Chapter 26: It's About Time

7:59 PM C.E.T.

"Psst! Psst!!"

"Huh? What was that?" Lady Une looks around. Both she and Relena exchange a look for the hissing noise they were sure they both heard.

"Oh! Lady!" Mariemaia's high pitched whisper exclaims suddenly. "There's somebody down there!" The orange haired little girl tugs at her adopted mother's long sleeve, pointing a stubby finger at the dark grate on the floorboards underneath their bench chair, in the far corner of the room. Even Dorothy Catalonia sat silently, albeit with complaint.

"Where?" Dorothy, Relena and Lady ask in disbelieving, hushed unison. Their three gasping heads duck down, following the girl's pointing finger, under their skirts and legs to the source of the "Psst" hissing noises that had been calling for their attentions.

"Ohhhh--"

Lady and Dorothy both slap a stifling hand over Relena's surprised, yelping mouth. The two-got-it-together ladies quickly peek back up to make sure the guards in their vicinity didn't hear the exclamation.

Satisfied they didn't, Lady Anne and Dorothy's head swing back towards where Relena and Mariemaia were both staring intently.

"It's about time someone did something, Quatre Raberba Winner." Dorothy Catalonia was the first to speak. She recognized "Master" Winner right off, even through the small hole this ventilator grate provided them as a talk through opening.

"Hello, Miss Dorothy." Is all Quatre manages to say. His take-charge demeanor of a moment ago goes all soft and squishy before Wufei's rolling eyes.

"Are my Preventers on this situation? Is the castle surrounded yet? How many are you?" Lady turns into the no-nonsense Colonel again at the sight of what could be their only hope out of this mess. For both she and Dorothy knew that where one Gundam pilot was---

The others wouldn't be too far behind.

Well, let's hope so, anyway.

"Yes. No. And at the moment, five."

Any voice but that one, please...

Lady Anne finds herself cringing at the thought of one Chang Wufei at the helm of her Preventer team. She wondered where Sally Po had gotten off to about now.

"Five?! This is a hostage situation! A potential nuclear crisis! We've got about fifteen minutes and you're telling me you've only assembled five people? Where's Sally?! You'd better have a damn good plan, Wufei."

Lady berates the so-often obstinate member of her group. Her vented, frustrated anger only made Wufei smirk at her and her feeble-minded femaleness all in one.

"I was all for wiping Sanc off the map. But my friend here had another plan more to your liking, Lady." Wufei baits her, but Lady Anne just lets it go, focusing more on what intellectual Quatre Winner had to say than chauvinistic pig Chang's rantings.

I don't know what Mr. Treize ever saw in you...

"Well, what is it?!" Lady asks the blonde boy's clear boy eyes gleaming in the darkness.

But out of the corner of his eye, Quatre catches sight of one of the guard's eyes on the gaggle of girls who were strangely bent, doubled over their skirts, acting suspiciously....

"No time to explain! We just need some kind of diversion to get their attention so Wufei and I can sneak in and secure the room without any unnecessary bloodshed!" Quatre spits out the whisper. His and Wufei's faces vanish and the grate cover were replaced in the flash of a wink. Just in time, too, as the four female heads peering down at him were now joined by a male head--and a decidedly unkindly male head, in a threatening black scarf and equally threatening black gun, cocking in his big hands.

"What's so interesting down there, ladies?" The gruff voiced guard muscles his way in, pushing past Relena and Mariemaia, knocking the thin, little waif right off the bench and peered at the grate they were just having a conversation with.

"Cough, Relena!" Dorothy conspiratorically mouths to her best friend, just before her own head snaps up, the smarmy smile already in place on her theatrical lips.

"The Foreign Minister's condition!" Dorothy Catalonia was an actress indeed. She did her family name credit as she motions her frantic hands to and fro like a woman possessed. "You people have aggravated her delicate condition and we can't find her pills!! Do something already!!!" The Senator's shrill voice shrieks in panic. Loud and deafeningly noisy enough for everyone of the five guards stationed around the room to come running to her state of utter alarm. Not a one of them spot a deftly manuevered Quatre Winner and Chang Wufei sneak out the large ventilator shaft at the far, right end of the room.

"Cough, cough. Cough, cough." Relena Peacecraft was doing a fine bit of acting herself. Her spasmodic coughing and doubling over had gotten enough of her captors' attentions for Wufei and Quatre to come up from behind and deck two guards each.

Quatre with the butt of his stolen machine gun, while Wufei used several well placed karate chops to the unfortunate backs of their necks.

So that only left...

The one with the unkindly face, big oafy hands and putrid bad breath.

SMASH!!!!!!!
Straight across the face, Lady Une takes up her role as current commander of a tactical force. She grabs the man's own machine gun and breaks his nose with it.

"I've got this one covered. The hostages are secure for now." Lady Une brushes a stray hair back in place, looking her "new" team right in the eye. "Your mission: Take the remaining of the terrorists out and disable that bomb!!"

Colonel Une orders her small team of two, make that three.

"Roger!" Dutiful Quatre salutes her and dashes forward towards the main double doors of the drawing room, with a loaded gun in his readied hand for action.

Wufei was similarly armed and dangerous as each man takes one side of the double door, fully prepared for mortal combat that most probably awaited them on the other side.

Both of them---

Plus one.

"Keep the hostages back, Colonel! Everyone, keep your heads down, take shelter and stay calm!! We're all going to make it through this!" Dorothy Catalonia's most commanding, rabble-rousing voice calls out to the crowd behind her. Quatre turns to find a finely dressed lady in black lace directly behind him.

"Dorothy! What are you---?" Quatre turns, ready to tell the powerful Senator with the bewitching eyes that she had to stay here in the safety of the crowd of innocents--but Dorothy Catalonia had far different ideas.

"I'm going with you." She states, stooping down and grabbing a loaded hand gun from one of the downed terrorists. She showed off her knowledge of guns by checking it's clip, handling it quite expertly and holding it up in the air.

"Oh no you're not! You're staying right here, Miss Catalonia, beside Miss Relena, safe and away from the battle where you belong." Quatre quite forcefully states, pushing her bodily back towards Miss Relena as he grasps the gun out of her hand and sticks it into his Preventer jacket's inside pocket.

Then he and Wufei quickly turn, slipping out the doors. They conk out a few more guards on the outside who were caught off guard, (hee hee) before locking the drawing room doors from the outside once again.

"Excuse me?!" Primadonna Dorothy Catalonia was not accustomed to any person--any man--ordering Her Royal Highness about.

Nobody tells me what to do!! Who does he think he is?! Just because he has that cute face!!! Oooohhhhhhh!

An angry, stamped foot, twitching with frustration lips and 2 sets of eyebrows rising above her burning with intensity eyes were nothing compared to the torment Quatre Raberba Winner just caused in Dorothy Catalonia's now turned upside down soul and heart in bewilderment of him, and those soft, yet commanding aqua eyes. He had just sent her senses reeling in a way she had never known before...