Playing Stupid

By Korogi Nagisa

Chapter 1

A Heard of Lemmings

Duo Maxwell was bored. Same old mission, same old fight. Something about slicing hapless Leo suits to shreds just wasn't what it used to be. Stifling a yawn and ordering his Gundam Deathscythe to heft its thermal scythe, the nearest Leo t'was cleft in twain. Hmm. 'Cleft in twain.' He'd have to remember that one and use it on Wu Fei when next the opportunity presented itself. With Chinese as the Shen Long pilot's mother tongue, Wu Fei's cluelessness on the finer points of the English language was often amazing feats of vein-throbbing frustrations and red-faced cursing.

The next Leo had its head lobbed off before it was kicked between the legs.

Next one: de-armed, Deathscythe poking out the Mobile Suit's eyes before backhanding it into the ground.

A random Suit was dismembered at the right knee, Deathcythe nudging the mecha just enough that it tipped over slowly until it crashed into the Suit Duo had just de-armed.

"Man, this is boooooor – riiiiiiing," he complained to the monitors.

It was Trowa who responded, Heavyarms' feed popping up in a corner of Duo's cabin. "Then the sooner we finish this mission, the sooner we can get back to the safe house."

"And have dinner?"

Trowa only sighed.

"I vote for pizza!"

"Again?" It was Wu Fei who voiced his complaint before napalming his current opponent.

"I agree with Wu Fei," Quatre put in. "We've had pizza three nights in a row this week."

Duo pouted, Deathscythe promptly flipping the bird to the next Mobile Suit that was mutilated under his boredom. "Fine, fine. As long as it's not Wuffie's turn to cook."

"There is nothing wrong with my cooking, Maxwell!"

"Rice is boring. Pizza is not." That was just a simple fact of life.

"Enough chatter," Heero's stoic voice said over the unneeded conversation. "Finish the mission and shut up."

Duo pouted again and attempted to give the next Leo an atomic wedgie, the sheer impossibility of the feat apparently of no consequence since Mobile Suits did not wear underwear. "Party pooper." The Gundam pilot would have happily returned to mutilating Mobile Suits were it not for the fact that radar was pinging back something big in a corner of his cabin. "Uh, guys…"

"Shut up, Maxwell!" Wu Fei rang back through the comm. link.

"Fine, fine. Shutting up. But I think you all would be interested to know that it looks like the Good Witch of the North Confederation Fleet is about to drop a house on our asses. Check your radar."

"Damn," Trowa answered back quietly. "Where did that come from?"

"No, Trowa, don't…"

"Wu Fei's butt?" Duo answered the rhetorical question.

"… give him an excuse," Wu Fei finished with a sigh.

"Everyone, reform." Quatre had been waiting patiently for a break in the banter. "Trowa and Wu Fei, you're with me."

"Oooh, that leaves me all alone with Heero with no one to watch."

"Pervert," someone muttered through the comms. Duo was fairly certain it was Quatre.

Swinging Deathscythe about, Duo followed Wing Zero as he leapt back into the fray, the nearest Mobile Suit lobbed off at the arms and wrists, leaving the Suit to wallow helplessly as Deathscythe turned and sat on it. "I'm still bored, ya know."

An ear-splitting whine whirled into the instrument panel, the cabin falling red as the warning appeared on his view ports. 'WARNING: High Voltage Discharge Detected.'

"Duo! Get down!" It was Quatre.

Duo had just swung around when a burst of light filled his sensors. His skin burned under the light, Duo throwing his hands up in his face as a blast lifted his Gundam off the Mobile Suit and flung him through the air.

Weightlessness took him momentarily as his Gundam took flight without his command. He braced for the inevitable teeth-chattering crash that was soon to come.

And something shifted.

The hot, blinding light became cool and Duo no longer felt like he was moving. Instead, he felt like he was lying on a hard floor, possibly concrete. Have I been captured? he asked himself, remaining unmoving. Having learned from Heero to first examine your surroundings with your other senses before moving, Duo attempted to figure out where he was.

The ground was hard, that much he knew. He could hear no sounds, but he could not hear the soft ringing in his ears that usually accompanied complete and total silence. There were no smells, and his hands and feet did not appear to be bound.

Carefully, he cracked open an eye and took in his surroundings.

White, as far as the eye could see. No walls, no floor. Just white. And he thought he could distinctly make out a milky fog, despite the impossibility of noticing a fog in a stark white environment. Where am I?

"You're on the Good Ship Lollipop. Where else?" a voice not unlike his own answered.

Duo froze. He hadn't spoken but his thought had been answered. Years of combat along side Quatre taught him that reading minds and emotions was not an impossible feat for those trained correctly. Those years had also taught Duo how to form mental defenses and barriers against Quatre's sometimes annoying intrusiveness when the blonde pilot would try to foresee Duo's random bouts of orneriness.

In an instant, said barriers were raised and Duo focused on a single image: an old man, about 90. Skinny. And completely naked.

"That's sick."

Duo latched on to his ability to annoy even the most hardened of soldiers, namely Heero. The image in his mind shifted to said skinny, butt-naked old man and a donkey.

The other voice sighed. "Before I'm mentally scarred for life, you haven't been captured, you're not back at the safe house, and you're not dead. Does that cover everything?"

Duo's mouth twitched. "Am I still wearing pants?"

The other voice chuckled. "Ah yes, forgot the most important question."

Despite not knowing anything about his surroundings or his current predicament, Duo began to sit up, noting with ire that his head felt like it weighed fifty pounds, his body ached and his head spun. "Whoa… Anyone get the number of that heard of lemmings?"

"Heard of lemmings? You can't come up with anything more creative than that?"

Duo snorted and rubbed his head gingerly. "Lemmings are small, fuzzy, and unassuming. It's funny."

"Man, you really did take quite a clunk to the old porn storage unit, didn't you?"

With a frown, Duo turned where he sat, trying to find the voice. Since everything around him was white, he had trouble determining if he could get his eyes to focus. He tested his vision with his hands, focusing on them first and then looking off into the milky white environment.

Before him and to one side, a figure stood dressed in a long black trench coat that nearly reached the floor. Dark sunglasses sat on the figure's face and their hair appeared to be tied back over their shoulders somewhere.

Focusing, Duo came back with a shock. He was looking at himself.

"Surprise!" the other exclaimed, throwing his arms up in the air in an awkward representation of the one-man wave. "Glad to see me?"

Duo squinted. Right down to the meter-long braid running down the other's back, he appeared to be his mirror image. "Who are you?" He sat back. "Are you sure I'm not dead?" he asked incredulously. "And I'd never wear something as dorky as a floor-length trench coat!"

The other stuck out their tongue but ignored the trench coat crack. "What do you mean 'who are you'? You know perfectly well who I am!"

Duo snapped his fingers. "I remember!" The other smiled and nodded their head. "I was hit by some energy weapon on our latest mission, knocked all loopy. I'm either dreaming or hallucinating… maybe on some trippy drugs as I'm sure I've been inundated by half the female Winner population, and you're…" Again, the other smiled and nodded at finally being recognized. "Bob the Butt Monkey?"

The other nearly fell over at the blatant opportunity for Duo to prove his orneriness. Said braided baka was laughing his ass off as the figure pulled themselves together, dusted off his trench coat and glared behind his sunglasses. "Very funny."

"I thought so," Duo said proudly. He grinned a bit thinly. "Take off your sunglasses."

The figure smiled out of the corner of his mouth, but did as asked. As the sunglasses were removed, large black eyes glinted off the smile on the figure's face; no irises, just black.

Duo's grin turned almost feral. "Shinigami."

The other took a bow.

… to be continued.

My first attempt at Gundam humor! Plz be gentle! R&R!