The tall, well-built boy was shocked to open his eyes to what was still complete darkness. His slender hand reached around the door to the lock on the other side. His emerald eyes blinked in the gloom as he realized that the lock was operated by a keypad. What kind of person would let a prisoner out of his cell only to have him get lost in a dark hallway? Trowa was not into playing other people’s games, even though he wasn’t expected to anymore the feeling of not knowing what was going on was irritating. He was only guessing that the expanse that carried a slight breeze beyond him was a hallway, but what else would it be? As a gundam pilot Trowa certainly wasn’t afraid of the dark, much less any enemy, no matter that this one had a very odd way of going about things. He set off running down the hallway. After at least five minutes of listening to his own hollow footsteps Trowa hadn’t come to a dead end. He might have passed a few turns but there was no way to tell. If Trowa ever normally experienced emotions he would have been frustrated at this point, but he didn’t and wasn’t. The most emotion Trowa had at the moment was wonder, wonder at how and why in the world someone would want a hallway of complete darkness. Trowa closed his eyes; he really could see better that way. His brain made up inconsistent wisps of light that he peered at behind his eyelids. It gave the illusion of a possible direction to go to get outside. Suddenly Trowa froze; turning around steadily to the sound of footsteps that weren’t his own.

A giggle pierced what had before been unnoticed but complete silence. It belonged to a female, probably a young girl. She set off running and Trowa didn’t hesitate to follow. By listening only to each other’s footsteps the girl guided Trowa through countless turns and branch offs that the boy would have undoubtedly smashed into otherwise. Trowa tried calling out to his invisible guide but she only laughed in response and ran faster. Eventually he heard the sound of a door being opened and the noise of the girl disappeared. Trowa found the door and strode through the threshold into another room. The slightest bit of light became visible. Trowa made out the shadow of the girl standing beyond him. Nothing else in the room cast a shadow, indicating that the place was empty. Trowa could vaguely make out that the girl was wearing something white. She folded her arms. "Trowa Barton. Don’t I know you well. I was wondering who I was guiding. Close your eyes."

Trowa had never heard the voice before in his life, although if he had to make a guess the tone of it certainly reminded him of someone. But his guess was absolutely absurd. "You might kill me."

"Yes, I might if you keep being so rude. For a supposed military genius you’re awfully slow on some concepts, I’m just going to open the door to get outside."

"Oh."

"The light will blind you, you might want to close your eyes. I’m just being considerate."

"Oh," Trowa repeated evenly. "No thank you."

"Idiot. Really, men are such paranoid bakas sometimes," the girl made an unreadable face and twisted the knob of a door she’d been standing in front of. Light flooded the room and Trowa was blinded, but only for a minute, and as the girl disappeared through the bright doorway Trowa realized that the walls of the room he was in were painted white. Perfect if you happened to want to blind someone. Trowa adjusted very easily to the change though and quickly followed his guide out the door.

Trowa stopped dead when he saw her, his guess, no matter how far off it was, was right. Or at least it seemed right. She had her back to him, so if it weren’t for her very distinct voice Trowa would have never known the difference. The white Asian pants and jacket outfit, the ink black hair tied in a tight ponytail, the slightly vertically challenged way that she held herself with an indisputable amount of cold pride; Trowa had to blink a few times at the sight. "Wufei?"

The girl, who did look exactly like Chang Wufei, turned around. She grinned. "Close, but no, not Wufei."

Trowa immediately saw one difference. The girl had very bright cerulean blue eyes, quite unlike Wufei’s onyx black. Her hair was also a little bit longer, falling to the middle of her back. She folded her arms and looked expectantly at him for a response. Trowa decided to take a look around before constructing one. He was standing on a very high platform of some sort with no railings. It was right next to the ocean; about a hundred feet below Trowa could distantly make out churning water. It was a very long way down though; Trowa wondered whether he’d live through a drop like that.

"I am not Wufei, although I do know a boy by that name. My name is Li."

"Li?"

"Wow, you can pronounce it, yes Li," she smiled sarcastically at him and Trowa quickly realized why she reminded him of another gundam pilot, she had the attitude, except instead of being dead serious she had a sense of humor. It wasn’t necessarily a good one either, although Trowa was certainly not the one to be a judge of that. Slowly she walked backwards towards the edge of the platform. "Yeah, Wufei’s an old friend of mine."

"Friend?" Trowa let a little disbelief into his voice.

"Sure, why not?" she stepped closer to the edge of the platform, so that her heels were over the side.

"You’re going to fall," Trowa told her, keeping his tone nondescript.

"Maybe," she shrugged. "It’ll be a fun fall though. Listen, Trowa Barton, you’re in a lot of trouble right now. Do you know what happened to you?"

"I was kidnapped by someone."

"Very good, yes, you were kidnapped. You should be thankful too; everyone around here wants you dead. I told them that you were very useful so you’re still alive," she turned around to face the ocean. "You might want to keep that in mind. Bye," and with the last word she jumped boldly off the platform without even flinching. Trowa ran over to the edge, but when he peered down she was gone without a trace. There was no sound of a splash in the water below, no sight of her falling, nothing.

Trowa blinked. This was getting very interesting. He looked around and realized what the platform he was standing on actually was. To his right was another platform shaped like a giant capital "M". To his left was a capital "N" and then "D". Trowa was standing on a giant "I". "MIND," he spelled out and said to no one in particular. He looked back at the open door and decided that it was as good an idea as any to explore this place called MIND.

Heero Yuy groaned as a little shoe hit the back of his head. He turned to glare at the girl who had thrown it without using either of her hands. "Yes, Cassie, I believe you. You have telekinesis; you proved it by throwing almost everything in the room at me. So will you stop it?"

The girl named Cassandra grinned, held her hand above another shoe, and lifted it off the ground. "It’s not that. Mr. Heero, you make a very bad babysitter. I want something to eat. I’ve been asking that for an hour now. Can we go get breakfast?" she launched the other shoe and hit Heero square in the nose.

"Duo. I’m going to shoot her."

Duo Maxwell looked up from the magazine he was reading. "Oh really? So you mean it this time?"

"I am no one’s babysitter Duo. Now make her shut up or I’ll shoot you."

"Hmph, someone’s a little bit grumpy. Come on Cassie, I’ll take you to breakfast," Duo hopped up from the couch. The threesome had found a much bigger hotel down the street and checked in at about one AM. It was a two bedroom suite on the 4th floor. Heero had taken one room; Duo had offered Cassie the other and opted for the couch. Heero had sat down on the bed and spent the last seven hours typing on his laptop. Cassie had proven to be very interesting company, although she certainly realized quickly that it was easy to annoy one of the boys she was rooming with. Heero was having trouble finding any files on MIND, according to most databases the organization was non existent. According to Heero they either actually didn’t exist or had some expert hackers hiding all of the information and records they kept on computers. "Duo. Tell where you heard of this whole telekinesis thing."

Duo let his usual benign smile leave his face. "A very long time ago I knew someone with telekinesis, I also knew the name MIND from him."

"I’m listening."

"Really? That’s new," Duo sighed and turned to Cassandra. "Hey Cassie, can you wait for like two minutes?"

"I suppose," Cassandra pouted a little. "Although I can tell you anything you want to know about MIND."

"Okay, but let me give it a try," Duo leaned back on the couch, putting his hands behind his head. "When I was still living as an orphan at Maxwell Church there was a boy that was found sitting on the doorstep one day. He said his name was Moiya, he was about my age. He said that his family had been killed and that he was looking for a home, so naturally Father Maxwell let him in with a warm welcome. He was a very odd little kid, kinda like me. He didn’t get along that well with anyone else either, kinda like me. So we were friends for a while."

"He had telekinesis?"

"Well, of course, although at the time neither of us had a name for it. He used to play lots of tricks on everyone, used to be able to steal anything. At the time I thought it was very cool. Moiya also had a very unusual personality, kind of like…you…only he was eight. He was very honest, loyal to a fault and had an honor system that I just laughed at most of the time."

"Interesting."

"It certainly was. The other thing I remember about him was that he said that out of a large family that had been killed in an air raid, he had a twin sister that had lived. Her name was Mishii, and he always talked about how this guy named 'MIND' had stolen her, and that she was very telekinetically capable. It was 'MIND' this, 'MIND' that, apparently they were after him or something."

"Ah. So did he die in the bombing?"

"No," Duo’s voice faltered for the slightest instant. "Actually, he disappeared about a week before that whole ordeal. Completely disappeared, I woke up one morning and all Father Maxwell would say was that he’d been adopted. Just like everyone else."

"You don’t believe that."

"Nope."

"Hmmm," Heero nodded slightly and looked back at the laptop. Duo was staring at the ground in a sort of trance. Heero was about to open his mouth again when the phone rang. "Think of anything else important while I get that."

"Whatever," Duo commented distantly.

Heero’s glare faltered a little bit as he looked at his friend, but the stoic boy shook it off very quickly and went to get the phone. He picked it up and stared at it for a second. "Hello?"

"Heero! Hello there, how are you?"

"Sally Po."

"Yes," said the cheerful voice of Sally Po on the other side of the line. "I wanted to call you back about something."

"So?"

"How are you?"

"I’m fine. What did you want to talk about?"

"Oh right, forget the small talk then, it was never really popular with you pilots. I wanted to tell you that when you called and asked if I knew anything about where the others were I didn’t think you meant Wufei."

"I did. He’s been kidnapped."

"That’s just it, he wasn’t. He went off on a trip very recently, wanted me to tell you that. I forgot for a while."

Heero shook his head, unusually perplexed. Sally worked with Wufei as a Preventer, a sort of police group paid by the government to stop plots to overthrow the armistice with a revolution. "Wufei’s disappeared. I gave him a laptop that carried a signal with it and it’s been destroyed."

"No he hasn’t. For some reason he destroyed that thing a few days ago and left on this mission. He said it was very important and that he was having a discussion with some ‘old friends’. I have no idea about what he meant, but you know Wufei, he flat out wouldn’t tell me. Do you know what’s going on?"

Heero blinked. "I’ll call you back," he hung up the phone.

Duo had his smile back on. "That was polite, Heero. From now on I answer the phone."

"Oh you boys are so hard to understand," Cassandra folded her arms and stood up. "I can tell you anything you want to know about MIND, will you just please listen to me?"

"Alright," Heero nodded again. "Like I said before, I’m listening."

Chang Wufei looked as irritable as ever as he stood up, pushed his chair away from the desk disgusted and glared at the person he was meeting with. "No. This proposal is insane. It will never work, and I refuse to be a part of it." The person that he was talking to looked only politely taken aback. She was a teenage girl dressed in a very plain white dress with crimson hair that fell to her waist. He twirled a piece of her hair with a single finger and smiled at the gundam pilot. "You don’t like it? But I thought this sort of thing was just what you were interested in."

"Mishii, you know me very well, but I have changed. A little," Wufei folded his arms. "There’s no place in the world for this sort of thing anymore."

Mishii laughed cruelly, it was a very odd thing coming from a girl that seemed very innocent. She looked no older than thirteen. "Oh yes there certainly is, now more than ever. And though you like to kid yourself you haven’t changed at all." Wufei was in a building built near the ocean. He looked around the bland white meeting room he’d seen so many times and suddenly felt that everything within it and everyone around it was an enemy. He was beginning to think that this was a waste of time. "Mishii, I didn’t come here to talk to you about something like this, I came here to-"

"Try to make Moiya and I do something that you know is impossible for us. You can take your Preventers nonsense somewhere else, it has no place here and you know that. Moiya is going to be very disappointed in you, by the way."

"I think if you talked to your brother about it he’d understand my point of view."

Mishii giggled girlishly. "Maybe you have changed. This whole armistice thing has just clouded your head. Won’t you please reconsider."

Wufei glared sourly at the stack of papers in front of him. "You don’t have access to any of the data you need anyway. It will never work."

"But you were so eager a few months ago to join that Mariemaia brat and fight on her side. She was a little twit with un-thought out ideals anyway. Moiya and I really know what we’re doing."

"No. My war is over Mishii. Find someone else. You’ll have trouble."

"No we won’t," the tall girl muttered as she twirled her hair. Mishii looked down at the table before speaking again. "You know, you’re really dishonoring the Long clan by making a decision like this. If you aren’t with us you’re our enemy, and I’m afraid I’ll have to kill you then."

"What?"

"Not now silly, but if you don’t accept I know you’ll go tell those other meddlesome pilots and they’ll try to stop us. Moiya really hates them you know, all but you of course. Your family has been our good friends for centuries. I really don’t want to tell them you died of stupidity."

"No Mishii. It’s not happening. You know exactly why, too."

"Fine then," whatever friendly guise Mishii was wearing vanished. "Then you’ll die with honor fighting against us. It’s a shame though, if that really is your idea of justice."

"Don’t, you stupid woman. Do not try to appeal to my sense of justice, even you wouldn’t go that low," Wufei started towards the door. He entered a code into the keypad and opened it quickly.

"Oh Wufei. Poor chauvinistic baka. A few traumatic moments and you don’t want to fight anymore. Oh well."

Wufei had half a mind to hit her, but it would upset a number of people and he knew he’d pay for it anyway. Wufei was very angered by the fact that Mishii was one enemy who always had the upper hand. Always. He stepped through the door and was just about to shut it when he heard her voice.

"I guess your wife really did die in vain then, huh Wufei?"

Wufei manifested his anger into slamming the door as hard as he could. He stood outside of it in the perfectly dark hallway and fumed for a few minutes, sorting out a lot of thoughts. He decided to go find the others. "I’ve got to do something about this," he commented to the empty hallway. "I don’t what I can do against them. But there’s got to be something."