Gundam Wing Fan Fiction / Trigun Fan Fiction ❯ The Game ❯ Group mission in a fantasy realm ( Chapter 15 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: Arigatomina 
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction / Trigun Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Fantasy / Adventure | Type: Crossover | Uploaded On: 07.24.2006 | Pages: 3 | Words: 4.1K | Visits: 288 | Status: Work In Progress
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction / Trigun Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Fantasy / Adventure | Type: Crossover | Uploaded On: 07.24.2006 | Pages: 3 | Words: 4.1K | Visits: 288 | Status: Work In Progress
Note: I have the 'Import Queue' online so you can see the playable characters they've met so far. This will be updated with new characters, information, and star count to match the beginning of each new chapter. Copy and paste and remove spaces:
www . arigatomina . com / fanfiction / crossovers / thegame / importqueue . html
The Game
Part 15: “Group mission in a fantasy realm”
The first thing they noticed when they found themselves in the blurry pre-setting for the realm was that Wolfwood's weapon had changed shapes yet again. Now it was a long rifle. Setsuna explained why when she described their task.
"Your task is to trap and fire on the sorceress," she said. "For this task, there will be two teams. One team must find the underground entrance to the tower and use that to reach the 'gate release'. They will spring this to trap the sorceress so that the sniper may take his shot."
An image appeared before them depicting a sewer, a ladder, and then a switch in a tower next to a window that overlooked a dark city. The next image showed the place where the sorceress was to be trapped, an arch with two heavy gates that would drop down on each side. The third showed what looked like some sort of carousel on top of a building where the sniper was to take position.
The final image was their target, a black-haired woman who would have been beautiful if her face weren't discolored so that she looked like a corpse, and if she weren't wearing what looked like snail shells over her ears, feathered horns in the back of her hair and the top half of...either a sundial or a clock...on her shoulders with rectangular white curtains hanging off both sides. At least they wouldn't have to worry about accidentally firing on the wrong person.
"You require two additional players for this task. Your 'Import Queue'."
As Wolfwood had learned, the three new characters they'd met in Wanderweb had been added to the list. There was now a star on Hiei's profile, and Vash and the three unnamed characters from that violent 'second chance' task were available to be imported.
"Any ideas on who to pick?" asked Duo. "We should probably work on getting more people stars so we can bring them on a 'Light Trip' with us. Kurama would be good, since we already used Hiei."
Heero sent a look at Wolfwood. "What about those two you met in the first task?"
"I don't think they'd take to this sort of thing," Wolfwood winced. "I couldn't even get the first one's name, and Akira...he seemed sort of shady. Like he was just checking me out on the off chance he might want to kill me later..."
"Let's leave him out," Duo grinned. "There's bound to be enough characters wanting to kill us in this realm without us bringing in our own."
"We can't bring Vash," said Heero. "And those other two from Kurama's realm were his enemies. That leaves the ones we met in Wanderweb and the three from the last task."
"And the girl from the first task," Duo reminded him.
"I don't plan to ever import her," said Heero.
"Good call," Duo laughed. "So that leaves Mitsukake - a healer's always useful - and the ones that beat the shit out of me, right? Tough choice. What about him? I don't remember seeing him at all."
He pointed at the blank profile of a lavender-haired teenager, who was listed right after the two who'd threatened them in the last realm.
Wolfwood frowned and shrugged. "That black-haired guy knocked him out right after we showed up. If we go on the assumption that he was trying to help whoever Duo replaced, then he'd be on our side. Assuming the person he replaced wasn't a bad guy. It's really hard to know what was going on in the last task."
"Let's give him a chance, then," said Duo. "We're sort of going in order, anyway. And it doesn't sound like we'll actually be fighting in this realm, so we don't need a healer. Plus, Mitsukake was already in Wanderweb - we might not meet anyone new if we try to bring him on a 'Light Trip' since we met him on a 'Light Trip'. No point getting him a star if he's already there."
"Are you decided, then?" asked Setsuna.
Heero nodded, and Duo turned back to her with a broad smile. He pointed to the two characters they'd chosen. "We'll take that one and that one."
"You have twenty minutes to complete the task," Setsuna said as a parting.
If they hadn't been split up immediately after her statement, Duo might have griped at her for the belated warning. He should have guessed there was a catch - again - to such a straightforward sounding task. They didn't even get a chance to ask who would be going in which group.
Wolfwood wasn't surprised to find himself, yet again, separated from his partners. It was becoming predictable. The rifle tipped him off, too, since he'd been assigned to the team as a sniper before they even started the game. What surprised him was that the second he 'arrived' in the realm, he found himself chasing after a stranger. Whoever he'd replaced in this realm must have been following the guy, because he 'landed' in midstep. He promptly stumbled and almost tripped over a corpse.
He was on the top of a building of some sort, with a podium to his left and the dead body of a middle-aged man at his feet, just a little ways to his right. A glance around showed that it was late at night, just like in the pictures Setsuna had shown them. And there appeared to be a celebration going on in the streets below the building. Faint music and cheers went together with the lights, gaudy colors mixing from spectators, dancers, and a strange looking vehicle with a corpse-like sorceress sitting on a throne. He could only guess he'd gotten the 'easy' part of the task. The view from above told him this was the direction he'd be in when he took his shot - after the others did their part and 'captured' the target.
The stranger he'd been following disappeared through a doorway on the other side of the roof. Wolfwood jolted into motion and hurried after him. If he were following the guy, he'd probably replaced a friend of his. Hopefully. He had no idea where the carrousel was supposed to be. If it wasn't somewhere on top of this building he'd have a heck of a time finding it and getting there in the next twenty minutes.
He entered a dim hallway lined with a red carpet, strange black symbols written around the doorway. And he got his first good look at the person he'd been chasing after. It was a young man, in his late teens, with short dark brown hair, black leather pants, and a black coat that was far too short on him and had a neck lined with white fuzz along the back. He also had wide blue eyes and a strange looking sword, which he'd drawn right as Wolfwood caught up to him. The weapon was some sort of mixed breed of sword and rifle, and the guy's eyes were wide because of the scene he'd ran onto. Wolfwood took one look and then his eyes were just as wide.
They were standing at the entrance to what might have been a bedroom if there had been a bed in sight. Iridescent curtains hid the walls from sight and a huge light protruded down from the ceiling, looking like a cross between an outrageously gaudy chandeliere and a skylight. Standing directly below that, in the center of the room, was Kurama. He was wearing pale jeans and a light teeshirt. Both were splotched with dark stains. In his right hand was a green vine studded with thorns. At his feet were clumps of something green and orange that might have been alive at one point.
"I should have known," Kurama glowered at Wolfwood.
"Who are you?" the guy with the gun-sword-weapon-thing asked. "Where's Rinoa?"
"Um, I can explain," Wolfwood said weakly.
The dark-haired teenager rounded on him in shock. He stared at him for a second, and then looked past him in confusion. Wolfwood assumed the guy was looking for whoever he had replaced in this realm. He gave a sick grin and gestured to his rifle.
"I'm sort of playing this game and, uh, everything will go back to normal after I shoot this sorceress woman..."
The teen blinked at him. "What?"
"Yeah," Wolfwood said, his grin twitching in place. Kurama looked ready to kill him. That probably wasn't good. "I'm a sniper, the name's Wolfwood. Nice to meet you. So, uh, you wouldn't happen to know the location of this carrousel I'm supposed to shoot from, would you?"
On the other side of the celebrating masses below, and beneath the street, Duo and Heero had found themselves standing in a well lit sewer that smelled cleaner than a bathhouse and was crawling - literally - with slinky black shadows. The lavender-haired teenager they'd imported was walking a few feet in front of them and serving as a human lantern to further light their way.
It turned out his name was Trunks and he was much more muscular in person, and when he was conscious, than he'd appeared when they met him in the last realm. He also had the ability to glow with a golden light, though he claimed it was a sign of his power increasing and wasn't supposed to be used to light up sewers. He didn't really remember them. He'd had a brief glimpse of his father turning into a slender teenager with long hair, Duo, and then he'd hit the dirt and woken up to remember nothing of the sort having happened in reality. It was all very strange. That was probably why he didn't push them very hard to explain exactly how, and why, he'd gone from sitting in front of a television, waiting for an android's public performance, to creeping his way along a monster infested sewer with two boys he didn't know.
Duo had tried to explain about the game, their task in the last realm, and how Trunks would go right back home as soon as they were done here. He got the impression the information didn't really keep, though. The guy was still sending dazed looks over his shoulders every few steps of the way. At least he'd explained who the bad guys were in the last realm. The flying pair were bad, after all, and according to Trunks they were androids and all of them were lucky to be alive after confronting them. Duo took that to mean they probably shouldn't try importing them into a task any time soon.
There wasn't much time to try convincing Trunks that he wasn't dreaming, and that what they were saying made sense if he really thought about it. They had a time limit and no watch to know whether or not they were falling behind. On top of that, they didn't know where they were going since the sewers had gates - some locked, some not - a walkway on either side of the fast moving water, and water wheels that for some reason they could climb up but couldn't climb down. Heero had gone on for minutes on the impossibility of that. They hit two dead ends and when they tried to go back, they couldn't. At all. They could get two feet from the walkway below, but an invisible wall sprang up when they tried to jump down. One way waterwheels in a maze, a time limit, and the slinky shadows on top of it all.
The shadows resolved themselves into monsters when they attacked. Like the waterwheels only going up, Duo couldn't explain how the creatures managed to get within striking distance before they saw them. Not even Heero could spot their approach, and that was saying something. They looked like solid oil slicks, flat and black and smelly, but they squirmed like worms when they weren't flopping over to try and slap them with their long fingered hands. They also did magic of some kind that, in Duo's opinion, belonged in a game for little girls and not one where sorceresses got trapped and shot with a long range rifle.
They'd just climbed another of those one-way wheels when one of the slippery things flopped over to heart them to death. Duo couldn't think of any other way to describe it. The thing flopped onto its hind...extensions, maybe, definitely not legs in the logical meaning of the word...pulsated, and then sent out a large pink heart, complete with sparkles. Duo grimaced as it struck Trunks and left him reeling. Like the waterwheels and the impossibly unseen approach of the monsters, they couldn't seem to dodge the...heart attacks. Luckily they didn't do much damage - they just left the recipient feeling dazed and sick to his stomach until the thing was killed. Duo took the honors of slicing it in half with his scythe.
For creatures that could approach from seemingly nowhere, they weren't very smart fighters. They only attacked in darting motions that were really easy to time. They'd flop over and swipe, or flop up and heart, and then they'd just squirm in place for a few seconds before trying again. It was almost like they were taking turns. He guessed that was sort of nice. As flexible as the things were, he didn't want them sticking around in a close contact fight. Ew. Just ew. They were rather easy to kill, too. One or two really hard hits - Trunks packed quite a punch - a good swipe of his scythe, or a blast from Heero's cannon, and the things stiffened and dissolved into death throes. The way they scrabbled at the ground looked painful. Duo hoped it was. Payback for making them fight something that specialized in heart attacks.
They reached another of those black gates that inexplicably cut the sewers into twenty-foot sections. The gate on their side of the water was locked. Again. And like the one-way wheels making it - for no rational reason - impossible to jump two feet, they couldn't blast or tear the thin gates open when they were locked.
"We're never getting out of here," Duo groaned. "Why can't we just cross the water? It's only like a foot deep!"
"I can't even fly across it," said Trunks. "The invisible wall stretches all the way up."
Duo grumbled as they turned and headed back the way they'd come. There was a water wheel back at the last gate. Not all of them could be ridden up, but maybe there was a ladder that would take them to the other side of the water or something.
"How much time do we have?" asked Duo.
"Eight minutes," Heero frowned. "We'd better start running."
"At least you have a stopwatch in your head," Duo sighed. He jogged alongside Heero, letting Trunks light the way ahead of them. That glowing thing really was convenient.
Trunks had gotten a little ahead of them. He turned back with wide eyes. "There's a wheel up there that goes down instead of up!"
"No way," Duo scoffed. "Seriously?"
"Yeah. There's one that goes up, a path across the water, and then another that goes down on the other side."
"That's gotta be a good sign," Duo grinned and darted off ahead. "Pick it up a notch, Heero! You're slowing us down."
Heero sent a droll glare after him and ran a little faster.
Above the sewers, the streets, the celebration, and beneath the roof of a certain building with a corpse and a podium, Wolfwood was slunk down at the edge of a dark carrousel that, supposedly, would be rising through the roof in a few minutes so he'd have a perfect beam on the sorceress. Squall, the teenager with a penchant for furry black leather, had begrudgingly helped him find the thing. He'd finally accepted that Wolfwood was the only sniper around, and that he'd fail his own mission if he didn't help him shoot the woman. He'd accepted Kurama replacing this Rinoa person with far less protest. Wolfwood took that to mean he either liked the girl, or hated her. Now if Kurama would just stop glaring at him things would be going fine.
"I'm really sorry for the inconvenience," Wolfwood said, to the dangerous looking redhead. "Really."
"Inconvenience," Kurama repeated, in an icy tone. "You're sorry for the inconvenience. Do you have any idea what kind of battle we were in when Hiei disappeared? I saw it happen. He was gone for seconds. Plural. Sensui was already on him when he flashed back. What you're doing is more than an intrusive, annoying, inconvenience. That one moment of confusion could have gotten Hiei killed. That doesn't even take into account the fact that I went out for a simple walk and found myself here instead, with two mansized lizards trying to eat me."
"I really am sorry," Wolfwood said weakly. "We didn't even know Hiei was going to be imported for that last task. The Game did it on its own that time."
"And this time?" Kurama asked, with a sweet smile.
Wolfwood shivered and hunched a little closer to his high powered rifle. "Duo picked you. I had nothing to do with it."
On the other side of the celebratory square, Duo sneezed and almost fell down a ladder. Trunks caught his arm before he slipped past more than two rungs.
"Be careful," Heero winced. He'd gotten a sharp kick to the head.
"Sorry," Duo called down to him. "Looks like this is the place, though. There's light up there. Besides Trunks."
At the top of the ladder they found a small room with a window that looked out over the square. That arch was in clear view, and there was a large switch on the wall beside the window. Duo moved over to the lever and let Heero take look out.
"Do we do this by sight or time?" asked Duo.
"Both," said Heero. "We have twenty seconds and that float she's riding on is almost under the arch."
Duo blinked in surprise and gave a soft mutter about cutting things close. Then Heero waved at him and he jerked the lever down. They could actually hear the grates dropping into place across the way. A moment later a crack sounded and everything faded away.
The moment they were reunited in the port, which was now sporting a dark green fire that matched Setsuna's hair perfectly, Wolfwood grimaced.
"It wasn't my fault," he said quickly. "I didn't know she was going to block the bullet. How could I have known?"
Duo twitched. "What! She blocked it?"
"I saw it, too," Heero scowled. "Some sort of force field."
"Congratulations on completing the task," said Setsuna. The three players rounded on her, and she raised an eyebrow.
"We didn't fail?" asked Duo.
"Your task was to trap and fire upon the sorceress," Setsuna smiled. "You completed the task."
"Hn." Duo frowned and rocked back on his heels. "So she was supposed to block it. I guess that's fine, then. Jeeze, you two, scaring me like that."
If anything, Setsuna's smile widened. "You have acquired a second 'Light Trip.' Do you wish to use one now?"
"Not yet," waved Duo. "We have to figure out where we're going next."
Quatre spoke up at that, just as Duo had expected him to. It made him wonder if Quatre had said anything to Wolfwood while they were separated. They'd probably have to wait until they took another 'Light Trip' to find out, since the bands didn't work in those.
"What do you mean, decide?" asked Quatre. "You're still taking Random, aren't you?"
Score. Duo smirked at Heero. Quatre had no idea which portals they went through. As long as he assumed they were using Random, he wouldn't bother to make it a direct order. Good to know.
"Sure, we're going in Random for the task," said Duo, "but we learned some things in that Wanderweb place. Something about trading to get items during a task. We had a time limit for the last one, but the next one might let us do a little bit of exploring. We'll probably have to deviate from the tasks to find the things we're supposed to trade for."
Duo made it a point never to lie outright, so Heero took up from there.
"We should decide whether or not we want to look for these items before we go into the next realm," said Heero. "That way if we're separated again, we'll know if we're all aiming to complete the task immediately."
"It's best to focus on the given task," said Quatre. "Unless it's a very simple task, doing other things would risk a failure in that realm."
In other words, hurry it up. Duo shook his head at how predictably Quatre had responded. This time even Wolfwood took part in the looks they exchanged. Heero waved a hand toward the Random portal. Time to move on and keep Quatre from suspecting anything. Duo shrugged and led the way.
"Off we go," Duo said, for Quatre's benefit. "Let's hope it's a quick task so we can get to the next realm as soon as possible."
"Yeah," said Wolfwood. "But hopefully it won't involve importing characters."
Duo frowned at that but didn't get a chance to ask why he'd say that. Trunks had been a little confused and distant, but he'd been useful. As far as he could see, the more characters they imported, the better. He kept that opinion to himself for the time being. They'd already locked hands and taken the step into Random.
.-.
TBC
Notes: Squall and the task are from FF8 and Trunks is from DBZ. My depiction of the monsters here is based on the ff8 games I've played. I always have my characters built up so it takes only one hit to kill "Creeps", and their 'heart' attack never does anything to my characters. I've never faced them when they were strong, so I can't write them as anything but annoying squiggly monsters that burst pink hearts at people. I have something self-serving and fun in store for the next part, so maybe it'll be one of the longer chapters.
www . arigatomina . com / fanfiction / crossovers / thegame / importqueue . html
The Game
Part 15: “Group mission in a fantasy realm”
The first thing they noticed when they found themselves in the blurry pre-setting for the realm was that Wolfwood's weapon had changed shapes yet again. Now it was a long rifle. Setsuna explained why when she described their task.
"Your task is to trap and fire on the sorceress," she said. "For this task, there will be two teams. One team must find the underground entrance to the tower and use that to reach the 'gate release'. They will spring this to trap the sorceress so that the sniper may take his shot."
An image appeared before them depicting a sewer, a ladder, and then a switch in a tower next to a window that overlooked a dark city. The next image showed the place where the sorceress was to be trapped, an arch with two heavy gates that would drop down on each side. The third showed what looked like some sort of carousel on top of a building where the sniper was to take position.
The final image was their target, a black-haired woman who would have been beautiful if her face weren't discolored so that she looked like a corpse, and if she weren't wearing what looked like snail shells over her ears, feathered horns in the back of her hair and the top half of...either a sundial or a clock...on her shoulders with rectangular white curtains hanging off both sides. At least they wouldn't have to worry about accidentally firing on the wrong person.
"You require two additional players for this task. Your 'Import Queue'."
As Wolfwood had learned, the three new characters they'd met in Wanderweb had been added to the list. There was now a star on Hiei's profile, and Vash and the three unnamed characters from that violent 'second chance' task were available to be imported.
"Any ideas on who to pick?" asked Duo. "We should probably work on getting more people stars so we can bring them on a 'Light Trip' with us. Kurama would be good, since we already used Hiei."
Heero sent a look at Wolfwood. "What about those two you met in the first task?"
"I don't think they'd take to this sort of thing," Wolfwood winced. "I couldn't even get the first one's name, and Akira...he seemed sort of shady. Like he was just checking me out on the off chance he might want to kill me later..."
"Let's leave him out," Duo grinned. "There's bound to be enough characters wanting to kill us in this realm without us bringing in our own."
"We can't bring Vash," said Heero. "And those other two from Kurama's realm were his enemies. That leaves the ones we met in Wanderweb and the three from the last task."
"And the girl from the first task," Duo reminded him.
"I don't plan to ever import her," said Heero.
"Good call," Duo laughed. "So that leaves Mitsukake - a healer's always useful - and the ones that beat the shit out of me, right? Tough choice. What about him? I don't remember seeing him at all."
He pointed at the blank profile of a lavender-haired teenager, who was listed right after the two who'd threatened them in the last realm.
Wolfwood frowned and shrugged. "That black-haired guy knocked him out right after we showed up. If we go on the assumption that he was trying to help whoever Duo replaced, then he'd be on our side. Assuming the person he replaced wasn't a bad guy. It's really hard to know what was going on in the last task."
"Let's give him a chance, then," said Duo. "We're sort of going in order, anyway. And it doesn't sound like we'll actually be fighting in this realm, so we don't need a healer. Plus, Mitsukake was already in Wanderweb - we might not meet anyone new if we try to bring him on a 'Light Trip' since we met him on a 'Light Trip'. No point getting him a star if he's already there."
"Are you decided, then?" asked Setsuna.
Heero nodded, and Duo turned back to her with a broad smile. He pointed to the two characters they'd chosen. "We'll take that one and that one."
"You have twenty minutes to complete the task," Setsuna said as a parting.
If they hadn't been split up immediately after her statement, Duo might have griped at her for the belated warning. He should have guessed there was a catch - again - to such a straightforward sounding task. They didn't even get a chance to ask who would be going in which group.
Wolfwood wasn't surprised to find himself, yet again, separated from his partners. It was becoming predictable. The rifle tipped him off, too, since he'd been assigned to the team as a sniper before they even started the game. What surprised him was that the second he 'arrived' in the realm, he found himself chasing after a stranger. Whoever he'd replaced in this realm must have been following the guy, because he 'landed' in midstep. He promptly stumbled and almost tripped over a corpse.
He was on the top of a building of some sort, with a podium to his left and the dead body of a middle-aged man at his feet, just a little ways to his right. A glance around showed that it was late at night, just like in the pictures Setsuna had shown them. And there appeared to be a celebration going on in the streets below the building. Faint music and cheers went together with the lights, gaudy colors mixing from spectators, dancers, and a strange looking vehicle with a corpse-like sorceress sitting on a throne. He could only guess he'd gotten the 'easy' part of the task. The view from above told him this was the direction he'd be in when he took his shot - after the others did their part and 'captured' the target.
The stranger he'd been following disappeared through a doorway on the other side of the roof. Wolfwood jolted into motion and hurried after him. If he were following the guy, he'd probably replaced a friend of his. Hopefully. He had no idea where the carrousel was supposed to be. If it wasn't somewhere on top of this building he'd have a heck of a time finding it and getting there in the next twenty minutes.
He entered a dim hallway lined with a red carpet, strange black symbols written around the doorway. And he got his first good look at the person he'd been chasing after. It was a young man, in his late teens, with short dark brown hair, black leather pants, and a black coat that was far too short on him and had a neck lined with white fuzz along the back. He also had wide blue eyes and a strange looking sword, which he'd drawn right as Wolfwood caught up to him. The weapon was some sort of mixed breed of sword and rifle, and the guy's eyes were wide because of the scene he'd ran onto. Wolfwood took one look and then his eyes were just as wide.
They were standing at the entrance to what might have been a bedroom if there had been a bed in sight. Iridescent curtains hid the walls from sight and a huge light protruded down from the ceiling, looking like a cross between an outrageously gaudy chandeliere and a skylight. Standing directly below that, in the center of the room, was Kurama. He was wearing pale jeans and a light teeshirt. Both were splotched with dark stains. In his right hand was a green vine studded with thorns. At his feet were clumps of something green and orange that might have been alive at one point.
"I should have known," Kurama glowered at Wolfwood.
"Who are you?" the guy with the gun-sword-weapon-thing asked. "Where's Rinoa?"
"Um, I can explain," Wolfwood said weakly.
The dark-haired teenager rounded on him in shock. He stared at him for a second, and then looked past him in confusion. Wolfwood assumed the guy was looking for whoever he had replaced in this realm. He gave a sick grin and gestured to his rifle.
"I'm sort of playing this game and, uh, everything will go back to normal after I shoot this sorceress woman..."
The teen blinked at him. "What?"
"Yeah," Wolfwood said, his grin twitching in place. Kurama looked ready to kill him. That probably wasn't good. "I'm a sniper, the name's Wolfwood. Nice to meet you. So, uh, you wouldn't happen to know the location of this carrousel I'm supposed to shoot from, would you?"
On the other side of the celebrating masses below, and beneath the street, Duo and Heero had found themselves standing in a well lit sewer that smelled cleaner than a bathhouse and was crawling - literally - with slinky black shadows. The lavender-haired teenager they'd imported was walking a few feet in front of them and serving as a human lantern to further light their way.
It turned out his name was Trunks and he was much more muscular in person, and when he was conscious, than he'd appeared when they met him in the last realm. He also had the ability to glow with a golden light, though he claimed it was a sign of his power increasing and wasn't supposed to be used to light up sewers. He didn't really remember them. He'd had a brief glimpse of his father turning into a slender teenager with long hair, Duo, and then he'd hit the dirt and woken up to remember nothing of the sort having happened in reality. It was all very strange. That was probably why he didn't push them very hard to explain exactly how, and why, he'd gone from sitting in front of a television, waiting for an android's public performance, to creeping his way along a monster infested sewer with two boys he didn't know.
Duo had tried to explain about the game, their task in the last realm, and how Trunks would go right back home as soon as they were done here. He got the impression the information didn't really keep, though. The guy was still sending dazed looks over his shoulders every few steps of the way. At least he'd explained who the bad guys were in the last realm. The flying pair were bad, after all, and according to Trunks they were androids and all of them were lucky to be alive after confronting them. Duo took that to mean they probably shouldn't try importing them into a task any time soon.
There wasn't much time to try convincing Trunks that he wasn't dreaming, and that what they were saying made sense if he really thought about it. They had a time limit and no watch to know whether or not they were falling behind. On top of that, they didn't know where they were going since the sewers had gates - some locked, some not - a walkway on either side of the fast moving water, and water wheels that for some reason they could climb up but couldn't climb down. Heero had gone on for minutes on the impossibility of that. They hit two dead ends and when they tried to go back, they couldn't. At all. They could get two feet from the walkway below, but an invisible wall sprang up when they tried to jump down. One way waterwheels in a maze, a time limit, and the slinky shadows on top of it all.
The shadows resolved themselves into monsters when they attacked. Like the waterwheels only going up, Duo couldn't explain how the creatures managed to get within striking distance before they saw them. Not even Heero could spot their approach, and that was saying something. They looked like solid oil slicks, flat and black and smelly, but they squirmed like worms when they weren't flopping over to try and slap them with their long fingered hands. They also did magic of some kind that, in Duo's opinion, belonged in a game for little girls and not one where sorceresses got trapped and shot with a long range rifle.
They'd just climbed another of those one-way wheels when one of the slippery things flopped over to heart them to death. Duo couldn't think of any other way to describe it. The thing flopped onto its hind...extensions, maybe, definitely not legs in the logical meaning of the word...pulsated, and then sent out a large pink heart, complete with sparkles. Duo grimaced as it struck Trunks and left him reeling. Like the waterwheels and the impossibly unseen approach of the monsters, they couldn't seem to dodge the...heart attacks. Luckily they didn't do much damage - they just left the recipient feeling dazed and sick to his stomach until the thing was killed. Duo took the honors of slicing it in half with his scythe.
For creatures that could approach from seemingly nowhere, they weren't very smart fighters. They only attacked in darting motions that were really easy to time. They'd flop over and swipe, or flop up and heart, and then they'd just squirm in place for a few seconds before trying again. It was almost like they were taking turns. He guessed that was sort of nice. As flexible as the things were, he didn't want them sticking around in a close contact fight. Ew. Just ew. They were rather easy to kill, too. One or two really hard hits - Trunks packed quite a punch - a good swipe of his scythe, or a blast from Heero's cannon, and the things stiffened and dissolved into death throes. The way they scrabbled at the ground looked painful. Duo hoped it was. Payback for making them fight something that specialized in heart attacks.
They reached another of those black gates that inexplicably cut the sewers into twenty-foot sections. The gate on their side of the water was locked. Again. And like the one-way wheels making it - for no rational reason - impossible to jump two feet, they couldn't blast or tear the thin gates open when they were locked.
"We're never getting out of here," Duo groaned. "Why can't we just cross the water? It's only like a foot deep!"
"I can't even fly across it," said Trunks. "The invisible wall stretches all the way up."
Duo grumbled as they turned and headed back the way they'd come. There was a water wheel back at the last gate. Not all of them could be ridden up, but maybe there was a ladder that would take them to the other side of the water or something.
"How much time do we have?" asked Duo.
"Eight minutes," Heero frowned. "We'd better start running."
"At least you have a stopwatch in your head," Duo sighed. He jogged alongside Heero, letting Trunks light the way ahead of them. That glowing thing really was convenient.
Trunks had gotten a little ahead of them. He turned back with wide eyes. "There's a wheel up there that goes down instead of up!"
"No way," Duo scoffed. "Seriously?"
"Yeah. There's one that goes up, a path across the water, and then another that goes down on the other side."
"That's gotta be a good sign," Duo grinned and darted off ahead. "Pick it up a notch, Heero! You're slowing us down."
Heero sent a droll glare after him and ran a little faster.
Above the sewers, the streets, the celebration, and beneath the roof of a certain building with a corpse and a podium, Wolfwood was slunk down at the edge of a dark carrousel that, supposedly, would be rising through the roof in a few minutes so he'd have a perfect beam on the sorceress. Squall, the teenager with a penchant for furry black leather, had begrudgingly helped him find the thing. He'd finally accepted that Wolfwood was the only sniper around, and that he'd fail his own mission if he didn't help him shoot the woman. He'd accepted Kurama replacing this Rinoa person with far less protest. Wolfwood took that to mean he either liked the girl, or hated her. Now if Kurama would just stop glaring at him things would be going fine.
"I'm really sorry for the inconvenience," Wolfwood said, to the dangerous looking redhead. "Really."
"Inconvenience," Kurama repeated, in an icy tone. "You're sorry for the inconvenience. Do you have any idea what kind of battle we were in when Hiei disappeared? I saw it happen. He was gone for seconds. Plural. Sensui was already on him when he flashed back. What you're doing is more than an intrusive, annoying, inconvenience. That one moment of confusion could have gotten Hiei killed. That doesn't even take into account the fact that I went out for a simple walk and found myself here instead, with two mansized lizards trying to eat me."
"I really am sorry," Wolfwood said weakly. "We didn't even know Hiei was going to be imported for that last task. The Game did it on its own that time."
"And this time?" Kurama asked, with a sweet smile.
Wolfwood shivered and hunched a little closer to his high powered rifle. "Duo picked you. I had nothing to do with it."
On the other side of the celebratory square, Duo sneezed and almost fell down a ladder. Trunks caught his arm before he slipped past more than two rungs.
"Be careful," Heero winced. He'd gotten a sharp kick to the head.
"Sorry," Duo called down to him. "Looks like this is the place, though. There's light up there. Besides Trunks."
At the top of the ladder they found a small room with a window that looked out over the square. That arch was in clear view, and there was a large switch on the wall beside the window. Duo moved over to the lever and let Heero take look out.
"Do we do this by sight or time?" asked Duo.
"Both," said Heero. "We have twenty seconds and that float she's riding on is almost under the arch."
Duo blinked in surprise and gave a soft mutter about cutting things close. Then Heero waved at him and he jerked the lever down. They could actually hear the grates dropping into place across the way. A moment later a crack sounded and everything faded away.
The moment they were reunited in the port, which was now sporting a dark green fire that matched Setsuna's hair perfectly, Wolfwood grimaced.
"It wasn't my fault," he said quickly. "I didn't know she was going to block the bullet. How could I have known?"
Duo twitched. "What! She blocked it?"
"I saw it, too," Heero scowled. "Some sort of force field."
"Congratulations on completing the task," said Setsuna. The three players rounded on her, and she raised an eyebrow.
"We didn't fail?" asked Duo.
"Your task was to trap and fire upon the sorceress," Setsuna smiled. "You completed the task."
"Hn." Duo frowned and rocked back on his heels. "So she was supposed to block it. I guess that's fine, then. Jeeze, you two, scaring me like that."
If anything, Setsuna's smile widened. "You have acquired a second 'Light Trip.' Do you wish to use one now?"
"Not yet," waved Duo. "We have to figure out where we're going next."
Quatre spoke up at that, just as Duo had expected him to. It made him wonder if Quatre had said anything to Wolfwood while they were separated. They'd probably have to wait until they took another 'Light Trip' to find out, since the bands didn't work in those.
"What do you mean, decide?" asked Quatre. "You're still taking Random, aren't you?"
Score. Duo smirked at Heero. Quatre had no idea which portals they went through. As long as he assumed they were using Random, he wouldn't bother to make it a direct order. Good to know.
"Sure, we're going in Random for the task," said Duo, "but we learned some things in that Wanderweb place. Something about trading to get items during a task. We had a time limit for the last one, but the next one might let us do a little bit of exploring. We'll probably have to deviate from the tasks to find the things we're supposed to trade for."
Duo made it a point never to lie outright, so Heero took up from there.
"We should decide whether or not we want to look for these items before we go into the next realm," said Heero. "That way if we're separated again, we'll know if we're all aiming to complete the task immediately."
"It's best to focus on the given task," said Quatre. "Unless it's a very simple task, doing other things would risk a failure in that realm."
In other words, hurry it up. Duo shook his head at how predictably Quatre had responded. This time even Wolfwood took part in the looks they exchanged. Heero waved a hand toward the Random portal. Time to move on and keep Quatre from suspecting anything. Duo shrugged and led the way.
"Off we go," Duo said, for Quatre's benefit. "Let's hope it's a quick task so we can get to the next realm as soon as possible."
"Yeah," said Wolfwood. "But hopefully it won't involve importing characters."
Duo frowned at that but didn't get a chance to ask why he'd say that. Trunks had been a little confused and distant, but he'd been useful. As far as he could see, the more characters they imported, the better. He kept that opinion to himself for the time being. They'd already locked hands and taken the step into Random.
.-.
TBC
Notes: Squall and the task are from FF8 and Trunks is from DBZ. My depiction of the monsters here is based on the ff8 games I've played. I always have my characters built up so it takes only one hit to kill "Creeps", and their 'heart' attack never does anything to my characters. I've never faced them when they were strong, so I can't write them as anything but annoying squiggly monsters that burst pink hearts at people. I have something self-serving and fun in store for the next part, so maybe it'll be one of the longer chapters.