Heero was already prepping the Wing for flight and full battle conditions; there would be no more stealth on this particular mission. He was also putting the final touches on a special removable skyhook system, attached to the Wing's chest.
Duo staggered into the cave, still smiling from all the activity of the last night, and hollered: "Shinigami! Test run One!"
Shinigami started to hum, and its eyes glowed faintly.
Heero couldn't resist: "Show-off!"
"But of course! Watch this, Heero-luv."
Duo stood proudly in front of his mobile suit, and simply said one word.
"Fade."
Duo's mobile suit suddenly started to disappear, but not quite, into the background of the cave, its overall color now matching the grayishness of the rocks and the greenness of the moss. Its whole outline also seemed to be less defined, and the only hint that it was there was a faint shimmer and hints of its outline where sunlight from the cave entrance hit its legs.
"It's Shinigami's secret, Heero. It has a holographic cloaking device, and its skin is coated with an electroreactive, galvanized coat of paint. It can almost disappear when it's not moving much. But it tends to fail when there's a lot of movement and chaotic environmental elements," Duo smugly explained.
"So you hide. Big deal," Heero said in a deadpan voice.
Duo looked at him with a knowing smile. "You're still proud of that thing's big gun, eh?" Duo shrugged, his smile still there. "Anyway, let's get going. And this time, we better blow up those two Leo-types. It shouldn't be too hard."
Heero nodded, and both boys went into their respective cockpits.
A few minutes later, both mobile suits walked out of the cave. The Wing started walking towards the cabin. "What's up, Heero," Duo asked. "We can't leave any trace, Duo, and you know that."
With a grim finality, the Wing stepped on the cabin, took a step back, and fired its vulcan cannons into the remains, its bullets rupturing the underground gas tank and electricals. The wrecked cabin exploded into a million fragments, some of them bouncing off the two suits' armor plates.
"Now, let's see if this system works," Heero mumbled into the suit's intercomm. The Wing positioned itself behind the Shinigami. The clamp systems that were rigged to its chest activated, and held on to harness points that were also rigged into the Shinigami's backpack. As the clamp systems connected, power feedlines also connected.
Heero smiled as his engineering screen showed the increase in available power. He pulled a lever on his cockpit control board.
The Wing transformed to its jet mode while still attached to Shinigami's back. Heero activated the propulsion boosters, and the two robots were suddenly airborne, the Wing's thrusters being given extra power by Shinigami's reactor.
He laid in the course to Hephaestus into the navigation computer.
"Duo, you okay?"
"Yes, Heero, I just don't like hanging by my harness, looking down at the ground, and knowing how high up we are. Otherwise, I'm fine."
Heero thought he heard tightness in his voice. Must be the uncomfortable position he's in, he thought. Or maybe the fact that he was coming back to the same place where the little girl died. Heero shrugged. Duo can handle that, he whispered to himself.
Duo's tears were dripping onto the main monitor, and he was hugging an article of clothing that he took with him from the cabin; it was one of the pillowcases from the bed set. He knew that it was all that would be left.
Hephaestus Base - Major Diez's Office
"Major, we have an unidentified bogey coming into our airspace"
Diez looked up from his papers, staring at the desk communicator. "They're right on time," he muttered. Nice to know that my assessment of these people were right.
"Alert Pilot Ocho, and give him clearance to use Bogey Two for live fire."
"S-ssir?"
"And please prep Bogey One as well. Program its cockpit systems for my configuration."
"Yes, sir."
He stood up and walked towards his closet. He took out the flight suit.
Hephaestus Airspace
"Duo, get ready!"
Heero had his hands full with the Wing's controls - he would have to use the vocal command system for the detachment sequence. He knew that this was the riskiest part of the insertion, since it basically meant that he would have to drop the Shinigami like a rock into enemy territory.
"Duo?"
"Ready when you are! Drop me onto the largest contingent of Leos you see!"
"What?"
"Trust me."
Heero cursed. It was either the most foolhardy thing to do, or the most brilliant tactic he had ever heard.
"Heero, ya hear me?"
"Yes."
"Okay"
Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name... I hope prayers will help, Duo thought darkly, because I have a really bad feeling about this.
"Get ready, Duo - five, four, three, two, one DETACH!"
The clamps that had been holding both mobile suits together exploded, leaving only burn marks and open power conduits that immediately disappeared under sliding armor panels. The Shinigami started its descent, quickly reaching terminal velocity. Duo activated the cloaking field, knowing only too well that though he was invisible to most sensory systems, he would still be seen visually. Down below, he spotted a large magnetic reading, and many multiple heat sources. He smiled, and waited to activate his booster systems.
Heero, on the other hand, had already transformed his mobile suit from airframe to combat mode. He went straight for his target: the mobile suit hangars.
Hephaestus Base
Duo's trick had worked. He waited until he was within 500 feet from the ground to activate his boosters, and he had landed almost squarely on one of the Leo's shoulders.
Using his beamscythe to advantage in the confusion, he had wiped out about ten mobile suits before one of them could even take aim at him.
Two minutes and ten Mobile suits later, he started landskimming to his primary target: the mobile suit hangars.
Heero was frustrated...he had already trashed half the hangar area and still no sign of the prototypes. He was wading through the remains of one docking bay when he saw all the Wing's proximity alerts go off. Suddenly, Wing was hit from behind - more precisely, it was kicked from behind by Bogey One. Wing collapsed into the rubble.
Heero noticed that there was an incoming transmission on his battle channel.
"Get up, you idiot. I want this to be a fair fight."
Heero smiled. An honorable enemy? He would make short work of this one.
He activated his boosters to create a cloud of dust, and then redirected them so he could jump up in the air and surprise the enemy from above. It was a brilliant move, except that the enemy wasn't there on the ground anymore. It was up in the air alongside him.
Bogey One activated both beamsabers and slashed at him.
Duo saw what was happening. A Leo with all sorts of thrusters and verniers had outmaneuvered Heero. He was already running towards the battle when he instinctively stopped.
A hypersonic slug tore through where Shinigami would have been.
Aha, Duo thought to himself, I always knew there would be backup. It made no sense for Duo that a mobile suit like that would not have a long-range counterpart system.
He turned towards the origin of the blast. A Leo was standing there, and it looked like it had sprouted missile and cannon systems, much like Trowa's HeavyArms.
He saw that it was sending a radio transmission. He clicked on the comm panel.
"Shall we dance the dance of death - again? Perhaps this time you shall join my daughter."
Duo suddenly felt very cold. He undid his harness to make himself more comfortable, and gripped the controls with his clammy hands.
"I knew it," he muttered to himself.
Wing thrust itself backward as fast as Heero could make it, and only the tips of the beamsabers nicked the chest intakes. When he recovered from the commotion, he realized that the Super-Leo was behind him. Without any preamble, it stabbed both beamsabers into the back of Wing.
Static electricity enveloped Heero, and as his radio died from all the disruption, he heard his enemy on the radio speak.
"I won't kill you yet... I will love taking you and your suit apart for all you're worth."
Heero smelled burnt hair as he struggled to reach over to a small panel on the side of his chair to a certain set of buttons, which he knew he'd have to use someday.
Shinigami was weaving in between Bogey Two's shots, when he heard his comlink to Heero squawk with static. He turned to see what was happening, and Duo gasped as Wing collapsed, with the other Leo hovering over it in triumph.
That moment of distraction was all that was needed. A slug hit the side of Shinigami's chest, and promptly tore through its innards, before stopping as it hit the cockpit's titanium/gundanium cage. The impact caused Duo's head to hit a side console, splattering blood all over it. He started blacking out, and all he could see was his beloved mobile suit's systems all crashing, save for the core cockpit command computer.
Before his radio became silent, he heard his enemy intone: "The Major wants you alive... but after that, you belong to me."
I guess I was right about having a bad feeling...
Duo slipped into darkness.
"Bogey Two, do you copy? I have Intruder One down. How is Intruder Two?"
"Bogey One, this is Two. Intruder Two is - eh -"
Major Diez turned to look at Bogey Two's combat area. Intruder Two, that damned thing with the beamscythe, was slowly getting up again. Which was impossible, given the big hole on the side of its chest.
"Bogey Two, tell me something!"
Ocho could not believe his readouts. The mobile suit in front of him was rerouting power, shutting down all damaged systems, and bypassing broken linkages. He could see it all from the way heat patterns were shifting on his thermal scan of the suit, when the scanner suddenly blanked out. It couldn't see the enemy suit anymore.
Ocho switched to visual, and immediately executed a side pivot to avoid getting stabbed by a beamscythe. He started to go pale - he knew had hit the cockpit, and he knew that the pilot was most probably knocked out or dead.
Why was the suit even moving, let alone fighting?
"Bogey One! There's an anomaly here, sir!"
"Some things are best taken care of personally," Diez muttered to himself. He powered up his booster and vectored towards the black mobile suit.
Heero was able to reach the panel, and he tapped in the proper code. He leaned back and waited.
Bogey One approached Bogey Two and the Shinigami. Bogey Two was having no luck getting another bead on the black mobile suit as it weaved in and out of sensor range.
Bogey One joined the fight, but in doing so made two mistakes: he inevitably blocked some of Two's targeting solutions, and that he was unaware of this, such was his dedication to defeating Intruder Two.
They finally had the Shinigami cornered in the ruins of a hangar bunker when out of nowhere came the first surprise of the night.
Ten seconds before they had cornered Shinigami, Heero's code activation for backup power systems finally booted itself and started rerouting the Wing's powergrid away from the main generator - to the backups it had in the legs, which were also used as catalytic systems for the main boosters when in airframe mode.
Six seconds away, and Wing powered up to 50% readiness.
Four seconds, and Heero overrode the safety systems with a single command.
Two, and Heero aimed at the Leo with his buster rifle.
Diez saw an alarm flash on his console, and turned to see what it was, before his Leo became engulfed in the Wing's buster rifle's blast. He felt his cockpit temperature spike up, his last thought being about how stupid it was to die of a back shot. After that, the Leo's frame turned into slag, as the electron disruption field set up by the rifle blast explosively freed most of the armor frame's parts into their component particles, Diez's particles liberated along with everything else.
Ocho saw it happen. One moment, the Major had cornered the scythe-wielding suit. The next moment, there was a bright flash of light and a roar of thunder, and he watched as his viewscreen autocompensated for the brightness and gave him a firsthand look as to how a suit could disintegrate into atoms.
Ocho, however, soon followed Diez's lead, as a very large beamscythe blade sliced open his cockpit and turned him into so much carbon vapor, much like Diez. He didn't even have time to think about his daughter.
For the second time that day Heero withstood electrostatic shock as his beloved Wing overloaded its backup systems to deliver one last shot for the Buster Rifle.
As he pulled the manual trigger for the cockpit hatch, he knew that he had to trust that Duo had killed the other one by now.
When the hatch opened, he saw that he had to walk about a kilometer to the battlesite.
When he reached it, he was greeted with a strange tableau: directly in front of him was a molten mass of metal that he presumed to be his target, while in the background, Shinigami was standing at attention. It overlooked the fallen body of another suit, the armor over its cockpit displaying a big hole.
"Smug as always." Heero muttered to himself. "Duo, you can come out now and gloat!" After a few minutes, Heero got even more annoyed. "Duo, I need your help to repair Wing - or carry it, dammit! This place isn't safe!"
Still no response.
"Duo?"
Heero slowly began to notice the extent of the Shinigami's injuries. When he saw the chest hole, and saw its angle into the suit, he turned ashen with shock.
"Duo!"
Heero scrambled up the mech by activating the ladder from the controls at the foot of the suit.
"DUO!"
He opened the cockpit by manual override, using his name, which he knew was among those allowed by the computer to do so.
"Duo... "
He saw his Duo, sprawled over the cockpit consoles, blood oozing from a head injury.
"Idiot!" Heero screamed, as he started to check for vital signs and took a first look at the Duo's head. "You never did listen to me about using your harness! Now look at this!"
"Heero... "
Heero stopped what he was doing, and turned to Duo's face. "Yes, Duo?" he whispered, "What?" Heero swallowed and blinked so that his voice wouldn't crack, and so that his tears wouldn't show.
"Heero, would you please shut up this time? My head hurts... "
Heero stayed in place for a moment, and then simply smiled. He kissed Duo on his bloody forehead, and gently repositioned him in the cockpit to make him more comfortable.
"Stay there. I will have to reroute some systems somewhat before we can get out of here."
With that, Heero left the cockpit, and went off to fix his suit.
Safehouse Townhouse-4
"I still can't believe that all that lousy programming of yours paid off!"
Heero was still annoyed while having breakfast. Duo was on the other chair, a gauze bandage around his head. Duo smiled.
"I remembered that the Alice-II Operating Systems we were using were originally for AI simulation, so it was easy to program it to have simple defensive/offensive moves based on previous pilot performances. I knew I would get knocked out someday, so I made sure that I had at least a chance of surviving until I came to. I mean, Quatre uses it for his Sandrock extensively, so why not the Shinigami?
"Not bad for a bit of hash programming, eh?"
Duo finished up his plate and put it in the sink.
"Time for me to rest. Maybe you should, too, Heero" A mischievous little grin played over his face.
Heero ignored him. He was still angry that he had never thought of using his own suit's OS like that, and he had to admit to himself that it was brilliant thinking on Duo's part. What he thought of as disorganized turned out to be a saving grace.
He finished washing the dishes; Duo had already gone into the bedroom.
He decided to take a bath to ease his anger.
As he was enjoying what seemed to be like the fifth hour in it with his eyes closed, he heard the shower door open. When he opened his eyes, Duo was there, naked except for his bandage.
Heero tenderly removed the bandage, and looked at his wound - it wasn't bad, just a shallow gash - and he kissed it, tasting the blood of his beloved.
When Duo looked up, he put his finger to his mouth.
--Shhhh.--
Then he closed the shower door, and kissed Heero.
They made love under the artificial rain.
The End
(:./lee/dogs4)
