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It should have been an easy bust, well beneath the skills of two former pilots, let alone the team of four. Quatre was sitting it out because he'd been away from WEI too long, so he had arranged to meet the others for lunch after the mission ended. It was just a quick arrest of a small-time dealer who had taken to building incendiary devices which he was willing to sell to those who could provide their own explosive materials. He was operating out of the back of an electronics store in the financial district, and by all accounts was a weaselly man of no courage, so they estimated that, even if everything went wrong, the case would be wrapped up and the man in Preventers custody long before noon.
Unfortunately, their intelligence did not anticipate the surprise visit by one of the top outstanding terrorists on the Preventers watch list, who came in unexpectedly looking for a replacement ignition for the bomb he had intended to plant in the environmental controls station for L4 that very afternoon.
"Zero Three, shut him down!" Heero ordered, dodging the automatic gunfire provided by the wanted terrorist's backup squad.
"He's busy! That little jerk hit him in the eyes with something!"
"Then you get him, Zero Two!"
"I'm…trying!" Duo grunted, wrapping one thug in a sleeper hold and putting him down fast.
"Zero Five! Where are you?"
"Tailing this coward!" Wufei yelled back over the open frequency. By the sound of wind whipping across the line, Wufei was either flat-out running or on some kind of motorbike in pursuit of the terrorist mastermind who had eluded them while his men covered his escape, detonator in his pocket.
It took another two minutes (unacceptable timing – they would be due for a new training regimen after this debacle) to subdue the terrorist's men and the errant shopkeeper who was spraying everybody in the eyes with some kind of copper adhesive. By the time Heero, Duo, and Trowa finally got the situation secured and took off after Wufei, Preventers had been alerted to the very real danger. But they were scrambling from a different colony in the L4 cluster and would be precious minutes behind.
Meanwhile, Wufei had absconded with a convenient scooter and was on the tail of the getaway car, which he now knew was loaded with enough explosives to take out half the district. He wasn't falling too far behind, but he would never catch up on this wimpy piece of vehicular technology. He knew his team was hopelessly delayed, so he called in the only trump he had left.
"Zero Five to Zero Four. Emergency. Come in, Zero Four."
Quatre wasn't picking up the signal, in spite of the fact that it should have rattled his phone enough to be heard even if he'd silenced it, turned it off, and left it in a bag; the emergency channel overrode just about anything. Wufei swore in fluent Mandarin, then Cantonese, then, with a thought to his team, switched to an obscure dialect they might not bother to translate over the open line.
"We're tracking your location, Zero Five," came Heero's measured tone, "but we're somewhat behind you."
"Not sure we'll make it in time," put in Zero Two, his words tight with apprehension.
Wufei rounded the corner with a screech of tires and the blasted scooter spun wildly, throwing off a wheel as it did so. Wufei came up rolling, gun in hand. It was a busy street in the middle of the day, but all he could do was shoot and hope to disable the vanishing car before it was too late. If it got away from him now, he might not be able to track it before the terrorist detonated his load.
Then, abruptly, the car swerved before he'd even gotten the first shot off.
"How...?" he started to run, watching as the car came to a complete halt after spinning wildly a few times across the lanes of the road. He reached it just in time to see the back door swing open and the terrorist himself, splattered with blood, climb out.
Wufei never even gave him a chance, hitting the man from behind with all his strength and taking him down in a brutal tackle. The terrorist would wake up with a concussion, a head lesion, and if he was smart, a prayer of gratitude that Wufei hadn't sliced him in two. Only after ensuring the man was out cold and in restraints did the Preventers agent look around to the front of the car.
The driver was dead, something having made an awful mess of his face that apparently struck him through the windshield. It glinted with a slightly silvery sheen.
"Sorry I'm late," came an utterly calm voice. Wufei whirled in place to see Quatre, hands in his pockets, looking completely collected and professional in his dark-colored business suit.
"What…how…?" was all Wufei managed as Quatre's predatory grin emerged from the folds of his 'oh nothing to see here – I'm just a passerby' face.
"You can hardly expect to chase criminals in front of my own building without my taking an interest," he shrugged. Wufei looked up to realize the corner he had just rounded was the one on which WEI's headquarters stood.
"But…" he didn't say aloud that he knew for a fact Quatre hadn't had a silencer on him today and he'd heard no shots. People were starting to gather, and that was a rumor nobody needed to have spread. All five former Gundam pilots went to good lengths to keep the Winner heir from ever being associated with Agent Zero Four.
"I'm very pleased to have witnessed your fine work in apprehending the suspect, agent," Quatre continued blithely, putting on an excellent show for the gathering crowd. A moment later, the van roared up and the rest of the team jumped out. To their credit, they noticed Quatre working the crowd and treated him like a stranger, hustling him back to the curb with the other onlookers.
"What have we got?" Duo asked, not even winking at his best friend as he turned back to the car.
"It appears they met with a very unfortunate accident," Heero said solemnly. "Look." At his gesture, the other three agents bent so they could see under the hood of the ruined sedan.
Embedded in the driver-side tire was what could only be a stout pair of scissors, sunk to the handle in the deflated rubber, and the obvious cause of the car's sudden swerve.
Trowa raised one eyebrow and looked more closely at the driver's body. Another roundish grip of a pair of scissors was almost visible in the tattered remains of the man's face.
"Killer office supplies," Duo couldn't help but quip.
"Looks like someone has been practicing their knife-throwing," Trowa commented lightly. "Their teacher would be proud."
And nobody but those who knew to look for it spotted Quatre's ears get pink at the compliment while the rest of Une's Preventers finally arrived on the scene, too late as usual.