It didn't really seem right that a week after a car bomb had almost destroyed the lives of most of the people she loved in the world, Hilde had to deal with things like getting a backpack ready with new supplies and going off to start school. Everyone had been rattled by the bomb and they were all showing their wounds in their own way: Heero had barely let Duo out of his sight since pulling him away from the car wreckage, Wufei was strangely quiet, Noin was snappish and keeping Relena on a short leash, and Relena had been walking around in a fog. Her mother was leaving on the weekend, having extended her stay a bit in the wake of the incident, and Hilde had caught her just staring sadly at Relena's back several times in the past week. As for Pargan, he was recovering well but still on bed rest; as far as Hilde had heard, he was not a graceful patient. Duo had thrown himself into overhauling their security protocols, which seemed to her to be the healthiest response to the situation they could have expected from him.

In spite of the Peacecraft estate's vulnerabilities being put on full display, the decision had been made to downplay the whole incident and keep it out of the news, in part to protect Relena's identity as much as they still reasonably could. Noin and Wufei had gone out and bought a new towncar and now the school year was beginning, so Hilde and Relena were walking out the door with crisp uniforms and new schoolbags, being hustled into the new car by Noin once she'd inspected the whole vehicle and pronounced it safe.

"Excited?" asked Noin, looking up at them in the rear-view mirror as she put the car in gear.

Hilde raised an eyebrow back at her and then shot a sideways glance at Relena, who didn't seem to have heard. "Relena?" she prompted.

That made her jump. "Hmm? Wh—oh. Yeah. Can't wait."

She was still in her fog, apparently. Relena went back to looking preoccupied, playing with her seatbelt strap and staring out her window. Hilde and Noin exchanged a worried look in the mirror but it was time to go; the morning bell waited for no one.

Hilde scanned the scenery on the drive, thinking. Noin and Mrs. Darlian both hoped that going back to the school routine and getting out of the house would clear Relena's head and help her get back to normal. She had to share in that hope, for lack of an alternative plan, but at least they'd bonded a little over the summer and she could be there if Relena needed it during the day. They were in all the same classes, anyway, since it did Hilde no good as a bodyguard if she wasn't in Relena's vicinity as much as possible. She reached inside her uniform jacket to slip her fingers under the edge of her shoulder holster and relieve the pressure where the strap dug into her shoulder. It was the least obvious one they'd been able to find, designed to hold a small handgun and make it seem as much as possible like the new girl following Relena around like a lost puppy wasn't armed.

"Something wrong?" Noin asked. Hilde's fidgeting had drawn her attention.

"It just kinda chafes," she said, pulling her hand away from her holster strap and squirming her shoulders against her seat back.

"Try not to touch it," said Noin. "Not something you want to be doing unconsciously in public later. You'll get used to the feel of it, and it'll soften up a little once you break it in."

"Is it super uncomfortable?" Relena asked, paying attention for once. "It looked like it when you put it on."

"It's not awful," Hilde said, shifting her shoulders again, straightening her jacket and then trying to chill out. "It's kind of like… like a bra that doesn't fit properly, and the straps dig in."

Relena made a face, her gaze lingering on Hilde's shoulder although there was nothing to see but the mostly-unbroken line of her jacket. "That sucks. How come you have to wear your gun? Can't you just keep it hidden in your bag?"

Noin opened her mouth but Hilde answered first. "Because if I ever actually have to use the gun, we don't want me to have to get it out of my bag first. Seconds count, plus it would be easy to separate me from the bag if someone figured out who I was and knew or guessed that I had weapons in there." She ignored the look Noin was giving her in the mirror. Relena was a big girl; she could handle some reality now and then.

"That makes sense," Relena mused, proving Hilde right. She went back to staring absently out the window, playing with a lock of her hair.

Hilde could see a muscle tic in Noin's jaw from where she was sitting; she avoided any more eye contact in the mirror by settling back in her seat and closing her eyes.

As good as Trowa was at following people, getting made by Quatre was still a bit of a setback. Quatre might not have been the best of the best at spycraft but he was still a person to be underestimated at one's own peril, so it took several days of extreme care and caution to wait for him to decide Trowa had actually left him alone. Trowa didn't learn much in those first days of tailing him except for where he liked to get lunch; his only consolation was that Quatre seemed to have slowed down whatever it was he was up to, because he was now spending all his time and energy on counter-surveillance tactics, varying his routine and generally trying to project an air of 'nothing to see here'.

It had to have delayed his plans by at least a couple of days.

Once Trowa figured out what those plans were, on Day 7 of following Quatre like a shadow, he wasn't sure whether or not he could call that delay good luck. There certainly wasn't much time for him to do anything about it.

Not that he wasn't going to try anyway, for everyone's sake.

Quatre tugged his delivery cap down lower over his eyes and pulled out his burner phone to send a text message to H as the elevator descended. The two other people in the elevator car, both in business clothes, got off on the third floor as the message delivered itself, a little envelope image zooming across his phone screen, and he stowed the phone away again and hit the button to close the elevator doors.

The doors were halfway closed to finish delivering him back to the lobby when an arm thrust through the gap, arresting their movement with a ding. Quatre smothered an annoyed expression and pretended to consult his clipboard as the latecomer got in the elevator with him. He was a little ahead of schedule; it was fine. This was no time to let his temper off the leash. Quatre flipped over a couple pages of fake waybills on the clipboard, chewing on the inside of his cheek as he stared at the papers.

The doors shut without further interruption and the elevator started moving with a tiny lurch, that split-second weightlessness that always gave Quatre a little shot of adrenaline. He flipped another page on his clipboard.

He barely saw the other passenger's arm move in his peripheral vision; he wouldn't have thought much of it except that the elevator lurched again, much harder. Quatre's fingers tightened on the clipboard and he blinked. They'd spent all of three seconds in motion. An alarm was buzzing. The other person had hit the emergency stop button. A much bigger shot of adrenaline ripped through him as he looked up.

At Trowa.

Who was blocking the elevator panel, his arms crossed over his chest.

"What the fuck?" Quatre blurted out.

"That's what I should be asking you," said Trowa flatly.

"What are you doing here?" He almost dropped the clipboard—his fingers had gone slack with shock—but he kept his grip on it, barely, evaluating its use as a weapon in the back of his brain. Whether to use it himself or just deny Trowa access to it.

"I'm staging an intervention," said Trowa, his voice still flat and featureless. "I wasn't sure I'd make it in time."

He probably had a gun. Quatre shifted his position, sliding out of the back corner and more towards the middle of the back wall of the elevator car.

Trowa's gaze followed him; nothing Quatre did would escape his notice, it seemed. "I admit," Trowa went on, still standing implacably in front of the elevator panel, "that it took me a while to figure out what was going on. The ownership of this building is pretty well-hidden."

The phone in Quatre's pocket vibrated, one short burst. He wondered if Trowa could hear it. He kept his mouth shut.

Trowa let the silence hang heavy. It filled the elevator, starting to suffocate. He almost caved, almost spilled everything, but Trowa saved him from speaking again. "What is this, some 'eye for an eye' thing?" he asked.

"They took a lot more than my eye," Quatre replied, his voice breaking a little around his dry throat.

"Your pain justifies nothing," said Trowa.

That got Quatre right in his soft underbelly, where his guilty conscience lived. "Don't tell me about my pain," he snapped. "What the hell do you know about it? You weren't there. You don't have this… this gaping hole in your chest where your family used to be." He gripped a fistful of his delivery uniform shirt as he spat out the words, pulling at the clothing over his heart. "You didn't have all your happiness ripped away."

Trowa's silence was frosty. "I'm going to pretend you never said anything so fundamentally stupid," he said eventually.

The words were like a slap. Right. Trowa, recently united with a long-lost sister. Trowa, apparently born with a different name. Trowa, with no parents to tell him where he came from. Who really knew if his sister was actually his sister? Quatre had 28 siblings and a mother still living. He was the one who didn't really know what he was talking about.

His pocket buzzed again. How long had they been in this elevator already?

"Can we finish this conversation somewhere else?" he asked, glossing over how he'd stuck his foot in his mouth.

"Got somewhere urgent to be?" Trowa asked.

"What do you think?" Quatre snapped, taking his chance to dive past Trowa for the button panel.

The clipboard came in handy as a shield, and it was a near thing but Quatre found a way through Trowa's defences to stab a finger against the 'stop' button. The elevator buzzed and started moving downwards again.

But Trowa had something in his hand at the end of the struggle: Quatre's phone.

Apparently he'd heard it buzzing after all.

He was staring at the screen. Looking at H's messages. The light faded from his eyes.

"We need to get out of here immediately," Quatre said, taking advantage of Trowa's inattention when the doors opened on the lobby to practically shove him out of the elevator. People in suits flowed around them to get into the vacant car, like they were just two rocks in a riverbed.

"Quatre—" Trowa said, sounding hollow. It seemed to cost him a lot of effort to tear his gaze away from Quatre's phone. "What have you done?" he asked in a very small voice.

There was a big clock on the marble wall over the lobby desk; when Quatre saw the time he swore under his breath and started heading for the big front doors, adjusting his hat over his eyes again. Trowa kind of stumbled after him, probably drawing the attention of the security guards. It didn't bear thinking about in that moment. He just needed to get in position. Needed to get Trowa out of range.

Trowa's long fingers almost wrapped all the way around his upper arm, but he didn't quite manage to stop Quatre's determined stride for the exit. "There are hundreds of people in this building right now," Trowa hissed in his ear.

"I know," said Quatre.

"Most of them don't even work for Romefeller," Trowa continued.

"I know," he said again.

"This is pure terrorism," Trowa snarled right in his ear, dogging him out the door into the afternoon sunshine. "Where is the difference between you and them, huh? What the hell would Rashid say if he were here right now?"

Quatre stopped on the huge stone stairs in the entryway, his heart lurching into his throat and choking off his air. That was the one thing he'd been refusing to think about. "It… I… th-they deserve…." He couldn't finish his sentence.

Trowa's hand on his arm gentled, but Quatre thought he'd have a handprint-shaped bruise later. He almost wanted it to bruise. A physical reminder he'd needed before all this had happened, not after. Not in the final moments.

"It's not too late to stop this," Trowa said in his ear. "You can just walk away from it."

A bark of laughter ripped itself out of Quatre's throat, almost a sob. He realized he was shaking his head. "It is too late," he said hoarsely, thinking of the charges he'd littered the building with over the past day and a half. The parking garage down below was a grid of wired-up plastique. There was no way he could disable enough of it in time, not now. Not when he'd left the backup trigger with H, just in case.

"What do you mean?" Trowa whispered at him.

Quatre met his eyes for the first time in several minutes, blinking away some tears and almost laughing hysterically at the dawning horror on Trowa's face. He choked out a little giggle, even though nothing about this was funny. Except for the timing.

"I planned this for weeks," he said, patting aimlessly at Trowa's arm and trying not to let his knees buckle under him. "Did so much prep work. Took me days to set it all up. We've got—" He grabbed at his phone still clutched in Trowa's hand, turned the screen enough to see the time on it, "—six minutes."

Trowa was speechless.

"I'm supposed to be in the car already," he added unnecessarily. "It's all gonna go up. H is monitoring it from down the road. I can't do anything about it now."

"Holy shit," said Trowa, looking back and forth between him and the busy lobby of the Romefeller-owned office tower. "Holy shit."

Quatre nodded, because there wasn't much more to say about it than that. Then a thought hit him.

"What if I just," he started, turning back toward the front doors of the building. Trowa's hand squeezed around his arm even harder.

"Where are you going? Did you think of a way to stop this?"

Quatre almost said yes just because it would have meant Trowa letting go of him, letting him go back inside the building. But he held his tongue, because while Trowa might let go of his arm, he was bound to be right on Quatre's heels, thinking he could help save the day.

So Quatre looked back up into his friend's sad, disbelieving face. "There's no stopping this, Trowa," he said quietly. "And I'm sorry. Just get out of here. You've still got five minutes to get clear."

He made it one step toward the doors and then his arm got yanked back.

"Nope," said Trowa, "come on." And he dragged Quatre down the front steps.

Quatre looked back over his shoulder at his imminent mistake, digging his heels in. "Trowa—"

"You're done making your own decisions for a while," said Trowa. "You're terrible at it. Let's get the fuck out of here."

"But it's going to—"

Trowa was shaking his head, still hauling Quatre toward the sidewalk. "Martyring yourself won't be enough to balance the scales," he said darkly. "You're going to have to live with this one."

Quatre took a deep breath and then blew it out. He shook Trowa's hand off his arm. "Come on, then," he said, striding off down the street to the getaway car.

By the end of Hilde's first week of school, she was pretty sure she'd made the right choice in dropping out the first time around. It wasn't that the classes were terribly difficult, even if her German was shamefully rusty, and she was getting used to wearing the shoulder holster, and she definitely liked Relena. It was Relena's friends who were making her regret all her recent decisions. Or, well, just the one 'friend', really.

She'd heard Dorothy Catalonia's name before, from Relena's occasional complaints at home, but finally met her in the flesh when she appeared during their Thursday lunch break like she was making her grand entrance onstage for a performance, standing beside their lunch table and giving Hilde the eye. Hilde got the uncomfortable feeling that Dorothy could somehow tell she was carrying a gun.

"Who's this?" Dorothy asked Relena imperiously.

"Uh," Relena floundered for a second, "Hilde. She's… a new transfer."

"A new transfer?" Dorothy said. "Where from?" She said it entirely in German.

Hilde put on her best unimpressed look and answered her in German. "America. I went to school in New York until this year when my father was transferred away." She felt bad for Relena, who likely was catching half of what they were saying and struggling with the rest, but this bitch had 'mean girl' written all over her and needed to be dealt with swiftly and without hesitation.

"Oh, how lovely for you," Dorothy simpered. "And your German is so good! Is that where you know each other from?" she asked Relena in English.

Relena maybe hadn't been as lost as Hilde feared, because she just said, "No, New York is pretty big, actually," in the same endlessly patient tone she generally used to speak to Wufei at home.

Hilde, meanwhile, felt the old rage boil up in her and for once she decided to let some of the steam off. "Yes, thank you," she said to Dorothy. "I know my German is good. I don't need anyone to tell me that. It's my first language. My parents were both born and raised in Munich. And where, pray tell, did you come from? Because I can tell just from listening to you that it's not your first language."

Relena coughed into her fist; her eyes were lit up with laughter. Dorothy looked like someone had just slapped her across the face, but unfortunately recovered within seconds.

"You're right, of course," she said, tossing her hair back over her shoulder. "I'm afraid German is my fifth language. A much easier question to answer than where I come from. Unfortunately, a cosmopolitan upbringing makes it difficult to feel rooted in a place, you understand?"

"Oh, sure," Hilde nodded. "Of course."

"My father—General Catalonia—has been the head of Operation Zodiac for years and that work took us all over the place when I was a child. Not just in Europe, but abroad. We spent a fascinating six months in Argentina; I celebrated my 8th birthday there. And then my grandfather… well, you've certainly heard of Romefeller?"

"Here we go," Relena muttered under her breath.

Hilde blinked at Relena, filing that away for later, and then said to Dorothy, "Great big multinational corporation, right? Tearing up the planet with oil drilling and fracking and refineries everywhere?"

Dorothy smirked. "How droll. Yes, Romefeller did start in oil, and it's still a significant part of their holdings but they've really… branched out, you could say, in recent years."

"Oh?" said Hilde. "Are they just like, directly killing the seals and melting the ice caps now? Skipping the middle steps with the oil? That does sound efficient, probably a big money-saver, I imagine."

"Little girl," said Dorothy, and Hilde breathed in through her nose and reminded herself that she did have a gun but she was not allowed to use it on someone this useless, "You clearly don't understand how power flows and where it collects. My grandfather," said Dorothy with great gravitas, "is Dekim Barton. Of those Bartons. Romefeller's board meetings are like a family reunion for us. We are richer than God. But what's the point if you're not using that money for a grander purpose?"

"Like saving the whales, or ending world hunger," Hilde suggested gamely. The name Dekim Barton was ringing bells for her and she was trying to figure out why.

"Listen to me," said Dorothy. "This time next year, OZ and Romefeller will be the only two powers worth mentioning. We won't need the UN anymore. Not once my father is in charge."

The bells started sounding more like alarms once the word 'OZ' passed Dorothy's lips. "What the hell are you talking about? Don't be coy, it doesn't suit you," said Hilde. She shot another glance at Relena, who wasn't even paying attention anymore. Had she heard this manifesto already?

"It's very simple, but I'll speak slowly so you can keep up. Operation Zodiac, funded by my grandfather and several of his most trusted backers, has spent the last decade—almost two decades—quietly and carefully setting up strategically placed bases all over the world." Dorothy was talking like she was telling a bedtime story to a child now, but Hilde was starting to recognize it as current events instead of fiction. "So many forces. More than you can wrap your little head around! They're all set up to strike at major cities, strategically important assets both military and political, and, yes, oil deposits. And one day very soon, they're all going to mobilize, all at the same time. And you'll wake up the next morning to a new world order! Both of you," she emphasized.

"How can you possibly know a thing like this?" Hilde asked scornfully, praying Dorothy was just delusional.

Dorothy shrugged. "Everybody learns the family business, don't they? Well, unless their parents die before they can pass it on."

Relena still appeared not to be listening but she was holding her fork more like a weapon than a utensil. And very tightly.

Hilde licked her lips, trying to pick her next words carefully. "Sorry, I just don't get why these people who you say are planning some kind of global overthrow would tell their plans to a teenage girl with a big mouth. It's just a little hard to believe."

"It doesn't matter who I tell," said Dorothy, smirking again. "It's so far along now that it can't be stopped. By anyone, let alone you two. Even a setback like that unfortunate bombing in Doha is no more than an inconvenience in the grand scheme."

Relena looked up at that. "What bombing in Doha?" she asked. "I watch the news every day; there's been no such thing."

Dorothy's smile turned simpering again. "Well, there you go," she said. "Watch the news tonight, and then you can think some more about all the things that I know about and you don't." She left them with that one, giving Hilde an unimpressed once-over before turning on her heel and flouncing away.

Hilde and Relena were left looking at each other over the remains of their lunches.

"Yes," said Relena, answering the unspoken question. "She's always like that."

"Have you heard that exact story before?"

"Pretty much," said Relena, looking nonplussed.

Hilde winced. "Have you told anyone about it?"

"No? She's completely full of shit; you heard her. She's delusional."

"I will grant you that she's a crazy bitch, no question there," agreed Hilde, "but some of what she said is definitely true. Enough to make me wonder about the rest of it."

"I'm sorry, what?" said Relena. "What part of all that could possibly be true?"

Hilde opened her mouth to answer but the bell for the end of lunch chimed just then. "Let's talk about this later," she said instead, getting to her feet. "And watch the news, I guess."

Wufei was on perimeter watch when they got home from school, but Hilde cornered Duo and Heero in the library before she'd even put her bookbag down and gave them the rundown on Dorothy Catalonia and what she'd said.

They were both grim-faced by the time she was done.

"Well," said Duo. "That's not ideal."

"If it's true," countered Heero.

"Some of it is objectively true," Hilde pointed out.

"She could have actually learned those things and made up the rest," said Duo.

"Those things aren't exactly common knowledge, though. So we're accepting the premise that Relena goes to school with the daughter of the guy who runs the organization currently threatening her life?" asked Hilde. "Because if we are then that's fine, I just need to know since I'm the one standing there while Relena interacts with her during fucking tennis club."

Heero crossed his arms and examined his shoes for a moment as they all processed that. "It's worth investigating a little more, maybe," he said finally. "But I don't think this girl is the direction the threat is coming from."

"If anything, she could be a distraction," Duo mused.

"We really can't even speculate at this point," said Heero with a shrug. "Even to consider her a source of information, we have to verify all the shit she said first."

"How do we even begin to do that?" Duo asked.

"Have either of you looked at the news yet today?" Hilde asked.

They both shook their heads. "Why do you ask?" said Heero.

"One of the many things she mentioned during our little introductory chat was a bombing in Doha. She called it a 'minor setback'."

"Okay," said Duo slowly.

"And then Relena piped up that there hasn't been any news about any bombing in Doha, and Dorothy hinted that there would be tonight."

"Well," said Heero, "let's see what that's about then, and go from there."

The three of them and Relena went straight from dinner to the TV in time for the evening news. Whatever any of them had been expecting or hoping to see, 'Terrorist Attack in Doha' as the lead story was not it.

"Unbelievable," said Relena flatly.

"After the tragic collapse of a high-rise office building earlier today in Qatar's capital,"* said the news anchor, *"local authorities entered the site to search for survivors and investigate the cause. We have now learned that this tragedy, which took dozens of lives and injured hundreds more in the building and the surrounding area, was likely an act of terrorism. Breaking reports from the scene are that traces of plastic explosives were found in the parking garage and attached to significant parts of the structure. We go now to our correspondent in Doha for more."*

They watched in silence as the image switched to someone standing in front of what had to be the wreckage of the collapsed—blown-up—building.

"The mood here today is somber after the surprise collapse of a busy downtown office building in the middle of the workday. The death toll is still unknown as rescue crews continue to search for survivors in the rubble, but we're hearing that there are at least 20 people still unaccounted for after the collapse. Authorities are treating this as an act of terrorism after finding evidence that several explosive devices were placed at key points in the building's structure, and were most likely the cause of this tragedy. No suspects or motives have yet been identified, but we are informed that six floors of this building were occupied by Romefeller Industries, leading some to suggest that Romefeller was the target of this act of violence."*

"Holy fuck," said Hilde. "That's… wow."

Relena sagged into the couch. "Oh my god. I liked it better when she was just insane and delusional. Can we go back to that?"

"And this Dorothy girl told you it was a bombing at lunchtime?" Duo asked.

"Yes," said Relena into a throw pillow she'd pulled over her face.

"Okay, so she's definitely got some kind of credible information source, I guess," he said. "We just don't know how far that goes."

"Hmm," said Heero, frowning at the TV, and then he said, "Wait, be quiet," and turned up the volume a little more.

"—Have just learned that some persons of interest have been identified in this attack from local CCTV footage. Anyone who has seen or has information on either of these individuals is asked to contact authorities immediately."*

A grainy still image from a camera next door to what used to be the building's front entrance appeared on the screen. Two blurry people were on the steps and one seemed to be holding the other by the arm. It was in colour, but that was about the only useful detail to be gained from it as far as Hilde could tell.

"What the actual fuck," announced Duo, leaning in to peer at the crappy image. He pointed to the blurry person closest to the building entrance. "Tell me that does not look like Quatre to you."

Hilde frowned at it. The person was light-haired enough, but was wearing a blue hat that covered most of their head and obscured their face.

Heero ducked down to get his own closer look, and then said, "Shit."

"What?" asked Duo. "Am I right?"

"This other guy is Trowa. Look at his hair."

"Goddammit. Shit. Fuck* I didn't want to be right. What did those two assholes do?"

"Blew up a goddamn building, according to the news," said Hilde, throwing herself down into an armchair to brood. "Sorry, a Romefeller building, specifically."

"That's a civilian target!" said Duo. "Why would either of them do that? That's not—that's the kind of thing I'd believe of Wufei, maybe. Not Tro and Q."

Heero got back to his feet and rubbed a hand tiredly across his face. "People can always surprise you with what they're capable of doing," he said, and left the room.