Disclaimer: These characters are used and abused without permission. And they love it.
~~~~~~~~~~Episode Eighty-Four: Game On
"I love myself today, not like yesterday,You're dead and gone, I'm gonna get my way.
I love myself today, not like yesterday,
Take another look at me now...
'Cause it's your last look...your last look forever." ~Bif Naked, "I Love Myself Today"
June 13th, 1903
On the night the prowler attacked, Duo disappeared. There was no ransom note, no letter of resignation, no indication whatsoever of where he had gone or why. He was missing for three days.
Then, on the morning of the fourth day, he magically reappeared at his post, cheerfully frying day-old bread for the staff's breakfast. He gave no explanation for his absence, and gladly took it on the chin when Bertram Augustus bawled him out for being AWOL. He smiled as he was penalized with a ten percent pay cut, and he laughed when he was summarily demoted to sous-chef. Nobody could fathom why he seemed so wretchedly happy, except Hilde, who got all the best gossip out of him while the rest settled for nothing.
Presumably humbled, the braided cook was sent back to work, now ranking below the hated Merlyn, but he was all grins and gleeful conversation, making for a refreshing puzzle. Within hours of his return, he was actually taking direction from the redheaded woman, and was quick to bow to her authority with regards to menu choices, ingredient shopping, and even who prepared what dish. Merlyn herself was most taken aback by the change, and was still mentioning it to Duo days after the fact. "Are you quite sure you don't mind de-boning the trout for me?" she asked on the morning of the thirteenth.
"Not in the slightest!" he chirped with an angelic grin, and he got right to it without complaining. "Never let it be said that I'm afraid of menial work! Whatever's good for my kitchen is good for me!"
"Oh, how jolly of you!" Merlyn cheered, now able to focus her energies on the main course. "It's taken me awhile to realize it, but you're much more sensible than some of the assistants I've had in the past. Did I ever tell you about the nine months I spent cooking in a lovely little Greek taverna on the Mediterranean where I was the only one who spoke English?"
Normally, Duo would have run screaming from the room at the merest mention of Merlyn's past triumphs, but today it was different. "No, you haven't! Tell me now, pleeeease?" On his way from the cutlery drawer to the worktable, he stopped next to her, and leaned into her side with puppy-dog eyes blinking away. "You know I just love hearing all your fascinating stories!"
Merlyn blushed through a conceited laugh, draped a dramatic hand over her heart as if she wasn't worthy of such praise, and launched into her tale while simultaneously inventing a new sauce with paper and pen, to be served with the trout that evening. "It had a magnificent view, this taverna, and the owner was the typical swarthy, bare-armed brute with a moustache, and if I do say so myself, he quite fancied me..."
Knowing that she was good for another hour at least, Duo quietly left his spot at the table and slipped over to the pantry, where Hilde had snuck downstairs and hidden herself, hoping for a crumb of conversation. He leaned against the doorway with his back to the kitchen, folded his arms, and arched his eyebrows in the vague direction of his superior. "Some piece of work, isn't she?"
Hilde went up on tiptoe to glance over his shoulder. The indomitable Merlyn was still talking as if Duo was still listening. "I'm more impressed with you! A week ago, you would've given yourself a clump of papercuts with a cookbook to get out of one of her stories!"
"Yep, well..." Smiling again, Duo stretched both arms over his head and then out to his sides, like a contented cat standing on his back paws. "Nothing three days in Blackpool couldn't cure."
Hilde hadn't heard the part about Blackpool yet, and she almost squealed audibly from desperately wanting to know more. She bit one hand to keep quiet, and reached out with the other to snag Duo by the arm and pull him closer so she could threaten him with tickle-torture until he coughed up the facts, but he darted out of her grasp, heading back to the kitchen table where she didn't dare follow.
While the poor girl nearly tore her hair out in delicious frustration, Duo went back to acting delighted to hear Merlyn's story, and she picked up the loose end of his attention seamlessly, unaware that he had ever left. A few paragraphs into the tale later, the doorbell rand, sending a faint, melodious clanging downstairs that made Duo look up for just a moment. He instinctively knew who was at the door, and the little hairs on the back of his neck bristled in electric anticipation. His love was approaching.
**********In his characteristic clipped pace, Bertram Augustus marched his mirror-shined black shoes up through the foyer to answer the call of the musical doorbell. With no possibilities in his mind more intriguing than a charity canvasser or a salesman, he got a surprisingly large shock at what stood on the front step.
It was a young man of about eighteen, clad entiredly in black from head to foot. The suit was new, with impeccable stitching and a shine to the lapels that marked it as top quality, with a white shirt collar peeking out the top under a business-like black tie. In the spots where his spiky dark hair didn't cover his face, a pair of dark, oval spectacles blotted out his eyes, and the ensemble was capped by an imposing black overcoat that missed brushing the ground by about eight inches. The stranger had his hands clasped in front of him, still as a statue, eerily staring out at the world from behind dark gray glass. For a moment, Bertram thought that the boy was rather like the housemaids' description of the prowler, but that was impossible. He wouldn't have dared to show up at the front door. Surely not. "Can I help you?" the butler asked in is 'I'm better than you' voice.
"Quite easily," said the boy in black. "Excuse me..." He poked the butler strongly in the shoulder and pushed him back, walking briskly into the house.
"Now, see here!" protested Bertram, making chase. "Just what do you think you're doing!?"
Clearly not listening, the stranger in black strode directly to the drawing room, knowing right where it was, and ducked inside. While the aging butler was still trying to catch up with him, he went to the secret panel in the one undecorated wall, slipped inside, exited through the opposite panel into the neighbouring room, and was back out in the hall and strolling boldly towards his destination while Bertram stood flabbergasted in the middle of the drawing room, wondering how the intruder could have vanished from a closed room.
Heero smirked and tugged on the lapels of his overcoat, shaking off a few drops of lukewarm, misty rain as he headed for the conservatory. This was the new Heero, a blend of his old self and the passionate creation of three days away with Duo, with the transitional months of doubt and weakness tossed aside. It was time to re-take control, to grab the reins of the situation and pull it back onto the road where it belonged.
He walked right up to the glass conservatory door, beyond which Trowa and Quatre were having a quiet cup of morning tea, facing the yard. Heero stopped at the door and slammed an open palm on it, creating a bang that made the unsuspecting pair jump, slosh their teacups around violently, and in Quatre's case, dribble some of the brew down his chin in the ensuing shock. They both twisted around and had their level of surprise doubled by the sight of Heero in a blacker-than-black suit and sunglasses. He took his hand off the door, snapped his fingers once, pointed at the boys and then pointed to his right, disappearing in that direction a second later. Trowa and Quatre looked at each other with a mutual squint that suggested they weren't too sure who it really was at the door, but the sheer forcefulness of the gesture commanded them to get up and follow.
Ignorant of what was striding confidently to the kitchen, Hilde remained hidden in the pantry, watching as Duo deftly deflected another of Merlyn's unconscious insults, even while making her a cup of coffee. He passed the porcelain beaker into her waiting hand, and she only barely noticed it as she rambled on through her fourth story in ten minutes. As a pair of purposeful footsteps approached via the stairwell, she didn't bat an eyelid until a very well-dressed, dark-haired youth in sun specs charged in between her and Duo, snatched the coffee out of her grasp, and took a leisurely sip as he circled around the kitchen table. Duo grinned.
Merlyn, for what was probably the first time in her life, was speechless. She stood there with her mouth hanging open at the stranger, and was about to let fly with a typically acrid barb when the boy turned to face her suddenly. "Don't know if you're interested," he said, "but there's a man down the end of the block with a cart, and he's selling genuine hand-picked white truffles at thirty percent below market value."
"....." Somehow, Merlyn's jaw dropped even farther, and her face glowed with the combined ecstatic vigors of a hard-core bargain hunter and a true gourmet. Suddenly giddy, she hitched up her skirts and dashed up the stairs, two at a time in her high-heeled boots, to catch the ficticious man and his cut-price delicacies.
"Smooth," Duo said admiringly.
Behind the dark spectacles, Heero flicked up his eyebrows as he raised the coffee cup for another sip. "Bigger fish need bigger bait."
Hilde came running over, just as Trowa and Quatre emerged from the stairwell, glancing backwards at Merlyn's path of retreat. All four of them crowded around Heero, pawing and poring over his new suit. Duo had only seen it on the mannequin in the store window, so having it modelled in person at last was a double treat. "Well, you sure know how to make an entrance all of a sudden!" crowed Hilde as she ran a hand delicately up and down his lapel. "And where did you get this?"
"Mostly from Knightsbridge," Heero admitted, still getting used to the sense of pride that came with the outfit. "Except the shirt. Some tailor with a foreign-sounding name...Izod, I think."
Quatre blinked oddly at the extravagance. "Expensive?"
"Absolutely. I've recently come to believe in dressing for success."
While Heero's improved presence was compelling, Trowa felt duty-bound as a member of the lower class to act offended. "That's what you do with your spare time while we're breaking our backs to serve people who wear cheaper suits than this?"
Heero smirked at the attempted insult. "No, what I do in my spare time is plan meetings for my team, like the one we're having at two o'clock today, at Catherine's."
"But...Otto's keeping us all on a very short leash," Quatre said doubtfully. "We can't get away..."
"Yes you can," said Heero. He was able to make it a request, a command, and a helpful suggestion all at once. "We're all going to start working on priorities, beginning today. I expect you to be there. I need you to be there." With a slight pause, he let that sink in while draining the rest of the coffee. "We've got to go to work."
Duo looked around at the other three faces and saw little bits of indecision and worry stuck to them in very obvious places. "Well, don't just stand there, start thinking up excuses for Otto," he ordered, glancing admiringly at his partner. "Less than four hours to go..."
Trowa and Quatre looked at each other, looked at Heero again, noticed that he seemed taller than before, and began backing up towards the stairs. Quatre was nodding faintly, placating the most dangerous person he knew so they could retreat long enough to think about the situation. "Okay...okay, we'll think of something..." They backed up so far that Trowa hit the bottom step with the back of his foot and stumbled backwards, catching himself on the handrail just in time. Seconds later, they were gone.
Hilde was in a very pleasant sort of awe, and stepped up to Heero from the front, reaching up to straighten his tie, blushing. "You know I'll be there, even if I have to stuff my bed with pillows and play sick for the afternoon," she giggled coquettishly.
Tipping his dark specs partway down his nose with one hand, so he could give her a smouldering gaze over the top of the slender wire rims, Heero treated her to a version of the secret smile he saved for Duo. "That's ever so good of you," he purred. Hilde squeaked with delight, rising up on her toes, and skipped a few steps away. She had been wondering where this side of him had been hiding lately, and she was very glad to have him back.
More or less alone, Duo and Heero locked eyes on each other, and slithered as close together as they could get without actually touching. They had been holding in the impulse to do so ever since Heero set foot in the kitchen, but it was easier than they expected, for they knew that any separation they suffered throughout the day could be easily made up for that night in the pub. Gazing past each other's physical forms and into the warm, safe place where their minds could intermingle without the world looking in on them and judging them, they stood still for a moment, letting tiny currents of energy swirl between them, through them, around them, from one to the other. Their pulses picked up speed, and Heero shut his eyes and leaned forward, nudging past Duo's face and stopping with his nose an inch from the spot where his shoulder met his neck. He inhaled, slowly and deeply, dragging his head upwards and back until they were standing nose-to-nose again, staring into each other's eyes for a few seconds longer. Then he tapped his specs back up where they belonged and headed for the back door, after giving Duo one last, tiny, passion-charged smile that promised everything he could ever want, later. Heero slipped out into the back yard and was gone, off to make preparations for the meeting.
"Wow," Hilde breathed, after padding up to Duo's side, where they stood staring at the back door with unspoken sighs.
Duo smiled hungrily. "You said it."
"A holiday in Blackpool, a new suit...how can you two afford this??"
"We got lucky on a horse." Stopping to think about his explanation, Duo quickly amended it, red-faced. "I mean, we bet on a horse, and the horse won."
Hilde pictured both versions in her head, and only barely stopped herself from grinning. "Nice save."
"Thank you, I'm proud of it."
**********For the past several weeks, Dorothy had been inching closer and closer to the end of her rope. Ever since Quatre was repatriated out from under her very nose, Treize had been very clear in blaming her bumbling for the whole issue. When she thought back on the event, over and over through many sleepless nights, she couldn't understand why it was still her fault, when she had actually had very little to do with anything, at the Count's insistence that she stay out of the important business, lest she muck it up like everything else. There was no concrete reason to blame herself for the failure, but the more she heard it, the more she believed it. To make up for her dreadful shortcomings, she was staying up late, neglecting her appearance, and eating less and less while she focused wholly on developing a new plan to make Quatre their prisoner once again.
A pitiful sight she was, grovelling to Treize's study with her hair all askew, no makeup at all, and the plainest and easiest to get in and out of dress in her entire wardrobe, clutching a stack of handwritten notes on Lady Une's monogrammed stationery. He paid her no mind when she said she could get the gardener back, and after all her effort, that simply infuriated her. "You haven't listened to a word I've said!" she caterwauled at the top of her voice, shaking fistfuls of paper at him as he lounged in a wing chair with a lit cigar. "I can get him back here! I know I can! All I'm asking for is one more chance!"
Treize gave her a bland look. "One day, you must learn the distinction between an interested face and an indifferent face." With his non-cigar hand, he pointed to his chiseled features, still purposely affable. "Look, and memorize."
"Alright, I've made mistakes before, but I've been working harder than ever to come up with a plan! Look at these!" She practically flung the notes into his lap, weeks of work fluttering down to him on the wings of his impending approval. "Each one a masterpiece! Any of them could put Quatre in the palm of your hand, and then you wouldn't have anything else to worry about! You'd be set!"
Chuckling lightly, Treize picked up a clump of papers and ran an eye over Dorothy's notes and plans, outlining dozens of possible scenarios, all with one goal in mind. He tossed the papers on the floor. "Child's play. Why don't I just do it myself? If this is the best you can come up with, why don't I just walk into the Manor and take him?" He shoved himself up off the wing chair and stepped on the plans as he began walking in a slow circle around Dorothy. "I'll tell you why. Kidnapping a small boy isn't going to impress anyone." As he passed the desk, he scooped up two trifolded sheets of premium embossed linen, bearing a neatly-typed message. "Do you see this? It's a letter...from the selection committee. They want each of the finalists, myself included, to perform what they call 'feats'...fanciful acts of power to prove our worthiness. Do you think anyone's going to care whether or not I can snatch a simple gardener from his potting shed?"
Hearing the notes of contempt that she feared so much sent Dorothy into a tailspin, and she recoiled in horror. "What does it matter? In a few weeks, or even days, he could be worth a fortune!"
"Not while his oldest sister is a captive of one of my potential rivals. An established member of Cinq has her...I know because I got a tip, several months ago, in fact. Would it not be a thousand times more awe-inspiring to steal this sibling away from a secure facility surrounded by guards and snipers than to toss little Quatre in a sack while Otto's back is turned?" The Count scoffed and closed the gap between himself and the girl, taking another long drag of the cigar and blowing the smoke into her face. "You have no sense of scope.....which is quite disappointing, really. Not surprising, but disappointing." He stopped a few inches away and leaned down, pushing her back and daring her to step away and flee like the frightened rabbit she must have been, and then breathed at her in a husky voice, "I expect a real baroness would have noticed that tiny hitch long ago."
As Treize stood back up and moved away again, Dorothy's pale, blotchy face with the bags under her eyes and the dry, crusted-over lips, turned to a freezing-cold slab of cement, stark and unmoving except for two bloodshot eyes charged with anger, panic, and humiliation that followed Treize back to his chair. Did he know? Could he really have been humouring her all this time? What kind of man would keep an ambitious girl like her dangling around, waiting for scraps of acknowledgement or a few coins to go shopping with, when all along he was waiting to crush her back down to the level she started out on? She wanted to scream and throw things, but knew that even if she had the strength, it would only get her tossed out of the house, and she would be even worse off than before. Shaking slightly from head to toe, she fixated on Treize with a fearful glower, padding forward in her slippers, until she dropped to the floor and hastily picked up every one of her discarded papers, gathering them into a messy stack piled in one arm. She refused to meet his eyes again as she stood up and fled the room, then broke down in whimpery tears the second she was outside. Dorothy ran to her little room, which she was thinking of more and more as her cell, dropping papers along the way until she could lock herself inside and sob properly. The dream was officially over.
**********In Sutherby's grand old library, Milliardo and Lucrezia were puzzling over a document that had arrived on their doorstep a few minutes previous. It was two pages of expensive-looking paper, typed with a letter, folded in three and sealed with a drop of wax bearing the numeral '5' surrounded by acanthus leaves. The hand-delivered note took up their full attention as they huddled together at the giant worktable, trying to read it.
Milliardo shook his head at the ridiculously embellished verbage used in the letter. "...I don't know," he moaned, flipping from page two back to page one in disgust. "We may need an attorney to decipher some of this."
"It can't be that bad if it came from people who treat mass carnage as a spectator sport," Lucrezia scoffed.
"The language is horrendously ornate," Milliardo pointed out tiredly. "'Party of the first part, party of the second part, signified ab initio, feats to be determined per curiam, sub silentio, contra bonos mores'..."
"Give it to me, my Latin's better than yours." Miss Noin snatched the pages out of his hand and began studying the letter line by line, squinting and moving her lips silently. While she worked, Milliardo looked a short distance across the room to a small desk with a plush chair in front of it, and in that chair was his dear sister. She didn't look like she was able to concentrate on the message, but any thoughts he might have had about going over to her and checking on her state of mind were quashed as Lucrezia came through with a rough translation. "The Cinq selection committee wants a show of our power, to assist in evaluating us against the other candidates. Apparently finances aren't enough to guarantee our place."
Milliardo scowled, then got up and paced around the room. "A show of strength...when we have none. We have no one who will follow our orders, even if we knew what orders to give." He stopped a ways from Relena, where she still sat motionless at the desk, and walked up to her.
Relena was unaware of anything, staring into space with her chin propped up in one hand, and the other hand in her lap. No letter from Cinq, no matter how important or cryptic it was, could drag her out of the state of perplexity in which she was deeply mired. Confusion was her only companion lately. What happened with Quatre a few nights ago was still fresh in her memory, and it spawned dozens of questions that she didn't have the emotional resources to answer. Why would he kiss her with no warning whatsoever? Why wasn't she angry with him, even though her relative social position demanded that she discipline him on the spot? Why was she still thinking about it?
It had been many months ago, but Relena had actually encouraged Quatre's affection with soft, flirty advances, which he repulsed. It was a little late for him to be reacting to those advances now, so what on earth had changed between them? They had hardly seen or spoken to each other for a long time, so perhaps he realized what a mistake he made by refusing her, and grew more attached to her as the days worn on, she reasoned desperately. Less disturbing than the question of why he did it was why she was still dwelling on it, days after the fact. There had always been something about Quatre she liked, even when he first arrived at the Manor. He was stable, dependable, and ever so polite. Marcus was polite, but a bit flightly. Heero was dependable, at times, but also had the capacity to be unconscionably rude and self-serving. When one put them side-by-side, it seemed obvious that Quatre was the best of both worlds, but she had never seriously thought of being tied to him romantically before. Now she was thinking about it, even while Marcus and Heero were still bouncing around her brainpan at the same time. All three of them were clanging around in there, tugging at her from all directions, and she just couldn't take it at that particular moment. Thinking about all three of them consumed her suddenly, and blotted out current events so much that Milliardo had to call her name three times and finally shake her by the shoulder to get her attention. She gasped and looked up at him.
"Are you not feeling well?" her brother asked with a slightly worried tone.
"No, I..." Relena dragged a hand across her brow, feeling almost feverish. "I think I'd better go lie down for awhile." She staggered out of the plush chair and through the library door, quickly and unassisted. She herself wasn't sure if she needed a distraction to keep her from thinking about the boys, or a quiet spot so she could think about them all the more.
Milliardo gazed after her, then over at Lucrezia, needed a female insight into the female mind. "What do you suppose...?"
Lucrezia didn't like the look of Relena's pale, troubled visage one bit, and glared up at the man with tightly restrained ferocity. "She's cracking. I warned you! Didn't I warn you!?"
Unwilling to believe that the pressure was getting to his sister already, Milliardo shook his head and stalked off into the shadows. "Rubbish," he muttered. All the while when he was at war, he pictured his sister growing stronger instead of weaker, and she had shown remarkable mental stamina thus far. He simply couldn't accept that she was floundering around in doubt and fear, but perhaps he simply didn't want to accept what might have been, for it would already have been too late to fix it.
**********When Heero said there was to be a meeting at two precisely, there was a meeting at two, precisely. Nobody dared disobey, but it wasn't inspired by fear. Something about Heero had truly changed, like the dial of a lock clicking into its final position, the way it was meant to be. The power he now exuded was intoxicating, enthralling, impossible to ignore. The three boys, plus Hilde, were in the conference room at the pub ten minutes early just to be sure. Sally was there twenty minutes early, having been made an offer she couldn't refuse earlier that day. They all sat around the polished wooden table, leaning well back in their chairs and glancing amongst themselves with a twitchy anticipation of what would happen when their leader arrived.
When the door finally opened at 1:59, they all looked up. Wufei entered first, looking steadily over his shoulder with a trepidation that was highly abnormal for him. Behind him walked Heero, hands in the pockets of his blacker-than-black jacket, sans the overcoat but still sporting the dark spectacles, even indoors. They added to the frightening electricity of his total image. Glaring in a disbelieving way, Wufei gradually sat down, unable to say anything. Finally satisfied that he had his team's undivided attention, Heero moved slowly to the chair at the head of the table, stood behind it, took off the dark specs, and tucked them into his front pocket. Looking around the circle, he cleared his throat once, and they all straightened up in their seats. That made him smile.
"Good to see you've all retained your sense of punctuality," he said, leaning both hands against the back of his chair. "Time is crucial, so I'll get right to the point. We've been meeting like this for nearly a year now, discussing the exploits of the Cinq Association, poring over Giorgenson's notes and correspondence...hypothesizing, strategizing, training...and where has it gotten us? What have we accomplished in that time? Nothing! We talk and talk, but never actually do anything. Why? Not because we're lacking information...we all agreed that something had to be done, and since the authorities would never believe us, we were obviously the ideal candidates to take action...but we've been sitting on our hands for far too long."
"You have an idea?" asked Wufei, sounding surprised.
"That won't get us killed or maimed?" asked Hilde, sounding timid.
Heero ignored them both and looked instead at Quatre, who sat up even straighter at being singled out. "Do you remember one of Relena's society parties, where the older men were comparing the state of their properties, and holding some childish verbal competition over who had the prettiest estate?"
The gardener nodded slowly. "Sure I do."
"You remember what that Mr. Finchely said about his back yard? Thirty-one acres ruined in the space of one summer? What caused it?"
Quatre did indeed recall that conversation. He had been only a few paces away at the time, tending the roses, but listened with interest, and relayed the man's sad tale in passing to the rest of his colleagues. "Bugs. Some species of beetle swarmed in and ate most of the grass roots."
"A beetle. About how big?"
"Oh, I'd say..." The gardener held up his forefinger and thumb about a half-inch apart, and looked up at his commander with an estimatory lift of his eyebrows.
Heero mimicked the hand gesture, looking around the table at the other faces. "Something this small.....destroyed thirty acres of lush parkland, and nobody could stop it."
Trowa squinted. "What are you getting at?"
"I think I know," Sally piped up with a trace of a smile to compliment her sly gaze. "Gulliver and the Lilliputians."
Heero snapped his fingers and pointed at Sally. "Exactly."
The less-than-literati among the group blinked at the pair. "What and the who?" Wufei commented.
"It's a story about an English explorer who sails around the world," Quatre supplied in his schoolteacher's voice. "He lands in a strange place where all the people are six inches high, and not being too used to visitors...they tie him up in his sleep and hold him captive."
Duo leaned back in his chair and shrugged. "You gotta have precautions. He might have tried to sell them a set of encyclopedias if they didn't stop him first." Hilde promptly whacked him in the shoulder, and he whimpered in submission.
Heero indulged in a moment's contemplation of his mouse, and drifted away briefly, back to the weekend of sensual self-discovery. There was something about finding his emotional niche in the universe that unfettered the confidence and cognitive ability that had been eluding him recently. Once he and Duo established themselves to each other as an unbreakable unit, he felt as if he could accomplish anything. "I believe the whole reason we've failed to make any moves against Cinq, or even Treize by himself, is that once we found out the massive scale on which they were shaping history...we all felt too small...too insignificant to stop them. That kind of thinking has kept us uselessly spinning our wheels for months, and it stops now."
Gradually, the others were energized by his determination. They saw what they had been missing, or even cheated out of, for the longest time--a strong leader. Now instead of slouching and counting the minutes until the meeting was adjourned and they could all dive into a platter of sandwiches, they were riveted to his every word, at last beginning to get excited about what good deeds they might be able to do for the world.
Heero pulled his chair out of the way and stood right up to the table, leaning forward on one arm while pointing fiercely at the air with his other hand. "The most intimidating thing about the Cinq Association is their size and strength...but our size is our strength! We are going to carry out a widespread, systematic campaign of sabotage, not just against them, but against the individual factions vying for that fifth chair Giorgenson left vacant. We will be too small and insignificant to be noticed until our damage is already done, and by the time they realize it, we'll be long gone. This is how it's going to work from now on, and you are all gong to be equally important to our success. Either we all agree right now that we're going to take these monsters out of the picture, or we disband and agree to hang it up...and whatever happens to the world is no fault of ours. But I know we can do it. I know all of you have great things to offer, and if we really start thinking as a team, not just in this room, but all the time and everywhere.....we can take 'em down."
Everyone was silent, stunned by the force of his words and the passion in his voice. A magic spell fell upon them as they finally felt as if they had some direction, a place to run to and a leader to show them the way. It was all going swimmingly as Heero wove his tapestry of positive thinking, until something under the table meowed. Shadow leapt up out of nowhere onto the tabletop, invoking the most adorable surprised look on Heero's face. At the end of his speech, he had leaned forward on the table, wedged up by his closed fists lying knuckle-down on the lacquered surface, and Shadow casually climbed up his right arm, putting her forepaws on his shoulder and purring as she nuzzled the side of his face. Heero made an 'Ahem' face, and everyone snickered a bit. "So much for my new tough-guy image..."
"All in favour of making Shadow the official team mascot!?" Duo shouted.
"Aye!" the chorus hollered back, hands in the air.
"Yes, very nice," Heero snarked lightly, taking Shadow down off his arm and putting her down on the table, stroking her back as she sniffed around the tray of sandwiches looking for the salmon-filled one. "Now, about the real vote? All in favour of being a major thorn in the side of the Cinq Association?"
The hands all went up again, and on everyone's face was a confident smile, and to Heero's ultimate shock and disbelief, even Wufei seemed agreeable. Now they had faith, even though they didn't have details of what they would do, or how, or when. Having a true leader was good enough, and Duo smiled in self-congratulation for helping to bring it about. The fact that Heero had rediscovered his personal power at that particular time in his life was no coincidence, Duo was quite certain. Somehow, their union made it possible for that power to emerge, stronger than it was before, and it knowing that he could change someone he loved so dramatically, even in his own small way, was a wonderful feeling.
**********While smaller bases of operations closed down and moved on a regular rotation, the Isle of Wight was an eternal constant, a solid installation that was very likely to remain where it was indefinitely. Very little ever changed there, and if something did, very few people knew about it. Lord Jeffrhyss' team worked strictly on a need-to-know basis.
In the gray-haired despot's private study, everything looked the same as usual, with one minor exception: Lord Jeffrhyss himself was strangely absent.
No one at the base had seen him since he left for the grand assembly, though they were all apparently still following his orders. It wasn't that unusual for His Lordship to vanish for days and reappear somewhere else, but the organization as a whole was still waiting for visual confirmation.
Individually, Byron needed no such confirmation, and he gave an inward chuckle to the rest of the masses who were still in the dark. At the moment, he was enjoying the high life that came with knowing what he knew. He was sitting in Jeffrhyss' chair, drinking Jeffrhyss' port, and playing with the various scientific novelties on Jeffrhyss' desk, like the Newton's Cradle and the amethyst geode. Everything His Lordship ever owned or was ever worth was at Byron's disposal, and he was loving it.
In between sips of port, he took a quill pen from its inkwell and put the finishing touches on a wobbly scrawl at the bottom of a one-page document. After putting the quill away, he gingerly lifted the page up and blew lightly on the fresh ink, then smirked as he admired his handiwork. Not bad, he thought. Not bad at all. In fact, I defy anyone but Jeffrhyss himself to tell the difference.
What he had done was create a near-perfect copy of the old master's signature, on an order to be carried out as if it came from His Lordship's own hand. Now all that remained was to have the order executed, and for that, Byron needed to summon a high-ranking officer from the council chamber. There was a drawer of Jeffrhyss' desk that contained nothing but a switchboard of buttons, buttons that would activate some bell, buzzer, or light bulb elsewhere in the compound. Byron wasn't sure which signal would be given, but knew what button to press in order to get someone important to come running.
He pressed a button. Mere moments later, a middle-aged man in a gray uniform and cap entered the study, with something less than a sun-shiney smile on his face. "Ah, good," Byron cooed. "I have something I'd like to pass along to the rest of...what do you call yourselves? Upper-middle management?"
Byron held the paper out to the man in the gray uniform, but the officer gave a slight hesitation and a scowl before taking it. He read it over and gave the boy a disapproving glare. "A berserker order?"
"I hope you're not questioning His Lordship's judgement," Byron warned with a raised eyebrow.
The gray man looked past Byron to a heavy metal door that led to Lord Jeffrhyss' private mini-residence, a self-contained suite with it's own power source and ventilation system. While it was quite possible for their leader to retreat there for a few days at a stretch, he had never been out of touch this long. "This order calls for the termination of a very costly prototype. I would prefer to confirm it with His Lordship personally, if possible." He was practically daring Byron to either produce Jeffrhyss or tell where he was really hiding.
Byron slowly rose with his fingertips perched on the desk, challenging the man right back with an icy stare. "That signature should be good enough for you and anyone else. I watched His Lordship sign the order not two minutes ago, and he was quite anxious to see it carried out. The prototype is a failure. It's no great loss." He folded his arms, wriggled, and smiled proudly. "Now, run along! Chop-chop!"
The gray man didn't trust this young upstart one bit, but he would take the berserker order to the council and see how the rest of them all voted. The odds were highly against a mass dissension. "Sir," he affirmed with an unpleasant nod before turning and striding to the door.
"Oh, just one more thing," Byron added, making the uniformed man pause. "See that the order only goes out to those with delta level security clearance and higher...we don't want any false sightings from the grunts." The gray man acknowledged this briefly, and left.
Well, now! Byron praised himself with a smile. You're finally moving up in the world, aren't you? Nicely done! With a grand flourish that no one but him could see, he refilled his port glass, took an extended swig, and wandered languidly around the study, patting himself on the back for his ingenuity. There had only been a handful of men present when Lord Jeffrhyss was shot, and within minutes, Byron had every one of them in his back pocket. With a late-night excursion into the desert and a few well-placed lies afterwards, Byron found himself running the whole show. Each time he forged Jeffrhyss' signature, it looked better than the last, and nobody ever questioned him. The atmosphere of mystery and paranoia that engulfed the organization was finally working to his advantage.
He stopped at a massive leather chair and sank into it immediately, draining the rest of the port in one gulp. Before him, on a low table, was a chessboard, and on the chessboard were many hand-carved pieces in exotic woods. Byron picked up a black pawn and smirked at it, glistening in the moody orange lamplight. "You shouldn't have crossed me, my friend," he said to the pawn. "I might have been able to save you from His Lordship's wrath, after all...but now you haven't a single bridge left that isn't going up in flames before your very eyes."
Byron turned the pawn over and read the name on the bottom, which spoke quietly to him in fading black ink: 'Heero Yuy'. He smirked. "I'm going to enjoy watching you die."
~~~~~~~~~~
Next, in Episode Eighty-Five: Relena interviews her preferred candidates for the job of facilitating Milliardo's Cinq bid, but the six sisters she has in mind are being held back by a problem they created through negligence. Heero starts picking out special skills for his team to study.
[Edit: Yes, this new server must go. Don't fret, we're working on it.] ...and the beat goes on... =^-^= Upon reflection, Rachel wanted to name this episode "How Heero Got His Groove Back," but I talked her out of it. (Just kidding. :P Ha ha.) Next episode should be due on June 23rd, but let's not put too much pressure on Rachel-sama, because she has exams coming up. =^o^= *waves Rachel flag* I owe people some emails, and I do humbly promise that you'll hear from me soon, ok? Baibai!