Disclaimer: My current defence against any corporate lawyers who might decide to beat down my door and present a "cease and desist" order from BanDai is that I've been working on this for a WHOLE YEAR now, and if they even tried to shut me down, they'd have hordes of angry fans swarming all over them and plucking out each and every one of their body hairs, one by one by one. Right guys? *looks expectantly at her readers* ... *crickets chirp* ... =o_o;= *gulp* Uh...right? =D

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Episode Fifty-Nine: Pyrotic Circus

"You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question." ~Albert Camus, "The Fall"

September 9th, 1902

Mornings in the kitchen didn't get much quieter. While random servants skittered to and fro carrying this and that, and finishing off their own brief meals, Duo was silent for a full fifteen minutes, reading his latest letter from Helen. Ever mindful and considerate, she wrote without using very many complicated words that might have been too big for Duo's limited reading abilities, but he read each word as slowly as he could anyway, wanting to savour every second of the treasure.

As he finished the last page, he sat back with a relaxed smile and a happy sigh, folding the lily-white pages back together and tucking the bundle into its envelope for safe-keeping. Trowa, who happened to be in the immediate area, walked up to Duo's chair and leaned against the table. "How is she?"

"Getting better," said Duo. "She actually had the energy to go to church last weekend, and she isn't coughing as much."

Heero heard the last comment as he came down the stairs with a tray of dishes, but opted not to intrude. Trowa helped himself to some leftover coffee and pondered. "You think Sally's herbs are really helping?"

"Well, there's something to be said for the power of prayer, too," Duo said, leaning way back and folding his hands behind his head, "but yeah, I think it's gotta be doing something good. Never had any doubt."

Finished with the dishes, Heero walked back from the counter to the table and caught Trowa's eye. "Are they going to be ready to leave before dark?" he asked impatiently, referring to Quatre and Wufei, who were in the double bedchamber to the north. While they waited for all parties to be assembled on their way to the Muddy Nag for their first real meeting in more than a week, Quatre put a few questions to Wufei about furniture arrangements, and they had been discussing the minute intricacies of feng shui for almost an hour.

"I'll check on them," Trowa huffed, and he strode out of the kitchen right away.

Taking advantage of their temporary solitude, and having been reminded by the overheard conversation, Heero sat next to Duo with the intention of finally touching on the topic he hadn't known how to deal with since he stumbled upon it weeks earlier. "I was hoping to ask you something...just curious..." he began, unnaturally slowly.

Duo toyed with his letter and shrugged with his eyebrows. "Fire away."

"You're...reasonably well-versed in Catholicism...correct?"

Duo thought about the odd question, then nodded slackly. "Reasonably."

Heero thought a lot longer before he found a benign enough way to ask what he wanted to ask. "Is there a rule saying a woman has to change her name to Mary to be a nun?"

It was a perfectly sound question, but Duo found it hysterically funny, and let out a couple of restrained chuckles. "Naw, you kidding? What gave you that idea?"

"The Benedictine sisters who brought Relena's brother home...I overheard them talking to each other, and they used the name Mary more than any other." That was all he wanted to reveal at that time, and he hoped it didn't show.

"A lot of nuns just stick 'Mary' in front of their birth names, that's all," Duo said. "I dunno why, really...guess it makes them feel holier or something. Some even give up their birth name altogether and take the name of a saint, but I haven't got a clue whether it's compulsory. There's a lot I don't understand, but it's not like I've been studying it all my life. Had other stuff to worry about, y'know?"

Heero nodded. What Duo said made sense, especially when weighed against the extremely remote possibility that all nuns just happened to be called Mary when they were born. He had heard the names Mary Alice, Mary Francis, Mary Cecilia, Mary Elizabeth, and of course, the fabled Mary Helen who had alerted them to the young man's peril. Coming so soon after Duo's Helen asked for a photo of Milliardo, Heero couldn't help but be suspicious, but he didn't know how he felt beyond that. "Thank you."

"Happy to help," Duo chirped with a smile. "Although...I thought you knew all this cross-cultural stuff already. Sensitivity training to make sure you didn't offend any of your 'marks', right?"

"It's not like I've been studying it all my life either," Heero mocked lightly.

Duo wanted to ask why Heero was so curious about something so unrelated to his own life, but they were both distracted by a group of three leaving the hallway to Trowa and Quatre's bedroom. The owners were walking stiffly, taking sidelong peeks out the kitchen window on their way to the table. Wufei was right behind them, padding along in his white suit with black buttons and silent slippers, but when he reached the window, he ducked under it, and chose his spot at the table very carefully so as not to be exposed to the outside world. Trowa stood between him and the window, trying to be helpful, and folded his arms. "Slight problem."

Heero was already subtly straining to see out the window without obviously looking, but the visual angle from the sunken kitchen was poor. "What?"

"Lucrezia and Milliardo. We just saw them going out for a walk, and they've stopped at the gazebo." Trowa gave a tiny tilt of his head towards the window.

Looking nonchalant, Duo picked up the empty coffee pot off the cork trivet and took it over to the washbasin, which was under a second window. He peered casually out the window while he rinsed out the pot and saw the happy couple, just as reported. They were sitting on the swing, talking quietly, nothing out of the ordinary. "Why's that a problem?" he asked through tight, unmoving lips.

"The problem is the direction they're facing," Wufei said, still ducking below ground level. "From where they're sitting, they can see every door and window on the west side of the house. Unless I want to take my chances with a different exit, I'm stuck here until they move."

That was a problem. The five of them were soon due at the Muddy Nag for an important strategy meeting, and it wouldn't do to go through with it short-handed, nor would it benefit Wufei to tip his hand to the rest of the household when he really had nowhere else to go. "Maybe we should reschedule," Trowa suggested.

"Or just stay here?" Quatre added hopefully. He was ready to try anything that might keep them all out of the pub for awhile.

Heero shook his head. "We can't keep putting it off, and we've already voted to relocate. We're going."

"Why don't you four go on ahead?" said Wufei. "Those two can't sit there forever, and while I'm waiting for them to move, you might as well get a head start."

It seemed reasonable to everyone, and soon they decided. Wufei would stay behind just long enough to escape the watchful eyes of the elder Peacecraft and his mistress, while the others would carry on towards the Muddy Nag and set up for their first real gathering in their new base of operations. Without any fuss, they parted ways, fully expecting to meet up shortly, ready to go to work.

**********

A sizeable crowd was gathering in front of a conspicuously unidentified building, formerly known as the Muddy Nag. The locals said 'formerly,' as evidenced by the discarded placard propped up against the front of the building with a wreath of white lilies hanging off it, partially obscuring the painted picture of a mare's head splattered with dirt. High above, a white drop-cloth was covering the long sign overhead, and at street level, two brass poles were set up with a brilliant red ribbon stretched between them, right in front of the doors. The front of the building was polished and scrubbed to a gleaming shine, but the interior was a complete mystery, as thick curtains of an orange brocade were drawn clear across the windows. The number of curtains gave the bystanders a hint that the old pub was at least twice the size that it used to be.

At noon precisely, the fair lady Catherine, queen of her tiny domain, emerged from the building with a pair of scissors and a great big grin. She immediately recognized the four lads from Bridlewood standing at the front of the pack, and hopped over to them, waving excitedly. "Oh, I'm so glad you all came!" she squealed. "Bet you're all just dying to see the results of our miraculous, fantabulous, presto-change-o surprise transformation!"

Heero blinked at her, heavy-lidded and with arms already folded. "Catherine...this place has been a shambles for the past month. How can you call it a surprise?"

"Yeah!" Duo laughed. "In fact, we had to cut one of our workouts short because the echoing of hammers and saws was too much for our delicate little ears!"

"...okay, it's not much of a surprise," Catherine admitted, "but you still won't believe it." As she walked proudly back to the front doors, Heero and Duo smirked at each other, while Trowa and Quatre traded silent glances of apprehension.

Next, the bubbly barmaid brought forth her special guest, a portly, bearded gentleman who was apparently a city councillor or somesuch. As a small-town press photographer readied his equipment for a simple but dignified publicity shot, the grand opening was made official. "On behalf of city council," the bearded man said regally, "I am pleased to declare this establishment...officially re-opened!" With Catherine's hand on one handle of the shears and his on the other, they held a smiling pose just long enough for the photographer to expose his plate of film, then jointly snipped through the red ribbon to the enthusiastic applause supplied by the crowd.

To top it off, two scruffy street lads chosen at random and paid with a pork pie each, standing below either end of the long, obscured sign over the doors, pulled their ropes to bring the white cloth fluttering down. Underneath it was a newly-painted sign in green and gold, bearing the proud words, 'Catherine's Place.' Most everyone grinned, very much pleased for Catherine and, at the same time, amused by her ego.

Before throwing open the doors, Catherine raised both hands to the people and made one further benevolent gesture. "Today only, from now until closing, in celebration of this momentous event, every drink is on the house!" A mighty roar arose from the booze hounds, and they pushed the Bridlewood boys aside to parade in like a pack of mice following the Pied Piper.

As the anxious customers filed in, their eyes glazed over in collective wonderment. While the original space taken up by the pub was essentially unchanged, all of the old, torn decorative fabrics had been replaced, and the tables and chairs were brand new. The bar had been extended about four feet, adding several new barstools and a system of racks for storing glassware overhead, and as a finishing touch, many of the low-hanging light fixtures had been given pretty new lampshades of stained glass and black metal, their festive light casting colourful mosaics of warm, welcoming hues all over the room.

While a handful of men went straight up to the bar for their complimentary pint, most wandered dizzily into the newer, much larger portion of the pub. Upon taking over the vacant business next door, Catherine had subdivided it into several smaller units, all of which still seemed cavernous. There was a games room with a billiard table, a conference room with its own little bar, two small meeting rooms for intimate gatherings, and a full-service restaurant with a brand new menu. Duo noted that a few of his own culinary creations were available, marked with his initials on the price board. He couldn't have been happier.

Each of the smaller meeting rooms seated ten people, while the conference room could accommodate twenty. While the total effect was still sinking in with the others, Heero poked his head into the farthest meeting room, bedecked with walnut trim and executive dark green wallpaper, nodding appreciatively. "Just what we're looking for."

Duo walked right in, admiring the little watercolour paintings of local landmarks and the banks of the Thames in their faux-gilt frames that adorned the windowless walls. "Hey, this is great! Plenty of room to spread stuff out all over the table!" As a totally unnecessary demonstration, Duo spread himself out all over the table, dangling his feet off the edge and waving his arms to make an invisible snow angel.

While Quatre laughed, albeit quite nervously, Trowa rolled his eyes, kicked a chair away from the table, and flopped down on it. "Make yourself at home, why don't you..."

"Hey!" Duo shouted without sitting up, pointing an angry finger at Trowa. "My skillet stroganoff paid for that chair! Treat it with some respect!"

"You know..." Quatre began timidly, wringing his hands as he paced around, "as nice as this place is, I really don't think we should be having our discussions in here. It's not set up for business purposes, it looks more like a miniature hall for birthdays and anniversary dinners."

Just at that moment, Heero opened one of the austere wooden wall cabinets and found a treasure trove of office supplies. "Looks perfectly suitable to me," he said, shuffling through the healthy supply of pens, pencils, ink wells and blank books available to preferred customers.

"Hey, are there any snacks in there?" Duo said, jumping up off the table and crouching beside Heero to search the lower levels of the cabinet. "I could sure go for some pretzels, or licorice drops, or..."

"Never fear, boys," a girl's voice sang from the doorway. It made Quatre jump and sent his heart rate soaring until he whirled around and saw that it was Catherine. "These rooms have complete access to the newly-fitted kitchen and revamped menu, full waitress service until closing time, and you can reserve them up to a month in advance!"

"Any holds on this room right now?" Heero asked.

"None whatsoever. Want it?"

No! Quatre thought.

"Yes!" Duo cheered. "And we might as well start off in style, so let's have a big platter of goodies and a big bottle of something fizzy!"

"Iced tea and orange juice," Heero interrupted. Duo frowned in disappointment, but as Catherine went off happily with her first major food order of the day, Heero turned to Quatre with a sympathetic look. "I know you weren't looking forward to this, but if it makes it any easier for you, we can just keep the alcohol out of this room as much as possible."

Feeling a pang of guilt at Heero's erroneous but sensitive assumption that Quatre's religious aversion to spiritous beverages was to blame for his erratic behaviour, he wrung his hands again. "Thank you."

Only Trowa knew what was really on the boy's mind as they each took a seat around the heavy oak table and lightly discussed this and that, waiting for their drinks and nibbles as much as they were waiting for Wufei. Duo took extreme delight in listening carefully to the orders shouted around the nearby kitchen, to see how many people were trying out his dishes, but the others pretty much just lounged around, watching the minutes tick by on the octagonal pendulum wall clock. Not long after placing their order, footsteps approached, and at the door appeared a young woman in a cornflower blue cotton dress and a white apron, carrying a tray of finger sandwiches. She had long, flowing brunette curls trailing away from a pretty schoolgirl face, and as she walked, there was a very faint jingling, as if she were wearing tiny bells on her high-heeled lace-up shoes. Quatre cringed and bit down on two knuckles of his right hand, while his left hand tucked itself under the other arm.

"Sandwiches!" the girl said, and she set the tray down in the middle of the table, leaning right over Heero's shoulder as she did so. As she looked across the table at Quatre, she smiled cheerily, and he smiled back through a guilty grimace. Then, as quickly as she came, she left, jingling out the door and down the hall back towards the kitchen.

Duo stared after her and slapped Heero lightly in the shoulder. "Did she look familiar to you?"

"A bit, yes."

Quatre looked up at the ceiling and begged Allah for a miracle.

Less than a minute later, another young lady walked in, this one with platinum blonde hair, braided and pulled over her shoulder. She wore an identical cornflower blue dress and white apron, and she came bearing a tray of cold cuts, cut fruit, and chunks of cheese, all with little coloured toothpicks sticking out of them. "Appetizers!" she said, and deposited the second tray next to the first. Upon seeing Quatre, she brightened considerably. "Oh! Hello!"

"Hello," Quatre answered, forcing a smile, and the girl left along the same path as the other.

This time, Heero crinkled his eyes and looked at Duo. "Doesn't she look like Hessa?" He looked immediately at Quatre, without waiting for an answer. "Was that Hessa?"

"Uh...she did...slightly resemble her, but I--"

"She sure seemed to know you," Duo said, puzzled.

"Well, she might've thought he was someone else," Trowa suggested strongly.

The other two both nodded unconvincingly and sat back. "Oh."

If the other shoe hadn't already dropped and then jumped up to slap Trowa and Quatre in the face, two more girls entered the meeting room, each carrying a tray with a full pitcher and two empty glasses. Not only were their blue dresses and white aprons identical, but their eyes, figures, faces, and dark, coiled-up hair were also a perfect match. The only detail that set them apart was the flower they each had pinned to their pinnies, orange for one, and blue-green for the other.

"Iced tea!" the orange flower announced.

"And orange juice!" the aqua flower answered. Quatre tried to hide behind Trowa's broad shoulders and sighed.

Duo and Heero regarded the girls with shock and confusion as they set down their burdens and exited the room. Once they were gone, Heero leaned forward on one elbow, pointed at the door, and glared at Quatre. "Those were the twins," he said firmly.

Quatre didn't have to try, he already looked innocent as a lamb, and dreading the swing of the farmer's axe. ".....technically.....if you really want to nit-pick.......yes, yes they were." He finished timidly and tossed his hands up in the air. "We couldn't stand it anymore! All crunched up together in the same room, it was awful! ...well...not at first, it wasn't...but it just wasn't working out, and when Yasmeen told me she'd found another place to hide, I didn't ask any questions, and well...then she told me at the last minute as they were sneaking out the back door in the middle of the night, a-and knowing how often you two come here for karate practice, I was just waiting for you to come home and bawl me out because you bumped into one of them...or all of them.....oh, bother..."

Heero leaned his chin in his hand and drummed his fingers on the side of his head, brows arched and eyelids at half-mast. "Anything else?"

Quatre made a show of thinking very hard, then shook his head. "No, that's about it."

"I thought we said no more secrets."

"It wasn't his fault," Trowa insisted, putting an arm around the boy without a second thought. "He wanted to tell you about it, but...well, we all know you have a bit of a temper..."

Calmly, but only on the surface, Heero lowered his arm back down to the table. "That's a feeble excuse and you know it."

"Hey, hey, hey, knock it off," Duo interjected before Heero could make a liar out of himself. "Maybe this is for the best, y'know? Maybe this is the best place for 'em. Are they living here and working here?"

Quatre nodded. "Yasmeen helps with the books, and the others all work in the restaurant. The upper floor of the new wing is all new rooms. They get to use as many as they need as part of their wages, and the rest of the rooms are up for rent, same as the old ones."

Duo smiled and slapped Heero's shoulder. "Well, that's not bad, is it? They're out of the way and doing something useful, nobody'd ever think of looking for them here!"

"Except that at least one of the other sisters saw Quatre in the pub last year, and threw a dagger at his head," Heero pointed out.

"She didn't see anyone but Quatre, though, and it'd be logical for her and the rest of the family to assume that he wouldn't chance being seen there again," Trowa said defensively. "They're probably as safe here as they would be anywhere else, and at least we've all got room to breathe now."

Even though they all knew Heero had no power or right to change what was, his approval was still very important to them. He was the closest thing they had to a leader, and his endorsement meant a great deal. After a good long think, Heero exhaled audibly, reached out to the nearest tray to pluck out a piece of mozzarella speared on a green toothpick, and chomped on it. "In a way, I envy them," he admitted while chewing.

Quatre sighed deeply with relief. "You mean that? You're not upset?"

"I suppose not."

"Atta boy, you know it makes sense!" said Duo, diving into the food immediately afterwards.

"Oh, you don't know how glad I am to hear that!" Quatre said gratefully. "This is such a load off my mind! Thanks so much!"

"Thank Duo," their leader said, pouring himself an iced tea with one hand and grabbing a sandwich with the other. "He must be rubbing off on me, because I'm finally learning to relax." Greeted by a chorus of little laughs, he kicked his feet up on the table in a very Duo-like manner and leaned way back, his temper lying in ruins on the floor. While they all had a good chuckle at his behaviour, however, he was already wondering if having Quatre's sisters out in the field could benefit them in any way. It could be very useful having so many extra sets of eyes and ears outside the house. I'll have to keep that in mind.

**********

For another thirty-five agonizing minutes, Wufei paced...and paced...and paced, but the lovebirds weren't budging. He peeked out the window every time he stalked past it, but they were still there each time, angled perfectly so that they would see any move he made out the back door. They didn't look as if they'd be moving any time soon, either. The boy's scowl worsened by the second, until it was no longer productive to stand there and wait. Irritating statues! I'm going out the front.

Determined to make it to the meeting even if he had to leap out a second-story window, he crept up the stairs and looked for an unpopulated path to the front of the house. Getting out of the servants' stairwell was easy, but every few steps, a lady servant walked by, and he had to duck into this door and that, zigzagging up the south hall. His steps were light and quick, his eyes alert, and his ears open to even the tiniest creak of the floorboards, which made it doubly surprising that as soon as he ducked into the little green sitting room one door down from the parlour, Wufei got a nasty shock.

He was hiding between the opened door and the wall and heard footsteps, but instead of getting fainter, they grew until a small, pale hand wrapped itself around the edge of the door and pulled it away. Attached to the hand was Relena, but between the moment of astonishment when he realized he'd been caught and the spark of self-doubt at his own abilities, he was taken aback by the change in her appearance. Gone were her normal airs of innocence, replaced by a velvet dress of deepest green, a fuzzy slash of rouge on each cheek, and a pile of upswept golden curls on top of her head. Her eyes were circled with a thin band of charcoal-black powder, and the way the ensemble aged her was somewhat frightening.

"Hiding from me?" she entreated through high-gloss, petal-pink lipstick.

Wufei had been so sure of his capacity to make it out the front door without being noticed that he never bothered to think up a cover story for why he was skulking around the manor uninvited. If Otto had walked in on him, the solution would have been simple--kosh him on the head and disappear before he hit the floor. The equation didn't balance with a female on the other side, however. He looked from side to side and swallowed. "I'm...here because..."

"Come away from there," she begged, pulling him forward by both hands. "The walls are probably coated with dust, and I'd hate to see you get all dirty." She helped herself to brushing imaginary clumps of fuzz off his pristine white tunic, off the shoulders, arms, chest, and anywhere else she felt like putting her hands.

Wufei didn't know why she wasn't questioning his presence, but he wasn't about to waste it. He headed for the sitting room door. "I apologize most humbly for my intrusion, M'lady, and now I'll be on my wa--"

"You're not leaving, are you?" She stopped him, framed squarely in front of the doorway, and let her hands crawl up the front of his tunic to hang on either side of his neck. "I'm not angry, if that's what you think. In fact, I've known for some time that you've been frequenting old Mr. Dunnet's cottage. You don't have anything to worry about, I understand completely."

Unable to decide exactly how suspicious he should be, Wufei studied the eye contact she made, looking for expected patterns of either deception or ignorance. "You understand," he stated questioningly. "What do you mean, precisely?"

Relena drew even closer, hanging her forearms off his shoulders. "I understand your need for secrecy. Anyone in your position would have to keep a low profile, and all I'm saying is that I don't mind if you use my property to do it." It was a cleverly-worded declaration, and it had absolutely no basis in fact. She was hoping to trick him into revealing more than he intended, but that in itself was foolishness.

Unbeknownst to either of them, Hilde was heading up that exact same hall with a dust rag and a jar of wax destined for the woodwork in the front hall. As she approached the sitting room, she heard familiar voices, but didn't think much of them, having been self-trained to ignore the family's inane chatter. As she passed silently by the door, however, and got a glimpse of Relena and Wufei hanging all over each other, a bolt of lightning hit her in the back of the head and sent hideous streams of ugly, green-eyed anxieties shooting through her veins. She ducked inside a door on the other side of the hall, directly opposite the sitting room, and watched the pair quietly from within.

"In fact, I think we might be able to help each other," Relena cooed. "If you've placed any trust in the people under this roof, it might be wise to reconsider. I've found recently that the people I thought I could trust have been deceiving me all along, and I wouldn't want that to happen to you, not ever." She stretched forward another inch, and was a deep breath away from pressing herself into Wufei's chest. "You and I, you see...we're different from the Sneaky Petes you've been consorting with, and if you'll help me keep an eye on one of them in particular, I'll help you and you alone...I'll be completely at your disposal."

"I see." Wufei's interest in the conversation was purely academic thus far, but he couldn't deny feeling somewhat stirred on his most primal level. He hadn't been this close to an attractive young lady in some time. "And who exactly do you want to keep an eye on?"

"Let's not worry about that," Relena purred, reaching up to stroke his slicked-back hair and trail the same hand down and around the embroidery embellishing his buttonholes. "What really matters is that I'm offering you an exclusive and secret partnership. If you're hiding out with the handy man, you must be pretty desperate, and I could easily offer you first-class accommodation...for a price..."

Across the hall, Hilde had put down her cleaning utensils for fear of dropping them, as she was aghast and appalled at what she saw and heard. Tiny red-hot flames were igniting behind her eyes, which were simultaneously fighting back tears.

Wufei tried vainly to pry Relena's hands off him, but her grip was like iron. "I don't think this is the place to--"

"Just say yes!" the girl insisted in a smoky, seductive voice. "Say you'll do a little spy work for me, and I'll make your stay here as comfortable as I possibly can." In a move that actually brought a tinge of red to Wufei's cheeks, she curled her unused arm around his waist and pulled, resting her head on his shoulder and tickling the patch of wispy black hair at the back of his neck.

That was more than enough for Hilde. Balling her little fists tightly, she stomped across the hall into the sitting room and scared the two of them into breaking apart. First, she addressed Wufei, in the manner of a proper lady, apparently the only one in the room. "Would you kindly excuse us, sir?"

The startled young man was only too happy to oblige, and scampered out the door at once. Only a few steps away, however, he reconsidered, and flattened himself against the wall next to the door. Inside, Relena was already taking exception to the interruption. "What do you mean, bursting in here and--"

"What do you mean, getting your filthy, aristocratic pawprints all over something that doesn't belong to you!?" Hilde shot back.

Relena took a fluttery step back as if she'd been hit across the face. "What's that supposed to mean!?"

Hilde took a deep breath and held her hands firmly down at her sides, lest she do something legally regrettable. "I don't have much," she said in a calm but gradually intensifying tone, "but I at least hoped, in spite of being lower-class and horrible at everything except polishing and dusting, that I might have the same chance at happiness as anyone else in the world, and to walk by just now and see you, you who's made such a habit of chasing after boys who can never be yours, falling all over the one young man in our puny, encapsulated world that I might've had a chance at, well it...it.....it just makes my blood boil so much that it's gonna heat up my whole head and shoot steam out my ears!!"

So taken aback by the outburst, Relena pointed frailly and shakily at the door, her mouth bobbing open and closed like a fish flopping around in the bottom of a boat. "You and him are--"

"No! We're not anything!" the housemaid shouted. "There's no telling what we might've been, but now that you've shown up with your rouge and your pretty curls and that dress, you--"

"What did you say before? Chasing after boys who can never be mine!? Who do you think you are, telling--"

"It's time somebody told you to your face! I knew all along that Heero didn't love you, he was just steamrollered into that engagement! He never had a chance!"

"How dare you say such a thing!"

"Why shouldn't I say it if it's true!? You can't keep your hands to yourself for one minute, can you!?"

"Take that back, you little tramp!"

"I won't! Not until you leave both of them alone!"

"I can do what I like in my own house!"

"Just because they're within arms' reach doesn't mean they're yours!"

Around the corner, Wufei was nothing short of mesmerized. The very concept that he could have sparked such a screaming match was a peculiar ego-booster, while at the same time he admonished himself for feeling responsible in any way. Still, he found himself drawn away from the wall and back into the doorway, hypnotized by the display and watching the pair in utter bewilderment. Already, there were heavy footsteps clomping down the stairs to see what all the ruckus was, but they were too late to prevent the worst of the damage. Wufei was still as a statue, even as one girl threw the first swing at the other.

**********

Heero's sense of the passage of time was unusually heightened through years of training, but it didn't stop him from checking his pocket watch obsessively. The others were equally fidgety, wondering what could be keeping their fifth member. At that moment, the most interesting thing going on in the top-secret meeting room was Duo's repeated attempts to balance a pencil between his upper lip and his nose while simultaneously balancing a second pencil on top of his head. The results were amusing at first, but it got old fast. Everyone wanted to do something useful before sunset.

Bored with his watch, Heero snatched the pencil off Duo's head before it fell for the hundredth time and poked it into his braid, where it stuck in place beside two other pencils that had earned the same fate. Duo was beginning to look like a long-tailed porcupine thanks to his friend, and he swivelled his head around to give him a dirty look. "You do that again," he warned, holding up his remaining pencil threateningly, "and this next one's going someplace real uncomfortable."

Heero challenged him with a glare. "Try me."

"Couldn't we be using our time a little more constructively?" Quatre begged as he perused the nearly-empty food trays for another bite or two.

"Doing what?" Duo whined. "We're supposed to be a five-man partnership, and instead, we've barely got enough bodies for a poker game!" Wufei had suggested that they get a head start, but not one of the boys knew where to start with one person short, and so, they were going nowhere.

Trowa slumped forward, resting his head on his folded arms in such a way that his bangs hid what was left of his face entirely. "Maybe we should just assume he's not coming and go back home," the boy mumbled. "Maybe something happened that kept him in the house."

"Or maybe he changed his mind," Heero wondered unpleasantly.

"He wouldn't bail out without telling us, I'm sure of it," said Quatre. "He could still get here."

"Even if he does, I've forgotten what we were supposed to talk about," Trowa said sleepily, yawning immediately afterwards.

"I'll tell you what we need to talk about," Duo said, pulling the pencils out of his hair energetically, "a general plan of action. We know who we're after and what he's up to, but that's about it, and when you think about it, we're a pretty funny bunch to be taking on organized crime."

"What are you saying?" Heero asked curtly.

"I'm saying that we really haven't got a clue! I mean, look at us! Even when Wufei does drag his sorry carcass in here, what have we got? A karate maniac, a kung fu decorator, a gardener, a horse trainer...and a five-star chef," Duo finished, brushing back his bangs with artistic flair. "Even if we capture the bad guy, any bad guy, what are we gonna do? Kick him until he's unconscious and fill all of his cranial orifices with Devon cream and peat moss?"

The point was surprisingly well-taken around the table. They all sounded rather pathetic compared to what they were up against. Heero folded his hands and exhaled with determination. "Alright...even with just the four of us, we can start looking at a basic strategy...we'll just have to figure out what we can accomplish before we set an unattainable goal." With a shrug and a jump of his eyebrows, he shook his head once and looked at Trowa, who now sat at closer attention. "What can you do?"

Trowa tapped his fingers nervously on the table, thinking. "Well...I'm handy with a sword...I can tie about three dozen different knots...I can find my way in the wilderness without a compass...and I can shoot a fly off a fencepost at a hundred paces."

Heero and Duo both leaned forward a bit, visibly impressed. "That's...pretty good..." Heero admitted.

"Pretty good?" Duo exclaimed. "That's awesome! I didn't know you could do all that!"

"I did," Quatre said smugly, smiling at Trowa, who gladly smiled back.

Heero nodded. "It's a solid start...what about you?"

"Me?" Quatre scrunched up humbly in his seat. "Oh, I don't think I could compete with all that. The kinds of things I learned as a child generally aren't battle-worthy, unless you want to audit the enemy's book of accounts."

"Aw, c'mon, spill it!" Duo teased. "You've got some kind of secret ability you've been hiding from us all along, haven't you?"

Duo was only joking, but for a moment, Quatre panicked, thinking he knew. He blushed. "Well...if you count fencing, then Trowa and I both have an extra card to play. The only other thing I can think of that might be useful is archery."

Heero's surprise was clearly displayed. "Archery?"

Quatre nodded. "I've used longbows and crossbows in the field, just for practice, but I was mostly educated on a short hunting bow, on horseback. We even had a family fletcher until things went haywire." He could feel that Heero was impressed, but that he also didn't think such a skill would be practical in the modern world. Suddenly and strangely desperate to feel valuable to the group, he looked at Trowa uncomfortably, looked back at Heero, and twiddled his thumbs, staring down at the table. "And...I can, sort of...tell when people are lying to me."

Trowa wrung his hands under the table. The opposite pair were equally curious and entreated him for details. "What, all the time?" Heero asked.

"Seriously? How can you do that?"

"Uh..." Their sudden demands made Quatre squeamish and doubtful about whether he had said too much. He felt himself falling into an inescapable pit of hounding questions and fearful answers, and when he reached the blackest depths of despair at his self-made predicament, a lifeline was thrown to him, in the form of fast-approaching footsteps and a terrible sobbing noise.

Heads turned before the footsteps even made it to the door, and jaws dropped when the newcomers revealed themselves. Wufei had made it to the pub after all, but he hadn't come alone. A blubbering, sobbing Hilde was hanging off his arm, dressed in street clothes and clutching a ratty, second-hand suitcase. Every so often, she raised a tattered linen handkerchief to her face, dabbing at her soggy eyes and blowing her nose as she whimpered and cried. Wufei looked shell-shocked.

Duo was out of his chair immediately and at her side. "Oh my gosh, what's the matter? What happened!?"

Hilde sniffed, sobbed, then lifted her head and wailed, "I've been fired!!"

Everyone stood and crowded around her, throwing out question after question at double speed. Duo threw his arms around her right away in a comforting hug, eyes wide. He stood back and gripped her shoulders. "How did that happen!?"

"I was...w-walking down the...hall, and I...overheard..." She choked out a sob every fourth word, the pulled herself just together enough to spew out the condensed version. "I got into a huge fight with Relena and there was yelling and scratching and hair-pulling and then she fired me!"

Duo gaped. "You two had a catfight!?"

"I think you'd better sit down," Heero said, tugging on her arm gently.

"No, I don't wanna sit down," she snuffled, "I wanna go...clean myself up..." She blew her nose one last time with a mighty honk that made everyone take a step back, except Wufei, who took two steps.

Catherine made an opportune appearance next, having directed the pair to the meeting room from behind the bar. The second she found someone to cover for her, she was racing to the back of the new wing to see what was wrong. "Everything okay in here?" she asked, partly out of worry and partly out of an instinctive need for gossip.

Duo introduced them briefly and asked if there was someplace Hilde could hide until she had fixed her face well enough to be seen in public, and Catherine led the girl away without delay. Next, all eyes turned to Wufei. They stared, and he stared back. "All I did was try to get out the front door."

"You saw what happened?" Heero demanded.

Wufei had backed right up against the nearest wall with his hands wrapped around his elbows, looking very shifty indeed. "You could say that..." The four of them just wouldn't stop staring at him, expecting an explanation. "I can't really say what it was about."

"Why not, if you were there?" Quatre asked, sensing that he knew much more than he was telling.

"Because you wouldn't believe me," Wufei concluded. The stares were persistent. He sighed and lolled his head back. "Alright, it's just...they just started squabbling. Over me." Eyebrows leaped up in all directions. Faithful to Wufei's prediction, none of them could believe it. "It's true. Otto had to separate them, and then Relena told her to pack her bags and get out."

"What in God's name set them off?" said Duo.

"It still doesn't make sense to me," Wufei said, touching a hand to his temple as if fending off a headache. "I was trying to sneak out the front when Relena stopped me, and then she started...pushing herself on me...with lots of flowery language and unnecessary touching. Disgraceful behaviour for a lady in her position."

"Uh oh." Quatre hadn't meant to let the tiny noise slip, but it did, and the group's focus shifted over to him. He was unable to look at Trowa while he made his announcement. "She did the same thing to me a week ago."

Another cascade of shocked looks and gasps followed. Trowa fixed his eyes on his friend and folded his arms. "I knew there was something bothering you, something you wouldn't tell me...this was it, wasn't it?"

Quatre nodded, then turned to Heero. "S-she wanted me to tell her if you were up to anything suspicious, and she was being...very forward about it." The blush that coated his face told everyone that the details, juicy though they were, wouldn't be squeezed out of him by a twenty-foot python.

Wufei squinted. "She wanted me to spy on someone for her, but didn't say who. I'd say you've got yourself a stalker, Yuy."

Heero snarled to himself and scratched the back of his head. Relena was onto him, to what degree, he didn't know, but her actions had the potential to get all of them, herself included, in a lot of trouble. While he pondered the depth of the dilemma, Catherine returned with Hilde in tow. She looked somewhat better, but was still devastated. Duo went straight over to her first and took her hand. "How ya feelin'?" he said softly.

"Still pretty awful," Hilde said. "I can't believe I'm homeless again! Back to selling flowers in train stations! I thought I was finally getting somewhere in life, too!"

"Don't talk like that," Duo said, giving her another hug while Wufei skulked guiltily to the other side of the room. "Maybe she'll hire you back when she cools off. Just give it a couple of days, lemmie soften her up with some nice, gooey, chocolate desserts and she'll come to her senses."

"Oh, and what am I supposed to do until then?" Hilde whined. "I've got nowhere to go! I don't wanna go back out on the streets!"

"Quite right, and you shouldn't have to!" Catherine exclaimed. "I've got room enough for one more lodger, easily!"

Hilde sniffed at her hopefully. "...really? ...oh no, I'm sure I couldn't afford it, not when I haven't got a job to go back to..."

"Never mind that," Heero said, turning to Catherine. "I'll look after it, whatever it costs. Could she look at one of the new rooms now?"

Catherine blinked. "Oh...when I said I could squeeze in one more lodger, I really meant squeeze in one more. There's a convention of brush salesmen in town and they've just snapped up all the vacant rooms for the next week. I was talking about your room. You hardly ever use it, after all."

Heero paled. His room. The one that had been turned into an archive of information on Treize, Jeffrhyss, and evil in general. This was not good. "Uh..."

"Oh, that's so sweet of you!" Hilde squealed, bouncing forward and thanking Heero with a hug and a kiss. While he was still frozen from shock, she grabbed her suitcase and straightened her little flowered hat. "Let's go see it right now!" Before Heero could utter a syllable to the contrary, the girls flew out of the room and back into the old wing.

Duo folded his hands behind his back and looked innocently at Heero. "Whatever it costs," he reminded him.

"We can't leave her here," Trowa said worriedly. "Everything from the puzzle box is in that room."

Looking up from the floor, Wufei volunteered himself as a security guard. "I can stay and watch her, make sure she doesn't get her nose into anything she shouldn't...I'm partly to blame for this anyway."

It was too late to get any real work done, and they seemed to have taken several steps backwards as well. It was positively the least productive day they'd had since forming the partnership, and Heero could feel a headache coming on. He rubbed the back of his neck and grumbled. "Meeting adjourned."

**********

It was now hours after the fight with Hilde, and Relena still hadn't left the green sitting room. There was an unpleasantly surreal feeling about the place, and it made her dizzy enough to plant herself on the floor next to the door, after barricading it with as many chairs as she could lift and carry over. She sat with her knees drawn right up to her chest, and both arms wrapped around the bunches of dark green velvet, shaking ever so slightly.

"Relena? Open this door," her brother's concerned but authoritative voice commanded for the umpteenth time.

"Go away," Relena croaked, squeezing her eyes shut. Everything was such a horrid mess now. She wasn't any good at being tantalizing and persuasive after all, and now Wufei was gone. Worse than that, she had acted in terrible haste and let go one of her best workers.

"You'll have to come out some time, and then I want a word with you."

Relena sniffled and looked up at the ceiling, wiping the mist from her eyes, her lower lip trembling. She didn't answer her brother, and after a few minutes more, he apparently gave up, and decided she'd come out when she was good and hungry. Inside, Relena knew she wouldn't be able to eat for the rest of the night, if not longer.

In need of a stretch, she got up gingerly and paced around the room, thinking the same ugly thought over and over. I just made a royal fool out of myself, and for nothing! As she passed by the liquor cabinet, an overwhelming urge made her grab a whiskey glass and hurl it at the opposite wall, smashing it into a thousand crystalline shards all over the Persian rug. Her dishevelled golden curls were already falling out of their hairpins and dangling in her face, and she collapsed on the nearest sofa, staring through the haze of shining twists and wondering if she could ever hold her head up in that house again.


~~~~~~~~~~

Next, in Episode Sixty: Dorothy finally gets ahold of Lady Une and learns the truth behind her engagement to Treize. Trowa and Quatre test the limits of their special abilities to see how useful they might really be to the cause.

Bwa ha ha! Catfight! >=D Oh, that girly's playing with FIRE now! *evil authoress laugh* Well, I'm gonna get straight to work on the next eppy, 'cause the sooner it's done, the sooner I can devote some time to badly-needed Gallery maintenance. *winky winky* Mark down September 19th if you will. =^_~= Baibai!