Standard disclaimers applied.
Thank you very much Tyrant good to be back too. First and foremost, thank you very much to my reviewers!
So now we know who and where our villain is. I had quite a mix-up of the place and time frame but the storyline's always up here haha. ANYWAY, I have things on track now and I have decided to actually finish this thing – not in the near future though...
I have a couple of reviewers whose hurt by our favorite leading character: p but it's all part of the story and I can't do anything about it. It's fated to turn out this way. So sorry bout that...
Anyway, please support the story and Gundam Wing!
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"You can't be serious?" Duo bellowed through the intercom to Hera's earpiece. She grimaced and took it off to let it stand at least an arm length away from her before she goes deaf over it whilst chewing her hair. The earpiece cracked to life again, this time a different voice.
"It must be some sort of delusion he's trying to advertise to everyone just to poison people's image of Relena." Trowa's voice now on the line.
Quatre's voice then replied to it, "I agree. But... there should be a ground to it, shouldn't there? A solid ground at that." He paused, "I do seem to recall Alexander Peacecraft ailing..."
"Hey...! Who's side are you on, Quat!" Duo's accusing tone was very hard to miss. And the nippy reply given by the poor man in question was of no miss either.
"No! No, All I'm saying is…"
There was a very busy discussion going on at the background, as well as her earpiece. Hera typed furiously on her terminal in an attempt to connect to the satellite she and Heero had found in Earth. No such luck. Apparently, her old friend had discovered their loop hole and was sharp enough to cover it up on time.
"Stupid Pierre." Hera breathed in frustration, rolling away from the terminal with the most disgusted 'ugh' she had built up ever since she tried re-hacking into the satellite. The only way to successfully doing this, she thought, was to get a good signal from earth. As to how to do it, she'll have to be count on the G-boys. She turned to look at the people by the door.
The heated 3-way argument made neither Zechs, Noin nor Relena realize they were the only human beings in the entire building. Every adult in the room was wasting precious time and Hera was beginning to feel a bit agitated by their display of uselessness.
She decided to leave them be as the political arrest that happened is more of a family matter nature. Her mind drifted to the plan they discussed last night.
"Ok, so Zeimer's on Earth," Duo plopped comfortably into the settee, cupping his hands together with a loud clap, earning a warning look from Trowa to which he held his hands up in defense, "What else do we got? Aside from being sitting ducks?"
Hera smirked with her arms crossed, lazily spinning about her rotating chair, "What makes you think I know?"
Stretching on the couch, Duo yawned loudly, "Awe, I dunno, cos you're Heero's daughter?"
She stopped instantly, giving her back to them.
"I'm sure you can help us – a lot. Bet you guys even knew about the ambush here. That's why you were here, right?" He added.
"And the mobile dolls..." Quatre quipped. "Rasyid's surveillance with a few others confirmed of at least 8 of them in this colony. They are tactically situated around shuttle ports; so there is absolutely no way of leaving L2..."
"On top of all else, we need to find Hilde, Catherine and Dorothy too." Duo banged his fist into his palm and turned his attention to Hera.
All they received was silence.
"We might even want to consider moving out of here. Safe to say we could expect them to drop in here any time now." Trowa said, looking out of the window as well as his reflection which looked back at him.
He then approached Hera, taking up a kneeling position at her side, in such a way he could see her stoned expression for a face. He was quite sure this was going to take a long time. But it's time that they do not have. They have to know whatever she knows - fast.
"Hera..." he started. Her eyes darted to his single visible eye and then just as quickly looked away. "All of us in here lost someone. We were too late to help Heero, with your help; it won't be too late to save more lives as well as our loved ones. Do you know something we don't?"
A long pause and then a nod. Behind her, Duo jumped in excitement and Quatre hissed a quiet, "Duo! Sit!"
"We need your help." He continued, using the most sincere voice he could muster which wasn't too hard as he was feeling quite sincere at this point to finding Cathy.
Hera turned slowly around to face him. He put his hand out as though to touch her face but stopped inches away by the side of her face to twirl his hand and revealed a pink lollipop.
"Please?"
She studied each face in the room. Quatre was wearing his puppy dog eyes, Duo looked at her hopefully, placing an icepack on his right eye and Trowa... with a candy. She took the lollipop from him.
"I prefer blackcurrant." She informed him, eating the lollipop. Trowa smiled and stood up as she jumped off the rotating chair and waded to the settee where Duo sat. She took a pencil out of her pocket and a blank A4 paper from under the coffee table.
Before anybody could say or do anything, Wufei burst into the room and saw all 3 men and girl in there. He had a sling on one arm.
He smirked and eyed them shrewdly, "You disappoint me, I thought if you're doing a plan of attack of sort, you could at least invite me also." Despite saying that, he did not wait for them to roll him the carpet or worse yet, invite him in with them. His proud demur was expressed by merely being there.
All sat silent as he sat on a lone arm chair near the coffee table. It was good old Quatre who made a feeble attempt of apology to the oriental man, "We thought you might like to rest up or something."
"Besides," Trowa began, "Given your injury, you are in no position to be of any use to our operations. You'll only be a burden."
The Chinese man scoffed in the most misbehaved way he knows and sharply replied whilst directing the speech to no one in particular, "I never said anything about joining your SACRED operations. You can go ahead, die with it by all means. I am merely here to assist and save time for you all to come up with a master plan to begin with. Or do your better judgments think my injury would hinder me from even THAT?"
Talking would only serve fuel to Wufei's wrath. "Ok, we're here," She said to break it up, in between smacking her lips with her newly acquired sweet and proudly turned Picasso. All three men bent down to a kindergarten drawing of what seemed like an odd-shaped keyhole.
Duo can't help from stifling a laugh and just had to ask, "What is this?" which he received 2 kicks to the shin from Quatre and Trowa. That made him yelp which he dispelled quickly by clearing his throat. Wufei just arrived so he chose to ignore Duo for now. At least, until he stays there for another 10 minutes.
"Obviously, L2, right?" Trowa saved. She nodded and continued drawing some distorted rectangles on 5 sides of the even more distorted keyhole.
Through a mouthful, she started talking, "L2 has 5 exits, I'm sure you're aware of this," another smack out of her, "and there are currently 8 mobile suits inside the colony. Half of them are heavily equipped," a smack, " and are placed here," she drew a deformed circle around a rectangle nearest to her, "here," near Duo," here and here." She finished with 2 circles near Quatre and Trowa with a smack.
"Hey, wait a minute." Duo suddenly dissented. He pointed the one rectangle uncircled by the little girl, "That part of the colony is an unoperational defense force base. Even if we can launch outta there, we'll be sure to be discovered and probably shot down before we even pass 20 mm out of here."
Hera looked at Duo, blinked twice and with not so much of a thought kindly informed him her opinion, "That's right, you will."
The braided man pinched the bridge of his nose and placed a hand on his hip, looking like a well-defined sculpture which carries the theme, 'what did I ever do to you?' "Y'know, the main thing's to get outta here – alive. Not minced meat."
"I was thinking if Mr. Winner could assist on this matter." Hera turned to meet Quatre's gaze who snapped his head up from his laptop screen with his reading glasses on. He wrenched the pair of glasses off of his face immediately, lifting his head up.
"Me?"
Hera nodded and turned her attention to the other 3. "Maybe you guys can have a look around this area or something?" she circled the military ex-base she drew and all men nodded in agreement.
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That's how it turned out last night. After more detailed discussions, they have decided to split into 3 teams.
Trowa with Duo paired as moles.
Quatre going solo on a reconstruction mission.
The third team was a newly established one only created that morning itself. Apparently, the 'tragedy' the newly found from a long lost journey Peacecraft was the epidemic. Sally and Wufei were to investigate the severity of such incident and to send reports to any known bio-research lab in the colony. Fortunately, there were quite a lot of Maguanacs Corp employees on the L2 to be on call at such short notice.
'The thing is, they are hardly scientists...' She narrowed her eyes and munched on some biscuits.
"Boot camp, this is Medic."
"Go, Medic." Hera replied, suddenly snapping her attention else where as her ears detected a most disturbing sound. 'Window glass breaking...' she thought. Judging from the looks of the Relena and her 2 cohorts, they didn't hear it. Hera narrowed her eyes and reached for her pocket slowly to retrieve a purple lollipop which she immediately popped in her mouth.
She got off her seat and walked to the balcony beside her, slowly. Somehow, the other 3 realized her cautious movements towards the balcony and straight away reached for their guns.
A feminine voice cracked in Hera's ears, "The virus is just a common flu which, I suppose with the intervention of some bio-engineering, is a kind which isn't infectious."
"Wha-? How the hell's that possible?" Duo's voice interjected, "I mean, not that it's a bad thing or anything, y'know..."
Hera was only half listening. Somebody broke into the ward below them and she very well knew that that's where Heero's body was. Instantaneously, she sprinted to the door and locked the door shut.
Relena's heartbeat raced as it dawned upon her of what was happening. "They found us..." she said, stating the obvious.
Noin turned to the nearest window, looking down from the 15th floor they were in, "They probably have the area around here blocked," her eyes followed Hera's scuttling movement about the room.
The little girl was like a mouse. Ever since she found out they were discovered, she locked every exit, shut all the drapes and disappeared under a computer terminal.
"What are you doing?" Milliardo demanded, literally rooted to the ground.
Hera resurfaced with a handful of canned drinks, "I thought we might all be thirsty." She stood up, shook the fizzy drinks and pointed it to the drapes, continually doing it using a different drink, "Oops, I like this flavor," and set it down next to her feet.
Her earpiece was static for a while before coming alive with Sally's voice; she decided to share the information with the adults. She went to speaker mode and Sally's voice filled the war room.
"L2 town is safe from the virus for now, some of the medications worked and..."
Noin flung to the computer, "Sally, we're discovered."
"What!" 6 voices simultaneously responded.
"Well, not to say we weren't expecting it..." Trowa's voice came coolly.
Milliardo stood next to Noin, "They'll be here any minute. Stuck without any reliable weapons or worst still, an exit, we are doomed."
"Or this could well be a chance to meet Zeimer." Relena added.
"Relena! We talked about this and trust me, He. Will. Kill. Us." Milliardo's voice stressed every word in his last sentence, voice dropping grimmer with every word. Relena wasn't the least fazed by it. She was about to retort something but was cut off promptly
"There are weapons in this room, find them. We're evacuating." Hera said over her shoulder which was strapped to a visibly huge shotgun if compared to her and jumped to stand on a stool to reach a protruding lamp on the wall, using it as a leverage to go to a corner, standing on the corniest on the wall.
Noin and Relena looked at each other at her acrobatic flexibility and continued to watch dumb-foundedly of what she was going to do next. Their hands slowly went up to their ears.
"Quatre, who else are in here?" Milliardo asked, exasperated, oblivious to the happenings around him, except for the footsteps he hoped he imagined to hear.
There was a long silence from the other line.
"Damn it." Milliardo cursed as the line just went static, "Radio interference bomb... I should've gue..."
A loud gunshot was suddenly heard, too near for comfort, as though it was (in reality, it WAS) behind him. His gun instantly flew to his hand and he dove for the settee. When he peeked to see what was going on, Noin and Relena were standing and looking at one direction which was where the sound came from. He straightened up as a coughing, dirtied with dust Hera jumped down.
"What the hell are you doing...?" the silver haired man didn't get to finish his sentence. She skittled over and shoved a toy-like remote control with a huge red button in the middle into his left hand.
"You do the honors. And if you ask me, pushing it when we leave this building would be most advantageous." She then pulled both Noin and Relena by the hands to the corner with the newly blown hole on the ceiling, "And did you find the weapons I told you to look for?" She asked them; to which they shook their heads no.
Hera paused in mid-track and did a frustration dance around them. As a finale to it, she tossed the lollipop to the floor. Just as well, their enemies reached the door and clunks were heard coming from the balcony, probably hooks for ropes.
"Up here, hurry!" Hera ushered them and Milliardo assisted in their escape. Hera was up first, where a rope slid down. Next up was Relena, then Noin and finally Milliardo himself. Hera pulled the rope and left a little booby trap on the hole. Not so much of a bomb but was enough of a shock.
"How are we supposed to escape now?" Noin queried as they got down on all fours, blindly following the girl through a vent and up a ladder. Below them, the door was busted open, the balcony sliding glass shattered with semi-machine gun; which Hera recognized instantly; and rough voices searched for them.
All 4 of them rushed up the ladder as fast as they can and just as Noin started climbing in the pitch blackness of the situation, crackerjacks were heard followed soon after by a man screaming and a heavy thud.
Hera smiled in satisfaction and Relena can't help but feel amazed, "Did Heero teach you to do that?"
"The crackerjacks? Of course not. He'd have killed all of them. I'm just being a good..." A small thud was heard when Hera's head made contact with the hard metal. "Ow..." A soft whimper was heard in the dark. There was an additional thump which was her form of revenge to the metal access which no one saw her do
The air suddenly felt fresher upon the unbolting of the exit. Hera's hat was blown in the wind, "Here we are! Let's go!" Hera raised her voice much to the surprise of everybody. They were in for a bigger surprise when they saw their 'escape'.
"Hang gliders?" Milliardo stated meekly, cocking his head to one side.
As much as he'd love to stay and argue about the unfavorable choice of escape, he had no choice at the moment except oblige to this or die in the most embarrassing way he knows.
"They'll shoot us down at sight!" Milliardo concluded after everyone was just about ready to go. He was with Relena, Noin with Hera.
"Push the button before you go!" Hera yelled. Those were her only words before Noin unlocked a buckle strapping the hang glider and the wind picked them up and away instantly.
Milliardo looked at Relena. She was looking back at the door they just got out of.
"Relena!" He called, jerking her by the arm. Her eyes were glistening with tears.
"Heero..."
Milliardo hugged his baby sister but stopped soon after it started. The enemies were nearing them.
"Hold on tight." He ordered her as he unbuckled the strap and soared into the air. Relena let out a surprised yelp at the sudden fleeting feeling of flying. Milliardo reached for his pocket and pushed the button.
What happened next was devastating explosion which can be heard and seen from miles and miles away.
To be Continued...
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