Crossover Fan Fiction / Gundam SEED Fan Fiction / Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Crossing Barriers ❯ Not As Dead As Everyone Thinks ( Chapter 1 )

Crossing Barriers

 

Gundam Wing and Gundam Seed are the sole property of their creators and distributing studios. I have no financial interest in either series. Nor am I receiving any financial gain from this fan fiction work. I do however own all plot elements not part of the original and all self-created characters. Thank you. Enjoy.

 

Beta Reader: T'Amara

 

 

Not as dead as everyone thought

 

 

Space flight tended to be boring when you had done it as often as the shuttle pilot had. It was made even more so when one had spent so many years on various colonies or the moon. Mind you, the news was rarely all that interesting either. But at the moment it held a slightly greater significance than staring at the points of burning hydrogen that dotted the view everywhere.

 

“. . . second commercial flight to disappear in the area in the last five months. No trace of the shuttle or its eleven passengers and five man crew has been found yet. Search and Rescue has been on the scene for three days now and hope is fading. The shuttle carried standard emergency supplies but only enough air for two and a half days. Relatives are being flown to facilities on L4 by the shuttle line . . . .”

 

He frowned slightly. That made eight shuttles or small work craft that had disappeared out by the new site that would soon be L3a112b. The odds of this occurring were beginning to get absurd. Just what was happening out there? He hated not knowing what was going on! Of all the things lost in the wars, and he had lost a great deal, his information network was the one he really missed most.

 

“Officials at Preventer Headquarters today have announced the discovery of a stash of some eighty Taurus mobile suits. These units were found in an abandoned resource asteroid base that formerly belonged to the Oz organization. The suits are reported to be in perfect condition and fully complete. The report clearly indicates they were never supplied for combat or fueled. The mobile suits will be removed to the Preventer storage facility on the Moon for decommissioning and destruction.”

 

Eighty suits eh? If they admitted to finding that many, how many were really there? More that they weren't admitting to having? Or far fewer so that they were padding the numbers to make it look like they were finding the old war material at the rate the public wanted it found? The public really shouldn't worry about what the Preventers found. They should be worried about what the Sweepers and the salvers were finding. Not all of those mobile units were ending up lawfully scrapped after all. But then, what the public hadn't bothered to discover wasn't causing any panic either. Perhaps ignorance could be confused with bliss here.

 

“. . . museum spokesman Abdul Obama has verified the recent report that the Museum has acquired a hand sized piece of gundanium armor plate clearly stamped with the name Heavyarms. This find adds to the certified pieces the Museum has from the Tallgeese, the Sandrock, the Deathscythe, the Wing, the Wing Zero, and the Shenlong Gundams, making this the most complete collection known. Mr. Obama was most specific in repeating that the museum is very interested in lawfully obtaining verifiable remnants from the Tallgeese II, Deathscythe Hell, Epyon, and the Altron Gundams to truly complete the collection. The Museum of Modern History has been in the forefront of the effort to conserve the few remaining fragments of the Gundams and to preserve their story for future generations.”

 

He snorted. Preserve their story indeed! As if they really knew the story in the first place! Only the five of them had actually known the story of the Gundams and their pilots and three of them were dead now. Even they only knew so much. They hadn't flown the machines, hadn't fought the battles. It was the boys themselves who knew the rest of the story of the Gundams. And they weren't talking. Proof enough, if anyone needed it, of just how bright all five of them really were.

 

Then there was the last of the true Gundams. Treize Khushrenada was the one who'd known the story of Epyon and he was dead too. Zechs Merquise, Epyon's pilot, had disappeared several years ago. There was no one left to tell the real story of that machine at all. Anything beyond whatever Heero Yuy knew was going to be more speculation and educated guesswork than genuine history. And Yuy had gone missing on purpose just about the same time Merquise had.

 

A proximity alarm began to beep at him. He looked up from the newscast to find his destination in sight. He flipped the news off. The old man grinned, a remarkably evil look for so common a gesture, and turned his attention to finding his landing point.

 

Professor G parked his shuttle in the surprisingly operational hanger of the ruined Oz station. It had been shot up late in the war and had been abandoned ever since. Or at least that was the official story. Reality had to be something more `interesting' though or this hanger wouldn't be working.

 

One exit light was on. With all the others dark, it was a very unsubtle bit of direction. Considering who had asked him to come and how secretly the transportation had been arranged, the blatant light seemed a bit out of character. Then again, who else was going to be here to see it?

 

As he entered the corridor, he noted the doors were all sealed. One light in five was on in the hallway itself and the artificial gravity was off. He didn't need it, moving swiftly and smoothly into the interior. Here and there he could see where heavy damages had been roughly repaired. The corridors were airtight but nothing more.

 

A final, very heavy, hatchway opened as he approached it. Prof. G drifted silently into a cavernous space he instantly recognized as a repair facility for mobile suits. It was mostly dark but for a single, well lit desk. He instantly recognized the man waiting for him there.

 

“Have you decided to take up melodrama at your age J?”

 

“Hardly.” The other replied with a small snort. “This place is listed as wreckage. Too much energy coming from it will attract undesirable attention. I've got all the shielding up I could manage but there is still leakage and the Preventers aren't blind.”

 

“No,” G conceded as he came to a neat stop beside the desk, “they aren't. This is Nelson's patrol zone too. I can understand your caution.”

 

“Nelson is a serious annoyance but they will be rotating Wu Fei and his team up here in three weeks. I have to be done by then. Chang won't overlook the tiny new leaks like Nelson has. He'll come here to be sure he knows what their cause is. Nelson's ex-Oz and was stationed here once. He thinks he knows the cause, so he isn't worried. Wu Fei wasn't and isn't the kind to overlook something new just because it's something another Preventer can explain away.”

 

“And what has been happening here?” G asked evenly.

 

J turned and gave him a long, steady look. “I've been rebuilding the Gundams.”

 

One couldn't really fall when one's knees gave out in zero g. The odd, jerky movement though could send you drifting in unexpected directions. Perhaps it was fortunate that his old colleague had anticipated something like this. G found his arm snagged before he could drift more than a couple of feet from the desk.

 

“You've been doing what?” he demanded hoarsely when he was finally able to speak again.

 

“I've been rebuilding the Gundams.” J repeated his impossible assertion.

 

“What Gundams?!” G shouted. “They're gone!”

 

“Hardly. Quatre and the Maganac ended up rescuing them from the Sun, remember. Lesser methods of destruction can be recovered from.” J smiled grimly. “They were just wrecked, even Wing Zero. Someone, I suspect Relena - the girl is a sentimental idiot but she does understand what kind of power as symbols those machines still have - had the scraps collected. It makes me wonder what those fools from the Museum of Modern History would do if they'd ever found out why there are so few bits and pieces out and about to buy. At any rate, I simply found out where they were and took them. I diddled the records of course; I don't think they even know they're gone yet. The fools in charge didn't have the minimal brains to smelt any of the parts down to keep someone from doing exactly what I am doing either! They just had them all neatly crated up and stored away. Eventually the plan was to put the heads back together and set them in a museum. Perhaps even Obama's precious Modern History! Really G, can you even visualize something that grotesque?”

 

“But, why?” G stared at him, honestly puzzled. “The war is over! We have real peace now, both on the Earth and out in the colonies. Why would you resurrect the Gundams? They've banned military mobile suits of all kinds, but Gundams most especially. The world populace would tear you apart.”

 

J nodded in weary agreement. “Yes, we do and yes, it would. But do you remember why we built the Tallgeese in the first place?”

 

“Because we could see where the Alliance was heading of course!” G snapped. “There isn't any such threat now. No one I've talked to can see one developing in the near future either. And by near future I mean at least the next fifty years! The Gundams will be obsolete by then. Technology will pass them by in a decade. What is the point of this?”

 

“Are you so sure? I'm not. There's something going on out in the colonies and I can't get any data on it. Whatever it is, its keeping itself very much out of sight right now. But small numbers of people, some of them very bright people, have been dropping out of sight in the last eighteen months. And who or whatever this trouble is, it wants the pilots dead and the Gundams indisputably destroyed.”

 

The sharp-nosed scientist stilled. A lot of bits and pieces suddenly clicked into a new pattern; a very dangerous one. He'd known something wasn't right for over a year. He hadn't suspected something this bad.

 

J looked out at the stars through the room's one viewport. “G, the situation is more delicate than I think you want to believe. When the Mariemaia mess ended, the whole of humanity celebrated and thought things were going to finally improve. And if there were a God and justice, they would have. But instead, we were gifted with the planet's third worst influenza epidemic on record the next fall with that Cotton Lung stuff. The colonies sealed themselves off to save their lives while some thirty four percent of the planet's population died. That did nothing to make things smoother between space and the ground-bound. But the famine that followed because too many of the dead were either farmers or part of the food distribution system was the real social disaster. The starvation killed almost a quarter of those who'd survived the disease. Total global population loss was close to forty five percent and the colonies lost almost a third of their people too. The entire structure of human society, all human societies, tottered right to the edge of extinction there. I dislike her, but we'd have likely all died without Relena Peacecraft Dorlian stepping forward and providing leadership. Her vision of total pacifism is folly but it did create a shared hope that allowed us to pull through that hell.”

 

“Oh, I understand,” G replied. “Believe me, I do. I was living on L4 when the food rationing went into effect and the shipments from Earth damn near stopped for seven whole months. The fairly broad goodwill that had been developing was crushed then. And it hasn't recovered yet. There is considerable neutrality now, but very little goodwill.”

 

“I have no trouble believing that. It fits neatly in with what I've been seeing. But this involves more than the colonies. Whoever these people are, they seem to have some very significant contacts in the Earth government too.”

 

Professor G was many things, a genuine `mad scientist' and legally dead at the moment were among them, but he wasn't a fool and he had never lived in anyone's ivory tower. Moreover, he'd worked with Doctor J for decades. He knew, and inasmuch as he ever could, trusted the man.

 

“I'll want to see your evidence.”

 

“Follow me. Dinner will be unimpressive but the documentation should make up for it.”

 

Oz field rations left over from the war qualified as unimpressive all right. But they were eatable and they would sustain life. Nothing more could be said for them yet the memory of recent starvation made them more than acceptable.

 

The mass of material J had accumulated on the other hand was fascinating. There were almost no hard facts in the whole stack, an amazing fact in and of itself considering the volume of the data, but the innuendo was very clear. You were being directed to watch the unstable government of the L2 colony. And it did need watching. But there was someone else out there, someone who was directing your eyes towards L2.

 

Trying to see them was like trying to hear smoke or smell music. You were always using the wrong sense at the wrong time. Whoever they were, they were still small right now. He had a distinct impression they were staying small on purpose for the moment. That they could grow any time they chose. But the time wasn't right and they weren't foolish enough to take the risk when there would be no reward.

 

And they were afraid of the Gundams, of the remote chance they could be reassembled from the rubble they were last seen in. They knew what the Earth government didn't, that someone had stolen the scraps. They understood that they might really have something to fear.

 

Worse, they either had the capacity to build mobile suits or could seize them readily from the steadily dwindling stockpile the Preventers still guarded. But they knew no standard suit stood a chance against a Gundam. That was why they were still staying out of sight he realized. They had to be sure the Gundams and their pilots were really gone before they could move. The only thing that had saved the boys so far was that so few people knew who they were. He said as much to J.

 

“That's right. The trouble is, too many people do know. Sooner or later, those people are going to stumble across someone who has a name. And once they have one name, they'll get the others in short order. Most of the boys aren't that hard to find any more. Winner is a public figure. He'd be relatively simple to kill once they find his name. Barton is with the circus. They could take him out during a performance before he ever knew he was being hunted again. Chang is with the Preventers of course, and Maxwell is with Hilde on L2. Neither of them would be an easy target but if they struck without warning, not unworkable ones either. Only Yuy is truly lost to sight; at least for the moment an impossible target by virtue of invisibility.”

 

“I think you underestimate Trowa Barton and I know you're missing on Quatre Winner.” G noted. “None of the G pilots is a simple kill. They would have died long ago if they were. They all have a highly developed sixth sense for lethal danger. But you didn't call me here to discuss the boys. You need me to help you do something.”

 

“We need to get the rebuilt Gundams and their pilots out of sight, completely and undiscoverably out of sight for the next several months, agreed?”

 

“Yes, it would look that way.”

 

“Do you have any suggestions of a place that would be genuinely undiscoverable?”

 

“Is this some kind of stupid game?”

 

“No, not really. I'd take a simpler solution if you have one. Believe me, the one I have in mind is dangerous, unproven, and might not work anything like animal testing suggests it should.”

 

“What are you talking about?”

 

“Do you remember the dream H had to look across space-time and see the past?”

 

“Of course.”

 

“I have his amplifier. I have your designs for multiple sequential power modulators. I have the tuners S made to go with the amplifier. And I've worked out the sequence of frequency fluctuations needed to let us take that look. Only I didn't get into the past.”

 

G could feel his eyes widening. “Alternate dimensions?” he whispered.

 

“I've found three.” J replied. “Two are very unstable connections that I can barely see into. But the third is steady as a rock. I can see, hear, record data, and send physical objects over there.”

 

“YOU'VE DONE WHAT?!?!”

 

“I've sent physical objects over there.” J replied evenly. “Small steel balls, a cheese sandwich, other things. They've all made the trip safely. So have three mice and a stray dog.”

 

“Oh,” he added offhandedly, “and an ex-Oz soldier who stumbled on the lab before I could get things taken apart. He made it safely too. Too bad he was shot moments later by local combat forces.”

 

G gave his friend a very cold stare. “Local combat forces you say.”

 

“Yes. Fortunately, their war is also over now.”

 

“Tell me, how would they get back?”

 

“I've tested that too. Or did you think I left the body for the locals to find? The unit can tap the power here to make the connection for the return but it is a one-shot device. It's scrap after that single use.”

 

“Five Gundams mass considerably more than a single soldier.” G pointed out bluntly.

 

“The unit I've built for their return is also considerably more powerful that the experimental model I used to recover the soldier's body. Believe me, this one can move at least three times the mass of all five of them. I wanted as much of a safety margin as I could build into it.”

 

“Show me.”

 

“This way.”

 

J led him back to the outer shell of the ruined station. There, in what had once been a bubble holding a sensor suite, was one of the most jackleg, cobbled together looking pieces of equipment Professor G had ever seen. J had taken full advantage of the weightlessness conditions of space. Computer components normally contained in heavy cases sat out inside nothing more than simple radiation sleeves. They sat at odd angles and odd points all over the place, easily accessible for replacement or repair while the wiring and cabling snaked through all available spaces.

 

He recognized the odd, bell mouth of the huge amplifier H had built so long ago jutting up from the center of the chaos. That, a neat control panel, very high quality monitor and equally good speaker system, and a massive data storage unit were the only completely identifiable items in the area. He could have identified specific parts of the other assemblies of course, but he had no idea what the assemblies themselves were or what they did.

 

The monitor was on. A slender young woman with the unmistakable look of a news anchor was staring earnestly out at him, speaking swiftly in a language he didn't recognize. Behind her was an image of a spaceship of unfamiliar design. Moving around the ship in a manner that didn't immediately appear hostile were units that had to be some kind of mobile suits.

 

“Newscast.” J noted. “Good. Take a seat.”

 

“She looks human.”

 

“As far as I can tell, she probably is. How close they are to our kind of human is another question but they are definitely human in behavior.”

 

“Big on wars, politics, and dirty deals are they?”

 

“Oh yes. And on shining heroes too.” J sighed. “They've apparently gone into genetic research in a major way and they're long past mouse testing.”

 

“They're modifying humans?” G asked, a bit startled.

 

“Heavily and a lot of them. They have an entire sub-culture of modified humans. The tinkering we did on 01 to make him so durable wouldn't even be noticed by these people. I suppose our experimental work would look like simple health precautions from their perspective. They could bring all the boys up to Yuy's level even though they're in their late teens now. They do their serious modifications on single cell fertilized ova. Anything older might not take up such extensive changes correctly or evenly.”

 

“And we thought the Romefeller group was dangerous!”

 

“It was.” J snorted. “And these people had their equivalent. I don't pretend to understand all the ins and outs of their recent history yet but I can give you the broad picture.”

 

“Let me guess. Race wars.”

 

J nodded. “Two of them in quick succession. They seem to have been very bloody affairs that killed large numbers of civilians on both sides as well. The second one has left the planet damaged but still quite livable.”

 

“Who won?”

 

“Neither side. There seems to be a small but very powerful third faction that tipped the balance both times to prevent genocide by either side. They are currently trying to build a new peace on the ruins of their second war.”

 

G eyed the monitor again. There was a much better shot up now of a pair of unmistakably military mobile suits just cruising through space. They had tall fins rising from the heads and sharp spikes jutting out of the shoulders. The lines were much smoother and the form far more developed that the suits he was used to. A sudden jump showed a completely different kind of suit standing guard in front of a fairly impressive building. This unit had some kind of winged backpack, lacked the fin and spikes but carried a heavy looking gun in its hands. The style difference was so marked he wondered if he wasn't looking at suits from the two main sides of the war.

 

“Those green units belong to the modifieds' military arm. What you see now is an older model belonging to the - for want of a better term - normal's military.”

 

“You know, fascinating as all this is, it doesn't answer some basic questions.”

 

“How are the Gundams going to cross the barrier between space-times. What are they going to do over there? How will they know when to come back? Questions like those G?”

 

“All of those will matter, of course, but no, the one I had in mind was more basic.” He turned rather hard eyes on his old friend. “Just how do you propose to get the boys to come up here? No, even before that, how do you plan to even find 01? The others you could get in touch with without too much trouble but Yuy just faded into a crowd that day and there've been no, and I do mean no, reliable reports of him since.”

 

“Well, he's managed to find and remove all the tracers I had in it but he's still got his old computer. I know because I've got tags set everywhere to let me know when he uses it. I can't track him of course, he's far too good for that, but I can get a message to him. There are codes in that machine he knows nothing of because I've never activated them. I've been saving them for genuine need because once he does know they're there, he'll get rid of them immediately. I can put out a message to lay in wait in the networks and when he taps in, it will upload on his unit and he will get it. I don't have to actually find 01, I just have to persuade him to come to me.”

 

“That's a rather tall order considering he's gone so far out of his way to vanish.”

 

“He isn't interested in being found.” J agreed calmly. “Still, he's anything but stupid. If we put what we have in front of him, he'll cooperate. He won't like it, he won't fully trust it, but he will do it. Sometime between the first mission I sent him on and the end of the Eve Wars, he recovered enough of his soul to become human again. And once that happened, he became engaged in the concept of helping others. His definition of help can be very interesting but he is honest and very genuine in his intentions. The help of a highly trained assassin who has sworn he'll never kill again isn't something everyone is ready to recognize they might need though. I expect that has a good deal to do with his staying out of sight.”

 

“Are you really sure he's still alive?” G asked quietly. “Of the five of them, 01 is probably the one to come out of the wars with the least to live for. And he has a self-destructive streak a mile wide. He's toyed with suicide several times under the guise of following orders. I've never understood how he survived the self-destruct of the original Wing. He could even have died of Cotton Lung! Anyone could be using that computer now.”

 

“No one has ever matched Heero Yuy's style on a keyboard or a data search. I won't even go into his hacking style. No, he's the one using the computer and he was on it the day before yesterday. So he was alive then.” J shook his head. “Although I will grant you that my tracking of his computer use does suggest he either caught Cotton Lung himself or was helping someone else through a severe case for about four months there. I lean toward it being 01 himself who was sick though. He still isn't back up to the level of activity he was at before the influenza hit.”

 

“Do you think he's even healthy enough to get back into Wing Zero's cockpit? The Zero System will eat him if he isn't in at least decent physical shape.”

 

“I don't know. I can't until I see him. But once I do, well, there are means of treating the aftereffects of Cotton Lung. He can be gotten back into condition to fly.”

 

“What about that promise he made Relena? From what you've gathered, I'm seeing a need for a combat pilot for Wing Zero. He can't be that pilot and keep that promise.”

 

“Probably not.” J agreed. “But that's something I'm hoping he can resolve while he's over there. You see, one of the major heroes of their wars had something similar to resolve. I'm hoping studying him will help Yuy with what is otherwise going to be a large problem for us.”

 

J waved a hand at the stars and the planet on the horizon. “He needs a purpose. They all need a purpose. Even Quatre doesn't really have one managing the Winner business empire. Whatever they might have grown up to be if we hadn't interfered, they are soldiers, no they are warriors, now. And warriors need people to serve and defend. Relena is trying to create a world where they are valueless and unwanted. And not just them but every other veteran like them. She's leaving very dangerous people with no place to go. But then, the girl's a fool. Unfortunately, she's a brilliant and dangerously capable fool and she's telling the vast majority of the people just what they want to hear.”

 

“Agreed. Too bad the Preventers haven't proved to be the answer for the boys.”

 

“Too tightly regulated.” J sniffed. “Not even Chang, rule bound as he likes to think he is, is really happy there. Only his unending search for `justice' is keeping him in their ranks. I understand why Une is holding the organization in like she is but it is making them far too conformist to offer a good place for one of the Gundam pilots. It has no place at all for the wilder black ops survivors. They will be easy for whoever is out there gathering strength and biding their time to recruit when they are finally ready to make their move.”

 

Doctor J stared up at the endless void and the hard, unwavering light of the stars. “No, they have no place right now. But there is another war coming G, I know it and so do you. We will need them then. If we aren't going to be subjected to a tyranny as bad or worse than anything Romefeller could have come up with, we will have to have them. Which brings us back to getting them to safety now.”

 

G rubbed his uniquely oversized nose. “Three weeks I believe you said. Three weeks before Captain Wu Fei Chang and his team come up to relieve Captain Nelson and his people. We have to have the Gundams finished, the new transfer machinery finished and have persuaded the other four boys to come here by then. Am I correct?”

 

“That's it.”

 

The Professor gave the Doctor a cool stare. “Then I suggest you start working on that message to Heero Yuy.”

 

* * * * * * *

 

“How're we doing tonight?” The shift chief asked as he dropped by the central monitoring station.

 

“Quiet night.” His lead replied. “Hotzer's drunk on his ass and sound asleep again. That new kid of his is doing all the work. He ain't fast but he'd thorough. Keeping his hands off stuff that he shouldn't be touching too, just like last time.”

 

The older man nodded as he watched the camera track a small, skinny kid with long red hair pulled back in a pony tail. He was somewhere between fifteen and twenty and he ran the power polisher over the newly cleaned main hall of the administrative building with a quiet, single-minded sort of focus.

 

The chief didn't like this one. For all his quiet obedience, there was something very uncomfortable about him. But then, he didn't like his boss either. And if he wasn't the Dean's brother-in-law, he'd have been able to get rid of Hotzer years ago. But he was and he couldn't and he was stuck with the never-ending string of temporary employees the drunkard hired and lost as soon as they discovered they would be doing all the work for next to no pay.

 

This one had lasted longer than most. It was his fifth week on campus. The drunk usually lost `em by the fourth week. Like most of `em, this one had no background to find. No birth records, no educational records, no medical records, no service records. He came out of the stews where too many ex-soldiers and other, even less desirable types had gone after the wars. No records was the norm for those bastards.

 

His eyes dark, he watched the boy methodically complete the polishing and put the equipment away. He followed him as he took the elevator up two floors and entered the Dean's outer office. Hotzer was out cold on the visitor's couch. The kid stopped and checked on him, including taking a pulse and moving his head so his breathing was easier. Yeah, he was someone's veteran all right.

 

All the cleaning supplies for the Dean's office suite were stored right there. Unfortunately, Dean Jensen was the suspicious type and there were several, quite deliberately created, blind spots in the camera coverage of his suite. So while he could follow the kid by sound, he couldn't always see him. Still, he was moving in and out of sight in a timely manner and a pattern consistent with his cleaning duties. It wasn't until he got into Jensen's inner office that he ran into a problem, one the shift chief already knew was there.

 

“Hn.” He heard the kid grunt quietly. “Red wine on beige carpet.”

 

He bent down and touched one of the stains. “Fresh.”

 

The look he shot the door was not something the chief would have wanted to be on the receiving end of. He'd clearly figured out who'd spilled that wine. The kid sat crouched beside the stain for several seconds, then went and got the cleaners and the sponges he needed. As he mechanically treated each one until he vanished into one of the blind spots, the chief rather thought this might be the final straw for this one too.

 

The first hints of coming dawn were beginning to dim the stars when Hotzer staggered out the door, his silent employee in tow. The man wavered so badly he could barely walk. So he didn't seem to notice that the kid poured him into the passenger side of the truck and took the keys. Then they were gone again, and the chief could finally relax.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Well, this operation was over. All that was left was to drop the truck and the drunk at the office and walk away. He kept his hand away from the pockets with the data. Touching them would be out of character and while Hotzer was still drunk, he wasn't unconscious any longer despite his effort to pretend he was.

 

The surprisingly heavy gates of the Stevenson Academy closed behind the truck as he rolled onto the main street. What a place for storing data on a global conspiracy! A prestige school for the daughters of the super-rich! And yet, in a way, it made a strange kind of sense considering just who seemed to be involved in this. Well, that and the fact that the school owned a supercomputer they were woefully underutilizing.

 

It had taken nearly three months to get into that place. Breaking in wouldn't have been impossible of course but he'd cracked enough of these people's computers now to know how their security operated. Not even he was good enough to break into the site, hack a supercomputer, steal the data and hide the fact that he'd done it all in one night. He'd had to find an entry that would allow him repeated trips to be able to get what he was there for. The cleaning service was tailor made for his needs. Unfortunately, his `boss' had been getting some ideas lately that were very dangerous, not to him, he could more than defend himself, but to the mission. He would not be sorry to get out.

 

The `office' if one could call it that, was a garage and storefront in a fairly shaky part of town. A code sent from the truck to the main doors opened them just long enough for him to drive inside before they snapped closed behind him. He parked and hopped out before his boss could react.

 

A couple seconds thought and he knew how he was going to handle this. He wanted to disappear without raising any hue or cry. Therefore, he couldn't kick the fool in the nuts like he deserved. Instead, he whipped around to his side of the truck and had the door open before the boss knew what was going on.

 

Hotzer was off balance and still fairly drunk. He toppled back toward the concrete floor of the garage with a yell. His `boy' caught him before he could hit the floor though, and started asking if he was all right. That was what the security camera saw. What it didn't see was the quick second of pressure at the base of the skull that put the man into a daze.

 

The security record would show the kid helping his boss into the office and getting him settled on the couch. He even found a couple blankets for the man. Then the kid stepped back and shook his head in open disgust.

 

“This job ain't worth this. Not every other damn night. I'm takin' my paycheck outta that desk and I'm gone. Find yourself another donkey.”

 

The camera dutifully recorded his skilled break-in to the desk's drawer and his taking the paycheck. It also watched him pick up and put back a wad of cash. He closed it with a slam.

 

“Don't do it. You can't afford no cops. Don't do it.” The freckled, brown-eyed redhead ran out the door.

 

Ten minutes later and four blocks away, a fairly youthful factory worker in a company uniform and cap, both too worn to identify in the bad light kicked his aging scooter to life and joined hundreds of his peers on the highways as he headed to work. Once in the factory district though, he just stayed on the road and suddenly he was part of the last of the wave of night workers headed home.

 

He parked the scooter in the same back corner of the used vehicle lot he'd `borrowed' it from some eleven hours earlier. The owner wouldn't notice it had come back since he hadn't notice it was gone in the first place. He blended into the shadows of the alley behind the ratty wall of the dealership. When he reappeared at the end of the block, the factory worker was gone. A wary-eyed street rat in an ill-fitting knockoff designer vest, fake laced-front shirt and baggy pants topped with a sloppy brimmed hat that hid almost all his hair and most of his face slipped across the road and disappeared into the next length of alley.

 

He covered almost a mile as the street rat. Then, between one pile of trash and the next, right where two buildings joined, he was gone. Had there been anyone close enough with ears keen enough, they might have heard a couple of soft scrapes that would have seemed to come from the wall beside them. Then there would have been nothing.

 

Heero Yuy slipped the blast curtain aside and hoisted himself wearily into the two small weather tight rooms he was currently calling home. There was no stair leading to this third floor eyrie, you could only get here by climbing up between the walls. Most of the rest of the building was an abandoned ruin. What was in use was down on the first and lower floors where the street people had claimed their small territories under the protection of the concrete firewall that had been the fourth floor. From the interior, these rooms were inaccessible remnants of flooring clinging to the outside walls, covered in debris. They made an almost perfect hideout.

 

This outer wall held the formerly shared utilities with the tenement next door. He'd been able to carefully but quite securely tap into the electricity and the water for his modest needs; the meters for this building were long gone. A common sewer stack let him run the water without fear of detection. It wasn't one of Quatre's mansions but it was one of the snuggest safe-houses he'd had in a long time.

 

He flipped the light proof blast curtain back over his entry port and secured it in place. Only when he was satisfied that it was down and the edges were smooth, giving a good light seal, did he stand and turn on the lights. It was a very small and stark room.

 

There were no windows and the doorway into the space that was both kitchen and bath lacked a door. Ventilation had been very carefully arranged to let air in but keep light from showing out. Everything in the place but the tub and the sink had come up either on his back or had been hauled up by rope through the entry port. That had made him rather selective about what he'd brought in.

 

Heero stood quietly by the light switch and just studied his space. None of the small traps had been sprung and nothing was out of place by the entry. The four thin pallets were still stacked as a bed, mismatched blankets set neatly on top. The single small table and chair were where he'd left them. None of the contents of the shelves or the backpack he kept the computer in had been disturbed. He probably hadn't been found yet.

 

He headed for the bath, slipping the new data discs into the backpack with the computer on his way. Once in the bath, he stripped out of a surprising amount of clothing. Each identity change on the way home had added a layer. People who saw him, not that many did, generally thought he was a fairly solidly built boy. What emerged from the layers was a young man surprisingly little changed from his days as a Gundam pilot. Oh, he was a couple inches taller, standing just a shade under five foot four now, and he had filled out a bit. It was hard to see it though.

 

Heero had survived both the disease and following food crisis and he looked it. Expecting his body to be as resistant to Cotton Lung as it was to everything else, he'd taken a job in an area he shouldn't have. He'd learned too late that influenza was one of the few diseases even he was ready prey for.

 

He'd been unlucky enough to have fallen sick in one of the border areas between hunger and true famine. He remained noticeably underweight well over a year later and, in his own very prejudiced opinion, still tired too easily. His face was too thin and his eyes remained a bit too large in his skull, giving him a waif-like appearance he really despised. His shoulders had broadened some but the muscle that he should have put on wasn't there. He was all skin, bone and high tension wire. He actually weighed a couple pounds less than he had at fifteen.

 

Some things though, had changed. Out of all the things that he took off, only one was a weapon. He wore a single long, plain knife in a sheath carried between his shoulders. It was a very special blade. Having it made had been Duo's idea. Getting the bit of scrap for it had not been easy. He had no regrets for the tricks needed to do it either. So now he carried a single memento of the Wing Zero in this perfectly balanced killing tool made from a piece of the mobile suit's gundanium armor; a tool he'd promised Relena he'd never use. A reminder and a burden, he never left whatever safe-house he lived in without it. Some things should not be forgotten, not even for an instant.

 

He leaned forward into the mirror and took the muddy brown lenses out of his eyes, putting them carefully into the cleaning solution. He lifted the cheek pads out of his mouth, tossing those, and worked the crooked false teeth off his own lower front teeth. Cream and tissues took most of the pale makeup off, revealing his own deeper skin tone. And he pulled the pins out, dropping the now braided length of grubby red hair off his head where it had been hidden under the hats he'd worn. He undid it, letting it fall freely before he stepped into the shower and got rid of the rest of the grime and the one-use hair coloring.

 

Once he was clean, he filled the tub with fresh soapy water and dumped his clothing in. It could soak for a while. It all needed it and he didn't keep anything that had colors that might bleed onto the other items in the wash. He dried his hair and tied it back again, absently noting it was getting to the point where he was going to have to think about either getting it trimmed or keeping it braided like Duo's. Somehow, he just couldn't see himself copying the crazy baka's hair style. He liked Wu Fei's neat ponytail better.

 

Actually, he liked keeping it neatly trimmed above his collar best. But he was far and away too easily recognizable like that. And long hair could be styled and or colored many ways for disguise without having to risk a wig that could come off at a bad moment. It also, in another trick learned from Duo, could be used to hide lots of useful things. It never failed to amaze him how many security people searched everything but his hair.

 

He grabbed the heavy robe off the hook by the door, wrapped himself up in its reassuring warmth, and went to see just what he had really managed to pick up. He set the computer up on the table, plugged in the external hard drive where he kept all of this hobby stored, and started uploading the new discs. Once the data was on the drive, the fun began.

 

With no job in the offing and money on hand, he gave himself the luxury of time, time to tear the data apart and to correlate it with the material he already had. He picked and sorted for three straight days. He took time out to eat, make obligatory stops in the bathroom, finish the laundry, and do the daily workout regimen that just about had him back into the kind of condition he'd been in at fifteen. Every other waking minute was spent at the computer. And this time there was a lot of data, he was getting somewhere.

 

Red or crimson, it didn't matter what the language was, those were the colors mentioned time and again. Usually accompanied by either water imagery, often violent water imagery like floods or hurricanes or sunrise imagery, bloody, `dawn of the revolution' types of sunrise imagery. He still didn't have anything that could be considered a whole document but what he did have he didn't like.

 

He didn't like the questions of worth either. It wasn't possible to tell yet just who or what was being judged or what the standards were. It was becoming pretty clear however that someone was thinking in a very us-them way and that they didn't sound like they were going to play nice with the `them'.

 

There was a confidence in all this that really made Heero Yuy uneasy. Whoever these people were, they had very serious money behind them, the kind that bought political and societal cooperation in places that ought to know better. It was Quatre's kind of money, although he knew the blond Arab would never be involved with anything of this nature. But Winner wasn't the only super-rich individual out there. And some of them were survivors of Romefeller, believers, deadly serious believers, in what Romefeller had stood for. And what Romefeller had stood for would mesh pretty well with the feeling he was getting for this group.

 

His biggest surprise had been personal; these people wanted him dead. They wanted all five of them dead. They saw the former Gundam pilots as a threat. They weren't going to waste their time trying to turn any of them to their side. They'd seen Mariemaia try that with Wu Fei and they'd seen her fail. They would eliminate the threat up front, before it could harm them. Once they could find it that was.

 

He knew they would. Sooner or later one of their agents was going to trip over one or more of their names. Once they had a name or names, finding faces to go with them wouldn't take them all that long. Une and Relena had gone to extraordinary lengths to hide all information on them as individuals but what was hidden could be found. He'd done it himself too often to doubt these people would be any less able to do with their numbers of hunters what he'd managed alone. After that it would be a matter of hours before there were gunmen out after each of them. And unless they had a genuine black hole to jump into, they would eventually find them too.

 

Heero scowled blackly at the offending screen. No matter how good any of them were, if enough assassins were sent, they would each go down eventually. Even if they stood as a team, their enemies could afford to send armies after them. They didn't have the Gundams to meet them with any more.

 

He ran his hands through his hair in frustration. He'd kept his promise to Relena so far. He'd put his weapons down and he was living without violence. The blade was more a personal reminder of what he owed the world than anything else. He hadn't had a gun in his hand since he'd so symbolically `killed' Mariemaia.

 

But if these shadowy enemies found his name, he would have exactly two choices; accept being slaughtered like a sheep or go down fighting. And Heero Yuy honestly didn't think he could handle the idea of just letting them butcher him. If he decided to commit suicide, well, that would be his decision now wouldn't it? But to let someone else tell him when to die? No, he simply wasn't put together that way.

 

Besides, he'd never hear the end of it from Duo if he let that happen. Wu Fei would be pretty sarcastic about it too. Trowa would go all analytical on him and Quatre would sympathize until he was ready to scream at the empathic pilot. And they would all haunt him. The idea of being stuck as a ghost with the other four badgering him for his decision for only God knew how long was more horrifying than the concept of disappointing Relena; a lot more horrifying.

 

He could make that decision later. It didn't look like they'd found any of them yet. But he was going to have to break his two year plus silence and get in touch with the others to let them know about this threat. They all had family or friends they would want to keep out of harm's way. The first thing he needed to do was organize what little he had to present it in a convincing manner. He might want to share it with Relena and the Preventers too. If he was going to talk to people again, however briefly, he might as well talk to everyone who needed to know.

 

It took another two days of hard work to sort the mass of material down to the handful of real facts and the best of the supporting information. Even then, the message was going to be over two gig's worth. He knew Quatre's computer could take a message that size and so could Relena's as of course could the one at Preventer HQ where he was directing the data to General Une and Wu Fei. He wasn't so sure about the units Duo and Trowa had access to. He might have to break those in two and send them a few minutes apart.

 

There was a cyber dive a few blocks away. It was popular with what passed for the more affluent of the local kids here. The minimal food wasn't poisonous, the drinks could be alcoholic if you paid under the table, and the cost to use the hookups was reasonable. If you didn't have a line at home, it was the best place around to go to do your connecting. He had an established persona he used to visit; he could go without raising any eyebrows. More importantly, the traffic at that site was tremendous. He was going to be hard to see in all that `noise' even with the size of the files he would be moving.

 

He arrived with the first wave of kids who were cutting their last class of the day. Normally, this would be a good cover. Today it was going to be an excellent one. He looked around and wondered just what classes were giving what major tests that so many were here so early. This could also be a problem. There were going to be more people here than there were connections available before long. Better buy his time up front. He decided to pay for a private booth too.

 

He had no problem getting into Trowa's system. The circus wasn't set up to stop a hacker of his caliber. Quatre would probably have a small fit when he discovered the backdoor into his system Yuy had installed after the Eve War just so he could send vital messages like this in emergencies. Cracking Duo's system was a lot more challenging until he realized that, with only a handful of exceptions, every vicious trick in it was one he'd taught the American. He was inside in minutes after that.

 

The Preventer's network on the other hand was a real obstacle. It took him thirty minutes to decide he couldn't afford the time to do anything more than to pry the mail system open just far enough to send his messages. He used up almost all of the rest of his four hours doing so. In the end, he managed to get not only General Une and Wu Fei's sent but the one to Relena as well. He hadn't expected her to be in the Preventer mail system but she was. He slipped out of the cyber dive very pleased with his work.

 

He took the round about way back to the safe-house. Now that he knew there were people seriously hunting him, he wasn't going to make any careless moves. Only when he was confident that he was not being followed did he head home.

 

Back in his room, it was time to see what his gleaner program had been picking up while he'd been hacking other systems and sending messages. He never knew what it would find of interest and save for him to peruse later. Often the data was immediately useful.

 

He turned the machine on. As soon as it booted up, before he could make any selections, he found himself watching a video piece. It was showing him some kind of wildly jury-rigged machine with electronic components parked in odd places and cabling running everywhere. There was a very large, bell-mouthed thing half buried in the middle of it all. He could see a clear view-panel ceiling and the hard, unblinking points of light that were the stars seen from space.

 

“Hello, Heero. It's been a long time. I wouldn't bother you, wouldn't even be telling you I wasn't dead, if things weren't getting very dangerous. I have some data I want you to seriously look at. Then I would like you to come see me. I know we didn't part on a good note but what I have to show you should at least convince you I'm by far the lesser evil. Do not go stalking out of the room! Watch, listen, and consider it all carefully.”

 

Doctor J! That was Doctor J. How was that bastard alive? He was dead! They were all dead, killed in the last battle down in the Peacemillion's engine spaces where they'd managed to bring those engines online long enough to save the planet from Milliardo Peacecraft's intended nuclear winter. WHAT WAS HE DOING BREATHING?!?

 

It was the blazoned banner proclaiming the upcoming glory of the Crimson Dawn that jerked his attention off the Doctor and onto the screen. He watched the whole three hour presentation. It filled in several blanks in what he already knew but didn't answer any of the critical questions. As it went along Dr. J tossed in bits of commentary noting where or how he'd found the data. Some of the places were almost as interesting as the data itself.

 

He knew now that they were going to have to get Relena into hiding too. Just warning her wasn't going to be enough. She wasn't a target for murder yet, they needed her too badly as a figurehead. But they wouldn't keep her. Her courage and her convictions were too well known and too much at odds with these people. No, they would arrange something, probably the usual `accident' as soon as her liabilities outweighed her advantages.

 

He made careful note of the directions for reaching the Doctor. The bastard was right; he didn't have much of a choice here. J really was the lesser evil right now. He hissed when he realized just how close the timing was going to be. It was a good thing he kept a decent supply of cash on hand because he was going to be spending it like water in the next few days and there wasn't going to be any time to steal any more.

 

What he wanted and what was necessary were two different things at this moment. He preferred to travel in carefully planned stages as inconspicuously as possible. Time, more correctly the lack of it, made that impossible. He was going to have to go quickly and openly on very public transportation.

 

He packed nothing but the essentials, slipped out along the wall to a point where the cell phone would work and managed to buy a plane ticket to London, and forced himself to go to bed. His internal alarm woke him seven hours later. One bath plus shampoo with a fragranced woman's conditioner and heavy use of a retardant cream that would inhibit what beard he did grow later, he sat down to become someone not even his former Gundam teammates would recognize.

 

When he was done, he both was and wasn't satisfied with the results. It had been a week before he'd come down with Cotton Lung when he'd last used this specific body suit, the only one he still had now; it wasn't surprising everything had to be snugged up a bit but it changed the entire silhouette. Those small changes made the final appearance startlingly different. The result was, what? Too something, disconcertingly too something. This was not the inconspicuous disguise it had been the last time he'd used it.

 

Heero studied his reflection with care. He needed to identify what had changed so dramatically. So he forced his face into a neutral expression and scanned the reflected image carefully. He'd done his hair in that two-braids-tied-back style that Relena had made so popular and the basic dress he'd tossed on to judge the results was nothing worth noting. Yet, as he looked, he realized the total effect was anything but simple. But he still couldn't put a finger on the problem.

 

He backed as far as he could from the full length mirror. Maybe he was too close to it to see what it was. The eight feet he backed up did the trick. He froze. Oh shit, this was worse than not good.

 

The young woman in the mirror was beautiful. Not pretty, not attractive, flat out beautiful. It was built into the bones of her face and the almost perfectly dimensioned slender body. For reasons that had nothing to do with whatever unknown preferences he might have been born with, Heero Yuy was rarely attracted to any woman. But the image in his mirror was one, conditioning or no, he'd have unhesitatingly considered bedding. This was a disaster.

 

With a soft thump, he slid down to sit on the side of the tub. He had very, very limited options. He had to travel on public transit, there was no time to make any other arrangements. Traveling in public was safer if he didn't go as a male. His eyes still held too much of the assassin in them; people saw that when they looked at him as a guy. They tended to see something frightened and defensive when he went as a girl. The guy they were afraid and suspicious of. The girl got a lot of sympathy. People didn't tend to be at all afraid of `her' either.

 

All right, what could he do to disguise the disguise? It was going to have to hold up for hours in public places with good lighting and he couldn't count on having any real chance to do more than very minor touchups. Whatever he did, it was going to have to last from the time he left this place until he got to his destination.

 

He studied the reflection as dispassionately as he could. He'd had to throw out his other two body suits recently when they'd been badly damaged on one of his undercover operations. There was no way to get a replacement for the suit he had on right now so he was stuck with this silhouette. Facial pads would be risky. Unless they were of very high quality, they had a dangerous tendency to move slightly after too many hours of wear. Even very small movement could drastically alter the appearance, a dicey risk during travel situations. The time he was going to have to keep in this character was beyond the service limits of the kinds of supplies he had on hand. Altering the face shape was pretty much out with what he had or could get in time.

 

This left what? Distraction, he realized. Find one item to focus the eye on to the exclusion of the rest. He tried letting his hair out of the braids to hang in his face, suddenly glad he hadn't trimmed the bangs yet. That, that was an improvement. He went with it. A hunt through his other supplies turned up a brand new pair of vivid green contact lenses. He added them.

 

Oh, this was good. The outsized green eyes behind the fall of hair suddenly gave the whole person a single focal point. They were stunning, grabbing the attention to the exclusion of really being able to see the rest of the face. He smiled. These would go perfectly with the outfit he had in mind too.

 

There was a touch of makeup added, more to enhance the eyes than anything else and the planned clothing proved to still fit comfortably. When he eyed the total image now, he saw the lenses had done the job precisely as planned. They couldn't completely solve the sex appeal issue but he already knew being very quiet would help there. Heero nodded, pleased with the whole thing. Problem solved, he could leave on time.

 

Half an hour later, six blocks from the now abandoned safe house, a trim and stunning brunette with clear green eyes caught a cab to the airport. She paid extra to have it all to herself. The driver would remember her as very quiet and moderately generous with her tip. When asked, he would be surprised to realize that, beyond those striking green eyes, he really couldn't describe her at all. He found he'd been too busy with fantasy to study the reality.