Tremors

Author: Madisonne

Part: 1/1 (maybe more)

Disclaimer: For some reason, the people at Bandai keep on forgetting to return my calls... So, no, I don't own them yet. Operative word: YET! MWA HA HA HA HA!!! Ahem... Don't steal, or else I'll sic my demon-chibis on you. Stop laughing! They can strip a cow of its meat in one minute! Or is that piranhas? Hmmm...

Warnings: Uhmmm, depressing (sort of), action/adventure-ish... I dunno...

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To say that Treize was swamped in work would not only be cliche, it would be a vast understatement. His ten o'clock had run over an extra hour, forcing him to work through lunch and cancel his appointment with his mother, only to be behind an hour in his personal mountain of papers. So, instead of having a calm lunch in a high-class bistro, he was stuck behind a desk, pen in hand, phone at his ear, and computer scanning systems flashing words wildly across his screen.

Earlier he had been calm and methodical in his work. Now, he was pissed. And it took a great deal to piss off Treize Khushrenada. Some idiot had leaked that the base was hiding weapons of mass destruction. What they'd failed to leak along with that information was the fact that the weapons were those confiscated from a local black-market chain and that they were, in fact, being dismantled as swiftly and safely as possible. "But nooooo, no one ever leaks good stuff; they only leak the stuff that's going to screw everyone else over." He hissed softly to himself, scribbling information furiously down on a pad of paper.

"General?" His vid-com came to, surprising him greatly; normally, he would have had to accept any call before it was patched through.

"Yes?"

"We need to move you to a secure location, sir." The soldier on the other end seemed rattled and nervous.

"Why? What's going on?" He pushed his pad of paper slightly to the left, out of the way.

"We're evacuating the entire compound, sir. You need to leave now."

He was greatly puzzled, never before had any compound been totally deserted. "This is highly irregular..."

"Sir, we really don't have the time to argue about this, I'm sending in a few, trusted guards. They will escort you to the jet fighter Z-423a, which is on stand-by for immediate take-off." The unit clicked off just as an entire squadron of swat-troopers came in to collect him.

In a daze, Treize allowed himself to be led through the compound in the middle of their protective flanking figuration. The ever hurried pace towards the doors began to focus him back into reality, and, when a trooper took over a mega-phone and hollered for the women to "drop their heels and run", he realized that his place was not to be treated any better than anyone else, but to fight for his life like the others.
"You all go on ahead, I need to be with the troops."

The squadron was indignant, and insisted that he must leave the building.

"As your commanding officer, I order you to leave me alone and save yourselves." He spoke with the calm, powerful voice of the leader he had been raised to be.

Realizing they were beat, the squadron nodded, then peeled off.

Being jostled by people trying to leave the compound, he picked up his pace to the run everyone else was maintaining and broke into the sunlight, where he saw a sight that he'd never even thought to wonder if he'd ever see. The gates of the compound were flung wide open (he wasn't even sure the compound had gates) and soldiers and civilian workers alike were streaming through the space, a mass exodus the likes of which Treize had never seen.

Through the anxious conversations of those around him, once safely outside the compound and behind the swat-team's line of protection, he figured out that the compound must have received some threat. Something about a bomb being planted from the inside...

"Oh shit..." He realized, with a sinking heart, that the terrorists must have planned this attack to keep them from trying to mess with the weapons they'd confiscated mere weeks before.

A cell-phone rang loudly, causing everyone to jump in alarm.

Treize answered his phone with a curt, "Yes?"

"Uh, General, it's me, Merquise. I was wondering if you could help me with a little Dismantling 101. How bad is it if I pull the red before the green wire?"

"No, it's okay. Red before green works... Wait, this is hardly the time to be worrying about first year classes you slept through. Someone could need me to help with the cri..." All of the sudden, it hit him. Zechs was inside, trying to dismantle the bio-weapons before the base exploded and affected people for miles around. "God damn it..." He dropped his cell-phone onto the ground absent-mindedly and headed for the line of swat agents. "I have to get inside."

"I'm sorry, sir. We can't do that."

He sighed, in anger and frustration. "I'm your commanding officer; you have to let me into the compound!"

"Check the handbook, sir. I think you'll find that, under these circumstances, you have to do what we say." A young soldier replied.

"But Zechs is in there!"

"He should have listened to the warnings." The officer spoke matter-of-factly, most of his thought going into the palm-pilot he was using to stay connected with the other swat members.

Treize tried to rush the line, but was stopped by the guards, and made to sit back from the fence. "You don't understand, he'll die in there!"

"Sir, please calm down." The officer holding one of his arms asked.

Moments later, a horrendous explosion shattered the compound to little more that debris.

"No! ZECHS!" Treize screamed, fighting uselessly against the swat-team, his voice cracking from sheer volume. As the dust cleared and there was, obviously, no chunks of building left standing, he collapsed onto the ground. "Holy shit..." He shook his head in disbelief. "He can't be dead. He can't!"

The swat-team was not quite sure what to do. After all, Treize was the ranking officer in the compound, but he seemed to be having a bit of a mental breakdown...

"Oh my god..." Treize turned off-white, then threw-up into the grass, shuddering at what he had just seen.

By the sounds the all around them, the general's reaction was not an unusual one, as civilians and soldiers alike reacted adversely to the fact that they all could have died in one mass murder.

The swat-team was even more unsure as to what they should do; Treize was doubled up on the ground, trembling and crying ungracefully, and all around them others were having similar reactions, becoming more and more hysterical as the extent of it all dawned upon them.

To say that Treize felt like shit was an understatement. He felt like throwing himself off of a cliff. Repeatedly. Rocking back and forth, he repeated in a worthless mantra the word 'no', each time more hoarse and despaired than the other.

When a fellow soldier put a hand on his shoulder, he was in fear of the other's false sympathy. But the man did not patronize him, pointing, instead to a clump of people where a tall blonde soldier was being helped off of the base by a small group of swat-members.

'Thank god...' He thought, and promptly passed out.

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Notes: This was way cooler when it was in its baby-stages... Let me know if you want a continuation and what you think should happen! ;-)