Running with the Devil/part two

February 20, 2002

Warnings: violence, language.

Author's note: Quatre's POV. Takes place during the series but no spoilers. Feedback appreciated, but apologies not guaranteed.

Pairings: none yet

It took us less than twenty minutes to get our gear packed, change into our black clothing and pay our bill. Duo was talking about the rave we were heading to and even asked the young girl behind the desk if she wanted to join us, but she politely declined. We did kinda stand out and Duo was always quick on his feet with throwing off suspicion. I had never even been to a rave, so I followed his lead and stayed quiet. Thankfully he paid cash for the room and we were soon underway to our real destination.

"Whatta ya packin'?"

I looked at him like he had lobsters crawling out of his ears. We had walked about four blocks, staying in the shadows and off the main roads when he started to grill me about weapons. I had a hunting knife and my gun and some extra rounds, but I was packing light. He however, had enough on him to outfit a small army.

Two knives, one in his boot the other under his right sleeve. His 9mm that made me cringe, tucked into his waistband at the small of his back. The one I knew the safety was left off on. A good sized piece of c-4 and detonator, lock pics, and other various tools for thieving, tucked under his massive amount of hair, and a long bit of wire with two small pieces of wood on each end. [1] I think that of all his weapons that one made my stomach summersault the most. "Enough."

"K, then. Here."

He shoved three pieces of chewing gum at me and proceeded to stuff four more pieces into his own mouth. I could only guess he had stolen it from the last shop we were in. I had our money and credit card on me. I shook my head as I chewed the sugary, fruity substance.

We crept to our target door; the only one that didn't have more than three guards and waited for them to be distracted enough to spring on them. This door only had two and Duo had told me to stay put while he dispatched them. I didn't ask and I didn't look, but when I heard his soft whistle, I knew they were either unconscious or dead. When I got to the door I saw Duo dragging the second of the guards around the corner of the building and under some shrubbery. The tiny trail of blood told me that they probably weren't just knocked out. I said a tiny blessing to Allah and waited for our next move.

Duo wasn't smiling at all, which made me a bit nervous. He was concentrating on getting the door unlocked while I snipped the wires on the panel to the alarm next to it. I could disarm the alarm, but he had to physically get the door unlocked. I heard the soft click and nodded that my part was complete and he gingerly opened the door. Then he took the wad of gum from his mouth and smoothed it over the locking mechanism on the edge. He held out his hand without turning to me and I placed my piece in his hand as well. That piece he smoothed over the top of the door where I saw another alarm trigger.

He ducked inside like a wrath, and I followed a second behind, letting the door close behind us, but not completely due to the gum. It took me a moment to let my eyes adjust to the blackness of the hallway we were in and I suppressed the urge to panic when I didn't see Duo right away. I heard his whisper and tracked the sound. He was completely hidden in the shadows and for all intents and purposes invisible.

We crept down the hallway and followed our plan to the storage area. Glad to see there weren't any more doors or guards in the interior of the building, we made our way silently over to the crates that were stacked on pallets in the middle of the dimly lit room. Duo disappeared again as I looked over the crates to determine which one had the chips we were after.

I found it and began to fiddle with the top of it. It was nailed shut. Duo suddenly reappeared next to me, making me jump and suck in a deep breath. He mouthed 'sorry' to me and shrugged with a big smile on his face for sneaking up on me in my blind spot. He then raised a crow bar for my inspection. It would be too loud, but I didn't know how else to get the crate open and I think he was thinking along the same lines. Weapons we had, but they weren't going to help us open a wooden crate that was nailed shut.

I nodded my assent and stood back to listen for guards while he went to work on the crate. The sound of the wood cracking and creaking was earsplitting in the dead quiet of the warehouse and I thought for sure that we'd have an Oz garrison bearing down upon our heads any minute. My hands were starting to sweat as I held my gun and darted my eyes from the doorway to where I could hear but not see Duo in the dark. I heard the crate's top being lifted and Duo putting the crow bar on the concrete ground with a small ping. Then I heard the rustling of him digging through its contents.

"Quatre." He hissed only loud enough for me to hear.

I hurried over to find him frozen in front of me with one hand reaching inside the crate. The look on his face was a lot like terror and my stomach flipped as I watched him pale before my eyes. "What's wrong?" I found it hard to whisper with the panic rising. I had visions of him triggering explosives that were rigged on the inside of the crate or something worse when he raised his arm out of the crate. In his hand was clutched some of the chips, wrapped in tiny plastic bags. I didn't see any triggers or booby traps and shot him a confused look.

"Get it off me." He whispered fiercely.

Then I noticed the small brown spider that was perched on his knuckle. I wanted to laugh. The God of Death was afraid of spiders. I think he realized what I was thinking and frowned even further. I reached over and gently nudged it into my palm and let it wander around my hand and over my knuckles. I flipped my hand over to keep it from falling off and I crouched down. Duo had turned a strange shade of green watching me gently place it on the ground. It scurried under the crate the moment it hit the floor.

I then reached inside the crate and started to fill my pockets with the chips. Duo snapped out of his momentary freeze and shivered making me want to laugh again. We soon had stuffed our pockets full and carefully lifted the top of the crate back on.

We crept back down the hallway and to the door that would lead us to the outside. When we got there we froze, watching as two guards flipped the lights on and entered the hallway. All the shadows had disappeared in the light and we stood there like deer in headlights before they noticed us. Duo grabbed my sleeve and pulled his gun out. He charged at them dragging me behind and firing at them, letting out a battle cry that buzzed in my ear.

They were so surprised that they just stood there watching as Duo came barreling towards them. Then by the time they figured out what was going on, we had already crashed into them and sent them to the ground in a tangle of limbs. Duo was on autopilot punching and kicking the guy he landed on top of as I skid into the wall.

The second guard got up, but I swung my leg out in time to trip him and send him back down on his knee as Duo snapped the first guy's neck with a gruesome crunch. He lunged at me and grabbed my shirt ripping it almost off as I kicked him hard in the gut. He landed a punch on my jaw as I tried to get away from the wall making me see stars for a moment. He didn't even get to blink because in the next moment Duo tossed a knife from were he was bent over the first guy that embedded itself in the guy's throat.

I just stared as the guy sputtered with his eyes wide and clutched at the blade's handle. Duo got up off the body of the dead guy with the broken neck and knocked the second to the floor. Then he smiled and whispered something in the man's ear pulling out the knife with a sickening, slurping sound and slashed his throat.

I found that I had stopped breathing and looked at Duo. He stood over the guy as the blood began to pool around him and then his eyes snapped to me. I was still leaning against the wall and watching the scene in horror. I couldn't speak and I thought for a moment I was going to be sick as the smell of fresh blood assaulted my senses.

I shut my eyes and slid back down the wall. Then I felt myself get roughly jerked up and spun around. Duo dragged me to the door, and kicked it wide open. He ducked his head out to check for more guards then shoved me through. I stumbled and nearly went to the ground when I felt his hand grip my collar from behind and pull me upright.

"Quatre? Did he hurt you?"

I heard Duo's voice but couldn't bring myself to look at him. "I'm alright." I took a shaky breath of the crisp night air and was glad that when I opened my eyes that the two men Duo had killed earlier hadn't been discovered and were no where in plain sight. I felt him grab the gun I held loosely in my hand and shove it in the front of my pants.

"We gotta get out of here. They won't go unnoticed for long." He broke out into a run and I quickly followed. I understood now why he always wore black. I could barely even tell how much blood he had on him.

We ran for a few blocks and turned towards the direction of where the car would be. Then we slowed down to catch our breath and kept to the alleys as we wound our way through the neighborhoods. We hadn't said a word since we left the warehouse. I followed closely behind him and when we stopped in the alley across from where the small gray car was parked, I finally looked at him. He had blood smeared across his chin and a few speckles of it on his neck. His eyes were gleaming in the low light of the streetlamps and he was wearing his trademark grin. I shivered next to him. Duo was gone. I was running with Shinigami.

I raised my hand and touched his face. He snatched my wrist and turned to me with a ferocious look in his eye. I saw the recognition flash in the indigo depths and the look softened. I watched him take a deep, slow breath and he released my hand. I would have bruises there later I was sure. I then proceeded to gently wipe away some of the blood from his chin, never taking my eyes from his. I was so very glad I had never been taught the hand to hand combat like he had. I never wanted to have to do what he just did. He gave me a small smile, not like his former grin and I found myself wanting to kiss him.

The blare of a car horn broke the moment and I dropped my hand to my side as I looked in the direction the commotion was coming from. I felt his eyes staring at me, but after a few moments he turned to look back to our car as well. He pointed and I followed his sightline to a jeep parked behind ours. It had two men in it obviously checking ours out. "We'll have to wait until they leave. Hopefully Heero had it registered or we'll have to get some other type of transport."

I was glad Duo was back and nodded my agreement. "We can stay at the safehouse Wufei told me about then. Until they leave. It's not far from here." I retrieved the hand written map and headed off towards the apartment building.

When we got there though we found it crawling with soldiers. It had been compromised somehow. "Now what?" I asked myself more than him.

I could tell that Duo was trying to figure that out too as we watched the men mill about down below the apartment complex from the rooftop we had climbed up on. "We'll have to find somewhere else to hide. Some little hole they won't think to look."

We had to figure something out soon though. The air was turning colder and we didn't have anything other than our blacks on to keep us warm. Sleeping outside somewhere wasn't going to work. We'd get hypothermia for sure. I hated the cold anyway and the thought of having to sleep in it made me wish I was back in the desert. I rubbed my rapidly chilling hands together and climbed back down off the roof with Duo right behind me.

I stopped in my tracks causing Duo to almost crash into me. I wanted to smack myself for not thinking of it sooner. "Heero's secondary spot." It was a haul from here but it was definitely not somewhere that Oz was going to look for us right away. "We'll need the car though. It's a solid twelve miles outside of the town in the woods."

"We can't go back the gray one, if they found our safehouse they know the car's hot too."

He was right. We walked a bit further looking for a suitable ride to steal. I hated that it came to that but we didn't have a choice. I supposed we could always return it later. Even though I knew we probably wouldn't be coming back here for a long time. We came across a parking lot and Duo smiled like a kid in a candy store.

"Perfect." I watched him sneak up along side the ugliest station wagon I had ever seen and giggled to himself as he pulled out the lock pics from underneath his braid. I couldn't imagine what he could find amusing about our present situation but followed quietly behind him. It was ugly but it would do. And I certainly didn't think we would need to be worried about attracting any attention in it.

End Part 2

(:./ebony/running2)