Chapter Summary: Dorothy Catalonia ponders Fate, the Gundams and how to seize power.
Gundam Wing © Sunrise. Used without permission and not for profit.
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Location: The library inside Castello di Catalonia, Naples, Italy
Date: May Seventh, AC 197
Dorothy Catalonia sat in the gilded, throne-like chair behind her late grandfather's desk and pondered on the whims of Fate.
From an early age, Dorothy's father, Chillas Catalonia, had raised her to only care for one person, herself, and catered to her every whim, so she was a spoiled brat who wanted for nothing. When he died, her mother couldn't handle the intractable budding sociopath, so she shipped the child off to her paternal grandfather, Duke Dermail Catalonia, to raise.
Not wanting to undermine what his son started, Dermail also gave his young granddaughter whatever she wanted, even a part in the war he and General Septum started in AC 175 with the assassination of Hiiro Yui. But it wasn't enough for Dorothy, and when she set her grandfather up to be killed by the White Fang, she actually smiled, then gleefully took off in her gold-plated personal shuttle and joined them as Zechs' second-in-command.
Reactivating the White Fang under Sogram to steal the Gundams and getting her company, Century Discover, involved was a monumental failure. So was playing the last pathetic remnants of OZ's Space Force and the Perfect Peace People, another offshoot of the White Fang, in a race against the Gundams and their pilots to find Vulkanus.
Dekim Barton's little reprise of Operation Meteor, which another of Dorothy's companies had secretly provided the Serpent mobile suits for, also failed. Mariemaia might have been raised to be the Foundation's puppet queen, but she was also Treize's daughter by Leia Barton, which made the little girl Dorothy's second cousin, not that she cared.
She truly hoped Yui would have killed the little brat when he finally got into the Presidential Palace, but what happened? He aimed, the gun misfired, and the idiot promptly passed out, mumbling that he didn't have to kill anymore!
The threat of the nuclear warhead she gave to the Epyon de Telos last month failed, too, but that was all for the good. She hadn't counted on the idiots putting her life in danger too, much less that Mr. Milliardo had infiltrated the group just because they were using the name of his Gundam.
After much thought, it finally came to her. Her failures were all because of Relena Dorlan, those damned Gundams, their pilots, and even Mr. Milliardo himself. That started her thinking about the Gundam pilots, or rather one pilot in particular: Quatre Raberba Winner, Pilot 04.
I should have killed the little bastard on Libra while I had the chance, instead of getting distracted by Treize's demise and then by that other pilot, she thought, bitterly recalling the sabre duel in the space battleship's mobile doll control room.
During their only battle in Libra's Mobile Doll control room, she'd disarmed him, taunted him for his kindness, and then ran him through the left side of his abdomen. She was about to deliver the coup de grace, if only to shut up his ongoing prattle about kindness, when Quinze told her that Treize was dead. That threw her for a loop; the version of the ZERO System she used on the Libra had shown her that Treize was supposed to die by her hand, not Pilot 05's. Then that tall idiot came in and destroyed the Zero System controls.
Though he was still the CEO of his family's corporation, Quatre Winner was also working for the Preventers, helping them to redesign, rebuild and reprogram five of Romefeller mass-produced Gundam knockoffs that were recently discovered in one of Tsuberov's abandoned mobile suit factories located on L3-X18722.
"Bringing them up to the quality of the original Gundams," Lady Une had called it.
Winner's also in love with... ugh... one of his fellow pilots, that tall idiot who calls himself Trowa Barton. He's so disgustingly besotted with that clown, he'd probably do anything to protect him, even...
Dorothy let a sinister smile creep across her face as she began plotting about what she would do to undermine ESUN and her dear, dear "friend," Relena. That she still trusted the older girl after all the lying, spying and betrayal Dorothy had done these past two years showed what a naive little fool the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs really was.
It would take months, perhaps even a year, but she was determined to have her war, and if she could use Trowa to force Quatre into building her an army of mobile dolls, then that was what she would do. All she needed now were the right allies, namely former OZ and Alliance troops who felt the new government didn't care, who felt they'd been cast aside and forgotten.
There were plenty of them out there, both on Earth and the Colonies, and all Dorothy had to do was find them and rally them to her faction... the Phoenix Faction.
-== 000 ==-
Author's Notes: This will be the prologue for The Hand of Sorrow, and will be removed when I start posting the full fic.