* * *

One week later Trowa was still at Preventors Headquarters. Ostensibly he was there to lend auxiliary assistance to his comrades, but things had been quiet that week, or at least as quiet as it ever got in the Preventors which wasn't very. He was actually waiting around for Midii to show up, and he knew she would. Just in case she decided to sneak in and steal the information instead of infiltrate Preventors as she'd been instructed, Trowa had double-checked the security system.

"Tisk tisk, are you still here?" Duo called from one of the tables in the mess hall as Trowa slid in and sat down across from him for lunch.

"Usually you head right back home," Sally remarked from where she sat beside him. Wufei and Trowa exchanged brief nods in greeting, both preferring to eat silently.

"Oh, I get it," said Duo. "You're here to admire the new secretary."

"There's a new secretary?" Trowa questioned. He had a vested interest in keeping tabs on anyone new who would have easy access to potentially sensitive information. It would be only too easy for Midii to infiltrate and get the information she wanted disguised as a harmless secretary after all.

"Yep. Tall, brunette, a little on the plumpish side but she has the height to wear it well," Duo said judiciously.

"About how tall?" Trowa inquired. That was one of the hardest features to fake without the use of heels, and even if she did use heels he'd be able to look at her and tell by her measurements what height she would be flatfooted.

"She's only a little shorter than you I think," said Sally. "Why? Are you interested?"

"No," said Trowa dismissing her. It couldn't be Midii, she was quite a bit smaller than him and looked it.

Duo shrugged and changed the subject.

"Hey guys, it just so happens I have the latest installment in the ongoing Heero and Relena saga," he told the group. Wufei looked painfully annoyed, Sally amused and interested, and a couple people from behind him leaned over to hear a little better.

"Has she at least given him the time of day yet?" Sally inquired, in part to encourage Duo to hurry up and spill the goods and in part to provoke a disgusted grumble from her cranky partner.

"As of right now, our boy Heero… is being spectacularly blown off. Only Relena could manage to make a frank and absolute dismissal sound like a highly concerned compliment."

"She is a politician Duo," said an easy-going feminine voice from behind him. His partner walked over with her tray and Duo moved over to make room beside him for her.

"What else would you expect but that she'd be good with words," she continued, inserting her straw into her juice container. "And I have even more interesting news than that."

"Oh really?" said Sally. "What's that?"

"We've got a new field agent just signed on this morning."

"Fresh meat," Duo chuckled, rubbing his hands together. One of the first things new recruits were warned about was that Preventer's sophomoric sense of humor.

"You should have seen how she made her entrance though," Hilde continued with a glare at her partner for interrupting her gossip string. "She showed up on the front steps, after having snuck past the front gate unnoticed somehow but that's not all… Not only did she manage to sneak in, but she brought a little present along with her. She had three guys trussed up like turkeys for market lined up at her feet. You won't believe it, but one of them was that doctor guy who was supposed to be making bioweapons for the Barton foundation, another was that elusive smuggler who gave Duo and I a run for our money before he just up and disappeared. I don't know who the third one was, but still… That's pretty impressive. The new girl looked up at Lady Une casually as you please and said that she was interested in a job working there and did Une think she had room for her?"

"That must be my new partner then," Trowa said quietly. They all turned to look at him in surprise, nay, shock. Trowa, in all of the time that he had been working on and off for the Preventors, had never bothered to acquire a partner. He always worked alone, on occasion he might work in conjunction with Heero but they rarely worked as a team (more like two allies who were working separately in tandem).

"I put in to train a new recruit and Une said she'd give me the next field agent she brought on to work with me," he explained. It had been a bit of a gamble for him, Trowa had known that there was a possibility that there would be another field agent hired before Midii was but he'd felt that the opportunity was worth the risk. Oh, he'd still act surprised to see her and he imagined that she'd be very very cautious in her work when she was starting out, but she wouldn't know that he already knew what she was up to and that gave him a distinct advantage. She most likely thought he'd be suspicious of her, she might even think he would have told his commanding officer of their past history together and that they'd be watching her carefully.

I probably should have told Une but I am concerned that if Une rids the Preventors of Midii the Consortium will not hesitate to destroy the civilian hostages because Midii failed in her assignment. Also, it is better to have a known element that can be watched as opposed to an unknown element who's orders and motives are undefined. If she thinks that her every movement is being watched this will make her cautious which in turn make my task more difficult, but I think I may be able to keep ahead of her. I figured her out once before after all.

Still, the voice of cation whispered to him, that was when they had both been young and he had been the more experienced of the two. Now Midii had had an entire lifetime to hone her skills to the razor edge… for all he knew she was more than a match for him now and it wouldn't do to be overconfidant.

He cocked his head to one side to listen o the pager system ask for Trowa Barton to report to Une's office and pulled away from the table. With a nod to his friends he said

"I should go meet my new partner now. Good day."

* * *

Midii looked across the oak desk at the brunette woman in the Preventors jacket. She too wore the last name Une, but on closer inspection, Midii really didn't think they were related. Her facial features, height and eyes were definitely not of any resemblance to her father at all.

"That's quite an impressive entrance you made Miss Une," Lady Une stated looking her squarely in the face. "It says here that you've done some freelance work for us before, is that what made you want to join us now?"

"Actually, I joined because I needed to provide for my family," Midii hedged. She really hated this part; a spy always had to remember their alibi and Midii didn't really care for lying in the first part. There was only so long a person could play the game before they actually became the lie.

"I see. Children?"

"No, younger siblings," Midii clarified.

There came a knock at the door, soft and precise.

"That should be your assigned partner right now," said Lady Une. "You're in luck Miss Une, you got one of our best and most qualified agents to show you the ropes around here."

Midii turned in her seat and nearly gasped in surprise when she saw who walked through the door. Only years and years of controlling her facial expressions and movements kept her from giving herself away.

Damn it! she thought frustratedly. Of all the rotten luck. Murphey's Law must really have it out for me. At every turn I keep running in to him! It's bad enough that he knows I'm Shadowblade, and that he might or might not be Nanashi , but does he now have to be my partner as well? The universe hates me.

"Good morning Midii," Trowa said blandly. Midii for her part looked for any clue, any silent communication between the young Preventor and his superior that they might be onto her and setting her up for a trap. Spies always suspected everything to be a trap, that was how they survived.

"Good morning Mister Barton," she said a trifle formally.

"I didn't realize the two of you knew each other," Lady Une remarked. "What a strange coincidence."

"We go back a ways," said Trowa mildly.

"Good, then I trust you two will be able to get along. Your first mission together is to track down information on that Smuggler Miss Une here caught. Right now, the evidence we're holding him on is pretty tenuous. We need something more solid."

"We could start by tracking Down Cap'n Jax's ship logs, at least the official one, and tallying up his official stops with amount of fuel usage to see if he's made any other unofficial stops. If we get someone who's good enough with computers we may be able to retrieve some of the erased logs… just as a start," Midii said.

"It looks like things will work out just fine here. Get to it; I'd like a report on my desk in two weeks. Oh, and don't forget to pick up your uniform before you go out into the field Miss Une."

"Aye ma'am," Midii said and followed Trowa out.

Well this is a hell of a complication, she thought as she followed her new partner down the maze of bustling hallways to wherever it was they were going. The one person who just might know my identity and the real reason I'm here ends up working with me. He'll probably be suspicious of me, and watch me closely. That'll make things harder. Mister Smith never seems to understand that infiltration takes time, even with a seasoned professional such as myself. He always wants immediate results. He's gonna be waiting a while with this one, Trowa is no easy man to fool. I sometimes get the feeling he saw right through my Shadowblade disguise from the very beginning. I'll have to be very very careful. And it's not exactly like I can say 'Gee Trowa, do you actually know I'm a spy sent to infiltrate here or are you just going along with all of this to trap me later.' Yeah, if that's not a giveaway. Why do I always get the weird complications? Stuff like this never happened to me when I was a bounty hunter.

"Here we are," Trowa said quietly.

'Here' was a small military issue clothing boutique. Midii eyed the apparel with distaste. Didn't they have anything a little more… sleek? Midii, even at her poorest, was never anything less than well dressed. She generally tailored her own clothes to fit her, or even made adjustments to suit her style and those uniforms… were not her style. She supposed that the coloring wasn't too bad… sort of; in a very olive green looking kind of way. And the jackets were very… functional. Didn't they have anything a little less oversized bomber jacket?

Oh well, I guess there's no hope for it, she thought resignedly. She'd have to wear that awful tie too she supposed.