Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ The True Victor ❯ Chapter 19

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Uh...just a warning (especially to my twin) about the ending. Don't kill me! I swear, I had to do it!!

Chapter Nineteen

"Obliterate this place?" Reinhardt calmly asked, glancing at Andy and Kitsune in turns. He waved his free hand at his captives. "If you two decide to self destruct, do you realize that you're endangering all life in a one mile radius or more? This includes the very people whom you want me to release."

An unnerving silence swept over the area as the temperature in the hallway began to rise. Fear slowly began to possess the AES soldiers' minds, their eyes frantically searching for a way out only to meet the glowing white eyes. Contrary to what the scientists who had experimented on them thought, they did have emotions like ordinary humans. The emotions were only suppressed.

After a few minutes of silence, Andy's lips curled into an arrogant smile, one that seemed out of character for him.

"Yeah, we know that," he replied.

"But nobody's afraid to die except for your soldiers," Kitsune added from the opposite side.

Reinhardt's eyes slightly widened in shock, and he turned around to look at his soldiers and their captives. Fear should have been in their captives' eyes, but it was replaced by a strange sense of calm. As he took a glance at each of his soldiers' eyes, he could tell that they were desperately trying to hide their fear. He silently cursed to himself. He had forgotten that these children had never experienced the threat of death. They were too inhuman, too skillful and fast to know what death was like. It was these two missing children who understood them, thanks to Heero Yuy. He stared into the other man's eyes now, which were impassive as ever.

Damn him, damn them, he mentally cursed to himself as he could feel the heat coming from Andy and Kitsune as their biological clocks began to wind down. His grip on his handgun began to slack off, but it didn't entirely want to let go just yet.

The decision was all up to him. To let go of the very man who had ruined the original project or to let go of the very lives that was solely needed for the plan to succeed?

Kaede led Gally through hallway after hallway, frantically running away from any AES soldiers that came in.

"Kaede-san, where exactly are we going?" Gally shouted as loud as she could over the wailing alarms.

"What do you think? Heero's communication was cut off," the older woman simply replied.

This did not help Gally one bit. "Meaning?"

"Meaning that they got caught! We have to find any free Preventers around to rally up and help them!"

"Demo, Andy and Kitsune-chan are going there."

Kaede abruptly came to a halt, making Gally collide against her. She swiftly turned around to face Gally, staring at her straight in the eye.

"That makes things even worse," she said.

"Naze?" Gally asked.

"You have no idea what those two possess," Kaede replied quietly, a distant look in her eyes. She quickly snapped out of it, however, and began to look for a room suitable for them to hide.

She ran to a random door, inputting random codes on the control panel. After around four failed attempts, she punched at the control panel, hard. It had literally caved in, curving her fist. Some sparks of electricity shot out and the steel door reluctantly let go of its comfortable position to a small opening. Kaede pushed the rest of the door open and shoved Gally inside before she herself entered. Gally gasped as the cold tip of a gun touched her bare neck, but Kaede had quickly took out her handgun and aimed at their unknown attacker in the darkness.

"Who are you?" a familiar voice demanded.

Kaede blinked. "Wufei?"

"Kaede-san?" Wufei's voice asked back, a red light flashing by to illuminate his face.

Both quickly put away their weapons and Wufei went over to slide the door closed.

"Sumanu, Gally," he apologized to the teenager. "I didn't know it was you."

"Da..." Gally stammered, realizing that she had held her breath. "Daijoubu."

"Oh, what an ironic place to hide," Kaede commented, placing her hand on a blank TV screen. "The surveillance room."

"It's pretty bad out there," Wufei informed them. "I wasn't surprised to find this room empty."

"What happened to the people in here?" Gally asked, remembering that she had seen a schedule of duties in the conference room while exploring the new base earlier.

"Dead," Wufei curtly replied. "I found them in the other room."

Roy skidded to a halt and slid to a nearby locker bay to avoid detection. For the first time, he felt tired and out of breath. As other AES soldiers passed by him, he carefully watched them to see if they were out of hearing distance before he turned on his communicator earpiece.

"How's it going, guys?" he asked.

"Haven't had much luck in trying to find somebody alive and kicking," Vicks reported in. "All I see are dead bodies everywhere."

"They sure did their work," Marlena commented. "Our friends aren't giving into any mercy."

Damn, I didn't expect for Reinhardt to act so quickly, Roy thought, frowning. We came a bit too late.

"Yukki, how about you?"

A muffled cough was the reply at first before she managed to say, "It's a tight squeeze going through these ducts, but I haven't found anybody either. Alive, anyway."

"What about you, Roy?" Vicks asked curiously, interrupting their conversation. "Did you find him?"

"Ie," he replied. A pause. "Yosh. Keep on looking. We're bound to find someone useful."

If they're not dead already, he mentally added.

After ending transmission, Roy noticed a glowing whit light not far from his position. He silently crept closer to the light, noticing a drastic change in temperature. Beads of sweat dripped down the side of his face as he came closer and closer to the end. The heat was close to unbearable, but Roy forced himself to focus on his goal. When he reached the end of the corridor, back pressed against the wall, he was surprised to see that the source of the light and the heat came from a young girl.

What in the?!?

Unaware of Roy's presence, seconds ticked by then minutes. It finally came to the point where Andy could "feel" that his "sister" was getting uncomfortable with the inferno boiling inside her. Andy's white eyes narrowed.

Heero couldn't tell if his cousin was narrowing at Reinhardt or him. He assumed it was both because he could sense that the young man was getting his mental thoughts. He could also tell that Kaitou was slowly, silently picking away at the lock of his handcuffs; it would only be a matter of time before the tide was turned. He listlessly stared at Reinhardt so that he wouldn't notice anything. Reinhardt at the moment seemed to be occupied with his own thoughts.

Kitsune was trying really hard to keep her mind away from that "button" that would end it all: the button that would destroy the Preventer base and everything hidden in it.

Kitsune, hold on for a bit longer, came her brother's request.

I'm trying, but it's really hard, oniichan! she replied. I can't hold on forever, you know!

"Well? What are you going to do?" Andy calmly demanded.

Reinhardt, snapping out his thoughts, met Andy's "eyes". A small smile crept to his lips as a cruel idea came to his mind.

"What am I going to do?" he repeated, slowly lowering his handgun. Heero's eyes followed the gun's position, realizing that Reinhardt hadn't let go of the trigger. "This."

He let go of Heero as he pulled the trigger, its boom echoing in the hallways despite the alarms. A surge of pain rushed through Heero's mind as he fell to the metal ground with a deafening thud. Blood began to spill out of his wound like water, slowly draining away the life in him.

And Relena screamed.