13 Dec 1999
So this is my first post, something I've only just started, easy-reading, won't be too long probably. If it fazes you in anyway, you can reach me at capgunmonkey @ yahoo.com, but it most likely won't.
Disclaimer: These characters are not mine, and have been used in a most perverted manner: sprinkled generously into my story, to taste. They are actually owned by some guy who has em all copyrighted, so that's why this note is here.
Big black gun. Rippled dagger. Grenades, can't forget the launcher. Didn't forget the tear gas. Hands full, biting on a ninja star, can you say shuriken without slitting your tongue? Duo Maxwell can. Heero Yuy wishes he couldn't. No, this isn't the setting of newest Hennessy cognac commercial, but it is appropriately complex. Or something. Or at least it would be if you didn't read so many 1+2s that the pairing's become pinchingly trite. Your fault. Let's begin.
Duo Maxwell was in first class undercover, ultra-durable, extra-stealth-friendly combat gear, Duo Maxwell-style. This wasn't your standard guerilla mission, but it was for Duo. For Heero, well, for Heero, everything is a potential kamikaze mission, nothing else in the vocabulary. And Heero wasn't wearing anything at all like Duo, anything at all Heero-style. Because Heero doesn't have style. He just has your basic $1.99 fruit of the loom reject tank top and spandex. Lots of spandex. Or rather not very much at all. Either way, it irked Duo just as his own frequent, but certainly not ceaseless chatter dug at Heero's nerves. The spandex was uncool. No other way to put it. If Heero were 20 pounds overweight people would close their eyes to block the image. Duo wanted to block the image, but a little voice teased him that it wasn't for the same reason. Duo's brow twitched. Of course it wasn't! If anything, Heero was 20 pounds underweight. End discussion, he sang out loud in his mind, to drown out the sad excuse for a conscience before it went places he thought best left to gather dust.
The two crept with profound skill, more silent even than their subdued surroundings, towards the seemingly abandoned warehouse which seemed to grow out of the jungle it nested in. Of course, it seemed abandoned only by virtue of its state of upkeep, or lack thereof. But any warehouse this far deep into one of the supposedly unexplored islands of the Philippines was highly suspicious. Especially for these two Gundam boys, who had orders to look out for anything out of the ordinary in this specific area.
No one knows better, though it is highly infamous, the true extent of Duo's big mouth, than Heero Yuy. But at the moment he was making no complaints. The boy with hair as captivating as blue flame was perhaps more than his equal when it came to stealth missions. While Heero was a constant machine, body and mind switching into whatever mode necessary, Duo was a creature of adaptability, a chameleon of the highest power, his body now as graceful and predatory as a panther's. Blue fire star jungle cat. Machine boy had words scrolling through his head like your average top notch computer, he harbored the professional ability to pluck out a single word of interest like a teeny bopper flipping through the pages of a boring, glossy mag who manages to pick out immediately the name of her favorite teeny idol. These fanciful words his mind had applied to his accomplice were surprising to him, and highly abnormal, so they were highlighted for him immediately. He mentally picked them up, slightly stunned, and turned them over slowly, examining them. But of course, such simply poetic thoughts were useless to Heero, nothing about them significant to the mission, and thus they were discarded.
A sad occurrence, that, for unknown to both, it would have sent a tickle up Duo's back and lent him at least an hour staring at himself in front of the mirror in all the "fierce cat-like" poses he could think of, to hear that he was reminiscent of something beautiful but never seen -- a blue fire star jungle cat -- that he had inspired a poetic spark in the cold Heero. It should be noted, though, that in some ways it was a benefit to each creeping boy that the words had not been spoken aloud (not that such a thought had ever occured to Heero), for it spared Heero uncommon fluster (if that could ever happen) and Duo another hour to add to the several he already spent in the bathroom every morning he was not stuck in his Gundam.
But back to the adventure at hand. The two young bishonen had reached the point, perhaps more accurately described as an invisible line, which they both knew was the marker of no return. Once past, they were in plain view and at the complete mercy of who or what might be inhabiting that mysterious warehouse at the given moment. Well, maybe not complete mercy, for each had enough ammo and "tools" to take a couple (to say the very least) of whatever vices might attack with them. And don't think they didn't plan to do just that if worst came to worst. Neither flinched as they stepped past the "line," although there was a small click as Duo readied his gun.
Despite the suspense thick in the air, it was a surprisingly uneventful 53 seconds to the wall of the warehouse. Nothing happened. This did not faze our heroes in the least. The two glanced around in a quick, efficient manner, readied themselves, and slammed into the huge main doors of the building. And if it were not for their rigorous training, each would have found themselves on their asses, because the rusted metal gave immediately. Only Heero could've noticed the slight stumble on Duo's part and he made no mention, for now they were in the lair of the enemy.
Blue eyes blazing like the core of melting steel, he jumped away and held his machine gun steady, pointing it swiftly in every corner that might harbor villainy... But didn't. And Duo loosed a great laugh of relief as a small snake fell from the roof into the back of Heero's shirt, causing him to yell, a barely-there moment of vulnerability, and shoot into the air. Rats scampered, startled at this sudden disturbance of their peace. Years of peace, by the look of the place. There was no doubt that OZ had not made use of the warehouse for an extremely long time. Duo brushed feather fingers against a random spiderweb. Genuine.
Heero's face was its usual emotionless void and the crystalline blue bored into the grinning boy, who let the smile fall away. But there was still a soft glow to him, and his own eyes twinkled with good humor. Or so it seemed until it became clear that they were watering, his vision blurring before he unceremoniously passed out.
Here he was stuck in this shithole and with only a bottle of generic pills and a half-complete Gundam to show for the previous adventure. And his life. Fuck. What happened? What happened was that just as stars had danced in his eyes and he shot Heero his most winning smile, scentless, colorless gas had filled his lungs and his body had collapsed like a marionette tossed to the floor by a careless child. His partner, being an invincible freak of nature, spent the next ten minutes not breathing, holding his breath, toting Duo's limp body and running for their lives. OZ was sick. A whole island ruined for years, its animals and plants shriveling and dropping as the life was suckled gently from them. And thank God for auto pilot. Heero had sent Deathscythe, complete with snoozing Maxwell back towards base, while he covered, laughing psychotically as he blew things up -- you've seen the tapes, no surprises.
But Wing was damaged, so la dee da, (and here's where Duo's in the know), why not take a couple legos off of that conked-out American's second-rate Gundam? He wouldn't mind... Not that Heero gave a rat's ass whether he did or not. It's a bird, it's a plane, no it's that mad spandex boy off on another one of his crazy missions. Yeah, Duo was fuming. It sucked to be the second sometimes. Especially when you had a love-hate infatuation with the first.
Yep, that's where this story introduces its first twist, and yet you've heard it all before. Alas, more cliches! You know you love it. Duo Maxwell had that driven pilot on his mind. At first he'd managed to convince himself it was pity for the alienated boy, then the desire to befriend him. When he'd grudgingly admitted to himself it was more than that, maybe admiration, he'd gone out and gotten laid, nice, but it didn't make what he already knew, through lovely subconscious, any less true. You could write doomy-gloomy goth poetry about it or jot a few sugary lines about it down on a pastel pink heart festooned with lace, and it would still be the same thing: palpitations of that fickle thing we call the heart.
But what could Duo do? Every friendly overture was snatched from him and stabbed repeatedly until it gushed blood and spasmed lamely on the floor at Heero's feet. It was all too plain: he was a robot whose only human quality was a subconscious inclination towards sadism. Too much for our vivacious young man to bother with. The only thing to do was hate him. Yes. Otherwise, as Duo knew all too well, being quite experienced with that thang we call love, his chest would ache ceaselessly and he might very well fall back into his old pulp fiction addiction, Heaven forbid. With that thought, the bed-ridden boy painfully dug out his wallet, fumbled to tug out the small photograph of the object of his affection, and gave it a nice, long, Evil Eye.
When he skipped out of shack base to his pieced-together Gundam, towards Howard's to fix it up, pieces of the puzzle that was once a wallet-sized picture of Heero lay scattered on the bed, waiting to be nibbled at by starving mice.
He hated him, but could he help it? Those shocking, death-defying blue eyes were sealed shut with caked and dried blood. Duo's chest ached. But he told himself frantically it was only in fear that it did so, fear that OZ had managed to get at the best fighter of them all, and they could very well get him next. A fly alighted upon Heero's still brow. His chest ached.
When he lay the body down, it was between random pieces of a torn photo, on a bed that was not so soft, not so warm. It seemed his mind turned off, for when he was next aware, his shaky hand was placing, ever so softly, ripped photo images of piercing azure where there real things were shut tight. He wanted them to look at him, gaze at him hard, and maybe that limp hand would curl up into a fist and deliver to him a solid punch, so full of life. Anything.
A stray thought alighted on a branch in his mind. His own beloved Deathscythe was severely broken up, and here was the incredible Yuy, drenched in the cracking brown of his own blood. With the tables so drastically turned, why not take a shot of that sweet stuff known as revenge and repair the Gundam out of the bones of her healthy sister, Wing? But with Gundam 01's fierce barely-human counterpart laying so lifeless in the shabby bed, Duo's own heart aching with a vengence, he had no desire to do it. No desire.
It was the mechanical, man-made hate that allowed him to do it, push his tired frame to fix, and finally set off in, Deathscythe, leaving the hollowed-out shell of Wing Zero behind. Leaving Heero's corpse to languish in the shack he'd built once, in a night. A foul legacy to leave behind. His chest ached.
End Part 1 to 3
(:./others/circles)
