AC 201

*****
1:30AM
“Yes!” he shouted as the first few flakes began to fall. “Snow day!”
He danced a little jig. Hilde rolled her eyes at her braided lover, placing her arms around him. “So this was the big idea with moving to Earth—so you could get out of work!”
“I just love the snow! I still can’t believe you’ve never seen it.”
“It never snowed on my colony,” Hilde responded. “We were subtropical. I miss subtropical.”
“Aw, Hilde, you’ll love it—I promise! It’s going to be so much fun!”
“Well, let’s get to bed—it will all be there in the morning to play in, my widdle Doowoh,” she replied teasingly.
“I’ll be right there,” he called to her as she made her way to the bedroom.

As soon as Hilde was out of sight Duo was on the phone to Heero. “Everything set?”
“Yes. Operation GTG will commence at twelve noon.”
“Gotcha. I’m getting some shut-eye. Seeya then.”

*****
2:00AM
At Relena’s place, she heard Heero get off of the phone and wander off to his bedroom. “Operation GTG? Please don’t tell me it’s another battle. We just can’t have any more.” She wandered to her own room, trying to read for a little while, but her curiosity got the better of her. She couldn’t stand it and called Hilde.
Duo yawned. “It’s probably Heero. Let it go—I’ll call him back in the morning.”
“No, I’ll answer,” Hilde responded. She picked up the phone and walked out the room. “Who the hell is this and do you know it’s 2AM?”
“Hilde, it’s me,” Relena informed her.
“What’s up?” she asked, sounding concerned.
“Heero was on the phone tonight, talking about some Operation GTG. I’m really worried about him, Hilde—I’m worried that the pilots are going to go off again.” She paused for a moment, and Hilde took that as a sign she was gaining courage to say the next thing.
“Please go on.”
“Hilde, would you hack into Heero’s files for me? Just on Operation GTG. That’s all—I really do not want to do this to him—I do trust him, it’s just—I know this is wrong but I need to know.”
“Well, I’m awake now, might as well have a looksie.” Hilde set the phone down for a moment in the study as she got on line and began working to hack into Heero’s files. “He’s got this stuff pretty well encrypted, but unfortunately for Heero, he thinks like me when it comes to computer,” she informed Relena, picking up the phone again. It took her only a few minutes to break in. “Dumbass. Oh, sorry Relena. Heero just picked a dumb password this time. I guess you’d have to be a Gundam pilot or one of their lovers in order to know, but he just had Wing Zero backwards as his password. Anyway, I’m still searching.” She paused again, going through the file names. She resisted the temptation to search through any of them. “Ok, here we go—Operation GTG.”
Hilde dropped the phone for a second, only to laugh out loud. “What is it?”
Relena screamed into the phone.
“It’s—It’s Operation Get The Girls. Relena, they’re planning an attack—on us! A snowball war—to commence at 1200 hours. Heero and Duo will be attacking close range while Trowa and Quatre will be backing them up. Wu-Fei is in charge of keeping the pile stocked. This is too funny—they have a whole battle strategy set up—and we have it!”

*****
2:15AM
Meanwhile, Duo was talking to Heero on his personal phone. “They got the bait?”
“Mission accomplished. Hilde’s already accessed the file.”
“What do you think they’ll do?”
“Hopefully they’ll come up with a plan, but if I know Relena, she’ll want to do something cute instead. That’s where we agree and take them to the park—”
“Where Wu-Fei and Trowa will have been busy since about 5AM making the ammunition—perfect! If we told them that we just wanted to take them out to do something special, they’d be suspicious, but if they think they’ve talked us out of it—”
“Right,” Heero responded. “They won’t suspect anything.”

*****
2:20AM
“Relena,” Hilde whispered, thinking. “I have a bad feeling we’re being set up. I don’t think Heero would have been that careless unless on purpose. He was expecting me to hack in.”
At that, Relena was silent. “Hilde,” she finally spoke. “Heero’s going to expect me to whine and try to talk him out of this.”
“Duo will be as well, and I usually win when it comes to things like this. However,” she added, thinking. “Let’s say we go along with this. We confront them in the morning about their plans. They confess, we whine, they give in and agree to drop it. They’ll probably be waiting to get us later.”
“So we’ve got to get them first!”
“Right. But how are we going to do this?”
At the same time, both of them said the same name. “Dorothy!”
“I’ll get her on as well,” Hilde responded. She dialed up Dorothy’s number.
“Who is it?” she answered, sounding very tired.
Hilde filled her in on the details. “So we’ve got to get them first,” Dorothy answered. “Basically, I need to be up early creating ammunition. I may need some help.”
“Call up Catherine, I’m sure she’d love to get her brother,” Hilde suggested. “But we need a place. We need to make sure it’s an open place, where we can get them good.”
“The park!” Relena and Hilde responded at the same time.
“Hilde and Dorothy, I think there’s one thing we need to do. I have a feeling they’re still planning to get as at noon. There’s a chance they’re also planning for the park. Their plans said noon. Let’s try for 11:30 and get them off-guard.”
“Good idea,” Hilde responded. “Ok, I definitely need to get some sleep. Dorothy, get your rest as well and get Catherine to go with you. Relena—call Sallie and tell her—we will probably need her tomorrow as well. Also, you need to try to stop Heero in the morning so he won’t suspect anything.”
“Ok, let’s do it! Operation KTBA is about to commence!”
“KTBA?” Dorothy asked Relena.
“Kicking the Boy’s Asses,” she responded before hanging up.

*****
8AM
Morning arrived and Duo awoke to find Hilde standing before him, her arms crossed on her chest. “Duo, are you and Heero planning something today?”
“Um, why would you think that, dear?”
“Don’t you ‘dear’ me! I found Heero’s file on Operation GTG last night!”
“Oh yeah, the snow!” Duo shouted, scrambling out of bed to look outside. “Oh, oops. So you hacked into Heero’s files?”
“Yeah. Tell him not to use such easy passwords—anyone who knows anything about Gundams could break in. Duo, I agreed to come to Earth but not so you and Heero could have your fun. I want you to call him up and call it off—now!”
Duo reluctantly reached for the phone when it rang on it’s own. “Oh, hiya Heero. Yeah, Hilde found out, too.” He paused for a moment. “Hilde, Heero ’s pretty pissed you hacked into his files. Well, I guess that means this is all off. But don’t you want to go out into the snow and see it?”
“Only if we go alone, and you promise to drop your plan.”
Duo turned back to Heero. “Well, guess it’s all off—she wants to do something alone. Right. Talk to you later.” He hung up.
“So what do you want to do?” she asked him.
“How about we go for a walk in the park?” he responded, almost too quickly.
“Well, I guess that couldn’t hurt. All right, we’ll go later—how about we leave here around 11?”
“Perfect,” he responded.

*****
8:30AM
Catherine and Dorothy had been at the park since 5AM, creating a huge stockpile of snowballs for the later attack under a gathering of oaks. “This should get them good,” Catherine told Dorothy, who smiled back at her.

Across the park, under a small stand of cottonwoods, Wu-Fei and Trowa surveyed their pile. “Looks pretty good—this will give us about fifty each,” Trowa told Wu-Fei. “They won’t be suspecting a thing.”
Just as the words escaped his mouth, his eye caught something. Across the park, in the dim morning light, he saw a flash of red. There were two people over there, digging in the snow. One had red hair—definitely red hair.
“Catherine,” he breathed.
“What?” Wu-Fei asked.
“They’re on to us—it’s Catherine, and I think that’s Dorothy over there!”
Trowa immediately called up Duo. “Hey, what’s up?” he responded. “It’s the girls—I think they’re on to us!” Trowa informed him.
“Relax—they’ve talked us out of our supposed plans—Heero and I are both planning on getting Relena and Hilde over there for a walk around noon.” “But Duo, I’m telling you—I see Catherine and Dorothy across the park!”
“Shit!” Duo exclaimed. Hilde turned.
“Everything all right?”
“Um, yeah, I stubbed my toe,” Duo muttered, covering. “So, um, can you tell me more?” he asked Trowa cautiously, knowing Hilde was still listening.
“We’re under the cottonwoods—they’ve got the oaks staked out. Make sure you walk by the cottonwoods,” he responded. Duo hung up, cursing under his breath. The surprise was going down, but he wasn’t going to let on to Hilde that he knew.

*****
9:00AM
Sallie joined the two girls shortly after dawn. “How’s it going?”
“Good,” Catherine responded.
“Well, I’ve got some good news and some bad news,” Sallie told them.
“What’s the good news?” Dorothy asked.
“Good news is that this snowfall is going to keep up for a little while, giving us plenty of firepower. The bad news is that I just drove around the north edge of the park and saw Wu-Fei and Trowa looking over at you. They know you’re here and I think Trowa already was on the phone to one of the guys.”
“Shit,” Dorothy replied. “Now what do we do?”
“That’s why I brought the truck,” Sallie informed them. “It’s refrigerated, so we can haul our snowballs out behind their station and completely surprise them.
“Won’t they notice us moving?” Catherine asked.
“The truck is parked down the slope here, so they can’t see it. I suggest you two build this wall up a little more, and I’ll begin moving the snowballs. They’ll think you’re building up the fort when really we’re escaping out the back.
“Got it,” Dorothy responded.
Catherine got on the phone to Relena.
“Plans have changed. They know we’re here. They’re going to suggest coming through the north end of the park. Resist all you can but then finally give in. We’ll be waiting.”
“Gotcha,” Relena responded, hanging up.

*****
11:15AM
“Duo, let’s walk over to the park now,” Hilde responded, hugging her shoulders. “I’m cold and I want to make this short.”
“Well I want to walk the long way,” he responded. “Let’s walk through the north end first—I always love to save the south end for later, with those oak trees.”
“Duo, I really would like to just walk in and out—and we’re close to the south end!”
“Hilde, come on—I suggested the walk and you agreed—let’s just walk through the north end and back.” He grabbed her arm, and finally she gave in, though she pouted all the way.

*****
11:30AM
Halfway around the park, to the north end they saw Heero and Relena. “Hey guys, you decided to go for a walk too?” Duo asked. “Yeah,” Relena replied bitterly. Duo casually grinned at Heero, knowing they had foiled the girls’ plans of an attack in the oak grove. They walked together in silence, when all of a sudden Relena stopped.
“Hey guys, let’s just cut through this gate right here—it swings behind the north end, and we can walk through the trees on this end and then work our way back down.”
“What do you think, dear?” Duo asked her, trying to read if it was a trap. Hilde shook her head. “Relena, I’d rather turn back here—I don’t know if I want to go through. I’m so cold,” she responded.
“Hilde, I don’t want to go alone,” she whispered, but loud enough that Duo and Heero heard.
“Ok, I’ll come, but you owe me,” she responded. Duo and Heero winked to each other in triumph as they entered the north end.

And then…

Suddenly a single snowball flew, knocking Duo’s cap off. The next thing he knew was that he was face-first in the snow bank. Heero was quicker and missed Relena’s first attempt but she fell to the ground herself, dragging him with her and rolling him underneath. Soon he had a face full of snow, snow falling down the back of his neck and uncomfortably down between his coat and his pants.
Then the air was thick with flying snowballs. Catherine and Dorothy attacked, with Sallie keeping them stocked well. Trowa and Quatre came running, but they were too far to be of much assistance, as they had to keep going back for snowballs. Soon Quatre and Trowa were pulled down to the ground, their skin turning a bright red from the cold snow that touched every inch of skin.
Sallie and Wu-Fei ended up sitting back for most of it, not participating too much. Sallie picked up her phone and called Wu-Fei. “So, having fun?”
“Yeah. Looks like you got the upper hand on this one.”
“Do you mind?” she asked him.
“Nah. They all needed it. Next time, though, I get to borrow the refrigerated truck.”
“I won fair and square. Rock beats scissors every time.”
Quatre began to look like a frozen popsicle after a while, so Dorothy began to let up. He was too cold to fight back. Trowa kept on, his hair shielding his face for a while, but Catherine was much better aim and got him before he could stand up most of the time.
Duo and Hilde had the most even matched battle. Hilde started out winning at first but Duo soon got her down and tackled her, whitewashing her face and making sure a lump of snow went down her shirt into her bra. But it wasn’t before long that he was again in the snow, getting snow down his pant legs. He began screaming from the cold.
What surprised everyone was Relena. Relena, the pacifist, anti-war princess had severely beaten Heero to a pulp, half-burying him in the snow, getting snow all over him. She let up for one moment when he appeared to be choking on snow, but it was a ruse to get her off-guard and he soon had her down. But somehow she managed to hook her foot around his ankle and flip him over again.
Triumphantly, Relena rose from the ground. “Mission accomplished. Do you know how long I have wanted to say that to you?” Heero was too cold now to respond. Catherine and Dorothy helped Quatre and Trowa to their feet as Duo and Heero declared their surrender. The four women helped the boys back to Duo and Hilde’s home, where all changed into dry clothes and sat around the fireplace.
“Well, that was a lot of fun today. I cannot believe you got us after all that,” Duo muttered. “How did you manage?”
“Operation KTBA was a complete success, thanks mostly to Sallie,” Dorothy responded. “She had the refrigerated truck and helped us move when we were caught.”
“Hey, speaking of Sallie, where did she and Wu-Fei run off to?” Trowa asked.
They all sat in silence for a moment. “Bastards,” Duo responded. “This was my idea originally, but Wu-Fei was the one who encouraged us.”
“And he’s the one who told me to use Wing Zero backwards as a password.” “It was Sallie who knew where you guys were and had us move back around,” Hilde replied.
“Ok, that settles it,” Duo responded. “We get them next.”
“No, let’s not,” Heero replied. Duo turned to him, confused. “If Sallie and Wu-Fei hadn’t set this up, I would never have believed that Relena had it in her.”
“What did I have in me?” she asked him, looking directly into his eyes. “The ability to defend yourself. And kick my ass in the process!”
“So no more little plots against us?” Relena asked.
“As long as there is no more mistrust and hacking on your end,” Heero replied.

*****
11PM
Duo crawled into bed next to Hilde, snaking his arm around her. “I’m sorry we had the plan originally, babe. I love the snow and wanted to share some of the joy of the winter with you.”
“You call that sharing the joy—setting us up to be ambushed? You know that if you had really gotten us, you’d be sleeping out on the couch tonight.”
“Yeah. Guess it is better you guys all found out. Still, I can’t believe Wu-Fei betrayed us.”
“Well, sometimes it happens when people love each other—they stick closer together than friends. And no, Duo, the two of us are not going to get them back—let’s let it go.”

*****
Midnight
Duo crept out of bed and called Wu-Fei. “It worked.”
“Yeah. The girls finally got the better of you guys this time.” “Thanks Wu-Fei for keeping us posted—they really fell for it and thought that you two were working together against all of us. Tell Sallie thanks.”
“We’ll have to do this again.”
“You bet on it.”

*****
2AM
Hilde crept out of bed and called Sallie. “It worked.”
“Yeah. You girls got the better of the guys this time.”
“Thanks Sallie for keeping us posted—they really fell for it and thought that you two were working together against all of us. Tell Wu-Fei thanks.”
“We’ll have to do this again.”
“You bet on it.”

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