Prologue:
AC 196; Peacecraft Estate, Earth
"Miss Relena!" The girl continued walking with dignity through the halls, chin held high as always. She was humble, yet her steps never faltered and she kept her strong will to this point. "You know that it's not safe to go to a colony, what with the new terrorist group. You would be the perfect target, you mustn't go!" Pagan, an old man who assisted Relena and drove her where she pleased in her pink limousine, objected rather smartly to his defiant charge.
Still walking on through the marble corridor of the Sanc Kingdom Relena ignored the pleas, the advice falling on deaf ears. She turned swiftly and looked at Pagan with her aquamarine colored eyes and spoke in a strong voice that screamed politician with the tone she was using. "Pagan, I'm trying to free the colonies not enslave them." She took a deep breath to calm herself, "Besides this is very important to me. The L1 colony executives are in need of my help, I must go. This isn't a matter of safety." He looked as though he was about to protest, objecting to that but was silenced as she continued on, "If I would have peace over my safety, I would choose peace." She said with her head raised high, looking at the doors, which lead out of the palace and into the outside world. The world that was once a war zone was now changing for the era of peace.
Birds chirped merrily outside, the sun shining brightly as it cleared the skies of any things that might spoil the moment, such as dark rain clouds that had been pushing towards her kingdom since three days ago. Everything was serene and calm, the moment like stilled water waiting for a ripple to come and slice through the glitch in time that was too perfect to be real.
The moment ended when Pagan found his voice again, still pleading with the stubborn teen to stay at the Estate, "Miss Relena I know you aren't going there only for that reason. That Doctor, um what his name," Pagan stopped and tried to remember the old man's name. "Ah, yes it was Doctor J. Miss Relena I know you miss him, young mister Yuy, but "
"That's enough." She didn't—couldn't—hear about Heero now. Ever since the Mariemaia incident, things had calmed down and the Wing pilot seemed to disappear from the face of the planet after saving her from assassination attempts during her campaign for presidency. People were acting up a whole lot more for some reason now, almost as if people sensed a sudden heaviness in the air that threatened to swallow each and everyone of them.
She stopped her thoughts, all of them dwindling down to one thing, which happened to be the one thing she didn't want to think about at the moment before a big conference. "Good bye, Pagan, I will see you in a week or two." She added with haste. Her eye wandered to one of the many pillars in the corridor and saw two eyes peering at her out of the shadows of one of the support pillars.
She could sense a grin forming on the lips on the mysterious visitor. "Miss Relena, might I ask of you to come with me and leave the business to be ordained to someone else?" A young boy's voice said, full of laughter at the high vocabulary use, and the two eyes seemed to look strangely familiar to her.
"Who are you?" Relena said trying to hide the fear that it might be an evil terrorist that, by some miracle, managed to break through her brother and Heero's security.
"Just a delivery boy." Said the same person as before only in a much cheesy tone of voice, formality down the drain.
Relena smiled, knowing she had a pretty good idea of just whom it was with the laughter and mirth in the voice. The figure stepped out of the shadows and then revealed a teen with long brunette hair tied in a braid with brown eyes. "Miss me, Princess?" He questioned with a mock salute.
"Duo!" Relena exclaimed happily and rushed over to meet him.
"Hey!" Duo replied just as cheerfully as Relena had greeted him after she learned who it was. Not some random stalker going around the gardens that much was for sure.
"What are you doing here?" She had to admit, she was quite surprised by the sudden appearance of one of the five former Gundam pilots.
"I've come to pick you up." Duo replied, continuing on his speech while pointedly ignoring the confused look of Relena with his first words. "All of us are getting together to discuss about the new groups trying to disrupt the peace."
"All of us?" She asked. "What do you mean by that?"
"All of us: Lady Une, Quatre, Trowa, Wufei, Sally, me. Y'know. All of us." He said. "We made sure each of them were comin'. Quatre's got one of his mansions out here ready for all of us. Had to get you personally though. None of the guys," Duo thought about what he said and then added: "And girls. Thought that we should let you travel here without a bodyguard." He concluded. "And who could be better than me?" He raised his chin up to try and look stern and strong, only making Relena giggle at his antics in the end.
Relena smiled at this. "What about Heero?" She asked. Duo didn't say anything, sensing the eyes and ears of Pagan. He didn't want anyone to worry, especially not the old man or Relena.
Glancing behind her, she saw a somewhat relieved Pagan. Most likely since she'd be safer with the Gundam pilots than at the conference. "Pagan," the old man looked up to the smiling teen. "Please inform the L1 conference that I'm busy and cannot have time to get there in time. Can you send Chris in my place?"
"I'll find someone, Chris is currently elsewhere. She's disappeared for the past few days." Pagan replied back with the small nod of his head, "She's probably off with that Ralph fellow. I'll see what I can do, Miss Relena."
"Thank you, Pagan." She waved farewell to the old butler and family friend as she turned to walk with Duo who was chatting endlessly with her.
Duo didn't look at her and kept his eyes on the ground. "It was weird, we got through to Wufei since he's been hangin' out with Sally and the Preventers but we couldn't contact Heero." Then he repeated himself again by saying, "It's weird…" Duo trailed off.
Her heart sank just a little bit at his words. "I'm ready. Do you have a car?" She was going to leave anyway after all, might as well see how the other's were doing at the same time.
"Yep. Oh, and its not that long away only about twenty minutes or so. That's if ya follow the speed limit though." Relena laughed. Duo was always the cheery one with a sense of humor of the entire Gundam pilot's.
She remembered the time he had been captured: "I have some good news. Your Gundam and mine are being repaired as we speak. Just watch, I'll become the God of Death once again but right now…I need some sleep…" She almost giggled at the thought, but held her laughter when she remembered about the "missing" pilot of the Wing Gundam.
"I wonder where Heero's gotten to…" Relena uttered. Duo noticed this, but kept his mouth shut.
They got into the car and drove off. Relena watched the other cars go by. "What did you mean by it was weird?" Relena questioned, remembering everything that Duo had said before, replaying it over and over again like an old record player in her head.
"Well," Duo said, not removing his eyes from the road. "Whenever something is up, he's usually the first to know about it. It's cool how you're running for president and all, but Heero's been on his toes because of that. There's been so many plots to assassinate you it's not even funny." He looked in her direction and saw her grave expression, and so. thinking it was because of the comment he said, made a sharp 'oh!' sound. "Not that it was funny to begin with." He quickly amended.
Relena nodded. "I've seen him a couple more times than I usually do." She closed her eyes and brought her hand up to her chest to remember the warmth that flows through her body. That's how she knows he's watching her, somewhere from the shadows. The last few speeches held a cold feeling, his presence frozen and no longer there to protect her.
Duo looked at her now. "He's always been updating us on stuff about the latest groups. He does more than you would think even though the war is over. He hasn't really been able to stay somewhere yet. He's been moving from colony to colony." He diverted his eyes back onto the road.
"He does more that I would think?" Relena asked again. "Like what?"
"Well…" Duo said. Muttering something about 'what is this? Twenty questions or somethin'?' he answered finally after a long pause. "He's not only been doing the updates on the terrorist groups and stuff, but he's been doing some studies too." He muttered.
"He's going to school?" Relena said, shocked that Heero, the perfect soldier, was actually attending a school. Then again, at least he was giving normal living a chance. All of the Gundam pilots had lived through hell over and over again, Quatre was the only one who still had a home and he saw his father and sister, Ilea die before him.
"Well, yeah. He was. Then you declared you were gonna run for president and all. He decided to rethink that and now he's kind of given up on that." He turned, smoothly moving over into a different lane as he mentally checked off each of the directions needed to get to their destination.
Relena looked downhearted at Duo. 'He gave up his chance for a normal life for me…' She thought.
"He didn't like it anyway." Duo added, taking in Relena's expression as he shot her a side way glance. "He told me. Besides, do you think he would? He's more like Wufei." He said.
Duo sighed heavily, "The Preventers are currently working on trying to be able to imprison the people that have been caught by them. The Earth Sphere currently holds them in easy to break out of facilities so they keep coming back, better than ever and with a few friends at times."
Relena nodded in understanding as Duo continued his long diagnosis of the situation and it's events, "It's hard to keep track though of where he is. He's been doing a lot lately and we haven't heard from him for over two weeks. Usually we got messages from him saying things about undercover groups and stuff at least every week or two to keep an eye out for or rumored assassination attempts, but now its nothing. The others are beginning to wonder if he's decided to handle them all on his own or he's decided to forget about it."
"Heero wouldn't forget about it." Relena said after his long speech was ended.
He glanced at her for a longer moment, a heavy pause lingering in the air until he nodded. "Yeah, you're right, knowing that guy." Duo said afterwards, agreeing with her.
"So how is ever one else?" While tucking a strand of her flaxen golden hair behind her ear, she silently thanked herself for being able to change the subject so gracefully. She would worry herself sick if they kept talking about the Japanese soldier.
"They are all fine. Quatre's been busy with getting the colonists who are edgy about peace to rethink it. Trowa's still in the circus. Wufei and Sally work for Une in the Preventer's organization. That's about it." He said, "I've been working with Hilde in the salvage shop."
"That's good to hear!" Relena smiled brightly, glad to hear everyone's lives were somewhat normal and calm.
Duo smiled as he pulled off of the exit ramp and found himself driving for a while down a somewhat bumpy dirt road. "Well, we're here!" Iron gates to a large mansion appeared and opened to let them into the estate.
"Wow." Relena breathed. It was almost as amazing as her mansion.
"Yep." Duo said grinning. They got out of the car and walked into the building and headed towards the hall once they entered the spectacular house. They turned a right and then opened the door to the meeting room Quatre arranged. Inside were the other three Gundam pilots, Lady Une, and Sally Po.
"Hello everyone!" Relena said, eyes sparkling as she felt young and carefree again despite the seriousness of the 'reunion'. A smile lifted her face, glowing in the sunlit room.
The clock chimed, only once to show that they had talked for thirty minutes non-stop. Relena smiled inwardly, thinking of how nice it was to just converse and not debate. She then pulled her attention back to where it should be, the conversation.
"So how many terrorist groups are there?" Relena asked, feeling it was about her turn to ask a questioned.
"We aren't quite sure now. You see, there might have been more formed during the time Heero's been absent." Trowa supplied.
"I wonder what the fellow's doing." Duo hummed, having to add his two-sense worth into the conversation. The others nodded absentmindedly in agreement and then a slight buzzing noise came from the VID phone in the corner.
"Strange." Quatre frowned, brows creasing together as he stared at the machine in confusion. "This one isn't used for anything but personal calls usually to you guys…" Quatre said.
A blank screen appeared and it had an open connection without even waiting for Quatre's password. "Well, well. We were hoping to get a connection and talk with young Quatre, but look, we found all of them having a cute little chat." A young woman appeared, looking to be in her teenage years. She had deep blue, almost purple colored hair and flashing deep crimson eyes, quite and odd combination. She giggled and smiled at them, though the smile sent shivers down everyone's spine. Not a happy smile, that much was for sure.
"Who are you?" Quatre leaned in, and took some steps forward with the other's following. All of them walked over to the phone; some dragging their chairs such as Relena, Une, and Sally while Quatre took a seat in front with the other Gundam pilots standing about near the screen.
"That would be classified information. Like much about the information about you all." The lady responded rather smartly, acting matter-of-factly. "But if you must call me something. Call me Lethe." She looked at the screen. She took in all the figures. "So. There's Miss Une, Miss Po, Quatre, Duo, Wufei, Trowa, and, oh! It's Miss Relena." She stated. She plopped down into a chair on the other side of the line, smiling evilly at them.
"This is stupid. Disconnect the link." Wufei growled, muttering about stupid onna's and earning a glare from Sally. Quatre nodded, reaching for the disconnection cable, but stopped when the girl spoke again.
"I would most certainly not do anything of the sort if I were you." She smiled wickedly. "I want 99 billion credits delivered by Relena to a certain estate which I will give you if you agree. You'll only have an hour though." Her grin grew wider, "Time limits makes everyone run around like rats, scurrying around for cheese or if an exterminator is here."
"And just why would we do that?" Relena nearly shouted at the girl thinking of her insubordination and disrespect for all of them. Ninety-nine billion? That was more than one third of the Earth Sphere United Nation's budget.
The girl looked at them blankly and then blinked again. "What?" She said, surprised. "I never told you?" She stretched the word 'never' for a while.
"Tell us what?" Quatre said calmly, trying to get rid of the tensions rising higher and higher because of the way this Lethe girl was acting.
"We have one of your comrades. Currently, he's out of it." She smiled wickedly again. "Or to put it better, he's unconscious." She smiled pleasantly this time. "My boss seemed to want to know where the Gundam's were, but he didn't tell. Sadly," She lowered her head. "I wasn't allowed in the interrogation, so I'm not sure if this was a good or bad interrogation."
"And why should we believe you?" Duo snarled almost. This girl was getting on his nerves.
Her crimson eyes showed true malice. "Well, maybe since you're the way your acting I should just give him to someone else or even…." She smiled even more. "Keep him for myself." She said slowly. Letting every clear word fill their ears.
"What in God's name are you talking about woman!" Wufei nearly belted out at her.
"I'm talking about one of your friend's. I'm not gonna say his name, it adds more to the surprise. So I'll let you all take a look at him."
The girl disappeared and then came back with some guards behind her, they brought another chair and placed an unconscious and bound person near the screen. A nasty gash ran on his forehead, leaving a running stream of crimson red blood that hadn't dried up yet, showing that the "interrogation" hadn't been that long ago.
The young warrior snapped her fingers together and the light got brighter, slowly, revealing the person's face, shocking all of the people in the room…
TBC
