Quatre frowned from his perch on the overlook, scanning the rebuilt bases' grounds through high powered binoculars. He half-turned, but carefully not taking his eyes off the moving figures below.
"1 and 2, hold position, there's movement to your right 20 feet." Quatre closed the transmission and slid a sideways glance at his companion. "Noin? is the satellite link up?"
Noin made an affirmative noise, fiddling with the equipment in front of her. "Yeah, but their encryption is heavy, I'm having a hard time getting into the system. Most of their security is self-contained."
"Can you get around it?"
"I'm going to have to aren't I?" Noin responded, her husky voice laden with irritation. Quatre could feel that it was directed more at the computer than at himself. The blond shook himself mentally, there was no time for this. Blue eyes hardened once more to their previous cold intensity.
"Approximate time?" Quatre asked, brusquely.
"Half an hour. It will be easier when no one is on their computers."
Quatre nodded and picked up his handset. "3 hold your position, 9 is working on it. 1 and 2 get ready. Lightshow in ten minutes."
Various noises of assent came back over the lightweight handset. Quatre put the set aside and turned his attention back to the field. He could make out Duo and Heero's forms through the binoculars, already in position. Trowa was at the far end of the encampment, finishing the concealment of a small brown dirtbike, an emergency precaution. A beep came from another of his communicators.
Wufei and Zechs were in position, the pattern and pitch of the beeps was the signal he was waiting for. Two mobile suits were undercover as a last resort, only to move in if there were signs of heavy artillery on the base or if the situation got out of hand.
Quatre nodded to himself, returning a confirmation signal. All was go.
"How soon, Noin?"
"15. Give or take."
Quatre nodded and picked up his handset again. "1? 2? Showtime. Make some noise."
"1 and 2, hold position, there's movement to your right 20 feet."
Relena didn't so much as hold as freeze solid. Heero ducked into a crouch beside her. His face was a study of concentration, although his eyes were almost feral.
"I don.."
"SH!"
A few minutes later, the cover of dark and the underbrush his them from the eyes of a patrol as they stomped past. Slate blue-grey uniforms made the guards ghostly figures in the halflight of the full moon. They walked with the presence and bearing of professional soldiers.
Relena let out a soft puff of air as the last one was out of sight. Heero frowned at her deeply.
"You're too pale," he simply stated.
Relena managed a weak smile and a shrug.
"Lets go, I'll watch your back." Heero said. Relena's smile turned grateful, her grip tightening around the gun she held.
/I can't shoot this thing. I can't take a life. This is wrong. This could have been worked out./
Relena carefully followed in Heero's footsteps, his/her footfalls naturally light and the body's energy easily allowing her to keep pace with him.
A low cracking came over both of their comm units, as they reached the perimeter of the main building. They both huddled along the Quatre's voice, all hard and professional gave "3 hold your position, 9 is working on it. 1 and 2 get ready. Lightshow in ten minutes."
"Ryoukai." Heero answered. Moving with precision. Heero shrugged off his backpack and removed the contents one by one.
The sheer assortment of guns, spare clips, small explosives, and knives boggled simple description. Heero grunted in satisfaction before pushing a block of what appeared to be a handsized block of gray clay, a small, wrapped packet and a small metal disc, no larger than a hearing aid.
/Is this a bomb?/ Relena's mind wondered, the part that wasn't completely numbed over. Her hands shook terribly as she set the block down slowly and carefully next to the wall.
A cool, calm presence wrapped around her mind and slid through her veins to settle in her hands, steadying them and working with quick, assured movements, cutting a small piece of the block off and molding it into a lump that stuck to the wall. Words like "incendiary compound" and "remote det" floated chaotically though her mind.
The presence behind them was just barely tinted with the irony and humor she'd come to recognize as the Jester. Now it was all focused, hard plains and cool liquid.
/Why are you helping me?/ She asked, a hint of hysteria coloring her mental voice.
/Death is approaching the door, we are making sure none of our friends are home when he finally knocks. Ourselves, we can worry later./
/We can't do this. People are going to get killed./ Duo's hands never hesitated in the slightest. The Jester simply ignored her declaration as he worked with chemicals in the package. /Just to get one person inside people are going to die! This is ridiculous! What if Karla can be reasoned with?/
/Suffer now if right, suffer later if wrong. Don't think, just do./
/It's wrong./ The Jester remained silent, finally adding the detonator to the C4 and duct-taping the small chemical incendiary above it. He straightened up, and pressed the remote into Heero's hands. She could keenly feel his exhaustion as he receded to the back of Duo's mind.
Following Heero out of instinct to their cover, she mentally shouted for the Jester. /Where are you going? I can't do this alone!/
/...Shini-chan's game now...../
"1? 2? Showtime. Make some noise."
With a feral gleam to his blue eyes, Heero depressed the detonator's button.
Quatre gave a grim smile as the explosion lit up the night smile. Duo did well again, flashy and terribly loud, but it probably did little more than damage the wall around it.
In the aftermath of the explosion, all was silent for a split second before the entire facility was flooded with lights and sirens wailed loudly enough to rival the previous reverberation.
"Noin, status?"
"Almost clear. I've got the doors, but not the cameras yet."
"Keep at it."
"3 hold your position. 5, 6, standby. 1, 2, large group heading your way from the southwest, smaller group from the east. Engage the east, be prepared to withdraw."
"Take the left flank." Heero said as the search group came into view. Heero burst from cover and began firing as he ran, creating enough confusion in the ranks to get several good hits. Heero ran low to the ground, loping like some great cat, but hundreds of times more deadly.
/Blood. They're dying./ Relena looked at the gun laying innocently blow where she crouched. Her hand closed around it, intending to throw it away.
As her fingers touched the cool metal of the grip, there was an explosion from inside of her. Shinigami, like a black cloud surged effortlessly to the forefront. Duo's body's reaction was dramatic.
The heady liquid fire of adrenaline, so steady and muted before, suddenly surged through veins and muscles alike. It felt as if her very blood was thinning under the force of it.
Duo's eyes widened and a grin, stretched almost painfully on his face appeared. Shinigami leapt from cover, sliding from shadow to shadow with uncanny grace. The snap of the gun as it recoiled in Duo's hands sent an aftershock of pleasure and lust through her system as each bullet tore through the flesh of someone else.
/STOP!/
Relena, at her declaration, suddenly found herself displaced, set a step back form the action. What Duo was seeing displayed around her, unavoidable, but now appearing like some odd virtual reality.
/STOP!/ She repeated, shouting. Shinigami was standing, motionless in front of all the images, his weapon now solidly a scythe and held between two white-knuckled fists. Around it, an intangible mist of black, swirled and coiled around itself, darkening with each action that Duo took.
Relena stepped forward, trying to stop this madness before it went too far. If she could get control again. She could radio Quatre, she could get him to order a withdrawal. Surely the explosion was enough cover.
Shinigami turned to regard her over its shoulder. Its red eyes flared once in anger before a coil of black lashed out...
"I've got it!" Noin crowed, leaning back. A satisfied smirk crossed her lips before she settled back to work.
Quatre nodded, fighting down the painful apprehension boiling in his stomach.
"3. Go." He gave the order, praying to Allah and anyone else who was listening with all his soul... that those two words weren't the ones fated to be etched above his lover's epitaph.
Long tense moments passed, punctuated by the staccato of gunfire, the reports of Duo and Heero's guns audibly sparred with enemy fire. After an eternity and a half, their communicator crackled to life.
"4, I'm in."
"Roger that. 9 will radio you from here in, maintain silence on this channel...." Quatre closed his eyes, trying to put all of his heart into his voice. "Be careful."
Noin smiled and put a hand on Quatre's shoulder for a moment before turn on her own headpiece and whispering into it. "Okay Trowa, don't worry about the cameras, they aren't recording jack right now. Just concentrate on getting to floor B3 undetected. The corridor to your right is clear..."
It couldn't have taken more than a second. That's all the time it would have taken for the black uncanny extension to pick up Relena and fling her like a rag doll to the back of that so familiar mindscape.
But in that second, Relena's world exploded into a mass of compressed, direct sensation.
Memories, laced with black and purple moods, flooded through her mind, burning hot and freezing cold at the same time. She felt Shinigami... no.... Duo's intense hatreds, his loathing, the cynicism that touched his life, that sunk slowly and steadily under the bones and manifested.
It had coiled, hidden safe in a creature that couldn't talk, couldn't let the world know he hurt.
She saw... fat politicians and generals (many faces she recognized) dining on lobster and steak, overlapped with the images of people starving, dying, shot down in the middle of dirty streets for ideals tossed around between appetizers.
She saw... blood and fire. She saw old friends die and new friends distancing themselves, unable to guess who was next and not wanting to sacrifice the heart.
She saw... terror, shame, revenge, hatred. Personified in memories in feelings and dreams.
She saw... herself, preaching. Duo fidgeting in his chair, frustration coiling in his stomach, wanting to believe, but knowing fantasy from the reality that he lives. She saw herself as spoiled, as flighty, as obsessive.
Dangerous. A hindrance. A liability. A rival.
Relena felt, in those few terrible seconds, her heart cracking, her natural empathy absorbing it all. Knowing it to be half false, one sided, merely a perspective... but also seeing the truth buried deep in the roots...
She saw... nothing. Death, sweet death. Shinigami.
Trowa slid from hallway to hallway, following Noin's whispered instructions without error. The transmitter in his ear assured that no sound she made was audible to anyone else, no matter how close they were.
Many of the panicked men he passed within inches of, undetected and without a trace. He couldn't afford suspicion so early, especially with the short duration of the mission.
"10 feet ahead on your right, there should be a door. In there is your destination."
Trowa nodded, unconsciously. He crept along the steel walls of the base and flattened himself against the wall next to the doorway. Quickly he palmed the door open and snapped himself back along the cover of the wall.
Silence met his keen ears. No one was inside.
Letting out the faintest of sighs, he ducked into the room, shutting and locking the door behind himself.
"A Laundromat?" He whispered, opening the transmission at last, he eyed his surroundings with mild disbelief. It was not what he expected.
"You got it babe." Noin whispered back. "Pick a costume."
Trowa accepted the logic of this, picking through the worn, discarded cloths bound for the wash, over the fresh uniforms awaiting reassignment. He finally decided on a grease stained mechanic's shirt, the same slate blue-gray of the Devolutionist clothes.
Finally finding a suitable cap, he tucked his distinctive bang up into the brim. Rummaging quickly in his backpack he came up with a small tin of oil he used for keeping doors from squeaking and giving away his presence and smeared just a bit on his hands and in random seeming patches on his face.
He made a mental note to haphazardly wash it off in the next bathroom that he found. Fresh oil was too much of a give away.
"I'm closing transmission Noin. I'm done." Trowa paused in packing his things again, intending on dumping it all down the nearest disposal. A though occurred to him. "Tell Quatre that I'm fine."
"Will do. Good luck." As he put the device away, he could just barely make out Quatre's voice giving orders to Heero and Duo to get out and to put on a show of reluctance. Despite the steel edge Quatre had, Trowa could detect his worry.
Shaking his head, he turned off his lover's voice. He had a role to play.
A pair of overly large, slender hands shook a very reluctant Relena back to consciousness.
"Ah! There you are! I had wondered to where you'd slipped." The Jester's tenor was hushed and raspy from obvious exhaustion. His whole posture was slumped and he was too tired to hide it.
"Where is the Child?" she asked, still groggy. The Child's presence, despite how dim it had become, was so distinctive when absent.
"Safe for now, away from this terrible dance of blood and bile. Tucked hidden where all this cannot harm him."
Relena took in the sensation of being in the back-seat while Duo was awake. The battle surrounded her, terrible, loud and seemly only half a step away. "I don't want to be here."
"You could spread your wings, dark angel, and fly afar."
"How can I leave? I don't even know how I got here!"
"In much the way all get here, a falling in of sorts. Duo is sensitive to those of the spiritual sort. Normally a good shove is all it takes to free us of those interlopers, yet somehow you were different ojosan."
Now that the topic had risen, something stuck tenaciously to Relena's mind. Relena quietly voiced her question, "Really, why haven't you done what Shinigami did?
"To throw you back here? What good would that do? Much akin to duct-taping a leaking dam I'd say."
"No, why haven't you thrown me out." A desperate edge had lined Relena's voice, and her eyes had taken on a dangerous tint. The Jester, for everything, wanted to calm her down, placate her with whatever it took. She was dangerous like this, and probably strong as well.
The Jester looked away silently, the stiffness in his form so telling from the limber and graceful creature.
"Why wont you answer me?" Relena moved herself stubbornly back into the Jester's line of sight. The miasma of emotions and the horror going on around her, giving her the strength to ask what had been bothering her. "Why?"
The Jester seemed to struggle for a moment, before shrugging. "Because I cannot lie."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"For once, exactly what I said."
Relena tried to shut out the sounds of the battle around her, trying to regain her balance amidst the warfare. "You can't, can you?"
"Can't? Lie? Of course not, such sweet and simple honesty is at the heart of my so..."
"No," she interrupted. "Push me out. You aren't strong enough alone."
"This is not the time for this conversation ojosan, it would be wise to watch the world. There are times to run and hide, this is not one." The Jester was so pale as to almost be translucent, staring past Relena and into the events of the outside world.
/"Trowa is secure... withdraw... 1, 2, withdraw now! What are you doing!?"/
"What do..." Relena turned her attention to what was going on outside. Shinigami had brought his gun to bear, a giddiness flowing throughout himself, spurred on by an unchecked bloodlust.
/"OMAE o korosu this time!" Duo's voice crowed, oddly metallic sounding in his own head./
"HEERO!" Relena called, trying to get close, but reluctant to touch Shinigami's consciousness again. "Please stop him.. it.. whatever!"
"I can't, ojosan," The Jester's voice was strained and cracking. "We are weaker for our separation. The left hand doesn't know what the right is doing, nor pays it mind."
"This is no time for riddles!"
"Sadly, it's the only language I know."
Relena felt her own finger, yet that disseperation of knowing that it was Duo's finger, tightening slowly on the trigger. Watching from afar, Heero's quiet acceptance.
At last, in the midst of the swirling darkness, Child appeared, his slight form radiating bright white power born of desperation. With a fierce and desperate look, he just said, "Shut it all down!"
And blackness, dreamless sleep. Relena's last sensation was of Duo crumpling to the ground.
"The attackers are retreating." A stiff-necked man reported to "Karla." The woman behind the desk was fierce, beautiful Latino girl. A master martial artist and expert in several firearms, and above all, a parrot that the media and politicians loved.
Karla herself sat back, taking dictation as Maria and the Meriks talked, safe in her incredible mundaneness.
"Casualties?" Maria asked, her eyes narrow.
"Minimal, we were able to repel them with ease."
"Thank you Meriks. Dismissed." The man saluted to "Karla" and clomped heavily out of the room.
All of the small office's occupants slowly stewed over the information.
"That was too easy," a small balding man intoned. Sean O'Hara was a veteran of several terrorist organizations, and was invaluable to Karla for his instincts and sheer experience, even if she did find him and his brutality unsavory. "If that was a Preventer retaliation, they didn't put much heart into it."
Yasmin ben Sallah shook her head, her voice thickly accented. "For once, I agree. They underestimate us!"
"That was not my poin..."
"They are just like all those full of themselves peaceniks! They are shooting themselves in the leg, not seeing that they are killing us and everyone slowly! A stranglehold of oppression."
"I don't thin..."
"We need to lash out, show them what the truth is though not only our words for once, but our actions..."
"Yasmin." Karla said, her soft voice immediately silencing the room. "Thank you."
The dark woman smiled brilliantly, her white teeth flashing. Sean shook his head, and Maria smirked, seeing the pacifying tactic for what it was.
"So what were they trying to do?" Maria asked. "They sure weren't trying to blow us to hell."
"I would guess they've planted a spy." Sean said slowly.
"That could compromise everything." Yasmin frowned. "We need to run through the ranks immediately."
"No." Karla said, fiddling with a tattered photograph between two fingers. "Don't worry about it. Whoever it is can't find out enough in time to stop us. Operation Curtain Call, begins soon. Our last acquisition was a success."
Smiles rewarded her declaration. Karla was always taken aback at how all of them enjoyed such protocol and silly words like "Operation Curtain Call," but she had long since learned to indulge them.
Still, it rankled her slightly that they played this like it was a childish game, with pompous names and shiny badges. Still, as she had often told Dorothy, she worked with what she had.
Whatever it took to give the world what it needed. Salvation from itself.
She smiled down at the photograph, promising the phantoms of her family once again that soon, everything would be different.
TBC
Nixers
Please send comments to: Nixerchan@aol.com or: Kwycksylver