Chasing Impossibilities
Part Five: The Trip to L1


Triton crept around the building. He couldn't believe he was doing it. He couldn't believe that he was listening to Odin's crazy story. But now he was back at the Riverside complex, trying to sneak into J's office. When he had been there earlier he didn't see any security cameras he had to worry about, but he knew the doctor lived right upstairs.

Triton pulled a long, steel rod out of his pocket and stuck in into the door lock, moving it back and forth in an expert manner. Soon he heard a familiar click and pushed the door open. It was dark, as to be suspected, and he let his eyes assimilate to the change while he closed the door. In a little bit he could see fairly well with just the light from outside, and he moved toward J's office.

He wasted no time in prying open the drawers, looking through the papers at the fastest rate he could. Surprisingly, he didn't find many files on the doctor's patients, and he wondered how the man got by with such little business. Still, it seemed like forever until he found anything he thought was related to his situation. It was a thin sheath of papers stuck in a manilla folder. It was filled in long and short entries, handwritten and undated.


Completed construction of the device based on O's changes to the prototype. Will effectively utilize the electromagnetic net naturally induced by the colonies...


There was scientific information Triton didn't understand, but he deduced that it was about the device J had built with his colleagues.


Called in the gundam pilots to test, everything successful so far. Will employ on Earth and the rest of the colonies.

Everything is going according to plan. No one has any memory of the gundams or the war. No one has yet to react negatively to the mind alteration.

Quatre Winner suspects something is wrong. Cause suspected to be empathic abilities. Will wait and see if problem persists.

Winner knows somehow. Will no doubt try to contact the other pilots. He must be taken care of before that happens, will have to try again.

Heero Yuy has come in for sudden memory loss. Suspect his real memories will come back rather than the mechanically implanted memories.


Triton's head flew up as he heard a noise from above him, having no doubt that it was J. He held his breath as J moved around, but jumped off the seat when he heard the footsteps coming down towards him. J must be on the staircase. He dropped the papers back in the desk, running out of the building as quickly as he could without making any noise. He closed the door, jarring the lock pick once so that it locked itself, and thanked god he had those skills before he ran to his car and drove off.

* * *

J walked down the steps. It was obvious to him that some one had just run out of his home, he just didn't know who. Or more specifically, he just didn't know which of the gundam pilots had been there.

He walked to his office, scanning the area. Finally, he walked over to his desk, opening the bottom drawer. His reports on the memory device was on top. He had placed them in the bottom.

J tapped his fingers along the desk, thinking, and coming up with a conclusion. It must have been Trowa.

* * *

Everything was falling apart. The most ridiculous thing was that that morning everything had been fine. Max closed his eyes, trying to forget and examine the events of the last twenty-four hours at the same time. He was sitting on a bench a few blocks away from the police station, waiting for the bus to get there so he could go home.

He couldn't believe Odin. Maybe he was crazy, he didn't know any more... no. No, Odin had seemed fine, despite what he had been saying.

He just wished he knew what was going on. The lack of knowledge, the lack of control, was killing him. He just wanted everything to be normal again. He just wanted a normal life.

A noise sounded behind him, and Max spun around, cursing his nerves that evening. There was no one there. Max turned around again, facing the street, a little unnerved now. He realized for the first time how empty this area was. Then, before he knew it, an arm had moved around his head and a wet cloth held against his nose and mouth. Then his world went black.

* * *

Triton skidded into the parking lot of the police building, mind racing. Gundam... Quatre... Heero... those words sounded so familiar. Even the thought of war seemed familiar to him, even though he knew he had never experienced it. Or rather, Triton Bloom had never experienced it. The idea still would have seemed ludicrous, except that it kept tugging at his mind, and he knew the familiarity had to mean something. It was as if there was a dark cloud at the back of his mind, hiding something. It was just a presence, sitting there, telling him that everything he knew was wrong. And he knew it hadn't just developed today; it hung on all his memories.

But he had a purpose now. Triton walked through the police building with his usual confidence, ignoring the hustle and bustle of his peers and coworkers. He eventually ended up in the cell holding area, stopping in front of the guard in charge of Odin's wing.

The guard stood at attention, nodding to his superior. "Can I help you, Mr. Bloom?"

"Go ahead and take a break, I'll take care of things here."

The man nodded to his superior before leaving. Triton watched as he disappeared around the corner before entering the corridor, marching past all the cells until he stopped in front of Odin's. The other man was seated on his cot, back against the wall, head bent slightly back and eyes closed.

"Heero?" For some reason, Triton wasn't surprised when Odin looked up at that name. "Get up. We're going to that colony."

* * *

"So. What's with the change of heart?"

Triton looked over at Heero as they sped to the spaceport. "You were right. I think. J and some others built a machine to change every one's memories, but it didn't work with you or Quatre for some reason."

"And the machine's on the colony."

"Yeah."

"And how do you propose we get there?"

Triton turned sharply, coming to a sudden stop in the spaceport parking lot. He untied his seatbelt as he stared at Heero. "Do you know how to pilot a shuttle?"

Heero blinked. Odin Lowe had been a computer geek. His artificial memories all showed him behind a computer, working on encryption or software or what-not. He had never done anything remotely like piloting a shuttle. "Sure."

The two of the snuck into the port fairly easily. Granted, no one was looking for them yet. The traffic in the port was fairly moderate, no one traveling so late at night. They scouted around the port, Triton playing close attention to the computer and information screen while Heero scouted security. They met together after only a few minutes of the reconnaissance.

"The security's pretty light. There are guards at the entrances to the port and at the security checkpoints, but only workers near the shuttles, and even that's not bad."

Triton nodded. "See that gate over there? There's a shuttle that won't be leaving for an hour."

The two made their way over to the gate, easing inside with stealthy grace. Triton drew out his gun, creeping towards the one man that was there. The worker was looking over the machinery of the engine, and it didn't take long for Triton to dispatch him. Just one well-placed hit with the butt of the gun and he was out of the way.

Heero pulled open the door of shuttle, striding inside and towards the cockpit. As long as he didn't think about it too hard things seemed to come to him with a natural ease, and it took him less than a minute to start the shuttle. He was vaguely aware of Triton sliding into the seat behind him.

"Well." Triton's voice was dry, unamused. "That was easier than I had expected."

Heero put the shuttle into movement, rolling it down the runway. Workers dived out of the way while staff off to the sides were yelling at them. The control tower tried to make contact, something Heero put a stop to by cutting off communications. In no time they were off, launching into space and towards X-00198.

"Damn." Heero cursed as he looked at the control panel, and Trowa looked down to see what was the matter. The gas tank was only three fourths full.

"Do you think we can make it?"

Heero ran through the calculations in his head, checking them with the measurements in the computer. "Barely."

There were a few nervous moments then, before they exited the colony outer hull, where they wondered if any one would be sent after them. Everything went wall, fortunately, and soon Heero set the course in the shuttle mainframe and they were coasting on autopilot.

"What do you think they were hiding?"

"What?" Heero looked up as Triton broke their tense silence before shrugging it off. "Who knows, maybe we were just a science experiment."

"Then what were the gundams?"

Another image flashed in Heero's head, and he recognized it from one he had before. A huge mechanical figure, huge and white, lay on a stretch of metal, right next to a matching black machine. Then the image left his head. "I'm not sure."

Triton shifted back in his seat, closing his eyes. It would be two hours before they reached the colony, and he didn't mind a little nap before they got there.