Subtle

~by Rae, who owns nothing. Timeline? What timeline?

Inspiration: Isis. "Gundam boys... and a slingshot". Bronze. Oatmeal and Trowa's sense of humor.

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Duo watched on his vid screen as the last bomb went off, causing the only undamaged section of the compound to go up in a blaze of fire and brimstone. He was grinning, proud of a job accomplished, and accomplished well, but something seemed to be missing.

He was bored, but not in the sense that there was nothing to do, because there was always -something- to do. Bored in the sense that the redundancy of -what- they did was finally wearing down on him. Apart from a few lucky captures by Oz, most missions had a way of going the same way. Sadly, for Duo the adage "We came, we saw, we conquered" no longer held any special meaning.

It was an odd bit of luck that he happened to run into Trowa shortly before his next mission. Between outfitting Heavy Arms with ammunition and repairing Deathscythe, Duo shared his thoughts on the way the missions had seemed to go for the past while. "We go in, we go boom, we shoot, they shoot, we kick ass. Same thing every time, man."

Trowa, largely silent, though attentive, during the rest of Duo's spiel, chose that remark to comment on. "You're bored?" he asked. Duo wasn't sure if the censure in his voice was there or imagined, but he chose to ignore it either way.

"Yeah. Aren't you? It's the same thing, time and again. Sure, it's a different place and different people, but it all ends the same. Boom, we win, game over for everyone else." He closed the panel he'd been working on and crawled to sit on the shoulder of his gundam, facing Trowa and his machine. "Don't you feel it, too?"

"The entertainment value of fighting has never occured to me," Trowa answered slowly, straight-faced.

Duo hesitated for a moment before deciding that Trowa was teasing him. It might have been an actual insult, but at the moment, Duo was focused on the matter at hand. "I just want to do something a little different, you know? Something that we haven't done a million times before."

Trowa finished what he'd been doing in the cockpit and stepped out onto the open platform. "Different." He turned his head and looked at Duo for a few seconds, green eyes intense. Then he stepped off the platform and dropped to the ground, landing easily on his feet despite the distance.

Still on Deathscythe, Duo winced and shook his head. He called down, "Between you and Heero, you make the rest of us look bad."

Green eyes flicked up, and there was a definite smirk on Trowa's face when he replied. "That's not difficult to do."

*********

Their mission came in a few days later, and the day after that, they were both in position to attack...or so Duo thought until he made to call Trowa on his radio, and received no reply. It might have seemed usual, if it hadn't been for the fact that Trowa normally kept the comm link open.

"Tro? Man, you there?" Duo asked,more confused than worried. He doubted anyone could have gotten to Trowa at all, much less so quickly and without warning. With an odd feeling in the pit of his stomach (Duo refused to think of it as concern), Duo made his way around the compound, on foot since the gundams would be used for get away and finishing the destruction they started, towards the area Trowa was supposed to be. From the plan that they, 'they' meaning Duo, had talked about, Trowa's first target was the bunker: create chaos and eliminate some of the enemy before striking the rest of the base.

Duo expected two things. Either he'd find nothing, not even a trace of Trowa's passing, which would mean that the plan was supposed to be commencing. Or he'd find some trace of Trowa or a struggle, and that would signal that the plan had gone haywire. What he didn't expect to find was Trowa.

"What are you doing?" Duo asked. Trowa was turning the crank on a machine. The machine was set between two trees, both of which had been strapped with some kind of-- Duo touched it-- rubber sheeting. The middle section of the rubber was being pulled back by the odd little machine, stretching it out, creating a- "Slingshot?"

Trowa ignored Duo as he finished cranking the machine back. Once he was satisfied with the tautness of the rubber, he carefuly set a metal bucket in the apex. It seemed oddly balanced, but stayed. Once everything seemed arranged to Trowa's satisfaction, he turned and finally acknowledged Duo's presence. He waved a hand at a lever on the side of the machine. "Would you like the honor?"

With a laugh, Duo strode forward. Trowa kept him from pulling the lever two quickly, as he lifted the lid slightly on the can, pulled a frag grenade out of his pocket. The pin was pulled out, the grenade dropped in with a light splash, and the lid replaced. Trowa stepped back. Duo pulled the lever and watched as the rubber was released, sending the bucket in a well-calculated arc towards the bunker. It crashed through the glass of a high window. There was silence.

"And then it goes-" BOOM! Duo grinned and turned to Trowa, but the other pilot was gone, presumably to finish the mission. With a shake of his head and a pat to the machine, Duo ran off to join in the fun.

Within three minutes, Duo had set bombs in the base's hanger, despite the soldiers running around to prevent him doing just that. He slipped out of the hanger and towards the barracks, planning to go through there to get to the main office. It was empty, as he had figured it would be. There was gray stuff splattered everywhere, and he could see shards from the paint can Trowa had sent the grenade in.

He left the bunker behind and started to make his way towards the building that housed the mainframe for that base. Halfway there, he was yelled at by gray-coated soldiers. He ducked, rolled, and spun, and returned fire. His aim was better than theirs, and there were only half a dozen of them. He was back on his feet in a minute, running faster this time.

Trowa had been there before him... there were bodies in the hallway. It made the trip to the control room easier and quicker. He found Trowa there, with a surprise. As the green-eyed man worked on the computer, an Oz soldier stood behind him, gun trained on Trowa's back.

"Ignore him," Trowa said sharply, finishing what he was doing. Duo, who had paused in the door, frowned, wondering to whom Trowa was talking. Feeling unsure, Duo crept closer, wondering why the soldier didn't turn to look at him.

He choked on laughter when he saw the reason. The guard must have been in the bunker when the grenade went off; he was covered from head to toe in the gray liquid, or at least his front was covered, including his gun and the hand that held it. Duo knocked experimentally on the man's arm, and did laugh when his knuckles met hard concrete. "Liquid concrete, Tro?"

"It works." At least the poor soldier had had the intelligence to close his eyes before they were stuck open. Duo grimaced, wondering how long it would take them to break the concrete off. Trowa was done before he had too much time to think about it, though. "Let's go."

Duo grinned at him. "You got anything else planned?"

"Something different," Trowa said shortly, leading the way out the door. He turned right in the hallway, taking them closer to the edge of the compound and farther from the hanger. "How much time on the bombs?" he asked.

"About two minutes," Duo answered after a quick glance at his watch. He followed Trowa to a supply closet and grinned when Trowa pointed at a ladder that lead up to the ceiling. On top, they found an emergency landing pad for a helicopter. Under the blades of the one that had been parked there, a blanket had been spread out. Duo stopped short. "You provided lunch?"

"We have twenty-eight minutes until the bombs in the control room go off. Time enough to watch your fireworks." He sat down casually on the edge of the blanket and reached into the cockpit of the helicopter for a basket of food.

Without further hesitation, Duo joined him. They had just finished setting the food out when the ground shook and the hanger exploded. Duo casually fixed his plate as he watched the flames burst towards the sky, the smoke plume reaching higher and seeming to touch the sky.

They ate in companionable silence, listening to the semi-distant chaos of the base. Trowa produced soda from the basket and even a cake, though it was a small one. Duo wasn't complaining. He enjoyed the food, the company, and the show.

Trowa finally stood up, signalling that their 'break' was over and the building beneath them was about to blow. Duo scrambled up after him, grinning as Trowa neatly put away the remains of their picnic. On impulse, Duo hugged him quickly. "Thanks for the date, Trowa. You really know how to treat a guy."

He didn't wait for a response as he ran to the edge of the building and slid down a rather convenient water pipe to the ground. He made for his gundam, ready for the getaway part of the plan. He was in the forest around the base when the last building blew up.

Deathscythe was waiting for him, and he climbed up in the cockpit, feeling happier and more satisfied with a mission than he had in a while. After powering up and making a clean getaway, he turned the vidlink on. Tro's face appeared a moment later, a side shot of his normal serious expression, though Duo thought there might have been a curve to his lips that wasn't normally there.

"We go boom and splat, we go in, they shoot, we shoot, we kick their asses." Duo grinned at the camera that would show his image to Trowa. "Do you have an idea for next time?"

"Maybe." Trowa answered slowly, the words spoken casually. "Something small... quiet."

Duo laughed. "I'm sure. Small and quiet like a gundam kicking their asses."

"Something with subtlety," Trowa murmured.

"Yeah, right. Subtle like a frag grenade in a bowl of oatmeal."

On the vidscreen, Trowa turned his head and looked directly at the camera, making his eyes appear to be staring straight at Duo, a small, mysterious smile on his lips. "The oatmeal would muffle the noise, don't you think?"