Okay, as much as Duo owed Trowa, it was definitely Wufei he should contact first. If his story differed from hers, he'd know it was all a con. As Wufei picked up, he made it clear. "Gee, I'm breaking protocol and contacting you? It must mean it's real important. When's the last time you saw your mother, Wufei?" While he waited for the answer, he took a picture of her beside him and sent a pic in a text message at the same time as he waited. "So?"
"How is she there?!" Ah, yep, sounded correct.
"Last time you saw her, Wufei," Duo asked again.
"Around twelve. She just went missing, or so they said." He didn't seem to believe it. "She should have gone with the colony. How are you with her?"
"Well, I almost killed her," he admitted. "Honest mistake." Yeah, that language he was using said it all. This was Wufei's mom, and even though he wasn't real fond of a lot of weak people, Wufei cared for his mother. "Trowa sent me a message that he thought Crystalia left. It said Hilde's body was at her address. I was supposed to kill her, Wufei. I'm on my way to apparently her new family's schooling and work to make sure they aren't killed."
"What family? Remarried?"
Aw, it almost made him smile for a second. "I know you want to talk, but I just needed to confirm she was who she claimed. Tell Quatre and Heero, I'm going to call Trowa. You can talk to your mom later."
"Soon, Duo Maxwell!"
"Yes, soon," Duo insisted as he hung up to call Trowa.
Trowa's Car
"Duo are you sure about that?" Trowa asked anxiously as he started to drive at a faster speed. "Cathy said she had that note for at least a week."
"Crystalia didn't even know her identity as Wufei's mom, and I was hot enough under the collar that I would have killed her. There was no body, just Wufei's mother, so I'd say the circus was compromised. They probably didn't want to try anything until you dropped your guard."
"If they knew about Catherine, and I just visited her?" Did they tag him then?
"Welcome to the 'they screwed you over' club," Duo said to him. "Get back as fast as you can and tell the others. Each of the women were microchipped by her, RTL might have that now."
Trowa had been a member of that club for way too long! Trowa hung up and drove even faster to get back. He could not risk them getting Middie back.
Duo was headed straight for the local elementary school. He had her call the school for an emergency, someone just died in the family. Her kids should be ready as soon as they got there. Going into an elementary school, what a weird thing. Something he never did once himself, but he had to make sure she didn't run off.
This thing was dangerous, and even now she seemed to get what was at risk as he parked. He got out with her and they headed inside. Her voice was definitely nervous at the office and he did his best to hide his appearance. He didn't look like someone that belonged in that place.
When her kids came to her, she wrapped them in the biggest mom hug he'd ever seen. She signed them out while they just stared at Duo for a few seconds, and then they started to bail.
"Back seat," she instructed them. "We are picking up your father."
"What's the emergency?" her son asked. "Who is this guy who picked us up? An uncle we don't know?"
Heh. "Definitely not Uncle Duo. Next location." He headed for her husband's work. This one would probably be more dangerous, that group would have a harder time against kids than taking out one guy. "After this, you tell your family, your husband takes his car with them, and you are coming with me to find Hilde."
"Tell us what?" Her son asked. "Who are you taking our mom to find?"
His mom told her son to be quiet. A harsh whisper, but a desperate whisper. Yep, her whole life was about to change. "If I were you, I'd tell him the truth, and leave it however it falls," Duo told her. "It's your life though, what's left of it, so you go with what you want to do. Just know, that-"
"That this is it." She clearly knew it. Once they were out, she'd never see them again. She'd rebuild her own life, on her own again. When Duo arrived, the woman formerly known as 'Blue Topaz' told her kids to run over by her husband's car. They definitely weren't coming with them.
She got out. Duo still couldn't risk leaving her. Just like before, he kept his head turned, and his eyes out of her business as she shared what she could as fast as she could. Duo didn't know how long RTL had her info waiting, but it probably wasn't a coincidence the one named Superior brought her in and didn't share her information correctly.
Her family would probably be safe, but she still needed to hurry. He heard her start with why she joined, and heard a lot more detail this time. That proud Long clan was too damn proud. Wufei's mother hadn't been a fighter at all, only his father. Apparently when he died in some battle, Wufei's mother didn't even get to say goodbye or explain before she was ejected from the colony. It was already decided that Wufei was supposed to marry into the Long clan itself at 14, but with a weak mother, and a dead father, someone else 'stronger' took him in.
Yeah. They decided to eject her when Wufei was 12, not like a kid. Her family now was from this guy's previous marriage, so none of these were half-brothers or half-sisters. At least that was good for him. Still, man. Wufei didn't even know, or there's no way he'd just let the 'she blew up' stand. Right?
Duo continued not to say a word, letting her handle her own business, but watched as her husband slapped her. Not the right way to take it, geez. At least she came for them, without her, that whole family would have been fried.
He still didn't say a word as the husband left to the car those kids stood by. As they all left, Duo headed back for his vehicle. Innocents saved, it was time to get back Hilde using the person he was supposed to kill. As they drove on, he watched her try to quietly weep in the corner. He didn't have anything for her except maybe?
He reached in his vehicle's compartment. He had a work towel to use if his car broke down. It was still new. "Here." He gave it to her. "Life isn't over, just with them. Be happy they make it out alive. Run again, run farther away without any plans of family this time. Now, how far should I drive before asking for directions? Oh, and do you have a real name because I know that nobody from your clan would name you 'Martha Thomas'."
She took his work towel from him. "At least three hours. RTL, for a long time, it worked fairly small. It came from a fairly small town."
Yeah, that's how things started. Small, then they spiraled into huge and out of control.
"I'm sorry," she said, "about your girlfriend. If you tell me about your situation, I might guess where they keep her."
"She should have still been alive," Duo said confidently. "They want her carrying my kid, and then she's got to at least progress awhile before they are going to try and kill her. At least, I thought so." Please let her still be alive. "We got so lucky, she being from space and all. Messed up their plans." He looked back toward her. Maybe this woman would be a nice little gem in disguise?
"Group revenge involved similar manners. Is your girlfriend Hilde not possibly able to get pregnant?" she asked. "If she can't, they will have to change their strategy."
"What would the secondary strategy be?" Duo asked.
She was quiet for a little while. "The worse the offense, the more likely the innocents involved can be taken down, or splintered. I was only with it a couple of years, and even then I knew it wasn't perfect. These tactics were first used with such scum that it didn't bother me."
"Okay, Mrs. Chang. Glad you got a moral compass, can you help some more again?" Duo didn't care about how she got involved, he wanted to get all the useful info he could.
"Who were chosen?" she asked Duo. "Hilde Schbeiker, how did you meet?"
"During the war, when I was hiding," he said. "She'd been a friend ever since. It started with just helping me fix my gundam, but I still stayed near. She was fun and great and didn't deserve this."
"A normal bystandard or involved in the war?"
"Sort of involved, she learned how to drive a mobile suit."
"Any involvement meant guilt in their eyes. Do you have some paper?"
She wanted to make calculations? "Memo pad." He took it and grabbed a pen for her. "What are you doing?"
"Determining more of your options and predictions. Writing down some of the old places. You could have killed me, and instead you saved me and my family," she answered. "That kind of honor from an assassin deserves nothing less than anything I can give." She started writing down vague addresses.
Okay, he'd buy that. "Wufei ended up with someone called Mei-Lin Wang from the Zhang colony. After they found out she wasn't pregnant, her colony blew up, but Wufei had been in the process of returning her."
"Superior would never have agreed to that, that couldn't be it," she said looking at the paper. "Tell me about Wang Mei-Lin, and tell me exactly how Long Meilan died."
"I don't know the Long details, but Mei-Lin never went into war or anything. Wufei got to her on her wedding day to someone else. She was also accused of murder for a little while, but that was cleared up to pin it on Dorothy Catalonia. What do you mean Superior would never let that be the revenge? The colony thing?"
"Few things were taboo, but blowing anything up was never allowed, no matter how much easier it could make things," she answered. "Not involved in war, an innocent. Count of one." She made a separate column that she didn't label. "Next one."
"I guess Quatre and Dorothy Catalonia."
"Involved in war, not innocent. Do you know how they plan on dealing with her?"
"His mom died during birth. We found out she was poisoned with something, but she's been getting treatment for it for about a month or so." he said.
"If the treatment is working . . ." She sighed and made another column next to it called Failures. "Two not pregnant, and one being treated. Tell me another one."
"There is Trowa with Middie Une. She was a spy in the war," Duo said to her. "She got pregnant. She has a hot line of torture waiting for her, with chemical injections coming up soon if they get a hold of her again."
"Spy, absolutely the worst. Chemical injections?" she questioned. "She had none though?"
"No, not according to Trowa." Duo saw her put another o in the innocent and 1 in the failure column. "If I thought you were playing a game, it'd look like they were losing."
"They are," she admitted. "Another one?"
"Heero with Relena Dorlain, used to be Queen of the Earth if you missed that," Duo said to her. "Definite innocent column."
"She was innocent and never killed. Let's go with O. She was kept safe but pregnant?"
"The safest she can be, no one can get a drop on Heero," Duo agreed. "She's almost due too, just one more month. She was also redeemed in the news, and so was Dorothy Catalonia too." He watched her write it down.
"The next one?"
Hm? "You miscounted," Duo told her. "That's five pilots."
"There were more than five gundam pilots," she said back to him. "There's six."