Chapter 30: Not Over Yet

"What are you saying--?!" Relena, confused and frightened, begins to ask, but Heero was up on his feet in a flash, covering her mouth with a forceful hand.

"Quiet, everyone!" Heero commands. Silence overtakes the room again at his monotone shout for quiet.

TICK, TICK, TICK, TICK...

"There's still an armed device in this room." Heero announces. The seriousness of the still deadly situation was apparent in his voice. His assassin training told him that the constant, slightly whirring sound was not that of a nuclear device, but rather, it was a normal tactical sort of bomb. It wasn't 1/20th the threat of vicious destructiveness of the atomic kind, but nonetheless, it was a bomb.

"Trowa."

Heero simply says his fellow soldier's name. Trowa, as always, responds spontaneously to the unsaid question.

"It's not coming from this one. It's dead." Trowa puts his ear to the briefcase atomic weapon he had just successfully defused. No ticking sounds.

TICK, TICK, TICK...

"So will we be if we don't find---"

Heero's calculating mind finally flicks the files of his brain in succession. His eyes look into Relena's frightened ones.

TICK, TICK, TICK....

"Quatre! The circuit board!"

Heero screams out. The intensity of the ticking sound only meant one thing---

The mechanical bomb was about to blow---and there was no way in hell that Heero could get to it in time.

Even now that he had deduced what it was, that the insane terrorist has masochistically determined if for some reason their nuke didn't go off as planned, the circuit board panel, no bigger than a cassette tape, that was the trigger, would instead, still have its own power and be able to blow, wreaking havoc and chaos in its unassuming wake...

It was a final crazed bit of vengeance on the kingdom that stood for all peace.

"DOROTHY!!!!!"

Quatre Raberba Winner too realizes what Heero was telling him--that she was in possession of the bomb. He had stupidly palmed that blasted circuit board over to her in a moment of macho bravado to show off to the girl he---

Confused by all the screaming and....

Where is that darn ticking coming from? Can it be my heart?

All dazed Dorothy could do was go to his calling, commanding arms in a state of bewilderment. She was in slow motion it seemed under his gaze. She took it all in with wide awestruck eyes as she feels Quatre's arms suddenly grasp her, roughly pulling her forward, towards the open window. He thrusts his hand down her cleavage and---

TICK, TICK, TICK, TICK....

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" Dorothy Catalonia's pride finally manages to shriek out at the way he was man handling her. The way he was just pulling and pushing her ar0und like a ragdoll...

TICK, TICK, TICK, TICK....

Quatre's eyes fill with steely determination, judging that defusion for this bomb was too late and far too close to call. So he throws the bomb out the window as hard and long and strong as his youthful arm possibly could.

He sends the bomb out the window, far as he could, into the dark still blue ocean.....

KABOOM!!!!!!!!!

It wasn't a second too late, either. The detonation goes off mere seconds after it hits the surface of the water. It sinks just deep enough to subdue most of the shockwaves it causes. The impact splashes up wildly and the Norwegian sea broils as it bubbles over with the intense explosive heat of the blasts.

It was over. Finally. This night was over. The Cinq Kingdom had been saved.

"Wooh! Wee!!! Whoopee!!!" Duo Maxwell's whooping cry of joy is the first to go up. Everyone's relief was signalled in his ecstatic call of victory.

"We did it, y'all! We did it!!"

"Yeah." Wufei stands, despite the pain in his chest. He didn't want the woman to find him cowering on the ground in a weakling pile beside the caterwauling American. Wufei was pretty sure that they'd both be requiring Sally Po's medical attention concerning both his and Duo's fairly deep knife wounds.

That is, if she's still alive.

Wufei teases with himself. Somehow, he already knew the answer to that one.

What do I expect? I wouldn't be so lucky. Hmph.

Wufei's warped sense of humor muses that his macho being wouldn't allow himself such frivolities as worry or concern over a "woman."

"Justice has been served this day." Trowa takes the words right out of Wufei's justice spouting mouth. He walks down the stairs calmly to join the group below.

"No! It has not! The justice of Epyon de Telos will come to pass!!! You will not be permitted to live in our righteous world, Relena Peacecraft! Both you and Sanc will perish!! You may have defeated me today! But there are more of us! There are others! You haven't seen the last of us!!! You cannot stay safe and protected from us forever, Relena Peace---UGH!"

The de Telos leader's rantings and ravings are stopped still in their tracks by a smashing elbow, knocking him into unconscious at last.

"Oh, yes...." Heero Yuy's harsh arm unbends from the knockout blow he just gave the terrorist. With a tight fist, his pulsating muscular hand and arm remain as blood drainingly clenched as his teeth and set jaw were resolute in the one singular thought burning in his mind. And maybe, all the deep, into his hidden, closed heart....

"....She can."

Heero states matter-of-factly and Relena Darlian's clear eyes connect with his tormented ones. She felt a huge weight now even heavier on her thin shoulders, being lifted off her and placed on his strong, bloodsoaked ones. Relena realizes that though her world was becoming more and more complicated and dangerous as she enters the political stage----

She wasn't going to have to walk this treacherous road by herself. Her "Heero" would be there with her every step of the way. And that made her tumultuous world all right.

Heero Yuy had a new mission now---and he wasn't about to let anyone in the world mess this one so important to him up ever as he gets lost in Relena's eyes....

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She was still reeling from the maddening speed of what had just happened. Dorothy Catalonia turns her head that was still stuck out the window and finally comes out of her transfixed gaze with the now calming sea that the bomb had just been harmlessly dumped in.

By him.

In the moonlight, under the starry night, the broiling, choppy seas within Dorothy's own soul were coming to a calm, as well. She felt as if her eyes had been opened to her for the first time in her life---

More than her eyes---her heart.....

It was violently, yet securely pounding in her chest as she finds the sea of his aqua blue eyes in hers.

"We make a pretty good team together, don't we, Dorothy?"

His voice was lilting and yet sure. Thinking about tonight's events and the feeling that hadn't left his heart and soul since they first met that day, long ago, Quatre's head too, was still out the window under the illumination of the bright moon and beautiful starlight.

Dorothy took it all in at once. She swallows hard before she answers his question, because it was her heart's question as well.

"Yes, we do, Quatre Raberba Winner."

Her heart gives her voice the answer even if her mind wasn't all that certain yet.

There was something about him---something....so sweet...and yet....he could be so strong.

Independent, blustery snob Dorothy Catalonia breathes in the cool, starry night air. She feels its magic sweep over her as Quatre Raberba Winner takes her hand in his and leans his head in over the girl who had haunted his every dream for what seemed like forever to a soul who only longed to connect with hers.

Her eyes seemed to beckon to him. His questions were answered now....

Because you and I are the same....I know it, I can feel it in my soul....

<KISS>

The crisp, cool night air, the salty ocean breeze, the waves of peaceful calm and triumph wash over this pair of star-crossed lovers when their lips meet tentatively, as do their hearts for the first time. Their soulful paths finally cross as time stands still around them. Quatre Winner and Dorothy Catalonia found something deep within each other's frightened tender souls in this moment of relief after a hard won life and death drama had drawn them together. Now they were both ready to accept their emotions.

When I'm with you, I'm not alone.....

Both their souls resound the same tender thought.

And the sweetest kiss lingers on....

Peace at last....