Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Gundam Wing in the Wild Wild West ❯ Another Little Girl ( Chapter 11 )

Chapter 11: Another Little Girl

“She's really cute,” Quatre said as he cradled little Jett in his arms and fed her a bottle of milk.

“Of course she's cute,” Duo declared. “Look who her parents are. We're all cute.”

“You could at least try to say that with a trace of humility,” Trowa murmured.

“Well, I think Duo should have tried to stay a woman for at least a few more weeks so he could breastfeed her,” Treize said. “That is supposed to be the best food for new humans.”

“Like I had any choice in the matter,” Duo said. “Quatre's spell wore off almost as soon as I pushed her out. And anyway,” he clamped his hand rather possessively over his genitals. “I like having these back. Being a girl is fun and all, but I'm more used to guyhood.”

“You did make a pretty girl, Uncle Duo.”

“Of course I did, Alexa. I'm adorable no matter how you look at me.”

“Geez, Duo, put a sock in it!” Heero grumbled.

Duo breezed over and plopped into Heero's lap. “There, there, Heero. I know you just miss having a wife.”

Heero's face turned an interesting shade of scarlet.

“Has anyone thought about how we are going to explain Duo's sex change to Hieronymus Gree if we run into him again, which seems very likely?” Zechs inquired casually.

The group was relaxing after dinner in the lounge of their hotel which, for the moment, was occupied only by them. Most everyone was seated on a couch or chair, except for Roku, who was kneeling by Quatre's chair watching Jett eat. Even though he was in human form, he kept licking the top of her head.

“Would you stop that?” Quatre muttered.

“But her hair's not clean.”

“Getting your spit all over her isn't going to change that.”

“It would work better if I was a tiger.”

“Tiger spit's no better than boy spit.”

Roku made a face. “Can I bathe her when she's done eating?”

“Yes, but in a basin and no playing mobile suit attack. She's too small.”

“I know that!”

“About Hieronymus…” Zechs prompted.

“Well, if you think about it,” Treize said, studying Duo thoughtfully, “if you don't actually know Duo is a boy and had previously believed him to be a girl, you might still think so.”

“That's true,” agreed Wu-Fei. “After all, he had those tiny little titties that barely stuck out more than he does now.”

“My tits were not tiny!” Duo protested.

“Yes they were,” everyone replied.

“You people suck!” Duo grumbled.

Heero shoved Duo out of his lap. “So why is Quatre feeding your baby and not you?”

“He bought the milk.”

“That is the stupidest excuse I've ever heard.”

“What do you expect? I haven't had anything to drink in weeks. My mind is all messed up.”

“That's ridiculous, Duo!” Wu-Fei exclaimed. “Being sober should make you more clear-headed.”

“Maybe that's how your brain works. I need several beers with some chaser shots to get my brain cells operating properly again. Let's go to a saloon.”

“We can't take the children to a saloon,” Quatre said sternly.

“We don't all have to go. You and Hadeya can stay here and look after the kids.”

“Who says I want to go?” Zechs said archly.

“Argh!” Duo cried. “I don't care who goes! I need a drink! Have pity on me! You lot have been swilling beer like water since we landed in this time and I've had NOTHING! Where's the justice in that?”

“I think Duo makes a fair point,” Treize spoke up. “I personally would like to see more of San Francisco and I don't mind starting with the night life. As I recall, there were a lot of gambling establishments in San Francisco of this time as well.”

“Gambling?” Duo's eyes lit up. “Drinking and gambling…” He sighed dreamily.

Quatre rolled his eyes. “Did you have to mention gambling, Treize?”

“Duo deserves a reward,” Treize said firmly. “He pushed his daughter out the old-fashioned way. It only seems fair.”

Duo floated over to Treize and poured into his lap. “You are a true gentleman, Treize Kushranada.” He put his head on Treize's shoulder.

“Get out of his lap, you sleazy man-whore,” Zechs growled.

“But he's the only one who appreciates me.”

Zechs gave Duo a dark glare and Duo yelped. He leaped out of Treize's lap.

“Ok! Ok! I'm out! Man, you shouldn't think those kinds of thoughts at people.”

“Just keep your hands off my property and we'll get along just fine.”

“Your property?” Treize lifted an eyebrow.

Zechs tipped his head to one side and fixed Treize with a deep blue stare. “You don't want to belong to me?” he purred throatily.

Treize blinked once. “I… ah…”

“Give up, Treize,” Trowa chuckled. “Just admit you're wrapped around his little finger and be done with it.”

Treize hung his head. “I'm his slave.”

Zechs laughed softly. “That's right and I will allow you to serve me later.”

Duo paled. “Oh lord, he's doing it again!” He squeezed his eyes shut and clamped his hands over his ears. “La-la-la-la! I'm not listening! Nasty, filthy, graphic thoughts of warm intimate coupling are NOT filling my head! La-la-la-la!”

“Does that really work when it's telepathy?” Trowa wondered.

“Probably not,” said Wu-Fei.

“Maybe you should take him to the saloon before he tries to drag you and Heero off to bed.”

“Good idea.”

Wu-Fei stood up and grasped Duo by the elbow. “Come on, Duo. Let's go find a saloon. Say, Roku, could you give us some money, please?”

Roku produced a couple of bags of coins and handed them over. “It's mostly gold, but there might be some silver, too.”

“Thanks.”

“I will stay with the children,” Hadeya volunteered. “I am not in the mood for drinking or gambling.”

“I'll stay, too,” said Quatre. “I don't need to see Duo get into a drinking contest with a bunch of miners.”

“Do you want me to keep you company?” Trowa asked. “Once Jett settles down for the night, we could, um, play cards or something.”

“Another euphemism,” Duo muttered.

“That would be nice,” Quatre replied to Trowa, with a frown for Duo.

So, with that settled, Duo, Heero, Wu-Fei, Treize and Zechs went out to look for a saloon. They found several down near the waterfront. Brilliant light spilled out into the street through windows made of real glass, making the churned up mud in the road glisten. Music and raucous laughter tumbled out past the swinging doors across the entrances.

“So which one looks good to you, Duo?” asked Treize. “This was your idea.”

“This one!” Duo decided, stopping in front of an establishment that stood three stories tall with an enormous painted sign proclaiming it “The Golden Spike”. A balcony below the sign sported several scantily clad women who shouted lecherous suggestions to the passersby below. “This looks like a good place.”

“I daresay,” Zechs remarked, “because it appears to be about as disreputable as they come.”

Duo rubbed his hands together. “That's what I like about! Let's get some beer and relieve a few dozen miners of their hard-earned gold.”

They pushed through the swinging doors and entered The Golden Spike saloon. The place roared with excitement and activity. A single enormous room filled most of the ground floor. At the rear was a small stage where gaudily made-up women in skimpy costumes danced for an appreciative audience of roaring men. The entire left side of the room was occupied by a long bar where those intent on serious drinking were lined up. Several small round tables with chairs were set up near the bar for those who wanted to sit down while they drank, served by waitresses dressed about the same as the dancers. The rest of the room was occupied by gambling tables. Roulette, craps, black jack and poker were all available.

Duo studied the scene with an intent expression. “All right, let's start with a little drinking while I figure out which tables are rigged. After that, I'll drop a little seed money to see how gullible they are. Then we'll start cleaning up. This should be fun!”

They took seats at one of the little tables by shoving a couple of unconscious drunks onto the floor to make space. A waitress almost immediately came over to them.

“What can I get for you, gentlemen?” she began cheerfully and then her eyes fell on Zechs. Her breath caught a little. “We have beer, wine, whisky and whores.” She stared at Zechs openly. “If you want the latter, I'm available.”

“Thank you, but no,” Zechs demurred. “We are planning to do a little gambling this evening.”

The woman made a face and leaned over, pretty much revealing all her charms, so she could whisper loudly, “The games are all rigged, Sir! You'd be better off spending your money on a sure thing. I'd give you a good ride.”

Zechs offered her a brilliant smile that made her flush a deep red. “Your offer is most appealing and I shall keep it in mind. But for the moment, we would like beers all around with whisky chasers. And my friend there,” he indicated Duo, “has just recently been released from a forced abstinence, so bring him his first three rounds all at once, please.”

The waitress looked disappointed but she bobbed her head obediently. “Very good, Sir. I'll be just a moment.” She hurried away to the bar.

Duo beamed at Zechs. “I'll never touch your man inappropriately again, my lord Count!”

Zechs just smiled.

“She said all the tables were rigged,” noted Wu-Fei.

“I daresay they are,” agreed Duo, “but there's good and bad ways to rig a table. Both are pretty easy to crack once you know what they're doing, especially with these old mechanical models. And with the card games about all they can do is card-marking and stacking the deck. But they have to be pretty careful about that because if they're caught, the business will go elsewhere. So they're probably just using shills at the card games. The craps are probably legitimate. It's hard to hide loaded dice and that's about the only way to cheat at that game.”

“You cheat at dice all the time,” Heero interrupted.

Duo winked at him. “Yeah, but I'm good at it.”

The waitress returned with their drinks and Duo almost cried as his three brimming beers and three thick shot glasses of whisky were set in front of him. “Oh, bless you!” He reverently lifted the first beer and downed it in one long pull. Then he picked up a shot glass and tossed it back happily. “Hee-hee!” he giggled. “That warmed me up a little! Three or four more like that and I may start to get a buzz! I'm happy now!”

Wu-Fei sipped his beer delicately and immediately gagged. “This stuff is atrocious!”

“That's why you chase it with the whisky,” Zechs advised. “It kills the taste.”

Wu-Fei sniffed the whisky and gasped. “That's even worse! I don't even have to taste it!”

Heero calmly took the shot glass out of Wu-Fei's hand. “It's flammable, too, so I think you should just keep your distance.”

“I wonder if they have Sarsaparilla?” Wu-Fei said mournfully.

“Probably.” Zechs signaled the waitress. “Can you bring my friend a Sarsaparilla?”

“Certainly.” She bustled off and returned a moment later with a brimming mug of the fizzy soft drink.

Wu-Fei sipped it gratefully. “Now this I can stomach.”

“And I'll just take these off your hands,” Duo said gleefully as he pulled Wu-Fei's beer and whisky toward himself. Then he nodded toward one of the Roulette tables. “I think I want to start there. They're using a mechanical switch and a magnet to pull the ball into black or red. I want to see how reliable the system is. After that, I want to try that poker table over there. I've figured out who the shill is and I've also figured out how he and the dealer are communicating. It should be pretty easy to undermine their system.”

“You're part demon, aren't you Duo?” Treize remarked.

“Not me! Once again and hopefully for a long time, I am all man!” Duo downed his third beer and chaser. “Let's go capture some gold, gentlemen!” He picked up his remaining beer and shot and led the way to the tables.

A long while later only Duo and Treize were still gambling. Heero, Wu-Fei and Zechs had retired to one of the tables near the bar.

“That black jack dealer is starting to look kind of terrified,” Wu-Fei remarked.

“He should,” Zechs chuckled. “Duo and Treize are winning way too consistently. He's supposed to let them get a little up and then clean them out, but just when he tries to pounce, they make small bets and he doesn't get anything from them. His bosses appear to have noticed, too.” Zechs nodded toward a couple of well-dressed men standing at the end of the bar watching the room. They did not look happy.

“Maybe Duo and Treize should move to a new table.”

“It wouldn't help at this point. They've been noticed.”

“How much have they won?”

“Probably ten thousand dollars, which is a lot for this era.”

“But we already won fifteen thousand when we were all playing,” Heero said. “Why are they still gambling? We didn't need all this money in the first place. Roku's probably got a million dollars shoved in his storage space.”

“As Duo pointed out before: it's not having the money, it's the process of accumulation that's fun.”

“Sheesh!”

At long last, Duo and Treize stood up and Treize handed the dealer a tip. The young man accepted it with a nervous smile.

“Tipping that dealer may have signed his death warrant,” Zechs said when the two joined them. “His bosses noticed how much you were winning.”

“I noticed that, too,” Treize replied. “The tip was just large enough to acknowledge we won, but not so large as to imply that he helped us win. He may just get beat up.”

“How generous,” Zechs chuckled.

“Can we go now?” Heero demanded plaintively. “I'm tired.”

“Sure!” Duo grinned contentedly. “I feel all warm inside and my pockets are full of cash.”

They left the saloon and set off up the street toward their hotel. The gas streetlamps shed small pools of yellow light that cast the rest of the street into semi-darkness. As they traversed one of these dimly lit patches, they were jumped by men leaping on them from all directions flailing clubs.

“Goddammit!” Heero shouted. “Who the fuck are these assholes?!”

“I imagine they're from the saloon,” Treize said calmly as he ducked under a blow aimed at his head.

“Winning all that money may not have been a good idea,” said Zechs as he kneed one fellow in the gut.

“They probably plan to rob us and leave us to be shanghaied,” Wu-Fei grunted. “How fast do you want to finish this?”

A sudden scream was quickly cut off by a gurgling sound. Heero yanked a knife free from one fellow's neck and spun toward another with a wicked grin on his face. A second knife appeared in his other hand.

“Oh, look, Heero's having fun!” Duo exclaimed. “Let him play, Wu-Fei. You can singe the next batch.”

Everyone backed off and left the would-be robbers to Heero.

“We've let Heero get rusty,” Wu-Fei noted clinically. “That attack just then should have stabbed clean through the eye socket.”

“Yeah, he usually gets that one into the brain,” Duo agreed.

“And that one there,” Wu-Fei pointed. “He got him under the chin, but all he did was sever the wind pipe, jugular and vocal cords. Now we've got to wait for the guy to choke to death in his own blood. Normally, Heero would have put that right into his brain stem and felled him on the spot.”

“When you're right, you're right. All this gunplay has let Heero's hand-to-hand skills atrophy.”

“Oh, now I think he's getting back into it. Did you see that?”

“Yeah, that was nice. Spilled his intestines right out. Very well done. Oh, I like that!”

“Definitely! The double-cut to the wrist and elbow to make that guy drop his club was pretty tricky.”

“And a double-hamstringing! Get out! He's really on his game now.”

And in seemingly no time at all, a dozen or so burly-looking men lay dead or dying in the street and Heero was pretty-thoroughly splattered with blood, but his expression was downright cheerful. He ripped a strip of relatively clean cloth off of one of the dead men and wiped his knives clean, humming contentedly.

“We should probably find a horse trough or a rain barrel so Heero can clean up before we go back to the hotel,” Zechs said. “It might cause a stir if he walks into the lobby like that.”

“A practical suggestion,” Treize agreed.

They found a partly full rain barrel in an alley a few blocks away and upended it over Heero. Damp but more or less clean, he remained cheerful all the way back to the hotel.

“Say, Heero,” Duo said as they traversed the lobby. “I've been a guy again for nearly two whole days now and I haven't had any hot guy action. That's like an eternity. What say you and me and Wu-Fei go upstairs and have some serious sex?”

Heero shrugged. “Why not? I was feeling a little pent-up before, but now a few hours of sex sounds nice and relaxing.”

Duo grinned. “Can I be in the middle?”

“Sure.”

Wu-Fei sighed. “I don't suppose it would make any difference if I said I was hoping to get some sleep.”

“You can go to sleep if you want,” Duo leered at him. “You don't have to be awake to participate.”

“That's not right!” Wu-Fei complained. “You can't just go around fucking a guy while he's asleep.”

“Yes I can. But before we do that, I want to check on Jett. She's in Quatre's room.”

“How do you know that?”

“I can hear her.”

“Do babies think?”

Duo scratched his head. “She makes pictures. They're kind of blurry, but mostly they look like Roku.”

“That's probably because he's always slobbering on her head,” Heero said.

The three of them stopped at Quatre and Trowa's room and tapped on the door. When there was no answer, they peeked in. Quatre and Trowa were asleep in the room's only bed. Jett was bundled in blankets in a tiny bassinet beside the bed. She blinked at them and cooed.

Duo crept into the room and picked her up. “Hey, sweetie! You hungry?”

Jett gurgled and made a grab for his finger.

“Here's her milk,” Wu-Fei whispered. “Give her to me. I'll feed her.”

“You're just trying to get out of unsolicited sex.”

“Just give me the baby. You two go fuck.”

“You're a generous friend, Wu-Fei.”

“Get out.” Wu-Fei took Jett from Duo and settled down in a chair to feed her. Trowa and Quatre never stirred.

Heero and Duo stepped out and quietly closed the door.

Duo grinned at Heero. “There seems to be nothing left for us to do but fuck until we pass out.”

“Sounds good.”

They retreated to their room.

Down the hall, Zechs and Treize stopped to check on Alexa in the room she was sharing with Roku and Hadeya. Although the room had two narrow beds, Roku and Alexa were sleeping sprawled across Hadeya, who had one arm curled protectively around the little girl and the other draped across Roku's furry back.

“His legs must be completely asleep,” Zechs whispered. “Roku really does weigh a ton in that form.”

“He's a demi-god. He can take it.”

They backed out and closed the door.

“There doesn't seem to be anything else for us to do but retire for the night.” Zechs said with a smile. “As I recall, I was going to allow you to serve me.”

Treize returned his smile. “That's right. Was there any particular service you had in mind?”

“Well…” Zechs purred. “I do seem to have a tight spot that could use a long, slow, firm, deep massage to loosen it.”

“I see. Will I need to undress you first?”

“I think you will have to in order to massage the spot most effectively. You might need to use oil as well.”

“Very well. I shall do my best to fulfill your expectations.”

“I trust you will give me everything I need.”

“Even if it takes me all night.”