AN: I don't own Airwolf; Mr. Bellesario and Universal do. I don't own Gunslinger Girl either; it belongs to Yu Aida and Funimation.

AN 2: Please forgive my Babelfish Italian.

"I still think this whole thing is crazy," said Dom irritably. "If you ask me, Michael and that committee of his have finally gone off the deep end." He watched his foster son pace restlessly over the pale carpet from his perch on Archangel's pristine white leather sofa. "String, will you sit down for just a minute?"

Hawke kept up his pacing. "I'm fine right here."

"You're wearing a path in Michael's carpet," the stocky Italian harrumphed. "His undoubtedly expensive carpet."

With a shrug, Hawke stopped pacing and crossed to the sofa.

"Finally," said Dom. "You've saved me at least two hundred bucks on carpet cleaning."

"No," said Hawke, a wry smile playing about his mouth. "They're coming."

Dom got to his feet with an exasperated sigh.

The door opened, and Marella, Michael's beautiful assistant, entered the room. Her white suit made a fashionable contrast to her cafe-au-lait complexion, and her pencil-slim skirt and high-heeled white shoes enhanced her natural height and shapely legs. Michael Coldsmith-Briggs III, her boss and the deputy director of the Firm, followed closely behind her, though his gait was marked by a limp and he walked with the aid of an elegant rosewood cane. He too was dressed in white, but the left lens of his gold-rimmed glasses was blacked out to both hide and protect the blind eye behind it.

Marella stood back as Michael led his guests through the door. Two young men—one dark-haired, one dishwater blond—walked into the office, each trailed by a young girl carrying Amati violin cases. Michael kept up his light banter as the group entered the room, but from their serious expressions, it appeared that Michael's easy charm was lost on the two men. The young girls remained silent and expressionless; both seemed to be unaffected by the conversation.

"Jose, Daniel, I'd like you to meet Stringfellow Hawke and Dominic Santini," Michael said by way of introduction. The newcomers turned to face Hawke and Dom, and the young girls immediately followed suit, their faces still blank.

"Very pleased to meet you," said the dark-haired man in a soft, lightly accented voice. "I'm Jose." He turned to include the small, auburn-haired girl in a grey school uniform. "And this is Henrietta."

The girl stepped forward and looked up at Hawke, her deep amber eyes taking in every detail of his face and form. Hawke met her gaze without flinching, and after a few heartbeats, Henrietta nodded. "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Hawke."

The girl's voice was like the chirp of a sparrow, and Hawke frowned. How old was she? Was this girl really the same one who wielded the formidable automatic weapon in the footage he'd seen a few days earlier?

Dom's voice broke into Hawke's musings. "Benvenuto, Signore Jose, Signorina Henrietta. Il mio nom e Dominic." The words of Dom's beloved mother tongue flowed easily, and Hawke couldn't help a smile. Dom rarely got the chance to speak Italian-other than swearing colorfully at stubborn machinery in the hangar.

Henrietta's eyes lit up. "Piacevole per incontrarlo, Signore Santini."

"Looks like you've found a friend, Henrietta," said Jose with a chuckle.

Dom grinned. "She's a charming young lady."

Hawke glanced at the other pair of fratello. The raven-haired girl stood silent, her icy gray eyes intently studying the scene before her, but the handler was looking on with quiet amusement at the exchange.
"Daniel Blake?" asked Hawke, remaining where he was.

The blond young man in the dark suit stepped forward, trailed closely by the girl. "Yes, sir." He proffered a hand in greeting, and it was only then that Hawke moved forward. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Captain Hawke. I've heard a lot about you from Archangel." He glanced at the girl. "Rowan and I have been looking forward to working with you and Mr. Santini."

Hawke looked down at the diminutive assassin. She even looked the part of a schoolgirl, clad in a white blouse and navy blue vest and skirt. Like Henrietta, she wore white knee socks and polished penny loafers, and her curly hair was held back from her face with a simple golden clip. "Hello, Rowan."

"How do you do, Captain Hawke?" The girl's voice was lower and more mature than Hawke expected, and held none of Henrietta's childish lilt.

"Daniel and Rowan are going to be working on the Airwolf project for the next few weeks," said Archangel, limping over to join Hawke and the American fratello. "Jose and Henrietta have been training their counterparts, and they have graciously agreed to stay on for a little while as resources. If you run into any problems or have any questions about how the fratello works, they'll be able to assist you."

Both Hawke and Santini had been briefed on the project, but with Archangel's announcement, it was official. Hawke suppressed a frown; Michael hadn't asked, he'd told, and despite Hawke's protests and arguments, the 'collaboration' was now a reality.

"Marella," Michael said with a glance over his shoulder, "why don't you see if you can rustle up a little something so we can all sit down and get better acquainted."

Hawke had to hand it to the white-suited team; the whole meeting had been carefully choreographed, and he felt a flare of annoyance at being made to play his part.

Before Hawke could protest, Marella confirmed his suspicions by dropping into the deceptive role of Office Lady. She smiled sweetly at the two girls. "Of course. I'll be right back." She left the room as the Airwolf team and the fratello arranged themselves in the sleek white leather chairs around the glass-topped coffee table near the windows. By the time the group was seated, Marella had returned with a tea cart complete with a flowered china pot and eight matching cups. A white-frosted cake covered with lavish curls of white chocolate rested beside the pot, and Marella set about cutting the cake and serving the tea with polite efficiency.

Hawke accepted his cup with a low word of thanks, and then shook his head at the offer of cream, sugar, or lemon. He took a cursory sip of the fragrant tea, and then set the cup and saucer on the table. "Mr. Blake-"

The handler smiled. "Please, it's Daniel. Rowan and I are on a first-name basis; she doesn't know me as 'Blake.'"

Hawke glanced at the girl, who was calmly stirring sugar into her tea as if she hadn't heard the conversation, and then back at her handler. "Okay, Daniel-how much do you know about Airwolf?"

Daniel wiped cake crumbs from his mouth with a pristine white napkin. "It's an incredible machine. From the dossier Archangel gave me, I can see that Airwolf is practically a self-contained army." He smiled. "It's fascinating. I can't wait to see it in action."

"Our Lady is one of a kind," Dom chimed in, gesturing with his fork. "È bella, ma è mortale."

"Ah, così mi sento." Jose nodded, resting his cup on his knee. "So I hear from Archangel."

"Let's cut to the chase, Daniel," said Hawke, his eyes flashing steely blue. "I want to know if your girl's going to freeze up behind that console. She's got to be on top of things if we run into trouble." He nodded at Dom, whose expression had turned serious. "Dom's an experienced pilot, and it took him six months to become proficient at the engineer's station."

"Signore Hawke," said Jose, his pale blue eyes glittering like chips of ice. "These girls have the capability to learn at a higher-than-normal rate, as a result of both the behavioral and the chemical conditioning the Social Welfare Agency gives them. They work with their handlers round the clock on small arms training, physical endurance, martial arts, and covert operations. Rowan is especially proficient at technical systems."

At the sound of her name, Rowan looked up at her handler, who smiled down at her like a proud parent. Hawke suppressed a shudder; he'd seen soldier-children with machine guns, but where they had had fanatical fire in their eyes, Rowan and Henrietta's were blank and cold.

"Jose's right," said Daniel. "A few months ago, Rowan studied a set of blueprints for a car engine for an entire day. The next day, she was able to disassemble and reassemble the engine from memory."

Dom whistled. "That's incredible!" He flashed a gap-toothed smile at the impassive Rowan. "If this fratello thing doesn't work out, you could always come work for me!"

"How much conditioning does Rowan have?" Hawke asked.

Daniel cast his gaze back to the pilot. "She's in the middle range. She's quick to obey an order, but she's not mindless." He sighed. "However, the memories of her life before the Agency brought her into their program are gone."

"Gone?" Dom looked from Rowan to Archangel. "You mean she doesn't remember her parents, or what happened to her as a little girl?"

Archangel set down his cup and had a quiet word with Marella, who rose from her seat and retrieved a thick file from Archangel's desk. "All the details are in here," said the deputy director, as Marella handed the file to Hawke. "You'll see that the memory loss was something of a mercy."

Hawke flipped through the file, and his eyebrows rose at a few of the pages. When he was finished, he set the file on the table. "She's conditioned to obey you and only you. How's that going to work with me and Dom trying to teach her?"

Daniel turned to the girl, who was finishing the last bite of cake on her plate. "Rowan," he said calmly.

Instantly, the girl's eyes were looking straight into those of her handler. The hand that held her fork in mid-air was rock steady. "Yes, Daniel?"

"When we train with Captain Hawke and Mr. Santini, I want you to listen to them very carefully. I'll be there watching, but when they tell you to do something, I want you to do it as if it were me asking you to do it. Is that clear?"

Her chin dipped once. "Yes, Daniel."

Daniel smiled. "Okay. You can finish your cake."

"Amazing," Michael murmured under his breath.

Released by her handler's words, Rowan slicked the last bit of cake off her fork, then placed her fork on her plate and wiped her mouth daintily. She laid the plate on the table and nodded to Marella. "Thank you. It was delicious."

Marella smiled. "You're very welcome."

"No doubt, Signori, we do not need to tell you to exercise caution when instructing our cyborgs," said Jose, accepting a refill of tea from Marella.

Dom set his empty plate on the table. "What do you mean?"

"He means that they'll do anything we tell them to do-literally." Hawke narrowed his eyes. "If we tell them to jump in the lake, they'll do it without a backward glance."

"Si," Jose continued with a wry smile. "One day not long ago, one of our handlers, Raballo, told his partner, Claes, to keep practicing at the shooting range until she could hit the target every time. The next morning, when we commented to him that we hadn't seen Claes, he hurried out to the range. It turned out that Claes had stayed there all night, trying to hit the target every time, as he had instructed her." He ruffled Henrietta's hair, and the girl gave a tiny giggle. "I myself made a similar mistake with Henrietta early in our training."

"The girls have an innate desire to please," added Michael, setting his empty cup on the tea cart. "It's much like how a drug-sniffing dog does what they do-it's a game of Pavlovian proportions." He glanced at Hawke. "It's what they're trained to do."

"Let's ask them," said Hawke, with a pointed stare at the girl seated beside Daniel. "Rowan, what is your favorite thing to do?"

The girl swung her gaze to Hawke's. "To help Daniel."

"Anything else?"

Rowan thought a moment. "Well, I like to paint, but that's only when I'm not helping Daniel."

Hawke turned to the grey-clad schoolgirl. "What about you, Henrietta?"

"I like to play my violin," said Henrietta. "But I like helping Jose best of all." She smiled. "All my friends like the work we do for the Agency. Hilshire and Triela sometimes don't see eye to eye, but she still likes helping him. Jean and Rico are a really good team. Angelica and Claes don't have brothers like we do anymore, but they still like helping the Agency."

Hawke glanced around the room at the silent adults, then back at the two girls. "And how do you help your big brothers?"

Henrietta glanced up at Jose, who nodded back. Silently, Henrietta rose and went to her Amati violin case, revealing the stark, deadly shape of her Sig Sauer P90. "With this."

There was a long moment of silence, broken only by Dom's whispered oath. "Madonne."

"Well, Hawke," said Archangel. "Are you satisfied?"

For a long moment, Hawke stared at Archangel, eyes narrowed. "Doesn't matter what I think," he ground out. "I've taught dozens of kids to fly, and so has Dom. However, you and I both know there's a big difference between a Hughes 500 or a JetRanger and Airwolf." He sat forward, elbows on knees, and his gaze sharpened. "What I want to know is: Does the Committee trust them with their precious four-billion-dollar jet chopper?"

Michael sat back, a small smile playing under his moustache. "They've let you keep it this long," he said smoothly. "Apparently the Committee thinks it's worth the risk."

"We taught Cait how to fly Airwolf," Dom pointed out. "That didn't take long."

"Cait's experienced," String corrected his mentor. "Neither of these girls has ever set foot to pedal in a chopper, much less something like Airwolf."

"Gentlemen," Michael cut in, effectively stilling the conversation. "As I said before, the Committee wants to go forward with this project. Airwolf is still in use by the Firm, as per the agreement reached between Hawke and myself. Of course," he said, turning to the simmering pilot in question, "if you want to turn Airwolf back over to the Firm, you need not be involved with the project at all."

Dom made a scoffing noise, but every eye was on Hawke. For a few moments, a tense silence reigned in the room. Finally, Hawke stood, his steely glare fixed on Michael. "You've made your point, Michael." He glanced up at Daniel. "You know where Van Nuys Airport is?"

The American handler met his gaze evenly. "Yes."

"Be there at 0600 tomorrow. Don't be late." He turned and stalked toward the door without looking back. Dom got to his feet and gave the group an uneasy glance of his own before following in his foster son's wake.

When the door had shut behind them, Michael sat back in his chair with a satisfied smile. "This should be interesting," he mused.