Noin groaned as she leaned back in her office chair. This was not what she had been trained for. This was not what she had spent her life getting ready for. This was not anywhere in her life plan, and it never had been. Never, in her life, had Lucrezia Noin thought that she would have to deal with this many loads of paper work.

Ever since the Preventers had been formed, she had found herself spending more time behind a desk and less time in the cockpit of a mobile suit. She knew that she was doing something good, not to mention necessary, for humanity. But that didn't change the fact that she was, and would always be, a soldier.

And soldiers are not pencil pushers!

A quick knock sounded at the door. "May I come in?" a voice called through the office door.

"Please!" Noin responded, sitting up quickly. The room seemed to spin for a minute when she did, but the adrenaline rush that comes from anything after that much boredom could do that.

A bright young face popped through her doorway. "Not that this is going to stop me, but you're not busy right now, are yah?"

Noin couldn't help but laugh. "Duo, there is nothing in the world that I would rather be doing right now that this…than this…this!" she exclaimed, gesturing toward the piles and piles of paperwork littering her desk. "What's up?"

"What, a guy can't just drop in on his superiors and bug them about every little aspect of their lives until their brains explode?" the young man asked, an innocent look on his face.

"Under normal circumstances, soldier, you would be written up for even thinking of such a thing," the general replied, a mock glare on her face. "However, in light of certain circumstances, I feel that we can forgo it this one time."

The braided young man bounced all the way into the office, sitting on top of the desk with no regards to the paperwork. "And what circumstances would these be, oh mighty commander of men?"

Noin stood up and clasped her arms behind her back. "Number one, you are a top flight pilot and soldier, and it would be a shame and a disgrace to this operation if you had a black mark on your record. Number two, you hold the capabilities to erase anything that may be put in your files anyway, making any formal write-up a moot point. And finally, I don't want any more damn paper work to do!"

Duo laughed, kicking his feet up as he hopped off of the desk. "Don't I know it! Man, I hate how every move I make now has to be documented, and then the documentation has to be documented, and now I can't even take a leak without someone trying to take notes on it! I mean, every little thing is…"

"Duo!" the tall woman interrupted. "Is there an actual reason for you being here?"

"Huh?" Deathscythe's pilot blinked. "Oh, yeah. Une's calling a meeting in our lucky conference room in, like, twenty minutes, and I told the guys I'd let you know about it."

Noin couldn't help the groan that escaped her lips. "Oh, God, I hate these things," she said, rubbing her temple. "The 'lucky conference room' meetings are never a good thing. Hell, the last time we had one, the world was being taken over by an eight year old girl with a God complex while her grandfather tried to undo the very structure of society."

"No kidding," Duo agreed. He raised an eyebrow in the direction of his superior. "Hey, Noin, are you alright? You don't look so hot right now."

"What?" the woman snapped.

Duo took two steps backwards, waving his hands defensively. "Not that you're not hot, Noin! You're a slammin' hottie! Not that I'm looking at you, or that I think of you in that way in any capacity! I would never violate our working relationship in that way! Not that I only see you as my boss or anything! We love hanging out with you. You're one of the guys! Not that I'm calling you a man or overly masculine! See, what I'm trying to say here is…"

"Duo, shut the hell up!" Noin shouted, a hint of a smile on her face. "You'd think that after all the time you spent with Heero, you'd have learned to be quiet by now."

"Are you kidding me? That guy is so quiet that he makes me talk more!"

Noin shook her head. It was moments like this that made it hard for her to believe that just four and a half years earlier, they'd all been trying to kill each other. Duo had only been a boy when she'd first met him, no matter what he might have claimed back then. He had only been fifteen. One of the best soldiers in the world, but fifteen nonetheless. Now, here he was, freshly turned twenty, and one of her closest friends.

"What time, exactly, is this meeting supposed to be taking place?" she asked.

"2100 hours," Duo replied, walking for the door. "And if you don't mind, I'm gonna run down to the cafeteria and grab something to eat. I'm starving, and I think that Une's going to shoot me if another one of her meetings is interrupted by my stomach growling."

Noin laughed out loud. "I wasn't sure whether I should laugh or be afraid when she actually pulled a gun on you at our last meeting. With her personality…"

"Singular?"

"…you can never tell," she finished, grinning at her friend. "So go and get something to eat, and I'll meet you down there in thirteen minutees."

Duo's eyes bugged out as he looked at his watch. "I only have thirteen minutes?!?" he cried. "I gotta go!" With that, one of the deadliest men in the world scurried out of the door, terrified of the deadliest woman.

Noin laughed, watching the so called God of Death flee. She walked back to her desk and sat down at her chair, once again leaning back. Something had to be seriously wrong for them to be meeting in that room, particularly this late at night and on such short notice. Whatever it was, it probably wasn't going to make her headache go away. With a very quiet groan, she rested her head in her arms, wondering how this day could possibly get any worse.

If only she knew…