Author's Note: School can definitely be a Myoga-the-flea kind of being. (Inu-yasha) However, I will continue to swat that obnoxious bugger just to see him float to the ground as flat as a pancake. Now, PLEASE R+R IF YOU ARE READING THIS! Doing these stories is a waste of time if no one will read them and tell me how to improve.

            "Slow down! AHHH!" Hilde gripped the car door with enough force to hear the plastic creak. Duo cast a sideways look at his wife and complied. She slowly let got of the door handle and turned to look at him. "Do you want to get there late and alive, or dead?" she shrieked.

            Duo strummed his fingers on the steering wheel. "As I see it, the shuttle leaves whether or not we're on it," he said. There was a giggling noise from the back and Hilde turned to see little Ayeka playing with her hands in front of her face with glee. She was so fortunate to have a baby which found its own means of entertainment other than ceaselessly crying. Washu handed Ayeka a key chain to play with. As Duo pulled into the parking garage, Hilde gathered their carry-on luggage for the mad dash to the gate.

            They made it with a few minutes to spare. As the settled into their seats, Hilde asked Duo, "Do you think Heero and Relena will ever have kids?"

            Duo shrugged. "Maybe, but not right now. Relena is too busy jumping from colony to colony to Earth to get pregnant. Of course, if she does, it will mean politics will get rather boring and unproductive while she takes her leave." Relena Yuy was the main gear grinder in the political machine, take her away and production slowed to a crawl. The only people who could be cheered by this were the ones who had to enforce all the new policy. Relena leaving to start a family would give them time to catch up.

            Several people around the Maxwells' seats complemented little Ayeka as she played with a block key-chain in her rather inept hands. As they took off and left gravity, Hilde eyed Ayeka wearily. The baby seemed to pause momentarily in her game with the key ring, and the started emphatically waving her arms around and emitting the wet baby giggles of joy. Nearby passengers grinned to themselves and tried not to seem too interested.

            While some babies didn't like space, many found it comforting to be floating around again. Ayeka was only a few months old, and Hilde realized that with a father like Duo, who was born for space, Ayeka should feel right at home.

            They landed on Quatre's colony a few hours later. As they carried their stuff out of the space port, someone started shouting, "Duo! Hilde! Over hear!" The couple turned to see Relena waving to them by the curb. A white stretch limo was parked there, Heero leaned against it with his arms crossed. It wasn't until they were only a few feet away and the crowd was thin enough that Relena could see the baby carrier and gasped. "She's adorable!"

            Heero looked at Duo and raised an eyebrow. Duo set his bags down and slung an arm over his buddy's shoulders. "You'll understand someday, but until then—"

            "Daddy?" said a voice by their feet. Duo and Heero looked down and Duo's jaw fell open. A blond-hared, blue-eyed little boy stood at Heero's leg, tugging insistently. Heero gave Duo and look and crouched down.

            "Yeah, Odin?"

            The boy eyed Duo before looking back at his father. "That's a baby," he said pointing to Ayeka who was being passed from Relena back to Hilde.

            Heero smiled, a genuine and warm smile that made Duo nearly fall over in shock. "Yes it is, why don't you get back in the car?" The boy nodded and managed to climb from the curb back into the limo.

            "How old is he?" Duo asked.

            Heero cast a look in Relena's direction. "He's two, but we managed to keep the pregnancy a quiet thing. Relena wants more, but I'm not so sure it's a good idea."

            Duo grinned and patted his friend on the back. "Oh come on! Relena needs a little girl to teach all her knowledge of men to, because I don't think Ayeka will suffice."

            Heero looked at the baby in Hilde's arms and the red-hared girl beside her. "Which one's Ayeka?"

            Duo pointed to the baby. "That's Ayeka. The other is Little Washu, Hilde's sister's daughter. She died and left Washu to our care." He sobered a bit. "It was a bit of a shock, Funaho's death, but Washu has been doing amazingly well. She's a genius.

            Quatre, Dorothy and Trowa met their guests at the front door. Duo had been impressed by the size of the house, but the only thing that surprised him more was Quatre's arm around a very pregnant Dorothy. Trowa was busy trying to get a little boy, who looked around Odin's age, off his leg. "Arm's like steel, that one," Quatre said as Duo commented on Trowa's struggled to remove his little parasite. Then a second body appeared out of seemingly nowhere to grab the other leg. "And the twins are identical in every way you can imagine."

            There were congratulations passed around and summaries of people's lives thus far. Then the women went off with the kids (Quatre and Dorothy's twins had been removed from "Uncle Owa's" legs) leaving the guys to talk about business. Quatre sat down in the living room and said, "Before I tell you about the houses, I'd better make sure the jobs I've lined up for you are to your satisfaction." He picked up some papers from the table in front of him and passed them around. Trowa, Heero, and Duo each took the one with their name on top and looked it over.

            "I don't get it," Duo said. "This tells me I'm working for Crystal Tokyo, a family business on Earth that needs my kind of 'technical expertise?'"

            Quatre smiled. "They run a cargo transport business which starts with their massive acreage of farmland and ends with the products of those farms up here as much as on Earth. Mr. Luna was really done a great job in building up the company, and his wife has just finished her second term as representative of Japan to the Earth Sphere Unified Nation Senate. They're a friendly and generous couple."

            Duo looked down at his paper and realized he'd made it into an airplane. He hurriedly unfolded it and asked, "So what am I supposed to do?"

            Heero spoke up. "You'll be in charge of maintaining their cargo shuttles is what it sounds like."

            Duo blinked. "Oh."

            Heero turned to Quatre and said, "As for me, I am not stepping down as head of security for the Senate."

            Trowa looked at Quatre and said, "It's a good choice, but why go through all the trouble of getting us jobs on Earth? I already told you that I'd need a place only if the circus falls apart, and that's not happening any time soon."

            Quatre smiled sadly and said, "People are abandoning Earth and it's becoming the playground of the rich and famous. The working middle class and higher have started a systematic evacuation, leaving behind only those without enough money to relocate to space. I was hoping that having the five of us move back down to Earth would slow if not stop that migration."

            Silent meditation took over.