Conspiracy

Chapter Two

 

Makeshift Shelter; Former Cinq Kingdom

 

Three Days after the Attacks

 

            “I’m tellin’ y’ guys! We’re nothin’ without Buddy!” Duo screeched from his bed, waving his arms around as he looked from one comrade to the other.

 

            “Perhaps, that’s true, Duo, but…”

 

            “It is true!” Shinigami insisted interrupting Quatre’s gentle tone. However, the Arabian went unfazed by his friend’s rude conduct.

 

            “But Duo we have no way of finding Heero’s location. He may not even… have a location.”

 

            “You sayin’ he’s dead, Q- man?”

 

            “No, not really! I just…”

 

            “I say the reckless, son of a bitch got himself killed along time ago.”

 

            “Oh come on Zechs! Is that anyway to talk about your future brother- in- law?”

            “The day I let Yuy marry my little sister is the day when Hell freezes over.”

 

            “Oh, wake up and smell the ammonia, Zechs. It’s already been there, done that, and now it’s doing it again!”

 

            “Maybe we should at least try to find Heero,” Quatre slowly spoke up, while looking at the ground to escape Preventer Wind’s death glare sent in his direction.

 

            “Finally, someone agrees with me!”

 

            “I object!”

 

            “Wu- man! What d’ hell are you a’ doing?!”

 

“Lady Une put me in charge of this group and I will not go wasting our resources and valuable time to find some idiot to whom you think could win this war for us!”

 

Duo slumped into his bed in overdramitized exasperation. Closing his eyes he breathed out, “Okay, now we are back were we started from.” He blinked open his eyes and rested them solely on Zechs.

 

“Let’s recap, shall we? Who saved us the first time against White Fang with no help what so ever from you, eh, Zechs?”

 

The older man grumbled and the braided one put a hand up to his right ear mockingly and spoke in an annoying singsong voice, “I can’t hear you!”

 

“Yuy!”

 

“Now, now, was that so hard?” Just as the words flowed effortlessly from his mouth a mischievous smirk graced his mouth and a devilish glint twinkled in his indigo eyes.

 

“Okay, round two! Who saved us from the Mariemaia Incident with no help what so ever from you, eh, Wufei?”

 

“Yuy.”

 

“Exactly. Do you see a pattern forming here or do I need to shove those sticks up your asses even further?”

 

“Duo, it’s not that we are nothing without Heero, but we are nothing without our Gundams.”

 

“Okay, so I can admit that either way is basically a lose- lose situation, but I can’t see why you just won’t agree with me!”

 

“Because we don’t won’t to stoop down to your level.”

 

“I never thought I’d say this to you, Barton, but if you start givin’ me the lip,” he balled up his hand and waved it threateningly at the acrobat. “This fist will go right through your lip!”

 

“Weak coming from a man who can’t even stand on his own.”

 

“That was low, Wufei, even for you.”

 

~ * ~

 

Relena sighed as she moved away from the door of the shelter to walk back to a large pile of gray rubble to sit next to Nion who was vigorously typing on a laptop that had the Preventers’s insignia on the top of it.

 

The Princess sat down next to her sister- in- law and leaned against her as sibling would do. However, when the other woman halted in her fingers’ dance, it alerted the golden haired twenty- one-year-old.

 

“Something wrong, Nion?”

 

She could not stop the smile that immediately wove itself on her face as Relena addressed her by her maiden name. Even now after nearly being married to Zechs for almost three years, her associates still had the habit of being called ‘Nion’. Heck, her husband still called by her maiden name.

 

“Relena, you look like you could use a good girl talk.”

 

Now, it was Relena’s turn to smile but the tone it held was more of sadness then of happiness. The girls she had met during or after the war in some cases had become her closet friends. This turn of events began to happen in the year of AC 197. It was during this time that the Earth Sphere United Nation had become stable with peace.

 

They had met at the Earth Sphere United Nation’s First Annual Winter Ball that had been a ceremony to mark the second anniversary of the Eve Wars and the first anniversary of the Mariemaia Incident. (It was only by the year of AC 200 had it become an ‘annual’ event.)

 

The girls, Relena, Catherine Bloom, Hilde Schbieker, Sally Po, and Lucrezia Nion, had all finally met and with a lot persuasion on the Pilots’ parts, they had become friends even to the point were they could second guess another’s actions.

 

However, they all were very busy women. Relena, of course, being the Vice Foreign Minister and the Princess of the most important kingdom in the ESUN, she had very little time. Catherine was the star of the only existing traveling circus. Hilde was a co- owner of the Maxwell Incorporated Scrapyard. Sally was a full time Preventer/ MD. While, Nion was Vice President, or second in command of the Mars Terraforming Project.

 

Even though, the group only got to get together a few times that did not mean that the tragedy did not hit them hard.

 

At the age of twenty- one, Catherine Bloom died on the day of July 15, AC 198 from natural causes. She had come down with typhoid fever on July 3rd of that year and did not recover. She had passed on nearly two weeks after being diagnosed with the sometimes-fatal virus.

 

Relena had smiled because Cathy had come up with the ‘girl talk’ bit and they (as in the Gundam girls) to this day said the line in remembrance of their knife throwing friend.

 

“Well, Nion, it’s just that I’ve been having these nightmares…”

 

Standard Disclaimers Apply