Wow, look at this, I'm branching out to other stories! Anyway, I thought that since Occam's Razor is taking such dark and dramatic turns, I'd write something more light-hearted on the side. Beware: This is my first attempt at humor. So, this story is set in the Occam's Razor Universe, but before Relena disappeared, (remember I mentioned that I'd write about all the little side plots brought up? This is one.) If you're not reading Occam's Razor, you can still enjoy this and not be missing anything. At any rate, enough of my chatter, enjoy!

Mutually Assured Destruction

Chapter One – An Unintentional Targe

Tynan

Even before it happened it was too late to stop it. She was forced to watch, completely helpless from only five feet away and could do absolutely nothing. The shock on his face was immediately evident, he had clearly been caught off guard. Off in the back of her mind somewhere she could hear her friends, their cries of surprise and disbelief but all of that faded away as she watched the man in front of her. She should have been more careful . . . they both should have .

And now she would have to live with the consequences of her carelessness .

"Heero, I-I am so sorr – "

Relena was cut off by roaring laughter coming from the direction of a certain braided man; his girlfriend stood transfixed beside him, the expression on her face akin to the one Relena currently wore: pale, uncertain, and terrified. The two women's gazes met; for how long they stared at each other neither could be sure. Duo was still laughing, though more quietly now, but they ignored both him and the other subdued chuckles that escaped a few of their friends. It was Heero, finally moving that brought them too their senses

Under any other circumstances this may have been very funny, however seeing Heero Yuy covered from his waist up in the remnants of what had once been Duo's birthday cake only meant one thing: a slow death for those responsible.

And Relena and Hilde could already tell he knew who was responsible.

In their defense, at least part of this was his fault. Relena had tried to insist that she be the one to carry Duo's birthday cake to him . . . the one that she and Hilde had set with a small, absolutely harmless air pressure charge attached to a timer. Hilde's desire to make her boyfriend's birthday enjoyable was not so much that it outweighed her desire for revenge for the many pranks he had pulled on her in the past. She had enlisted Relena's help with little convincing and so when ESUN's Foreign Minister stepped into the kitchen to retrieve the culinary concoction in question, she had dutifully followed her best friend's instructions and set the charge just as Hilde had shown. What she had not anticipated was a certain ex-Gundam pilot's sudden appearance and his unexpected desire to be helpful .

She had tried to take the cake away from him, following him onto the porch, desperately making a grab for it. In retrospect, if she hadn't interfered, maybe Heero would have set it down in front of Duo in time . . . but there was no going back and changing the past. She had said many times that the people of Earth had to learn to live in the present rather than waste their lives imagining how things might have gone differently. For the moment however, she could not seem to take her own good advice .

Again Duo's voice jarred her from her thoughts, "Oh man . . . so-someone's" he broke down into laughter yet again, but recovered quickly "someone's got to have a camera, p-please! Man, I need to remember this forever! "

"Duo, shut-up." Hilde growled from between clenched teeth.

But her boyfriend would hear none of it, "Aw, Heero, man you should have seen the look on your face! That thing just exploded –" He stopped short as a thought had clearly just occurred to him, "Wait a second, that was supposed to be for me wasn't it?!?

Duo stood from his seat frantically scanned the room, "Who was trying to blow up my birthday cake?!" Wufei shrugged from his seat in the corner, a look of slight amusement on his face, beside him Sally looked torn between a trying not laugh and being too stunned to. Noin and Zechs sat beside them, wine glasses in hand; Noin couldn't stop her eyes from darting back and forth between Relena and Heero, her husband was making no attempt to hide the slight laughter still coming from his mouth. That only left two people

"Hilde, babe, you were . . . you would do something like that to me?"

He really almost sounded hurt, but she wasn't buying it for a minute. Snapping out of her daze, Hilde whipped her head around to face Duo, "It was supposed to be payback for everything you've pulled over the past three years! "

"But, babe, on my birthday?"

"Well you shouldn't have chosen April Fool's Day as your birthday, Maxwell!" Hilde knew she was panicking, desperately trying to come up with any possible explanation for their behavior; maybe if Heero knew their plan had been directed at Duo he would take mercy on them.

"Hey, it's not my fault I don't know when my real birthday is! I thought today was appropriate . . ."

Hilde tuned him out as she turned back to Heero, waiting for him to make his move . . . wondering what it would be.

She looked over to the man in question, still wearing a considerable amount of cake and icing. Relena was just to the side of him, though Hilde noted, well out of arm's reach. Being far braver than Hilde ever could have imagined herself, Relena took a cautious step towards Heero.

"H-heero, I, we, . . . it wasn't for . . . Heero I am so sorry." Her voice shook a considerable amount.

She held out a napkin and to her great surprise he allowed the now basically empty platter he was holding to fall to the ground and took the square piece of cloth from her. With surgical like precision, he slowly and deliberately wiped as much of the cake residue off his handsome face as the small napkin would allow.

Without a word he handed it back to Relena, who took it and again stepped a good bit back again. Gracefully he bent down to retrieve the platter from where he had let it fall and set in on the chair next to him. Taking his first steps since the explosion that had seemed to take place days ago, but really had only been a few minutes back, Heero turned to face Relena, the tiniest hint of a sadistic smile playing on his features.

"Payback's gonna be a bitch."