Piece 1

Heero Yuy's real name was Damon Callum Lowe. Because after the war all the pilots were technically wards of the ESUN's Child Welfare Agency, none of them were allowed to join the Preventers until they were eighteen. Even Trowa, who was seventeen and had lived his entire life on the battlefield. Trowa went with his newly discovered sister, Catherine Bloom, and Quatre moved in with one of his sisters. Wufei was taken in by an old professor of his and allowed to continue attending his old boarding school. Duo and Heero, however, were placed into foster care. They were special cases, though, not merely war orphans but child soldiers. While they couldn't label them as Gundam Pilots, they could label them as child soldiers. This would at least get them into the appropriate foster homes with foster parents who were more able to handle them. Heero was given over to Gabriella and Sebastian van Buren, who had a nine year old daughter named Elsa and an almost two year old son named Kaden. Duo was placed with a middle aged couple named Jeremy and Carla Robinson, who had no children to speak of.

Heero frowned, thinking. Was he forgetting anything? He was used to living outside of his Gundam with just the clothes on his back to call his own. He wasn't used to having all these new clothes and things that Sally had insisted he go out and buy with the Preventers money. He had wanted to join the Preventers, but because he was a minor and technically a ward of the ESUN's Child Welfare Agency, he, Duo, and Wufei were being forced into foster care. That and the Preventers weren't allowed to hire minors without government clearance, which they weren't about to be getting since their status as Gundam Piltots was supposed to be top secret. Sally, having been declared their temporary social worker of sorts, said that since they were coming from Preventers they needed to make a good impression and fit them out with a suitcase's worth of belongings so they were well prepared going into their new homes. That was the reasoning Sally had given him, anyways.

Home, that was a word he was still getting used to. He hadn't had a home since he was eight years old living and working with his uncle Odin as his protégé. But even then he hadn't been a kid – no, no normal kid knew how to fire a gun from the age of four years old. Odin hadn't wanted to make him his protege, but with him being his last living family member he'd had no choice. It had been either that or let him die in the streets as just another war orphan. Right now, he wasn't sure which would have been worse. If Odin had never taught him how to fire a gun, his hands wouldn't be so stained with blood. His hands clenched into fists and lowered pained blue eyes as self-loathing filled him. The soldiers, they were just missions, he was long since used to that – but the little girl and her dog, all of Marshal Noventa's family. That entire city he had obliterated in Epyon. They hadn't been just missions, and they were dead because of him. Even still, he sometimes wondered if his life meant anything outside of a mission. He couldn't even complete all of his missions without fucking up and killing innocent people, something he had been raised to do. How was he going to navigate something as unfamiliar as foster care and a normal public school?

He sighed. Guess he had no choice but to try. It wasn't like he could fake dying on the way to the space station. Packing away the last of his clothes and his travel bag of basic hygiene supplies, he threw his laptop on top of all the neatly folded clothes and zipped the duffle bag shut. Pulling out his phone in its plain black slip-proof case, he texted Sally to let her know he was ready. She had said she wanted to drive him to the space station yesterday after their massive shopping trip. Not that he couldn't drive himself given the chance, or catch a bus, but she had insisted and he didn't see any logical reason to deny her. He just hated having his independence stripped from him. As if it wasn't enough that they'd confiscated his gun.

He found Sally waiting in the car outside the hotel. She smiled at him as he got in. "Good morning, Heero. Sleep well?" He nodded. "Yeah." He wouldn't remember until halfway through their drive that when people greet you, you're supposed to say the appropriate response like good morning back, but oh well. Hopefully she was used to his lack of social skills by now. "I got us breakfast." Sally said, guesturing to the donuts and sausage wraps sitting on the panel between the seats. "I know you said you didn't like coffee, so I got you a soda instead."

He nodded and grabbed a donut, taking care to grab the one with cream filling. He was partial to those. "Thanks."

"I emailed you your foster family's bio last night. Did you get to read over it?" She asked as they pulled out of the parking lot of the hotel.

He nodded. "Yeah. Gabriella and Sebastian van Buren, right? They have a son that's almost two and a daughter that's nine. Gabriella and Sebastian both work, Gabriella as an administrative assistant at an electric company and Sebastian as a safety manager at an oil company."

"That's right. They seem like really nice people, I got to talk to them for a bit when I originally called to ask them if they'd take you in. They're specially trained to take in child soldiers, so you aren't their first. Sebastian is also a retired Alliance military officer, as well." Heero's eyes narrowed at this information. "Don't worry about it, he's actually against everything the Alliance did to the colonies during and leading up to the war. I wouldn't have chosen him if I thought he posed any risk to you. He retired back when you were still a kid about seven years ago, so he wasn't involved in the war at all." Heero relaxed a little at this information. Only a little, though. You could never be too careful.

Sally continued. "The subject of you being a gundam pilot is supposed to be kept as secret as possible, including on our official records of you. As we all agreed in the meeting, you're being passed off as just another child soldier and war orphan. They know you were raised by your uncle, an assassin, and what we said to cover the many unknown years after that was that you wandered from place to place fighting, and eventually ended up fighting for the Treize faction at one point during the war. Its your decision if you want to tell them you are a gundam pilot, because as your foster parents they're allowed to know, but only at your own personal discretion. That's your secret to tell, we as the Preventers can't forbid you from telling whoever you decide is okay to tell."

The airport was busy, even for Tuesday afternoon. Shouldering his plain black duffle bag, Heero stood awkwardly to the side, trying to avoid the steady stream of people still exiting the tunnel from the plane. All the people around made him feel nervous. Too many people, too much noise. He'd always hated airports. He scanned the crowd for the Van Burens, who were supposed to come pick him up. He'd memorized their faces on the phone. The woman, Gabriella, had dirty blonde hair in a boy's cut and green eyes and had dark hair and a stubbly moustache. Finally he found them, standing off to the side away from the crowd against the wall near a big map of the airport. Relaxing, he pushed through the thinning crowd milling about and over to the Van Burens.

"You the Van Burens?" he asked, more for an awkward conversation opener than actual validation. They looked just like the people in the picture from his email.

The woman nodded, beaming. "That's us!" she said, shifting the weight of the toddler on her hip, who was currently staring at him openly, curiously. "I'm Gabriella, but you can call me Gabby. This is my husband, Sebastian, and my nineteen month old son Kaden." The man, Sebastian, said hello.

The toddler spoke up. "Hi." His eyes focused on the kid, not sure if the boy was wary of him or being outgoing. His expression seemed like a mix of both but he wasn't sure. He liked kids well enough, but they weren't really his thing. "Hi." The boy said again, seeking a response. He indulged the boy. "Hi." He replied. The boy had the same well-trimmed dirty blonde hair as his mother, and his father's blue eyes. He wore a red, white, and blue stripped t-shirt, jeans shorts, and red vans.

Peice 2

After the war between the Earth and the Colonies ended, Heero and Duo were pulled into the ESUN's War Orphan Welfare Act. Despite being Gundam Pilots, the both of them were subjected to the same worldwide education standards as were all the other fifteen and sixteen year old war orphans. They could get a job and rent an apartment as a war orphan provided the ESUN's child welfare people deemed them competent enough for it. Which they did, especially since they had important people like Vice Foreign Minister Relena Darlian and Preventer Head Lady Une provide them with references. Because of their age and the importance of them finishing their education – because they would not always be young and able – Une refused to hire them as agents. She could not hire them underage without coming under fire from the ESUN, anyways, and to do so would put suspicion on them. They needed to avoid suspicion. The most they, as teenagers and war orphans, could do with the Preventers was paperwork and consulting and, in Heero's case, assist them with anything computer related. They could answer telephone calls and respond to emails and provide advice to agents, but that was it. But a job was a job, even if it was a desk job. Being minors, they weren't allowed to work more than four days in a row nor were they allowed to work a shift longer than five hours during the school year. They had a decent sized two bedroom apartment and by the time they graduated highschool in two or three years they would have the money to each get a car.

The war left Heero's mental psych badly damaged, but it was still better than it had been before the war in some areas. For the first time since he was a very young child, he had friends in the other gundam pilots. As much as Duo completely baffled him, he enjoyed being around the outgoing teenager. Duo had more than his fair share of hardship just like he did, but unlike him Duo hadn't resigned himself to it. The war made him into a very bad perfectionist, thinking that he is worth nothing if he isn't perfect, all because of that one mission he failed. His missions as a gundam pilot only exacerbated this feeling – if he failed even a single mission, made even the slightest error, then everything including his own life would go up in flames.

The Preventers got them all mental health evaluations when they signed up to join. It was standard procedure, but as former gundam pilots it was even more crucial. It was during this evaluation that Sally suggested he probably had Aspergers Syndrome. She had suspected it during the war, but only now had she finally had the chance to see him about it properly. Several visits later, he was given an official diagnosis. He was also diagnosed with depression as well.

Peice 3

Heero was born half caucasian, half japanese. His birth name was Hiro Sosuke-Jacoby Clark. His mother had named him Hiro because it sounded like a strong name, and she wanted her son to be strong, while his combined middle name paid homage both to her deceased father and Hiro's biological father. Clark was his father's last name. His father wasn't in the picture ever since he'd left a few months ago and his mother now worked two jobs just to support him and his two year old half-brother Akio. He went to daycare a lot. She raised him with the best of both worlds; he went to a regular public school and she taught him how to read, write, and speak Japanese. They couldn't afford much, so they ate a lot of on-sale food and most of their meals were japanese, because groceries at the local ethnic food mart were cheap. They ate a lot of rice, vegetables, and soup and didn't have meat or fish very often. Usually only on Friday nights as a treat.

Peice 4

Five year old Damon followed closely behind Odin, small hands clutching each of the shoulder straps of his child sized backpack. They were at the airport, going to another town to kill another target – a politician in Los Angeles with mob ties who was helping the Alliance. A kid behind him bumped into him, making him jump. He hurried forward to clutch Odin's limp, pale hand.

"You okay, kid?" Odin asked, looking down at him briefly before focusing his eyes forward. They were looking for their plane's gate, gate A34.

"Someone bumped into me." He mumbled, looking at his feet sheepishly. He hated feeling like a little kid.

"I'm sorry, kid. We're almost there. A29 is right here to the left, see?" Odin replied, motioning with his currently held hand to Damon's left. Indeed, it was. "You can get your phone out and listen to music with your headphones in if it gets too noisy."

Damon nodded. "Okay Odin." He didn't want to right now, right now he just wanted to stay close to Odin. He felt so nervous with so many people around. He looked around at all the different shops. Some were selling clothes and other boring stuff like that. He smelled food, though. Were was the food? "Odin, I'm hungry. Can we get breakfast?" His stomach growled in agreement.

"We will, we just need to get to our gate and check in first. Its right up ahead, alright? See the letters on the wall? A34. They match the ones on our tickets, so that's our gate." Odin replied. "Do you want McDonalds for breakfast?"

Damon grinned. "Yeah! I want two cinnamon roll bites." Well, that's what he called them anyways. They weren't cinnamon rolls but they were like cinnamon rolls all cut up into bites with poured icing over the top.

Odin laughed. "Alright." Finally they arrived at their gate. Odin let go of his hand and pulled out the tickets from his jeans pocket. "Good morning! I'm Odin Lowe and this is my nephew, Damon Lowe. We're here to check in for our 9:00 flight to LA." Heero looked up at the desk as Odin handed the clerk lady their tickets.

The lady smiled at them. "Good morning! Good to see you found us alright. We're kind of tucked in the back corner. How are you all this morning?"

"We're good. How are you?" Odin replied. Damon frowned. Why were they asking questions and giving fake, scripted replies? Odin called it small talk but it still puzzled him, even though they went through this exchange every time Odin took him anywhere. He didn't like it.

"I'm good, thanks!" The lady pulled off a small part of the ticket and kept it and handed the rest back to them. She looked down at him and held out a flight pin. "Would you like a pin?"

He shook his head. "No, I have a lot at home."

The lady laughed. "Well alright." She replied before turning back to Odin. "The flight will be boarding in another fourty minutes, they'll call over the intercom when we're ready to begin. You will be boarding in Group 3. Enjoy your flight and thank you for choosing United Airways!"

Odin nodded and led him away from the desk. "Time to find us some food, kid." Damon grinned. "Yeah! I'm starving."