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You were a stranger to sorrow: therefore Fate has cursed you.
Euripides, (484-406 BCE), Alcestis, 438 BCE
War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.
Desiderius Erasmus
On the ship, the cadets spent more time than ever doing studies and practicing in the simulators. The officers were all tense, pushing them hard, making them feel the growth of the war. With no Gundam attacks in weeks, everyone was on pins and needles. It was in the very air itself—they were planning something big. The extra pushes began to make most of the students improve. The harder they were pushed, the better they became.
Worser watched them, in his suspicions, watching Waters, of course, more carefully than any of the others, even than those who surpassed him on the sims, which, while not being many, was still a significant percentage.
He usually stood somewhere in the top twenty percent, never going below thirty, and never above ten, very precise. Even when the cadets were dragged out of bed at two A.M., grumbling and bleary, to run the sim again. Waters' score was an eighty-five. And for all that he had been sleeping, for all of four hours, he looked much the same as he had after eight hours of sleep; he looked like he'd been up, or he'd had a jolt of caffeine, as fresh as he would ever be while he went to and from the sim-room. Worser, in the freedom he has a passenger, watched the vids they took of the cadets in the sims.
Always, it was the same with the kid. He'd climb in, backwards as they all did, and the cockpit would close up on him, just like it would on everyone else. But there were interesting things. Eyes that were older, but still vigilant, caught the speed with which the kid'd strap himself in, the moment of hesitation as his hand hovered for a split second over the start-up sequence, as if he were thinking about it...or maybe making himself take it "slow". The way his eyes tracked over the "battlefield" so much faster than any other cadet—and Worser'd pulled out the highest scoring ones' tapes, too—and how he sometimes seemed to nearly feel the other suits.
Sometimes, his head would cock, and his eyes would center on something not really there, sliding down, and to the side, accessing some unknown part of his brain, a split second before he'd die, from a side he couldn't "see" on his screens. But Worser would truly believe that he could tell that it was about to land. And that he deemed it the right time to fall, and get his exact score.
After he watched those sim vids, he knew he was right, that his possibly paranoid mind wasn't being so, here. The question that faced him, though, was what he was going to do about it.
Once again, it was the moon on the water that he went to contemplate over, a backdrop for his thoughts.
Five boys. Five Gundams. It matched up, perfectly. But they were so young, just kids. Kids who could still find enjoyment in games. And anyone who was smart enough to do what they were doing at this age...they must've had some damn good reasons for it.
With his elbows propped up on the railing, he used his hands to scrub at his face. It was so screwed up. Four weeks. One month. That was how long he'd been watching them. That was a hell of a long time for someone their age, usually. And they'd never really blown their cover.
No, they hadn't blown it at all. Only to him...
For some reason, he didn't think that he was going to find any answers in the dark of night, anymore. But he had to try, dammit, 'cause four weeks...
He felt a shiver run down his spine. What was he going to agree with? The idea that killing...that murdering...
Or...was he to agree with the ideals he saw, had always seen, in the Gundam pilot's fight?
Too bad the moon didn't speak. Or give advice. 'Cause he sure as hell needed it right about now.
It wasn't talkin' though. The burly man straightened up, pulling his arms up to the top of the railing, and standing, braced, while he puzzled through the myriad thoughts that had recently come to settle in his mind. The more he sorted, the more he knew what was, not necessarily the best option, but the one that fit the most with his conscience. He wasn't liking the lose-lose situation, though.
He could almost feel the slump of his muscles as he left for his bunk, squished into the sardine can he was slowly recognizing as quarters. Clouds even came over the moon, to reflect his mood, and he couldn't help one more glance at the ocean the second before his head ducked beneath the deck.
Worser found the blond standing on deck, staring at the wake where it peeled off behind them. "Hey kid. Don't ya' know it's rec time?" Worser leaned his meaty forearms on the top rail, and knocked his booted foot in between the bottom two.
"Sure I do. But they don't notice if I'm not there, so why should you?" There was a bitter key to his voice, something that the man hadn't heard in any of the many hours he had spent in the teen's company. It raised his eyebrows for him.
"'Cause someone's gotta keep an eye on you. Can't have you runnin' around on yer own. Might get inta' trouble."
"Maybe. But I like it here." Now there was a quiet sadness in him.
Worser, confused for a moment, looked around him at the grayness of the ship, the only spots of color the people on it, (though there were none on deck, all of them at their posts, in the superstructure, or below decks, doing the same thing,) and the few spots of color that ruined the sheer grayness of it all, before he looked where the kid was looking—at the water below them. "You like the water?"
Waters looked up at him. "Well, don't you think it's appropriate, with my name?" There was a smile on his face, but when he looked back at the water, it was a sad one. "Besides...the water, here, where it falls away from us...it makes me think of the past, how, when you've passed it...so much of it gets left behind."
The kid's head was just at that right height to let him rest it on the cold metal of the top bar, without even having his forearm there. His hands, when Worser glanced down, were gripping one of the wires of the guard-rail in a tight fist, hard enough to make the knuckles white. He didn't think that it was the most comfortable looking position he'd seen.
He could see the boy's face, just a little, because of the way it was turned, and the smile on his face was bitter and sad.
"You know, kid, you're 'bout as cheerful as a cold, wet rag right now!" He tried to project something other than the slight annoyance he felt, but the way the kid glanced up at him, his eyes shadowed just the slightest bit by his light hair, he thought that the attempt must've fallen flat, from the expression he got.
Dark eyes, blue-green in the bright light of the sun, regarded him seriously for a second more, before turning once more to the sea. His voice was just a low, melancholy whisper. "Sorry."
The lieutenant studied the boy out of the side of his eyes, before he, too, looked out at the water. He had to broach the subject somehow.
He'd tried thinking about how to phrase what he now knew, but when he looked at it in his head, he'd decided that there was no way to say it other than just saying it. Like all the times when he was serious, he lost the slurred, accented speech that so went with the image he presented. "I figured it out, you know. I know what you are."
The boy stiffened beside him, and the movement in the corner of his eye made Worser turn to look at him full on. He only stayed stiff for a moment before he relaxed into a position much like the one Worser'd kept throughout the small conversation, though his foot stayed on the ground, and his arms rested on a lower rail.
"We knew you would eventually, you've been watching us so carefully." He sighed. "Care to list off what gave us away?" He paused a second to shoot the man a wry smile. "Aside from the...uh...obvious."
Worser studied what he now knew was an extremely dangerous terrorist, and couldn't see anything more than a young man who had the face of some young angel. He echoed Waters' sigh, shifting his regard out to the softly cresting waves of the sea. He'd opened his mouth to speak when the boy's hand snaked out to grab his wrist, silencing him with the strong grip, though his fingers couldn't reach all the way around the meaty arm.
"Hold on a moment, would you?" So Worser waited, watching, fascinated, as the boy reached into his pocket and brought out a gold-chased pen. Holding it in his hands, he took off the cap, unscrewed the tip and shook it upside down, until a small electronic device slid out of the end, telescoping out, apparently. He held the pen, and began to press a series of miniscule buttons that went along one side of it, until a green light turned on. He then reassembled the pen, and put it back in his pocket with a nonchalant air.
"There, that bought us some space." There was general unconcern in his voice. He simply wasn't upset or worried or even scared. He just was. "So what gave us away?"
Worser looked with new eyes at the small boy standing there. "Ahem. Actually, I thought something was off with you just about from the start. There were lots of things, things that I had to have been already watching for in order to see." He halted for a moment, and thought about the things he had seen while watching that group of boys.
"Your acting was amazing. All of you act as though this were your life. Any mistakes you've made, they only add up to anything if you're already suspicious, and not just suspicious of you, but of anything at all. In fact, I can't think of one, single incident that would've given it away completely. It was all little things, added up and totaled to something nearly ridiculous."
"It was all actions, all responses, and even those were split-second, a moment's time." He paused another second. "You know what really began to confirm it? All of your hands."
"Our hands?" When Worser looked at him, he could see the puzzled frown pulling at the kid's face.
"Yeah. Just look at them." A hand was held out to the sea, the fingers spread wide, the palm facing up. "Look how large they are, for your size. And the strength of them. The worn calluses...all of that, it's not... It doesn't add up, unless you consider that last, most bizarre track."
They stood there, the air relaxed, almost, as the blond kid looked at his hands, even exploring the muscles of each one with the pads of his fingers. Then he sighed, his hands folding together on the railing, one on top of the other. "What else?"
Worser could only shake his head. "Well, you did the sims." He shook his head when the kid opened his mouth to say something. "Yeah, I know, you were careful...too damned careful."
Waters grimaced, with a snort. "Only sometimes." Then he shook his head, somewhat absent-mindedly, his thoughts somewhere else. "I don't think that all the mistakes we made would go over well with any of our superiors."
Again, the boy got a surprised look from the OZ officer. "Superiors?" Since when did terrorists do things strictly under orders? Though, he certainly couldn't be called an expert on terrorism, now could he?
"Well, how else are we supposed to get the backup and information we need?" If the kid could be clear on the logic, there, Worser supposed he'd have to follow.
"So you get orders?"
This time it was the kid who turned to study the person next to him. "I suppose it doesn't matter if you know anything else. If you haven't told anybody yet, you probably won't." A slight break. "And I don't suppose it really matters anymore either." The white of the wake drew his gaze once more. "Yes, ordered. Each of the pilots have their own 'mentor', I suppose you could almost call them a controller...they're the ones who gave us the suits, and trained us. I'm sorry, but I can't tell you anything else, because there isn't really much more I know."
"So you guys work independently? I thought you were a team. You acted like it, most of the time."
A wry shake of the head, tinged with melancholy. "That's all it is, right now, an act. We haven't known each other very long at all. We didn't even know that there were other suits until we came to Earth. After we landed, we slowly met one another, until we began getting coordinated missions." A genuine smile traced its way across his face. "You should hear the story about how...oh, never mind. But it does make a good story." There was a puzzled look on his face, perfectly observed by Worser."Oh, well." The kid looked at his expensive watch. "I don't think we have time for much else, now. Maybe later."
"Why's that? Why're we outta time?" Surely he could get something interesting out of this kid."Oh, just give it a minute, you'll see then." Again, a small smile, only this one seemed colder somehow.
Waiting games...he could deal. He settled back down onto the railing. "So, kid, what's your real name? Or is Waters it?"
The blond head tilted at him, curious. "Do you really want to know?"
"Sure, kid. Who wouldn't?"
There was a soft laugh. "Yeah, I suppose you're right. My name..." He trailed off for a moment, before picking it back up. "My name is Quatre Winner."
It didn't register for some few seconds, but when it did, he could feel the frown as it pulled his angle of view to face the serious features of the kid beside him.
"Winner, as in the Winners?" A billionaire terrorist. Geeze.
"Yeah, those Winners." Quatre grimaced. "I don't like to talk about it."
There was the silence of everything but the waves and the wake, where it slapped against the ship. Worser mulled over the little he knew, wondering about the many questions these children raised in him.
"Why would you fight? Why would any of you fight?" The wrinkled skin of his face pulled together in a deeper frown.
Quatre would have answered, but an explosion rent the air, and a shudder could be felt through the ship.
Worser's head whipped towards it, but Quatre only sighed, eyes focused on the horizon, and whispered: "Sorry". Worser, hearing that, turned back to him, looking at his pinched profile.
"That was you, wasn't it? That was the completion of your mission." Nothing but resigned sadness. He'd made his choice before he went to sleep last night. Lose-lose. But maybe...maybe these kids can make a win out of it somewhere.
It took a moment, but Quatre finally turned his focus. "Yes, that was my mission. As 01 would say, mission: complete." He gave out another sigh, and turned away from the sea. "Come on, we have to get to the roof of the command tower...while avoiding the mess that's going to be in the actual tower. The fire is going to be on deck soon. And the fuel tanks will only stay contained for another five minutes." He gave the man standing by him a concerned look. "I really hope you can climb."
Worser just stood still for a moment, as his thoughts caught up with the boy's words. Then he had a thought of his own to mull over. "Did anyone survive?"
Quatre, who didn't want to leave him, looked up into his face and considered what answers he might give. But he was tired of lying. "No, I don't think anyone survived. The design of the incendiary charges took advantage of the formation of the ship, spreading easily, helped by the sheer quantity of ordinance distributed throughout the ship with string detonators and chain-reaction triggers. I was very thorough." But he heaved a sigh. "And now, even if they were alive...well...I disabled the communications room...there won't be anyone coming to help."
His only response was a weary nod of the grizzled head. "How did you isolate the fuel?"
"I'll tell you, but we really have to get off the deck. I have a ride, but it's going to be rather sticky. The only place that will be above the water line by that point is the top of the command tower. And then, we need to be off and away before the fuel goes." He was futilely tugging on the 'tenant's arm, but even with the training he'd probably had, if the stocky man hadn't wanted to move, Quatre wasn't the one to get him to.
After staring at the kid in front of him for a spare second, Worser nodded hard, once. "'K, kid, lead the way."
It didn't take them more than two minutes to get up the tower, because, sure, it was a mess in there, but it there was a straight line up, and then out a window and they were sitting on the "roof". Another thirty seconds and there was a helicopter hanging over them, two lines snaking down, looking like the lines hanging on an MS.
They each grabbed one and were being winched up even as the 'copter was pulling away from the sinking, smoking ship. Just as they were getting level with the deck of the 'copter, the fuel went, the explosion rocking them around before the pilot stabilized the aircraft.
A man who intimidated even Worser for sheer size was there to haul them both in, and immediately the boy was surrounded by the half-dozen men lining the walls.The same giant of a man swept through the others, to give Winner enough space to move so he could find an empty jump-seat and collapse. The blond terrorist was visibly glad that the interference was too loud for anyone to begin asking the questions in anyone's eyes when they looked at the man calmly sitting beside him.
The boy's head fell back and hit the rest, and the huff of a sigh went through his body. Worser saw the movement, and he turned from the scrutiny of the men surrounding him, to the scrutiny of the boy sitting beside him.
They were above water for only fifteen minutes before a small island came into view, complete with palm trees. They settled down on the beach, all of them ignoring the stinging sand as it blew into the open hatch. The rotors slowly went idle and, giving out, a blessed almost-silence came down over them all. The men lining the walls had already surged outwards, joining the other men that had already been at the beach, and turned nearly as one, mouths open to speak, but before they could, the kid held up his hand.
"Please, I need to do something. I need a secure 'com."
"Of course, Master Quatre." The giant pulled out a well used 'com, the buttons indented with the hundreds and thousands of times that they had been pushed, and handed it to "Master Quatre". The boy took it and rapidly entered a string of numbers, too fast for Worser to follow. It took thirty seconds to connect, but after that brief time, it did, and the screen went to snow, and then cleared, showing the dark interior of a MS cockpit, and MacEvans' face. He looked fine to Worser, though he did look rather careworn, with the hint of circles under his eyes.
"04." The voice was hard, tired, none of the joking that Worser had come to associate with the boy echoing through it, like it normally seemed, to, despite the few times when he'd been "caught" with a somber note in it by Worser's ears. The number was apparently both an acknowledgement and a question.
"02. I have a mission extension. I discovered the location of another base. What's your current position?" Quatre's voice was also worn, but it too was all business.
"I'm in the North Pacific, heading towards the JAP sector. Do you need exact coordinates?" The blue eyes bored out of the small video screen, and Worser, looking at them, was unsurprised at the hardness of his voice. It seemed as if it were only a pale reflection of what was contained in the boy's eyes.
"No, you should be close enough. It's in Northern Eurasia. Actually, it's about twenty clicks south of point SHR3. You should be able to pin it down from there, no problem."
"Okay." His arms moved around, his hands barely out of view. He must've been doing some reckoning on his computers. "Yeah, I'm about an hour away."
"Yes. See you later, 02."
"K, then I'm clear." He was clearly about to sign off, his attention shifting away from the screen, but Quatre spoke up again, his voice a little strained around the two words.
"02."
"Yeah?" Maybe his disconnect wasn't located next to the screen, because, even though he had that note of, "I was just outta' here. What is it?" in his voice, his hand hadn't moved across the little screen, in fact, hadn't moved at all, they were both still resting, the muscles in the upper arm appearing lax.
"You should know....the installation...it's set up within a civilian school." More hesitancy, as the boy in the cockpit stilled, which struck Worser as rather interesting, since he hadn't thought he'd been moving.
"Inside a school?" The blond nodded, his face unreadable. A sigh could be heard over the line. "How many am I looking at here?"
His voice was a whisper Worser had to strain to hear despite his proximity. "Over three hundred."
The former OZ Lieutenant couldn't really make out too many details, even with the clarity of the little screen, but he got the feeling that 02, or MacEvans, or...shit, what was his real name?...didn't like the situation.
"There's no way to avoid it?" There wasn't really any anger, just disappointment and calm resignation, and Worser tried to imagine what the kid felt, since he obviously felt something about it.
"Not that I can see. But maybe there'll be something there." There was a pause. "Just, good luck, 02."
"Thanks. I'm out." Another sigh. "This really sucks, 04." The screen blanked, so the other kid couldn't hear Quatre's whisper.
"Yeah, it does."
Yet another dejected sigh, with the boy's head bowed, his eyes dark under his ragged bangs. Then, even as Worser watched him as one would watch a very large cat, with perfect attention, the boy's mask of calm settled over him, piece at a time, so that, when he looked up, he was all business, and the men surrounding him stood just that little bit more at attention.
"Okay. We need to move out of here. Where are the carriers?" The large man, Rasid, came forward, and Quatre handed back the com with a small smile of thanks.
"The carriers are on the other side of the island, Master Quatre." He gave a very slight bow, a mere inclination of the head. "We will need to load up the 'copter before we depart, but other than that, we are ready."
"Thanks, Rasid. I'll load it up, that'll be the fastest."
"Very well, Master Quatre." Again, that slight bow. "If you'd like...?" He gave a wave towards the cockpit of the silent 'copter.
"Yes, Rasid." The boy stood up, climbed out of the cargo area and opened the cockpit door, waiting patiently while the previous pilot backed out and handed the headset to the boy. Quatre wasted no time getting in himself, and even while one hand was buckling him in, his other was settling the helmet on, and then began to dance rapidly over the controls as the other, now finished with the harness, reached out and used a surprising strength to yank the door shut. Rasid ushered the men away from the 'copter as it began to warm up, the doors still open on the cargo area, and the co-pilot's seat empty. They all watched as the rotors began their rapid spinning, and, when they had reached that critical speed, the aircraft began to lift with nary a wobble.
It was possibly the best take-off Worser had ever seen in his long military career, but for some reason, he couldn't help but think that it must have been the kid's less-than-best, because he could clearly see in his mind the sheer exhaustion that seemed to fall over the boy whenever he thought he could grab a single second of peace. And that was all it was, too, a single second. But his thoughts were pulled away from the enigma he'd begun to associate with those boys oh-so-long ago, by the large man as he turned to face the ex-'tenant.
"So what would Master Quatre have us do with you?" There was none of the sneer or the derision Worser would expect of these men threaded through the deep voice. The lack didn't make Worser relax, though. As for the question—he could only shrug. He didn't know what the kid was thinking. A huge sigh rippled through Rasid. "Well, if you don't know, I suppose the only thing to do would be to bring you with us." The men around him were murmuring agreement, and Worser could only feel pure amazement, that these fully grown warriors could trust in their...the more he thought about it, the more he could only assume that the kid was the commander of this miniature army...so, in their commander's choices, that they would "carry" the extra baggage that was currently him with them, if only to find out what, exactly, it was that "Master Quatre" wanted of him.
And he couldn't do anything but know that the blond had something planned for him. From his observations, he knew that all the pilots had very keen minds. And if he didn't miss his guess, Quatre's was the best out of all of them for plans. So he had an ace hidden somewhere, some seemingly harebrained scheme that, he was sure, would be the work of pure genius. Now, if only he knew what his part in it was.
All of this thought led up to him, being led by the bevy of men around the rim of the island. He enjoyed the scenery while he was doing it, and they reached what he presumed were the aforementioned carriers, within ten minutes. The boy was sitting on the sand in front of one of the closed cargo hatches. He stood up and brushed off the back of his trousers when he looked up from whatever he'd been doing in the sand and saw them approaching across the beach.
When they got closer, Worser, looking down, saw that it seemed to be a random doodle, of spirals and other shapes. Something a kid would do, if they were bored.
The blond head nodded to the big man, Rasid. "I saw Sandrock in that first one, next to the helicopter. I'll take it."
"Yes, Master Quatre. What do you want to do with him?" The rumbling voice coming from behind him made him want to look back at the man, but he didn't.
"Oh." Ragged wisps of hair swept across the kid's face as he shook his head, eyes closed, and one hand raising to rub at his forehead. "He'll ride with me, I think." Eyes opening, their dark gaze looked up the long way to his subordinate's face. "I'll need to talk to the others." Yeah...and Worser sure as hell'd like to know what was going on with him, too. He even had a vested interest in it. But he'd keep his mouth shut, for now.
"Okay. Then shall we move on?" Rather belatedly, Worser noticed how quiet the other men behind him were. He figured they must'a been focusing pretty hard on "things".
The kid moved towards the cargo hatch of the first airplane, and Rasid motioned to Worser to follow the kid, the big man moving in behind him. Groups of the other men went off to the other two planes, and now, all of them were talking animatedly. Perhaps their silence before were a sign of respect, or the quiet of soldiers waiting for orders? For some reason, Worser thought he was going to have either plenty of time to think about yet one more mystery, or he wasn't going to have to worry about it, soon.
Winner was waiting just inside the cargo hatch for them. When he saw them, he turned around to the bulkhead, and hit the controls for the hatch, shutting the three of them in the cargo hold, with the helicopter, and a large transport vehicle, the bed of it full, but covered with canvas tarps. Thinking about it, that must be "Sandrock"...which must be the Gundam, if he thought about it.
"Come on. We should really get out of this area." The boy began to head for the front of the plane, but glanced over his shoulder at the giant man behind him. "Are the other planes already secure?"
"Yes, Master Quatre." The deep voice was calm, and as unhurried as the man's steps.
"Good." By this time, he was on his way up the ladder, the two men following a little slower behind him. They were only halfway up when he reached the top and disappeared, only to re-appear a second later. "Strap in, I'm going to go get us underway." He didn't wait for them to respond before he was gone again, his footsteps making no sound on the quilted metal of the catwalk. Worser frowned over that when he himself made a ton of sound as he stepped out onto it, Rasid equally loud. But he shook it off as just another quirk of them, and followed the indicating nod the other man gave him.
He was there for the beginning of the "conference". Quatre and "01" went down into the bowels of the mansion, taking Worser with them, while the halls became slowly, more and more utilitarian, revealing the underground base area. They came out into a room where the walls were covered in screens and terminals. Over on the far wall, in one of the upper corners, a small box-like icon was blinking, and Quatre's clear voice began the transmissions. Worser watched as the box expanded, showing the face of the other three pilots, the screens splitting, each of them sitting in a mobile suit cockpit, the blackness of the equipment shadowing them, small green, yellow and red dots back-lighting them from the various panels.
"01, 04. We started without you." The green-eyed boy was quiet, unemotional.
"That's okay, 03. I'm sure if we missed anything important you'd tell us." The ex-OZ soldier wondered again, as he had vaguely in the past, if the blond had been engineered for diplomacy.
"Sure we would, but we weren't doing much serious stuff, 04." 02's braid was sitting over his shoulder, falling beyond the edge of the screen.
"Then there's no harm, is there?" The two boys that Worser was with had each taken up confident stands in the middle of the room, facing the screens. Worser, idly, wondered whether or not their eyes would be "focusing" on whomever they were speaking to at that particular point. He didn't know how the camera system was set up, and frankly, at this point, he didn't think it really mattered to him to know anyway.
"Let's get to the business of everything, then. The less time we spend on the band, the better." The blond's face wasn't visible to Worser, so he couldn't really see if there were genuine concern there or not—for that matter, with the acting jobs that they had pulled, he didn't know if he'd be able to discern it as being real or not.
There was a short nod from 03, an equally curt one from 05. 02 just grinned, and the two standing in front of Worser...he couldn't tell. From the back, they were still.
"Okay, first: was everything a success, and I'm assuming nothing too horribly bad went wrong, since you're all here?" No play, no childhood in the his voice. The more he was around them...the more he felt sorry for them.
02 was the first to answer. "No. Got out of the first installation fine. I had my suit, so that was an easy job. The second installation, the one you pointed out..." There was a hesitancy, there, much as Worser'd noticed before, when they'd spoken in the tractor, and then, on the ship. That bitter pause where he, looking back, must have been choosing his words carefully. "The second one. Well, going in, 04 informed me that there could possibly be as many, or more, than three-hundred civilian casualties."
The pilots on the other two screens sharpened their gazes. Standing beside Winner, 01's back straightened. Sharpening seemed the only way to describe the sheer intensity of their eyes as they stared at 02, or wherever they were seeing him. He still wasn't sure about all that, despite the fact that his curiosity was still worrying it around in the back of his mind.
They were silent, though, until 02 cleared his throat, and went on. "Took me about an hour to get to location, 'bout noon is when I arrived. When I got there, I used some of the long range sensors and scanners to scope things out. As it turned out, they were getting ready to move the cadets out, but they were waiting for dark. I took them out when they moved, and there ended up being minimal unnecessary casualties. Total count: eighty-seven." He gave a fairly nonchalant shrug, and an easy smile.
05 spoke up next. "After 01 and 03 shipped out, I started the set up of installation one. It didn't take very long, I was ready to detonate within three days. Then I waited until the time ran out, and when it did, I completed the objective, and left, as proposed. Count: forty-one."
"Mission was successful. Fifty-five targets." 01 nodded to 03.
The blond head in front of him nodded. "Then, with mine, total count is two-twenty-three. We missed eight out of the installations we had targeted." There were grim faces around the room.
02 broke the silence, as seemed to be his wont. "Are there..." He obviously trailed off, not wanting for some un-known reason to not voice the words allowed, when, since Worser could figure it out, the question was obvious.
But the pale white hair shook back and forth, negative. "No. Orders are, this was a success. We don't know how many installations we missed, but...we have new objectives, nonetheless. New objectives will be, henceforth, routed once more through the suits. 02, you have specific data that will be delivered by courier." There was a motion of one arm and hand towards 01. "05, your control will be in contact with you in the next thirty-six hours. 03, you and I have been told to return to cover, and let things blow over. 01—"he turned towards the silent boy beside him. "You already have your orders." It got a short, silent nod.
"Then there's not much to go over, now."
The blond was turning away from the screens when someone cleared their voice
"Uh..." It was 02. He waited until Quatre was facing him. "What about him?"
"Hmm? Oh. Him." He twisted around to flash a grin at Worser, before going back to the screens again. "I'm going to send him to my father."
The other pilots didn't look very up to that idea. Again, 02 was the one to open the subject. "Quatre...is that such a wise idea, considering..."
He just sort of trailed off, but the blond standing in front of Worser didn't let the silence sit. "What do you think? If I sent someone up to him, and said 'either you find him a place, where he won't get in trouble, or I kill him', no matter how upset he is with me, there's no way he'd not do it." He paused, and from behind, the man could only conjecture that he was looking down, now. "It's the only way I can think of...if you've thought of better..."
The braided kid's features frowned down at them from the wall. "Well, what about sending him to one of the mads?" But Quatre was already shaking his head.
"That's signing his warrant, and you know it." The room echoed with nothing, everyone in their own thoughts, staring at each other or nothing.
Then, in an abrupt movement, 01 spun around and leveled a gun at the man in question. Where it'd come from, Worser wasn't sure, and right then, didn't really care. Frankly, he was too surprised to do much more than blink stupidly and raise his hands after a nearly ridiculous pause.
"Then we'll take care of it now. The situation is compromising us." Worser looked behind him to the blond kid, and beyond him, to the screen, where the only change had been a widening of 02's eyes, and a snort from 05.
Winner was looking at the two of them with a pretty darn cold look on his face, as if he were calculating some scenario in his head. But the kid seemed to be the voice of reason around here, so Worser thought he'd apply to him, rather than the still, cold eyes of the boy staring down the barrel of a gun at him.
"Oh, come on, kids. S'not like I wasn't a hazard you let go before." Hopefully, it wasn't too much of a plea.
Winner tilted his head at them. "Although that is true...the reasoning and situation is different, here. Just because you didn't give away anything important before doesn't mean you won't now." He paused for effect, raking one hand through his hair his eyes calm and measuring. "After all...you can identify all five of the pilots...there's not another person in creation other than the pilots themselves who can."
Fuck. Not good. Not good at all. What happened to the kid who didn't want to kill him? He glanced at the screen again, but the three there were just watching, even 02 was impassive, now. Worser focused his eyes on the blue ones of Winner, trying to keep up the appearance that these kids didn't scare the fucking hell outta him. "Kid, I let you carry out your mission even when I had time to turn you in. Even when I knew what you were there to do. What fucking good would it do to say anything now? You've killed over two-hundred children, and more personnel. I think, at this point, my saying anything would be rather useless."
He just got a raised eyebrow. Well, might as well dig it all the way down... "And...I couldn't even really go back to OZ, anyway...I'm dead, remember?" Damned if he'd be the first to look away. He concentrated on keeping eye-contact, and, more dubiously, ignoring the gun that was about three feet in front of his chest.
Maybe the pilots could tell how long they stood like that, but Worser sure's hell couldn't. He was more surprised than anything else when the gun lowered without any more words being spoken. The messy head of the kid still holding it—in a pretty tight grip, he noticed—turned to face the majority of the room, towards the other pilot and the screens.
"He's right. We don't need to kill him." Well, that was good...but there were five of them. He took a quick glance at the screens, breaking eye contact, and when he focused back on the blond, the hard eyes were staring at 01.
Still meeting 04's gaze, 01 re-holstered his weapon, and all Worser could tell was that it was somewhere on his back, from his angle. 04 kept his gaze steady, and asked, "Are you sure, 01?" He got a nod, and turned to the screens. "Anything else?"
"Nah. That works for me. I mean—there's a pretty big gap between them knowing us, and them having us, anyway." 02 was suddenly that boisterous kid from before, the grim look on his face forgotten. 03 gave a silent nod. He thought it was 03, but he couldn't be sure. The other Asian kid, besides the one who'd pulled on him, just sat there, a smile Worser wanted to characterize as a smirk on his face. He seemed to be leaning back in his piloting chair, his arms crossed over his chest, but from the way the shot was, and the backlighting from the instrument panels, he wasn't positive.
Winner gave them a nod, and turned to the man who was still standing there in a state of adrenaline. Very few times in his life had he faced his own death, and known he was facing it, and getting a scare like the one that kid just gave him.
"Well, Worser...I think this is goodbye, then." There was a smile accompanying the words, but the man thought it was more bittersweet than anything else.
Worser felt his eyebrows rise, almost out of his own volition. "Is it, kid?"
Again, that smile. "Yeah, probably, sir." There was silence from the rest of the room. "Rasid is outside the door. He'll take you where you need to go. Remember—if you don't know anything, there's nothing anyone would want you for. That's the safest road to take."
He met the stern gaze leveled at him from the blond kid for a minute or so, and then nodded. "Right." His grizzled head swung around the room, meeting the dark blue eyes of the Asian kid, and then, the projected ones on the screen. "Nice knowin' y'all."
Then, he went back to the door they'd entered by, and, after one last glance behind him, opened it and stepped through.
The End
There. Would like to put in some small notes. First, large, sloppy thanks to Miyabi and Crazy, because...well, what would one do without them? Second, disclaimer's in my profile, so there. Third, wow. HR's finished. Amazing. Really. Okay, I'm done now!