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Chapter Twenty-Two

Ignition Sequence

We are the culmination of our past, and the bane of our future. – Anthony T. Hincks

Fights begin and end with handshakes. – Cameron Conaway

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The boys are back in town, and everything is on the move. If you're going to pick a fight, best do it with solid foundations - once you have momentum on your side, nothing can stop you.

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And… 55 pages, 35k words. Sorry about the wait. I've been wanting to cover all the points of an 'Ignition Sequence' chapter for a damn long while though, and hey, it looks like all my characters are FINALLY finished stalling? Plenty of fun this chapter in a bunch of angles (writing both Howard and the Maguanacs as a group is a damn riot, I tell you), some good catharsis.

Also, my betas are goddamn godsends. Enjoy!

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November 22nd 198 – Friday – Earth Orbit – Sweepers Ship

"Welcome back," Howard called as the group of kids made their way out of the ship he'd lent them. Eyeing them over the top of his glasses, he noted, "I'd offer you a chance to relax and get cleaned up, but your ride out beat you here by an hour and since they won't come inside, I figure you want to get going yourselves."

The tall one blinked at him, the hint of a lazy smile twitching into life at one corner of his mouth. "That's a nicely buried insult."

The twelve-year-old, Yasa, laughed. "I need a shower too bad to get offended," he decided cheerfully.

"You might not be impressed with the ship-grav version of a shower," Heero warned, looking tired.

"That's because so far, everything about space sucks," Yasa announced cheerfully. "Audi has promised amazing views for the next two weeks, though, so I'm holding off on judging you all."

Howard laughed, liking the pluck of the boy. "It has its downsides," he agreed. "Though to be fair, you haven't tried a colony yet, and they're a whole different kettle of fish. Living shipside doesn't give the culture much credit."

"Eh, okay," Yasa agreed easily, shrugging, before looking back to Heero. "So what now?"

The young man tipped his head to one side, thinking, before signing a handful of abbreviated signals to Trowa/Adam one-handed. "Call Audi and coordinate how they want to do this." He focused back on Howard. "They won't board, but did they lay out any rules otherwise?"

He crossed his arms. "I wouldn't have let them board even if they wanted to, before you could vet them," he pointed out. "Now that you're here, it's a different story. I'd appreciate it if you'd go to the control deck and coordinate that, make sure no one has any misunderstandings."

"I can handle that," Adam decided, briefly gripping Yasa around the elbow to get his attention. "Text her instead, and we'll call from the bridge," he suggested. "Or just wait; they would have seen us arrive anyway." He pushed off then, the kid following, though he tossed a sidelong look back at the other pilot. "Meet you there?"

"Or back here," Heero agreed. "I'll catch up." Turning to Howard again, he explained, "I was hoping to talk to you privately."

Now that's unexpected. He couldn't help but raise his brows, surprised… but he shrugged and gestured for the kid to follow him out of the bay. "Sure." Curious, he looked back over his shoulder once they were alone in the next hall. "Worried about rumors, or something else?"

Heero's face did something complicated and awkward. "Starting requirement for passing on a message," he admitted. "He insisted. There's some other stuff too, but you'll be hearing about most of that through Lucrezia soon, so I wouldn't have really cared."

A message, huh? Kid got around enough that that could mean any number of things, so he started leading him back to his personal quarters, which he knew would be safe against any kind of eavesdropping. Slowing his momentum, he gestured for him to come up alongside so he didn't have to crane his neck around. "What's the second part, then?"

"You were part of the project that built Tallgeese, weren't you? And Peacemillion?"

"You bet," he agreed. "Handled a lot of the upgrades for Tallgeese too, before Milliardo blew it up to cover pulling Wing Zero out of a debris field."

Heero blinked back at him, surprised. "I'd wondered how he got it."

Howard snorted. "I'm not sure he even had it a whole week before you conned him out of it."

Another long blink. "About the same as I'd had Epyon, then." He frowned, then shook his head. "Strange… but it made sense. Quatre built Wing Zero, and Treize, Epyon. And Wing Zero was so much like Wing that it just… felt right." He offered up a wry sort of smile. "It's not like he argued with me when I told him what I was doing."

"Hmm." That sounded enough like them, he supposed; even before he went crazy, Milliardo had always been hard to pin down. "What happened to Wing anyway? When Une showed up with it at Libra I figured you'd stashed it somewhere and it got found, but that's too sloppy for you."

"I signed on with a mercenary group in late October, after Quatre and I escaped the Treize Faction radicals experimenting with Zero," he explained. "Though I had hidden it before that, since no one else seemed to have a lot of luck getting back into space with their suits after the colonies renounced us."

"You mean after you blew yourself up the first time?" Howard wisecracked.

That earned him a smug, dark sort of smile, closed lips and crooked enough to call it a smirk, and the effect was frankly a little ghoulish – especially paired with the dangerous troublemaker glint in his eyes. "What makes you think that was the first time?"

He choked out a laugh at that, amused in spite of himself. Dark, but still. More vibrant than he'd been giving the kid credit for too. "Was it?"

Heero let out a short breath of a laugh, rolling his eyes. "It was." Pulling a face, he added, "Sixth attempt, but J was pretty good at sabotaging my supplies when I got bad by 195."

And dark without the humor now. Great. "Did he now?"

He made that same face again, and Howard caught enough of it this time to see the hints of shame and anger mixed in with the disgust. "194 was… bad. Anyway, the mercenary group was a splinter of a splinter off of the Treize Faction that actually had decent priorities, and they were taking jobs to try to put down the groups still wrecking cities in Europe, whatever allegiance they claimed. It was nice to be the outsider for a little while; it gave me more time to figure out what I wanted to do without worrying about making another mistake. It's easy to play the moral high ground without committing to something bigger when you're just trying to lower the collateral damage. Europe was too crowded even then for the kind of MS battles everyone kept getting into to have anything but mass civilian casualty rates."

His face tightened up, and he caught Howard's eyes almost in a challenge as he said, "I understand the need for fighting, but innocent collateral… It's wrong." Looking away, he admitted, "I've done it on accident before, and I've never come close to hating myself even half as much again. The idea that someone would do it on purpose, to make a point, is…" He shook his head before meeting Howard's eyes again. "That way of thinking needs to die out."

…He was a little charmed by that. He could acknowledge that he probably shouldn't be, but he could relate a little too well to deny it. "Amen to that." He pointed out their turn before grabbing a handhold to alter the direction of his momentum, swinging left. "So what happened to Wing?"

The kid grimaced. "Bad intel or a trap; I'm not sure. Romefeller was on the rise and hired us to take out another radical group in Lux – then as we were wrapping up, a doll army got turned on us. Too much concentrated fire; even Wing could only take so much abuse. I was trying to decide what to do once it'd been wrecked, if I had a realistic chance to make it out on foot or not, when I got a com call from Treize. I hadn't realized how close the battle had been to his estate, but… we'd already overflowed onto it, trying to gain ground. He offered sanctuary, and it wasn't like I had too many options. I rigged the self-destruct to a timer and got inside… and he showed me Epyon."

He shrugged again. "I handled the rest of the dolls once I got back out, but everyone I'd been fighting with was dead. Lucrezia had already talked Quatre and me into coming to Sanc once before that, and since I didn't have anywhere else to be, I went back. Treize must have pulled Wing's wreckage into the hangar he built Epyon in before Romefeller showed up to claim the rest of the scrap."

The ghoul smile made another appearance. "I suppose he needed a new project, since he'd given his old one away? Though despite how many times OZ rebuilt Wing, they never did it justice; every new iteration was just the barebones." Rolling his eyes, he added, "Zechs expected me to be impressed when he showed me what he'd done with it when he called me down to Antarctica, and he'd done better than I would've thought possible, but it was still off.

"I never said anything because I didn't want him to keep a team on trying to reverse engineer it even more, but the operating system was a complete mess and they didn't get the bird mode right at all. It only took ten minutes for it to start glitching out once Trowa tried using it in our escape from Antarctica, and even after I redid the programming I wasn't confident it could handle another controlled re-entry. It never moved half as smooth again either – the way they did all the junction points was completely different. It took some getting used to."

Howard barked out a laugh. He'd wondered about that, especially with the story about how Heero had readily agreed that the rebuild was perfect… then insisted on borrowing Heavyarms for the duel Milliardo was holding him to. It made a lot more sense than refusing out of pride; Heero'd never really seemed to buy into that tosh… though it made a believable excuse against someone who thought like Milliardo, he was sure.

And he'd seen the transformative flight mode on Wing gundam when Heero left that time Duo'd brought him home for repairs. He'd never seen a single damn thing like it – and since J was dead now, he didn't figure he ever would again. Even when they'd let him play with Wing Zero on Peacemillion and he'd put the big guy through his paces for diagnostics, the transformation on it hadn't been half so polished.

Wing had been beautiful… and once he'd seen it shift into that fancy bird mode the first time, he couldn't really blame the little shit for not letting any of his engineers near it. Even if Heero'd trusted them that kind of tech had to be fiddly as hell. The parts he'd stolen out of their stores and off Deathscythe in the dead of the night hadn't even been exact; the kid had done a fair job cleaning up his workspace, but it was clear enough that he'd modded a few of them for some kind of patch job.

He was also sure he'd stolen more than he needed so they couldn't tell what he'd used. Given what estimates he could tell about the damage done to Wing just from seeing it in his hangar that day, he was positive that at least one thing he'd taken off Deathscythe had purely been done so Duo couldn't immediately boot up and follow him when he tore out of there the next morning.

"It's a damn shame," he admitted out loud, showing Heero the next turn. "J always did like a little too much flash, but refining something so sweet as Wing… I never would have believed it, if I hadn't seen it myself."

That got him a speculative look. "It took a lot of testing," he admitted. "Years, and that was after we started working with the custom high-mobility joints; changing the tolerance ranges practically had J back at the drawing board a few times. It made a big enough difference to be worth it, though."

Well isn't that a teasing sort of hint? He raised both brows as they turned, debating just whatall that implied. "How involved were you?"

His jaw tightened for a moment, even if nothing about the rest of him did, before he met Howard's eyes again. "Very. Almost four years of development between the odd mission and training, until early 194. There were a couple other candidates the first few years, but they stopped being able to keep up by 192." He looked up and to one side. "From what I remember before they dropped out, I wouldn't be surprised if most people hard a hard time with Wing after we were done with it. This girl, she just about put herself through a wall after the last gyro upgrade, even though she'd been working with them for weeks already. It was never intuitive, the way Heavyarms is."

…There was absolutely nothing intuitive about Heavyarms' handling. Not unless you wanted to say it was closer to Leo standard than even Tallgeese, and Leo standard was not intuitive. The original mobile suits had been built for precision, not speed, and even when they'd crafted Tallgeese sacrificing that precision was never an option – the pilot just had to learn the system, same as with any other type of cockpit. The fact that Heero thought that way about it either showed how much of an engineer the boy was despite none of them picking up on it, or just how young J had gotten him – maybe both.

Maybe a well placed compliment would get him more information. Heero was easier to get talking than he used to be by a long shot, and just because he was questioning J's ethics –again – didn't make the kid any less impressive. "Whew! The way I heard it, G only wrapped up Deathscythe the December before launch, and Heavyarms wasn't ready 'till damn near day of. You mean to tell me that the two of you working together managed to wrap up building Wing over a year before deadline?"

Instead of a witty response or another one of those ghoulish smirks, though, silence stretched out… and when he risked a glance over at him, he saw the boy's face had gone blank like it had stayed stuck during the war, and that was its own brand of fucking eerie. Shit. "Heero?"

The kid's eyes narrowed, and for all that he looked a little out of sorts, at least his face was human again. A little upset, on edge maybe, but animated. "It's… Odin. Please." Licking his lips and swallowing, he grabbed a handhold and arrested his motion as they came to a T intersection Howard hadn't given directions for yet. Letting his feet sink slowly back to the ground in the low gravity, he added, "And I don't know."

Howard felt like he'd taken one step to the left and straight into something unidentifiable and nasty, but he also didn't think it would be a great idea to step right again without figuring out what in the hell it was. And so, since he wasn't a coward, he tried to muddle his way through. "You don't know what?"

"When Wing was finished. I wasn't… J handled a lot of the retraining, but often indirectly, and he…" He shook his head as though to clear it. "It's blurry. I wasn't paying attention. Wing wasn't done when…" His jaw clenched tight enough that Howard could hear his teeth creak this time, before the kid took another deep breath and every inch of him went slack. Tipping his head back, eyes shut, he said, "He must have kept working on it without me. I remember the sims upgrading a few times, but they didn't let me fly that year."

He considered that for a moment, watching him before hesitantly offering. "That seems sloppy, not letting you get used to it again."

"I think they were worried about what I'd do. I'm not sure they ever wanted to let me in Wing again even with a remote kill switch, but J… He must have said it wouldn't be a problem?" He sounded confused for a moment, almost lost, before shaking it off, opening his eyes and staring at the far wall. "I don't know. He found me the day before launch and gave me a list of options like he used to, and when I wouldn't do the original Operation Meteor, he helped me steal Wing." He frowned. "No one else knew I'd come back… they didn't interfere when I used the new launch codes." The frown deepened. "They should have been there. I'd just refused orders again, they usually…"

He blinked, expression clearing. "J must have killed them before he came to find me. I almost mistook him for the retrieval team and pulled the trigger, before I recognized him. I'd decided I didn't want to go back anymore." Licking his lips, he finally focused back on Howard. "When I agreed to a different version of Meteor, the one we all followed through on, that was when he gave me the code name Heero Yuy. I didn't really have a name before that, so I kept it, but… I prefer Odin. My father's name was Odin."

"…Shit, kid." There was a whole pile of issues in everything the boy had just said – in what he hadn't said – that made him want to go pull J out of the grave just so he could shake him and demand what the fuck. He'd been wary and looking for issues when Duo came to him because G had always been one of those people who should never be let near children, but… While J had always been an 'ends justify the means' kind of guy, he'd backed it with a common sense style of logic that kept it from getting too extreme. Most amputees who made it to their age learned to temper their disposition out of self-preservation if nothing else, and J had always been ruthless, but he'd also been stable.

Obviously, some real shit had happened. But that really wasn't the point – this was clearly Heero's version of being wild around the eyes, and he had rules about spazzy kids… and in the end of the day, he'd split from the group that got themselves known as the Mad Five because they had shitty ethics. Sure, the boy was a little weird, but the least he could do was use the name he preferred. Even if it wasn't automatically the right thing to do, he'd more than earned a few favors from everybody, Howard included.

Without that last insane dive after Libra mid-atmo with Zero's twin buster, they would have lost a lot more than just the Americas. He'd made damn sure that that bit of math and intel made its rounds on the nets soon after the Fall. He'd nudged a few groups into doing all sorts of stats on the boys after the Regime rose and put bounties on their heads, playing the court of public opinion anonymously while he hid behind his own decently-sized bounty for the sake of the long game, but no matter how you spun it the facts were pretty straight up. Everything the gundam pilots had done had been critical to how much the Fall got minimized, and most of the folks on Peacemillion had pulled their weight too, but when they'd been at the bottom of the end with only seconds to spare and it still wasn't close to good enough? Heero had been the one to, well… be the hero.

Odin, he reminded himself. "Odin, then," he agreed solemnly, gripping a handrail as his toes finished touching down.

"Thanks." They just stood there for a moment before the kid pointedly looked both ways. "Left or right?"

Practical as always. "This way."

He'd kinda figured things would go quiet after that, given the steaming pile of what the fuck he'd stepped in, but it was only fifteen seconds or so before Odin picked the conversation back up. "Anyway, the Zero System let Wing Zero smooth over a lot of edges that J and I spent all that time reworking, but I don't think there's any reason it should – it was just an untested prototype Quatre found blueprints for in something Instructor H left behind. No one had ever built it. Before the retraining, I had a couple different encrypted copies of Wing's blueprints stashed around known space in case our primary site was ever compromised and we had to burn everything fast, and the copy I dug up this last September is dated February 194, so I shouldn't have to do too much off of memory."

Howard resisted the urge to stop again. He debated being surprised, but didn't really see the point, and he debated keeping his mouth shut and rolling with it, but he'd never been good at that… because really, what was the point?

And anyway, clearly J had fucked up the boy's education in more than one way, so he was just helping out. "Kid," he announced after a moment. "In conversation, we have these things called transitions."

That startled a laugh out of him, surprised but also a little naughty in a way that Howard figured matched that ghoul smile of his pretty decently. When he looked back over at him, his eyes were lit up in a way that had him debating if the little shit had dropped that idea on him so hard intentionally, trying to get a rise out of him, cheer him back up…

Well, he'd watched him use that trick on Duo enough times to recognize it, and he could appreciate the sentiment. Whether or not he'd done it on purpose, Howard more than welcomed the life amusement breathed into the kid, especially after that little episode.

It also made a few more pieces click together on just what a girl like Lucrezia saw in him; that lady's sense of humor could get downright shitty sometimes.

"How long've you been planning this, then?"

"Mm, I've wanted to since Lucrezia let me fly Heavyarms at the start of July," he confessed happily. "But I didn't start making any decent progress until September."

"When you grabbed Wing's prints."

"Among other things."

He snorted out a laugh, turning the idea over a few times in his head. "I'd have to think of a good build site," he admitted. "And I hope you've got a way to handle the gundanium supply, because I'm mostly sure the guy I used to get extra from for repairs is dead."

"We already have that part worked out," Odin returned dismissively. "Though it won't be set up for another six to eight weeks." He side-eyed him. "Like I was saying, you'll hear about all this in more detail in a couple weeks through Lucrezia, but it seemed better to involve you now."

If the kid caught Duo flat-footed this often, it was no wonder the boy whined about him so much. He was exhausting. "We, huh?"

"Hn." The look on his face was pure awkward exasperation, and he wouldn't meet his eyes anymore. "I could have said that better."

Shit, we really gonna play this game? "But not more accurately?" he countered, eyes narrowed.

The brief twist of his mouth was all irritation, and the puff of a sigh, resignation. "I said me having this conversation was a bad idea," he admitted conversationally.

Howard huffed right back at him, thoughts churning. "I thought Adam said he didn't ever want in an MS again," he hedged, trying to cut off the hopes before they spun out too far.

"He doesn't," Odin agreed blandly, pointedly eyeing the next intersection.

"So he's just going to help build?" Even in the deepest throes of his amnesia, Trowa had known enough about the inners of a gundam to make folks nervous.

Not that that was why he was asking. Lu had said plenty enough about how honest her new man was, if you asked him direct-like.

Odin made a thoughtful noise as he followed the latest direction to the right. "Maybe if he likes any of the plans we come up with."

Yeah, that's a no. He fought down the urge to make an aggravated noise. Just because he wanted it to be Duo the kid was talking about didn't mean he wasn't jumping to conclusions. "We really doing this?" he asked plaintively.

"We could not," Odin pointed out in that same bland tone. "You'll get all the details after we go to Sudan in a few weeks. I just thought you should have the extra time to work on designs, if you decided you wanted in."

…God damn it. "Designs," he repeated, drawing out the s. "Plural." Technically they'd already been talking about an advanced fusion between Wing and Wing Zero, and if that was it the kid would cut him off at the pass here, so-

"We were thinking three. Maybe four, but that's still… touchy."

His brain stalled out a little, and he forced himself to take a deep breath as he showed the way down the last hall before his rooms. All casual like that… but Heero had always had a damn good eye for details, even when he decided to ignore them and bulldoze his way through a problem. He'd always been serious about his tech; had the kind of meticulously obsessive care for it that museum curators reserved for rare priceless artifacts. A gundam wasn't anything he'd cut corners on unless it was a do or die situation.

But three, three or four… and the way he was talking, how 'they' already had the resources lined up, if not primed? To meet that timeline, they already had to have a plant spinning out new gundanium somewhere, and that… That was a lot of cash flow. A lot of infrastructure too, and even if he'd been working on it for a full five months, even he had favors and old stockpiles he could bring into use from before the war, that was still a downright monstrous amount of wealth.

And maybe it was going to be a lot simpler because they weren't pioneering the tech the way G and the others had – Howard even knew he could get most of the boys from the Peacemillion back on board, starry-eyed at the very idea that they could do that kind of work again – but this… This was like getting that email from RLTT proposing the creation of Peacemillion all over again. There were layers of pure what the fuck in this, and while Heero was resourceful in all the same ways as Duo and any other thief who'd learned the trade too young to imagine stopping, this was leagues beyond what the kid would be able to pull even at his best.

Quatre, though. Quatre had a history of building gundams under people's noses – the Barton Foundation hadn't actually much to do with Sandrock. They'd been ready to wash their hands of H after the Alliance caught him stealing resources red-handed and sent him to some kind of work camp in L4 territory on MO-III. As he'd heard it, they'd given up on him entirely by the time he contacted G again, talking about a half-built commander class gundam and its pilot, pacifist Zayeed Winner's darling Heir. The kid had helped build Sandrock under his father's nose, redirecting funds – or maybe he'd just used his damned allowance, he was a Winner, who even knew? – while training himself into the ground.

The first time G had shared that little piece of gossip, Howard had just about died laughing. He'd figured the scandal when it all came out would be fantastic. Unlike what happened in 173 with his oldest, the Winner Corp Head wouldn't be able to handle the situation by disowning the boy – everyone knew he needed him too much, because why else would you go through twenty-nine other kids first?

He'd never been able to make up his mind over whether Zayeed was so shitty at being a dad that he didn't notice his kid was building a gundam, or if little Quatre was just that damn good, even at fourteen. Considering some of the shit he'd pulled off at Libra against the dolls, even with Catalonia directing them…

But it hadn't been a scandal, in the end. It had been a real sad shitshow, with the old man dead in mysterious circumstances while the satellite where it all went down was swept away with senseless rioting. And Howard may have spent a lot of time on Earth, but everyone in space knew that leaving a grieving space heart alone was asking for trouble. He had hoped, when he'd heard the news, that some of the boy's sisters had snatched him up right after the fact – hell, maybe even the spitfire whose example it looked like the boy was trying to follow, whatever name she was going by now. Instead, it had been three weeks of isolation, and then he'd shown up with Wing Zero.

Once was happenstance, and twice he could write off as coincidence. Three times was a pattern. Mother of God, maybe he'd had everything laying around already, but Quatre had constructed Wing Zero in three weeks.

He thought back to what Odin had said earlier, when he started deflecting. "If you don't want to be the one having this conversation," he asked, pressing his palm to the reader, "then why isn't he?"

"Because we need to talk to some people in Sudan first," the boy reiterated yet again, sounding annoyed. "But he won't do that until we have Rubato off the ground, and we still need to finish the orbital set-up before we have the communications network Sally asked for. So if you give me another two or three weeks, you can hear about all this from her." Kicking off with the precise control of the spaceborn, he launched himself through the doorway and directly onto the couch, resettling himself with ease. "We're almost past the point of trading favors. By the time you hear from Sally it's going to be a full alliance, and Lucrezia will know the ins and outs of our operations so we can coordinate."

…He was so done with all the bombs this kid dropped. 'We' was clearly a hell of a lot more than just him and Quatre, and he'd have sworn he heard about something called Rubato to do with souped up educational programs last week. Now he was going to have to go dig up everything he could find on it.

Instead of taking another deep breath to keep from making a fool out of himself, though, he spat out the first argument that came to mind. "Lucrezia already has the Maguanacs."

The look Odin gave him was just as done as he felt, and carried a heavy dose of 'you're-being-really-stupid'. "I'm here," he stated deliberately, overenunciating. "Because a different friend asked me to pass on a message."

Howard frowned, considering that as he shut the door and made sure all his privacy protocols were still in place. "And to give me blueprints to play with," he pointed out.

"I could have done that in the hangar; Quatre's set a deadline. Duo's a lot more touchy about secrets than either of us, these days."

"…Duo."

That look of sheer exasperation was back. "If you had asked me instead of waiting for Adam to come around, we could've had this conversation ten weeks ago." His lips twitched in an aborted smile. "I could've swung by before picking up Wing's blueprints. We already had the Rubato network up by then; I could have even given you a point of contact, so long as you can accept his terms." He rolled his eyes then. "They're a little excessive, so you might not want to, but a proof of life is easy enough. He says he still carries the lighter you gave him."

The RLTT lighter that Duo never would've had a chance to tell Heero about before Libra went down – if the kid had even been inclined to brag, given the way he'd looked half gutted over the compliments Howard had said it represented. He didn't need the extra little proof in that statement, he'd have believed Odin without it, but he wouldn't deny that it was nice to have.

Slumping a little, he took a slow walk over to the couch instead of kicking off, taking the time to let the warmth of the revelation settle down in his chest a little better and clear his thoughts. "Damn."

He'd been relieved when Adam said he'd seen Duo, but figured that would be the end of it when he didn't offer up anything else. If the kid had decided to ghost everyone from his old life, then he'd figured it was fair that he was on that list. It had hurt a bit, but he couldn't really fault the logic. He might have made himself out to be the most reliable adult Duo had ever known, but it wasn't like the bar had been set too high, and he was just one of many faces. It had only been a year that they'd known each other, and even if Howard saw so much of himself in the kid it practically felt like he bled every time the boy got himself hurt, that didn't mean it went both ways.

Still, if he was willing to reach back… "What kind of terms?"

Odin still looked entirely unimpressed. "No sharing his location to anyone, even Lucrezia. Most of Rubato knows he's a friend, but only a few of us know who he used to be. No political involvement or war play in his area. Or, if it can't be helped, he wants warning – but I'd handle that part." He rolled his eyes. "Because he thinks that's going to work."

He was absolutely certain he wasn't misreading the sour attitude about specifically not being able to tell Lu, and that made him want to laugh a bit. Wow, but he's got it bad, doesn't he? Still… "Being somebody's confidante isn't a betrayal to someone else," he pointed out carefully. "Not unless they're in direct conflict."

"That's not what he's being stupid about," Odin returned dismissively. "Lucrezia's going to figure it out through process of elimination because she's not stupid – especially once I turn up with the schematics for Deathscythe Hell's stealth jammers that he's promised me. She'll respect any distance he wants to keep the same as Treize apparently does already. He can be as ridiculous about his identity as he wants without anyone getting offended by how bad he is at it."

"…Holy shit, Odin," he breathed, starting to laugh. "You need some help unloading that baggage?"

The kid barked out a bright laugh at that, entirely delighted by the joke. "It's stupid," he argued, letting out a brief grin that was bright and entirely unlike the boy Howard had known during the war. Sobering up a little, he shook his head. "He's doing three completely different things and refusing to notice how they counter each other. At this rate he's going to walk himself right onto a battlefront two weeks before he even notices he joined a side, all because he's busy denying he wants anything to do with the politics. He says he doesn't want to fight anymore, but he won't stop picking fights. He still wants to know everything, even when he knows he can't make himself listen and not act. It's frustrating."

Howard grinned broadly, trying not to laugh; he hadn't expected him to actually take him up on the offer. Considering the information, though… "You don't think he means to stay out?"

"He means it," Odin countered. "But he also means five other promises, and I think he'll be lucky if he gets the time to make up his mind about which he cares about most before something else makes him choose. It's a wonder it hasn't happened already." He frowned, then corrected, "It probably has, but he was able to compensate."

He sat forward, dropping his elbows on his knees and turning his head to meet Howard's eyes again. "Maybe he can keep it up, and he'll be fine. It would hardly be the first time I misjudged Duo; he finds new ways around situations that I never would have imagined all the time. But in the meantime, I'm going to lay things out so he has support for a late entry.

"He's the possible fourth, if I can get enough about Deathscythe out of him to pull it off. If Hilde wasn't in Italy I'd have her try to wheedle details out of him about it, because he might think it was for her… and if he stays out, that would be fine too. She's good enough in Heavyarms to handle it even if she'll never come close to matching him. But I want him to have every advantage if he changes his mind. Duo doesn't take 'it's a bad idea' for an excuse any better than I do, and if it happens…"

He bit down on his bottom lip for a moment before sighing and clenching his jaw again. "If something happens to change his mind, it's probably going to be ugly. I think he's going to be back because staying out is the commitment he cares about the least, and if one of those other connections gets taken away? It's going to be Quatre all over again. So I'm going to do everything I can to make sure it doesn't happen in the first place, but he won't let me too close… and I'm going to make sure he has an outlet ready and pointed in the right direction in case Shinigami comes back with a bang."

…Well, shit. That sounded about as dark as half the things Odin had talked about today, which was worrying, but at the same time, he obviously cared… and a Duo that had so much to protect had to be a happy Duo. These two had always had an odd dynamic to their relationship, ever since Duo brought him home like a bedraggled puppy. Weird as it was coming across, it was reassuring to hear the other kid returned all the same layers of care and worry – along with the same blatant cynicism about the other's ability to function alone.

"I'm fine with those terms," he decided after a long moment. Cracking a grin, he added, "Though you might want to work on your compassionate speeches, what with how many backhanded compliments you fed in there."

Odin snickered, sitting back up and dropping his head back against the couch cushions. "Hilde's good in a suit, but Duo's in a class of his own. Lucrezia's the only person who might be on the same level – though he hasn't kept in practice, so maybe she's better, now."

"I'm noticing how you're not putting yourself on this scale," Howard pointed out, caught between wry and dubious. "And I was more referring to how you sidelined Adam, comparing Heavyarms to Deathscythe like that."

"Trowa's favorite fancy move in Heavyarms sprained his wrists. Every time. Even with how heavily you modded it post-Fall, that suit is still clunky, and Trowa's training as a pilot was minimal no matter how good his aim is. He's more in touch with being on the other side of the cockpit than most engineers, but even if it's only for personal reasons, I'm glad Adam isn't getting back into an MS. He's not bad, but he's almost three times as good on foot as he is in a gundam; it doesn't suit his talents." He rolled his head to one side to look at him. "And I dare you to tell me I have Duo or Lucrezia's soft touch on the controls with a straight face."

He did the opposite, as a matter of fact, and busted up laughing. "Hell no! Try that on some fool that didn't read your after battle diagnostics! You have any idea how long those had me scratching my head?" The little shit had regularly pulled stunts that looked impossible from the third person perspective, but he was so fast even without Zero running that you figured he was just cutting it too close for the human eye to see the difference. Lu and Duo practically danced when they flew, every movement perfect and intentional and absolute murder against multiple enemies or any other chaotic field. But while they were both good in close quarters, especially considering the inherently slow speed of Deathscythe's primary weapon – that Duo made opportunities with instead of concessions – Heero was a goddamn monster when it came to infighting.

For a while, he'd genuinely thought the diagnostics on Wing Zero's damage sensors were screwed up. The amount of pressure reported back after each battle was always an exponential of what it should have been, but there hadn't been any damage worth bothering with repairs during those first few weeks – despite the programs telling him it was so bad he might as well scrap the whole suit. After every damn battle. He'd tried to find the bug for a little while before throwing up his hands at the gibberish Quatre had used for code and resigning himself to doing a full tolerance inspection every time instead.

Then Wufei had taken it for a spin, and the diagnostics had come back normal. A near clone of how Wufei's flights read back on Altron, when he got his hands on that machine.

Heero got in again? And it was back on the fritz.

"Considering how you asked to put a camera in the cockpit that one time to check for a glitch?" Odin asked, ghoul smile back in place. "After you asked if I had any extra programs running that I hadn't told you about? Yeah, I know."

"You could have said something."

He snorted. "Honestly, I forgot. J figured out a better way to gauge me in 191 and it was the new standard from there, but Wing Zero didn't have the same sensor array he used. I never trust external diagnostics anyway."

It wasn't until three weeks of regular after-battle exams started showing mild but large, regular surface deformations in Wing Zero's outer plating that the truth had started to dawn on him, and even then he hadn't wanted to believe it. Then Trowa had borrowed the suit and the same shit as what with Wufei's flight happened, and he'd put the extra camera in… and been able to watch maybe ten minutes of the footage later before he had to either give up or lose his lunch.

The amount of G forces placed on the average MS pilot were not inconsiderable, and both Tallgeese and the gundams were three times harsher. You had to have an aptitude for it to start with and then you had to build a tolerance, and you still had to be able to think through the disorientation of both the speed and the constant, sudden changes in direction. Aerotrim exercises were the average screening for any pilot that wanted to go beyond a land Leo for a damn good reason – most people just couldn't keep their thoughts in a straight line when spinning in three different dimensions at high speed, let alone work a complex series of control panels. Finding someone who could, and who was level-headed enough to handle advanced maneuvers and strategy at the same time was hard.

Finding someone who leaned into the resulting turbulence when you ground against your opponent, leaned into it like nothing, cool as a cucumber even when doing it from two different directions at once so the effect was like a kid shaking a hamster ball as hard as they could while the rest of it was going on? Fuck, maybe while another kid was slapping the other sides? That was a fucking miracle that Howard hoped J had damn well praised the heavens for. And given the fact that Wing Zero didn't have a superficial sensor array intricate enough to give him meaningful feedback on just how hard he was pushing and how minimal the ongoing damage to the armor there was? Heero'd been gauging those maneuvers on touch.

He hadn't been just been shutting out the new layer of hellish motion. He'd been reading it.

"That shit would never work in anything but a gundam," he pointed out testily, feeling tired. He'd never gotten to see the immediate wreckage of any of the boy's enemies, but he knew the tolerance of all the materials used in other suits compared to gundanium. Tallgeese, with its solid neo-titanium construction, would have been the only non-gundam opponent facing off against that tactic to not have massive scoring lines after each graze. After watching more footage of Wing's older battles on Earth, it was clear the kid used that trick to detonate a suit's engines while Wing's hands were otherwise occupied fairly frequently – it just looked like a delayed response to an earlier strike if you didn't already know what was happening.

He'd kinda thought he'd seen it all by the time he took Peacemillion to Libra… but then Heero had happened.

"I've only ever flown gundams," Odin shot back. "Besides: what's the point of all that armor if you're not going to use it?"

"I've never even heard of anyone else who can do that," he went on. "It should be impossible." In any attempts, or looking at the accidents with newer pilots that flirted with that line, the damage had always been catastrophic – though to be fair, it sure as hell was catastrophic for Odin's enemies. But while the tolerance of gundanium was nigh astronomical, he'd done the math again after he'd worked out the maneuver, and it still didn't make sense. The margin for error on the edge he was riding every time he did it was far from forgiving… and he'd been effectively flying without instruments.

There was that ghoul smile and proud, dark glint in his eyes again. "I'm good at impossible."

"It has to be your reflexes," he continued, feeling his way back through the only logical argument he'd ever been able to convince himself of. "They were damn near supernatural before Zero." Fine-tuned corrections he added into his flight pattern, once again into the vibration, was the only way he could've kept from half killing himself with every grind, and the speed he'd have to do it at would be beyond any of the others without Zero's involvement.

Without getting into the predictive nature of the System the one universal, easily quantifiable was the change in its user was reaction time. All the data he'd ever been able to drag out of Wing Zero's diagnostics about its pilots – including Duo, because whoever had had it before Milliardo hadn't bothered to wipe the log – showed their reflexes skyrocketing from the averages on their preferred machines.

The difference was that the runners-up for Odin – Duo and Milliardo? Both were a cut above even OZ's elite, but their Zero reaction time scores were only a hair above Odin's non-Zero reflexes. And he went up just about as much as the rest of them once the System kicked in.

Milliardo must have gotten even better once he acclimated to Epyon, or maybe sinking into the crazy had given him an edge. That, or Howard figured Epyon's heat whip must've given Heero no end of trouble. It was a unique thing to have to learn to defend against on the fly… and it wasn't like anyone had much data on how Zero versus Zero really worked, with the predictive functions countering each other… though the crazy probably threw that off too.

What a fucking nightmare. Everything about Libra had been one nightmare after another, right from the moment that upright kid he'd helped out for most of a season suddenly turned to extremist world domination. He'd had some pretty serious anger and guilt issues when he'd lived on Peacemillion before Sanc's second fall, but so had Jake, and he'd been working through them well enough. He'd taken up with Lucrezia in the first place because she'd been recommended both by Peacecraft and Miller, even if he hadn't seen the little OZ deserter in person for a handful of years by that point. And Lu and all the people she brought along with her had obviously been more than worth it, but…

What the fuck had happened to Milliardo? It had only been a month – a total of five weeks between him leaving to defend Sanc and the final showdown at Libra. How could anybody change that much in so short a time? It had never made any damn sense.

"If you're done flattering me," Odin decided, reaching into a pocket on his left thigh and pulling out a phone, "then this is for you, and it's secure. It'll go down briefly when we bring the wider network online, but I'll warn you ahead of time. Duo's on Central European Time but his hours are erratic, so I wouldn't worry about a good time. Ask for Kasey if someone else answers; they all speak English."

He rolled his eyes, holding the device out for Howard to take. "And my number is programmed in too. Next time, try asking me if you're stuck on something. I can't answer a question if I don't know about it in the first place, and Duo was thrilled to hear you'd asked about him." Those deep, steady blue eyes bored into him. "We're supposed to be allies now – the worst I'd say is that I need time to find a solution."

Howard grinned as he took it, thumbing the power button. "Allies, huh? No more slipping pink ponies through my security net, then?"

The smirk came back, even as the kid rifled in a different pocket. "Only when requested," he returned mildly, pulling three sleek little hard drives out and offering them up like someone else would candies. "Here. Wing from 194 with what I could do from memory with Wing Zero in another file, Sandrock in 195, and a few concepts I was playing with for the third. I'll have more after I see Duo again, but I thought you'd want your own copy of what we've recovered so far."

"Hate to break it to you, kid," he announced as he took the drives, "but I learned early on to hedge my bets, and I know when to bluff and when to fold." He grinned broadly. "Don't worry so much about scraping your braincase for the other specs. I didn't touch the programming with a ten foot pole, but physical? I figured you lot might want help again eventually. Would have taken it to my grave if I never heard back, but…" He shrugged. "Let me talk to Duo a bit, and I'll probably be cool with letting you see Deathscythe Hell again."

The stealth system on that gundam was the one thing he'd never taken any data on. Duo had asked, and that had always been G's rule too – and Howard understood the fear of letting that particular genie out of the bottle well enough to go along with it. The fact that the kid was willing to fork it over to Odin said more about the trust there than any words could ever hope to manage.

"The idea of a refined Wing Zero with G's level of stealth capacity is downright nuts," he pointed out as he fingered the plastic casings for a moment. A swatch of white ink had been dashed onto one, and a rich yellow on another.

"Yeah, Duo laughed for almost a full twenty seconds when I asked if he thought the rest of us could use it, even after he'd already agreed to draw the jammers up," Odin pointed out dryly. "I don't think it's that straightforward."

Howard snickered, rubbing the drives together as he thought. White for the Wing fusion, yellow for Sandrock… If he followed the pattern he had a pretty good idea of what that meant for the purple on the third, but he'd already been lectured once today for assumptions making an ass out of him. "Who's the third for?"

It was funny how, when he let it widen enough to show a little teeth? That ghoul smile turned into something incredibly bright. "I thought Lucrezia deserved something nice."

oOo

oOo

November 24th 198 – Sunday – London, United Kingdom

"What we do have is a statement of continued good will, as well as explicit welcome to all the currently unpopulated areas of Oceania," Dorothy pointed out as she tucked the papers and drives Sylvia had passed her into her work satchel for later perusal. "Not just Polynesia." Unlocking her tablet, she opened the document she wanted and tapped on the picture of the map showing the relevant area.

The other noblewoman eyed it for a long moment, considering, before bluntly noting, "This feels like a bribe."

"It might be," Dorothy mused. "I've yet to find a stick to match the carrot, though."

The Pacific Reclamation movement was a clever gambit for Noventa, and a useful one besides, on more than one front. The Americas were generally at the forefront of the people's minds when it came to the consequences of the Fall, but the degree of the damage varied dramatically… and the Americas had done better than the island nations and eastern Asia. The hellish meteor shower had pockmarked both continents heavily, and the tsunamis that accompanied the off-coast strikes had massacred millions in short order… but there had been survivors left on the larger land masses to evacuate before the volcanic activity spurred on by Libra's Fall kicked into gear. Even now, there were reports of scattered groups of survivors across both continents – though to be fair, Milliardo's closing of the American borders had less to do with the unsuitable living conditions than the civil unrest as the governmental structures collapsed in on themselves. The South American borders had remained open for months longer than the North.

The lower continent had taken considerably longer to resort to killing and looting their would-be rescuers when supply couldn't meet demand. The superstorms that had already begun raging through were certainly a factor as well for both North and South, but… well, from what the then infant Regime had been able to observe, the South had been far more polite and organized.

The most immediate effect of the Fall, however, had been a sharp rise of the waterline in the Pacific, accompanied by a series of underwater volcanic eruptions leading to aftershock tsunamis as the ocean roiled… and while the waters had gone down again to something close to normal by the end of February, it was only after many previously populated lands had been underwater for weeks. The Americas might be a mess, but the nations that called the Pacific home had been desolated, from Polynesia, Micronesia, Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines, all the way south into parts of New Guinea. The coastline of the Asian mainland had been dramatically devastated as well, with reports of more volcanic action, but… well, China kept to themselves and Romefeller East had refused aid.

Not that the Regime had been in a position to offer Asia aid at the time, even discounting their campaign against Romefeller on the western front. By late 196 the East had repopulated and begun working the land again as far east as Vietnam, but according to the treaty they weren't allowed to go further south into what had once been Malaysia and Indonesia. Like New Guinea, parts of Indonesia had successfully escaped the initial waves of destruction and had had survivors willing to swear to the Peacecraft Regime. They, along with Australia and New Zealand, had enough room – and collateral – between themselves and the immediate affected zone to take on American refugees once the initial crises had passed.

The Pacific Reclamation Project proposed recolonization of the deserted acreage that could now be considered viable again in the western hemisphere. Technically the Americas could be reopened too, but the potential for complications with survivors was… significant. As it was, the project was still in the theoretical stages and already the media channels were flooded with demands about how the proprietors planned to… well the most memorable line she had come across so far was 'keep that Lord of the Flies shit in the Sahara from happening again' in any of the 'new' territories.

Considering the fact that the majority of Noventa's power block within Western Romefeller had their controlling interests in Africa, it was a valid concern. Cambyses had technically occurred under Noventa's watch. Conversely however, the Regime had overridden Romefeller's concerns in the Sahara early on out of pure necessity, and northern Africa had been a disaster waiting to happen. The infrastructure was weak, and while they'd had the technology to start trying to alter the landscape, communications between groups had been limited from the start, with transport between colonies in a desert troublesome from the outset… and many areas that had faced the same sorts of initial problems had gone on to not host Cambyses. By the time anyone was willing to acknowledge the problem as a true threat instead of the latest collapse of an American colony, Cambyses had been too large for anyone but the Regime to handle.

The fact that the rest of Africa had handled its refugee influx far more admirably than Europe counted in her favor. When viewed through that lens, the Reclamation was less a radical attempt to offload troublesome populations and more of a logical next step. The majority of Africa was Regime territory in word and taxation, but largely acted independently… and had avoided most of the problems Relena had become known for righting across Europe.

Or at least, they avoided the publicity of those problems. Romefeller's European population was far more dense than the larger African estates, their history less fraught. The southern families as a whole were simply more stable… and historically, bore fewer children to squabble with each other and their neighbors. Fewer tongues wagging made it easier to keep secrets, spread the information net a little wider, with bigger gaps…

Not that it truly mattered, at this stage. Sylvia was cut of similar enough cloth to Relena for them to work together, while the social disparities between them over the last five years could smokescreen their developing partnership from the Eastern Romefeller houses. Everything else they could sort out as necessary.

"I didn't think they would let anyone so close as Japan, let alone Taiwan," Sylvia mused, tapping her nails on the table.

Someone clearly never got the lecture on how 'Japan is not Asia', Dorothy mused, resisting the urge to smile. Centuries and multiple wholesale changes in regime, and still, apparently the Chinese had yet to let that grudge go. "They have a few caveats hidden in the fine print for the closer territories," she admitted. "Most of which will be resolved if you're willing to partner with Relena in some small capacity to solidify a few guarantees."

The other woman rolled her eyes. "Naturally. They're giving their favorite a bone to worry away at, all the while smiling and refusing to explain the abrupt shifts in population density the satellite feeds have picked up."

"They've never been particularly chatty," Dorothy agreed. "She pushed as much as she felt was safe, but the most they would offer was a note about refusing to let their engineers stagnate when other fields needed them, and that they would be in contact come next summer for the next amplifier survey. Favorite or not, she can't ask why we've been picking up internal troop movements without inviting retaliation we cannot afford."

"The military shifts worry me less than the sharp uptick in construction of industrial structures," Sylvia argued, still tapping and staring at the map. "The troop movements, until now, have been very internal, and China was…" She wrinkled her nose. "China made Europe look calm as a frozen lake, in 195. Their army immediately post-Libra was so significant because they were still actively occupied with civil war when Treize sent out the call for arms – they didn't have the time or ability to equip many of their MS for space combat because they were still fighting. For all that they've claimed no Romefeller roots since the Fall, I know that there were houses so entrenched in China that the new government is likely still dealing with them. The nation is large – I can't begrudge them internal strife, when we have so much of our own."

Dorothy made an agreeing noise. "Not to mention, of course, their rather long border with our mutual neighbors to the southeast. I should hope they are still watching that." The need for caution there was one of the few points of the peace talks in 196 that hadn't been difficult to find common ground on.

"Of course," Sylvia agreed, sitting up straight and gesturing at the tablet. "Send me those documents? I'll need to run logistics again; I'd only just finished my initial survey of the Polynesian islands."

"They should be in your inbox already," Dorothy deferred. "Also, RLTT says your team so far is good, but he's willing to offer suggestions." Tipping her head and smiling brightly at the other woman's suspicious look, she added, "Possibly more, if you find yourself in need."

Sylvia's eyes were calculating. "I wouldn't turn down a candidacy if it were offered, but as far as I'm aware, RLTT has never worked by proxy through another candidate."

She gave her very best smile. "Very few candidates know the proprietor personally," she lied. Technically, all of them did – they just didn't realize it. "Otherwise, he's particular about choosing proxies, and doesn't know enough about you to consider a direct relationship just yet."

BJ sighed, a soft voice nestled deep in one ear. "Do you actually know something there, or are you just leading her on? Because this seems like something I should know."

Sylvia pursed her lips in a pouting motion as she thought the implications through, and Dorothy just continued to hold the smile, dropping her head into one hand. Jake had given her permission to drop these kinds of hints – he had a point in his argument that most wouldn't believe him if he just came out and said it. Leading evidence for their allies was a logical step, where they could observe and come to the correct conclusions on their own terms before he was eventually forced to go public.

She'd been surprised when he admitted to planning for that. He had always been so secretive and reclusive that the idea was strange. He'd spent his entire life obscuring his identity, working from the shadows even while staying in plain sight. The Rhea Lowe Tomorrow Today Fund had gained the respect it had by ignoring boundaries, and a lot of that had been accomplished by its anonymity. True, it had become far less nebulous and more poignant in the public eye since he selected Relena to run her myriad projects under its auspices, but… Well, given how he already tensed at the privacy he had lost in coming clean with Relena's inner circle, she had expected him to cling to RLTT as an outlet for lost freedoms.

When she had gotten him alone and asked directly, though…

~~oOo~~

"Things change, Thea. If I want to change the world I have to change with it, and now that I've figured out where I need to be, I don't have to keep wandering. So much of the Fund's early years was a search for purpose; I couldn't figure out what to do to make things better, so I was just… trying everything. And I'm not done with that, there's always more, always something new, but roots are important too – and despite its reputation, I've had more people turn down RLTT because of its mystery than you might expect.

"So this is the next step. The publicity of the past two years has already had a positive effect, and it's past time for it to mature in any case. I already have a few splinters from it that work under different auspices anyway, and I can create more if I need the separation. The process needs to be handled carefully, but going public will be for the best.

"Besides, did you think Relena would be able to marry some no-name soldier without repercussions? I've already made my choice – better that I spin the details to our advantage."

~~oOo~~

Sylvia started tapping out a new tattoo on the table, watching her carefully. "You know the RLTT proprietor."

"I do. Continue to deal fairly with Princess Darlian-Peacecraft, and you might as well."

"Damn it, Dorothy, seriously?"

Really, BJ had been so quiet up until now despite eavesdropping on her meeting that she was surprised he was being so fussy now. The intent behind the hidden mic and earpiece had been support if necessary, and to remove the need to debrief the man – the documents she had received from Noventa on the East were something the two of them would be going over together once she was done here.

"In any case, we should work on your publicity," she continued, dropping her hand from her face and leaning back. "With everything you've done behind the scenes that we can retroactively point out, there's a few ways we can spin your story to cover all the bases and still minimize the risks from the East, given how you and Relena have largely moved in different spheres of influence. You're practically her southern counterpart, and we can use that – say that none of her projects have extended into your territory because they haven't needed to."

"That's because they haven't," Sylvia pointed out sharply.

"Exactly. So keep the attitude while showing a grudging allowance for a partial partnership on the Pacific Reclamation to receive RLTT backing, and you'll get her supporters behind you while our mutual enemies continue to see all the reasons why you step on each other's toes too much to consider an alliance. Meanwhile, we do have an excuse to bring you two into the same building to coordinate without suspicion."

The woman's mouth twisted into something just shy of a grimace as Sylvia gave a slight nod. "Grating, but practical; fine. Where do you suppose we start? Marketing has never been one of my strengths."

"There are a few different avenues we can take," BJ muttered, and she put on a pensive expression while she listened. "We can go over it later, but she actually has a lot of the groundwork laid out already, just too subtly – should be able to move fast without it looking unnatural."

"I have a few ideas, but let me comb through the details and get back to you later today?" Dorothy suggested.

BJ snorted softly. "Or at least, we can move fast without it looking like anything more than a pissy rivalry attempt with the princess."

Which will help the cover, so isn't that the point? It was annoying that she couldn't talk back to the sassy spymaster when she had company.

Sylvia made an apparently Herculean effort to not roll her eyes, and nodded again before dryly asking, "Relena does have a PR team, then?"

"It's mostly handled by RLTT," she returned blithely. "So yes, in a way."

"I don't actually buy that – I've seen too many of her and Miller's idle chats to think she might let anyone else have a grip there."

Dorothy beamed at Sylvia's guardedly thoughtful look. This almost made up for Jake's recent reminders of her running joke about how Rhea Lowe wanted to have Relena's children, back when they were all still new to each other. She was absolutely going to remind BJ of this after he put two and two together. Hopefully he would make a few more unintentional allusions she could lord over the man before it all came out, to compound it. Jake might even help, if she asked nicely.

Mm… So long as it's before February. He'd likely be at least a little upset with her by March… But that was still plenty of time, of course.

Time to change the subject, at any rate. "How well are your people handling Milliardo's new martial law play?"

Sylvia scoffed even as she smirked. "It's hardly martial law – more gendarmerie than anything. Hardly so oppressive as Relena's made it out to be in the media."

"Ooh, something else for you to publicly disagree about," Dorothy cooed facetiously. "Excellent." Not the reaction she had expected from the other noblewoman, which was curious, but maybe she had been spending too much time with Relena.

Sylvia rolled her eyes. "It's annoying, but more helpful than I expected. The military patrols are picking up trouble I normally have to cope with the results of, and there are easy enough ways around the curfew. It lets me sympathize with my problem elements while the new hoops they have to jump through make my life easier." Shaking her head, she noted, "But it would honestly be much more helpful if it hadn't been locked out of the Democratic Zone."

"Oh?"

"Completely discounting the lack of regulation that the East and Insurgence are using to infiltrate my side of the North Sea, the entire conglomerate is positively rife with black market dealings and syndicate power plays. The military presence so far has had a great affect on the drug trade, at least, but they can't gain any real traction with the democrats as our neighbors."

"The Democratic Zone also has the highest per capita count for Militia members, and inserting a stronger military presence there wouldn't have gone well even if Relena hadn't championed keeping them out," BJ noted.

Dorothy repeated the comment in her own cadences, then added, "Besides, you know well that it's only a matter of time before your more nefarious elements find new routes around the soldiers. Black markets are always ubiquitous."

"If they were all as organized as what's happened in Amsterdam, I wouldn't complain. The Netherlands and allied Germany is a hotbed, but it's relatively stable under the Dutchman's influence now that he's spreading out. I can work with stable. No, it's south Sweden and Denmark that are making my life difficult."

"He hasn't really gone north yet, and his movements east have been tentative" BJ noted. "Everyone keeps acting like he's going to go on conquest, but even on a local level, the Dutchman's a homebody. We don't even know what he looks like because he doesn't like leaving his neighborhood."

She decided she didn't care – as much of a hotbed melting pot as the Netherlands had become over the last few years, it really wasn't a problem right now. "What kind of outlets do you think the East is taking advantage of?"

"I have too many universities with extensively transient populations in Ireland and the UK to effectively comb for plants or sleeper cells," Sylvia groused. Gesturing back at Dorothy's bag and the papers she'd handed over earlier, she added, "When you go through some of those reports, you'll see… I've found evidence that they're slipping people into the reformed Cambyses populations that are pushing for going back to school, and that's only one venue."

"Shit… Because we don't expect them to have any extensive history to call on, they'll get through security checks easier."

"Anyone that can pass off as being from the Americas can make a pity gambit," she mused. "If you think they've been slipping the border with any regularity for the past few years…"

"If we can do it, so can they," Sylvia pointed out.

"Not in any significant numbers, but a trickle… That would make sense," BJ agreed. "Natalia's girls have proven it enough times now, not to mention Padma or Hanifah's cells."

"Let's return to those points after I get through my reading, then," Dorothy decided. BJ had more resources on the East than Jake had assumed, as he convinced his odd little co-op style intelligence network into centralizing, but Noventa still had leagues more. "What's your schedule over the next few days?"

oOo

oOo

December 4th 198 – Wednesday – Khiva, Uzbekistan

David breathed slowly and deeply, straining his ears for more detail as he waited. Closer… Definitely only one this time, which was a blessing… And the last three hadn't had radios, so if he could finish this quietly, all the better. No electricity up here for white noise one way or the other, and the only light came through the faded plastic of the cheap blinds covering the windows.

Low light meant less worry about shadows giving him away, at least. Given how utterly everything had gone to hell so fast it was hard to remember it was still only early afternoon, but he'd take it. This would be a lot harder if he was actually in pitch darkness.

'Seven,' Razo's strangely accent-free sub-vocal caricature announced quietly in one ear.

He waited. This door had been halfway open when he found the one-time apartment, so it was even odds as to whether this shithead would take it as bait or leave a different ambush opportunity. Either way. The latter would probably be quieter, but he could make it work.

His target paused, obviously trying to use the same cues to hunt, but Dave wasn't moving… and even if he had been, he'd mastered being silent while on the move over a decade ago. If nothing else, at least these fuckers didn't have the benefit of decent training.

If only that had made more of a difference downstairs.

The man evidently decided to trust his ears and not investigate because he started walking again, his silhouette passing the doorway as those slow, cautious steps began again, and Dave waited for him to pass the other side of the frame before slipping around the wood of the door and wrapping one hand around his lower face before dragging his combat knife across his throat. He convulsed once before he started to fall and Dave caught him up against his chest before dragging the body back into the abandoned apartment. 'Five,' he announced via his own subvocal mic. 'Delta, ETA?'

"Six minutes, sir," came Jasmine's terse voice. "Hold on."

'Ten,' Razo announced.

'Two,' added Chanel.

David bit back the urge to sigh and instead tried to think. Six minutes was practically a lifetime to wait for backup in this kind of situation, but it wasn't like it was her fault.

That blame rested on him.

'Twelve. Second floor clear.'

But on the bright side, Razo was some kind of silent French Cuisinart. He was still only passable with a gun, but give him blades and an ambush-friendly setting and he was fucking terrifying.

He wished he'd had subvocal equipment on the rest of his team aside from his scouts. If they were still alive, they could hear the radio chatter, but probably weren't in a position to respond.

'Still on third floor,' came Chanel's flat voice. 'Might be clear, but not sure.'

He was still on the first, and so far the only friendlies he'd come across had already been bodies. They needed to stay in one piece until backup made it, but they also needed to cover anyone who was still cornered on his floor or back in the basement, where it had all gone to hell. 'Auerbach, Charel, get down on ground level. We need to find the others.' Chanel was on the third floor because she and her spotter had been watching the exits from the roof when it all went to hell, not because it was still useful. He closed his eyes for a moment, debating. 'If anyone else can hear me, I'm starting to make rounds on the first floor. I still have my helmet on; if you see me, tap or click shave and a haircut; otherwise, try not to shoot me.' He had decent body armor, but he was already bruised as fuck from the first barrage and its integrity might be slipping from the abuse.

The new players had been using rounds that ripped right through Delaney and Goldstein despite the armor, and unless Georgia had gotten the fuck out of dodge after him and rigged a tourniquet, she'd probably bled out by now. The gush from the lucky hit to the gap by her shoulder had been arterial. Then he'd already found Keating and Mulin's bodies up here…

Cartwright, Talamantez, Laubacher, and Lesko could still be alive, and he couldn't count Estrada out just yet, despite how much blood he'd watched her lose. Bussey had gone down shortly after he and Chanel left the roof and Giesecke had gotten mowed down by the same newbies who took Delaney and Goldstein as they made their exit, but Strozzi had announced he was leaving their post to come in before going radio silent.

Six. He still had five or six people he needed to get out of this easy raid turned deathtrap, and if they were still in the basement, they might not have another five minutes.

"First floor," a barely audible whisper broadcasted. "West side."

Relief bloomed in his chest like a living thing.

'East on second, waiting on Auerbach,' Razo added. 'Mitchell?'

'I'm close,' David confirmed, tucking his knife away and pulling his weapon before soundlessly making his way back to the door. 'Just made a kill at," he glanced at the doorplate, '014.'

This time the whisper was a little louder, and recognizable as Lesko. "I think I heard that, then. Wasn't sure where he went." A pause. "I didn't check the room number."

'I'm in the hall and can't see anyone else. Come out?' It would be easier to search with someone watching his six. He'd prefer Razo over Ivan if he was being honest, but that was favoritism, not practicality; Lesko was on his squad for good reason. Given what they were doing, it was best to let Razo keep playing blonde ninja.

A few moments later Ivan slinked out of the apartment two doors down, gun at the ready, and only relaxed marginally when he saw Dave where he said he'd be. "You're a damn ghost, he muttered under his breath, glancing down at the spray of blood on the cheap carpet. "I thought he was still standing there."

I learned from the best. Learned in OZ, and then specialized, running with Jake. This situation wouldn't be half so stressful if he didn't have his subordinates' lives hanging over him. There was a time when he and Jake might have called this kind of hide-and-seek tame.

But those ops had been black book and just the two of them, and command was a different beast entirely. His soldiers were good but not Jake-level of good, and that changed everything. Holding up a hand in a gesture for silence, he subvocalized, 'Lieutenant Lesko is backing me on first floor rounds. Charel, keep me posted. Delta Squad is maybe five minutes out.' He hadn't heard gunfire in a few minutes, but he wasn't sure if that was a good sign or bad.

"Five minutes confirmed," Jasmine returned quickly. "Paramedics are right behind me."

They're still going to be too late for Sergeant Estrada, he couldn't help thinking, but cut that line of thought off quickly. He didn't know that, and even if he did dwelling wouldn't help right now. Lesko fell in behind him as he started to move… then paused with him as he rethought the situation.

The building was in a U shape, and he'd already been down the north side of the first floor halls; he'd found Ivan midway down the west. Most of Razo's kills had either started on the second floor or ran that way after hearing radio calls from the ones who tried cornering Auerbach and Bussey, and if Razo had cleared the area, then he doubted any of theirs had made it up that high.

It had been hard to get out of the kill zone that was the basement. The others were most likely still down there, and they didn't have time.

'Recap,' he announced. 'First floor west hall is clear of all but me and Lesko. If you're in first floor west, sound off. A click into your radio will do."

Nothing. He waited a long moment, but nothing, so he gave a sharp nod to Lesko and started back the way he'd originally come, making sure to keep his steps silent. 'Heading north. We'll do this again unless we run into trouble.' Switching his gun from semi into full-auto, he gripped it with both hands and tried to stretch out his senses again. Out in the open like this, an encounter needed to be fast more than quiet.

He'd planned for a surprise raid with minimal resistance; more of an evidence grab than a true op. They had a rough layout of the abandoned apartment complex that looked to be a packaging or processing site for drugs – what they'd seen go in and out for the past week made sense for that. These mafiosos had low enough scruples and there were enough missing person reports filed locally that they were suspected of human trafficking, but this was a tertiary location – important enough to have intel buried in it about other operations, maybe a few valuable prisoners he could get talking, but not heavily reinforced. They'd had a truck come in today, and with the expectation of increased floor work on their product, it hadn't been too difficult to slip two teams of five in opposite entrances. Chanel and Bussey had come in behind them and headed off with Razo initially shadowing, then working his way back down. Desiree and Zuko had stayed outside to keep an eye on the garage entrance.

The first sign that something was wrong had come from Razo, eavesdropping on gossip about an upcoming deal, but it hadn't stood out until afterwards. The second had been Captain Talamantez's lack of resistance as he made his way towards what they had pinned as the most likely final product site. Still, they didn't have more than a rough layout of the building, and they weren't dealing with professionals; any number of reasons could have had the thugs elsewhere.

No one responded in the north hall.

'Coming down the east stairwell to first with Charel,' Chanel informed them.

'East hall first is clear,' David confirmed, eying the long stretch. 'Sound off if you're here.'

Nothing.

The stairwell door creaked open and Chanel stepped out, looking grim but steady despite the blood on her face… and then Razo behind her, looking like something out of a slasher flick. It was hard to tell with the black of the uniform, but his hair and all his visible skin were liberally slathered with red, and given the red trail behind him, the rest of him was still dripping. The two K-bar style knives he preferred were in his usual forward and reverse grips, and his bare feet were entirely crimson.

So, basically Algeria again. Razo was one hell of a silent killer, but he still hadn't figured out how to do it in boots. Hopefully he'd remember where he left his damn footwear this time.

Chanel was a good sniper, but he didn't have true specialists on the Anti-Anarchy and Terrorism Strike Force, and she'd dropped her rifle somewhere to pick up one of the autos carried by their opponents to go with her semi. She'd do well in a triad with him and Ivan while Razo ghosted away again, and she had the silent communications rig – when they found someone, she could partner off and still stay in the loop.

"Three minutes, sir," Jasmine interrupted. "Just three minutes, and we'll be blasting the doors." There was an almost pleading tone, like she knew what he was thinking.

And she had a point, but… Georgia might not have three minutes, if she'd gotten the bleeding to slow and was waiting for the enemy to trip over her hiding place. Alan had escaped the armor-piercing rounds before David had. Matías and Trent could be in any position, and Zuko had gone in solo with no warning or backup, so who the fuck even knew. He had five people to account for, and they could be dead in the rooms he'd just bypassed, he could be throwing his people back down into that mess without enough firepower for nothing, but…

Zuko had been pissed, looking for a fight and more armed than the rest of them put together. He wouldn't have even tried to come upstairs. Georgia would've tried to hide, wounded as she was. And despite how he'd found Peyton and Leslie's bodies, Matías' team had had the advantage over his own in that they'd had warning before the op collapsed. They hadn't walked into an office that was supposed to have maybe three folks doing paperwork to find more than twenty, armed and in the middle of some kind of meet with a group of extremely hard-hitting unknowns. Trent was Talamantez's second nine times out of ten; they would have stuck together as hard as they could, even if Ivan and the others had been forced in different directions.

Even three minutes could be an eternity when you were in trouble, and command was heavier than a fucking mountain.

'Spencer, come in hard as you can when you get here, through the garage. The new players are long gone, but their artillery could hurt a goddamn tank – be wary. Lesko and Auerbach are forming a triad with me, slow and quiet. Charel's with us until he sees an opening. If anyone can give us a sign, great; if not, we'll search, then try to pick more of them off when Spencer starts the racket.' He paused. 'If you can break radio silence, now would be a good time.'

Nothing. Jasmine was probably cursing him three ways to Sunday, but at least she had the sense to keep it off the radio.

Right then. 'Coming down the northeast stairwell.'

oOo

oOo

"Breach in fifteen seconds," Captain Spencer announced grimly. "Coming in loud."

Zuko took a slow, deep breath, starting an internal countdown as he listened to the bustle on the other side of the wall. Things had largely quieted down by the time Charel hit double digits, for all that it was artificial. He'd come in fast in the wake of the outsiders' exit, securing the garage's elevator and making his way into the shaft for a decent number of opportunistic potshots before the fuckers realized it was a deathtrap and switched to the stairs. Then once that strategy had dried up he'd slipped into the basement and made a few rounds.

With the exception of the storage area he'd stumbled across with a handful of relaxed asshats, he'd stayed quiet – his LMG was meant to suppress vehicles, not keep a low profile, and he'd come in without backup. For all that he'd decided he couldn't stand to stay outside after watching the light bleed out of Desiree's eyes, he wasn't stupid. Coming in had been more about trying to keep their own body count down than increasing the other guys'.

'Sixteen.'

Razo clearly had that part covered. Zuko hadn't been counting, personally, but was generally of the opinion that that count was a lot spookier when you knew there hadn't been any firearms involved.

He just wished he'd been in time to help Georgia. He'd found her tucked in a utility closet behind a hot water heater, but she'd already been gone.

Five…

'Eyes on Strozzi,' Razo announced.

Grinning, Zuko looked up and to the right at the ventilation vent – because any other entrance, he would've heard. Giving a little half-assed wave, he gestured to the door and made a spraying motion before tapping his watch.

The vent started to shift. 'We're on the south side, ready to hit their backs as they rush to handle Spencer,' the Frenchman continued. 'I still haven't seen Matías or Trent, but otherwise, we should be clear of friendly fire for that.' Dropping to the floor, he added, 'Once it gets loud, you've got five seconds to say you're in the area before we open fire.'

He felt more than heard a deep thump from below, and there was a bare moment of stillness before everyone outside the room started getting noisy.

"Spencer, there's two of us tucked in the back of a sedan to the right of your entrance," Matías announced in a harsh whisper. "Don't get too riled up."

"Roger, Captain," Jasmine answered, tone warming up a little.

Zuko closed his eyes for a moment as relief sank through him. Between that and how Alan had come out of the woodwork almost immediately after Mitchell got back into the basement… "That's everyone," he announced quietly for his commander's benefit. He'd been tracking the brigadier's ongoing headcount. "Estrada's dead."

Knowing Mitchell the man probably sighed, but the mic didn't translate it. 'Confirmed.' Below, the unmistakable sounds of artillery were reaching a fever pitch. 'Lesko and I have north, Cartwright and Auerbach, stay hidden until my signal. We're making sure we've got a full flush down to Spencer. Go.'

The mop-up was on the anti-climactic side, but only because of how much shit had already gone wrong. By the time they made it down to the sub-basement garage, Captain Spencer's team had full control and she was waiting with arms crossed to glower at the commander while Matías and Trent climbed out of their car in the far corner.

"Fat lot of difference that made, sir," she snarled, eyes narrowing dangerously. "Three minutes, for no gain and how much risk?"

Aaaaaaand exit, stage right, Zuko decided, realizing Razo had already beat a retreat in the direction of the delivery truck they'd seen come in earlier, parked a ways away. He debated following, but after a moment, darted over to Trent instead. Jazz would get her pound of flesh out of him too for being stupid once she was done yelling at the brigadier, so he might as well finish following through on why he'd done it. "Hey," he called once he was sure his mic was turned off. "You guys okay?"

"Just bruised, mostly," Matías admitted. "We missed the wave and then stayed lucky, for timing. There were still too many people running around down here by the time we made it into the garage to risk radio silence, but, well." He grimaced, looking a little hollow-eyed. "Splitting up seemed smarter, for stealth."

"You couldn't have planned around what happened," Zuko argued immediately. Literally half of everyone's squad on this shit mission had died. They hadn't… It hadn't been this bad since some of the worse areas in the Sahara.

And at least we expected it, then. He wasn't sure that actually made it any better, but…

Fuck, but he was going to need a bit of downtime after this. Desiree was hardly the first soldier that had fallen next to him, and he had a pretty good handle on not getting survivor's guilt whenever the devil rolled the dice, but she'd probably been the closest thing he'd had to a partner since basic. They'd been paired up either on their own or as part of a group since the end of the Cambyses campaign, and now…

Yeah, okay, he needed to not do that just yet. Just because Jazz and her boys said the scene was safe again didn't mean they had time for a breakdown. Once he started, he needed to not have any responsibilities riding on him for a couple hours while he figured out how to rearrange all his pieces back into something that fit again. If he lost it in the middle of Spencer's lecture he'd get on leave pending a clean psych eval, and that could take weeks.

He'd rather find out and help hunt these fucks who'd mowed down his friends. Closure helped the healing process, right?

"I need bolt cutters!" Razo called out, loud enough to be heard over the irate captain.

Though, in her defense, Mitchell didn't seem to be giving any more than a cursory effort at arguing back. There was a reason she felt safe yelling at him… though really, Jazz would to it even if it was a terrible idea so long as she thought she was right. Word was that she'd been up for major, once, then lost the promotion for attitude.

"Eugh." Trent made a face, even as he started moving towards Charel. "Is he trying to dye his hair again?"

Zuko snorted. "A for effort, but I'm pretty sure he already knows that doesn't work," he noted dryly. "Don't be mean to our stab-happy friend." It went without saying that their body count would be higher than it was already, if Razo hadn't been thinning out the enemy so thoroughly. Sometimes it was hard to believe that the tall blonde had been a salesman before Cambyses.

Whoever the hell Robby Stanton had been, he'd taught his people a brutal sort of efficiency when it came to violence. Not all of them were so good at it as Razo, and sadly Razo wasn't even the messiest killer of the bunch – that honor went straight to Nick Abney, holy fuck – but all of the ones that belonged to the core group, that Stanton had taught personally? Despite how very differently they fought from each other, there was something streamlined about their styles.

And fast. Most of the Cambyses men they'd come across in the Sahara hadn't really known how to kill beyond trial and error, and while it had been an advantage in taking them down… Stanton had been a firm believer in mercy killing. His boys were coldly vicious and didn't linger. Add into that how so many of them specialized in ambush work, like Razo, and it made him more glad than ever that the man hadn't actually gone over to the dark side, as it were.

If they'd had to fight their way through Robby Stanton's people as true fanatics, he didn't want to think about how much longer and bloodier that campaign would have been.

…Razo really did look like shit, though. He'd had enough trouble getting blood out of his hair in the past that he figured it had to be at least three times as bad when you kept it past your shoulders. He kept it in a stupid little man-bun on missions like this, but even so, it was liberally streaked with red.

"He's going to catch something nasty one of these days," Matías muttered worriedly.

"Why do you think Mitchell sends him to medical so often?" Zuko pointed out. Most things these days were curable; the trick was mostly catching them before they did any permanent damage.

"Because no one can tell if there's any of his blood under all the rest?" Trent argued dryly.

Well, point.

Meanwhile, someone else had brought the Frenchman the requested cutters and he was leveraging them around something at the back of the truck he'd claimed – presumably a padlock, given what Zuko could see.

One more weird thing about this fucking op, then. They'd planned the timing so that these assholes would be busy processing their product, but here was a truck, still all locked down. Maybe they'd been delayed on that with the meet Brigadier Mitchell's team had stumbled into… Or maybe they locked it back down to minimize exposure while they hunted us? It made some sense, sure, but…

Well, Razo was always good at spotting inconsistencies in patterns. The fact that he'd zeroed in on the truck first wasn't surprising.

"This is why we develop protocols!" Jasmine went on, sounding as close to tears as she was to outright screaming in fury. "Just winging everything with a group like this makes it worse, Dave!"

She's stopped even trying to be professional, shit. They were all riding the edge of a breakdown, weren't they?

He saw Razo set the cutters back down on the ground before he ducked closer to the truck and out of their line of sight while they came up from the other side. A deep clang echoed through the garage as he got the latch open, then the ratcheting as the back panel was shoved up…

But then he could see Razo again as he stumbled a good two, three steps back. Razo, wide-eyed and looking ill… Razo.

He had a moment to realize he didn't want to know what could get that kind of knee-jerk reaction from their resident terror before the smell hit him like a wave. And god help him, but he knew that smell.

Trent swore under his breath, even as Matías darted around the back for a clear look. "Christ!" He stepped back the same as Razo had, hands going to his head. "This is why! All of it, just… this."

Mitchell finally cut Spencer off. "Talamantez?"

As he and Trent finally rounded the back of the truck themselves, Matías grit his teeth. "Traffickers, sir. The new players. There's…" He squinted into the dim interior.

"They're dead," Razo cut in harshly. "Over a dozen, women. No witnesses."

Because he'd thought today wasn't going to get any worse.

oOo

oOo

December 10th 198 – Tuesday – Southern Sudan – Blue Nile Base

Yasa made a point to bounce as he darted ahead of everyone to exit the plane, grinning as he heard Cory and Audi chase after him. Audi wasn't really trying with Cory between them, but that was just as well – he knew he couldn't outrun her, but with how nervous Cat'd kept getting the closer they got, he figured a little lighthearted playfulness couldn't hurt.

Everybody else had kept telling the guy not to worry, but since that didn't seem to be helping much, Yasa'd figured he'd try paving the way instead. Audi'd said Cat was a space heart – and he'd had to look up what the hell that was, before having a total holy shit sort of moment because that was real? – and he still wasn't super clear on what that really meant in real life terms… But he figured worrying about him right back or getting frustrated with the runaround probably wasn't helpful? So, you know… distraction. Emotional distraction, which was a weird idea, but actually really easy.

Finding a way to be happy in the face of new shit going sideways was what he'd been doing since he and his dad had made it onto the evacuation ships. Some days were easier than others – and people looked at you like you were crazy when your day's happy was a tube of chapstick – but so long as you had something, it was that much easier to put the next foot forward. Sometimes it was just an excuse, but your brain could get stupid if you let it, and being stupid could get you dead. It was better to reroute before you sabotaged yourself for no reason – things could always get worse, and helping that along just made it harder to latch onto what was left.

And besides, today had a lot of good to it, and the warm wind hitting him like a wave from the open hangar door even in the middle of December was the least of it. "I have returned!" he hollered, launching himself sideways off the ramp, doing one of the fancy little flips Adam had shown him on the way down. He stuck the landing badly – and winced, because ugh, he thought he'd gotten past that, ow – but he flung his arms wide like a circus showman anyway, grinning as a few of the guys in the hangar laughed. Jogging towards the biggest part of the crowd and shading his eyes against the glare, he added, "You thought you'd seen the last of me, but no luck! I'm like a bad penny!"

There was more snickering and exasperated noises, but a deep rumble of a laugh from straight ahead made him really want to bounce. "Rashid!" The big guy had still been out of it when he left with Odin and Audi in October, and he'd hated that he hadn't really been able to talk to him before going to Europe… But now that his eyes were adjusting better, he could see he wasn't even wearing a sling anymore, which was boss.

Speeding up into a full sprint, he launched himself at his one-time savior, grinning against his stomach as he wrapped arms around his waist. Despite knowing he'd grown since his friend went missing last April, he could still barely latch his fingers together – either his arms hadn't gotten much longer after all, or Rashid had packed on even more muscle somehow.

"Yasashiku," the big man rumbled, dropping one hand onto his head to mess up his hair as the other spanned across his back in a return of the hug. "It is good to see you too."

"I missed you," he mumbled into his shirt, relaxing all his weight against him. "You're gonna have to tell me where you were all this time, okay?" It had been six whole months when he'd only planned to be gone a few weeks… and as impossible as it had felt, that someone like Rashid could die, someone who had hunted him through the mountains and brought him out as a friend despite being a half-feral eleven-year-old, immovable as a mountain himself no matter what traps or potshots he'd taken trying to run away…

It didn't take much to die. It was almost surreal, how easy it could be. And maybe living in the Sahara had taught Yasa how to be mean, but he'd still been a tiny brat, and just because he hadn't been able to put a dent in the big guy didn't mean somebody else couldn't chew him up and spit out the bones.

Life was like that, you know? There was always a bigger fish just waiting for its chance. He'd learned that the hard way.

On the plus side, though, he'd learned that sometimes the big fish were nice too. He'd been terrified when the Maguanacs first found him in Tamanrasset, half convinced that the rumors of cannibals to the south had been true – sure that even if they wouldn't eat him, they'd still kill him for having come from Cambyses. By the time Rashid had cornered him, he'd been so exhausted he'd been ready to just offer his throat like an animal and hope they'd make it quick – deliriously trying to decide if he still believed in God and what it might mean if he didn't when he was about to meet him… And then the guy had knelt down so he was at least closer to the same height and started talking instead.

And, well… Afterwards, when they'd talk about it to anyone else, the Maguanacs made it out like he'd been doing well for himself, living off the land… but it had been October, and he'd already been just barely making it. Maybe he'd have been able to go true woodsman if he'd been back in the ranges his dad had taken him hunting in before the Fall, but there was just enough different between Algeria and Colorado that he'd been slipping… or maybe he never would have made it alone, long-term. It hadn't even been winter yet, and he'd known already that, unless he figured out a better way to trap and had a whole lot of luck? He'd been maybe a month off from starving. Rashid had been the one to insist they catch him even after he'd hurt a few of the guys trying to stay two steps ahead, and…

Those kinds of debts didn't go away. You made them into bonds instead, and kept them close. Rashid was family in that absolute way it was hard to explain to anybody who'd never been saved, and it'd hurt the same as realizing he was never going to see his dad again, thinking his giant friend was gone.

"I will," Rashid agreed warmly, rubbing his hand up and down Yasa's back. "Though I think you will find the story boring, aside from the first part and the end. I had to hide, let my trail run cold, but the season was ripe; there are so many new farms, with the weather changes." He chuckled, and Yasa pressed his cheek happily into the vibration of it, which made the man laugh more. "I learned to harvest all sorts of crops."

"So here we were worried," Abdul announced dryly, "and he spent two seasons working fields. Almost none of his old shirts fit, even with how he had to stop exercising to heal. He is intent on making us look bad."

Rashid only laughed again, stepping back slowly to give Yasa time to loosen his grip. "We only do what we must," he announced, smiling down and resting both hands on his shoulders for a moment before looking over his head. "But I hear you've brought back far more company than you left with?"

"Oh, yeah!" Turning half back around, he waved at Audi and Cory, who were hanging back. There was no sign of Cat yet – which made sense since he had insisted on flying the last leg and they were only just finishing the engine's shutdown – but Skye was lingering at the foot of the ramp, with Ethan and Braden coming down now. Odin had been sitting co-pilot, and Darren was probably still hanging back with them. "Odin's friends, you know?"

"Odin, yes." He frowned thoughtfully as Audi ambled their way, even as Cory hung back, looking to Skye instead. "Lucrezia said…" His brow furrowed as Audi came close enough to talk to. "I… know you."

She laughed, reaching out a hand to shake. "Only sorta? You were really out of it when Odin put your shoulder back in, then on different drugs when we tried saying good-bye before going north. I'm Audi."

"Odin's baby sister," Yasa explained, in case he'd forgotten.

"His protégé," Abdul added, smirk kicking up one side of his mouth high enough to hitch his glasses up and hide his eyes better. "She's quite talented."

"Totally boss," Yasa agreed happily. "But don't leave her and Skye alone together unless you want trouble. It's like kittens and string – they find whole new ways to mess stuff up."

She huffed at him, hands on hips. "We're not that bad."

"Third floor bathroom," he reminded her.

"Oh, come on! You didn't even see that!"

"Or that cubicle wall."

"…Okay, we could have thought that out a bit better."

"Or-"

"Banter aside," Abdul cut in. "Audi, it is marvelous to see you again, but are you going to introduce us?"

"Uh…" Twisting around, she eyed the way Cory had backtracked to stand by Skye, who'd also been joined by the others, though they were clearly still waiting on the pilots. "I think Odin wanted to be the one to handle that? Where's- Oh! Hi, Lu!"

Yasa grinned again, turning the way she was facing. "Lady General!" he greeted happily, giving her a wave.

oOo

oOo

"Lady General!"

Abdul turned to welcome the woman, ready to heckle her for running late, and found himself biting back a grin. To her credit, Odin's flight had come in nearly an hour and a half early, and she wasn't in command today… but evidently they had interrupted her workout routine. Dressed in exercise clothes with her hair in a high tail and a towel draped around her neck, she was only a little flushed, but was visibly damp with sweat. If he had to wager a guess, he would say she had been in the middle of one of her runs when the alert about the incoming plane had come out – possibly on the opposite side of the complex.

"Hi, Audi, Yasa," the woman returned easily, lifting one end of the towel to pat at her hairline. "You're early."

Audi smirked, tucking her hands into her pockets. "I think Odin wanted to be here, like, four weeks ago. He totally jumped the gun as soon as we got clearance for take off."

Lucrezia's returning smile was a touch more secretive than usual. "He did say something about a surprise." Directing her gaze over to the men loitering by the ramp of the plane, she added, "And he mentioned that he was bringing friends."

"Some of the Rubato guys, yeah" the girl confirmed, looking the same way. "They can be a little skittish with new people, though, so you need to wait for him on that… But!" She bounced lightly on her toes, the motion somehow juvenile and predatory at the same time. "I finished the phone network! We're up and running, full scale! I've got crates of handhelds in the cargo hold, ready to roll!"

She said 'Rubato' in a way that was clearly a title, but Abdul didn't recognize the word. Hm.

"Oh, excellent," Lucrezia congratulated, scrubbing at her neck to pick up more perspiration. "We'll have to go over all the details later and make sure I have the logistics on my end straightened out. Odin and I mostly talked about it in generalities, not the nitty gritty."

"That's because I had to sort the nitty gritty first," the little redhead pointed out. "But they've got a lot more for you today than the phones, you know?" She gestured back to the strangers waiting for their escort. "Revenant Rubato is…" Her face wrinkled in thought. "It's a lot."

I most certainly do not know, Abdul thought, trying not to feel exasperated. "Yasashiku?" he asked.

"Odin has a lot of friends," the boy offered. "And they've been busy." Shifting so he could lean into Rashid's bulk again, he added, "Like Audi said, they're leery of new people – I guess he finally talked them around."

"They've been planning this for a while," Audi countered. "Odin just wanted it to be more solid before bringing it up, and Kat wanted to procrastinate. And Rubato is more his than Odin's for the doing, so…" She shrugged. "We're here now."

Lucrezia hummed. "He said he was putting off working with us more directly until he had more to bring to the table, back in July," she mused aloud.

Audi perked up visibly. "Yeah, that!"

Rashid rested a hand on Yasa's back again, stroking a thumb over the boy's shoulder blade in absentminded affection – readily providing the physical reassurance the twelve-year-old sought out so often. "He thought he didn't contribute enough on his own?" he asked, tone edging towards incredulous.

"He's something of an overachiever," Lucrezia drawled in a liquidly pleased sort of voice.

Abdul didn't bother hiding his grin when Rashid looked back to him with raised brows. He'd told his old friend about the two of them already, but Lucrezia had spent the majority of the last month in Europe and only returned to Sudan last week; his leader hadn't had the chance yet to see the effects. Every day since returning to the Blue Nile base, Lucrezia had been in contact with her lover at least briefly, and he'd seen her receiving calls more than once, not only reaching out herself.

The young man was good for her. He would have said something if it looked like their lady general was falling into old bad habits, but it held water so far. He was largely sure that Audi hadn't realized how much of his seeking her out on their last visit was intelligence gathering to make sure of that fact – given how delightful the girl was to chat with, it hadn't been hard to simply be himself – but he had checked. Every time Quatre had hesitated or run off during the war, it had been because of self-doubt and recrimination or other emotional upheaval.

They had failed Master Quatre enough times – they didn't need to repeat the same mistakes with Lady Lucrezia. Not to say that new mistakes couldn't be made, but it had been wrong, he thought, to leave so much of the young genius's emotional support to Rashid alone. He didn't think they had been wrong to worry about overwhelming him, but… What had they accomplished by giving him space? Perhaps crowding him would have been the wrong choice as well, but he could only cast doubt on what he knew had gone poorly.

Rashid was just so good with children that they had deferred to him, never mind that their leader didn't have a much better notion than the rest of them when it came to Quatre. The man had half-raised more than a handful of their ranks, so it had felt natural to leave it there… but Quatre had always been different. He had needed something that none of them had known how to give.

He could only hope they would get another chance, someday. There was something special about Master Quatre, something he'd never been able to truly put his finger on but had drawn them in like moths to a flame all the same. A born leader, destined for something great… He had wanted to see that future badly, and he refused to believe the young man's story was over. There would be more to come, and the Maguanacs would be a part of it.

Lucrezia was more than worthy of their allegiance, but she was no Quatre.

"I see," Rashid announced, watching their general with careful consideration for a long moment before focusing back on the plane. "I look forward to seeing what he provides, then."

It wasn't much longer before Odin and two other men started making their way down the ramp, him in deep discussion with the tall blonde while a the stockier brunette of average height trailed behind. Almost as one, the others waiting below turned to them expectantly… then settled at the blonde stranger's easy wave, turning to talk to each other instead. When they reached the bottom of the ramp, Odin twisted to say something so the second man stopped with the group and both he and the blonde raised a hand to shade their eyes the same as Yasa had as they moved closer.

Abdul fought down the urge to laugh, however, when Odin caught sight of Lucrezia. He didn't stop walking, but his focus was clearly redirected and he stopped speaking, not looking anywhere else… and Lucrezia, standing with arms crossed, carried much of the same intensity. He couldn't help but scoff out a short chuckle, though, when the young man's gaze became far more absorbed as he obviously fixated on his lady's bare legs.

The blonde stumbled briefly and gave his friend an incredulous look that was either blandly ignored or not noticed. Abdul blinked. Did Odin say something? He hadn't thought so, but they were still some distance away, and there was nothing to lose your footing over on that bit of ground. Taking a quick two steps to one side and picking up his pace, the stranger called something over his shoulder that had Odin sending Lucrezia an almost apologetic shrug before he jerked his head at his friend and jogged to catch up, muttering something that Abdul could only catch the tail end of.

"…of the definition."

The blonde shook his head and said something else too softly to pick up. Meanwhile Yasa started snickering, moving away from Rashid to elbow Audi and whisper something in her ear that set her giggling. Casting a sidelong look back at Lucrezia, she slouched to whisper back, making Yasa laugh more…

Abdul shared an amused look with Rashid, even as something in him relaxed a little more. Yasashiku was always quick to make friends, but so few were close to his own age that it was heartwarming to see him act twelve. The boy had been forced to grow up too fast and was surprisingly well-balanced in spite of that, but there was something liberating about seeing the young ones chatter without any pressure weighing on them. It gave him hope that he hadn't even realized he'd lost.

"Rashid," Odin called. "You're looking better."

The big man crossed his arms carefully, offering up a gentle smile. "I'm most of the way there," he admitted. "I often wear the sling again in the evening, when it starts to ache, but even that should pass soon. It could be much worse – my thanks again for your help."

Odin tucked his hands into his front pockets and his friend, seemingly unconsciously, mirrored the motion. "Don't worry about it," he returned easily. "I'm glad you're back." He considered Abdul for a moment, before focusing back on Lucrezia with a questioning tip of his head as he kept walking towards Rashid and Abdul. "I have some news."

The general relaxed her stance and came closer. "I can have one of the conference rooms set up in a few minutes, if you think you need the space."

"Hn." He shook his head, glancing back to his companion. "It's a good idea, but not so fast. Maybe this afternoon, or tomorrow. There's… some other stuff, first."

They were only fifteen paces or so away now, and the tall blonde was visibly forcing himself to straighten his shoulders, bringing his hands back out of his pockets and unclenching fists. Long bangs partially hid pale eyes, and hair too short to be pulled back in the same sort of high tail Lucrezia wore today framed an oval face. A long, white, crooked scar spanned his left cheek, the shape of it unusual enough that it was difficult to say what had caused it.

…There was something familiar about him. Abdul looked over to Rashid to find the other man was studying the stranger closely as well, an odd look in his eyes. Not just me, then.

"Odin?"

The pilot met Lucrezia's eyes and shook his head slightly before stopping at ten paces and looking at his friend… Audi called him Kat earlier? Something like that. The man stopped when Odin did and glanced at Abdul for a long moment, then Lu, the children, and Odin before settling on solidly on Rashid. Taking half a step forward, he visibly drew in a deep breath. "I…" He started to reach out before stalling himself, freezing halfway through a gesture before pulling his hand back.

Abdul frowned, his stomach uneasy for reasons he couldn't place, and tried to see what he was missing. The man was wearing a pale blue button-up with practical khakis and a knee length brown coat, as well as sturdy brown shoes that could pass for dress but had a solid enough tread to be serviceable on a hike. Now that he was standing straight, Abdul could see that he was definitely taller than himself, though only by a handful of centimeters…

The way he stood was familiar, but it didn't match anyone he could call to mind.

The stranger closed his eyes for a moment, before opening them and again meeting Rashid's eyes. Taking another step forward, he tucked his left hand back in his pocket in a way that would be casual if he wasn't faintly trembling and made a nonsensical little gesture with his right as he reached out almost like he was trying to shake but was… not…

He… he'd seen that gesture before. What-

"It's good to see you, Rashid."

His heart pounding, he turned to his leader, knowing something was wrong but not quite understanding it, wanting direction because he couldn't-

"Quatre?"

Rashid's voice was barely a whisper, it was so strangled… and no wonder, because Abdul didn't think he could speak at all. Instead he was just staring, going over his features again, and his eyes were wrong, but-

"It's me," Quatre admitted quietly, not breaking his gaze. "I'm sorry I… I couldn't…" He swallowed hard and pushed his hair back out of his face with one hand, the other elbow locking straight as the hand in his pocket fisted, shaking harder. "It's me, Rashid. I'm sor-"

He was cut off as Rashid swept him up in a powerful hug, lifting him from the floor as he let out a cry of pure joy. "Quatre!" he bellowed, voice rolling out like a wave. "You're back!"

"Quatre?" someone called back in disbelief.

"Master Quatre?"

"What the fuck?" Yasa muttered, sounding stunned.

"Shh," Audi returned quietly. "Quatre Raberba Winner."

"The fuck?"

Others were rushing over now, crowding in around Rashid as he swayed side to side, tears streaming down his face and laughing while Quatre just hung on, face buried in the bigger man's neck.

Behind him, he heard Lucrezia speak. "It was him that I talked to when we were in South America, wasn't it? That gave you hell for not teaching Audi more about navigation?"

"Yes. He made contact the day after Zechs attacked here; I was on my way to see him when we met in Verona."

Abdul frowned, some of the exhilaration that was making his heart pound twisting into dread. Since July? But it was December…

His general made a concerned noise. "So long?"

"He… wasn't ready," Odin defended haltingly. "A lot happened after he disappeared." He hesitated, then admitted, "I'm not sure how much longer he would have waited if not for meeting Yasa, or if Rashid was still missing."

Abdul wasn't sure what Yasa had to do with anything, but he thought he'd given the others time enough. Wading into the crowd, he protested, "Rashid, let him breathe! You're going to crush him!"

"He's not so easy to crush anymore," Deklan protested with a broad grin. "He's as tall as you now!"

"More than," Abdul agreed. After Rashid, he was the tallest Maguanac… or at least he had been. He had to shove a little to reach the pair and found himself laughing raucously at the insults Josue started flinging after being elbowed aside. "Now, now," he soothed, grinning hard enough that it hurt. "You don't know that much about me, I should think." Reaching up, he started to pry at Rashid's fingers. "Come now, friend," he berated, methodically breaking the bigger man's grip. "You have to share!" A hard scabbard of some kind dug into his belly from where it was strapped against Quatre's low back and left leg – that was new, but the boy had been talented in sword play, so it wasn't too surprising. "Give me just a moment, Master Quatre," he added cheerfully as Rashid seemed to finally acknowledge the world around him again and shot Abdul an irritated glower. Giving the man a sharply amused look over the rims of his glasses as he continued pulling back fingers, he finished with, "I'll have you free in no time."

Everyone else laughed at that, and with an exasperated huff their leader let the blonde go… and Abdul wasted no time, pulling the young man into a hug of his own as soon as his feet touched the ground. "Oh, but it is good to see you, Master Quatre, we worried so!" He had gained much in the way of muscle too, not just height; he was solidly built now, instead of petite. What a difference three years can make, he marveled, arms wrapped around powerful shoulders. He's been practicing that sword work, to be sure. Or at least, he'd been doing something very physical, as there wasn't an ounce of fat on him – nothing but corded muscle and sharp edges. He needs to eat more.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled again, returning the embrace with just as much force.

"None of that," Abdul returned, though apprehension rose in his gut at the despair in Quatre's tone. "You're alive and well, if a little skinny."

"And we can fix that," Caspian announced cheerfully, setting off another wave of laughter.

"Nothing to be sorry for," Ismael reassured as he reached out to pat one of the man's shoulders. "Family is meant to worry."

"You're here now, and that's what counts," Josue added.

"We've grown too, you know," Deklan pointed out. "Maybe not in height, but numbers – you're not the youngest anymore! You've met Yasashiku already, yes?"

"His introduction, at least, was a little less fraught than yours," Josue continued gleefully. "He concussed Hazen and Ahmad needed stitches, but at least Rashid didn't have to yell at him!"

"Is that the standard we're using now?" Rashid asked dryly. "Whether or not I raise my voice?"

"It's an accurate scale!" Josue insisted, grinning broadly.

"Well, at least you know the little one isn't taking your place for notoriety," Abdul decided, resting his hands on the young man's shoulders and pushing back to get a better look at him. His pale brown eyes were strange and the scar distracting, but the more he looked the easier it was to see how the other changes were just the loss of the childish roundness he'd had to his face.

Just like Heero, Master Quatre had come back to them a man grown. He had been on the cusp of it before so it should not have come as such a surprise, but… Three years. He was different now.

That was fine, though. They would just have to learn him again, and he them. Together, the possibilities were always greater than on one's own.

"But where have you been?" Caspian asked. "Heero said you disappeared in early 197."

Quatre licked his lips, meeting Abdul's eyes… and that despair was so clear that for a moment he thought… No. Tipping his head down to stare steadily back over his glasses, he tightened his grip on the other man's shoulders. I am with you. Stand tall. He might not know what the problem was, but nothing was insurmountable.

"I got careless," he admitted, not breaking the gaze Abdul had locked him in. "I'd gotten my eyes to change, and my hair long and colored… I thought no one would recognize me. So I relaxed, and by the time I realized my mistake I was already losing consciousness."

Deklan frowned. "Bounty hunters?"

"No. They… No one recognized me. We'd… I found Odin a neutral doctor in Israel. I was alone on the street in the middle of the night in Jerusalem, February 197, and…" Closing his eyes for a moment, he took a deep breath before opening them again to stare resolutely into Abdul's very soul. "I've been in Libya."

There was a frozen sort of moment while that statement struck down like a blow, caught between one heartbeat and the next… but when Quatre tried to pull away, Abdul was tightening his grip and reeling him back in before thoughts had a chance to form.

Cambyses. Grimacing, he held a hand to the back of the other man's head in an invite to press his face into neck or shoulder, if he wanted to hide. Sweet, idealistic little Quatre who tried to convince cold-blooded killers to lay down arms, who apologized to the ghosts of men who had tried to execute him… in Cambyses. Shit. The boy would have done everything he could to…

To what? It was Cambyses; the survivors hadn't had room for mercy. But he'd walked enough men through it by now, knew the things about their world that had already haunted Quatre before that nightmare, to know the next step.

"It's over," he murmured. "You're here now – what happened isn't the sum of who you are. You know it isn't, Master Quatre." Hands fisted the back of his shirt, and he smiled, closing his eyes as they started to tear up and wrapping his arms around the younger man more firmly. "We've got you."

He found himself biting back a squawk, though, when they were pulled into an impossibly large embrace. "We are with you," Rashid rumbled overhead. "Never doubt that. Whatever happens, you can count on us."

"You got that right!"

"You can't take on the blame for that one, Master Quatre," Caspian insisted. "Not with how it happened. No more than Somto or Rylan or Yasa can. What they did to everyone in the Sahara was terrible, and you survived in spite of it!"

"Dying wouldn't have done anyone any good," Deklan added soberly. "So don't go thinking you should have done that instead, either. We needed you, and you made sure you got home to us. Anything else, we can work out."

A sob wracked through their friend, and Abdul sighed, wriggling his hands as much as he could under Rashid's bulk to try and rub his back. "You're alright," he soothed. "You've been carrying this for a while, haven't you?"

"He gets like this whenever we press the point," a new voice admitted from the edge of the group. "It's been six months and he still expects us all to bail on him, when he's the one that got us out of there."

"I don't," Quatre denied, voice thick.

"He still expects everyone but Cory to bail on him," the stranger amended cheerfully. "And maybe Ardith, but only because he has too many plots he wants Kat's help with."

"Skye."

"Yes, Boss?"

The pilot drew himself up, and the glimpse Abdul caught of his face was clearly exasperated… before he collapsing back into him with a helpless laugh. "I can't move…"

"Don't look at me," Abdul insisted with a grin, even as he tightened his grip on the other man. "I'm just as stuck as you."

Josue sputtered out a disbelieving laugh that the others joined in on… and Rashid, pointedly, didn't budge

"He needs this," he decided after a moment, unsure if he was talking about Rashid or Quatre. "Just give him a minute. We have time."

oOo

oOo

In Transit Between Linz, Austria and Munich, Germany

"No, this is great, thank-you," Relena decided, heart lifting as she looked back at the chart. "I appreciate you calling back so quickly. I should be able to look it over by tonight; is there a good time to call you back tomorrow?"

"So long as it's after eight my time, it should be fine," Rochelle returned easily. "Take as long as you need – even if they agreed to a proposal today we're too busy to get to it until next month at the soonest – and that's only if we prioritized them."

"I understand," she agreed, tucking the phone against her shoulder to reach down by her feet and open the flap on her work bag, reaching for a notepad. "I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions directly."

The other woman snorted out a laugh. "Don't make like you don't know who in this conversation is more important, your highness; it's a pleasure to work with you. Just keep me posted, and we'll do fine."

She grinned at that, appreciating the attitude. "I'll do that and let you get back to the more practical end of saving the world, then," she decided, not bothering to hide her amusement even as she kept her tone otherwise prim. "I'll be in touch."

"Psh. Take care of yourself." Click.

"Oh, but she is refreshing," she announced to no one in particular, dropping the phone on the seat next to her and settling her tablet on top on the notepad.

"You could say she's rather down to earth, then?" Lin suggested, eyes sparkling.

Relena gave him a look, though she couldn't help her lips twitching. Before she could think of something to say back, though, Jake drawled out a flat, "Ow."

The major just smirked and relaxed back, clearly satisfied with himself. "It got you to acknowledge us again."

Her man just made an irritated sort of listening noise, still not looking up from his laptop – rather disproving the point.

"Oh, burn," Lin decided, rolling his eyes.

Relena just shook her head. It had been a while since she had seen Jake so focused on something as this, but she could wait to learn what it was; Lincoln was just bored. And anyway… "Mrs. Maraggos' work is very moving, I think," she decided with a sly smile.

"Ground-breaking!" Vaughn called back from the driver's seat.

"World changing," Cassidy agreed blandly without opening his eyes.

Jake made another listening noise while… obviously not actually listening.

Undoing her seatbelt, she shuffled across the town car floor to drop next to Lin. "Look at this," she insisted as she handed over her tablet, reaching back into her blazer's breast pocket for a pen before belting back in. "Everyone was worried because of the initial failures, but based on this, it really was sabotage."

He blinked a few times, frowning as he deciphered the key… then stared. "I'm reading this wrong."

She laughed. "You're not," she insisted. "Though it's only been possible because David systematically evacuated everyone along with Cambyses when he swept through and had Nueva Terra come in right behind him."

"We didn't let her in until late July," Cassidy corrected, still without moving from his sleeping slouch. Despite that, however, his voice was clear. "The camps were only loosely organized, and we couldn't accurately map too far into the Ramlat Rabyanah, so we had Terra lock it off instead once we were sure we'd gotten all the stragglers north of the deep sand sea, the same as we did the Egyptian border."

"Lock it off?"

The other man cracked an eye at that. "The tech's proprietary and I don't know more than the basics about nanotech to start with," he pointed out dryly. "Maraggos said phase two is often lethal, and three always is. I didn't ask more beyond how to make sure the boundaries didn't break, or recognize if they were." Closing his eyes and resettling, he added, "As is, we're only so sure we got all of Cambyses because if they tried to flank us, they're fertilizer now."

"…Shit. And she's been doing this how long?"

"The current processes were originally developed for the ill-fated Mars Terraformation Initiative," Relena explained. "And they're what we've done small-scale in pockets throughout Africa and Eurasia since the Fall, but they're still relatively new. Maraggos originally made a name for herself clearing toxic waste and reinvigorating dead zones in the ocean."

The weather patterns had changed after Libra, and the world was colder and wetter now, but that hadn't meant the land itself was immediately arable for the new farms they had needed after both Americas were removed from the food chain. It was a blessing that the technology to alter the landscape had been invented at all before they found themselves desperate for it, never mind that it had originally been intended for interstellar use.

Colonizing planets, instead of space… It sounded like a pipe dream. But then… Well, the ecosystem of colonial life had probably sounded the same way, once. Once she'd started researching the topic, back before the North American borders were closed and Milliardo sent her away, she had found detailed enough plans to suggest that the initial expedition could have come as soon as early 197, that it was more than speculation…

But after Libra, of course, there was no way it would be feasible within her lifetime. Someday, maybe, but there was too much work for them here, regaining what they had lost, to pour resources into an undertaking so massive that even with Nueva Terra's miraculous technology it would still require decades to come to fruition, let alone make a return on the investment.

"This still sounds like a terrifying biological weapon," Lin argued.

"Technically, it's a technological weapon," Cassidy corrected… then frowned. "I think. There's something about carbons, and… It's tiny machines, isn't it? Bacteria-sized machines?" He opened his eyes again to stare out the back window with something like dismay. "…Machines maybe made of organic stuff?"

"It works," Relena cut in before the two of them could wind themselves up. "It works, and it's wonderful, and the last person to try to steal the secret from Maraggos died very messily in public by traditional methods, after which every country sheltering her refused to extradite." Considering how small of a team she ran – most of them her own daughters – and their ruined plans to literally relocate to Mars for the rest of their natural lives, not to mention the other rumored methods Maraggos took to ensure her trade secrets were kept…

Well, Relena was content knowing that said secrets were kept and that Rochelle Maraggos was entirely set on only using them responsibly. As Cassidy said, she didn't need to know, and she didn't have even a quarter of the science education to understand even if someone did want to explain the technology to her.

There was quiet for a long moment, and she wasn't sure why, exactly… until Vaughn started wheezing out a laugh. "Traditional methods!"

…Right, she could have thought that phrase through a little before spitting it out.

"Best used by an efficient skill set," Lin returned immediately, grinning broadly as he turned on one hip to lean closer to Vaughn.

"I'm actually familiar with the incident Lena mentioned," Cassidy butted in, also sitting up and turning slightly. "And there was nothing efficient about it. She was trying to make an impression."

"If it prevents future action, it's technically efficient in that it saves you time," Jake argued. The three of them turned back to him to find him sitting straight again and the laptop half closed. Vaughn started laughing again, even as Relena and the other boys stared at him feeling caught out… which had him frowning. Eyeing them for a moment, he set the computer on the seat next to him and leaned back. "Okay… What are we talking about?"

"I wanna be Maraggos when I grow up!" Vaughn called back, still cackling.

"Sure thing, Peter Pan," Cassidy drawled with a grin.

"Aren't you supposed to stop saying that when you hit… at least twenty-five?" Lin debated.

"Thirty," Vaughn argued immediately. "But I don't care, I'm not grown up till I have kids."

"Which is how this conversation gets circular," Cassidy decided with a thoughtful frown, making Lin choke out a laugh.

Jake smirked, focusing on Relena. "Good news, then, I take it?"

She smiled at him, unbuckling and moving back to the other bench, aiming for the middle when he hurriedly shoved the laptop into the seat she'd taken before. "It's pretty impressive," she agreed as she belted back in. "I want to go over it in detail at home and compare it to the previous jobs when we have a decent amount of screen space to spread it over, but Rochelle's leagues ahead of her projections."

"She's always been conservative with them," he admitted. "It's part of how she manages people."

She'd half expected him to have worked the older woman before – it seemed up his alley – but he hadn't said anything earlier. "How well do you know her?"

"Enough to be impressed, but not nearly as well as I'd like. It might have been because the Fund was too young to have a strong reputation at that point, but she refused an offer of RLTT candidacy back in 192." He shrugged. "She's more than proven she didn't need the boost, and she had legitimate concerns about being seen as shady. Howard disappeared Peacemillion damned fast after we finished her and did who knows what to beef up her stealth specs, and given Maraggos lean towards a future in space, the implications there made her uncomfortable." Smirking, he pointed out, "Though on the other hand, it was proof I'd let a candidate run off without strings and keep their secrets – I sure as hell feel like Howard got a lot more out of me than the other way around."

"Oh?"

Grimacing, he covered his eyes with one hand. "I knew him for five months, and I think he got more about my personal life out of me than a professional shrink or interrogator might in twice the time – could never even figure out if it was intentional or just him." Shaking his head and dropping the hand to meet her eyes, he admitted, "He's one of the better people I've ever met. I high-tailed it out of there early because I started to seriously worry I was going to break the rest of my cover. The whole point of Peacemillion was neutral ground and you can't get a more neutral middleman than Oclaire, but he's protective – if he'd realized I wasn't quite the fence-sitter I put myself out there as? I'm not sure what he would have done to make sure I didn't turn around and compromise the ship." He grimaced again, reaching up and tugging at the hair behind one ear. "And nobody saw Libra coming and could have planned for Peacemillion to see its use there, but we'd all be fucked if she hadn't performed at peak efficiency."

"What… did you do anyway?" Lin asked tentatively. "You're a lot of things, but engineer isn't one of them. You have some of the right background, but… not enough to get anywhere practical with it."

"I programmed it." He smirked. "Howard is that kind of engineer, but coding is less his forte, and we wanted a custom system anyway. We spent a lot of time working together, integrating it, making it seamless." Shrugging again, he admitted, "A lot of my base engineering know-how, the non-ballistics, I actually got my foundation in through him."

"…The ballistics?"

He grimaced, looking out the window. "My uncle had some pretty warped ideas about early childhood education, but he was thorough. After Jack took me, my learning curve for computers, artillery, or explosives was mostly about new tech innovations or relearning something after a growth spurt. You brace differently when you weigh forty pounds compared to a hundred or one-forty, and I wasn't big enough to shoot one-handed with anything approaching accuracy until I turned eleven."

Don't start brooding now. Looking to draw him back into lighter waters, Relena asked, "So who taught you that?" One-handed firing was one of the hardest things about guns for her, to the point that when they were home, almost all her drills excluded the two-handed approach. After all, if she ever had to fire a weapon, it was unlikely she'd have the time to get into an optimal position.

Still, it was absolute murder on her arms. It made sense that it would be outright impossible for a child, even one as… well, with such militarily focused early years. At a certain point there was a straight up problem of mass, and Leia said he hadn't broken five foot until he was fourteen.

"Dave, mostly. Lu was exceptional enough to take aside for private lessons by then and Dave scooped us both up at the same time, pushed the competition angle."

"Didn't want to get outshot by a girl, huh?" Cassidy teased.

Jake snorted, smirking again. "I had to settle for pulling even, if that. I'm good, but I do too much other shit to stay at the top of my game. In real situations it's usually not enough difference to matter, especially since my rate of fire is half again if not twice as fast, but even at my best Lu's precision trumps me four times out of five."

Lin frowned. "But if you're faster-"

"Doesn't actually make a difference at the level I'm talking," Jake negated. "Not in either direction – at least, not on a human scale. In a suit, it makes a hell of a difference, but by the time they tried me on that, I was too deep in my own skin to translate out of it. And believe me, it wasn't for a lack of trying – Treize wanted me in a suit, and he pulled out all the stops. I have the kind of reflexes that makes MS instructors salivate, and something about my muscle fiber type ratio is unusual, apparently." He shrugged. "But I've never been more than mediocre in a cockpit. There's a disconnect between the physical and my headspace, or something – the running consensus was that it was like they caught me too old to really specialize, which drove them nuts because I was barely eleven, but… I was already too specialized, or something. Too trained."

Focusing back on her, he shrugged again. "Some kind of mental block, at any rate, whether it was self-imposed or on the neuroplastic level. I honestly wasn't too broken up about it. There's a blinding sort of two step removal from reality when you wrap yourself that deep in a fortress, and I hated it from the start. It never made any sense to me, how you could react to something you couldn't actually see or feel."

"And yet you still do fine on the game consoles," Lin pointed out, though he sounded more exasperated than anything.

"I was mediocre by OZ standards, not entirely hopeless. Flying a suit is like trying to run three of those games you like at the same time. I can multitask on that level just fine in person, but not in something like VR. The instinct's just… missing."

She supposed it made sense in an abstract way, but she didn't have any parallels in her own life to compare it to. Though, describing it in terms of removal… More often than not, Heero had seemed almost to exist on another plane of reality. Intense and present as he was, it had always felt as though he was half somewhere else too; like his surroundings were just an afterthought to something deeper that he was reacting to before anyone else caught on. In hindsight, she could recognize that she'd found him so fascinating because there was something almost surreal about him.

Then again, Jake was the same way when disaster struck, and the whole world had felt that way at the end in Sanc, then in Libra, Brussels, and Amsterdam. She could acknowledge that that perspective likely had more to do with how she personally processed danger than anything else.

"Well, if you'd become a pilot I never would have met you, so I'm going to call it a win," she decided. Reaching to the left, she pulled the laptop into her lap and opened it. "What have you been so focused on for the past two hours?"

He gave her an appreciative smile as he leaned tiredly against her. "Revenant Rubato."

"Oh?" She'd asked him to tell her what he thought a few days ago, but she hadn't thought it interesting enough to take up all his attention like that. She frowned. The implication there… "What did you find?"

He gusted out a sigh and shook his head. "Nothing like that. At least, not on anything they've openly put their name on. Most of the educational programs were pre-existing, but poorly manned and funded."

"Can we back up and share with the class?" Lin requested pointedly. "I remember overhearing a conversation about them and I've caught an ad or two, but I'm otherwise in the dark."

Jake rolled his eyes, straightening slightly and looking to the major. "Either someone in that group knows exactly what they're doing, or they've hired a damn good advertising agency," he decided. "The ideas they're pushing are pretty and popular, but no one had ever heard of Rubato a month ago. Now, over the last three weeks, they've given eight different alternative education programs across Europe and Africa a facelift and are pushing through a social movement focused on the value of the next generation." Looking back to Relena, he added, "They have at least five more original programs in the works focused on the kind of thing those barebones organizations never offered, pending recruitment of appropriate staff. They're being vague in the official talk, but they're mostly working through two different agencies to do the hiring, and the sheer number of offers being made for anyone with experience teaching, coaching, or counseling say a lot for intention."

"How alternative of education?" Relena asked before Lin could interrupt again.

"It ranges the gambit, from local GED programs to online secondary and higher education programs, and a few steps in between," he continued. "Regimented and loose styles are both covered, and they're recruiting hard to beef those up too. That's a large part of the pitch: whether you can only take a class here or there, or if you can spend four or more hours a day, they're making the option available, either for free or at a lower price than anyone could two months ago."

"Well, good," Cassidy decided, finally looking awake. "That problem hit critical with half or more of the refugees two years ago. We have all these people who should be in high school or freshly graduated but haven't seen the inside of a classroom since the end of 195 – or earlier, with all the chaos of the war. They're either too old or too far behind for the regular government programs to cover, and they have to make the choice between a better future or dinner tonight."

"It's very good," Jake agreed. "It's something I feel like I should have looked into myself, but I've been too busy, and too focused." He looked to Relena again. "It's… above the board, exactly what it looks like, and well-organized." Glancing back to Cassidy, he added, "Though I'm curious to see how well they weather the ex-Cambyses angle. They're going out of their way to not lampshade that this caters to pretty heavily to them too."

"I don't think it gets more direct than my work with Osborne," Relena pointed out.

"You're lobbying, making good examples, and coming down on discrimination," Jake argued. "You didn't pick an ex-Cambyses spokesperson for your first major campaign."

"Ho shit," Lin breathed, perking up. "That is ballsy."

"Shows how much they mean it," Jake confirmed. "Though he's not their only spokesman – and in their defense, the guy is charismatic as fuck and was one of Stanton's."

Cassidy frowned. "What's the name?"

"Jovaughn Lluvia."

The other man barked out a short laugh, then whistled and shook his head, leaning back into his seat. "Yeah… That's not a bad choice. Jovi could talk a brimstone preacher into incorporating a Veda into a sermon." He frowned. "But how did he get recruited? With the kind of cash Rubato is throwing around, I figured it was a bunch of new money folks taking a stand."

Jake's smile was thin. "It looks like that, mostly, but he's part of it, and he brought in four more from Stanton's circle – though none of them are founding members."

"So… they're small and exclusive, but money's not a major factor," Lin extrapolated, eyeing Jake. "What else is bothering you?"

"Besides how they knew these five ex-Cambyses guys well enough to immediately snatch them up after leaving Dave's service?"

"Jovi's an American vet," Cassidy broke in, eyes flicking between them. "A decent pilot – not suits, but carriers, and he fought at Libra, then all the skirmishes with Romefeller. He didn't quit at the start of the Regime either. He was all signed up to keep going, but took a long leave first to help his sisters and their families settle in one of the refugee areas in the Sahara, and then Cambyses swept through. Like I said, the guy's super gregarious – he makes friends with everyone. I'd assume it's an old friend or friend of a friend scenario."

"Maybe, but it's still fast," Jake argued, jaw tight. "And they just put him in a position of major power. That's a lot of trust… and two of the others were brought in right after him without much more theoretical backstory than his word."

Cassidy frowned. "And the founding members' stories check out?"

Jake wound even tighter, smile razor sharp. "After a fashion."

"Meaning?" Lin demanded warily.

"My brother's a founding member."

"…And he has a perfect, entirely fabricated backstory. Shit."

"The rest of them might be exactly who they say they are," Jake added hastily, slumping a little. "I just can't tell. And it might still just… be exactly what it looks like. Rubato started before Halloween, and…" He bit his lip, looking down. "This kind of focus on displaced kids without a lot of the trimmings you need to get somewhere in the world… Junior started off on his own when he was nine, and our uncle homeschooled in a really disjointed way. Depending on what actually happened after our…" He hesitated, then forced himself through saying the name despite issues he'd admitted to. "After Odin died, the lack of a normal education might have closed a lot of doors, if not outright screwed him over.

"I mean… the first thing I did when I inherited was clean up the colony where we lost him, and then the next five projects were all the dealing with the crappy situations I found where he could have been hurt while I tracked him. And he's claiming custody of a thirteen-year-old with a GED and no school records. Whatever they're lying about… it could also just be genuine. And personal."

It made a certain sort of sense… and whether the motive was direct or not, the educational funding and charity were real, and made a remarkable parallel to Jake and RLTT.

"But you think your brother is funding Revenant Rubato," Lin concluded. "Instead of it being a conglomerate of moderately wealthy young men joining together to tackle a cause or two."

Jake grimaced, giving a slight shake of his head. "Not entirely. Like I said, Rubato existed before Halloween, and they were moderately wealthy to start with. I can't prove the source of that wealth any more than I can their identities if they're on par with Junior's, but unless he also found a significant source of money and spread it out between his friends before going into the History for Tomorrow Database? There's more to it than that. On the other hand, I'm mostly sure a campaign on this scale would have maxed them out before Junior's contributions, if they could have done it at all."

"Well, at least we know what he's doing with it," Lin offered.

"We… really don't," Jake negated. "If anything, the way this was done is careful, professional. He either knows exactly what he's doing or is trusting someone in Rubato that knows, because all signs of the management being done here are efficient and flawless. Either he's grown up a lot like me or, if I had the guess? The close friend he brought to the bank with him as a 'lawyer' is handling the details the same way I kinda threw it all at Leia for the first few years… and the friend is on my level of expertise."

"But you just said he's building multiple non-profit organizations from scratch," Lin argued, eyes narrowing. "Without even getting into building facilities and such, the new ad campaigns and more, there's the salaries for all those people he's hiring, benefits… he's tied up in that, so we know what he's doing, and it's good stuff."

"It's a drop in the bucket," Jake negated again. "The passive income from one of the mid-range investments from five years ago would comfortably cover that, and I had that whole account set up to keep reinvesting forty percent of the returns. It's been long enough since I looked at the fine details on the account that I couldn't give you exact numbers, but the one I'm thinking of will have kept growing; Czarley Incorporated is still firmly in the black and going strong… and it's one of the mid-range stock arrangements."

"…What the hell?"

"He matches RLTT, doesn't he?" Relena suggested, giving Lin an expectant look. "You helped enough with the paperwork for most of my projects to realize the kind of money RLTT represents. It's hard to conceptualize, but it shouldn't be such a surprise." Jake had said before that the original inheritance had been split evenly between the brothers, and that he had always kept a distinct line of separation between them, even as he cultivated both. She gathered that it had been a fairly insane sum to start with, but he had aggressively, actively grown it with intelligent investments, and…

Oh. He'd refused to do anything but continue to grow his little brother's half, even years after he was presumed dead. That…

"My accounts have been active," Jake negated. "And I have private accounts too; not everything I have is tied up in RLTT, though the line gets fuzzy sometimes when I drop personal back into a project for sake of speed. RLTT makes up about two thirds to three quarters of my wealth, and… Lin, I'm active. I have a lot, and I have the same degree of ongoing passive income, but I've always taken more risky ventures with my share than Junior's, and sometimes they fall through. I'm never going to regret it but technically speaking, Peacemillion was a failed project with no return because Howard vanished it as soon as I gave him the chance. Very few of my RLTT projects have ever had a profit margin – and when they did, I fed it right back into the venture. I drop donations into local charities almost everywhere we go. I do it smart and make enough back on my returns that I can be impetuous without breaking past my carrying capacity, but I spend a lot."

Relena closed her eyes, the implications sinking in. "Just how much bigger is your brother's half?"

"I haven't tried to quantify it in years," he admitted. "It was depressing – I usually handled details for it in bits and pieces a few times a year, if that. I was the final account overseer on file and I did control it, but only when I found something I wanted to add to the portfolio or the statistics on a set of stocks shifted outside a standard set of operating parameters. It was a sort of morose hobby, building his share into something he could have used, knowing it didn't mean anything but… daydreaming, almost, like you see people play fantasy football. There have been losses over the years too, the stock market can surprise you even when you're not above inside trading, but… If at any time I got the idea to support something cool and it wasn't advisable to go over the limits I'd set for myself, I'd use his and build the portfolio up more. It's… Significant."

"Significant," Cassidy repeated in a wry tone. "So descriptive."

"You lot thought RLTT was impressive before you found out I've been funding Treize at an equal pace for espionage, military ops, and construction for the past three years at the same time," Jake reminded them, tone cutting. "And I've been comfortable, though only because Treize actually took his time building Aequitas to maintain both his cover and a budget. Significant might be the wrong word just because RLTT is already massive enough with such low overhead that it's too big to easily relate."

"Aequitas?"

"Gundam," Relena reminded Lin. They'd talked about Treize having a gundam before, but she wasn't sure how often its name had come up, and no Regime troops had seen it yet.

"Let me put it this way," Jake decided. "In one of my more depressive moods five years ago, I told Dave that if I hadn't figured out what to do with Junior's share by 210, I'd try starting a new colony cluster."

"…I'm starting to see why Des was so exasperated with you," Lin decided after a long moment.

"That's the kind of wealth that can crash entire economies if you handle it wrong," Cassidy interjected quietly.

Jake grimaced, but didn't argue. "Well on the bright side, we have proof now that he knows how to work the system and avoid that."

"But on the other side of the coin, he knows how to work the system," Lin returned, closing his eyes and dropping his head back against the headrest. "You're scary enough, Miller; I really didn't want to deal with two of you."

"Two philanthropist billionaires, for shame," the other man pointed out sarcastically. "As paranoid as I'm feeling, this still is good news. Revenant Rubato has a lot of promise if this is its opener, and… there doesn't have to be any malcontent involved. Every time I've considered the idea that he might still be out there over the years I've thought of all the ways he could be in dire straits, but… He also could have done okay. The cover story was designed to fool people who knew too much about our uncle to believe something entirely innocent, and maybe so he could be lazy and not have to remember too many details about a life he never lived when questioned. Rubato might really be a bunch of bright-eyed idealists who just want to do the same thing as the rest of us."

"Or he could be armed for bear and trying for a new world order," Lin deadpanned.

Jake grimaced again. "Yeah, but… Technically, so are we."

Not wrong, but enough is enough. "We're going in circles here," Relena announced. "We can't reach any more conclusions on that front without more information, so let's stick to the facts. Jake? We'll be meeting with Delilah again next week, and the more information we have on the reactions to Rubato Cambyses members, the better. It will be something she's going to want to incorporate into our own social advances, so I would appreciate it if you kept a close eye on that." He nodded, and something else occurred to her. "Wait, is she going to recognize you?" All her meetings with Delilah before now had, by either design or circumstance, happened while Jake was out.

"It's not likely, but possible," he admitted. "She was one of my candidates that was quick to build a dialogue digitally, which was good because I was doing, like… three other things on any given day, and I kept her on until 192; she does good work. I only saw her in person every couple of months, and the majority of my hands on work with the History for Tomorrow Database was in streamlining the structure of the company. We didn't have much need for face-to-face, and I don't think she ever remembered my name consistently." He tipped his head to one side. "Though if she does, I might get some interesting questions – I used a backup identity for that one."

Relena frowned. "Should we keep you away, then?"

"Nah." Grinning and relaxing a little more, he dropped an arm around her. "I like Delilah, and this kind of problem was going to start happening soon anyhow. Might as well just go for it. She's the type who'll probably appreciate the absurdity of it, so she's a good start."

"She's also dropped more than a few hints about how personal assistants make good spouses right from the start," Lin chimed in cheerfully.

Jake snorted. "Of course she has. Helena can tie you up in knots and convince you to thank her for the privilege, and Delilah was practically in love at first sight. Literally no one was surprised when she quit the temp agency I pulled her from after the first quarter." He snickered. "Actually, that might be why Criel never really noticed me, her eyes were… Very much elsewhere. The two of them got married in 191, then just after I withdrew RLTT candidacy they made HTD a subsidiary under the new Osborne Reunion Foundation. They adopted Iliana… I want to say in 193? Might have been late 192. She'd be… nine or ten now, if memory serves." He smiled. "It'll be nice to see them again."

It should be interesting, if nothing else. Still, she agreed with his thoughts on Delilah's disposition, and he'd clearly known the Osbornes longer than she had despite his distance. Speaking of distance… She checked her watch. "Has Treize been able to verify if he can make the call tonight?"

"Barring an emergency, yes," Jake confirmed, dropping more of his weight against her as he leaned in to press his nose to her hair. "Communications in space are getting better, if only because the repair crews are running double-time. Honestly, a lot of it doesn't make sense – the fighting's dropped back down, but the problems are ongoing. It's starting to look like sabotage."

Relena sighed softly and closed her eyes. "I was worried about that." Predictably, relatively little ground had actually been covered during that first phone conference, with too many introductions and ground rules to lay out and limited bandwidth, but there had been a number of encrypted emails flying back and forth in the weeks since. Nothing official from the Winners yet beyond 'we'll be directly in contact soon', but they had a better idea now of exactly what agreements had been made between the parties making up the new Soleil Coalition and what changes they wanted to see in the long-term.

The colonies wanted to be a separate, recognized state – with standalone governing systems on each cluster that were also organized into a unified confederation. In her opinion, it was long overdue. The last person to have started lobbying for something that could even begin to lead to something similar had been the original Heero Yuy, and… Well, according to conspiracy theory, there had been a number of attempts to discredit or sabotage the man's efforts before the Alliance had resorted to a more permanent solution, and then a few failed attempts and a number of outright refusals before they settled a contract with the man who had actually performed the assassination.

The colonial politician's death had been the start of a tumbling house of cards in all too many ways, for a lot of people.

~~oOo~~

"It's one of the things I've never been able to understand," Jake murmured half into her shoulder, morose after going over the details of one of the darker cases he'd ever worked on in OZ. "The way he could just… put a price on something. No matter how deep I've dug, I can't even ghost up a rubric for how he charged his clients. I don't think he had an accurate idea of money value, like my dad says. Or at least, he never tried to teach the two of us, but… I can't figure out what else he might have been doing it for either. I know he grew up poor, and maybe it was a hoarding thing that stopped making any logical sense after his bank account got big enough, but…

"My uncle took on jobs almost compulsively, like he couldn't keep his hands still. Maybe I got that from him, not being able to sit still, but… Lena, he cut a bloody swathe across history, killing for the highest bidder starting in his teens; Romefeller's backstabbing and the Alliance's determination to subjugate the colonies kept him busy. Heero Yuy was probably the highest profile job he ever took and the payout for it was downright insane, but that was after he'd already been freelance for more than ten years – OZ didn't manage to keep him on payroll for much longer than they did me, and he was already on their records as a dangerous element when they recruited him. He was a hit man for… at least twenty-five years? And he died before he turned forty-five.

"Where does it start? I used to think I'd be lucky to see the other side of thirty, and… I'm not sure he thought he would either. Other than the money hoarding, he didn't plan for the future. Looking back, I'm not sure he knew how. Sometimes I want to agree with Jack and write him off as having been crazy, because nine times out of ten even money wasn't a motive for why he did some of the things he did, but at the same time… He took custody of my mom when he was a couple months shy of fifteen.

"Galina Lowe's death is a matter of public record, and it's one of the few things I can piece together from his early life. The address on the police report used to be a shitty little tenement in the middle of nowhere Finland, listed as the location for an unholy number of crimes before it got condemned and torn down. My dad says Odin told him he'd run away when he was eleven, but that he decided to come back for his mom, after he'd figured himself out. He'd been working for someone okay with child labor doing who knows what for almost four years, but he decided he still missed his mom, and that he wanted to get her out of the hellhole he'd escaped. So he went home… and found a baby in the house. In the report, my uncle said my grandmother claimed she hadn't seen the old man since just after Rhea'd been born, and… that's all I really know about my grandfather. Then they ended up arguing about where he'd been, and how she didn't want to go anywhere, and when the neighbors started complaining about the noise, he stormed out. When he came back the next morning she was dead with a needle in her arm and the two-year-old was sitting in front of the TV eating string cheese and a hard-boiled boiled egg like this was normal routine.

"He was probably working for some kingpin and looking after a toddler would have made his life stupid hard, but he took her and never looked back. Jack and Amarianna both say she was always happy, and Junior and I were happy with him too, he wasn't a bad father, but… Sometimes I just can't help but wonder what the fuck went on in his head, to make some things unquestionable, and some perfectly fine. Where does that shit start? Where does it end? Is it over yet, or am I just as deep in delusion as he must have been?

"It's the things Odin never even thought twice about that scare me the most. What do I write off as normal that I don't even notice? What's Junior's version of normal? Odin took hush money often enough too, even if he didn't usually start extortion schemes on his own. I'm pretty sure he accepted bribes to not act as often as he took them for incentive, and even accounting for that, I'm never going to know where even half of his money originated from.

"He didn't… When he took the Heero Yuy job, my parents were living together, but not married yet. Sometimes I wonder if it was, like… Some kind of midlife crisis? Aside from the initial difficulty of reaching him in the first place, it was known that anyone who killed Yuy would have had to deal with the fallout from his contemporaries. The man was a pacifist, or at least he said he was and people believed it, but his friends… they paint a hell of a contrast. You know how Quinze ended up. Best case scenario with him is that he only went nuts after he ran out of peaceful options; he was a no-name that basically disappeared after the assassination. Then you have to think about the guy who popped up during the war under the alias Dr J – he was often seen around the original Yuy back in his heyday too. Whether they were violent beforehand or not, losing Yuy took off their safeties, and J was suspected of enough bullshit even by then that OZ wanted to either recruit or kill him.

"But the real big gun that scared off most people the Alliance could have hired for the Yuy job was Dekim Barton, because he was stuck on that man like a flea… and when I bother believing all the martyred propaganda about the original Yuy as truth, I tell myself that Dekim was playing the game, trying to puppet the man or just the whole situation into his power. Dekim's always been a sick piece of work and a first class manipulator, and even if Yuy saw through that, he could have been using the influence the Barton Foundation brought along for as long as he could get away with it not biting him. I could see that scenario. And maybe it was just that he felt like the situation came so close to successful annexation before Odin shot Yuy, but… Dekim took that blow hard.

"No one thought he would take it lying down, I have to assume the job payoff was so high because Odin expected he'd have to avoid the Bartons for a while, but… Maybe they were friends. Maybe history painted Yuy wrong, and everyone fell for it. Dekim hunted Odin for years with a fucking fanatical kind of fervor. That last job was an elaborate trap for my uncle, and the Barton Head pulled the trigger on him personally, more than thirteen years after the fact. And Odin was so depressed by then that he just walked right into it, there's too many things he did wrong for it to have been anything but an intentional death march, but…

"Amarianna pulled me aside when I was going to the Noins for the first time, when I was ten, to let me know how she's already staved off three separate attempts to get at me since she'd taken custody of me – that I needed to stay wary. She said my uncle had asked her to keep an eye out after he intercepted a team heading for Jack's house, weeks before she helped hoodwink me to Luxembourg. All wet work teams with Barton's prints all over them. Dekim hated Odin enough to want to kill his kid if he couldn't get his hands on the real thing, and that level of obsession… I used to think maybe the trail went cold on Junior because Dekim got him. My only consolation prize for hunting that whole damn year was that I picked up a breadcrumb trail on what later got to be called Operation Meteor. I gave him up for dead because that was all I ever found; it kept going in circles, and I realized I must've lost the real thread far enough back that it wouldn't matter any more.

"So… something in my uncle broke when Jack took me away, and when Junior… Odin wouldn't talk about that first year after, beyond saying that Junior didn't remember it, or anything before it. That started the spiral of his depression. But how much of why it got so bad was because Dekim was dogging his heels? He did some really high risk shit during those four years I can't find evidence of him doing while he still had me, went completely off the radar at times in ways I still can't figure out. Just… I don't know. The way he just dropped Junior and walked into his death, it's like he thought it was a solution? Like if he died, that would fix the problem? I don't know. The shot that killed him was a gut wound; the coroner said he'd probably had a couple hours. They might have talked afterwards, Dekim's the gloating type. Maybe he got some of the fucking closure he was after.

"The thought that's never left me alone about it though, is how… It almost made sense. I loved Odin, but… In some ways, he died as a consequence of his greatest, stupidest point of pride. He knew Dekim would hold a grudge, and he knew where he was vulnerable, and… It's not even close to justice in either direction and he probably still did it for the wrong reasons, but he walked into a kill shot from someone he'd thoughtlessly hurt so badly that they hunted him and his family beyond the ends of the Earth. There's a sort of finality in that that he would've liked, I think.

"In some ways, the assassination of Heero Yuy is what killed Odin, and I hate how much sense it makes."

~~oOo~~

"Lena?"

She started, blinking at Jake before shaking her head. "Sorry, just… thinking."

The creation of the Soleil Coalition was easily the best chance the colonies had at true independence since their inception. All peaceful attempts following Yuy's assassination had either been ignored wholesale or crushed before they could gather any strength by the Alliance. Then the martial attempts… Well, Jack was proof of how well the militias had faired – even if a few had successfully harried the Alliance to the point where the Earth's military only managed a creeping advance into space instead of a rout. The original Operation Meteor had been more about revenge and turnabout subjugation than freedom, and despite its alteration into a series of surgical strikes against the military might of the colonies' conquerors… Well, it had barely lasted six weeks before Une had threatened to shoot down a colony and the colonies as a whole denounced the gundam pilots as radicals and cut them loose. Everything the boys had done after that had been on their own terms, without the support of a nation.

Then had come White Fang, insanely radical with Quinze at the helm even before Milliardo lost his mind, and they all knew how that had ended. Overwhelming force in order to subjugate, once again. Milliardo now held the colonies much the same way he did Africa and northeast Asia – loosely, with more free reign than the colonies had seen in two decades, but still with demands. Dekim's attempt to pull away from the Regime last year had been pulled apart at the seams before it could really begin, and before anyone could gather much information on exactly how he intended to accomplish it beyond having a personal army… But Dekim had fronted the original Operation Meteor, so even if he'd had another chance her expectations were low.

The Soleil Coalition had gathered a significant amount of military power, but with Treize at the helm, it was also determined to organize a stable state; a state that could hold its own and be considered equal to Earth. He had the Winners backing him, and the sect from L5 that had produced a gundam before, and though the Barton Foundation was technically neutral and out for the count, now, he had strong enough ties there through Leia and their daughter to hold sway. Leia insisted that divulging information on Mariemaia's whereabouts was too risky to consider, but that she was both safe and aware that she had future responsibilities to their family's empire. The L2 cluster was apathetic and had little in the way of resources to offer to either the Coalition or the Regime, content to wait on news of the victor, and L1 was… apparently cooperative and helpful to the Coalition so far, even as they shrugged unhelpfully at the Regime and maintained their borders.

L1 had always been the most successful at rebuffing outside assault, after all. They might not have been winning against the Alliance before the gundams came, but they hadn't quite been losing either. According to Treize they were currently a tentative ally, but wanted proof that the Coalition could back its claims before offering more absolute support against a man who had once attempted genocide.

She had been a little surprised, though, at Dorothy. The layout of the Coalition's long-term plans meant that Treize would never return to take his place as a Romefeller Heir or Head, the way she knew the other woman had worried over after they learned her cousin was alive. Provided he succeeded in his campaign, and Relena and now Sylvia in theirs, he would be renouncing his claims to Earth in favor of the fledgling Colonial Confederacy. His allies had accepted him by claiming him as one of their own, and she had caught Leia browsing through websites centered on weddings, so she rather assumed that was… set. Dorothy's status on Earth was therefore assured, and yet… there hadn't been any sign of relief in her friend. Happiness, yes, but… it was as though she had already known, or had found an alternate solution, and the news hadn't affected her at all.

…It was probably for the best that she didn't know what plans Dorothy had made to counter a threat to her position. Treize was a clearly defined ally now, and whatever blade she had crafted to use against him could stay sheathed.

All this, however, was balanced on Treize's success in the space campaign, and so far, his attempts to wear her brother down on resources with only minimal engagements didn't seem to be making a dent. And by now… It really should have. Treize had the home field advantage and a minimal supply train managed by the locals. This… shouldn't be a stalemate Milliardo could maintain, and yet he was.

Sabotage. Betrayal from supposed allies? If so, through fear and shame or intent? Maybe he would have a better idea of what the root of the problems were by the time they spoke tonight, but she wouldn't hold her breath.

"Have we received anything yet that you think could be an approach from the Winners?" she asked. It had been three weeks since Treize's ambassador from the family, Belle Blaine, had said they would be in touch 'soon'. She was starting to wonder if everyone else was going by a different definition of that word.

"Not that I can clearly call out," Jake admitted. "But, you know… Winners. They're the supreme best at stealth, at least on the legal side of things – there's a reason I called Junior's cover story Winner-quality. I honestly don't think we'll know until we're told, but if they're taking the same stance with us as they are with Treize? Be on the lookout for blonde women who want a private word."

She rolled her eyes. "Well, at least we know it's not Sylvia."

He snorted, rubbing his thumb over her arm. "Small mercies," he agreed. "Though in their defense, we haven't been home much. It's harder to be sure your conversation is truly private on neutral ground, and we've shown we like to hold that kind of talk at Sarracenia. It could be as simple as that."

"She might have to take the time to get down here, too," Lin suggested. "Space travel is still a little wonky between two armies running around."

Relena frowned. "Maybe, but that still assumes she's not already here. Blaine said she moved to Earth permanently in 193. The previous Winner Corporation Head had thirty children, and the youngest of them is eighteen now – they could be anywhere."

The older woman had spoken little during the first conference, and according to Mu and Treize was something of an enigma even in person. Belle Blaine née Etheredge, the young widow to the late business magnate Patrick Blaine, had apparently been born Belle Winner. Claiming to be the nineteenth child, she had been nine when the family had some kind of mass schism over the death of Quaterine Claflinn-Winner. According to her, the split had meant that each of the younger daughters were raised in clusters independent of each other, and Quatre alone… which made little sense to Relena beyond the realization that the problem at the root of that family must have been severe. But then, of course, thirty children. Apparently Belle was only three weeks older than the next sister in line, which just made the whole situation all the more confusing, but… As strange as the scenario was, she now knew more of it than she suspected most outsiders could claim, and that probably counted for something.

Besides a show of trust, Belle claimed her willingness to divulge so much was to clarify her motives. To explain that she was technically colonial, yes, but also that she had a vested interest in Relena's management of Europe because her son was earthborn, and she intended to raise him where she had fallen in love with the boy's father. She had explained the structure of her family because she wanted Relena to understand that while she acknowledged her sisters as kin, she rarely considered any outside those she had finished her childhood with as sisters – one of whom died with their father in the war, and another of which was currently held hostage by the Regime. The only 'full' sister she had left was her twin – the three week age difference being dismissed, apparently – who was currently staying at the Blaine's largest estate in Ukraine, looking after three-year-old Gerald while his mother was in space.

Iria and Zayeed Winner died in September of 195. Patrick Blaine had been attending to investments in Costa Rica when the planes stopped running in the leadup to the Fall. Sarali Winner had been snatched out of her bed in January of 196.

So yes, Blaine's motives were spelled out rather clearly. There was both a relief in that, and a sort of weariness. Even three years later, you could still hear the grief in the woman's voice when she spoke of the dead.

She reached out and squeezed Jake's hand. "Is it bad that I hope whoever we get, she's less melancholic than Treize's ambassador?"

"No," he reassured. "From everything Treize has been able to pick up, part of why she was sent to him was because her family felt she needed to do something productive on a large scale in order to stop sliding into depression. He said something about already talking to two different Winners already; I gather Belle's the primary for now, but that might change too." He shrugged. "Well, that and apparently she has a very impressive, unnerving poker face. Treize says there's something almost ethereal about her."

"So, look out for pretty blonde liars who probably need therapy," Lin cut in, giving Jake a pointed look. "Sounds like she'll fit right in."

Jake smirked. "I'll be sure to tell Dorothy you thought of her."

oOo

oOo

Southern Sudan – Blue Nile Base – Officer's Quarters

"I'm only here for a few more days," Lucrezia noted idly, fishing in the tiny pocket at the back of her shorts for her key. "Graduating a few of our pilots and taking stock before I'm due north again." Taking on all of Hilde's workload on top of her own was kicking her ass, and that was with Xutao handling most of her intelligence network. "I think I'm going to cut Xu loose and toss Yasa at him, since you've brought him back," she decided. "Italy's taking longer than any of us expected and we still have no sign of an ETA there, so the limbo's probably pointless."

"He'll like that," Odin agreed in a low rumble.

She risked a glance over at him, eyes settling briefly on the set of his shoulders, the taut muscles of his neck, before focusing back on putting one foot in front of the other and trying to act like her nerves weren't all humming.

If she met his eyes again and they were half as dark as they'd been in the hangar, she might do something… well, nothing regrettable, but it wasn't even noon yet. Someone else might come through this hallway, and she really wasn't in the mood for interruptions.

He seemed to be of the same opinion – that, or he was letting her control the setting, which… wasn't unusual. They hadn't figured out all the boundaries to their relationship yet, but so far, he was willing to follow any she even vaguely implied. And respect was nice, of course, but…

She'd written off Zechs' standoffishness as respect. In hindsight she wasn't sure how much of anything he'd done with her had ever gone beyond concession, but she'd thought he was just… high class and chivalrous. That or obscenely touch-shy like Jake, except Jake got over that with a certain level of exposure, and Zechs…

Well, warning signs. Too little too late, but she'd learned to read them, damn it.

So yeah, she got a little unnerved when Odin was less demonstrative, and as much as she'd been looking forward to seeing him again, she'd worried she was overreaching. That doubt had begun to plague her when she first caught sight of him despite how he was obviously introducing new allies – always a potentially delicate situation – or how she was a general in front of her troops. One of the things she appreciated most about Odin was his lack of care for decorum – how he didn't bother with masks. Even when the emotional charge of the situation skyrocketed with the reveal that it was Quatre he'd brought home with him, that he'd deferred a greeting to back one of his closest friends through what looked like some serious turmoil, she hadn't quite been able to dismiss those old insecurities.

But at the same time, the way he'd watched her, eyes smoky and body strung tight as a bow from the moment he laid eyes on her, had practically made her want to purr. Every motion of his body was overly precise, and as the snafu with Quatre went down he… He'd still been respectful, but once he'd seen Quatre into Rashid's arms, he'd settled in behind her with his hands on her hips, almost like it was automatic. And as they watched the reunion he'd leaned forward, and… It had been subtle, but distinctly not innocent. His fingertips were practically brands, and the warm air from his breath on her neck as he leaned forward to gently rest his shoulders against her back had almost undone her. There were only four points of contact, hardly anything noteworthy, but the way he'd quickly aborted a caressing motion with his thumbs, his ramrod tension, and the way he'd pointedly kept his hips back combined with just how little blue was left in his eyes by the time he got close?

Odin didn't always talk much, but he sure as hell communicated. He was practically shaking from how harshly he was reigning himself in by the time he touched her, but he was still restraining himself and leaving the ball in her court.

It was as hot as it was irritating.

So she hadn't really given Quatre's ex-Cambyses situation more than a cursory 'okay, great' level of thought processing before suggesting her lover go get his things so they could settle him in. Rashid and Abdul weren't letting the empath out of their sight for at least a few hours anyway, and the boys he'd brought with him were already tentatively integrating himself into the group. She'd catch up later; it was fine. She was off today anyway. She'd planned on getting a little cleaned up first, but more time was better than niceties anyway…

He'd gotten his duffel in record time despite looking poised instead of rushed and hand signed something fast to Audi before focusing all his attention back on her again, eyes practically black… and that was about the point where she decided she needed to stop looking at his goddamn face if she wanted to keep control of herself.

She'd never been this ramped up over seeing Zechs again, no matter how long he'd been away. Hell, she hadn't known she could get this ramped up at all, and God, but wasn't that telling?

They reached her room and she fumbled the lock a little, rolling her eyes at herself before paying attention and doing it right with little enough delay that most people wouldn't notice. Odin just let out a low noise that might have been the beginning of a laugh as he crowded her, slipping in ahead and tossing his bag at the bed as she closed the-

She gasped out a laugh as her back hit the wall, wrapping her legs around him on instinct more than anything before grabbing a fistful of hair to drag him the rest of the way in. The sound he made was all appreciation as he attacked her lips, hands gripping her hips hard as he came flush with her before shifting to caress down her thighs and slip under the hem of her shorts and all the way back up to the waistline.

"Mmm." She bucked against him in approval, grinning when he groaned, and tugged his head to one side for a better angle before diving into his mouth. His breath hitched as he kissed her back, chest heaving and fingers caressing all the skin he could reach in stuttering jerks…

God, if this is something he likes, I need to invest in a skirt or two. She hadn't missed where his attention had immediately gone when he first saw her and this was fun, but the shorts were going to get really irritating in a minute or two. Besides, it didn't just have to be for fun – she could stash a goddamn arsenal in the right kind of skirt without anyone the wiser…

After a minute he pulled back for air, and it was only because he could that she realized she must've let him loose at some point in favor of his shoulders… Better leverage, right, that made sense, but still, problem. "Mmnn," she protested, leaning forward and catching his bottom lip in her teeth as she ground down again. They half-fell the couple inches back against the wall as he stumbled and she smirked, burying her hands in his hair again and giving him one last, bruising kiss before shifting him the opposite way she had before, nibbling along his jaw and down to the spot on his neck just under one ear that, if she paid it enough attention, could turn him downright feral. "Some athlete you are," she teased. "Learn to breathe through your nose."

He huffed out a laugh, leaning into the angle and sliding his fingers under her panties to cup her ass. "Got distracted."

She snickered, lingering over the last lick and enjoying his shudder at the hot air over sensitive skin. "Mmm…" She dropped another kiss right next to it, just a little closer, and nuzzled at his ear before licking a slow stripe up behind it. "We should get your ears pierced."

He felt him swallow before he nuzzled right back, cheek to cheek. "Sure." Testing how much range of motion she was giving him, he pressed a surprisingly soft kiss just under her jaw… and began swiping his thumbs back over her hips, edging under the front of her underwear with an idle intent that made her shudder this time.

She could feel his smile against her skin even before he pointed out, "Little busy right now, though."

With a snort, she wrenched his head back and attacked that spot on his neck, laving it once and biting before sucking hard, feeling smug as his low chuckle turned in a growl, letting go of one handful of hair to yank up his shirt and feel the muscles underneath. His grip on her hips tightened as he tensed up and she grazed her teeth over the hickey forming up before latching on again, feeling his abs clench even more…

His nails scored hot lines down her skin as he dragged his hands back out of her shorts to slam her shoulders back into the wall. A harsh twist of an arm later she was forced to relinquish his hair and she laughed, not bothering to fight – using the opportunity to hitch up the other side of his shirt instead, palming more smooth, hot skin as he invaded her mouth.

Zechs had almost never taken the lead, even when provoked. She never would have even considered Odin if he hadn't been willing to pursue her instead of the other way around, but sometimes it felt like she hadn't even known what she'd liked, before. Almost as if Odin knew her body better than she did, and shit… It hadn't even been all that many times yet. Maybe it was just because she was older now, had a little experience and some idea of what she was actually doing, but… more and more, she was starting to think it might just be him.

She moaned when he pulled away to work on her neck, head falling to one side to give him better access. She was trying to stay skeptical, but… chemical lust was supposed to last, what, three months? They hadn't been sleeping together that long, but the making out started in August. They didn't actually get that much time together, so maybe it was skewed, but…

God, she needed to find a way to make more time, because the last six weeks had sucked.

She dropped her hands lower and eased the lock she had with her legs a little, tracing the lines of his abs down. She was wrapped around his waist, and, as fun as it was, it was a little high for him to have been getting nearly as much out of the position as her. Even pulling back, though, the angles weren't great, and the best she could do was swipe a few teasing fingers just under the waistband of his pants.

He grunted and pushed her upper arms back against the wall, jolting her back and continuing to press down the line of her arms until they were stretched out on either side of her. He brought the whole of his core up against her to keep her from falling, flush from chest all the way down to groin with how loose she'd let her legs fall… And yeah, she could feel him, but instead of trying to do something about it he ran his thumbs over her palms a few times before bringing them back to his shoulders and dropping a fairly chaste kiss against her lips. "No need to rush," he murmured, hands dropping to her waist and slipping under her shirt to trace over her stomach. "I missed you."

…All things considered, the moment shouldn't feel as tender as it did. And yet… She let out a little whine at the idea of slowing down and pointedly rocked herself directly against him for emphasis, relishing the way he dropped his head against her with a groan, before wrapping her legs back around him to support some of her own weight again. "Fine," she groused, spreading her hands over the planes of his upper back and tipping her head against the wall. "How was America?"

"Tch." He mouthed along the base of her neck to her collarbone as he brought his hands up along her ribs, making her shiver. "Terrible."

She frowned, then licked her lips and held on tighter as he played with the bottom strap of her sports bra just under one breast. "Yeah?" She… wasn't exactly surprised, given her own visit to the lost continents, but she wasn't expecting him to look at it that way either.

"Hn." He shoved the strap of her tank top off one shoulder with his chin, scraping his teeth lightly along the skin there and humming against her when she let out another shiver. "A graveyard of bad decisions," he offered by way of explanation. Working his way back to her neck, he slipped a thumb under the shelf of her bra to run it along the very bottom edge of her breast, adding, "And I missed you."

She laughed a little at how much less innocent that phrase sounded this time. "Uh huh," she returned, grinning and arching into his touch. "I take it you and your hand didn't get much alone time with the other boys around, huh?"

He snorted, nipping at a tendon and refusing to take the hint to do more than just tease. "I've had sex before," he reminded her pointedly, pressing his nose into the nape of her neck and taking a long, deep breath. "This is different."

Her heart fluttered a little at that, and it wasn't entirely because his second hand was mirroring the first now. She'd known – he was too damn smooth right from the start for her to have considered the idea even if he hadn't told her – but she'd never pressed for details beyond clarifying that the relationship was both resolved and distant. "Oh?"

He snorted again, kissing a line up the other side of her neck and touching her only slightly more. "It was nice, but not enough that I thought about seeking it out again. I didn't…" He paused, then started to laugh, low in his throat but hard enough to shake through his whole body. "I just realized… I hadn't thought of her again until you came strutting out of Heavyarms like… I don't even know, like you, and…" He laughed more. "I went to look her up, then changed my mind and called you instead."

Right after… She snorted out a disbelieving laugh. "With the outlandishly bad flirting?" she demanded. "You were off to check on your ex, then changed your mind and called me to flirt in April?" She hadn't thought much of the obvious persona play at the time, it had been funny, but given the context…

"Ex is pushing it," he noted, face still buried in her neck as he shook with silent laughter. "I was more… flavor of the week."

Lucrezia laughed harder, really not sure what to make of that, because okay, whatever… But… "April." It didn't mean anything, to have felt the initial spark that far back, but at the same time… He hadn't shown an obvious interest until July, and it had taken him another six weeks after she called him out before he decided to act on it. They'd danced on the line for a while before crossing it… and knowing just how casual his prior experience had been put that in a different light too.

She'd gone into this relationship fully aware of the fact that he was flying by the seat of his pants, and had half expected the passion to fizzle out once he'd sated his curiosity. She'd gone with it anyway because the spark of possibility that it wouldn't was so bright it was impossible to ignore, because his attention was goddamn intoxicating… and because if it did go well, she could see a future there. A clear one, extending from how he acted now, not wild could-be's given this or that changed scenario, the way she'd daydreamed about Milliardo. Odin was steady, calm in the face of a storm in a way she'd never seen before, and so intense in every little thing he did that even when he was quiet, you could feel his passion for life. If he did something, he meant it, and…

She'd thought that at least, if it didn't end up going anywhere… At least it would have been a compatibility issue. Not because he hadn't tried.

"I'm… a little behind, sometimes," he murmured into her skin, fingers tracing lazy patterns. "I'm working on it. Almost everything feels new sometimes, raw, but this… I've never wanted like… It's different. I…" He made a frustrated noise and kissed her with just enough teeth to leave a mark. "I'm following my emotions. If it was simple, I would've figured it out by now." Nuzzling up with his nose settled against her hair, he repeated, "I've missed you."

…He'd been away for six weeks, and sounded just as hurt by it as she was.

Maybe she could start letting her doubts fade away.

"I missed you too," she told him, bringing one hand to the back of his head and dropping her face against his hair. "Six weeks is too long." They'd talked during, especially once he was out of the old States and had better reception, but it wasn't the same thing.

He sighed softly… then thumbed her breasts again with far more intent, making her gasp. "Let's not do that again," he decided, biting her neck in a way that had her clenching her thighs around him again, locking her ankles tighter…

…Yeah, hating the shorts right about now. Too many damn barriers.

"I'd really prefer we took our time on take two," she groused, arching her back as his touch grew bolder. "Or three. Isn't wall sex supposed to be fast anyway?"

That rumbling chuckle was back. "If you're sleeping with a civilian, it probably has to be."

…God, he'd just been holding her up here for how long now? She wasn't dead weight for most of it, but still, shit.

Hot as that was, though, she was serious, so different tactics were called for. "Six weeks, Odin. Do me a favor and fulfill one fantasy before trying to turn it into a new one."

He stilled for a moment, processing that… Then laughed low and deep again, shoving her bra up and hitching her higher so her chest was level with his face before slipping his hands into her underwear again. "Why not both?"

oOo

oOo

December 13th 198 – Friday – Soleil Coalition Fleet

"To be frank, sir," Mu decided. "I don't think why matters much right now. We'll pare down our options as we get more intel. If you want my opinion, we need to circumvent the problem more than we do an answer."

Because moving preemptively will compromise the troops, Treize agreed silently, eyeing the layout of information without really seeing it. It was the same conclusion he had reached, but he had hoped he was missing something. A great part of Ackroyd's value at his side now was her fresh prospective, and her analytical skills were nothing to scoff at.

Still, the situation was frustrating enough, large with conflicting information and circumstances he might have misread, that he had wanted to be wrong.

It had been five months since he had started this operation. Initially, they had planned for three months of evasive maneuvering, minimal contact and excessive baiting to draw the Regime's forces deeper into space and lengthen their supply line. They had expected some amount of skirmishes in that time, but the idea had been to soften Milliardo's forces before any major strikes by lengthening the campaign itself with little gain on either side. Situated as he was, Treize could afford to wear the other side down that way, with ready, fresh supplies via the Coalition – Milliardo couldn't.

Except at three months, he had still been going strong. The decision had been made to lengthen the first stage, even as skirmishes became more frequent – minimally damaging, but often exhausting all the same… and though minimal, casualties had occurred. Well within expected parameters, but… after five months and no change, it was beginning to look like a waste.

The Regime supply train, as much of it as they could find, was long and moderately guarded. Most of the skirmishes the Coalition had instigated had been breaking that chain, with a decent rate of success. Enough that Milliardo's troops should be feeling the loss and compensating as a result. And yet, there was no change in their movements, in Regime tactics – which by now could only mean that Milliardo had found a way to compensate that didn't lean harder on his men. An alternate source of supplies. And after eliminating many of the more passive possibilities, he had to start looking askance at his own people, and all his… relatively young alliances with the spaceborn.

He could admit, looking back, that he'd always had something of a problem with keeping his troops in line. A single misstep during the war was all it had taken for them to shatter into too many factions to count. Loyalty was too subjective without a firm hand, a shining beacon to follow, and yet too hard of a line, and that devotion eroded. He'd long been gifted with the charisma to inspire others, to lead effectively, but once the group exceeded a certain size, the situation would always be untenable. Add to that the fact that this army wasn't devoted to his vision like what he had claimed of OZ but a group of factions with common goals…

They had a leak, but hunting for it could very well shatter the whole. The Winners were easily his most staunch allies, but given the way they kept their own counsel on just how they controlled their territories, the gap might be hidden there – in which case, the betrayal could very well be accidental, or isolated. Then the others…

It doesn't matter. Without more intelligence than they currently had, it would only be a witch hunt. He couldn't investigate any further than he already was. The resources had to be allocated elsewhere.

Mu had stated it rather well. Circumvent the problem instead of solving it. He had chosen his current tactics to make an easier target of the Regime, not because it was necessary.

"We move on to stage two, then," he decided aloud. People had already died – if this was to continue, the losses might as well be worth something. "It's time to bring the fight to him."

oOo

oOo

Ignition Sequence

oOo

Thoughts? Theories? This one was kinda a doozy in terms of points covered. The next chapter is only loosely planned at the moment but should be a lot shorter… theoretically… and most of this was written over a month ago – Mitchell's fight was a lot harder to slog through than I expected. Add health issues to that and… well. Culminating plots are finally revealing further? Next chapter is more about surprise… surprise meetings? Unexpected collision/compilation of plans, maybe. Odin really shouldn't be avoiding reading his HTD file.

Next chapter should also have the final reveal of any hidden Winner sisters, if anyone was trying to track that. Most of them have been outed officially now by either their own internal dialogue or that of other Winners (Tay's technically a Cavanaugh, but he's still Quatre's nephew that's… you know, almost two years older than him). Just since the reveals should be in the next chapter, I'll note that there's been two more Winners physically seen and interacting with main characters in Sedition that haven't been outed just yet. It's… a big family. Seriously, the Winner family has their own file and a bunch of handwritten notes to keep that shit straight. They probably deserve their own damn story, but I'm not writing that beyond what filters in through here. Gah.

I almost feel like I ought to apologize for Odin and Lu, because that's… just barely shy of explicit, there? But at the same time, it shoes a lot of how they both think and just are, and that's…. yeah. That's there. Future shenanigans on that front should be more off screen than that, but it was actually fairly relevant to show how their relationship is shifting?