Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Wild Wings ❯ Chapter 3

Chapter Three

 

The very bright sunlight attacking his eyes woke Duo up. The extreme tension in his muscles kept him confused and immobile on the forest floor for quite some time afterward. `Mission gone bad.' was his first thought, but when the only thing the pilot could remember was some god-forsaken dream about being a very weird wolf-hawk hybrid he reluctantly decided he must've walked in his sleep… yeah. That was it.

 

Duo moaned as he sat up. Every conceivable muscle (and some he wasn't entirely sure existed) protested. His fucking eyelids hurt. He stood up, supported by the closest tree, and waited for a spell of dizziness to pass. When it did his violet eyes focused on paw prints in the dirt and the unmistakable signs of a large animal passing through. Duo bent to move a fern out of the way and nearly fell over. His center of balance was way off.

 

He put a hand to his head and dismissed the tracks. They were something to worry about later. For now he needed to know where he was.

 

North was to his left. Duo looked in that direction, saw nothing more than forest, and wondered how in the hell he knew that little tidbit.

 

The pilot took a breath of air to steady himself and was hit with the duel sensation of an overwhelming amount of information and a memory shock. Trees, forest, dirt, fur, wind, bugs, bird, metal, Howard, pineapple, gas - it all swept over him with the chaotic scramble of too many things happening all at once. He staggered, cursed, and got friendly with the tree.

 

Duo took a moment to breathe through his mouth in short pants. “You are not a wolf-freak, this is just a throwback to the dream. Howard does not smell like pineapples and there is no gas leak.” His chest hurt with every breath and his shoulders ached.

 

He shook his head and pushed away from the tree. Vertigo gave him a break and he started off in a general south east direction. He tried not to question too hard why he knew Howard's place lay that way; he just did. His braid snagged on a branch and Duo belatedly noticed it was a snarl of tangles. Well damn.

 

As the memory-dream faded Duo relaxed. He moved through the shadows with familiar stealth and kept his ears open for anything unusual. Other than some rather loud squirrels he couldn't sense anything strange and he tried his best not to notice the wolf tracks he crossed on repeated occasions. Instead he focused on the complete mess he had made of his clothes… somehow. What had he done? Take a mudbath?

 

Duo paused at the line of trees and scanned the field between him and Howard's hanger. Nothing seemed to be out of whack other than the gas he could smell even from this distance.

 

“Ok, so maybe there's a gas leak, but damnit you are not a wolf-man… bird… thing.” He grunted. “Whatever.” He jogged across the field and couldn't help but notice how much longer it took on two legs. Every movement screamed with pain. He wanted a hot shower and some pills, by God.

 

Duo thanked the Lord above no one seemed to be awake just yet and crept into his room for a much needed change of clothes.

 

Hot water was heaven, he decided. The shower was small but the pilot couldn't have cared less. It contained hot water and said water was currently pounding the tension out of his back. He stood under the punishing stream for several long minutes before he could convince himself that soap really was necessary and no, it wouldn't lather itself by telekinesis, he really did have to move. The activity served to loosen him further and by the end of a half hour he felt almost human.

 

He scrubbed at his hair with a towel on his way down to the kitchen and groaned with delight. “Oh man, Howard is that really what I think it is?” He took a deep breath; Batter, oil, Howard, pineapple, butter, metal, flower, gas, bacon—“Bacon?!”

 

Howard laughed, “Yeah, I've got some bacon for you. How many pieces?”

 

Normally zero, Duo wasn't all that fond of pork but for some reason the smell alone was sending him into a fit. He swallowed twice before answering. “Four… five… I donno. How many've you got?” He tried to busy himself with his hair and made a point of breathing shallowly through his mouth but that only served to give him a taste of the meal to come. He snapped his mouth shut and tried not to breathe at all.

 

I am not a wolf-bird, I am not a wolf-bird, I am not—BACON! Duo chewed blissfully on a series of bacon strips, half way through the third one before Howard was even finished pushing them off the skillet.

 

“So… you're a little hungry, then?” Howard laughed.

 

Duo took a half second to flip him the bird before devouring his single pancake. Another two appeared on his plate without asking and he plowed through those as well. The pilot grunted and began languidly licking his fingers clean. The syrup was everywhere. He sat back in the chair and found Howard staring.

 

“What?” He looked down at his shirt, “Have I got a spot?”

 

“Utensils, Duo. We try to use utensils at a meal.”

 

The American glanced at his plate. It was a swamp of syrup and butter but the fork and knife sat slightly askew on the table. He flashed Howard a grin to cover the shiver of unease that swept up his spine. “Aw, who needs em; streetrats do it better with their hands.” He lifted his eyebrows at the man and Howard laughed. “Besides, fewer dishes for you.” He said, dropping his plate in the sink.

 

“Go wash up, kid. You're a mess.” Howard flapped his hand and sat down to eat his meal with a bit more decorum. “We've already got the barge loaded to grab your gear when you're done here. We're sailing out in a half hour.” Duo high-tailed it from the room.

 

What the hell had he been thinking? He wasn't a beast, he could eat with a fork just fine, thank you! His stomach growled and Duo frowned. He couldn't possibly be still hungry after that but the twist in his stomach said otherwise. What had come over him? That dream last night…

 

No, it was nothing more than a dream. Creepy and very strange, but nothing more. He was not a wolf-bird, damnit.

 

Duo flicked the light on in his bathroom and saw wings. With a gasp he hit the wall and stared at himself in the mirror. It reflected nothing but his wide-eyed self and the toilet. “Get a grip, little-rat. You don't have wings” He whispered harshly to himself.

 

But his shoulders itched with the memory, his muscles still twinged, and Howard smelled like pineapples.

 

Duo leaned against the sink and stared at himself in the mirror. Two eyes, a nose, two arms, and certainly no wings. He took a breath to steady himself; ammonia, metal, pineapple—and watched in fascination as his pupils shrunk to vertical slits in a sea of violet color.

 

Something beeped. Duo twitched and refocused on the mirror. Everything was normal. The com beeped again and Duo abandoned his eerie reflection to accept the message.

 

--//--

 

“Howard!!” Duo sprinted down the stairs, still stuffing his duffle bag on the way. “Howar—damnit!” He wasn't in the galley. Where the hell did the man go in such a short time? Duo sprinted down the hall toward `Scythe. He could call the man from his Gundam if he didn't run into him on the way.

 

Duo took the stairs in a single flying leap with a smooth roll at the end and kept going. Rather than wait for the elevator he tossed himself off the back end of Howard's floating city and caught a ladder there by his fingertips. Duo found the thing a week ago completely by accident but the extra exit was proving to be useful now.

 

He shimmied up the ladder and leapt over the guard rail. His swinging braid scared the piss out of some poor deckhand but Duo was already half way to `Scythe when the man yelled. The pilot spotted his host on an electric cart and waved.

 

“Hey! Hey, Howard!”

 

The bald man waved back and pulled his cart to a stop. “What's up Duo?”

 

“I got a call, `Scythe and I have to go. Sorry if I left anything in the room—hang onto it for me?”

 

“Yeah, sure. Be safe, kid.”

 

Safe? He was a Gundam pilot. He was fired at on sight. There was no such thing as safe. Duo waved and sprinted for his Gundam. Rather than wait for the zip line he tossed his duffel over one shoulder and scaled the mecha by hand. He jammed the code for the hatch and bypassed the startup sequence on his way to the seat. The duffle was stowed under his chair and he took a moment to strap it down. Better to loose a few seconds now than have his clothes floating around in zero-g in the middle of a firefight.

 

Duo had his machine running off the end of Howard's boat almost before the hatch lock engaged. He jumped the last few feet off the barge and hit the thrusters. Howard's boat rocked in the water, suddenly lightened.

 

`Scythe's toes kissed the water before the thrust really kicked in, then he was skimming over the waves.

 

Duo brought up his mission specs on the left screen and his Gundam's stats on the right. He entered his trajectory from memory while the information scrolled and tore a ration bar out of a compartment to chew on while he figured out just what his target was.

 

The Gundam stats were green across the board except for a small glitch in the lower left leg. Duo poked at the screen to bring up the details. “Damn. I thought I fixed that a week ago…” A small transistor fried itself a few battles ago. Nothing major, but it had to be dealt with.

 

A small blip indicated the mission had finally come through. He abandoned the alert to scan the new information with a growing frown. Howard's city of a ship was floating about in the Indian Ocean. His target was half way across the world in the Gulf of Mexico. It was a simple search and destroy order but the flight alone would cost him. Fuel wasn't exactly easy to come by.

 

Duo sighed, minimized the parameters for the mission, and stared at the details of his alert instead. It wasn't something he needed to fix before he went into battle, but he didn't want to leave the task undone for too long. It was the same transistor as before, but this time the fried hardware flipped a breaker. He had no power to the heel thruster.

 

“Well that would explain my greeting the water on the way up…” His mobility was compromised by a single-digit percentage, hardly worth paying attention to. With the breaker flipped there was no power fed to the area, so he didn't have to worry about live wires bouncing about.

 

Duo settled into his chair for a several-hour flight. He tore another bite from his ration bar.

 

--//--

 

Three hours into his flight and just getting absorbed in a series of music files, `Scythe's radar picked up a rather large craft. Duo abandoned his distraction to bring the stats up on his main screen.

 

Two Aries suits were locked onto his vapor trail. Duo tried not to laugh too much. A pair of suits was all they sent? Pathetic. He flicked `Scythe's cloaking and doubled back on his own trail. The two suits slowed almost immediately. To them he'd just disappeared.

 

Duo bared his teeth in a grin and powered the thermal scythe up only a moment before it burned through the first Aries. He spun about and cleaved the second in half, then powered the thrusters just as the two exploded. A piece of molten blue metal twanged off the Gundam in a weak parting shot.

 

Duo returned to the sparse music files in `Scythe's computer with a grunt of satisfaction.

 

--//--

 

The pilot was in the middle of listing his favorite songs when the proximity alert dragged him back to the present. He was a half hour away and closing fast. Duo triggered `Scythe's cloaking and eased the mecha lower over the waves. He double checked his trajectory then plunged the gundam under the water. The hum from his engines was lost in the splash then vibrated back to him through the water. The water cut his speed more than half but attacking from below almost guaranteed him a surprise assault.

 

His scans didn't spot anything more than a pod of dolphins a few miles south, not even a Cancer unit or two to escort his target. That was odd.

 

The mission specs said the first transport was carrying a small fortune in Leo and Aries suits. The second ship was shuttling the pilots for those suits. It was Duo's luck that the two were traveling together. He would take out the boat of suits first. The other ship would send out it's distress signal but at the very least OZ would be missing a few dozen mobile suits before they could spring a counterattack on him. It was easy to find some poor shmuck to stick behind the controls of a machine, it was much harder to build the machine.

 

The lack of defense made him wary, though. He'd already proven the strength of his Gundam in the first series of missions in the Asia area, or didn't the leaders of OZ realize how pervasive the Gundam's intel was?

 

Duo hadn't missed the fact that all of his directions so far were against active, public military bases. He also hadn't missed the small signs of military activity in areas that the television claimed were nature preserves or some other such cover story. `Scythe's map was liberally sprinkled with red flags from Sri Lanka up past Nepal.

 

But he wasn't a Gundam pilot because he rushed in headlong, Duo knew a little about strategic moves. If he didn't touch the less obvious military basis, he might be underestimated.

 

Duo grinned at his vidscreen. Like here in the Gulf of Mexico where two transports floated like ducks with no escort. This would probably be the last time a target was so damn easy.

 

His scans still showed nothing so Duo pushed `Scythe deeper under water to make the arc up less of an angle. When the ships were nearly above him Duo shifted upward and hit every thruster he could pour power into. The ocean boiled around him, obscured every camera he had outboard, so he navigated by instrument. The boats were flagged. Red for pilots and blue for suits. His course was perfect, his radar was clear, there was nothing standing in the way of this perfect attack.

 

His thermal scythe retracted to a small point at the tip, he drove it through the lower galley of the transport, directly up into the helm where a small explosion concussed anyone aboard. Deathscythe's shoulder caught the front bow and Duo flipped the boat like a coin. The fully deployed scythe cut through every kind of metal more easily than butter and what hadn't been melted exploded a moment later.

 

An alarm screeched. The other boat had finally sent out its distress signal. Duo slapped the panel to shut off his alert and turned `Scythe with one hand. An Aries unit slammed into his left side and the two spun about. Duo dragged them both into the water where his opponent was at a disadvantage and sliced the machine to bits. His radio scanner finally picked up the right frequency.

 

Stunned shouts streamed over the radio that made Duo smile.

 

`What is it?'

 

`He just wiped the floor with Andrews!'

 

`A thermal beam doesn't work under water!'

 

That last one was a popular excuse.

 

He surfaced in the middle of another swing with his scythe and cackled when the transport rolled in the water. “Sorry boys, but you're not allowed to see me.” Shinigami's grin was full of teeth. Another few stabs at the back end of the ship and Duo finally hit the magazine. The explosion was too big for his cameras to handle. His vidscreen was blinding white for a moment. When it cleared the carnage was perfect. What wasn't sinking slowly to the bottom of the Gulf was on fire.

 

Duo took the time to snuff out any signs of life still floating about. That at least was something L2 had taught him long before he ever knew about OZ. If the enemy didn't know who or what they were fighting you could walk right up to them and ask for candy without being suspected. Rumors about the Gundams were flying around like hotcakes but until OZ's intel was up to snuff he wasn't taking any chances.