The True Victor: Chapter Eight

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Long time no see, you guys! After FINALLY finishing "Angels", I can now freely work on this and my other fics before I create the Angels sequel.

Chapter Eight

"Heero..."

That was all she could say, standing frozen in between the doorway as she looked at him in utter bewilderment.

Heero shared a look with his sister before standing up from his seat.

"Relena..."

"Y-you're...YOU'RE Andy and Kitsune's guardian, aren't you?" Relena finally realized as her eyes filled with tears. "H-how come..."

"Maybe you should explain this to everyone, Heero," Kaede interrupted, smiling at them.

Heero glared at his sister for a moment. "Take---"

"Care of them," Kaede finished, her smile getting wider. "They'll be just fine with me. You should already know that, brother."

Heero just noded at her and escorted himself and Relena out of the room. Kaede sighed at her brother's curtness for she could tell that the two who had left had a relationship before. She pulled out some spare covers that the hospital had given her and put it over Kitsune's sleeping form.

Zechs paced around the room while Noin sat down with a semi-distraught Gally. It had been at least twenty minutes since Relena had left to check up on Andy's condition and those minutes were spent in silence. Gally didn't feel like talking, but she still felt awkward about not talking to her "sister's" brother and sister-in-law. Sitting in her curled position in the chair, she began to think of something to say as she watched the movement of Zechs' shoes going back and forth.

Come to think of it, I really don't know any of Relena's friends that well, nevermind her relatives. Gally thought. Then she remembered something.

"Um...Noin-san?"

Noin lifted her head from the magazine she was reading. "Hm??"

"...When are you due?"

The question surprised Noin for a second, but she remembered that Relena had told the young girl. She smiled, patting her swollen stomach lightly.

"About five months from now. May 15, hopefully."

Gally returned the smile, some of the tension in her shoulders relaxing. More questions began sprounting in her head. "Do you know if it's a boy or a girl, yet?"

Noin chuckled, shaking her head. "No, we want to keep him or her a surprise." She took a glance at her husband who was too lost in thought to comment. "Sally said that I might have twins, though."

Zechs froze in midstep. He hadn't heard anything about...THAT. Ignoring Zechs' reaction, Gally laughed a bit more cheerfully. "That's going to be a lot of fun and a lot of hard work at the same time, huh? Back at the orphanage, I babysat a lot. Some were just tiny babies, put into a dumpster because they weren't wanted."

Noin nodded in understanding. "It's a sad world, isn't it?"

"Honey, when...what..." Zechs sputtered.

Before Noin could explain, Relena appeared, but she wasn't alone. Behind her was a man that Gally couldn't recognize but one that Noin and Zechs knew very well.

"Heero!" Noin exclaimed, standing.

Gally slowly straightened herself to a regular sitting position as she curiously looked at Heero. He looked a bit tired from lack of sleep, but nonetheless alert. She could see a slight resemblance in him representing Andy and another with Kitsune. Is this Andy and Kitsune's brother?

Heero just ignored everybody and glanced around the room for any of the Red Hawks' members in the area. There were.

"I'll do the explaining once we are outside," he said nonchalantly.

Relena just looked at him, but he didn't answer as she had expected. He didn't even look at her either; he just headed towards the elevator.

"Matte, Yuy, why can't you explain here?" Zechs asked.

Heero returned the stare that Zechs had given him although it had a bigger impact. "I'll explain as soon as we leave the hospital," Heero replied more demandingly.

Gally took this time to stand up. "Is Andy okay?"

Heero's eyes gradually softened as he fixed his eyes on Gally in order to not to scare her. He knew what Andy's feelings were about the girl although he wouldn't show it. "Don't worry, he's fine. Give hime about two weeks and he'll be back to normal."

Gally's eyes widened at the information. "Two weeks? The doctor said that it would take him three months to recover."

Heero smiled, one that never touched the corner of his lips. "Andy's not your typical teen."

Kaede snapped out of her small snooze when the phone rang. She quickly reached for it. "Operator."

"Oneesan, be careful in there," Heero's voice came from the receiver. "I saw a couple of them out there in the lobby. They'll make their move soon."

"Got it," she replied. "Now please insert twenty-five cents to complete your call."

"Hn," came her brother's response before hanging up.

Kaede could help but silently laugh in delight as she hung up the phone. It was too fun teasing her stoical little brother.

<Lobby>

The young woman posing as nurse watched Heero as he entered the elevator to go down. When he was out of sight, she tapped into her earphone.

"Sir, Yuy has left," she stated. "He's going with the Prime Minister and Preventers."

"Good," Reinhardt's voice replied. "Take care of the two in the hospital."

"But he knows, sir."

"It's typical of him. I'll send Vicks to take care of Yuy and the others," Reinhardt assured. "You just take care of the ones here. Remember: I don't want any survivors, Yukki."

"Yes, sir," Yukki replied and she signed off, gazing down the hallway with her superhuman sight to room 182.

<...in the car, I guess....one the way to Preventers' safehouse>

"Now will you explain to us?" Zechs asked as he drove.

Heero was cautiously looking out the rearview mirror on the passenger side. He figured that they had found him.

"Ie," he replied. "Not yet."

"They're following us, aren't they?" Relena asked worriedly. "The people who are after me."

"It's not just you, Relena," Heero said. "It's everyone in here and more. The Red Hawks don't want anyone involved to be left alive."

"Red Hawks?" Gally asked curiously.

"I'll explain it later, but once we reach safe grounds," Heero replied as he continued to look at the mirror. "Zechs, give me your gun."

Noin eyed Heero curiously. Although she couldn't work actively in the Preventers, she still had a keen eye about these things.

"You plan to shoot at the car and divert its course?" she wondered aloud.

"It's better than trying to lose them in a chase, which is what they want," Heero said as Zechs handed him his gun. He rolled down the window, releasing the safety on the gun. "To be honest, their soldiers are more skilled than anybody, even me."

Vicks strictly followed orders as soon as they were given to him. Stop the Preventers' car and make sure nobody lives. Sure, it sounded easy enough to him. All the other jobs he had done were simliar to this one, and it didn't seem any different. Boy, was he sure snapped out of that confidence rather quickly when a bullet came flying towards him.

Relena and the others watched the driver in the car behind them narrowly avoid getting shot. It swerved off to the side, sending the car and its inhabitant flying into the woods.

"How can that be...possible?" Relena asked.

"They're not your typical soldiers that were trained in extensive military combat and tactics like the Gundam pilots," Heero answered as he stuck himself back into the car. "Artificially Enhanced Soldiers are what they are, or AES for short, from Project Neo. When they were all just kids, they were taken away from their homes, orphanages, and other shelters and had a microchip surgically inserted into their brainstem. After that, they all went under physical and mental training with inhuman abilities like jumping from one skyscraper to another."

"Artificially Enhanced Soldiers...so you mean that they're kind of like cyborgs," Zechs said.

Heero noded. "Aa, something like that."

"How do you...know all of this, Heero?" Noin asked.

Heero sat back in his seat, arms folded. There was a moment of silence before he finally spoke.

"I used to be in that project twenty years ago."

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Yeah, me again. Anyhoo, I'm going a bit slowly on Heero's rather long explaination of the past because if I didn't, then this chapter would be at least 16 to 20 pages long, ya know? Anyhoo, hope you like and R&R!!