Categories > Anime/Manga > Gundam Wing > Christmas Dreams and New Year's Wishes
Chapter 3 Time for Action
By the time the guards came to pick Duo and Heero up, the plan was perfected as much as it could be. The knife was tucked safely in Duo’s shoe, and each of them had a piece of brick resting behind their back as they sat on the cot. The guards actually came into the cell holding .44 Magnums and motioned for Duo and Heero to precede them out of the cell. Knowing that they would have to be quick, Heero and Duo got up still holding the brick pieces behind their backs. The guards motioned once again for them to go out of the cell and while they were nodding their heads Duo and Heero struck. Heero moved faster than Duo, but both did the job. The guards were knocked out and just like that, Duo and Heero were armed. They stripped the guards and put the uniforms on before locking the cell.
As Duo was pulling the shirt off the guard he was going to impersonate he took a good look at the eyes. There seemed to be something on them that prevented the eyes from closing. He opened the eyes wider and noticed a thin sheet of something covering the eye. It was too much of a coincidence to think that it was a prescription contact lens so he drew Heero’s attention to it.
“Hey Heero, take a look, there’s something on this guy’s eyes.” Duo held the eye open so Heero could see better then watched as Heero checked the other guard. Heero did not say anything, but reached down to touch the eyeball and came back up with a colored contact. Swiftly, Heero put it on his own eye.
“Ewww, man that was on that guy’s eye! That’s just gross!” Duo said but Heero simply took the other one and put that on too. Then he turned to Duo.
“Transitions lenses...” Heero said simply and stood. Duo was thoroughly grossed out as he put his own on. He discovered that Heero was right and now he could see clearly.
“Ok, let’s go.” Duo said and headed off toward the all too familiar room where he counted on finding the woman.
“Hn.” (Translation for those of you who aren’t Duo: You said it.)
Duo and Heero arrived at the room quicker than they thought it would take. Silently, they hugged the wall on either side of the door. Heero looked over at Duo and gave him the signal to kick the door open. Duo took a deep breath and positioned himself.
“Here we come, bitch.” With that, Duo kicked with all his strength and busted the door open. Heero went in low and trained his gun on the chair. It did not move so Duo stepped around carefully to check and see if the woman was in it. He was actually relieved when the chair was empty. “She’s not here.”
Heero holstered his gun and started looking around the desk. Duo looked around the room and thought to himself ‘So this is what this looks like’. After a moment, Heero pulled out a stack of papers and handed them to Duo.
“Stage 1 complete.” Heero said and began to head back out the door.
Duo folded the papers and put them in one of his pockets. He was about to follow Heero when somewhere behind him glass shattered. It could only have been a bullet that whizzed by him and cut a thin stream of blood from his neck. It grazed Duo, but hit Heero in the back somewhere near his shoulder. Duo swung around and shot the guy standing behind a busted mirror. As the guy dropped, Duo turned back to Heero and saw he was kneeling on the floor. He was breathing heavy and clutching his chest.
“Heero? You ok?” Duo asked panicking. It looked as though the bullet had lodged itself somewhere in Heero’s shoulder.
“Just go.” Heero said and Duo could hear the labor in his voice.
Duo was hesitant to leave him there, but trusted Heero to be ok. After all, Duo himself had shot Heero three times when they had first met and that had not phased the pilot a bit. Nor was Heero phased when he’d had all those broken bones and still jumped out the military hospital to roughly land on the beach below. Sure Duo had had to help him, but Heero had been just fine for the most part. Still, Heero’s sudden labored breathing worried him. Quickly, Duo went and peeked into the room the guy was hiding in. It looked pretty big and had another door leading from it. Duo was definitely not leaving Heero behind so he threw one of Heero’s arms around his neck and dragged him as best he could. Heero was silent but Duo could hear his damned labored breathing. Doubts began nagging at Duo as he realized that Heero was seriously hurt.
“C’mon Heero, stay with me. Don’t you dare die on me cause I’m not dragging your dead ass out of here.”
Joking around was not really what Duo should have been doing, but it made it easier for him to leave Heero’s side to search the room. There was nothing in it so Duo picked Heero back up and went through the door. He was not paying attention and was ambushed on the other side by two guards. Duo was forced to drop Heero in the doorway and pulled his gun. He shot one guard and the other surprised him from the side to kick the gun out of Duo’s hands. Throwing what punches he could, Duo was holding his own until he went down hard on a counter in the room. He hit his head pretty bad and lost consciousness.
When Duo woke up, Heero was holding a still smoking gun and the other guard was dead. Duo could not have been out more than a few seconds. By this time an alarm had been sounded and Duo knew he had to act fast. Not having the time to search for his gun, Duo holstered Heero’s and once again picked up the injured pilot. The room was nothing more than a hallway and Duo hobbled down it as quickly as he could with Heero leaning on him. The hallway led to a courtyard and freedom, but Duo knew he could not leave yet. There was still one more phase to be taken care of before the mission was complete, but what about Heero. It was obvious now that Heero needed medical attention.
Scared to death he would lose Heero and his secret love for years now, Duo decided to damn the mission and get out of there. Half way through the court guards surrounded him and opened fire. Duo got a bullet in the leg before he managed to get him and Heero behind a concrete bench and the little cover it offered. Taking out his gun, Duo shot off as many guards as he could. Heero had lost consciousness so he would be of no help to Duo. The bullets were gone and there were still four guards out barraging the two with bullets. Duo’s mind was working frantically trying to think of a way out of the situation when the voice he had come to hate rang out.
“Hold your fire!” Immediately the bullets stopped. Duo sighed but quickly realized he had hopped out of the frying pan and into the fire.
“Prisoner 1291, come out. Escape is futile, you are surrounded.”
“Yeah right lady, I’ll come out so you can just kill me. Forgive me if I haven’t resigned myself to death just yet.” Duo said under his breath wishing he could tell it to her, but figured it was better to maintain the silence he and Heero had agreed upon.
“You can’t stay there forever.” The voice rang out and Duo could hear her give the command to her guards to sit.
“So that’s how its gonna be. Waiting games are so boring.” Duo said to himself and checked on Heero. The other pilot was still breathing but it did not sound good. Duo was amazed he was not panicking. This was the closest he had ever come to losing Heero. Normally it was Heero saving Duo’s butt.
“Just don’t die on me.” Duo whispered and thought hard about the second phase.
Phase two was supposed to be the assassination of the leader of the group. He wished it was the woman but all intelligence reports had indicated it was a man. Pulling out the papers in his pocket, Duo looked them over for a clue. The papers mentioned an Alex Whitings but had no picture. Assuming that was the leader, and it certainly looked that way, Duo wondered how he could trick his way to Whitings.
Four hours went by and Duo still was locked in a stale mate with Heero’s wound bound as best as Duo could manage. If Heero did not get medical attention soon, Duo would lose him. Somehow that thought gave Duo the strength to wait for the opportune moment. His patience was rewarded when someone came running into the square shouting for “the boss”.
“That has to be this Alex guy we’re supposed to take care of. What are the chances that I’d get lucky and he’d be here?” Duo whispered to the still unconscious Heero.
“Boss! Boss! The DNA samples from the prisoners came in; they are two of the five Gundam pilots. It is unconfirmed which two they are, but the lab is running the possibilities now.”
Duo could not see the soldier or who he was reporting to, and was too scared to risk popping up to see. Besides, he had no weapon to attack with.
“Did I ask you to report?” The woman’s voice came to Duo.
“No…ma’am.” The soldier’s suddenly weak voice replied.
“Then why are you doing so?”
“Sorry ma’am, but your orders were that the information was to be reported immediately.” The soldier hazarded.
“Ah, yes, but we are in a delicate situation here. Normal rules do not apply.”
The soldier and the woman continued the discussion and somewhere in the middle it kicked Duo in the ass. The woman was not some secretary or right hand girl, she was Alex Whitings. The information had been thrown off because Alex was short for Alexander, but it could also be short for Alexandra. Duo smacked himself and rubbed his hand over his face.
“Damn incompetent intelligence! The mission was a bust, I might lose my best friend, and now I’m finding out that the MALE leader we need to get rid off is a FEMALE!”
Duo mumbled violently to himself and wished he had a weapon. He looked around the ground for anything to throw or distract her with when his eyes lit upon the bulge in his sock. He still had the knife! One good throw and it would all be over. Providing of course that Duo had a clear shot and he could still throw a knife like he used to in training. Duo strongly preferred to use guns because hardly anyone fought with knives anymore, and there was a low fair fight level for knife combat. Duo struggled with the badly rusted knife to open the blade. Though it was badly rusted, Duo judged the point was still sharp enough to pierce the woman’s skull, for that was where Duo intended to aim. One quick, clean blow to the head and there would be no chance of some kind of miraculous survival.
Duo crouched as low as he could and listened for an update as to the situation. It seemed that the soldier had gone and the game of waiting was on again. Duo wondered if he had been concentrating too hard to hear any questions she might have asked, but then realized it would not make a difference because of the silent treatment he was giving her. The problem was that Duo had no idea where her head was and needed some kind of indication if he was going to aim on a moment’s notice. He had to trick her into saying something. The longer Duo waited to get Heero help the less chance Heero would be alive for the help to do much.
“Hey lady, what happened to your face anyway?” Duo yelled hoping that breaking the silence would startle her into speaking. If that did not work, he hoped his reference to her condition would do something.
Duo waited with baited breath for Alex to say something. Just when he thought she was going to stay silent, her voice rang out to him full of rage, but Duo could still hear the confidence behind it.
“The first time you speak to me and you make the rudest comment possible?” She sounded angry, amused, and thoroughly confident.
“Yeah, keep thinking you have me trapped bitch. I know where you are now.” Duo said to himself and prepared to stand. He had an idea where her head was and was about sixty percent sure his plan would work. “You got it babe!”
With that final yell out to Alex, Duo popped up fast, aimed and let the knife fly. He did not stay up to see if it reached its planned destination, but dropped as fast as gravity would allow him to. Bullets whizzed by him, but as he hit the ground, Duo noticed the eerie silence. Cautiously, he peeked up and saw with satisfaction the knife had hit its mark. Alex Whitings, FEMALE leader of the current revolution, lay sprawled on the ground with a rusty army knife sticking vulgarly out of her forehead. Her guards were all looking at her and did not notice Duo steal away with Heero.
“Thank god it’s hard to find smart guards these days.” Duo joked to Heero even though Heero could not hear him. They were almost to the door when the sound of a chopper overhead caused the entire base to break out in panic. Guards started running everywhere and though many ran by Duo, he and Heero were ignored. The chopper opened fire and sat itself in the middle of the courtyard. Out of it came Sally Po and Wufei. The Chinese pilot went off on his own errand, while Doctor Sally Po ran straight to Heero and Duo.
“Hi!” She greeted and immediately checked Heero’s condition.
“He’s hurt pretty bad, we have to get him to a hospital immediately. He was shot. What the HELL took you guys so long?” Duo asked her angrily.
“We had to wait for Heero to get out in the open so the tracker in his body would work!” Sally shouted at him over the roar of the chopper.
“TRACKER! WE’VE BEEN IN THIS HELL HOLE FOR TWO ENTIRE WEEKS AND YOU HAD TO WAIT FOR A TRACKER!” Duo was pissed.
“Calm down! Heero had it inserted after the Marimeia incident! The walls here blocked it out, but we picked up on it nice and strong when you guys got out in the courtyard!” Sally shouted as she handed Heero up to Duo and helped strap him into position.
“Where’s Wufei?” Duo asked.
“He went to complete the mission!” Sally answered and rolled her eyes.
“But the mission is already complete! I have the documents we needed right here and Alex Whitings is dead!” Duo took the papers out of his pocket and handed them over to Sally.
“He is? Where?” Duo was confused until he realized everyone else still thought Alex Whitings was a man.
“SHE is right over there!” Duo emphasized the she and pointed to where the woman lay.
Sally looked confused and went over to the body, probably for identification. There did not seem to be any means of identifying her, so Sally brought the corpse over and pulled the bloody knife out.
“We’ll use this for identification!” She yelled and spoke into a radio to call Wufei back.
By the time the guards came to pick Duo and Heero up, the plan was perfected as much as it could be. The knife was tucked safely in Duo’s shoe, and each of them had a piece of brick resting behind their back as they sat on the cot. The guards actually came into the cell holding .44 Magnums and motioned for Duo and Heero to precede them out of the cell. Knowing that they would have to be quick, Heero and Duo got up still holding the brick pieces behind their backs. The guards motioned once again for them to go out of the cell and while they were nodding their heads Duo and Heero struck. Heero moved faster than Duo, but both did the job. The guards were knocked out and just like that, Duo and Heero were armed. They stripped the guards and put the uniforms on before locking the cell.
As Duo was pulling the shirt off the guard he was going to impersonate he took a good look at the eyes. There seemed to be something on them that prevented the eyes from closing. He opened the eyes wider and noticed a thin sheet of something covering the eye. It was too much of a coincidence to think that it was a prescription contact lens so he drew Heero’s attention to it.
“Hey Heero, take a look, there’s something on this guy’s eyes.” Duo held the eye open so Heero could see better then watched as Heero checked the other guard. Heero did not say anything, but reached down to touch the eyeball and came back up with a colored contact. Swiftly, Heero put it on his own eye.
“Ewww, man that was on that guy’s eye! That’s just gross!” Duo said but Heero simply took the other one and put that on too. Then he turned to Duo.
“Transitions lenses...” Heero said simply and stood. Duo was thoroughly grossed out as he put his own on. He discovered that Heero was right and now he could see clearly.
“Ok, let’s go.” Duo said and headed off toward the all too familiar room where he counted on finding the woman.
“Hn.” (Translation for those of you who aren’t Duo: You said it.)
Duo and Heero arrived at the room quicker than they thought it would take. Silently, they hugged the wall on either side of the door. Heero looked over at Duo and gave him the signal to kick the door open. Duo took a deep breath and positioned himself.
“Here we come, bitch.” With that, Duo kicked with all his strength and busted the door open. Heero went in low and trained his gun on the chair. It did not move so Duo stepped around carefully to check and see if the woman was in it. He was actually relieved when the chair was empty. “She’s not here.”
Heero holstered his gun and started looking around the desk. Duo looked around the room and thought to himself ‘So this is what this looks like’. After a moment, Heero pulled out a stack of papers and handed them to Duo.
“Stage 1 complete.” Heero said and began to head back out the door.
Duo folded the papers and put them in one of his pockets. He was about to follow Heero when somewhere behind him glass shattered. It could only have been a bullet that whizzed by him and cut a thin stream of blood from his neck. It grazed Duo, but hit Heero in the back somewhere near his shoulder. Duo swung around and shot the guy standing behind a busted mirror. As the guy dropped, Duo turned back to Heero and saw he was kneeling on the floor. He was breathing heavy and clutching his chest.
“Heero? You ok?” Duo asked panicking. It looked as though the bullet had lodged itself somewhere in Heero’s shoulder.
“Just go.” Heero said and Duo could hear the labor in his voice.
Duo was hesitant to leave him there, but trusted Heero to be ok. After all, Duo himself had shot Heero three times when they had first met and that had not phased the pilot a bit. Nor was Heero phased when he’d had all those broken bones and still jumped out the military hospital to roughly land on the beach below. Sure Duo had had to help him, but Heero had been just fine for the most part. Still, Heero’s sudden labored breathing worried him. Quickly, Duo went and peeked into the room the guy was hiding in. It looked pretty big and had another door leading from it. Duo was definitely not leaving Heero behind so he threw one of Heero’s arms around his neck and dragged him as best he could. Heero was silent but Duo could hear his damned labored breathing. Doubts began nagging at Duo as he realized that Heero was seriously hurt.
“C’mon Heero, stay with me. Don’t you dare die on me cause I’m not dragging your dead ass out of here.”
Joking around was not really what Duo should have been doing, but it made it easier for him to leave Heero’s side to search the room. There was nothing in it so Duo picked Heero back up and went through the door. He was not paying attention and was ambushed on the other side by two guards. Duo was forced to drop Heero in the doorway and pulled his gun. He shot one guard and the other surprised him from the side to kick the gun out of Duo’s hands. Throwing what punches he could, Duo was holding his own until he went down hard on a counter in the room. He hit his head pretty bad and lost consciousness.
When Duo woke up, Heero was holding a still smoking gun and the other guard was dead. Duo could not have been out more than a few seconds. By this time an alarm had been sounded and Duo knew he had to act fast. Not having the time to search for his gun, Duo holstered Heero’s and once again picked up the injured pilot. The room was nothing more than a hallway and Duo hobbled down it as quickly as he could with Heero leaning on him. The hallway led to a courtyard and freedom, but Duo knew he could not leave yet. There was still one more phase to be taken care of before the mission was complete, but what about Heero. It was obvious now that Heero needed medical attention.
Scared to death he would lose Heero and his secret love for years now, Duo decided to damn the mission and get out of there. Half way through the court guards surrounded him and opened fire. Duo got a bullet in the leg before he managed to get him and Heero behind a concrete bench and the little cover it offered. Taking out his gun, Duo shot off as many guards as he could. Heero had lost consciousness so he would be of no help to Duo. The bullets were gone and there were still four guards out barraging the two with bullets. Duo’s mind was working frantically trying to think of a way out of the situation when the voice he had come to hate rang out.
“Hold your fire!” Immediately the bullets stopped. Duo sighed but quickly realized he had hopped out of the frying pan and into the fire.
“Prisoner 1291, come out. Escape is futile, you are surrounded.”
“Yeah right lady, I’ll come out so you can just kill me. Forgive me if I haven’t resigned myself to death just yet.” Duo said under his breath wishing he could tell it to her, but figured it was better to maintain the silence he and Heero had agreed upon.
“You can’t stay there forever.” The voice rang out and Duo could hear her give the command to her guards to sit.
“So that’s how its gonna be. Waiting games are so boring.” Duo said to himself and checked on Heero. The other pilot was still breathing but it did not sound good. Duo was amazed he was not panicking. This was the closest he had ever come to losing Heero. Normally it was Heero saving Duo’s butt.
“Just don’t die on me.” Duo whispered and thought hard about the second phase.
Phase two was supposed to be the assassination of the leader of the group. He wished it was the woman but all intelligence reports had indicated it was a man. Pulling out the papers in his pocket, Duo looked them over for a clue. The papers mentioned an Alex Whitings but had no picture. Assuming that was the leader, and it certainly looked that way, Duo wondered how he could trick his way to Whitings.
Four hours went by and Duo still was locked in a stale mate with Heero’s wound bound as best as Duo could manage. If Heero did not get medical attention soon, Duo would lose him. Somehow that thought gave Duo the strength to wait for the opportune moment. His patience was rewarded when someone came running into the square shouting for “the boss”.
“That has to be this Alex guy we’re supposed to take care of. What are the chances that I’d get lucky and he’d be here?” Duo whispered to the still unconscious Heero.
“Boss! Boss! The DNA samples from the prisoners came in; they are two of the five Gundam pilots. It is unconfirmed which two they are, but the lab is running the possibilities now.”
Duo could not see the soldier or who he was reporting to, and was too scared to risk popping up to see. Besides, he had no weapon to attack with.
“Did I ask you to report?” The woman’s voice came to Duo.
“No…ma’am.” The soldier’s suddenly weak voice replied.
“Then why are you doing so?”
“Sorry ma’am, but your orders were that the information was to be reported immediately.” The soldier hazarded.
“Ah, yes, but we are in a delicate situation here. Normal rules do not apply.”
The soldier and the woman continued the discussion and somewhere in the middle it kicked Duo in the ass. The woman was not some secretary or right hand girl, she was Alex Whitings. The information had been thrown off because Alex was short for Alexander, but it could also be short for Alexandra. Duo smacked himself and rubbed his hand over his face.
“Damn incompetent intelligence! The mission was a bust, I might lose my best friend, and now I’m finding out that the MALE leader we need to get rid off is a FEMALE!”
Duo mumbled violently to himself and wished he had a weapon. He looked around the ground for anything to throw or distract her with when his eyes lit upon the bulge in his sock. He still had the knife! One good throw and it would all be over. Providing of course that Duo had a clear shot and he could still throw a knife like he used to in training. Duo strongly preferred to use guns because hardly anyone fought with knives anymore, and there was a low fair fight level for knife combat. Duo struggled with the badly rusted knife to open the blade. Though it was badly rusted, Duo judged the point was still sharp enough to pierce the woman’s skull, for that was where Duo intended to aim. One quick, clean blow to the head and there would be no chance of some kind of miraculous survival.
Duo crouched as low as he could and listened for an update as to the situation. It seemed that the soldier had gone and the game of waiting was on again. Duo wondered if he had been concentrating too hard to hear any questions she might have asked, but then realized it would not make a difference because of the silent treatment he was giving her. The problem was that Duo had no idea where her head was and needed some kind of indication if he was going to aim on a moment’s notice. He had to trick her into saying something. The longer Duo waited to get Heero help the less chance Heero would be alive for the help to do much.
“Hey lady, what happened to your face anyway?” Duo yelled hoping that breaking the silence would startle her into speaking. If that did not work, he hoped his reference to her condition would do something.
Duo waited with baited breath for Alex to say something. Just when he thought she was going to stay silent, her voice rang out to him full of rage, but Duo could still hear the confidence behind it.
“The first time you speak to me and you make the rudest comment possible?” She sounded angry, amused, and thoroughly confident.
“Yeah, keep thinking you have me trapped bitch. I know where you are now.” Duo said to himself and prepared to stand. He had an idea where her head was and was about sixty percent sure his plan would work. “You got it babe!”
With that final yell out to Alex, Duo popped up fast, aimed and let the knife fly. He did not stay up to see if it reached its planned destination, but dropped as fast as gravity would allow him to. Bullets whizzed by him, but as he hit the ground, Duo noticed the eerie silence. Cautiously, he peeked up and saw with satisfaction the knife had hit its mark. Alex Whitings, FEMALE leader of the current revolution, lay sprawled on the ground with a rusty army knife sticking vulgarly out of her forehead. Her guards were all looking at her and did not notice Duo steal away with Heero.
“Thank god it’s hard to find smart guards these days.” Duo joked to Heero even though Heero could not hear him. They were almost to the door when the sound of a chopper overhead caused the entire base to break out in panic. Guards started running everywhere and though many ran by Duo, he and Heero were ignored. The chopper opened fire and sat itself in the middle of the courtyard. Out of it came Sally Po and Wufei. The Chinese pilot went off on his own errand, while Doctor Sally Po ran straight to Heero and Duo.
“Hi!” She greeted and immediately checked Heero’s condition.
“He’s hurt pretty bad, we have to get him to a hospital immediately. He was shot. What the HELL took you guys so long?” Duo asked her angrily.
“We had to wait for Heero to get out in the open so the tracker in his body would work!” Sally shouted at him over the roar of the chopper.
“TRACKER! WE’VE BEEN IN THIS HELL HOLE FOR TWO ENTIRE WEEKS AND YOU HAD TO WAIT FOR A TRACKER!” Duo was pissed.
“Calm down! Heero had it inserted after the Marimeia incident! The walls here blocked it out, but we picked up on it nice and strong when you guys got out in the courtyard!” Sally shouted as she handed Heero up to Duo and helped strap him into position.
“Where’s Wufei?” Duo asked.
“He went to complete the mission!” Sally answered and rolled her eyes.
“But the mission is already complete! I have the documents we needed right here and Alex Whitings is dead!” Duo took the papers out of his pocket and handed them over to Sally.
“He is? Where?” Duo was confused until he realized everyone else still thought Alex Whitings was a man.
“SHE is right over there!” Duo emphasized the she and pointed to where the woman lay.
Sally looked confused and went over to the body, probably for identification. There did not seem to be any means of identifying her, so Sally brought the corpse over and pulled the bloody knife out.
“We’ll use this for identification!” She yelled and spoke into a radio to call Wufei back.
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