"So Wufei has two sisters…he did say two right? No more than that I hope."

"Heero, you’re really bad at faking a good attitude," Duo grinned at his friend. "Hell, you never had a good attitude to begin with. Give it a rest, what’s wrong?"

Heero sighed, an occurrence that Duo had rarely seen him do. He closed the laptop slowly and turned to face Duo, his dark blue eyes reflecting the quiet airport. "Are you sure you want to go through with this?"

"Why wouldn’t I? It’s for the mission, you said it yourself."

"Duo, even I think twice about chasing down childhood nightmares. You don’t even know if you’ll find this Moiya guy there or not."

"I think I have another Shinigami hunch here. He’ll be there, I’m sure of it. I was so close to getting all of the answers in that filing cabinet. We’re too into this to turn back now."

"Fine," Heero looked away, shaking his head as he did so. The action had certainly died down after they’d escaped from the sinking yacht. The five boys had decided to stay on Earth in a hotel in New York City until they could sort out the whole MIND issue and figure out if they were dealing with a real threat or just another case to refer to the Preventers. Also with them was Chang Cassandra, who Wufei very reluctantly identified as a relation. Cassandra was delighted to see her brother, and to some extent Wufei could stand her company as well, a rare occurrence that he seldom showed for anyone. For his part Wufei wasn’t saying anything to assist the boys’ investigation. All of them knew that Wufei knew exactly what was going on. But they also knew that wild horses couldn’t drag the info out of him and that pursuing it was pointless, they’d find out quicker themselves.

Duo shrugged and glanced at his watch. They’d start boarding the shuttle in fifteen minutes. "Okay, you gonna stick around until the plane’s gone?"

"You want to go by yourself?"

"Um, yeah. This is probably going to get kind of personal, I don’t want an audience."

Heero rolled his eyes. "Fine then. I wouldn’t have this sort of problem, but you aren’t incapable of an emotional break down. Well…neither am I, but that’s besides the…point…yeah, that thing…the point. Right."

Duo burst out laughing and didn’t stop until he heard Heero cocking the gun. "Aw, calm down. You can’t shoot me, who else are you gonna show the slightest speck of humanity to? I am not going to have an emotional breakdown. Far from it actually, I’ve wanted to do this for a long time. And we’ll get a lot of answers, so shut up and let me have a good time."

Heero nodded and stood up. "Don’t let me stand in the way of your quest for enlightenment," Heero arched a brown eyebrow in defeat, "I’ll be here when you get back. Bye."

Duo grinned as Heero muttered to himself and left. It was so hard for the stoic perfect soldier to show any emotion, when he actually decided to every word out of his mouth tripped over itself indefinitely. This was something else to add to the long list of things that would have never happened during the long war that they had all survived. For some reason Heero had decided to trust Duo with trying to help him build up a personality. Although Duo was nothing less than honored and he would never say it to Heero’s face, the result was becoming very good entertainment indeed.

Duo showed all of the proper papers to board, for once they weren’t fake, and soon after he was on the runway walking towards the plane. A lone figure was standing on the top of the stairs to get into the shuttle. Duo squinted as he approached and soon recognized her with a sigh. "Cassie. You’re supposed to be back at the hotel."

The little girl had gotten some new clothes finally; she was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt and had her ink black hair in ponytails. She was sitting on the banister of the stairs looking quite smug with herself. "Mr. Heero sent me. He wanted to make sure you didn’t do anything stupid, so he decided I should go. Really smart, right?"

Duo was initially annoyed, but he made sure it didn’t show. "Did Heero tell you how important this was to me?"

"Yeah, but he also said that it might hurt you a lot, and that someone had to be there to bring you back to Earth…in a proverbial way. Besides, I wanna talk to Moiya too."

Duo blinked shrewdly at the girl. For an eight year old she was a lot smarter than she chose to let on. Heero was being annoying, but Duo wasn’t sure whether he had really put her up to this or not. Duo shrugged, it was much too late to send her back anyway. "Okay, but no promises on it being a good time."

"Yay!" Cassandra cheered as she followed Duo onto the shuttle.

A half hour later they were flying off to L2, to solve a puzzling mission but to also revisit places etched deep in Duo’s memory, after all, the past was always an excellent teacher for the future.

***

Quatre never liked business calls, unless it was with someone he really wanted to talk to. Right now, even though the person on the other line was really quite agreeable with him normally, he would have preferred to talk to no one. "Relena, are you sure that they said ‘yes’? We’re talking a definite answer here."

From the other side of the phone Relena Dorlian sighed. "Well I had a very interesting conversation indeed with Mishii Tomoyo, and she said that MIND would definitely be coming to the conference in Giza to sign the treaty."

"The big one?"

"The huge one. The one that we were discussing at the conference you missed. It’s going to be signed in Giza, Egypt; the total number of signatures is numbering in the twelve thousands."

Quatre let his head hit the headrest on the couch. "That’s two thousand more than before. How are you planning to get that many people to sign?"

"Well," Relena hesitated. "I really don’t think this is necessary but a bill just got passed into law forcing anyone we invite to come and sign. Of course there are very strict rules on who we can invite, but once a government official says so you’re signing that piece of paper."

"I suppose we’ve all been invited?"

"You guys were first on the list. Sorry. I guess people just can’t accept that you won’t start another war."

Quatre nodded. No one in the large hotel suite noticed. "We can expect a lot of that. So, I just want to be a hundred percent clear on this. You invited MIND?"

"Yeah, we invited them and they said that they’d definitely be at Giza."

"To sign?"

"Well, they weren’t specific. Mishii just said that they’d be there."

"So she never said that they’d actually sign the treaty?"

Relena paused again, seemingly unaware of Quatre’s thought process. "Why, no, they didn’t. I should have seen right through that, they didn’t at all."

Quatre watched as Trowa came into the room. The tall pilot dropped a set of car keys on the table and stayed to listen to the conversation. "Hmm…I’m starting to worry about this."

"Me too. I’ll call if I get an update."

"Okay. Wait, Relena, one last question. When’s the Giza conference?"

"In two weeks."

"Ah. Thanks for keeping me informed, bye."

As Quatre hung up the phone Trowa blinked at him. "MIND playing more games? We should expect that."

"Of course. Relena doesn’t know what we know, though."

"And what exactly do we know about them?"

Quatre sighed as he got up from the couch. "That MIND has no good intentions. You drop Cassandra off?"

"Yes. Wufei was very happy to see her go for a little while. I wonder if Duo seriously thinks this Moiya person will be there?"

"We’ll see. Anything helps you know."

***

As Duo walked the streets of the huge city that was his home on L2, he was baffled at how much had changed. For one really obvious thing, all of the old military bases were gone, gone and replaced by parks, memorials, public works and such. The city hadn’t gotten any bigger, it couldn’t, it was a colony after all; but there seemed to be at least twice as many people. For a while Duo began to doubt that he would find the place he was looking for. But as he led Cassandra through blocks and blocks of towering skyscrapers, Duo eventually found his way to the "old" part of town.

It was abandoned and surrounded by a run down barbed wire fence that had long since lost it’s purpose. It was the part of town that was still crumbling, that hadn’t been cleaned up after the war had ended. Buildings lay in ruins, pieces of them lying in the streets. Duo went up to the gate in the fence; it was left open, only because no one ever wanted to go in. Cassandra blinked at Duo. "We’re going in there? It looks so scary…"

"Well," Duo shrugged. "I don’t remember it being so creepy. I guess I only remember it with a lot of people. It wasn’t abandoned back when I lived here."

"What is that place?" Cassandra stared into the ruins with a very hesitant look.

"This is the part of L2 hit hardest by the war. Once the entire colony looked something like this, but people cleaned it up as soon as peace was announced. You’ll learn though, Cassie, that people don’t go to places of bad memories. This place has a lot of bad memories, even for me."

Cassandra sighed. "Then why are we going there?"

Duo grinned. "Why even a gorgeous little squirt like you should you know that. The only way to come to terms with bad memories is to face them head on."

With that they went past the fence and entered the abandoned part of L2.

Duo nodded to himself as he strode past the rubble, this place hadn’t changed a bit. He could still hear the bustle of people living. The people that he’d grown up around had lived in the hollows of the broken buildings, in the shadows of a once glorious society. Unable to leave they had created a home in a dead city. The war had been a constant factor but here Duo remembered it only as a far off thing, a challenge to grapple with. No one had any food because of the war, and that was why Duo had to steal to survive. No one had a home because every night a few more buildings disappeared into rubble and dust, and that’s why Duo’s pack of orphans had thrived. Everyone was working to survive for themselves, and that’s why Duo had learned about the corruption of the world at such a young age. There were still cars parked on the streets, lights blinking in empty windows, newspapers scattered on the ground.

Duo was jostled out of his memories when he felt something warm gripping his hand. He looked to see Cassandra holding onto his hand for dear life. She had a real look of fear on her face. "Mr. Duo," she moaned. "I can hear the echoes of the people that lived here. I’ve never heard so many before…"

Duo blinked and decided to stop. "Hold on a sec, ‘echoes’?"

Cassandra rolled her eyes and pointed her free hand to her head. "Echoes. Telekinetic people hear echoes of the past and future. Sometimes in places where strong emotions were felt people’s minds exert more chemicals, the result is an imbalance that causes- oh never mind. It’s hard to explain; even I don’t really understand it. The point is that I can hear people’s memories sometimes, but only when a lot of strong emotions are felt by a large group of people."

Duo looked around. It was definite; this place was capable of producing a ton of strong emotions. "So you’re hearing a lot of echoes now?"

"Lots and lots," Cassandra started walking again. "Some of them aren’t that nice, but some are very pleasant. We just have to move because there are so many right now that I can’t tune them out that well."

"Okay," Duo smiled at her and they kept walking. Mentally he stored this ‘echoes’ concept away for later thought, but as he glanced around the ruined city the braided boy didn’t need any echoes to remember everything.

Duo still knew exactly what street to turn down. He paused a moment before looking down, unsure about whether it was really a good idea to awake so many dead memories. He got over it very quickly after all, and looked up to whatever would be left of his old home.

Cassandra broke away from Duo and started running happily. "Look, Mr. Duo! There is a building left! And it has people too!"

Duo stared holes through the intact and new building before him. Maxwell Memorial Church stared back. It was whole, it was intact and it looked exactly the same as before it had been blown to the other side of the colony so long ago. The word ‘memorial’ was the only clue to it’s past; it stuck a knife through Duo’s perfect memory world. There was no memorial to the massacre that had occurred here. Duo just stood there and stared at it, he might have been in front of it all day if Cassie hadn’t broken his thought process again by rushing through the double doors, and calling for Duo to come in after her.

Duo held out a hand, just because it was rebuilt didn’t mean that it was safe. He forgot his fear of all the memories and rushed in after her. He stopped dead as soon as he was in the doors. There were people, actual live people inside. Some were sitting in several orderly rows of pews, there was a priest tending to the alter. Duo blinked again and again. He’d been thrown back a few years. It was exactly, precisely the same to a fault.

A large group of children were sitting in the back corner of the church. They were talking and laughing to themselves, Duo recognized the robes they were wearing and realized they must have been orphans adopted by the church. Cassandra had joined them and was making friends as fast as she could talk. Duo grinned at the way she was grabbing the attention of the group of kids, after all, they must have never gotten a lot of visitors. A very exasperated nun came out and tried to control them but Cassandra was having a field day. She motioned to the other side of the church and the entire group set off.

As entertained as Duo was over this it really was impolite to the nun, who was trying very hard not to create a disturbance reining these kids in. Duo remembered when he used to pull tricks like these, and he also remembered exactly how Sister Helen had handled them. Duo caught Cassandra by the shoulders and pulled her away from the group. "That’s enough Cassie. Awfully popular aren’t you?"

Cassie made a face. "But Mr. Duo! I was just trying to have some fun. There’s nobody else around here and Chris said-"

The boy named Chris was even more interested in mischief than Cassandra. As the flustered nun came over to brake up the group he ran up to her, grabbed her hat off her head and ran with it. The nun froze. She had very light blond hair and a young face. The girl couldn’t have been older than twenty. Duo stopped dead and abruptly let go of Cassandra. The nun looked exactly like Sister Helen.

Her pale face went beet red and her hands folded themselves shyly. "I’m very sorry. They’re such miss behaved children-"

"No problem," Duo grinned at her, which only made her blush more. "What’s your name?"

"Oh? My name? It’s Sister Roseanne."

Duo nodded. "Roseanne huh? Well Miss Roseanne, there’s only one way to handle unruly children. Join ‘em! Bye!"

Duo set off after the group of kids and made a game out of chasing them around the church. Eventually he snatched the hat from Chris and whistled to Cassandra. "Hey Cassie, come here for a sec."

Cassandra looked away very reluctantly. "What?"

"You are gonna go give this hat back right now. Understand?"

Cassandra rolled her onyx eyes and sighed. "Mr. Duo you’re no fun at all."

Duo was struck by a sudden idea. "Well, if you really don’t want to let’s add some incentive. You can go give Miss Roseanne her hat back, and a special present. How’s that sound?"

Cassandra laughed but came over anyway. "Mr. Duo, I’m not a little kid you can bribe. What is it?"

Duo reached in his pocket and pulled out something that had been gone from the church for far too long. It had been given to him ages ago by a friend and now it was time for it to settle back home and be passed on. Duo pressed a little necklace with a golden cross into Cassandra’s hand. "It’s really important, okay Cassie?"

Cassandra saw his eyes and decided abruptly to be serious. She looked down at the cross. "I understand, don’t worry about it."

Duo nodded and sat down in a pew as she went off. Sure enough the group of kids followed to see what their new leader was going to do. Duo was left to sort out his memories. He was about to start when his thoughts were interrupted yet again.

"You know, we were the only two people to ever make it out of this place alive. No one else survived."

Duo jumped and turned to look down the pew. Moiya Tomoyo was sitting there reading a book; he had looked up to notice Duo’s arrival.

Moiya closed the book as Duo registered what exactly was going on. "You know, they only ever recorded about two hundred people dead after the explosion. They never really accounted for everyone though, what about all of the orphans that starved after they had no place to get food, all of the bodies that they never found-"

"Shut up," Duo was startled by his first words to his old friend in years.

Moiya grinned. "Just making sure that all of this is hitting home."

"It’s home all right," Duo sighed. "Moiya, you baka. What the hell is going on here?"

Moiya just kept grinning. He had gotten a lot thinner since Duo had seen him; his red hair had grown long and wispy over his dark green eyes. He had it pulled back into a slight ponytail. He was very pale and seemed all together a lot different, like something had changed him recently. "It was incredibly lucky that I survived at all. About five minutes before they detonated it I went out looking for you. I came back and you were gone, I assumed you were dead."

"I came back because I thought you’d be here."

"I came back because I was expecting you. Also to rebuild this section of town. Maxwell Memorial is only six months old; I borrowed some money from MIND to give it a fair start. I intend to do that for the rest of this region, so people can finally let memories rest in peace."

"What’s going on?" Duo repeated, he wasn’t bothering to hide the tired sound of his voice. "What’s with MIND? If I didn’t know better I’d think that you really were out to kill us."

"Well…" Moiya shrugged. "Times have changed old friend. The only rules of the world that endure are the ones I learned here."

"Yeah," Duo nodded, "but we’ve achieved peace. We paid for it, but it is finally here."

Moiya looked at him oddly. "For how long?"

"What?"

"How long do you think peace will last?"

Duo sat up. "A pretty long time, considering that people will remember what a war did."

"People’s memories are short and it fades with generations."

Duo felt something very unusual for him. It was a chill, and so he decided that it was time for this conversation to cut to the point. "What’s this really about? MIND didn’t ever exist during the war; you telekinetics like to keep to yourselves. Why are you suddenly so interested in the world today?"

Moiya sat up too, placing his book on the pew and folding his arms. "You were always to the point Duo. Well I suppose I should honor that. I’ve been doing quite a bit of research since the organization of MIND fell into my hands. Very interesting research I might add, research on telekinesis and it’s impact on the human mind, how it advances the average human’s capability. We telekinetics have always been a secret few in society. We’ve always been shunned, and never appreciated. Lack of tolerance or even belief in our existence killed my family. And it will kill a lot more people should I ever disclose the information I’ve learned."

"So? Find out something interesting?"

"In fact I did. It’s about the war that just ended. That war was fought completely with mobile suits, super human masteries of engineering. The top physically and mentally capable members of our race piloted all of them. A lot of them died. Do you know what I found out about them?"

Duo folded his arms to mirror his friend. "I think I’m about to find out."

"Telekinesis is funny in a way, you could go your entire life just excelling mentally and never know that you had the potential to be trained. It only appears prominently after years of training, like in my students. You have to use it somehow. Well since I’m the only one interested in a war after it’s over I gathered all of the data, blueprints and models of mobile suits left intact. And I found out something very odd indeed. According to all of the test results, the average human could not physically pilot a suit and survive."

"What do you mean?"

"That if any average human with your basic mental capacity got into a mobile suit, they would not survive more than two or three flights."

"Wait," Duo felt a chill again. "Are you saying that every person that ever piloted a mobile suit was telekinetic?"

"Well, a lot of soldiers never actually flew mobile suits more than once or twice before they were killed. But in the case of everyone that did…"

"Whoa," Duo held out a hand for a minute. In his head some how he knew exactly where this was going. "What are you saying then?"

Moiya smiled again, it was a very hollow and mysterious smile. "The age of my people has finally dawned."

"Oh damn. You’ve got to be kidding. You’re gonna go to Giza and-"

"Declare war on the Earth Sphere."

Duo blinked. "Hold on, that’s not what I was going to say. Why in the name of all sanity would you want to declare war? What would you prove?"

The smile vanished. "That stupid war…politicians and men of power fought with ideals but my people died for them. No one even believes that telekinetics exist but we do, and we died for the world that ignores us. It’s time they all knew, I have no interest in ruling this stupid world. I just want to show them what really happened, and this is the only way I can do it in a time of peace. Peace is a very misleading word now a days, it’s only peace for those who have nothing to look back on except for distant memories."

Duo just stared at the boy he had called such a close friend once. He had changed, the world had betrayed him, much like it had betrayed the pilots so long ago. They were still so much alike that Duo couldn’t give up on Moiya just yet. "Listen, buddy. I know what you’re trying to do, and I know that it’s a pointless endeavor this late in the game. You’re charging hell with a bucket of water."

"I’m what?"

"Charging hell with a bucket of water. Charging all of the ancient flames and thinking that with that one bucket you are going to quench the fires and free all the spirits that lie there. Those spirits are the only ones who really understand what war means. It’s over Moiya. I’m sorry it was so personal to you and your organization but that’s no reason to bring back the same pointless fight."

"It won’t be the same pointless fight because there won’t be any fight at all! The government is so weak right now that with a strong enough force anyone can take over in a day. Once I prove my point they can go back to being a peaceful democracy. I don’t want to rule. That’s the difference."

Duo shook his head. "If one word gets out of your mouth it’ll never be the same, and you know it. The government is incredibly weak right now and can’t have anyone tampering with-…hold on a sec. Strong enough force?"

Moiya instinctively looked away and reached into his jacket pocket for something. "Well, what did you expect? Me to march into a room full of ten thousand bureaucrats completely unarmed?"

"No one else is."

"I don’t care," Moiya pulled a floppy disk out of his pocket. He handed it to Duo, who was very surprised. "Take this and read it over. I could sit here and explain all day but that outlines it better. We could really use you pilots to help us out. In fact you’re the most valuable people we could have. The whole war thing is just a joke. I want to prove my point about telekinesis and that’s it."

"No way we’re helping you on this, buddy. You know that already."

"Well Wufei already turned me down when he realized what the task force was going to be exactly. It’s a shame; I was counting on his support. Oh well. Two days from now I’m going to call for your decision."

Duo stood up and pocketed the disk. This conversation really had gone on for too long. "And if we refuse your proposal?"

Moiya looked Duo straight in the eye. "I’m afraid then that I’ll be forced to kill you. Can’t have you telling my master plan, or worse yet, resisting me. You can tell anyone you want though in the next two days. Telekinetics are taking over the world; no one will believe you. I’m afraid joining me is the only way you’ll live."

Duo looked around the peaceful church. How could someone who rebuilt this place be thinking about such madness? Duo found Cassandra talking to Miss Roseanne and whistled to her. "Cassie, come on, we’re out of here," he turned to Moiya. "Moiya I’m only going to tell you once more. You can’t do this. No matter how hard you try there will be a war if you declare it. How many times do we have to do this over? Do you really want humanity to destroy itself?"

"If that’s what humanity is destined to do," Moiya shrugged and turned to leave into the back rooms of the church. "You have two days to respond. Personally I wish you would. You’d be very useful to us, especially with the force we’re preparing. It’s right up your alley."

Duo gave Cassie a pat on the head and looked to the timid nun. She was wearing the cross, and she looked up to give him a brilliant smile, which Duo was barely able to return. A thought had just flitted across his mind at Moiya’s last words. "Wait a minute…this is crazy, but somehow it seems like something you’d do. You’re not going to rebuild the…"

Moiya snickered at Duo’s inability to finish his own sentence as a result of sheer shock. "Well, the past has taught us that there are only a few things you can use to take over the world. Why not use them?"

***

Duo didn’t bother to stay the night on L2. He had seen enough memories and history to last him a very long time. Cassandra had brought two tickets for a return flight a few hours after she had gotten there, and that’s when Duo realized that she had been prompted to come along with him after all.

As soon as they got into the airport back on Earth, Duo saw Heero waiting for him. The stoic boy was sitting and typing on his laptop in the exact same seat he’d been in when he left. Duo sat down and gave Cassandra some money to go buy an ice cream.

"How’d it go?" Heero asked without looking up.

"Damn…" Duo allowed himself to collapse in the seat just a little. "This is bad, Heero. Really bad…"

"He wants to start another war."

"What?" Duo blinked. "Ya, exactly that. How’d you know?"

"I saw it coming a mile away," Heero looked up and shut his laptop. "Ever since I had that conversation with Wufei on the Integrity I began thinking like that. Really it was only a matter of time. There’s always someone that the pains of war endure for. We’ll stop them though."

"Heero, I think this is really big though," Duo held out the floppy disk. "I think…that they’re going to rebuild the gundams…or a gundam…or something…"

Heero’s reaction was very unusual. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and fisted his hands quietly. He seemed angry but not willing to let it show. "Emotion is a funny thing. I’m not sure yet if I’m glad I’ve gotten emotional. Makes for a lot of inconspicuous behavior."

Duo knew a subject being dodged when he saw one. "Whatever."

"Let’s go back to the hotel."

"Right."