AN: Another chapter! Hopefully I've gotten back to my previous tone here. I wrote this one with no defined word count in mind and it ended up working out well. I was glad to see that people had been updating things as I had something to read once I got home! On the topic of Haro and Cherudim (in case I detail them again), I've always assumed that Haro was responsible for the shield-bit system and the motion of Cherudim, while Lyle would be in control of shooting etc. As for windage...I imagine there would be some version of manual adjustment necessary with the Gundam, especially where it can operate in several atmospheres. Other than that, I can't think of anything I really have to say about the last chapter...I just *kind of* would like to forget it exists. I'll be editing it when I have the motivation.

I'm not entirely sure what I listened to for this chapter...I'm going to assume I had my iPhone on shuffle because I can't remember a single song.

On a random note, anyone else notice that the Dylandy family is really fond of 'y'?

Undercurrents

"The things you can see are occasionally the same things that make you blind."

Ptolemy had been eerily silent since its landing on Earth. After everyone had finished running around in a panic, and once the threat of the A-Laws mobile suits had faded, it was like no one had anything to do other than sit nervously in their rooms and wait for news on Allelujah. Ptolemy hadn't been damaged as badly as it could have, and although the sounds of the Haro Carols could be heard drilling and welding away, the rest of the ship felt like a graveyard. There were no sounds of life…it was like everyone on board was scared to breathe lest it affect the super-soldier's chance of survival. Lyle could have waited apprehensively with them, but he knew that it wouldn't really help. Allelujah's survival was probably more guaranteed than any other person on-board; he was designed to survive, after-all.

It felt like Lyle was the only one left alive…even Haro was notably silent as he rolled along behind him. He wasn't really sure where he was going. He'd tried to stay occupied in his room, writing his report and re-examining the battle footage to make sure he hadn't missed anything, but after two hours he realized that he couldn't find anything left to fix. After that he'd gone to the hangar to see if Cherudim needed any reprogramming or work, but Haro had quickly and abruptly informed him that his was the only mobile suit that hadn't been damaged. The hangar had been dead silent as well, Ian was unconscious and still would be for another four days, and the Haro Carols were too busy fixing Ptolemy's outer shell to fill the hangar with their working hum. The silence of the hangar had given him a chill.

He'd poked his head into the cafeteria next but had come up empty. No one was there. The chefs were missing for some unexplained reason, and Marie was of course steadfastly stationed on the other side of the operating room's glass. Milena was likely watching her father, and Feldt had disappeared without a trace. Even Anew wasn't able to keep him company as she was in the OR with Shia, helping Allelujah toe the line between dead and alive. Where did that leave him? Standing outside Reverie's room, his hand idly hanging in front of her door. He lowered it when he realized his foolishness. She was still unconscious after Trans-Am…she wouldn't answer even if he knocked.

With all the injuries on Ptolemy and the limited space in the infirmary, Reverie had been moved back to her room to sleep off her exhaustion. If everyone wasn't acting so strange, Lyle would have been enraged. They'd left her alone, supervised only by a Haro. The sound of the door sliding open reverberated off the walls with frightening intensity in the silent ship and he stepped into the room, looking down at the sleeping telepath. She looked worse than she had the last time she'd gone through Trans-Am. Deep circles ran under her eyes and she was surprisingly more pale than normal. Her lips were a strange shade of purple that made his eyes flick to the white Haro that sat contentedly next to her, its eyes flashing for each beat of her heart. He saw her chest rise and sighed. She was breathing, but she looked half-dead.

He wasn't sure what to do. There was no way to tell when she would wake up, and there was nowhere to sit in the room, her desk chair was missing for reasons unknown, and unlike the infirmary, there was no place for a guest here. He could sit on the edge of the bed as he'd done last time, but his pride wouldn't let him. He was still mad at her. They hadn't had a chance to speak since he'd fought the A-Laws telepath and he'd been harbouring a grudge since he'd heard the man's voice. He hadn't visited her in solitary at all due to it, as hard as it had been, and even when they had been in the same room after her release they hadn't spent time alone. That was his fault too, of course. Lately he was always with Anew.

Anew. His time spent with her had started as a distraction from the awkwardness between he and Reverie, but he'd come to actually enjoy the time they spent together. She was carefree and didn't seem to suffer from the same form of debilitating humanity that the rest of them shared. It was refreshing. As much as he enjoyed the time spent with her, it seemed to blatantly underscore the tension that had evolved between he and Reverie. He could spend an entire day with Anew, talking and laughing and generally finding comfort in her simplicity. The problem was that the more time they spent together, the more hyper-aware he became of the brunette telepath. Just passing each other in the hall made him aware of their proximity. Being in the same room for a briefing left him strangely confused, as though he didn't know where to look, or if he should respond to her, or if he should joke with her like he would have before Lagrange Three. It was ridiculous, but it told him that he felt something towards the brunette that was outside friendship and possibly outside lust. He didn't like it. He knew that she knew all of this, of course. She could hear him think. That made it almost embarrassing, and he somehow found himself feeling like he was in grade school again. He hated it, yet for some reason she never said anything. She darted away from him just as quickly as she appeared. She avoided his gaze as much as he avoided hers, and she never brought up his anger towards her, or the awkwardness between them. It confused him. He expected her to confront the awkwardness between the two of them right away, but she never did. Neither did he.

She stirred and he looked down at her. Her expression was pained and she was trembling, clinging to her pillow, and he knew that she must have been having nightmares again. Her hair clung to her; she was probably bathed in nightmare sweat, and he was sure the thin black turtle-necked undershirt wasn't doing much for her. He contemplated pulling the covers up for her, but decided against it, as though it would cross an unspoken boundary. He saw her Haro's eyes start to flash faster and he realized that she'd be waking up soon.

What should he do?

What if she woke in the same state as she had last time, panicking and clinging to him? Would he be able to keep his grudge and confront her if she looked at him with hurt greyish eyes, or would he forget it and want to comfort her again? He couldn't stay. She didn't want him to stay…she didn't want to be close to him. She'd made that clear by her awkward response to the last time he'd comforted her after Trans-Am. He wanted to stay, but he knew that he'd only hurt himself in the end. She didn't want him. He had to leave. He couldn't stay again and drag himself deeper.

"Get up! Get up!" her Haro chirped, and his own started to roll around happily, chiming in with hers.

He had to get out of there quickly. He scooped up the orange ball and stepped through the doorway, taking one more look at her before disappearing into the hall.

Reverie sat up in a panic, but lay back down almost immediately. Her head was spinning and she felt like she was going to lose the non-existent contents of her stomach. Her body was drenched in cold sweat and she could feel her heart pounding in her chest. She wasn't surprised. She'd had another series of nightmare-memories. This time they were about the Taklamakan incident. Her mind had assimilated the fact that Hallelujah was responsible for what had happened to her, and although she felt horrible for it, the idea made her mad at Allelujah as well. Her stomach did a flip as a flash of the nightmare-memory came back and she rolled onto her side, closing her eyes and waiting for the room to stop spinning. The room finally steadied itself and she thought she'd be fine, but a fraction of a second later her mind was assaulted by an onslaught of thoughts.

-..the shard went deep…I hope I can get it all out.-

-..Hallelujah, what are you talking about? I'm fine, hearing you doesn't change that.-

-..Lichty, Chris, Lockon…now Allelujah. My tactics…-

"Get up! Get up! Rude! Rude!" Haro interrupted.

He apparently didn't understand the concept of recovery. She needed to take a few minutes to just lay there and let her heartbeat return to normal. At least she was fixed. The past few days of not hearing anyone think had driven her crazy. "Quiet Haro, I'm up." she mumbled with a lot less conviction than she was entitled to.

"Rude! Rude! Get up! Laaaaazy!"

She sighed, covering her eyes with an arm and holding back an irritated groan. "What are you going on about, Haro?" The vibration from her voice was making her sick again.

"You were asleep! You were asleep!" it chastised. For a medic, it was completely unaware of the amount of nausea that she was feeling at the moment.

"No kidding." she muttered. She steadied her stomach and lifted her arm off her eyes. She was slowly realizing that the Haro wouldn't stop chattering until she was up and about. "Why rude?" she asked, pushing off the mattress with remarkable stability. She must have been sick, it felt like she was in Earth's atmosphere, in full gravity. She knew that wasn't likely, though.

"Visitor! Visitor! You were asleep! You were asleep!"

She groaned in annoyance and resisted the urge to whip a pillow at the white ball. "Haro, I wasn't asleep, I was comatose. I probably had a lot of visitors. I'm getting up now, so you can stop picking on me, alright?" She pulled the heart monitor off her finger and the IV from her arm. She was starting to look like a drug addict between the IV marks and the bruising on her left shoulder from the nightly sedatives. Her mother would fly off the handle if she saw her now, not that she would get a chance, thank-god.

"Just two! Just two!" Haro chirped as she stood. Her legs felt shaky and heavy, and she started to realize that she was in an atmosphere with heavy gravity. That didn't necessarily mean earth though, they could have been in another resource satellite for all she knew. She steadied herself against the wall as she sorted her shower basket, making sure that she'd replaced everything. She wasn't particularly worried about her visitors.

"Alright." she said, slinging a towel over her shoulder and immediately regretting the fast-action. "I'm going for a shower. You behave yourself." She instructed, slipping into her shower sandals and letting her door slide open.

"I'm coming! I'm coming!" it chirped. She flinched. She'd hoped that it would let her have just this one little piece of her life to herself, but it seemed to have other ideas. She liked having the company, but she'd always looked forward to her alone time in the shower. She would still be kind-of alone; Haro wouldn't be in the shower with her, but he would still be there, probably sitting on the bench and chattering away her silence.

"Fine. Come on." She unplugged the cable from his mouth and set him on the ground. If he insisted on following her, he could roll himself. She was in no condition to be carrying around her pint-sized overlord.

The door closed behind them and Reverie became suddenly very aware of the silence that seemed to envelop the whole ship. There was no hum of power, there were no people running around. Everything was deathly silent except for the hum of thoughts in her head. She picked through them quickly as she stepped into the female shower room and set her things down. She took a moment to brace herself against the wall as she felt a dizzy spell returning, then sat down to process what she was hearing. They were on Earth, so that explained the gravity. No one could give her an explanation for why they were on Earth, but she assumed that Sumeragi had used the atmospheric re-entry to weed out the mobile armour. Allelujah was severely injured and was being worked on at the moment, but from what she could hear of his thoughts he would be alright. If he was well enough to be bickering with Hallelujah, he had to be well enough to survive. Then again, using a person's conversations with their other personality as a sign that they were alright was kind of misleading.

She started the water and shed her under-flightsuit shirt and miniscule black shorts. They couldn't really be called shorts to be honest, she had pairs of underwear that probably sat lower than these did. The shirt fell on Haro but he didn't protest, instead he chattered to himself in his newfound t-shirt tent.

The water felt amazing and she groaned happily at the massage of the high-pressure water on the back of her neck. She resumed her check of all the crew members as she massaged her shampoo into her scalp. Ian was dreaming away in his recovery unit, Lasse was on the bridge, and Marie was waiting apprehensively for Allelujah. After some digging she could see that Tieria was alive and working on a report. Lyle…she couldn't hear Lyle! A flash of panic shot through her and she ducked her head out of the shower to look at Haro in a panic.

"What's the status of Cherudim!?" she demanded, looking down at the little fabric-covered bot. She and Lyle had been strange lately, but that wasn't enough to stop the worry from coiling in her stomach. No one was sad over him, but would anyone be? The thought made her angry. If he was injured…

"It's fine! It's fine!"

"Did something happen to Lyle?"

"Lockon's fine! Lockon's fine!"

It was strange to think of him as 'Lockon'. He was likely outside, out of the range of her abilities. She breathed a sigh of relief and started to look for other familiar voices. Feldt was worrying over Allelujah, Mileina was overseeing the repairs to Ptolemy's hull, Setsuna….where was he? She couldn't see his thought-pictures.

"Haro, what's the status of Double-Oh?"

"Missing! Missing!"

Setsuna. A pang of worry added itself to the steadily twisting knot in her gut. The stoic teen wouldn't have gotten himself killed. She knew that. No one was mourning him, and they would definitely all be distraught if something dangerous had happened to him. "What happened?"

"Lost him! Lost him!"

What!? Was it even possible to simply lose a Gundam Meister? A person wasn't something you could easily misplace. "How was he 'lost', Haro?"

"Atmosphere!" It replied. She took note that it dropped its habit of repeating itself. The atmosphere. That made sense. If Setsuna hadn't made it back to Ptolemy in time, he could have easily been separated and be hundreds of kilometers away by now. She wasn't sure if she should be relieved or not. He could be fine or he could have been injured or captured for all they knew. She didn't know, though, so she couldn't justify being more than moderately worried. If any one of the Meisters had a chance on their own, it was Setsuna. She ducked back under the water.

The boy-soldier would definitely be alright on his own. She would still worry, though.

Katharon's European location was humming with sounds of work and conversation. They'd just had ten new mobile suits added to their roster, four Enacts and six Tierens. They'd been recovered from a poorly destroyed base in the Taklamakan region, and although they were badly in need of repair, they were still mobile suits. Deiter watched with passive curiosity as his stepfather ordered sets of mechanics to each suit and followed along behind them. He'd be busy for hours, and it gave Deiter the perfect opportunity to figure out what the man had been up to. He stalked off nonchalantly, deliberately taking the long way to the man's room through a series of rarely used hallways.

Something strange was going on. He wasn't sure what it was, but his stepfather had been acting differently since Celestial Being's base at Lagrange Three had been destroyed. Some of the other men had interpreted it as worry about his black-sheep stepdaughter, but Deiter knew better. While he got along with his stepfather, he knew innately that the man hated his sister and wouldn't be particularly bothered if she died. The knowledge angered him, but his sister and stepfather had a colourful past. Deiter liked to believe that the man had changed since his sister had snapped, but he was crucially aware that his stepfather's violence had steadily decreased as Deiter had grown older and taller. He knew that his physical stature had more to do with Bruns' apparent pacifism than any real effort at change. No one wanted to pick a fight with a giant eighteen year old pilot, after-all. Still, the man had redeeming qualities. His expertise as a mechanic made him incredibly useful to Katharon, and once his aggressiveness was pushed back he was actually pretty funny. He and Deiter had spent quite a bit of time working on his Enact and talking about this and that, about everything really. For the last week though, those conversations had stopped. That was what had lead him to the dimly lit hallways.

He watched as dust skittered away along the ground as he walked, and he pushed his blonde bangs out of his face as he looked for the right hall. He had a sinking feeling in his stomach that told him that what he was about to find wouldn't be very pleasant. Still, he didn't know what he would do. Could he talk to his stepfather about it? No. That wouldn't be a good idea. The man wasn't seeking a fight from him, but Deiter knew that if threatened, the older man wouldn't hesitate to be violent. Could he bring it up to Klaus? Possibly, though no one was really sure where Klaus had disappeared to, even though he kept contact with the branch. He could possibly keep the information quiet, but that depended on what it was. He had to figure out what he would be hiding before he decided on a course of action.

He'd reached the hall that lead to the mechanic's wing and pushed himself into a doorway as a set walked past at the end of the hall. It wasn't like it was strange for him to be there, he often visited his stepfather, but he didn't want to run the risk of the older man knowing that he was snooping. He stayed statuesquely still until he heard their steps die away, then ducked quickly into Bruns' room. He flicked the light on, met with the almost insanely well-organized space. It didn't unnerve him at all, he was used to the man's compulsive need for order. The fact that everything was always so organized made it much easier for Deiter to figure out what had changed. He'd always been observant, and he immediately noticed a red leather-bound book that hadn't been on the shelf before. He examined the rest of the shelf carefully before pulling it from its spot and opening it. Somehow, he wasn't surprised to find that it was hollow. The cover was too solid to really be a leather-bound book, and it was far too light to be a book of its size.

He sighed. A hollow book wasn't exactly an indication of guilt, nor did it say anything other than the man wanted to hide valuables. He kept looking. Everything else in the room seemed to be in its usual insanely perfect order and Deiter realized that he was probably being paranoid. The drawers were orderly, the books lined up properly, all the surfaces in the room could have shone if there was more than one light. The floor was littered with tiny pebbles and dust. That was strange. Deiter knelt and looked at the tiny bits more closely. They weren't gravel from boots, nor were they metal filings or anything else that a mechanic would track to their room. They were light and somehow fake, as though they weren't tiny rocks at all, but were something else…

"…like jip rock." he realized.

He looked up. Sure enough, the edging around the one dim light was freshly disturbed. He reached up and felt around the light, his height making it startlingly easy to reach the fixture. He wiggled the light mount out of the ceiling and carefully let it hang. The hole was big enough to fit a hand in, and he felt around the dusty, dark surface for whatever he was sure was hidden there. He felt nothing at first, then shifted his hand. He felt something small and round. He pulled it down and put his hand back up, feeling around again and coming back with something that shocked him.

A brick of neatly bound bills. He didn't put his hand up again; instead, he looked at the two things he'd found. In one hand he held a tiny round microphone, and in the other he held what seemed to be at least a few thousand dollars. He knew there was more in the hole, he'd felt it. Bruns was definitely up to something, and someone else had a vested interest in it. Deiter felt sick. His stomach twisted in knots and his hands felt weak as he replaced his findings and slid the light's fixture back in place. What would he do? First, he'd get the hell out of that room. He did a sweep to make sure that he hadn't left anything out of place, then left as quickly as he'd arrived.

He would find out as much as he could about his stepfather's illicit behaviours, and he'd find out exactly what kind of information it was that the man was being paid to collect. In the meantime, he'd make it much harder for the man to betray the organization. He walked with long, confident strides.

He was going to report an anonymous mole.

Information spilled across the lone screen in Gallagher's expansive room. The light of the screen was the only source of illumination in the massive empty space, but it was still too bright for the masked captain. His head was throbbing. The dull tone that had been ringing in his head for the past week had reached a shrill whine the second he'd started reading about the KPSA's activity in Ireland, and it had peaked when he found an article about a shopping center that had been destroyed. Now it was reverberating through his head and skittering across his scalp as though he had a tiny circular saw in his skull. He wasn't upset though. The pain was a metal detector of sorts, and he was willing to bet that shortly it would lead him to information gold.

He buried his masked face in gloved hands and tried to take deep breaths. He was shaking, and he'd never quite realized how hot his face was behind his mask before. Still, he smirked. The pain meant that he was inches away from a monumental discovery about his past. He'd read all about suppression, and he knew that his mind was coloured with it like a slum graffiti wall.

According to his memories - or rather, what he was supposed to believe were his memories – he'd grown up in an Irish home a skip away from Tralee. He was the only child of a set of ordinary parents, and nothing of any interest had happened to him until he decided to enlist with the AEU. It couldn't be true. The pain in his head told him, screamed at him that there was something that he was missing. If his supposed memories were true, then the bombing incident at the doomed Dublin shopping center shouldn't have bothered him at all. After-all, he'd supposedly never been to the capital city.

He took a deep breath and steadied himself to look up at the screen again. His head throbbed and he could feel a trickle of sweat run under the mask, but he looked up. He clenched his teeth and looked through one eye at the screen. He scanned over everything he'd read already before clicking a link to the victim's memorial page.

He was met with a list of names, and in some cases photos and a short biography here and there, for the more important ones, he guessed. He scanned through the first twenty or so names before looking back down and taking a break, his head pounding. He'd never felt so inept in his life, having to take a break from five seconds of screen time. It was pathetic, yet it was somehow a refreshing reminder that he tended to take life for granted. The thought made him grin.

Gallagher the philosopher.

He snorted and looked back at the screen. The list of names had to be easily five-hundred people long. It wasn't surprising given the type of attack it was and the amount of people who'd died, but it was still a daunting list. What if he spent all this time reading through it and not a single name stood out? He looked at the clock. He had nothing better to do, and he kept scanning through the list, breaking here and there to get his brain back under control. There were so many faces flashing in front of him, but not a single one stood out. One after the other, they all seemed to blur together into a picture of unimportance. He had to make an effort to read the names in-between the images, but those blended just as uninterestingly as the photos had.

Until three stood out.

Owen Dylandy, Lyndsay Dylandy, Amy Dylandy.

The tone stopped ringing in his head. It was the family of that Celestial Being pilot…or so he assumed. The probability of it not being the pilot's family was low, the reaction of his pain said that much. He needed to know more about the man…he was completely assured of that by the sudden silence that had fallen between his ears. That name had been the one to start the ringing in his head, and Regene had pointed him in the direction of the man's family. They were linked somehow, and they had been for much longer than Gallagher was capable of remembering.

He grinned.

He loved the idea that he and the Celestial Being sniper were connected.

It would make destroying him much more fun.