that someone out here could be unaware of what was going on in the world. "Not everything on the planet is like this. There are more livable places. Imperfect, but they're better off than this. OZ has a stronger grip on them, since they have control of almost all remaining resources."

"We have much bigger problems now than the military being less than kind. Even if there are better places, most of the Earth isn't this way. So much farmland is lost, people will start starving. If they haven't already. Medicine will be harder to come by. Desperate people do violent things."

"Like you?"

"I'm not desperate. I know this. I've always known this way of living. But not everyone does so it will be harder for them."

"You're a soldier." Heero didn't say it as a question because it wasn't one.

"Mercenary. As long as I can remember. I know how to make a living out of the bare minimum."

That image in the mirror was getting sharper. Enough like himself to be understandable. Heero glanced around the room at the evidence of that. He heard that whistle again and his eyes shot in the direction it'd come from, out in the hall. "Who else is here?"

"Just me."

"Then who keeps whistling?"

The other boy stared for a moment, still giving nothing away. Then he said, "It's a bird. You've never heard a bird?"

Heero shook his head. He knew what they looked like, same as the turtle and the snake. But he'd never seen or heard a live one. "There aren't birds on the colonies." Everything there was allotted and purposeful. Every tree planted, every patch of sod laid, every brick in every building and every steel beam had a purpose. Nothing wasted, nothing extra, nothing random or unpredictable. In space, unpredictable meant disaster, plain and simple. Birds weren't a necessity there and it wouldn't do to have them attacking delivery drones or nesting in the wiring.

"Maybe I see why that Dekim is so jealous of the Earth, then," the boy muttered. It was the first time Heero heard his voice give away some of what he was feeling, save for the brief worried anger over the snake-complete and utter disgust.

"What's your name?" Heero asked abruptly.

Nothing being easy in life, the other boy shrugged.

"If you're going to help fix my suit, I've got to call you something." Someone who didn't want to kill him was a pretty rare thing, and he'd learned from the other pilots that letting someone help you out of a tough spot wasn't so awful a thing. The spaceport he was after was days away, and his suit had issues. He could fix it all alone, but another set of hands would repair it quicker.

"They called me Nimeta. The mercenaries."

"Why didn't you say that to begin with?"

"It just means 'without a name' in Estonian."

Heero let out an annoyed breath through his nose. A boy soldier without a name. Too many parallels for his comfort, but then why should he have ever believed he was so unique in times as desperate as these? "Then I'll call you Nanashi."

"Why?"

"Same thing in Japanese. Because I'm not Estonian."

Nanashi nodded. "And you?"

It felt heavy on his tongue and he almost didn't want to say it. What a mockery the code name had turned out to be, but maybe that was the point. "Heero Yuy."

"Lukewarm is no good" is something said by Roald Dahl. I don't know where Duo picked this up. I do not exactly think Trowa is ethnically Russian so you can have him be whatever you want in your mind's eye. But since Episode Zero I always got a Russian/Eastern Europe vibe from his mercenary group, maybe because they look dressed for the cold(I know it's a flimsy reason). So I have the thought that the mercenaries were a mix Eastern Europeans, most of whom were Russian. An Estonian found Trowa and when asked for his name, the Estonian tells the others 'nimeta'-to say, he doesn't have one. The Russian captain mistakes that for a name and even after they realise the mistake, they keep calling him this way. It's purely self-indulgent, I like how it sounds better than in Russian. :p This story is not intended to be a romantic one but if it pleases you to read it this way, that's fine too.