Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Survival ❯ Starter Mix: Sweet or Sour? ( Chapter 12 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Starter Mix: Sweet or Sour?

Mm… Okay, again to answer some questions.

What do you mean “Zechs is still a problem for me”? Just the lack of explanation? Heero has his Zero theory… And I'm not sure if that is or isn't correct, yet. For all that Duo keeps telling people that Zechs is a flaming psychopath, I severely doubt it. I'd like to note that he is taking responsibility for his actions with Libra… I'm pretty sure he took over the Earth-Sphere because he didn't think the Alliance would be able to cope. I'm not gonna say he's a great person… I think he still has some major issues, and I get the feeling that he's more or less stopped caring about the means so much as the end result… which has a way of getting messy. There's a reason it occurred to both Heero and Dorothy that they don't actually know what Zechs wants with the pilots anymore. However, the fact is that everyone has their own opinions, and their own plans that they won't risk trashing by stopping their careful tip-toe around Milliardo's aforementioned issues… if that's what they actually are instead of careful plans of his own.

Thank you all for all the interest, I'll do my best to keep your attention.

May 6th 197 - Saturday - Brussels

Relena knocked on the open door with one knuckle before leaning into the dark room. “Anyone here?” she asked quietly. It didn't look like it, but the door was open…

“Just working on wrecking my eyes,” someone muttered wryly. “One sec…” She heard some rustling of cloth and the squeak of a chair before the lights switched on. Jake stood, again in jeans and a t-shirt, blinking at her. “Oh, hey… Um,” he picked a pile of papers up off a chair and dropped it on the floor. “Come on in. What's up?”

“Um… I was hoping you could crunch those numbers for me?”

“Oh, yeah.” He smiled and held out his hand for the folder. “Sorry, it's just the end of the day for me, so I'm not thinking too well.”

Relena smiled as she passed it to him. It was only two in the afternoon, but Dorothy had told her about the odd hours that Jake kept. “Just, whenever you can get to it. Thank-you, again.”

He yawned as he flipped through the papers. “It's not a problem, or I wouldn't have offered… I'll do it once I get back up.” He glanced over at a clock. “Will you still be here at eight, or no?”

“I may or may not be in my office, but I keep rooms on base, so you can just call my cell if you can't find me.”

He blinked at her. “So you wouldn't want me to just leave it on your desk?”

She offered him a somewhat sheepish look. “I'm trying to get the details all figured out before my brother finds out what I've been up to the past couple days.”

“Ah… well, alright then.” He closed the folder and grinned at her. “My lips are sealed.” He sat down on the chair he'd vacated for her and started to untie his boots. “I'll do it first thing once I wake up, and come find you.” At her confused look, he jerked his thumb over his shoulder at another door. “I already had the space to myself, so I had a bed put back in there. I like having all my stuff together, less places to look if I lose something.”

“That's… convenient.” She liked the suite of rooms that Milliardo had given her, but she spent time in them so rarely, and she always seemed to leave something important in them, so she ended up walking the breadth of the base to fetch things several times a day. Milliardo worked out of his rooms, but she liked having her office in the middle of everything.

“I like to think so,” he agreed as he pulled his foot out of his second boot… and gave her a pointed look.

She flushed, and headed for the door. “Sorry, I don't seem to be thinking. I'll see you later.”

“Later,” he agreed amiably enough as she shut the door behind herself…. And rested her back against it. Stupid… Invading his personal space, not taking a hint… She shook her head and walked briskly back to Dorothy's office. Where are my manners?

***

May 7th 197 - Sunday - Ankara, Turkey

Heero stared at the ceiling for a while after he woke up, considering his options. He was fairly sure that none of his roommates were a danger to him, but that didn't mean he felt comfortable with them there. In the end, he had settled into a light sleep on a top bunk, which rattled fiercely even when he did his best to climb it quietly. He had knives strapped to the insides of his wrists and with the sheaths loose, so he could pull them out quickly if a fight were to start. Before he could get a gun, he'd need an I.D. that said he was old enough to carry one, and preferably, he could get a carry permit from whoever he got the I.D. from. He could make up his own, but he trusted a professional's work in actual papers more than his own.

He might be able to steal one… but then it would be reported missing, and any bullets found unaccounted for anywhere could be matched up to that gun, and he could be tracked that way…

He really didn't want a registered gun. Papers that said it was registered, but no actual registration. Not being actively hunted was nice, he wasn't about to jeopardize his position, not when he couldn't even walk very fast.

Quatre wasn't even there… Quatre had been able to still run fairly fast even while carrying him; he wasn't sure if that was a testament to the blonde's strength or his own lack of build. But now Quatre was gone, and he had no leads, no idea where to even start looking for his friend… for his friend's body…

He shook his head and focused back on what he could do; sinking into a depression would get him nothing. Wufei had caught a train to Ankara, and Heero had managed to hitchhike there with a trucker and actually arrived in the city about the same time the train was due in…. but had no idea where the station was. By the time he managed to find it, it was four hours later, and he knew better than to think the Chinese man might have stayed there that long. He saw no sign of the searchers he had come across in Beirut… which could mean a couple different things.

The most obvious was that they had caught him and now had no reason to be searching. He was fairly sure that they would have flown at least a couple of their men to Ankara so they would arrive before Wufei. On the other hand, Wufei might have hopped the train at some earlier point, and foiled all their searches… hopped the train and been caught anyhow… or he might have managed to come here and slip past his pursuers some other way still.

He wasn't about to underestimate the other gundam pilot.

Still, his tardiness and lack of assumptions about the Chinese man meant he had no leads, which meant he was going to have to do something he'd been trying to avoid. He'd need get into the train station records, see whether or not he'd gotten off as scheduled at Ankara.

Which meant hacking into the database.

He could try to sneak in, but quite frankly the facility wasn't large, and all the employees knew each other… and that meant either making a very good friend very quickly, or pushing his luck to see how long it was before security broke down the door, which was likely to be long before he figured out an ID and password.

He wasn't terribly good at making friends.

He wasn't terribly good at running, these days.

He rolled over on one side to look over the youth hostel room. The shower was down the hall, and he needed to take one, before it got crowded and someone could wonder about his scars. He sat up and opened his bag to get his towel… and found himself staring at the laptop the Sronas had given him.

It would barely be a blip on the radar… and he could do it fast enough that a trace couldn't catch…

…but he'd thought that before too.

Sighing, he shoved his things into a locker and climbed down, making sure he had his key before leaving. During the war, the idea that someone could scare superstition into him would have seemed preposterous, but now there was that gnawing fear that if he started treading the net as arrogantly as he used to, he would find soldiers chasing him. He was almost home free as he was now, he did not need Zechs on his tail again…

No one was in any of the shower stalls; it was four in the morning local time, after all. Just the same, he was careful to hang his clothes over the door so that they wouldn't get terribly wet or drop to the other side while he enjoyed the hot water. They would be disgustingly damp, but he had too many scars for his age, and there was always the chance that someone else might have had the same idea of bathing before any one else could disturb them.

It's not really so bad, he told himself as he leaned forward to let the water run down his back, then cranked up the heat. It really felt amazingly good… that was the thing he loved about Earth; no water restrictions. He could stand here in the water until he used up everything in the boiler, which might mean over an hour, in a place so big as this… and it was no hassle, no worry. He was technically in a desert, but the sea was not far, and desalinization was a cheap process. The heat he could soak up into his body made his leg more limber. He stretched it several times a day and rested whenever he could, but hot water just… soothed. And, despite the more logical part of his brain, he had a feeling he'd need that extra mobility today.

***

Amsterdam

Duo opened his door, yawning… and blinked at the sticky notes stuck to it. There were three of them…. And the odd thing wasn't so much the number, but that they were different colors. Different colors meant different people…

…and they were all repair jobs?

He grinned broadly as he took them down, reading them through… One was near the church. If he ran, he could probably get it done before he was due to pick up Amos and bring him back to the den to wash. He was already dressed, and he momentarily checked himself over for anything particularly discriminating about him before ducking into his room to grab his coat and hat; it was the one he'd had when he met G, when he started up with the Sweepers. It didn't have any sort of marking, he'd had it for a while before he snuck onboard the ship, but it had a sort of sentimental value, and meaning to him if he was going to be fixing something. He was fond of symbolism.

He had fixed the vending machine for his boss the night before last… and he already had three jobs on recommends. This wasn't any kind of solid work, the same way Tate paid him under the table, so there were no real risks implied… especially since every week since the war, people thought less and less about the old soldiers and more about how to make rent or feed their kids. And in such a mechanized, old city as this one, cheap, reliable repair work was more than enough to turn a blind eye for your mother's own murderer, let alone some sixteen-year-old punk.

Why didn't I think of this before?

He waved and kept running when people tried to catch his attention; he could explain when he came back for wash-up, if they didn't already know. It wasn't as if people had waltzed in to put their own work to his bedroom door, they'd dropped it off up front and who knew who'd gone and stuck them up there for him.

Amos was waiting on the stoop of the church for him, and he motioned for him to join him - the boy might learn something from watching, after all - before he caught sight of Cal. He sharply motioned for the kid to wait, and watched the older man warily.

The blonde crossed his arms. “Where's my girl?”

“Probably eating, right now,” he noted.

“I haven't seen her in two weeks,” he returned just as coolly, his eyes steady.

“Yeah, that's the funny thing,” he started, shoving his hands in his coat, mostly to see how the other man would react, but also to make sure his gun's safety was off. “She decided she didn't really want to see you anymore.”

“Oh really now.”

He didn't like this guy's calm; rages were messier, but generally easier to predict. People who were icy calm when pissed off or freaked out had a tendency to do things like jump out a fifty-story window and not pull their parachute.

Well, Cal wasn't suicidal, but the point was all the same; he was capable of crazy shit.

“Yeah, something about you not likely to be a great dad.”

He raised his brows. “So… No dad is better than superdad?”

Duo scowled. “Tell me, did you honestly want it once she told you?” Sin hadn't mentioned much of Cal's opinion on the baby, and once she'd decided she wasn't going to have an abortion, she'd been resolute. The Father and Luc had made a comment or two about bruises, and she had the right attitude about the Slinger that she didn't with Luc that the profile fit like a glove…

“It's mine,” he snapped. “If you think I'm going to just let the bitch leave-”

He hadn't really thought before he moved, but the next thing he knew he had the other man's right arm twisted up behind his back so he couldn't return the punch Duo had thrown. “I hate guys like you,” he snarled. “Just think you own the whole damn world because you said so… she's her own woman, and seeing as she's the one carrying the kid for nine months, its hers to decide how to raise.”

“You're starting something bigger than you know,” he returned, calm again.

Duo couldn't help it; he laughed. “I've gotten into much bigger, believe me.” He shoved the guy away but stood nonchalantly, waiting for him to make the first move.

“You're going to regret this.” His eyes were ice… but there was the whole bite not backing up the bark thing that made it fake; Heero would have his face in the pavement by now, knee in his back so he couldn't be thrown off.

“You want me to kill you right here, then?”

Cal snorted. “This is neutral ground.”

Duo grinned back at him. “So I'll knock your ass out and carry you a few blocks first.” He could feel the people in the church watching him. “You came here looking to fight me because your girl realized you're a dickhead… and I'm sorry, but I'll bend a few rules before I'll let harm come to a friend; she'll be safe here and elsewhere, and if you have to die to get that through your head than so be it, buddy.”

“You only injure my people, generally speaking.”

“That's because this isn't a war anymore; it's not my business to be killing, these days.” He tilted his head at him. “I would appreciate it if you just promised to leave her alone, though. Word is she might tell Luc everything you don't want him to know if you make a fuss.”

He had him starting to get edgy now… people either got edgy or completely blew him off, when tensions were coming down. He had a sort of nonchalance inherited from his previous life that made him king of any fight in this city, and he could feel - What had Hilde called it? His battle persona? - his thoughts clicking together like when he booted up Deathscythe…

He really wouldn't care if he killed this asshole. It would likely start a gang war, but he could have that done with in under a week… in time for the baby shower. Karina had already told him everything he might be able to use if he needed to raid the Slingers den, and quite frankly it sounded like something he could probably pull off single-handed. Wouldn't even have to kill too many of his gang; kind that most of them were, they'd slip away looking for a better leader… or cling to Chaos.

And he could bring them to Luc. If Luc didn't want them, he could push them off, and they wouldn't drift for too long before they found a new place of some sort or other.

The trick was making them believe Sin's staying with Cal had been a trick to bring them down all along, and not the series of fuck-ups it actually was. And with the women in this city, that wouldn't be hard. The real issue…

She really needed to find a way to tell it to Luc. Tell him all of it… without him breaking somehow.

“Amazingly enough, I do care about my own damn kid!”

“That's nice, seeing as it's not yours.” He smirked at the man's shocked look. “Pretty little thing like that tells you she's pregnant when she's over four months along and you don't suspect a thing? That's charming, really, but you're not her only sweetheart. It's his, in all reality, but she wasn't sure which one of you could keep them safer for longer, until she realized that she didn't give a damn, because you're a prick.”

He'd gone and started it… they'd see how it played out.

“You are, you know.”

He jumped at that… and smiled instead of wanting to scream at himself for being so distracted. How fucking long's he been standing there?!

Cal's eyes narrowed. “Lucas.”

“That's what my mother called me,” the leader of the Devils muttered. “Not you.”

“Get going, Cal,” Duo went on, beginning to walk towards the guy. “Before I make good on my word.”

If Cal believed it, then that would handle the rest of the Slingers. If Luc understood, he would lie for the girl he was trying to talk into marrying him, to keep the rest of the crew from tearing her apart.

If.

Cal scowled… and ran. Duo waited until he was sure he was out of earshot, and, without looking at his leader, asked, “Are you mad I kept her secret for her?”

There was a long silence. “You know, I knew she was pregnant after the first month; that's why I was trying to keep her off the streets, which is why she was so pissed at me when we met you.”

Duo snapped around to stare at him. “You knew?”

Luc snorted. “Combination of a leaky condom and having the girls check for anything in the trash cans that they know they didn't leave? Shit, Chaos, she was over two months along when you came to this town.”

He wanted to laugh in relief… but the issue was that it wasn't over yet.

“But she doesn't know, does she?”

Duo sighed. “She was scared out of her mind… I think she only told me because she was in the middle of a meltdown when I found her. At first, I thought she'd figure out when to say what on her own, then she popped up two weeks later saying she'd decided to keep it… shit, it hadn't even occurred to me that she'd be thinking about abortion.” He waved a hand at his friend's incredulous look. “I'm innocent or something, leave me alone.”

Luc sighed. “She eased up, once December hit, calmed down… I thought you might have given her the money for it, at first.” He looked sideways at the ex-pilot. “It wouldn't have been the first time she had it done.”

Duo just stared at him for a while. He knew he had always liked Luc, right from the moment he met him, because when he committed he committed, but… damn.

He sat down on the bench outside the church. “You knew about Cal the whole damn time?”

Luc snorted, sitting as well. “Not Cal, but I knew there was another guy.” He eyed Duo suspiciously. “Only one, right?”

Duo almost choked on that. He seriously…? “Just Cal,” he squeaked out. Shaking himself, he demanded, “But wait, if you knew-”

“Think of it like a competition,” the blonde suggested. “She was going back and forth… and with you, she kept going back and forth…” He grinned. “But you're on my side, no?” He started to chuckle, and motioned back at the courtyard area in front of the church. “You brought the whole damn game to a close, with me in first… and I'm going to be a father, too.”

His eyes were shining in a kid in front of a Christmas tree sort of way, and Duo hated himself for it, but he had to say, “But we don't really know…”

Luc shook his head. “No, Chaos… It's mine. We got the ultrasound today, actually, she's mine,” he corrected himself. “In all likelihood it's true all the way… and either way, it's true in the end anyhow.”

Duo almost wanted to cry for a moment, and ducked his head down between his legs… and started chuckling. “Shit, dude, you'll adopt me, right?”

Luc laughed too, standing. “You're crew, aren't you?” He waved at Amos, who came running down the stairs. “You can do that job when you bring the boy back, we've killed a lot of time already.”

“Just… a minute…” He wasn't entirely confident he could bring his head back up without hint of water just yet.

“Oh really?”

“Shut up…”

“What's going on?” asked Amos worriedly.

“Me being stupid,” Duo told him easily. “Just gimmie a sec…”

“Not really,” Luc noted. “Cats don't come when they're called, you have to play it right before they'll let you keep them.”

He sat up to stare disbelievingly at Luc, that he had just said that. It was true, and he understood the sentiment, but people didn't actually say things like that…

“Cats?” Amos asked blankly.

Luc kinda sniggered and motioned at Duo. “Still a little wet, Kay.”

He immediately ducked his head back down between his knees again.

“You're crying?” Amos asked, sounding even more worried.

“I am not.”

“Nothing to be ashamed of,” Luc soothed. “It's kinda sweet… makes me feel all proud.”

“What?”

“Damnit, you make Solo look shallow,” he grumbled… and that was really it. It was Solo fuckin' reborn… with blue eyes. Just… too much…

“Mm… whatever. Come on, let's go.”

“You get to tell Karina,” he decided, wiping at his eyes and walking ahead of them.

“Karina?” He sounded like he was almost tasting the name, trying it out… “I like that.”

He turned back to stare at the guy again before remembering his condition from Amos' astounded look and spinning back around to take the lead again. “Come on, kiddo,” he called to the boy. “Before they decide they're tired of waiting and we have to wait another three days to wash.”

He still hadn't known her name? All that… and he hadn't even known her name.

…But he doesn't know mine, either…

And he knew that he'd never ask for it.

***

Ankara, Turkey

Heero considered the Ankara train station… which was also a mall, apparently. It was an open air one, and the breeze coming through actually felt really nice… if not terribly good-smelling. He knew that Wufei had gotten off here, but outside of that… He was hoping for some “crime scene, police line, do not cross” tape. As none was in evidence… Well, maybe it was time to find good sweater, since he was fairly sure he'd be heading further north.

“Dude, he was seriously all `Waaaa-ee!'”

“Seriously?”

A third voice sniggered. “Yeah, only without the sound effects.”

The first laughed too. “It was totally awesome, though. He kicked their asses.”

Heero turned to look at the group of guys talking, over at a table; the food court was right next to the train area. They looked to be about his age… maybe a little younger. That gave him an in that a few months ago he wouldn't have considered… but he couldn't afford to not talk to them if they had information he could use. He'd pushed his luck already with hacking into the train station database today, he really didn't want to touch the police records if he could help it… especially since he had yet to see them in uniform, and wasn't sure if it would even be in police records.

“What did he have?”

“Dude, he didn't have a knife or anything, it was all that crazy Chinese kung fu shit.”

“Huh?” Heero made himself ask curiously, pushing his hair out of his eyes and blinking over at them.

“This tiny little Chinese guy beat the shit out of this gang or something that tried to jump him,” the storyteller explained enthusiastically.

“Really?” He tried to make his eyes a little bigger, and walked closer. “How many of them were there?”

“Six,” the third guy returned, grinning at him and motioning at an empty spot at the table. “It was beyond cool, and then when the cops came, I swear, he, like, flew.”

“He can run that fast, huh?” asked the second in amusement, sipping at a drink as Heero sat.

“No, he, like, leaped over a few people then started climbing a wall,” the first explained.

Heero looked around. “What wall?”

He pointed to a building not too far from them… which was made out of fairly pocked stucco.

“Okay, now you're just making shit up,” the second protested. “There isn't a handhold anywhere there.”

“He frickin' ricocheted up!” protested the first. “Like a superball or something!”

Parkour did have a tendency to look like you were defying gravity, moving like the laws of physics didn't apply… it was a useful skill, especially when you had to run; people generally didn't like to follow you up a three story building, and even if they did, you'd be gone by the time they got there.

“Uh huh…”

“No, he really did,” confirmed the third, pushing a half empty thing of fries at the ex-pilot. “You look like you're just passing through.”

“I came in a couple hours ago,” he lied easily. “Staying with my uncle for a bit. He's still at work, though.” The fries made him realize he was hungry… but that could wait. “They didn't catch him, though?”

“Mm, at least not yet, my mom's been watching the news,” the first noted. “And all the guys he beat up bolted when they heard the sirens.” He grinned at his friends. “I bet he had something really sweet in his bag.”

“No drugs,” the third pointed out. “Not if he was taking them, anyhow, he had too much energy, too sharp. Maybe he's a delivery boy, though…” He considered. “He didn't use his right arm at all though, kept it close to his chest. I think he might have been hurt.”

If there had been any doubt in his mind that he was on the right trail, that comment erased it.

“Maybe he pissed off some mob boss or something?” the second speculated. “I mean, he was coming in from Beirut.”

“Could be,” the third admitted before turning to Heero and announcing, “I'm Ali, and this is Amir and Joss.” He motioned to the first and second guys respectively.

“Odin,” Heero introduced himself happily. He had thought about it for a while, and after dying his hair blonde in the hostel sink earlier, had decided to use the name, at least for a while. He actually looked more like his old mentor after the color change… which made him wonder again if they had actually been related or it was conjecture and imagination. He shifted his bag a little on his shoulder; he'd left his duffel back at the hostel, but had brought his laptop and a change of clothes, and his fold-up cane for a couple of scenarios gone wrong; he could always say he rented a locker for his main bag, or that he'd already dropped off his stuff at his uncle's before coming back to buy a less beat up pair of jeans or something. “I'm going to get something to eat… are you guys going to be here much longer?”

“Just killing time,” Joss reassured him. “I'll watch your bag, if you want; you're limping pretty bad.”

Heero grimaced and let the bag slide off his shoulder and onto the bench. “I was in a car accident almost a year ago,” he told them. Often enough it was better to sate people's curiosity than to leave it hanging to figure out; Duo had taught him that. If you gave them a plausible story, they usually stopped thinking about the oddness of a situation, and you were no longer suspicious. “I've actually only been seriously walking for a month or so now.” He didn't think they would try to walk off with his stuff or even rifle through it; they were well-dressed upper middle class teenagers, and he looked a bit shabby. The story of his uncle also suggested that his parents had farmed him out for a while to try to handle the bills without worrying about him; it was becoming more and more common, right now. Ankara was doing well enough, but most places weren't. “I'll be right back.”

They all made noises of acknowledgement and went back to talking about something or other; Ali pulled the top of his backpack closer so the top of the zipper was against his leg, so he could keep people away from it without really paying much attention.

Heero had no intention of staying longer than it took him to eat and maybe buy some spare clothes, but the anonymity of the other teenagers was nice… and it gave him a little more time to polish his social skills. He wasn't entirely sure exactly how he was going to go on from here just yet, but either way, his stomach was growling and his leg aching… so this was alright for now.

***

Brussels

Relena blinked at Jake, confused for a moment. When she'd heard a knock at her door, she had figured it was Dorothy. She was still fully dressed, it wasn't embarrassing or anything, just…

“Well… Can I come in?”

“Oh, yeah, sure…” She stepped aside so he could enter. “I just thought…”

“I was running papers up to your brother, and to generally give him hell for not being social anymore,” he noted as he sat down on her couch, starting to sort the contents of the folder he'd brought into different piles. “I figured it'd just be less hassle for everyone this way.” He looked up at her, back down at the piles he was spreading about, and back up at her again. “I mean, if it's an issue, we can head back to your office, I just thought-”

“It's fine,” she reassured him. “I just wasn't expecting you, and I don't usually work out of my suite.” She offered him a shy smile as she came to sit next to him. “It just seems… a little pretentious.”

He laughed. “Point.” He shook his head a little. “I didn't really think of that… Everyone always talks about you and Zechs in terms of being brother and sister, so it's hard to remember you were raised different.” His grin was almost boyish. “No offense, but his nose is a lot higher in the air than he realizes. I like the guy well enough, but even back in basic he had this way of acting like he was just better than everyone, even though he thought he was being humble.” He rolled his eyes. “Nobility and all that.”

“You've known him so long?” she asked curiously. For some reason, beyond Noin, she hadn't really thought her brother had made friends back in his Academy days.

“I had…” He ran his tongue over his teeth. “I had some authority issues when I got into the Specials training…”

That… sounded interesting.

He chuckled a little sheepishly. “We didn't get along so hot at first, but after a while Lu calmed us down. I worked recon for them both for a while before I started to specialize more, and we used to hang out.” He snickered a little. “Our own little military middle school cliché, if you will… few other people too, but…” He grimaced. “Wars aren't pretty things. We actually hadn't talked in a couple years when he joined up with White Fang and we met up again, and Lu's not around to make us all have lunch together and shit, so it's kinda just… there.”

“`Lu'…” Relena sighed. “She always just had everyone call her Noin, when she stayed with me.”

“Yeah… She tried yelling at me for it for a while before she realized that I didn't mean disrespect by it. Well, that and she realized I wasn't going to stop.” He considered. “I called her Noin when we were on missions, and that was really the whole point anyhow, I guess, so yeah.” He shook his head. “Awesome chick…. Damn good shot too… made sure we all remembered we were human and not just soldiers, back in school. I think that's one of the reasons she made such a good teacher.” His laugh was becoming infectious. “Not that she could drill mobile suits into me, mind you, but that's a different story.”

“I just… I hope she's happy, wherever she is,” Relena confided. “She got so confused, when it all came to a point…”

Jake sighed. “Yeah… We all make our own choices, but I heard she was having a hell of a time with hers.” He smiled a warmly at her… but it was a little sad, too. “I miss her too, and hope she's alright… I tried to find her for a while, but she knows the games I use to track, so she knows how to hide.” The hacker sighed again and closed his eyes. “At least, I hope that that's why I can't hunt her down.”

He opened his eyes again and taped at the folder he'd set on the desk before starting to rifle through it again. “You're going to need colony grown food. We can see what we can get out of China, but if we get anything, it won't be near enough - they're hit fair hard by Libra too, just refusing aid, and it's hard to see exactly what they're managing over there. Zechs isn't even making any claims on the country, they went to

tally agrarian in a semi-colony kind of way to cope. The cities are all empty; no one who stayed in them had any way to get food.”

“Are they releasing the design structures for the heat amplifiers?” she asked, looking over the different money numbers she could see.

Jake handed her an outline of all the costs. “No, and it looks like they've been sketching and calculating by hand instead of digitally, so don't try to get sweet on me for that.”

“That would be what would really help, though…” she muttered, considering the prices. It was reasonable enough… It would get revised again and again before it got put through, but it was a good start. “Turning miles and miles of fields into a greenhouse… The Americas need that heat right now, it's turning into Russia down in the tropics.”

“Zechs has people on it, but they're a bit overloaded trying to keep Europe and North Africa fed,” Jake informed her easily. “If you went and bugged them, you might be able to work up a proposal for sending out an ambassador or two. Especially if it was you that went, with your history.”

“Why haven't they jumped on this already though?” she protested.

“Because everyone kinda left them for dead, Princess,” he muttered solemnly. “And besides, we've only known about the heat amplifiers in China for a few months, and I doubt they've been working all too good until recently. Truth tell, Europe could use the damn things too… Africa mostly needs a shift in vegetation, plants can live there alright, just not the kind that have been growing in the heat for millennia. Issue with that is that people are fighting too much over the damn food to figure out how to grow more, and then we send in a shipment of seeds and seedlings to one group and another burns it all out of spite. The effort's better spent on Europe, but-”

“But Europe's full of rebels,” Relena finished for him. “At least they're not fighting the Agricultural Department.”

“For better or worse, they're not stupid,” he agreed. “The issue is trying to figure how to ration out what to where, because we need to stamp out the whole damn faction, they'll topple us before we have a chance to do any damn good just out of revenge, but they're melting away every time we think we have them pinned, and then we end up starting a riot because we're not releasing the goods.”

“And meanwhile, the colonies are making a fortune.” She rubbed at her eyes. “This is just insane…”

He just grinned mercilessly at her. “Let's not forget that the goods are coming from Europe half the time anyhow, so it gets spun around that we're only taking care of our own in the first place.” He motioned at all the papers he'd brought back to her. “The reason nothing like this has gone through before is because it's like dumping a cup of water on a dune and expecting a full crop.”

She considered that. Everyone else had more or less hinted at the same, and it was a general thought, but… “We need those amplifiers.”

Jake pursed his lips. “Well, airfare is considerably easier to figure out than the cost of all this.” He considered a moment longer, then pointed in the direction of Milliardo's rooms. “He's in a freakout about trying to tax food out of the colonies right now, go tell him you want to talk China into doing it instead.”

She blinked at him, then frowned. “Seriously?”

“Use the little sister wiles of how you're here to help,” he suggesting, grinning again. “I'll wait here and come in if you're not back in a few minutes to help out.”

“Help out?” she asked skeptically.

“You know, remind him that he's a soldier, not a democrat, all that. Fling a few insults if necessary, list off the people who should take you.”

“Okay…” She stood and brushed at her clothes, looking for a mirror.

“You look fine, go.”

She rolled her eyes at him and headed for the door.

“Relena, one thing.”

She turned back to look at him. “What?”

“We're trying to feed Europe.”

She frowned, wanting to argue… but understanding his point. “Got it.” She considered. “Five minutes.”

He snickered, blue eyes dancing. “Got it.”

Sorry this took so long… I have no real excuse beyond the general writer's block. I was kinda confounded when suddenly the whole Luc situation just solved itself, but hey…

Reviews are nifty? I'll try to have the next bit out soon, but as always, no guarantees… especially since at the moment I have no idea what I'm doing next, precisely. General ideas, yes, actual scenes, no… But yeah, I kinda like how more and more of what's going on with the world is coming into play from Relena and them… And you guys should really look up parkour, it's just all sorts of fun…

Yeah, I'm rambling, hope you enjoyed the chapter.