Anyone ever seen Ruin Explorers/Fam and Ihrie?

This is for you... and for whoever it was that put up those Rising Earth pics of Duo the chipmunk. They were cute enough to inspire this ^_^;

Duo watched the blast from Wing Zero's gun head towards the fragment of Libra still heading for Earth. It expanded as it left the barrel, the golden blast of energy beginning to burn through the piece of scrap metal that was beginning to fall through the atmosphere.

But it wasn't enough, the fragment, once the blast had passed through, was still big enough to pose a threat to Earth's climate.

As Wing continued to fall through the atmosphere ahead of Libra, Duo sighed. There he goes, trying to self-destruct again. But there were things that could still be done, though most people

probably thought otherwise. After all, if Heero and Wing Zero couldn't do it, who could?

A light touch to his thrusters and Duo was heading towards the falling fragment, cackling madly and half-hysterically. He hadn't wanted it to come to this; it was too embarrassing. But with the

fate of the world and all that at stake, he supposed he could deal with a little embarrassment.

So, as he drew ever closer to the fragment, he tuned out the worried queries from Quatre and began to cast the only spell he knew was fully capable of spreading Libra into atoms across the

atmosphere. His tongue twisted with strange words, familiar from a lifetime of study, though unused for a long time.

And as the final word was spoken, Libra began to glow then it disappeared in a blast of harmless light and Duo was straining to see his monitors from where he sat in the middle of his seat.

A sweatdrop appeared on his head as he realized he'd forgotten to organize things so his Shinigami would land itself safely; somewhere he could sit until he'd worked out how to get his hands on those pills...

With a flick of a tiny chipmunk's tail, Duo scrambled to the edge of his seat, looking up at the controls across the chasm that separated them. This was _so_ not good, he chittered to himself

before realizing what he was doing and clamping his mouth shut.

He heard Quatre's voice loudly in the cockpit, yelling for him, warning him that if he didn't pull out of his current trajectory, he'd end up burning up on entry. He could hear the shock in the blonde's voice, and not just from his current situation. Quatre obviously wanted to know what had just happened.

Yeah, he thought to himself, and I thought I'd avoid telling you what happened, if at all possible. I _would_ change course, if I could.

If he got out of this, he was really and truly going to kill Professor G for accidentally casting this damn curse on him. Why the Professor had decided he wanted the pilot of Deathscythe to learn magic, he had no idea, but he'd gotten into more trouble through that than anything. And when Professor G had decided to learn magic as well and use him to practice on...

It was a good thing he had teeth he could grind in this form.

Uncaring of the spell he'd chosen to cast first, without _any_ training, the Professor had sent it flying at Duo and from then on, every time he dared cast any magic, he'd end up like this; a

_chipmunk_!

His own teacher had managed to create something to reverse the effects, but, not expecting to have to cast magic in the middle of a battle, he'd left the pills back on the Peacemillion, sitting on a shelf in the bathroom cabinet.

The heat of re-entry began to make itself known and Duo grabbed his tail, fanning it in front of his face and had resigned himself to being barbequed when a loud clang was heard and the

Gundam began to turn, pulling back enough for the worst of the strain to be taken off Deathscythe.

"Duo?" Heero's voice sounded from the speakers in the cockpit, sounding more concerned than he'd ever heard before.

He considered answering, but Heero would likely think it static, so he curled up on the seat until Heero had landed, placing Shinigami gently on the ground. Then he waited impatiently for Heero to open the door.

Eventually he did, and Duo grinned, as well as a chipmunk could grin, up at Heero, who was looking baffled by the cockpit's emptiness. Then his eyes fell on the tiny chipmunk sitting on the

seat, wearing a priest's costume and a braid, smiling winsomely up at him with violet eyes.

He blinked and stared.

He blinked again.

"Duo...?" the question came tentatively.

Duo nodded, blushing, and began to wave his arms around as he tried to explain.

Heero didn't stick around to hear though, as soon as Duo had started talking, with his high chipmunk's voice, the Japanese pilot had fallen backwards out of the cockpit in a dead faint.

It was Duo's turn to blink.

He huffed impatiently and, planting his hands on tiny chipmunk hips, he began tapping his foot, tail twitching behind him.

And he waited for Heero to recover.

He waited a long time.