"When was the last time you were violent, Chang? The last time you split your knuckles on someone else's jaw as you pounded their face into a meaty pulp like just so many pounds of raw, bloody hamburger? It's been too long for me, I think. I'm starting to forget that sweet, coppery taste of blood as it slides across my tongue—as I suck it down and revel in it."

In Wufei's nightmarish memory, Wren laughed and slurped at the blood welling up on her small fist. The liquid stained her lips red, her teeth pink, he saw, horrified, as she lapped her tongue cat-like across the wound.

Wufei woke with a start in his hotel room on Colony L5-F729. The room was silent except for the hum of the air conditioning unit in the corner and the rattle of his rapid breathing in his chest. The clock on the nightstand proclaimed it to be only a little after midnight, but harsh, unnatural light forced its way in from a crack in the thick curtains. Parts of this colony—especially near the spaceport docks—never got dark, so the light said one thing, the clock said another, and his poor, abused circadian rhythms a third.

Sliding out from beneath the sheet, he crossed the room to the little adjoining bathroom, wearing only his briefs. The AC blew cold air against his sweat-slick skin, and he had to fight the urge to shiver. He turned on the faucet and splashed lukewarm water at his face. Whether due to fatigue or lack of light, his aim was bad, and water dribbled down his chest in rivulets. "I've spent too much time on Earth," he muttered to himself.

He was a little more awake now—a little calmer—though still on edge from the dream. "Why did my subconscious choose that memory for me?" he asked out loud. The answer came to him almost immediately—because this was the first time he had thought about her in over two years. Since he had been judged worthy to pilot Nataku, and she…well, she had been given other, less honorable tasks to complete. He suppressed a shudder as the image of her licking her knuckles flashed through his mind again. Wren was not a warrior—not as he was—she was something else, something less…wholesome. Despite her rigid upbringing, she cared little for honor or valor. In her eyes, the fight was a means of drawing blood. And she liked blood.

He dried his hands, face, and chest with a small hand towel. If he was awake, then he might as well attend to business. His laptop sat hibernating on the small table in the corner under the window. He thumbed the standby button then pulled on his jeans as he waited for it to wake back up. He expected his mailbox to be full of messages from Une and Sally demanding his return immediately—he had watched the news before falling asleep and knew that the Vice Foreign Minister had been abducted. He wouldn't go though. Finding Wren and putting a stop to whatever schemes she was involved in far out-weighed the need to save Relena Darlian. Besides, Heero would take care of Relena—he always did.

There was one message from Sally:

Wufei,
I know you watch the news, so I won't bother to tell you what has been going on. We're swamped here at Preventer Headquarters, but I'm sure you've already figured that out for yourself. We could use your help, but I know this trip of yours is more than a simple vacation. I trust you, Wufei, to know whether or not you should come home or stay. I hope you find what you're looking for.
Love,
Sally

The silly woman always signed her letters—even in-department memos—with the word "love". The first time he had received something from her (it had been a forwarded email full of jokes), it had angered him. He had confronted her in her office that day. It was simply, she had explained, a habit of hers since childhood. The letters she and her father had exchanged when he was away fighting had always been signed "love", so she had fallen into a pattern of always doing so. Then, she had teased him about making such a big deal of it.

He winced as he recalled how embarrassed he had been. He had behaved quite foolishly. But, a couple of days later, they had made the coffee run together, and she'd talked about her father.

"Did they give us the correct brew for Une?" Wufei asked her as she accepted a tray with six coffees stuck in it.

Sally put the tray down on the coffee shop counter and took the lid off the first cup, sniffing it. She made a face, "Yuy's," and returned the coffee to the tray.

"I still think we should just buy a can of turpentine and serve it to him hot," Wufei said. "He burned off his taste buds long ago—he'd never know the difference."

"My dad used to drink Turkish coffee like Heero does," she said as she sniffed another cup. "This one's Decker's. He used to say that soldiers either had to drink, smoke, or partake of coffee strong enough to melt the enamel off your teeth." She checked a third cup. "This is yours." He accepted it and took a sip. "He was a tank man for the Alliance," she continued. "He fought for them when they were first unifying all the separate little countries. That was the first time, you know, that Earth had the chance to get this peace-thing right." She put the lid back on the fourth cup. "It took what? Three tries to get it right, and then we almost lost it all to a ten year old." She looked down at the two cups she hadn't tested yet. "One of these is Une's gourmet brew and the other's Ives' hot chocolate. Want to bet the last one I pick up is Une's?"

He reached over and plucked the one on the left out of the tray. "Try this one first."

"Why don't you test it?"

"Unlike you, I can't tell coffee blends apart just by smelling them."

"It's a talent, I know," she said, giving him a smile. She popped the lid off and gave it a sniff. "You were right—this is Une's. You've got skills, Chang." He remembered how he had bristled when she said his name like that. She always called him "Wufei", never "Chang".

"Did you know that my dad was one of the first to pilot a Leo?" she asked as she headed out to the car with the coffees. It was a Preventer vehicle—an armored Humvee with bullet-proof windows—and she drove. He still hadn't bothered to get his civilian driver's license. "He worked security—I don't know why they gave a security post to a guy who drove a tank, but they did—for the test group that worked on the first mobile suits. He said one of the test pilots, a woman, let him sit in the cockpit of the very first mobile suit. It was made out of gundanium—the first couple were. It wasn't until they built the Tallgeese that they started making them out of neo-titanium. Anyway, he said it was one of those once in a lifetime opportunities." She set the tray down in between the seats and settled in the driver's seat. He buckled himself into the passenger seat and put the tray on his lap so it wouldn't slide.

"I imagine it was," Wufei agreed. "So he was promoted from tanks to Leos when the Alliance came out with mobile suits?"

"He said that after that woman let him sit in the gundam, he couldn't not try and pilot one." She started the truck and backed it out of the parking space. The parking lot of the coffee shop was narrow, but she somehow got the Humvee turned around without hitting anything. "I think he was little in love with her as well as the machine," she added quietly. "My parents were separated by that point in the war. My mother didn't want to be married to a man who was never home. Never mind that it was his job that kept him away."

Wufei hadn't known until then that Sally had come from a broken home. Actually, he hadn't known much about her at all except that her father was Chinese and her mother English. He leaned down and typed off a quick reply to her, then sent the email, and closed down the computer. It was time to find Wren.

Sally woke up with the shape of a paperclip imprinted into the side of her face. She had fallen asleep at her desk. Not surprising since she hadn't gone home since the attack on the Prague palace. Une had left her in charge of HQ while she was off handling damage control in Prague.

The sludge in the bottom of her coffee cup did not look promising. Taking it in hand, she headed for the employee lounge. The clock hanging on the hall wall said it was 10:40pm, but Ives and Decker were in the lounge. Decker, a good-looking blond former Treize Faction member, was pouring himself a cup of coffee. Ives, a lanky anti-Alliance rebel from the Congo, was asleep on the lounge's couch with a newspaper over her head.

"Tell me that coffee's hot," Sally said to Decker.

"Honey, you're in the luck." He gave her a dazzling smile that revealed perfectly white, even teeth. They'd dated for a few months before he broke it off. She hadn't been as committed as he was, and he wanted to avoid undo heartache. Times like this, she decided, as she held her out her mug, she wished she could be more committed. But, a charming accent and a hand with Mr. Coffee were not enough to keep her in a relationship. She wanted depth. Emotional baggage. Someone who could and would argue with her.

Steam rose up as he poured the rich, dark brew into her cup. "I could kiss you," she teased. She took a gulp, even though it burned her mouth and throat. "Beautiful, beautiful caffeine." She turned her attention to the woman on the couch. "Is she awake?" she asked Decker.

It was Ives who replied from under the newspaper, "No."

"Any luck on tracking that shuttle?"

"The Orbiting Space Traffic Tracking Net has been on the fritz for the past couple of weeks. The shuttle slipped out through one of the holes, and then we lost 'em."

Sally considered that as she took a sip of her coffee. The caffeine was already doing its thing, waking her up. "Any chance OSTTNet was sabotaged?"

Ives gave her a thumbs-up sign. "Very good, boss, very good," the black woman muttered sarcastically. "I've got the OSTTNet computer scanning itself for Trojans and other rogue programs. It should be finished in…" The newspaper was raised a few inches so Ives could look at her watch "…six hours."

Sally nodded absently, and then realized Ives couldn't see her, "Good, stay on it." Blessed coffee in hand, she wandered back to her office. No leads—and no warnings. Her fingers tightened around the mug's handle. There had been absolutely no warnings at all before the strike. No whispers in the underworld, no large supplies of gundanium alloy disappearing… In fact, there had been very little trouble from the Colonies at all since the end of Mariemaia's Uprising. It had been the Earth that kept the Preventers hopping—countering radicals, rebels, and even religious fundamentalists. That last lot gave her a major headache. She sighed—how were they supposed to prevent violence when they had no warning? This reminded her in too many ways of Operation Meteor.

She sat back down at her desk and pulled up her email. Wufei had replied.

Dear Sally,
I am afraid I am unable to return to the Earth at this point. I fear that the recent appearance of a new gundam may be tied to aspects of Operation Meteor that have not yet been made public. I will take care of that potential threat and then return. Good health and long life to you and Lady Une.
Sincerely,
Chang Wufei

He had put his name in Chinese characters underneath the electronic signature. She smiled. There was something so poetic about Wufei that electronic discourse couldn't do justice to. Funny though, that he mentioned Operation Meteor when she had just been thinking about it. It reminded her of something...

She pushed back her desk chair and went over to the bookcase against the far wall. The only light in the long room that she and Wufei and Heero used as an office was the one shining down on her desk, but she didn't need light to find the book she was looking for. Her hand traced along the spines of mobile suit manuals, binders of mission reports, and the few paperback novels that people brought in and then forgot to take home. Most of these had been Noin's—the mysteries, the thrillers, the random Thai cookbook—had all belonged to Sally's last partner. Sally felt a twinge as her finger brushed over the cover of the cookbook. It had been a year since Noin and Zechs had left for the Mars terraforming project. She got emails every couple of weeks, full of technical chatter about the project and some odd gossip. Sally always sent replies with news about the people Noin had left behind—Amber Benson from the mail room getting married and then immediately getting pregnant with twins, Heero joining the Preventers, working with Wufei—but she wondered if Noin cared anymore. It was hard losing your best friend.

Finally, she found the book she was looking for. It was a leather-bound journal she had filled during her early days as an Alliance medic. Her dad had kept work journals, recording what he did each day in the service of the army (well, what he could write about without violating security codes), and she had tried originally to do the same. Her entries stopped right around the time that Duo Maxwell had broken Heero out of her hospital, and they had both jumped out a hole they had blown in the side of the building. A smile quirked up the side of her mouth—trust those two to know how to make an exit. Heero still had a bad habit of blowing things up. Some of the boys down in Armaments kept a running tally of how many grenades Yuy exploded in the line of duty.

She pulled the journal out and set it aside. Behind it, pressed flat against the back of the bookcase, was one of her dad's work journals. She had brought it in to read during her "spare time", but she hadn't wanted Wufei to find it. Not that he read much off this bookcase except for those things pertaining to work, but still…her dad had mentioned her several times and she didn't want Wufei reading about her as a child. She had been a gawky, awkward child and an even gawkier, more awkward teen.

She flipped it open and headed back to her desk. This long day was going to get a little longer.

"Hirde, what's this?" Duo asked. There was only curiosity in his voice, but Hirde, in the process of toasting waffles, winced as she turned around. Duo, fresh from the shower and wearing only a pair of boxers, was standing in the doorway to the kitchen. He had a little purple plastic stick pinched between two fingers.

"A pregnancy test," she answered, her voice cracking half way through the word "pregnancy".

Duo blinked. "Oh…" he looked at the stick again, "Why was it behind the trashcan?"

"'Cause I got angry at it," Hirde replied. She turned back to the toaster and drummed her fingers on the counter. Why wouldn't the frozen waffles cook faster? She was beginning to think the freezer was set too low… My, she was being evasive this morning. Couldn't even look her own boyfriend—who swore up and down (and she was inclined to believe him) that he loved her—in the eye.

She wasn't looking at him, but she could still feel the change that went through him as he woke up a little more and started to consider the implications of the device he was holding. "Hir…why were you angry at the test?" he asked cautiously.

She bit down hard on her lip and felt all the muscles in her back tense. "Because it came back positive"—the words all came out in a rush.

"WHAT?" Duo's bellow echoed throughout the tiny kitchen. Hirde winced again. His shout had been all volume, no tone, so she wasn't sure if he was angry or…or…

Strong arms seized her around the middle and swung her around and around. "I'm gonna be a dad! I'm gonna be a dad!" Duo crowed. Then, realizing where their child currently was located, he let go in a hurry.

Hirde staggered back a little, bumping into the kitchen table. "I take it you're not angry," she said quietly. His face was absolutely alight with a huge smile. She couldn't help but return it.

"Angry?" he looked a little confused, "Why would I be angry?"

Hirde just shook her head and stepped forward, wrapping her arms around his waist. He had shot up in the past two years since the Eve Wars—sometimes an inch in as little as two weeks—until he reached six feet. She felt so short compared to him. Heck, she felt short compared to everybody. She felt a tear trickle down the side of her nose. It curled along the underside of one nostril then fell on to her lower lip.

"Shit, babe, are you crying?" He turned her face up towards his. "Why?"

The concern in his eyes and all the tension she had been under since early morning suddenly became too much. She burst into tears. "I…I dunno," she managed to get out between sobs.

"We're going to have a baby!" he repeated. He looked like a small child at Christmas who had just been given a puppy…only happier, if that were possible. His strong arms tightened around her.

And then a wave of nausea hit her like a brick. She wriggled out of his grip and took off down the hall towards the toilet.

She barely made it.

Of course, there was nothing in her stomach, since the waffles were still cooking (ah hell, they were probably burnt now), so all that came up was stomach acid and a little bit of what might have been last night's cheeseburger. "Shit," she moaned, wiping her mouth as she collapsed down on the floor in front of the toilet. The linoleum on the back of her bare legs was so cold.

Duo came in and looked at the mess in the toilet. His nose wrinkled, but he didn't say anything…just closed the lid and flushed. Then, he sat down behind her and wrapped his arms around her, resting his chin on her shoulder. "You ok?"

"I guess this is what they call morning sickness," she said weakly.

"You want me to make an appointment with Doc Lazarus?" he asked, naming the outlaw doctor who lived down the street. The old man was the closest thing they had to a medic in this sector of the colony. He was also a good friend of theirs.

She leaned back into him, letting him support her. "That'd be nice."