Archive: http://www.fanworkrecs.com
Disclaimers: I don't own the characters from Gundam Wing, I just play with them for non-profit fun until they run screaming back to their creators.
Warnings: AU - AAAAAAAAAAAU. Some yaoi, lemon, violence, language. You should be a legal adult to read this. Open-mindedness helps, too.
Pairings: all over the map; Duo-centric. yaoi and het.
Author's Notes: A huge helping of "suspension of disbelief" would be appropriate before you read this. I'm sure J or G could explain the science behind it, but they're kinda dead right now...
Part 5 ~ Scraps (cont'd)
"We're almost to L3, and Quatre has yet to contact me. I assumed he would be on the vid, royally steamed at the breach of trust and demanding an explanation. The fact that he hasn't..."Duo shook his head, looking grim. "He *must* know about it - the Maguanacs would never keep something like that a secret. So the only reason I can think of for him to keep silent is because he already knows why I searched his office. Confronting me with it wouldn't gain him anything; it would just tip me off that he knew his office had been searched.
"Of course, this isn't good enough to take to the Peacekeepers; Quat could just deny that he even knew I'd been in his office, and that would be that.
He pulled his braid over his shoulder and began running it through his hands, frowning. "I've also been checking with my contacts... Trowa is looking into the theft like he said he would. But it looks like he's come up with a different target - me."
He looked down at his hands. "I gotta admit, I make a good suspect. If he's looking for someone who..." he took a slightly shaky breath, still staring at his hands, "who hasn't done as well under the new peace, I guess I qualify. I do have the connections to move a load of alloy quickly. And he knows I used to be a thief. For sure, he'll have questioned the staff at the factory, so he'll have discovered I was there... and the household staff can tell him I got back to the mansion just before he did. As for the meteor storm, he could assume I used the Sweepers the way I think Heero or Wufei might have used the Peacekeepers..."
He looked up at the camera, a bitter twist to his mouth. "And the frustrating part is that I don't have any proof to show that it *isn't* me. If I go to Trowa and tell him my suspicions about Quatre, it'll sound like I'm just trying to throw him off my trail. I've got to get some solid evidence...
"Heero would be a little more objective about Quatre than Tro could possibly be, but even if I could find him, I'm not sure I could trust him. Or Wufei.
"See, with two gundanium incidents in as many months, the Peacekeepers should have picked up on it - they look for patterns like that. But for all my checking, I can't come up with a single reference to a Peacekeeper presence at any of the remaining facilities. Not even a whisper.
"That can only mean that they're keeping it quiet for some reason. That might be because all the reports are going to either Heero or Wufei, who are suppressing them, or they are getting through and His Psychotic Blondness is approving them. Either way, it means I still can't trust anyone with what I know." He rolled his eyes, "Or think I know.
He sighed, downcast. "I'll check out the last major factory tomorrow when we make port at L3. After that, I dunno..."
Wide eyes looked out of a pale, battered face, the rumpled, torn clothing, tattered-looking braid and various smudges, scrapes and bruises completing the picture . The background of passersby and noise showed that the recording had been made at a public terminal.
"We just made port on L3 today. I stood my shift, and as soon as I got off-duty I grabbed a bite and headed for the gundanium manufacturing plant here.
"I was looking for signs of the Peacekeepers, but I didn't see anything. No little old ladies with suspiciously tiny hearing aids, no big brawny guys working on a broken down pod, no sharp-eyed drunks lying in alleyways...
"I was just about to slip around back to sneak in through the loading dock when the plant just... disappeared in an explosion.
"I was lucky. The blast knocked me into a support strut, so I had something to hold onto when the..." he looked away from the camera, eyes haunted, "when the hull breached."
"All kinds of debris started flying towards the hole. People were pulled right off their feet, crashing into the walls and each other. The roar of the decompression was so loud, I couldn't even hear them screaming...
"The pressure doors were closing, but I..." He looked off to one side, swallowing hard.
When he spoke again his voice was stronger, harder. "I saw Heero. He was on the safe side of the blast doors, staring right at me. He looked... startled and... maybe a bit worried. Like he hadn't expected me to be there. But I gotta wonder if he didn't expect to see me on L3 at all, or if he was just concerned that I was so close to the pressure doors. 'Cause if he was worried about my health an' all, he could have at least tried to pull me into the safe zone. I've seen how he can move - he had enough time. But he just stood there...
"Then other people came between us, reaching in to grab whoever they could and haul 'em to safety. I dragged myself through at the last second, but when I looked around again, he was gone.
"The official story is that a faulty smelter combined with 'the unsafe storage of chemical reagents' caused the blast. But I figure they won't be finding much gundanium when they finally sift through all the rubble outside. And they won't be doing that until they've recovered as many of the bodies as they can.
"The death toll so far is over 800 people. And it's my fault."
He sighed, shoulders slumping a little. "Not the explosion itself, but... the timing of it. He could have chosen to breach the hull during the night shift, when there would have been fewer people around. But I guess he was trying to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. If I hadn't stopped to get something to eat, I would have been inside that plant when it blew.
He closed his eyes. "So Shinigami once again brought death and destruction to the people around him, and still managed to escape." He paused for long moments, head bowed.
At last he shifted a bit, wincing. "I've already called the Sweepers from a public vid to let them know that I won't be working the leg back to L2. They weren't too happy about being left a hand short, but I figure the farther I get from them, the safer they'll be. I told them to be sure to complain about my thoughtlessness in the dockside bars before they go... That got me a strange look from the guy on comm, but Captain Neuf just nodded and agreed. Smart man."
"I'll be a while getting back to L2. I'll have to cover my tracks well if I don't want the ship I'm on to crash mysteriously, and that takes time.
"But I want to be where I can protect Helen and Hirde. Much as I hate to think of any of my friends threatening my family, it would be stupid to think they would be safe from this madness.
"I've already scrambled a call to Hirde to fill her in. She was..." he looked faintly sheepish, "annoyed with me. But she's up to speed on the situation and ready to bolt at the first sign of any of the other pilots. And Helen knows the drill, too, so I've got to believe they'll be OK.
He sighed again. "My injuries are superficial; I'll be all healed up by the time I reach home. Now I just have to figure out what the hell I'm going to do when I get there."
Duo sat in the slowly darkening office, thinking. So Hilde was actually Hirde in this version of reality. That was weird. And she knew what he had been up to - no wonder she'd almost jumped out of her skin when he had startled her earlier.
So what could he do to reduce the danger? He didn't have the background that his counterpart did; he couldn't possibly figure out who the rogue pilot was based on who was acting strangely. From his alternate universe perspective, everyone was acting strangely. Especially himself.
But his alter ego wasn't a Preventer, either. Perhaps the training and experience he had would do the trick.
OK, keeping a record of everything he'd found out was a good start. He knew that that must have been a big step for his alter ego - it went against everything he had learned about secrecy during the war. But he was willing to bet that the desire to preserve his information didn't extend to making backups. That was something he still had to be reminded of, and he'd been a Preventer for 3 years now...
He set about making duplicates of the disks. One copy went into the filing cabinet, one was set aside to be stored with the hidden gundanium under the deckplates, and one was encrypted and downloaded into a university computer on Earth that apparently had no better security in this universe as it did in his own.
"Duo! Supper's ready, love!" Hilde - oops! Hirde - called. He would have to be careful to call her by that name.
"Coming!!"
He grabbed the disk to be hidden with the gundanium and closed up the office. He made a detour through the yard, checking carefully to ensure he was unobserved. A few moments hidden behind the piles of scrap was all he needed to stash the second backup under the deckplates.
Then he went into the little house to join 'his' family for dinner.
Supper was simple but filling, but Duo found that he couldn't relax and be silly with Helen as he had hoped. He kept listening for odd sounds in the yard, footsteps in the hall behind him, or the snick of a gun's safety being released.
Hil- no, Hirde - noticed his nervousness, but could only offer a slightly strained smile for comfort.
When Helen got up to get a cookie from the cupboard for dessert, Hil- Hirde, damnit! - leaned over and asked quietly, "Did you find something? Do you know who it is?" Her eyes begged for reassurance.
Duo shook his head. "Nothing yet. I'm just... antsy." He stood up restlessly. "I want to look through the listings on that second disk - make sure I haven't missed something."
She nodded, clearly worried. "We should sleep in the hideaway again tonight. If you're feeling unsettled... maybe your instincts are trying to tell you something."
Hideaway? They had a bolthole? A great weight seemed to lift from his shoulders. He hadn't realized how exposed and vulnerable he had felt, contemplating sleeping and trying to protect his counterpart's family at the same time.
"Yeah," he sighed with relief. "That's a great idea."
Hil-rde smiled and kissed him. "I'll get Helen ready after she's finished her cookie. You sit and go through that data again. Maybe you'll turn up something yet."
Duo did sit and go through the data, but he was also watchful, wanting to discover the entry to the hideaway without making it obvious that he had no clue where it was or how to activate it.
He almost crowed with delight at the sight of the pantry shelves swinging out as one unit, revealing another narrow shaft down into the skin of the colony.
He sauntered over to say goodnight to Helen, checking out the strong inner door that could be bolted in place. It looked thick enough to withstand a direct blast from an energy rifle, or the concussion from an explosion directly overhead.
Which was good, because it might have to...
He picked Helen up and hugged her to him, relishing the precious weight in his arms. "Goodnight, Helen. Sweet dreams." He kissed her cheek.
"Night-night, Daddy." A moment later she was climbing down the ladder, singing to herself about ponies.
"I want you to stay down there, too," he whispered into Hirde's ear. He put his fingers over her lips as she turned to him with stormy eyes. "I know you can take care of yourself. But I won't be able to concentrate unless I know Helen is safe. We can't leave her unguarded."
Hirde let her breath out in an understanding sigh, shoulders slumping. "All right."
She turned and reached down into the dark shaft, pulling out two handguns and a couple of spare clips. She kept one gun for herself and pressed the rest into Duo's hands. "You'd better stay alive, too, or I'll kick your butt."
He snorted lightly, immeasurably reassured by the familiar feel of a gun in his hand. "I'll keep that in mind."
Three hours later, Duo was sitting at the desk in his office, still going through that damned supporting data on the second disk. He was paging down the current list, rubbing his eyes tiredly, when he suddenly sat bolt upright, shock and disbelief drenching him like ice water.
There is was - the reason behind the seemingly illogical hoarding of gundanium and the cold-blooded murders. His counterpart would have had no reason to single it out; it was only because he realized the significance of it that the words seemed to leap off the screen.
Winner Enterprises Project DSE-22:A.L.D.I.S.
Duo stared at the screen, stricken with guilt. He'd been so eager to make sure Heero was all right this morning, calling Wufei to warn him of the danger at Pandora Research. He'd never even thought of warning Quatre about Zero Syndrome. Or rather, warning Trowa, since it was the acrobat Quatre had killed under ALDIS' influence in the last universe.
But what could he do about it in this timestream? His counterpart had no experience with ALDIS, and it was obvious that Zero Syndrome had not yet become common knowledge. How could he believably claim to know that Quatre was having horrifically twisted visions of the future, let alone that they were caused by brain lesions created by ALDIS???
OK. If Quatre were behind all this, then the Maguanacs were untrustworthy as well. As for Trowa... Trowa had said he would look into the theft, and Quatre had looked thoughtful immediately afterward - thinking up a way to divert his lover, perhaps? Yeah, like making sure he found evidence to point to the other person who was investigating it. That would keep Trowa occupied and out of the way...
And Heero - why had Heero been on L3? Was he investigating the gundanium situation as well? Had he been following Quatre, or one of the Maguanacs? But if he had been following Quatre, why the hell hadn't he leapt forward to help Duo when the blast doors were closing?
Unless he were working with Quatre...
Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit!! They couldn't all be in on it, or he would be dead already.
He broke off his frantic mental argument as a blinking light on a panel inset into the wall caught his eye. He had a visitor. He had to get out of the office now, before whoever it was that had just opened the yard gate trapped him inside. Sometimes having only one exit from a room just plain sucked.
He flipped off the lights, crouched down with his gun ready, and cracked open the door. He could see no one. He dove out, rolling behind the nearest pile of scrap.
All was quiet.
He ran silently to the next scrapheap and peered carefully around it. The front gate was slightly ajar, and he just caught a glimpse of Quatre, golden hair agleam in the ambient light, disappearing between two piles, heading towards the farther end of the yard. Towards the house where Hirde and Helen were hiding.
"Ohhhh, no you don't, blondie," Duo muttered. He twisted around and sped down a corridor in the scrap maze, intending to cut off his unbalanced friend before he reached the house.
He was halfway there when he saw a tiny flicker of movement on his right. He threw himself sideways, cursing himself for being so intent on the obvious that he had almost missed the more subtle threat.
"Drop your weapon, Duo. Surrender." Heero ordered, stepping out from the shadows, his own gun held steady.
Duo did no such thing. He turned his sideways lunge into a scrabbling run up and over the shoulder of a small mountain of scrap. Metal parts cascaded down and bounced around Heero, who dodged and leaped, and at the last moment, raised his gun and fired.
Duo half-fell down the other side of the huge pile, hissing at the burning pain in his right hand. A quick glance showed a bleeding hole through the meaty part between thumb and index finger, which would probably account for why his gun had been wrenched out of his grip.
He paused for half a second, but there was no sound of Heero climbing up after him - which meant he was going around. No time to search for his gun. Duo darted off, knowing he had to deal with Heero before Quatre showed up. He couldn't hope to face them both at the same time.
His wound was bleeding freely, leaving easily-seen splotches on the deck plating. He hadn't even heard the shot that did it - Heero was using a silencer. He probably didn't want to alert Hirde. Or the L2 authorities - did they even have Colonial Police in this universe?
He ran down one row, turned, pelted down another, and entered a little open space. He would make his stand here.
First he ran to an opening between the piles of scrap, still dripping blood from his wounded hand. Then he doubled back, holding his hand up and letting the warm red liquid trickle to his elbow. On his way, he detoured to the old thresher that guarded the entrance to the stockpile of gundanium and flicked the switch to lift it off the deck. He let just the tiniest of drops spatter onto the deck by the entrance. Then he wrapped his hand up in the tail of his shirt and slipped into the shadows on the other side of the little open space.
He hunkered down, tucking his hands into his black shirt and angling his face towards the floor to prevent the lighter tones of his skin from giving away his position. He kept watch through his bangs.
Barely ten seconds had passed before Heero appeared, running lightly along the blood trail, gun at the ready, glancing around at his surroundings carefully. Halfway through the area he halted abruptly, swinging his gun around to cover the slightly raised machine. Duo could see the small smirk on his face as the ex-pilot caught sight of the small drops beside the opening.
After a careful glance around, the Japanese man approached cautiously, then crouched down and peered carefully into the darkened shaft.
Duo was up and running as soon as Heero turned back to the thresher. Despite his care and considerable stealth skills, his target whirled around, already lifting his gun into position, just as Duo launched himself.
Duo hit feet first - one just off-center on Heero's chest, the other on the machine behind him - and pushed off again. Almost immediately he felt two bullets scorch across his skin - one blazing a hot trail up the outside of his left thigh, the other branding his chest and skittering off his collarbone.
Despite the new pain, he couldn't help smirking as he landed back in the open space. Heero had done exactly what he had anticipated - he had opted to get off a few shots as he was staggering back towards the machine, instead of flailing his arms in an attempt to regain his balance or reaching back to keep himself upright. Duo had counted on Heero deciding that losing a little skin bouncing off the thresher would be worth the extra time to aim and shoot.
But the disguised hatch was, as Duo had noted before, beautifully counter-weighted. It moved aside obligingly at his shove, and the Perfect Soldier fell backwards into the opening shaft, a look of faint amazement on his face as he failed to collide with the metal mass that had been behind him a moment ago.
Duo was already racing around to the back of the machine, noting the white-knuckled hand wrapped around a ladder rung about two feet down. He pushed the old thresher back over the shaft before Heero could pull himself up further. A quick flick of the switch lowered the heavy hatch back into place again.
Silence fell.
Duo stared down at the deck plates, panting, his heart racing. He could hardly believe that he had bested Heero so easily. A little grin flickered to life as he remembered the look on Heero's face as he fell. If he weren't worried sick about what Quatre was doing he'd be laughing his ass off right now.
End Page 11
(:./wingnut/alter11)
