Let Slip the Gods of War: Part One: False Dawn

Gundam Wing: Let Slip the Gods of War

Author: Cyn Finnegan

Beta: None yet

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing.  I only like to play with the characters.

Archive: FF.Net (edited), MediaMiner, AO3, deviantArt (slightly edited), Red Curtain, Gundam Wing Fans

Status: Work in progress.

Pairings: 03 x 04 (primary), 01 x RP, 02 x HS, 05 x SP, 06 x 09

Warning: This fic features scenes of physical abuse and psychological torture, canon-typical violence, angst, betrayal, mentions of past sexual assault (Trowa), Bara, lemon (eventually), and possible spoilers for New World Order, Endless Waltz, Preventer Five and The Hand of Sorrow.

Summary: The year is After Colony 203.  There hasn't been a major war on Earth or in the Space Colonies for nearly five years.  Our pilots are still working hard to help keep the peace they fought so hard to help create.  Just days from his retirement as a Preventer field agent, Quatre Raberba Winner goes missing.  Who is trying to capture the Gundam pilots, and what's his connection to them?

Part of the "Heroes of the Future" time line.

This story is based on an unfinished 2007 story called Gods of War, by Starlight Soul.

Part One: False Dawn

Preventer HQ, Washington, DC, July 17th, AC 203

As he left Lady Une's office and headed for the elevator, Quatre Winner felt better than he had in a long while and it showed in the smile on his face.  The forms he'd put in just a few weeks earlier, forms that would permanently transfer him from active field duty to an instructor in the use of firearms, had finally been approved and he couldn't have been happier about it.

Retiring from field duty would mean fewer hours and a slight cut in pay, but to Quatre, it was worth it.  He'd get to spend more time at home with Trowa, and with one of them off the hazardous duty roster, it would work the odds in their favor when the time came to adopt a child.  Though Trowa's older sister, Catherine, and his own eldest sister, Iria, both offered to act as surrogate mothers, both young men stubbornly opted to try adoption first.

One of the reasons they gave was that there were plenty of kids in orphanages and foster care in need of a permanent home with loving parents, both on Earth and in the Colonies.  Another was that Quatre had inherited the reproductive problems that plagued the men in his family for two hundred years. [1] That made him adamant against creating life for the sake of convenience, as he'd spent the first sixteen and a half years of his life believing he had been for his late father.

In other words, for all intents and purposes, he was the last son, but no longer heir, of the Winner family.  The majority of his older sisters had seen to that when Quatre was still sixteen and professed his preference in life partners.

Money wasn't an issue, either; neither of the young men were paupers, not by a long shot.  Though Trowa received several stipend checks from the Barton Foundation during the war, he and Quatre had both done their fair share of hacking into and pilfering from bank accounts held by various members of Romefeller.  While Trowa had done it for fun, Quatre had done it out of necessity due to the growing tensions between he and his father; tensions which often started out in a verbal fight and usually ended with the back of his father's hand across his face.  Quatre cut himself off entirely from his family's fortune months before he'd ever left for Earth. [2]

What he and Trowa hadn't spent on ammunition, transportation or the occasional hotel room had been squirreled away in several interest-bearing savings and checking accounts that really started to grow after the war.  Part of those funds paid for their home in Fairfax, Trowa's motorcycle, and the bare bones of a vintage pre-Colony Aston-Martin DB5 Silver Birch which had been originally built in 1963 CE.  Quatre and Trowa spent weeks rebuilding it, and it was a true labor of love.

With a little help from Hiiro, Duo and Hilde, they re-enforced the frame with Gundanium alloy, and Trowa lovingly built an engine that would conform to the current energy standards.  They finished it by recreating the exterior chassis using photos, blueprints and sheets of Gundanium and finally painting it a silvery turquoise blue that almost matched Quatre's eyes.  While they were doing that, Quatre worked on his laptop to create a vocal command system for the vehicle and installed it in the car's new internal computer.

The use of Gundanium as a building material wasn't illegal; [3] in fact, all Preventer vehicles, including mobile suits, the cars of many ESUN officials, and the outer shells of several newer colonies were all armored with or constructed out of the nigh-indestructible alloy.  Preventer also used Gundanium for their dog tags, and ESUN had even planned to use it for building homes for the now-defunct Mars terraformation project. [4]

Quatre shook himself out of his reverie as the lift car finally reached its destination, the parking garage.  He approached his car, using the tiny keychain remote to open the driver's side door, slid into the well-padded driver's seat and buckled himself in.

"Start engine," he said as the belt clicked into place and a moment later, the motor began purring like a contented kitten.  Shortly after that, he added the commands "Turn on air conditioner and play music file QRW-12-12-AC195."

The music was Quatre's first-ever birthday present, given to him by Trowa on the lowest day of the tow-headed man's life, his fifteenth birthday. [5] Between the Heavyarms pilot's warm, teenaged counter tenor singing voice and the soft vibrations of the motor, the Sandrock pilot felt all the day's tension drain from his body.  Trowa's singing had always had the power to soothe and calm him, and this time was no exception.

Realizing he was now a little too tired to drive himself home, he engaged the car's autodrive function, but kept his hands resting on the steering wheel so an overeager local LEO with a ticket quota to fill wouldn't pull him over again.  As he pulled out into the late afternoon traffic, Quatre directed the voice system to turn on the vidphone and call home.

"Hello, love," Trowa's image said fondly, a gentle smile gracing his handsome face.  He was at home on medical leave for spraining his knee the day before while fending off a gang of thugs who seemed awfully determined to get him into the back of their van.

"Hi yourself, sexy britches," the Sandrock pilot replied with a smile of his own as his car guided itself out of the building's garage.  "I heard back about my transfer and I'm on my way home.  Starting next Monday morning, I'll be a lowly firearms instructor."

"You're hardly a "lowly" anything, Cat.  The babies will be lucky to have you for a teacher.  So how did Lady Une take the news that you want to retire as a field agent?"

"Surprisingly, she was fine with it.  If anything, considering all of the shit we've gone through over the past few years, she was only mildly surprised that Hiiro, Duo, Wu Fei and you weren't following suit.  She did add in a stipulation, though."

"Which was?"

"That I, and I'm quoting her here, "take on the occasional case" that requires my unique skill set."

"Makes sense that she'd want to keep one of her master strategists on hand, just in case," Trowa quipped sagely.  "Where are you?"

"In the car, on my way home," Quatre replied, and then yawned.  At Trowa's concerned look, and his own suppressed yawn, he added "Don't worry, muhib. [6] I engaged the autodrive before I left the parking lot, so I'm not driving tired.  I'll be home in half an hour.  Wanna go out to dinner to celebrate?"

"Sure thing.  Want me to call L'Orange and see if we can get in tonight?"

"Nah, I was thinking of Donovan's Pub.  We don't need reservations, and I'm in the mood for a cheeseburger with the works, some cole slaw and onion rings, a chocolate shake and a warm brownie sundae for dessert."

"You know, if you keep eating like Duo, you're going to get fat," Trowa mock groused.

"Then there'll be more of me to love," Quatre replied playfully.  They both laughed, knowing that with the changes they'd all undergone in preparation for Operation Meteor, the likelihood of any Gundam pilot getting fat was impossible at best.

Their bodies had been altered to process food more efficiently, wringing the maximum nutritional value out of anything they consumed, solid or liquid, and disposing of anything they didn't need.  They also healed faster than the average human, which was why Quatre was sitting up on his own and talking with Trowa within hours of waking up from surgery.

"All right, I'm gonna get off the line now, haul my gimpy ass to the bathroom, take a shower and get ready for dinner.  I'll see you in a few."

"Okay, Tro.  I'm about to hit the freeway, so I've gotta hang up.  I love you," Quatre said, then raised his left hand to his mouth, kissed his callused fingertips and touched them to the image of his husband's face.

"I love you, too, Cat.  Be careful," Trowa replied before repeating his husband's gesture.

"Always am, muhib.  See you in a little while."

"You too, love."

The traffic that day was light, so the trip down the throughway didn't take long at all.  Soon, he got to his exit and pulled on to the access road, then turned onto the tree-lined country lane that would take him home.  He and Trowa loved it out here; the air was much cooler and cleaner than in the city, so he commanded the car to turn off the air conditioner and open the windows to let some of that fresh air in.  The cool breeze that blew in the windows did a better job of reviving him than a cup of the thick, strong coffee Quatre favored did.

A few moments later, Quatre heard a horn honking behind him, and that was when he saw the black sport utility vehicle that had been on his six while driving on the throughway.  Berating himself for letting his guard down, Quatre scanned the vehicle and its occupants through the rearview mirror and didn't like what he was seeing.

Three men, two ex-military, probably Alliance or OZ, one ex-pro wrestler judging from his size... black suits, Ray-Bans... yup, they've got that whole "Hong Kong kung fu bad-ass movie mook" look down pat, the tow-headed man thought as he reached out the window and waved at the driver of the other vehicle to pass.  In response, the huge SUV sped up, made like they were going to pass him, and then rammed into the Aston-Martin's side, denting the passengers' side door slightly and nearly forcing it off the road and into a tree.

"What the Hell?  Are these guys insane?!" Quatre exclaimed to no one.  The black SUV swerved again, ramming broadside into the front of Quatre's car and sending it crashing in to a roadside ditch.  The airbags deployed as it struck the ground grille first, and he threw his arms up in front of his face to prevent his nose from being broken.

Quatre groaned as he crawled out of his wrecked vehicle, his head ringing and his arms aching and tingling from his shoulders to his wrists.  He was battered, bruised, abraded in several places and had a small cut just under his hairline, but thanks to the Gundanium armor that made up the car's frame and exterior, those were the worst of his injuries.

In fact, Quatre's Preventer uniform fared far worse than his body did.  Despite the fact it was labeled "safety glass," the rounded, pebble-like fragments from the shattered back window imbedded themselves deep into the back of his jacket, scraping the flesh underneath it through both the quilted lining and his khaki t-shirt. [7]

He heard the doors of the SUV open and close, and soon found himself surrounded by the three men he'd spotted.

"This skinny little twerp is a Gundam pilot?!  Could'a fooled me," the first man quipped, not believing that the seemingly frail form before them could possibly be a Preventer, much less the pilot a mobile suit as advanced as a Gundam.

"Yeah, he's a Gundam pilot, all right," the second man replied mockingly for Quatre's benefit.  "Pilot Zero Four, to be precise.  I've had the "pleasure" of meeting him and Zero One on Moon Base Alpha when I was with OZ.  This little piece of colony trash blew up a resource satellite full of our soldiers and an evacuated colony before we finally managed to stop him.  We would have executed him on the spot, but we handed them over to the Treize Faction instead."

Oh, Allah, talk about revisionist history! Quatre thought angrily.  He remembered all too well exactly who had stopped his ZERO-influenced rampage, and it sure as Hell wasn't this scummy piece of OZ shit.  Anger quickly turned to sorrow when his thoughts turned to the one who did stop him that horrible day, the one who risked his own life to keep Quatre from becoming the monster many told him he was since childhood.

Without warning, the thug Quatre had tagged as an ex-wrestler lifted him up by the waistband of his pants, and growling "Stand up," set him on his feet.  The second thug reached into Quatre's jacket and pulled his piece, a Sig Sauer P250 Subcompact Nitron, out of its shoulder holster.

"Get in the truck, Zero Four.  Willing or unwilling, you're coming with us," the first man ordered, still thinking of Quatre as nothing but a pipsqueak rich boy still playing games instead of the highly-trained soldier he truly was.

"Sorry, but I don't take orders from anybody but Lady Une," the blond-haired man growled angrily, crossing his arms over his chest.

"This isn't an order, Zero Four; it's a request from Kronus," the former OZ soldier said gruffly as he lifted Quatre's gun and pressed it against the back of his head.

Quatre's eyes widened at the mention of that name.  Kronus was one of his first trainers and the source of some of his oldest wartime nightmares.  He was a sadistic madman who took an almost childlike delight in the pain he inflicted and who had an unhealthy obsession with the then-teenaged boy.  If Instructor H hadn't been concerned when Quatre missed his self-defense training that last day... he might have been too damaged, mentally and physically, to ever pilot Sandrock.

"That's great, but I don't honor requests from FUCKING SADISTIC MADMEN, EITHER!"

Utilizing every trick he'd ever learned during his pilots' training, the lithe, tow-headed young man fought back valiantly against his would-be kidnappers, at least until one of them tossed a grenade at his feet.  Instead of an explosion, Quatre's body was surrounded by a cone of energy that made him feel like he'd been dropped head first into an active volcano.  He screamed as excruciating pain lanced through every nerve in his entire body and he fell to the ground convulsing.
Just before he passed out, his mind, heart and soul cried out one name...

: Trowa... I'm sorry... : Quatre thought as guilt, fear, remorse, despair and pain filled his heart.

The three hundred pound mass of muscle again lifted the younger man's now inert form, carried him over his shoulder to the battered SUV, lifted the hatch and literally threw him in the back while his comrades got in.

Meanwhile, in the master bedroom of their Fairfax home, a half-naked Triton Bloom-Winner felt a massive wave of guilt, fear, remorse, despair and pain that were not his own.  He collapsed to the floor like a marionette whose strings had been cut, his entire body twitching like a landed fish.  Just before he passed out, his mind, heart and soul cried out one name...

: QUATRE...! :

Undisclosed Location, July 17th, AC 203

Quatre awoke to find himself in a small, windowless room, lying face down on a dusty, foul-smelling foam mattress.  He was stripped of every last stitch of clothing and, for the second time in his life, his hair had been shaved off, leaving the pale skin of his scalp bare and smooth.  Like the oxygen in the colonies, the air being pumped into the little room, or rather cell, was stale and processed smelling, but Quatre knew he was still on the Earth.  He'd only been out for maybe ninety minutes, and it still took the fastest shuttles almost four hours to reach the nearest colonies.

What is it with these assholes and shaving my head? the Sandrock pilot wondered, remembering when he and the other Gundam pilots battled the leader of the so-called pacifist faction, Pax Eterna, in early AC 196. The faction's leader, Victor Gaintz, had some of his followers kidnap him, killing nearly a thousand people by bombing an intercolony trade conference to cover the crime, then shot him up with massive doses of truth serum and tortured him with electric shocks in an attempt to force him into revealing where he and the others had hidden their Gundams. [8]

Though he nearly died in the process, he didn't break.  He held on and stayed strong until help, in the form of Trowa, came to the rescue. Until the ransom demand arrived at his apartment in L3-C8253, the only one who believed he was still alive and in danger had been Trowa, and for that, Quatre was grateful...

A few minutes later, an oily voice whispered into his ear, bringing the Sandrock pilot back to reality.

"Hello, little Shulmanu.  You remember me, don't you?  You were always my favorite, a true god amongst mortals. Tell me how to find the others."

"Go... fuck... yourself," the tow-headed man ground out haltingly, then spat in his eye.  In retaliation, the scar-faced man backhanded Quatre into the nearest wall.  As he sagged to the floor, the man grabbed Quatre's left arm and tore the wedding band, which Trowa had made from scraps of the original Heavyarms, off that hand's ring finger.

"No...!  Give... that... back!" he cried, trying to reclaim the band with his free hand.

"You won't need this little trinket anymore, my sweet little Quatre," he added in an almost sing-song voice as handed the ring to one of his men.  "Your Neit won't find you, and neither will Hachiman, nor Woden, nor Zhang Fei;[9] I'll find them first, with your help.  You're mine, and I'll have my little Gods of War back with me."

"I'll help you... when Hell boils over!"

Still holding Quatre's left arm, the man calling himself Kronus jabbed the Sandrock pilot's arm with the business end of a hypodermic needle, its contents burning through his veins like liquid fire as the drug cocktail flooded his system, and more burning filled his eyes they were filled with a noxious liquid.  As the men left his cell, lights and images began to pulse and disembodied voices began to throb as the drugs took a hold of his system, Quatre's screams of agony his only response as his world narrowed to naught but excruciating pain.

The home of Trowa Bloom and Quatre Winner, Fairfax, VA, July 17th, AC 203

Trowa was a wreck.

It had been nearly three hours since Quatre's call had ended, and Trowa was close to having something he hadn't had since he was fourteen, a full-blown panic attack. [10] He knew his husband was in danger, knew he was cold and afraid and in pain, but at the moment, Trowa was helpless to aid or comfort him.

Somehow, he'd managed to get up off the floor, hobbled to the phone, punched three buttons and called his sister Catherine and her husband, Abdul Kurama, a member of Quatre's Maguanac Corps. [11] The couple arrived about fifteen minutes after Trowa called them, and he silently thanked God that he gave his sister a copy of the front door key.  They helped her younger brother into the family room, settled him as comfortably as possible on the sofa.  Abdul kissed his wife on the cheek and made a beeline to the kitchen to make coffee.

The State Police came by a few moments later, letting him know about the crash and handing him the only thing they'd found at the site: a gift-wrapped package and an envelope with his name on it.  When he unwrapped and opened it, the box revealed a matched pair of throwing daggers housed in a pair of leather wrist sheaths with a trick release and a humorously snotty birthday card.  The blades were a present for his birthday five days from then. [12]

While Abdul puttered about in the kitchen, Cathy called the other Gundam pilots using the codes the pilots and the Corps developed during the Earth-Space War.  Two calls and ten minutes later, and the pretty knife thrower reported her results to her sibling.

"I got a hold of Wu Fei and Sally," she said in a concerned tone.  "They're in town right now, so they'll be here in about an hour.  I couldn't get a hold of Duo, but I did talk to Hilde.  He and Hiiro are wrapping up a case on Duo's home colony.  They'll be back on Earth in a few hours.  Hilde said that she and Relena will pick them up at New Andrews Spaceport and they'll be here around seven."

"Cathy, you know the last words we said to each other were "I love you"?" Trowa asked his sister as she took the tray from her husband and set it down.

In response, Catherine replied with a quiet "I know," wrapped her slender, strong arms around her little brother's shaking shoulders and kissed his smooth, clean-shaven cheek while Abdul patted Trowa's back.  He couldn't feel either gesture; all he could feel was the pain and terror wracking Quatre's body and mind and the tears burning down his cheeks.

The backwash of Quatre's emotions was driving Trowa mad, and he had to do something about it.  With great effort, Trowa rebuilt the walls he'd torn down towards the end of the Earth-Space War, effectively cutting off the empathic and telepathic links he and Quatre shared, which also stemmed the flow of tears.  The pain of it tore at Trowa's heart and mind, but he had to do it for the sake of his sanity, which he was hanging on to by the thinnest of fraying threads.

Once his head was clear, Trowa asked Cathy and Abdul to stay until the others got there, and finally noticed that his big sister had a slight, tell-tale bulge to her belly and was told the baby would be due in mid-December.  Though Abdul was hoping for a girl, he backpedaled and said that he'd be happy with either a girl or a boy, as long as the baby was healthy.  With his mask back in place, he could feel happy for the couple, but that happiness wouldn't be felt until Quatre was home and safe.

An hour later, the doorbell chimed, signaling that Wu Fei and Sally had arrived, and both were visibly upset that Quatre seemed to have gotten himself in danger again.  As they came in, Cathy and Abdul left without saying goodbye.  The less they knew, the less could betray and it wasn't as if they'd be much help with whatever insane plans the boys were going to make.

At seven on the dot, the car carrying Hiiro, Relena, Duo and Hilde pulled up to the curb in front of the Winner-Bloom residence, and all four got out of the vehicle and quickly entered.  With everyone there, Trowa told his friends what the police told him, and what he knew from his links to Quatre.  Everyone sitting in the room had tested positive as a Newtype years ago, so they didn't scoff at Trowa.  He and Quatre were deeply bonded to each other; so much so they feared that if one died, the other would quickly follow, either by suicide or by force of will.

An hour later, the cinnamon-haired man finally finished briefing his comrades, his stoic mask firmly in place, and that worried the others.  It meant he'd shut down the one advantage they had, the mental and emotional connections between him and the tow-headed pilot, and though it was saving Trowa's sanity, it would make any rescue attempt far more difficult.

"We'll find him, Trowa," Duo finally said, a look of grim determination on his face.  "We'll all look for him, and we won't stop until we bring 'im home.  No one hurts a member of my family and gets away with it."

"This isn't a coincidence, Duo," Trowa replied, looking at each of the others in turn.  "Think about it for a moment... I was attacked and nearly abducted yesterday, and Cat gets ambushed and kidnapped today?  And what about you guys?  Has anything similar happened to you in the last few days?"

The three Gundam pilots looked at each other, and then began to tell their tales.  Several men accosted Hiiro the same day Trowa was attacked, but he believed they were after Relena because of her former position as Vice Foreign Minister [13] and fought them off successfully.  Duo and Wu Fei had been attacked earlier that very day, but they were backed up by Hilde and Sally.

"Trowa's right," Wu Fei finally said with conviction.  "This wasn't a random crime against one of us...this was all planned from the get-go.  Whoever's behind this is after all five of us, and whoever they are or whatever their reasons, they're not gonna stop until they get us... or we get them."

As the four Gundams and their companions all nodded in agreement, Hiiro finally chimed in with "I think it's time to implement "03's "Oh, shit" plan," then sat in front of Trowa's desktop, booted it up, and clicked on a file icon.

To be continued...

- - = = 000 = = - -

Author's Notes: This story is based on an old Hiiro/Duo fic that was last updated seven years ago.  I've tried several times to contact the original author about either continuing it herself or letting me adopt or adapt it before I started this.  If she's reading this, I'm sorry.  I liked the original, but the more I read of it, the more it seemed like a Trowa/Quatre fic than a Duo/Hiiro one, and the more it needed (in my not-so-humble opinion) this "how did this shit happen" chapter and the final one.  This is also going to be one of my shorter multi-chapter ones; ten in total.

The title of this chapter comes from a phenomenon that's also called Zodiacal light.  It's an eerie light extending up from the horizon, and you're most likely to see it about an hour after sunset in late winter or early spring (Zodiacal light), or an hour before dawn in the late summer or early autumn (false dawn).  Here's a link with more information:  http://www.earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/look-for-the-zodiacal-light-or-false-dawn.

Here are some photos of what Quatre's 1963 Aston-Martin DB5 looks like: http://www.sunshineautomotive.com.au/sites/sunshineautomotive.com.au/files/Aston-Martin-DB5.jpg and http://cdn.astonmartin.com/sitefinity/new-db9/historydb5.jpg?sfvrsn=0.

And here are some photos and the specs on Quatre's pistol: http://www.sigsauer.com/CatalogProductDetails/p250-subcompact-nitron.aspx.

Annotations:

[1] According to one of the animation bibles for the series, the men in the Winner family were the ones who suffered with reproductive issues, not the women.  In my head canon, while all of Quatre's sisters can have babies naturally, many of them had theirs via test tube to keep their figures.  The sole exceptions to this are Iria and one of my OC sisters, Amina.  And the bit about Quatre's original dislike of creating human life for the sake of convenience came from Sumizawa years before Glory of Losers and Frozen Teardrop were first dreamed up.

[2] In The Whereabouts of Happiness (Ep. 11), Quatre revealed to Duo that he'd disinherited himself, meaning that he cut himself off from his family's money and resources so he could come to Earth and fight against OZ and the Alliance.

[3] In my head canon, Gundanium alloy wasn't banned for use across the board, just for the manufacture of new mobile suits.  Since they were built before the ban took place, the Gundams I've listed in my Post-Endless Waltz fics were exempt from it.  Hell, mobile suits in general are still legal in my HC; since the series' official timeline establishes that they were first used for colony construction and space mining, that's mostly what they're used for.

[4] The full tale will be revealed in The Hand of Sorrow.  It'll also explain why Zechs and Noin appear in later chapters of this fic.

[5] According to several information sites I’ve found on Islam and the Muslim faith, the only birthday Muslims celebrate is Muhammad's.

[6] Muhib (or muHibb) is Arabic for "lover."

[7] This comes from personal experience; I cut one of my fingers on some once.  Though it turns into pellets rather than shards when it breaks, safety glass will cut you with enough force/pressure behind it, but it won't slice you into ribbons or impale you.

[8] Shulmanu, Neit, Hachiman, Woden and Zhang Fei are all war gods from different parts of the world: Shulmanu, Mesopotamian; Neit, Irish; Hachiman, Japanese; Woden, Anglo-Saxon, and Zhang Fei, Chinese.  Of all of them, Zhang Fei was a human general who was deified after his death and, in my head canon at least, is one of Wu Fei's earliest ancestors.  They are the code names given to our pilots by Kronus (the guy who's after them), and go in this order: Shulmanu (Quatre), Neit (Trowa), Hachiman (Hiiro), Woden (Duo) and Zhang Fei (Wu Fei).

[9] Reference to my fic New World Order.

[10] This is from my rewrite of the series.

[11] Head canon again.  I love Cathy and Abdul as a couple.

[12] According to an article, the boys were all born in AC 180, and their birthdays are as follows: Duo, February 2nd; Trowa, July 22nd; Hiiro, August 8th; Wu Fei and Quatre, December 12th.

[13] Yes, I said former VFM.  I have Relena rethinking her career choice in between Preventer Five and Hand of Sorrow.  It takes her a while, but she decides to drop out of politics and become a Preventer just before Hand of Sorrow.  Her agent code name is Siren and she works mostly in communications and hostage negotiation.  Her replacement?  That's going to be revealed in another story.

Next Chapter: Six long, lonely, agonizing weeks have passed since Quatre's abduction... but what happens when Trowa finally locates and rescues him?  Why was he kidnapped in the first place?  And what does it have to do with the "improvements" made to the Gundam pilots prior to Operation Meteor?

Next, on Gundam Wing: Let Slip the Gods of War - Nightmares.