“Maxwell!” was the first thing that Lady Une heard as the former Gundam pilots entered for work. Wufei had been the first to join, while the others had gone off for other careers. However, it hadn’t taken long for them to become restless.[1]
Now, they were members of the Preventers. They worked well together, even if Duo was somewhat... rambunctious. The Lady shook her head and strolled into her office. ‘Yes, Treize-sama, these pilots are our future...’ Her thought trailed off as she saw her chair facing the the wall. Cautiously, she approached it.
“Can I help you...?” she asked, reaching the chair and turning it. As it turned, her eyes widened in horror. She backed up, hitting a button on her desk. “Barton, Chang, Maxwell, Winner, Yuy: report to my office now!”
* * *
Duo was still dodging paper clips and memo pads when he heard the intercom crackle. He stopped and Wufei narrowly avoided crashing into him. “Barton, Chang, Maxwell, Winner, Yuy: report to my office now!” came Une’s voice, tinged with anger and... something else.
“Better go see what the boss wants. She loves us, really,” Duo said over his shoulder to the other agents as he bounced off to see Une. Wufei muttered something uncomplimentary in Duo’s general direction, straightening his own uniform and quickly marching towards Une’s office.
Quatre popped his head out from his cubicle, then indicated it was safe to come out. Heero and Trowa had twin faint smirks on their faces. They strolled towards Une’s office, postures deceptively casual.
“So, how much you want to bet Duo pulled a prank on Une?” Heero asked. Trowa shook his head.
“I think she’s pulling our leg.”
“What do you think Quatre?” Heero asked. Quatre shook his head faintly.
“Something is wrong,” was all Quatre would say, and then they were inside.
* * *
“Oh shit,” Duo said quietly as he walked into the office. Wufei let loose a string of curses in Chinese. Heero, Trowa and Quatre walked up behind them. Quatre gasped, holding both hands over his mouth. Heero and Trowa were far more subtle in their revulsion.
Beyond Une was her chair, turned so they could see it. Sitting on her chair was a severed head. It’s eyes were frozen open in horror, teeth bared back with a piece of paper clenched in it’s teeth. It’s hair streamed long and loose around it, brushing the floor. A not overly large amount of blood spattered the chair’s seat and the floor.
“I found this when I came in. Tell me right now this is a harmless prank and I won’t kill you. Yet,” Une managed. Duo shook his head. Quatre walked forward, face now composed into an unreadable mask. He knelt near the chair, avoiding the blood. He gently pulled the paper out of it’s mouth and examined it.[2]
“It’s real,” Quatre said simply. He reached out to close it’s eyes when he noticed something. “Heero, come here for a moment,” he said, peering intently at the face. Heero rather reluctantly came forward. As he approached, he could see what Quatre could see.
“Shimatta...” Heero muttered.
“What is it?” Duo demanded, stepping forward. Heero held Duo back but it was too late.
“Shit...” Duo said. Wufei made a noise in irritation.
“Violet eyes, long chestnut hair,” Quatre said simply. Wufei’s eyes widened. Quatre read the note aloud. “April Fool’s.”
* * *
Une ordered a Forensics team to her office to clean and investigate further. Now the Preventer headquarters were abuzz with rumours.
“Listen to me,” Une ordered. “We will not allow such a disgusting trick to stop us from protecting the Earth Sphere. We will continue as if nothing has happened, and we will get answers soon. Dismissed.” This last was so pointed that they knew not to argue.
Preventers went on their merry way. Heero had switched desks with Wufei so he could be close to a very shaken Duo. Quatre was talking with Trowa and Wufei.
“The question is, why would someone choose to leave such a thing in Une’s office, and why was Duo the target,” Quatre said.
“It could be all of us,” Trowa pointed out. Quatre nodded thoughtfully.
“Okay. Why?” he asked. Trowa lowered his head in deep thought.
“Perhaps our involvement with the war?” Trowa put in. Quatre nodded again, waving for him to continue. Quatre’s expression was blank except for a slightly thoughtful look about him. Trowa tried not to shiver. Quatre had gone ‘Zero system’, and had opened the part of himself that did not feel, only observed and analysed. It was eerie.
“But why would they choose such a manner to do it in?” Quatre asked.
“Because they are a sick fuck,” came Duo’s voice. He was leaning heavily on the cubicle divider, Heero right behind him, hand placed soothingly on his lower back.
“I think the most pressing question is, if the head was in the office, where is the rest?” Wufei said quietly. Except for Quatre, there was a collective shudder.
* * *
“The report is in,” Une said, tossing the report on Quatre’s lap. Quatre opened it, blue eyes scanning the contents.
“The parallel is... startling if not surprising,” Quatre said finally. Five pairs of eyes looked at him. “His name is Samuel Rider and he went missing from the L2 colony system about 48 hours ago. He was heavily involved in church activities and was nicknamed ‘the Priest’.” Quatre shut the file.
Duo shuddered and Heero wrapped his arms around Duo’s waist. Une said nothing about the display. Duo needed Heero’s support. Une smiled and touched Duo’s shoulder gently.
“Take a break and go to lunch,” she said. Duo stared at her like she was nuts.
“You expect me to EAT after this?!”
* * *
“Come on, you need to eat something,” Heero said as all five former Gundam pilots walked into the cafeteria and grabbed trays. Quatre went first, then Duo, Heero, Wufei and finally Trowa.
Quatre smiled at the cafeteria ladies, who twittered and smiled back. They began pulling lids off of the dishes. One shrieked. Five sets of eyes were automatically drawn to the dishes.
“Oh god... not again...” Duo whispered. Four severed fingers were sitting amongst the mashed potatoes.
“Someone get Une. NOW!” Heero snapped.
* * *
“Does anyone else feel like we’re stuck in an old Stephen King novel?” Duo muttered, rubbing his arms as he tried to get rid of his goose bumps.
“Anne Rice,” Quatre muttered as he stared off into space. Trowa placed his left hand on Quatre’s shoulder, the thick golden band twinkling on his ring finger. Quatre reached up and put his hand over Trowa’s, a matching band on his own left ring finger.[3]
“Novel or not, someone is very, very disturbed,” Wufei commented quietly. He was more than a little glad that Sally was off visiting Noin’s family. It wasn’t that he thought she couldn’t take care of herself. She had shown him that. But he wouldn’t be sane and still wish that she was here.
“Report,” Une said tiredly. “And now people want to know what the hell is going on.”
Quatre grabbed the report, flipping it open. “One of the fingers matched Samuel Rider. The other three are from three as-yet-to-be-identified victims. They’ve taken fingerprints and DNA samples and are running them through the computers now. What they can tell us is that the fingers are all the fourth, probably from the left... hand,” Quatre closed the file, staring at his own left hand, then at the band glittering on it.
Duo fiddled with the silver band on his own left ring finger, then at it’s mate on Heero’s hand. He shivered and kept shivering. Quatre turned to him.
“Do you want your jacket?” Quatre asked gently. Duo nodded. He did not need this shit. Mobile Suit versus Gundam battles were cleaner somehow. You rarely saw the other person’s face when they died, though the cut of radio screams were enough for the nightmares of a thousand lifetimes.
Quatre walked over to the large closet that Duo had put his coat in that morning, while things had still been sane. He opened the door. There was a slight noise and Quatre looked up. He gasped.
* * *
There was the sound of tumbling and the others looked over. Something fell out of the closet, assaulting Quatre as they fell around him. The pilots went running, Trowa reaching Quatre first.
Around Quatre were severed arms, four of which were missing a finger. Quatre was shaking. Trowa wrapped his arms around Quatre tightly.
“And then, there were five,” Wufei said. They looked, and indeed there were five distinct sets of arms.
* * *
“They’re still looking for the other four victims,” Une said. Now, both Quatre and Duo were a mess, while Heero, Trowa and Wufei were barely clinging to sanity.
“Have they finished searching the building yet?” Trowa demanded as he rubbed Quatre’s back. Quatre was rocking back and forth, lost in a world of pain and trauma. Duo didn’t look that much better.
“Lady Une!” called the head of the forensic search team. Une looked over at the man clad in a full biohazard containment suit.
“Yes Pietersen?” Une demanded.
“We’ve found nothing, and we went through every room, closet and cranny in the entire building,” Pietersen said. Une sighed in relief.
“We need to go back to work,” Une reminded gently. Preventers began returning to the building, the five pilots last.
Wufei looked up at the building before entering. He had a bad feeling about this.
* * *
“Yuy, copy room now. Barton, warehouse 371. Chang, where’s the Bunsten file?” Une barked. After searching the building, dozens of calls had flooded the Preventer’s head office for cases. It was as if they had coordinated their calls to overwhelm them now.
Heero ran to the copy room and flipped on the lights. He stopped, leaning against the wall and sinking down. Four sets of very dead, blank eyes stared at him. He recognised the faces: Quatre’s, Trowa’s, Wufei’s and his own. His pseudo-head was resting on the copy machine, while the other three rested on cabinets.
But that wasn’t the worst. What was worse was the writing in blood that adorned the walls. Over and over again “Are you lost?”[4]
“Yuy-san, is there something wrong?” asked one of the delivery girls. She took one look inside the room and started screaming.
* * *
“Warehouse 371...” Trowa muttered, unlocking the door and sliding it up. It revealed a macabre scene. Two headless, armless, naked torsos sat on fake looking logs in front of an artificial fire. They were moulded in place by wiring. There was a third equally naked, armless and headless torso ‘standing’ between them. It- he- had been made fake arms with more wiring and was holding a tray with two bowls.[5]
From where he was standing, he could see and smell that both bowls were filled with blood.
In letters dripping, the walls proclaimed “Strange boys”.
Trowa’s stomach rebelled and he fell to his knees, heaving.
* * *
Wufei muttered as he stalked down to his car to get the Bunsten file. Of all the stupid things to do, forgetting the file in his car had to be the stupidest. Though, he thought he’d brought it with him this morning...
Stalking to his car, he went to the passenger’s side in the front and unlocked the door, pulling it open. He momentarily cursed the fact that he’d pick tinted windows. Sure enough, the file was resting peacefully on the seat. Wufei nodded, picking up the file when something caught his eye.
He nearly lost it right there. In the back seat of his car were two headless, armless and very naked torsos. They were placed in a grotesque mockery of sex, one ‘taking’ the other. Both were smeared with blood, and written on the rear view window were the words “Death and Destruction”.[6]
Wufei distanced himself from the car as fast as possible, barely remembering to slam the door and clutched the file in his hands. Running back to the building, all he could think was ‘we’re not safe. We’re not safe anymore.’
* * *
After a second sweep of the building, surrounding buildings and vehicles, they could find nothing more. Hoping and praying that this time they were all safe, they returned to work. The rest of the day was peacefully busy.
One by one, the pilots ventured out of their blessedly safe cubicles into the other parts of the building. The most traumatising thing they saw were a few fanged, long-legged dust bunnies[7], but the dust bunnies behaved themselves admirably.
Far more peacefully then it begun, the day ended. And then, the computers went black.
“What the hell is going on now?” Duo demanded. His question was shortly answered.
[I CAN S33 INT0 Y0UR S0UL]
[I CAN S33 Y0UR M0V3S]
[I AM IN Y0UR MIND]
[N0 3SCAP3]
[FIND M3]
[IF Y0U CAN...]
[B3H0LD TH3 P0W3R 0F Z3R0]
The words glowed in yellow on the screen. Heero seized the keyboard, trying to override for a trace. The message faded, except for the three’s and zero’s. They floated across the screen, and over and over they saw a moving stream of numbers.
[303030303030303030303030]
Eventually, they faded.
Heero and Duo swore in tandem, then said: “Trant.”[8]
The End
Well, I’ve successfully scared myself. Great.
1- I’ve heard it complained about that people use the idea that all five of the pilots become Preventers, even though Wufei is the only one who joins and does so in Endless Waltz. However, if you read Preventer 5, Quatre outright says that he’s not happy, and Duo’s frequent sojourns to look at the stars probably indicate he isn’t happy either. Heero just shows up, they don’t ‘find’ him. And Trowa... well, he seems happy at the circus but the fact he doesn’t hesitate for an instant probably means he would lean towards Preventer work.
2- Okay, this may confuse some people, especially with what happens in later scenes. I can picture Quatre accessing the part of his mind that the Zero system enhanced, the cool, clear headed, analytic manner of looking at things. No, this doesn’t last. It’s far too creepy for logic.
3- Yes, they’re married. So flipping sue me. It also followed the logic of the nut-job’s mind.
4- Yes, from the Endless Waltz flashback.
5- This would be the scene during the series with Trowa and Wufei during the show. She, however, does NOT say ‘strange boys’, she said it before that, when Heero and Trowa were laughing. It should be noted that the Wufei and Trowa scene does NOT occur during the Graphic Novel.
6- Destruction is my nickname for Heero ‘cause he does love to bust stuff...
7- *giggle* Okay, I brought back the dust bunnies because we were in desperate need of some humour.
8- Trant is the schizoid from the middle of the series that makes Heero and Duo test Zero. Trant = trente = 30. Also, in the message, completely by coincidence, when I changed the Es to 3s and the Os to 0s, there were exactly the same number of 3s and 0s. Spooky shit.
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