A balding head looked up from its work and aged eyes locked on the three young men entering his home.

"Duo! Jesus, thank God you got here! I saw what was going on down there and I feared the worst!"

"We're not that easy to kill. Neither are Gundams," Duo replied grimly. "Have you seen what happened to Heero? Wufei showed up at the Brussels estate, so I'm going to assume something bad."

Howard bit his lip and glanced down. "Yes, bad… Very, very bad." He tapped a few keys on a wireless keyboard and the main screen before the four of them lit up. Wing Zero hurtled toward the ocean and sent up a spray of water. The satellite image pixilated for a moment and froze, then jumped forward several frames and showed a huge fireball erupting out of the ocean.

"No!" Quatre leaned forward as if attempting to touch the image. "He… No… This is all my fault… All my fault…"
Trowa looked him in the eye. "You could have done nothing to-"

"I took away our only means to fight this enemy," Quatre said, cutting him off. "If Heero'd had Wing Zero we wouldn't have been defeated back at the Brussels estate. Mariemaiea would likely be dead."

"Ah, that's the only good news," Howard said, interrupting. "See, after you folks left, Zechs stayed behind. Him and Wufei both."

The pilots watched in both horror and fascination as Ntaku was slammed from every conceivable angle, how it self-detonated, nearly ripped into the estate, and how the Talgeese III appeared, cannon in one hand, a melted glob of metal serving for the other. He fired, ripped through the defenses and blasted Mariemaiea and Dakim to their makers.

"You call this good news?" Duo asked slowly and darkly. "Relina Peacecraft is now dead. You saw what happened to Zechs after he lost his family once. Now what's going to happen that he just killed his one remaining family member?"
"I don't know," Howard replied. "What I do know it that we don't have to worry about Mariemaiea or Dakim any more."

"And possibly Zechs," Trowa added.

"You think so?" Howard asked.

"It makes some sense," came the reply. "He's lived a life of war all his life. While he realizes that it isn't the solution to every problem that doesn't stop him from treating it as the best viable option. Recall the Libra situation a year ago. He tried to destroy the Earth in the original operation Meteor gone overboard.

"If we leave him to his own devices once more he may see the need for 'peace' once again. He tried to destroy all life on the Earth to attain that last time. I shudder to think what he'll attempt this time."

"All… my… fault. If we just had our Gundams none of this would have happened in the first place. The situation wouldn't have escalated half this far- we could have destroyed this foundation any time we felt like it. And now hundreds are dead, all because of me."

"None of this is your fault, Quatre. Nobody could have seen this coming. Besides," Duo smiled grimly. "The God of Death is back. He needs a sidekick."

"I'll match you, death for death."

"Umm, yes, this is all very touching and all, but did you not have three mobile suits in desperate need of repairs?" Howard interjected.

"Er, yeah, we do," Quatre said, yanking himself from his state of depression. "We managed to get them on a trio of civilian shuttles set to go to the colonies. With the current situation it wasn't easy, but that's one of the benefits of having a Gundam, I suppose."
"Abuse of power? Yeah, Duo used to do that quite a bit."

"Not the time for jokes, Howard."

"You're right." The aged scientist stuck a pair of fingers into his mouth and whistled sharply. "Common, folks, we've got three Gundams that need fixing ASAP!"