Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ ZER0 ❯ Sloth ( Chapter 3 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: Vinyl-Koneko 
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Thriller / Suspense / Psychological / Police / Drama / Angst / Adventure / Action | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 04.07.2002 | Updated On: 10.14.2002 | Pages: 2 | Words: 1.8K | Visits: 464 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Thriller / Suspense / Psychological / Police / Drama / Angst / Adventure / Action | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 04.07.2002 | Updated On: 10.14.2002 | Pages: 2 | Words: 1.8K | Visits: 464 | Status: Completed
Title: ZER0 - Part 4 - Sloth
Author: Vinyl Koneko (Emily), roguegirl@att.net
Rating: R
Warnings: language, angst, death, blood, gruesome stuff
Archive: Want it? Take it. Just give me credit, please.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters. I just like to play with them and make them play with each other.
Comments: *Emphasis*, 'thought', [flashback], /written/. Sloth is the Fourth Deadly Sin and is defined as an aversion to work or exertion. Bonus points to anyone who can tell me where those lyrics came from. I'll give you a hint: The first one and the third to last aren't lyrics, but the rest are.
*~**~*
January 17, 201 AC (cont'd)
*~**~*
'I don't *believe* this. No way. Heero's pulling my leg... Maybe he really *is* developing a sense of humor, but this is way past funny.' Duo glanced over at his partner, watching him drive for a moment. It had started snowing right as they left, and Heero had refused to let Duo behind the wheel, claiming that he didn't want to end up dead in a ditch because Duo was doing 90 miles per hour[1] on a sheet of black ice. 'He's just so tense and waaaay too focused. He doesn't even turn on the radio, and I bet if someone called on his cel, he'd make *me* answer it.' Duo looked back at the snow. It wasn't sticking to the road yet, so the flakes looked like they were going through the pavement instead of melting on impact.
Duo slouched a little in his seat, mentally reviewing the two targets, trying to find a pattern. 'Evan Gail, 12-years-old, collected anything on the Gundams he could find; Paul Lucas, 31-years-old, wanted Lady Une and us *former*-pilots dead. Suspects seem to have nothing in common except for the Gundams...'
["Hero worship, maybe..."]
["...he was supposed to blow up Headquarters this afternoon around 1430."]
'Damn it...I know there's *something*, but I just can't put my finger on it.'
*~**~*
"Quatre! Picked one heck of a time for a visit!" Duo laughed, sharing an enthusiastic hug with his blond friend. "You gonna stick around and help us solve this thing?"
The Arab smiled warmly in reponse. "Whatever I could do to help. My sisters kicked me out. They claim I've been working too hard and need a vacation."
"You? Working too hard? I think they've got you confused with someone else!" Duo chided sarcastically. "I don't know if this will be much of a *vacation*, but you won't be stuck with papers and meetings all day."
"I'll try my best to help. From what I've heard so far, you're going to need all the help you can get."
*~**~*
All the former-pilots were gathered in a briefing room going over the information. The forensics team had just returned with photographs from Lucas' apartment and were going over chemical analysis of the items found within, especially the alleged explosives in the refridgerator. Wufei was going over everything they had gathered so far, reviewing it like a puzzle and trying to find out how and where the pieces fit together.
"First victim..." the Chinese man pulled an envelope out of a file and put it on the table. Within was data on the victim as well as any notes and images from the scene of the crime, including anything the medical examiner or the forensics team managed to dig up. A disc recording of the mother's interrogation was sitting at the bottom of the envelope, but her alibi checked out and it was only included to make sure nothing had been left out. "Evan Gail, 12-years-old, was supposed to complete his 6th-grade-year at the local middle school in June. He was home alone at the time of his death. His mother was at work, and his father was killed in a terrorist bombing roughly nine years prior. The family had five Cocker Spaniels that were used as show dogs who were the only other beings that we can actually tell were in the house at the time.
"According to the medical examiner's report, Gail was killed after he was forced, based by the bruising on his jaw, to drink ethanol before the killer burned his throat. There was a bottle of nail polish remover next to his bed, and we had to presume that the killer used that, but there were no fingerprints, so he had to be wearing gloves.
"The neighbors saw no suspicious behavior in or around the house that night, so there are no witnesses. Whoever got in was undetected, even to the dogs, so it's safe to assume that it's someone the family knew, but it's still likely that the killer didn't know the boy or his family."
"Was anything planted or taken?" Quatre asked. "Besides the addition of the...graffiti in the closet, of course."
Trowa shook his head. "There weren't even indentions in the carpet due to footsteps. An intruder's step would press firmer in the carpeting because he or she would be more cautious and pause every few steps, but nothing abnormal was picked up."
Duo snorted. "Even any hairs that were picked up were from the dogs."
"What about the last victim?" Quatre asked as he looked over the pictures from the first murder, wincing at the collage of Gundam images that seemed to lead to the brutal murder of a 12-year-old boy.
"Paul Lucas, Preventers employee, 31-years-old, died of a bullet between the eyes," Heero pulled out the other envelope, adding to it the images of the hung Lady Une mannequin and the voodoo dolls and the lab analysis of what turned out to be C-4 sitting in Lucas' refridgerator.
"Poor janitor that found him is going to have the clean the guys brains off the wall," Duo commented wryly.
"Lucas was ex-OZ and seemed a little upset that they didn't win the war, to the point where he had resorted to Black Magic, demo the C-4 seems to be proof that he didn't think it was working..."
"Unless Wufei's been impotent lately," Duo interrupted with a michievous grin and a wink.
"Maxwell!" Wufei roared. "Ancient witchcraft has no fundamental, scientific proof of it working, and even *you* should know that!" Duo had to stifle his laughter. Wufei's complexion tended to turn crimson when he got angry, and it humored the other man to no end.
Heero cleared his throat. "The only pattern so far is that there's a week between kills, so the next one should be the twenty-fourth. Unfortunately, another pattern can't be established until there are more victims; only then can we figure out a target radius. There isn't much we can do otherwise."
*~**~*
January 23, 201 AC
*~**~*
"I don't like this, Duo. Someone's going to die tomorrow and there's nothing we can do about it." Duo and Quatre were sitting at a table in a Starbucks down the street from HQ, Duo with a simple mocha latte and Quatre sipping a triple-shot espresso[2].
"There isn't anything we can do about it; even Heero realized that. Normally a seriel killer would be giving more clues as he went along; he would want to see how many kills he could get in before getting caught, but we aren't getting anything besides the occasional graffiti. For a moment, I thought Lucas was our killer and he commited suicide, but there was no weapon and the writing in the boy's room was different from that in Lucas's apartment."
"I still don't like the feeling of being blindfolded and dragged around at the killer's will."
"We'll come up with something. Heero's been going through every minute detail and digging into it even further. He'll call me in the middle of the night with a theory that I'll fall back asleep in the middle of." Duo blinked twice, noticing the grin on Quatre's face. "Wha~at?"
"Nothing."
"Quatre!" Duo was trying to get his friend's blue-eyed gaze, but it wasn't working. "Fine. I'll get it out of you eventually."
Quatre just sipped at his espresso and pretended to not be paying attention.
*~**~*
January 24, 201 AC
*~**~*
The seriel killer didn't stray off schedule, and this time it was on a grander scale. The public eye was caught more with this incident than with the past two. Evan Gail's death had been described as an unfortunate accident while Paul Lucas's got no media interference whatsoever.
It was a homeless shelter, this time. The entire building went up in flames, and all seven volunteer workers and fifty-three occupants were killed. Duo had been late again that morning, so his "penalty" was not having to go to the crime scene. Wufei and Quatre went, the blond Arab managing to nab a camera from forensics to bring on-site and catch the damage before the building's skeleton got too weak to stand on its own.
While Duo didn't see the actual scene, he saw the photographs Quatre took as soon as possible. The entire interior of the building was charcoal-black from the flames that had been licking up the walls in a flash-fire. The red spray pain was back, and it stood out from the black walls easily, and there was more of it this time.
/hA hA hA hA hA/
/thE ROOf, thE ROOf,
thE ROOf iS ON fiRE,
bUt WE dON't NEEd NO WAtER
lEt thE MOthER-fUCkER bURN/
/SEtS ME ON fiRE
ShE SEtS ME ON fiRE
SEtS ME ON fiRE - fiRE/
/Shit AddS UP At thE bOttOM/
And that was only one wall of the two-story complex. Each and every surface was covered in writing, some of them seemed lyrical while others were just contemptuous.
/WE Will fiGht thE hEAthENS
WE Will fiGht thE hEAthENS/
/NA NA NA NA NA NA/
/i'VE hAd ENOUGh Of thE WORld ANd
it'S PEOPlE'S MINdlESS GAMES/
/dRiVEN bY hAtE - CONSUMEd bY fEAR/
"You know what?" Duo tossed the images to Heero. "I think we've been giving this guy too much credit... We're dealing with a fucking psycho, and this will keep going until we find him." He grabbed a push-pin and stuck in on the map where the homeless shelter once stood. "There's no pattern to anything! This time, it wasn't even related to us, and we have a week until someone else dies."
"He's getting cocky," Heero said, tossing an individual photographs at Duo. One was a bottle of spray paint, and the other was a footprint. "We have something to work off of, now, but the fingerprint will only help us if the killer's been entered in the database before."
Duo sighed. "I guess it won't hurt to hope."
*~**~*
End Part 4
[1] They're in the States, so it's mph. It's likely that the American system of measurement could be changed by then, but moi, being American, felt a tad bit lazy to figure out how many kilometers per hour that would be. If anyone really wants to know, multiply 90 by 1.609 to get kilometers. ^_^
[2] All that tea he drinks...that's probably how much caffeine he'd need in order to notice it. ::laughs:: I know some mornings I just want my coffee dripped directly into my veins.
Author: Vinyl Koneko (Emily), roguegirl@att.net
Rating: R
Warnings: language, angst, death, blood, gruesome stuff
Archive: Want it? Take it. Just give me credit, please.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters. I just like to play with them and make them play with each other.
Comments: *Emphasis*, 'thought', [flashback], /written/. Sloth is the Fourth Deadly Sin and is defined as an aversion to work or exertion. Bonus points to anyone who can tell me where those lyrics came from. I'll give you a hint: The first one and the third to last aren't lyrics, but the rest are.
*~**~*
January 17, 201 AC (cont'd)
*~**~*
'I don't *believe* this. No way. Heero's pulling my leg... Maybe he really *is* developing a sense of humor, but this is way past funny.' Duo glanced over at his partner, watching him drive for a moment. It had started snowing right as they left, and Heero had refused to let Duo behind the wheel, claiming that he didn't want to end up dead in a ditch because Duo was doing 90 miles per hour[1] on a sheet of black ice. 'He's just so tense and waaaay too focused. He doesn't even turn on the radio, and I bet if someone called on his cel, he'd make *me* answer it.' Duo looked back at the snow. It wasn't sticking to the road yet, so the flakes looked like they were going through the pavement instead of melting on impact.
Duo slouched a little in his seat, mentally reviewing the two targets, trying to find a pattern. 'Evan Gail, 12-years-old, collected anything on the Gundams he could find; Paul Lucas, 31-years-old, wanted Lady Une and us *former*-pilots dead. Suspects seem to have nothing in common except for the Gundams...'
["Hero worship, maybe..."]
["...he was supposed to blow up Headquarters this afternoon around 1430."]
'Damn it...I know there's *something*, but I just can't put my finger on it.'
*~**~*
"Quatre! Picked one heck of a time for a visit!" Duo laughed, sharing an enthusiastic hug with his blond friend. "You gonna stick around and help us solve this thing?"
The Arab smiled warmly in reponse. "Whatever I could do to help. My sisters kicked me out. They claim I've been working too hard and need a vacation."
"You? Working too hard? I think they've got you confused with someone else!" Duo chided sarcastically. "I don't know if this will be much of a *vacation*, but you won't be stuck with papers and meetings all day."
"I'll try my best to help. From what I've heard so far, you're going to need all the help you can get."
*~**~*
All the former-pilots were gathered in a briefing room going over the information. The forensics team had just returned with photographs from Lucas' apartment and were going over chemical analysis of the items found within, especially the alleged explosives in the refridgerator. Wufei was going over everything they had gathered so far, reviewing it like a puzzle and trying to find out how and where the pieces fit together.
"First victim..." the Chinese man pulled an envelope out of a file and put it on the table. Within was data on the victim as well as any notes and images from the scene of the crime, including anything the medical examiner or the forensics team managed to dig up. A disc recording of the mother's interrogation was sitting at the bottom of the envelope, but her alibi checked out and it was only included to make sure nothing had been left out. "Evan Gail, 12-years-old, was supposed to complete his 6th-grade-year at the local middle school in June. He was home alone at the time of his death. His mother was at work, and his father was killed in a terrorist bombing roughly nine years prior. The family had five Cocker Spaniels that were used as show dogs who were the only other beings that we can actually tell were in the house at the time.
"According to the medical examiner's report, Gail was killed after he was forced, based by the bruising on his jaw, to drink ethanol before the killer burned his throat. There was a bottle of nail polish remover next to his bed, and we had to presume that the killer used that, but there were no fingerprints, so he had to be wearing gloves.
"The neighbors saw no suspicious behavior in or around the house that night, so there are no witnesses. Whoever got in was undetected, even to the dogs, so it's safe to assume that it's someone the family knew, but it's still likely that the killer didn't know the boy or his family."
"Was anything planted or taken?" Quatre asked. "Besides the addition of the...graffiti in the closet, of course."
Trowa shook his head. "There weren't even indentions in the carpet due to footsteps. An intruder's step would press firmer in the carpeting because he or she would be more cautious and pause every few steps, but nothing abnormal was picked up."
Duo snorted. "Even any hairs that were picked up were from the dogs."
"What about the last victim?" Quatre asked as he looked over the pictures from the first murder, wincing at the collage of Gundam images that seemed to lead to the brutal murder of a 12-year-old boy.
"Paul Lucas, Preventers employee, 31-years-old, died of a bullet between the eyes," Heero pulled out the other envelope, adding to it the images of the hung Lady Une mannequin and the voodoo dolls and the lab analysis of what turned out to be C-4 sitting in Lucas' refridgerator.
"Poor janitor that found him is going to have the clean the guys brains off the wall," Duo commented wryly.
"Lucas was ex-OZ and seemed a little upset that they didn't win the war, to the point where he had resorted to Black Magic, demo the C-4 seems to be proof that he didn't think it was working..."
"Unless Wufei's been impotent lately," Duo interrupted with a michievous grin and a wink.
"Maxwell!" Wufei roared. "Ancient witchcraft has no fundamental, scientific proof of it working, and even *you* should know that!" Duo had to stifle his laughter. Wufei's complexion tended to turn crimson when he got angry, and it humored the other man to no end.
Heero cleared his throat. "The only pattern so far is that there's a week between kills, so the next one should be the twenty-fourth. Unfortunately, another pattern can't be established until there are more victims; only then can we figure out a target radius. There isn't much we can do otherwise."
*~**~*
January 23, 201 AC
*~**~*
"I don't like this, Duo. Someone's going to die tomorrow and there's nothing we can do about it." Duo and Quatre were sitting at a table in a Starbucks down the street from HQ, Duo with a simple mocha latte and Quatre sipping a triple-shot espresso[2].
"There isn't anything we can do about it; even Heero realized that. Normally a seriel killer would be giving more clues as he went along; he would want to see how many kills he could get in before getting caught, but we aren't getting anything besides the occasional graffiti. For a moment, I thought Lucas was our killer and he commited suicide, but there was no weapon and the writing in the boy's room was different from that in Lucas's apartment."
"I still don't like the feeling of being blindfolded and dragged around at the killer's will."
"We'll come up with something. Heero's been going through every minute detail and digging into it even further. He'll call me in the middle of the night with a theory that I'll fall back asleep in the middle of." Duo blinked twice, noticing the grin on Quatre's face. "Wha~at?"
"Nothing."
"Quatre!" Duo was trying to get his friend's blue-eyed gaze, but it wasn't working. "Fine. I'll get it out of you eventually."
Quatre just sipped at his espresso and pretended to not be paying attention.
*~**~*
January 24, 201 AC
*~**~*
The seriel killer didn't stray off schedule, and this time it was on a grander scale. The public eye was caught more with this incident than with the past two. Evan Gail's death had been described as an unfortunate accident while Paul Lucas's got no media interference whatsoever.
It was a homeless shelter, this time. The entire building went up in flames, and all seven volunteer workers and fifty-three occupants were killed. Duo had been late again that morning, so his "penalty" was not having to go to the crime scene. Wufei and Quatre went, the blond Arab managing to nab a camera from forensics to bring on-site and catch the damage before the building's skeleton got too weak to stand on its own.
While Duo didn't see the actual scene, he saw the photographs Quatre took as soon as possible. The entire interior of the building was charcoal-black from the flames that had been licking up the walls in a flash-fire. The red spray pain was back, and it stood out from the black walls easily, and there was more of it this time.
/hA hA hA hA hA/
/thE ROOf, thE ROOf,
thE ROOf iS ON fiRE,
bUt WE dON't NEEd NO WAtER
lEt thE MOthER-fUCkER bURN/
/SEtS ME ON fiRE
ShE SEtS ME ON fiRE
SEtS ME ON fiRE - fiRE/
/Shit AddS UP At thE bOttOM/
And that was only one wall of the two-story complex. Each and every surface was covered in writing, some of them seemed lyrical while others were just contemptuous.
/WE Will fiGht thE hEAthENS
WE Will fiGht thE hEAthENS/
/NA NA NA NA NA NA/
/i'VE hAd ENOUGh Of thE WORld ANd
it'S PEOPlE'S MINdlESS GAMES/
/dRiVEN bY hAtE - CONSUMEd bY fEAR/
"You know what?" Duo tossed the images to Heero. "I think we've been giving this guy too much credit... We're dealing with a fucking psycho, and this will keep going until we find him." He grabbed a push-pin and stuck in on the map where the homeless shelter once stood. "There's no pattern to anything! This time, it wasn't even related to us, and we have a week until someone else dies."
"He's getting cocky," Heero said, tossing an individual photographs at Duo. One was a bottle of spray paint, and the other was a footprint. "We have something to work off of, now, but the fingerprint will only help us if the killer's been entered in the database before."
Duo sighed. "I guess it won't hurt to hope."
*~**~*
End Part 4
[1] They're in the States, so it's mph. It's likely that the American system of measurement could be changed by then, but moi, being American, felt a tad bit lazy to figure out how many kilometers per hour that would be. If anyone really wants to know, multiply 90 by 1.609 to get kilometers. ^_^
[2] All that tea he drinks...that's probably how much caffeine he'd need in order to notice it. ::laughs:: I know some mornings I just want my coffee dripped directly into my veins.