Gundam Wing Fan Fiction / Trigun Fan Fiction ❯ The Game ❯ Healthy competition ( Chapter 2 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: Arigatomina 
Duo makes a new friend and Heero learns he doesn't like to share.
Minor anime: Trigun.
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction / Trigun Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Fantasy / Adventure | Type: Crossover | Uploaded On: 07.22.2006 | Pages: 2 | Words: 4.5K | Visits: 384 | Status: Work In Progress
Duo makes a new friend and Heero learns he doesn't like to share.
Minor anime: Trigun.
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction / Trigun Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Fantasy / Adventure | Type: Crossover | Uploaded On: 07.22.2006 | Pages: 2 | Words: 4.5K | Visits: 384 | Status: Work In Progress
Category: Anime, Gundam Wing, Yaoi, Timeline-What-Timeline, Alternate Universe
Minor Anime (in this part): Trigun
Pairings: 1x2 main
Warnings: very light shonen ai
Author: Arigatomina
Email: arigatoumina (a) hotmail . com
Website: www . geocities . com / arigatomina
The Game
Part 2: “Healthy competition”
Explosions tinted the walls a glittering medley of gold, melonish amber, and sharp white, casting glints and blinding flashes off the participants’ weapons and eyes. Shadowy figures darted about the ruins of a skyscraper that lay crumbled, impossibly, in the middle of a darkened jungle. Their deaths were met by those varying shades of light, bright explosions that cleared to reveal two more figures in the place of each destroyed target. It was a hydra concept which demanded faster reflexes and better aim with each second that passed. Despite their training, the participants were hard-pressed to maintain any sort of accuracy.
Duo grimaced, his eyes squinting against the epileptic light show that made it difficult to see his weapon, let alone to aim it properly. The targets, computer animated soldiers in identical camouflaged outfits, were like nothing more than a swarm of insects crawling over each other as if they planned to erupt out of the screen and swarm the men still firing on them. Despite his determination not to fall too far behind Heero, Duo was finding it harder to ignore how creepy and futile the simulation was.
The trial had started with flying discs that bounced around the screen. Five participants stood in front of the large screen that covered the back wall of the darkened room. They were separated from their ‘targets’ by fifteen feet. The real distance came in the simulation itself, with the discs flying close to the screen one moment and so far they were vague dots the next. Their scores were recorded by the metal ‘guns’ they had for weapons, like the old laser games in the pre-colonial days. Each gun signaled a different color burst when it struck a target, and the scores were calculated by the computer. They wouldn’t know how well they’d done until the day’s trials were concluded.
Duo’s weapon was a very large silver handgun with an overly narrow barrel and a slender eye at the tip for targeting. It was heavy enough that he used both hands to aim it, his arms stretched in front of him so he could get a proper beam on his targets and move with his hips, rather than his arms. That was important – not moving his arms – because a day of trials was literally a day of trials. Eight hours of repetitive movements, in this case, firing on increasingly agile targets, and his arms felt like leaden weights. Of the three men – plus Heero – he’d entered the room with, two of them had already sunk against the wall in defeat. It wasn’t just a matter of having a good eye. Stamina played a large role in the target drills.
He’d done well through the first few hours, the screen literally flashing with the amber explosions that resulted from his shots. Since the trial had shifted to this newest routine, with those insect-like soldiers, there were a lot more white and gold explosions. He just couldn’t keep up with Heero’s consistent and insanely accurate ability. Not to mention his arms hurt something awful.
Duo glared at a clump of soldiers on the left side of the screen, directly in front of where he stood. He took them out as quickly as he could. Each one down was almost immediately replaced with two more and he might have groaned in pure frustration at the blinding white flashes that lit up around his lonely amber hits. His only consolation was that Heero seemed to be falling behind as well. There were far fewer gold explosions than there had been three minutes ago.
He forced himself to keep up his own shots, just so he wouldn't have to join the losers seated behind the active participants. But Duo’s eyes darted to the side so he could take in Heero’s expression.
The dark-haired teen was positively scowling at the screen, his knuckles white from how tightly he gripped his gun. Unlike Duo, he was using only his right hand, his arm stretched out in front of him. Heero had an instinct when it came to knowing just where his shot would land, so he didn’t need to strain his shoulders by lining up the eye of the weapon. His shots remained as fast and consistently accurate as they’d been during the first hour of the trial. He couldn’t have sped up if he’d wanted to.
That was the source of his growing glare. Heero had started at his top speed, so he couldn’t compensate for the growing speed and confusion of the targets’ movements. The remaining competitor didn’t seem to have that problem.
Duo glanced past Heero to where the other man was standing. He was a few years older than Heero, in his early twenties at most, and a good foot taller. He was dressed in the same black uniforms that all of the participants wore, and it went well with his short dark hair and matching eyes. He was completely absorbed in the simulation, so he didn’t notice that he was being observed.
The first thing that struck Duo was how the participant was holding his gun low, firing from the hip with his wrist being the only part of his body in motion. The second thing Duo noticed was that the man had switched hands sometime during the last few minutes. When they’d started, he’d been using his left hand and keeping up with Heero as the two fastest players. Now he was using his right hand and leaving Heero behind with an uncanny ease.
The man’s expression – a nervous flickering smile when he first stepped into the room – was now a concentrated frown, his dark eyes snapping from one target to the next. It made Duo think of a sniper. If not for his eyes and hand, the man might have been a statue.
The targets on the screen had nearly quadrupled when Duo glanced back over. He’d only looked away for a few seconds at best, but that was long enough for the simulated enemies to overrun the ruins. Those animated soldiers weren’t even bothering to hide now that there were too many of them to fit into the various shadows of the crumbled building. And the flashes, white all over in the background, Heero’s gold in the foreground, were blinding to Duo’s eyes. He stepped back with a long sigh and lowered his weapon.
Using a gun was not one of Duo’s innate skills, and he wasn’t about to strain his muscles trying in vain to keep up with Heero. His partner was in his element. Duo was more at home with close combat and piloting, than this sort of boring and tedious shooting. He didn’t join the men seated in the back of the room. Instead, he stepped to the side to lean against the wall where he’d have a better view of Heero and his competition. The screen was painful to look at.
A beep resounded in the room and narrow platforms rose up in front of the two remaining shooters. Each table held two handguns, lighter than the ones they’d been using up to this point. Heero snatched one up without stopping his shots. Then, firing with the new gun in his left, switched the right weapon. Beside him the other man stopped shooting altogether. He set his heavy weapon down and cracked his knuckles. Then he flashed a sharp look at Heero and snatched up the two smaller handguns. The explosions that followed were an epileptic’s worst nightmare, such a mix of gold and white that it was impossible to tell who was landing more hits.
About four minutes later the screen went dead, the overgrown ruins so empty Duo could see the details of the simulation down to the little vines that were threaded among some of the cracks in the broken concrete. He’d tried to follow that final storm of explosions, but he couldn’t have said which color he’d seen more of – gold or white. All he knew was that the moment they’d hit every target on the screen, the simulation was over.
The men in the back of the room offered reluctant congratulations to the two ‘winners’, including Duo in the begrudging praise. Then they all filed out of the room. One of those raccoon-eyed men stood in the hall and passed them cards as they stepped past him. Duo wasn’t the least bit surprised to see that he’d made a score far higher than the two who’d quit early. But a peek over Heero’s shoulder told him that was nothing to be proud of. His score was barely half what Heero had landed during those last few minutes of the trial.
“You didn’t win that one?” Duo asked with a teasing smile.
Heero scowled at the man who’d been his competition. The man was standing a few feet ahead, waiting for them with a bright friendly smile on his face.
“I have the blue score,” the man said, his tone more surprised and happy, than smug. “It was wild, wasn’t it? I’ve never done anything like that before, but it was…invigorating. I really think I have a knack for this sort of thing. Though…I’m still not sure which hand I should have been using. Do you think that’s odd?”
He was frowning at Duo, his head tilted a little to the side. Duo gave a weak smile, not sure what to say. Heero was still glowering beside him.
“I thought it was odd,” Duo offered, “but I’m not ambidextrous. It looked like you did better with your right hand, but you eat with that one, so that’s probably natural.”
The man gave a thoughtful nod and made a passing comment about how worried he’d been about his eyes not adjusting to the explosions, since he didn’t have the experience with space battles that most of the others had.
Heero’s glare grew darker as he found himself trailing the two. Duo had met the man a day or so before, during one of the flight trials, and had come back to tell him all about the poor guy who couldn’t fly a simulated mobile suit to save his life. Heero hadn’t thought much about it at the time. There were plenty of soldiers on earth who’d never so much as touched a mobile suit. It wasn’t until Duo told him the man had no military experience at all, that Heero had become suspicious.
Now he was convinced Nicholas D. Wolfwood was lying through his teeth. The fact that the man had made friends with Duo so quickly only added to his distrust. It didn’t help that he was only a few years older than them, and had a way of talking that Duo called ‘easy-going’. The man’s entire affable persona felt false to Heero. He just didn’t act like a soldier. That could have supported his claim that he had no military experience to speak of, but Heero refused to believe it. No one could shoot like the man had without years of experience. The only question Heero had was why Nicholas was bothering to lie. He couldn’t help but see it as a ploy to get close to Duo.
Heero had told Duo just that, the night before, when the boy had asked to invite his new friend to join them for their evening meal. It was Duo’s nature to be unguarded and almost naïve in his trusting of complete strangers. But Duo didn’t just believe the man’s story. He liked his open and friendly personality. To Heero, that was all the proof he needed to know Nicholas was up to something.
They spent the first part of their break in the cool auditorium. Now that the trials were underway, there were rarely more than twenty men in the room at the same time. This made it quieter, and, unfortunately, colder. Instead of the stale scent of heated bodies they had in the trial rooms, they were surrounded by the smell of freezer-burnt vegetables. The air vents that cooled the wall of food circulated around the main room and left the impression of bedding down in a grocery store. Duo made that apt observation to the curious amusement of his audience of one.
Heero remained sullenly separate from Duo and his new friend, within hearing range, but far enough that he wouldn’t be called upon to be…sociable. While he couldn’t find a good excuse to forbid Duo’s involvement with Nicholas, or Wolfwood, as he preferred to be called, he would not support it, either. And though he’d never admit it aloud, Heero resented the fact that Duo had latched onto a stranger so quickly. He knew Duo found him boring to be around, but he hadn’t expected the boy to find an alternate source of entertainment – not when they were surrounded by former enemies, who were mostly twice their age.
“What do you think, Heero,” Duo called, glancing over his shoulder at Heero’s cot. “Wolfwood’s gotten red in all of the trials up to this last one. You think he still has a shot?”
“Shooting seems to be the only thing I’m any good at,” said Wolfwood. “But I wasn’t the worst person in my physical combat trial. There were a lot of old men who couldn’t even finish that one.”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Heero said coldly.
He didn’t bother to look up from where he was stretching his arms and shoulders over his folded legs. The men who ran the trials were supposed to be announcing the first round of cuts shortly. They’d know then who was being sent back to NU-695, and who would advance onto more difficult tests. As far as he was concerned, someone who only excelled in one category had no place in the simulations. He and Duo had taken different trials, but the categories were similar.
In the last few days they’d been through physical combat, targeting with weapons, piloting, endurance races – on moving tracks since it was a small satellite, and computer tests consisting of mazes and problem solving questions. He and Duo had done well in all of the trials, one or the other taking top marks – a blue score – for every category. If Wolfwood had received red, which was average at best, then he had no chance of advancing. At least, that was what Heero wanted to believe.
He scowled and bent lower over his legs so that his shoulders and back burned irritably. He had an idea those last three minutes – 3.25 by his count – had marked a very large difference in their scores. Part of him wanted to see Wolfwood’s card and compare it to his own. Mostly he just wanted to see the man gone, back to the other side of the room where he’d been when Duo first arrived at the satellite. The more he listened to the two of them chat, the more he disliked the stranger.
Heero knew a good portion of his resentment stemmed from jealousy. He’d been isolated, separate from his old comrades for over a year. Seeing Duo again had reminded him how comfortable it was to be near someone he trusted, someone who accepted him and even embraced him despite all his antisocial leanings. Now he felt as if the stranger were encroaching on his space, moving the wall back so he had nothing to stand against. Wolfwood’s infuriatingly pleasant personality grated on Heero’s nerves. He didn’t want to accept him. He certainly wasn’t going to like him. And the fact that Duo liked him made his own determination that much stronger. He wanted his partner back and, quite frankly, Wolfwood wasn’t good enough to compliment Duo’s skills. Heero just hadn’t found a way to come out and say as much without Duo getting angry with him.
Duo was well aware of the distance Heero had placed between them, and the role Wolfwood was playing as a catalyst to Heero sinking further into self-imposed isolation. He’d tried to get Heero interested in the young man, to convince him that Wolfwood was as friendly and open as Quatre or Duo himself. His efforts had only seemed to make Heero withdraw even more. And honestly, he was beginning to suspect Heero was jealous of his new friend.
That thought had served as encouragement to Duo, a potential way to tease his friend, maybe con a few growls out of the resistant boy. It was partly the reason Duo had gone out of his way to return Wolfwood’s friendly gestures. Once he actually talked at length with the man, Duo found he didn’t need an outside reason to be friends with him.
Wolfwood was easy to talk to, with a great sense of humor that made him downright entertaining at times. His only regret was that he couldn’t seem to get Heero to like the man. It really reminded him that he’d spent months convincing Heero to tolerate him when they’d worked together. Trying to get Heero to like someone so similar to him was probably futile.
Two of the raccoon men showed up in the doorway of the large room, and the talk quieted down around them. Some of the soldiers elbowed acquaintances, waking those who’d dozed off, and catching others’ attention. Duo and Heero exchanged a quick glance and stood, Wolfwood following suit with a wary look. They were told to follow as their names were called. Heero, Duo, and Wolfwood ended in the second group and soon found themselves back in one of the larger testing rooms, the one they’d used for the endurance races.
There were nine men in total, and the same number of chairs set up in the rectangular space behind the treadmills. At the front of the room were three of those tired looking men, who looked up and waved them to be seated when they entered. Duo was quick to grab one of the front row seats, Heero and Wolfwood sitting to either side of him. He flashed a smile at Wolfwood, who was looking ever more nervous at the prospect of being eliminated. Then he glanced at Heero and smirked at the boy’s confident expression. Heero probably had the highest rank of all the participants, so he had nothing to be concerned about.
Two of the three men in front stepped off to the side, the remaining one rubbing a tired hand over his temple. He frowned at the participants and cleared his throat in the manner of a man giving a memorized and boring speech.
“What you’re about to be told,” the man started, is voice dull and a tad hoarse, “is not to be repeated to the other participants. If it is repeated, the offending party and the receiving party of the restricted information will be disciplined and dismissed. That said, the nine of you have been cleared to advance. You should know that The Game is more than interactive. It is potentially dangerous.
“You will enter an amphitheater in ten hours, with the recommendation that you sleep eight hours to be sufficiently rested. This amphitheater will become the game setting. Each player will be equipped with a transponder to help the programmers keep track of your progress. You will obey the programmers unquestionably. Those who succeed in the game will be rewarded. Those who fail in the game, or who fail to obey the programmers, will be disciplined and dismissed. Each of you is required to sign a waver before entering the amphitheater, voiding the backers from any responsibility in the case of accident or death. If you do not wish to sign a waver, you will be dismissed.
“You are to enter the amphitheater wearing the clothing you wore upon your arrival at the satellite. Any matching uniforms will have to be switched before entering the amphitheater. If you do not have a unique outfit in your possession, remain in this room after I’ve dismissed the group and we will see to resolving that problem. You are not to bring anything into the amphitheater aside from the clothing and footwear. Coats are permissible and recommended. Any attempt to bring a weapon, food items, or any items aside from clothing, into the amphitheater, will result in discipline and dismissal. If you have any questions regarding what may not be brought into the amphitheater, remain in this room. The rest of you are now dismissed. We will reconvene in ten hours in the washroom hallway. Anyone late will be dismissed. That is all.”
Duo swallowed roughly at the man’s clipped words, his eyes wide. He’d almost laughed aloud at the way all of that was stated as if it were some audio instruction manual. And for the life of him, he couldn’t see what part of that speech they’d want to repeat to the other participants – they hadn’t exactly been told any secrets.
Heero led the way back to the large room that served as dorm and cafeteria, the rest of the nine following behind. Duo caught up to him and flashed a weak grin as he sat beside Heero on the quiet boy’s cot.
“Did you get anything from that?” asked Duo. “You were in an awful hurry to get out of there.”
“Some,” Heero admitted. His tone was quiet, and he was glad to see that Wolfwood had gone off to the washrooms instead of following them. It was annoying to know that the man hadn’t been dismissed, but at least he wasn’t eavesdropping.
“The waver proves that the game is dangerous,” said Heero. “And that proves that they’ve used other ‘players’ in the past, which would explain the tests they’ve made us take. I suspect the other players were incapacitated, otherwise they would not need new recruits.”
“Unless the other ones refused to play again,” Duo put in, his eyes gleaming. “Sounds challenging.”
Heero smirked at Duo’s mischievous expression. “It does. It also sounds as if this game is considerably more than they’re making it out to be. The key is the transponders. If this were a virtual reality game – in an amphitheater to make room for each participant to move around – they wouldn’t need transponders.”
Duo straightened at that, a hint of worry creeping onto his face. “Locators…”
“Exactly,” said Heero. “There’s no need for locators unless the participants are going somewhere. The question is where they go.”
The boy’s expression was deadly serious. Only that familiar gleam of determination told Duo that Heero was looking forward to the prospect of answering that question. Duo leaned over so their faces were so close they could have kissed – if he’d had a death wish, and Heero hadn’t been Heero.
“I bet I know where the participants go,” Duo whispered, his eyes dancing with dark glee. “Into the game. Does that scare you, Heero…?”
Heero gave a startled blink at the warm feel of Duo’s breath on his face, not registering the words so much as the husky whisper with which they were spoken. He caught himself a moment later and gently shoved Duo’s forehead back and out of his face.
“Idiot,” Heero snorted, a droll glower flashing over his eyes. “If we did go…into the game, as you put it, then you’re the one I’d worry about. As badly as you reacted to having the Zero system judge reality for you, you’ll be in trouble if you’re thrown into a game-created reality.”
Duo scowled at the reminder, a faint blush creeping to his face. He hadn’t had any nightmares in almost a year, but Heero had caught him a few times before the last rebellion. Once he’d admitted the cause – his short stint in Wing Zero during the war – he’d opened himself to all sorts of teasing remarks. But it was a low blow for Heero to bring that up now, just when he’d been in the midst of making Heero look like a wide-eyed ten-year-old.
“At least I never went crazy and attacked my friends,” Duo scoffed.
“No,” said Heero. “You just had nightmares for two years straight.”
The longhaired boy bristled and shot off the cot. He glowered for a long minute. Then his expression twisted into a taunting look.
“Better than calling out Relena’s name first thing after waking up,” Duo said sweetly. “I think I’ll go see what Wolfwood’s up to. You can have your own little trip down memory lane if you want. I have a game to think about.”
Heero’s eyebrow twitched above a very irritated scowl. He turned to watch the boy swagger off, not the least bit mollified by the way the tip of Duo’s braid twitched with each step. He didn’t know who to be more irritated with, Trowa for repeating an incident that definitely hadn’t deserved repeating, or Duo for using Wolfwood’s name as if he’d be jealous upon hearing it.
Five minutes of silence later, and Heero knew with whom he was most irritated. He was irritated with Wolfwood, for existing, and with himself, for letting Duo use the man’s existence to irritate him. It was going to be a long ten hours…
.-.
TBC
Minor Anime (in this part): Trigun
Pairings: 1x2 main
Warnings: very light shonen ai
Author: Arigatomina
Email: arigatoumina (a) hotmail . com
Website: www . geocities . com / arigatomina
The Game
Part 2: “Healthy competition”
Explosions tinted the walls a glittering medley of gold, melonish amber, and sharp white, casting glints and blinding flashes off the participants’ weapons and eyes. Shadowy figures darted about the ruins of a skyscraper that lay crumbled, impossibly, in the middle of a darkened jungle. Their deaths were met by those varying shades of light, bright explosions that cleared to reveal two more figures in the place of each destroyed target. It was a hydra concept which demanded faster reflexes and better aim with each second that passed. Despite their training, the participants were hard-pressed to maintain any sort of accuracy.
Duo grimaced, his eyes squinting against the epileptic light show that made it difficult to see his weapon, let alone to aim it properly. The targets, computer animated soldiers in identical camouflaged outfits, were like nothing more than a swarm of insects crawling over each other as if they planned to erupt out of the screen and swarm the men still firing on them. Despite his determination not to fall too far behind Heero, Duo was finding it harder to ignore how creepy and futile the simulation was.
The trial had started with flying discs that bounced around the screen. Five participants stood in front of the large screen that covered the back wall of the darkened room. They were separated from their ‘targets’ by fifteen feet. The real distance came in the simulation itself, with the discs flying close to the screen one moment and so far they were vague dots the next. Their scores were recorded by the metal ‘guns’ they had for weapons, like the old laser games in the pre-colonial days. Each gun signaled a different color burst when it struck a target, and the scores were calculated by the computer. They wouldn’t know how well they’d done until the day’s trials were concluded.
Duo’s weapon was a very large silver handgun with an overly narrow barrel and a slender eye at the tip for targeting. It was heavy enough that he used both hands to aim it, his arms stretched in front of him so he could get a proper beam on his targets and move with his hips, rather than his arms. That was important – not moving his arms – because a day of trials was literally a day of trials. Eight hours of repetitive movements, in this case, firing on increasingly agile targets, and his arms felt like leaden weights. Of the three men – plus Heero – he’d entered the room with, two of them had already sunk against the wall in defeat. It wasn’t just a matter of having a good eye. Stamina played a large role in the target drills.
He’d done well through the first few hours, the screen literally flashing with the amber explosions that resulted from his shots. Since the trial had shifted to this newest routine, with those insect-like soldiers, there were a lot more white and gold explosions. He just couldn’t keep up with Heero’s consistent and insanely accurate ability. Not to mention his arms hurt something awful.
Duo glared at a clump of soldiers on the left side of the screen, directly in front of where he stood. He took them out as quickly as he could. Each one down was almost immediately replaced with two more and he might have groaned in pure frustration at the blinding white flashes that lit up around his lonely amber hits. His only consolation was that Heero seemed to be falling behind as well. There were far fewer gold explosions than there had been three minutes ago.
He forced himself to keep up his own shots, just so he wouldn't have to join the losers seated behind the active participants. But Duo’s eyes darted to the side so he could take in Heero’s expression.
The dark-haired teen was positively scowling at the screen, his knuckles white from how tightly he gripped his gun. Unlike Duo, he was using only his right hand, his arm stretched out in front of him. Heero had an instinct when it came to knowing just where his shot would land, so he didn’t need to strain his shoulders by lining up the eye of the weapon. His shots remained as fast and consistently accurate as they’d been during the first hour of the trial. He couldn’t have sped up if he’d wanted to.
That was the source of his growing glare. Heero had started at his top speed, so he couldn’t compensate for the growing speed and confusion of the targets’ movements. The remaining competitor didn’t seem to have that problem.
Duo glanced past Heero to where the other man was standing. He was a few years older than Heero, in his early twenties at most, and a good foot taller. He was dressed in the same black uniforms that all of the participants wore, and it went well with his short dark hair and matching eyes. He was completely absorbed in the simulation, so he didn’t notice that he was being observed.
The first thing that struck Duo was how the participant was holding his gun low, firing from the hip with his wrist being the only part of his body in motion. The second thing Duo noticed was that the man had switched hands sometime during the last few minutes. When they’d started, he’d been using his left hand and keeping up with Heero as the two fastest players. Now he was using his right hand and leaving Heero behind with an uncanny ease.
The man’s expression – a nervous flickering smile when he first stepped into the room – was now a concentrated frown, his dark eyes snapping from one target to the next. It made Duo think of a sniper. If not for his eyes and hand, the man might have been a statue.
The targets on the screen had nearly quadrupled when Duo glanced back over. He’d only looked away for a few seconds at best, but that was long enough for the simulated enemies to overrun the ruins. Those animated soldiers weren’t even bothering to hide now that there were too many of them to fit into the various shadows of the crumbled building. And the flashes, white all over in the background, Heero’s gold in the foreground, were blinding to Duo’s eyes. He stepped back with a long sigh and lowered his weapon.
Using a gun was not one of Duo’s innate skills, and he wasn’t about to strain his muscles trying in vain to keep up with Heero. His partner was in his element. Duo was more at home with close combat and piloting, than this sort of boring and tedious shooting. He didn’t join the men seated in the back of the room. Instead, he stepped to the side to lean against the wall where he’d have a better view of Heero and his competition. The screen was painful to look at.
A beep resounded in the room and narrow platforms rose up in front of the two remaining shooters. Each table held two handguns, lighter than the ones they’d been using up to this point. Heero snatched one up without stopping his shots. Then, firing with the new gun in his left, switched the right weapon. Beside him the other man stopped shooting altogether. He set his heavy weapon down and cracked his knuckles. Then he flashed a sharp look at Heero and snatched up the two smaller handguns. The explosions that followed were an epileptic’s worst nightmare, such a mix of gold and white that it was impossible to tell who was landing more hits.
About four minutes later the screen went dead, the overgrown ruins so empty Duo could see the details of the simulation down to the little vines that were threaded among some of the cracks in the broken concrete. He’d tried to follow that final storm of explosions, but he couldn’t have said which color he’d seen more of – gold or white. All he knew was that the moment they’d hit every target on the screen, the simulation was over.
The men in the back of the room offered reluctant congratulations to the two ‘winners’, including Duo in the begrudging praise. Then they all filed out of the room. One of those raccoon-eyed men stood in the hall and passed them cards as they stepped past him. Duo wasn’t the least bit surprised to see that he’d made a score far higher than the two who’d quit early. But a peek over Heero’s shoulder told him that was nothing to be proud of. His score was barely half what Heero had landed during those last few minutes of the trial.
“You didn’t win that one?” Duo asked with a teasing smile.
Heero scowled at the man who’d been his competition. The man was standing a few feet ahead, waiting for them with a bright friendly smile on his face.
“I have the blue score,” the man said, his tone more surprised and happy, than smug. “It was wild, wasn’t it? I’ve never done anything like that before, but it was…invigorating. I really think I have a knack for this sort of thing. Though…I’m still not sure which hand I should have been using. Do you think that’s odd?”
He was frowning at Duo, his head tilted a little to the side. Duo gave a weak smile, not sure what to say. Heero was still glowering beside him.
“I thought it was odd,” Duo offered, “but I’m not ambidextrous. It looked like you did better with your right hand, but you eat with that one, so that’s probably natural.”
The man gave a thoughtful nod and made a passing comment about how worried he’d been about his eyes not adjusting to the explosions, since he didn’t have the experience with space battles that most of the others had.
Heero’s glare grew darker as he found himself trailing the two. Duo had met the man a day or so before, during one of the flight trials, and had come back to tell him all about the poor guy who couldn’t fly a simulated mobile suit to save his life. Heero hadn’t thought much about it at the time. There were plenty of soldiers on earth who’d never so much as touched a mobile suit. It wasn’t until Duo told him the man had no military experience at all, that Heero had become suspicious.
Now he was convinced Nicholas D. Wolfwood was lying through his teeth. The fact that the man had made friends with Duo so quickly only added to his distrust. It didn’t help that he was only a few years older than them, and had a way of talking that Duo called ‘easy-going’. The man’s entire affable persona felt false to Heero. He just didn’t act like a soldier. That could have supported his claim that he had no military experience to speak of, but Heero refused to believe it. No one could shoot like the man had without years of experience. The only question Heero had was why Nicholas was bothering to lie. He couldn’t help but see it as a ploy to get close to Duo.
Heero had told Duo just that, the night before, when the boy had asked to invite his new friend to join them for their evening meal. It was Duo’s nature to be unguarded and almost naïve in his trusting of complete strangers. But Duo didn’t just believe the man’s story. He liked his open and friendly personality. To Heero, that was all the proof he needed to know Nicholas was up to something.
They spent the first part of their break in the cool auditorium. Now that the trials were underway, there were rarely more than twenty men in the room at the same time. This made it quieter, and, unfortunately, colder. Instead of the stale scent of heated bodies they had in the trial rooms, they were surrounded by the smell of freezer-burnt vegetables. The air vents that cooled the wall of food circulated around the main room and left the impression of bedding down in a grocery store. Duo made that apt observation to the curious amusement of his audience of one.
Heero remained sullenly separate from Duo and his new friend, within hearing range, but far enough that he wouldn’t be called upon to be…sociable. While he couldn’t find a good excuse to forbid Duo’s involvement with Nicholas, or Wolfwood, as he preferred to be called, he would not support it, either. And though he’d never admit it aloud, Heero resented the fact that Duo had latched onto a stranger so quickly. He knew Duo found him boring to be around, but he hadn’t expected the boy to find an alternate source of entertainment – not when they were surrounded by former enemies, who were mostly twice their age.
“What do you think, Heero,” Duo called, glancing over his shoulder at Heero’s cot. “Wolfwood’s gotten red in all of the trials up to this last one. You think he still has a shot?”
“Shooting seems to be the only thing I’m any good at,” said Wolfwood. “But I wasn’t the worst person in my physical combat trial. There were a lot of old men who couldn’t even finish that one.”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Heero said coldly.
He didn’t bother to look up from where he was stretching his arms and shoulders over his folded legs. The men who ran the trials were supposed to be announcing the first round of cuts shortly. They’d know then who was being sent back to NU-695, and who would advance onto more difficult tests. As far as he was concerned, someone who only excelled in one category had no place in the simulations. He and Duo had taken different trials, but the categories were similar.
In the last few days they’d been through physical combat, targeting with weapons, piloting, endurance races – on moving tracks since it was a small satellite, and computer tests consisting of mazes and problem solving questions. He and Duo had done well in all of the trials, one or the other taking top marks – a blue score – for every category. If Wolfwood had received red, which was average at best, then he had no chance of advancing. At least, that was what Heero wanted to believe.
He scowled and bent lower over his legs so that his shoulders and back burned irritably. He had an idea those last three minutes – 3.25 by his count – had marked a very large difference in their scores. Part of him wanted to see Wolfwood’s card and compare it to his own. Mostly he just wanted to see the man gone, back to the other side of the room where he’d been when Duo first arrived at the satellite. The more he listened to the two of them chat, the more he disliked the stranger.
Heero knew a good portion of his resentment stemmed from jealousy. He’d been isolated, separate from his old comrades for over a year. Seeing Duo again had reminded him how comfortable it was to be near someone he trusted, someone who accepted him and even embraced him despite all his antisocial leanings. Now he felt as if the stranger were encroaching on his space, moving the wall back so he had nothing to stand against. Wolfwood’s infuriatingly pleasant personality grated on Heero’s nerves. He didn’t want to accept him. He certainly wasn’t going to like him. And the fact that Duo liked him made his own determination that much stronger. He wanted his partner back and, quite frankly, Wolfwood wasn’t good enough to compliment Duo’s skills. Heero just hadn’t found a way to come out and say as much without Duo getting angry with him.
Duo was well aware of the distance Heero had placed between them, and the role Wolfwood was playing as a catalyst to Heero sinking further into self-imposed isolation. He’d tried to get Heero interested in the young man, to convince him that Wolfwood was as friendly and open as Quatre or Duo himself. His efforts had only seemed to make Heero withdraw even more. And honestly, he was beginning to suspect Heero was jealous of his new friend.
That thought had served as encouragement to Duo, a potential way to tease his friend, maybe con a few growls out of the resistant boy. It was partly the reason Duo had gone out of his way to return Wolfwood’s friendly gestures. Once he actually talked at length with the man, Duo found he didn’t need an outside reason to be friends with him.
Wolfwood was easy to talk to, with a great sense of humor that made him downright entertaining at times. His only regret was that he couldn’t seem to get Heero to like the man. It really reminded him that he’d spent months convincing Heero to tolerate him when they’d worked together. Trying to get Heero to like someone so similar to him was probably futile.
Two of the raccoon men showed up in the doorway of the large room, and the talk quieted down around them. Some of the soldiers elbowed acquaintances, waking those who’d dozed off, and catching others’ attention. Duo and Heero exchanged a quick glance and stood, Wolfwood following suit with a wary look. They were told to follow as their names were called. Heero, Duo, and Wolfwood ended in the second group and soon found themselves back in one of the larger testing rooms, the one they’d used for the endurance races.
There were nine men in total, and the same number of chairs set up in the rectangular space behind the treadmills. At the front of the room were three of those tired looking men, who looked up and waved them to be seated when they entered. Duo was quick to grab one of the front row seats, Heero and Wolfwood sitting to either side of him. He flashed a smile at Wolfwood, who was looking ever more nervous at the prospect of being eliminated. Then he glanced at Heero and smirked at the boy’s confident expression. Heero probably had the highest rank of all the participants, so he had nothing to be concerned about.
Two of the three men in front stepped off to the side, the remaining one rubbing a tired hand over his temple. He frowned at the participants and cleared his throat in the manner of a man giving a memorized and boring speech.
“What you’re about to be told,” the man started, is voice dull and a tad hoarse, “is not to be repeated to the other participants. If it is repeated, the offending party and the receiving party of the restricted information will be disciplined and dismissed. That said, the nine of you have been cleared to advance. You should know that The Game is more than interactive. It is potentially dangerous.
“You will enter an amphitheater in ten hours, with the recommendation that you sleep eight hours to be sufficiently rested. This amphitheater will become the game setting. Each player will be equipped with a transponder to help the programmers keep track of your progress. You will obey the programmers unquestionably. Those who succeed in the game will be rewarded. Those who fail in the game, or who fail to obey the programmers, will be disciplined and dismissed. Each of you is required to sign a waver before entering the amphitheater, voiding the backers from any responsibility in the case of accident or death. If you do not wish to sign a waver, you will be dismissed.
“You are to enter the amphitheater wearing the clothing you wore upon your arrival at the satellite. Any matching uniforms will have to be switched before entering the amphitheater. If you do not have a unique outfit in your possession, remain in this room after I’ve dismissed the group and we will see to resolving that problem. You are not to bring anything into the amphitheater aside from the clothing and footwear. Coats are permissible and recommended. Any attempt to bring a weapon, food items, or any items aside from clothing, into the amphitheater, will result in discipline and dismissal. If you have any questions regarding what may not be brought into the amphitheater, remain in this room. The rest of you are now dismissed. We will reconvene in ten hours in the washroom hallway. Anyone late will be dismissed. That is all.”
Duo swallowed roughly at the man’s clipped words, his eyes wide. He’d almost laughed aloud at the way all of that was stated as if it were some audio instruction manual. And for the life of him, he couldn’t see what part of that speech they’d want to repeat to the other participants – they hadn’t exactly been told any secrets.
Heero led the way back to the large room that served as dorm and cafeteria, the rest of the nine following behind. Duo caught up to him and flashed a weak grin as he sat beside Heero on the quiet boy’s cot.
“Did you get anything from that?” asked Duo. “You were in an awful hurry to get out of there.”
“Some,” Heero admitted. His tone was quiet, and he was glad to see that Wolfwood had gone off to the washrooms instead of following them. It was annoying to know that the man hadn’t been dismissed, but at least he wasn’t eavesdropping.
“The waver proves that the game is dangerous,” said Heero. “And that proves that they’ve used other ‘players’ in the past, which would explain the tests they’ve made us take. I suspect the other players were incapacitated, otherwise they would not need new recruits.”
“Unless the other ones refused to play again,” Duo put in, his eyes gleaming. “Sounds challenging.”
Heero smirked at Duo’s mischievous expression. “It does. It also sounds as if this game is considerably more than they’re making it out to be. The key is the transponders. If this were a virtual reality game – in an amphitheater to make room for each participant to move around – they wouldn’t need transponders.”
Duo straightened at that, a hint of worry creeping onto his face. “Locators…”
“Exactly,” said Heero. “There’s no need for locators unless the participants are going somewhere. The question is where they go.”
The boy’s expression was deadly serious. Only that familiar gleam of determination told Duo that Heero was looking forward to the prospect of answering that question. Duo leaned over so their faces were so close they could have kissed – if he’d had a death wish, and Heero hadn’t been Heero.
“I bet I know where the participants go,” Duo whispered, his eyes dancing with dark glee. “Into the game. Does that scare you, Heero…?”
Heero gave a startled blink at the warm feel of Duo’s breath on his face, not registering the words so much as the husky whisper with which they were spoken. He caught himself a moment later and gently shoved Duo’s forehead back and out of his face.
“Idiot,” Heero snorted, a droll glower flashing over his eyes. “If we did go…into the game, as you put it, then you’re the one I’d worry about. As badly as you reacted to having the Zero system judge reality for you, you’ll be in trouble if you’re thrown into a game-created reality.”
Duo scowled at the reminder, a faint blush creeping to his face. He hadn’t had any nightmares in almost a year, but Heero had caught him a few times before the last rebellion. Once he’d admitted the cause – his short stint in Wing Zero during the war – he’d opened himself to all sorts of teasing remarks. But it was a low blow for Heero to bring that up now, just when he’d been in the midst of making Heero look like a wide-eyed ten-year-old.
“At least I never went crazy and attacked my friends,” Duo scoffed.
“No,” said Heero. “You just had nightmares for two years straight.”
The longhaired boy bristled and shot off the cot. He glowered for a long minute. Then his expression twisted into a taunting look.
“Better than calling out Relena’s name first thing after waking up,” Duo said sweetly. “I think I’ll go see what Wolfwood’s up to. You can have your own little trip down memory lane if you want. I have a game to think about.”
Heero’s eyebrow twitched above a very irritated scowl. He turned to watch the boy swagger off, not the least bit mollified by the way the tip of Duo’s braid twitched with each step. He didn’t know who to be more irritated with, Trowa for repeating an incident that definitely hadn’t deserved repeating, or Duo for using Wolfwood’s name as if he’d be jealous upon hearing it.
Five minutes of silence later, and Heero knew with whom he was most irritated. He was irritated with Wolfwood, for existing, and with himself, for letting Duo use the man’s existence to irritate him. It was going to be a long ten hours…
.-.
TBC