May 3 AC 201, L1F136
He flipped the light switch again, automatically, not bothering to hope that the repeated action would cause the single bulbe in his ceiling to show any hint of turning on. It was a strange day indeed when everything in this apartment worked, and he'd far rather come home to a dusky grayness in his livin groom than a fridge full of slowly melting groceries.
It wasn't that he couldn't afford better lodgings. He could have afforded that and more, had he wished to. But Sho Mitsuno was a modest man, just as his predecessor had been.
He thought of himself as Sho these days. The all consuming tenacity which had allowed him to focus almost exclusively on his missions had not abated, and on the day that he had made the decision to shed his past, he'd allowed that one part of himself to remain. It had proven useful, although many of his co-workers had found his often intense devotion to whatever project he'd been asigned somewhat unnerving, they could not doubt that his all or nothing attitude produced results.
As he shut the heavy wooden door onto the corridor, the last of the florescent glow from it's long fixtures disappeared, leaving him standing in semidarkness. Striding purposefully over to the long window that filled three quarters of the wall of the main room, Sho dragged aside its heavy blue curtains and stood gazing through the glass.
L1 hadn't changed much, except that the people were better dressed, and there were fewer scrawney, dirty children shuffling along waiting for pockets to pick. His apartment overlooked a busy main street, and Sho liked to watch the women and children hurry past, laden with packages and pushing full grocery carts. The fact that there were far fewer men than there had once been was troubling, but that was something he couldn't fix.
Turning from the window, Show moved over to where a low table stood against one wall. He fumbled among the papers, T-shirts and empty glasses littering it's surface until his hand came in contact with a box of matches. Striking one, he proceeded to light several candles located in various places throughout the room. He enjoyed there soft glow, often preferring to light them rather than illuminate the ceiling fixture.
He'd never admit it to anyone, but he had a sentimental side that thrived on things like the golden glow of firelight and the neat arrangement of plants and flowers on a low table below the window. It made him feel human, he supposed.
That was another luxury he could afford these days.
A hasty search of the refrigerator and nearly empty cupboards revealed two things--firstly, that he was in desperate need of a trip to the grocery store, and secondly, that for the fourth night that week he was going to be reduced to eating soup and some variety of sandwich. Resigning himself to his fate, Sho carried his meager dinner back into the living room and sat down at his desk, placing the food on a low stool near his elbow.
Old habits certainly died hard, he reflected, waiting as the screne of his much abused laptop computer flickered to life. He permitted himself a wry smile. He was as bad as other men, making promises to themselves and breaking them within a month.
He'd tried to eliminate all traces of his former life. As his figure had transformed from that of a wirey youth into that of a full grown man, six feet tall and muscular, the tight fitting jeans and tanktops of his youth had been replaced with khakis and comfortably fitting shirts. He had even been known to sport the occasional sweater, upon the appearance of which the female employees at the resource facility where he worked could be seen to refrain from drooling only with a supreme effort.
That amused him. He'd attempted to become interested in some of them--yet another concession to his change of roles--but the truth was that awkward, often tittering girls just out of their teens irritated him. He was too matter of fact for their circuitous chatter, and too deliberate to make any attempt at physical contact seem less than perfunctory and lacking in spontaneity.
He didn't mind. If his one experience of the tenderer passions was any indication, being in love was an awkward affair--a state of being exactly calculated to make a person irrational and indecisive.
He often caught himself wondering how she was doing--how her steely resolve was holding up under the constant barrage of criticisms and the endless flash of camera bulbs. Of course, she'd grown up with that sort of attention, so perhaps it was for her as meager meals and broken light bulbs were for him--an inescapable reality of life.
But then again.
It had been largely to avoid her notice that he'd changed his name. It wasn't that he resented the effect she had on him--in fact, he'd enjoyed it a good deal. But for the sake of both of their effectiveness in the roles which they'd chosen to adopt, any connection between the two of them needed to be severed.
As it was, it was beginning to appear very likely that he'd bee seeing her again soon. Snapping out of his reverie, Sho began to make his way through the endless series of procedures necessary to circumvent Preventers' security network. Personally, he was of the opinion that Une had been the absolute worst choice for head of ESUN's only defense organization. She'd been too long under Treize's spell, too often led, to be an effective leader in her own right. It surprised him sometimes that Wufei wasn't doing more from the inside. Of course, his proximity to the intermittent troubles plaguing the earth sphere would put him under suspicion, but Sho had seen the occasional signs of his discreet handiwork enough to know that he was watching too.
Of course, this most recent disturbance had taken the entire organization by surprise. It had been careless of whoever had delivered that message to Noin to have allowed her to show it to anyone not immediately concerned with the problem. The bug had picked up on the extra activity within less than a day. Without surveillance data it was impossible for Sho to know either who the mysterious messenger had been, or who the spy was. But there was a little time yet. Knowing how cumbersome Preventers' operations tended to be, he'd only have to wait a few more days for the necessary information to leak.
This was new. His hands paused above the keyboard, frozen in mid command as he scrutinized the data displayed on his screen.
Extra personnel.dogs, screeners--a sardonic smile quirked one corner of his mouth. So, they were stepping up security at the upcoming ESUN world conference. Looking at the planns laid out on his screen, Sho felt an uneasy knot just begin to form in the pit of his stomach. He wasn't afraid- -he wondered, sometimes, if he still had the capacity to feel fear. He was, however, beginning to be apprehensive.
The transmission he'd intercepted from L4C179 yesterday evening--"I have a plan". What better way to uncover a bug than to put them in a position of blowing their cover or.
And the sons of justice were infamous among the fragmented pockets of rebellious ESUn citizens as a group who counted no costs. Would they be willing to accelerate what he suspected was there plan in order to prevent this security breech from foiling it altogether? And come to that, even with this extra help, could it be foiled, given their astronomically superior strength.
Careless. Absolutely careless for Preventers to let this get so out of hand.
Conscientiously he retraced his electronic steps through the maze of traps, bugs and invisible quicksand that protected the Preventers' network. When he had safely navigated his way back into harmless cyberspace, he rose and began pacing the room, slowly at first and then with increasing energy.
Yet another habit he would not have indulged in five years ago. But those days were long gone.
And worse days were ahead for the people of Earth and the colonies if the Preventers didn't remove their heads from their.well, that train of thought wasn't going to get him anywhere. Getting angry was what had so often caused Wufei and Duo to make mistakes.
He paused in his perambulation, wondering if any of the others had the faintest idea of what was going on. He was almost certain Quatre and Duo were completely oblivious. That had been their clear intention in January of AC 197--to disappear back into the throng of humanity from which they'd all been wrenched as children. Not that Quatre had done much in the way of disappearing, he thought ironically.
Trowa--perhaps he knew part of what was happening, but if that Catherine person had anything to say to it his information would be limited. For all Sho knew she'd convinced him that the affairs of ESUN's government were no longer his concern. Trowa had not been a pushover by any stretch of the imagination, but his fondness for that girl who'd called herself his sister might have softened his resolve.
Sho envied him, in a way, but now was not the time to dwell on that. He'd remained aloof from all but the most tenuous human contact in preparation for just such a situation as the one brewing now.
And Wufei? That most enigmatic of all the pilots was, if Sho had any insight into his character, taking great pains to conform himself to his new role. Not that Wufei was lacking in inteligence or spirit--far from it. However, Sho had noted in the Chinese man a rather odd tendancy to throw himself wholeheartedly into the actualization of whatever image he had conceived for himself at any given time. When convinced he was a loser, he acted that part. When convinced he was the avenging spirit of the soldiers thrown away at the close of a war, he had executed that role as well with a heart-felt fervor Sho envied for it's resolution.
Wufei would not stray beyond the bounds of the new pattern he'd laid out for himself until the shock of what was happening hit him with sufficient violence to revive the heart of a warrior--the heart he had forced to lie dormant these past five years.
"And I," said Sho, moving once again to gaze out the window, "Will change my name again."
The artificial sun had ceased to glow against the slowly darkening backdrop of the colony's celestually patterned dome. As the false blue of L1's day faded into the genuine blackness of space, Sho thought about the stars that gleamed softly beyond the manmade sphere that was keeping him alive at that very moment. And he thought about earth, as it's blue and white immensity became slowly visible above the false horizon, dwarfing the moon and reducing the stars to nearly invisible points of light.
Man had not created earth. He wondered sometimes who, if anyone, had effected that miracle.
She had believed in God. He wasn't certain he could accept that theory, but at times like this he supposed it must be nice to think there was someone out there, larger than the universe, watching out for you.
He turned from the window and slowly blew out the candles. Gently lifting his computer from the des,k he inserted it into its carrying case and in turn slipped that into his backpack. Pausing just long enough to grab a jacket from the hook behind the door, Sho slipped out of his apartment, softly closing the door so as not to disturb the baby sleeping across the hall.
She had just learned to sleep through the night, and her parents, a cheerful couple in their mid thirties, would not relish having their repose disturbed by a careless neighbor.
The street was nearly deserted when he stepped out into the evening air. There were a few lights still on in one of the stores across the road, but most of the shoppers and workers had already gone home.
Thinking all the while, flagged down a passing cab, and directed the aging driver to head toward the spaceport.
"Where ya headed?" inquired the man conversationally, barely turning down the volume on the classical music blaring from his speakers.
"L2," replied Sho, gazing vaguely out at the blur of passing traffic. "I just developed an overwhelming desire to visit an old friend."
"Well, that's nice," responded the driver. "I remember once, I had a friend living on Earth--his name was /samuel--" Sho barely heard the man as they turned one corner, then another, traveling, as it seemed, ever faster.
He wondered what Duo's reaction would be upon seeing him. If he refused to help--well, that would be unfortunate, but Duo's assistance in this matter would be purely an added boon. The cooperation of another party was, however, indispensable.
Five years had caused him to relax some of his rigid habits of speech and manner, but the man once known as Heero Yuy had no doubt that he could still control a mobile suit.
Even that one.
"Looks like we're gonna be stuck in traffic for a while--some fella's gone and run his car right up into that wall--it'll take some time 'fore we can move."
Sho made no reply, only demonstrating that he'd heard the other man by readjusting his legs into a more comfortable position.
Perhaps, he reflected, Zero was the only thing that had the capacity to make him afraid. Then again, from the looks of things it was the only thing standing between ESUN and chaos.
He flipped the light switch again, automatically, not bothering to hope that the repeated action would cause the single bulbe in his ceiling to show any hint of turning on. It was a strange day indeed when everything in this apartment worked, and he'd far rather come home to a dusky grayness in his livin groom than a fridge full of slowly melting groceries.
It wasn't that he couldn't afford better lodgings. He could have afforded that and more, had he wished to. But Sho Mitsuno was a modest man, just as his predecessor had been.
He thought of himself as Sho these days. The all consuming tenacity which had allowed him to focus almost exclusively on his missions had not abated, and on the day that he had made the decision to shed his past, he'd allowed that one part of himself to remain. It had proven useful, although many of his co-workers had found his often intense devotion to whatever project he'd been asigned somewhat unnerving, they could not doubt that his all or nothing attitude produced results.
As he shut the heavy wooden door onto the corridor, the last of the florescent glow from it's long fixtures disappeared, leaving him standing in semidarkness. Striding purposefully over to the long window that filled three quarters of the wall of the main room, Sho dragged aside its heavy blue curtains and stood gazing through the glass.
L1 hadn't changed much, except that the people were better dressed, and there were fewer scrawney, dirty children shuffling along waiting for pockets to pick. His apartment overlooked a busy main street, and Sho liked to watch the women and children hurry past, laden with packages and pushing full grocery carts. The fact that there were far fewer men than there had once been was troubling, but that was something he couldn't fix.
Turning from the window, Show moved over to where a low table stood against one wall. He fumbled among the papers, T-shirts and empty glasses littering it's surface until his hand came in contact with a box of matches. Striking one, he proceeded to light several candles located in various places throughout the room. He enjoyed there soft glow, often preferring to light them rather than illuminate the ceiling fixture.
He'd never admit it to anyone, but he had a sentimental side that thrived on things like the golden glow of firelight and the neat arrangement of plants and flowers on a low table below the window. It made him feel human, he supposed.
That was another luxury he could afford these days.
A hasty search of the refrigerator and nearly empty cupboards revealed two things--firstly, that he was in desperate need of a trip to the grocery store, and secondly, that for the fourth night that week he was going to be reduced to eating soup and some variety of sandwich. Resigning himself to his fate, Sho carried his meager dinner back into the living room and sat down at his desk, placing the food on a low stool near his elbow.
Old habits certainly died hard, he reflected, waiting as the screne of his much abused laptop computer flickered to life. He permitted himself a wry smile. He was as bad as other men, making promises to themselves and breaking them within a month.
He'd tried to eliminate all traces of his former life. As his figure had transformed from that of a wirey youth into that of a full grown man, six feet tall and muscular, the tight fitting jeans and tanktops of his youth had been replaced with khakis and comfortably fitting shirts. He had even been known to sport the occasional sweater, upon the appearance of which the female employees at the resource facility where he worked could be seen to refrain from drooling only with a supreme effort.
That amused him. He'd attempted to become interested in some of them--yet another concession to his change of roles--but the truth was that awkward, often tittering girls just out of their teens irritated him. He was too matter of fact for their circuitous chatter, and too deliberate to make any attempt at physical contact seem less than perfunctory and lacking in spontaneity.
He didn't mind. If his one experience of the tenderer passions was any indication, being in love was an awkward affair--a state of being exactly calculated to make a person irrational and indecisive.
He often caught himself wondering how she was doing--how her steely resolve was holding up under the constant barrage of criticisms and the endless flash of camera bulbs. Of course, she'd grown up with that sort of attention, so perhaps it was for her as meager meals and broken light bulbs were for him--an inescapable reality of life.
But then again.
It had been largely to avoid her notice that he'd changed his name. It wasn't that he resented the effect she had on him--in fact, he'd enjoyed it a good deal. But for the sake of both of their effectiveness in the roles which they'd chosen to adopt, any connection between the two of them needed to be severed.
As it was, it was beginning to appear very likely that he'd bee seeing her again soon. Snapping out of his reverie, Sho began to make his way through the endless series of procedures necessary to circumvent Preventers' security network. Personally, he was of the opinion that Une had been the absolute worst choice for head of ESUN's only defense organization. She'd been too long under Treize's spell, too often led, to be an effective leader in her own right. It surprised him sometimes that Wufei wasn't doing more from the inside. Of course, his proximity to the intermittent troubles plaguing the earth sphere would put him under suspicion, but Sho had seen the occasional signs of his discreet handiwork enough to know that he was watching too.
Of course, this most recent disturbance had taken the entire organization by surprise. It had been careless of whoever had delivered that message to Noin to have allowed her to show it to anyone not immediately concerned with the problem. The bug had picked up on the extra activity within less than a day. Without surveillance data it was impossible for Sho to know either who the mysterious messenger had been, or who the spy was. But there was a little time yet. Knowing how cumbersome Preventers' operations tended to be, he'd only have to wait a few more days for the necessary information to leak.
This was new. His hands paused above the keyboard, frozen in mid command as he scrutinized the data displayed on his screen.
Extra personnel.dogs, screeners--a sardonic smile quirked one corner of his mouth. So, they were stepping up security at the upcoming ESUN world conference. Looking at the planns laid out on his screen, Sho felt an uneasy knot just begin to form in the pit of his stomach. He wasn't afraid- -he wondered, sometimes, if he still had the capacity to feel fear. He was, however, beginning to be apprehensive.
The transmission he'd intercepted from L4C179 yesterday evening--"I have a plan". What better way to uncover a bug than to put them in a position of blowing their cover or.
And the sons of justice were infamous among the fragmented pockets of rebellious ESUn citizens as a group who counted no costs. Would they be willing to accelerate what he suspected was there plan in order to prevent this security breech from foiling it altogether? And come to that, even with this extra help, could it be foiled, given their astronomically superior strength.
Careless. Absolutely careless for Preventers to let this get so out of hand.
Conscientiously he retraced his electronic steps through the maze of traps, bugs and invisible quicksand that protected the Preventers' network. When he had safely navigated his way back into harmless cyberspace, he rose and began pacing the room, slowly at first and then with increasing energy.
Yet another habit he would not have indulged in five years ago. But those days were long gone.
And worse days were ahead for the people of Earth and the colonies if the Preventers didn't remove their heads from their.well, that train of thought wasn't going to get him anywhere. Getting angry was what had so often caused Wufei and Duo to make mistakes.
He paused in his perambulation, wondering if any of the others had the faintest idea of what was going on. He was almost certain Quatre and Duo were completely oblivious. That had been their clear intention in January of AC 197--to disappear back into the throng of humanity from which they'd all been wrenched as children. Not that Quatre had done much in the way of disappearing, he thought ironically.
Trowa--perhaps he knew part of what was happening, but if that Catherine person had anything to say to it his information would be limited. For all Sho knew she'd convinced him that the affairs of ESUN's government were no longer his concern. Trowa had not been a pushover by any stretch of the imagination, but his fondness for that girl who'd called herself his sister might have softened his resolve.
Sho envied him, in a way, but now was not the time to dwell on that. He'd remained aloof from all but the most tenuous human contact in preparation for just such a situation as the one brewing now.
And Wufei? That most enigmatic of all the pilots was, if Sho had any insight into his character, taking great pains to conform himself to his new role. Not that Wufei was lacking in inteligence or spirit--far from it. However, Sho had noted in the Chinese man a rather odd tendancy to throw himself wholeheartedly into the actualization of whatever image he had conceived for himself at any given time. When convinced he was a loser, he acted that part. When convinced he was the avenging spirit of the soldiers thrown away at the close of a war, he had executed that role as well with a heart-felt fervor Sho envied for it's resolution.
Wufei would not stray beyond the bounds of the new pattern he'd laid out for himself until the shock of what was happening hit him with sufficient violence to revive the heart of a warrior--the heart he had forced to lie dormant these past five years.
"And I," said Sho, moving once again to gaze out the window, "Will change my name again."
The artificial sun had ceased to glow against the slowly darkening backdrop of the colony's celestually patterned dome. As the false blue of L1's day faded into the genuine blackness of space, Sho thought about the stars that gleamed softly beyond the manmade sphere that was keeping him alive at that very moment. And he thought about earth, as it's blue and white immensity became slowly visible above the false horizon, dwarfing the moon and reducing the stars to nearly invisible points of light.
Man had not created earth. He wondered sometimes who, if anyone, had effected that miracle.
She had believed in God. He wasn't certain he could accept that theory, but at times like this he supposed it must be nice to think there was someone out there, larger than the universe, watching out for you.
He turned from the window and slowly blew out the candles. Gently lifting his computer from the des,k he inserted it into its carrying case and in turn slipped that into his backpack. Pausing just long enough to grab a jacket from the hook behind the door, Sho slipped out of his apartment, softly closing the door so as not to disturb the baby sleeping across the hall.
She had just learned to sleep through the night, and her parents, a cheerful couple in their mid thirties, would not relish having their repose disturbed by a careless neighbor.
The street was nearly deserted when he stepped out into the evening air. There were a few lights still on in one of the stores across the road, but most of the shoppers and workers had already gone home.
Thinking all the while, flagged down a passing cab, and directed the aging driver to head toward the spaceport.
"Where ya headed?" inquired the man conversationally, barely turning down the volume on the classical music blaring from his speakers.
"L2," replied Sho, gazing vaguely out at the blur of passing traffic. "I just developed an overwhelming desire to visit an old friend."
"Well, that's nice," responded the driver. "I remember once, I had a friend living on Earth--his name was /samuel--" Sho barely heard the man as they turned one corner, then another, traveling, as it seemed, ever faster.
He wondered what Duo's reaction would be upon seeing him. If he refused to help--well, that would be unfortunate, but Duo's assistance in this matter would be purely an added boon. The cooperation of another party was, however, indispensable.
Five years had caused him to relax some of his rigid habits of speech and manner, but the man once known as Heero Yuy had no doubt that he could still control a mobile suit.
Even that one.
"Looks like we're gonna be stuck in traffic for a while--some fella's gone and run his car right up into that wall--it'll take some time 'fore we can move."
Sho made no reply, only demonstrating that he'd heard the other man by readjusting his legs into a more comfortable position.
Perhaps, he reflected, Zero was the only thing that had the capacity to make him afraid. Then again, from the looks of things it was the only thing standing between ESUN and chaos.