Note: Did you guess who's POV the last chapter was from here is a hint: The curses were in Russian.
Section 2b
WuFei woke to total darkness and the inexplicable sensation of water falling on his shoulders and trickling in tiny rivulets down the folds of his leathery wings.
"Rain?" he wondered aloud "Can't be." He frowned shrugging off the lethargy that always seemed to cloud his thoughts these days. "Fire suppression system?" he guessed again. That was the more likely case.
He rose unsteadily to his feet and groped about with his hands to find the smooth walls of his prison. He didn't feel any heat to indicate he was in any immediate danger and as he felt further along the smooth plexi, something crunched beneath his bear foot and the wall he had been following ended abruptly- sending him tumbling into the void beyond.
He gasped in surprise- landing unceremoniously on his chest, his arms sprawled out and his wings uncomfortably bent. He instinctively got to his feet and tried shaking himself dry, as a dog would, but it was a futile attempt as the sprinklers still rained down on him. Obsidian eyes surveyed the room in which he found himself so unexpectedly. What little light there was came from the indicators on banks of computers and monitoring equipment. Those directly across from him appeared to be sparking and there was the unmistakable smell of fried circuits in the damp air.
He could also just barely make out a figure lying prone in front of the ruptured monitoring station. There was a half strangled gasp and it moved weakly to support itself on one elbow. The body shuttered with a wracking cough, a fact made all the more apparent with the convulsive movement of…
Unless he was very much mistaken those were wings, not composed of leather and scales like his own, but properly feathered like those of a raptor. "Are you hurt?" WuFei asked.
"Be…alright…minute…help…him." A husky, but eerily familiar voice wheezed, his arm pointing off into the haze. WuFei nodded and went in the direction indicated; the massive cylinder was easy to spot through the heavy drizzle once he got to that side of the room. A closer inspection revealed the thick blue liquid was slowly seeping from a crack in the mid section of the cylinder.
"Alright my friend, hold still." WuFei took a half step back, taking several deep-centering breaths as he had been taught as a child and then with a slight jump, a turn and a kick, he lashed out at the crystal column with the fury of the last heir and first dragon of the Dragon Clan. Foot, tail, elbow and claws made devastating weapons when he could get them to work in concert. His own wings broke free of the straps that confined them and shielded his face and chest as the containment cylinder shattered beneath the assault.
The body that spilled out at his feet was far larger than it had appeared in the cylinder and now it lay inert; pale skin still swathed in numerous wires and hoses glittering wetly. He seemed human for the most part, save for the out flung hands which were distinctly clawed.
"Is he breathing?" the voice from before intruded snapping WuFei from his reflections. He moved to lift the head and feel for the jugular when long blond hair fell aside to reveal a face he recognized despite the prominent fangs.
It was the face of a dead man.
"Merquise!" he gasped. WuFei had heard of a white suit that resembled the Tallgeese taking part during the Barton incident, but only knew the pilot as 'Agent Wind' and after the battle the individual in question had vanished as easily as his namesake.
"Is he alive?" the other struggled unsteadily to stand and make his way toward WuFei and after another fit of coughing, obsidian eyes met the crystal blue of yet another ghost.
"Treize?" WuFei gasped. When one looked past the fact that the russet hair was nearly shoulder-length, the piercing blue eyes possessed slit pupils, his ears were pointed and mobile and feathered wings stretched from his shoulders… the man kneeling before him could be no other.
"Our Captors have named me 'Noble', just as you are 'Dragon." Treize remarked.
WuFei bristled, of course he was a dragon wasn't that obvious? His scaled tail curled and twined in on itself in a serpentine fashion and his fringed ears flattened against his skull. He opened his mouth to retort that their captors obviously weren't very original. but Treize stilled him with a glance.
"Now is not the time to get reacquainted." The former tyrant of earth ran nervous fingers through slightly mussed bangs. "Prince needs help. If we are talking while he needs CPR…I swear to you…"
"He is breathing, Treize." WuFei explained rationally. "I expect that oxygen hose goes all the way into his lungs and some of these others," he motioned to the tangled mess, "-might be life support as well but his pulse seems strong."
"He needs to be breathing on his own." Treize frowned, worry etched across his features. "I've managed to mangle the controls rather badly who can say how long it will continue to function." Treize shook his head. "Besides I expect the guards will be along soon to put down this little rebellion of ours. We need to be ready for them. Or do you intend to go back to your cage like a good little pet?"
WuFei growled at that last remark, showing his fangs menacingly.
Treize chuckled, "That is what I thought."
The former rivals spent the next few minutes in relative silence. Their focus was on emptying the thick liquid from Zechs esophagus and lungs and disentangling him from the many umbilical lines that kept him in stasis during the change.
"Come on Prince. It is not too late you can beat this. Wake Please!" Treize whispered chafing the blonde's arms to return circulation to them. WuFei remembered the man for his nobility and strong sense of honor but this tenderness was a side of the charismatic leader he never imagined.
"You care about him a great deal." WuFei noted quietly.
"He's my oldest and dearest friend, of course I care." The ginger haired man frowned still clutching the inert blonde to his chest.
The sprinklers had finally shut off and the emergency lighting came on; this was both a relief and a worry. There was something comforting about proper lighting as it tended to banish nightmares such as this. But the reality remained and the return to some semblance of normalcy might well herald the arrival of the guards.
"He tried to kill you. I tried too, and I thought I had succeeded in the end." Chang mumbled almost distractedly, unable to look Treize in the eye as he said it. The memories were hazy. He wasn't sure why they had been fighting but those few facts were still crystal clear.
"I wanted to die. I believed sacrifice was the only way to ensure peace." The man confided, "You will find it is not so easy now. We were designed to last and our animal instincts have been hardwired so to speak. Though instead of fight or flight they've tried to design us to submit and survive."
"I don't know about you I've still got plenty of fight!" Chang growled.
"I said tried to, I didn't say succeeded…these wings aren't just for show. We can fly and fight but the conflict is draining, not to mention exceedingly painful. I'm not sure how much longer I can…Time is short. They can break us. It is only a matter of when. We need to get out of here. Come on Prince, wake up, Miri please!"
Treize shook the blonde roughly and finally got a response; a low moan and a feeble attempt at pushing away the intrusive hand. Treize's voice instantly lost the harsh edge of his former urging. "That's right come back to me." He almost crooned. "Fight me, tooth and nail if you must, but come back."
With a sharp intake of breath and a convulsive shudder, the former Lightning Count and Prince of Sanq returned briefly to the world of the living.
"C-cold." he mouthed the word through slightly blue lips but no sound came out.
"Don't try to talk Miri. You've had tubes down your throat- it will be sore for a while. Moving will help warm you up but it won't be easy. You're going to have to pull yourself together. I'm not strong enough to carry you and Dragon here hasn't got the height."
"Together maybe…" the young pilot suggested, and that was when the first wave of explosions hit.
"Sounds like a buster cannon." Treize observed. "I take it that is your rescue party. Are you going to let them find you?"
"I-I-!" WuFei began, and then frowned. On the one side, he wanted his friends; he wanted to feel safe and to know that everything was going to be all right. But then he didn't want them to see him like this; didn't want to accept that everything wasn't all right and most likely- never would be. He simply couldn't stand to see pity in their eyes. His tail lashed and coiled at the conflicting emotions and sharp teeth worried his lower lip.
Another round of explosions shook the building the lights flickered; dust sifting from the ceiling. Treize growled as the gravel dust clung to his still damp wings. He really, really disliked having his feathers mussed. "We need to get out of here. Miri and myself might easily be classed as collateral damage; as I understand it, we've been listed as being dead for a quite some time. But your friends would not be happy to learn they brought the building down on your head as well. I suggest we find our own way out and you can decide what you want to do later."
WuFei nodded ducking his head under Zechs' left arm while Treize supported the right. The erstwhile prince proved to be quite the gangly hatchling and had very little control of his limbs and practically no strength to speak of. It took a coordinated effort to wrangle him out of the room and into the hall; the attack above had drawn away many of the guards but not all.
There were still plenty fully devoted to preventing their escape.
Yielding to his instincts out of necessity, Treize proved very dangerous when protecting his own though it clearly cost him. Afterwards, his eyes remained the tiniest slits and blood marked his wings and dripped from his claws. The world-renowned orator and demagogue had been reduced to inarticulate growls and hisses.
It scared WuFei more than a little considering there was no denying the beast lurked so close to the surface in him too. But he had to keep his wits firmly about him and clearly that meant staying out of the fight. Something as minimal as tasting blood left Treize so undone he had lost the ability to reason on any level but the most basic one. The former general had been entirely correct in his assessment that they hadn't much time before those that had made them would be able to use them as they pleased.
The aftermath of the bloodshed was even worse. Treize was so far gone he was reduced to a state completely vulnerable to suggestion. In many ways, it was like leading a child. He had to be shown how to stand upright and what to do with his arms to best support Zechs. But once the winged-man understood what to do, he was content to continue on as directed. The only positive was that the change seemed to banish whatever drug had been sapping his strength and he didn't seem to tire. Or perhaps he simply wasn't able to understand fatigue in quite the same fashion and would press on indefinitely until he was:
A. given leave to stop or,
B. simply ceased functioning.
The situation made a cold hard knot roil about in the dragon's stomach. He hadn't shown any signs at being able to breathe fire…not that Chinese dragons had ever done so; that was a western notion. But if he HAD the ability and the ones responsible for this outrage were in his sights, he would not have hesitated for an instant. But now was not the time for revenge…or justice for that matter. They had to remain unseen and slip away as quickly as possible.
Twisting through the knot work of corridors in the massive underground complex they heard the stuttering fire of automatic weapons heralding the advance of their 'would be' rescuers. Even if WuFei had decided to reveal himself to his friends, Treize's current state made that impossible. Armed and armored, his fellow pilots would be classed as 'threat' and WuFei wasn't sure he could convince either party otherwise.
It seemed an indeterminable period later when the threesome discovered a rickety service elevator that took them up. The lift terminated in what appeared to be a mineshaft, an abandoned mine car making travel to the surface much easier. It was large enough to carry six people but WuFei could manage the controls himself. Treize fell asleep sprawled on the floor of the car and Zechs had been largely unconscious for some time but WuFei silently prayed both would be feeling better when they awoke.