Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ God of War, God of Death ❯ Chapter Two ( Chapter 2 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: Shinimikra 
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Shounen / Sci-fi / Romance / Mecha / Adventure / Action | Type: Shounen-ai | Uploaded On: 04.21.2013 | Updated On: 05.24.2013 | Pages: 2 | Words: 4.1K | Visits: 176 | Status: Work In Progress
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Shounen / Sci-fi / Romance / Mecha / Adventure / Action | Type: Shounen-ai | Uploaded On: 04.21.2013 | Updated On: 05.24.2013 | Pages: 2 | Words: 4.1K | Visits: 176 | Status: Work In Progress
Second Chapter:
The sun had set some ago, but Wufei had been asleep long before twilight. The room was heavy with the dim light of night, and inky obsidian shadows on ebony cast by the moon through the open curtains, and Wufei dozed in an over-stuffed armchair that he and Heero had purchased from a thrift store when they had first moved into their apartment of two years. It had been purchased in a debatably successful venture to furnish their new residence. The chair was fraying at its seams, and Heero had tried throwing it out many times over the past year, saying that they had new furniture and they no longer needed it.
It was the cause of many arguments, and the chair had been called everything from dirty to wretched. Here it still sat though, with him in it. It had been pushed to the corner of the living room; where it couldn’t be seen around the new cream suede couch. It was Wufei’s favorite chair. It reassured him when Heero was out; it was a little quirk that he picked up when Heero had received a promotion to lieutenant, and started leading the Preventers raids on Mobile Suit weapons stockpiles. Usually by the time Preventers confirmed the stockpile, there were a few would-be weapons dealers that had latched onto them, and they didn’t let them go with out a fight.
Wufei hated it when Heero went out on a mission, he hated the thought of Heero coming back in a bag; he had settled a little after the war, but when he went out on a mission it was like the war never ended. Mr. perfect soldier peels back the mask of the Heero he loved, and stays sometimes days after the mission ends. That reckless abandon had been the cause of more than a few sleepless nights for Wufei, and more close calls for Heero than he cared to remember. Wufei was living in fear of the inevitable call from Une, to inform the next of kin.
The vid-phone shrieked, shattering the silence of the dark room. Terror tore Wufei awake. He bolted out of his chair before his eyes could focus properly. He tried to hurry across the room, while avoiding the obstacles his furniture presented. Wufei heard the couch lurch and screech as it slid across the hardwood floor before he felt the pain. He collapsed cradling his left foot. In the dark he was unable to fully inspect the damage. He sat for a few moments and waited, listening for the phone, and wondering if he missed the caller; his answering machine beeped loudly and he knew he had.
“Damn,” he hissed as he stood, and the pain washed over his foot. He hobbled the rest of the way to the phone. There was a small lamp next to the phone for writing messages. He flicked it on and looked behind him at the couch that had shifted a good 12 centimeters. There were small blood smears where he had stepped. He sneered at them and turned toward the phone, flicking on the vid monitor. His heart skipped a beat as Commander Une’s face flickered to life.
“Agent Chang, report to briefing room 6 at 2130 hours,” that was all. Une’s face froze momentarily as the system loaded the mail box’s home screen, but Wufei didn’t wait that long, he reached over and flicked off the monitor. He was dumbfounded; he glanced stupidly at the clock hanging at the entrance to the kitchenette. 7 o’clock, 1900; he had 2 and a half hours to be at Preventers headquarters. Morbid images of what might have happened to Heero floated through his mind as he hurried to get ready to appear in front of his superior officer.
Une rarely called on agents personally, and much less common was her to call on a desk agent like himself. Wufei had retired from field agent status after his first year with the agency, and now worked on the paperwork that held the framework of Preventers’ bureaucracy together. He knew it had to be about Heero, they rarely did a debriefing for next of kin, but then Heero was a lieutenant, and the Gundam pilots were always treated differently no matter what the official policy stated, there was always some leniency for them; so by the time he was pulling into the Preventers’ parking lot he had worked himself into a panic.
He barely registered the security checks, only taking note of them when he was forced to present id and his arms; he didn’t carry a weapon on him since his retirement, and so the arms check was mostly procedural. Normally the security guard wouldn’t have bothered to check for unregistered weapons, but the Gundam pilots made the other agents nervous, true only three of them worked in Preventers these days, but Heero and Trowa had earned themselves a reputation of being unpredictable, and thus they treated all of the Gundam pilots like pariahs. Wufei barely felt the rough pats of the guard as he frisked him. He didn’t wait for the security guard to usher him forward, and started off toward the elevator.
The call button was a small circular dome, with a small white light in the center; rose above the brushed steel of its back plate. He pressed it a little harder than he needed. He looked up at the floor indicator above the brushed steel of the elevator door, and taped his foot impatiently as he watched the indicator light flashed under the polished brash twelve, and slowly moved toward ground level. It paused at the small three, and Wufei lost his temper with it. He slammed he fist against the call button. Wufei felt the plate give with a metallic whine. The elevator began moving again, as if in response to his violence.
The elevator opened after on a few more seconds, and he shouldered his way in to the small room between the retracting doors, that were opening too slowly for him. There was only one other person in the elevator, a stern looking woman with grey hair. She was currently looking at Wufei like he was mad, which wasn’t too far from the truth. She gave Wufei a wide berth as she maneuvered toward the safety of the lobby.
Wufei was relieved he didn’t have spend any more time in her company, as he reached over to press the small plastic button labeled fifteen. Briefing room six was on fifteen, he was relieved that it had only taken 15 minutes to get to Preventers headquarters, although if there had been a cop n the road he would be seeing some jail time. Felony speeding was defined as twenty kilometers an hour over the posted speed limit, and he was easily doing one hundred and ninety on the way there, almost a hundred over the limit.
He shuddered to think what could have happened, if he had been pulled over. He started thinking of excuses he could have given the hypothetical cop. All of them sounded weak
in his head so he started to vocalize them, hoping that hearing them aloud would make them feel more substantial. He didn’t notice the elevator stop and open on the 9th floor, where he worked together with sally, when she had to do paperwork that is.
“Wow, Heero I always thought you were a little crazy, but this?” Sally’s teasing tone shattered Wufei’s fantasy; interrupting an argument he was having with his invented officer. He blinked stupidly at her for a moment, and gaped his mouth a couple times before managing to say something.
“Heero?’ he repeated stupidly. She simply pointed at the nameplate on his chest. He looked down at it and panicked, he remembered his name pins. He glanced at the floor number briefly, and bolted past Sally who was standing in the doorway, preventing it from closing. He ran full tilt down the hall toward his office. He came to the end of the hall and weaved frantically through the cubicles of the lower employees, nearly tripping over a few over achievers still burning the midnight oil.
He burst into his office, slamming the door into the wall, and pounced on his desk, tearing open the drawers and rifling through them frantically. His center drawer caught as he tried to open it. He could see just beyond the lip of the faceplate, there were millions of pins. He was drowning in pins. He wiggled his fingers into the tiny gap between the draw’s faceplate and the surface of the desk. He yanked at it harshly. The desk jerked, and squealed as it dragged across the hardwood flooring of his office. Whatever was holding the drawer gave, and it flew to the end of its track. The sound of splintering wood filled the room, and stationary burst into the air showering Wufei as the now broken drawer clattered loudly onto the ground. He bent down frantically shuffling through the mass, grasping for any brass object.
A hand appeared in front of him holding one of his pins, “You are looking for this?”
Sally’s voice quipped playfully. Wufei shot to his feet and outstretched his hand. “Nuh uh, what’ll I get out of it?” Wufei growled at her. She didn’t seem to be affected by his obvious aggression. “How about a late dinner,” she continued in her infuriating lilt.
“Why did you follow me Sally?” he bit out at her. She smiled devilishly.
“Well your ass looked so good in Heero’s pant’s I had to follow just to look at it. I mean
God, you never showcase your ass like that. Got to get it while I can!” She continued to quip. He growled at her again, and snatched at her hand; she too was fast. She lifted it, deftly maneuvering out of his reach.
He composed himself as best he could, straitening out the twisted reflection of rage in his face. He looked her in the face, and tried to be as imposing as possible. “Sally, please give that to me, I have a briefing at 1930 hours.” She pulled back her sleeve, and looked at her watch. She made a show of trying to make out the dials, and counted aloud. Wufei growled at her again, and found himself wishing horrible, nasty, deranged things on her.
“Well by my calculations, you have twenty minutes to nicely ask me to dinner,” she placed special emphasis on the word nicely. Wufei was nearly crawling out of his skin with anger, but he complied with much vexation. He looked her in the eyes, and tried not to explode in a rage at her. He squinted, and puffed up, trying futilely to appear imposing again. Her smile never wavered, during his failed show of dominance, something that nearly drove him out of his skull with fury. He deflated and accepted defeat.
“Sally will you go to dinner with me?” he rattled off as quickly as possible. She lowered
her hand and opened it just enough so that he could see the coppery glint of the polished brass, and bend down a little, turning the right side of her face toward him. She blinked innocently, and tried to act as dainty as possible. He reached toward her hand, and grunted at her. She snatched it out of his reach again.
“I’m sorry I don’t believe I heard you correctly,” she chirped back at him. It took all of his self-restraint to stop himself from hitting her.
“Look Sally, I have to go with or with out that pin. Please give it to me,” he appealed to her, hoping that his disinterest would loosen her enthusiasm for taunting him.
“Dinner,” she repeated simply. He took a moment, pretending to think about it. He closed his eyes and chewed on his upper lip.
“I’ll pick you up at your office after the briefing,” He replied defeated, with his eyes still closed. She lowered her hand, and presented him with the object when he opened his eyes. He snatched the item and hurried off to the nearest bathroom to put the item on.
(~*~*~)
Wufei was a few minutes early; he was terrified that this was a debriefing on Heero failing a mission. Wufei knew the cost of a failed mission, when it came to failure in the Preventers’ Mobile Deterrent branch, it was almost as if the war hadn’t ended. That was why Heero joined them. Wufei sat in a straight-backed steel chair, and stared at the clock, 2125. He counted the seconds, willing the second hand to move faster. Time seemed to slow, and creep by almost in defiance of Wufei, as if it was goading him. The low click of the second hand was torturous.
At the precise moment that the minute hand struck the small plastic 6 the door opened, and in stepped commander Une. She was trailed by three cornels, which Wufei could only assume were aids. This was the first time he had seen Une in person since he joined Preventers. She had started wearing glasses again, and by the look of them he would not be surprised if they were the same pair she had worn during his war with OZ. The small item stirred memories of his defeat by Treize, a memory that did nothing to improve his already shaky disposition. He had met Une for the first time in the aftermath of that humiliating dual. He had been so sure of his swordsmanship before he had met Treize, than again he had been sure of a lot of things before Treize. That man had been responsible for a lot of changes in Wufei’s life, half dressed and frantic images of the late coronal rose to the forefront of his mind. He tried to stifle them, using the techniques he used for meditation to clear his mind, trying to find solace in the perfect silence of a balanced mind. The pure black he had associated with peace washed away the troubling memories, but they did not stay subdued for long. They retaliated not with the steamy rose colored images of his torrid affair with the enemy commander, but with flashes of the inside of Nataku, and the flickering silhouette of a white and blue mobile suit. There was a deep gash in the side of Tallgeese that radiated with an ominous orange. Wufei could feel his eyes burn as partial images of the man’s face floated through his now swimming vision. The man was speaking into his monitor, and he saw the man’s expressive face working out the last transmission he received from the man he loved be fore he was murdered, by Wufei’s own hands.
Wufei tore his eyes open, willing them dry. He desperately searched his surroundings for something to wash Treize out of his mind. Movement caught his attention, and he grasped onto it. One of the aides leaned toward Une, and whispered in a voice Wufei was sure was meant to be too low for him not to hear, “Castor is on his way,” this had to be serious if the head of Mobile Deterrent was coming down for a meeting with him. His heart sank, and it was all he could to hold back his tears.
It had been nearly three years since he had last seen Castor. Images of the funeral flashed through his mind. It had been a warm day, in total defiance of the solemn event. He had been the mission lead; it had been his fault that Pollux had been killed. The target had been some arms-dealer named Ambrogino Capra, that was looking for some quick cash by breaking in to MO2, he and his thugs had gotten out with over 70 million Guilders worth of mobile suits and paraphernalia. Wufei’s team had tracked them down to an auction in the L4 Colony Cluster on the 51st block. By the time they caught up to Capra, he was trying to leave the colony. They had been ready for Wufei’s team.
The crossfire had killed seven civilians, and one agent. Pollux had been shot three times, and they kept shooting at him even as they kept the other Preventers pinned down. He had been alive when they opened the bay doors. They never found Agent Pollux’s body, but there was no doubt that he was dead. It was later determined that there must have been an informant. Pollux was suspected to be involved in the leak; some went as far as citing the dead agent as the source of the leak, but no one could find any substantial proof. At the time he had been a Master Chief in the Mobile Disarmament branch; they later reorganized them into the Mobile Deterrent and Weapons Expunction Branches, but he had nothing to do with them anymore; he was on permanent desk assignment.
She must have seen his reaction to the name, as she stood silently at the head of the room waiting to be acknowledged. There was the sound of impatient rustling coming from the direction of one of the aide’s and something clicked in Wufei. He looked up, and realized that Une had been standing at attention. He immediately stood, and saluted.
“Agent Chang,” it was a greeting. Wufei nodded in reply, he didn’t trust his voice. Une took a seat beneath the large dry erase board, and reached over the metal lip and started rolling the markers so that she could see their label. She would pause periodically and inspect the color; some times she would pop off one of their caps and make a small mark on the white surface. She would then place the cap back onto its marker with a snap that reverberated through out the nearly empty briefing room. Wufei crossed his legs in order to camouflage his anxious fidgets at the offensive sound. He glanced at the small clock hanging above the door, and shifted uneasily at as the minute hand passed the seven. Une had been in the room for five minutes, and the briefing had yet to begin. Terrible images of a mangled Heero surfaced ominously from the murky depths of his unconscious. Dread started to ooze down his spine, causing him to visibly shudder; something that Une had not missed, to his embarrassment.
“Are you cold, Wufei?” the soft inflection in Une’s usually stern voice shocked Wufei out of his mental reveries. His attention immediately snapped to director of the entire Preventers organization. He opened his mouth to respond “No,” but all that came out was a weak hiss that even he could not interpret into any semblance of understandable language. Une gave him a strange look, which withered him further. She studied him a little too intensely over the rim of her curved, oversized glasses, and he slumped further into his chair wishing a very deep dark hole would open up under him so he could crawl into it and die. She reached behind her again and began fiddling with the markers again.
The door burst open, and with no preamble a short middle-aged man erupted into the room followed by a flurry of aides all brandishing thick documents at him. He snatched several of the now wrinkled papers, and swatted violently at the others, shooing their curriers more forcefully than was necessary. Wufei jumped several feet into the air at the man’s entrance. His heart felt ready to bust at the sudden flurry, terror slowly subsided as he turned his attention to the man. He caught a glimpse of curly blonde poking out from underneath the Preventers command cap. It was Castor.
The man herded the aides over the threshold, some of which were still brandishing their documents at him. He slammed the door in a young man’s face, which had been forcing his way through the crowd, and was demanding that he take his memo. The slam reverberated unpleasantly through out the insulated room. It quickly cleared and all that remained was the ringing in Wufei’s ears. All eyes were locked on the man who shuffling papers at the podium. He had not yet saluted the room. His head was bent; quickly scanning the papers he had accepted before acknowledging his transfixed audience. Castor raised his head, and scanned the room. He immediately locked eyes on Wufei and nodded curtly at the Chinese man. Wufei stood and saluted again, and held waiting to be relieved. He wasn’t.
Castor looked back down at the documents and shuffled them frantically. He quickly gave up and walked back to the door. He pulled it open and immediately the room was filled with the sounds of the aide’s shouting again. He snatched something roughly from one of them, and again slammed the door; at this point Wufei could see something that made him very uncomfortable raise in Une’s face. She erupted out of her chair and turned on the short blonde man.
“What is the meaning of this?” Une managed to fill every corner of the small conference room with the full force of her voice. Wufei cringed at her strong tone and tried to shrink. It was not an easy task as he stood at attention, still saluting. Castor froze at the door he had just closed and dropped the manila envelope he had retrieved from behind the door. It burst open spilling three of its slides that Wufei couldn’t make out from where he stood. Castor slowly turned on his heel, not taking a single step forward, and saluted with an expression of calculated calm hanging over his delicate Mediterranean features. He snapped to attention, and stared at Une waiting to be relieved.
“I am not used to this sort of excitement, you had better to explain yourself Castor,” her voice was calm, but her inflection promised death. Castor stood at attention without changing his expression, staring at Une still waiting to be relieved. Wufei felt the circulation slow in his arm from the awkward position. Pure fury washed over Une’s face, but she saluted and relieved the room, Wufei let his arm fall limply at his side, and felt the pinpricks of returning circulation. Castor took a step toward the podium, and Une sat, still watching him expectantly.
(~*~*~)
AN: Thanks for all the reviews. I’m glad to see so many fans still out there. There will be many pairings in this story, but it was originally written for the Moments of Rapture Contest (1x2x1), It was not finished in time, and therefore does not have to follow their rules. We’ll have to see where it takes us.
Special love to Elle.Writes and our guest reviewers, don’t worry Duo will be back next update.
~Shini
The sun had set some ago, but Wufei had been asleep long before twilight. The room was heavy with the dim light of night, and inky obsidian shadows on ebony cast by the moon through the open curtains, and Wufei dozed in an over-stuffed armchair that he and Heero had purchased from a thrift store when they had first moved into their apartment of two years. It had been purchased in a debatably successful venture to furnish their new residence. The chair was fraying at its seams, and Heero had tried throwing it out many times over the past year, saying that they had new furniture and they no longer needed it.
It was the cause of many arguments, and the chair had been called everything from dirty to wretched. Here it still sat though, with him in it. It had been pushed to the corner of the living room; where it couldn’t be seen around the new cream suede couch. It was Wufei’s favorite chair. It reassured him when Heero was out; it was a little quirk that he picked up when Heero had received a promotion to lieutenant, and started leading the Preventers raids on Mobile Suit weapons stockpiles. Usually by the time Preventers confirmed the stockpile, there were a few would-be weapons dealers that had latched onto them, and they didn’t let them go with out a fight.
Wufei hated it when Heero went out on a mission, he hated the thought of Heero coming back in a bag; he had settled a little after the war, but when he went out on a mission it was like the war never ended. Mr. perfect soldier peels back the mask of the Heero he loved, and stays sometimes days after the mission ends. That reckless abandon had been the cause of more than a few sleepless nights for Wufei, and more close calls for Heero than he cared to remember. Wufei was living in fear of the inevitable call from Une, to inform the next of kin.
The vid-phone shrieked, shattering the silence of the dark room. Terror tore Wufei awake. He bolted out of his chair before his eyes could focus properly. He tried to hurry across the room, while avoiding the obstacles his furniture presented. Wufei heard the couch lurch and screech as it slid across the hardwood floor before he felt the pain. He collapsed cradling his left foot. In the dark he was unable to fully inspect the damage. He sat for a few moments and waited, listening for the phone, and wondering if he missed the caller; his answering machine beeped loudly and he knew he had.
“Damn,” he hissed as he stood, and the pain washed over his foot. He hobbled the rest of the way to the phone. There was a small lamp next to the phone for writing messages. He flicked it on and looked behind him at the couch that had shifted a good 12 centimeters. There were small blood smears where he had stepped. He sneered at them and turned toward the phone, flicking on the vid monitor. His heart skipped a beat as Commander Une’s face flickered to life.
“Agent Chang, report to briefing room 6 at 2130 hours,” that was all. Une’s face froze momentarily as the system loaded the mail box’s home screen, but Wufei didn’t wait that long, he reached over and flicked off the monitor. He was dumbfounded; he glanced stupidly at the clock hanging at the entrance to the kitchenette. 7 o’clock, 1900; he had 2 and a half hours to be at Preventers headquarters. Morbid images of what might have happened to Heero floated through his mind as he hurried to get ready to appear in front of his superior officer.
Une rarely called on agents personally, and much less common was her to call on a desk agent like himself. Wufei had retired from field agent status after his first year with the agency, and now worked on the paperwork that held the framework of Preventers’ bureaucracy together. He knew it had to be about Heero, they rarely did a debriefing for next of kin, but then Heero was a lieutenant, and the Gundam pilots were always treated differently no matter what the official policy stated, there was always some leniency for them; so by the time he was pulling into the Preventers’ parking lot he had worked himself into a panic.
He barely registered the security checks, only taking note of them when he was forced to present id and his arms; he didn’t carry a weapon on him since his retirement, and so the arms check was mostly procedural. Normally the security guard wouldn’t have bothered to check for unregistered weapons, but the Gundam pilots made the other agents nervous, true only three of them worked in Preventers these days, but Heero and Trowa had earned themselves a reputation of being unpredictable, and thus they treated all of the Gundam pilots like pariahs. Wufei barely felt the rough pats of the guard as he frisked him. He didn’t wait for the security guard to usher him forward, and started off toward the elevator.
The call button was a small circular dome, with a small white light in the center; rose above the brushed steel of its back plate. He pressed it a little harder than he needed. He looked up at the floor indicator above the brushed steel of the elevator door, and taped his foot impatiently as he watched the indicator light flashed under the polished brash twelve, and slowly moved toward ground level. It paused at the small three, and Wufei lost his temper with it. He slammed he fist against the call button. Wufei felt the plate give with a metallic whine. The elevator began moving again, as if in response to his violence.
The elevator opened after on a few more seconds, and he shouldered his way in to the small room between the retracting doors, that were opening too slowly for him. There was only one other person in the elevator, a stern looking woman with grey hair. She was currently looking at Wufei like he was mad, which wasn’t too far from the truth. She gave Wufei a wide berth as she maneuvered toward the safety of the lobby.
Wufei was relieved he didn’t have spend any more time in her company, as he reached over to press the small plastic button labeled fifteen. Briefing room six was on fifteen, he was relieved that it had only taken 15 minutes to get to Preventers headquarters, although if there had been a cop n the road he would be seeing some jail time. Felony speeding was defined as twenty kilometers an hour over the posted speed limit, and he was easily doing one hundred and ninety on the way there, almost a hundred over the limit.
He shuddered to think what could have happened, if he had been pulled over. He started thinking of excuses he could have given the hypothetical cop. All of them sounded weak
in his head so he started to vocalize them, hoping that hearing them aloud would make them feel more substantial. He didn’t notice the elevator stop and open on the 9th floor, where he worked together with sally, when she had to do paperwork that is.
“Wow, Heero I always thought you were a little crazy, but this?” Sally’s teasing tone shattered Wufei’s fantasy; interrupting an argument he was having with his invented officer. He blinked stupidly at her for a moment, and gaped his mouth a couple times before managing to say something.
“Heero?’ he repeated stupidly. She simply pointed at the nameplate on his chest. He looked down at it and panicked, he remembered his name pins. He glanced at the floor number briefly, and bolted past Sally who was standing in the doorway, preventing it from closing. He ran full tilt down the hall toward his office. He came to the end of the hall and weaved frantically through the cubicles of the lower employees, nearly tripping over a few over achievers still burning the midnight oil.
He burst into his office, slamming the door into the wall, and pounced on his desk, tearing open the drawers and rifling through them frantically. His center drawer caught as he tried to open it. He could see just beyond the lip of the faceplate, there were millions of pins. He was drowning in pins. He wiggled his fingers into the tiny gap between the draw’s faceplate and the surface of the desk. He yanked at it harshly. The desk jerked, and squealed as it dragged across the hardwood flooring of his office. Whatever was holding the drawer gave, and it flew to the end of its track. The sound of splintering wood filled the room, and stationary burst into the air showering Wufei as the now broken drawer clattered loudly onto the ground. He bent down frantically shuffling through the mass, grasping for any brass object.
A hand appeared in front of him holding one of his pins, “You are looking for this?”
Sally’s voice quipped playfully. Wufei shot to his feet and outstretched his hand. “Nuh uh, what’ll I get out of it?” Wufei growled at her. She didn’t seem to be affected by his obvious aggression. “How about a late dinner,” she continued in her infuriating lilt.
“Why did you follow me Sally?” he bit out at her. She smiled devilishly.
“Well your ass looked so good in Heero’s pant’s I had to follow just to look at it. I mean
God, you never showcase your ass like that. Got to get it while I can!” She continued to quip. He growled at her again, and snatched at her hand; she too was fast. She lifted it, deftly maneuvering out of his reach.
He composed himself as best he could, straitening out the twisted reflection of rage in his face. He looked her in the face, and tried to be as imposing as possible. “Sally, please give that to me, I have a briefing at 1930 hours.” She pulled back her sleeve, and looked at her watch. She made a show of trying to make out the dials, and counted aloud. Wufei growled at her again, and found himself wishing horrible, nasty, deranged things on her.
“Well by my calculations, you have twenty minutes to nicely ask me to dinner,” she placed special emphasis on the word nicely. Wufei was nearly crawling out of his skin with anger, but he complied with much vexation. He looked her in the eyes, and tried not to explode in a rage at her. He squinted, and puffed up, trying futilely to appear imposing again. Her smile never wavered, during his failed show of dominance, something that nearly drove him out of his skull with fury. He deflated and accepted defeat.
“Sally will you go to dinner with me?” he rattled off as quickly as possible. She lowered
her hand and opened it just enough so that he could see the coppery glint of the polished brass, and bend down a little, turning the right side of her face toward him. She blinked innocently, and tried to act as dainty as possible. He reached toward her hand, and grunted at her. She snatched it out of his reach again.
“I’m sorry I don’t believe I heard you correctly,” she chirped back at him. It took all of his self-restraint to stop himself from hitting her.
“Look Sally, I have to go with or with out that pin. Please give it to me,” he appealed to her, hoping that his disinterest would loosen her enthusiasm for taunting him.
“Dinner,” she repeated simply. He took a moment, pretending to think about it. He closed his eyes and chewed on his upper lip.
“I’ll pick you up at your office after the briefing,” He replied defeated, with his eyes still closed. She lowered her hand, and presented him with the object when he opened his eyes. He snatched the item and hurried off to the nearest bathroom to put the item on.
(~*~*~)
Wufei was a few minutes early; he was terrified that this was a debriefing on Heero failing a mission. Wufei knew the cost of a failed mission, when it came to failure in the Preventers’ Mobile Deterrent branch, it was almost as if the war hadn’t ended. That was why Heero joined them. Wufei sat in a straight-backed steel chair, and stared at the clock, 2125. He counted the seconds, willing the second hand to move faster. Time seemed to slow, and creep by almost in defiance of Wufei, as if it was goading him. The low click of the second hand was torturous.
At the precise moment that the minute hand struck the small plastic 6 the door opened, and in stepped commander Une. She was trailed by three cornels, which Wufei could only assume were aids. This was the first time he had seen Une in person since he joined Preventers. She had started wearing glasses again, and by the look of them he would not be surprised if they were the same pair she had worn during his war with OZ. The small item stirred memories of his defeat by Treize, a memory that did nothing to improve his already shaky disposition. He had met Une for the first time in the aftermath of that humiliating dual. He had been so sure of his swordsmanship before he had met Treize, than again he had been sure of a lot of things before Treize. That man had been responsible for a lot of changes in Wufei’s life, half dressed and frantic images of the late coronal rose to the forefront of his mind. He tried to stifle them, using the techniques he used for meditation to clear his mind, trying to find solace in the perfect silence of a balanced mind. The pure black he had associated with peace washed away the troubling memories, but they did not stay subdued for long. They retaliated not with the steamy rose colored images of his torrid affair with the enemy commander, but with flashes of the inside of Nataku, and the flickering silhouette of a white and blue mobile suit. There was a deep gash in the side of Tallgeese that radiated with an ominous orange. Wufei could feel his eyes burn as partial images of the man’s face floated through his now swimming vision. The man was speaking into his monitor, and he saw the man’s expressive face working out the last transmission he received from the man he loved be fore he was murdered, by Wufei’s own hands.
Wufei tore his eyes open, willing them dry. He desperately searched his surroundings for something to wash Treize out of his mind. Movement caught his attention, and he grasped onto it. One of the aides leaned toward Une, and whispered in a voice Wufei was sure was meant to be too low for him not to hear, “Castor is on his way,” this had to be serious if the head of Mobile Deterrent was coming down for a meeting with him. His heart sank, and it was all he could to hold back his tears.
It had been nearly three years since he had last seen Castor. Images of the funeral flashed through his mind. It had been a warm day, in total defiance of the solemn event. He had been the mission lead; it had been his fault that Pollux had been killed. The target had been some arms-dealer named Ambrogino Capra, that was looking for some quick cash by breaking in to MO2, he and his thugs had gotten out with over 70 million Guilders worth of mobile suits and paraphernalia. Wufei’s team had tracked them down to an auction in the L4 Colony Cluster on the 51st block. By the time they caught up to Capra, he was trying to leave the colony. They had been ready for Wufei’s team.
The crossfire had killed seven civilians, and one agent. Pollux had been shot three times, and they kept shooting at him even as they kept the other Preventers pinned down. He had been alive when they opened the bay doors. They never found Agent Pollux’s body, but there was no doubt that he was dead. It was later determined that there must have been an informant. Pollux was suspected to be involved in the leak; some went as far as citing the dead agent as the source of the leak, but no one could find any substantial proof. At the time he had been a Master Chief in the Mobile Disarmament branch; they later reorganized them into the Mobile Deterrent and Weapons Expunction Branches, but he had nothing to do with them anymore; he was on permanent desk assignment.
She must have seen his reaction to the name, as she stood silently at the head of the room waiting to be acknowledged. There was the sound of impatient rustling coming from the direction of one of the aide’s and something clicked in Wufei. He looked up, and realized that Une had been standing at attention. He immediately stood, and saluted.
“Agent Chang,” it was a greeting. Wufei nodded in reply, he didn’t trust his voice. Une took a seat beneath the large dry erase board, and reached over the metal lip and started rolling the markers so that she could see their label. She would pause periodically and inspect the color; some times she would pop off one of their caps and make a small mark on the white surface. She would then place the cap back onto its marker with a snap that reverberated through out the nearly empty briefing room. Wufei crossed his legs in order to camouflage his anxious fidgets at the offensive sound. He glanced at the small clock hanging above the door, and shifted uneasily at as the minute hand passed the seven. Une had been in the room for five minutes, and the briefing had yet to begin. Terrible images of a mangled Heero surfaced ominously from the murky depths of his unconscious. Dread started to ooze down his spine, causing him to visibly shudder; something that Une had not missed, to his embarrassment.
“Are you cold, Wufei?” the soft inflection in Une’s usually stern voice shocked Wufei out of his mental reveries. His attention immediately snapped to director of the entire Preventers organization. He opened his mouth to respond “No,” but all that came out was a weak hiss that even he could not interpret into any semblance of understandable language. Une gave him a strange look, which withered him further. She studied him a little too intensely over the rim of her curved, oversized glasses, and he slumped further into his chair wishing a very deep dark hole would open up under him so he could crawl into it and die. She reached behind her again and began fiddling with the markers again.
The door burst open, and with no preamble a short middle-aged man erupted into the room followed by a flurry of aides all brandishing thick documents at him. He snatched several of the now wrinkled papers, and swatted violently at the others, shooing their curriers more forcefully than was necessary. Wufei jumped several feet into the air at the man’s entrance. His heart felt ready to bust at the sudden flurry, terror slowly subsided as he turned his attention to the man. He caught a glimpse of curly blonde poking out from underneath the Preventers command cap. It was Castor.
The man herded the aides over the threshold, some of which were still brandishing their documents at him. He slammed the door in a young man’s face, which had been forcing his way through the crowd, and was demanding that he take his memo. The slam reverberated unpleasantly through out the insulated room. It quickly cleared and all that remained was the ringing in Wufei’s ears. All eyes were locked on the man who shuffling papers at the podium. He had not yet saluted the room. His head was bent; quickly scanning the papers he had accepted before acknowledging his transfixed audience. Castor raised his head, and scanned the room. He immediately locked eyes on Wufei and nodded curtly at the Chinese man. Wufei stood and saluted again, and held waiting to be relieved. He wasn’t.
Castor looked back down at the documents and shuffled them frantically. He quickly gave up and walked back to the door. He pulled it open and immediately the room was filled with the sounds of the aide’s shouting again. He snatched something roughly from one of them, and again slammed the door; at this point Wufei could see something that made him very uncomfortable raise in Une’s face. She erupted out of her chair and turned on the short blonde man.
“What is the meaning of this?” Une managed to fill every corner of the small conference room with the full force of her voice. Wufei cringed at her strong tone and tried to shrink. It was not an easy task as he stood at attention, still saluting. Castor froze at the door he had just closed and dropped the manila envelope he had retrieved from behind the door. It burst open spilling three of its slides that Wufei couldn’t make out from where he stood. Castor slowly turned on his heel, not taking a single step forward, and saluted with an expression of calculated calm hanging over his delicate Mediterranean features. He snapped to attention, and stared at Une waiting to be relieved.
“I am not used to this sort of excitement, you had better to explain yourself Castor,” her voice was calm, but her inflection promised death. Castor stood at attention without changing his expression, staring at Une still waiting to be relieved. Wufei felt the circulation slow in his arm from the awkward position. Pure fury washed over Une’s face, but she saluted and relieved the room, Wufei let his arm fall limply at his side, and felt the pinpricks of returning circulation. Castor took a step toward the podium, and Une sat, still watching him expectantly.
(~*~*~)
AN: Thanks for all the reviews. I’m glad to see so many fans still out there. There will be many pairings in this story, but it was originally written for the Moments of Rapture Contest (1x2x1), It was not finished in time, and therefore does not have to follow their rules. We’ll have to see where it takes us.
Special love to Elle.Writes and our guest reviewers, don’t worry Duo will be back next update.
~Shini