Chapter XV-A Transformation

It was…not entirely a new sensation. She could feel the confusion spreading like a stain soaked in the cloth of her mind, the aphrodisiac impression of losing all grip of reality, of melting and blending into something wonderfully new and untouched by the pain and inhibitions of one’s past.

It was (ironically) unforgettable.

And it was happening to Lady Une.

She could feel cool, steady composure replacing panic. Lady Une walked over to her desk and pulled open the top right hand. The cool feel of the lenses, the familiar weight on the bridge of her nose. She was losing her weak, inefficient personality, and replacing it with something far more useful.

She had a mission.

Treiz Kushrenada, Lady Une’s long lost love and commander, had driven her to change her personality, and now, paradoxically, his daughter was forcing her to do the same.

Oh, her life was full of irony. Ha ha ha.

She pressed a button on her counsel and looked at her attendant with the severity she had been well known for, "Mr. Phelps, I want you to call up a jet. I have business elsewhere."

"Where to, Colonel?"

She looked down to the report on her desk, to the photographs of her beaten adopted daughter. She had traced the grime on the paper to a portion of India.

"Southern India."

She smiled to herself, every ounce of kindness erased. She was going to need some serious weaponry.

"I can’t believe we’re back in the forest!"

"Shut up, Duo." Hilde said absently, flicking a rather disgusting bug off of her forearm.

They were back in the forest in the depths of night. After the motel incident, no one really wanted to bother staying around.

"It cold and it’s slimy and it smells of dead stuff."

Sally laughed, "You’ve never spent much time on Earth, have you, Duo?"

"No, of course not!" he growled, "If I had liked the place, do you think I would be hanging around in the colonies?! You guys may have a great look at the stars, but your environmental control sucks."

"It’s not supposed to have environmental control, Duo." Trowa supplied softly.

"Yeah, ‘good ole natural Earth!’" he said sarcastically, "All of the immigrants long for it…they always forget all of the nasty disadvantages."

"Shut up, Duo," someone said wearily.

"I mean…what is that smell?!"

"SHUT UP, DUO!" several people chorused in unison.

"Yeesh, fine, I didn’t know you all were so touchy."

There were several moments of complete silence, spare the chorusing of the active nocturnal animal life.

"I mean to cut of some guy who was only-"

"SHUT UP, DUO!!!"

"Relena…"

"What is it, Heero?"

His eyes were peering into hers, hard, cold, but filled with deep guilt and sadness. She had never seen him so lost, so desperate, "I’m a drug addict, Relena."

If she was expecting anything, she wasn’t expecting that. The statement, placed forward with the usual Heero Yuy bluntness, had caught her off guard as usual.

And she remembered…that day, soaked in the rain, when they had made The Bargain.

He liked to do that to her, liked to shock reactions out of her. She held Heero tighter as he spoke again, "Ariel offered me escape. I was so…angry for not being the one to kill you, that I took them. I took the pills." He looked up at her. Heero Yuy was hallucinating. Behind Relena stood the little girl, smiling serenely among the sweet plants, Her white sundress rippling in the slight breeze. He looked beyond Relena, to his own illusion, "Please…forgive me…"

She smiled, and lifted up a weed in her hand, "Here, take this flower."

He reached out blindly, but his fingers passed through her phantom arm, and he found himself grasping air.

Her voice was disembodied, faint and pure, "I will relieve you of your pain."

Heero looked up at Relena, then to the field around him, absorbed in his drug-induced hallucination, I…thank you."

There was silence.

Heero Yuy passed out.

Relena bent over him, too uncertain to understand the emotions coursing through her heart.

The group came upon them several minutes later. And Sally rushed forward, to aid the two wounded people on the plot of land, tutting angrily at both of their states.

"Relena, you’ve already soaked through your bandages! What were you doing?!" she growled, doctor-mode switched on fully.

"Escaping!" she snapped back, "What about Heero?"

Sally leaned over him for a while, checking his pulse and opening his eyelids curiously.

"I don’t want to say this…but I think he has drugs in his system." She looked confused, "but why would that be?"

Relena bit her lip, "I’ll explain it all later, but right now we need to get out of here."

Another group of soldiers could be heard a whiles off, in search of the group that had conveniently ‘disappeared.’

Sally nodded her head sharply, "That would be advisable."

She turned her head pointedly towards a certain braided pilot.