Chapter Fifteen

I

Zechs shrugged into his overcoat and handed a wad of bills to the driver, not caring how much money he gave the man but knowing the sum of the profit would buy more than just a few nights on the town. It seemed that these days the only untraceable mode of transportation was a taxi with a heavily-tipped driver.

He was sure he had not been followed, but nonetheless after he got out of the cab he looked over his shoulder, half-expecting to see some telltale trace of an amateur pursuer despite all the precautions he had taken. There were none.

The cab sped eagerly away, leaving Zechs standing alone by the docks, visible not only to anyone Treize might have sent after him but also to the people inside the building. He did not particularly care about this. If anyone saw him and, after deciding he was more foe than friend, wanted to gun him down, let them do it. He welcomed death over what would be coming if this mission were not successful.

He walked along the docks toward the building's side entrance. He lifted his eyes to the sky and without any intention of doing it he halted, his eyes wide and wondering as those of a child.

The sky was high tonight, and clear save for a few black wisps of clouds. The moon was behind one of these and the clouds muted its light to a dull shimmer. With the moonlight gone he could see the stars — so many stars so many it made his head swim to look at them millions upon millions of stars — and the lights of the colonies, but from the Earth they, too, looked like stars and he tried to think of them as that, tried to imagine that the space he peered up into was still untouched by human hands.

He wondered if Treize ever looked up at the sky these days, or if the one he was about to see did. He could still imagine Treize doing such a thing, but he had doubts about the latter.

He squinted at a point between the stars, trying to glimpse something beyond it, and he wondered what it would be like to return to space and not stop at the colonies or the distant planet Mars, to keep going until even the Earth was just another small speck of light piercing the darkness, then to keep going until his life was brought to an end or he found something beyond that darkness. He could do it; God knew he was enough of a coward to do it, and for a moment he seriously thought he would. No one knew he was here save for Odin, nor would anyone know if he left, and if he left he would not be missed for days. He could be well into space and to his death by then, if he let the system take his mind. He was about to turn and walk away when something stopped him, not a voice or a sound made by some amateur stalking him, but rather something in the sky.

The moon moved out from behind its cloud cover. Judging by its position in the sky, it was sometime after midnight. Lucrezia would be asleep at the palace by now, safely asleep in her own peaceful dreams while his child grew within her. He was weak, yes, he would admit that to anyone, but he was not so weak that he could take his own life and leave her to the world that would come to be if he failed to complete this mission. That would be something more than weak. That would be pathetic.

He proceeded on to the door at the side of the building. The door was unlocked even at this hour, but he knew there were guards on the other side of it. Not even a complete and utter idiot would leave information such as these people possessed unguarded.

He entered the building. The door slammed shut behind him, and the latch fell into place with a sound not dissimilar to the cocking of a gun.

Two uniformed guards, having left their posts at the juncture of the corridor beyond the room in which Zechs stood after being alerted by the inevitable whine of the door's hinges, started toward him, guns in hand. The first one had once been employed under some kind of military organization, Zechs could see from the man's posture and stance and in the confident way he brandished the weapon, while the second was obviously an amateur. Most of the soldiers who should have been doing this job were dead, Zechs mused humorlessly, and too many of those who had survived had seen too much warfare to want to participate in this work.

That was almost too bad, really. Zechs had a feeling that some of those old soldiers might be needed later on, especially now that it seemed Treize Kushrenada had the support of the sovereign of the Sanq Kingdom.

"I'm sorry, sir," the first guard said, not sounding sorry about it in the least. Zechs smiled faintly at this. "No one's allowed back here."

"I'm here to see Odin Lowe."

The former soldier didn't even flinch. "There's no one here by that name."

"It's in regard to the counteroffensive," Zechs continued, undaunted by the guard's forbidding expression and even more forbidding gun.

The guard did flinch this time, and out of the corner of his eye Zechs thought he saw the other one give a slight smile. Four days later he would berate himself for not realizing the significance of the smile then.

"You know about the counteroffensive?" the guard said, squinting at Zechs.

"Yes, and unlike yourself I actually know what it is," he growled. "Now would you please tell me where I can find Odin Lowe."

The guard gestured toward a lighted room at the end of the corridor with the barrel of his gun. "Ask for him down there."

Zechs nodded and without another word he proceeded down the hall. The second guard — the one who even now couldn't seem to wipe the tight grin from his face — followed him as though he needed an escort. If Zechs had been able to go for his own gun in the shoulder holster underneath the gray overcoat without arousing the guard's suspicion, he might have shot him on the spot. He would later wish he had.

There were three men in the room to which the first guard had pointed him, all of Chinese descent. They were sitting around a shabby table scarred by cigarette ashes and beer spills, apparently playing a rather dispirited round of poker. They all looked up at him expectantly when he entered the room, two of them smiling half-drunkenly, the other with an expression of sublime dread. Upon entering the room, he saw that there was a fourth man sitting in the corner, engaged in nothing, older than the others by several decades, it seemed. He knew immediately that this man would be the only one who had the authority to assist him.

"Can we help you with something?" one of the smilers asked in heavily-Chinese-accented English.

"I need to see Odin Lowe."

The two smilers furrowed their brows in confusion. "I'm sorry," the one said. "I don't think–"

"What do you want with Mr. Lowe?" the fourth man asked, sounding entirely unperturbed. "Would I be correct in assuming this has something to do with the counteroffensive?"

The other three looked at him, and Zechs found himself wondering what the man's explanation for his knowledge of a worker they had never even heard of would be.

"You would be correct," Zechs said, nodding.

The man rose to his feet. "Come with me," he said, and he stepped out of the room. As he passed, Zechs caught a glimpse of the slender, gray tail of hair tied at the nape of his neck. Could this possibly be Rhyn's beloved Yuan-Chen?

Zechs did as asked. The guard followed but kept a comfortable distance behind them.

When they were out of earshot of the other three, the man pointed toward an elevator to their left. "Go down. There will be a man in the office across from the service stairs. You may ask for Mr. Lowe there. I presume you know whom–"

"Yes," Zechs replied. He started for the elevator. The guard tried to follow but the Chinese man quickly grabbed him by the shoulder with a strength surprising for one of his age and thin size. He dropped his gun in surprise and was lucky it didn't go off.

"I'm sure Mr. Marquise is able to find his way there alone," the Chinese man said quietly. "You may return to your post now."

The guard gathered up his weapon and with a begrudging frown on his face, fled down the corridor.

The man smiled placidly. "Odin has informed me of what he has sent you for. I wish you luck in dealings with his 'son', Mr. Marquise."

Zechs nodded. He was not the least surprised that this man knew who he was. If he had not previously been so certain he wasn't being followed, he would have tucked his signature long hair — which was common in Sanq but not here — down into his overcoat.

The man turned and went back to the lighted room.

Zechs went to the elevator. Though he was alone it was rather cramped inside; he believed he had had more room in the cockpit of the first mobile suit he had ever piloted than in here.

The elevator was not well-used and the ride down was slow and silent. He fought against the image that tried to resurface in his mind, the image that had driven it home for him just how good the chances of Treize succeeding in his imperial endeavors really were. An open balcony door, two voices floating from the darkness beyond it. Two shadows, her elegant hand in his, a stolen kiss, and Zechs, unaware of what he was about to see, about to realize, had stepped out onto the balcony and she had turned and—

Relena!

The elevator came to a halt. Zechs shook his head, trying to clear the memory of the night's events from his mind, and stepped out into this new corridor.

It was remarkably colder down here than aboveground, and though this was to be expected, the chill only further unnerved him. Something wasn't right about this. He could not sense what it was, not yet at least, but something was wrong here.

He saw a sign reading 'Service Stairs' with an arrow pointing to the left. He walked slowly toward the stairwell, the only sound the solid clicking of his boots against the cement floor. There was an ominous quality to the silence between each step and again Zechs looked over his shoulder. Of course, he saw nothing. No one could have followed him without making some kind of noise and if someone had been waiting on him down here he would have seen some sign of them by now, for these hallways could only offer so much protection for so much time.

His thoughts turned to the guard, to the watchful smile he had glimpsed upon his face, so like the one he had seen upon Rhyn's when first they had met.

He would deal with that later. There was a much more pressing issue at hand now.

He walked to the stairwell. To the side of it, as promised, was a small office. Zechs stepped inside.

The office seemed dark at first, then after his eyes adjusted Zechs saw that it was bathed in soft blue light coming from a series of computer surveillance monitors on the western wall. Every one of the screens displayed a different portion of the corridors leading to this point.

The swivel chair in front of the computers turned and a man — an officer of some rank judging by his uniform — rose from it. He appeared to be alone here but Zechs knew that at any sign of trouble, with the press of a single button he could have one hundred soldiers swarming the halls, weapons in hand.

"Mr. Marquise?" he asked gruffly.

Zechs acknowledged this with a solemn nod. Apparently there was some kind of communication system linking the room in which he had found the four Chinese men and this one.

"How can I assist you?"

Zechs sighed, weary of this whole matter even in its beginning.

I presume you know whom–

Yes.

And he did know exactly who to ask for at this last junction.

"I'm here to see Takeru Hanasaki," he said.

The officer cleared his throat, hung his head for a moment. "This way," he said. He brushed past Zechs into the hall. Zechs followed.

They walked to the end of the wide corridor, their footfalls echoing deeper and deeper into the subterranean level until it sounded as though they preceded an entire phalanx marching into battle. Soon, Zechs knew, they might find themselves in that very situation.

They came to a flight of stairs leading further under the earth. The officer looked back at Zechs as though silently asking him if he was sure he wanted to do this, then led the way down into the darkness.

There was a second flight beyond the landing of the first, and with every step Zechs curiously found himself wondering if this was what it would be like to walk into his own grave.

There was only a single light on this level, lighting the landing and giving a faint illumination to the rooms beyond. They went to the last of these rooms. Zechs would not have to ask for the boy by yet another name inside this room, for inside was none other than the one he wanted to see.

The officer rapped his knuckles on the door, then depressed a button underneath the intercom system. "You have a visitor."

The voice, a bit static and very blunt, was easily recognizable to Zechs and he both shuddered and smiled at the sound of it when the boy answered: "I thought I told you I wasn't to be to disturbed."

"I think this is one disturbance you might want to endure."

All was silent over the intercom for a moment as the boy considered. "Send them in," he said finally. There was a quiet buzzing sound and the locks on the heavy door were disengaged.

The officer opened the door for Zechs and stepped aside to let him in, then let it fall shut again the second he was inside. The locks automatically reengaged.

The room — more of a bunker, really — was even darker than the security office. The only light came from a single computer in the far left corner, and even that light was meager for the screen was black, the only relief from the darkness being the small green words typed across it.

Heero did not take his eyes from the screen when Zechs entered, nor did he speak for the first few minutes following the officer's departure. His right hand was planted over the scroll and numeral keys on the keyboard, and every few seconds the black pages with green writing displayed on the monitor would jump to the next section of the document. There was a scar across that hand, Zechs noticed, one that he was sure hadn't been there when last he had seen him. The scar was colorless, thick and raised above the skin a little, a long cicatricial welt. It began as a straight diagonal slash across the metacarpals starting at the first knuckle, then at his wrist it curved wildly to form a thinner, almost serpentine pattern.

The scar on the former Gundam pilot's hand intrigued Zechs, but he said nothing about it. Such a wound could not be inflicted unintentionally, and he was almost certain he knew who had done it. From what he had gathered through accurate assumption, there was only one person Heero would allow to get by with such an insult to him.

Heero entered a final series of numerical data and the green words were replaced by a green outline of a mobile suit. He studied the image for a moment then said, without taking his dark eyes from the screen, "I should have known it was you."

Zechs didn't reply.

"An operation like this one has your name written all over it. But tell me, Zechs, did you join this one with yet another one of your ulterior motives or are you simply getting back at Treize?"

Zechs smiled dryly. "Perhaps a little of both," he said, and he took a few steps toward the pilot.

"Does Relena know about any of this?"

He stifled the choking sound that threatened to erupt from his throat at the sound of her name. "Yes." His voice was too thick despite his attempts to clear it.

"She supports him, then."

Zechs grimaced at the prospect of this, which he had earlier this evening come to find was true and in more ways than the one to which Heero referred. "I suppose you could say that."

Heero turned his head slightly toward Zechs, lifted an eyebrow. "Does she support him enough to allow him control of the Sanq Kingdom?"

"If things continue on the path they are on, she will give him the kingdom."

Whether or not Heero knew what Zechs meant by this or only partially did Zechs could not tell, but the subject of his sister was dropped and for that, for Heero's basic, unspoken understanding of him, he was grateful enough.

Heero cleared his throat and said, without looking up at him, "I heard Odin Lowe was seen near the Sanq Kingdom. I'm assuming you know something about this."

Zechs nodded, and strangely he found himself wishing he still had the mask that had protected his face and name for so many years. "He went there to speak with me on a matter he no longer trusted to kept discreet if discussed through a computer." This was close enough to the truth.

"I don't blame him for that," Heero said, shifting his eyes up and back to the screen and the hollow image of the mobile suit. "You have to admit: Treize's new soldiers can't fight but they can hack into almost anything they want to. He should've employed them in something other than the actual warfare. They were trained to be civil and formal and observe safely from behind their computer screens, not to get down in the whole bloody carnage of it. That's where Lake Victoria was a waste on you, Zechs."

Zechs was about to agree when an image of Lucrezia floated up in his mind, a mental picture of her as she had been when he first met her, back when her smile was still real and her dark violet hair was still long, back before she had gotten a true taste of battle and death. This image faded and gave way to a more recent one: Lucrezia dressed in a white hospital gown, her eyes dark and sunken, her mouth curled at the corners in a quiet moan of pain, a needle hooked to a glucose IV in one hand and the other hand lying atop her abdomen, resting over his child. You're wrong about that, Heero, he thought. I did get something out of it, and now it appears as though I'm going to be getting another something.

"What does your presence here have to do with Odin?" Heero asked. He typed in another set of data. The next image that appeared on the screen was the MS's profile.

"He asked me to come here. He has other business to attend to elsewhere."

"I'm doing all that he asked me to do," Heero said, calmly but with a slick note of an almost homicidal bitterness in his voice, "what more does he want?"

Zechs's eyes fell again to the scar bisecting Heero's hand and snaking down his wrist. Did Odin really ask you to do this or did he tell you to?

"He asked me to make a request of you," Zechs said, awaiting the pilot's reaction and wishing more now than ever that the silver mask still adorned his head.

"Get to it, then. That's another one of your problems, Zechs, you have to be formal to deliver a message. What does Odin want?"

"He wants you to bring Wing Zero to him."

"Wing Zero was destroyed."

"Badly damaged, yes, destroyed, no."

"They all destroyed the Gundams after the assassination of Dekim Barton."

"Not you, Heero."

"What does Odin want with Zero?"

"He's also requesting that you come with your Gundam." Zechs paused, debating on whether or not he should say this. He decided Heero would see through him anyway regardless. "I'm making that request as well."

Heero looked at him. "What do you want with Zero?"

Zechs didn't — couldn't — answer for a minute. He agreed with Odin on the reason why Zero might be needed, but was that really why he wanted Heero to bring his Gundam to Vólos? Or was there another reason as well, one that involved a certain secret constructed of Gundanium alloy hidden in an abandoned hangar only a few miles outside of the pacifist Sanq Kingdom that he had guarded as well as Heero had guarded the knowledge of his own? Was the real reason an unfinished battle and the sick desire to fight that coursed through Zechs's veins as surely as did the pacified blood of the Peacecrafts?

"Odin and I are in agreement," he said finally. "Wing Zero might be needed sometime in the near future. We're not sure when Treize is going to employ the use of his armies, but there probably isn't much time left."

"Probably isn't," Heero agreed. He turned back to his computer and gestured with his unmarked hand for Zechs to go to him. "I want to show you something."

Zechs stood behind the pilot's chair, watching over his shoulder as he keyed in the codes to bring the information he had been going over when Zechs interrupted him back up again.

"The Gemini system," Heero said, still tapping the keys, "Treize has already told you how it works and what it does, right? I'm just assuming you were the one who supplied Odin with the information."

"He has and your assumption is correct."

"Good, then I don't have to explain all this to you." He scrolled down the first five pages. "As you already know, the Gemini system was based on the Zero system. Treize wanted to duplicate the original system and then increase its power, but the people who designed the original are all dead now and what records they kept of it were conveniently stolen."

Zechs gave a faint smile. Lucrezia's first independent mission as a preventer.

"Treize's pawns tried to duplicate the system anyway, and they failed miserably. What they did manage to create, however, was a less powerful version of the Zero, one that leaves the pilot more in control of what he's doing but still has nowhere near the battle capabilities of an MS powered by the Zero."

Zechs nodded. He had heard all of this before but not without Treize's oozing soft-spoken self-confidence. And he knew Heero was getting to something, whichever way he had to take to get to it.

"The Gemini is still perhaps one of the most powerful suits aside from the Gundams, especially since all the other MS's were destroyed following Mariemaia's attempt at a world takeover." Heero scrolled to the next page. "What Treize didn't count on, however, was that someone would stumble across his plans and would organize a counteroffensive. Even if that thought had ever entered his mind, he didn't count on that person being the supposedly dead Odin Lowe."

"What does Odin have against Treize?" Zechs was aware of the hostility between the two, but he had always been spared of the details.

Heero neglected to answer the question. "Before this time he hasn't had much experience with mobile suits but he has the right connections to the people who have. The Sagittarius suit was created to counter Treize's actions."

"And named to mock the OZ organization," Zechs added.

Heero acknowledged this with a nod. "There's one other factor Treize didn't count on, and it's probably the worst, for him at least. He made the mistake of believing that just because he didn't know how to duplicate the Zero system, no one else out there did. He knows you've mastered it but he's still foolish enough to trust you. All the others who worked with the system are dead and pose no danger to him. Except for one."

"You."

Heero nodded. When he spoke, his voice was choked with an emotion Zechs could all too easily identify as regret. "Yeah."

"What does the Zero system have to do with this, Heero?"

"I had to use the system to do it, to implant the mechanism within in the Gemini. Only Zero could have pulled this off."

"What mechanism?"

"Treize underestimates his enemies too much to be an effective leader," Heero continued, as though oblivious to the question. "He looks at battle as a game. He sends undertrained soldiers who don't know their heads from holes in the ground out to fight for him, he convinces them they're invincible, and when the enemy defeats them all he's too amused by it to realize what's just happened. He sets himself up to be destroyed. I think he gets off on it."

Zechs favored the pilot with a humorless smile. "Go on."

Heero tapped the keys again. The first line at the top of the page now displayed read simply 'ZERO ENHANCEMENT.' This cryptic title could have meant any one of a thousand things, but Zechs feared he knew exactly what it was Heero had been leading up to.

"What is this?" He felt the words escape his lips in a thick, stricken breath, weighted words that conveyed his pre-knowledge of what was contained on this disk. Heero glanced at him briefly, and strangely again he saw the image of the woman holding the boy in the picture, like a Japanese Madonna and child. The boy's eyes and the eyes of the ruined young man who sat before him making war plans were the same.

There was a pause, a short silence. Perhaps they were truly the only people who understood this. They were the only ones who had ever surrendered fully to the system, although the pilot 04 had done so once to an extent, the only ones who had gone into a battle to either save or destroy the Earth with the system as their guide, the only ones for whom the system had ever been intended. They two alone had gone as far as the system would allow them, had given everything of their being to it. They knew it as intimately as a lover, and had they not espoused it just as willingly as it had taken them? Had they not used it as a demonic mistress, as a drug? How could they have walked away from all that had happened without gaining some immense understanding of it?

Zero Enhancement. The very sound of it, to anyone who had ever had contact with the system, was the thundering of an apocalyptic drum. To enhance something as monstrous as the system, for whatever purposes, to allow not one man but hundreds falls under its power…what he had done was bad enough, but this—

I am not your enemy.

He almost shuddered at the memory of it.

"It was completed three months ago," Heero said, offering explanation where none was needed, offering without request where had one been issued he would have remained silent. "Odin commissioned it two weeks after the Mariemaia incident."

"And I assume you are the only one he would trust something of this nature to."

Heero merely grunted. "All records of the Zero system have been destroyed. However, I'm sure if Odin has sent you here you're aware of what resources were used to construct the new system."

He nodded, and indeed he did know.

"This system was designed to be implanted in the Gemini, encrypted in its own cockpit system."

"By yourself?"

"No. One of the computer analysts was to do it."

Rhyn. He wondered briefly, humorlessly, if it had ever crossed Rhyn's mind to alter the Gemini's original cockpit system to feed the pilot pornographic images.

"We received word about a month after its completion that the system had been successfully implanted."

"What are the chances that someone has discovered it by now?"

Heero raised an eyebrow and looked at him. "Shouldn't you know?" Such a cynically emotionless voice for the one who had once been the calmly smiling child clinging tightly to his rebel mother.

Zechs stifled a scoffing grunt. "I am no longer part of Treize's organization."

Heero showed not the slightest change at this recent development, as though news of this sort was more common than Zechs had previously expected. "He's purging his army of loose ends such as yourself. Are you certain you weren't followed here?"

"Yes."

"Did anything suspicious happen before you came here?"

He thought of the guard at the entrance, the one who had watched him as closely as Rhyn once had during his arrival on Earth but with some strange element like an added malice; he thought of the guard's poorly concealed frustration when the Chinese man had refused to allow him to escort them. Had the guard really had some ulterior motive, or was Zechs only imagining this?

"Nothing that I cannot take care of myself," he replied finally.

Heero responded with a signature "Hn."

The younger man's fingers flew over the keyboard again, opening the file labeled 'Zero Enhancement.'

"This is an advanced version of the original Zero system," he said, dully as though he were discussing nothing more important than changes in the weather.

Zechs raised an eyebrow. "More advanced than the one installed in Epyon?"

"Do you mean the one Treize installed or your own alterations to it?" His eyes didn't move from the screen, though there was an added note of cynicism in his monotonous voice.

"You heard of the test run, then."

"No." He offered no further explanation. He returned his eyes to the computer. "The Zero system was created before its time. The most advanced mobile suits, even a Gundam, are not always equipped to incorporate the system into the computer program that all cockpit functions are based from. Many of the Alliance's older suits would simply have shut down after only a few minutes of employing the system. Even the original Tallgeese would not have been functional with the addition of the Zero system."

Zechs, almost dumbly, nodded.

Heero continued. "To enhance such a system by a slight degree and install it in a mobile suit, even in one as powerful as Epyon, would cause certain difficulties. I'm sure that, as of recent events, you are aware of this, Zechs."

He stifled a reaction.

"To dramatically increase every performance level of the system and install that, however, would cause great damage to a Gundam, and a less advanced suit would be completely disabled."

He glanced up at Zechs as though to confirm understanding, and Zechs nodded. Simultaneously, he found himself remembering what Rhyn had said about the counteroffensive's greatest attack relying on him.

"You would have needed a replica of the Gemini's current system as well as the Zero system to accomplish what you're talking about."

Heero nodded. "Odin arranged for that through one of the others."

"The computer analyst."

"Perhaps."

"When will the effects of the enhancement be realized?"

Heero exited the file. "Not until they go into battle. The system is programmed to fully activate only under certain stimuli."

"And those stimuli would be?"

"The system is linked to the counteroffensive's main computer in Vólos. It will be activated from there."

He nodded, and this simple gesture seemed to end their conversation. Heero closed every file on the computer until the one he had been studying when Zechs had entered the room was displayed on the screen.

"Did Odin request anything else?"

"No. Only that you bring your Gundam to Vólos."

"Hn. I'll send him a message."

"He no longer trusts the computers for these matters. He wouldn't have sent me if he had."

This was the truth, but was truth really why he had said this? Was it to warn the former pilot or to elicit a response from him that would satisfy Zechs's own mind, plagued by dueling images of a stolen kiss and a crimson machine?

"Tell him I'll honor his request then," Heero said after a moment, "but on my own terms."

Zechs gave a soldier's nod and stepped away from him. The first of his evening's tasks was now completed.

Heero did not look up when he turned to leave but instead resumed reading the file. His hand, as though by unconscious force, rose and pressed the button that would open the sealed door.

"Until we meet again, Heero," Zechs said quietly as he started through the doorway, feeling a faint smile cross his weary face.

Behind him, Heero's rhythmic typing halted. "That battle is still unfinished."

"Precisely."

After a moment the typing resumed and the killer of his own men returned to the darkened corridor, and thus exited the life of Sakura Hanasaki's son for the remainder of the Earth's time of peace.

Author's Notes: After the prologue, this is actually the first scene that was ever written of this story. It's probably quite obvious that I didn't really know where I was going with Ballad at the time. As I've said before, I at first wanted this to be a story mainly concerned with Zechs and Noin's relationship, and I had thought this would be one of the rare scenes detailing certain war preparations. As it turned out, Ballad became quite the opposite.

I've always had quite a bit of a fascination with the idea of Heero and Zechs continuing the battle they started at the end of the GW series. I almost think that Zechs would consider it unfinished business, something that, regardless of date or location or circumstance, must be completed. A new war would merely act to provide the opportunity for that.

Once more briefly on Sakura's name, Zechs is European; therefore, her name is transposed. In upcoming chapters her surname is placed correctly, due to setting.

The next three chapters form what seems to be a favorite section for some readers, which I have jokingly titled the Thoughts Trilogy, the first being called 'Rambling Thoughts with Odin Lowe,' the second 'Suicidal Thoughts with Heero Yuy,' and the third, 'Reflective Thoughts with Zechs Marquise.' These, of course, are not really the names of the chapters, but I once thought it would be funny to call them that back when they were not truly meant to be part of Ballad, but rather character studies.