Roberta picked her way along the rocky beach, electric lantern swinging from her hand. The setting sun had brought storm clouds, and those storm clouds had quickly opened up into a deluge of black rain. Before that though, she had seen flashes of light that had nothing to do with atmospheric conditions. What the hell were mobile suits doing fighting out here? She wondered. Come to think of it, what were mobile suits doing fighting at all? It's starting again, isn't it? She shivered inside her black slicker but not because of the rain. She had lived through too much. Way too much. She did not want to live through yet another war, even if all she did nowadays was watch the battles on TV. It was the only time she watched TV—when there was a war—her battered set tuned to the news channel as repetitive reports rattled off casualties and political stances. Her TV set had been on through the entirety of Operation Meteor and the Eve Wars, and most of Mariemaia's Uprising (she had been in Moscow, at Sister Tabitha's funeral, when that had started). She sometimes muted it when politicians were on—they knew nothing about the lives they tossed so casually aside. That Peacecraft girl had been the worse—made Roberta's teeth hurt just listening to her.

She thought she'd seen a suit come down over here, but she had been looking into the setting sun at the time and maybe all she had seen was another black spot in front of her vision. She was getting old—well, not really in the grand scheme of things…though she did have more than her fair share of aches and pains—and her eyes had to go at some point.

Her electric lantern did little to cut through the dark, but she thought she saw it glint off something small and metallic. Scrambling down off the rocks, she landed on a small sandy strip of beach. There was someone down here—two people in fact. Both dressed in the uniform of the Preventers. Both drenched, and she suspected not just from the rain. "Are you okay?" she called out as she skidded across the sand coming to a halt by the two entangled bodies. A boy and a girl, not old enough to be in law-enforcement really, but the wars had forced a whole generation to grow up too fast. She got no answer, so she placed two fingers against the artery in the boy's throat to take his pulse. It was a little weak, and he was freezing cold—wet, cold, but alive. The girl, however, might be a different story.

"Hey, wake up!" she ordered, shaking the boy's shoulder. He moaned and opened his eyes.

"Who? Who are you?" he asked, pulling back in surprise. His hand began to hunt instinctively for a rock or something to use as a weapon against her. She watched the hand scrabble through the sand with something akin to amusement. This kid was well-trained.

"My name's Roberta," she said quickly, before he could find a makeshift weapon, "I'm the caretaker at a church up the hill. I saw the battle." She pried the girl loose from his grasp and picked her up in a fireman's hold. "Come on, you can rest at the church."

He staggered a little as he stood but didn't limp. Roberta grunted as she put her foot on the first of many, many rocks and forced herself up. It was going to be a long trek back to the church. She was getting too old for this.

Something sparkled in the debris covering the floor of the hallway where the Gundam had broken through. Quatre rubbed his eyes—he had yet to sleep since the attack almost twelve hours ago—but there was really something shiny half-hidden under the rubble. He bent down and brushed the dust and small chips of concrete aside. It was a necklace, the golden chain broken, with a beautiful tear-shaped sapphire dangling from it. He turned the gem over, looking for an inscription or a jeweler's mark that might help him locate the owner—this looked like a very precious piece, and he was sure someone was missing it. What he saw made him frown. The gold backing on the jewel seemed to be made of two sheets of gold fitted around a filler. One piece had slipped, revealing that the "filler" was electronic. Hurriedly, Quatre used his fingernails to pry off the backing. A tracking device. He suddenly had a very good idea of who this necklace belonged to and how the Gundam had managed to hone in on her.

"Rashid!" he shouted to the big man who was prying bullets out of the wall down the hall. When Une had put Quatre temporarily in charge of the investigation, he had called in the Maganacs. "Contact Miss Relena's people and find out where her necklace came from!"

"Yes, Master Quatre," the big Arab replied. He pocketed the tweezers he had been using and immediately took out his cell phone.

"Would you like some coffee?" a voice asked from behind him.

"What? Oh." Quatre turned—Sylvia Noventa stood at the foot of the rubble pile, a cup of coffee in each hand. "Thank you. Coffee would be great." He scrambled down to the floor, stuffing the broken necklace into his pocket.

"I wanted to do something to help," she said with a shy smile as she handed the coffee to him. "Unfortunately, brewing coffee is pretty much the only thing I know how to do when it comes to investigating terrorist attacks."

"You could go home." As soon as those words left his mouth, he knew he didn't want her to. She looked very pretty this morning—she had changed into a pair of khakis and a pink blouse—and she certainly didn't look as if she had been up all night. Personally, Quatre was so tired that his face hurt.

"Your men still haven't had the chance to take my grandmother's statement. She was very upset last night, so I gave her a sleeping pill. They were kind enough to let her go lie down in one of the palace bedrooms."

"Is she all right?" He took a sip of his coffee.

Sylvia nodded sadly. "She had such hopes that there would truly be peace once Mariemaia's Uprising was put down by unarmed civilians. Last night's display made her feel for a moment that maybe Grandfather's death was in vain. I'm sure she'll be fine when she wakes up. She is a very strong woman." She flushed. "Please excuse my rambling—I guess I'm more tired than I thought I was."

"Don't apologize. It was very nice of you to make this," he held up the cup of coffee. "It's more useful than my investigation has been so far. I hope Lady Une manages to free up some Preventers soon to come and take over. I'm afraid I'm not very good at this sort of thing." He gazed sadly back at the milling Maganacs and the rubble.

"Well, I think you are doing a good job," Sylvia said. Her pretty mouth was set firmly. "If it weren't for your organizing, this place would be in chaos still, and the body of that poor man—the Minister of Agriculture, was it?—would still be buried under all the rubble. You really are doing a wonderful job."

Words failed him, and he could only manage a blushing smile.

"ALL PASSENGERS PLEASE PREPARE TO DISEMBARK."

The loudspeaker crackling overhead woke Wufei. Stifling a yawn, he ground the grit out of the corners of his eyes with his fists. All around him, the shuttle's other passengers stood up, stretched, and started pulling their carryon luggage out of the overhead bins. Wufei waited. It had been a thirteen hour flight from Earth to Colony F729—an opportunity to catch up on missed sleep. Ever since Zechs and Noin had left for the Mars terraforming project, the Preventers were short senior officers. Actually, they were down to just him, Heero, Sally Po, and of course Lady Une. The latter was unimpressed with any of the dozens of applicants trying to be promoted to the upper echelons of the Preventer organization. Wufei thought she was still secretly holding out in hopes that she could lure Trowa away from the circus and Duo away from his scrape heap. The woman's high opinion of the former Gundam pilots was right and proper, but Wufei knew that Duo and Trowa were too enamored with their civilian lives to leave them behind. They had found ways to exist beyond the battlefield. He hadn't.

He couldn't—at least not yet when there were still past specters haunting him. Reaching into the breast pocket of his shirt (his civilian shirt—he was traveling incognito), he took out a folded piece of paper. He didn't open it, just held it in his hand. It was a printout of an email he had received two days before, and he knew every word by heart at this point. He had certainly stared at it long enough. There was still business he must take care of. It was his duty to handle this.

With a grimace, he pocketed the paper and stood. He had to duck to avoid cracking his head on the luggage compartment. He'd grown quite a lot since the end of the Eve Wars and was five feet, nine inches tall now. Taller than Sally Po. That gave him a small measure of satisfaction. He had worked closely with the woman ever since she had recruited him for the organization (he had later learned that she had received a nice bonus when he enlisted…silly woman had neglected to mention that in her little recruitment speech…not that he particularly minded). They shared an office with their desks pushed together, facing one another. On one hand, it was convenient when they were discussing something. On the other, her mess tended to overflow into his tidy workspace. There had been many high-volume discussions on the injustice of her forcing her sloppiness on to him. He smiled a little at the thought of their debates. In the end, she always acknowledged him as the winner of them.

He retrieved his duffel bag from the overhead bin and impatiently made his way off the shuttle and into the hubbub of the colony's busy spaceport. F729 was part of the L5 colony cluster—home. Most (but not all) of the residents were of some kind of Earth Asian descent. People that he recognized as having Thai or Korean or, like him, Chinese blood pushed passed. Dress was an esoteric mix of casual, professional, and traditional. Two little girls in kimonos ran by, their blond hair pulled up in bouncy ponytails. The sight of them made him draw up short (the man behind him cursing as he nearly knocked Wufei over). He watched the girls as they scrambled after a brightly colored ball. It rolled to a halt on the carpet about a meter from his feet, and the older of the two gave him a flirtatious smile as she scooped it up. Her eyes, he saw, were slanted and her nose slightly flattened despite her Caucasian skin tone and golden hair. Her sister looked much the same. They could be Sally's daughters, he thought.

"Sir, do you know where you're going?" It was the gate agent. "I can give you directions if you need them." She had shut down her computer terminal and was standing in front of her podium, a stack of papers in the crook of her arm. She was clearly headed elsewhere.

Wufei fought down a flush of embarrassment as he stepped aside to let her by. "No, sorry. I know where I'm going."

"Ok then." She gave him a cheerful service-industry smile and bustled past, her high heels clicking on the hard floor.

As soon as she was gone, he turned back to watch the little girls play, but they were nowhere in sight. He shook his head, then shouldered his duffel bag. This was no time for distractions—he had business to take care of.

Hirde wasn't quite sure what caused her to wake, but she found herself, eyes wide open, staring at the digital clock on the nightstand. 3:49. They had to keep it on her side of the bed since Duo had a bad habit of turning the alarm off in his sleep. Before they had moved in together, he had kept his alarm under a pile of dirty laundry on the far side of the room—it was the only way to guarantee he'd get up on time.

As she lay there, the minutes went by, marked by the changing of the clock. Her mind wandered from the particulars of the scrap business she and Duo ran together to noting that no matter how hard she stared, she never quite managed to witness the clock's transition from one minute to the next. Eventually, she started drawing up the week's grocery list in her head:
Bread
Milk
Rocky Road ice cream (for Duo)
Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream (for her)
Peanut butter
Coffee (the biggest can available)
Paprika (since the lid had come off the little bottle and ruined dinner the night before)
Hamburger
Printer paper
Apples (red, not green, Duo wouldn't eat green)
Tampons…

Wait, did she really need tampons? How many had been left in the box last month? Then, she realized she hadn't used any last month or even the month before. That was worrisome.

Quietly, she slid out from under the covers and took a step back away from the bed, waiting to see if the movement would wake him. He immediately flung out an arm to claim her vacated space as his, but he didn't wake up. He tended to sprawl, taking up as much of the bed as he could. She, on the other hand, after years of sharing a bed with her older sister and infant brother, kept to the edge, hardly moving. They worked well together like that.

Satisfied that he was still asleep, she padded barefoot to the bathroom. The air conditioning unit in the hall window blew cold air at her, making the skin on her bare legs prickle. She carefully closed the bathroom door behind her and turned on the overhead light. The sickly green glow of the digital clock had not been enough to spare her eyes from the light's attack. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, and, when it passed, she was digging around in the back of the under-sink cabinet. She had only been taking birth control tablets for a couple of months now, ever since a pregnancy scare. During the scare, she'd bought one of those home pregnancy tests, and it'd come in a three-pack.

She found one of the leftovers and briefly reviewed the instructions. It wasn't that complicated—pee on the stick, don't shake it, don't hold it upside down. She stripped the foil wrapper off the obnoxiously purple stick and did her business. Afterwards, she set it down on the counter and waited…and waited…and waited…

Slowly, a line appeared in the "Testing" circle, proving that the test wasn't past its expiration date (a minor miracle in it's own right—it was hard to get anything in the colonies before it expired).

Seated on the lid of the toilet, her legs pulled up to her chest, she was suddenly very cold in only her panties and Duo's Mickey Mouse shirt. She crossed her fingers. She crossed all of her fingers and crossed her big toes over the little ones beside them. Then, for good measure, she linked her thumbs together and held her breath. She wasn't quite sure what she was crossing her fingers for…

It had been like this the last time, the last scare that had put enough fear in her to start choking down the chalky anti-baby tablets every morning with her orange juice. The three minutes between the act and the answer. The three minutes where a stupid little piece of plastic dipped in piss held her life in its metaphorical hands. She knew in her heart that the time was not right for a baby. Hell, they were little more than babies themselves despite all they had done. Or, at least, that's how she felt every time she had to deal with some paper-pushing bureaucratic clerk who wouldn't let her do this or that simply because of her age. But, the last time, when a minus sign appeared in the "Results" circle instead of a plus, her stomach had clenched, and somehow, she'd felt worse than before she'd taken the test.

This time, she wasn't feeling any better about the whole scenario. In the back of her mind, she resolved to throw out that third test. Just having these things easily at hand was asking for an ulcer…

…Wait…there was something forming in the "Results" circle, dark pink splotches pulling together into a cohesive symbol…

"Damn it!" Hirde ducked her head, slamming her forehead into her kneecaps, and finding a bit of comfort in the sudden pain. She'd look really stupid walking around the rest of the day with twin circular bruises on her forehead. Why that seemed so important right now was beyond her comprehending.

She snuck a peak over at the plastic stick, its tip stained yellow with her urine. The plus sign still hadn't gone away. The directions had mentioned that the reading might change after ten or so minutes but to ignore it. Probably had something to do with drying or the chemical reaction winding down or something. The stupid little plus sign had just made her world go all topsy-turvy and it wasn't even going to stick around to see what happened. Figured.

Suddenly angry, she slapped the pregnancy test off the counter. It hit the floor and went spinning behind the waste basket. She gave it a good glare, then stormed out (careful, as always, to turn out the light).

Wherever that little tantrum had come from, it dissipated by the time she reached the bedroom…their bedroom. He was on his back, mouth open, snoring like a chain saw. She'd almost tripped over the comforter he'd kicked on to the floor when she came in. She watched him sleep for a few moments, in the eerie green glow of the clock. Part of her wanted to wake him up now and tell him, but as she reached over to shake his shoulder, she pulled back. No, let him sleep—they would deal with this in the morning. Sighing, she slid back under the sheet and pushed him back on to his side of the bed. It was going to be a long time until the alarm went off.