‘He’s going to ruin the mission one of these days’

‘Shut up Duo’

‘Maxwell, if you don’t be quiet, Quatre will be finding your body around the safe house for weeks...’

‘I feel so sorry for him… but he’s just got to much energy for all of us… I guess…’

‘Maxwell watch your back next mission, because if you’re caught then I KNOW you’ll blurt everything… you’ve got a big enough mouth…”

“I swear… one of these days, if OZ doesn’t kill him then I will…’

These things danced around in Duo’s head as he sat in the quiet field, with nothing but the flowers, bees and himself. He had burst from the safe house after the twentieth ‘you’re going to ruin the mission Duo’.

He was to say the very least; utterly sick of people telling him stuff like that… it can damage a person’s ego pretty badly, not that Duo had much a very large ego.

He sighed and decided that it was probably time to head back to the safe house, he stood up slowly, grimacing in pain, the bruises gained from being captured last were still fresh.

As he walked, he tried to keep his mind off what the others had said about him, but it all came crashing back to him when he silently opened the door and entered the safety of the house and he heard the others talking.

“Dammit! Why does that baka have to leave like that.” That was unmistakably Wufei.

“Hn…” Heero.

“Maybe… he’s joined OZ…” Quatre?!?! How could he say such a thing.

“Maybe someone should go look for him..” Trowa.

I was growing increasingly angry, and when I’m angry things become broken, including faces, skulls and other inanimate objects.

“No need,” I growled from my place in the doorway, making everyone else in the room jump, “Thanks a whole hell of a lot, I couldn’t think less of you all right now… I had thought you were my friends, apparently not, now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go find myself a hotel room, I’m not staying anywhere near you assholes anymore… and next time I get captured, maybe I’ll think twice about staying quiet and getting the shit beaten out of me!” I yelled this last part, before leaving the room. I got into the cockpit of my beloved Shinigami, and started it up quickly, the other four rushed into the hanger, but it was to late. And as a last little goodbye present, I sealed the hanger doors closed with the heat from my thermal scythe.

I sighed as I sped away towards the closest OZ base with suitable shuttles for carrying mobile suits to space… I had decided to go home… back to L2 and start out a completely new life, gundam… and gundam pilot free… In other words… I was giving up.

/1430 hours/

As I sped through the air something suddenly rocked Deathscythe. It couldn’t have been one of the others; they would have had one hell of a time tracking me when I was going at this speed and when I was in stealth mode. Deathscythe rocked again, this time throwing me forward with bruising force into the harness. I hissed in pain. I looked around desperately, searching for the enemy. No luck… ohhhhh shit… I thought. OZ had recently come up with a new model MS, one with stealth abilities not unlike Deathscythes… and worst of all, they had figured out a way to track the signs of my cloaking, which the other pilots hadn’t even learned to do yet…

~~~~

A well-aimed shot knocked out the stealth, and a second well aimed shot knocked out the thrusters that allowed me to stay suspended in the air. I crashed to the forest floor below me and my head smashed against the headrest put there so I didn’t break my neck is such situations. Because the headrest was there, and my head had hit so hard, I seemed to momentarily loose the ability to move, therefore I couldn’t make my gundam get up, meaning I was also defenceless. I just sat there, my vision clouding quickly… I must have hurt my head worse then I thought.

~~~~

I tried to stay awake as well as I could, but it was no use and the blackness quickly surrounded me as I passed out.

/1747 hours/

I didn’t know what had woken me, the painful throb in my head or stares of about four other people… I never could stay unconscious with people staring at me…

~~~~

They didn’t seem to know I was awake, so I had time to get my bearings. I was sitting up in a chair in which I was cuffed to… damn…. I tried to raise my head slightly, it was now or never for them to find out I was awake. I raised my head the rest of the way and couldn’t stifle my groan as the room spun painfully around me. I could see them grin.

I noted that the uniforms of these people were quite different then the uniforms of normal OZ members, “Who the hell are you?” I asked, grimacing at the pitifully weak voice that came out, and it was true that I was feeling weak.

“Secret officers of OZ…” stated the one that seemed to be the leader of the group, because this person had a uniform that was as different from the others in the room as theirs were different from the other OZ members, “and I believe you have some information that his Excellency wishes to have as well…” she continued.

My first thought was to tell them where to go, but then I remembered what the others had said about me, “And what will you do if I don’t tell you?”

The officer grinned, “Beat you until you couldn’t even be categorized as pulp, then use your remains for fertilizer for the beautiful forest right outside.”

Duo couldn’t help it… he turned slightly pale. The people looked perfectly capable and willing to do what they were threatening.

The head officer continued, “You’ve gotten away before because the other pilots knew where to find you… no one knows you’ve been captured, not even the press, we caught you rather close to here while testing our new MS, what did you think of them, by the way?” she asked.

I grimaced. “They will be tough opponents…” I stated, “But the other pilots and myself will figure out a way to beat them… we always do…”

She laughed, “You won’t make it out of here to warn the other pilots… why don’t you just tell us what we want to know… it will save you a lot of pain,” she said.

I snorted, “But for how long…” I murmured

She chuckled, “I have an idea… how about… you call them and warn them about our MS, and at the same time we’ll track where their signal is coming from…. Yes that sounds good,” she says, “And if you refuse, then we’ll just beat you.”

One of the others pulled up a table and placed a vid-phone onto it, “What’s the number?” he asked

Duo stared for a moment, would it be a good idea, he hated them, but they disserved to be warned… yeah… he’d use the chance to warn the others then…. What then? The others just get blown to pieces?

He recited the phone number, he grinned, “And if you say something we don’t like, then we’ll take over the call…” he said.

Duo grimaced, this wasn’t sounding very good, the number was dialled. A very distressed looking Quatre answered the phone, he stared at him for a long moment before yelling, “DUO!!!” the braided pilot winced as the sound went strait to his already pounding head.

Again, he grimaced, “Listen, don’t ask me why I care, but I’m calling to warn you… about a group of very powerful MS, they have stealth mode and…” conscience kicked in all of a sudden, and with a growl, “Quatre, hang up now! They’re tracing your signal.”

Quatre looked confused, “Who is?”

Duo looked sideways quickly and saw that they were almost done tracing and that they were closing in on me, “Dammit Quatre! Just hang up!”

“We have them!” yelled one voice.

Duo yelped softly as he felt a very sudden pain across his cheek and guessed that he had been punched, the base of his braid was then grabbed, and a cheek pressed against his own so that another face could be shown on the screen on Quatre’s end.

“We’ll be seeing you soon,” it was the commanding officer. She then turned the screen off, right after watching Quatre scramble, “Good job… Duo. We’ll be seeing you very soon; we’ll bring your friends... should we take his MS? It was repaired right?” the other three shook their heads.

“The other pilots might know how to track him alone…” said one of them, and the commander nodded.

They all left.

Their biggest mistake was leaving Duo without supervision, another of their mistakes was using normal cuffs on the self proclaimed Shinigami. So they had repaired Deathscythe? Good…

The braided pilot got out of the cuffs easily and went the way they had. Seems they had already left because when Duo finally found the hanger where Deathscythe was, their MS were gone. He climbed up to my familiar cockpit and started Deathscythe up.

When Deathscythe was finally running he sped towards the safe house. Duo had the advantage to the OZ MS, he was faster. he quickly set up a half assed tracking for the secret officers and sped towards the safe house as fest as he could. When he arrived at the safe house, it was to find the other gundams badly damaged and still not sure where the enemy was… they probably thought the enemy was Duo himself… he set up the communications link between himself and the other gundams and blurted out, “I don’t know WHY I’m helping you guys,” before slashing into one of the enemy suits.

While the braided pilot was setting up the scanner, he also set up a system that would disrupt the scanner of every MS within range, except his own of course. he slashed through a second enemy MS. Two down, two to go…. Three down, one to go. I could only guess that the one left was the commander. My suspicions were confirmed as a new voice made itself heard through my comm..

“How the hell did you get out?! I underestimated you…”

Duo chuckled, and this was so everyone could hear, “Underestimations often lead to death…” and he slashed through the final MS. With the enemy destroyed he deactivated the stealth mode and set the Gundam down on the ground. He then opened the hatch and stepped out and surveyed the damage that had been done to both, the safe house, and the other gundams… the Maguanacs would not be pleased….

/2134 hours/

Quatre would NOT let me leave, not until I explained exactly what had driven me away in the first place.

So here I was, trying to explain, “Think about it!” I snarled at him, “Think good and hard…”

Quatre frowned, “I’d prefer to hear it from you..” he muttered.

I decided to make a show of imitating the guys, “ ‘maybe… he joined OZ…’, ‘I swear… one of these days, if OZ doesn’t kill him then I will…’, ‘He’s going to ruin the mission one of these days’ And that’s only a very small portion of it… all of the three I mentioned were ones where you guys thought I wasn’t listening… it hurts, it really does…”

Quatre looked sad and was about to say something when Duo burst in again, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go find a nice little colony and stay there…”

I left the room, got back into my Gundam, started it up and zoomed away, again headed towards the base I had been talking about only recently.

/800 hours/

I had spent the last hour reprogramming the new additional programs to Deathscythe, not that I would ever be using it… I just didn’t want to be caught by those people again, if there happened to be more of them. He had just gotten ride of the scanner jamming one, and had programmed the other to near perfection… when it suddenly went off..

(((BEEP, BEEP)))

I looked down at the screen and saw five of the damned things coming towards me… they were still a great distance off, and I decided that I would not fight them… I would abandon the shuttle now. And abandon it I did.

I cut through and started moving away, however… the enemy MS seemed to be a lot closer then I had expected, because I was attacked almost immediately. I would have to fight. I used my scanners to detect them and was about to start attacking when one of the MS latched ONTO Deathscythe. I saw the telltale signs of a beam blaster powering up and just as the beam began to fire, I moved, so that the cockpit was not in the direct beam.

The deadly beam was enough to melt away a good half of my cockpit, and the explosion from the MS right behind me was enough to throw me into the oblivions of space… which is exactly what happened.