The entire class looked up in trepidation as Une walked into the room and began to talk to the teacher. He nodded at her, then she turned to the class. “Taylor, Li, come with me.”

Everyone looked nervous, except the two chosen victims.

“Man, do we have to?” Rigel whined. His head was swimming from the advanced Calculus that had unfortunately taken the place of hand-to-hand combat.

“Yes.”

“Onna!” Xiaolong protested. “Do you want to my Calculus for me?”

The entire class watched in horror. He was certain to die a messy, horrible death.

Surprisingly, Une just rolled her eyes. “Don’t make me come over there, Li.”

“Dare you,” Xiaolong said, continuing to work on his math.

“Accepted,” Une said. She walked over to Xiaolong’s desk and yanked him up by the ponytail. “Now come along. You have work to do.”

“Stupid onna,” Xiaolong muttered, rubbing the sore spot at the back of his head.

“You too, Taylor,” Une said.

“But Une,” Rigel protested, “this is hard! I don’t want to miss stuff!”

“If it’s hard, you’ll appreciate the break. Come on.”

Rigel sighed and closed his books, shoving them into the desk. “Oh, fine.” The three of them left the classroom, leaving stunned students in their wake.

“Um, sir?” A student raised his hand. “Did we just see that?”

“I’m not sure,” the instructor replied.

Une was lecturing the two of them as they walked down the hallway. “You shouldn’t be insubordinate in front of your entire class, you know.”

“Let your hair down, onna,” Xiaolong said sternly.

Une sighed. “I don’t know what Treize-sama sees in you.”

“Or what you see in us, right?” Rigel asked with a charming smile.

Une didn’t choose to dignify that with a response.

“Where are we going?” Rigel asked.

“To see your Gundams.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so in the beginning?” Xiaolong asked, looking far more enthusiastic now that he knew.

“Because the class does not know who you are,” Une said slowly.

“Don’t patronize me, onna,” Xiaolong grumbled.

“Don’t ask stupid questions and I won’t,” Une replied, putting her hand on a identification scanner. She spoke her name, then the lock clicked and she opened the door, leading the two boys inside.

She glanced over to see their reactions. In unison, they looked around and said, “Cool!” Their eyes lit up like they were fifteen year old boys being given robots of mass destruction -- oh, wait, they were.

“Which one’s mine?” Xiaolong was the first to recover his senses.

“That one.” Une pointed across the room, to her left, to a green and white Gundam. “Rigel, yours is that one over there.” The second Gundam was black and white. Neither were finished. “Go on, you can look at them. They’re yours, after all. Treize wanted your input on how well the cockpits were set up.”

Xiaolong looked like he was going to start twitching from anticipation, so he walked over to his Gundam. There was a large bald man sitting at the base of it, doing calculations. He looked up, blinked, blinked again, and then nodded briefly in the young man’s direction.

“Are you in charge?” Xiaolong asked.

“Of this one, yes. Feel free to take a look.”

Xiaolong nodded and climbed up to the cockpit, plopping down inside.

Rigel went over to his own Gundam, where two men were conferring. One was short and pudgy, with dark hair and a pointy mustache. The other had spiky hair, but since his back was to Rigel, he couldn’t see anything else. “Hello,” Rigel offered.

The man facing him looked slightly startled, then smiled. “You must be the pilot.”

Rigel nodded, though he found the man’s smile slightly creepy. Okay, make that very creepy. Then, always polite, he reached out and shook the man’s hand. “My name’s Rigel Taylor.”

The man didn’t return the introduction. “Well, look around, let me know if you have any suggestions.”

Rigel nodded.

An hour later, both boys were full of suggestions. For one thing, everything was simply too far apart. As Rigel politely put it, “I have short little arms. You have to remember this.”

“We could only give them approximate measurements,” Treize said. He had arrived while they were both in the cockpits.

“Oh, hi, Treize,” Rigel said, looking up from where he was conferring with the man in charge of the construction of his Gundam. “Didn’t see you get here.”

“Une came to my office complaining about the both of you,” Treize said.

“I’m so hurt,” Xiaolong said.

“You really should be nice to her. She’s having a bad day.”

“Well, we didn’t know that,” Rigel protested. “Why, is something wrong?”

“Just . . .” Tsuberov’s trying to use his mobile dolls to force me out of office and take over the world, plus the other Gundam pilots have started destroying stuff again, with reliable information this time, which means they must have somebody on the inside and it certainly isn’t these two, plus the colonies are angry at the Gundams but we can’t risk directly attacking the Gundams because we don’t how the Colonies would respond to that . . . don’t want them to know any of that. . . “Nothing. Never mind.”

“Girl problems?” Rigel asked innocently.

Treize sighed. “No. Not girl problems.”

“Hey, it was worth a try,” Rigel said. “I was just trying to get you to smile. You look like you have a headache.”

“Yes. I do.”

“Well, what’s wrong?” Xiaolong asked. “Maybe we can help.”

“Can’t really do much until these things are done,” Treize said with a shrug.

“Well, for now can’t we go out in normal mobile suits to help?” Rigel asked.

“Not against Gundams. It’s too dangerous and you’re too valuable as pilots.”

“Wait, I thought we had the Gundams,” Rigel said.

“We do. Unfortunately, so do they.”

“Oh.” Rigel’s face fell. “Well, that’s not good.”

“No, but for now they’re not doing much, because the don’t want to anger the colonies . . . see what I mean about how it’s not worth going into?”

Rigel nodded. “Just let us know if we can do anything.”

****

Duo’s maniacal laughter echoed through Deathscythe’s cockpit. He’d been having a bad week, and now everyone else was going to know it. He was a firm disbeliever in anger management. Catharsis, on the other hand . . .

That was a fine art.

“Man, where are all these bastards coming from?” he wondered aloud. “Last time I checked, OZ didn’t have this many men to waste . . . hey, Heero!”

“Hn.” Heero was attempting to use the Zero System without frying his brain. It was difficult.

“Heero! Earth to Heero!”

“What?” Heero snapped.

“Why are there so many? It’s just an armaments base.”

Heero stopped to consider this, frowning. “I don’t know.”

“Well, aren’t you useful!” Duo said, still laughing. “Oh well, they’re no match for us. Right, Heero?”

“Hn.” Heero paused to think, though his actions didn’t even slow. Duo was right. There were too many. Something was wrong.

His screen was starting to glow yellow, taking on the unmistakable glow of the Zero System. Heero blinked and shook his head a few times. Images flooded over him, where to go, what to shoot . . . and for some bizarre reason, Zero System was suggesting retreat.

Heero’s frown grew deeper. They were just mobile suits. A lot of them, sure, but he and Duo had handled more than this before . . .

In his mind’s eye, he saw one of the mobile suits fly forward, smashing right into Deathscythe, sending it and its pilot crashing into a nearby building.

“Duo!”

“What, man?”

Heero blinked as his vision returned to normal. The yellow glow faded. He quickly regained his equilibrium. “We should leave.”

“Huh? Why?” Duo whined. “I was just starting to have fun.”

“Something’s wrong,” Heero said tersely.

“Yeah? What?” Duo took out three mobile suits with one swing of his scythe. Maybe if he distracted Heero, he could blow more shit up.

“I don’t know what,” Heero snapped. “Zero’s guidance system suggests retreat.”

“Well, isn’t that just great,” Duo said. “You do realize that I have no idea what you’re talking about, right? Hang on, I’m gonna go blow these people up.”

Heero ground his teeth in frustration. “Duo, we need to leave.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, just a sec.”

“Duo, now.”

“Who made you boss? This is an equal partnership, last thing I remember. And -- ”

“Do you want to die?”

Duo smirked. “Now, now, are you talking about getting killed by the mobile suits, or are you threatening to kill me if I don’t listen to you?”

“Mobile suits, you idiot. Now let’s -- ”

“Mobile suits! As if these piddly little things could every destroy Shinigami -- ”

“Duo -- ”

“The God of Death, for crying out loud. I’ve been in enough battles to know when the odds are stacked against us and we’re doing fine, so will you just untie your shorts and -- ”

“Duo!”

“get over yourself, because there’s no reason to retreat and I’m having a good time and -- ”

“Duo!!”

“nobody ever lets me have any fun, especially you, so now I’m going to -- ”

“DUO! LOOK OUT!”

“Shit!” Duo dodged as a mobile suit nearly crashed into him. “Thanks, man.”

Heero swallowed hard, trying not to yell. “We. Are. Leaving. Now.”

“I was in the middle of saying something! I was having a perfectly good tirade and SHIT!”

The second one didn’t miss.

“DUO!”

No answer.

Heero quickly cleared out the mobile suits that had gathered around Duo’s fallen Gundam. He scooped up Deathscythe. “Duo, can you hear me?”

“Man . . .” Duo’s voice came in faintly. “. . . those OZ guys sure do know how to ruin a good time . . .”

“Baka,” Heero muttered, trying to deny how relieved he was to hear Duo’s voice. “Now we’re going to retreat, like we should’ve done in the first place,” he snapped.

“Sure, sure . . .”

“Keep talking.”

“Huh?”

“I need to make sure you stay conscious. Keep talking.”

“Sure, now you want me to talk . . .”

****

“If you’re so good at Calculus, why aren’t you in the class?” Rigel asked, leaning over Trowa’s shoulder as the taller boy showed him how to do the problem.

“Didn’t feel like torturing myself that much,” Trowa replied. “You did number four wrong, too.”

“This wasn’t my idea,” Rigel protested. Then the second part of what Trowa had said sank in. “Oh, man, what’d I do on that one?”

“More like what you didn’t do,” Trowa replied. “But don’t worry, in this one it’s relatively simple. You forgot to carry the one.”

Rigel flopped down onto the bed in frustration. “I’m telling you, all this math has melted my brain.”

“That’s what you get for beating up all the best students,” Trowa teased.

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Rigel said, pouting.

“Do you want to study or not?” Trowa asked. “I thought you had a test tomorrow.”

“I do,” Rigel said with a sigh. “But I don’t want to study. I need moral support.”

“I see,” Trowa said gravely. “And how might I provide that?”

“To begin with, come over here.”

Trowa raised an eyebrow.

“Please?” Rigel added with a smile.

“Okay. Only because you asked nicely.” Trowa walked over and sat on the bed next to him.

“Not up there,” Rigel said, pouting. “Down here.” He grabbed Trowa’s shirt and tugged the older boy down to him.

“You’re being forward tonight,” Trowa said.

“Are you complaining?”

“No,” Trowa replied.

“Then be quiet. You’re talking too much.”

Trowa complied, letting Rigel pulled him down onto the bed. Just before their lips met, Rigel let out a gasp and sat bolt upright, clutching at his chest.

“Qua -- Rigel?” Trowa cursed himself for the slip. “Are you all right?”

Rigel doubled over, eyes unfocused.

Fortunately, before Trowa could get any more worried, the attack was over as quickly as it had begun. “Rigel?” Trowa asked uncertainly. “Are you okay?”

“I-I think so . . .” Rigel replied. He was rubbing his chest absently, over his heart.

“If you don’t mind my asking, what was that?”

“I don’t mind, but I don’t know,” Rigel answered.

Trowa tried to lighten the mood. “I’m not that bad a kisser, am I?”

Rigel laughed shakily.

Trowa wrapped his arms around Rigel’s shoulders and gave the smaller boy a tight hug. “Maybe you should see a doctor or something about it,” he suggested. “Since you were injured a while ago . . .”

“I feel fine now, just unnerved,” Rigel replied.

Trowa hesitated, then nodded, trusting Rigel to make his own decisions. “Okay. But if it happens again . . .”

“I’ll see a doctor. I promise.”

“Okay.” Trowa hesitated, not sure what Rigel wanted to do.

Rigel snuggled closer to him. “I’m sorry,” he said in a small voice. “Can we just . . . stay like this for a while?”

“Of course,” Trowa said, hugging him tighter. “Whatever you want.”

****

“I think you’d better take him to the hospital.”

Heero gave Howard an incredulous look. “A hospital.”

“Do you any other way to fix broken ribs, a concussion, various electrical burns, multiple lacerations, and blood loss?”

Heero considered this. “No,” he finally said. “But we’re Gundam pilots.”

“Yeah, well, if you don’t get him there soon, you’re going to be ‘Gundam pilot.’”

“Oh.” Heero tried not to look angry. “Fine. Do you have a car?”

Howard was already dangling keys in his face. “It’s in the garage. Be careful moving him.”

“Naturally,” Heero snarled, carefully picking Duo up and carrying him out to the car. Duo was only half-conscious, his head drooping against Heero’s shoulders.

“Baka,” Heero muttered yet again, putting Duo in the backseat of the car. He kept repeating that as he drove to the nearest hospital, trying to pretend that he wasn’t panicking. He parked near the emergency room entrance and carried Duo inside. Within minutes, doctors had taken Duo out of his arms and the entire matter was out of his hands.

“Fill these out,” a nurse said, handing him some papers.

Heero blinked down at them. Insurance. Name. Age. Time for Creative Writing 101.

“Heero?” a feminine voice asked.

Oh God not Relena. Not Relena, please not now, not ever again . . . oh God . . . not Relena . . . I think I’m getting hysterical. He forced himself to look up and felt relief to see nobody more threatening than Sally Po. “Oh, it’s you. Thank God.”

“Not every day I get such a warm reception,” Sally replied.

“It’s been a long week.”

Sally sat down next to him and glanced down at what he was writing. “You might as well not lie.”

Heero looked down at the papers. “Oh.” He began filling out the papers again, using real information this time.

Sally half-smiled. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting to see how Duo is.”

“Not sitting here right now. I mean, here, in the area.”

“Mission,” Heero replied.

Sally looked around. “Come into my office, okay?”

Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly . . . “How’s Duo?”

“If I find out, will you come talk to me?”

Heero considered. “Sure.”

Sally nodded and stood, walking over to the desk. A few minutes later, she came back. “He’ll be fine, he’s unconscious, come with me.”

“Okay.” Heero stood up and followed her, handing the paperwork to a nurse as he passed by. He ignored her as she called after him, then they were in the relative safety of Sally’s office.

“Now. What are you doing here?”

“Taking out the armaments base,” Heero said, as matter-of-factly as if it was something anybody could be doing. “I don’t know why they had so many mobile suits there. I’m working on it.”

Sally raised an eyebrow. “Where’s the rest of the team?”

“Elsewhere,” Heero replied.

“I see,” Sally said.

“I’m willing to bet you don’t,” Heero said.

Sally just rolled her eyes. “Well, for your information, that wasn’t just any armaments base. It was a testing base for Mobile Dolls.”

Heero blinked. “Mobile Dolls?”

“They’re a new OZ weapon,” Sally explained. “They don’t have pilots, and they can work together, coordinated.”

Heero rubbed his temples. “This would explain why we had so much trouble.”

Sally nodded. “Since there are no pilots, and they’re relatively inexpensive to make, they don’t care how many they lose. You’re lucky you made it out alive.”

“We would’ve made it out fine if that stupid idiot had listened to me,” Heero grumbled.

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t know! He seems to have a death wish. That’s all I can think of. I kept saying we should retreat and he kept saying that he was having too much fun.”

“Oh,” Sally finally said. Then she sighed. “Well, do you want to see him?”

“Of course I want to see him,” Heero snapped.

Sally raised an eyebrow at his vehemence. “Okay. Follow me.”

****

Name: Duo Maxwell

Age: 15, or somewhere around there, I think

Date of Birth: 15 years ago, obviously.

Gender: Male, except for his hair

Address: None

Phone number: None

Medical history: Yes, he has one.

Allergies: How should I know?

Insurance: None that I know of

****

“Dr. Po?”

“Yes?”

“These forms are . . . um . . .”

“Never mind. Don’t worry about it.”

****

I’ve been forced to write my journal on regular paper, rather than in my computer. I’ll type it in later. I find I can’t write as quick as I can type. This irritates me.

To back up a little, we have several rather large problems. To begin with, OZ has a new weapon. Secondly, Duo is injured. Thirdly, Duo is an idiot.

To back up further, Duo and I were attacking an armaments base tonight. There was a new system there called Mobile Dolls. (I’ve learned all this from Sally Po, the doctor who saved us at New Edwards.) These are apparently unmanned, self-controlled mobile suits. They have very heavy weaponry, good strategy programs, and there were a lot of them. Zero advised me to retreat, so I attempted to advise Duo, who told me he was ‘having too much fun.’

This resulted in him getting slammed into a building and having several beam rifles use up their store of energy on him and him alone. Fortunately, I managed to haul him out of there before we both got killed. Howard advised that I take him to the hospital. So now I’m sitting here waiting for the little jerk to wake up. I find myself feeling bad. He looks so much . . . smaller now.

Of course, this is all his fault. But there’s definitely something I’m missing. Duo isn’t stupid. There must be something that made him stay . . .

And I still don’t know why he calls himself Shinigami, damn it.

****

To: 03@colony.net

From: 01@colony.net

Re: Problem

Please don’t send any missions for a while. Duo was injured in our last battle and he’ll need at least a week to recover. I’ll let you know when to start sending us information again. How are Quatre and Wufei?

Please find any and all information you can on Mobile Dolls. They’re apparently quite dangerous.

Heero

****

To: 01@colony.net

From: 03@colony.net

Re: Re: Problem

Things are pretty quiet here. I’ll try to find that information you asked for. Just one question, however: When exactly was Duo injured?

Trowa

****

To: 03@colony.net

From: 01@colony.net

Re: Re: Re: Problem

The mission came to a rather spectacular failure at 23:44 hours yesterday night. Why do you ask?

Heero

****

To: 01@colony.net

From: 03@colony.net

Re: Re: Re: Re: Problem

It’s a rather long story. Somehow, Quatre knew when it happened. I’m working on figuring out how.

Trowa

****

“Nnnnn.”

“Duo? Are you awake?”

“I hope not . . . oh God, just kill me now . . .”

Heero rolled his eyes and slumped into the standard hospital issue chair. It was a mustard yellow color. Hideous, really. Duo was in the one bed in the room; Sally had pulled strings to get him into a single room. “Duo?”

“Nnnngh,” Duo replied. He lifted one hand to rub his eyes blearily. “Am I alive?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“You were an idiot.”

“It’s always my fault, isn’t it,” Duo said in a much-put-upon tone.

“Just this time, really,” Heero replied. “Though, since we were going up against an unknown enemy, I suppose you can be forgiven. Next time, however, when I say to retreat, try listening to me.”

“Yeah, well, shut up,” Duo said. “I feel like shit. What’s wrong with me?”

Heero listed it off. “Three broken ribs, two cracked, concussion, multiple lacerations, electrical burns, and bruises. And blood loss.”

“Is that the best of the news?”

“No. The best news is that we were beaten by OZ’s new superweapon, which we’re going to have to figure out some way to fight.”

“Oh.” Duo’s face fell. “Where are we?”

“A hospital about twenty miles away from the school.”

“That doesn’t sound safe.”

“It’s okay. I know the doctor. She’s the one who was at New Edwards.”

“Oh. Well, that’s all right then.” He paused. “Didn’t we have to . . . fill out forms and stuff?”

“Yes. Sally took care of it.”

“Oh. My head hurts.”

“Go back to sleep, Duo.”

“Sure, order me around . . .” Duo’s voice trailed off as he fell asleep again.

“Baka,” Heero whispered, brushing Duo’s hair out of his face.

“Heero?” Sally stuck her head into the room. “You still here?”

“Yes,” Heero answered.

“You should get some rest,” Sally told him sternly. “You haven’t done anything other than sit here and fanatically check your mail on my computer. You need some sleep and some food.”

“Hn,” Heero replied.

“I’ll bring you some dinner.”

“Do what you want.”

“Then you’re going to get some sleep.”

“Hn.”

“Or else I’ll tell Duo that you were insisting on staying up to watch him sleep.”

Heero just gave her a Yuy-Death-Glare (TM).

“I thought you’d see it my way.”

****

Part Fourteen
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