"Family Tree in the Parking Lot"
Someone had made the mistake of giving Duo a tub of sidewalk chalk for Christmas. Then they gave him an extra long lunch break on a sunny day when the parking lot was nearly empty due to the fact that most of the employees were still on vacation elsewhere. Last but not least, they left him alone and unsupervised.
When agents began drifting back to Head Quarters, they found the way blocked by the sprawled out figure of Duo Maxwell, who lay on his stomach drawing what looked like a family tree directly onto the pavement.
"When did Maxwell get such an extended family?" one of the agents asked his partner, a worried look on his face. Wasn't one of them bad enough?
"My guess is when Une found the legal adoption papers back 'behind a filing cabinet,'" the other man said dryly, trying to make sense of the odd writings the braided agent had written in red next to select names, his own included. "Looks like the only ones actually related to him by blood are dead though."
"Yep, those're Mom and Dad, long time dead and gone," Maxwell piped up cheerfully, drawing another x-eyed smiley face by the name Kuwabara Shizuru.
They watched in horrified curiosity as the senior agent drew a line down from 'Yukina' and 'Kuwabara Kazuma,' adding a daughter, 'Hina,' who married an 'Edward Bloom.'
Bloom. The name rang a definite bell in their heads. As it connected, the blood started to drain from their collective faces.
"Agent Barton's real name," the first speaker whispered.
"Turns out he's a distant nephew," Maxwell said, still not looking up as he added both Trowa and his sister down at the bottom of a many times crossed line that went down from Hina and Edward. Someone in the crowd swore when Quatre's name was added as Trowa's husband, followed by all twenty-nine Winner sisters, their husbands, and their children, one of which was the fiancé of none other than Relena Peacecraft. The Lightening Count and his wife were added next to the pacifist politician before Duo bounced back to where he'd left Catherine Bloom's name hanging.
If had been certainly an interesting day for the pilots when Dorothy Catolina had marched into Trowa and Quatre's office, boldly sitting on the taller agent's desk as she informed him that she was dating his sister whether he liked it or not. She'd done much of the same when announcing their engagement, only this time it was with a wedding invitation in hand.
Catolina's family branched off to include Trieze and his daughter, who led through her mother to the original Trowa Barton. Even Une, having legally adopted Mariemaea, made it onto the complicated web.
A second, much smaller, family tree floated separate from the massive Maxwell clan, right above the Kuwabara/Bloom section. A couple agents chuckled when they noticed Chang's name written next to Urimeshi Atsuka, a young woman rumor said had managed to snare the widower. They were connected by a squiggly line that they took to mean 'dating but unwed.' An arrow pointed from her father's name as well as three others in the red writings, joining together to indicate Kuwabara Kazuma. They groaned. So that family was connect too.
"Is it just me, or is Duo Maxwell connected to every power house in the United Sphere?" one female agent asked blandly as Maxwell finally stood up and put his stick of chalk back into his bucket before dusting his hands off and proudly surveying his work.
It was then that Maxwell's phone rang. Giving the crowd a raised eyebrow as though he'd just noticed them, he answered. "Maxwell." … "Oh, hey big brother." Agent Minamino then. From the usual loudmouth's long silence, it would seem that his adopted brother had a lot to say, and it was definitely good news. "I'll tell Heero and the guys and meet you two in the front. Five minutes tops."
Ending the call, Duo let out a loud 'whoop,' startling more than a few agents. Dancing with glee, he swooped down to grab a stick of green chalk, which was used to cross out the dead smiley next to Kuwabara Kazuma's name.
"Agent Maxwell?" an intern asked, stuttering with wide eyes. "I thought you'd marked him dead."
"Since before even Trowa's parents were born, year," the braided man agreed, grinning as he replaced the chalk and closed the bucket, picking it up top head inside.
"Then why'd you just cross out the mark?" another man from the trainee squad asked.
The crowd would forever remember the slow, malicious smile that grew on Shinigami's face, and it would forever cause them to shiver. "An hour ago, Kuwabara Kazuma, husband to my brother's mate's sister, snored."