Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Idle Hands ❯ One ( Chapter 1 )

One

"They found another ten," Quatre muttered dryly as he moved into their tent.

Duo considered the words with interest as his lover moved over to kiss him, then smiled up at the...semi-blond.

A waft of cigarette smoke floated toward them on the wind, and Quatre turned to stare over his shoulder at the edge of the tent intently.

"That is so not me," Trowa informed the man almost irritably as he moved in himself. "I'd totally have started and been happy with it, but..."

"But I'm not kissing a fuckin' ashtray," Blake agreed dryly. He smiled at Duo and Quatre as he ran a hand through his hair—there was enough sweat in that that the boy both wiped his hand off...and left hair standing.

Trowa grinned at the words, looking to Duo with interest.

"Why are you out here?" Duo demanded, finally lowering his legs. He'd been sitting back with his legs crossed on top of the table...and the maps, oops.

"You better not start smoking," Quatre informed Trowa seriously.

"Quatre, Quatre, Quatre," Trowa moved around the table and up to the guy's back. Duo started to sit up faster as Trowa pulled the other to his chest by arms around the waist...and started whispering in his ear.

Oh. That game.

Heero had some annoying tendencies...which included trying to entice Trowa into his and Matty's bed. Duo didn't know if he was even serious about it, but he'd done it several times. Those instances had bled into Trowa making free with Quatre and Jinli—though the latter was a total game.

Duo avoided meeting eyes as he looked around the pair to Blake. The young man had pulled a water-bottle from the cooler and had it pressed to his forehead.

"What?" Blake asked, blinking at Duo.

"What are you doing out here?" he repeated his earlier question as he patted down his pockets. He had a black vest over his t-shirt that was either to help keep him cooler or Kevlar. He hadn't decided what the logic would be if he were asked.

"Oh," Blake smiled, moving around to kick the chair beside Duo over. He'd had the fortunate instance of finding a very bright frog on the chair he'd chosen to sit on a few days before. One of the men from the camp had squawked at him not to touch it and went to gather a pair of gloves to do it. He'd lectured Blake about the thing the entire time he carefully took the creature out of the camp.

The kid had followed him to where he put the frog down and taken a ton of pictures with his phone from a safe distance. Duo would have been disgusted by the lecture, but Blake had this thing...he liked learning.

He was an odd kid.

Duo considered the floor as the guy picked the chair back up, then raised his eyebrows.

"What?" Blake muttered, sitting down. "Tisler was telling me all sorts of stuff about the bugs and things out here," he gestured toward the ground. "I don't want to become intimate with anything but Trowa."

Trowa was distracted from his game of trying to annoy Duo by his name and the word 'intimate' in close proximity, grinning at Blake.

"He's annoying," Quatre whispered, leaning down to kiss Duo again. "Keep your feet off the maps."

"You're a mother hen," Duo informed the guy happily, kissing him again. "I can vouch that you're not a woman, but you're really trying to prove me wrong."

Blake laughed at that.

"So," Duo pulled away to raise his eyebrows at the guy. He had forgotten the other was there—which was talent.

"What?" Blake gave him the same curious look that he had before.

Duo dropped his hands to his lap in exasperation.

"Oh!" Blake jumped slightly and laughed. "Matty wanted to see more frogs and stuff...so I just hid in Trowa's pocket when he got in the humvee."

Trowa rolled his eyes for the rest of their benefit. "For some reason, no one pointed out to me that he was in the damn thing with us."

"How did you...miss it?" Duo asked skeptically.

"I got in and was talking to the colonel," he gestured off toward Blake's new teacher. "People got in behind me, and were giving me nervous looks...but no one asked why he was in the machine."

"That happens when you tear peoples' throats out," Quatre informed him...and it sounded like he was letting Trowa know something he may not have.

Trowa's eyes narrowed.

The thing was that it was his fault. He'd started it off by snarling at the MP who were trying to do what they did to anyone they found in the hall after hours. He'd kept it up by taking Blake to a few meetings he shouldn't have been at. He outright refused to ask Blake to do the espousal thing with him...but that was a different topic. If anyone questioned Blake's right to stand at his side, they got the snarl or the look.

Duo'd gotten the look, and it was creepy. Trowa's ability to suspend his emotions entirely was bad enough without his ability to pick and choose which ones he wanted to feel. Beyond that, Duo knew that Trowa was intelligent...but the look showed no signs of humanity.

At least with the snarl you knew what to expect.

Things had gotten...interesting...after Duo'd finally lined up the information he'd wanted to from Illicit. He'd been having fun with Qing anyway, so he hadn't minded waiting for the various people to get him the lists he'd wanted. Actually, the day he'd left it—which was the day after he'd thought Jaden was attacking Clint—he'd also taken back a request for dismissal from Hoxha and the permit papers for the mercenary stuff.

He'd spent the first couple nights with Quatre in a different room than the others. His space-heart had needed to re-bond, because he'd really been about to tear Duo's eyes out for his evident stunt. Trowa and Blake had like, magically became a known couple about then, too. It went beyond them screwing...actually back to the conversation he'd had with Trowa before the man went for Heavyarms. Heero and Matty hadn't changed overly much, but Wufei's cuddling with Trowa hadn't entirely lessened.

All the rest of them but Heero had lost their damn minds. Matty was outright refusing to step into Brazil, though that determination was being shaken by curiosity. Colonel Tisler was stationed at the base-camp, and was telling Blake all about the jungle whenever he'd get the chance. Blake would bring phone-fulls of pictures back to base. He'd had a heartbreaking moment when he realized his memory was full, though. He'd had to delete some of those pictures...though in the end Trowa'd stepped in and saved his lover the agonizing choice of missing pictures or having to delete them...by transferring them all to his laptop.

He had one of the most expensive laptops around, networked so deeply with the military's grid that if you killed his it'd probably cause permanent damage to something...the connections to the highest authorities around...and he put a few gigs of pictures onto it so his lover was happy.

Duo knew he'd have done the exact same thing if Quatre were in that sort of need...but just thinking of the sheer...power...in the damn machine and having watched Blake agonize...

Duo ran a hand through his own hair, sighing. There was nothing to be done about it. He was just grateful the pair didn't stare at each other longingly across a room or something.

Oh no, Blake didn't long, he plotted.

Duo considered the younger man's face without bringing attention to himself. Trowa had taken to strutting again, and Blake would just watch him. He'd follow him with his eyes, and every now and again something would reach his mouth—which was the water-bottle today...he had a cute mouth, the bow thing...

And, of course, Trowa had bruises. Little ones almost randomly across his arms, back, and chest...and his throat. He wasn't going shirtless so who knew how far down the youth's oral fixation went.

Duo realized he was still watching the kid's mouth and pulled his eyes away. The guy'd been...uh...the top of the water-bottle...it'd been distracting, and if anyone saw him watching...

Trowa smirked at him.

Ah hell.

Duo sighed to himself and looked back to the younger man. "You like being watched?"

Quatre smacked a hand to his face as Blake laughed in a naughty way that suggested Duo hadn't been as discreet as he'd assumed he was being.

The colonel moved up to the edge of the tent to look around at them—for Blake, actually. Blake bounced up, then bounced over to greet the man...who evidently had found something specifically to interest the youth. Blake squeaked and jumped back from the man's hands...and the man started laughing.

- -

Matty moved around the feet of Demigod for probably the hundredth time. He had his left fingertips touching the machine...and a real want of finding blue face-paint and dragging Quatre through the base. There were the soldiers that Quatre had kept gravitating to before when he'd been...off. Those tended to wander around with him, but as close as the base was to Rabid's camp...it bothered Matty.

Jaden had taken him because he hadn't wanted Ranger to get Matty—and while Matty knew Ranger was in prison on 27, he couldn't help being antsy when faced with a soldier he hadn't seen before.

If Blake would stay at the base, it would be easier. They could wander around together and find the different departments of the base—but Colonel Tisler liked telling them about the different animals or insects around. His favorites were the grisly stories about a spider bite leading to amputation, or death by toxin three years later...and they found a lot of the things around the base-camp.

"You know you're going to go with him in the end," Heero noted, climbing out of the hole in Demigod's back he'd been perched in for a half hour. "So why don't you give over?"

"Because I didn't want to go to that camp in Brazil," Matty retorted. "They're at the camp."

"Which is a literal camp now instead of a compound," Heero retorted. "You're bored out of your mind, and I don't want you going back to LA, come on," he leaned forward to kiss Matty. "Just take the next humvee that goes."

Matty frowned up at him a moment, then looked around again. The idea of a random humvee full of soldiers made him nervous, but he didn't want to dive into that nonsense when Heero was already worried about him.

"Hey, Jin," Heero muttered as the Asian man moved up to them.

"Yo," Jinli returned, considering Heero a moment, then gesturing toward the main hall over his shoulder as he looked to Matty. "I just watched you wander around that machine for a good quarter of a mile," he added. "And it melted my brain. Come on."

"Come on?" Matty retorted, then blinked when the man pulled at his forearm and nodded once to Heero.

Matty didn't properly appreciate that Heero turned back to the machine without further comment.

"We found a gym," Wufei noted happily, moving from the wall to join the pair of them. "So we're going to use it."

"It's only obvious on every map we come across," Matty retorted, gesturing at an emergency exit map on the wall.

"Don't even pretend that we're talking about the obvious thing," Wufei retorted happily. He'd been recovering his humor, and was to the point that he used the nebulizer when he got up and didn't usually need it again after that.

"We don't know why you don't want to go into Brazil," Jinli added happily, "but we've been thinking..."

"...About some stuff Duo was saying," Wufei clarified a bit.

"About training and stuff," Jinli agreed.

"We're thinking that if you really don't want to go into Brazil..."

"There should be at least some points where there's someone here who can train you."

"I will when I'm here, or Jin," Wufei indicated the other. "And Trowa can..."

"I guess Quatre can't," Jin added, resting the fingertips over his heart as he went on. "But he's supposed to be teaching you that space-heart stuff, right?"

"But we figure Duo'll be game," Wufei agreed.

"So we were looking for somewhere more private with less random soldiers," Jin gestured at a group of men in a lounge.

"And this place has the set-up like our base—the officer's area."

"So we figured out how to get to it and why it's covered in dust," Jinli indicated a set of stairs in front of them.

"It doesn't have an elevator," Wufei agreed.

Matty grinned at that, nodding his agreement. He wasn't entirely sure about the training part, but the pair of them finishing each other's sentences was funny. It was one of the changes that had started since Wufei'd gotten better. He'd run around at random with Jin because Heero'd taken over Demigod's repair.

Between the pair of them, they probably had the base memorized.

"I was just thinking," Wufei started.

"We had this thought," Jin also started, then frowned at Wufei, who was frowning back at him.

"It's just," Wufei tried again.

"Wufei thinks..." Jinli had the same timing.

"Just let me say it," Wufei grumped.

"It doesn't matter who says it," Jinli retorted.

"Well, I'm saying it," Wufei informed him. "If you can rebuild your self-confidence..."

"If you know you have a secondary option," Jin was saying at the same time.

They glared at each other again.

Matty laughed at that, starting up the stairs. He imagined there was a level of tact Wufei was trying to employ, and chances were that Jin thought it was easier just to say the facts...or maybe the other way around.

"Proper training might help you deal with the phobia," Wufei said quickly.

"Why do you have to call it a phobia!" Jinli was offended, evidently, for Matty. "You could have just noted that if the situation requires it..."

"He can get away, probably," Wufei retorted, giving Matty a brief look. "Trowa works with him on that sometimes...but you see him look at soldiers when they come up! He's always watching what they'll do!"

Jinli huffed at him, glancing at Matty.

"It's okay," Matty reassured the man. "It is a phobia...it was Ranger who wanted to grab me, not Rabid."

"Gerrange," they both corrected easily.

Matty grinned slightly at that and slid his card into the reader for the door-lock.

"So we'll all go round-robin on teaching you," Wufei shrugged as they pushed into a tall room.

There were like, twenty-foot tall tinted windows on the outer wall, and the lights were all off—the shape of the top of the windows was vaguely amusing to Matty, because from the outside, those windows formed a sort of building center-piece. Aside from the wall the windows were on, the walls were lined with seven foot mirrors. There was workout equipment to one side, and a large area with mats...and a whole lot of dark empty space up to the ceiling. The ceiling slanted forward to reach the height of the outer window, though the tips of the windows protruded from the main structure. There were pipes up there...and pockets of utter blackness highlighted by the light that did shine in.

"Well," Matty said in a quiet voice as he considered the area. "I guess we know where my next nightmare is going to take place."

"It's just those pockets, honey," Jinli declared in a flamboyantly-gay sort of voice, flicking his wrist, "they make your rumpus look bumpus."

Matty started laughing.

Wufei groaned.

- -

"Up...up...higher!"

Heero yawned as he moved into the gym area. Wufei's was the only voice he could hear, but he knew Matty had taken off with he and Jinli. Jin had shown up again in the hanger, asking if Heero wanted any help.

He blinked as he stopped, considering the slow motion kick he was watching.

"Heero." Wufei caught Matty's ankle as he said it, his eyes flicking to him.

Unfortunately, Matty didn't have the agility training to counterbalance being grabbed in the unfamiliar angle, and the youth croaked a protest.

"Oops!" Wufei laughed, moving the leg down...it had been nearly at his face.

"Well, he didn't hurt himself," Heero noted, considering his fallen boyfriend.

Matty smiled up at him, righting himself so he could sit on his rear and run a hand through his sweaty hair.

"You okay?" Heero muttered, moving closer to sit next to him.

"Just sore," Matty smiled slightly, leaning up to kiss Heero briefly. "And sweaty," he added, wiping at his face again irritably.

"He's doing good," Wufei noted happily. "I decided to touch back on basics with him and realized the only people who know basics are the ones who were trained them."

"It was an epiphany," Matty noted, starting to laugh a little. "So that's what we started doing, and then I pointed out that I'd seen him kick higher than my head with power behind it."

"And he pointed out how fucking lethal he is, didn't he?" Heero asked dryly, focusing on his friend.

"Yes, I did," Wufei retorted. "Funny thing, the kid thinks it's cool."

"You did not just call me a kid," Matty noted, looking to him sharply. "I know you did not..."

"It's coming up on my birthday, kid," Wufei retorted. "Give me a break."

"What?" Matty asked blankly as he thought. "What is today?"

"The fourteenth," Wufei returned easily. "My birthday is the sixteenth."

"See, that's his oh-so-subtle warning to me," Heero informed his boyfriend happily, "to remind the others so no one forgets."

Wufei smirked at him.

"And you'll be twenty-three?" Matty asked curiously.

"Yep," Wufei smirked more. "I'm the oldest."

"Since my bio-signs don't suggest my birthday was early in the year," Heero agreed.

"Yes, which still puts you a year behind me," Wufei's tone was pointed enough that Matty realized this wasn't the first time they'd had this conversation.

Heero rolled his eyes and looked back to Matty. "They projected me to be about fifteen right-off, no hesitation at all."

"Was there some?" Matty thought back. "With who?"

"Trowa, actually," Wufei shrugged. "He's probably closer to twenty-four. He'll never admit it, though."

"He was really bothered about it," Heero added. "When they were doing the tests and stuff for me and Duo it was just blatant fifteen. For him it was a kind of waffling. He was at the end of fifteen at the earliest...and probably a full-on sixteen. Whoever was doing it, though, muddied it up so bad that he was emotionally bothered by it. He wouldn't decide what he thought for almost a month, and by that point I really think he was just..."

"He's admitted he just wanted to say a firm age when he was at that point," Wufei noted. "He said something about it...and you and Duo had no hesitations, if you think back. He just grabbed it and ran with it."

"I'm just curious why...that...Odin?" Matty glanced at Wufei briefly. "Why didn't he know your birth-date?"

Heero shrugged. "He might have. For what we were doing, it wasn't important. I didn't exactly play with a lot of other kids—the ones I did play with were like me. Birthdays were unimportant to us."

"What happened to them?" Matty asked blankly.

Heero shrugged indifferently. It had never been important to know, and he didn't remember what names they had anyway.

"We don't like talking about our pasts much," Wufei noted, his eyes wandering to the huge windows. "None of us. We were all fucked in the head, that's how we got pulled into this bullshit to begin with."

Matty sighed, wanting very much to lay on Heero. He was covered in sweat, though, and the notion didn't seem very sound.

"Jin needs to go home," Wufei noted quietly, still staring out the window. "I promised him that we'd go see everyone when we mopped this mess up..." he gestured toward the main of the base without looking around. "But we just made a bigger mess..." he sighed heavily and dropped backwards to stare up at the far-distant ceiling. "Since I promised him, we're going to go all over L-5."

Heero closed his eyes.

"It was...the memorial, wasn't it?" Matty hazarded. "The memorial was the issue?"

"Matty," Wufei said in a distant sort of tone. "My entire family disappeared, and I was right there...I saw it happen. I got to go in and talk to my mom...to Nataku's dad...to...so many people I'd known...and then poof," he gestured in front of himself like a ball exploding. "That was all there was to it."

Matty looked up to Heero uncertainly.

"All of fucking space is the issue," Wufei noted, pushing himself up to glower at the younger male. He grinned, though, looking to Heero. "I made him forget I called him kid."

The younger male guffawed, swatting at Wufei's knee.

"Hey," Jinli muttered, bouncing happily into the room. "Trowa'n'em are almost in...like ten more minutes."

"Ooh," Matty tried to bounce up, but his muscles interrupted that by nearly tripping him. He laughed a little as Heero caught him by the hands, pushing off of those. "Wow..."

"You got a real workout," Jinli noted happily. "I'm sure your abdomen is in fine shape and all...but the rest of you..."

Heero laughed at that, not horribly surprised. He smacked Jinli's legs as Matty gave him a disbelieving look.

"Well, I mean...I gathered bits here and there," Jinli noted happily. "You totally like, throw Heero around, don't you?"

"What?" Matty demanded, embarrassment striking hard and fast as he looked down to his boyfriend. He was relieved to see Heero's own mild dismay.

"You forget about that?" Wufei asked pointedly, indicating the teen. "For all that I'd love my lover to throw me on the bed and attempt to exhaust me..."

"Shut-up!" Heero protested, flustered as he jumped at Wufei.

Wufei started laughing delightedly...and Jinli yanked Matty back.

The confused welter of emotions subsided slightly as Matty nearly fell over at the tug. His legs didn't seem able to support him properly...but that wasn't all there was to blink at.

Heero and Wufei were fighting.

It'd been an age since Heero'd properly sparred with Wufei. They normally had fun doing it, but Wufei'd been worked up by practicing with Matty. His endorphins were already in full effect...which in turn flushed Heero's adrenaline.

They moved across the mats, Heero giving ground willingly for now. He had to get into his proper flow before he could throw the Chinese man down...

"Come on," Jinli muttered, grabbing Matty around the waist and moving back toward the wall. "This has the look of a match to it..."

"And they're both trained," Matty noted quietly, considering his lover. The man obviously wasn't warmed up, but aside from that he wasn't doing bad at all.

"Oh!" Jinli flinched hard...as Wufei ducked a kick that would have hurt.

Wufei started laughing.

- -

Trowa moved into the officer's gym curiously, considering the monstrous windows before noticing the mirrors. He'd heard this place had existed, but hadn't found it himself. Quatre had been telling him which directions to take on the halls.

"Hey!" Jinli greeted him happily, looking back to...the spectacle.

Wufei and Heero were fighting...or sparring. It was hard to tell which, really. Their t-shirts were thrown haphazardly on the mats in a way that made it obvious they'd been on at some point...and other than that...

Heero struck hard at Wufei's face, and Wufei blocked the motion...but missed the under hand one that followed, cursing vehemently as he turned away from the other male...his eyes were absolutely sparkling.

"They seem to be just getting started," Matty noted from where he was collapsed against one of the mirrors. "Where is everyone?"

"I'm here...hot-damn," Blake moved around Trowa with interest as he watched the two men exchanging a volley of kicks.

"You have no idea," Matty snickered. "Wufei was training me, and..." His cheeks flushed.

"I was just pointing out that your core-strength is probably in fine shape," Jinli noted nonchalantly.

Trowa snickered at that as Matty gave Blake a mildly upset look.

"I should work on my core strength, huh?" Blake muttered, dropping down next to his friend with a wicked grin.

"Sorry," Trowa noted, leaning against the wall beside him. "I can't help but take over."

Heero laughed a delightedly wicked laugh as he flipped backwards from Wufei, and Duo moved into the room with Quatre, giving the pair an interested look.

"Oh, so we're doing this again," Quatre grumbled.

"I'll take ya on," Trowa noted, meeting his eyes with a grin.

"Like I want to fight you," Quatre snapped back.

"I've been trying to annoy you," Trowa argued back. "Why do you think I keep grabbing you? Shit, I should start grabbing Duo, I'd get a rise for that, I'm sure."

"Even if it was only mine," Duo retorted.

Trowa shrugged a vague agreement to that...it was, after all, a given.

- -

"So they found ten more today," Quatre summed up to his friends and the various other leaders. It included Une by vid. "Out of those ten, five of them were claiming it was Deathscythe, not Wing Gundam...which probably means they saw the footage when Deathscythe's shield first shut down. Three of the rest were far too vague—like, it could have been a Leo or something just as well as a gundam. The last two had both seen a gundam, but one wasn't sure how long ago it'd been, and the other saw some of the practice runs before we got down here."

"So a fat wad of nothing," Trowa grumped, rocking back in his seat. "We took some more satellite pictures earlier. They're being compiled for printing downstairs. We'll get that looked at as soon as we can, but the cameraman didn't see anything that particularly got his attention." He shoved himself up, grabbing his laptop and taking it around to the projector board. "We have no news on...uh..." he blinked.

A titter went through the crowd, because there was a very large frog looking back at them from Trowa's desktop. It was a bright frog.

"Sorry," Trowa muttered, accessing his desktop images...to see a bunch more of those sort of pictures.

Duo snickered.

"My...boyfriend...has been..." Trowa didn't bother to finish the sentence as he started navigating through folders.

The rush that went through the room at 'boyfriend' was startled and interested. Trowa'd been decidedly straight before he decided Matty was cute.

Wufei rubbed at the bridge of his nose. He'd gotten similar reactions when he noted his espoused was on hand. The questions he'd gotten had been quiet and respectful...it was a fairly widely known fact that Wufei...had...been straight. Noting that it was his childhood best friend had made several women almost swoon at him. He was pretty sure he'd have gone into a sugar-coma if what he'd done was really as sweet as all that, though.

It was damn irritating to be known as espoused, because women wouldn't follow him home on accident...and even less on purpose.

He'd have to remedy that, he just hadn't figured out how yet.

"You know what," Trowa muttered. "We can deal with the damn frog." He canceled out of the desktop options and opened his main file. "He'll be thrilled, I'm sure...anyway, here's our current set-up." A satellite map appeared on the screen with a straggled octagon around it. "This is what we've held onto...and this," he clicked a button and a second set of lines appeared. "This is what Illicit is holding...they don't have as much weaponry as they'd like, I think. I attempted to get ahold of President Timorre...their supreme ruler...but he was out on patrols with his men."

Heero gave Trowa a severely level look, but his dislike of the man wasn't the sort that led to discrediting him. He just wanted to beat his face in or something.

"Are we really going to give that ship supplies?" one of the men in the room asked blankly. "They defected from the defectors...doesn't that make them unreliable entirely? At least the ones who stayed...."

"Stop talking before you make a fool of yourself," Trowa suggested, looking around until he found the guy. "President Timorre was against all the methods of Gerrange from the start, but Gerrange had the reins and Gerrange's advisors ignored him. The president could evidently tell how low stores were getting on the base, and probably knew Gerrange was intending to start the raids. I'm almost certain that was why he defected from them."

This was the agreed upon theory they all decided to throw the others. They knew that Timorre had left because he was tired of dealing with the mad-man at the helm. He'd left in a way that actually made this protester sound in the know...but they needed Timorre's men to hold those towns they did have, and that meant getting their permits certified. They could all talk a good game when they wanted to, so they'd agreed on what image to give people. Trowa's position as spy extraordinaire gave him a good foothold of credibility to announce he was sure why someone he didn't know had done what they had...so the comment passed un-challenged.

"At any rate, I was looking at our lines today, and considering what the...uh...man...from Illicit was telling me—I met up with one of their councilmen around noon. We supped over cold tea and biscuits."

Duo snorted.

Trowa snickered, glancing up at him—whatever the hell he was looking at on his screen distracted him again. The cold tea and cookies thing was him playing for time. "Huh."

"What?" Wufei asked. "What popped up?"

"A stiffy, shut up."

Wufei snickered as other people in the room exchanged looks.

"Apologies, Une," Duo called over to her screen. "Sometimes our decorum escapes us."

Trowa actually laughed at that, looking up to Duo to smile brightly at him...and went back to whatever he was doing.

"Uh...right," Heero stood. "I'll do my bit, then. The part for Demigod was installed, but I've been running through the schematics, and am pretty sure I can install a failsafe to keep the machine under proper control..."

Wufei sighed and stood, moving around to Trowa. He'd discussed Demigod with Heero, and though it was considered his suit, everyone knew Heero was taking care of the fixes.

Trowa held up a finger without looking around, then shook his head and started typing.

"What?" Wufei demanded quietly. "What is it?"

"Evidently," Trowa said quietly, "Gerrange and his lot have started to regroup."

Wufei leaned forward to the map that was loading on the screen—the speed meant that it was a live feed from the satellite...and it showed...

"We got it," Trowa said firmly, looking up to Duo, Quatre, and Heero. "We got it...let's go."

The room fell deathly silent.

"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your time," Duo noted, pushing himself up. "However, it seems that we're needed elsewise, and will have to give your our updates later."

There was polite applause from some quarters, but Trowa was ripping cords from his machine and Quatre had pulled out his phone. Une disconnected her line wordlessly...and the five former pilots started toward the hanger.

"We'll get Jinli to stay with the boys," Quatre noted as he typed on the thing. "I'll get a reading on a few more to post outside their rooms...and we can pile into a humvee...well," he glanced up, "Deathscythe and Heavyarms...but..."

"Demigod should be ready by tomorrow," Heero noted. "If I can get someone to run diagnostics and stuff...we could take it now, but there hasn't been any testing done."

"I'd rather not have it short out on me in field again," Wufei noted dryly. "I think Heavyarms and Deathscythe will do alright."

"You could like...pilot a Leo," Quatre noted happily.

"And you could bend over and let Trowa take you," Wufei retorted.

Quatre snickered at that.

"I need to get ahold of Timorre," Trowa noted, looking up and around. He obviously hadn't been listening to them, and glanced at Heero briefly. He came to whatever decision he'd been considering and sighed as he passed Wufei his laptop before pulling out his phone. "I'll get Matty to call him. That's the only way anyone will get through."

"Bastard-say-what?" Heero asked curiously.

"You heard me ass-wipe," Trowa retorted, typing.

"You're not serious, are you?" Heero snapped. "Make Duo do it...he can call Rin and..."

"I'm having Matty do it, and you're getting over it, because you called me a bastard."

Heero huffed at him.