Day 2: San Francisco, California

Duo Maxwell woke up suddenly and found himself staring at a very odd stucco ceiling. The entire hotel had ceilings like that, although Duo for the life of him couldn’t imagine why. Someone had left a light in on the room. It was an eerie blue light, and Duo heard the sound of typing. "Heero…it must be midnight already. Give it up, you’re keeping me awake."

Heero Yuy paused in his typing only to glance over at his friend. "I need to find out as much information on Alexia Barton as possible before we go have a conversation with her."

"Call me an idiot, but wouldn’t that be the purpose of the conversation?"

"No, because I have a feeling she won’t be interested in telling us anything. Idiot. Besides, I’ve booked seats on a boat to Honolulu at two tomorrow afternoon. We’ve got the morning for the interview with Miss Alexia and then we have to get back to the mission."

Duo rolled over and pulled a pillow over his head. "But I thought she was our main suspect."

"Well…she is suspicious but we still have a mission to stick to. Which we’re going to be doing, our next informant is in Hawaii anyway."

"Oh…so how much longer do I have to sleep?"

"About three hours."

"Kay. Night, Heero."

Heero nodded and returned his eyes to the computer screen. The five pilots were in San Francisco staying at some unidentified hotel Quatre had reserved for them. They had gotten a suite and were currently all sleeping, all but certain people. Heero was very unhappy that he hadn’t even known of Alexia Barton’s existence until she showed up at the San Francisco airport. This called for one thing, an enormous internet search for her life story. Which was of course proving pointless, since apparently the girl was so secretive that the only pulbic knowledge of her was her relation to Mariemaia Kushrenada. Even that could’ve been fake though, Heero really wasn’t sure.

Trowa Barton wandered into the room. He had a glass of coke with him. He pulled up a chair across from Heero and put the coke down next to the laptop. "You’ll need this. I guarantee you won’t find anything on her though."

"Why?"

"Because I don’t think she exists."

"What?!"

Trowa shrugged. "I would have heard of her. I knew about Mariemaia and the rest of the Bartons. I would have known about her."

"Is it worth calling Mariemaia right now and asking her about it?"

Trowa blinked. "It’s almost one in the morning."

"She lives in Europe."

"Oh," Trowa got up and strode to the other side of the room. He picked up the receiver on the hotel phone and started dialing a bunch of assorted numbers.

"Wait, let me find her phone number-"

"I already know it," Trowa covered the phone with his hand.

"Do I want to know why?"

"She gave it to me a while ago. Just in case we ever needed to contact her over anything," Trowa listened to the ringing for a moment. "Hello, is Miss Mariemaia Barton there?"

Heero rolled his eyes and momentarily shut the laptop. Duo rolled over again and peeked out from under the pillow. The braided teen looked extremely curious all of the sudden. "What’s going on?"

"We’re calling Mariemaia."

"At midnight?"

"She lives in Europe, idiot."

"I only asked you to call me that once. Cool, can I talk to her?"

Trowa put the phone on speaker. "We can all talk, but some secretary just put me on hold."

"That’s rude."

"Welcome to Earth Heero. Everyone’s rude."

Heero took a sip of the coke and stole a pillow from Duo. Putting it behind his head he yawned in a very rare moment of actually looking relaxed.

The secretary came back on the line. "May I ask who’s calling?"

"Tell her it’s an old friend named Trowa."

"Alright, please hold."

Duo smirked. "At least they don’t play that crappy music that scares the hell out of you. Man, that stuff gives me the creeps."

Suddenly a Spanish guitar could be heard playing from the speaker. Duo instinctively jumped back a couple of feet. Soon enough the music was replaced by an almost timid feminine voice. "Hello? Trowa Barton?"

"And Duo and Heero, thanks for talking to us Mariemaia," Trowa spoke very gently. Ever since she had realized what exactly she would have done to the world if she had taken over Mariemaia had gotten kind of shy. Shy was actually an understatement, she had become the most reclusive person any of the pilots had ever seen, it was a big deal for her to take the call at all.

"Oh. Hello there. What could you boys possibly want from me?"

"Do you know someone named Alexia Barton?"

There was an awkward pause. "Wow, you do always get to the point quickly, huh Trowa?"

"So I take it you know her."

"Well of course I do," her voice grew a defensive edge. "After all, we’re related."

"How so?"

"Um…she’s my cousin."

Heero cut into the conversation. "You don’t sound to sure of that. You can tell us the truth Mariemaia, we won’t repeat it."

"Yeah," Duo chimed in, "mostly because we have no one in the entire world to repeat it to."

There was silence until Mariemaia sighed very deeply. "You won’t be able to find this out anywhere else, especially since the cousin story is so believable and it would spoil all of Alexia’s plans if anyone knew otherwise. She’s my sister. My twin sister."

"But she looks so much older than you. She’s our age at least."

"She’s only ten," Mariemaia put the phone down for a moment and shouted for everyone to leave whatever room she was in. "I’m ten too, I was nine when I tried to take over the Earth Sphere and met all of you. She was genetically altered at birth so that her mind would mature much faster than me. Just in case, of course."

Heero blinked. "Just in case of what?"

"Well, just in case Project Meteor failed. You don’t think that someone as smart as my grandfather wouldn’t have a back up plan, do you?"

"Hold on a sec," Duo sat straight up. "Are you implying that-"

"I’m not implying anything. Nothing that you can tell anyone anyway. Alexia’s the back up plan if the world goes into an armistice. That’s all I was ever told. Good bye my friends."

There was a click as the phone hung up. Trowa pushed the speaker button off and turned to Heero and Duo. "Back up plan? I think we’re hallucinating. We should go back to sleep."

"Not a bad idea."

"Yeah. See you in the morning."

"We leave at seven for the interview."

"Right."