Finding Triton: The Sorrowful Battlefield

Again, I don't own Gundam Wing, Harry Potter, or the characters from them. I'm just borrowing them. If I did, the Remastered version of the Gundam Wing series would have also been uncut and included the "Odds & Evens" episodes, and the HP movies would have been closer to the books.

Rated "M" for angst and language.

Chapter Summary: Hiiro and Trowa try to save Quatre from the ZERO System, but does he want to be saved?

Warning: Again, this is NOT a slash or yaoi fic. There are NO M/M pairings. It is a family/brotherly love story. Don't like it? Don't read it.

Potterverse:

slightly AU between Books Six and Seven and the end of DH.

GWverse:

partially AU from "The Gundam They Call ZERO" on, starting with this chapter.

Note: This chapter is told almost completely from Trowa's perspective.

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

Chapter Three: The Sorrowful Battlefield

OZ's Lunar Base, June 12th, AC 195

    The fourteen-year-old Gundam pilot who called himself Trowa Barton had been having a lousy month.

    After lying about his age by nearly a year, hacking into the L3 colony's computer servers in order to falsify his records, and just barely managing to hide his gift from almost everyone, he'd infiltrated the Order of the Zodiac, or OZ, in order to get close to and assassinate the secret order's leader, General Treize Khushrenada, and his direct subordinate, Colonel Lady Anna Une.

    However, after his brief interview with the "evil succubus," as Duo called her, the stoic young man put his orders to terminate her on the back burner. The momentary contact his mind made with Lady Une's told him that hers was fractured in two between the vicious Lt. Colonel who had threatened to destroy the colonies just two months before, and the gentle, peace-loving woman seated before him.

    He also found out that Duo was right to call her a succubus; Wu Fei had told him that she had a "Newtype" ability similar to both Quatre and Trowa's own, but where Trowa could read the minds of others like a book and communicate with the other pilots through his thoughts, and Quatre could feel the emotions of those around him, she could actually manipulate how people thought and felt, getting them to see things her way and therefore, Treize's way. That was how the Colonies allowed OZ to bring weapons into outer space.

    Things started going sideways for Trowa when he overheard two OZ soldiers laughing about the death of Zayeed Winner, the father of one of his fellow Gundam pilots. The elder Winner had opposed OZ's plans to arm the L4 cluster, and in retaliation, he'd found himself blackballed and stripped of his position as a member of the Colony's ruling council, then falsely accused of hoarding resources when, in fact, he'd given them to anyone who asked.

    The fact they were blaming the elder Winner not only for his own execution, but for the injury of his eldest daughter, Dr. Irea Winner, and the disappearance of his only son worried Trowa. Quatre Raberba Winner, Pilot 04, wasn't just Trowa's friend and comrade, but he loved the pale-skinned, blond-haired boy like he would a little brother, even though they were most likely only a few months apart in age.

    Soon after, the rest of his comrades, Hiiro Yui, Zhang Wu Fei, and Duo Maxwell, each wound up getting captured by the new rulers of the Earth Sphere. Trowa was responsible for Hiiro's capture, and he felt like a rat for it, but he was good at playing the rat, and figured Hiiro would forgive him for it later.

    Wu Fei surrendered himself and his badly damaged Gundam, Shenlong, which Wu Fei affectionately called Nataku, to Chief Engineer Nikolai Tsuberov and a squad of OZ Mobile Suit troops and Mobile Dolls. The only reason they captured him instead of killing him was because he was out of ammunition, nearly out of fuel, and he didn't even try to fight back. Scuttlebutt had it that Wu Fei grinned evilly at the troops who took him into custody.

    And finally, Duo was captured and badly beaten by the five Gundam designers while infiltrating the moon base in an attempt to assassinate them, not long after Trowa destroyed Duo's Gundam, the Deathscythe, with a beam cannon on live television. It was then the braided-haired pilot found out that the massive shipment of Gundanium alloy OZ ordered was being used to rebuild and upgrade both his "old buddy," the Deathscythe, and Wu Fei's beloved Nataku, the Shenlong. They would be completely repaired, upgraded, and ready to go in exactly one month.

    A few days later, the moon base had received a transmission. It said that the Order of the Zodiac's newly-acquired resource satellite at 07U1, which they stole from the Winner Mining Company with the blessings of the L4 Colony's governing body, had been completely obliterated by a new type of Gundam, and that its pilot warned them that he was going to destroy Colony 06E, also in the L4 cluster, next. He had, but since the colony had been evacuated beforehand, the only ones who lost their lives on both of those occasions were all OZ troops.

    Trowa figured better them than Quatre, and that the troops got exactly what they deserved.

    Until that day, all three boys were being held in the brig, not far from the five mad scientists who'd built the five Gundams. He's told them about the new Gundam, and that the pilot had sent Sandrock's blueprints as a message. While Doctor J, Professor G, Doktor S and Master O wanted to know what the new Gundams specs were and what sort of firepower it had, Instructor H asked about the pilot. The note of concern in the old man's voice told Trowa that he was worried about Quatre and not the Gundam.

    As he walked away from the Mads' cell, he overheard the one Duo had called Professor G refer to Quatre as being either extremely stupid or incredibly violent for finishing that Gundam and installing some new type of operating system on it. He started to turn around so he could tell the old man off, to let him know that Quatre was neither violent nor stupid, but a young boy grieving for the father who had, in life, never paid him more than a minute's worth of attention until after he ran away from home, then disowned the boy as punishment for becoming a soldier, but not before the young Arabian pilot disinherited himself first.

    Knowing Quatre as well as he did, Trowa knew he was most likely blaming himself for his father's execution, though it wasn't his fault.

    He would have done just that, if Tsuberov hadn't picked that moment to order him to take an armed escort down to the brig and collect Pilot 01, then for the both of them to suit up and report to the shuttle transport hangar for immediate takeoff. Lady Une wanted information on what sort of damage that new Gundam was capable of inflicting, and it seemed to Trowa that she didn't give a damn if he and Hiiro died trying to find out.

    Could the succubus be on to me, then?

    The unsettling thought had popped up again, and again there was no easy answer. If she were aware of his true agenda, surely by now he'd be languishing in the brig with his fellow pilots or had been executed by a firing squad, wouldn't he?

    "Get out, Zero One!" an armed guard shouted to Hiiro as the cell door opened with a whoosh. The three young Gundam pilots all looked up to see two men armed with machine guns flanking a third, whom they recognized as their former comrade turned OZ officer, Trowa Barton.

    "C'mon, why him again?" Duo grumbled. "I'm a better pilot than Zero One is, y'know. Let me take care of the next battle."

    "You can't do it in your condition," Trowa said as he entered the cell holding his former comrades. "Even a Gundam pilot runs the risk of being killed on this mission, because this time, we'll be fighting against another Gundam pilot."

    "What?!" was Wu Fei's shocked response.

    "Apparently, this Gundam's a new model, and that one suit just wiped out an entire division of OZ soldiers."

    "What are its weapons and characteristics?" Hiiro asked, standing up.

    "The engineers asked me the same questions. That shows that you're familiar with them. We don't know yet. That's what we're supposed to go and find out."

    "Okay, then, let's go," Hiiro said, his mind made up. "With that red one, the Mercurius, this should prove to be quite a fight."

    "You're coming, whether you like it or not," Trowa said crossly, the British accent he tried to suppress slipping out.

    "And you're just gonna sit back and watch as the two Gundam pilots kill each other, aren't you! Hey, Zero One, don't do it! It's probably another one of their lousy suit performance tests ... unngh!" Duo exclaimed, standing up, only to find himself doubled over Trowa's fist as it hit him in the solar plexus.

    Thanks to Quatre, the chestnut-haired American pilot knew exactly how hard Trowa could hit ... and this blow wasn't even close to it ... but something told him to make it look good for the guards. It took a moment for Duo to realize that it was Trowa who "told" him that.

    "Quiet, you two. You'll both get your turn soon enough."

    Trowa used the opportunity to tuck something into Duo's cassock. Moments later, he, Hiiro, and the armed guards left, and Duo straightened himself up with a groaned "oww".

    "I don't think that guy was acting," Wu Fei said, angered that a fellow Gundam pilot had apparently turned his coat. "We have to assume that he really has betrayed us."

    "We don't need to worry about that," Duo replied with a cocky grin as he retrieved Trowa's little present from inside his shirt. "He's one guy I know we can trust."

    "How can you be so sure of that?"

    "Because no traitor's gonna give us a gift that so much thought's been put into. See for yourself."

    What Trowa had slipped the braided-haired pilot turned out to be a microprojector loaded with detailed blueprints and schematics for the upgrades to Deathscythe, now called Deathscythe Hell, and Shenlong, now called Altlong. Duo aimed it at the wall of their cell, and Trowa's voice came on.

    "Hey, that's ...!"

    "Duo and Wu Fei," Trowa's disembodied voice said, "these blueprints were given to me by Master O. Use 'em to kill time. We'll be back to break you out of there soon."

    "Son of a bitch," Wu Fei breathed, a faint smile creasing his astonished face.

    "Right?" Duo asked in response, his own grin growing a little broader. "Now that Quatre's back, we're gonna be busy again."

    The faint smile dropped from the Chinese pilot's face as he answered. "I'm not gonna count on an unknown Gundam as an ally."

    "Huh? But Quat's one of us ... that automatically makes him an ally!"

    "Maybe, but I've got a bad feeling about this. I'll be damned surprised if someone doesn't die out there today."

    Sometime later, Hiiro and Trowa were in space, piloting OZ's newest Mobile Suits, the Mercurius and the Vayeate. They were searching for Quatre and the new Gundam to find out what its capabilities were. They'd been too late to save the 06E colony, but fortunately Quatre had given them enough warning to evacuate the civilians, and the latest intel said that he was targeting a colony in their current location, but no news on which one yet.

    "Once we meet up with Quatre," Trowa said to Hiiro through a private channel, one used only by the Gundam pilots and the Mad Five, "we can go ahead and stage an attack on the moon base. After I hack into the system and open the cells, Duo and Wu Fei can use the confusion to board their Gundams and escape, then we can fake our deaths by blowing these suits up and head back to Earth with Quatre. From there, we'll retrieve Wing and Heavyarms. The three of us in one Gundam will be a tight fit, but I think we can manage."

    Hiiro chuckled at that image. "It's a good plan, but it might be more advantageous for you to stay inside the Organization until you can get close to Treize. Then you can take him out," Hiiro finally said.

    "So you knew I was undercover all along, huh?" Trowa quipped with a faint chuckle.

    "Yeah. Didn't help that you had the same look on your face when you "captured" me as you did when I handed Sylvia Noventa my gun."

    "And that was ...?"

    "That "disapproving older brother" look of yours. It takes a lot of self-control for me not to laugh at it." Both Hiiro and Trowa chuckled over that mental image for a moment, then Hiiro sobered and added, "Trowa, we should be careful. Something's not right about this."

    "Hiiro," the tall, cinnamon-haired teen responded with a heavy sigh, "this is Quatre we're talking about. He's the kindest, gentlest person on Earth or the Colonies. There's no need to worry."

    "Maybe, but don't forget ... he just destroyed a colony. The civilians may have been evacuated to safety, but he still destroyed it."

    As he switched to a public channel, Trowa sighed again. He then ordered Hiiro to split off from the rest and search on his own. When one of the Space Leo pilots objected, Trowa reminded him that he still had the detonation switch to the Mercurius in his possession, and that Hiiro clearly saw the new Gundam as an enemy.

        Within an hour of Hiiro's departure, they arrived at the colony and "Officer Barton" received a report that a three Leo scouting party ran into the new Gundam within the colony, and were completely wiped out when they confronted him. As Trowa started his back door hack into OZ's system, he ran a side search on the condition of Dr. Irea Winner, Quatre's eldest sister, and the results were good. She'd suffered from a minor concussion and some bruised ribs from their shuttle accident, but nothing more serious than that. She was currently searching for her little brother, so Trowa sent her an e-mail telling her that he'd located Quatre.

    Minutes later, a small craft that looked very much like a pre-Colony fighter jet approached the search party at a high rate of speed. Though it looked a lot like Wing Gundam, Trowa knew it had to be the new one. This new Mobile Suit was very much like Wing in color scheme and appearance, especially in Bird Mode. He'd once piloted Wing Gundam during Hiiro's duel with Zechs in Antarctica, after all, so he was familiar with its lines.

    "Okay, Quatre ... go ahead and show me what this new Gundam can do, and don't hold back."

    Trowa watched as the new Gundam dodged beam cannon fire and machine gun shells with ease, including his own. Trowa's beam cannon blast wasn't intended to hit the younger pilot's Mobile Suit; a child could have dodged it with ease, and he only shot to keep the escort troops from becoming suspicious. The doubled barreled rifle split into two separate ones, and in a circular sweep, the strange Gundam wiped out every single Space Leo ... and almost shot Trowa, who managed to dodge.

    "Hiiro, there's no reason to worry. This new Gundam's unparalleled," the cinnamon-haired, green-eyed teen stated with a touch of awe in his voice. "Quatre, this is Trowa. Can you hear me, Quatre?"

    "Yeah, I can hear you loud and clear, Trowa," a raspy, tremulous voice came over the Vayeate's comm link. Gone was the warm, kind tone of the boy Trowa considered a little brother, replaced by one he barely recognized as Quatre's. "Trowa ...

please

... don't come any closer."

    Out of concern, Trowa tried using his gift to "talk" to Quatre through his empathy, but something was blocking his attempts. Wait a minute ... something's not right here ... I can't sense him at all. Is that Gundam blocking me?

    Ignoring the blond-haired boy's plea to stay away, Trowa steered the Vayeate closer to the new Gundam. Suddenly, the Gundam raised its Buster Rifle and locked it onto Trowa and the Vayeate.

    "WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST SAY, TROWA?! I SAID DON'T COME ANY CLOSER TO ME!!"

    Trowa barely had enough time to say "Huh?" before the Vayeate was struck by a blast from the Gundam's double-barreled Buster Rifle. He cried out in pain as a piece of the interior fuselage sloughed off and struck his head, making a concussion a real possibility, and nearly a third of the Vayeate disintegrated before his astonished eyes. He felt something warm trickling down his face; it was blood from a gash on his forehead.

    Damn it ... my head's splitting, and it's not just from that blast, the emerald-eyed teen thought.

    "Quatre, what's going on here? Why did you attack me?" he asked, panting. For the first time in a long time, Trowa was terrified, and not only for himself.

    "Outer space has gone crazy, Trowa ... so I'm gonna use this Gundam to destroy it all," Quatre's now-raspy voice sobbed in his ears. "I have no choice but to destroy all of the weapons that have accumulated out here. OZ has the Colonies arming themselves, right? That's why I have to destroy them!"

    Quatre's confused diatribe hadn't told Trowa anything. Again, the acrobatic teen asked "Quatre ... what the Hell's really going on? C'mon, little brother, talk to me! This isn't like you ...!"

    "Trowa ... tell the others for me ... tell 'em to stay away from me ... or else ... I'll end up killing them."

    A proximity alarm went off inside the new Gundam, alerting him to the timely arrival of Hiiro and the Mercurius.

    "I'M TELLING YOU NOT TO GET ANY CLOSER!!!" Quatre screamed, drawing a bead on Hiiro with the twin barrelled Buster Rifle, but Hiiro managed to shoot the weapon out of the Gundam's hand. A moment later, Hiiro ignited the Mercurius' beam saber while Quatre's Gundam drew its own from its shoulder mount and lit it up.

    "IS THAT ALL YOU'VE GOTTA SAY?!?" the Prussian blue-eyed pilot screamed back. "If everything has gone crazy, then I'll have faith in myself and keep on fighting!! I don't want to, but you're giving me no choice here!! I'm gonna KILL you, Quatre!!"

    For Trowa, the scene playing out before his eyes was like something out of a waking nightmare. His two best friends were about to kill each other, but with only a heavily damaged and nearly inoperable Mobile Suit, he was helpless to stop them from doing so. For some reason, the blond-haired Arabian boy's mind and soul were both in torment, as if something were forcing Quatre to do these things against his will, and his efforts to fight against it were hurting his mind even more.

    With Hiiro distracting the younger pilot, Trowa tried "calling" him again.

    :Quatre, can you hear me?:

    :Trowa? It's really you, isn't it ... I'm not hallucinating?:

    :Yeah, Quatre, it's really me. I've got an idea to get you out of there, but I'm gonna need Hiiro's help. Just ... please ... keep fighting it for a bit longer, little brother.:

    :I'll try, but it won't let me. It hurts ...:

    "Hiiro, keep him busy! I'm gonna try something!" Trowa said urgently. With his best friend's pain-filled mental screams echoing in his mind, the battered Heavyarms pilot managed to disconnect his seat harness and extricate himself from the damaged cockpit of the Vayeate.

    "Trowa, what the Hell are you doing, trying to get yourself killed?!" the Wing Gundam pilot yelled at his friend in surprise. "Quatre's lost his mind! He needs to be taken out, now!"

    "Listen to me, Hiiro ... something's terribly wrong with that Gundam. Keep it occupied until I can get over there and open up the cockpit's access hatch," Trowa shouted back.

    "What do you mean by "keep it occupied"? Is it that much like our Gundams?"

    "Yeah, but there's something twisted about it ... it's almost evil. I don't know how, but instead of it treating Quatre like its partner, it's forcing him to do all of this, and it hurts him if he tries to fight back or stop himself. I can hear him inside of it, screaming for help ... I can't just leave him in there!"

    The only thing he hadn't mentioned was that the screams he heard weren't coming from Quatre's mouth, but from his mind. Hiiro already knew that, just as the half-Japanese pilot knew all along that his British counterpart hadn't turned traitor on them.

    "Okay, pal," Hiiro finally answered with a heavy sigh as he closed his eyes briefly, then reopened them. "I'll give you five minutes to affect a rescue while I keep him from blasting your ass off. If you can't subdue him in that amount of time, I'll ditch this hunk of junk and take care of it myself."

    "Five minutes. Roger that."

    Performing the same maneuver Zechs had when he first arrived on Earth, Hiiro managed to immobilize the Wing Gundam look alike. While this was going on, Trowa located the pack that got him from the shuttle to the mobile suit transport and strapped himself back into it, then climbed out of what was left of the Vayeate. Using the compressed air of the pack to cover the meters between the OZ suit and the Gundam, Trowa found a handhold and started working on his rescue of Quatre.

    "Come on, God damn you, let him go," Trowa muttered, slamming the side of his fist against the exterior access button. "You've been raping his mind for days, now ... haven't you done enough to him already?"

    When he finally managed to open the cockpit of the new Gundam, Trowa gasped in shock and dismay at the sight that greeted him.

    "Bloody Hell! Quatre ... what's happened to you?!"

    Quatre looked like he'd been dragged face-down through Hell ... literally. In his flight suit, Quatre's once slim and wiry body looked nearly emaciated, like he hadn't eaten more than a mouthful of food in days. His once-vibrant turquoise blue eyes were dulled by grief, pain and madness, and the pale flesh around them was ringed by a hideous shade of grayish purple, like the younger boy hadn't slept in a week, or had gotten his nose broken in a fist fight. On the whole, he reminded Trowa of a trapped wild animal, looking for a way to escape and finding none.

    "GET AWAY FROM ME, TROWA!! I DON'T WANNA KILL YOU!!!" the blond-haired boy screamed at his one-time friend, tears streaming from his eyes, as the British pilot suddenly found himself staring down the barrel of Quatre's pistol. In response, Trowa grabbed Quatre's right wrist and smashed it against the arm of the command chair, forcing him to drop the firearm with a cry of pain.

    "Dammit, Quatre, snap out of it and stop it already!!" the taller teen growled, pressing his right thumb and index finger to either side of the blond-haired boy's neck. With the blood flow to his brain temporarily interrupted, Quatre finally lost consciousness. Trowa then freed his friend from the Gundam's command chair, slung him over his shoulder, and carried him to where Hiiro, who had watched the entire scene, and the Mercurius were waiting.

    An hour later, on the colony they'd saved, Trowa sat by an artificial spring with the still unconscious Quatre cradled in his arms like a child while Hiiro stood watch. As a light breeze tugged at their hair and clothes, Trowa cupped his hand and dipped it into the spring, then brought it to his lips to taste and find out how bad the chemical treatment of the water was.

    As the cool liquid washed over his tongue, he got a pleasant surprise. The water was clean and sweet-tasting, with a slight coppery aftertaste. It was mineral water. This, he realized, was one of the wealthier colonies, equipped with the very best and newest in climate control devices, like variable speed wind generators, and fresh spring water probably imported from the Earth itself.

    Trowa dipped his hand into the spring again, this time for Quatre. The blond-haired Arabian boy swallowed reflexively as the water passed his chapped lips, and it seemed to revive him. Quatre tried to murmur an apology, but Trowa shushed him and told him it wasn't necessary because he'd done nothing wrong.

    "Hiiro, you might want to get a drink of this water, yourself. It may be the last one we get for quite a while," Trowa said as he looked up and felt his brow crease. Hearing a noise like a gun being cocked, Hiiro and Trowa went on high alert. A few moments later, the pair of young mobile suit pilots saw a squad of heavily armed OZ troops approaching them, guns aimed at the boys' heads.

    Outnumbered, two of the three young pilots put their hands on top of their heads, and all of them surrendered without a fight.

Author's Notes: Whew!! Well, I promised a longer chapter and hopefully, I delivered the goods without rambling too much.

On a personal note, I'd like to publicly thank everyone who have so far read, reviewed, subscribed to or added this story to their favorites. I'm very glad you like it.

And before anyone gets pissed off with me about it, all five Gundam pilots had shown instances of having both physical and psychic Newtype abilities throughout the Gundam Wing anime. I just made these abilities a bit stronger, is all. I'll delve into them further as the story progresses.

Plus, the boys do treat their Gundams like they're living beings in the anime, including talking to them like they're friends and even giving them nicknames.

Next chapter: Hiiro, Trowa and Quatre are captured by OZ, and Tsuberov has a trick up his sleeve ... literally.