Some time back, there was a certain group of terrorists. Actually, they'd have to do some serious social climbing to reach the terrorist level -- the only cause they had was to create as much havoc as possible, until people paid them to go away and bother somebody else.

   Preventer assigned one of their top agents to the task, mostly because it was a slow month. Since his cover was of someone meeting his absolutely inappropriate lover, they wanted to assign him a teenage boy as backup. The guy they'd normally have sent had the flu, and a free agent known to them happened to be following up the same trail for reasons of his own, so one of the Preventer admins told them to work together.

   Now, if they had asked one Relena Darlian, or perhaps a certain Lucrezia Noin, or even a particular Duo Maxwell, they'd have heard that it was a really, really stupid idea.

   Anyway, the surveillance tapes tell their own story.

   The gang of ruffians wandered back to the apartment building where they were making their headquarters for the moment, half of them high and most of the rest of them drunk, and in the mood to have some of what they thought of as fun: namely, scaring the sh -- crap out of people and beating them up.

   So they roistered down the halls of their apartment building, and came upon the open door of a lighted room.

   The room turned out to be divided in half as neatly as if a line of tape went down the middle. On one side, a few woodblock prints hung in the company of ink sketches, the latter mostly of the school known as "1980s Japanese animated series character designs." Below them, shelves were lined against the walls, containing books, discs, and various knickknacks.

   On the other side, the walls were absolutely bare except for a tall cupboard. The top had doors, and the bottom was shelves with computer disks, a few meticulously labeled privately-made discs, and a laptop.

   Against the back wall, matching tiny chests of drawers flanked a small microwave-fridge unit. A larger laptop sat on top of the microwave; on top of one chest of drawers were plastic cups, bowls, and flatware, and on the other various microwaveable dry goods.

   And against the left and right walls were matching twin beds. On the left bed, a man in a red cardigan with long silver-gilt hair sat, arms crossed, staring across the room with a faintly bored expression. On the right bed, a youth in a green tanktop with short dark hair sat in the same position, face an absolute deadpan as his eyes met his roommate's.

   "Well, look what we have here," the gang leader drawled.

   Neither of the room's occupants said anything.

   "Terrified, are you?"

   Silence.

   "You should be. We're the Rache Bruderschaft!"

   No response.

   "Yoo-hoo," another gang member half-sang. "Anyone home?" He waved his hand in front of the blond's face. The man tracked the hand motion with his eyes, but otherwise remained motionless.

   "A couple of retards," the gang leader concluded. "There anything to eat here?"

   The ruffians raided the fridge, pouring wine and Scotch into plastic cups -- sometimes both together -- warming up the remains of a roast chicken and the back half of a small Virginia ham, eating peaches without regard to where the juice might drip, and throwing the rice all over the floor because they were manly men who didn't eat pansy stuff like *rice*.

   The room's tenants didn't say anything.

   A couple of the gang members began pulling the drawers out of the little bureaus, tossing some of the clothes to the floor, grabbing some of the nicer stuff to keep for themselves, making rude comments over a picture of a woman with short dark hair in the left-hand bureau, and turning up a paper bag containing several tin boxes of Flavigny violet pastilles and two expensive bars of bittersweet chocolate in the sock drawer of the right-hand one.

   One of the ruffians tore open a chocolate bar, took a big bite, and then spat it out in disgust. Bittersweet chocolate is usually about fifty percent chocolate liquor, and if you can develop a taste for it very few people will ask to share your chocolate more than once.

   "See if there's anything worth taking on the disks," the leader ordered.

   "These are all ancient cartoons or black-and-white flatscreen movies," the ones who had checked the left-hand shelves reported some time later. "Nothing worth the metal foil they're printed in."

   "If half the stuff the labels claim are on these," the guy on the right said, "this is some good sh -- stuff. Password-crackers, viruses, antiviruses, worms -- of course it's all mixed in with some theramin crap and some stuff with names like Lair della miseer and Alavolont dew poople and Dulsanee-a."

   The people on the beds didn't move.

   "Well, that's plenty. Trash the place and go," the leader giggled.

   The guy over by the cupboard threw the doors open hard enough that he tore one of the doors right off, and then blinked.

   It was divided into a lot of small cubbyholes, and in nearly every one was a small stupid-looking stuffed animal of some kind filled with beans, neatly labeled in the same hand as the compact discs.

   The guys at the left-hand bookshelves swept all the books and knickknacks off of one shelf, and were reaching for the next when they ran into a fist.

   "Get your filthy hands," the blond snarled, silver-gilt hair swirling and settling as he drew himself up to his full height, "OFF my 1/144 scale MS-06S Zaku II Red Comet Type model." He caught it up and cradled it protectively before setting it down gently on the bed.

   Like I said, these guys were so not even deserving of the name terrorists -- if they met a real one, they'd wet their pants. The one at the cupboard DID when he turned and found that the boy on the bed had pulled a gun out of nowhere, was aiming it at him, and, after a swift glance at the blond bouncing two would-be toughs off the floor, spoke.

   "Look, you can have the CD collection."

   He absently kicked out, catching one of the braver (or drunker) ruffians under the chin and knocking him out as well as any uppercut might.

   "You can have my candy stash."

   He stood up, caught yet another man over his hip with his non-gun-holding hand, and threw him across the room.

   "But touch my beanie babies, and I will hunt you down and stuff your still-bleeding heart down your throat."

   The guy at the cupboard, having wet his pants already, soiled them into the bargain and then fainted.

   The boy spun, shot the knife out of the third-to-last gangmember still active's hand -- sending the bullet through the leader's arm in the process -- and then reholstered his gun and helped the blond immobilize or render unconscious all of their uninvited visitors.

   Not a sound could be heard in the room save deep, rhythmic breathing.

   The blond had just carefully moved the 1/144 scale model back a bit farther, in case vibrations should disturb it, when his companion broke the silence.

   "You spoke first," Hiiro Yui said. "YOU go shut the door."

   Marimeia blinked. "They were trying to out-silence each other," she said faintly, "over who had to shut the DOOR?"

   Duo nodded.

   The small redhead tried to hold it in for about half a second more before spasms of laughter racked her, wheezing and rocking back and forth, and nearly sending her flying out of her wheelchair.

   "They had us in to review the record," Duo finished once he was assured she was not going to suddenly choke from lack of breath, "and we all stared at each other for a moment before Noin finally said 'They're idiots.'

   "And then Relena said 'They're IDIOTS.'

   "And I said 'Damn' skippy. Want to go see a movie?' and we went. It was the third remake of Superman vs. King Kong, with guest appearances by Mothra, Alucard, and Rocky and Bullwinkle, and we had a ball. Too bad Hilde couldn't make it, but we have the second one on tape, the one where they added in Cutey Honey and Torgo for no reason that fits into the plot whatsoever."

   So that, Marimeia thought with some distant clear corner of her mind, was what was meant by the phrase "The mind boggles."

   She had finally scooped her jaw off the floor, put her eyeballs back in their sockets, and begun thinking of some new topic of conversation when the public address system crackled to life.

   "Marimeia, please report to Number One's office. Marimeia, please report to Number One's office."

   "Anne's looking for me," Marimeia said regretfully.

   "Better let her know you're not lost or kidnapped or causing mass destruction," Duo agreed, picked up the telephone on his desk, and hit a few buttons.

   "Hi, Anne, I've been keeping your munchkin entertained... well, to be more precise, we've been fighting off boredom together... "

   "Mr. Chang was busy," Marimeia said loudly, leaning forward, "and I didn't want to disturb you."

   "Got that?... yeah, I'll walk her down... you're welcome... bye."

   "I don't need to be walked down," Marimeia declared.

   "Of course not, but I thought we'd discuss the logistics of your first Snark Out... when to expect me, that kind of thing."

   "Oh." She carefully manuevered herself in a circle, only making a little face when she found that he'd hopped up and was holding his door firmly open. "Thank you, Duo."

   "'S nothing. Hey, Mari-chan?"

   "Yes?"

   "How come Wu-chan's 'Mr. Chang' if I'm 'Duo'?"

   "Because... because you are not enough respectable," she managed as he locked the door behind them.

   "Struck!" He elaborately smote his forehead. "Wounded to the heart! Or at least the ego."

   They proceeded in an elevatorwardsly direction, he cutting his step short to match her pace.

   "By the way, Mari-chan?"

   "Yes?"

   "You owe me two stories."

   "Maybe if I write them down for you? I'll have the whole weekend."

   "And I might be gone by then, if I'm lucky... how do we manage this?"

   "Wait for me to get in, and then see if you can fit in the side or something."

   "That works..."

   All the short ride down in the elevator, he had a weird smile on his face, as if he were thinking about something.

   "Mr. Chang, hmm?"

   Marimeia bapped him.