The Truth Part 4
Rating: PG-13 still…
By Vixen Schmixen
'Some great contact this Fleur is…' muttered Duo, collapsing into the chair, 'it's been two months!'
'You don't really expect her to get into contact with us, do you Duo? Why the hell would she do that?' Wufei flicked channels.
'Dunno, someone to talk to I guess. Anyway, that Juno guy never told us which of the Developers trained her. He just said "you".'
A pager bleep interrupted the conversation.
'Hey!' cried Duo, making Wufei jump, 'this is a bit weird, we've been called to disable a low-flying fighter over Hochcity.'
'Whadda we care about Hochicky?' muttered Wufei. Dammit, he could never pronounce the name of that city.
'Hoch-city,' repeated Duo.
'Hang on,' perked up Wufei, 'what do they mean disable?'
'That's the thing! Read it!'
Wufei read it, then looked up. His dark eyes were sparkling.
'Let's go then, sounds good. Heero, are you in?'
Heero looked up. Over the past few years, the youth had gone from his eyes, but he still had a loyalty to the mission.
He nodded.
*********
The fighter was definitely low. It skimmed the trees of the suburbs as it frantically whizzed around. It seemed to have gone mad. It zigged and zagged, as if dodging an unseen enemy. It was white, the accepted colour of fighter jets. The three ex-Gundam pilots quickly laid a trap for the rogue fighter. Heero tailed it around 100m back, while Duo and Wufei laid in ambush in the nearby woods. The city of Hoch lay behind them.
The pilot of the fighter saw the trap and hung a sharp left, then fired. Heero dodged the shot, and was about to retaliate when his own fighter's sensors lit up. There was something behind him! Something huge! He spun around and powered straight up.
'Shit! An airliner!'
Duo was half right. It was definitely the size of an airliner, but it was 100% on the offensive.
Now that their original target had knocked its pursuer's cloak off-line, the shots it had been dodging were visible. Obviously focused shots. Focused weapons were relatively new. They would only damage their programmed target, which explained the lack of burned trees and charred ground from shots that had missed.
'Woah! Who do we help?' Duo yelped, as the enormous fighter began to close in on the seemingly tiny rogue jet.
Heero did some light speed thinking.
'No one, just follow!'
****************
The pilot of the fighter playing the role of rabbit gripped the control stick. It was only a matter of time. The more powerful fighter would eventually catch up, and then the little machine was as good as destroyed.
Or even worse, (the grip on the stick shifted) they could shoot it down…and get everything inside. Everything that needed to be protected.
No. They wouldn't get it. What they wanted would remain out of their hands. Taking a terrible risk, the pilot locked the controls and dashed down the small corridor. They were soon back, with something small and green under their arm. A smile formed. Now it was safe.
The time came. The last shot knocked off a cannon and an engine. The fighter spiralled sickeningly before plunging into the ground. The high-speed chase had taken them far from the city. The larger fighter landed a short distance away.
'What do we do?' Duo, Heero and Wufei had cloaked and were hovering nearby.
'Wait. We'll soon discover who needs our aid.' Heero watched the scene unfolding.
*************
The pilot of the fallen fighter forced the door open. Death wasn't a certainty, at least not if the door was open. The green box was still tucked close to them.
*************
'What happens n…' began Duo.
Light erupted from the little fighter. The panels were blown off. The entire ship was consumed by the enormous ball of flame that followed, belching up into the sky.
'He self-destructed…' muttered Wufei to himself, 'I wonder what he had that they wanted.'
*************
People began to pour from the airliner-sized fighter, and began to sift through the wreckage.
'Turn up your outside microphones,' said Heero.
'…sign of it, it must have been completely destroyed.'
'Dammit, oh well, that's one agent down.'
'Details would have been very useful to us.' A reproach.
'Well, let's not waste any more time here, the press will be along soon, and it would bode no good to have our new Galorer fighter splashed over the evening tabloids.'
They all laughed.
**************
The three tailers watched as the Galorer re-cloaked and quite obviously flew away.
They landed close to the wreckage on some grass, so fewer marks would be left.
Duo and Wufei walked over to the shell of the fighter. Wufei busied himself looking for serial numbers, which didn't seem to be there. Duo picked up a piece of the fuselage.
'Looks like it used to be blue, look.' Someone had obviously painted white over the old colour. Heero looked at the fragment. Midnight blue.
'The fighter that shot down the Minister's jet was that colour.'
Duo and Wufei exchanged glances.
'That's real weird, but I mean, come on, what are the odds that this is the same jet?' Duo walked over to where the remaining cannon was still. There appeared to be a flap along the side.
'Hey guys, gimme a hand, there might be something hidden inside,' said Duo, thinking that it may be a compartment. Wufei and Heero helped him, and the panel suddenly came free. All three ducked quickly as spikes shot out and embedded themselves in nearby trees.
'Woah!' cried Duo, but Heero just stared.
Wufei wandered away.
Heero located the door and found it open. He climbed inside. Odd. He knew that the first visitors to the scene hadn't found the remains of the pilot, and that just didn't compute. There was always something left. They must have been blown out of the fighter by the blast…
'Over here!' yelled Wufei.
Wufei had found the pilot. It was a girl.
Her face was cut and blood was dripping down her jaw line. She had been thrown into a bush, which was why she seemed to have survived. Heero checked her pulse and found it stable and strong. Her skin was warm. Her shoulder-length blonde hair was darkened by the blood, which flowed from an unseen head wound. One arm was twisted at an odd angle, but the other arm was clutching something to her chest.
'I'll hazard a guess that that's what they were after,' murmured Duo, and tried to pry it gently from the girl's grip. To his immense surprise, he couldn't pull it free.
He leant down closer to try and claim the object, and got the fright of his life when blue eyes opened and looked straight into his. Gundam pilot or none, that scared the hell outta him.
'Yaargh!' He leapt back.
Heero instinctively reached for his weapon, but managed to stop himself.
The girl groaned softly and tried to push herself up.
'Hey,' said Duo, 'you're in no state to get up.' She ignored him and used a tree to push herself up. She looked around at the three young men.
'What do you want?' she asked. Her voice was cold and quiet.
'Maybe later, we'll wanna ask questions, but right now, we just wanna help. It looks as though your arm's sprained or broken.'
'What do you have that the Galorer wanted?' asked Wufei.
She retrieved the small box.
'This. The in-flight recorder. It's the only thing on the entire ship that can be used to trace me or the makers of my ship…'
As she said this, she turned and looked at her empty wreck of a ship. Duo thought she was going to say something like, 'I'll really miss that ship,' but instead, she said, 'Do you have anything that can either move or completely destroy this?'
Heero felt he could empathise with this girl better than she'd like. Quickly, before she could stop him, he gripped her good arm and pulled it over his shoulder. He began to lead her towards their ships.
*******
Fleur was taken by surprise by Heero's action, but it definitely felt better to be helped along. Her other arm was numb, and she knew it required attention, but she'd have to do that later. Suddenly the ground swirled and she tripped.
Duo grabbed her other arm, forgetting that it was broken or something. There was an awful kind of squeaky twisted click. Heero looked at the girl. Her face registered pain for a couple of seconds, then became impassive again.
If that was him, he'd've left it at that, but there were some differences between him and this pilot.
'Ok…ow!' she muttered, although she hadn't exclaimed at the time. Duo winced.
'Sorry…err…what's your name?'
She didn't want to answer that.
'What's yours?'
'Clive.'
Her eyes searched his.
'Bullshit.'
*******
'Why were they after you?' It was later, and the four of them were sat in the small house that they used. The girl sat and looked blankly out of the window.
'They don't like me.'
'Fuck!' Duo was getting pissed. He'd tried being subtle, unsubtle, polite, rude, and downright threatening, but he hadn't managed to get a single scrap of information out of the woman. Short of beating her up, there was nothing he could do.
'Remind me why we're bothering…' he growled, addressing the room as a whole.
'If there's a reward on her, it could be useful to us,' said Wufei, looking up from polishing his katana, which he somehow still had.
'If you don't let me go soon, I won't be held responsible for the consequences.' The girl's steely blue eyes bore into Wufei's, who, to his immense shame, had to look away first.
'Why should we believe that? You don't seem to have all that many allies, except that Juno guy.'
Her eyes darkened.
'Don't trust him with anything.'
'What? He's the head of Necsa…'
'Exactly. A spy.'
'You're a spy.'
'Was a spy, but now I'm…' she shrugged, '…nothing.'
Heero nodded internally. He knew that feeling.
'Why didn't you put up a fight when we brought you back here?' he asked. Duo looked up in surprise. He hadn't expected Heero to participate much in this.
'I have a broken arm. Besides, I want to help you.'
Silence.
'Then why were you beating round the sodding bush that whole time?' Duo exploded. The girl shrugged.
'I said I wanted to help you, not tell you everything about me.'
'How could you possibly help us?' Wufei positively spat the word 'you'.
'I don't know, but I'm no trouble.'
'You look and sound like trouble,' muttered Duo.
She looked at him.
'You aren't exactly the picture of innocence yourself.' Duo went nuts. He jumped from his chair, but the woman was too quick. She was already over the back of hers with her gun drawn. Even though it was pointed at him, and the design shouldn't have been the dominating fact about it in his brain, Duo stared at it.
'That's a Glock! It's like a hundred years old!' She clicked off the safety.
'It still works, I can assure you. Back off.'
He did so reluctantly, glowering.
'You had no right to say that. You don't know me.'
'I've done a lot of things in my life I'm not proud of, Duo, and I hardly think this is going to make the top ten.'
'What have you done that's so terrible?' asked Heero, as he watched Duo twig that the girl had used his name.
'My job isn't a…wasn't a nice one. I had to trick a lot of decent people. People who didn't deserve to be tricked.'
'Trickery isn't so terrible. It's a useful tool.' Heero again.
'You have no idea of the scale…' she muttered, lowering her weapon.
'How d'you know my name?' asked Duo.
She sighed and flicked her dark blonde hair out of her face.
'I'm a high-ranking Necsa agent, Duo, there isn't much about recent affairs I don't know.'
'The war wasn't that recent,' protested Duo.
'My project drew me very close to the heart of the war.'
'You know all our names?' Wufei this time.
'Yes, I do.'
'And we don't know yours…'
'Yes, you do.'
Duo looked baffled and angry all at once.
'She's right, we do. You're Fleur Tollian, aren't you?' said Heero.
Fleur nodded.
'I was very surprised when you didn't recognise me after the crash.'
'What the hell made your ship explode like that?' asked Duo. She looked puzzled for a moment.
'A button on the control stick.'
'You blew your ship up?! But why?'
'Otherwise they'd've found me, and what they would've done was a hell of a lot worse that getting almost-blown-up.'
'Who?' Fleur slumped inwardly. Yeah, who? She didn't know. Problem.
'The people after me. Don't glare, I don't know who they are.'
'What are you going to do?'
'Juno suggested that I contacted you. He had this twisted idea about me helping, even though I knew you'd be dead against it.'
'He's right though, having you could help us,' said Duo suddenly. Everyone looked at him in surprise. He shrank away a little.
'Okay, sorry, perhaps I haven't been telling you guys about all the missions I get patched. I found out about this one way in advance, but I was sure we couldn't do it…but now Fleur's here…' he looked slightly ill, '…we can…'
********
Fleur: What the hell are you talking about Maxwell?
Duo: *points at Vixen* Don't blame me, blame her!
Heero: Where is that god damned lemon?
Vixen: The intro begins in chapter 5.
Duo: Goody.
Fleur: Why am I so traumatised?
Vixen: You'll see. *~_^*
Fleur: -_-
Heero: -_-
Duo: Spooky…
*************