Disclaimer: ...what? You think I have time to write a new disclaimer every week? Do you have any idea how busy I am!? =P Fuggedaboudit.

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Episode Sixty-Five: Front Page News

"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is." ~Yogi Berra

November 13th, 1902

Nobody seemed to care that the manor was going downhill fast. Without Otto's intimidating presence or Heero's thirst for absolute perfection, the chores simply weren't getting done as well as they used to be. Any given surface was generally only half dusted, and only half as often. The carpet sweeper was lost and had yet to be found. Everyday city grime was starting to accumulate on the windows, and few were all that interested in wiping them down. Staunchly loyal Doris, who was legitimately too old to do everyone else's work plus her own, greatly feared that when, or indeed, if Relena and Milliardo returned, the house would be a shambles by then.

The only one who wasn't slacking off in any way was Duo, for while the woodwork wouldn't die from a week without polishing, people still needed to eat, and strangely enough, they seemed to do more of it when they weren't working so hard. Duo thought that should have been the other way around, but there was no court of appetites to which he could take his case.

The poor, bedraggled chef was already in a rush to take care of the day's meals in advance, for the little band of spies-in-training had chosen that day to test their abilities in the field. Sally was supposed to have shown up at seven that morning, but when she didn't arrive, Lucrezia volunteered to dash across town and find out why she was delayed. They didn't hear back from her. In a move that felt suspiciously like sending a search party after the search party, Heero rang Wufei at the pub and asked him to check on both of them on his way over. They were still waiting for his call at a quarter to ten.

Now Heero was bored to tears, running late, three bodies short, and hovering over Duo's shoulder like a puppy wondering who moved his food dish. It wasn't so much that there wasn't any real work to be done around the house, just that Heero was no longer interested in doing any of it. Early on in the meal preparation, Duo felt all warm and fuzzy from having Heero underfoot, but after he asked for the third time if there was anything he could help with, it began to get on his nerves. "If you're that desperate for something to do, you could always scrub the floor in the scullery," Duo suggested.

"I'm not bothering you, am I?"

"No, you're not bothering me, and would you quit asking that?"

"Sorry." Heero backed off a bit, but continued to hover. He had unloaded quite a bit of emotional baggage from his past lately, but one concept still dogged him: The need for instructions.

Duo watched him out of the corner of his eye as he was chopping watercress, saw the way he just lolled around with his hands in his pockets, and took pity on him. "Okay...you can pick out something for dessert," he said, pointing to the pantry.

With a renewed light in his eyes, Heero walked swiftly to the pantry and ran an eye over the contents. "Anything?"

"Yeah, anything."

Heero didn't know what to make of the tins and boxes and packages flooding his vision all at once. After a good long think, he picked out a box at random and squinted at it.

"Except that," Duo ordered. "That's got coconut in it. Trowa can't have coconut. It makes him pass out. I'm waiting until he's out of the house to make that up, so's I don't contaminate anything with it."

"...oh." Heero put the box back and started hunting down another, this time picking up a packet of powdered custard with chocolate flakes already added.

"Bethany won't eat anything polychromatic on a Thursday, she says it brings her bad luck."

Heero frowned at the packet, then glared at the chef. "You're making these up."

"I am not!" Duo exclaimed, half-laughing. "If you'd spent eight hours a day for the last year and a half in this kitchen, you'd know these things too." He grinned and looked away, listening as Heero put the packet back on the shelf with a snarl. "And before you pick up the cookie tin, we've only got oatmeal raisin left. Oatmeal makes Quatre gag, and Hilde won't eat raisins because of a bad experience she once had involving an abandoned bakery and an infestation of bugs."

Heero jammed his hands back in his pockets and stalked out of the pantry, grumbling in his native tongue. It didn't seem that long ago when he had to admonish Duo for not doing a dietary background check on certain members of the household, but that table had been well turned since then.

After chopping the last of the watercress, Duo dried his hands on a tea towel, walked over with a sympathetic smile, shoved Heero into a chair, and began massaging his shoulders. "Aw, cheer up. If you want, I can break something, and then you can spend the night gluing it back together..."

"I never thought I'd still be so dependant on busywork after all this time," Heero said. "When I wasn't spying on Treize, I was serving tea. When I wasn't serving tea, I was tidying the dining room. When everything was done, I polished the silver until it was time to sleep. What did I do when I didn't know what to do?"

Duo cringed at the memory. "You let me drag you out on those stupid daredevil missions, that's what. I don't know what I was thinking back then...probably that I didn't have anything to lose, and that it wouldn't matter if I got splattered looking for an adrenaline rush." He pulled up another chair behind Heero's, sat down right on the edge, and wrapped both arms around him, pressing their cheeks together lightly. "Don't worry, though...I've got much better places to get an adrenaline fix now..."

With a reason to smile at last, Heero reached a hand up and clutched one of Duo's, leaning his head a bit to the side with his eyes closed. As Duo turned his head slightly, Heero felt a stream of warm breath tickling his skin, and expected a pair of warm lips pressed against his neck to follow, but several distant clomping noises that suddenly spewed out of the stairwell soon put a stop to that. Both heads snapped up, eyes wide open, and Duo was so quick to scramble out of the chair and put it back in its place that he nearly fell over. He was back to his watercress, and Heero to his moping, just seconds before the first of many feet came into view.

"Bad news," Trowa said in an introductory tone as he led a short parade into the kitchen. Behind him were Quatre, Hilde, and Wufei, all fresh from the front hall where Wufei had just arrived carrying a small wooden crate marked 'Tangerines.' One of them must have spotted him coming up the walk in their boredom and let him in, for the doorbell never rang once. "Lu and Sal aren't coming."

"What?"

"Why not?"

Wufei took an envelope out of the open-top crate, handed it to Trowa, then sat down, putting the box on the kitchen table. "By the time I got to her office, they were both on their way out. Sally just shoved this crate into my hands, and they left."

While Heero stared at the tabletop and contemplated why he bothered in general, Trowa opened the envelope and read the note inside, as everyone else took a seat. "It's from Sally," he confirmed needlessly. "She says, 'Sorry we can't be there for spy school, I know you've put a lot of effort into clearing your collective calendars, but Lucrezia's been upset lately, so we're going to have a girls' day out instead, since this was the only day I could get off surgery. But there's no reason why the rest of you can't go out and do something constructive, so as our contribution, we've put together a little challenge, if you'd like to use it.'" Trowa glanced ahead in the note, glanced at the little orange crate, and went on. "'In the box is a bag full of folded papers, and on them are written several different items. Since we think espionage is just as much about being places you shouldn't be and taking things you shouldn't have, we thought you might like to have a scavenger hunt.'"

Surprise flowed freely around the table. Wufei took the described bag out of the crate and gave it a light shake, resulting in paper-like crinkling noises.

"'We suggest that you break up into teams, draw an item at random from the bag, and try to find it by the end of the day,'" the note went on to say. "'Sorry if this messes up your plans, but we'll make it up to you later, we promise.'"

Everyone looked at each other, then at Heero, since the final decision was his. They fully expected him to act slighted at the suggestion that his own plans for the day should be tossed out, but to their astonishment, he seemed agreeable. "Sounds interesting."

"Then if we're pairing off, I pick you!" Duo called out, grasping Heero's arm playfully with both hands. A ripple effect swept through the rest of the group, leaving Hilde paired with Wufei and Quatre paired with Trowa. Everyone looked quite happy with their arrangements, as well.

"Alright, times a-wastin'," Hilde said as she rolled up her sleeve. "Let's see what kind of stuff they thought up." Wufei held the black bag of mystery open as she dipped her hand in and pulled out a folded slip of paper, exactly as advertised. With dramatic flair, she opened it and read their goal out loud. "A fisherman's net."

"Easy!" Wufei crowed. "We'll be back before sunset!"

"You seem awfully sure of yourself," said Heero. "Best not to count the rest of us out."

"Well, maybe you'd like to bet a steak dinner on the outcome."

Duo stepped in between them, just in time once again. He was getting quicker at it every time they had a tiff. "Don't you two start," he barked, reaching into the bag next. He took out the second paper, opened it, read it, and frowned. "...a freshly blooming flower? In November? How does she expect us to find that?"

Wufei smirked. "A steak dinner with mashed potatoes, gravy, and apple cobbler on the side."

"It's not as hard as you think, Duo," said Quatre, taking pity on him. "Plenty of plants bloom in cold weather, like--"

"Whoa, wait a second," Trowa said, putting up a hand to stop his teammate. "That steak dinner sounds pretty good. You know, if we're going to make a real competition out of this, then you shouldn't be giving them any hints."

"Oh, now that's gratitude!" Duo whined. "I cook, and I slave, and what thanks do I get!?"

"Don't you two start either," Heero said, arching an eyebrow at the chef with a faint grin.

While Duo was being placated, Quatre pulled the third item from the bag, read the contents, and looked puzzled. He showed it to Trowa, who looked equally perplexed. Duo smirked. "Well? What's the big secret?"

Quatre hesitated. "A butternut squash."

Trowa squared his shoulders defensively yet unconvincingly. "No problem."

Grinning wider by the second, Duo looked back and forth between them. "You don't have the slightest clue what a butternut squash looks like, have you?"

Quatre scowled and whacked Trowa lightly in the shoulder. "Why don't you know? You worked on a farm when you came to England!"

"I worked with livestock, not...uh.....squashes."

"Okay, try this on for size," Duo said in a confidently calculating voice. "It'll take just as long for us two to look up late-blooming flowers in the library as it will for you to tear through my cookbooks looking for a picture of a dumb squash, so you give me a hint and I'll give you a hint, deal?"

Trowa and Quatre looked uncertainly at each other, then the gardener sighed. "Fine, then...write these down. Asters, chrysanth's, begonias, marigolds--"

"Hold on, hold on! Lemmie get a pencil..."

And so began a peculiar training day that left six egos and a steak dinner hanging in the balance.

**********

To his dismay, Wufei soon realized that he grossly overestimated the ease of locating a fisherman's net in metropolitan London. He knew there was plenty of water, and plenty of boats, but a critical element was missing: There weren't all that many fish swimming in the Thames.

Hilde continually reminded him of his blunder as they wandered aimlessly around the docks. The locals were quick to inform them that, because of the heavy shipping traffic and pollution in general, fish preferred the smaller tributaries farthest from the city centre, and even then, the tools of choice were rod and reel, not giant nets. It seemed that unless they were willing to blow half the day travelling out to the coast, their mission was doomed to failure.

"You know, I've never even tasted steak?" Hilde said bitterly, with her arms wrapped sternly around herself as she walked.

Wufei sighed. "I know."

"When I was living streetside, we were lucky to have bread, and meat was the impossible dream!"

"I know."

"Fine thing, boasting about how easy this was going to be before you had all the facts."

Wufei stopped walking, folded his arms, and waited until Hilde actually noticed and turned around before finally snapping at her. "How much worse do you want me to feel, woman!?"

"I expect you to feel at least as bad as I do!" Hilde cried. "Look at us, we can't even handle a practice mission! What sort of use are we going to be to the others if this is the best we can do? My whole life, I've waited to make some sort of worthwhile contribution other than washing dishes and selling flowers, because that would mean I exist for a reason! At this rate, all I'll be able to say is that I made sandwiches for the seven people who saved the world all on their own..."

Wufei's glare softened. She blamed herself for their failure more than she blamed him, for while the one idea he had didn't amount to much, she hadn't had any ideas at all. "Look...let's just say this is nobody's fault, and think about it some more over lunch. It's rarely advisable to think on an empty stomach."

Hilde quietly agreed, and they left the docks in search of food. Ironically enough, the first eating establishment they happened across was a fish and chips shop, but since the clouds that loomed overhead were looking more ominous by the minute, they opted to take what was offered to them now rather than take a chance on being hungry and getting drenched later. That wouldn't have improved their mood one bit.

The fish and chips shop had a small eat-in area, and after picking up their orders at the counter, the youngsters snuggled into a corner booth amid the brawny dockworkers on their lunch break. Obviously, a petite brunette in a maid's uniform and a Chinaman dressed all in white drew a few odd stares, but it mattered little. The food was amicable, and so was the conversation.

During the course of the meal, Hilde let her eyes travel around the room, taking in the various artifacts of the shipping trade that had been used to decorate it. There were photographs of cargo ships and steam liners, dehydrated starfish, an anchor, some kind of long-bodied fish mounted on a plaque, and...

"Oh...my..." Hilde's eyes ballooned, and so did Wufei's when he finally noticed and turned to see what she was staring at. Fastened to the opposing wall, directly across from the door they came in, was a weathered old net. It was pinned up as a decoration and festooned with clam shells, a little piece of nautical ambience in an otherwise bleak environment.

Wufei turned back to the table, holding back a victorious smile. "Well...there it is."

"Yes, there it is," Hilde said quietly. "It could be the only one of those we see for the rest of the day, you know."

"It could. And if it were, shall we say, liberated with due haste, we could be home in time for tea."

"We could."

They contemplated each other and the net while they finished their lunch, and seemed to be communicating a plan without uttering a single syllable. Hilde slowed up towards the end, toying with her tartar sauce as she watched the door, and within a very short while, about half a dozen dockworkers came in at once, leaving the counter mobbed and the net unguarded. She gave Wufei an intense look, and they stood.

Slowly and casually, they crept over to the wall under the ruse of admiring the samples of photography, gradually positioning themselves on either side of the net, which was suspended on a scattered handful of three-penny nails above head-level. At the height of the activity at the counter, Wufei brought a hand up close to his chest with the fingers splayed open, then tucked them in rhythmically--five, four, three, two, one. At the count of zero, they leapt up, grabbed the top edge of the net with all four hands, ripped it off the wall, did an about-face, and tore past the counter and out of the shop like their shoes were on fire.

The shop owner nearly had a heart attack. "Oi!!" he hollered simply, wedging his portly frame out from behind the counter to follow them. The junior thieves expected to be chased for a short while, but hadn't counted on the bulk of the clientele storming out alongside the owner to avenge the sudden desecration of their favourite feeding spot. A glut of angry working-class warriors was now pounding the planks behind them.

"Which way!?" Hilde gasped.

"Left! ...no, no, right!" The multiplied threat induced a bit of panic in the pair, and they scrambled around the docks, dropping clam shells like a trail of breadcrumbs.

"Get back 'ere! Stop, thief!" the owner shouted, leading the charge. The pack split up and attempted to trap the youngsters in a pincer movement, spreading out all over the riverscape they knew better than anyone else.

No matter which way Wufei and Hilde turned, there suddenly seemed to be a vigilante customer trying to block their path. They stumbled over crates, scooted around buildings, and tried the handle of every door they passed, but none would open, and the options were quickly running out. At the end of the chase, they were flushed back to the outskirts of dockland, right up against the river's edge, their pursuers betting that they would rather give up the net than take a swim. The mob began closing in around them, nudging them nearer and nearer to the water. "Awlright, 'and it over," the owner growled.

Still clutching the net with matching death grips, Hilde and Wufei traded uncertain glances. "How badly do you wanna take that steak dinner off Heero?" she asked with sudden confidence.

Wufei's gaze turned blazing red, and without any argument from his partner, he spun around and led the leap into the Thames with a spectacular double splash. The customers gaped all at once, and looked distinctly disorganized now that they weren't so keen to follow. All they could reasonably do was watch the two sneaks paddle frantically away.

Hilde regretted the choice somewhat. "This water's freezing!"

"You goaded me into it!" Wufei shot back.

"Where are we supposed to go!? We'll never make it to the other side!"

"Shut up and let me think!!"

The finest culinary creation known to steakdom wasn't worth a case of pneumonia, or worse, hypothermia. A serious error in judgement was staring them in the face, as well as soaking them in a chilly liquid that wouldn't improve the longer they stayed in it. A glance over his shoulder told Wufei that the angry mob had lost interest and dispersed slightly, but that didn't necessarily make it safe to reverse heading. Instead, he scanned the horizon in all directions, and found that the nearest craft was a tugboat chugging past at a distance of at least three hundred feet. He waved and hollered at the tugboat, and when the two bearded men in caps spotted the lady and gentleman overboard, they hurriedly wheeled their craft around to intercept.

What could have been a disaster ended up as a minor embarrassment. The pair were hauled up on the deck of the tugboat, certainly less clean and a lot less dry, but still latched onto their net with feverish intensity. After ascertaining that they were unharmed, the bearded sailors were quick to ask what in God's name were they playing at, for which neither Hilde nor Wufei could provide an answer. In lieu of a proper explanation, Wufei hunted around in his pockets for whatever money he still possessed after being dipped, and asked with a guilty voice, "Um...how much to take us as far as Charing Cross foot bridge?"

A persistent dripping noise was the only sound for several minutes, while the bearded men stared in disbelief.

**********

"...crummy book...never gonna make it...kiss that steak dinner goodbye..." Duo grumbled up a storm, staring down at a minimally-descriptive pocket-sized gardening book while he and his teammate stalked up and down the streets, looking for a simple flower. It was even tougher than it sounded from the beginning.

The pair felt as if they had searched every flower bed and window box down every suburban street in London, but every home was already winterized, leaving nothing but shrubbery and deeply-blanketed bulbs behind. It was almost two o'clock, and while there were still plenty of hours left in the day, they knew their energy wouldn't last nearly as long. They plunked themselves down on a low rock wall to sulk at their impending defeat, which was when Duo began staring at the flower shop across the road.

"You know," Heero reminded him gently, "cheating isn't far removed from lying, and you hate to lie..."

Duo moped. "It was just a thought...those indoor tulips are the only living blooms we've seen all day."

"I think if we brought them a greenhouse flower in a flower pot, it would be a little obvious."

They both slouched at once. Quatre's tips and a book about flowers could only get them so far when the vast majority of local specimens had been killed off by frost. Duo knew, however, that pitting Heero against Wufei in any sort of contest would keep them both occupied for weeks, if necessary. One of them had to win that very day, or nobody would hear the end of it.

While deep in thought, Duo felt a tug on his sleeve. He glanced up, and Heero was staring very attentively at something in the distance. "What's that?"

Duo followed his gaze with some difficulty, through the narrow gap between the flower shop and the haberdasher's, where a tallish red brick building could barely be seen. It looked like the back of a small apartment block, with a balcony encased in waist-high wrought iron bars. Sitting on the balcony was a little green blob in an earthenware pot, and adorning the blob were about a dozen little orange dots.

The boys looked at each other, then quickly crossed the street and darted between the shops to get a closer look. The apartment block appeared to be squatting at the end of a cul-de-sac backing onto the street full of shops. On the one particular balcony was a planter full of cheery orange flowers. Duo quickly ripped through the book until he found a page that suggested they were marigolds, but by then it hardly mattered. Their target was within reach.

The only problem was the height of the balcony, and also the few number of places where one could grab hold of something in order to climb up. "We could do it if I stood on your shoulders," Duo mused.

Heero shook his head. "First rule of espionage: Look normal. The less attention we draw, the better." He glanced to the right and spotted a fenced-in walkway that the residents used to get to the shops. "Let's check out the other side."

They followed the walkway into a sprawling expanse of row houses, town houses, and other dwellings, then promptly identified the ivy-laced doorway that most likely corresponded to the balcony. Next they discussed various methods of gaining entry, foremost of which was making use of Duo's lockpicking skills, but it was all erased when the door opened unexpectedly. A decently-dressed young lady stepped out and looked down the road as if expecting a visitor. She seemed pretty and pleasant, with ash brown hair swept up in slightly unkempt curls, a tiny upturned nose, and wide, innocent eyes. Her dress was a simple floral print befitting her lower-middle class lifestyle, and as an added bonus, she looked about Heero's age.

A horse and cart came clattering down the cul-de-sac, and stopped right in front of the girl's door. Before it even came to a complete halt, the driver hopped off, then went around to the back of his vehicle, lifted a large crate off the cart, and deposited it by the side of the road. After exchanging a few words and a polite smile with the girl, he got back into the driver's seat, turned the cart around, and sped off to make another delivery. Once he was gone, the unfortunate girl attempted to lift the crate, and found that she couldn't.

Duo and Heero smirked at each other. "Damsel in distress," the chef deduced. "Go get 'er, tiger."

Heero straightened his suit, ruffled his hair roguishly, and slapped Duo lightly in the shoulder. "Watch my back." Ever confident, he strolled over to the apartment building while Duo concealed himself behind a tree to watch the master at work. Though he was too far away to hear their conversation, the first thing Heero seemed to do was ask the girl for directions, at a distance of about six feet.

The girl was wary, but friendly, and pointed down the road and then to the left, explaining the best route to reach whatever landmark Heero had recalled from his journey. He moved a bit closer and mimicked her directions, at a distance of four feet. After she confirmed his route, he turned on the charm, scooting closer and leaning languidly against the brick facade of the building, though with his hands in his pockets, so he didn't look at all threatening. Whatever sugary compliments he was showering her with were working beautifully, as she smiled, blushed, ducked her head, and leaned one shoulder against the building just as he had, looking up coyly as Heero moved even closer and perched a hand on the doorframe just above her head.

Regardless of the fact that it was all being freely given to someone else, Duo loved watching Heero work his magic. All those charming smiles and smoky glances so rarely saw daylight that he cherished any opportunity to imagine himself in the recipient's position. Within five minutes of starting the intense sweet-treatment, the girl had utterly melted, and turned around to open the door after pointing Heero to the crate. He picked it up with ease, tossed a secret wink to his assistant behind the tree, and followed her inside.

Doomed from the moment he laid eyes on her, Duo thought proudly. No sooner had the door closed, however, than the low-flying cloud hovering above the cul-de-sac decided to unburden itself of excess moisture, and it began to rain, signalling to Duo that he had somehow gotten the raw end of that particular deal. ...okay...teamwork sounded like a good idea in theory...

Duo looked around, not too frantically since he was only wearing his brown tweed suit, but not too slowly either. There really wasn't anywhere practical to hide from the rain, but as he began wandering back towards the shops to take refuge under the florist's awning, a sight far worse than falling raindrops met his eyes. A big, burly, middle-aged, heavy-handed, brick chicken house of a man was jogging up the road, heading right for the ivy-laced door.

Duo's eyes bulged. If there was any person on the face of the earth who looked more like a big, angry father to an innocent girl in a floral dress, he didn't know who it was. Thinking only of stalling the man for Heero's safety, he dashed up to the building just before the man got his key in the lock. "Excuse me, sir!"

The man turned slowly, looking more and more like the kind of surly no-goodnik that had served at least five years in prison for some thuggish atrocity. "Whut?" he growled in a menacing bass tone.

"Um..." Duo only then noticed the butcher's apron tied around the brute's thick waist, well-splattered with some unfortunate animal's entrails. That meant he knew where to hide the body. "Have you...have you ever given any thought to the afterlife?" Duo had. Quite recently, in fact.

The brute was not amused. "Whut?"

"What I mean is, uh...if you died tomorrow, are you absolutely sure you know where you'd be?"

"You tryin' to be funny!?"

Duo swallowed. While he searched for an answer that wouldn't result in a massive head injury, a girl's voice giggled from somewhere inside the house, accompanied by a loud clunk, loud enough to permeate through wood, glass, and six inches of brick. The gruff man's eyes were engulfed in flames, and Duo took a substantial risk by stepping in front of him. "In that case, have you ever given any thought to life insurance?"

The brute growled and shoved Duo out of the way, sending him down with a splash against the puddled pavement, and stormed through the door, slamming and locking it before Duo was even back on his feet. Panicking, Duo ran around to the back of the building and dragged his jacket sleeve over his eyes, trying to daub away the raindrops. From inside the apartment came a terrible noise, a mixture of shouts, clunks, crashes and squeals, as a three-person collision occurred on the second floor. Heavy sounds akin to objects being hurled at walls preceded the flinging open of the balcony door. Heero dashed out, followed by the angrily-waving fists of the girl's father, whose meaty arm was being tugged on by the girl herself. As the man took a parting swing at Heero, the boy somehow managed to leap over the iron bars with one hand while grabbing at something near the balcony floor with the other, all while being pelted with terrible obscenities that would have made a sailor blush.

Duo ran up to the patch of wilted grass where Heero was about to make contact, with the foolish notion of breaking his fall, and the two of them smacked into one another quite ungracefully, mutually clobbered into a broken heap. They shook off some minor dizziness and scrambled to their feet only seconds before the brute threw an empty flower pot at them. The escape was made without injury, but only just.

Sprinting through the rain, they didn't stop running until they reached a spacious but empty park, and wordlessly took shelter under the canopy of a combination gazebo and bandstand. There, they sat on the wood plank floor, panting for breath, and Duo wrung out his braid while he let Heero have it for taking so darn long to escape. "What were you doing in there!?"

"Trying to get out!" Heero insisted desperately as he checked the mobility of his left wrist. "She's got a grip like a ten-foot python!"

Duo also noticed a mark on Heero's neck, just above his collar, and pointed at it curiously. "And what's that?"

Heero prodded his neck right where the reddish oval was, and winced. "I think there's a reason why her father doesn't let her out much."

"She bit you!?"

"Only after she tried to tie me up with a pajama cord."

Despite the lingering horror, the could both see the humour in the situation, and started chuckling, but Duo's eyes soon went wide. "Hey, what about the flower?"

Heero lifted his clenched right hand and stiffly opened it. Inside was the crumpled prize that he had snatched at the last possible moment before sailing off the balcony--a green sprig of marigold, with four frond leaves and two orange blooms, freshly picked. The boys each slung an arm around each other and laughed again, their mission complete.

**********

Duo had been more than happy to tell Trowa and Quatre everything they never wanted to know about tuberous vegetables, but sadly, the information got them no closer to finding what they needed. For some odd reason, not one of the green grocers they visited had a single butternut squash for sale. They were all terribly apologetic and tried to make up for the shortcoming with a cauliflower or some nice mushrooms, but they were hardly sufficient. Things looked awfully grim.

Then came a lightning bolt of inspiration. They spotted a notice in a post office window advertising a week-long county fair and harvest festival not too far out of town. Among the delights listed were pony rides, a carnival, arts and crafts, a horse show, and prizes for locally-grown garden products. Being of a fairly spiritual nature, Quatre took it as a sign, and soon convinced his partner that if they couldn't find the sacred squash called butternut within the city, it was very prudent to search without. With less than an hour of daylight left, they boarded the next available train to nowhere.

Upon their arrival, the first order of business was dinner, and while they munched on stew and pastries under the food tent, a small crew began lighting lanterns all around the festival grounds. It was a pleasant atmosphere at the fair; families of all ages and descriptions were playing games, buying and selling country wares, and hovering around a gigantic prize-winning pumpkin placed in the middle of it all as a kind of centrepiece. "This is nice," Quatre remarked. "Have you ever been to one of these before?"

"Just a couple, after I emigrated," Trowa said, nodding. "This one's pretty late in the season, though...probably the last before winter."

"So...if I were a butternut squash, and I was hiding in a harvest festival, where would I be?"

Trowa scanned the landscape under the slate blue sky. The sun was already below the horizon, and time was short. "Looks like there's some displays over there," he said, gesturing towards a far-off tent lined on the inside with dozens of tiny electric lights. "They give out ribbons for all sorts of things...fruits, vegetables, pies, quilts, homemade preserves..."

That gave Quatre a terrible pang of guilt, as he was struck by a thought that neither of them had considered yet. "Trowa...what are we supposed to do with the squash once we find it? If there is one, it'll be a project that someone's been pouring their heart and soul into for weeks. I know I wouldn't be too happy if some hooligan made off with one my best geraniums..."

Trowa frowned and hummed in thought. "Well, maybe we'll go after the one that didn't even win last place. The owner would be glad to see the back of it."

"But still, you can't just walk up and steal a vegetable! People will see! They'll tell the organizers, the organizers will tell the police, and we'll be fugitives!"

"...fugitives over a squash?"

Quatre gave him a heavy-lidded 'Don't mock my opinions' look. "It's still stealing."

"You go ask Heero what it's like to be a spy," Trowa told him pointedly. "Sometimes you have to steal. Sometimes you have to lie and cheat and do things you wouldn't ordinarily do because you're focused on a bigger picture. That's what this exercise is all about." He picked away at his pastry, trying to convince himself of those very words. "Maybe it'll be sitting way at the end of the tent where no one's looking."

Quatre sighed.

Immediately after dinner, they went into the big white tent and had a good, long look around. It seemed larger on the inside than it did on the outside, and also seemed to be packed with at least half of the total people in attendance. There was a great deal more to observe than pies and quilts as well. Ribbons of blue, red, and yellow had been awarded to potted plants, iced cakes, amateur wines, cross stitchery, floral arrangements, paintings, and woodcrafts, to merely name a few. A large portion of the tent was reserved for garden products, and sure enough, among the myriad of different varieties of vegetables cultivated from specimens worldwide sat three examples of butternut squash--right in the middle where everyone could see them.

The spectators were still filing through the tent rather thickly, so the odds of being caught in the act were high. "Let's wander around and come back, see if the crowd thins out a little," Trowa whispered. Quatre silently agreed, and they left the tent to explore the rest of the fair in greater detail.

Not surprisingly, Trowa's inherent love of animals nudged them towards the stables, where the livestock resided for the week. Row upon row of light and heavy horses, beef and dairy cattle, sheep, goats, rabbits and poultry greeted them, and it felt, to Quatre at least, like Trowa just had to stop and pet each and every one. It was getting tedious.

Eventually, they worked their way up to a row of Holstein cows, each in their own wooden stall, and each chained by the neck to a long horizontal bar that stretched across the tops of the stalls, purely for security purposes. Quatre watched the way Trowa fawned over the animals, giving them each a little scratch on the head and telling them what good girls they were, and found himself smiling. "Do you ever think about what you'd like to do if you ever leave Bridlewood?"

Trowa hardly had to think at all. "Veterinary medicine. Not that it's all that likely, with my education. Ten or so years as a cabin boy doesn't exactly qualify me for university."

Quatre leaned against the door of a stall with his hands in his pockets, swallowing. "What about family?"

"What about it?"

"Would you ever get married?"

Trowa looked up and shrugged. "Haven't thought much about it."

"But you...aren't strictly opposed to...maybe...falling in love?"

There was something very strange about the way Quatre asked that last question. He looked away while he said it. His voice grew weak, and trembled. Overall, he seemed terribly nervous, but why? Trowa regarded him curiously, staring intently until Quatre was forced to look up, and when he did, he looked away again just as quickly, turning a bright cherry red. Trowa didn't realize just how shocked he was until it was too late.

The unsuspecting Holstein currently being petted by the boy was suddenly hit with a wave of confusion and panic, one so strong that it erased all thoughts of munching hay and watching the two-leggers go by. The panic filled the animal's consciousness, and somehow jumped to the next one, and the next one, until the entire row of cows was stricken with Trowa's displaced feelings of flustered shock. A wild and multi-voiced 'moo' erupted, and the wide-eyed bovines stamped their hooves and battered against the flimsy stall doors, making the boys jump back in fright.

The thundering noise alerted those in charge of the stables that something was terribly wrong, but by the time they got there, what happened was inevitable. All the cows surged up at once, broke through their stalls and clomped out at top speed, still connected by the long iron bar. Trowa, Quatre, and everyone else in the immediate area ducked for cover as the stampede roared by in a flurry of moos, busting right through the barn doors and heading for the festival's core. Amid the terrified screams of the populous were ugly crunching noises as the confused cows trampled everything in their path.

The boys leapt up and ran to what was left of the stable doors, just in time to watch the stampede run through the displays tent. They entered at one end, made a terrible ruckus that shook the tent itself, and exited at the other end, chasing dozens of pudgy townswomen in gingham frocks and flowered hats, carrying great armloads of pies, tarts and knitted things in a desperate rescue attempt. The cows tailed the women all the way to the other end of the field where they were finally stopped by the giant pumpkin, unable to decide with one mind whether to go around it or through it. While a mob of farmers descended on the giant tandem team and wrestled them into a calmer, more manageable state, Trowa and Quatre slowly looked at each other with doe-eyed guilt, after which Trowa stared at the big white tent and sighed.

"Let's grab our squash and get the heck out of here."

They crept into the tent, picked up the blue ribbon butternut, which was the only one of the three still intact after the rampage, and slipped quietly off the property before they caused any more riots.

**********

At the end of the day, when all the teams regrouped at Bridlewood, they had to declare a three-way tie, and while the fantastic stories were being traded, Heero came up with the very excellent suggestion that they all go out to dinner, funded by the dividends from their current investments. The motion was carried unanimously, and off they went.

Later that night, they pulled back up to the house in a large, showy carriage, still chatting broadly about the days' events and wondering what the newspapers would say about their exploits the next day. The carriage driver wasn't able to pull up right in front of the house, however, because another carriage was already there. The teens clambered out and one by one noticed the strange vehicle. Stranger still, the housemaids were standing at the open door with a diminishing pile of luggage, and the driver and footman of the first carriage were piling the luggage inside and on top. They didn't seem to be carrying any passengers, just chattels.

Heero led the group up the front walk and glared questioningly at the truculent trio. "What's all this?"

"Miss Dorothy, sir," Elsie said with her special brand of lower-class indifference. "She's sent this lot 'round for her things. Says she's movin' out."

They all wondered what it meant, Quatre in particular, though it wasn't much of a surprise to anyone. The Baroness had spent so little time at the manor recently that it seemed as though she had moved out long ago. "Where's she gone?" Quatre asked in a suspicious voice.

"Don't know," Elsie answered. "She din't say, an' we din't ask. Good riddance, I say."

Bethany sneered in agreement. "Yeah, she's done nuthin' but moan since the day she set foot. I won't miss 'er."

While they discussed it, the two men loaded up the last few bags, snapped the reins and were off in a shot, and the housemaids retreated inside where it was still warm. "Should we follow them and see where they drop it all off?" Duo wondered.

Heero shook his head tiredly. "We've done enough for today. Let's just leave it."

Another motion was unanimously carried, as the team voted to lock up the house for the night and warm themselves up with some hot cocoa. Considering her reputation for dragging her feet on everything important, whatever Dorothy was up to would most likely keep another day.


~~~~~~~~~~

Next, in Episode Sixty-Six: After a run-in with a rival agent on a mission to pester Treize, Heero enlists outside help to pinpoint the boy's base of operations.

...and finally, DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME! =P Don't jump into freezing water, don't steal squashes, and don't make cows go insane. Words to live by. Dinner's cooking (Ahhh, mac an' cheese, fruit of the gods) so I won't keep you overtime. Just mark down Saturday the 23rd for the next eppy. Baibai! =^_^=