Disclaimer: Gundam Wing and all related characters are property of Hajime Yatate, Sotsu Agency and Sunrise.
Setting: This story takes place between episodes 4 and 5
Operation #01: Sweet RevengeMarch 13, 2005
Duo watched with helpless rage as the guy he had worked so hard to free from the military hospital flew off in his repaired Gundam. Repaired with Deathscythe's parts! He balled his fists in impotent fury and glared ineffectually after the quickly receding shadow of the white mobile suit.
"I do hope you have some scheme for getting even, Duo," Howard said, walking up behind the braided teen and following his gaze after the small dot on the horizon.
"Of course," Duo straightened and flipped his braid noncholantly, anger at the guy's betrayal already receding as he began to form a plan for revenge against the steel-eyed boy.
Howard grinned. As someone who had been on the recieving end of Duo's pranks a time or two, he knew that the silent boy was in for a dirty surprise, and that he would be reminded of his error in judgment for many months to come.
Remembering his original reason for joining Duo on the deck, Howard spoke again: "I'll order replacement parts for your Gundam," he informed the boy, who was now staring at the horizon with a contemplative expression on his face. "I'll make sure they're here in about 24 hours, and we'll have you fixed up a little while after that."
"Excellent," Duo smirked. "That's plenty of time to devise the perfect revenge." So saying, he turned swiftly and stalked back into the hanger. Returning to the barracks, he seated himself at his laptop and got to work.
Mentally cataloguing all the various parts that had been stolen from Deathscythe, Duo narrowed his choices down to the two contraband parts which had a direct effect on the pilot's view of the area around him. If his outstandingly good luck was still with him, the other boy wouldn't have had time to reset the functions of those particular computers, and he could sneak in a back door to plant his virus.
Writing the virus itself was the easy part. Implanting it into a relevant computer was more difficult. And much more fun. He had the code for the virus written out and perfected in less than an hour. Really, the only limit was his imagination, and it couldn't be denied that his was quite active. He smirked to himself as he wondered how the stoic, silent boy would react to the twirling Deathscythe gifs and the horribly annoying, upbeat background music which was intended to take over the processor which controlled the visual input relayed to the screens within the Gundam cockpit. He snickered to himself as he imagined various reactions, each more hilarious than the last.
Packing up all the loose bits of coding into one folder, Duo set his newest creation aside and turned his attention to locating and hacking into one of his former computers. Discovering its whereabouts didn't take long. Finding out what condition the computers were in took a little longer, however. He might be loud and obnoxious in person and in open battle, but he knew there were few who could match his skill at silent subterfuge. He set his hacking program to find out the status of both computers, then leaned back to watch it process - he'd set a little animated gif of Deathscythe in one corner of the window, and it gave him the outline of what was going on within the program - describing in a series of cute, animated movements what the detailed code to its right said.
At the moment, the gif was making little slashing motions with its scythe, which meant the program was in its initial hacking stage. Every once in a while, the slashing motions would stop and the gif would sweep from side to side in a small path, which ment that it had come across a dead end or a non-useful avenue, and was now searching for a different opening. A quick glance at the scrolling code told Duo exactly what the problem was, and whether he needed to manually redirect the program if there was a threat of detection, or if it was safe to continue proceeding. In each of the limited cases the gif alerted him to a possible problem, it turned out to be a simple dead end within the system. It appeared as if his part thief wasn't even using the computer at the moment, which was even better for him.
After about five minutes of slashing and sliding, the gif thumped the end of its little scythe on the virtual ground and made a victory gesture with its left hand, signaling successful penetration. Duo grinned and wiggled his fingers in anticipation over the keyboard, then set about implanting his latest brainchild where it couldn't help but make itself noticed. Once it was embedded securely, Duo swiftly withdrew his program and wiped all traces of his entry into the system.
Smiling happily at the little Deathscythe gif, which had begun to frolic about its allotted box of 200 pixels to signal a successful implant, Duo shut off his laptop, stood, and stretched. Now it was only a matter of time before his revenge extracted itself, and in the mean time, he was ready for a shower.
Heero ran expert fingers over the controls in his Gundam's cockpit. He'd stopped briefly after his flight from Duo's refuge to acquire some food, and that had taken some time, as he'd had to hide Wing several miles from his intended destination, and walk the rest of the way on foot. Now the system was lighting up about him as it started up, making all the usual small pinging and humming noises as the monitors turned on and the external cameras began feeding information into them. All was well for about a minute, when a motion on the right-hand screen caught his eye:
It was a crudely drawn and animated gif, though clearly it represented none other than the black Gundam from which he'd borrowed his parts. Frowning, Heero's hands flew over the controls which would make the gif disappear. This only caused another to pop up right next to it. Both mini Gundams set to twirling about and wagging their beam scythes at him in a rather aggravating manner. Heero glared at them and jabbed at the computer again, which only caused more to appear. They spread exponentially across his entire field of vision, and once he could see nothing but twirling, frolicking Gundams, the music started.
It was a combination of outdated Japanese and incredibly mangled English, flowing over an outrageously hideous techno beat, and it suited the dancing, spinning mini-Gundams perfectly. Irritated and more than a little concerned, Heero quickly assessed the extent of the devastation. Thankfully, the virus only appeared to be affecting the computer in charge of relaying information from the external cameras into the cockpit - he quickly found the source of the disturbing, dancing, miniature Gods of Death, and attempted to delete it. However, this only caused a window to open on the main view-screen, which began playing a pre-recorded video.
In the center of the window was a smirking Duo, who waggled a finger impertinently at Heero. "Now really, is this how you repay the guy who got you out of that hospital? Tsk tsk." He affected a piteous expression and shook his head sadly for a moment before leaning back in his chair, smirking once more. "I'm sure you'll think twice before you underestimate Shinigami again, my friend. Since I'm such a nice guy, I'm going to give you the password to switch off the virus, but until you can figure out a way to remove it, you're going to have to enter the password every time you get in your Gundam. Now pay attention, because this is the only time you're going to see this message."
Duo's face disappeared, replaced with a black screen. White letters appeared one by one, as if typed infinitely slowly on purpose:
The password blinked several times once it was fully typed onto the screen. Heero blanched, but entered the password. As if by magic, the hideous music stopped and all the chibi Gundams disappeared, leaving his viewing screens clear once more, except for the main one. Duo's face appeared once more, and he was grinning maddingly. "Lovely doing business with you, I hope to see you again. Shinigami out." So saying, Duo flashed a peace-sign and a 100 watt grin at Heero, then the screen went black and then disappeared.
Heero glared at the place where Duo's face had been but moments before, then snorted mirthfully. So there was something more to the other Gundam pilot than just loud, obnoxious chatter after all. Maybe he wouldn't kill him the next time they met.
Maybe.
The End
Author's Notes I've wanted to do little side-stories like this for a very long time now, and I finally sat down and got started a few weekends ago, by re-watching some of the first episodes of Gundam Wing and taking detailed notes. I hope to add more to this as time goes on. We'll see what happens.