Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Attempted Bystanding ❯ 03 ( Chapter 4 )

Three

Ranger stood, surveying the empty apartment with narrowed eyes.

Rabid wasn't as clueless as he pretended to be sometimes. He'd known they'd need hostages to gain their independence. That was why they'd taken the tourist ship. It'd probably have gone better if there was more than one lousy boy from earth. They'd probably have gotten media attention then.

Since that had failed, they'd decided on a plan B. Late one night when most of the bastards surrounding 27 were sleeping, they'd launched a handful of MS. A few of them had worked decoy, and one of them had contained a man who no longer wanted to be part of the game. He'd surrendered himself, which was probably when the units had realized the MS were unarmed.

Getting back to 27 was going to be difficult. The Preventers had circled the colony like a bunch of old vultures...war-rick bastards hungering for another battle. The peace would never hold. There were too many frictions. The Peacecraft bitch could preach total pacifism until her tongue fell out, but until there was a surgery available to remove men's pride, it would never hold.

All the grand ideals in the world only amounted to the golden rule—whoever had the gold made the rules. The weak followed like sheep, doing what they could so that their master could pat their heads like the dirty dogs they were.

Of course, when he said things like that Rabid always hushed him.

No one wanted to hear the truth, they wanted the sugar-coated lies. They wanted everything to be peaches and butterflies, not knives and rabid wolves.

Ranger smiled viciously at the notion.

No one seemed to see the irony in the name their leader had earned himself. There was some honey-coated story going around about him fighting like a rabid badger in battle...no one ever seemed to notice the bit that the humans infected with rabies tended to go insane as well...just like Edgar Allan Poe.

Quoth the raven, "nevermore."

Ranger smiled more, looking around the empty apartment. He'd gotten to it in the early afternoon, around three or so...and no one was there. It was going on five, and no one had returned. He couldn't tell if anyone was around or not, but he doubted it. Someone'd said the prince was getting nervous and had skived off...the woman must have gone with him.

He'd have to look it up. Shouldn't take too long, Rab had figured that 27 would get surrounded and closed off from society, so they'd put up a network of people who could act outside of the colony. They all knew that Ranger was his agent now, so they'd all work with him very well...very very well.

The man sniffed slightly, moving into an office and moving over to flick on the computer. He'd check the history to see if the pair had been looking at flights. That should give him a good start—especially if they were the sort to keep records of that sort of thing on their computers.

He doubted it'd be that easy...but it was worth a shot.

- -

Milliardo closed his eyes as he rested against a paper-thin wall, listening to a couple arguing in the room next to his. Evidently the man hadn't bought the woman a single thing for Valentine's Day and she was letting him know how worthless she thought he was while he reminded her she was nothing but a dirty whore, and he wasn't going to spend the money on her when he could buy his crack.

Well, that was an assumption on Milliardo's part.

He loved L-2 slums.

He was on V08744...and the fact that Duo'd been raised there seemed to figure. There was no other reason the annoying man would have the personality he did.

Zechs grinned a bit. That wasn't fair, but he wasn't trying to be fair. According to Lu's phone, she'd gone to earth—to Los Angeles. The only people she knew who lived in LA, in fact that anyone knew in LA...were the former Gundam pilots.

Duo'd had his head turned by Lu far too many times for Zechs' piece of mind...and worse, she had a tendency to dress nice when he was around. They went out shopping, to lunch, and occasionally drinking together. She'd take long lunches to go out with him...

Considering that over the years, the only competition Zechs had ever had for Lu's attention had been Duo, he didn't really think she'd stray. It was just nerve-wracking, because he also knew that Duo had the ability to make her stray.

Milliardo shook his head sourly.

It didn't help that he'd left right before Valentine's Day, either. He'd actually intended to get her some roses before he did, but then someone'd been following him.

Une had informed him that someone was looking to take him hostage. She'd refused to tell him if it was the 27 idiots or one of the other random groups that infested the colonies and earth like flies on a pig-carcass...he'd noticed he was being followed before that, but her saying as much meant that she was expecting him to deal with himself.

The woman started crying, and the man punched the wall.

Milliardo didn't trust anyone. The only person he was ever entirely sure of anymore was Lu. He hated that he'd had to leave her like he had, but the vultures had been circling, and he'd wanted her to go too. If he'd said anything to her about it, she would have insisted they stood their ground and took the people down.

His plan, which had worked disgustingly well, was to make her think he'd left on her again. He'd had a few issues with commitment in the past, and they'd led him to run away so he could clear his head. It always came back to the fact that he didn't like being without her anymore. After he'd realized that, he'd gone back like a mutt with its tail between his legs and she'd taken him back...again.

He wasn't so sure if she would anymore. This might have been the straw that broke the camel's back. She'd never left the colonies when he'd done it before. She'd always go to Sally or one of her other girlfriends...but she did always leave, and that was what he needed her to do.

Just why earth?

The man's anger gave-out, and he started comforting the woman.

Great...now they were going to have make-up sex that would probably be annoyingly loud. Aww...he'd forgotten it was Valentine's Day? Poor poor man, instead of biting the bullet and admitting it, he'd had to try to talk around it...hell, why hadn't she said something about it to him on the day? Lu wouldn't have let it pass.

Zechs groaned to himself and flicked the television on.

He'd accepted long ago that his life sucked. It had been one misfortune after the other...the only time he'd known anything other had been during the Eve Wars...and not even through all of it. Only the first bit had been fine. Everything that had followed had been nonsense.

The couple in the other room had gone quiet, and Milliardo sighed, pretty sure he knew what was coming.

He had missed Valentine's Day, and he hadn't wanted to. He'd been planning a dinner before shit had hit the fan. He'd wanted to take her to a little garden café. He'd seen her noticing off and on and looking at him. It wasn't the sort of place he'd ever have really wanted to go, and she'd never asked him to take her. She knew it wasn't his sort of place, so she'd have appreciated him taking her...and flowers...and a necklace.

He sighed at a few telltale thumps from the next room over and turned the television up a little more.

He'd left her again and really had gone to hell. Maxwell had said as much the last time he'd done it. ‘You leave her again, you piece of shit, and I'll make sure she's comforted while you burn in hell.'

Something to that effect, anyway.

He was going to have to deck the man the next time he saw him. No warning, no explanation...just go give him a nice black eye. They could get drunk and laugh about it later.

He could get drunk now.

Milliardo sat up, that idea appealing highly. He didn't want to hear if the neighbors actually did have sex...maybe he'd get lucky and they'd be done by the time he got back.

Either way, he was going to work on getting drunk after that. Maybe then he'd stop thinking about what Duo might possibly be doing to his Lu.

...she wouldn't do it. She...he had to have faith in her.

- -

"What do you think?" Duo muttered, gesturing toward a little café with his and Lucretzia's joined hands.

"Here?" she asked, looking curiously at the thing.

"No," he retorted sarcastically. "We just parked down the street from it and I'm showing it to you for shits and giggles...yes, here."

She giggled, meeting his eyes before looking back to the place.

Duo rolled his eyes slightly as they moved closer. He was wearing slacks and a sapphire blue button up top. He'd tempered the fairly work-related look by leaving the shirt halfway unbuttoned with a white wife-beater underneath it...under his leather jacket with a pair of his shiny shoes.

His professional wardrobe made him look rich, and that seemed about right for taking her out.

He grinned, looking her over from the corner of his eye. She had on her little black dress. It fell to her knees and was fairly low cut...which looked very nice, and would have been damn hot with a pair of strappy sandals and something shiny above her cleavage—but she'd gone for the fucking hot thing of adding combat-boots and leg-warmers.

Duo had to smile more at that. There was a cold wind that made the outfit too cold on its own. She had thought to wear the leg-warmers with her strappy sandals, but Duo'd told her not to bother when she'd started to fuss.

She did look nice, she had her short hair fluffed and positioned in an appealing way, and she'd done her make-up...the boots and leg-warmers were an almost funny addition.

He moved forward, pulling the door to the place open for her, and smiling as she moved past him inside, pulling off her trench coat.

It saddened him that this really was her Valentine's treat. She wasn't with the man she loved, but with a very dear friend. She needed his support and he wasn't going to hesitate to give it to her...and hopefully the next time he saw the damn prince he could walk up to the man and deck him. He wouldn't have to explain why.

"Reservation?" the maître d' asked curiously.

"Tembler," Duo returned.

"For two?" the man smiled sweetly at Noin, then looked to her legs curiously.

"It's cold outside!" she protested, grinning.

He smiled back at her and nodded his head, grabbing two menus.

"You have the wine I wanted, correct?" Duo added as they neared the table. "I was told you could get it."

"Of course we have it," the man returned. "It's already been cracked and is on ice—we'll bring it out momentarily."

Duo nodded his agreement.

"What, now?" she asked sweetly.

"I ordered some wine," Duo returned, shrugging as the man started away. He took her coat from her and hung it from the hook next to their table, then moved to hold the chair for her. "It's nothing for you to worry about."

She smiled at that, sitting down.

He swung his own jacket off and hung it, taking his seat as the man, true to his word, moved toward them.

"A.C. 177," the man noted, allowing Duo to sniff the cork. "Just like you asked..."

Noin started giggling. "What?"

"The year this was made, miss," the man returned, smiling sweetly at her as he carefully poured her a glass. "Many good things came that year..." he met her eyes, grinning.

She smiled back at that, then turned the smile onto Duo, giving him a flattered and amused look.

"Many," he agreed, accepting his cup. "Very many...especially in the spring."

"Ah, yes," the waiter muttered quickly, showing her the date on the bottle.

Fifteen, May. A.C. 177.

"Oh, Warrick!" she gasped, staring at that in amazement before meeting his eyes.

He smiled at her. It had been fairly hard to find a bottle of wine made the day she was born in the course of two hours...he'd called about every café and fine dining establishment in the city before finding one that could accommodate his desires...they had twenty-four hours to get it, though, so it wasn't nearly as tight.

The waiter smiled at her, cast an approving grin at Duo, then decided to make himself scarce.

She wordlessly grabbed his hand in both of hers—his left hand. She raised that to her mouth and kissed the tip of his middle finger, studying his eyes as she did so.

"I know you had a bad day yesterday," he muttered, pulling her hand back to his lips. "So I wanted to do something for you."

Tears filled her eyes as she pressed her hand against his lips, then pulled away to wipe at her eyes.

"And think," he muttered, pushing her cup toward her. "If we'd come here yesterday it would have been crowded with giggly girls, right? Tonight it's almost only us," he gestured toward the two or three other couples in the place. "Is this okay?"

Tears spilled down her cheeks and she wiped them away before taking his hand again, then grabbing her glass and sniffing at it curiously.

He passed her a napkin, still considering her eyes.

"You absolutely ruined my make-up," she accused him, wiping at her eyes as the stuff she'd carefully applied wiped away.

"You don't need it," he reassured her, smiling a bit wanly. "You're beautiful anyway."

- -

"Are you sure it's okay?" Heero asked Wufei nervously.

"No," Wufei returned, meeting his eyes. "The next question is do I care? I don't, you know. If Duo wants to snatch Lu up on the rebound he may as well. He's been besotted with her long enough."

"But...I mean...what if Milliardo didn't actually leave her? What if..."

"What if pigs grew blue?" Wufei cut him off. "What if space changed from black to pink? What if grass stopped being green in protest?"

Heero frowned at him.

"What I'm saying," Wufei noted quietly, leaning forward, "is don't worry about it. Let the cards fall as they may. I don't think Duo will follow through with any of this. She insisted yesterday that he take her to Valentine's, so he's doing it."

Heero looked down.

"You can talk to him about it tomorrow," Wufei reassured him. "Or tonight. She's going to take a room in the apartment, so if you wait up for him, he'll probably stay up and talk it out with you."

Heero nodded, thinking about that. Matty had most Sundays off. He'd called his friends about the mall thing with Lucretzia earlier in the day, and they'd come back to the apartments with him. They were all over in the second apartment with a tv and some game console. Heero wasn't entirely sure where the tv had come from, but he figured that between the three of them, they'd scrounged it up somewhere.

They'd been trying to get him to play the game, but when he had, he'd flown through the first level for a record time that had beat Matty's previous top-score. He'd decided at that point not to do it anymore. He felt bad that he'd beat Matty's score; Matty had been telling him how long it'd taken him to get it...but they seemed to be attempting to beat his score. They could get rather loud...

Wufei had reassured him that they were having fun, a lot of fun from what he could tell...so evidently it wasn't a problem that he'd beat the high score.

"Max!" Matty squeaked, flying through the door. "Max!"

Heero jumped to his feet in alarm, his mind instantly going over every possible entrance to the other apartment.

"I did it!" Matty informed him proudly, bouncing up to jump on him. "I did it! I beat it!"

"I beat it first!" Abel noted, bouncing happily after. "It was damn hard!"

Heero blinked at them.

"I beat it!" Matty repeated, bouncing slightly in Heero's arms. "You need to go beat it again...faster...so we can try to beat that..."

"What are you playing?" Wufei asked skeptically.

"It's a race game," Matty returned, grinning at him. "You should try, too!"

"If you get him in on it, the two of them will be trying to out-gun each other and there'd be no way you could ever beat it," Trowa noted from the loft.

Matty giggled at that.

"Did you just giggle?" Taili demanded, his dark eyes flashing in amusement as he looked between the three older males. "Did he really?"

"Shut-up!" Matty retorted, throwing himself at the other guy happily so he stumbled back.

Abel started laughing happily, then gestured at Heero. "Come on! Come beat it again for us!"

Heero looked to Wufei uncertainly.

"It's a personal challenge," Wufei muttered in French. "They're probably all at the same skill level."

Taili's eyes had rolled back in a way that meant he was thinking fast.

"Was that French?" Abel demanded, looking between them in disbelief.

"What languages do your friends speak?" Wufei demanded of Matty irritably. He'd wanted to give his friend reassurance in a way they wouldn't recognize.

"Taili took French in high school," Matty explained, shrugging. "We all speak Japanese...and me and Taili know Chinese...Mandarin...and Abel knows German." He looked back to Heero. "You speak French?"

"I speak a lot of languages," Heero returned, giving him a pointed sort of look. If Matty took a moment to think about it, he'd realize why—and also probably that their skills didn't go much past the conversational level.

"That's cool," Abel muttered, grinning slightly at Taili. "I bet he can teach us!"

"Huh?" Heero asked blankly.

"We want to learn Spanish," Matty returned, grinning at him. "We all decided we wanted to learn the romance languages...that's why Ty took French."

"And you can speak it?" Wufei asked skeptically.

"Not really," Taili admitted, shrugging. "I try some, but I'm not that great...do you speak Spanish? Or you?" he focused between them.

Wufei pointed at the loft.

"Rige?" Matty squeaked.

"You did not!" Trowa protested, moving forward from where he'd been sitting in the window. He was holding a book. The words were to Wufei and Heero.

"You speak Spanish?" Matty demanded, turning and bouncing toward the stairs. His friends were quick to follow.

Trowa glared between Heero and Wufei a moment, then turned his focus on the teens as they stopped to bounce in front of him.

"Cute kids," Wufei muttered from the side of his mouth to Heero. "I'm gonna go try to mediate, keep'em off me if you can at all."

Heero grinned at that, watching the Chinese man dart for the room.

"I'm gonna go play that level," Heero noted...as he'd hoped, it distracted them. It cut off the tide of begging and offers the teens were throwing at Trowa. They thought their arguments were valid, but Heero playing the game was enough of a distraction that they all turned to follow...almost instantly.

Really, Heero thought Quatre might have the right idea. He'd retreated to one of the bedrooms of the apartment with a book. The teens respected him in an insanely weird way, which meant they were mostly trying to keep it down since he was reading.

Heero wasn't sure why Trowa wasn't afforded that same courtesy...but he could ask Matty later.

It wasn't like he'd be going to bed until after Duo got back anyway. They'd have plenty of time to talk...after his friends went home.

- -

"Ma'am?"

Une looked up from the computer screen she'd been staring at so long her head had started to hurt.

"The searches have returned nothing," the quiet soldier muttered, looking down embarrassedly.

"Nothing?" she echoed, closing her eyes and starting to rub them. She'd have to wear her glasses now or gain a migraine for her troubles. "Are you very sure?"

"The men who went are changing out of their spacesuits," the man returned. "They should be back here within the next fifteen minutes."

Une nodded.

He hesitated a moment, then stepped back. When she watched him and didn't call him back, he nodded his head respectfully and disappeared back the way he had come.

Didn't it figure?

She hadn't thought they'd have much more success, after all. The man who'd surrendered—a soldier named Ratdy—he'd said they'd used the maintenance MS on purpose. He'd said that they'd been trying to get a few men out of their colony, but they hadn't told him why. He'd been a soldier, his rank made him the one of the many legs the others would stand on. They hadn't told him what he didn't need to know, and that meant that his defection from their ranks hadn't been worth more than a sigh before including him into their plan.

He'd also given them solid numbers...the death toll from their fateful decision to take one little boy...

It bothered Une to know that twelve men had fallen between the five former pilots. The wounded count, however, had been considerably higher. Twice? Three times? That number hadn't sank into her brain the way the twelve deaths had. There'd been many wounded from them, and from the fire they'd brought. She'd heard the numbers before that, from the two men she had on the inside, but she'd stopped asking them to report. They needed to leave 27 before the whole ordeal claimed two more lives for an independence that was as reckless and meaningless as...

As what?

Une sighed tiredly, spinning around in her seat to pull open the drawer that held her glasses.

She'd been intending to get her own men in, and do it in a way that meant no lives would have been lost...but that had fallen short. Just like the argument she'd had with Rabid. He'd shouted at her and demanded why the ESA had sent in such a hostile...hostile and bloodthirsty...force. He'd worked himself into his lather, much like he usually did when talking about the Gundam pilots. She'd reinstated their rank, ever so briefly, to keep them from getting jail time for their vigilante nonsense. She couldn't actually tell Rabid that she'd had nothing to do with the brigadiers being there, she hadn't even realized they were in space to begin with, let alone about to attack a colony. The man also wouldn't understand that they'd only done it because of that boy...that Williams boy.

Rabid would never understand the extremes those pilots were willing to face without flinching. He'd wanted them dead since the wars had first been over, and the fact that they'd slipped through the hangman's noose had probably been part of the reason he'd left to start his own crazy nation.

Didn't he realize why his plan wouldn't work? Didn't he realize how many things a country had to have before it could be recognized? Those things included public support before their attempts to rule themselves.

There was a tap at the door and the young man who was making people leave her alone stepped back in again. "They've arrived, Ma'am," he noted quietly.

"Thank you," she muttered, rising to her feet.

Three men moved into the room and saluted her.

"I don't suppose there's a chance in hell or Mercury that you have good news," she noted.

"Not particularly," the older of the three agreed, smiling slightly at her.

"Then what do you have to say?"

"What I've heard said," he returned. "What I think...what you haven't deigned to notice yet."

"Craber," one of the others elbowed him, looking mildly alarmed.

Une crossed her arms, considering the three of them with narrowed eyes. "And what might that be?"

"Someone on this colony is helping them," the guy muttered, gesturing vaguely.

"Helping them how?" Une returned.

"They have to have somewhere to hide an MS," the man retorted.

"Yes, we've looked," Une reminded him. "All through the storage depot, we have men comparing bin numbers."

The man studied her a long moment, then looked away. "Maybe you have the wrong men."

"And maybe you're paranoid," she retorted irritably. "Who would be the right men, then, pray tell?"

He blinked and met her eyes.

"Put them forward for consideration," she pressed, giving him a long level look.

He hesitated and looked to his comrades.

"No?" she asked, then smiled sweetly. "Very well then, we will continue as we have been. You found nothing outside this colony, that's what you're here to tell me about. Do so now."