Preventer 5 and The Army of Une

By Nightheart

Midii scowled and stuck her tongue out at her reflection in the mirror. She didn’t look like herself. The girl who had been the Alliance Military’s top spy and “original bad-ass” referred to only half-jestingly as “the army of Une,” definitely didn’t belong in this white satin confection of a gown with her piled up in curls on top of her head like some kind of fairy princess. She most certainly didn’t belong at a political fête with the crème de la crème of the Romefeller Foundation; a bunch of old, white, European men who had once pulled the strings of Earth’s former puppet government. But, it was spring, it was peacetime, it was the year A.C 197 and incidentally, the anniversary of Operation Meteor. The political fête was to commemorate the start of a tumultuous war that in the end brought true peace to the Earth Sphere.

Despite her noble heritage, Midii Une--the daughter of the late, disinherited, Pierre Une and the late Duchesse Sabrina De Winters--had definitely grown up with a rather checkered past… that was being diplomatic; her past was striped, plaid and polka-dotted as well. Hobnobbing with the idle rich without a set of mission parameters was definitely not high on her list of fun activities for a Sunday afternoon. While her skills in the area of espionage had taught her well how to blend in to most any surrounding, this situation was nothing like what she was accustomed to. For one thing, she wasn’t being sent in to gain access to sensitive information or acquire intelligence about the attendees; for another thing she was supposed to be an invited guest and considered the absolute equal of any of the heirs and heiresses and heads of state who were in attendance. She didn’t feel equal.

“Lady Une, are you sure about this?” she said dubiously. In her opinion the Lady was having entirely too much fun with all of this “Launching her into her Grand Début” nonsense. Why couldn’t she concentrate her energies on Mariemaia and let Midii remain cheerfully anonymous? The dress with its white chintz and satin smacked of repressed femininity right there. Midii thought she looked like a stupid china doll. How was she supposed to blend in wearing a gown that was cut to keep her on display? Really could she possibly have found a color that wouldn’t make her stick out like a sore thumb? She felt like a giant walking white target in that uniform! Still, Midii supposed she could put up with it for one afternoon… The Lady was paying for her younger brothers’ education after all; for that fact alone Midii would have walked over hot coals if the Lady had asked it of her. It couldn’t hurt to humor her a little, so Midii schooled her face into the mask that was going to do her the most good and allowed the Lady to put the last few finishing touches on the life sized china doll that was Midii Une.

“I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time,” Lady Une said patting her shoulder.

Midii smiled diplomatically and placed her small handbag on her wrist.

A lifetime in miniature of suspicion and ingrained caution prompted Midii to bring a few necessities in her handbag. It might be peacetime but Midii felt naked without her sleepy-gas mace and her PC-cell-phone. If nothing else she could always play a round of virtual chess if she got bored.

“Are my little brothers ready?” she inquired as she stood up.

“As ready as they’re going to be. Call me observant but I don’t think they’re looking forward to this,” Une said with a wry look.

The three young boys had been vocal in their protests of attending the political fête, but were going because Mariemaia was going. Midii was going not just because Lady Une had asked it of her, but also because she felt that she had to be there to look after them. Old habits died hard and despite the fact that Lady Une was the one providing for them now instead of Midii herself, she still felt very protective of her younger brothers. A good part of her still saw herself as their only protector.

Midii took an elder sister’s delight in fussing over them and making much of them in their little suits and ties. She couldn’t help it, they looked adorable; even if they were glaring at her for her fussing. As the entered the limousine that would take them to the event the three boys stuck their tongues out at her and teased her about finding a boyfriend. Brothers, she loved them dearly but sometimes she wished she’d had all younger sisters.

***

Une encouraged Midii to mingle, so she did what she was best at; she infiltrated herself into the crowd and started profiling.

<Ex-soldier, ex-soldier, ex-assassin, spy, spy, politician, diplomat, yuppie, that guy probably always hangs about the edge of trouble involved but not too deeply so that he can cut out and wash his hands at the first opportunity. That one, I’d say, gives lip service to pacifism, but I think he used to be involved in arms smuggling. Another diplomat, that girl looks like she disguises her real practices well but I can smell gold digger all over her, that woman shouldn’t be wearing that much jewelry she’s going to blind someone… her fortunes are probably taking a downturn and she’s trying to attract a wealthy husband. The guy with the eyepiece really shouldn’t be holding forth on stuff he knows nothing about.>

Une was right… this was fun!

With the thought of perhaps finding some interesting gossip, Midii integrated herself into a knot of young courtiers or whatever the Romefeller equivalent was called and began extracting information. The information she got was enough to bore her to tears. One fellow talked of nothing but his prize race hounds, another girl spent endless minutes chattering about the importance of coordinating eye shadow and lipstick, two more girls were holding a gossip session about an illicit affair concerning two other (absent) members of their clique. Midii quickly left them to their little insidious gossip party and wandered around to see if she couldn’t possibly find something of greater interest to her.

She hovered about a knot of older politicians who were debating the political ramifications of a bill up for vote on the ESUN Council Advisory Board but when it became apparent that each of the venerable old gentlemen had their own ideas firmly fixed in their minds and weren’t likely to change their opinions Midii moved on to the next point of interest. It didn’t take long at all for her to get a feel for the room and she quickly grew bored. Rather than stick around and listen to more stuff that had little to do with her or was ever likely to, Midii decided to take the opportunity to explore the old castle. She’d heard the place still had its original library intact from the razing twenty or so years ago and there was a lot of great architecture remaining to be admired. With that in mind she gravitated out toward the edge of the crowd, slipped unnoticed past the guard at the entrance with the ease of skills that hadn’t gone been dulled by a mere few months of peace and snuck out of the room.

The library was a huge oak-and-leather affair, smelling vaguely of old paper, cigars and self-importance. At least the chairs were comfortable. They had three levels of books! Forget mingling with those callow youths who were too wet behind the ears to know what war was really like; she could spend her time in here quite comfortably. She was perusing their selection of Shakespearean works debating whether she was in the mood for the tragic drama of Othello; Iago was one of her all-time favorite villains, she liked a baddie she could secretly admire, or if she wanted some lighter fare like, say, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Puck was an awful lot of fun. She needn’t even read the volumes; the books came with vid-disks containing several different versions of the plays done over time. There was even an old black and white rendition of Hamlet from before the time shows had been filmed in color!

<Hey, Monty Python!> she thought, spying another old vid classic from before the Colony Era. Boy, this library had everything.

“No one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition!” she mimicked to the still library. Her father had been a follower of the classics of film as well as music. She was about to pop the disc in for old time’s sake when her still-active spy instincts caught a movement outside the library’s windows. There was a group pf men sneaking across the lawn, and they didn’t look like they’d come for a tea party. They were wearing kerchiefs over their faces like they were going to hold up a stagecoach and camouflage outfits with semi-autos slung at their sides. Definitely an invading force then. She watched as they quietly and efficiently took out the guards on the perimeter and slipped into the building.

<Oh-ho! I guess things aren’t as rosy and peaceful as everyone wants them to be; looks like there’s still a place for an ex-spy like me after all. Ladies and gentlemen… the army of Une is back.>

Waitaminit… how was she supposed to kick some ass and take some names when she was dressed in some fluffy, white, oh-shoot-me-now target of a dress? She’d never blend in and do her thing in this thing. It looked like she was just going to have to do her thing and get some new clothes.

<Entering from the south, and likely proceeding towards the main hub of activity,> she assessed. She was going to need one of their uniforms. She snuck over by the door and listened; there was the sound of booted feet running softly by the door and the sound of slamming doors a little down the hallway. They were checking the rooms then. Perfect. Midii got out her instant-dream sleeping gas spray and waited by the door for her lucky victim. Soon enough a young man of about nineteen or so, dressed in camos with a face hanky, stepped into the library. Midii grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket, ripped off his face mask and kissed him soundly on the lips. While he was too stunned to move for a second, she sprayed him into slumber and began unfastening his shirt and pants. She found a suicide bomber vest underneath his outer jacket and disarmed it before stripping it from his person. After she had exchanged his clothes for her own and made some minor but necessary adjustments to same, (definitely leaving out the bomber vest) she looked at the body snoozing helplessly on the floor and several ideas came to mind; most of them pretty embarrassing and not very nice. In the end she settled for the expedient, she took some telephone wire, trussed him up and stuffed him into a closet gagged with his hanky.

<A technician huh?> she thought as she looked at the equipment he’d had looped over his shoulder. He was installing cameras around the castle. Perfect. She could check in with the headquarters and find out the frequency and position of all the cameras; then it would be a simple matter to control the cameras with her cell phone. Midii had some pretty expensive toys, and her PC-cell phone was one of them. As a top spy, she had wanted the best and gotten it.

Just then the communicator that she’d taken from the guard crackled in.

“This is Bugs Bunny calling Daffy Duck 3, do you copy?” the voice on the other end of the line said.

<Speak of the devil,> she thought, deliberately lowering her voice a little. It wouldn’t matter if her voice were a bit off on these staticky things anyway, it was pretty indiscernible.

“Daffy Duck 3 here, all clear,” she said. “Request confirmation on the camera frequency, over.”

“Rodger that, frequency is 106.7 Daffy 3.”

“Rodger that. Out.” She said with a widening smile. These boys had no idea the can of worms that they had just opened.

She quickly accessed the frequency and flipped through the different positions on her tiny LCD screen, then followed the frequency all the way back to their central brain and accessed their Colonel. Midii switched the views to the cameras dotting the hostage room. A good big sister always checked up on her little brothers after all. She spotted one of the guards shoving her second eldest younger brother roughly up to the wall. Midii Une saw red. She was sorely tempted to just drop the whole infiltration and rescue mission right then and there and come down on that guard like the holy wrath of God for daring to mistreat her younger brother.

<That’s it, they’re all going down!> she swore. Before she might have been persuaded to give in since their little hostage takeover and lame attempt at global domination had little to do with her, but now… it was on! They’d hurt her family and now it was time for her to haul out the Bitch and deliver some Smack Down.

From there she pulled up communications and schematics.

There were exactly seventy five of them divided up into teams of five making fifteen teams in all; each team was named after a different Loony Toons character, each individual within a team was given a number. The central security and communications team was Bugs Bunny, the two teams sent to round up the hostages and make the demands were teams Yosemite Sam and Wyle E. Coyote. There was one other team besides herself that was responsible for setting up the additional security cameras and integrating them into the castle security system, Tweety. Bugs Bunny, the brains of the operation, had already taken control of the security room and was using it for a central command post. There were two teams dispatched to set up the nuclear warhead…

She’d better do something and quick. She scanned her brain, trying to come up with a scenario; most of the reason why Midii had been such a good spy was that she thought on her feet and improvised quickly. The best thing she could do to end this nonsense quickly would be to take over the brain. With her control over their cameras she could stay out of their sight and they wouldn’t know that there was a loose cannon like her rolling around on their deck; however, the most important thing right now was gaining control over their nuke. If she took out Bugs Bunny and gained control of their communications she might be able to give orders for them not to set up the warhead. Ah, but if the warhead was as pivotal in their plans as it looked like it was going to be, they wouldn’t receive such orders without suspicion. If Midii took over their command and control and issued such a suspicious order they’d likely send a team to check things out at headquarters and Midii would be busted. They still outnumbered her and Midii would be bargaining with them from a position of weakness… never a good thing. She needed to secure her own position before proceeding. If she took out the two teams that were setting up and arming the warhead and gained control of the warhead itself she’d certainly breathe a lot easier; it would also give her a longer leg to stand on if she chose to negotiate. Midii nodded to herself. Take out ten people and reset the command protocols on a nuclear warhead? No problem for a woman of her caliber.

She looked in some of the many pockets of her new uniform and found some things that made her very happy. Lucky for her these guys weren’t fooling around. There were grenades, detonation switches, extra magazines of bullets, explosives charges; anything a girl could want for a hostile takeover.

She called up the schematic for the castle on her tiny phone screen and looked up the area they had designated as Point W.

<W is for warhead,> she thought with deliberate childishness. As she skipped out the camera views in the control room for the cameras that were in her path so as to remain unseen and unnoticed she quickly proceeded to Point W, (second sub level shaft three) and thought:

<Operation: Midii’s Got Skills commenced; Phase One: The Whooping of Ass.>

* * *

Meanwhile in the castle ballroom three teams of terrorists burst in the door and secured the room, announcing that they were the group Epyon de Telos and they wanted their comrades busted out of jail, the right to bear arms and no quartering of soldiers… wait that’s not right. Oh, they wanted a quarter of the ESUN budget as tribute to their stage-coach-robber-masked leader… Bob. Some of the rich older men in the room laughed openly at them telling them to come back when they actually had an Epyon or at the very least, a Tallgeese; that was until one of the Soldiers of Epyon de Telos threatened to blow a couple of them a new asshole. Things quieted down despite Mariemaia’s attempts to get the soldiers to join her new army.

Relena Darlian was having a bad day; all she’d wanted was to have a cup of tea and talk politics politely with some old acquaintances of hers and now she was being herded up against the wall like some kind of frightened little sheep and stared at in a completely unacceptable manner by some bumpkin terrorist from some group no one had ever even heard of until then. She was beginning to wonder of it was some kind of obscure terrorist debut ritual; in order to make your name in the annals of Failed Terrorist Factions you had to first kidnap Vice Minister Darlian! She’d like to meet the stupid bastard who’d written that rule and give him a piece of her mind. It didn’t help that Dorothy was there at the party; she was looking at her with that look of hers again. That look of a scientist with a particularly interesting specimen in its bell jar that, if watched long enough, just might do something interesting. Why couldn’t she do something useful, like challenge a couple of them to some fencing duels? Mariemaia wasn’t helping matters any either, and if Lady Une hauled out her glasses… Relena was getting out of there.

“Looks like it’s up to me,” she muttered. Time to haul out the Relena Peacecraft Determined Face. She confronted what appeared to be the head guard, or at least he was the one doing all of the talking and most of the strutting.

“I will not give in to your selfish demands. I am the symbol of peace; kill me if you must but let these others go… they have nothing to do with this. There are children here!”

The guard just looked at her coolly and menaced one of Lady Une’s young nephews that had come with her. The Lady glared and told the man to back off unless he wanted to find himself on the business end of the fencing sword His Excellency Treize Kushrenada had given her as a birthday gift.

“We’ve finally achieved true peace! Why are you doing this?!” Relena demanded.

The guard tried to look at her with cool indifference again, but his face crumpled.

“Daddy never got me a pony!” he cried, tears streaming down his face like waterfalls. One of his comrades patted his shoulder comfortingly.

Whether she liked it or not it looked like they were stuck here until the Preventers caught on and mobilized to help them. She sighed, sometimes she almost wished she’d become an accountant.

* * *

Deep down in the dank and chill bowels of the castle, Midii waited in the shadows watching as two teams of five men tried to read the instruction manual on the warhead and stumbled over one another in maneuvers reminiscent of the Three Stooges. Collectively, they reminded her of a bunch of men trying to pitch a tent that came with more than two poles.

<I’d better stop them before they get us all killed!> Midii thought torn between real amusement and exasperation. <It’s true; women really rule the world, the men just don’t know it.>

She took out her special smoke bomb, the one that she’d rigged, McGuyver-like, with draught from her sleeping spray. No sense going in there guns blazing and getting her ass blown up by a stray bullet triggering that warhead… she didn’t object to dying, she objected to dying stupidly. After pulling the pin and lobbing the bomb she sealed off the sector and waited. There was the sound of hands pounding against the doors for half a minute then all was still. Midii waited another half a minute just in case, then took a deep breath of breathable air and busted her way in. It was the work of a few moments for her to disarm the device then re-arm it to the private frequency she’d set into her cell phone, one never knew after all. If someone else came along and tried to tamper with her warhead she wanted to know about it.

She saw all of the soldiers sleeping peacefully on the floor and grinned wickedly. It was time for a trademark Midii Moment.

Approximately twenty minutes later Midii stepped back and surveyed her handiwork. It had taken some doing to get them all dragged out of that room and into one of the sub-basements cement storage chambers, and then to get them all tied up, but the end result was worth it. Ten men with their pants removed and tied limply into various sexually compromising positions with one another was something truly worth catching on film. She took her trophies (i.e. their pants) and stored them in a safe place to come back and get later. With their communications devices taken away and patched through automatically to her cell phone so that she could answer for the guards she’d taken out, it was time to proceed with her mission.

Just then, her eyes were caught by the familiar and beloved sight of storage rooms full of wine bottles… old ones. Midii was French and had a Frenchman’s almost genetically ingrained sense for fine old wine. Her family had been raised in a run-down old vineyard near the French province just outside Strasbourg. Her mother and father had been old-school French, raising their children (when they were still alive that was) on watered down wine and teaching them the importance of savoring bouquets and flavor. A castle was more than likely to have the finest wines offered by Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, and Madeira (from which Midii had gotten her name); the kind of wines that ran in the three digits… per bottle. Her need to get moving on her next assignment warred with her inner Frenchman… She wanted revenge, but she was French, and the French worshipped wine.

<Oh, I’ll just snitch a bottle as payment in advance,> she promised herself. By the time she was through, she’d have more than earned it anyway.

When she saw the selection that was offered she about fainted in dyed-in-in-the-wool-French ecstasy. Just pick one? There were so many different kinds, so many flavors and years that she had heard of and only dreamed of tasting! She could no sooner choose a favorite flower in a meadow, a favorite grape in the arbor, a favorite star in the heavens. There was even a bottle or two from the pre-colony era! By this point Midii had tears in her eyes. It was so beautiful. Her hands itched to just touch it, to take a single sniff of the precious nectar and thus be able to die a very happy French girl. She didn’t dare, a single bottle of fine wine that old was worth more than the liquidated assets of Winner Corporation and the President of the Earth Sphere’s paycheck for his next five lifetimes put together. There was no deed she could ever do that would be great enough to earn such a treasure, so after seeing something so rare and valuable it was easier to make her decision on what kind and year of wine from among the other still-fine but younger wines she should decide upon as her payment.

<Now… what next?> Her train of thought was interrupted by the communications room again requesting the status of Sylvester and Elmer Fudd’s war head set-up. She replied that everything was on schedule, armed and ready. There were a few more communications matters but Bugs Bunny was soon feeling reassured that everything was well under control and going exactly as planned. Which of course, was exactly how she wanted them to feel, nice and complacent.

<Some days, I love my job,> she thought, feeling good as she hacked back into the com room and re-checked the progress of their mission. She had to hand it to them, they worked pretty quickly. Within two hours of arriving on the scene (a half an hour for Midii to work the clothing off the Daffy guard and infiltrate herself into his position, and another forty minutes spent with the warhead group in the basement plus ten minutes for travel time) Epyon de Telos was already firmly entrenched, they had ten groups trading shifts and patrolling sectors outside and inside of the castle, the hostages were well in hand. If they hurt one of her little brothers again she was going have to get medieval, or Midii-evil, on their hinnies.

She looked down at the pile of explosives jackets she’d collected from the nuke teams Sylvester and Elmer Fudd speculatively and began sequencing, running some numbers and experimental scenarios in her head. With the taking out of the teams Sylvester and Elmer Fudd, plus the guard whose clothes she’d taken, there were sixty-four members of Epyon de Telos left. That was still a good number considering that there was only one of her and she was working with no back up this time. Epyon De Telos likely had back up, she’d taken note of the condition of their weapons and their uniforms and quickly concluded that they had backing, either powerful backing or backing with a lot of money. Terrorist groups didn’t get supplies like they had in that good a condition by holding bake sales.

<This is probably only part of their group; the other part, if I know my terrorist faction set-ups, is probably hidden safely away at a secret base somewhere in the wilderness waiting for confirmation that either their comrades have been defeated or that we’ve all been blown straight to hell,> she thought consideringly. <If I want my revenge to be total and complete, I’ll have to get those guys and these ones… otherwise I just wouldn’t be living up to my reputation.>

She considered carefully, there were still ten teams with five men each out there. If they got suspicious and discovered Midii and she didn’t have a back-up plan, she was toast… or worse they might start shooting hostages thus placing her family in danger. After a life like she’d led, Midii didn’t have very many weaknesses left, but that was one of them. Well, she could just take out some of the guards… she looked again at the pile of explosives and a plan began to form in her mind. Midii smiled. Somewhere deep out in space, an Empath shivered, overcome with a sudden chill feeling.

* * *

“It’s good to be back in the groove,” she thought, barely restraining herself from whistling a little tune as she watched the monitor for her hallway in her little handheld PC-cell phone. Night had fallen an hour ago. According to Epyon de Telos, the Preventers had twenty-four hours to accede to their demands. They were only into hour eight. Midii had been amusing herself for the past six hours by playing shadow games with their communications devices. She had previously taken down eleven Epyon de Telos members (that first guard who’s clothes she’d taken, and those ten village idiots arming the nuke) and had them tied well and truly in a deep dank corner of the sub-basement, now she was making certain that the rest of Epyon de Telos thought that teams Sylvester and Elmer Fudd were still active. Dummy feed and fake check-ins were child’s-play, and she was having fun getting inventive in new places to send them when their shifts were over and they had to move on to a new location. Still, the game was beginning to pall for Midii and she wanted to get started on the next phase of her operation now that she had everything she needed prepared. Her shadow games had mainly been a way to amuse herself while she worked out her next big feat. She had the appropriate location for her next coup and was making her way to it. The South Wing was away from the general hub of activity it being nothing more than the kitchens, some storage and gardens, it was only guarded inside and out by two teams of Epyon de Telos members.

There was a pair of guards were coming up soon, she was hiding in a vent and waiting. She waited patiently until they had passed right beneath her then switched the camera view for the communications room to another camera and pounced on her two guards. She didn’t bother with the sleeping spray, she didn’t have enough of it to be gentle with everyone; she just hit them with a wooden pike she had found lying around. Once they were out cold, she had their pants off and the two of them tied in a sexually compromising position inside of a nearby maintenance closet. The pantless sex tie was Midii’s trademark. You could immediately discern a Midii Une hostile takeover from any other ordinary run-of-the-mill takeover… she liked to give hers style and a little artistic flair. Every single compromising position she tied the guards into was different. She liked to consider herself an artist; anyone could just tie someone up and throw them in a closet, entangling them in sexually explicit positions took talent. The multi person sex-knots were the most challenging, she liked to queue them together in such ways as to have one movement affect all of the others and the harder they struggled the harder it became to extricate themselves. You just couldn’t buy entertainment like that.

Well, no time to sit back and admire; places to go, people to render unconscious. She kept an eye out on the cameras and another out for wandering guards. The south wing of the castle was entirely deserted but for the members of Epyon de Telos and was far enough away from the warhead to suit her purposes. She was just getting rid of a few of the guards along the way. She sent a dummy command to Bugs Bunny that the two men she had taken out were headed toward the south wing for a shift change with some of the guards. The exact guards she intended to take out shortly.

<Oh how I wish I had my dart gun and tranqs,> she thought wistfully. This was probably one of the more challenging missions she’d taken on simply because she was so very unprepared. She was just sort of making things up as she went along, jerry-rigging a lot of the supplies and equipment she was accustomed to being outfitted with when she was sent on missions like this, and forming her quick strategies based on what she knew of most terrorists’ modus operandi and her own specialties and skills. She hadn’t been caught yet, and so far it had been a cakewalk to keep one step ahead of them. It wouldn’t do to get over confident but Midii was actually starting to have a little fun with this. She supposed it was one of the perks of being the best… they never saw her coming.

She reached the South Wing the quickest and safest way, by sliding her slim form through the ductwork until she reached her destination. She pushed her pile of explosives she had rigged to one of the detonation switches that the clothes she’d borrowed from her first lucky victim had come with. It was so nice of them to outfit her for a hostile takeover. Out of the ten, there were two teams patrolling the South Wing for the next hour, Taz and Foghorn Leghorn.

That made ten men who were in constant communications with one another. Midii cheerfully intercepted their lines, and brought their positions up on the schematic. There was one guard on the first floor, one guard patrolling outside, currently in the second story stairs and adjacent hallway, another guard one level above them in the same position. That took care of Taz; the guards of Foghorn Leghorn were placed two stationed at the main entryway, one was running a sweep of the corridors and two more were out in the garden, on the lookout for infiltrators no doubt.

She had just under an hour to take out all of these guards undetected, put her charges in place, and then take over central command, Bugs Bunny. Shouldn’t prove too difficult. She quickly ran through her checklist for her hastily improvised plan; she’d done a maneuver like this at one point in her career, it shouldn’t be too difficult to run a replay.

She looked out between the bars of the sixth story landing. The lone guard patrolling the third story was almost into position. Midii gave the cord another tug to ensure the knots were secured then balanced upside down like a balance beam performer on the railing and looked below her. The guard was moving… almost there… she let go and let herself fall upside down into freefall. In a rush of wind like some avenging angel, she fell on the hapless trigger-weenie rendering him unconscious with a blow to the head and had a hold of him as her cord tightened and stopped her descent a mere inch before hitting the fourth story floor and possibly killing her or rendering her very unconscious.

<Whew! Did I ever play it close on that one!> she thought with relief as her springback pulled her and her victim safely and silently to the fifth floor. She left her unconscious new friend there while she leapt acrobatically from the railing of the fifth back to the railing of the sixth, untied her knots, then flipped back down to the fifth floor and retied them to take on the guards on the second floor. She waited until they were in a good position, then fell back off the fifth floor swooping down to the second floor. The two guards were standing around, one was smoking a cigarette and the other was watching something on a portable hand-held vid monitor. Too easy. She knocked the nearest one out immediately with her club and the momentum from her fall then brought him silently up with her without his companion standing about ten feet away engrossed in his video game even noticing. The second reached for his gun, taking a breath to call for his comrades when she grasped her hand around his waist and used her other arm to cover his mouth and bring him silently up to where she’d stashed his companions. Once on the floor she released him and hit him over the head with her club… hard. She could worry about whether she’d crushed his skull later. The bungee jumping and grabbing up guards was actually quite fun.

<I could join the circus!> she thought in amusement as she descended on the guard in the first floor. In a matter of moments he too was unconscious and stowed away with his friends. She was working quickly and a little more offensively than she liked because she was on a far more stilted timetable. Knocking the guards unconscious was so crude. The bungee cord was her attempt at giving the operation a little more of her elegance.

She rid herself of the cord and took out the two guards stationed outside the front door by pointing her guns at their temples, ordering them to keep quiet. Then she hit them over the head with a convenient umbrella stand. How ignominious. The three garden guards were called inside by Midii Une via their taken-over communicators and promptly fallen on from above in a single fell swoop. The struggle lasted but a few moments, Midii was feeling the adrenaline by then, when she was done with them all of the guards of the South Wing had been taken out in under fifteen minutes. A new record for her.

<Now I have to drag their heavy carcasses undetected to safer ground. The castle was watched along every corridor so trying to get ten men down to the sub-basements was out of the question. She might be stronger than most girls her age, but she wasn’t that strong. All she needed to do was get them out of the building so they wouldn’t get caught in the explosion.

<The garden will do,> she decided. <I can just tie them up out there, I’m sure there will be a tool shed or something I can use.>

Ten minutes later the guards had been loaded onto a rug and dragged out to a nearby toolshed. It took five more minutes after that to de-weapon, remove their pants and tie them up in a piece of sexual artwork that brought tears to her eyes. It was one of her finer works, truly.

<I’d better hurry up!> she thought as she glanced down at her watch. Her time was already half up and if she wanted her plan to work she needed to get it done in under half an hour from now, before the shifts changed. She hurriedly ran through the first, second and third floors of the South Wing, planting explosives. The South Wing luckily didn’t hold any antiques or priceless artifacts, just the kitchen and storage and the maintenance rooms, oh… and the formal dining room, but who used that?

<Charges set, frequency locked, sleeping-vapor bomb prepped… I’m ready to go!> she thought cheerfully. She grabbed up her trophies and hurried off to her next destination via the castle ductwork again. Command and control was a security room in the center of the castle; that was the place that the group known as Bugs Bunny, the real brains behind the operation, had holed themselves up into. Midii dropped the bomb into the room and plugged up the vent. Bugs went down immediately. Midii left them on the floor while she aired out the room a little. It would be pretty damn stupid of her to be the one finally holding all of the cards and then fall unconscious on the cusp of her big strike because she breathed in some of her own sleeping gas. Hoist by her own petard indeed, not likely. Once the room was aired out Midii patched the systems speakers into her cell phone; it would be wisest not to be in the one-room central command just in case they dispatched troops to take care of her. Once she was safely away and hidden in a duct overlooking the hostage-filled ballroom, Midii flipped open her phone and patched herself into the castle’s loud speakers which had previously been used to deliver the terrorists demands.

She loved this feeling: the warm, comfy feeling of being the one in control. There was no kind of confidence like the kind of sanguine that came with holding all of the cards.

“Good morning ladies and gentlemen,” she said cheerfully over the loudspeakers. “This is your wake-up call. My name is Midii Une.”

She got the expected startled reactions both from the Lady (who’d had some small notion that Midii’d once earned money as a spy but no real idea of exactly how renowned her young niece’s skills were) and her three younger brothers, and from a few of the terrorists themselves. She was not entirely unknown in certain circles; the Alliance had once tested their new security systems out on her because it was said she had never failed a mission. She had a bit of a reputation, well deserved, for eccentricity. The soldiers of Epyon de Telos who were former OZ and Alliance paled at the faint recollection involving an Alliance spy called the Army of Une and unusual sexual positions; they’d thought she was only a rumor circulated by certain officers to save face from some rather humiliating events involving closets and broomsticks. The rumors of the things she had done to her conquered enemies and the vast public humiliations and damages to their reputations they’d suffered as a result of crossing her surfaced in their thoughts and made more than a few of them suddenly wish they had become accountants like their mothers had wanted. But mostly she was known for massive property damage and her twisted sense of humor.

“Oh! I see some of you have heard of me… Good, good. That’ll make things easier. I won’t have to establish my credentials. Now, getting right down to business… Epyon de Telos, I am now in control of all communications between your respective groups. I am now in control of all of your cameras. I am now in control of your nuclear warhead. To put it bluntly… I own you. You are currently holding something that belongs to me. I want it back.”

They gasped and quickly checked their communications, verifying that what she said was true. Quickly, out of the sudden freeze of uncertainty, a leader appeared. There was one in every terrorist group, damn them.

“Oh yeah?” one of the guards said into a nearby com station. “Tell us what it is; we might consider a negotiation.”

“I don’t negotiate with terrorists, especially with amateur terrorists who are so far beneath my level that taking all of you on was a joke,” she said icily. “You have something of mine and I want it back unharmed… otherwise I’ll blow you, me, and this whole place, right off the map.”

“W-wait! We’ve got hostages!” the guard protested, gesturing to the cowering politicians (minus Relena, Dorothy, Lady Une, Mariemaia and her three brothers that is). “They’ll be killed too!”

“I think you’re laboring under the mistaken impression that I care,” she informed him. “It’s either give me what I want or die along with me and everyone else.”

“You’re bluffing,” he said cynically. Midii replied in a voice so absolute and unequivocal that it was like she was stating mathematical law; rather reminiscent of Lady Une on one of her “off-days.”

“Unes. Never. Bluff.”

The guard paled and swallowed but bravely tried again.

“Then you’re trying to trick me. Well I’m not falling for it. You’re just a little girl, you can’t be serious.”

Midii smiled her spy-rubs-it-in-the-losers-face smile with her head cocked to one side and brought out the detonation switch to her charges, the ones she had set up in now the empty and deserted South Wing. She was the only one who knew the wing was deserted however… as far as the rest of Epyon de Telos was concerned they still had ten of their comrades in there.

“Am I now? Well how about I show you how “not serious” I am?”

Without another word, Midii hit the button on the end of the detonation switch and the entire building shook with the force of the explosion. It was all above ground, but it was truly a thing of beauty as the windows blasted out and doors were blown off their hinges. Not her finest work, but not bad.

“There goes half of your crew pal,” she informed him in a nonchalant and uncaring tone. “Teams Elmer Fudd and Taz have been caught in that explosion. If I were you, I’d quit while I was ahead.”

“You bitch!” one of the guards screamed.

“Hey, watch you language; there are children present,” she admonished, then pulled out her most obnoxious tone. “I thought all you boys came here ready and willing to throw down your lives for your cause. It’s not so easy to be martyrs when you have to watch you comrades die is it?”

“You bitch!” he screamed at her again. Horror reflected in his face at the sight of the perceived massacre. “You bitch…”

“Watch it sonny, I’m the one with the detonation switch to your nuke. I have no problems with pushing this button and sending us all straight to hell. I stopped deserving to live a long time ago and I’ve been responsible for so many deaths that adding yours and mine to the list won’t bother me a bit,” and then she injected a little more obnoxiousness into her tone as she prepared to ram the truth right down their throats.

“Isn’t this what you wanted? It’s what you intended to do to hundreds, perhaps thousands of other people… Whatsa matter? You can dish it out but you can’t take it? Or is it that you intended to be the ones to decide life and death; that you wanted to be the ones to decide what shape peace was going to take? Or was it the fact that you couldn’t be happy living in a peaceful world so you wanted to bring back the only world you knew because you were too busy licking your own wounds to let them heal over and get on with your lives… such as they are? Well, let me tell you soldiers a little something about your precious battles… they mean exactly shit to me and I’ll tell you why. It was war that killed my mother, it was war that made my father so sick that he couldn’t take care of his kids, it was war that created a famine and made my family starve through the long winters, it was war that put a weapon into my hands and forced me to make a decision, it was war that made me stick to my guns… Basically, it was soldiers like you who created people like me. Now you see why I have no qualms about pushing this detonation switch and blowing us all straight to hell.”

“But what about the hostages?”

“Acceptable losses,” she said uncaringly. “Why should their lives matter to me? They obviously don’t matter to you since the point of having a hostage is that you find their lives expendable and keep them alive only so long as they are of use to you. Now the map of power has shifted in your little game, I don’t care what happens to them, I certainly don’t care what happens to you, I don’t even care what happens to myself. The only thing that matters to me is that you don’t succeed. To me, that’s worth every single last life in this building. This gives me power over you.”

The guard finally got it into his thick skull what Midii had been painstakingly trying to make clear to him. If she had nothing to lose, that made her more dangerous to him than anything else at the moment. Of course she was bluffing, but they didn’t know that. That was one advantage to being a spy, superior acting skills.

She was certain that he believed her.

“W-what do you want?” he asked in defeat.

“I want you to go away,” she told him. “I want you and all of your… remaining men, to drop your weapons, head down to the bomb shelter, and lock yourselves in. Leave the hostages where they are and just go. Now.”

Meekly as little lambs they obeyed… Midii knew they were plotting something else. She was already planning ahead. She knew their next move, the less fanatical element was going to call for its escape route so that they could live to fight another day, while the true believers would be hung out to dry and probably kill themselves in prison. The escapees were going to want someone to use as a bargaining chip in their future negotiations with Preventer and that was where Midii would launch into the next phase of her mission. She was already moving because by the sound of the communiqué she had just interrupted; their chopper was on its way. By the blips on her monitors most of Epyon de Telos was making tracks for the bomb shelter, there were a few however, exactly as Midii had predicted, who were making straight for the hostage room. That didn’t give her a whole lot of time. She looked down the vent and into the hostage room, Lady Une was marshalling the other hostages out into the garden for a head count. Midii slipped behind one of the billowing curtains in the ballroom and waited for the right person to pass by.

By a stroke of luck she found just the person she was looking for making her way outside into the light of dawn that was just breaking over the horizon with the rest of the hostages. Midii snuck up behind the girl, covered her mouth and dragged her off to an empty room.

“It’s me. Give me your dress,” she commanded.

“Wh-wha?” Relena said blankly, her brow furrowing in puzzlement, sending an odd look at Midii.

“Your dress,” Midii said impatiently. “Strip it off and hand it over.”

Midii began hurriedly stripping herself of her borrowed uniform. “I don’t have a lot of time. If I’m gonna get kidnapped as you, we gotta move quick!”

“But-“ she tried again.

“Don’t argue with me! Just do it… I know what I’m doing.”

Relena shook her head; then gingerly took off her dress which had been rumpled by the long night she’d spent soothing her fellow hostages and trying to get a little sleep in between threats on her life. Fortunately, they were roughly the same size in height and their builds weren’t terribly different; their clothes were quickly exchanged. Midii looked at the two of them in a nearby mirror.

“Hmmm,” she said critically, cocking her head to one side. “My hair is lighter than yours, even if it is about the same length… they’re bound to notice. I wish I had some spray dye or something.” Shrugging, she piled her hair up on top of her head and secured it under a baseball cap jammed down low over her eyes to hide her slightly different features.

“Are you sure about this?” Relena said skeptically. Midii was to busy scribbling a note on a piece of paper. Suddenly she finished her note then whirled on Relena.

“Make sure Lady Une gets this,” she said seriously. “It’s a matter of life and death. I gotta go.”

With that Midii rushed off at a dead run in the direction of the terrorists who were looking for a Relena Darlian to escape with and use as a bargaining chip in future negotiations.

“Wait!” Relena called. “What are you… oh never mind!” She ran off to find the headstrong girls’ supposed keeper. If a girl like that said it was life and death, Relena was inclined to believe her.

* * *

“Alright, let’s go! Mission commenced!”

Preventer Five arrived at the site ready and willing to take down the terrorists exactly as Quatre had planned it out… only to discover the hostages out on the front lawn of the castle milling about as Lady Une shouted orders and separated people into groups. Perplexed, they all exchanged puzzled looks. Sally walked up to Lady Une with the others trailing along behind them looking around.

“Lady? I thought that there was a hostage situation here… what’s going on? Everything looks fine.”

“There was,” Une said shortly. “Up until a few minutes ago. You can thank my niece; once I get through skinning her alive that is.”

“Lady Une! Lady Une!” Relena came running up in a state of great distress… wearing someone else’s clothes. Even Heero had to look twice as the normally elegant and stately dressed former princess sported the uniform of the ones who had been holding them hostage up until a few minutes ago.

“Relena?” Sally inquired. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s that girl Midii,” she said anxiously trying to rush all of her words out at once in a state of uncommon agitation. “She cornered me and made me change clothes with her, then she gave me this note to give to Lady Une. She said it was a matter of life and death. Lady, I think she intends to disguise herself as me and… I don’t know what!”

Suddenly there was the sound of chopper blades beating the air nearby, the chopper descended vertically from above and landed on the helicopter pad on the roof of the Sanc Kingdom Castle. A few scant seconds later, before anyone could react, the chopper took off again.

“I could venture a guess,” Sally said dryly as Preventer One opened the hastily scrawled note and scanned the lines.

Une spat out a string of curses, loudly and vituperously, that could have turned the air blue.

“How much you want to bet our dear Relena-impersonator was in that chopper?”

At Wufei’s questioning look, Une handed the note to him and turned to Heero snapping off an order in her crisp colonel voice that would have had many a soldier scurrying to do her bidding.

“Heero, I want you to access the Alliance Military personnel records at the Preventers’ database and bring up anything you can find me on a Midii Une. I want to know exactly what she did, where she did it and for how long. Sally, Wufei, Quatre I want you three to get things calmed down and organized right here; I expect things to be in order when I get back.”

“Where’re ya goin’?” Duo asked in puzzlement, a little of his irritation seeped into his voice. He had come here all ready and willing to kick some serious terrorist ass; ready to relive some excitement and fun with some of his best buds from the wars. Quatre had come up with a great strategy and Duo had been rearing to go, only to get there and discover that someone else had beat them to it! He was feeling some major letdown right then. He wanted to kick some ass, but there was no more ass to be kicked!

“We are going to follow our dear infiltrator right back to the terrorists’ nest; and hopefully stop her before the body count rises,” Une said shortly.

“Body count?!” Quatre said in surprise and dismay, just as Relena looked back at her former residence and screeched in alarm

“My castle! She blew up the South Wing!”

A gardener came jogging up abruptly and called, “We found a bunch of strange men… I think you’d better come and see.”

Sally walked over to the tool shed while Une called for transport. Trowa just stood there in a state of semi-shock. It figured she’d turn up like this, with death, destruction and the possible loss of peace nipping at her heels. Like a Plague Maiden of old, she never got hurt but everyone else around her went down… boom!

“Heero, Duo, Trowa; you’re with me,” Une ordered unequivocally. “We need to move fast. I don’t even want to think what they’ll do to her if or when they discover she’s not Relena, or worse if they figure out what she did to them.”

Suddenly there was the sound of whooping laughter coming from around the side garden. It sounded like Sally.

Une’s communicator went off.

“Une,” she answered.

“It’s Sally, we’ve found a little love nest,” Sally snickered. “Your niece has a hell of a sense of humor.”

“What do you mean…” Une inquired.

Sally replied with something indecipherable.

“She did what?!” Une screeched, then jogged up the hill and around the side to the South Gardens.

Trowa and the others followed, since it would be a few minutes before their transport arrived, Heero already absorbed in his laptop. They looked as one into the entrance of the tool shed; it took a few seconds to decipher what they were seeing at first but when they finally made it out, Duo burst out laughing. He was holding his side, doubled over and laughing like a crazy man. Trowa sweatdropped when he saw the object of Duo’s amusement.

They were men. They had no pants. They were tied together in a variety of positions that would likely be censored, if not banned completely, from public television. Trowa didn’t think the acts they were supposedly engaged in were even anatomically possible, at least, not without Yoga lessons first. Maybe not even then.

<She’s sick.> Trowa thought.

“I guess we can rest assured that, while she may be the imp of mischief, Midii’s actually pretty harmless,” Sally said, still looking amused, “We’ve found more guards in the sweep of the premises in flagrante delecto, or at least without their pants on and tied up into some very creative positions. This brings the total death toll to zero… so far.”

Pretty harmless… The sound of explosions and gunfire echoed back from his memory. Yeah, that would be the day. And now Lady Une wanted him to follow after her and do to the terrorists what Midii and the Alliance had done to him?

“Got it,” Heero informed the group flatly, pulling a printout from the side of his laptop. “Midii Une, Alliance Covert Operative number 8472; Type-class Operative: level one class-A.”

“Ride’s here,” Trowa said shortly. As Heero, Duo and Une proceeded into the castle to go to the top floor and catch the helicopter, Trowa stayed where he was.

“Hey!” Duo called over his shoulder. “You comin’?”

Trowa shook his head.

“Barton!” Une barked commandingly. “Get your ass moving!” Trowa debated refusal again, but by the look on Une’s face it hadn’t been her night. Even he was wary about crossing a pissed off Lady Une, and she looked very pissed off. On second thought, she was pissed off at Midii… He didn’t really want to miss seeing the girl get raked over the coals by the Colonel. Vengeance, even if it was second hand, was sweet. Things were looking up.

He calmly paced up the hill and into the building to catch the chopper headed on its way to the roof. Heero kicked the pilot out of the cockpit while Duo nabbed shotgun. Une and Trowa strapped themselves into the back.

“How’re we supposed to follow her?” Duo asked into the radio-connected headsets that shut out the sound of the engines all around them. “That chopper they took is long gone.”

“Midii said she’d be broadcasting their coordinates to my vidphone via satellite from her handheld. We’ll follow the directions she’s given us so far. She has us traveling at ninety-two degrees at a velocity of 500 mph, cruising altitude one thousand eighty feet above sea level for seventeen point eight minutes.”

“Rodger that,” Heero said and set the course.

“Afterwards she specifies a direction change to one hundred seven degrees maintaining speed and altitude.”

Trowa fought away the uncomfortable feeling he got from being directly on the other side of the fence. Was this what it felt like to come full circle?

<No,> he answered himself. <We have no intention of massacring everyone inside that building.>

“I’m getting another transmission; oh, wait never mind,” Une said.

“What did she say?” Duo asked curiously.

“She was requesting that we show mercy to the ringleaders of Epyon de Telos and not come in there with bombs and mobile suits killing and shooting everyone. I’d say she’s been working for the Alliance too long.”

Trowa bit back a comment about Lady Une’s own previous record with bombs and mobile suits killing and shooting everyone. He didn’t exactly have a whole lot of room to throw stones.

“Increase speed to one thousand mph.”

Heero complied.

“So how’d she bring these boys to heel Une? Had to be somethin’ pretty impressive to be only one person takin’ on seventy,” Duo said into the slightly awkward silence.

Lady Une began giving them the details of what she knew about Midii’s maneuvers concerning the terrorists and an abridged version of her little speech in the hostage room in between Une’s occasional relay of Midii’s course adjustments. They at last received confirmation on the coordinates of Epyon de Telos’ main base, sent by Midii who had obviously landed there. Following quickly after the transmitted coordinates were specifications on their external defense systems, how many gun towers there were, where they were positioned, what kind of guns they were equipped with, etcetera, etcetera. Heero shot vertically up into the atmosphere and circled the tiny island that Epyon de Telos had made its own in the remains of an abandoned Alliance weapons bunker/base.

“Hn,” Heero grunted. “Now what?”

“That should be obvious Heero,” Duo said looking at him like he was crazy. “We go in there and take them out.”

“There is a civilian hostage involved,” Heero pointed out.

“She’s no more a civilian than you or I,” Trowa said flatly.

“Do you two know each other?” Une asked shrewdly.

Trowa maintained a passive face and said nothing.

Une shrugged and said, “Regardless, there’s only one of her; and we don’t know how many soldiers inhabit this base, nor what their weapons strengths and capabilities are.”

“If she’s as good as her reputation and the reports on her Alliance personnel file, we won’t be left in the dark for long,” Heero pointed out.

“I would recommend that we hover here and await a fuller report,” Trowa suggested. “If she’s discovered we’ll move in anyway. It would not be strategically advantageous to attempt to take over their base without information when we don’t have to.”

“Yeah, if she can do the job, why not let her,” Duo added.

“Because we don’t know what’s down there,” Une snapped, looking uncharacteristically worried. “We don’t know whether she walking in to a trap or a bunch of old retired generals wanting to give one last hoo-hah before they fade into obscurity or if there’s a whole fleet of young hotheads itching to take on the one who’d gotten them busted. There are too many unknowns and Midii is too vulnerable. We need to extract her and then we can take out the base.”

“I can sympathize with you being worried about her,” Trowa said tonelessly. (Une got the feeling he wasn’t really sympathetic or worried about her.) Normally it was Quatre’s job to do all of the sympathizing anyway. “But even if we do infiltrate their base, we won’t know where to find her. This place has wave dispersion devices set up at regular intervals and we won’t be able to lock on to her signal as it will be garbled up with all of the others. I’ve tried synchronizing with some of the wave patterns but they’re running at too many different frequencies.”

Suddenly, Une received a downloaded file.

“I tested the security system for this one myself a few years back,” Une read aloud from the words scrolling across her communicator. “The file contains the parameters. Most of it is probably already useless but some of the place is still intact. A Gundam style attack, I’d bet my laptop. They’re leading me towards block A; they appear to have re-routed command and control to the non-demolished barracks sector.”

“She’s right about the attack,” Duo chimed in. “Quatre got sent on this one… you know how he hates killing soldiers in their sleep.”

“Now that we have the parameters we can set up an operation and plan ahead. We should call in Quatre and some of the others first,” Une said. “Hovering here won’t do us much good and it won’t get my niece out of there any faster.”

“The point will become moot soon anyways guys,” Duo said. “A few more minutes and we won’t have enough gas to get home.”

“Then drop me off, I’ll infiltrate while you go back for back up,” Une said.

The three of them shook their heads in negation.

“No good,” Heero said flatly. “You’re the central command and as such the only one with real authority to call for back-up. Aside of that fact, your skills don’t lie in infiltration.”

“No offense meant Lady, but you’d just be getting in the way,” Duo said. “Trowa and I will take care of it.”

Trowa blinked and blurted out “why me?” before he thought. Helping the obnoxious little vixen was the last thing he wanted to do.

“Because, you’re our infiltration expert, and I’m the next best at getting in and out of places I’m not supposed to be. Besides, we need Heero to fly the Lady back and the Lady needs to go back and bring the others so we can wrap this up.”

“Will wonders never cease, Duo actually made a logical observation,” Heero observed dryly. Trowa made a small, inaudible growling noise in his throat. He was stuck for it. Without another word, he picked up a parachute pack, shrugged it on, fastened the buckles, and prepared to open the door.

“Take this, just in case,” Une said, handing him her phone. “It maybe possible that once inside the perimeter you can get in contact with Midii.”

Trowa nodded once then Duo joined him and shrugged into his own parachute. He heaved open the side door and fell out into the darkened sky. The chopper pulled away, presumably headed back to Preventers’ HQ, leaving the two operatives alone in the night.

* * *

Midii Une, with her head bowed low and her face hidden in the shadows of the bill on her hat, was escorted by two beefed up security guards to a locked room… nicely accoutered; and left there all alone. She looked around her; it had rich, thick pile carpeting, oak paneling, a canopy bed and dresser. Former Romefeller quarters or she’d eat her handheld. She really didn’t think she’d be dining on plastic and microchips anytime soon. Aside from the lovely and expensive antique furniture, there was not a single security device in the entire room. Midii swept it twice covertly with her handheld; the first time, she didn’t believe it. There wasn’t a camera or an audio monitor or a motion detector or even a spy hole; the vent was more than large enough for her, even with the dress. She was surprised they remembered to lock the door. If she hadn’t known Relena’s reputation of being a good little hostage and staying put, Midii would have felt that they were insulting her intelligence.

Then again. This was an island… there weren’t many places a hostage could go unless she knew how to pilot a helicopter and as far as Midii knew that particular skill wasn’t on Relena’s list of abilities.

<Phase Two: The Taking of Names commenced,> she thought climbing easily into the ventilation shaft and trying not to sneeze from the dust and grit collected there. Part of her wondered why she was even bothering with the vent; she could probably just walk right out through the door and no one would notice. Still, even though this group was the sorriest and most inept collection of village idiots she’d taken on to date, there was no point in doing something stupid and getting herself caught like an amateur.

Most Alliance barracks were built along the same lines. The dormitory hallways were built almost exactly the same in any military installation she’d been in. There was a large central room for muster, two long hallways along either side with stairs at each end lined with rooms on either side of them, and more hallways interconnecting them so as not to create a fire hazard. Each floor of the barracks was built the same as the one before it. A small base like this probably had only one level of barracks, two at the most. Since the large room for muster was in the center, Midii would bet her father’s flute that they’d turned that into their central command post, or at least had something important there. It was the room that was the easiest to defend in the barracks after all. So, that was the logical place to go.

<Why am I doing this again?> she asked herself as she slid along the grimy inside of the vent, smearing years of accumulated dust and mud down her borrowed dress front and getting grit and grime in her hair. She dearly hoped that the Vice Minister Darlian was not terribly attached to the dress, the only thing it was good for now was rags for cleaning… on second thought they wouldn’t even get anything clean in their condition. She growled inwardly as she squeezed past a tight point in the vent and her stomach reminded her that it hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning and she had been quite active.

<Oh yes, professional pride. Geez, I should just let those Preventer losers handle this one; those greenies could use some experience.> She grimaced in disgust as she slid through some muck that had accumulated in the unused vent shaft. <No good deed goes unpunished I suppose; remind me never to do this again.> Midii was going to knock them all out and braid them all into such a knot that they’d never get untangled just out of sheer irritation at having to slide her exquisite self through that disgusting vent shaft.

She reached the shaft that overlooked their improvised central command post. She sighed, it was completely textbook, and completely boring.

* * *

“So how do we get in?” Duo questioned when they’d landed in the dense cover of the island forest.

“According to the schematics she sent us, blocks B, C and D were destroyed; leaving only block A, the barracks. There are three main weaknesses with their layouts; the front entrance which as we can see from here has been barricaded in, the fire escapes which is likely what they are using as their primary entrance and exit points, and the maintenance ducts.”

“Aww man!” Duo said, snapping his fingers. “I hate using the maintenance ducts. It’s so not cool.”

“It would be easiest to access the ducts through Block B, it is likely that they’ve been exposed because of the destruction,” Trowa stated with his usual detached calm.

“Great, let’s just get goin’ before the sun comes up. It’ll be easier to sneak past the guards.”

Sneak they did. They didn’t even have to take any of the guards out just waited until their backs were turned and slipped into the piles of rubble and cement walls that was all that was left of that particular portion of the base. Trowa found where the main line of the maintenance duct was by using the downloaded schematic Midii had sent them; much as it galled him to have to accept help from her he would take speed and not getting caught stupidly over his own pride on this occasion.

The maintenance tunnel had definitely been left to go to ruin. There was rubble lining the floor of it along with stale water from the rains tricking in and some sort of slimy substance that didn’t bear investigating coating the walls. There was also the movement of small animal life echoing through the dark tunnels.

“So,” Duo said conversationally as he turned on a small hand light and proceeded down the shaft. “How long have you two known each other?”

Trowa debated not answering, but if his behavior with Heero was anything to judge by the young thief wouldn’t let the matter drop. Trowa decided that since he was a friend, and likely to be very annoying, he should just give over.

“She knew me when I had no name,” Trowa said shortly. “We were friends when we were children but she turned out to be a spy. The rest of the rebel faction that had raised me from when I was a boy was destroyed because she did the exact thing then that she is doing now; that is, she allowed us to take her in and transmitted the coordinates of our main base to our enemy so that it could be destroyed.”

“Sounds like a rough first meeting,” Duo said, then brightened. “I guess that gives you and me something in common for a change then!”

Trowa looked at him, awaiting clarification.

“Hilde and I were on opposing sides when we first met too. Now we’re on the same side. It looks like you and Une’s niece are on the same side now also. See what peacetime can do to old lines of conflict? It’s a lot more fun being Hilde’s friend than it is her enemy… although there are times when fighting with her is fun too. We get to make up afterwards and-“

“Duo,” Trowa cut him off. “No more,” he said as he noted that his friend was about to elaborate. Duo grinned and shrugged. They continued walking down the tunnel in silence.

* * *

Midii looked down at the room beneath her, weighing her options in her mind. Optimally, she’d like to have the remaining factions of Epyon de Telos well in hand before Lady Une arrived. She suspected that there was nothing like handing a renowned terrorist group on a silver platter for getting in Une’s good graces. Midii didn’t really see why the Lady would be upset at Midii in the first place, but just in case… That meant that she would have to cut off their means of escaping this island. But she had come here not only to whoop some ass, but to take some names as well. That meant getting into their main computer and finding out precisely who was pulling their strings. Any spy worth their salt knew that information was more valuable than gold, jewels and any form of currency. She could hack in using her portable PC, but actually gathering the evidence was a bit more troublesome. There wouldn’t be enough memory on her cell phone for the massive download she would need. Aside of getting the information she required, cutting off the terrorists means of escape and rounding them up, she also wanted to destroy their weapons bunker. Ambitious, especially if she was working alone without back up… but they didn’t call her the Army of Une for nothing.

<Let’s see, I can explode some fuel tanks and take care of their means of escape, run a line of gasoline to one of the powder kegs in their weapons stockpiles and that’ll take care of that. Which leaves me with two problems basically, how to get them all into a holding pen and how to get some time alone with that computer of theirs.>

She could try evacuating all personnel with a false alarm but then they would run for the escape vehicles and if she already had them on fire and was detonating their weapons bunker at the same time there was the chance that she could get someone killed in the crossfire. How to get them all out of her hair though? She only had one sleeping bomb and there wasn’t enough morpheus vapor in it to send everyone in this compound to sleep. It would take care of this room all right but what about the rest of the terrorists.

She pondered the dilemma a bit more. She really liked the idea of lighting up their fuel tanks. There was just something about the sound of things exploding… it was actually a lot of fun.

<I think I’m going to need some kind of distraction… or maybe I can hack in to the computer from here and… yes, yes that’s it. I’ll run a coded transmission to a satellite feed, I know they’ve still got a dish, I can tight cast the information to the Preventers via piggyback signal and that’ll take care of that. Once I’ve got the names, the rest is just the fun part.> It wasn’t easy using her phone to hack into a mainframe in the first place, fortunately she was on location.

She peered down through the cracks in the vent at the computer mainframe they had in dominating one wall of their central command and read the little tiny numbers on their modem, which would let her pc-cell phone talk to their computer. Praying she wouldn’t get caught stupidly, Midii logged on as one of their high security clearance users after cracking one of the passwords with her scrambler and pulled up three files; personnel, financials, supplies. This would tell her the three things she needed to know… who was in the group, who was financing it, and where and how their supplies traveled from base to base. That last would enable them to capture or tag most if not all of their accomplices. A nice neat little package. Said package was swiftly transferred to satellite feed and sent in several tight bursts bouncing from satellite to satellite until she accessed one of the Preventers’ private transmissions satellites. This would only hold up their operations for a moment. They’d thank her later.

While she was accessing base schematics she discovered something interesting. The base didn’t rely on escape vehicles to exit the island in case of an emergency. Instead they had an underwater bay full of escape pods that would launch automatically fifteen minutes after they had been filled. Each Epyon de Telos member was assigned an escape pod, and the launch and closure of doors was controlled via the central computer. There was also an old reactor core from back when the base had been fully operational that was what the current stronghold was running off as far as power and electricity went right now. In times of war it was common for OZ and the Alliance to pull a “sowing the fields with salt” maneuver when their local bases were attacked and they had evacuated all personnel. In order to keep their equipment and special information from falling into the hands of the enemy, they could set up a self-destruct sequence for their reactor core; this too was automated from central command.

Midii smiled.

* * *

Quatre suddenly shivered and looked around. The day looked like it would turn out to be seasonable but suddenly he felt chill. Sally looked over.

“Is something the matter Quatre?” Sally inquired.

“I’m not sure, I hope not. I just got this sudden cold feeling running up my spine,” he replied, looking around him in unsettlement.

* * *

She glanced at the timer slowly counting down from twenty minutes on her cell phone. While she was on her way over to the vehicle bunker/ boathouse to take out their means of controlled escape her automated ruse would be counting down to activation. She had used her PC-cell phone to program in and lock some new commands into the system; at the end of twenty minutes there would be a sudden computer glitch and the whole base would go to red-alert. She had commanded the system into authorizing a fake system meltdown; all personnel would be ordered into their evac pods which Midii would then seal up and lock down via her command of their internal computer. She would have all of the sheep in their pens, and any stragglers wouldn’t be able to get away anyway because she would have already destroyed their means of escape. That would leave her free to go and check on the major financier of their little Sanc Kingdom expedition.

<But first, before I do any really fun exploding of fuel thanks and blowing apart of standing structures… I need to change clothes.> She looked down, grimacing at herself in disgust. Really, she was positively filthy in this dress and she didn’t want to get picked up by her aunt looking like something the cat had dragged through the mud. The dress was unsalvageable but Midii didn’t have to wear it now that she wasn’t pretending to be Relena Darlian. She had time enough to make a quick pit stop into supplies and requisition something a little less covered in grime.

<All clear,> she said to herself as she slipped into the back of their storehouse. Apparently they had been given more than enough financial backing to buy out most of an OZ-Alliance Surplus Store. Midii helped herself to some of what she found there in as close to her size as she was going to get. Black combat boots for her dainty feet. A white one-size-fits-all tank top was turned into a fetching belly shirt with the proper application of a folding field knife. Charcoal and black camo-cargo pants for night missions were tucked into the tops of the boots along with a pair of throwing knives, the waist of the pants were adjusted with the use of a faux-leather belt onto which was also strapped an extra handgun, an extra field knife in its sheath, a pouch with extra ammunitions mags, flares and small charges and a few odds and ends she liked to carry with her. Midii looked around her quickly, checking to make sure there wasn’t anything else she wanted that they might provide her. Her eyes fell on a familiar shiny black case…

<A tranq-gun!> she thought happily. Some god up there must have decided she had earned a helping hand! It was even a Raven PX2160, the very same model that had been lik