January 27, 2001
Sequel to 'Have You Ever...'
Standard Warnings and Disclaimers apply.
"Not a single weapon must be left within the Earth Sphere," Lady Une ordered, staring at the images of war on the view screen. "That is what His Excellency, Treize, wanted."
"I see," a voice from behind spoke up. Sally eyed the woman she had considered one of her greatest enemies for almost a year now. "Treize Khushrenada was trying to establish world peace, as well."
The personnel of MOII turned in their seats, staring at the newcomers. "Who are you?" one of the men asked, reaching for his gun. He froze when his commander raised her arm against his chest.
Her grey eyes looked over first the ginger haired woman who had spoken, and then past her, to the honey-wheat haired girl--no, young woman. "Welcome, your majesty," Une said nodding her head.
The woman and old man she stood behind parted before her--it all looked too perfect. Her calm serenity when she stepped forward. The modest tilt of her face. Her folded hands. 'Is she truly the one you would have succeed you, Excellency?' she asked her dead hero.
"Please, don't call me that," Relena said, looking up at the woman.
'Where is you're fire? Where is your spirit? Has the passionate girl who to dared aim a gun to me a year ago died?' She stepped forward, pulling her gun from its holster.
"I am only a remnant of my true self," Lady Une said, holding the gun out to her. "But, please, if you would like to revenge your father's soul..."
She couldn't look at the girl, couldn't look into her cornflower blue eyes without thinking of another pair of blue eyes. 'Soon...' she thought, and then looked up, startled, when two soft hands lowered the gun.
"Let's end the cycle of revenge and fighting," Relena said.
Lady Une stared at her, disbelief at her redemption, her forgiveness, plain on her face. And then she smiled and nodded. "Hai," she told the young monarch, slipping into the more formal Japanese language. 'She will be wonderful, Treize-sama.'
The blonde and dark-haired girls ran down the corridor as fast as safely possible, keeping their firearms cocked and ready. They were almost to the end of the second corridor when they heard the scream tear through the thin air.
"Rini!" Kat gasped adding a burst of speed to her legs.
"Kat! Wait!" Blaire called after her, but the dark-haired younger sibling didn't listen. "Shit," she cursed, following behind.
They pulled up to the end of the third corridor in time, already proceeding into the fourth when a light to their left drew them up short.
"Oh my gods..." Kat choked, stumbling into the room.
Blaire swept past her, green-grey eyes analyzing the situation in one cursory glance. Blood. A lot of it. All over the floor in a deep, dark puddle. She passed the shuddering form of her littlest sister huddled just at the edge of the puddle and stepped into the gory mess.
A large broadsword was embedded into the body of her stepbrother, the blade having fallen diagonally and haphazardly. In a detached moment of humor, Blaire thought to remember to give the girl sword lessons. She reached down and yanked the blade free from the skull and shoulder blade, noticing the fresh gush of blood that seeped from the gapping wounds at the head, neck, and shoulders.
She would have gagged had she been seeing this for the first time. But this was an image that had haunted her nightmares for over a year now and so, unfazed, she kicked the corpse away and crouched down beside her half-sister.
"Jack?" she called, pulling back the eyelids of open but unseeing eyes. "Jack? It's time to wake up now, we have to get out of here," Blaire said, a hint of urgency belaying the calm tone.
"Rini? Rini? Can you hear me?" Kat cried as she pulled at her younger sister. The girl unfolded, assented to Kat's insistent pulls, and stood; but her wide, terrified eyes never left the site of her sister, covered in blood, laying motionless on the floor.
"Dammit, Jack! Wake up!" Blaire snapped, slapping her across the cheek. Behind her, Rini cried out. "We don't have time for this now! We have to get out of here!"
"Blaire! Kat! Report!" Dev's voice called out over the com unit.
"We're coming now!" Blaire called back before grabbing Jack and pulling her up. She grunted. "You need to go on a diet, girl."
"You're... just out of... shape..." the weak voice replied, swallowing a moan.
"Well at least your awake, now," Blaire snipped. "C'mon. We gotta get out of here, five minutes ago."
Kat pulled on Carina's arm, dragging her from the room and into a run back down the corridors. Blaire was already at their heels when Jack stopped her.
"Wait, wait," she gasped. "Put me down." Blaire began to balk. "I have to..." She slid down her sister's side, almost collapsing at her feet. But when she stood up, the hiss of a knife pulling free from it's sheath filled the quiet room.
Jack knelt down beside the corpse of her stepbrother. A flick of her wrist dissected flesh from flesh.
"Overcome them with yeses and undermine them with smiles," she hissed. "Agree them to death and destruction and let them swallow you till they vomit and bust wide open..." She stuffed the dismembered bit of anatomy down a gaping mouth, mindless of the tears that were staining her blood-smeared cheeks. "Choke and die."
Quatre gasped, dragging in each breath of air brought a sharp, piercing pain. He pressed his hand against his side, feeling the stickiness of his blood on the space suit material against his skin. He was trying to concentrate on what was going on around him, but his head hurt, he felt dizzy even though he was laying down. And then...
And then... Trowa was there. Trowa had found him, and he felt like everything was going to be alright now. Around him, the various screens that represented the Mobile Doll programs began fading, Trowa slicing through the power cables.
"I have been fighting all my life," Trowa's calm, reassuring voice drifted over him, giving him a sense of peace, strength. "And each time I have killed my emotions, destroyed my heart. That is why my heart has been dead for so long."
'Trowa...' the blond boy thought, his heart swelling in his chest, bursting with love for the taller boy.
"Perhaps I have no worth as a human being, but I have to stay alive."
"Why?"
The voice sounded dead, void of any emotion, even bitterness. If it hadn't have been female, Quatre wouldn't even have recognized it as Dorothy's.
"Because I have a place to go back to," Trowa answered, finishing with the power cables and moving to where the blond boy was laying on the floor.
"I... I have no where to go anymore..." Dorothy thought, realizing too late that she'd said the words out loud.
"Can you stand up, Quatre?" the lanky boy asked him as he kneeled down close to him and tried to help him up.
"T... Trowa... please," Quatre said, licking his dry, chapped lips. "Never mind me, help her," he sighed, still gasping and short of breath.
Trowa's grip on the smaller boy tightened. "Don't worry," he told the boy who was too kind for his own good. "She won't lose it; she's not that weak."
Quatre smiled, looking up into Trowa's face, focusing on those expressive emerald-like eyes as he was pulled to his feet. "You're right." Trowa helped him to the door where a space helmet lay idle. Quatre picked it up and tossed it back to Dorothy.
"You'd better hurry," Trowa said as he watched her reach out and grab the offering.
Quatre smiled. "Don't die," he told her before Trowa could pull him from the room. He didn't see the girl crumble in on herself.
They had found their way to the propulsion room with little hindrance, and now the group of five huddled close to the console, ready to impose some damage.
"We have to work quickly," Indra Osiris intoned.
"Yes, we don't have much time," Palwashi Hilel agreed with his tall friend.
"We're working! We're working!" Garret snapped, looking over his friend's shoulder.
"It can't be altered," Samuel said with a look towards his life-long friend and accomplice in crime, "with the usual methods."
"Then we just have to extract the boiler limiter on the propulsion cylinder," Garret replied already reaching over.
"Create an uncontrolled reaction to prevent one?" Samuel Jackson grinned. "That's one of my favorite tactics!"
"No one move, please," a voice called out from behind. The five men turned, Jackson standing up to greet the newcomer.
"Quinze... Long time no se--" He gasped, pain shooting through his arm and lacing up and down his sides. 'Damn, the good one too,' he thought off-handedly.
The four men moved closer to their fallen comrade and unofficial leader of the pack.
"I told you not to move," the white haired man said smugly.
'Now I remember why I never liked the man,' he thought and said, "Go ahead, kill us. That suits us fine." He could feel the others shifting. "Our work here is finished."
"You people have caused me a great deal of trouble," the White Fang official told them.
'As if we weren't doing it intentionally, baka!'
"How many times will you interfere with our Operation Meteor before you're finally satisfied?" Quinze went on.
"The Gundams were enough to avenge Heero Yuy," Jackson gasped, wincing when his arm moved. "Both this time and then."
'They were too much...'
"If you hadn't modified the mission instructions to the Gundam pilots, humanity would have understood sooner!" Quinze shouted at the five old men.
"We value Earth and humanity more," Jackson spat.
"Shut up!"
Garret reached over and depressed the button that would complete their mission. "Looks like you'll have to allow us our interference once more," he replied.
Quinze's gun fired.
They drew up to their exit; Kat and Carina already in their flight suits. Blaire shoved Jack into her flight suit watching as Kat and Carina went out first. Blaire waited until both girls were safely in the Shooting Star before setting off the detonation that would start the chain reaction. She grabbed Jack, yelling to Dev to go as she snatched onto the cable and locked on.
The Shooting Star pushed away from the condemned satellite, pulling the two girls behind it. In the hanger bay, Kat and the three Sweeper fellows they'd been forced to bring along waited for the pulley to reel in the remaining members of their team while Nita hurried a shocked Carina to the medical room.
"Got 'em!" Kat shouted the minute the hanger doors sealed tight behind Blaire and the room hissed as it re-pressurized. Around them, The Shooting Star thrummed as the engines purred to full power and propelled them far away.
Up front in the cockpit, Dev watched as the satellite ripped into pieces from the inside out--fires dying before they'd burned, drowned out in the vacuum of space.
End of Part 31: Downfall
Andrea Readwolf
Please send comments to: andrea_readwolf@hotmail.com