Chapter II- Dead Flowers

"Well, well, well. For the first time in history, the best of the best screws up big time."

Zero looked up irritably, danger radiating off of him.

Shinigami was not scared of anybody. His powers were, after all, granted by the God of Death himself.

However, Zero was not the ordinary person.

A black mask covered the upper half of his face and was connected to a black spandex body suit, with a black cape over that. Wild brown bangs covered most of Zero's forehead, and he had a habit of gripping and un-gripping his gloved hands while staring at someone, giving them the impression that he wanted to kill them (which was, in Shinigami's case, most often correct).

Heero's costume was made to intimidate, which it did well.

Shinigami's navy black priest getup and white mask were created for the same reason, but it was more a part of his eccentricity than his desire to scare others. In fact, he was known to get emotional over any damage to his clothes. Zero had seen his braided companion take on five men single-handedly over a popped seam.

"I didn't see anyone around the back of the mansion, Duo," a light-hearted voice called from the behind the two vigilantes.

Zero and Shinigami turned.

"Oi, Quatre!"

"Sandrock." Heero acknowledged absently, sending an extra glare to Shinigami for his liberal use of real names.

The boy named Quatre leapt up behind them and seated himself on the ledge of the building with the others. The way he jumped was called short distance teleportation, but it looked more like incredibly fast leaps from one place to another. Sandrock really couldn't explain his power, it was just something he had always had.

Zero hunched over, peering deeply into the depths of the mansion. "We'll move in quietly. There will be not room for failure."

"Do you think Oz was behind it?" Duo asked quietly.

Zero shrugged, "That's not important. Where's Clown?"

Sandrock ran a careless hand through his shock of blond hair, his eyes, hidden behind a mask, crinkled up into a smile, "I told him to go in as soon as I gave the all clear."

Zero nodded, "And Shenlong?"

"He refused to participate tonight. He wants to keep an eye out for the city in case this was supposed to be a distraction." Quatre supplied easily.

"Yeah, right," Shinigami scoffed, "We all know that he didn't come because the victims were women."

Sandrock made a soft sound of protest, "Shenlong would never deliberately refuse to aid someone!"

Duo grumbled something about over reactions and then pointed exuberantly to a flicker in the distance, "Trowa's coming! Let's move!"

The boys disappeared into the darkness.

"So, Heero, what are you staring at?"

Heero looked up absently from his seat on the park bench to Duo, who had invited himself over to eat his incredibly large lunch with the somber boy.

"Her," he said carelessly, jerking his head in the direction of a slim girl, who was seated on the grass under a tree, all alone.

"Relena Darlian?" Duo said, choking on his sandwich, "The new kid? I didn't know you liked blondes..."

"I don't." he said, turning back to his seat and his food. Duo gave him a very confused look.

"You don't like blondes, yet you watch one. You are one screwed up weirdo."

He lifted a shoulder, unconcerned at what his friend thought, "She saw me at the docks two nights ago."

"Woah-ho-ho!!!" Duo hollered, sending bits of sandwich flying everywhere, "I didn't know you had it in you, you dog!!!"

Heero pinned him with a dangerous glare, "During the coup, thick-skull. She saw me without my mask on."

Duo leaned back, his eyes wide, "Aw, shit."

"I don't know if I should kill her or threaten her into shutting up."

"Why hasn't she said anything so far?"

Heero said something noncommittal.

Duo's face brightened, "Maybe she likes you! Maybe she has a thing about men in tights."

In an instant, Heero's hand was at Duo's throat, "They are not tights."

Duo gagged.

"Say it!"

"Okay! Okay! They aren't tights!"

Duo gasped for air and Heer let go, crossing his arms and leaning back into the bench.

"You know," he said, still rubbing his neck, "with friends like you, I don't need enemies."

"Hn."

"Maybe you should threaten Relena anyway. Blondes tend to be ditzy. She could let it slip."

Heero nodded, his dark blue eyes unfocused, staring off into space, concentrating on the plan that was forming in his mind.

Relena sighed as she stared at her math homework. The problem just wouldn't figure itself out. She felt like she was on the brink of something...as if she had assembled all the pieces, just had to stare at the paper so they could fall into place. She needed one last thing to have it all make sense....

"Put the two equations equal to each other. That's your problem."

She swung around to face her tutor, her greenish eyes wide with surprise and anger. She had thought she was alone in the library, spare the aged librarian typing in the other room.

"Hey! I almost had it!" She began, but then stopped as her furious face dissolved into pure shock. She tilted her chin up to look at the face of the boy she had seen, the one she was forced to sit next to, the one she could not make any sense of, "You...."

"Heero Yuy is not my name. Turning it in to the authorities will bring you no profit."

"What?"

"Don't even think about revealing my identity. This isn't a game for you to meddle in, Relena Darlian. If you refuse to cooperate, I will kill you. If you dare to slip up, I will be there to make you regret your mistake."

Relena stared into his eyes and saw nothing. She felt like she was enveloped in his icy and uncaring gaze, as if she was looking at a soul who only noticed hard truths and never dreamed.

If was not the kind of face one could smile at.

She clenched her jaw and replied in a cold high voice, "If I wanted to turn you in, Heero Yuy, I would have." His gaze did not slacken in intensity. She swallowed nervously, but her tone was firm and steady, "If you must know, I don't really care about what you do in your spare time."

"You have no reason to." He replied, and it seemed to her that he had gotten the last laugh, even if he was just confirming what she had said.

The looked at each other for a moment longer, his expression probing and hers dignified, until they both turned- her back to her work and Heero to leave.

The library seemed even more quiet then before. She shivered at its chill

Wufei straightened his jacket as he walked threw the dank neighborhood, to the place he had been visiting for several weeks. He sulked and glowered at everyone, as was appropriate for the area, blending in easily with the crowd. His feet plodded heavily on the stained concrete, but his heart was light.

The sun was setting when Relena finally decided to go home, her homework completed. She looked around her environment with more interest than she ever had before, to the beach the crashed on her left, the busy road to her right, and the shops beyond that. Her hand brushed against the fence, and she looked down at the beach nervously. It had been there where the whole mess had started.

Where she had discovered the face of Zero belonged to a boy.

She didn't know why, but she felt a nagging worry about the vigilante, and she hated it to no end. If he wanted to go get himself killed, why was that any of her business?

Her thoughts remained jumbled as she made her way home and opened the door to the small townhouse she shared with her brother. She was in the middle of closing the door when she stopped. Two pairs of shoes were by the door beside her brother's boots. She heard footsteps, and then the faint scent of roses.

Her brother came in, accompanied by a slim, commanding woman, and the broad presence of another man.

"Relena, I'm sure you remember Une and Treize. They'll be staying with us for a little while."

Her eyes darted to her brother's, angry and accusing, "You didn't tell me that they were coming by."

"They're our guests, Relena, don't throw a tantrum over it. You don't have any friends here to visit while they're here. Just deal with it."

She shook her head violently, "I'll come back when they've left," she hissed, and ran out, slamming the door behind her.

She ran for several blocks until she reached the beach again. She slid down on her knees onto the sun-warmed concrete and looked down at the glittering sand and the glimmering ocean.

She had nowhere to go.

But she knew she could not go back.

Relena realized that her only option left was to go back to school. The grounds would close soon, and she could easily sneak in somewhere and find a place to stay.

She didn't have enough time to get a real meal, but she figured she could always buy breakfast at the cafeteria. Relena walked onto the campus, ignored by the janitors finishing their work, and made her was to the girls' P.E. locker room. The last of the runners and tennis players were leaving, and the custodian had already entered to begin cleaning up.

The locker room had two entrances, and the custodian had left both doors open as he cleaned, humming to himself and he swept up dirt and grime and forgotten scrunchies. Relena entered silently, head low, listening to him clatter in the back of the room. She slipped into the nearest shower stall and huddled in the corner, silent and eager.

About half an hour later, the janitor wheeled his cart out and turned out the lights. Relena hugged her knees tighter, and tried not to be afraid of the blackness around her.

A woman was screaming. Two- no, three- men were laughing. A chain clanked. There was a glimmer of a knife in the alley. She screamed. She cried for help. She let out a whimpering cry of fear and panic and frustration, knowing that this neighborhood knew better than to help her, for she had listened to many similar events occurring outside her apartment window. She knew that no one would dare risk themselves for her, that no one needed her, and that no one would bother risking their lives for a woman such as her. She was a woman looked down upon by society, a whore, a slut, and a thousand other names.

She liked to think that she was a woman trying to survive.

So what if she had been a drug addict, a dropout, a delinquent?

She had made her mistake, and now it was her turn to pay the price. She only wished that she could start over. She prayed that she could get a second chance. She wanted the right to live.

So, as the three laughing shapes approached her, there wasn't even the smallest flicker of hope in her heart that anyone would even flinch as they heard her scream.

She knew a boy too, a boy that she had loved for years. A person who tried to take care of her, tried to drag her threw rehab, tried to make her realize how beautiful the world was.

And she only understood it now. She finally figured out what he had been trying to tell her, as the last moments of her life were stretching on into infinity.

The largest of them moved forward. There was no pain at first, but then it boiled forth in a rush, frothing through her body like the blood on the stab wound. She let out a terrified hiss.

It can't end like this. It can't.

I'm important! I know...I know I'm important. It's not my time! It can't be! It can't!

She blinked in the dim of the alley, in the dim of her own fading vision, as a shadow leapt forward. The shadow pulled one man away, and yanked back another, a howl of anger his only battle cry, his confusion, brought on by blinding fury, the only thing that saved the lives of the three men.

When they had run away, he lifted her lolling heads in his hands. She smiled. She recognized the cloth that covered his mouth and nose, the confusion in his black eyes.

"Wu...fei...." She whispered. Her teeth were tinged red with blood. He didn't say anything. She wondered if he could.

"Meiran!" he whispered, much to her shock.

She tried to shake her head, "Not Meiran..." her eyes, dark and slanted, a clue to her Chinese descent, filled with tears, "Call me...Nataku...I know you wanted...to fight crime...to make me proud of you... to prove yourself...but-" she took a choking breath and struggled slightly in his arms trying to will the air in and out of her lungs, "-justice is more important. People like me...we screwed up...or we were screwed up...people like me....we need help...we need someone...not to protect us...but to remind us. Please...Wufei...do that? So...people...like me...won't exist anymore?"

He rubbed his cheek against her, and she was surprised to find it wet.

Wasn't she his charity friend? Was she the one he helped to prove to himself that he was a better person? Why was he...? He wasn't capable of...."I love you, Meiran. Don't go."

She smiled at him, and looked over at the trash dump nearby, where a wilted bouquet of flowers lay on a throne of banana peels and rubbish.

"Look at the flowers...Wufei...aren't they beautiful?"

And then she was gone.

The vigilante who stood up was not named Shenlong or Wufei, but Nataku. Justice.

And it was time justice returned to New Port. It was time humanity realized what they did to themselves.