Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Butterfly: Black Wings ❯ Chapter Four ( Chapter 4 )

Butterfly: Black Wings

By: Banshee Puppet

Chapter Four: Hopeless

Naone awoke suddenly to the feeling of being violently jarred. "Ugh." Slowly, the voice came to her ears , rising in pitch and volume. "Naone! Naone, are you okay? Wake up!"

Heavily, deep brown eyes fluttered open beneath long lashes. "Lin Pao?" she asked. But no, that wasn't his voice at all. Reaching a hand up to her face, she pushed the tangled dusty blonde curls from her eyes and took a long few moments to let her eyes focus. The boy sighed. Lin Pao. Even at a time like this, Arima Naone could think of nothing but Lin Pao. He was their leader, so of course she should think of him, but not to these lengths. 'Ari, can't you see that there are people more appropriate for you than he is? Like me? I'm the one who cares about you. I'm the one who, more than anyone else..'

"Oh. Drix. It's you."

'Oh. Drix. It's you?' he thought huffily. 'That's all you have to say?! What the hell happened? You're hurt you moron!'

Naone saw the huffy anger enter Drix's gray eyes. He wasn't unattractive, Drix, on the rare occasion that he was smiling. His skin was nearly ghost white, but he had charcoal black hair that fell in soft waves over his brow, cropped short all the way around but more shaggy and restless on top with these little streaks of a natural orangey color flecking it at random intervals, but, Naone thought, his personality sucked. 'What the hell does this cretin hate me so much for?' She sat up carefully. 'Ooo. I think I'm gonna puke.'

"You idiot!" Drix snapped. "What the hell happened?! Why didn't you call for help? I mean, look at this mess!"

'You could have been killed!' he thought.

"Chang got out," Naone mumbled.

"Yeah," Drix answered. "No kidding. I'll tell the boss."

"No! I-I'll go. It's fine. I'm to blame anyway." She pushed up to her feet. "Whoa." Wobbling slightly, Naone made the comment, "like riding the roller coaster after eating nachos, three corn dogs, and an every-flavor slushie."

Drix pushed his hand through his bangs. "I'll start looking for Chang. He's got to be here somewhere, after all."

'You silly fool,' he thought. 'Don't you understand that you're just a tool for him to use? He doesn't love you. The person who loves you, is me…'

*~*~*

Lin Pao stared out over the wreckage from the bridge. Outside, his men (and women) were sited up and working diligently to locate L-5's abandoned containment core. Seemingly out of nowhere, and never turning his gaze upon her, he said, "I haven't figured out precisely what's in it for you, Miss Catalonia."

She turned a saccharine smile upon the man. "You mean you don't believe I'm doing this out of the goodness of my heart? I'm hurt, Lin Pao, really. I'll have you know I'm very altruistic."

Lin felt a migraine coming on. This woman-she didn't even try to hide the fact that she had ulterior motives. But for the life of him, he couldn't figure out what they were. He'd done his homework; this she-wolf had nothing to gain from the colonies destruction, and someone as in love with war as Dorothy Catalonia certainly wasn't helping him for the sake of peace.

"You're as much an altruist as I am a man of the cloth. It's convenient to say, but meaningless. So stop jerking me around, what are you really after?"

Rather vaguely Dorothy replied, "I just want to see how this whole thing turns out. Something interesting is bound to happen."

There was a fizzle of static. "Boss, I think we've found the outer shell. Prepping to crack it open."

"Yeah. Go for it," Lin said. "I'm going to start the coding sequence if you're sure."

"Uh…get back to you in five?"

"Fine."

As he said it, he heard footsteps echoing in the cold hallway beyond the door, which slid open with a puff of hair.

"M-Mr. Lin?"

"What is it Naone?"

"It's Chang, sir. He's gotten out."

"WHAAT?! You worthless little fool! What did I tell you about disappointing me?!"

"Ah, yeah, but…"

"Damn it!" he spun and grabbed the girl hard by the arm. She squeezed her eyes shut in fearful resignation and, with an annoyed sigh, he tossed her to the ground. "Don't you realize that the reason girls like you get raped in the first place is that you don't do anything?! Geez, what was I thinking, a weak woman like you is useless to me. I should have left you to have that body of yours ruined. You damn well would have deserved it."

"I. I…" Naone stuttered. "You're right," she said in resignation.

"What a weak woman you are," Dorothy commented off-handedly. "That you just take what he says as the absolute truth."

'Women in love are really the absolute worst,' she thought. 'I should know. I've been terrible for a long time too.'

*~*~*

Trowa shook Zechs' shoulder.

"Hm?" the blonde blinked awake.

"We're nearly there."

"Element of surprise?"

"Non-existent. It's wide open out there."

"Alright. Then we'll have to do it in the usual way. I'm going to prep the space Leo."

"Roger that."

*~*~*

Wufei was cursing the chains on his wrists which made it virtually impossible to move silently, even for him. Another guard had spotted him. They were easy to defeat. Swinging his arms so the heavy chain slammed against the young man's head with a satisfying 'thunk', Wufei was assured that when the boy awoke, he was going to have one hell of a headache. And then a click sounded behind him, the familiar sound of the safety on a small military issue handgun being released as the first bulled clicked into place. "That's as far as you go I'm afraid," Drix stated calmly.

'Shit,' Wufei thought. This was so very not his day. Slowly, he turned, wondering how he was going to get out of this one.

*~*~*

"SHOOT THEM DOWN!!" Lin Pao demanded. He was pissed. How dare the Preventers interfere! "Naone! Last chance, shoot them down!"

It was her chance to make it up to him. She knew now that if she failed in this, she was dead. Of course, they were probably all going to die anyway, but she didn't want to be killed by Lin Pao, so she fired at the Preventer's ship.

Trowa managed to evade the blast, but his eyes widened upon seeing what the girl managed to hit. "Zechs, the core!"

"Those idiots!!" Zech demanded. "I'll take care of it. Get Chang off of that ship!"

"Roger that."

*~*~*

When Wufei was about to take the chance that he was a quicker shot than his opponent, a loud, echoing shot rang through the hallway.

Drix cried out, grabbing at his shoulder and slinking, dragging a trail of blood down the wall. He'd never actually been shot before, and couldn't immediately come to terms with how painful it was. It was only a shoulder wound, but he couldn't help but think, 'am I going to die? Like a coward? Without ever having told Naone that I…'

Wufei's eyes widened in surprise at the woman in her green dress as she pulled the ribbon from her hair and let her platinum strands fall long and loose down her back. "Dorothy Catalonia," he stated, but it was a question. Why was she here, and more importantly why was she helping him.

She smiled with that sweet liar's smile she had and tossed him a key that could only be for the chains on his wrists. Of all the women in the world, it was this conniving woman who made the least sense to him.

"Go defeat your cousin, Wufei Chang, before he destroys the world," she said.

"What the hell are you after?"

"Something interesting. Go on. I'm going to greet our guests."

He would have liked to tear the answer from her throat, but there was no time. He could feel things coming to a head at last. So he dropped the chains to the ground and hurried down the hallway.

It was only moments later that Trowa ran into the hall from the other end, and skidded to a halt to find a gun pointed at his head.

'Dorothy Catalonia.'

"I knew that if something big like this happened, you'd come."

Trowa blinked. 'Huh?'

The young woman remembered how he'd saved Quatre after their duel so long ago and found she was jealous of even their friendship. She eased the safety back slowly. 'This is the only way that I can love you. I won't let anyone else have you, Trowa!'

"Trowa!" Quatre cried out. It was in that instant, on instinct, that Trowa lifted his own gun quickly and pulled the trigger. The bullet went straight through the right side of Dorothy's stomach. He blinked. In truth, for a long moment, Trowa didn't know what had happened.

Catherine gasped. She knew that Trowa had always been a soldier. She'd seen him in his Gundam, but she'd never actually seen him shoot someone. "Trowa?!" she asked.

"Are you alright?" Quatre demanded, already inspecting the older boy for wounds.

Dorothy looked painfully up at Catherine. "Are you the one?" she asked heavily. The boys were so engaged in Trowa's insistence that he was fine and Quatre's 'don't lie's and 'just let me check, you stubborn idiot's that they didn't even notice when Catherine kneeled beside the other woman. "The one?" she asked, lifting the blonde's head.

"The one…who broke Chang's shell."

Catherine smiled gently and said, "what shell?"

Dorothy closed her eyes and laughed, coughing up a bit of blood in the process. "I see," she said then. "In that case, I was hopeless from the beginning."

*~*~*

A/N: Geez. I feel like an idiot. I typed this chapter, then started chapter five, and saved over it, and had to type it all over again…NOW I can type chapter five. Heh.