Disclaimer: I in no way own Gundam W. Don't sue; I'm simply an E-5 in the USN, therefore I have no money. Ha.

-BEGIN FIC-

13:00 Hours --

"Would you like another sandwich, Trowa?"

"Aa. Thank you, Quatre."

Reaching over, the Heavy Arms pilot lifted a ham and cheese sandwich from the plate carried by the young Arab and promptly stuffed it into his mouth.

Quatre giggled as he nodded, chewing. "You look like a chipmunk. Your cheeks are distended."

Trowa just grunted as he clicked the mouse that he held with his right hand.

"How's your search going?"

Trowa sighed quietly, shrugging his shoulders. "Nothing out of the ordinary yet. Reviewing the history of your security tapes doesn't help much. That bastard James stuffed the hole your camera's lens was stationed behind before he left."

"Damn…" Quatre whispered quietly, scratching his chin. "Wonder why?"

"Covering for his friends?"

"Or just being an ass. He's known for that kind of thing. He enjoys proving that he can outsmart every one around him."

"He must have hated working with you, then."

Quatre beamed at the compliment. "Thank you."

A few more moments of silence past as Trowa flicked through tape after tape of footage. Quatre leaned on the desk he was seated at facing Trowa. His arms crossed over his chest, he smirked. "This has got to be the most mind-numbing thing you've done lately, neh?"

Trowa let his eyes rove quickly over the tee shirt and jeans clad boy before shrugging. "It's got to be done."

"Aa, but it's so… boring. And it feels so unproductive!" Quatre sighed melodramatically, letting his head loll back on his neck and contented himself with huffing at the ceiling.

Trowa smirked slightly, shaking his head. "It won't be, once we find out what happened."

"I'll tell you what happened. One of those two ransacked that room to throw us off track."

Trowa arched a brow.

"I'm willing to bet that whatever you find on that video tape will be leading us down the wrong path to the true perpetrator."

"You really think so?"

"Trust me. I have a bad feeling about this. All of this."

15:15 Hours --

Duo stuffed another spoonful of vanilla ice cream in his mouth.

"Fuck no, he ain't conscious yet," he muttered.

Trowa barely managed to resist the urge to gag. 'It's so revolting when he talks with his mouth open. Ugh.' "Damn," is what made it between his lips, though, swiftly followed by, "Wonder if smelling salts would help. I'd like to question him.

"You and me both, buddy. I'm sick of all this reviewing security tapes, dusting for fingerprints, yadda yadda yadda. I mean, both of their fingerprints show all over the fucking place. Just like yours. And just like James. And mine, and Quatre's. Just what the fuck are we supposed to deduce from that, hm?"

"Fruitless path." Shaking his head, Trowa sighed. "That's what Quatre's saying the video surveillance tapes are going to uncover, as well."

"Only fucking recourse is the unconscious guy, and he's probably gonna lie his fool ass off."

"Hm." Scratching his chin, Trowa frowned. "What we really want to know is…."

"What happened in there and why, right?"

"Yeah. It's obvious who was behind it."

"Yep. Chad. 'Less, of course, Xavier half beat himself to death then threw himself down that service shaft, then managed to close the hatch before passing out." Duo rolled his eyes.

Trowa just scratched his chin. 'I wonder…'

'Maybe this isn't as clear-cut as it seems to be.'

16:21 Hours --

Trowa silently followed Quatre as the boy made his way downstairs into the manor's basement. "So, where are we going again?"

"The mainframe," Quatre replied with a casual shrug.

"And you're revealing this to me because…?"

"I need your help. I don't need to worry about you retracing my steps and breaking into the system without me knowing about it. There's no way anyone can enter this area without my consent. Spilling what'd down here to any enemy force will have no repercussions, as there's no way anyone can break in. My secrets guard themselves, and they do so well."

Trowa simply nodded, following as they walked to a non-descript segment of the west wall.

Quatre glanced through the aged bottles that rested upon their racks.

"Alcohol?"

Quatre giggled lightly. "Company, Trowa. You can't possibly think that I wouldn't have any consideration for those who visit my grounds who doesn't follow my faith, neh?"

"Of course." Slyly smirking, Trowa shook his head.

"Mmmmm… ah. Vintage Merlot, A.C. 22, Stewart Cellars winery. Wonderful batch that year, from what all of the critics say."

The taller boy nearly toppled over. "Um…. Aa." 'That bottle's worth a god forsaken fortune!'

Lifting it, the boy blew the dust off of the bottle, shrugged, and tossed it to Trowa. "Hold this a moment, will you?"

Trowa barely managed to keep from dropping the bottle, his fingers buttery and limp as he caught the thrown bottle. Turning his eyes to Quatre, he simply arched a brow.

The boy had his hand thrust in the wine rack, resting against the wall.

A beep sounded moments later, as did the grinding of stone against stone.

"You mind putting that back?" Quatre said as he walked away from the wine rack and began to cross the cellar.

Doing as he had been bid, Trowa followed, then stared at what had created the grinding noise he'd heard earlier.

A section of the south wall had lifted, revealing a keypad and a handprint scanner.

Resting his left hand upon the scanner, he carefully typed what sounded to be a twenty-digit number into the pad. Standing perfectly still, he stared at the wall.

Trowa's eyes narrowed slightly. 'Retina scan for identification? No wonder he said that no one's getting in without his consent.'

Another beep, accompanied by a computerized voice crooning "Identify Confirmed. Welcome, Quatre Raberba Winner" sounded. More grating filled the still atmosphere as the wall beside the keypad slid out of place, revealing a brightly lit and metal-lined hallway beyond.

15:18 Hours --

"I just want to know what gives you the impression that this Waverly character is fully clear of suspicion."

Shrugging, Trowa frowned. "I don't believe that. It's Quatre's impression. We can only trust his judgement."

"Trust 'Mr. Sleeps-with-the-enemy,' eh?"

Trowa felt his fist clench entirely of its own accord. "Yes."

Shrugging, Duo sighed. "Damn it all to Hell, I say… just explain why we don't just tromp on their sorry rear ends and get this over with. I mean, yes, Quatre's got this whole theory bit going about the Romefeller Foundation and how predicting their moves'll make it billions of times easier on us, so we aren't second guessing what OZ is up to, but I mean, come on! He's got what he needs, so why don't we just trash their asses for this crap and get on with what we're supposed to be doing?"

"Do you ever breathe?"

"Shut the fuck up. Just answer the question!"

Trowa shrugged. "It's entirely up to him. Maybe striking now is a bad idea."

"And why the hell would it be a bad idea!" Duo shouted, waving his arms around.

"Duo, think about it. We still don't know who was behind this, or why they've done what they've done. We don't know how much information they've retrieved off of Quatre's computers."

"And so?"

"Haven't you realized where your mission orders have been coming from?"

Duo's violet eyes nearly rolled from his head. "You've got to be kidding me…."

Trowa just shook his head.

"So… if they got in, like it looks like they did…"

"They know exactly what we've been scheduled to do for, oh, approximately our next ten missions. Each. All of us. Including you."

"Meaning defenses'll be up."

"Meaning we'll be killed."

"FUCK!" Snarling, the braided boy punched the table. Lifting his hand, he growled at the blood that was beginning to seep out of his cracked knuckles.

"Which, I think, is why Quatre wants to lay low for the moment and figure out exactly what happened. He wants to know who's responsible, who they're working for, and what their intentions are."

16:29 Hours --

Trowa stared about his surroundings, completely enraptured with fascination. 'These walls are crafted from solid Titanium alloy, aren't they?' he thought to himself.

"Gundanium reinforced. We shipped the panels down from MO III before we shut that facility down."

Trowa stared at the blond boy.

"We're here," Quatre quipped, ignoring the questioning look that was being grilled onto him by the other pilot. Touching yet another keypad, he typed in another password, finished another retina scan and watched as yet another door opened.

Trowa stared in awe as they stepped through.

He was facing a wall of computer monitors.

Quatre slipped into the only seat in the room without waiting for Trowa to come to his senses, and folded his hands in his lap. "Computer, login identification: Quatre Raberba Winner. Recognize voice print, password: This is my cheesy password."

The computer beeped. "Identification confirmed."

All the monitors came to life.

"Show activity log of all terminals located on grid B 97 for the last 30 hours."

Mesmerized, the emerald-eyed boy simply stood behind Quatre, his hands unconsciously finding resting places upon the platinum-haired pilot's shoulders as each screen began to rapidly scroll numbers, IPs and file transfer logs.

"They got the mission logs."

Trowa hung his head.

18:49 Hours --

It was turning out to be a disturbingly silent dinner.

But, of course, that doesn't last for long when Duo Maxwell and Quatre Winner are seated in the same room for any determinable length of time.

"So they got the logs, eh? Fuck…"

"No big deal, really. I've just disabled my autosend. No one'll receive what has been stolen."

"Meanin' their reinforcements'll be sitting around on their asses with nothin' to do, seein' as how we'll never be showin' up?"

"Yep!"

"Well, that's a good thing." Duo shoved another fork full of spaghetti into his mouth, chewing happily. "Ya know, I love your chefs. You say 'God damn it, I want spaghetti! I'm sick of this weird Middle-Eastern crap!' and they say, 'We are greatly sorry, Duo-sama! How would you like us to prepare tonight's dish to better please you?' Heh. Great."

'God, Duo, stop talking with your mouth full,' Trowa silently seethed, munching on his dinner even though he was quickly losing his appetite.

"Um, Duo? Favor."

"What, Quatre?"

"Don't talk with your mouth full. It's gross."

"Oh! Shit, I'm sorry." Laughing, he made certain to fully chew and swallow his next mouthful before speaking again. "Sometimes I don't even realize I'm doin' that. Just tryin' to get two things done at once… fill the stomach and shout out what my brain's screamin', you know?"

Quatre giggled. Trowa simply nodded his thanks.

Finally, the taller boy included himself in the conversation. "If we are going to alter our mission plans, this pilfering of our prior plots may work to our advantage. If they reallocate all of their troops, their other strongholds will be relatively unprepared and under-protected."

"Take out the weak links, make 'em panic like hell? Good strategy…"

"Save it won't work."

Both pilots stared at the blond. "Nani?" they questioned in unison.

"I was already planning to alter our mission logs. Romefeller's objective is altering the plan."

Trowa narrowed his eyes. "Tell us more."

"No can do until I have everything figured out. For now, we'll just have to leave things to fate, neh?"

Leaning back in his chair, Duo groaned, stretching until his back audibly popped. "I don't like the sound of that, Quatre."

"Neither do I. But there's nothing more we can do at the moment."

"Especially seeing as how we still don't know who our enemies are, and what they're planning. Certainly they knew that we'd alter our mission logs when we discovered that.…"

Duo's words trailed into silence.

Trowa nodded slowly, before resting his chin in the palm of his hand. "Damn."

tbc…