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Finding Triton	By : CynFinnegan Category: Gundam Wing/AC > Crossovers Views: 933 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I DO NOT own Gundam Wing, Harry Potter or related characters

Chapter List
- 3
- 4
- 5
Disclaimers, Ratings, Archive, Etc.: See Chapter One.

Chapter Summary: OZ captures Hiiro, Trowa and Quatre, and Tsuberov has a trick up his sleeve ... literally.

Gundam Wing © Sunrise. Harry Potter © J.K. Rowling. Used without permission and not for profit.

Italics - Thoughts, emphasis.

CAPS IN BOLD ITALICS - Shouting/screaming.

:Italics between colons: - Telepathic conversation.

"Italics in quotation marks" - written messages; TV and radio transmissions, telephone conversations.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Chapter Four: White Reflection

OZ's Lunar Base, June 12, AC 195

Trowa and Hiiro went on high alert when they heard the sound of rifles being cocked. A few moments later, the trio of young Gundam pilots saw a squad of heavily armed OZ troops approaching them, guns aimed at the boys' heads.

Vastly outnumbered, the three young pilots put their hands on top of their heads and all of them surrendered without a fight. In spite of this, the soldiers tackled the three boys to the ground, though it took six of them to force Hiiro into a prone position and the butt of a pistol striking his head to finally subdue him.

Upon their capture, the OZ soldiers rounded the three boys up. Their wrists shackled in front of them, and then the soldiers marched them into the back of a transport truck headed for the Spaceport. From there, they would be loaded onto a shuttle headed back to the moon base, then subjected to interrogation, or rather tortured for information, imprisoned with Duo and Wu Fei, and likely executed within the next 24 hours.

"Move it, scum!" one of their captors, a middle-aged man whose face and body told of too many days of too much bad food and way too much cheap booze, bellowed, prodding the three boys into the truck with the muzzle of a machine gun. The soldier shoved Quatre hard, causing the blond-haired boy to stumble. Given his weakened state, it was not a surprise when he started to fall, but Hiiro and Trowa managed to catch him before he could hit the ground.

Trowa didn't need Quatre's Empathy or his own gift to know his best friend was afraid. He could see from the slightly younger boy's face and body that he was about to pass out from sheer, unrelenting terror. Quatre's downcast bright turquoise blue eyes were almost completely black; the pupils dilated so wide open that only a thin band of color showed, the pulse in his neck leapt with a rapid, clearly visible beat, and each breath he took was a hyperventilated gasp through his mouth.

"None of this is your fault, 04," the taller teen said softly, using Quatre's pilot designation to hide his identity, and a gentle tone of voice to try to calm him down. "That wasn't you out there; that Gundam was controlling your mind. No matter what they tell you, the only ones killed on that colony were OZ soldiers ..."

"But 03 ... everything that happened out there is my fault!" Quatre exclaimed guiltily, still gasping for air as he thought of his recent exploits. "If I'd been stronger, if I were a real soldier instead of a spoiled brat playing one, I would have been controlling Wing Zero instead of it controlling me. 03, if you and 01 hadn't stopped me when you did ... I ... I would have killed all three of us! It told me that I would!"

"You're wrong, 04," Hiiro added, cutting off Quatre's stream of self-recrimination. "You are a soldier. You've undergone the same kind of training as the rest of us. There's something wrong with the operating system on that Gundam. It diminished your mental capacity and made you its puppet. That's why what happened out there isn't your fault. Shit happens, 04, and we're only human. You almost made a mistake out there, but 03 and I stopped you before you did something unforgivable."

"Shut up!" the guard bellowed again, slapping Quatre hard on the back of his head. The boy nearly fell over, but recovered quickly, and if looks could kill, the glares the three young pilots gave the guard would have flayed the flesh from his bones as surely as if Trowa were still in possession of his knives.

When they arrived at the Moon Base, more soldiers escorted the young pilots off the shuttle, frisked them, uncuffed them, forced them to strip, then brutally and methodically searched them again, all at gunpoint. To the soldiers' consternation, there were no cries of pain from any of the three boys when the soldiers probed certain areas, though Quatre was visibly trembling.

After the strip search was finished, the guards herded the young pilots into a multi-stall shower room, and then thrust bars of harsh-smelling soap and coarse textured towels and washcloths into their hands. From there, the guards ordered the pilots to find a stall and wash themselves thoroughly. Hot water was a luxury on the Moon and no matter what age, prisoners of war didn’t deserve such luxuries.

Once in the icy water of the shower, Quatre wedged himself into a corner of the stall and slid down until he sat on the floor with his thighs drawn to his chest. He wrapped his now thin arms around his legs, laid his forehead against his knees and tried his damnedest not to weep. The soldier who conducted the second search had hurt him and left him feeling both completely filthy and utterly violated. He doubted he would ever feel clean again, even if the water were boiling hot.

Honestly, what did they expect to find in there, that he was body-packing primacord and a detonator? Were they really that bloody stupid?

Unable to hold them in any longer, Quatre allowed himself the luxury of a much-needed soul purging crying jag. Scalding hot tears dripped down onto his bare thighs, only to be quickly cooled by the icy water of the shower as his chest heaved in racking, broken sobs. Quatre was overwhelmed by feelings of intense shame and guilt over attacking his friends. If he had done anything to harm his friends, especially Trowa, his best friend, he would never be able to forgive himself.

:Quatre, are you all right?: The tall pilot thought to his friend, having heard Quatre's sobs. In response, the young Arabian boy shook his head in the negative.

Trowa's reaction to the strip search was nearly as bad as Quatre's, but Trowa now sported a swollen lower lip from sinking his teeth into it. It had brought some particularly painful memories to the surface of the seemingly stoic young pilot's mind. Memories of his time on Colony X-18999 and the man whose name he was given that the Earth-born pilot desperately wished he could forget.

The mercs who raised Trowa until he was nine had treated him well; that is, as well as a bunch of professional soldiers could treat a child. They never deliberately hurt or humiliated him, and treated him with a rough sort of affection, as though he were one of their own family. It wasn't until he emigrated to the L3 cluster and started working on Heavyarms that he learned some adults didn't respect the boundaries between themselves and children. A bad encounter with the real Trowa Barton taught him that painful lesson.

Hiiro could empathize with his friends. During much of his training with Doctor J, the old mad scientist discussed the possibility of the boy encountering painful and humiliating things, but it never went any further than discussion. It wasn't until the Barton Foundation fully took over the Japanese pilot's training that he was actually subjected to those and far worse things.

:Quatre, that strip search was just another way for these OZ pricks to humiliate us,: Hiiro "said" gently, having been brought into Trowa and Quatre's shared rapport. :You're a lot stronger and tougher than you give yourself credit for. That Gundam's operating system was more than you could handle, and there's no shame in that. They're gonna shut the water off soon, so you should get yourself cleaned up.:

With that, Quatre stood back up, rubbed the tears from his eyes, and gave himself a fast but thorough scrub down. He managed to finish rinsing the harsh soap off his body the moment the guards shut off the water, then the three Gundam pilots quickly dried themselves off.

Finally, the boys had standard issue OZ prison uniforms thrown at them. One of the soldiers ordered them to put the uniforms on, seeing as some of their comrades "accidentally" destroyed the clothes the three Gundam pilots were wearing at the time of their capture. Someone at the Romefeller Foundation had them made from a cheap, thin cotton fabric with the texture of fine sandpaper. They resembled one size fits all surgical scrubs and were dyed the ugliest shade of dark gray they could find.

Once dressed, the three boys once again found their wrists shackled in front of them. They then began their march through a confusing maze of corridors, headed towards the cell occupied by their fellow Gundam pilots.

Glad as he was to be even halfway clean, the young Arabian boy was shivering from the ice water shower, and the thin, coarse cotton fabric of the prison clothes given to them provided Quatre with no warmth at all. Of course, walking on a cold Neotitanium floor in his bare feet did not help matters, either.

Quatre lowered his eyelids as he considered what Hiiro and Trowa said to him on the shuttle. They were both right; he was a Gundam pilot, not an easily cowed child! Moreover, in spite of what these OZ idiots were saying, there was no innocent blood on his hands! The civilians were safe on another colony! The only ones killed on that colony were OZ soldiers who shot at him first, and likely the same ones who murdered his father!

He was tired of feeling guilty and of being afraid. In fact, Quatre was pissed off and getting angrier by the moment. Hiiro and Trowa knew he was planning something when he "told" them to follow his lead, and to look surprised when he made his move. However, Trowa didn't have to fake his shocked reaction over what happened next.

"Traitor ...," the boy blond-haired boy said, turning towards Trowa with a look of pure rage on his face. "YOU'RE DEAD, YOU TRAITOR!”

Adrenaline and Quatre's combat training took over. While he lacked Hiiro's physical strength and Trowa's agility, he made up for it with grace and precision. Though exhausted and emaciated, he laced his fingers together, raised his arms as if to strike the normally stoic teen, then twisted at the waist and swung his bound limbs back, hitting the man behind him in the gut with one of his elbows. A moment later, he swung around and executed a nearly perfect spin kick that connected with the second guard’s face, and then struck the third guard with a punch to the underside of the man's nose. That drove the man's nasal septum into his brain, killing him instantly.

"You filthy little whoreson … I'm gonna kill you!" Quatre's second guard yelled as the third one dropped to the floor dead.

As this was happening, Hiiro took the opportunity to drop to the floor in a crouch to spin like a top on the ball of his left foot, sweeping the legs out from under two other OZzies with his right leg and knocking them flat on their well-padded asses. He then leapt at them and managed to punch one on the jaw. Not to be outdone, Trowa also dropped to the floor and mule kicked his guards both in their stomachs, then quickly stood up again and executed another kick, one that connected with the soldiers' faces.

While Quatre's first guard was still trying to catch his breath, the second guard struck the blond-haired boy hard across his face with a backhanded punch. The blow would have taken the fight out any other teen, but not a Gundam pilot. He took it limply, as his martial arts instructor taught him how to. It didn't keep him from seeing stars or nearly falling to the floor, but it prevented him from receiving a broken jaw. The soldier followed up with a punch to Quatre's gut, and then just started whaling on him.

Witnessing his friend's predicament, the lithe young acrobat shouldered another guard into the wall next to them and shouted, "GET YOUR HANDS OFF OF HIM!"

Before the other soldiers could stop him, Trowa rushed the one beating on Quatre. He grabbed the man by the collar and drove his left knee into the man's groin in retaliation for pain they were inflicting on his best friend. His reward was Quatre's immediate release and the feeling of one of the guard's testicles rupturing under his patella.

The first guard finally recovered from Quatre's elbow strike. He got up, grabbed the boy's wavy, pale blond hair near the base of his skull, and hauled him roughly up to his feet. He caught the blond-haired boy in a chokehold, and then jammed the muzzle of his pistol painfully under Quatre's chin.

"STAND DOWN, BOTH OF YOU!" the soldier shouted at Hiiro and Trowa. "Any more funny business out of either of you, and your pretty little boyfriend here gets a bullet in his brain!"

"Go to Hell, you fu ... nnnnnngh!" Quatre hissed at his captor in Arabic, which earned him another sucker-punch to the gut, this one from the guard he'd kicked.

"That's enough crap out of you, you little heathen bastard!" the guard who punched the blond-haired boy retorted, grinding his fist in.

Seeing the threat to the life of their friend and comrade, the still-seething Hiiro and Trowa had no choice but to stop fighting. OZ now knew the pilots' weakness; they cared what happened to the Arabian boy, and would do anything to protect him.

That was when reinforcements decided to show up, and they wasted no time "subduing" the Japanese and British Gundam pilots with the butts of their rifles to the backs of the boys' skulls. Hiiro and Trowa collapsed to their hands and knees, fighting the dizziness and nausea that accompanied the blows, and Trowa could feel the headache he'd gotten during the earlier battle getting worse.

Seeing his friends hurt, Quatre called out to them and struggled against his own captor to help them, but the soldier tightened the chokehold enough to start strangling the young empath. He didn't loosen his hold until Quatre nearly passed out from the lack of oxygen.

"What the Hell are you fools doing?" The voice of one of the new soldiers rang out irritably. "Get off your lazy asses, all of you! You four," he pointed at some of the soldiers who came with him, "get 01 and 03 back on their feet and escort them to their cell! And you two idiots," he pointed at the ones holding Quatre, "take 04 to Interrogation Room 2, right now! General Tsuberov wants to question him personally! I'll take this poor bastard to the morgue!"

The soldiers split up, four "escorting" Hiiro and Trowa to the pilots' cell at gunpoint, and the other two dragging the still resisting Quatre down an adjacent corridor.

I won't talk, Quatre thought as the guards led him away from his friends, fear forming a knot in the pit of young Arabian pilot's stomach. No matter what they do to me, God knows I deserve it for what I've done, these bastards won't make me talk. Hiiro's right ... I'm stronger than I give myself credit for and they won't break me.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"Interrogation Room," my ass ... this is a torture chamber, Quatre thought sourly, still trying to break loose from his captors. Well, if they think they're gonna get any information out of me, they're sadly mistaken.

The soldiers shoved him roughly into a dark, circular room where two other soldiers caught him. These two dragged him to the center of the chamber, where one of the soldiers grabbed a hanging chain with a large, heavy D-ring attached to it. Those two soldiers grabbed Quatre's bound arms, looped the cable between the shackles through the D-ring, and then one soldier pressed a red button on a control switch, which pulled him up towards the ceiling. The soldier pressed another button, and a bright spotlight came on over the boy's head, nearly blinding him. While he was blinded, the soldiers secured his legs with heavy manacles that were bolted to the floor.

Soon Quatre was hanging on display by his wrists, putting a nearly unbearable strain on his shoulders and chest because his feet no longer touched the floor. Moments later, Tsuberov appeared, carrying a slender wooden rod in one hand. Quatre couldn't even guess what it was for.

"Now you're going to answer some questions, boy," the Chief Scientist said as he slowly paced in front of the helpless Quatre, "and I won't harm you if you're being truthful. Tell me about that new Gundam and its operating system. How can it outmaneuver my Mobile Dolls?"

However, Quatre had other ideas. He replied angrily, staring straight ahead, "Name, Robert Walter Quinn, no rank, identification number LP4-GSR-GP04."

"Wrong answers, boy."

Tsuberov said something almost under his breath as he pointed the wooden rod at the blond-haired boy and Quatre screamed in agony, feeling as though millions of white-hot needles pierced every single nerve ending in his body all at once. The question-no answer-blinding pain dance continued for nearly twenty minutes, and the intense pain the young, blond Arabian pilot suffered caused him to briefly pass out several times.

Training or no, Quatre was mildly surprised the pain hadn't driven him gibbering mad yet. Tsuberov asked his questions about Wing Zero one more time, but …

"Name, Robert Walter Quinn," Quatre snarled once again, still staring straight ahead, his breath coming out in a pant. Rage bubbled up to the surface and a savage grin pulled the corners of his mouth up. "No rank, ID number LP4-GSR-GP04. That's all the information you bastards are gonna get out of me, so do your worst!"

"Oh, don't worry, boy, I will. I have no further use for Quatre Raberba Winner, except to turn you into a good little OZ spy, so ... Extergito animo hostem redigere Tabula rasa!" Tsuberov said, once again aiming the tapered wooden rod at the blond-haired youth.

Before Quatre could react to hearing his real name, a jet of purplish-black light struck him, and he felt his open to their widest extent as his battered face contorted into a silent scream of terror and his body began to convulse violently. Within moments, every trait and quirk that made up Quatre Raberba Winner’s personality found itself shoved into a tiny, dark corner in the back of his mind.

Quatre tried the best he could to protect himself, but soon, even that fighting spirit was gone, and he found himself locked within the prison of his own body. Still wide-eyed, the tow-headed Gundam pilot's head dropped to his chest, all traces of sense, reason and personality seemingly gone.

Tsuberov lifted the boy's head, examined his handiwork with a sadistically satisfied grin, and said, "Take him back to the cell where the other Gundam pilots are being held and bring Ensign Barton back with you. I'll take care of their little spy now, and deal with this brat later."

The soldiers unhooked the chain they'd hung Quatre from, then lowered Quatre's unresponsive body to the floor and freed his shackled arms from the D-ring and legs from their bindings. They grabbed the catatonic boy under his arms and lifted him up some, then half-dragged and half-carried him back to the cell that held his fellow Gundam pilots.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Back in their cell, the rest of the Gundam pilots wondered what went wrong. Trowa's hack into the Lunar Base's security system had successfully freed Duo and Wu Fei, but the soldiers recaptured them 150 feet from the mobile suit hangar where the Mad Five had the nearly completed Altron and Deathscythe Hell hidden.

"Dammit, we were so close to getting outta here!" an enraged Duo Maxwell ranted. "Another fifty yards and Wu Fei and I woulda been in our Gundams, gotten outta here and blown this joint to Hell! But no; not only do these bastards catch us again, they stole my boots and my lock picks were in 'em! It's like they knew we were gonna make a break for it!"

"Because they did know," Hiiro growled angrily, looking up towards the ceiling. "They've had hidden cameras and microphones on us nonstop since my initial capture. I didn't notice them at first, but I do now. They've been watching every move we've made and heard every word we've said to each other. I wouldn't be surprised if they monitored mine and Trowa's transmissions while we were looking for Quatre."

"Unbelievable," Wu Fei grumbled irritably. He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, and then shook his head. "So they were eavesdropping on us the entire time we've been here, huh? So much for these OZ toadies being honorable, not that they know what the word "honor" means."

"If that's the case, guys, I think we should give our watchers our standard greeting for an enemy on three. One ... two ...," Trowa chimed in sourly. As he uttered the word "three," the four pilots all looked directly at one camera, raised their shackled arms, and gave whoever was monitoring them the one-fingered salute. In Duo's case, he gave them a double because Quatre wasn't there to flip them off himself.

A few seconds later, the door to the pilots' cell opened. The two soldiers who took Quatre to the Chief Engineer entered, dragging the limp form of Sandrock's pilot between them. One released his hold on the blond Arabian's arm, walked over to where his British counterpart sat, and prodded the cinnamon-haired boy with his booted foot.

"Get up, 03. Commander Tsuberov wants to talk to you, now," the soldier said with an evil smirk as the other one dropped Quatre's unresponsive body to the floor. The guard then smugly added, "I told you I'd show up when Colonel Une wasn't here to protect your skinny ass."

Trowa's only response to the guard’s barbs was a death glare. At least that was what Duo called it when Hiiro used it. If this idiot thought a Gundam pilot was going to act like a frightened child, he had another think coming. As it was, Trowa was more concerned for the youngest Gundam pilot than he was for himself. Quatre hadn't looked good before the soldiers captured them, and he looked even worse now.

Whatever Tsuberov did to you, Quatre, he'll pay for it, and I'll cheerfully collect that debt for you, the British Gundam pilot mused as he left the cell, his mood turning bloody.

As the door slid back into place, Duo knelt next to his tow-headed friend. He saw Quatre's wide-staring eyes, then tried jostling him a little and talking to him, but got no response at all.

"Hey, Cat, you okay?" the American pilot asked, worried. "Hiiro, something's wrong with Quatre! I can't get him to respond!"

"Shit!" Hiiro exclaimed, his voice thick with concern. He strode over and knelt next to Duo, and then pressed two fingers against Quatre's neck. "His pulse is fast, but it's strong. Quatre, can you hear me? C'mon, 04, snap out of it! Quatre!"

Hiiro caught Quatre by the shoulders and shook him gently ... for him, at least. Being twice as strong as an adult man, Hiiro tried to be careful how he handled his comrade. There was no physical response from the blond-haired boy, but in a tiny, dark corner of his mind, Quatre beat on the walls of a cell, screaming to the others that he was there, and could hear them.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

When Trowa arrived at "Interrogation," he came to the same conclusion that Quatre had; it was a room specifically for torturing prisoners. As they hung him up like a side of beef, the British Gundam pilot decided to work the same routine his Arabian partner had before him. He would give OZ nothing but a name, even if he had to make one up, no rank because "rebel scum" had none, and the ID number Doktor S gave him when he left L3 to return to Earth.

If Tsuberov thinks he's going to get a straight answer out of me, he's sadly mistaken, Trowa thought when the old man re-entered the room. When Tsuberov started questioning Trowa, all he got in response was "Name, Nanashi Oshimaida, no rank, ID number LP3-GHA-GP03."

"Eh? What the Hell kind of a name is "Nanashi Oshimaida"?" the Chief Engineer bellowed.

"That's just it," Trowa replied with an evil-sounding snicker. "It's not a name at all. It's my swan song."

It was the truth. The captain of the mercenaries who had raised him from the age of two to the age of nine was Japanese, and he could not think of a good name to give the lost boy, so he stuck the youngster with Nanashi, or No-Name. He hadn't come by the name Trowa Barton until the real managed to get himself fatally shot in the back by an assistant of his Gundam's designer, Doktor S. The scientists had no plans to follow through with the mad schemes of the real Trowa's father, Dekim Barton, and he was going to get them all killed by ratting them out.

After what the nameless boy suffered at the hands of the real Trowa Barton, he would have loved to kill the man himself. It took nearly two weeks for him to recover from the incident.

The frustrated chief engineer of the Mobile Dolls reached into his robes and pulled out what appeared to be a highly polished stick of wood. Somehow, Trowa figured it was some kind of a weapon, possibly the very one used to harm Quatre. Tsuberov pointed the wooden rod at the boy, and said something in a language that sounded almost like Latin.

In spite of his training to withstand most forms of torture, the young British pilot's slim, lanky body convulsed in agony. For several long, excruciating seconds, all Trowa could feel was the nerve-searing, mind-numbing pain of a thousand white-hot needles stabbing him. He bit into his lower lip again, this time hard enough for it bleed, just to keep from screaming.

What was that word ... crucify? Trowa asked himself silently, gasping as the pain began to fade. No, not crucify ... crucio ... torture. That's exactly what this is.

Unfortunately for Tsuberov, Trowa noticed that the guards hadn't bothered shackling his legs to the floor.

The pain almost gone, Trowa swung his long legs upward and kicked out with both feet, knocking the rod out of the scientist's hand. He sailed up further and, with a flip, managed to free his shackles from the D-ring. As he landed, both the youth and the old man watched as the wand went sailing across the room to strike the Neotitanium floor, causing it to shatter into several pieces.

Tsuberov squawked as Trowa's feet struck his wrist and he backhanded the young Gundam pilot in retaliation, sending the boy crashing into the wall beside him and knocking him for a well-known loop as he bit back another yelp of pain. Tasting more of his own blood in his mouth, Trowa growled in anger while the OZ scientist stood over him, gloating over his petty triumph.

A moment later, the old man grabbed Trowa by the neck of his gray t-shirt until the boy's keen nose was close enough to pick up the bitter reek of liquor on Tsuberov's breath. The strong smell made Trowa nauseous, and he vowed that he would never drink anything with alcohol in it, not even beer.

"You brats think you're perfect little soldiers who feel no fear or pain, don't you?" Tsuberov said, cackling maniacally. The emerald-eyed boy responded by spitting a mouthful of blood and saliva in the chief engineer's ugly face, which got him a fist driven into his solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him, followed by another blow to his face.

"We'll see if you change your tune when you're all facing a firing squad," the chief engineer continued, though Trowa sensed he was lying about the firing squad. Romefeller wouldn't waste bullets the Gundam pilots. "Put this little bastard back with his friends so he can say goodbye to them. They're all scheduled to be executed first thing in the morning."

"What about 04, sir?" the soldier on Trowa's left asked. None of the men seemed to care that the young Heavyarms pilot was still conscious, or that he heard and understood everything that was going on around him.

"Without my wand to modify his memories, the Winner brat is useless to us. He'll be executed with his friends, but he won't know who he is, who they are or why he's dying with them."

Dammit! Trowa thought, his eyes widening when he heard Tsuberov say Quatre's real last name. These bastards know who Quatre is, even though he's using an alias! Hiiro and I never called him by his real name, just by his pilot's designation, so how is it even possible?

Prodded on by blows and shoves, an enraged, confused and frustrated Trowa was "escorted" back to the cell he shared with the other Gundam pilots, there to await his inevitable death, but not before muttering the word "pompa." With that, phase one of "get revenge for Quatre" was complete. Next was to find a way to use this feeble gift of his to free himself and the others and get Quatre back to normal, then board the two nearly completed Gundams, Deathscythe and Altron, go back to Earth and retrieve Heavyarms, Wing and Sandrock.

In the torture room behind him, everything electrical began to flare into fountains of sizzling sparks and then burst into flames. The Russian aristocrat cursed as he ducked to avoid getting himself burned. It became apparent to the Chief Engineer that 03 not only knew how to use magic, but he didn't need a wand to do so. Tsuberov knew of only two wizards who didn't need a wand to focus their magic.

One was Albus Dumbledore, who had died from the Killing Curse nearly 15 years ago.

The other was Harry James Potter, the boy who lived.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

An hour later, in the room that served as both the atmosphere control and the surveillance station for the cells, an Ensign not much older than the five boys he watched on the monitors still chuckled over their earlier "greeting." Like Lady Une, he'd come to admire the young pilots for their tenacity and courage in continuing to fight, even when it was a losing battle.

As the door of the control room opened with a whoosh, the Ensign turned to see who was entering, then jumped up suddenly and snapped a smart salute to the men who came in. The soldier didn't like Mr. Tsuberov one bit; from his antiquated style of dress to the way he had enjoyed his torturing of 03 and 04, the man was just plain creepy. In the young man's opinion, the sooner the Colonel returned, the better.

"Good job, soldier," Tsuberov said as he entered the base's control room. Four heavily armed guards accompanied him.

"Sir!" the eager Ensign replied. Tsuberov walked over to the console the young man was monitoring and looked over the controls.

"Is this the atmosphere control panel for the cells?"

"Yes, sir, it's controlled from here!"

"Is that right ...?"

Tsuberov gripped a lever on the console and pulled it down until the windowed panel under it was all red. He had Duke Dermail's execution order to carry out, and contrary to what he said when torturing 03, he did not intend to waste precious ammunition on a bunch of rebel brats, especially not on the bastard son of the Boy Who Lived.

The Chief Engineer knew wandless magic when he felt it, and the boy was powerful enough to use it. He'd also been a Death Eater for far too long not to recognize Harry Potter's emerald green eyes when they looked back at him.

"Mr. Tsuberov, wha ... what are you doing?" the shocked soldier asked as Tsuberov's guards grabbed him, forcing his arms behind his back.

"Just cutting off the air supply to the cells," Tsuberov replied with a sadistic grin. "No need to worry, soldier. You're just following orders!"

"Are these Lady Une's orders?" the Ensign demanded.

"I'm giving these orders. Lady Une's gotten far too soft for her own good, especially where those Gundam pilots are concerned!"

The soldier struggled for a moment, and then gave up, sagging to the floor in defeat. Lady Une was due back soon, and all the Ensign could do was wait for her return. Then Tsuberov would pay for his treachery.

Meanwhile, in their cell, four of the five young pilots noticed something was wrong.

"What the Hell?" the Chinese boy asked. "The air's getting thin!"

"Shite!" Trowa exclaimed as he pulled the unresponsive Quatre closer to him. "The bastard cut off the oxygen! We've maybe a half an hour of air left!"

"Looks like you were right, Trowa," Hiiro observed dryly. "Tsuberov decided not to waste any bullets on us, after all."

"So they're gonna slowly suffocate us instead! Damn, what a crappy way to kill us all off!" Duo growled, his rage flaring, then quickly fizzling out.

Since he deemed getting angry to be a waste of energy and oxygen, Wu Fei picked up the microprojector Duo had dropped when the soldiers threw Hiiro and Trowa into their cell. He sat down on the floor Indian style and began flashing the blueprints for his and Duo's Gundams on the wall. Hiiro joined him a moment later, and the two Asian youths began studying the blueprints carefully.

Duo noticed what his friends were doing, crawled over to them and asked "Hiiro, Wu Fei, what are you guys doing that for? There's no sense in studying those now!"

"We all need to stay calm if we wanna live a little bit longer," Wu Fei replied, turning to look at his American friend. "We should know what our Gundams are gonna be capable of, if we manage to survive this."

"It's gonna take something pretty drastic to get us out of this fix."

"That's why we're studying these," Hiiro interjected, "in case something drastic happens."

"Guys ...," Duo said to his comrades, then resigned himself to his fate and lay down on the floor. "Sorry, but I'm gonna throw in the towel. This is such a goddamn lame way to die! This is so uncool!"

Trowa could not help but overhear the other three pilots talking, and could hear the utter despair in their voices and in their minds. He hated to admit it, but his hope was almost gone, too, and he chuckled bitterly at that. He'd known since the age of eight that he would die in a war, but not like this.

"Y'know, Quatre, this situation would be almost funny if it weren't so bloody damned tragic," he murmured, giving the blond-haired boy what comfort he could. "Instead of dying on the battlefield like the soldiers we are ... or in front of a firing squad as prisoners of war ... Tsuberov is killing us off like a coward would. Slowly and painfully."

The minutes slowly ticked away, bringing the five young men closer to a suffocating death, and oddly enough, the other pilots were all leaning against Trowa. Hiiro and Wu Fei both used a form of self-hypnosis to lower their heartbeat and respiration so the others could survive a few minutes longer. Duo passed out only a minute earlier. Quatre's breath came out in a faint, dry-sounding wheeze, then suddenly stopped.

The only one still awake was Trowa, his headache worsening as consciousness finally began to desert him.

I don't want to die ..., Trowa thought. I don't want any of us to die ... not yet, not like this, and not in this place. I ... I want to know who I really am first. I want ... to find ... my home … and my ... my real family ...

As Trowa took one last breath, all five Gundam pilots vanished in a brilliant flash of blue-white light, accompanied by a thunderous CRACK that shook OZ's moon base to its foundations. The last thing Trowa thought he heard before passing out was the voice of a woman crying out someone else's name.

The name sounded like "Harry."

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Author's Notes: Sorry this chapter took so long to finish. There's no excuse for it, other than I wanted it to be as close to perfect as possible. And I had a bad case of runaway muses dressed in OZ uniforms, holding Trowa and Quatre hostage. Moreover, I apologize for the length of this chapter. My muses decided to get even with me for corralling them.

For the reviewers who asked about Dumbledore's part in this: he died shortly before Triton/Trowa's birth, so he doesn't have any part to play.

My idea for Dekim Barton fully taking over Hiiro's training stems from an argument he had with Dr. J after the "Red Wolf" incident, as shown in EW and touched on in Episode Zero. In the voice over, as Hiiro's carrying the dead puppy, Dekim is screaming at J about Hiiro having feelings of guilt ("A perfect soldier doesn't need emotions!"), and J responds with "Is this what Hiiro Yui would have wanted?" (Referring to Operation Meteor, and of course not, but Dekim was a delusional baka.) I figured J did everything he could to try to protect Hiiro, while Dekim threw the boy under the metaphorical bus.

The "name/rank/serial number" routine Quatre and Trowa give Tsuberov goes as follows: Name/alias; "no rank" because there was no military rank for the Gundam pilots during the Earth-Space War (which had raged for 20 years before the Gundams came to Earth) or the Barton Uprising. Finally, the "ID number" stands for the Colony that sent them, the name given to their Mobile Suit, and the pilot's alphanumeric designation.

Trowa has no real name at this time; hence, "Nanashi", no rank, ID number LP3-GHA-GP03. The "Oshimaida" bit is Japanese for "it's finished." It's both Trowa's admission that his cover was blown & a tip of the hat to the CBS series NCIS, my favorite live action show. Quatre used the alias of Robert Walter Quinn, which I created for another story, no rank, ID number LP3-GSR-GP04. So voila, there it is.

Yeah, I know having someone say "do your worst" is kind of cliché, but if anyone can carry it off, an angry Quatre who's still fighting off the influence of the ZERO System can. As for Quatre's fighting skill, I might be playing them up a little, but I'm not making them up at all. In episode 4, Rashid thoughts on Trowa were "I'm just relieved that this guy who can fight as well as Quatre isn't an enemy." (Emphasis mine) I took it to mean that Quat has some mad fighting skills both in and out of Sandrock. :)

The reference to Hiiro's greater than normal strength comes from the beginning of the manga sequel Ground Zero, where the boys find and delete some computer files Treize and OZ had on them. That and the further upgrades to the Gundams seem to be the only parts of that manga that are considered canon. The reason is because, with the sole exception of Wu Fei, everyone was written completely out of character.

The curse I created for Quatre's mindwipe, Extergito animo hostem redigere Tabula rasa, is Latin for "Wipe clean the mind of my foe, reduce it to a blank tablet." If it were real, the mind of its victim would be regressed back to its infancy, making them a tabula rasa, a blank slate open to manipulation. I felt that because of what it does and the amount of pain it causes Quatre, it would be damn close to an Unforgivable Curse.

Oh, the word "pompa" means "fireworks." Thank you, Google Translate.

Besides, I'm gonna use Obliviate in another chapter.

Next chapter: With two of their number down, the Gundam pilots suddenly appear at 12 Grimmauld Place, Harry and Ginny meet their teenaged son, now a wanted terrorist and Gundam pilot, and Sally Po meets Madame Pomfrey.
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Finding Triton