Sometimes Time Doesn't Matter

Chapter Two

It only took Heero three days and one highly tedious field assignment to push the twenty-seventh's strange encounter out of his mind. His life progressed through the usual system of work, sleep, eat, repeat, pausing only for a lovely and well-put-together New Year's party, decorated by all the heads of state, and a post-party decorated by intimate friends and a nice slew of rejected stomach acid.

Unfortunately for Heero's regained sanity, his allowances for good and bad luck ran nearly parallel, intermingling whenever they felt the need to "spice up his life." Heero was fond of spicy food, but only in moderation, and an overuse of paprika had a tendency to make him sneeze.

And so it was that Heero was eating a well-spiced Suddenly Salad when there was a simultaneous ring of sneeze and doorbell. Muttering a string of curses and wiping tears out of his eyes, Heero made his way towards the door, calling out, "Coming! Hold on a sec!"

He opened the door with what was intended to be a polite "Hello," but came out missing the second syllable. That syllable was made up for with a single, questioning word, "You?"

Heero's visitors, eight interchangeably annoyed and amused young men and women, seemed disinclined to respond with anything other than mutual shock. After a few moments of staring, Heero invited them in with a step back and a gesture.

"C'mon in, I suppose." His words seemed to spark something among them, and the one with the ponytail, Evan, threw his hands in the air.

"What the hell?" he growled, glaring at Heero and bringing a finger around to point. "Why do we keep running into you? And what are you doing here?"

Heero pursed his lips, as though in deep thought. "Fate, I suppose, and last I checked, I live here." He gestured to the apartment again. "We can have this confused and somewhat bumbling conversation out here in the hall, where my neighbors will pass by and lower their already abysmal opinions of me, or we can go sit down in my living room, and I can eat my dinner."

Mike, ever good-humored, shrugged. "Sounds good to me," he said cheerily and pushed past Evan on his way into the apartment. Either in concession or disgruntlement, the others followed suit, and Heero picked up his dinner and followed them to the living room, taking a seat in his favorite recliner. The younger occupants splayed themselves over the room.

Taking a bite, chewing slowly and surveying the agitated silence of the room, Heero came to the conclusion they really hadn't expected to see him there. He also came to the inevitability that this probably had something to do with the question of Duo he'd heard before. If they were expecting to find the braided pilot, this would be the place.

Unfortunately, their expectations were for naught. "So what brings you to my humble abode?" Heero finally asked, setting aside his dinner for a later and less surreal time. He looked across the group, names and faces connecting in his mind, though only vaguely.

The blonde girl who had questioned him about Duo, Ren, was the one who finally answered. "We got this address off a search engine," she said haltingly, exchanging a look with Sari, the short-tempered girl with a strawberry blonde ponytail.

Sari shrugged helplessly at Ren's obviously inquiring looking, and turned her own upon Evan, who scowled.

"It was, however, listed under a different name," Mike said, smilingly, taking the attention off his partner. He lifted his eyebrows in an amused and somewhat sarcastic expression, continuing, "You wouldn't happen to have just moved in, would you?"

Heero shook his head. He wondered how much longer they were going to beat around the bush, but replied nonetheless, "I've lived here since I joined Preventer in 197, actually. It's a good-sized place and comfortable, too." He smiled charmingly, watching faces both fall and tighten.

Mike pursed his lips, as though pretending to consider, though his eyes still showed a sense of merely playing through formalities. "How unfortunate for us, I think. You wouldn't have, by any chance, ever had a roommate, now would you have?" he asked, leaning more comfortably into the chair he had claimed, kitty-corner from where Heero was, and under a conveniently-placed lamp.

"Actually, I did," Heero replied, allowing his amusement to show in his eyes. "Are you going to ask me now, politely of course, his name, social security number, and current whereabouts, or should I just save us all the pain and time, and cut the bullshit?" Heero smiled broadly, entertained by both the situation at hand and the people he was dealing with. He had been told, long ago, that you could always judge a man's character based upon the way he reacted to something unexpected. The same applied to women, of course, and Heero was given a swift and at least partially accurate reading of the rack-shack time travelers by their mix of amusement, embarrassment, and horror.

In the category of amused were, much to Heero's lack of surprise, Mike, the calm, busty girl Caitlin, and the tall, broad man serving as her makeshift backrest, Nathaniel. Embarrassment was evident on the twins' faces, Ren and Tram, as well as the girl Ren had exchanged looks with, Sari. Horror was only present on the faces of Evan -- the ringleader -- and Cole, the scowling boy wonder; though it was, in Cole's case, more fury than horror. An accurate assumption, more or less, Heero assumed, and refocused his attentions on Mike, who was grinning from ear to ear.

"By all means," Mike said, throwing his arms open, "tells us our plans, and help us in our forsaken quest." He made a mock salute followed by a mock bow, and didn't even flinch when Evan, sitting on the floor next to him, elbowed him harshly in the shin.

Heero cleared his throat, mostly for posterity's sake, and grinned. "When you left a week ago, Ren there," he gestured to Ren, who looked somewhat surprised he had remembered her name, "asked me if I recognized the name Duo Maxwell." Watching Ren's face fall, he continued, "Before you beat yourself up too much about that, dear, I should tell you not to worry. The name is hardly commonplace, though any Preventer would have recognized it. It wouldn't generally raise suspicion, either, as anyone actually looking for Duo probably has innocent intentions." She looked relieved; he continued. "However, I told you then that it was not my story to tell, and I stick to that. I won't tell you more than is my own business unless you give me due cause. Is that understood?" Heero raised his eyebrows at the group, his years of teaching new recruits becoming more obvious in his more patient actions as his own years grew in number. The expression was one Duo had dubbed "Heero and his condescending ways," and it was a sound title.

As Heero had expected, Cole snorted, dark eyes annoyed, though he folded his arms and turned to Evan, rather than speaking. Evan himself met Heero's eyes, gaze for gaze, and eventually replied, "All right. Go on with what you have. If we need more, we'll concede."

"Fair enough," Heero said, nodding. "Duo lived here from 199 to 217, when he died. He worked at Preventer, like I did, and was in the top rank, as I am." That was all Heero had to say, but it was a few moments before the crowd before him realized that. Heero knew he'd been uninformative, but he hadn't been planning on telling them anything of importance without a little more knowledge of their plans. Stupid plans meant stupid people, and stupid people could be traced back to him. A bad algorithm, and not one Heero felt much like dealing with.

"Well," Evan started, raising an eyebrow at Heero, "that was about as informative as a plain old search on the web. Thanks, mate."

"No problem." Heero shrugged back into his chair. "It was information you didn't have, however, so it wasn't completely worthless, I'm assuming."

"Not completely," Caitlin, the busty brunette with a human cushion, said plainly, "but nearly. I suppose you're now waiting for us to tell you something. It wouldn't make much sense for you to spill a whole story for nothing, logically speaking, and you have no reason to tell us anything at all. We came to your apartment unannounced, are interrogating you, and you only vaguely remember who we are." She smiled slightly, eyes betraying her amusement. "That you do remember us, actually, is surprising, though you can't have many visitors from the future. So I'll concede. We need to talk to Maxwell about something we found written about him in the posthumously read journals of Emmanuel Colbridge."

Evan glared sharply at her from across the room, receiving nothing but a blank look in response, and picked up her story sharply, "Colbridge wrote that Maxwell was a pest, a threat, even. That he was too quick for his own good, and was poking in places he shouldn't have been. The fact that he died a year after that entry was written should be proof enough that I'm not lying."

Heero paused, looking at Evan squarely. "That would, conceivably, proof that you're not making this up. Unfortunately, Duo died from illness, not assassination, putting a bit of a wrench into your tale."

Evan scowled, opening his mouth to continue, only to be cut off when Mike tapped him in the arm with his leg and took over.

"If you don't mind my asking," Mike said amiably, ever polite, "what sort of disease was it?"

"An infection in his lungs. He had a bout of bronchitis that we didn't take well enough care of and got a bit out of control, turning into an infection. He suffocated." It wasn't a fond memory, and it wasn't a fond guilt, but Heero had accepted it in the six years since it had happened. It was called "life."

Mike nodded at that. "This may be rather presumptuous, but those are all the symptoms for a type of bio-weapon that one of the Council of Six came up with, probably right around then. It was created to mimic the wasting disease of history, only bypassing the immunities the human race has since created. Evan could give you better details, seeing as he's both chemically inclined and a descendant of the woman whose team developed it." He smiled as Evan elbowed him again, harder. "Evan, darling, it's not like he knows who you are or what that connection is. You don't exist yet."

"Yes, well, you're not helping our cause very much," Evan growled, scowling. "And you're running your mouth like a politically-adept fool."

Heero couldn't help but chuckle at their almost marital bickering, as well as at Evan's quip. "Actually, honesty usually works best for simple people like me," he said helpfully, though falsely. "Though I'm still rather disinclined to believe Duo was killed, you present an interesting point. I won't question you on its authenticity, but I won't tell you that I fully agree. Regardless, it's always possible, and who am I to question things? I'm sitting and having conversation with people whose parents haven't even been thought of yet."

"Right you are, and your confidence is blinding," Mike said charmingly. "But assuming I'm not pulling this out of my ass, and Maxwell's death is more than a lucky numbers fluke, is all this within the realm of possibility?"

"With those stipulations, yes," Heero replied. "Without those stipulations, it's still well-within possibility's bounds. So let's say I believe everything you say, and I tell you what you want to know -- though there really isn't much more -- what do you think you'll learn from it? What would you have learned from talking to Duo?"

The conversation had remained mainly between Heero, Mike, and Evan for the bulk of the serious conversation, with the input of Caitlin. So Heero was understandably surprised when the blonde twins looked at one another and each replied to a question in quick succession.

"If we're lucky, we can learn what Mr. Maxwell knew," Ren said. "If we're unlucky, we can learn what he'd been working on at the time, if you'll tell us. If I've assumed you wrongly, we stand to learn nothing."

Tram continued for his sister. "Talking to Duo could tell us what we needed to defeat Colbridge before he even came into power, if the information was right. It could teach us nothing at all, as well, but that's a risk we have to be willing to take, at this point. We're down to no options, sir. The rock's got jagged edges and the hard place is moving in. If straws are all we can grasp at, then we'll hold on with all our might."

Heero smiled. "Good speech," he complimented, giving a nod of the head first to Ren and then to Tram, and turning to face the group at large. "Either you're all very good actors or you need this information more than you care to let on. Whichever way it swings, I'll tell you what you need to know." His smile turned to a momentary laugh. "It's insane, but Duo always said sanity was overrated, and he would have been the first to tell you everything he knew."

"Nothing if not political, dad used to say," Tram said, grinning. "If you can't beat them with logic, beat them with a pure and guided heart. And if your heart isn't right, you're fucked."

Most of the room smirked at Tram's uncommon and well-timed curse, and Heero's gut feeling gave him no backfires. The time to be stingy had passed, apparently, and Heero was feeling all too giving. This may have been influenced by the dream-like surrealistic day he seemed to be having.

"Then I suppose the first thing to ask would be if you knew what Maxwell had been working on before he died," Evan said, leaning against Mike's chair.

"Nothing special, really," Heero said, "just the occasional mission, tutoring trainees and new recruits, paperwork, and public speaking. See, I've always been awful at public speaking -- I can't beat around the bush worth shit, which you may have noticed. I don't like fancy words and double meanings when I can just come to my point and be done with it. Duo, on the other hand, loved to talk. He rarely shut up, actually, and even had a tendency to talk in his sleep. Or yell, which was always fun."

"Nothing unusual?" Evan asked, ignoring Heero's off-topic tirade.

Mike added to Evan's thoughts mildly, "Not that public speaking isn't unusual. Evan and I both have a talent for it, seeing as we were brought up around it. So do Ren and Tram; they're dad's family was aristocratic back in, well, your day."

Heero laughed. "Mine was poor, and lived in a slum. Then I was raised a soldier. Those combined make for something of a terrible politician." He shrugged. "Duo wasn't sneaking off anywhere, or investigating anything vigorously. If you say Colbridge's note was written in 216, that's a whole year of missions and things we were on, together or separate. If you could give me a more exact date, I could probably help you out a bit more."

"The threat entry wasn't the first that mentioned Maxwell, actually," Evan said. He reached into the duffel Heero had seen him with in the hanger, which was still his constant companion. He pulled out a few photocopied pages, and looked to the top of the first. "The first mention is in June of 215, actually, but it mentions him on a relatively regular basis from them until November of 216, when there's simply a memo written in pseudo-code, saying something about how they can dismiss Maxwell as a threat, as nothing he knows is too important." Evan pursed his lips. "Which contrasts rather sharply with his descriptions in the journal, so I think it's probably a veiled code. But he doesn't show up again in the journal at all, either." He shrugged vaguely. "Like Tram said, grasping at straws."

Heero allowed his memories to drift back so far as 215, which wasn't nearly as difficult as he'd thought it would be. "I remember 215 pretty well, actually, or at least parts of it. The New Year's party was interesting, since Quatre and Wu Fei decided they were going to plan it together." He paused. "Please note that this is an odd thing. And I do, actually, remember a case Duo had in June. It had him really annoyed, and took him basically the whole month, as well as parts of May and July, which is quite a while for us, experienced as we are.

"He was complaining because the trail was altogether too obvious and the crooks were too guilty-looking, and he thought they'd been willingly framed. But he solved it and filed the report, and no more was thought of it." Heero shrugged again. "I suppose that's a little too convenient for you, isn't it?" He raised an eyebrow. "I could be honest and tell you why I really remember that case, but that's really not your business."

Evan shrugged elegantly in response. "You wouldn't happen to remember who he was investigating, would you?"

"No," Heero replied, "I didn't take that much stake in it, since it wasn't my case, but I could find out for you."

"And how long would that take?" Evan asked, a scowl poorly veiled on his face.

"About the amount of time it takes a computer to boot up and a text file to open," Heero replied just as sharply, though with a fleeting grin. "Colbridge isn't the only one to keep a journal, and I have permission to read this one."

Evan smirked. "I have permission to read these, actually. My dad gave them to me to study and learn from."

Caitlin let her usually straight face break into a grin. "Yeah, we're consorting with the enemy." She raised her arms and waved them at Evan. "Boogah, boogah!"

Heero couldn't help it: he laughed. So did the rest of the room, including Nathaniel, the square-faced human cushion. It was nearly the first time Heero had seen an expression on his face.

While trying poorly to contain his laughter, Heero got up and retrieved his laptop from the desk across the room, flipping it open and pulling it out of sleep mode. He pulled up the journal file and scanned for July of 215, looking for the non-report version of Duo's conclusions.

It was relatively easy to find, captioned, "An end to the madness!" Opening the file, it was even easier to find the name of the organization that Duo believed to be behind the whole event -- a bombing -- and the organization he had put in his report. To Heero's surprise, they were, in fact, two separate organizations. In his defense, he hadn't read much of the journal that didn't have to do with special occasions or when they'd just gotten together. The work-related stuff couldn't have much juice to it, he'd assumed. Wrongly assumed, it seemed.

"I have good news and more good-ish news," Heero said cheerfully, repositioning both himself and the laptop for optimal comfort. "The organization Duo put in his report as being the cause of a medium-scale bombing outside Baghdad was a minor upstart group called Raven's Wing, which was then squished." He paused. "That's the good news. That they were squished."

"And the good-ish news?" Mike asked, knocking Evan idly with his heels. Evan's only form of retaliation was a silent glare. Heero continued.

"That's that he goes on to say that he really believes an organization called New Futures was behind it, and Raven's Wing was just a cover so the leaders of this organization -- several high-name CEOs -- weren't looked at suspiciously. He even goes further to list those CEOs, their companies, and the man they all seem to be answering to." Heero smirked. "One Emmanuel Colbridge, head of the Foundation for Human Well Being. I'm assuming that's what you're looking for, correct? It's all being rather nicely handed to you, isn't it? How much Duo knew, how he knew it, and why you think they killed him. Now what are you going to do with it?"

There was another pause, quickly becoming a trend around the room. Deep question, pause, bad answer, good answer, rinse, repeat.

"Find . . . the weakness, I suppose," Evan said slowly, the gears still turning in his mind. He exchanged a quick glance with Mike. "Or we may just have to jump back again."

That sparked a response. "We can't just 'jump back again,' you moron! Look how much you overshot us this time!" Sari yelled, an echo of what had been yelled when Heero had first come across them. It was, apparently, a live debate.

Evan scowled. "And what can we do from here, huh? Continue to interrogate him?" he asked, gesturing at Heero angrily. "Read more old journal entries that probably tell us suspicions we already knew and none of the common-sense details that are always left out and most important? We know who they are, we know where they are, but we don't know how to convict them. Right now, they haven't done anything that hasn't already been considered and discarded. No one's going to believe some crazy kids from the future that one of their most prominent civilian leaders is going to take over the world and turn it into a dictatorship. That sounds ludicrous even to me, and I know it's the truth. He may listen to us," Evan gestured to Heero again, "but he's not going to present us to the authorities saying, 'Here, these kids have something to tell you,' and even if he did, who'd believe him? We need information to back us up, and we're not in a position to get anything."

Mike smirked. "This is why you lead us. You take even the irrational and make it sound like sense." He shrugged. "All else fails, we can keep miss-hitting until we get it in the right vicinity. At least we know we've got a year and a half opening, anytime after 514, but before 517 and we're golden."

Heero smiled as Ren and Tram simultaneously hit Mike with pillows and Mike laughed. Being able to sit back and observe, Heero was able to assess the group a final time, and had they been his trainees, he would have been satisfied with their abilities. Separately, they each defined their own role, but together? Together, the group worked in a cyclical motion, moving through each member until the round was complete and the idea was rounded. They reminded Heero of himself twenty years ago.

"I think I understand," Heero cut in, breaking off his mental meanderings. His visitors had continued to argue, but he finally had something to say. "You've learned more specifically what you need to accomplish your mission, but you really need to go further back in time. So now's your time to build another machine and jump again. If you offshoot, just do it again. Trial and error, practice makes perfect; there's a reason there are so many euphemisms for failure." He shrugged. "Just give it your best shot."

Mike saluted him. "Yes, sir, understood," he said, a glint of something in his eye. "If you're not a teacher, you should be." He grinned.

Heero shrugged in response. "You learn things with age," he said sagely, smiling. "I'm also a Preventer cadet instructor. I'm faced with kids getting their undies in a twist all the time."

"Remaking the machine doesn't actually have to be done," Evan said, redirecting the conversation. "It's actually just a computer program of sorts." He smirked. "Type in the place and time, stand on a mat, and off you go."

Mike snorted. "There's a bit more to it than that, but that's a good digested version."

"And we brought both the mat and the program with us!" Evan proclaimed, pulling a disc and what looked remarkably like a DDR mat out of the duffel next to him.

Heero couldn't help but stare. "I sort of figured the secrets of the universe lay in more of a whir and a bang than a click and a beep."

"So did I, at first, until I remade the apple I'd just eaten," Evan said, shrugging. "I could explain it, but it's in a computer language that I'm pretty sure you guys don't have yet."

Mike coughed into his hand, "Cop out."

Evan glared. "Right. You wouldn't happen to have a USB2 port on that notebook, would you?" he asked, gesturing to Heero's laptop.

"I do," Heero replied, looking at the group. "You sure make awfully snap decisions."

"Considering our options, this is really all we can do, so there isn't much to weigh around. We can't do anything right now and we're still missing information." Evan shrugged. "We'll just have to hope we land right. Generally speaking, the shorter the jump, the higher the percentage of accuracy. We'll be jumping seven years instead of seventy-four, which should help."

Handing over his laptop, Heero continued, "I think I may be able to help you." He stopped as Ethan raised an eyebrow at him. "Not with the programming; I'd have to look that over for quite some time. But when you get there. Go to Preventer Headquarters at around five. Both Duo and I got off work then, and we'd be heading home. You can effectively pretend to know me by saying you're from Coorman's. Just Coorman's. It's a code for people who are my informants or sending me messages. I'll think you're a bunch of loons, but at least I'll listen, and if I listen, Duo will. This should save you a lot of the sneaking around, unless I'm terribly mistaken."

"Thanks," Evan said, popping the end of a cord into the USB2 port on Heero's laptop. "That really does help." He paused, looking up at the older man. "Though I'm sure I don't know why you're helping us."

Heero smiled. "I'm not, really. Just speeding things along. I'm also leaving out a few important details so you have the right expressions at the right times, later, so I -- the younger me, that is -- don't think you're a spy or stalker of some kind," Heero said, his smirk turning into more of a smirk.

Evan made a gesture and the group stood up, walking towards him.

"I wouldn't thank me yet, anyway," Heero finished, stepping back as Evan removed the newly-loaded disc from the laptop and dropped it back into his bag.

"Maybe not for that," Mike said, waiting for the rest of his group to step onto the pad first. "But for this."

Heero inclined his head as Evan hit the keyboard one last time and stepped back.

"So, thanks."

They left with remarkably less noise, no bang, and no whir. The only thing Heero was left with was a compile-time error on his computer. "Out of bounds exception," he read to himself, grinning. Maybe that was the problem. "Good luck," he muttered, directing his well wishes out the window, allowing them to transcend time and space on their own.