Mon, Jun 19, 199 @ 12:21 p.m. Lunar Time
Wufei's office was becoming a source of claustrophobia as two more people took up residence there for the duration it took him to explain the situation. One he had been expecting all along, the other was a surprise. He managed an amused expression as he regarded the latter. "Yuy, I'm disappointed. You haven't found them yet?"
Heero glared off the sarcasm. "Your people haven't done any better. Your training must be slipping."
Wufei's regular serious-situation scowl returned. "Touche`. Any ideas?"
"Earth Sphere is a damned big place to search," piped up their companion.
"I see you're taking this well, Bloom."
Trowa carefully kept his face still. Wufei refused to use the Barton name after the Mariemeia incident, yet something about his sister's name bothered him. And, all the same, this wasn't the time to raise that particular issue. "Find me a lead, Chang, or else you'll see how well I really don't take this." He turned to storm out of the room.
Wufei glanced at Heero then said, "Suit up, boys, I've got a mission for you."

Mon Jun 19, 199 @ 9:21 a.m. MST
"Quatre? Quatre! QUATRE!!" Relena floundered haphazardly toward the black-clad form lying too far away through a patch of thin scrub. They had missed the truck but had been forced off the road and down the relatively even incline of the lower cliff. Quatre seemed to be handling it fine until the front wheel was introduced to a rock just large enough to give them trouble -- the bike stopped but they didn't. As she found herself soaring, a random memory from her abandoned fifth-grade acrobatics class surfaced, causing a reflex of tuck and roll. It absorbed some of the shock when she landed, but her neck and back ached something awful. A bizarre thing to recall, but she supposed that kind of instinct kicked in when one was faced with such a situation. She briefly wondered if that's how Heero managed all the feats he had performed. Then she realized that maybe Quatre hadn't been as lucky.
And she was right.
"QUATRE!!" Her voice was getting hoarse. At last she reached him and gathered enough strength to remove his helmet -- it may have saved his skull but she didn't want to risk a chance of saving him before the ambulance arrived.
Ambulance? They weren't in a city, they were in the middle of nowhere!!
She forced herself to calm down. She simply couldn't panic. Yet doubts rose when she saw the trickle of blood down the side of his head that the helmet had hidden from view. Oh, God. This was the stupidest thing we've ever done. For two reckless people, we should have known better!

Mon, Jun 19, 199 @ 12:31 p.m. Lunar Time
"We have to wait for Zechs?!" Trowa had meant for the comment to be flat but failed miserably.
Heero gazed straight ahead out the docking bay window. "The two best bloodhounds for tracking down Relena."
Trowa turned and stared at him. His expression was one that could be equated with the saying, What the F*? Finally he croaked, "Humor? Was that humor or something?" Then he whirled on his heel, rubbing his left temple. "This is getting to be too much."
Heero shifted slightly to regard him. "Relax. For someone so close to Quatre you need to pay more attention."
"What do you mean?"
Heero turned back to the window.
Trowa was instantly in front of him, grabbing the lapels of his jacket. "Heero, what are you talking about?"
The other calmly freed himself. "We should trust Quatre."

Mon Jun 19, 199 @ 9:31 a.m. MST
She wasn't going to cry, she wasn't going to cry, she wasn't going to cry...
The thing that was scaring her to tears was not the fact that Quatre wasn't responding, but that she had become so coddled by the surroundings of her office. She didn't have to worry about being stranded anywhere. There was always someone shoving a paper in her face, rather than being surrounded by miles and miles of miles and miles. If she ever got a paper cut, there were bandaids in the top left drawer of her desk. And now here she was, unable to do a damn thing to help her partner in crime. They should never have left...Skip out for the afternoon maybe, hide out in a quiet restaurant somewhere until evening maybe, but not this...
She wondered if Quatre would have felt the same way had she been the one lying possibly dead on the ground...

Mon Jun 19, 199 2:07 p.m. Lunar Time
"Chang, did you lose my sister again?"
Wufei scowled at the tall figure with long blond hair who stood blocking the doorway. "The two most important pacifists of our time are missing, and you and Yuy are too calm."
"And what are you doing?"
"Trying to coordinate every agent scattered across the four corners of the earth, and every radii in between."
"Heero informed me that Quatre can handle a possible situation. I trust him."
"Possible? Winner would have found a way to contact us."
"Then pick a random coordinate and we'll go there."
"Huh?"
Zechs crossed his arms. "Me, Yuy, Barton. We're still Preventers, you know."
Wufei's scowl deepened. "That was the whole idea of you being here, but Yuy has his 'trust Quatre' campaign going." He tugged a sheet of paper from a crumpled mess beside the computer. "Southwest of North America. I can't get ahold of my agent there. Maybe you'll find him while Winner closes this case." He smiled mock-pleasantly, and added quietly, "You've become too coddled by the times, Zechs."
"I would be worried if you had, also."

Mon, Jun 19, 199 @ 9:39 a.m. MST
Sunburn, we're going to get sunburn. She busied herself with worrying about trivial things.Oh, and that will look great at the next meeting. I think it's at two o'clock... She went to check her watch then remembered she didn't have one at the moment, aside from the fact that her hands were currently pinned beneath Quatre's head, clumsily trying to support him as she had seen Lady Une do to help Mariemeia -- not that she expected it to do much good.
"Quatre, you have wake up. Heero can't come save us -- he only saves me, you know. You aren't part of the 'Save the naive pacifist' deal...You weren't naive..." She caught herself before she continued on the train of thought. He was a pacifist who understood war from the get-go; she had taken longer to learn.
"You have to wake up," she whispered. "I can't leave you so Heero can find me, and then we'll return for you. I can't do that." She brushed one hand along his perspiring face, vainly trying to wipe away the dried blood. How long had they been there, how long would it be until someone found them? Or worse?
Why couldn't she be stronger than this?
Facing all the wars and the most hateful world leaders, and having guns pointed at her constantly, and she couldn't manage to stay calm now. And if it had only been a matter of a few minutes? Was her fear only making time pass quickly? Perhaps the time to panic would be when the sun began to set...
Quatre stirred. She was sure he had moved. She gazed down anxiously, waiting for his eyes to open. "Quatre..?"
He shifted, winced, then went still again. After a tense breath he opened his eyes. "Rel...len...na? A-Are you...okay?"
She would have laughed had she not been so weak with relief. "You're worse off than me."
"I'm...sorry..." His voice was as parched as the surrounding sand.
"Easy. Don't worry."
It was several more moments before Quatre could sit up on his own, and even more until he could stand with some help -- nothing was broken but he could confirm several nasty bruises without even looking. Relena supported him all the way to the motorcycle where they rested for another five minutes before he attempted to pick it up and see if it would run.
"Are you sure this is a good idea? Maybe we should wait for..."
"I think I can do it. Just give me about ten minutes or so." He grinned although he closed one eye against the sunlight, and seemed to be grimacing instead. "I'm a gundam pilot. I'm more durable that than."
Relena silently agreed, and silently gave thanks, and patiently waited.

Mon, Jun 19, 199 @ 9:58 p.m. PST
Ocean spray is so nice after the dry desert heat, a refreshed and blue-sundress-clad Relena thought as she let her bare feet sink into the damp sea-washed sand; it had such a profoundly different texture from the sun-baked type. She lifted her face to the evening breeze then glanced over at Quatre. He had gladly traded his black leather for loose chinos and -- over a gray teeshirt -- a navy sweatshirt. He gazed out across the ocean, mixed emotions roiling through his eyes as surely as the waves.
"It wasn't your fault," she assured softly, and for the hundredth time since they'd ducked out of the small hospital they had stopped at to bandage up their cuts. "You couldn't have know about the shipping schedule."
"I should have." He smiled bitterly. "Winner-sama is supposed to know everything, after all."
She fell silent, drawing her knees up and hugging her arms around them. She mumbled, "So is Minister Dorlian..."
He glanced over at her, then sighed. "And that's what this whole misadventure was about. Trying to get away from who we are. But there's no escaping destiny." His attention returned to the sea as he smiled wistfully and murmured, "I of all people should have known that."
There was a long silence that Relena was hesitant to break. "Tell me, Quatre, what it means to be you."
"Hmm?" He gave her a puzzled look.
"Do you remember when I said I wanted to know what gave people the urge to fight? I think I have it mostly figured out by now, but I'd like to know why you fought if you hated it...If you don't mind me asking."
"Not at all. I fought because it was all I could think of to do. At the time, words didn't seem to do any good, I saw that from my father. He spoke Pacifism every breath of his life, but he was lacking something. It's the same thing that you do have."
She looked at him with surprise. "And what would that be?"
He smiled sheepishly. "I haven't quite figured it out exactly. I don't think I have it, for all my sway in the colonies." He turned back to the ocean. "Although I think maybe it was your determination during One-nine-five. You grew and what you said began to make sense to people." He chuckled. "You had a better effect than the gundams ever did."
She swallowed her surprise so she could speak, "But I only found that path because of Heero -- because of the gundams." She had tried to catch herself and ended up blushing.
Again he chuckled. "That's all right. We each took a turn holding Heero together for you, anyway, so it evens out." He smiled to show that he hadn't been offended.
"We make a good team," she offered, then returned the smile.

Tues, Jun 20, 199 @ 6:30 p.m. Lunar Time
"So, in effect, Quatre Winner kidnapped Minister Dorlian..."
"Are we going to charge him for that?"
"Don't think so, Duo."
"And I left Mars for this..."
"I told you not to worry."
...*Fume, Fume*...
"OUT! Get out, people!" Wufei reached his limit of useless babble and shoved everyone out of his office: Sally, Duo, Zechs, Heero, and Trowa. That left one person, whom he rounded on and pointed a finger at with a vengeance. "And you, Winner--! That was indescribably stupid of you! Do you know how many riots this stunt could have caused? Or how many people would have jumped at the opportunity to see you and Ms Dorlian disappear for good?"
"I'll sleep better while pondering that one," Quatre responded dryly.
Wufei fairly crossed his eyes staring at him. "Quatre, have you been hanging out with Maxwell again?"
The blond choked back a laugh as he realized just how badly Wufei had been upset if he was mixing up name addressing. "I assure you that I have not. No time." Again he had to hold in his mirth but failed this time.
"This isn't funny," Wufei groused. He dropped down on his chair, which creaked in protest, then started shuffling through the nearest stack of papers.
With a completely straight face Quatre said, "Wufei, I think you need a vacation."

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(c) 2001-2004 Autumn Loweck. This work may not be copied, distributed, or reprinted without the author's permission. Characters of Quatre, Relena, Heero, Sally, Wufei, Trowa, Zechs, Mariemeia, Une, Duo, and Duke Dermail belong to the creators of the GundamWing series, Sotsu Agency, Sunrise, Bandai, and whoever else in Japan involved in this most cool anime.