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Entry tags:
GW - i need a title for that fic. ~__~
In the meantime, it will just be refered to as the Newtypes fic.
By the way,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
questofdreams and phoenix_melody, I hate you a little.
REMINDERS:
-I have a plot up until everyone is in the same place -- after that, it's all fallout, and I don't have a clue what will happen. I might write myself into a corner and the fic might die.
-The urge to write GW fic might die again.
--> there is a rather big chance I'll never complete this fic. You're warned.
Yay newtypes. And yay preventers. And yay slums and mafias.
Genre: Action/adventure/some romance
Couples: I dunno yet. Wufei and Heero are central characters; Duo will eventually get there; and also someone else of the female gender. Might be gen, might be yaoi-and-het, might be a foursome or might have people pair off, or one pairing and two lone guys, I don't really know. It depends what happens when they all get to the same place. So... Starting with 1+5, 5x?, 2+1, and then we'll see.
Unbetaed, if you can help i'll love you forever. I'm still writing, might be another part posted today. Hopefully it will be more interesting.
EDIT NOV. 8 2008: BEGINNING REWRITTEN.
First scene
"... Too grainy to prove anything." Heero let out a short sigh and reclined in Wufei's couch, eyebrows furrowed. On Wufei, the expression would have looked frustrated and angry; on Heero, it just looked intensely thoughtful.
Wufei massaged the bridge of his nose and glared tiredly at the many reports, both official and personal, that spilled their guts over the coffee table and piled up here and there on his hardwood floor.
"Okay. A last time." Heero took a white sheet of paper and a pencil, traced a few quick lines, and gave it to Wufei. "The clearing where your Kirin Brigade and Bei Long's men were supposed to meet. Do you remember the relief?"
The Kirin brigade. Hah. Grand name for a bunch of bloodthirsty idiots who rebelled because they hadn't gotten to be the ruling class of their own little country and clearly that was unfair. But they wouldn't go free much longer. Shaking his head, Wufei shaded the rocky areas and fixed the line of the forest. "Front half of Bei Long's car," he pointed out on the crude map. "Back half. His men's car. Tracks of the missing munitions truck. Mobile Suit transport truck, two-seater. First Taurus, destroyed." He closed his eyes briefly to concentrate. "Scuff marks on the rocks here..."
"One of the Tauruses wasn't on the transport when it was attacked..."
"Not that it did them much good." Wufei glanced at the video, where the five relevant seconds played in a loop. No sound, just an image so damaged it was little more than black and white pixels and a lot of static. A still picture of a forest, the back end of a car... and then the image whirled to the left, sweeping over empty grass and rocks. The last half-second had the camera starting to pan up -- then static.
The attacking Mobile Suit had taken them a while to identify from the cleanest still-picture of its leg. It was a Horseman, a weaponless Suit that was used, amongst other things, to clean up mountainsides of unstable rocks and fallen trees. It was a relatively light model, maybe half as big as a Gundam; so-called because it came with a four-wheeled "ride" of sorts for long distances, but that hadn't been used there. It could climb and stand on sharp inclines, but couldn't hover over flat ground more than ten seconds at a time and its operating system was very limited. And its hands were more adapted to moving around tree trunks than holding weapons.
Wufei was sure he could have found other clues, but the Kirin commander had been so panicked to see his promised weapons gone and the fearsome mafia who furnished them destroyed that Wufei barely got the time to make a copy of the Taurus' recent memory before the guerilleros retreated. They hadn't even checked for survivors. Wufei had sent a message as soon as he could do it without blowing his cover, but the first occasion only came two days later; by then the field had been burned down and all clues destroyed.
"So the Horseman jumps on the patrolling Taurus..." Heero continued, patient.
"... Must have kicked right through the cockpit on the first try. Then... No footprint in between, at least sixty feet... It kicks off straight from the falling Taurus and uses its hoverjets to push itself farther. Lands on the first car. Boss gets flattened, one man manages to exit in time..."
"Ah?"
"No body in the shotgun seat," Wufei pointed out.
"Hm. Possible. If that's the case, he escaped."
"Another potential witness. Now how the hell we're going to find out if he even exists, I don't know."
Heero snorted quietly. "Maybe the Chinese police will get lucky and think to call us. Anyway...?"
"Kicks clean through the Mobile Suit transport cabin, disabling the vehicle. Then the tracks, hmm -- ah, I get it. The second car tries to ram its leg and it jumps up to dodge, and lands on the leftover Taurus, the unmanned one. Straight on the cockpit, once again -- and it must have landed pretty hard."
Heero leaned back and scowled heavily. "Someone good enough to kick off from a stumbling target in the right direction and clear this much space with a Horseman wouldn't forget to use the jets to soften the impact. But a Horseman's structure is weaker and the metals are thinner than a battle model -- to go through a Taurus's plating it must have landed perfectly, or it would have broken off a leg. Even then it has to be damaged..."
Wufei shrugged. "Doesn't matter, it didn't have to go far. The rest of the men escape, the pilot lays the Horseman on top of the munitions truck and drives off. The end." He opened his eyes. "... And between Bei Long's latest 'all clear' and our arrival at the site, not ten minutes went by. The attacker was well out of sight by then. I don't think it took that operative longer than two minutes to clear the area of targets. Maybe under one thirty."
"Hm." Heero picked up his notebook. "So what did we learn?"
Wufei tilted his head to read Heero's list. 1) Suspect knew where&when money/weapons exchange would happen. 2) Suspect piloted a Horseman. 2b) Suspect is extremely good with Horseman. Experience? What kind? 2c) Horseman's operating system was rewritten for speed&efficiency. (Who has the skills? Who would sell the knowledge? Follow through.)
"I find it strange the assailant ran off with the munitions but didn't try to capture the unmanned Taurus. Even a junk-heap rescue like that one is still valuable. Selling it would have bought him a lot more weapons than stealing the ones in the truck, unless there was something in there the Kirin commander didn't mention." Wufei would have been surprised. The man had an almost pathological need to brag. Oh, he could have kept his mouth shut, but he would still have exuded smugness and 'I know something you don't'.
"Maybe our suspect wanted the weapons right now, or wouldn't have known who to sell the Taurus to."
"Hm. Anyway... Amongst all incidents, it's the only one where a Mobile Suit was used. The previous operative could have hired someone or been assigned a partner -- or the mobile suit attack is entirely unrelated to our case. But when you consider the timing with the attack on the rest of Bei Long's Family, and the fact that the gear stolen might easily have been used on them..."
"Could be unrelated, but it doesn't feel that way," Heero agreed quietly. "No, it's the same person."
"Or group."
Heero grunted, clearly unconvinced. Wufei was in agreement. So far there was nothing to prove there were several people involved together in this -- but then again, nothing proved there was one culprit to everything either. Motives were still lacking; what on Earth was it about? Vendetta? Vigilantism? Mafia group mowing down the competition? Groundwork to a coup d'état? Separately Heero and Wufei could easily find number-one suspects and motives for a lot of the crimes -- mafias were always at war, politicians could either be dirty or know someone else who was, and laboratories, well, it went from industrial espionage to coworker jealousy -- but only if all the cases also happened to be strangely similar by pure coincidence. No motive fit for every suspect party.
They'd tried starting from the other end -- the method -- and track back up to the source. They already had a couple of possible suspects for that one, someone who would have known how and been physically able to carry on dozens of separate incidents in a row. A motive, now, that was less immediately obvious.
The short bit of surveillance footage Wufei had managed to salvage wouldn't work as proof of anything, but it troubled him nonetheless.
"So our hacker-heist operative might also be a highly competent pilot." Wufei frowned, flipping through several of the files again, eyes automatically pausing on the key points. A semi-common, but awfully convenient computer anomaly here, an unusual break-in pattern there, an odd bit of timing in that one... "When the only tool you have is a hammer, all problems start resembling nails," he quoted under his breath.
"You think we're over-identifying with the pattern?"
"It's a possibility," Wufei allowed halfheartedly. "... That, or we're just refusing to let go of the idea that there even is a pattern because suspecting our own is better than not having any clue where to start."
The two young men exchanged a long look.
"What if you drop the idea that our suspect is the pilot?" Wufei asked, unwilling to explore the possibility before having exhausted all others.
"Three of the disappearances have occurred on De Montaubois turf, and two of the businesses hits have ties that might lead back to their rivals, the Estevez."
Wufei nodded with fake patience, giving Heero a jaded look. "Just a problem. They're all dead."
"Not Raquel Estevez."
"... Isn't that the grandmother? She's over ninety."
"She could be advising or paying other people," Heero commented even as he typed in a search string.
Wufei allowed it halfheartedly. "She could..."
"...She couldn't," Heero rectified with a scowl.
"Hm?"
"Alzheimer's. Advanced case."
Wufei groaned in weary acknowledgement and reclined against the back of the couch, holding the file he'd been reading closed on his lap. He wasn't even surprised. He made a mental note to send someone to check anyway, in the unlikely case she was faking it or paying her doctors to lie. "Estevez had a second in command, didn't he?"
"Who's also dead."
"He had a son."
"Changed his name and cut all family ties over ten years ago; now he's a supervisor at McDonald's."
Wufei let his head drop heavily on the backrest and closed his eyes. "Might want revenge anyway. Add him to the background check list."
He listened to Heero's soft grunt of acknowledgement and the clacking of his keyboard, wishing nothing more than to be allowed to go to bed. He'd been up for almost twenty-three hours; and in six hours they'd have to clock in at work, but there were some things they just couldn't talk about in the Preventers building. Too much of a chance of being overheard by the wrong person. The Preventers were a fine group, but they were also a highly paranoid one, and their Internal Affairs department would have fits over the amounts of information Wufei and Heero hadn't seen fit to share yet.
Heero gave them fits often enough, with his so-called part-time status. Just came and went as he pleased, really; here in time for some big case, and then gone as soon as the report was typed. Oh, he wasn't the only part-time Preventer on their payroll, far from it, but it would have been fine if the rest of the time he worked as a bodyguard or a shuttle repairman, or, hell, even a cashier, something traceable. He could even go laze about in a spa every other week for all they cared, so long as he could be found when they looked for him. But usually he just dropped off the radar. Even Wufei didn't know where he went and why. Add that to his ex-Gundam pilot status...
Heero and Wufei's wartime occupation was on a need-to-know basis, which meant people had gossiped about it at the coffee machine until something scandalous happened to some other coworker and drove it out of many minds. Preventers could be ex-OZ and ex-Romafeller and ex-freedom fighters from all parts of the Earth sphere, all united under the desire to protect and serve the new peace. Gundam pilots fit neatly in the ex-freedom fighter corner -- and seeing them day in, day out had made most of the colleagues they didn't directly work with or under totally forget how competent, driven and dangerous they truly had been. They were just Resistance Mobile Suit pilots, who'd lucked out on the machines they happened to get their hands on. Neat, but nothing to ooh and aah about.
Not all of their coworkers thought like that, though. And Wufei knew that some higher-ups firmly believed Heero only used the Preventers as a convenient resource for his own personal ends, they just hadn't caught him red-handed yet. It wasn't so far from the truth; they were just lucky Heero's goal was the same as the organization's. The day working for the Preventers stopped being convenient, Wufei knew Heero would hand in his notice and revert back to solo work without a second thought. He could be exceedingly professional, but ultimately his loyalty wasn't to a government or an organization, and it wasn't going to be bought with a paycheck.
Sometimes Wufei was tempted to apply for part-time status, too. But for maximum efficiency, Heero needed a full-time, trustworthy partner onboard, and Sally and Noin had other responsibilities.
"About that computer error... I think there was another case where it could have been used... Something in Australia? No deaths, but --"
"That was me," Heero replied laconically.
"Oh."
Wufei groaned and massaged his temples. He refused to ask.
"...I need more coffee."
But of course there wasn't any coffee left. There hadn't been any for the last hour and a half. Wufei really needed to restock.
He forced himself to open the folders on his lap again, skimming through them with the weak hope that something new would jump at him. Pharmaceutical firm thoroughly bombed, research irretrievable, all employee houses broken into and searched; up-and-coming mafia hotshot disappeared in transit between two L3 sub-colonies; big-time, loud-mouthed L2 politician suddenly deciding to take a long vacation on Earth...
"Hah. 'Politician' on L2 is just a fancy word for 'mafia lord that cops have to shake hands with'," Wufei muttered under his breath. And the lab seemed clean -- all legal paperwork had been submitted and it had never come to the attention of either the local police or the Preventers before the hit -- but drug and biological warfare research couldn't be done in a kitchen, so for all they knew...
"Hm?"
"Nothing. ...The more I look at those attacks and the less I can see anything but guerilla and advanced sabotage training. The serious kind -- this is a highly competent operative who has nerves of steel, incredible timing, and is used to blowing his way through if he can't sneak in. Add to that sharp piloting skills and possible programming and hacking skills..." Wufei paused, gave Heero a sardonic quirk of the eyebrow. "Are you sure you haven't conveniently forgotten to mention being an up-and-coming crime lord in your spare time?"
Heero quirked his own eyebrow right back. "I have spare time?"
Wufei snorted, his lips curling up in a small smile. It didn't last; he pushed the papers on the couch and extricated himself, pacing to the kitchen and back to work out the kinks in his legs. The elephant in the room was starting to resemble a bloated whale.
He went to Heero's side of the couch, leaned back against the wall. Heero was staring at his screen, but didn't even pretend to type or scroll. Wufei watched his profile, the tense jaw, the lowered eyelashes that spoke of somber thoughts.
"All the clues go back to L2 in the end, don't they," Wufei said, because someone had to.
Heero's voice was quiet as he answered, and he didn't look up from his computer screen. "The ones that go anywhere, yes. But then it's a fairly attractive place for all kinds of shady deals. And people travel."
Trowa traveled, too. Wufei closed his eyes. "What does your gut feeling tell you?"
Heero's jaw twitched. "...Duo."
"Aa."
Wufei massaged his temples; it didn't help. The evidence amounted to jack shit and would hold approximately ten seconds in a court of law; but if they said the name at work, it would be all the validation their coworkers needed to start a witch hunt.
Quatre had claimed to fight for peace, Wufei for justice; Trowa and Heero because they could and didn't see why not, at first -- though later on they'd gained other. But Gundam Pilot 02 had fought in the name of revenge. Of course the truth was more complicated than that -- Wufei's first reason for seeking justice had nothing to do with altruism and everything to do with OZ killing his wife -- but it wasn't how things were remembered.
"What do we do?"
Trowa would be faster and easier to check up on. They knew where he was supposed to be. The circus would be the perfect cover, too; a reason to travel without even bothering with fake papers. Hiding in plain sight -- his specialty. Wufei didn't put making it look like Maxwell had done it past Barton either.
Hell, they couldn't possibly know all operatives of this level in the Earth Sphere; there were probably quite a few around who had nothing to do with any Gundam Pilot.
Heero stared at the screen in silence for a few seconds.
"Kamenov is based on L2. We need to investigate him first anyway."
Heh. Wufei would have reminded Heero that gut feelings got people into trouble, but he would have been a hypocrite, because his guts said the same thing. Granted, if Winner or Barton decided to put the blame on Maxwell in such a way that even his fellow Gundam pilots would believe it, they could. For that matter, so could Wufei himself.
"We'll have a hard time getting a warrant with that flimsy evidence." Whereas they would get one if they mentioned a Gundam pilot might have gone renegade again -- his own behavior was precedence enough, to his great shame. But then they would probably get saddled with a SWAT team or two.
"Minister Weisman is riding Une's ass. She'll give us the mission just to make it look like we're doing something. Once we're there..." Heero shrugged.
Wufei pushed away from the wall and started gathering papers. "All right. Let's ask tomorrow."
Hopefully five and a half hours of sleep would be enough to let him talk their way through.
Next
By the way,
questofdreams and phoenix_melody, I hate you a little. REMINDERS:
-I have a plot up until everyone is in the same place -- after that, it's all fallout, and I don't have a clue what will happen. I might write myself into a corner and the fic might die.
-The urge to write GW fic might die again.
--> there is a rather big chance I'll never complete this fic. You're warned.
Yay newtypes. And yay preventers. And yay slums and mafias.
Genre: Action/adventure/some romance
Couples: I dunno yet. Wufei and Heero are central characters; Duo will eventually get there; and also someone else of the female gender. Might be gen, might be yaoi-and-het, might be a foursome or might have people pair off, or one pairing and two lone guys, I don't really know. It depends what happens when they all get to the same place. So... Starting with 1+5, 5x?, 2+1, and then we'll see.
Unbetaed, if you can help i'll love you forever. I'm still writing, might be another part posted today. Hopefully it will be more interesting.
EDIT NOV. 8 2008: BEGINNING REWRITTEN.
First scene
"... Too grainy to prove anything." Heero let out a short sigh and reclined in Wufei's couch, eyebrows furrowed. On Wufei, the expression would have looked frustrated and angry; on Heero, it just looked intensely thoughtful.
Wufei massaged the bridge of his nose and glared tiredly at the many reports, both official and personal, that spilled their guts over the coffee table and piled up here and there on his hardwood floor.
"Okay. A last time." Heero took a white sheet of paper and a pencil, traced a few quick lines, and gave it to Wufei. "The clearing where your Kirin Brigade and Bei Long's men were supposed to meet. Do you remember the relief?"
The Kirin brigade. Hah. Grand name for a bunch of bloodthirsty idiots who rebelled because they hadn't gotten to be the ruling class of their own little country and clearly that was unfair. But they wouldn't go free much longer. Shaking his head, Wufei shaded the rocky areas and fixed the line of the forest. "Front half of Bei Long's car," he pointed out on the crude map. "Back half. His men's car. Tracks of the missing munitions truck. Mobile Suit transport truck, two-seater. First Taurus, destroyed." He closed his eyes briefly to concentrate. "Scuff marks on the rocks here..."
"One of the Tauruses wasn't on the transport when it was attacked..."
"Not that it did them much good." Wufei glanced at the video, where the five relevant seconds played in a loop. No sound, just an image so damaged it was little more than black and white pixels and a lot of static. A still picture of a forest, the back end of a car... and then the image whirled to the left, sweeping over empty grass and rocks. The last half-second had the camera starting to pan up -- then static.
The attacking Mobile Suit had taken them a while to identify from the cleanest still-picture of its leg. It was a Horseman, a weaponless Suit that was used, amongst other things, to clean up mountainsides of unstable rocks and fallen trees. It was a relatively light model, maybe half as big as a Gundam; so-called because it came with a four-wheeled "ride" of sorts for long distances, but that hadn't been used there. It could climb and stand on sharp inclines, but couldn't hover over flat ground more than ten seconds at a time and its operating system was very limited. And its hands were more adapted to moving around tree trunks than holding weapons.
Wufei was sure he could have found other clues, but the Kirin commander had been so panicked to see his promised weapons gone and the fearsome mafia who furnished them destroyed that Wufei barely got the time to make a copy of the Taurus' recent memory before the guerilleros retreated. They hadn't even checked for survivors. Wufei had sent a message as soon as he could do it without blowing his cover, but the first occasion only came two days later; by then the field had been burned down and all clues destroyed.
"So the Horseman jumps on the patrolling Taurus..." Heero continued, patient.
"... Must have kicked right through the cockpit on the first try. Then... No footprint in between, at least sixty feet... It kicks off straight from the falling Taurus and uses its hoverjets to push itself farther. Lands on the first car. Boss gets flattened, one man manages to exit in time..."
"Ah?"
"No body in the shotgun seat," Wufei pointed out.
"Hm. Possible. If that's the case, he escaped."
"Another potential witness. Now how the hell we're going to find out if he even exists, I don't know."
Heero snorted quietly. "Maybe the Chinese police will get lucky and think to call us. Anyway...?"
"Kicks clean through the Mobile Suit transport cabin, disabling the vehicle. Then the tracks, hmm -- ah, I get it. The second car tries to ram its leg and it jumps up to dodge, and lands on the leftover Taurus, the unmanned one. Straight on the cockpit, once again -- and it must have landed pretty hard."
Heero leaned back and scowled heavily. "Someone good enough to kick off from a stumbling target in the right direction and clear this much space with a Horseman wouldn't forget to use the jets to soften the impact. But a Horseman's structure is weaker and the metals are thinner than a battle model -- to go through a Taurus's plating it must have landed perfectly, or it would have broken off a leg. Even then it has to be damaged..."
Wufei shrugged. "Doesn't matter, it didn't have to go far. The rest of the men escape, the pilot lays the Horseman on top of the munitions truck and drives off. The end." He opened his eyes. "... And between Bei Long's latest 'all clear' and our arrival at the site, not ten minutes went by. The attacker was well out of sight by then. I don't think it took that operative longer than two minutes to clear the area of targets. Maybe under one thirty."
"Hm." Heero picked up his notebook. "So what did we learn?"
Wufei tilted his head to read Heero's list. 1) Suspect knew where&when money/weapons exchange would happen. 2) Suspect piloted a Horseman. 2b) Suspect is extremely good with Horseman. Experience? What kind? 2c) Horseman's operating system was rewritten for speed&efficiency. (Who has the skills? Who would sell the knowledge? Follow through.)
"I find it strange the assailant ran off with the munitions but didn't try to capture the unmanned Taurus. Even a junk-heap rescue like that one is still valuable. Selling it would have bought him a lot more weapons than stealing the ones in the truck, unless there was something in there the Kirin commander didn't mention." Wufei would have been surprised. The man had an almost pathological need to brag. Oh, he could have kept his mouth shut, but he would still have exuded smugness and 'I know something you don't'.
"Maybe our suspect wanted the weapons right now, or wouldn't have known who to sell the Taurus to."
"Hm. Anyway... Amongst all incidents, it's the only one where a Mobile Suit was used. The previous operative could have hired someone or been assigned a partner -- or the mobile suit attack is entirely unrelated to our case. But when you consider the timing with the attack on the rest of Bei Long's Family, and the fact that the gear stolen might easily have been used on them..."
"Could be unrelated, but it doesn't feel that way," Heero agreed quietly. "No, it's the same person."
"Or group."
Heero grunted, clearly unconvinced. Wufei was in agreement. So far there was nothing to prove there were several people involved together in this -- but then again, nothing proved there was one culprit to everything either. Motives were still lacking; what on Earth was it about? Vendetta? Vigilantism? Mafia group mowing down the competition? Groundwork to a coup d'état? Separately Heero and Wufei could easily find number-one suspects and motives for a lot of the crimes -- mafias were always at war, politicians could either be dirty or know someone else who was, and laboratories, well, it went from industrial espionage to coworker jealousy -- but only if all the cases also happened to be strangely similar by pure coincidence. No motive fit for every suspect party.
They'd tried starting from the other end -- the method -- and track back up to the source. They already had a couple of possible suspects for that one, someone who would have known how and been physically able to carry on dozens of separate incidents in a row. A motive, now, that was less immediately obvious.
The short bit of surveillance footage Wufei had managed to salvage wouldn't work as proof of anything, but it troubled him nonetheless.
"So our hacker-heist operative might also be a highly competent pilot." Wufei frowned, flipping through several of the files again, eyes automatically pausing on the key points. A semi-common, but awfully convenient computer anomaly here, an unusual break-in pattern there, an odd bit of timing in that one... "When the only tool you have is a hammer, all problems start resembling nails," he quoted under his breath.
"You think we're over-identifying with the pattern?"
"It's a possibility," Wufei allowed halfheartedly. "... That, or we're just refusing to let go of the idea that there even is a pattern because suspecting our own is better than not having any clue where to start."
The two young men exchanged a long look.
"What if you drop the idea that our suspect is the pilot?" Wufei asked, unwilling to explore the possibility before having exhausted all others.
"Three of the disappearances have occurred on De Montaubois turf, and two of the businesses hits have ties that might lead back to their rivals, the Estevez."
Wufei nodded with fake patience, giving Heero a jaded look. "Just a problem. They're all dead."
"Not Raquel Estevez."
"... Isn't that the grandmother? She's over ninety."
"She could be advising or paying other people," Heero commented even as he typed in a search string.
Wufei allowed it halfheartedly. "She could..."
"...She couldn't," Heero rectified with a scowl.
"Hm?"
"Alzheimer's. Advanced case."
Wufei groaned in weary acknowledgement and reclined against the back of the couch, holding the file he'd been reading closed on his lap. He wasn't even surprised. He made a mental note to send someone to check anyway, in the unlikely case she was faking it or paying her doctors to lie. "Estevez had a second in command, didn't he?"
"Who's also dead."
"He had a son."
"Changed his name and cut all family ties over ten years ago; now he's a supervisor at McDonald's."
Wufei let his head drop heavily on the backrest and closed his eyes. "Might want revenge anyway. Add him to the background check list."
He listened to Heero's soft grunt of acknowledgement and the clacking of his keyboard, wishing nothing more than to be allowed to go to bed. He'd been up for almost twenty-three hours; and in six hours they'd have to clock in at work, but there were some things they just couldn't talk about in the Preventers building. Too much of a chance of being overheard by the wrong person. The Preventers were a fine group, but they were also a highly paranoid one, and their Internal Affairs department would have fits over the amounts of information Wufei and Heero hadn't seen fit to share yet.
Heero gave them fits often enough, with his so-called part-time status. Just came and went as he pleased, really; here in time for some big case, and then gone as soon as the report was typed. Oh, he wasn't the only part-time Preventer on their payroll, far from it, but it would have been fine if the rest of the time he worked as a bodyguard or a shuttle repairman, or, hell, even a cashier, something traceable. He could even go laze about in a spa every other week for all they cared, so long as he could be found when they looked for him. But usually he just dropped off the radar. Even Wufei didn't know where he went and why. Add that to his ex-Gundam pilot status...
Heero and Wufei's wartime occupation was on a need-to-know basis, which meant people had gossiped about it at the coffee machine until something scandalous happened to some other coworker and drove it out of many minds. Preventers could be ex-OZ and ex-Romafeller and ex-freedom fighters from all parts of the Earth sphere, all united under the desire to protect and serve the new peace. Gundam pilots fit neatly in the ex-freedom fighter corner -- and seeing them day in, day out had made most of the colleagues they didn't directly work with or under totally forget how competent, driven and dangerous they truly had been. They were just Resistance Mobile Suit pilots, who'd lucked out on the machines they happened to get their hands on. Neat, but nothing to ooh and aah about.
Not all of their coworkers thought like that, though. And Wufei knew that some higher-ups firmly believed Heero only used the Preventers as a convenient resource for his own personal ends, they just hadn't caught him red-handed yet. It wasn't so far from the truth; they were just lucky Heero's goal was the same as the organization's. The day working for the Preventers stopped being convenient, Wufei knew Heero would hand in his notice and revert back to solo work without a second thought. He could be exceedingly professional, but ultimately his loyalty wasn't to a government or an organization, and it wasn't going to be bought with a paycheck.
Sometimes Wufei was tempted to apply for part-time status, too. But for maximum efficiency, Heero needed a full-time, trustworthy partner onboard, and Sally and Noin had other responsibilities.
"About that computer error... I think there was another case where it could have been used... Something in Australia? No deaths, but --"
"That was me," Heero replied laconically.
"Oh."
Wufei groaned and massaged his temples. He refused to ask.
"...I need more coffee."
But of course there wasn't any coffee left. There hadn't been any for the last hour and a half. Wufei really needed to restock.
He forced himself to open the folders on his lap again, skimming through them with the weak hope that something new would jump at him. Pharmaceutical firm thoroughly bombed, research irretrievable, all employee houses broken into and searched; up-and-coming mafia hotshot disappeared in transit between two L3 sub-colonies; big-time, loud-mouthed L2 politician suddenly deciding to take a long vacation on Earth...
"Hah. 'Politician' on L2 is just a fancy word for 'mafia lord that cops have to shake hands with'," Wufei muttered under his breath. And the lab seemed clean -- all legal paperwork had been submitted and it had never come to the attention of either the local police or the Preventers before the hit -- but drug and biological warfare research couldn't be done in a kitchen, so for all they knew...
"Hm?"
"Nothing. ...The more I look at those attacks and the less I can see anything but guerilla and advanced sabotage training. The serious kind -- this is a highly competent operative who has nerves of steel, incredible timing, and is used to blowing his way through if he can't sneak in. Add to that sharp piloting skills and possible programming and hacking skills..." Wufei paused, gave Heero a sardonic quirk of the eyebrow. "Are you sure you haven't conveniently forgotten to mention being an up-and-coming crime lord in your spare time?"
Heero quirked his own eyebrow right back. "I have spare time?"
Wufei snorted, his lips curling up in a small smile. It didn't last; he pushed the papers on the couch and extricated himself, pacing to the kitchen and back to work out the kinks in his legs. The elephant in the room was starting to resemble a bloated whale.
He went to Heero's side of the couch, leaned back against the wall. Heero was staring at his screen, but didn't even pretend to type or scroll. Wufei watched his profile, the tense jaw, the lowered eyelashes that spoke of somber thoughts.
"All the clues go back to L2 in the end, don't they," Wufei said, because someone had to.
Heero's voice was quiet as he answered, and he didn't look up from his computer screen. "The ones that go anywhere, yes. But then it's a fairly attractive place for all kinds of shady deals. And people travel."
Trowa traveled, too. Wufei closed his eyes. "What does your gut feeling tell you?"
Heero's jaw twitched. "...Duo."
"Aa."
Wufei massaged his temples; it didn't help. The evidence amounted to jack shit and would hold approximately ten seconds in a court of law; but if they said the name at work, it would be all the validation their coworkers needed to start a witch hunt.
Quatre had claimed to fight for peace, Wufei for justice; Trowa and Heero because they could and didn't see why not, at first -- though later on they'd gained other. But Gundam Pilot 02 had fought in the name of revenge. Of course the truth was more complicated than that -- Wufei's first reason for seeking justice had nothing to do with altruism and everything to do with OZ killing his wife -- but it wasn't how things were remembered.
"What do we do?"
Trowa would be faster and easier to check up on. They knew where he was supposed to be. The circus would be the perfect cover, too; a reason to travel without even bothering with fake papers. Hiding in plain sight -- his specialty. Wufei didn't put making it look like Maxwell had done it past Barton either.
Hell, they couldn't possibly know all operatives of this level in the Earth Sphere; there were probably quite a few around who had nothing to do with any Gundam Pilot.
Heero stared at the screen in silence for a few seconds.
"Kamenov is based on L2. We need to investigate him first anyway."
Heh. Wufei would have reminded Heero that gut feelings got people into trouble, but he would have been a hypocrite, because his guts said the same thing. Granted, if Winner or Barton decided to put the blame on Maxwell in such a way that even his fellow Gundam pilots would believe it, they could. For that matter, so could Wufei himself.
"We'll have a hard time getting a warrant with that flimsy evidence." Whereas they would get one if they mentioned a Gundam pilot might have gone renegade again -- his own behavior was precedence enough, to his great shame. But then they would probably get saddled with a SWAT team or two.
"Minister Weisman is riding Une's ass. She'll give us the mission just to make it look like we're doing something. Once we're there..." Heero shrugged.
Wufei pushed away from the wall and started gathering papers. "All right. Let's ask tomorrow."
Hopefully five and a half hours of sleep would be enough to let him talk their way through.
Next
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More please? *begs shamefully*
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... I need a 1x2 icon. >.>
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"That was me," Heero replied laconically.
AWESOMEST LINE EVER.
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And they definitely make good partners... I like the dry wit and low key banter. ^____^
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Thanks ^______^ They lack a little in spontaneity, but we know how easy that is to fix. >_____>
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Next time we catch each other on AIM, I'll give you some feedback, kay?
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Want me to think of investigative details?
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Ohhhhh. *_* I'd love you forever and ever. ♥♥♥
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♥
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Love the insight on Duo's motives. I'm very eager to see how this all culminates!
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... Won't be culminating for a good long while. *stares at planned scenes* >_>;;
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YOU KNOW YOU LOVE ME MWUAHAHA. <3<3
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*hugs and love and fangirling and more love* ^_^
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I'm writing more right now! :O le gasp.
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Oh, Heero. "That was me," Heero replied laconically. Yes, yes it was. :-)
I love how much they manage to say without actually speaking. You're amazingly good at that sort of nonverbal conversation. :-)
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I don't know where people get that Heero doesn't have a sense of humor. Come on, "I've got a piece of advice for you. Dying hurts like hell."
"You can't go anywhere with your machine in this shape! We're talkin' miracles, here!"
"It'd take a miracle for you, but I can handle it."
Oh Heero. ♥ XD
Totally off-topic, but...
I'm sorry that I keep disappearing for weeks/months at a time. Work is wonderful, but the hours keep getting longer each day--I'm working 50-60 hour weeks recently. Love you, lovely. Take care and I hope to have time to chat with you soon!