CHAPTER VIII- The Flaming Chariot

(A/N: Sorry about the bad grammar last chapter, a nasty cold robbed me of my grammatical skills! BTW, the chapters are screwed up because ff.net is screwed up, and I'm very sorry for any confusion this may have caused.)

Heero cursed himself inwardly. He used to be so well informed about everything in Relena’s life, and now the moment he turned his back she managed to get herself into trouble again.

Life really had it in for both of them.

He had found his replacement, and it was far less demanding.

She never asked much from him, companionship, maybe sympathy. But in return she had given him so much.

When the gundams dropped to Earth for the revised Operation Meteor, Heero had lost his supply of drugs. He fought harder than he had ever dreamed he could to regain that supply and do as he was told.

But then, something in the war changed him. He stopped viewing his actions as missions or jobs, but what they really were, quests for peace. Killing had been a job. But it had become an obligation.

Heero had realized what he was fighting for.

And her name was Relena.

Her world was collapsing around her, her family dead, her life a deception, and yet she still remained pure and herself. She would look upon the harshest of realities and still manage to maintain her delicate fantasies of how much better the world could be.

When he had first met Relena, he surmised that he was stronger than she was. He was fighting, making a difference, while she could do nothing. But then he observed that she was not weaker than him, but merely possessed a different kind of strength. She could walk into a room with a pack of enemies, and they would leave her spouting her ideals with joyous enthusiasm.

When she spoke, the world stopped to listen.

That was why he had chosen to follow her originally- because he had finally concluded that he could never compare to her.

And slowly, he began to realize that he wanted her in more ways than as a symbol of peace for all people, but he believed he could never be her peer, and any romance between them had merely been a weakness on both sides.

She had saved him, and she was so much better than him.

He had no idea just how equal they truly were.

"Confirmed visual target," he said to himself, reconfiguring the computer’s calculations as his shuttle approached hers. The was a spark behind him, and he wondered vaguely how much longer his ship would last keeping such a high and dangerous speed.

The white spacecraft he was tracking so meticulously was navigating the asteroid field nimbly, moving just within normal safe speed limits. Heero had had to disengage every safety his ship possessed to catch up with them, and the poor craft was showing the signs of its strain. He had twenty minutes perhaps, if he was lucky.

There was a glint behind an asteroid. The trap was being activated.

He looked back down at his computer. Twenty minutes.

Heero smirked and activated what weapons remained on his shuttle.

More than enough time.

Relena looked up from the progress report she was reading to the copilot that stood before her. She was dressed in Preventer’s garb, one of the newer recruits who was slightly star-struck by being given the honor of escorting the famous newly promoted Foreign Minister.

"What is it, Major Gherin?"

Hr eyes were grim, "Ms. Relena, we’ve detected several space mines on neighboring asteroids, all geared to explode. We can’t maneuver past them, and if we stop, we activate the ones we’ve past." She looked almost close to tears, "I’m so sorry, Ms. Relena!"

The steely eyed delegate shook her head, "How were you supposed to know? Are there any escape pods?"

"It wouldn’t matter, Ms. Relena." The woman said softly, "Captain Stevens’ navigating might be able to buy us a few more minutes but-"

Her words were cut off as a nearby explosion rocked the ship.

Doctor J was standing in the middle of a machine so vast and beautiful, it looked like a jewel carved out of the rocky, barren landscape. A bubble of energy absorbing material encased the machine, which resembled a spider flipped on its stomach, with all eight metal legs bent towards the center.

Hesitantly, a child crept towards him, staring up at his creator with wide, emotionless eyes, "Am I to enter in this thing?" he asked stoically, as if he were asking to enter a house or a building.

A house or a building did not have the capabilities that this machine had.

"Yes, Tyrone," the doctor told him, "I’ll manage it from here, I just need you to get in and do it like I taught you."

"Yes, sir." The boy began moving towards the epicenter of the vast device.

"Wait, Tyrone-" Doctor J called.

He turned, as heartless and focused as Heero Yuy had ever been.

"You’re the best of all your brothers and sisters. Do your best out there."

"Yes, sir."

The young child’s body was grasped by many force fields from the electromagnets around him, and brought up to the empty place where the eight ‘spider’s legs’ met.

"Activate." He said softly, and he found himself surrounded by curious white light.

Relena looked up from the floor, surprised that she was still alive. The shuttle had not exploded, but a nearby asteroid had. She went to the nearest window and saw another ship efficiently targeting an destroying the asteroids around her.

Soon, it was over, an a face appeared on the nearby vidscreen. She did not need a picture to know that it was Heero Yuy, "space mines had been terminated. My shuttle is no longer space worthy. Prepare to receive another passenger."

Relena merely smiled at him, her face and eyes alight with happiness, "Understood."

"General de la Jour, sir!" an officer said, nodding sharply at his superior, "Mining colony XLJ008 has disappeared, sir!"

The leaders of the preventers looked up sharply from the reports scattered on his desk, "What do you mean, disappeared?"

"It has undergone complete radio silence and a team sent there brought us visual proof." He swallowed nervously, "As of zero hour (A/N: i.e. midnight) this morning, the colony has been simply wiped out of existence."

The leader rose a hand to his mouth to cover a smile.

It had worked!