A man in a green jump suit looked over a stack of crates at the back of the room. They were scheduled to be sent to Earth this morning, but it looked as if something had gotten into one of them. There were little black smudges all over the lowest wooden rung in the crate's frame. Touching it, he found that it was rubber.
"Hey boss," a young man called through the maze of supplies in the room. "The shuttle's here!"
Sighing and standing up, the 'boss' pushed the little rubber smears out of his mind. "Ok," he said to the waiting forklift. "Let's load these up!"
His orders were followed by the incessant beeping of the machinery. The lift carried the crate out of the room and into a shuttle at the loading bay. It repeated the process with seven other crates until the shuttle's cargo bay was comfortably full. He checked over the shipment list one more time before waving the pilot off in good spirits.
Nodding to his shipping coordinator, the pilot started the shuttle and left the bay. As X18999 began to look smaller behind him, he set the engines on high. The cargo was on high demand on Earth. The sooner he got there, the sooner he could come back for more.
Skyline Shipping Co. Cargo Hold...
Heero woke up to the sounds of hissing and spitting and arguing. "It's not my fault!" Duo seemed to be defending himself. "I had no idea this would happen!"
"But it did!" Quatre was in hysterics. "Now look at us!" Heero shut his eyes and tried to ignore them. His head hurt and it felt like he had cotton in his mouth. "I mean, did you think this would help me? Is this what you had in mind?!" Quatre continued.
"Oh yeah, cause I totally planned all this! I so wanted to be a cat for the rest of my life!
Cat? What the hell are they talking about? Heero sat up. He turned to face the noise. As he did, it seemed like a vacuum of space opened up around him. It was completely quiet while he took in the scene. There was a dark tabby sitting on a black kitten, who was hissing like a maniac, and a longhaired brindle colored one sitting next to an almost white one. All four of them were staring wide eyed at him.
The brindle kitten, without taking his eyes off of the Japanese soldier, whispered, "what are the chances he'll just fall back asleep?"
The carmello kitten gulped and whispered back, "if he lunges, you die first..."
"Gee thanks..."
Why do these animals sound like Duo and Quatre? And how did they get in the lab? Wait. Heero looked around. They weren't in the lab, they were in a crate. Why am I in a crate? He looked back at the tabby restraining the black, then to the arguing kittens again. Realization hit him like a ton of bricks. "...Duo..?" There was very little question in his voice.
Shying backwards, the brindle kitten mumbled weakly, "uh... yes?"
"Are we... cats?"
"Uh... Well you could put it that way... I mean, technically, we're kittens..."
"How." Heero demanded, trying to keep from looking at himself.
"The machine... I think..." Duo was now hiding behind the blond kitten that was obviously Quatre. "It chemically altered out genetics... or something. But hey, at least we're cute!" The attempt at humor fell flat on its face.
Narrowing his eyes, Heero stalked up to Duo, who was franticly looking for an escape. Quatre however, was sitting heavily on his tail. Raising a small clawed paw, Heero smacked the brindle kitten as hard as he could. Squealing in kitty-like anguish, Duo curled up in a ball and held his bleeding nose.
"Damn..." Heero huffed. Catching Quatre's frightened but curious eyes, he mumbled, "if it was a dream he'd have died."
Quatre immediately backed away, wide eyed and more than a little nervous.
"Where are we?" Heero turned to the tabby kitten who was still sitting on the semi-calmer black one.
Trowa cautiously got off of Wufei, but still kept one paw firmly on his back. "On a cargo ship. It's destination is unknown."
Heero sat and wrapped a very dark brown tail around his feet, glaring at the light filtering in from the outside of the crate. "How long?"
"We don't know that either." Duo spoke up almost angrily as he unfurled from his safe ball. "But the cargo's packed for a long convoy period, and the crew's food supply is more than three fourths depleted. It wont be long before we dock."
Glancing sidelong at the brindle, the dark brown kitten twitched his tail in irritation. "Set up watch." He said slowly. "We don't want to be found, it could be dangerous."
Wufei had finally struggled out of Trowa's grip. "Yuy! We need to get out of here! We cant just sit around!"
"And we cant do anything until we reach the ship's destination," Heero nearly shouted. He lowered his voice to a growl. "So sit tight and shut up. I'll take first shift." Wufei pinned his ears and hissed, but did as he was told. He stalked to a corner and stuffed his nose in it. Behind him, Heero walked to the edge of the crate and looked out. Trowa rejoined Quatre and tried to keep him from whispering death wishes at Duo, who returned to his ball to nurse his wound.
Hours went by. The lights in the cargo bay flickered every now and again. Once a crew member came to check the air lock. Heero made mental notes of where everything was located. He was staring intently at the type of hatch command system the ship had when he felt someone behind him. He turned his head. It was Duo, the beginnings of tiny pink scars defying his dark coat.
"I'll take over," he said quietly. The others had finally gone back to sleep and he didn't want to chance waking them up.
"Hnn," Heero nodded. He made one more visual sweep and went to the back of the crate, where it was darkest.
Duo squared his shoulders and sat down as straight as he could. The light was dim, but he could still see so many details in the ships hold. He wasn't used to the intense vision and had to blink. It seemed like forever had passed before he let himself start thinking. His gaze fell. It was his fault they were in this mess, his idea to mess with that thing. Quatre was mad at him and Heero hated him. Wufei was waiting to jump him and Trowa... well Trowa seemed right at home.
A loud sigh made Duo jump out if his skin. He whirled around and came nose to nose with Trowa.
Shying backwards a little, Duo grinned sheepishly before sitting down. "Uh... Hey." Taking a seat leisurely next to him, Trowa scanned the surroundings slowly. Then he looked at Duo and sort of smiled gently. He turned back to standing guard.
It was silent for a long time. Duo eventually settled down. He sighed. "I messed up pretty bad, hu?" Trowa didn't respond. "I always heard that when you find something your good at it should be easy, but the only things that's ever come easy to me is killing people.. Even living is hard. I cant seem to lead a normal life... be a normal person... I keep messing up." Duo, who had begun talking to himself, dropped his voice to a whisper. "It shouldn't be this hard..."
"Its not easy for us either." Trowa said after a long, tense pause. Duo chanced looking at him from the corner of his eye. "We were great soldiers, but that's because we had a cause. We're all struggling to find a new one."
Smiling, Duo kitty rolled his shoulders. "You know, I think this is the most you've said to me since we met. Are you feelin' ok there, buddy?"
"Sometimes it takes a while to find things worth saying."
Duo raised his eyebrow as best he could and looked behind him at a little white ball in the darkness. "Sometimes it takes a while to find someone worth changing for, is that what you mean?"
Trowa grinned. He turned and left Duo back to his own imaginings, joining a little whitish ball in the dark recesses of the crate.
Duo ended up keeping watch until his eyes tried to escape his head and run for cover. He'd finally slumped down on his own overly fluffy tail when the cargo hold began to rumble. The noise grew louder and louder. Duo dug his claws into the crate's floor when the ship started to list violently from side to side. In seconds, all five of the newly-cats were in a line, looking out of the crate panels for some clue as to what was going on.
"What's going on?!" Wufei shouted, hackles spiked.
Quatre braced himself against Trowa's chest. "Maybe we're entering an atmosphere."
"Like this?" Duo shouted over the rumbling. "We're all going to die!" his sentence turned into a yowl as the ship heaved violently.
Suddenly, there was just the sound of an engine winding. Heero slowly rose from his position flattened on the floor and listened. Nobody spoke. They were still getting their bearings when a humming sound filled the hold and natural light pored in. Craning their necks out of the crate, the kittens were nearly blinded.
The cargo hatch door was opening and it was brilliant, white daylight outside. Receding into the crate, the kittens packed closely together. Whatever port they were at was flooding the bay with too much light. There weren't any shadows left to hide in.
"What do we do?" Quatre whispered.
"Stay put." Duo replied. "ts our one way ticket out."
Soon a forklift came in on the ramp and began taking packages away two or three at a time. It wasn't long before the spikes of the lift were steadily piercing the gundam boys hideaway. When Wufei was nearly skewered they unanimously decided that the bottom of a crate full of scrap metal was probably the least safe place to be.
Duo and Heero watched wide-eyed. The forklift was taking them down the ramp, along a short dirt road strewn with inconvenient potholes and setting them on top of the first few crates already extracted. From inside, they could see that it was a private docking bay. They also noticed that they were in a junk yard. Old cars stacked on one side of them, imported materials on the other. There was a man below them taking inventory and a few others securing their newest arrivals. It took hours for the commotion outside to die down, but when it did Duo was the first to climb out of the crate. Heero was next, making a clean sweep of their perimeter.
Stealing along the top of the crate next to his, Duo was careful to check for human life. When it was all clear, he sat in the very center, careful of splinters, and looked up.
The sky was a liquid blue strewn with white wisps. The sun had died down a little and was already changing the color of the horizon. Duo grinned. He knew where they were. It was the only place he could watch a sunset like this.
"Hey guys!" He called to the others, who were already filing out of the crate. "We're on Earth!"
Yo yo yo! Sorry it took so long to get this chapter up... its not even all that good. I cant blame it on writers block or lack of time, its just that I'm just so damn lazy.
Heads up:
There's gonna be an original character joining the cast in the next few chapters or so.
Be sure to let me know which think. Oh yeah!
I'll be startin up my first story at FictionPress pretty soon here, so check it out! Please? My user name is Mylo Jareth.