Progress: 8 of a proposed two figure sum
General Notes: I hope you guys aren't too angry with me about what transpired in the previous chapter. It appeared I've traumatized a few people…for that, I am sorry. But as previously stated, it had to happen for the story to work. Anyway, hope you guys enjoy this chapter. And as usual, read and review!
Some swearing towards the end of the chapter, namely the use of the ruder synonym to crap and less scientific than faeces.
Music: To Zanarkand – FFX OST; Suteki da Ne – FFX OST; Pure - Hayley Westenra

Covetousness

Chapter Eight: Answers

Wufei sighed as he took his place on the front steps of Seaside Elementary. It was a small school on the outskirts of town, consisting of only five hundred students altogether. Like all small schools, the architecture for the place was simple, and most of the buildings were moveable houses, giving Wufei the impression that the school had not been at any one place for long. From his vantage point, Wufei could see a crowd of small children engaging in a game of basketball. For a moment, all he could do was stand and wonder just what he had been doing when he was their age. Whatever it was, he was sure it had nothing to do with basketball.

The Chinese man approached the front desk slowly, taking in the surroundings as he entered the lobby. The indoor design was about as simple as the outdoors, with white walls, blue carpet and down-lights. The front desk was not much more complicated, being a simple gray, secretary desk, behind which a young woman sat with a headset attached to her ear. When Wufei reached the desk, she held up a hand, gesturing for him to wait a moment while she finished her call. Wufei nodded, taking the time to analyze the rest of the school. He was not sure when this place was built, but he was quite sure it had not been around over a decade ago when Yuy was supposed to have been in primary school.

'Can I help you?' His gaze fell on the secretary once again as she jabbed a number on the phone before her.

'Yes. My family recently moved into the area, and I was wondering if I could get some information about this school.'

'Sure.' She reached over to fetch some brochures under the desk, finally straightening up and handing Wufei two small booklets. 'Well, this school is about the same as every other elementary school, except we are mobile. In that, I mean that we go to areas where there are no elementary schools, and remain there until a permanent school is erected. We teach students from grade one to six here, and our curriculum is just the same as you would expect anywhere else. The rest of our information can be gathered from those pamphlets I gave you, and if you have any further questions, you can always call or come here in person. Enrollment can be at any time, except for the last two weeks of term, in which case we would advise you to enroll your child as soon as the new term begins.'

'I understand.' Wufei nodded once. 'Thanks for your time.'

'Welcome.' The secretary smiled, before bending down over her computer and continuing her work once more.

Wufei walked slowly out of the school, eyes fixed on the booklet in his hands. The school was apparently established around half a century ago, which seemed unusual considering the newness of the architecture and furniture. However, the school was always moving, so Wufei decided that most of the buildings were not as they were when the school first started. A quick flick through talented former students section yielded no mention of Heero Yuy, although it definitely mentioned several other students whose accomplishments were no where close to Yuy's supposed performance.

The Chinese man sighed as he entered his car, placing the booklets down on the passenger seat. That was one fake school down, one more to go, as well as two supposed parents. He hoped Maxwell was working hard, because wandering around places where Yuy had obviously never been to was a real pain in the ass.

Duo rubbed his eyes before going back to work, feeling as if his brain was about to meltdown. He had been unfortunate in finally getting through the security gateway just as the backup was being overwritten. Thus owing to why he had been cursing nonstop for half an hour at his terrible luck, for he could have prevented it all from happening if he had been just a minute faster. Still, it was not the end of the world, because even overwritten data could be forced to revert back to their original form. The only problem with that was that it was going to take a lot longer than he had previously though, and knowing his quick-tempered partner, Wufei was not going to like it.

Not that Duo liked it either.

The braided man sighed as he took a sip of water. He may have a lot of skills with hacking, but he was by no means the best, which was definitely not the best thing considering his situation. Duo sighed again as he turned to stare back at the screen, seeing the multiple windows opened around the screen. He cracked his knuckles and sighed once again, feeling that it was going to develop into a terrible habit by the end of the week. Slowly, his hands positioned themselves over the keyboard and began typing once more. He had managed to salvage some of the file before it was completely overwritten, although it did very little to help his present problem. The file, although not completely overwritten, had contained very similar data to the documents he already had. Perhaps it was because only the vital statistics at the top had been salvaged, but from what he could see, the name Heero Yuy, and the date of birth were the same. The rest of the document had been chopped off due to overwrite, and he had not tried to copy that across.

Duo proceeded to further hacking into the backup system's directory, hoping desperately that he could still do what he wanted to do without the physical drive being there. The good thing (or bad thing) about hard disks was that they were just that in physical nature: disks incorporated into boxes which held information much the same way as all disks did, which was through grooves made onto the disk. Unless a software was used to purposefully purge the information after each format or rewrite, the information could still be salvaged, albeit without the quality of the original file. Unfortunately, the few times Duo had done this was through using a specific software with the disk directly connected to his computer, which was a luxury he did not have this time. On a positive note, wireless access allowed him to do this (in theory) without needing to move from his computer. Silently, he hoped once again that he could do just that.

He opened up the software he was going to use, making sure to check that he had not yet been discovered. A new window opened up, joining the various others he already had open. Quickly, he set the directory as the backup system he was connected to, and typed in several lines of code. The "successful" message that flashed across his screen was a positive thing, and Duo continued with his work, hoping that nothing would screw up now. A dialogue appeared, showing the progress of the scanning process, with the expected time as twenty minutes. As long as he made it through this next twenty minutes, then he would have the original file no sweat.

Duo pushed himself away from the computer, eyes still locked firmly on the screen before him. The digits continued its countdown steadily, and the various other windows indicated that there were no problems in those fronts either. Dully, he confirmed the fact that he was hungry, but had no food left considering how Wufei had emptied his entire fridge earlier after running into three overdue items. Personally, Duo could not understand why the Chinese man had been so neurotic about the whole thing, since he was quite sure that there were still things within that fridge that had not yet gone off. Now, Duo had to suffer from the other man's pedanticsm in having a terrible hunger but unable to satisfy it, considering that he was not allowed to leave the room until his job was finished.

His mobile phone rang loudly, jolting Duo out of his revere. He scowled slightly as he registered the caller to be the very same person who was responsible for his lack of nutrients, and made sure to remind himself into complaining to Wufei about it.

'I'm hungry.' He declared immediately, not bothering with formalities.

'That's really something I wanted to know.' Came Wufei's dry response. 'Get yourself something to eat if you're really hungry.'

'Can't, since you cleared out my fridge, and I'm waiting for the original Yuy files to copy itself over to my comp.'

'How terrible.' Wufei sighed. Duo smiled, knowing that he was not the only one who was developing a bad habit. 'I'll bring you back some food on my way back.'

'Thanks Wuffers.' Duo smirked. 'So, you finished with the fake-data business?'

'Somewhat.' Wufei made an irritable sound. 'I've just got his parents left to check, then I'll be done for the day. Should take another hour or so.'

'I'll be waiting.' Duo made a face as he hung up, wishing that Wufei was looking at the screen. But the Chinese man sounded like he was in a car, which meant that that was highly unlikely. Besides, he never turned on the video either, so the camera would not have registered anything even if Wufei was looking. It was a childish paranoia of Duo's and made worse from his life as an assassin: one just did not show their face to people they did not know. He had settled to using the video of his home phone whenever he was speaking to Quatre, but as far as he was concerned, the camera feature of his mobile phone did not even exist. There was just something impersonal about mobile phones, another thought gained from his life as an assassin.

A glance at the screen told Duo that the file was still in the transferring process. He rubbed his eyes quickly, feeling a yawn ripple through his lungs. Reaching across his desk, he grabbed a roll of newspaper and unfurled it. As far as he could tell, there was nothing interesting or new on the news front, and a quick scan yielded no mention of Heero or breach in government security. Once again, Duo wondered what the other man was doing, and whether he was staying out of trouble. Perhaps he had recovered some shred of his memory now, or so duo hoped. A glance over at the clock sitting on the edge of the desk reminded him once again of the little time Heero had left. Silently, Duo wondered if he had done the right thing in allowing the man to go. No matter which way he looked at it, he had given up the chance of shooting a shell to kill a man instead.

A beeping from the computer caught his attention, forcing Duo out of his thoughts. He glanced over tiredly, feeling a sense of impending doom. A flashing window on the edge of the screen instantly became the center of his attention as Duo noted with a wry look that the security system had finally detected him. A glance at the window in the center told him that he still had ten minutes to go. Stretching once more, Duo maximized a window in the lower right corner of his screen and set to eliminating his presence as best as he could without severing his connection to the system. He was quite sure that even though he had been detected, it was most likely one of the many diversions he had set up. Still, it did not hurt to be sure, and if it was one of the false connections, he could just severe it and leave the security system with the knowledge that it had done its job.

As expected, Duo found that the system had indeed picked up on one of his fake intrusions. He played with it for a moment, giving the pretence of a struggle before disconnecting. The beeping stopped, and the system fell into equilibrium once more. Duo smiled and rubbed his eyes once again, feeling that that action was definitely not worth his effort.

Wufei paused as he stood before a headstone at the local cemetery, his mouth set in a firm line. Before him, Odin Lowe's grave stared back at him, dating the death to twenty years ago. Wufei had had little luck searching for Yuy's mother, but Odin Lowe had been easy to find. After a great deal of searching and hacking on Maxwell's part, they discovered Lowe to be a government assassin, much like themselves before dying at the age of thirty-nine after twenty years of service. The file had not specified any wives or lovers, despite stating in plain text that he had a son, the name of which was unspecified. Wufei wondered whether the son had been Yuy, although the last name was strange, considering that no wives had been evident on any of Lowe's documents.

Wufei shrugged as he continued strolling through the cemetery, hoping to find something which would help him with his investigation. But the tombstones told him nothing, and Wufei found himself straying back to his car, with Maxwell's place as the destination. On the way there, he made sure to stop by at a takeout store, and left with two bags of food in hand.

Duo smirked as he logged off the Human Resource database, feeling happy with his conquest. He had successfully downloaded the original Yuy file, and unscrambled it to form a classic looking ID page. His eyebrows furrowed as he glanced down the page, taking in the various details. As expected, the name and birthdates were the same. The family yielded him a very surprising find, and he found himself standing up suddenly, knocking his chair over in the process. Just then, the front door opened and Wufei soon entered his room with two bags of food in his hands. They stared at each other for a moment, Wufei's face displaying his obvious shock before he finally recovered.

'What's wrong Maxwell?' He asked calmly, setting the plastic bags on the floor next to Duo's desk.

'I've just stumbled across some serious gold.' Duo murmured, pointing at the computer screen. Wufei walked over slowly, a confused expression on his face. This soon morphed into surprise, and when he turned his gaze on Duo once more, his eyes were wide.

'This…'

'Yea, I know.' Duo said weakly. 'Who would have guessed huh?'

'But…' Wufei looked completely speechless. 'Shit!'

'Eloquent, Chang.' Duo sighed, pulling his chair up and sinking back into it, his eyes fixed on the computer screen once more. 'Real eloquent.'

Under the family section of Heero Yuy's profile were the words: Wife: PEACECRAFT, Relena; deceased and son: PEACECRAFT, Xander; deceased.

Endnotes:

And the plot thickens! At least, sort of… Well, I feel like I've just sealed my fate with the fangirl front, confirming that Heero was married to Relena. Well, as I said before, she is dead. And the main thing to understand is that they were married, not anymore. Well, you can't be married to a dead woman can you? In any case, yea… another short chapter, which sucks, but I have to cut it off there. I guess we can call it a cliffhanger, sort of. There was another sentence I wanted to fit in, but could. So sorry about that, but you guys will see it next chapter. And if my writing appears a bit screwed at certain points in this chapter, it's because I'm sick and I had a fever when I was writing this (am I dedicated or not?). Anyway, hope you all enjoyed it. Oh, and once again, I have to remind you all that I don't know anything about computers where hacking and databases are concerned, so sorry if it sounds strange or unbelievable. I suppose this is what you would call a blind man writing about colors, hey?