Crossover Fan Fiction / Gundam SEED Fan Fiction / Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Crossing Barriers ❯ First Contact ( Chapter 18 )

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.

 

Special note: Yaoi (homosexual pairings) is a plot element of this story. There will be NO explicit material but there will be sections where it is reasonably clear that sex is happening or has happened.

 

Beta Reader: T'Amara

 

 

 

First Contact

 

“Fucking shit!”

 

The whisper came from Dearka, Kira recognized his voice. And he rather doubted that shock in the other's tone had anything to do with the complete destruction of the pirate and half dozen mobile suits that had been in front of his own weapons moments ago. No, if he was placing bets, Kira would bet on the cause having something to do with that gold light that had reflected everywhere as things blew up in front of him. A very bright light that suggested a discharge from one very, very powerful weapon.

 

“You have company,” Yzak said absolutely flatly.

 

Kira nodded, forgetting that he didn't have the visual open and they couldn't see him. “With or without white wings?”

 

“With.”

 

“Doing what?”

 

“Nothing, he's just there, right at your back,” Joule told him slowly. “You're at his by the way.”

 

“Ah, all right.” Kira gave the situation quick thought. This could go very badly if he made any serious mistakes. The stunned note in Dearka's voice had told him a great deal about how effective the other's weapon was. They didn't need that weapon doing something they'd all regret, however brief the chance to reflect on the error might be.

 

So he began to quite slowly and deliberately take his own weapons off ready status. The rail guns were unhurriedly lowered to their standby position. He shut down the chest cannon, knowing the energy drain would be readable. And he called the DRAGOONs back to their wing mounts and closed the wings with even deliberation. Lastly, he lowered Elsman's twinned rifles until the unit was hanging, still in hand but quietly at his side.

 

-------------------------------

 

“04, status?” Heero asked warily.

 

“He's being very quiet,” Quatre reported. “He has to have seen the reflection from your shot, he knows you're there.”

 

“'Ro, ya might wanna touch a side thruster. The two of you are drifting together from the energy recoil.” Duo sounded oddly thoughtful. “He's gotta be a lot more massive than you are, Hee-chan. You're clearly moving toward him a lot faster than he's moving toward you. I wonder what that thing weighs.”

 

“Heero!” Quatre snapped. “He's begun to close his weapons down!”

 

Heero tapped his main thrusters and reversed his momentum, making sure he was now moving very slowly forward. If the local, the `Coordinator', didn't want to start a fight, then he'd encourage that reaction. The other pilot had friends watching, they'd report his actions.

 

He uncoupled the twinned buster rifles slowly and deliberately. Once he was sure the other two suit pilots could see what he'd done, he carefully mounted the two onto the Wing Zero's shield. That was followed by closing the wings into resting mode. He let the shield down until it too was held in resting mode and lowered the right arm to his side. Then he waited.

 

“His weapons are fully down, Heero.” Quatre informed him quietly. “He's touched his thrusters; I think you are almost stationary relative to each other.”

 

“Hn.” He was now at something of a loss. His training was extensive and exhaustive, but it never even touched on the `fictional' concept of alien contact. Heero Yuy realized he'd just run out of ideas.

 

-------------------------

 

Kira managed to orient the Strike-Freedom to allow him to check on his friends. The angular shift was fairly small; he doubted it would be noticed in particular by the strangers. But he knew this suit wasn't alone and he wanted a chance to check for any more of them.

 

He found two immediately. Dearka and Yzak had moved out into plain view as they watched the suit at his back. But there were two other mobile suits just inside the shelter of that old elevator now.

 

He recognized the two tone gray one with the bat-like wings. They were still folded neatly across the unit's chest. But the other was completely new. It was largely white from this angle with touches of what looked like lavender. Strange color combination for a war machine. Perhaps the pilot was female? Although what looked like two huge, heavily curved blade weapons mounted on the back didn't suggest much that was feminine.

 

They didn't suggest a space model either. Those were close order weapons, not well suited to the ranged type of combat most common to space battles. The black shrouded one didn't appear to be mounting much in ranged weapons either. Ground combat suits?

 

“Ah, Kira, what next?” Dearka asked quietly, as though he was worried the new mobile suit might hear him. “You two can't just hang up there forever. He doesn't seem to want a fight any more than you do by the way. He's closed his weapon down too. Folded the wings as well. Did you know that thing has two sets of wings? Weird.”

 

“I'm not sure,” Kira admitted. “No matter what Yzak thinks I was taking in school, alien contact absolutely was not on the list! It never came up at Aube either. I'm open to suggestions here. I can see lots of problems, starting with language, but not much in the way of solutions. And I've still got my back to it; I haven't seen the wings at all.”

 

“Oh, yeah, right. Well, it does.”

 

He debated telling them about the pair right behind them but he didn't want anyone jumping and grabbing a beam saber or something else just as stupid. Joule and Elsman were damn steady but this, well; he'd probably be the one doing stupid things if some alien mobile suit walked up behind him too. And neither was doing anything but watching. So the one up here wasn't the only one who didn't want to start a new kind of war.

 

Suddenly a second comm line lit. Kira eyed it curiously. He hadn't sent out a contact pulse but here this was, and on one of the secure lines too. He tapped it, allowing audio and visual in but keeping the transmission one way for the moment.

 

“ . . . . . absolutely not!” The voice was light and fairly high but had a note of command in it that Kira instantly recognized although there was a very decided accent here that made the speaker difficult to understand, requiring close attention to what was being said. “And we will use the local language from now on.”

 

“Q!” That was a protest, no matter what language it was in.

 

“I said local language Duo! We need to make contact, not start a fight because of lack of communications.”

 

“…………”

 

Kira stared at the screen in fascination. This looked like a male, mostly. But he really didn't know any guys with hair like that. That braid drifting behind his head had to be several feet long! He was a huge improvement on the old goat with the mushroom hair. Looked like he was pretty close to being his own age too.

 

There were four other, smaller images paired on either side of the screen as well. A focused blond with startlingly kind eyes, an unmistakable Asian with stern features, a slightly older European type with a great shock of hair concealing one eye, and a Eurasian with the most intently powerful gaze Kira had ever seen and more very long hair. They were wearing dark pressure suits with different colored decorative highlights, all of them metallic and all of them in the same pattern. The interesting thing was all of them had their helmets off. That wasn't something someone who was expecting a fight did.

 

A careful touch brought up his line to Dearka and Yzak. “I'm going to send you something I'm getting. Make sure your screens are set lock out two way communications on the line. And it looks like I'm going to owe Lacus an apology.”

 

“Eh?” Dearka grunted, then his eyes widened as he caught the pictures. “Oh!”

 

“Where are they?” Yzak muttered, concern and irritation blending in his voice.

 

“Well, stand very still please because the dark suit with the bat wings and a new one we haven't seen before are right behind you.” Kira spoke softly, trying to keep either of the others from jumping. It seemed to work as neither suit so much as twitched, as mobile suits could when someone's hands jerked the controls just enough to set off incipient movement. He sent them both clear shots of the two alien suits too.

 

“They're a little smaller than we are.” Dearka noted coolly as he closely studied the picture Kira was sending. “Still don't see a weapon on that bat suit.”

 

“There's a pole mounted over the shoulder now,” Yzak said softly. “It could be a two-handed beam blade of some kind. We've seen those before.”

 

-------------------------

 

“So, Q-man, what do we do?” Duo asked somewhat uneasily as the other mobile suits just stood there in front of him.

 

“We wait,” Quatre replied calmly. “In case you missed it, the one up by Heero has changed his orientation very slightly. He can see us now. Which means he's almost certainly told the two here about us. It is very important that we not do anything threatening right now.”

 

“Ah, how long do we stand around being `not threatening'?”

 

“However long it takes.”

 

Duo gave his screen a disgusted look. “Ya do know we could all die of old age playing this game, right?”

 

“Trowa's looking for their communications frequency,” Quatre reminded him firmly. “Once we have that, we can move forward a bit faster. We just need to know something of how they're taking this.”

 

The American shook his head. “You're missing something here. These guys know how many of those canceller things G took. And right now, they can only account for half of `em. I'd be real still and wary until I knew where the other mobile suits were too.”

 

“He has a point.” Wu Fei said it like it hurt to admit Maxwell was capable of any logic.

 

“Love ya too Woofers,” Duo snarled.

 

“Enough!” Quatre snapped. “This is difficult enough without the two of you getting into it. Stop that right now.”

 

“Duo's right though,” Trowa suddenly put in. “And I'm not getting anything. We need to stimulate a conversation. I'm going to walk over slowly and join you. Wu Fei, will you come with me?”

 

“Yes.”

 

For several minutes nothing seemed to happen. Then Duo realized the suit hanging over them was moving. It rotated slowly, weapons still locked down, and then began to drop toward them, also in slow motion. Heero matched the other's actions. Quatre gave a sudden small grunt.

 

“You ok Q-man?” Duo asked quickly.

 

“Yes, I'm fine Duo,” Quatre sighed. “I think one of them just caught sight of Trowa and Wu Fei. There was a very sharp emotional spike there, a very defensive one. He calmed down almost instantly though.”

 

“They're moving!” Duo snapped up alertly.

 

The two Coordinator mobile suits were indeed moving. They stepped slowly away from the elevator and gradually turned, allowing Duo to see more than the flight packs on their backs. They both stopped about a hundred feet out. By that time, they were in three quarter profile to him. And, he realized, the third suit was going to be landing beside the pair of them in the next few moments.

 

“Duo, lets join the others.” Quatre already had Sandrock in motion as he spoke, walking toward Heavyarms and Altron who had come to a halt perhaps two hundred feet from the locals.

 

He followed Sandrock. Yuy was setting the Zero down on his right, leaving Quatre in the center of their group. The landing Coordinator was putting the damaged suit between his and the other undamaged unit. And now they were all here, just staring at each other. Well, wasn't this just peachy!

 

Several minutes of silence did nothing for his outlook on the situation. Barton was not finding their comm frequency. Or maybe they just weren't talking. And staring at three damn dangerous looking war machines was not doing his nerves any good. The dark one and the white and light gray were bad enough but that suit the Yamato guy had was just outright scary doing nothing more than standing there motionlessly. Something had to give here before someone else's nerves twitched the wrong way.

 

“Shit! Quatre, this is going nowhere!” Duo finally snapped.

 

“I'll listen if you have a better idea,” the blond replied, beginning to sound a bit irritated himself.

 

“Actually, yeah, I do. Trowa probably isn't the only one looking for a comm frequency. So let's see if someone's found one.”

 

“Duo!” Wu Fei snapped. “What are you going to do?”

 

“Say hello!”

 

Before anyone could argue with him, or Zero could grab Deathscythe, Duo marched six fast steps forward and opened the active cloak. “Hi! Name's Duo Maxwell. I may run and I may hide but I never tell a lie. That's me in a nutshell. So, who're you guys?”

 

---------------------------

 

“How long are we just going to stand here?” Yzak growled. “It's been almost ten minutes!”

 

“No idea,” Dearka answered quietly. “But they sure aren't doing anything hostile.”

 

“They aren't doing anything period!” The aggravated Commander of FAITH bit out shortly.

 

“This has to be wearing on them too.” Kira tried to calm Joule down without being obvious about it. “We have their comm frequency, they haven't found ours. So we have a better idea of what's going on than they do.”

 

“Yeah, the problem with having only one side in the know is it leads to bad decisions on the part of the other side.” Dearka reminded them all.

 

“But we now at least have some names to go with the faces,” Kira pointed out. “We pretty much know who has which suit too. I don't think we've done so badly for ten minutes of just standing around.”

 

“I'm kinda surprised the blond, Katra, is the one in charge.” Dearka said thoughtfully. “He just doesn't look like the leader type. I'd have bet on either the pure Asian guy or the Eurasian.”

 

“They're the most disorganized Team I've ever seen!” Yzak exclaimed. “They seem to have no command structure! The ZAFT is a military dictatorship next to that chaos!”

 

“I wonder if they are a Team as we think of them,” Kira said quietly. “They seem more like a civilian or guerrilla outfit than a true military one. It's pretty clear they're all used to acting independently at least part of the time.”

 

“Turn your sound up!” Dearka suddenly called. “Something's breaking!”

 

Kira's hand went instantly to the volume control as he cursed his mistake in turning it down in the first place. “ . . . . see if someone's found one.”

 

“Duo! What are you going to do?” The Asian sounded alarmed.

 

“Say hello!” He was going to do what?

 

Abruptly the bat-winged suit moved forward. It only took six steps before it stopped though. Then those wings popped open, revealing a truly sinister looking mobile suit.

 

That evil looking suit suddenly waved at them as a cheerful voice announced clearly, “Hi! Name's Duo Maxwell. I may run and I may hide but I never tell a lie. That's me in a nutshell. So, who're you guys?”

 

Dearka snickered, and then broke down laughing. Yzak's face was a study in shock, horror, and affront. Kira could only grin. When several seconds went by and neither of the other two recovered, he decided to respond for them. He walked Strike-Freedom the same six steps forward, waved back and turned on the outgoing comm line.

 

“Hello, I'm Kira, Kira Yamato. Sorry, I don't have any fast thumbnail descriptions to offer.”

 

“It worked?” The Asian sounded so much like Yzak it was all Kira could do not to laugh.

 

“Not everything the baka does fails.”

 

Duo had a wonderfully insulted look on his face. “Love ya too Hee-chan! And yeah, it worked! So shut it Wuffie.”

 

He turned back to the amused Coordinator. “Sorry about that. Some of the guys have some misconceptions about how I get shit done.”

 

“So I see,” Kira grinned at him. He couldn't help it. This Duo Maxwell was just someone he responded to very positively.

 

“Yeah, well, I'm not sure how this is supposed to work but I know one of your guys is not a hundred percent and I kinda doubt you all wanna stand out here for however many days it takes your gang to get back here. Since I'm sure you got a bazillion questions, you wanna come on in with us and we can all talk about it someplace more comfortable than a mobile suit cockpit?”

 

“This is first alien contact?” Yzak sounded almost as insulted as the Asian had.

 

“Apparently it is,” Kira agreed cheerfully. “I know it isn't up to your standards but we have been invited in. So, Commander Joule, are we sitting out here while your head and shoulder give you hell or are we going somewhere where we can treat them?”

 

“Showers?” Dearka enquired quietly.

 

“Yeah, sure,” Duo grinned. “One per room and we got a whole corridor's worth of space that we're not using.”

 

He cocked his head at Kira. “How come you gotta ask the grouch?”

 

“The ZAFT is a military organization,” Kira pointed out with a small smile. “And Yzak Joule is my commanding officer.”

 

“Then how come . . . . .”

 

“MAXWELL!!” Two voices yelped, one shocked, the other angry.

 

Duo stared, obviously puzzled. “What?”

 

“I think the question you were about to ask probably wouldn't have been politically wise.” Kira just shook his head. “It's something we can go into later anyway. No matter what Yzak wants, I'd like to get him somewhere where we can do a proper assessment of his injuries”

 

“Fine Yamato, we'll go.” Joule agreed without the arguments he'd usually have put up. But Kira had been watching him closely and had already seen how much he was fighting to control his pain. Naturally pale, he was almost ghost white now.

 

“Thank you.” The blond inclined his head with a regal diplomacy that reminded Kira of Lacus at her most formal. “I'm Quatre Raberba Winner by the way and my machine is called Sandrock. Duo's is Deathscythe Hell. Chang Wu Fei pilots the Altron. Trowa Barton has Heavyarms. You've already seen Heero Yuy's Wing Zero at work.”

 

“Commander Kira Yamato, Deputy Commander of FAITH, ZAFT, piloting Strike-Freedom.” Kira responded with a much more formal introduction now. “My commanding officer, Commander Yzak Joule, Commander of FAITH, ZAFT, piloting the Command Duel. His Wing, Dearka Elsman, piloting Blitz-Ranger.”

 

“You guys got a rank besides `Commander'?” Duo asked, curious.

 

“Several,” Kira replied calmly. “But the ZAFT is more a militia than a standing army and the list of rank titles is very limited.”

 

“We have control of the cameras in this section, its safe to move openly right now.” Quatre cut in gently. “Would you please follow me?”

 

They led the three Coordinators almost half way around the colony. Kira was watching closely, very aware of where they were relative to the interior structure of the place. And he wasn't real pleased when they drifted to a stop above a tangled mass of wreckage that once might have been a private shuttle port. How had these people picked this place? Then, to his shock, the snarled mess lifted smoothly out until there was more than enough room for even Strike-Freedom's broad shoulders to slip inside.

 

A single light illuminated a very large outer docking port, leaving many shadows but doing a good enough job to allow them to get eight large mobile suits into the space safely. From the inside, it was easy to see that the outer hatch was in excellent repair. So, all that junk on it was a disguise. Kira had looked on their way in and he knew the visitors hadn't set this up themselves.

 

Weathering in space took time and the surfaces up there showed enough of it to have been there for decades. This bay had been hidden long before the aliens had found it. He wondered if concealing it had been his bio-father's idea. He suddenly realized he'd probably been here before, as a days-old child being taken secretly to safety with Cagalli just before Blue Cosmos had destroyed this colony to crush G.A.R.M. and Dr. Hibiki's research. It gave him a very weird feeling that lasted until the heavy main doors opened onto a very large interior bay ablaze with light that recalled him to the needs of the present over the past.

 

It looked like this had been a maintenance bay once, one set up for the heaviest of the colony-building mobile suits. He wondered if G.A.R.M. had run the bay or just appropriated it later. In any case, there were suit racks here that would support Yzak and Dearka's suits, flight packs and all. Sandrock was already moving to show them which bays to use. Wing Zero had immediately stowed that spectacular rifle and was beginning to reset a third bay to accommodate the unusual breadth of Strike-Freedom and the extra depth the DRAGOON system wing mounts gave the suit. Familiar with how these bays worked, Kira moved over to give him a hand.

 

It took perhaps fifteen more minutes to get all the mobile suits set into the various racks. The three from ZAFT did not bother hooking their units to the colony's maintenance system. It was too outdated to manage to do anything but cause problems if it attempted to work on their suits. By that time the hanger was fully pressurized again and it was safe to leave the cockpit without a helmet.

 

Before they moved though, Kira had one last suggestion. “Guys, I'm thinking we probably should leave our sidearms in our suit lockers. They aren't really going to do us that much good if things go bad and not having them may keep anyone else from doing something stupid out of fright. I don't think these pilots are nervous types but I also don't think they're the only ones here either.”

 

“That makes sense to me,” Yzak agreed wearily. “What do you think Dearka?”

 

“Fine with me.” Elsman was already shoving his into the secure lockbox that sat under the right hand side of the main front panels. “What about our helmets?”

 

“I think we can leave those in the suits too.” Yzak frowned thoughtfully. “We'd only need them if there was another fight and we'd probably be out in the middle of that anyway.”

 

“Roger that,” Dearka agreed. “Say, Kira, you got a standard aid kit or one of the big ones in that monster of yours?”

 

“Big one and yes I'll bring it.” He been busy working it out of the somewhat cramped corner it was stored in even before Dearka had asked.

 

“Ah,” Elsman suddenly sounded very unsure. “Just thought of something. We don't catch Natural's diseases but what about aliens?”

 

“I'd doubt it,” Kira replied as he finally managed to get the large box out of the corner and the hatch cover closed again. “Besides, it's a bit late to worry about that now. We've already agreed to this.”

 

“I think Yamato's right.” Yzak sounded both irritable and in some pain now. “Let's just get this meeting part over. I want to look through that kit of his for a couple pills.”

 

Kira picked up the med-kit and opened his hatch. As he did, he realized he was really taking this quite well. It was almost as though he met people from alien universes every other week. He wondered how things would go when whatever protective shock he was operating under finally wore off.

 

Strike-Freedom was in the fourth bay, chosen to allow the space to close in some of the third to make room for the unusual breadth of his mobile suit. So he was furthest from the cluster of five young men waiting by the end of the gantry. It gave him a fair chance to look them over without appearing too rudely obvious about it.

 

The very first thing that hit him was how short they were. Of the five of them, only one looked like he might be taller than Kira himself and that was a real maybe. The Asian was quite close to his height and the other three were noticeably smaller. The pilot of Wing Zero was outright petite, a word he'd never associated with a male before in his life, and Deathscythe's wasn't much bigger. As he got a bit closer, he realized the two of them and blond Quatre were very lightly built and that was contributing a lot to the impression of almost delicacy. He didn't for a second believe they were. No one who could pilot mobile suits like theirs was delicate!

 

Hair was the second impression when you saw them as a group. Duo had an insanely long braid, it was difficult to be sure the man was in motion so much, but it looked like it was tied off about mid thigh. It would probably make it close to mid calf unbraided. Heero's pony tail, and did he wear it that high on his head to add some impression of height Kira wondered, fell almost to his waist when he turned once to answer someone's question. The tall one, Trowa, had what looked like a fairly normal haircut across the back of his head and then this great fall of hair that went to one side of his face, hiding one eye. That definitely wasn't normal on Earth or the PLANTs. Only Chang and Quatre fell inside that range. Chang because his tightly drawn back hair was only about shoulder blade long and Quatre because his was about as long really as Kira's own.

 

The third thing that struck Kira was that this was a conspicuously handsome group. Beauty among Coordinators now was largely by design and once you were used to it, you could often see at least some of the artificialness of it. But there was no sign of any such tampering in any of these five. So the people from wherever they were from had something of the same kind of range Naturals here did if the weird old man and these guys were anything to go by. Then he reached Yzak and Dearka and his attention was abruptly refocused on his own team; most specifically on Yzak and the pain he could no longer control well enough to keep it off his face.

 

-------------------------

 

“Shit, they're tall!” Duo exclaimed in an excited whisper. “Wonder if that's why their suits are so much larger than ours, `cause they need the space for a bigger cockpit?”

 

“I would doubt it,” Quatre replied soothingly in a vain attempt to calm the over stimulated American down. “It simply appears to be one of many design differences.”

 

“Hey Q-man, did ya see how the lights shook a bit when they walked in? Man, they gotta weigh at least two or three times what our suits do! And why did they suddenly turn gray?” Duo was talking a mile a minute, eyes brilliant with his anticipation. “Did ya notice they're all set up for ranged combat? Wonder what their mobile dolls are armed with if manned suits all gotta have beam rifles! Do ya think we'll get to look inside? I'll see if I can set up a trade; I'll let one of `em peak at `Scythe if he'll let me look around his suit. Wonder if Yamato would go for it? I'd really like a close up of that suit! Damn! They're our age too! And whoa, he's got purple eyes! They design themselves right, Coordinators do that? Why would someone design their kid to have white hair?”

 

“Duo!” Heero snapped sharply although he kept the volume well down. “Shut up! Just let them come to us and we can ask the questions one at a time. AND we will wait for answers before asking another one!”

 

“Hee-chan!”

 

“You're babbling,” Heero told him bluntly. “Stop it before you say something you don't want to. The only times I've ever known you to give something away were when you were this excited and wouldn't shut up.”

 

Duo stared at him in shock. “When did I ever give something away?”

 

“Two different safehouses,” Heero reminded him grimly. “At two different basketball games. Now shut it.”

 

“Did not!”

 

“Did so,” Wu Fei told him flatly. “I lost three good shirts and my spare gei when we had to cut out without time to fully pack in Norway. Close your mouth or I'll find something to stuff in it.”

 

“Oh,” Duo was suddenly a lot quieter. “Yeah, I remember that one.”

 

“Oh we all remember that one,” Trowa assured him coolly. “What ever possessed you to tell that Ozzie you could fly a mobile suit anyway?”

 

“He was being a superior jackass,” Duo admitted. “It rubbed me the wrong way at the wrong time. He was a fuckin' Leo pilot fer God's sake! And he was tellin' me how great he was! Me! Shinigami! I just lost track of where I was for a second, that's all.”

 

“Right,” Heero agreed with a sharp nod. “Now don't make that mistake here.”

 

Duo gave him a rather curious look. “'Ro, just what do ya think I could give away here?”

 

“Since I don't know how much, if anything, they know, I suppose a great deal if you were really careless.”

 

“You're from another space-time and one of your people stole six null-jammer cancellers, presumably for use in your mobile suits.” Yzak Joule told them icily. “We're not deaf.”

 

Heero turned sharply. Kira Yamato was standing, bandages in one hand, a blue shirt in the other, with his eyes closed, an expression of complete exasperation on his face. Dearka Elsman didn't even pause in his careful winding of another bandage across Joule's chest and across his left shoulder. Joule's pressure suit was now open and off to the waist. The pattern of bandaging told the experienced group that Joule probably had broken, or at least cracked the collar bone on that side.

 

“You learned diplomacy where Yzak?” Yamato muttered just loud enough for Heero's sharp ears to catch it. “Your Mom would box your ears for that one and you know it.”

 

“She'd do worse than that.” Elsman assured the other Coordinator drily. “Ezaria Joule isn't one to tolerate that kind of mistake from him at all.”

 

“We probably shouldn't assume they're deaf either,” Kira added, eyeing the watchful Heero thoughtfully.

 

“They aren't Coordinators, Kira.” Dearka protested quietly.

 

“We don't know they aren't their world's equivalent,” Yamato noted. “I'll bet they know a lot more about us than we'd like to think they do too. They understand our language after all. If they've done nothing more than watch the news and educational channels for a couple weeks they'll have at least a sketchy idea of how things stand here now. We on the other hand, know nothing of the pressures that drove them to come here.”

 

“Good point.”

 

Yes it was, Heero agreed silently. And it said some interesting things about how quickly this Kira Yamato thought on his feet that he'd pull that out this quickly. Yuy knew he was more than a bit disoriented just meeting these people, genuine aliens straight out of fiction for all they looked and sounded so much like normal people. And they had to be somewhat unsettled too.

 

The five of them sat back to wait for their guests to be ready. It really didn't take them very long. Once Elsman finished, he helped Joule back into the blue shirt and they got the pressure suit closed again while Yamato put the medical kit back in his mobile suit. Joule swallowed some medicine they'd pulled out of the kit before Kira'd taken it and washed it down with a small bottle of liquid from the same source. Dearka got the left arm rigged into a sling that helped take some more pressure off the damaged clavicle. By that time, Yamato was back and the three locals exchanged glances just once before they started up the gantry, Joule slightly in the lead.

 

They stopped when there was perhaps two meters left between their groups. Joule took one more step forward when Yamato spun around. Elsman instantly turned to his own right, dropping into a slight crouch similar to the one Kira was in. Joule was looking at them with arctic blue eyes.

 

“Who just came in behind us?” The Coordinator asked flatly.

 

Heero took two open steps to his right to look past Elsman. He knew where the concealed door that led into the corridor behind the bay was so he focused there even though it was one hell of a long way down there to have heard something that quiet open. But when he saw a small movement he knew their hearing was even better than he'd suspected it might be.

 

“Mariemaia,” Heero snapped, “does Zechs know you snuck out?”

 

The child made hushing motions at him. He scowled at her. She should have known better!

 

“They heard you! Come out here before someone decides you're a danger!” Heero ordered sharply.

 

“Yamato?” Joule enquired coldly.

 

He was answered with a light laugh. “It's a kid. Someone has too much curiosity.”

 

Yzak's eyes went wide in shock. “You brought children with you?”

 

“Just one,” Quatre sighed. “We didn't have a choice about it. Crimson Dawn wants her dead as much or more than it wants to kill the five of us and Relena. With the right help, she could be as great a danger to them as we could.”

 

“So I guessed right,” Kira said quietly. “You're here to escape some political disaster.”

 

“She's a cute kid.” Dearka observed calmly as he straightened.

 

Heero just shook his head as she marched around the three guests to stand beside Quatre.

 

“I am Mariemaia Khushrenada-Une,” she announced proudly, and then seemed a bit put out when the three of them simply smiled politely, clearly completely unaware of what her name should mean.

 

“The flow of information has all gone one way Mariemaia.” Zechs' voice suddenly came from the speaker over the door. “They have no idea who you are or why Crimson Dawn wants any one dead. They don't know who or what Crimson Dawn is for that matter. Commander Yamato is correct though, we are here to escape a political disaster until the situation changes enough to make it useful for us to return. Quatre, please bring our guests in to the lounge. We've done enough analysis of what we've found here to be sure what we have to offer is safe for them.”

 

“Of course,” Quatre agreed and caught Mariemaia by the arm. “Will you follow us please?”

 

“You have a commanding officer then?” Yzak enquired dryly.

 

“Nah, not really,” Duo denied instantly. “Well, I guess maybe technically he could be. I think Une pulled a fast one and officially has us back on active duty with the Preventers. But that doesn't mean we're in his chain of command ya understand! The idea of being under Zech Merquise's command is just too weird to think about!”

 

“Why?” Kira asked with friendly curiosity.

 

“Would you wanna find your old nemesis from the war your commander?” Duo asked as he flounced through the hatch behind Quatre.

 

Kira and Yzak could only stare at each other, eyebrows arched. Then Dearka burst into laughter. The two of them grinned, then they were laughing as well. Heero eyed them both warily, trying to remember why this would be such a hysterically funny suggestion to this pair. Then a few facts from the history lesson surfaced and his own eyes widened fractionally. Oh, yes, Duo didn't know it but he'd just made a real big joke there. He followed the still chortling Coordinators through the hatch and secured it behind him.

 

Maxwell was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. “What's so funny?”

 

The three of them just shook their heads at him but Heero paused and gave him a long look. “Bloody Valentine War, remember your lessons there?”

 

“Some of `em, sure. Why?”

 

“Who was on which side?”

 

Heero moved quickly to catch up with the group, leaving Duo to trail in after them, lost in thought as he tried to recall the data.

 

---------------------------

 

Kira followed Yzak and Dearka through the generous door into what Heero Yuy had called the lounge. He glanced around quickly, taking it in with one brief scouting look. A large space, it was perhaps eight meters by ten and boasted two separate sitting areas, one large and one small, with comfortable looking chairs and small tables as well as three others with much larger tables clearly set up for either casual dining or gaming. But it was the people waiting there in the larger sitting area who arrested his attention.

 

Like the five pilots and the child, they were handsome people. One man, three women, they seemed to be no older than mid twenties and no younger than early twenties. He wondered about that, none of them appeared old enough to be the child's parents.

 

The two younger women looked to be about his age, both of them strikingly attractive in quite different ways. Both women were impeccably dressed in what his now-experienced eye recognized as very high quality civilian clothing. The taller one had the longest blond hair he'd ever seen, even among the show-off wealthy PLANT daughters. She had very odd eyebrows as well, deeply forked and quite dark for her coloring. There was something sly about her, she would have to be watched and not trusted.

 

The other was more conventionally beautiful with blue eyes and honey blond hair. She also had an air about her that unmistakably reminded him of Lacus. Whoever she was, she'd been in a position of considerable power once and she understood its responsibilities. She was someone significant; he was going to need to learn everything he could about her.

 

The older pair on the other hand wore unmistakable uniforms. The woman had black hair with a bluish cast and deep blue eyes. In any other company she would undoubtedly catch every man's eye. Here though it was her commanding officer who arrested the attention.

 

This Zech Merquise was taller than Dearka, with long pale blond bangs that fell across intense ice blue eyes. Standing like this, it wasn't possible to judge the length in back but Kira was quite sure it fell well below the shoulder blades simply because it had enough weight to it to hang so smoothly. The uniform fit him flawlessly and truly flattered him as uniforms rarely did. But it was none of that that had Kira's attention.

 

This man was a soldier. And he was at very least a born leader if not actually born royalty. Kira had met a good number of the noble-born now and he could recognize it when he saw it. Merquise had been born to wealth and influence and had used both effectively. It was unusual for male children of such families to choose the military. He wondered if he was a fourth or fifth son to even be allowed to.

 

There was an unmistakable air of competence here too. This officer knew his job and had complete confidence in his ability to execute his orders. If he and Maxwell had been on opposite sides during their war, it spoke rather well of Maxwell that he was still alive. Actually, Kira realized, he was going to have to take a long second look at that very likeable but apparently scatterbrained chatterbox. You didn't survive going against someone like this by being the, ah, somewhat limited individual Maxwell seemed to be.

 

The first comparison Kira could find for Merquise was Admiral Halliburton. He was quite sure Merquise had also led troops with compassion and deadly effectiveness. However, unlike the Admiral, Kira had the feeling this officer would be a dangerous opponent in his own right. He resembled Andy Waltfeld or Mu that way. And anyone who could combine those characteristics was a man worth watching.

 

He was watching them right now with a level gaze that gave nothing away. There was no feeling of hostility from him at all. Neither was there any impression of excessive welcome that might indicate a more delicately balanced situation than they should be getting in to. In fact, none of these people gave him that feeling, which he admitted privately, was a relief. Yzak was as politically savvy as they came but he was injured and in pain right now, both of which had been known to cut into his self-control and so into his political skills.

 

It was an automatic and natural move to find himself saluting Merquise right along with Yzak and Dearka. And Merquise returned the gesture just as automatically. Oh, yes, the man was a career soldier all right.

 

“I am Commander Yzak Joule of the ZAFT. I will be very direct as I really don't feel like wasting a lot of time playing games. Who are you people and why are you here?”

 

Well, that was fairly undiplomatic but at least it wasn't absolutely rude. And it would, if they chose to answer, as he'd said, cut out a lot of the usually wasted time and verbiage. Kira watched more than just Merquise for a response. To his complete surprise, it didn't come from the soldier.

 

“I am Relena Peacecraft Dorlian,” the young woman with the honey hair replied gently. “We are here because our home has been overrun by a quite ruthless enemy who is systematically murdering everyone they deem dangerous to them. All of us here fall in that category. There was no place in our home space where we could hide the mobile suits and ourselves so we accepted the risk of coming to this space for what we hope will be a very brief time. We do not intend to intrude on your affairs and would not have allowed you to know we were here if those people had not threatened the colony, and so ourselves.”

 

“And you had that old man steal null-jammer cancellers from us why?” Yzak demanded coldly.

 

“I'm afraid Professor G did that without consulting with anyone here. He and Doctor J rebuilt the Gundams in complete secrecy and discovered how to reach this space-time without telling anyone of their actions.” Relena simply shook her head. “They have always operated in this manner so no one was surprised by that. I understood they committed the theft because without those units, our machines would be in serious danger of malfunction here.”

 

“Gundams?” Yzak asked, “You call those suits Gundams?”

 

“Yes, it is because they're made of gundanium.”

 

“We can discuss materials later perhaps,” Merquise suddenly cut in. “I believe formal introductions and a bit of our history would be more helpful to our guests right now. Commander Joule would probably also be more comfortable sitting than standing as well.”

 

They made a good team, Merquise and the Dorlian girl. Between them, everyone ended up seated and served tea and small cakes. They assured their guests they were safe to eat but Kira politely declined and noted the others did as well. Some chances weren't worth it. They weren't wasted though as Duo Maxwell seemed to be quite capable of devouring the entire plate by himself. Yuy and Chang though both made sure he didn't get more than four of them. He wondered why.

 

Colonel Merquise took over the discussion at that point. Kira learned the lady in uniform was Major Noin-Merquise, the Colonel's wife and the girl with the odd eyebrows was Dorothy Catalonia, a political hot potato of some kind who was related to both the child and two different and now late would-be leaders of the world from their last war. At some point the information dropped that Zechs and Relena were brother and sister as well. All five of the mobile suit pilots turned out to hold the rank of Captain in this `Preventer' group. The child it seemed was the adopted daughter of the Preventer commander, a General Une, who had sent her with these people for her safety.

 

As he listened and watched, Kira began to sort some things out. The five pilots were a loose Team of some kind. They'd all fought on the same side in that war while the Colonel had been a major figure on the other side. He was a professional soldier, obviously formally trained and almost certainly the graduate of a military academy. They just as clearly weren't. They'd been guerillas at best, possible terrorists at worst. But they'd won the fight and they hadn't done it from the shadows.

 

The climactic battle Merquise described reminded him of both Second Jachin Due and of Requiem. All three fights had involved vast numbers of men and mobile suits but had come down in the end to a few key people in a handful of key locations doing what had to be done. Libra, like Second Jachin Due, had also been a three-sided fight as well. The Requiem battle, for all there were only two declared `sides' had probably had at least four different agendas attached to it.

 

As Merquise went over that battle, Kira kept a surreptitious eye on the five pilots. Yuy was impossible to read, a stiffly frozen figure who sat rigidly in his chair. But the other four told him things. And what they told him gave him some hints on Yuy as well.

 

It surprised him to realize Quatre Winner really was the team commander in combat. He didn't seem have the personality for it at all. But Merquise made it quite clear he had the tactical mind for it and both the courage and the skill to use it. If he wasn't an aggressive fighter, he was an able one when he had to be. Sandrock would be a machine to be very careful of in close quarters.

 

The Heavyarms pilot, Trowa Barton, was a one-man demolition team. The suit was every bit as heavily weaponed as Yzak had thought it might be and Barton apparently was a serious expert in getting the most out of that. Kira shuddered inwardly at the thought of how much damage a machine with that kind of firepower could cause. And yet, it too was not really set up for more than mid-range combat at best and would be most effective at fairly close range.

 

The Altron was similar, set up for mid-close and close combat. The pilot though was different. Wu Fei Chang had issues. Kira wasn't sure what they all were but justice in many forms was a big one. His own self-perceived weaknesses were another. Apparently he was much improved, mental health wise, over how he'd been during the war and in the year or so after. If this was much improved, he was kinda glad he hadn't met that younger Chang. Still, he was clearly a very formidable man in a fight and that suit wasn't one you'd want to take on without some careful thought beforehand either.

 

In some ways, Deathscythe Hell reminded Kira of the Forbidden. Most specifically, in the fact that it used a scythe weapon. However, with this suit, it was the principal weapon. And it sounded like Maxwell was an expert with it. It seemed rather out of character for the cheerful young man until he glanced over and caught someone very different looking out of those blue-violet eyes for a second.

 

Kira did an instant and abrupt revision on his assessment of one Duo Maxwell. There were depths here he hadn't expected and instinctively knew he probably didn't want to get into. The bright, cheery chatterbox was quite real. But so was the ice-blooded killer he'd just seen looking out of those same eyes. This man was probably the most dangerous of the five of them, simply because he was the one who would make the biggest switch in personality. Anyone who took Maxwell the friendly-but-over-talkative at face value was in deathly serious trouble when that other side came out to play.

 

Heero Yuy and his Wing Zero were the group's only serious long range threat but they were an awesome one. He'd already had the chance to look over what that buster rifle could do. He wasn't sure what the beam it fired actually was but it functioned like a disruptor of some kind, reducing whatever it touched to plasma. In some ways it didn't matter if it excited the atoms until they ripped apart or just broke their internal bonds instantly. The result was solid matter shifted into energy for a very long way out from the muzzle of that weapon. And as Merquise's tale of the Libra battle made quite clear, it would convert a lot of mass on one shot. Somehow, Kira didn't think Phase Shift Armor would be real effective against it either.

 

From a few other remarks the Major made and some flippant answers from Maxwell, Kira also gathered the five of them had been as much an infiltration and demolitions team as they were mobile suit pilots. This in fact seemed to be what their current enemies, this `Crimson Dawn' group wanted to eliminate them for. Miss Dorlian had said something about the Gundams being rebuilt but it wasn't until fairly late into the discussion/lecture on the other space-time's history that he realized they'd outright destroyed their armaments at the end of their latest conflict in the unrealistic hope of preventing all future wars. It was all he could do not to shake his head at that bit of stupidity, especially when Miss Dorlian admitted it was her idea.

 

“Begging your pardon, Ma'am,” Dearka said bluntly. “But that's probably the dumbest idea I've ever heard. You really blew up your mobile suits and thought you'd stop all wars? Whatever gave you a nutso idea like that?”

 

“Elsman!” Yzak snapped.

 

“No,” Relena raised a quiet hand, “he's correct as it turned out. But as to where I got it, it was my Father's cherished goal. Total Pacifism was a cause my Father espoused at the cost of his own life. I suppose that alone should have taught me something. It is going to take a lot longer that a year or two to achieve it and we will have to have true justice for all our people and an honest means of allowing the varied groups to settle their differences in place before we can try it again. Neither of those will happen overnight.”

 

“It's something worth trying for though.”

 

Kira thought of Lacus and the children of the orphanage. How much better would those young lives have been if there had been no war to take their families from them? How much happier would his own soul be if he'd never had to take someone's life? Those questions had no answers; at least not in this reality.

 

“Thank you, Commander,” Relena said gently. “It is unusual to find military people who understand the value of becoming obsolete.”

 

Kira shook his head. “The need to protect is always going to be there Miss Dorlian. It can be scaled back but it can't be completely eliminated. As long as you are dealing with human beings and not with angels there will be some who are evil, some who are greedy, some who are cruel, and some who are just selfishly misguided. There will be others who are weak. They will follow the stronger either for gain or in hopes of avoiding being the ones hurt. The ambitious individuals will do things that endanger or outright injure others around them and they will have to be stopped. You may hope to reduce the need to your `Preventers' instead of needing armies but you'll never be rid of it altogether. The true protector will never be obsolete.”

 

She gave him a very serious look. “How would you recognize a protector, Commander? How do you tell such a person from someone who just thrives on violence?”

 

He could feel the bitterness twisting his lips. “It isn't hard. A protector doesn't really want the job, Miss Dorlian. He or she does it because they have to. Because it must be done. And they do it because they have the skills of mind and heart to do it properly. They do it so others, more innocent, never have to.”

 

He looked away. “You can never go back to what you once were after you've killed another person. No one who you could consider a protector wants to see anyone else have to lose that part of their soul like they did. If you are dealing with someone who doesn't care, they aren't any kind of protector at all.”

 

“I see. How do you cope with this, Commander?”

 

“By considering just what would happen to those I care about if I refused the job.” Kira told her honestly. “Understand please, I got into this whole thing in the first place by just trying to protect my friends. I was a tech school student, sixteen, living on a neutral space colony when the war exploded in my face one day. I was working on a school project one minute, running for shelter from a mobile suit attack the next, and then piloting a mobile suit to keep others from killing my friends, all in the space of maybe half an hour!”

 

He sighed. “I turned out to have a natural talent for it.”

 

“Oh now there's a serious understatement if I ever heard one!” Dearka said feelingly. “Natural talent doesn't even begin to touch it Yamato! You topple into the Strike and in under an hour, with NO TRAINING on the thing you're fending off pilots with both training and months of combat experience! Mir told me you rewrote Strike's initial OS in the middle of that very first fight because you couldn't make the machine work until you did! You got any idea how few people there are around who could have even considered doing something like that?”

 

“I didn't plan it Dearka!” Kira protested. “I had no choice!”

 

Duo leaned forward. “Lemme get this straight. You jumped into the cockpit of a strange mobile suit, rewrote the OS, and fought your first battle, all at the same time, with no training at all?!?”

 

Kira glared at him. “First off, I didn't jump in, I was pushed in by Lieutenant Ramius all right? And I was in school to become a computer engineer in the first place, programming was my specialty! So the rewrite was no big deal, I just modified what was already there. But that last, yes, I fought that battle without any training. Lieutenant Ramius was perched sorta behind me and helped me find the right controls when I needed them.”

 

“Why did this Lieutenant Ramius allow you to pilot at all?” Wu Fei gave him a deeply disapproving stare. “You were a civilian I take it. He was the soldier. He should never have pushed you into the mobile suit in the first place. What kind of coward then demands the civilian fight his battle?”

 

“To begin with, it's Murrue Ramius and she's a lady!” Kira growled. “She shoved me into the Strike because we were in a warehouse that was about to blow up and the cockpit was the only safe place around. The initial OS was total crap! No one could have operated a kid's toy with it let alone a war machine! I had to have the pilot's seat in order to get to the keyboard efficiently to do the rewrite. And by the time I was done, well, she's a Natural and no Natural could have handled the Strike with the way I rewrote the program. I stuck myself with having to be the pilot by writing her out of the job.”

 

He stared straight into Wu Fei's eyes. “Just so you know, she's now Captain Ramius-La Flaga, commanding officer of the Archangel. And I don't ever want to hear anyone put the word coward and her name in the same sentence again, thank you very much.”

 

To his complete surprise, the Asian pilot stood and bowed deeply, the gesture unmistakably an apology. “I spoke without knowledge. I will not do so again.”

 

Kira stood up and returned the gesture, knowing he needed to. “I shouldn't have yelled. You aren't from here; there is no way you could have known. If the situation had been as you imagined, you would have been correct to reprimand the soldier.”

 

“You are loyal to your friends,” Colonel Merquise remarked.

 

“He's legendary for it.” Yzak assured him. “His loyalty is almost as famous as his skill as a pilot. Just don't ever betray him. Luck has a nasty habit of deserting people who do that.”

 

“YZAK!”

 

“It does though,” Joule said quietly. “It makes me wonder sometimes if Ito wasn't telling us the literal truth that day in the cafeteria.”

 

Kira's eyebrows rose. “You've seen Wolverine then?”

 

“No,” Yzak gave him a very dark look. “But then that isn't the part of the conversation I'm talking about.”

 

Kira closed his jaw with an audible snap and sat down. He was not going to discuss that with anyone, including Yzak. It had no bearing on this situation anyway.

 

“It is getting late by colony time,” Relena suddenly put in. “As far as we can tell, it will be at least another thirty seven hours before the first ships will get here. We have set up rooms for you on one of the corridors we aren't using. We weren't sure if you would want to share one room or each have a room to yourselves so we have prepared three and you may choose for yourselves how you wish to do things.”

 

“Thank you, Miss Dorlian.” Yzak gave her a small incline of his head.

 

“Quatre, will you show our guests their rooms?”

 

“Of course, Miss Relena.” The blond bounced up and they stood, saluted Colonel Marquise, and followed him. The place was very simply laid out. Quatre pointed out the pilot's wing, theirs and the one the Colonel and the ladies had. And then he did them the courtesy of leaving them alone.

 

“How do you want to handle this Yzak?” Kira asked.

 

“Lets check out the rooms first and we can decide from there. We're going to have to send someone back to the bay to get our things from the lockers anyway.”

 

Kira nodded and promptly opened the closest door. It proved to be a small suite with a sitting room, sleeping room and rather well appointed bath. It was a rather nice set of accommodations. But it wasn't one he could trust.

 

He moved to the common wall between this sitting room and the suite next door. This place had belonged to G.A.R.M. and they'd had a nasty tendency to make places accessible to themselves that the occupants thought they'd securely locked up. So he wasn't surprised to find a well hidden door about half way down the wall. He popped it open and found himself smiling at Dearka's shocked face.

 

“What the . . . ?”

 

“Do you know where we are in the colony?” Kira asked quietly.

 

Yzak, sitting in the most comfortable looking chair in the room, didn't need a second hint. “Don't tell me, we're directly below G.A.R.M.”

 

When Kira nodded, they both nearly spit.

 

“I wonder if our hosts have any idea where they are.” Dearka eyed the formerly hidden door thoughtfully

 

“I would doubt it,” Yzak said slowly. “Even if they've been in the colony's computer system, and I would be shocked if they haven't, all it would tell them was that the place was a research facility and assisted in development of techniques used to do the genetic splicing needed to produce stable Coordinator children.”

 

A very faint whisper of sound caught Kira's ear and he turned to find Duo Maxwell just inside the hallway door, eyeing the new door in the wall with clear interest. The sound he'd heard had probably come when the other had let his shoulder lean into the wall by the door. It somewhat concerned Kira that he hadn't heard him before that. The other pilot was damn light on his feet.

 

“Now that's something I've not seen in any of these rooms before.” Maxwell remarked brightly.

 

“You should take a closer look,” Kira decided to be up front here and see what information he could jar loose in return. “This site belonged to a research facility once. They had a very respectable front and were corrupt as ancient sin behind it. There is very little here that you should take at face value. They worked in human genetics and they had no morals when it came to where or how they got the ones they wanted. Have you found a door into the facility proper yet?”

 

“Oh yeah,” Maxwell nodded grimly. “Nobody wants to go there though. Real bad feelings in that place. Poor Q-bean passed out right in the doorway it was so nasty. Not even Heero's been willin' to go in there and he's as immune to that shit as we get.”

 

The Deathscythe pilot gave the new door another long look. “I'll do some checkin' around again. Wouldn't want any surprises now.”

 

“That's not a bad idea,” Kira told him soberly. “Just be careful of what you find. Mendel Colony was dedicated to genetic research in many forms and G.A.R.M. wasn't the only place respectable on the outside and rotted on the in. I wouldn't touch any bottles or test tubes if I were you. And I definitely would back out fast if I found one of the old embryo storage facilities.”

 

“Whoa, musta been a real charmin' place in its heyday!” The sarcasm was heavy in the voice. “Ya really know how to kill a guy's sense of adventure and exploration.”

 

“Of all the places in this space-time you could explore, this is the last one I'd recommend,” Kira told him with bitter honesty.

 

“Riiiiiight,” Duo drawled. “I think maybe we should find something else to talk about.”

 

“That would be fine with me. Did you have something in mind?”

 

“Actually, yeah, I did.” All humor was suddenly gone from the other man's face. “There's something you three need to know a bit about since it seems you're gonna be sharing a common wall with us.”

 

Long before Maxwell was finished all three of them were almost sick to their stomachs. One did not do things like this to people! Then Kira gave a few seconds consideration to just where they were standing and the ironic correctness of it all just made him want to bang his head on the wall. They managed to thank him for his warning though and then Kira and Dearka went back to the bay together to get everything they were going to need in one trip.

 

They ate ration bars from the mobile suit's stores, bathed and went to bed, leaving the door between the rooms open. Kira found sleep elusive though. The sound effects Duo had had the courtesy to warn them about were actually quite muted, indicating the soundproofing was of rather good quality. Only once did he hear anything at all clearly. He would, though, have laid reasonable money on the voice screaming Heero Yuy's name being Duo Maxwell's.

 

 

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