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Heart of the Storm

Chapter One

Trowa Barton walked down the dark streets thinking.  He stuffed his hands in his pockets and shuffled down the streets.  At every alley entrance, he stopped and listened.  He halfway expected soldiers in hiding, waiting.  But then, he grinned to himself and realized that he was just being paranoid.  After all, the war had been over for several years.  And most rebels had either been caught or had gone deep into hiding.  All was quiet.  Trowa couldn’t get used to it.

He continued to walk along, looking up at the stars.  It had been a long time since he was up there among them, fighting with his Gundam Heavyarms.  He missed it, but he thoroughly enjoyed the peace.  He also enjoyed looking from Earth up at the stars.  The clear skies that held nothing but the stars and the colonies.  No warships, no mobile suits, no mobile dolls, no explosions. Finally, peace and quiet.

He had stopped suddenly as he thought he heard something in one of the alleys.

“Hmm…?”  He listened.  He gasped slightly as he heard a woman scream.  He ran down the alley and stopped within the shadows.

He watched as two men attacked the young woman.  Both men had seemingly had too much to drink.  The larger one grabbed the woman by her arms and held her tightly while the smaller took her purse and carried it off to a corner near Trowa.  He dumped the contents of the purse onto the ground and began searching through them.

The woman screamed again and Trowa turned his attention to her and the larger man, who, by now, had tackled her to the ground.  Trowa couldn’t stand to watch. He got ready to attack the smaller man, since he was closer, and, apparently, the other man wasn’t paying attention.

The smaller man searched through the things he had dumped out of the woman’s purse.  He pushed anything of any value away.  Trowa guessed that he was looking for something in particular.

“It’s not here!” he shouted to his partner.  “Maybe she’s got it on her!”

The larger man, by now, had the woman completely pinned to the ground.  He looked down to her face as she struggled to get free.

“You’d best tell me where that disk is before I have to go in and look for it.”  He smiled, licking his lips, moving his eyes up and down her body.

“Go to Hell,” She said quietly and spat in his face.

“You bitch..” He slapped her across the face, leaving her hand free long enough to reach into his jacket and pull out his gun.  Before he could re-position himself, he was staring down the barrel of his own gun.  And before he could do anything about it, she fired.

The smaller man looked over just in time to see his partner slump down, lifeless, on top of the woman.  He reached for his own gun and aimed it at her.  “BITCH!”

Trowa knew the woman couldn’t push the other man off of her before he fired the shot.  He jumped on the armed man from behind and struggled with him for a few minutes before knocking him out cold. The man slumped into a heap on the ground.

Trowa walked towards the woman who had finally pushed the dead man off of her.  “Are you alright, miss?”

She gasped and aimed the gun at Trowa, then looked at the unconscious man behind him.  She looked back at Trowa, then smirked, lowering the gun.  “You almost got yourself shot, Mr. Barton.”

Trowa raised a brow, although unseen by his extreme bangs.  “Do I know you?”  Seems that I should.  She looks an awful lot like Quatre.  But as far as I know, none of his sisters look anything like him.  But then, I’ve only met a handful of them.

“No,” she said getting up, readjusting her skirt and blouse.  She looked back up at him.  “But I know all about you.”  She walked over to where the contents of her purse were still all over the ground.  She tossed various items over her shoulder, looking for something in particular.

“Well, would you mind telling me your name and why they were attacking you?”

“I should, shouldn’t I?  After all, it may concern you and the other Gundam pilots.”  She continued to dig through the items.  “Ah-ha.”  She picked up a container that looked like it was for contact lenses.  She opened up one side.  “It was here, the asshole just didn’t look hard enough.”  She took out a small disk from the container.

Trowa looked at her.  “So that’s why they attacked you.  But, what is your name, and what does that have to do with us?”

The girl smiled up at Trowa.  “Just call me Lightning.”

“You’re a part of the Preventer Storm.”

“You’ve heard of us.  Une’s tried to keep us a secret.” She picked up a book of matches.  She wrapped up the disk in a piece of paper.  She lit one of the matches and set the paper on fire, the disk burning along with it.

“Lady Une’s good with keeping secrets, but her computer isn’t.”

“Especially when Mr. Yuy is contempt on finding everything about anybody that’s with the Preventers.  Tempest is the same way.”

Trowa nodded.  “Except he has yet to find what your real names are.”

She picked up the rest of her things and placed them in her purse.  “We go by many names.”  She walked over to the smaller man that Trowa had knocked unconscious.  “You wanna grab the other one?  There’s an entrance to our underground base near here.  I’m sure Tempest would like to talk to this one and we’d better take that one before his employers find him.”  She took the arm of the man and slipped it around her neck, dragging him further down the alleyway.

Trowa picked up the larger man and followed her.

Lightning.  Who are you?

She stopped and looked back to him.  You’ll find out soon enough.

Telepathic.

She smiled and continued.  “You got it.”



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“Izzy!  Can you help me with my adding?”

Not five minutes in the door and a 6-year-old girl ran up to Izreina and wrapped her arms around her waist.  “Please?”  said Izreina.  “Say please.”

“Please, Izzy?”  The little girl looked up at her.

Izreina smiled.  “Alright, Lena.  Go get your counting straws.”  Lena’s mother and father had used colored plastic drinking straws to teach Lena how to count when she was younger.  Now that she was in school, she was using them to learn addition and subtraction.

Lena beamed and ran up the stairs, nearly tripping her parents as they made their way down.

“Lena, don’t run on the stairs,” said her mother.

“Yes, mommy.”  Lena slowed to a fast walk.

Her parents smiled at Lena then turned as they reached the bottom.

Izreina put her backpack on the dining room table.  Izreina was a college student, and in her spare time, the Preventer, Thunder.  She had met Lena’s parents a long time ago, shortly after her own family was lost in an attack early in the war.  Eric and Leia Knight had saved her from a soldier that had chased her and had taken care of her for a few years, before the three of them joined Oz.  She fought with them for a few months before going her own way.  She moved back in with them soon after Lena was born.

“Iz, are you busy later tomorrow evening?” asked Eric as he walked into the dining room.

Izreina looked up to him.  “I have a little homework, but I can finish it while I help Lena with her math, tonight.  Why?”

Leia sat down in a chair at one end of the table.  “Mr. Winner has invited Eric and I over for a small party tomorrow.”

“You want me to watch Lena?”

“Actually, Leia doesn’t really want to go, so I was wondering if you wanted to.”  Eric looked at Izreina.

Izreina raised a brow.  She was trying to avoid any type of contact with the Gundam pilots, but she was too polite to say no.  Besides, she had always wanted to meet Quatre.  “Sounds like fun.  Formal or casual dress?”

“Just a casual party.  Some of Mr. Winner’s friends are in town.  He hasn’t seen them for a long while and thought he’d have a small get together.”

Leia smiled.  “I’ll stay with Lena.  I haven’t been spending much time with her lately.”

Lena bounced down the stairs.  “Yay!  A night with just me and mommy!”  She hopped up in a chair with her straws.

Izreina smiled.  “Sure, I’ll go.”

“Excellent,” said Eric.  “Be ready to leave by 7 in case I don’t see you before then, I know how busy you get.”  He kissed Leia on the forehead.  “I’ll be back.  I have to take care of a few things at the office.  I’ll check in with Mr. Winner while I’m there.  See you all later.”

“Bye, daddy.”

“Bye, Eric.”  Izreina took a seat next to Lena.

“Bye, hon.”  Leia walked him to the door, then headed up the stairs.  “Iz, can I talk to you before you and Lena begin?”

Izreina nodded and looked at Lena.  “I’ll be back.”  She joined Leia at the top of the stairs.

“Iz, all five of the Gundam pilots will be at the party.  And I know that you feel like you have to stay away from them.  Especially Duo Maxwell.  But you’re going to have to confront him sooner or later.  And with everything going on with Tempest right now, you may never get another chance.  Une has tried desperately to get the three of you to go to your siblings.  Why haven’t you?”

Izreina twiddled the end of her long brown braid around her finger.  “I don’t know, Leia.  How would he react if he knew about everything that I’ve done?”

“You don’t, Iz.  But I think that he’ll be happy just to know that you’re alive.  I’m sure you two can work out the details later.  But the God of Death deserves to know that his twin sister is alive.  Quatre deserves to know what his twin has been up to.  And Heero Yuy deserves to know that his older sister is alive, although I don’t think he’ll enjoy what she’s turned in to.”

“Leia, we have no way of knowing exactly what’s going on with Tempest, with Trinity, until we can get a hold of her long enough for Kalli and I to perform a telepathic scan on her.  I suppose that does pose some threat to both of us.”

Leia frowned.  “Iz, you and Lightning may have strong minds, but Tempest is also strong, if not stronger.”

“That’s why it’s going to take both me and Kalli to handle it.  Our strength combined is far stronger than hers.”

Leia laid a hand on Izreina’s shoulder.  “You know Eric and I have both been keeping up with our training and won’t hesitate to help you out…”

“NO…  No…if something happened to you two I could never forgive myself…and who would take care of Lena?  I don’t want her to end up like I did.”

“Iz, all I’m saying is that we’re here for you, for all of you.”

Izreina frowned and nodded.  “Hopefully that won’t be necessary.  You're not as strong as you used to be, Leia.  And you're getting weaker by the day.  I can't have you wasting what stregnth you have left on a war that can be prevented.  After all, it is our job. Not yours.  You and Eric need to stay out of this.  I'm very thankful for what help you've provided, but this is something that the Storm has to handle.  And the Gundam boys may end up being dragged in as well, but this is something left to us.  You and Eric have done enough for us."

“IZZY!!”  They heard Lena from downstairs.

Izreina smiled a little.  “I’m coming!  I’ll see my brother at the party, but he's not going to know that I'm a part of the Storm. Not yet anyway.  Not until we confirm what's wrong with Trinity."