Duo stared in disbelief at his own face stuck onto someone else's body. But it wasn't his face, not exactly, because there wasn't any color in it, not at all. He had the same coloration as Diana, with white-gold hair and chalk-white skin, and those empty-looking eyes. But the smirk, the features, even the three-foot long braid, even though it was white instead of brown, they were all the same.
"Hey, will you look at that?" his double said mockingly. "I betcha I can make him as white as us," he called to the others. "Watch this," he said to Duo, and then his color changed, as his skin and hair darkened, the first to a pale tone, the second to dark brown. In a few seconds a being identical to Duo in every way but one stared back to him. Only one thing hadn't changed - his eyes remained that awful empty white color.
"Kane, stop it," Diana said. "You had exactly the same reaction, or don't you remember? It was just that your face was covered at the time."
"You take all the fun out of it," the other Duo - had she called him Kane? - said. But his hair and face returned to their normal bleached color as he started removing the same type of padding that Diana had worn.
"So you're the ones they thought I was," Quatre said, hand on his heart as he stared at his double. Because Quatre was so fair to begin with, it was even harder to tell those two apart, the only major difference being in their eyes.
His double stared at him. "They tortured you because they thought you were me," he said quietly. It wasn't a question, it was a statement of fact. "I'm sorry."
"They used to do that to you all the time," Quatre replied. "I'm sorry for that."
Diana regarded them both with a critical eye. "It seems that the two of you share more than just genetics."
"Genetics?" Kane said sharply, his eyes hardening. "What are you talking about?"
"You weren't listening earlier. I got to see a workup of his genes," she said, nodding towards Quatre. "They figured out it wasn't him when he started crying for his father, and did a scan."
"Father?" Trowa's double asked. "He has a father?"
"Apparently, unless he was playing some sort of a game," she turned that hard look on Quatre, who stared at his feet.
"Had a father. He died," he said shortly, then glanced at his double. "You don't have a father?"
"None of us do," the other one said quietly. He looked at Diana. "You said something about genetics?"
"Yes. I saw the workup, and his genes are identical to yours, with only a few exceptions. 1537-1628, for example, or 2387-2399."
If it was possible, Duo's double got a little paler, although his expression didn't change. "You mean... "
Diana nodded. "There have been some slight modifications, gene therapy, done on all of them, but aside from that, they're about what you would have been if you were born human. As I was saying before, I believe they're from a different dimension. It's the only explanation I can think of. That failed experiment that went off - it was supposed to be able to control black matter. It would have provided an endless power supply, if it worked, but it didn't so the Alliance eliminated the scientists and stuck it in that warehouse. But it did activate for a few seconds. I'm guessing if they were inclined to talk, they'd tell us they were near a similar machine, and they ended up here." She raised an eyebrow and looked at Quatre, who blushed and looked down again.
"We saw something like that, and a bright flash of light, and then we were here," Quatre said, not giving away any of their mission, but hopefully giving her enough information to continue giving them information. "What do you mean, if you'd been born human? What are you?"
"I don't know if you noticed, boy," Kane said. "But this," he held up a hand that slowly darkened until it was black and then whitened again. "Isn't exactly a normal skill."
"So what are you?" Trowa asked quietly.
"Weapons," Diana said with a shrug. "Genetically engineered since our conception for fighting. Assassins, mostly, but the six of us in a regular fight together are pretty deadly. Stronger, faster, smarter than any human, both trained and engineered to have no emotions, no mercy, no regrets." Her expression mirrored something like sadness for a second before it disappeared. "That one didn't work so well, but they tried. And you... what is your story? Do they genetically modify and teach shooting to all kids in your world, or are you something special?"
They didn't answer. Duo happed to be looking at the other Quatre right then, or he might have missed it, but suddenly something in the other boy changed, hardened somehow, and he suddenly looked very, very threatening. "We just risked our lives to get you out of there. More than that, we risked our freedom, and possibly the lives of thousands more. We told you more about ourselves just now then we've ever told anyone," he said quietly. "And we can't help you unless you give us some information. We also can't be sure that you are who you say you are unless you start talking. I'm very good at making people talk. I developed most of the methods that the Alliance uses."
"You know we're telling the truth," Quatre said softly.
His double refused to look at him. "Unfortunately, my own empathy is not reliable enough for me to trust on something like this. I know that you have similar skills, and I can't be sure that you aren't influencing me somehow." He looked around the room, and his gaze rested on Duo. "That one," he said quietly. "I'll work on him first."
"Hey! What the hell do you think you're doing?!" Duo demanded as Kane grabbed his arm and twisted it up behind him, and then pushed him against the wall.
"I'm getting some answers," the other Quatre said quietly as the others all immobilized their doubles among the Gundam pilots, all except Quatre, who was being held by Diana, and Wufei, who was still unconscious.
"How long?" grunted the one who was holding Heero as the other Quatre pulled out a vial of some clear liquid and a needle. "He's pretty strong."
Duo yelped and tried to pull away, and almost got his shoulder dislocated for his efforts.
"I don't know, it depends. We don't know much about them. A few hours, maybe."
Diana shook her head. "They're more than they appear. This one lasted for hours in the chamber," she gestured to Quatre.
Quatre's double blanched slightly. "Then it may take longer." He filled the hypodermic needle with the liquid and then approached Duo. "Sorry, nothing personal," he said quietly, and Duo knew in a panicked flash that there was something very, very wrong with this Quatre, like their Quatre on the Zero System, and that he had told the truth - it really was nothing personal to him, and that he would torture him even if he regretted it, and do it well.
"Wait! Stop!" Quatre shouted, and his double hesitated.
"What?"
"You may not trust yourself, but I do," Quatre told him. "My name is Quatre Ribaber Winner. My father was head of the Winner Corporation before he was killed by our own people. I have twenty-nine sisters... "
"He hasn't told us anything about his mission or why they're so strong yet," his double observed.
Quatre swallowed, looking at Duo. "I'm a Gundam pilot," he finally said.
"Quatre, no!" Duo hissed, then was cut off when his double locked a hand around his throat, threatening to cut off his air supply.
"Quatre?" his double said thoughtfully. "What's a Gundam?"
"You don't know what a Gundam is?" Trowa asked disbelievingly.
"I wouldn't be asking if I knew," Quatre's double said coldly. "What is it?"
"A type of mobile suit, made from gundanium," Quatre said.
Their doubles exchanged a glance. "Mobile suit?"
"You don't have mobile suits?" Duo asked. "How the hell do you fight?"
"Usually guns, explosives, occasionally shuttles or satellites," Diana said with a slight twist of her lips that might have been considered a smile. Maybe.
This really is a different world, Duo thought, trying to imagine fighting a war without mobile suits. Sure, they did their share of terrorist work outside of their suits, but they wouldn't have gotten anywhere without the Gundams.
"How did you end up here? And why were you genetically altered?" the other Quatre asked. "I'll warn you now, I'll know if you're lying to me."
"We were supposed to gather information on a device Oz was making that was supposed to be able to manipulate the fabric of space itself, except it wasn't supposed to work. We got into the base, but then there was a flash of light, and... then we were here."
"That sounds about right," Diana said grimly, not loosening her hold on Quatre's arm in the slightest. "And the other?"
"We all went through... special training in order to be able to pilot our Gundams. A Gundam puts more stress on the body then any normal suit, trying to fly them at full potential would have killed normal humans."
"And who's this Oz you're fighting?" Kane asked.
"Its an Earth-based military organization that's taken over the colonies. We're trying to win our freedom."
Diana looked at Quatre's double, who nodded, and suddenly Kane released Duo's arm. Duo instantly responded with a punch, but his double blocked it easily, then gave him a shove that sent him flying. "I wouldn't try it," he said grimly. "You may be stronger and faster than normal humans, but we were engineered. Completely engineered, not just normal humans improved upon. You wouldn't have a chance, and you might hurt your fist if you ever hit me." He suddenly grinned.
"That's impossible," Wufei's double said, examining the still-unconscious Wufei. "They can't be colonists."
"They were telling the truth," Quatre's double said.
"But how can that be?"
"Maybe things are different in their world."
"Hey, wait a minute! No apology? And why can't we be colonists?" Duo demanded.
"Sorry," his double said, sounding completely unapologetic. "And you're colored."
"What?"
"Skin tones," Kane clarified, rolling his eyes. "Boy, you are slow, aren't you? You're not albinos."
"So? What does that have to do with it?"
"All colonists are albinos."
"What? No they aren't."
"They are here," Diana said, tilting her head to one side as she looked at him. "All the original colonists went through some gene therapy to allow them to survive better on other worlds - better use of oxygen, slightly stronger and faster, not as much as you and nowhere near us, but more than normal humans. One of the side-effects was that they all became albinos. I take it that it's different where you're from?"
"Colonists look just like regular people," Duo stated, then realized how that must have sounded. "I mean... "
"He's almost as polite as you, Kane," Wufei's double observed. "And here we call people who look like you Earthlings." He checked on Wufei. "He ought to wake up in a few minutes. I didn't hit him that hard."
Duo snorted. "You must have hit him pretty hard, if you knocked him out. Wufei's got a hard head. Why'd ya do it, anyway? Was it all his talk about weak women?" he grinned. "'Cause if it was, I've got to warn you, he never stops. Weak women and justice, that's his entire repertoire."
"It wasn't that," Diana said with a glance at Wufei's double, who actually blushed a little. "We didn't have any time to waste, and besides, he's a little sensitive about that topic. Maybe because he believed women were useless for the first fourteen years of his life. The Alliance taught him that. I've since educated them otherwise," she added with a toss of her head that sent her braid flying.
Suddenly Wufei grunted and opened his eyes. His eyes grew very, very wide as he saw his double. "What... "
"You're in a different dimension," Diana said quickly. "As far as we can tell, they're your doubles - who you might have been if you'd been born here. And we seem to be on the same side, at least for now.
"Oh, by the way, that's Shin," she pointed at Wufei's double. "You've already met Kane. Brian," she nodded at Heero's double, who stared at them with no expression on his face. Big change there. "That's Devin," she nodded towards Trowa's double, who didn't seem to like blinking. Big change there too. "He's Andrew," she said, her eyes resting on Quatre's double. "And my name, as you've probably guessed, is Diana."
"Diana what?" Quatre asked. "Don't any of you have last names?"
"As a matter of fact, we don't," Andrew told him. "We picked our own names when we were ten. There was no need to pick last names. One was enough."
"Her too?" Quatre asked. "I felt something... "
"I have a number of names. One of them is Diana Dorlian," she said with a slight shrug. "But, as I said, I go by a number of different names. I think of myself as Diana."
"Dorlian!" Heero grunted in surprise.
Duo stared at Diana, who had the same last name as a certain irritating princess of a lost kingdom back in his own dimension. Now that he looked for it, there were certain similarities in features between Diana and Relena Peacecraft, although without a doubt Diana was more beautiful. Nah, it couldn't be, he found himself thinking, and shook his head. They couldn't be the same person. Relena was a whiny brat - an influential whiny brat, to be sure, and she was good at the whole 'peace' thing, but still... He couldn't possibly by thinking that she and this soldier girl were the same person!
"What is it?" Kane asked, looking at his face.
"She just... it has to be a coincidence, doesn't it?"
"What?" Wufei asked crossly. His eyes were still a little wild as he stared at his double.
"It may be just me," Duo said, stepping back slightly to get a better look at her. "But does she look a little bit like an irritating Princess we know?"
Quatre gasped. "It can't be!"
Heero grunted again. "They don't look the same," he observed. "Not like us."
"Don't look the same as who?" Diana asked sharply.
"There's this girl. Her named used to be Relena Dorlian, but now it's Relena Peacecraft... She looks a little bit like you... But it couldn't mean... Her name wasn't really Dorlian, she was adopted," Duo finished lamely.
"And what makes you think I wasn't?" Diana asked, a hint of pain in her eyes. "All six of us were created, not born. I couldn't possibly be his natural daughter, since I have no parents. I sort of wondered who I'd be on your world. Who is this girl?"
"She is... was... the princess of a destroyed kingdom," Quatre said. "Her father... her adopted father, Ambassador Dorlian, was assassinated by Oz just before the beginning of the war, and that's when she found out her true identity. Since then she's been... well, she has been traveling around for a while, and now... " he shrugged. "Her kingdom was destroyed many years ago, but she still has a lot of influence. And she keeps chasing Heero all over the planet." He grimaced.
"Heero, huh?" Diana said, and Duo realized - too late to do anything about it - that they'd accidentally given away another name. "I take it he isn't interested?"
Heero snorted his opinion of that.
"My name's Duo, by the way," he said, to prove that he didn't care if he'd given away information. "Duo Maxwell. That's Heero Yuy, Trowa Barton, and Chang Wufei," he said, pointing at each in turn, ignoring the glares he was getting from Wufei.
"Real names," Shin murmured.
"What do you mean, real names?" Wufei asked crossly, still angry about being knocked out.
"They don't sound like names you just picked out for yourselves," he clarified. "They sound like you have families, or pasts... "
"Heero Yuy is a code name," Heero said in a low, threatening voice. "The real Heero Yuy was a peaceful man who tried to unite the colonies before he was assassinated."
"And I am not really Trowa Barton," Trowa said. "I took his name after he was killed."
"And I made up my own name," Duo added. "I'm just a street rat."
"Beginning to sound more like us every second," Kane said with a smile that Duo knew was meant to hide the pain. He'd worn it himself often enough. "You know your name means 'two', don't you?"
"Yeah, I sorta did that on purpose. I'm not stupid."
Kane nodded, looking uncomfortable. "I know. I was just... why would you do that?"
"Solo. I once knew a kid named Solo, who did me some favors, so when he died, I became Duo," Duo said shortly. "What's your problem?"
"It just... numbers. We hate numbers."
"What?"
"They called you eight, before," Quatre said suddenly, "And they called me four. Why?"
Diana sighed. "There were originally ten of us. So we each had numbers. Five boys, five girls. I would have been number eight, but they didn't want the girls, so they tried to get rid of all of us. They only kept the males, numbers one through five... " she trailed off, looking at Kane, whose face was a stony mask.
"The Alliance raised us," Andrew, Quatre's double, clarified. "And they only called us by our numbers, they never bothered to give us names. They though it would convince us that we weren't human, that we were only tools that they created. We gave ourselves names around our tenth birthday." He shrugged. "So we're just a little sensitive about being called by numbers."
"That's why Treize... the one who looks like Treize... was so surprised when I didn't react when he called me Four," Quatre mused.
"Treize?" Andrew looked at Diana.
"Velanz. Apparently they have someone like him in their world. But you responded to it very easily," she said to Quatre.
"We've been captured a few times before," he said sheepishly. "They don't know our names, so they call us by numbers, the order our Gundams showed up in. They call me 04." He shrugged. "It's better than them knowing our names." Suddenly he frowned. "Did you say you were raised by the Alliance?" he asked. "Aren't they your enemies? That would be like... like us being raised by Oz." He shuddered.
"It wasn't particularly pleasant for us, either," Kane snapped.
Quatre suddenly grasped at his heart. "What did they do to you?" he asked hoarsely, drawing closer to Trowa for comfort. Trowa silently reached out and arm and pulled Quatre closer to him.
Diana stared at him for a second, then sighed again. "Let's get the whole story out now, or at least the short version of it, it will cut down the time we'll spend later. The Alliance military is in control of most of Earth and all of the colonies, which they want because of the resources we have that aren't available on Earth. They're controlling the colonies by the most brutal means possible, so Rebel groups have sprung up in the last fifty years to oppose them. For many years they were completely ineffectual, but as the actions of the Alliance against the colonies became worse, the Rebels became more popular, and effective. The Alliance started a number of programs to counter this, and one of them was the project that created us. The Alliance wanted, well, the simplest way to put it is that they wanted weapons that looked like humans. So they got some scientists together, took some human DNA, and basically created ten fetuses from that. The fetuses would be much stronger, much faster, much smarter than any normal human, and instantly aware."
"Aware?" Duo asked.
"We never grew up," Diana said with a twisted smile. "We were mature as we were going to get by the time we were born. I quite clearly remember being adopted."
Duo snorted. "So what? I remember when people tried to adopt me."
"But were you three weeks old? That's how old I was. Anyway, they also did some delightful things with the way our emotions were connected to the logic centers in our brains. They wanted ten males, but one of the doctors who was being forced to work on the project disagreed with what they were doing, so she made half of the fetuses female. Likewise, they made us look like colonists because they thought it would be a way to control us - colonists are instantly identifiable and very mistrusted on Earth. The same doctor who made me female gave us the ability to do this," she held up a hand which turned black, then faded to white again. "It doesn't affect our eyes, but a simple pair of contact lenses takes care of that.
"So, she made these changes, but they weren't noticed until we were taken out of the incubation chambers. The Alliance didn't want the girls, so they gave us to a lower-level functionary with orders to get rid of us. He felt guilty killing what he thought were a bunch of harmless infants, so instead of killing us, he gave us to an orphanage. In a few days I was adopted by Ambassador Dorlian. A few days after that the higher-ups at the Alliance found out that we hadn't been killed, and the other four females were killed. They would have killed me, too, but there was too much publicity surrounding my adoption, so they covered it up instead and left me alive."
"Sloppy," Heero remarked.
"Very," Diana replied. "But they've come to regret it. I grew up in a relatively normal home environment, but I always knew I was different. By the time I was four I was taking college courses, and I knew that I never forgot anything. When I was seven I was hit by a car, and I walked away from the accident. That was about the time that I started feeding information to the Rebels."
Duo was impressed in spite of himself. "You started early."
Diana shrugged. "It's what I was created for. The fact that I was working against my creators was ironic, but I do my work very well. I continued that work for three years, mostly hacking into the Alliance's computers and feeding the Rebels information, but about when I turned ten, something changed. The Alliance decided to activate these guys. You see, while I'd grown up in a semi-normal environment, they'd been raised by Alliance doctors who told them that they weren't human, they had no emotions, and that their only purpose was to serve the Alliance. They'd had combat training for years, and ten-year-olds make astonishingly good assassins, because no one would suspect a kid of anything like that. The first time I ever found out that there were others like me was when he... " she pointed at Brian, "... assassinated my best friend's father. Suddenly there were people as fast and as smart as me working against me, so I joined the Rebels officially, when I was ten. By the time I was twelve, I was in command of all the Rebels in my colony, working almost full-time against them. I kept going to school as Diana Dorlian, so no one would suspect who I really was, but the rest of my time I spent working for the Rebels. But by the time I was fourteen, I realized that I couldn't possibly keep up with these guys indefinitely. There were five of them, and one of me. Plus, the Alliance has virtually unlimited resources, while I was acting like a supercomputer half the time because the Rebels couldn't afford decent machinery. So I did the only thing I could think of. I captured Brian, showed him how the Alliance had been lying to him, and brought him over the my side. Then we did the same for the others. That's the short version of how we came to be fighting where we are now."
"And the numbers?"
"They only called us by numbers for the first ten years of our lives. When we completed our first missions, around the age of ten, we picked names for ourselves, as a sort of symbol of our new status," Andrew said. "But when we worked for the Alliance, on missions, we were only allowed to use our numbers. Since then we never use them, and we don't respond to them either. You probably surprised them when you answered to numbers so easily. To us it represents them trying to take away our humanity."
"We just didn't want them to know our names," Duo said. "Especially Quatre, 'cause he's got family in the colonies."
Quatre's face darkened slightly. "My father all but disinherited me when I left to join the fight - he was a pacifist," he explained shortly. "But I don't know if any of that would have made a difference if Oz found out. Actually, it didn't matter. They killed him anyway."
"I'm sorry," Diana said quietly, and Quatre's hand went to his chest again.
"Yes, I know. There's so much pain... what happened to your father?"
Diana's face was completely emotionless. "I got captured, and they found out who I was. They killed my father before anyone could do anything about it, in order to punish me. Rather foolish of them, actually. It would have been wiser to keep him alive and try to force information out of me that way." She said all of this in completely flat tones, much the way Heero spoke most of the time. Suddenly she looked at Quatre. "How long have you been able to do that? Sense people's emotions, I mean."
"I've always been able to do it, but it's getting stronger, I think. How about you?" Quatre asked, directing his question at his double.
"I... I've always had it, but the Alliance... they tortured me when I used it when I was younger. I could feel what humans were feeling, and I wasn't supposed to feel anything at all. So I sort of pushed it back down where it wouldn't affect me anymore, and I forgot about it until after I joined Diana. It re-emerged when she was captured and tried to kill herself - I felt that even though we were miles apart." His hand drifted to his own stomach.
"You tried to kill yourself?" Quatre gasped, and everyone glanced involuntarily at Heero. Most of them had tried to self-destruct at one point or another, but only Heero made a habit of it.
"I'm not suicidal or anything, but faced with death or betraying everything I'd spent more than half my life building, I chose death. It didn't work, anyway." Heero made a vague sound of disapproval, and she glared at him. "It's rather difficult to aim a gun at yourself with those damn cuffs on your wrists. Other people, yes, but its very difficult to hurt yourself. Which is the idea. It's hard to get answers out of a corpse, so they wanted me alive. It bought me a few weeks, anyway, while I was healing. These guys eventually rescued me."
"Now, what is your story?" Brian asked grimly.
"I see your Heero talks as much as ours does," Duo remarked.
It was several hours before Diana's curiosity was satisfied, and by then Quatre was getting very tired. He couldn't remember the last time he's slept, real sleep, not the drugged stupor they'd been in when they were tossed in the cell. Ten hours before the mission they'd begun against Oz, the one that had gotten them tossed here. And then he'd spent those hours in that room... he shivered. He was exhausted, but he wouldn't let it show.
At least, that was what he intended, but his double, Andrew, took one look at him, and he felt that odd twinge in his heart that he'd first felt when he met Andrew. Andrew frowned. "Quatre's near collapsing," he said. "They put him in the chamber... and he hasn't slept in over a day. He thinks he's you, Brian," he said with a fond smile, and Quatre smiled in return. He was strangely at ease with his double, as if they'd known each other all their lives, although they'd just exchanged stories. Like the brother I never had.
"I'm fine."
"No, you're probably all exhausted," Diana said. "Sorry, I forgot. You're so much like us... "
"What, don't you sleep?" Wufei asked sarcastically. He hadn't grown any more friendly, either towards her or towards his double in the last several hours.
"An hour or two a day is usually sufficient - we're a little more efficient in our rest than most people, and we can go for weeks without sleep if we have to, if we aren't too stressed. You shouldn't take offense - you're astonishing, for humans, we just aren't human." Wufei didn't look any happier. "Look, you guys might as all sleep now, get a few hours at least. Things are going to get interesting when we get back."
"Why?" Duo asked.
"Well, you guys for one thing. I've also been out of contact for a little too long, and... " she glanced at Brian, who grunted.
"She ordered a raid staged at another base to distract from our original mission, and we did the same thing at a different base to get her - and you guys - out of there. She has to deal with those reports, and knowing her, she'll want to do the prop work herself... Then she - and we - will be playing catchup for a long time. It isn't often that we all are out of contact for more than an hour or two."
"Why is she so important?" Wufei asked huffily.
"She's our commander, I thought you knew that," Andrew looked mildly surprised, and a little amused too.
"Only weaklings follow women," Wufei sniffed.
"Are you saying we're weaklings?" Shin asked, a dangerous tone in his eyes.
"You're following a woman, aren't you?"
"Hold it!" Diana exclaimed, obviously seeing the same fight brewing that Quatre did. "Why, exactly, do you think women are weak?" she asked Wufei.
"Oh great," Duo muttered. "Got a free day or two? That was the wrong question to ask him."
"Women don't have the strength to do what's necessary," Wufei started. "They can't win without help, and those near them get hurt as a result."
Kane started laughing. "That's rich!" he exclaimed. "You think she's weak?" He burst out laughing again.
"All women are weak," Wufei insisted.
"Physically, you might be correct, maybe," Diana said. "I don't know what sort of women you deal with, but the women I deal with are all every bit of intelligent, resourceful, and when the time comes, ruthless, as any man. Many of them are physically stronger, as well. And as for me... " she smiled wickedly. "I actually had a discussion with one of the scientists who created me on this very subject. Because, in general, women are physically weaker, they've evolved differently. Our minds are more subtle, and we're trickier. Or so I've been told."
"She's only proved it a couple dozen times," Shin muttered.
"Anyway, in me those evolutionary changes remain, but the reason for them - that women are physically weaker - was eliminated. I'm stronger, physically, than any normal human, including yourself, smarter, and faster, and I'm ruthless too, don't worry about that part. I'm also a lot more devious than my male counterparts, and that's why I've survived as long as I have." Then, smiling sweetly, she walked across the room, grabbed the front of Wufei's shirt with one hand, and without any sign of effort, she lifted him off the floor.
"Try me, sometime," she said quietly. "I'm quite willing to prove my strength to you the same way I did to Shin - by beating the crap out of him. A bit brutal, with none of the subtlety that I usually expect of myself, but if I survived such crudity before, I'll somehow manage again." She smiled sweetly again, and set Wufei down on the ground.
"Trust me, you don't want to do that," Shin advised. "I was a bit... difficult... when I first was captured."
"Yeah, well, let's be fair, I wasn't in a particularly good mood myself. I didn't really help things. I was still pissed at him for shooting me," Diana said apologetically. She smiled consolingly at Shin.
"See, Heero?" Duo exclaimed. "I told you we weren't the only people in the world who met when one shot the other!"
"We're in a different world," Heero observed. "There is no one else in the world."
"Anyway, anyone who was not genetically engineered should go to sleep now," Diana suggested, cutting their bickering short.
Trowa immediately settled himself to the floor, then looked at Quatre, who smiled. Trowa must be feeling very comfortable around these people, or he wouldn't show so much, Quatre thought. He settled himself on the floor and lay back against Trowa's chest, giving him a quick kiss on the way before getting comfortable. Trowa started gently stroking his hair. It felt really good, and Quatre allowed himself to relax into the caress. It was the first time he really felt like he could relax in the longest time - this was the first place that they could be absolutely certain that Oz couldn't find them. Oz didn't exist here. He smiled.
Then he felt a wave of surprise from someone nearby, and opened his eyes to find himself staring at two very wide eyes, belonging to his double. "The two of you... " Andrew trailed off, then a small smile appeared on his face, and he chuckled to himself.
"Do you have anyone... " Quatre trailed off, and looked at Devin, Trowa's double, expectantly.
"Devin has always tried to protect me, even when he brought punishment down on himself for doing it, and I love him like a brother, but we're not... involved that way," Andrew said with no hint of embarrassment. He looked at Diana who walked over and gave him a very thorough kiss, leaving no doubt as to who he was currently involved with.
"Andrew... is the most human of us," Diana said with a sigh when they broke off for air, several minutes later. It seemed that they had advantages in more than one field. "And what does that say about me? At least I was raised human, but I'll take a life as quickly as anyone. Andrew's the only one who tries to avoid killing. I can't really imagine what he sees in me."
Andrew turned Diana's face towards his, and his lips moved silently. Quatre knew how to read lips, but he averted his eyes, sensing that this was something intensely private.
"Oh man, you too?" Kane asked, looking at where Heero had a firm grip on Duo's braid and was pulling him to the floor. "Doesn't that hurt your head?"
Duo shrugged, then let out a yowl of pain. "Ow! Cut it out, Heero! It's not so bad. There are advantages, you know." He leered at his double, leaving no doubt as to his intentions. "How about you guys? I mean, Andrew's with Diana, but there are four more of you... "
"We don't have that sort of relationship," Shin said primly.
"We might have, though, if Diana hadn't come for us," Devin said suddenly.
"What?!" Kane turned to look at the other boy. "What do you mean?"
"We were designed to be physically attractive," Devin pointed out with a shrug. "It wasn't just so that we'd look nice for the scientists. Eventually we would have used our looks to our advantage in a mission. We looked like children when we left the Alliance - no one would have wanted to sleep with us. Not yet, anyway. They probably would have started that training a few years later." He shrugged again. "Who do you think we would have been practicing on? Not the scientists. Besides, it probably would have fallen into the realm of stress relief."
His comrades stared at him, and then Kane turned to Diana. "Did I mention how much I really appreciate you getting us away from the Alliance? I might have gotten stuck with Brian." He shuddered dramatically.
"Hey!" Duo protested as Heero glared at Kane. "Are you saying that there's something wrong with us?"
Kane shrugged. "I never thought of it, to tell you the truth. I was just trying to piss off Brian. He never says anything."
"I know the feeling," Duo said, turning his head quickly to get his braid out of Heero's reach as he grabbed for it again. Then he settled down on the floor, laying his head on top of Heero's stomach. "How many times to I have to tell you, Heero, that you've got to put some fat on your bones?" he complained loudly. "This is like having a piece of gundanium for a pillow."
"Back to the point - you guys had better rest now, if you're planning on sleeping at all," Diana said again.
"Yes mam!" Duo saluted facetiously. He probably said more, but Quatre's exhaustion finally overcame him and he fell asleep.
About four hours later, Heero heard a footstep somewhere near him. Without thinking about it, he drew the gun he'd stashed in the back of his pants, aiming it at the source of the sound. He opened his eyes and saw Kane standing there, a gun also drawn. "So, are we going to shoot each other and die cursing our families for the stupid feud?" Kane asked. "Do you always greet people this way?" he asked, slipping his own gun into a holster under one shoulder.
"Hn," Heero replied, putting his own gun away.
"Hi, Kane," Duo said, sitting up and blinking sleepily. That was just an act. Heero had felt Duo tense when he moved to draw his gun, and saw that Duo's hand was pressed against his stomach, holding his own weapon.
"Hey. Your Heero isn't a morning person, is he?"
"Not especially. Why'd you ask?"
"The 'hn' sort of gave it away."
"Oh, that's normal for him. But you're right he isn't a... ow!" Duo shouted as Heero clamped down on his braid again.
"We'll be arriving in just a few minutes," Kane told him. "Wake up the rest of your friends. You can come up to the cockpit if you want."
"We're awake," Quatre said, sitting up and blinking sleepily. "How long?"
"Just a few minutes," Kane said, casting a sharp look around the room at the obviously-awake Gundam pilots. "Did I wake you?"
"Live on the run long enough and you'll learn to sleep light, too," Quatre said, half-joking. "The cockpit?"
"Thought you might want to get a glimpse of the colony before we land. Our colonies aren't located in outer space, floating around Earth. Our colonies are actually on other planets."
"You never mentioned how that was possible, or what planet they're on," Quatre remarked, standing up and stretching.
"The sub-ether drives," Kane said in tones that suggested that Quatre was stupid for asking. Seeing their blank looks, he said, "Faster than light travel? Please tell me you have that at least."
"Not yet. Our world has been a little engrossed with war for the past two hundred years, so we're not all we could be technologically," Duo snapped.
"Two hundred years?" Kane asked. "Fuck." He was silent for a minute, then regained his composure and good-humor. "Well, are you coming or not?"
They came. Heero heard Quatre's soft gasp as they entered the cockpit, where Brian had his hands on the controls of a very awkward shuttle and was guiding it across the surface of a planet with bright reddish rocks and two suns hanging in the sky. "Man," Duo muttered quietly, looking at the twin suns. "We really are on another world, aren't we?"
Kane snorted. "Nothing gets by you."
Heero turned to glare at this more openly cynical version of his koi, but was distracted when Duo snaked his arms around Heero's waist and rested his chin on his shoulder. "Never thought that we'd be the first from our planet to be on another world, huh?" he murmured.
"Hn."
"You'd better hang on. It gets tricky up here," Diana murmured, taking a firm grip of a handhold bolted to the ceiling. Heero looked around and grabbed onto another handhold, after checking to make sure that Duo had done the same. Just in time, it turned out, as Brian began maneuvering madly to avoid hitting rocks as they flew through a deep canyon.
"Um," Duo said after a particularly sharp turn had almost tossed slammed him into the wall. "I don't mean to question your motives, but is there a reason that we can't go onto the surface? The flat surface?"
"We have to stay down here to avoid their scanners," Diana replied, her eyes fixed on some screens in front of Andrew. "If any unauthorized ships try to get to the dome, the Alliance blasts them. We've got another way in that doesn't require us to go up to the surface, but we can only get there through here."
"Oh. Makes sense to me!" Duo said cheerfully.
After several minutes of rough maneuvering, Brian stopped the ship. "Are they ready for us?" he asked Andrew.
"Transmitting codes now," Andrew said formally. A few seconds later a large rock in front of them suddenly swung away from the cliff face, revealing a set of doors behind it. The doors slid sideways, revealing a large docking bay behind it, and Brian easily guided the shuttle into it, then settled it onto the floor beside two other shuttles the same size. There was a loud metallic clang as the doors closed behind them.
"Beginning shutdown procedures," Brian reported.
A second later Andrew took off the headset he'd been wearing and said, "They're repressurizing the bay. Everyone will be in as soon as it's safe."
"Oh, well," Diana sighed. "My vacation was nice while it lasted."
"You were on vacation and you cut it short to do a mission?" Duo asked. "That's cold."
"I was talking about the eight hour ride back in the shuttle," Diana said with a weary smile. "That's the longest uninterrupted period of inactivity I've had since we freed Alpha colony. It was nice."
"You mean you haven't had a day off in months?" Duo asked, then shuddered.
"I'm the Tiger. There's no one else who can do the things that I can."
"What about them?" Wufei asked with a frown at the thought of a woman being able to do things men couldn't. He jerked his head at his double.
"They can do the same things as I can, but my people trust me, and I've got a reputation so that other people in the colonies will listen to me and trust me. That is the person they can't do without, and it keeps me pretty busy. It's not so bad. I got used to it after the first couple of years."
"Years?" Duo yelped, but Brian's unemotional voice cut him off.
"Shutdown completed." He looked out through the window of the shuttle. "And here they come," he remarked in a slightly less official tone.
Heero looked up and saw a pair of doors at the opposite end of the large bay open and people came streaming in, dozens, maybe hundreds of them, and he was startled to see Diana sigh, straighten her shoulder, and murmur, "Are you guys ready?"
"After you, fearless leader," Kane said with an elegant bow.
"I'm going to get you for that, one of these days," Diana muttered, but there was a slight smile on her face as she walked past them. "Stay in here until things calm down a bit. We need to explain things to them before you show your faces, or this could get... interesting."
"Interesting the good way or the bad way?" Duo asked before Heero could grab his braid and silence him.
"Figure it out for yourself. I'm sure you're a smart boy," Diana said patronizingly before hitting the button that controlled the hatch. The door slid open, and a ramp extended to the floor. Diana stepped out onto it, and the crowd gathered at the bottom burst out cheering.
As their doubles followed the girl down the ramp, Duo murmured, "Man, they're just like Quatre's people. They love her."
"All those people following a woman," Wufei snorted.
"I don't think I'd let them hear you say that," Duo muttered. "Most of them are armed."
"Really?" Quatre leaned forward slightly and saw what Heero had already noticed and filed away in his mind - that fully half of the people down there, crowded around Diana and the others, were openly armed, and perhaps half of those remaining had suspicious bulges under their clothes.
"Hey! Who are you?! Intruders!" someone shouted from the back of the shuttle. Heero spun and drew his weapon, aiming precisely for the forehead of the trembling teenager who held a shaking weapon trained (sort of) on them.
"Heero don't!" Duo shouted right before he tackled him.
"Baka!" Heero grunted as his shot went wide.
"He's one of Diana's people!" Duo hissed. "You want to shoot one of her people?!"
Heero considered, then grunted an affirmative. His instinct reaction when he'd heard the alarm was to shoot, but they didn't want to kill allies. "Get off me."
Duo flashed him a worried look, but rolled off him.
"Freeze," ordered a cold voice, as Heero looked directly into the barrel of a gun.
"Shit," Duo muttered as Trowa raised his hands into the air.
Heero blinked in surprise. The crazy mob that only a few seconds ago he would have sworn was completely uncontrollable had fallen completely silent, and there were at least a dozen people clustered around them, guns drawn. Just a few seconds earlier those people had been acting as if there wasn't a thought in their heads, and now they were acting like soldiers. Good discipline, he thought, mildly surprised, berating himself for underestimating the possible threat, and for not hearing that boy before he'd sounded the alarm.
"So, which one of them do you think will shoot us first?" Duo asked as he backed up against the wall.
End Part 2
(:./marika/others2)
