���Vice-Minister Relena Darlian was not having the best of days.

���To start off with, she had had four hours of sleep the previous night.

���Secondly, she had arrived at her office only to discover that two meetings needed to be rescheduled, that the day's paperwork had apparently spent a night on the tiles and spawned like rabbits, and that the ceiling had grown a leak above her secretary's desk -- which last had managed to ruin her secretary's paperwork, her secretary's computer, and her secretary's temper.

���Thirdly, they were out of chai, and by some strange rule of government buildings, the departmental coffee always tasted not quite exactly like hot burnt dishwater.

���Fourthly, her elder brother's notion of "Faking One's Own Death" was apparently liberal enough to include not only Sending One's Little Sister Helpful Little Untraceable Messages To Let Her Know One Continues To Be Alive, but Sending Her Said Messages In The Form Of Educational Tracts About One's Other (Earlier) Obsession. She had begun to seriously consider inventing a time machine in order to go back and kidnap Tomino Yoshiyuki.

���Fifthly, one of the earlier-mentioned rescheduled meetings was with Lady Anne, who was currently running so late on her own schedule that Relena had no polite choice but to cool her heels in the outer waiting room --

���"Hey, ojousan! How's life been?"

���-- which was currently full of Duo Maxwell.

���"Fine," she muttered, gingerly sitting in one of the cheap-looking plastic chairs across from him. It wasn't, she corrected her initial impression, that he was taking up ALL of the small room, or even of the side where he had chosen to flop across four of the armless chairs, reading a magazine from the pile on the minuscule endtable. One of the arms of the coat he had bundled up and stuffed under his shoulders was dangling almost to the floor, and she locked her eyes to it, fighting the urge to stare at him and wonder how on earth he managed to hold that pose.

���The said puzzlement, by a logical train of thought, reminded her of the resolution she had made earlier regarding the American; and, after a half-minute of mental debate ('I'm tired! I'm grumpy! I don't WANNA!' 'Oh, yes, and when will you ever find a better opportunity? Tell me that, ne? Besides, it'll just be one more on the list of things you've reluctantly done today, such as get up.') she acted on it.

���"Actually, today's been lousy."

���His eyes widened for a moment over the magazine before peering inquisitively at her. "Want to talk about it?"

���"I'm tired, I'm grumpy, the rain destroyed my secretary's workstation, the coffee there is atrocious -- "

���"I'd sympathize, but I don't like coffee."

���Relena stared at him. "You don't?"

���"Can't stand the taste."

���"Then how do you stay up in the mornings?"

���"Cola, lemon-lime soda, that opaque yellow-green stuff -- "

���"In the MORNING?"

���"Why not?"

���She fumbled for words before deciding to drop the subject. "-- and I'm tempted to ask you to assassinate whoever invented paperwork."

���"Quatre's already planning to. I'd leave it to him; he's got a much nastier sense of payback than I do."

���"Uh... he does?"

���"I'm too impatient."

���"...oh."

���After waiting to see if she were going to add to that not-quite-statement, Duo shrugged and went back to reading his magazine, and Relena went back to watching him while trying to look as if she weren't.

���After a few moments, he started snickering.

���"Anoh... Duo?"

���"Yes?"

���"Is there any particular reason you're reading 'Mlle de Ville'?"

���"It was there. I was bored."

���Relena blinked.

���"See," Duo amplified, "in a contest between economics magazines, outdated computer news and reviews, and stuff for women, I read the one with the half-naked hot chick on the cover. Anne needs to get some new stuff for the waiting room. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned tabloids?"

���"Tabloids?"

���"You know. Big cheap things on newsprint that they have next to the cash register at a supermarket. The sort that proclaim in two-inch capitals that the End of the World will happen in A.C. 200, that Chang Wufei is actually a woman, that scientists have dug down into Hell and the Devil jumped out spitting fire, and that Dorothy Catalonia is pregnant by the ghost of Sting."

���"That Dorothy is what?"

���"Personally, I liked the one about Wu-kun better, although that's probably because I saw it when I was buying groceries for the five of us when we were all sort of vacationing at that cabin, and I bought it and dropped it in his lap."

���Relena's lips started to curve upward.

���"He started making strangly noises and swelling up and turning purple, and I was wondering if he was actually going to get a few inches taller, only Quatre started worrying that maybe he was having trouble breathing or something and whacked him on the back -- "

���Relena's smile began to tremble.

���"-- which turned out to be a big mistake because apparently Q-man hit his 'Talk On' switch in the process and the Wumeister started blistering the paint off the roof-beams -- "

���Relena pressed her hands to her lips in a vain attempt to stifle the giggles.

���"-- and then they made ME go buy some more brown paint so we could repaint them. I mean, was it my fault that the 'Colonial Star' was having a slow week and decided that something about an ex-Gundam pilot would sell?"

���Relena gave up the battle as a lost cause and howled with laughter.

���"I needed that," she said after finally pulling herself back together. "Thanks."

���"No charge." Duo moved his left foot to the back of the chair whose seat it had been resting on. "This has some pretty funny articles, actually. 'Top Ten Ways To Tell That The Men In Your Life Are Obsessed With Silver-Age Animated Television.'"

���"Um..."

���He ignored her. "'Ten. He has figured out how to manage an Egon-forelock.'"

���"A what?"

���"Beats me." He shrugged. "Maybe something like Trowa's hair. 'Nine. He has memorized the Cutey Honey song.' Hey, I like that song."

���"What song?"

���Duo swung his feet down, sat up, inhaled deeply, and began singing. "Kono goro hayari no onna-no-ko, o-shiri ga chiisa-na onna-no-ko, kotchi o muite yo Honey; datte nanda ka -- aw, man! Can't you stay where I put you, stupid coat?"

���Relena choked on a giggle as the boy retrieved his coat from the floor, refolded it, splayed himself across the chairs again, and shoved the folded coat in where it would give his back the most support, muttering the whole time.

���"ANyway. 'Eight. He can and will tell you the differences between the bridge officer's uniforms in Ai Oboete Imasu Ka and the original Macross TV series.' Some people have wayyyyy too much time on their hands."

���"Seven," Relena interrupted. "He cosplays as Char Aznavour for a decade straight."

���Duo fell off the chairs, mouth dropping open.

���"Although of course he didn't have a separate helmet," Relena went on thoughtfully, "but then maybe he was afraid that he'd forget how much it stuck above his head and catch it on a door or something and knock it off -- Duo, are you all right?"

���Duo was rocking back and forth, wheezing.

  �

���"I still don't believe he was actually COSPLAYING."

���"I think he just thought of it as 'basing himself on,' but with the mask..."

���"Yeah, the mask definitely makes it cosplaying." Pause. "Out of curiosity, how'd you know it was Char?"

���"He wrote and told me so. At great length. With pictures. And sound files. And snippets of movie. And recommendations to look to the female characters for guidance in MY life, although I couldn't tell if he meant me to look to Sayla Mas, Lalah Sun, or Frau Bow."

���"Well, if I were you, I'd hope he wasn't thinking of Lalah, or I'd start worrying."

���"Wha...? Eeeuw." Pause. "I probably just misunderstood that because my eyes glaze over whenever I try to read his stuff."

���"Recently?"

���Relena stared at him with eyes she was certain must be wide and panicked, throat closing up. She'd done it again, let her tongue run away with her thoughts before filtering them through common sense -- and she'd thought she was over that, had finally mastered the tendency that otherwise could have gotten someone else hurt or killed someday --

���Thank goodness it was only Duo Maxwell, but still --

���"Because I ran into him at Neospag's the other day, in the used disk aisle. Damnedest thing. They only had one copy of Tylor, and I reached for it at the exact same time he did, so we looked at each other and went 'YOU?'"

���"So what happened next?" Relena asked, after he didn't continue.

���"Oh, we glared at each other all the way to the cash register. Then I went home."

���She rolled her eyes. "Who bought the disk?"

���"Me." He grinned. "I didn't mind being chewed out by name in full hearing of everyone in the store."

���"... you're evil."

���"Thank you. I try." Duo bowed before draping himself across the chairs for the third time. "Damn. If we'd known, we could have just had the doctors get him in a good canon argument and White Fang would still be sitting around waiting for the order to attack this time next Thursday."

���"... The doctors?"

���"Yeah. See, if normal guys get into a Rocket Age series, they sit around, argue about whether the RX-78 could take Camille Vidan's Zeta provided Amuro Rei was piloting it after they both developed Newtype abilities, maybe scribble a design for a suit that could beat either of them. If mad scientists get into a Rocket Age series, they not only design it, they sit down and work out the formula for gundanium so they can actually each build their concept."

���Relena let her forehead fall into the heel of her hand with a moan. "So you're basically saying that the fate of the Earth and its colonies depended on a bunch of Rocket Age mech series otaku."

���"Well, yeah. But talented Rocket Age mech series otaku. I could have taken either the RX-78 or the Zeta -- although not both at once, thank you. I'll leave that stuff to Hiiro."

���Relena bonked her forehead into her hand again.

���"Hey, at least they weren't into Giant Robo. We'd all have been sitting around on the ground yelling commands into wristwatch radios with self-extending antennae." His voice grew more introspective. "I actually talked G into making me one so I could give my partner a few semi-remote commands -- 'c'mere,' 'go up,' 'go down,' 'sit,' 'stay,' that kind of thing -- and it would have worked fine if Hiiro hadn't stepped on it one night."

���Relena's shoulders shook.

���"And then he had the nerve to say it was MY fault for dropping a shirt on it after it fell off the desk! What did he want to go walking on my dirty shirts for anyway? It's not as if there wasn't plenty of floor. Well, a clear path to the door, at least."

���Relena laughed herself breathless for the second time that day.

  �

���"Not that I'm complaining or anything, mind you, but what brought this on?"

���"This?" Relena blinked.

���"You're actually holding a conversation with me for a change. And laughing at my jokes."

���"Well..." she examined her right shoe... "I realized the other day that I hadn't even tried to know you, and getting off on the wrong foot is one thing, I suppose, but, um... they say that if you want to get an idea of what a person is like you should look at his friends, and your friends are good people -- well, Chang-kun is as long as he keeps his mouth shut -- "

���Duo whooped.

���"-- so you must have good qualities around somewhere -- "

���He mimed exaggerated shock.

���"-- only I wouldn't know because I never bothered to actually look at you. I didn't even know you didn't drink coffee!"

���"Oh, I'll drink coffee -- I just don't like it."

���"See? I didn't know that either! And I'd finally worked out why we got off on the wrong foot, so I decided I'd try to talk to you the next time I ran into you if we both had some time, and here we are."

���"Out of curiosity, why was it?"

���"Um. Well," she pasted her 'I have pretty crummy news for you, but it's not my fault, so let's grin and bear it' smile on her face, "it was mostly your voice, although the thing with the gun at the beginning didn't help at all."

���Duo rolled his eyes. "Meet a girl by rescuing her from apparent certain death, and she thinks you're pond scum. Meet a guy by shooting a couple of holes in him, and he thinks you're exactly the sort of capable soldier he'd want at his own back. Are you and Hiiro by any chance twins separated at birth or something?"

���"Ah, that explains it," a light voice said from the doorway. Dorothy paused for a moment before walking to a seat two chairs away from Relena. "I thought there was something familiar about the pattern of obsession; I should have realized that Relena-sama was in need of her dominant half."

���"Dorothy," Relena said, "shut up."

���"We're in the middle of a conversation here," Duo agreed.

���"A what?" Dorothy raised an eyebrow.

���"A con~ver~sa~tion. You know, where one person says something and the other one listens, and then they switch?"

���"I think I need to get my hearing checked, Relena-sama. I could have sworn he said that you were having a conversation."

���"We are." Relena's teeth gritted. "It isn't that remarkable an occasion."

���"No, of course not. Remind me to pack my ice skates and fluffy parka for my next visit to Hell."

���The other two occupants of the room glared at her.

���Dorothy leaned forward and peered at the table. "Doesn't Lady Anne have any good magazines?"

���"You can look at this if you like." Duo half-sat up, tossed 'Mlle de Ville' at her, and lay back down.

���"The ghost of Sting?" Relena said, willing her smile not to become a full-fledged grin.

���"Cheating," Duo obviously had no such qualms, "on the resurrected Amelia Earhart."

���The two of them started laughing.

���Dorothy looked from Relena to Duo and back again, and picked up the magazine.

���"To get back to the subject," Duo tapped one foot against the other, "what's wrong with my voice?"

���"Oh, nothing's wrong with it," Relena hastily denied. "It's just that you sound a lot like an upperclassman I knew when I was thirteen."

���"And?"

���"I didn't like him."

���"I'd gathered that. Why not?"

���"He was rude and noisy and he used to TEASE me all the time." Relena's voice gained in volume as the memories of four-and-a-half years ago washed over her. "And once when I was walking down the hall, he flipped up my skirt and announced at the top of his lungs 'Relena Darlian wears Sparky the Unicorn panties!'"

���"Sparky the Unicorn?" It was the first time Relena could remember Duo Maxwell looking completely blank.

���"I guess it missed you where you were," she said charitably. "It was this big craze when I was ten or eleven -- you could get Sparky plush stuffed animals, Sparky embroidered bookbags, Sparky notebooks, Sparky pencils, blouses with Sparky embroidered on the collar, Sparky underwear, Sparky wristwatches -- "

���"Sparky socks," Dorothy chimed in, "Sparky plastic drinking glasses, Sparky hair ribbons, Sparky vibrators -- "

���"DOROTHY!" Relena spun in her seat and stared.

���"I saw one at an online store the other day," the taller girl shrugged.

���"I don't even want to think about it. Anyway, I was just wearing the underwear because it still fit, but everyone laughed. And he'd call me 'Sparky' every time we ran into each other, and all his friends did too... it was the worst experience I'd ever had in my life. I was so happy when we moved one month later, I could have danced."

���Duo blinked.

���"And when you opened your mouth," Relena went on, "you sounded just like him, so I guess the back of my head decided to finally listen to Mother and ignore you/him and maybe he'd go away. But it really wasn't fair of me to treat you like him just because your voice sounds like his, and besides, as worst experiences of my life go, that one isn't even in the running anymore."

���Duo opened his mouth to say something.

���He was interrupted by Dorothy, staring at the open magazine. "Who on earth waxes their eyebrows?"

���The boy began muttering under his breath instead. Relena leaned so far forward she nearly fell out of her chair, managing to catch "Not gonna say it, not gonna say it..."

���Relena flopped back in the uncomfortable chair and sucked in quick breaths, struggling not to laugh again.

���Dorothy peered at her. "Do you still own Sparky panties, Relena-sama?"

���"Dorothy?"

���"Yes, Relena-sama?"

���"Shut up."

���Dorothy went back to 'Mlle de Ville,' smile dancing on her lips.

���"No, no," Duo said, swinging his feet down and standing up. "You do it like this."

���He walked over to the tall blonde. "Dorothy?"

���"Yes, Maxwell?"

���"Shut up."

���~WHAP~

���Relena blinked. "I didn't know you could hit someone with your hair like that, Duo."

���"Hey, I'm talented."