A/N: Sorry for the long wait but both time and inspiration is something I seem to be lacking these days. I'll do my best to update sooner next time. Also I'm on the lookout for a beta or if you know someone who could be willing drop me a line, hm?
Chapter 7
There was a loud noise, a gun shooting, a splash of red, screams.
"C'mon Wuffers"
Wufei uncurled like a snake striking out and Duo ducked the kick, unlike the dead man who had gone down as soon as the gun had broken his concentration. Meeting Wufei's eyes he reached over and took hold of his unwounded arm with the hand that wasn't holding a gun and gave him a start.
They were running full speed, leaving behind the screams and honking of cars as pedestrians cut trough the road to get away from the shooting. Laughing Duo grinned at Wufei.
"Chaos, panic and death! My work here is done!" he crowed
Just then there was a screech of car brakes and Heero's metallic car nailed to a stop in front of them, nearly running them over. Throwing open the door to the front seat for Wufei Heero was already speeding off before the Chinese was fully in and Duo fought to close the door in the back.
"Hot damn! Une's pets are getting better!" he laughed even as he was reaching over to tie the t-shirt he'd taken off around Wufei's bleeding shoulder.
Heero didn't react to this as he took a corner on three wheels.
Wufei breathed trough his nose, feeling the adrenalin pumping trough his veins, knowing it was stalling the shock of the shot wound.
"That's tight enough" he said, voice calm but vibrating with suppressed violence" Are you ok?" he asked throwing a look from Heero to Duo.
"Hn" Heero nodded sharply as he weaved trough traffic causing a few minor incidents.
"Yeah, yeah. Shaken but not stirred"
Wufei raised a brow at him.
"Did you have to learn how to do that or is it natural?" Duo asked cocking his head to one side than swaying bodily in the same direction as the car did a ninety and shot off the main street.
Managing to buckle his seatbelt at last Wufei leaned back into the seat.
"Natural, all natural" he sighed feeling the shot of pain pulse trough his arm and back at another sharp turn.
"Damn, some got it all for free! Can I get a refund?"
The apartment building came into view and Wufei sat up.
"Yuy! You're insane…!"
"We need to take something from the apartment" he said evenly as he shot inside the underground garage, steering with one arm while the other went to his back and came out with a Glock.
Seeing the black minibus parked in front of the elevator Wufei reached a hand over his seat and felt the butt of a handgun being placed firmly in it. Closing his good hand over it he sent a small thanks that he'd been hit in the left shoulder.
The weapon in his hand was Preventer issue, had belonged to the driver of the first minivan before Duo shot him.
"Very poor form Fei, very poor. Didn't 'cha mama tell you not to leave da house without a damned cannon?"
"I did not plan a shoot-out in my lunch plans"
Behind him he heard the click of a clip and the release of a safety before Duo snickered.
"So it wasn't you who ordered the side dish of lead?"
The sound of bullets piercing the car muffled his words and they all ducked as one hit the front window leaving a hole and a web of cracks in its wake.
"Ready" Heero's emotionless voice warned them a second before he hit the brakes, doing a side slide, barreling into the minivan behind which the men had taken position.
"Ohhh that's gonna leave a nasty scratch Hee-man" Duo tsk-ed as he threw open the door and rolled out of the car ending in a position over the trunk and opening fire to accompany Heero who slid out of his seat and out in the small space between their car and the van, where it had bounced back after the hit. He was already targeting and efficiently executing any the men who had gotten caught between the van and the wall.
Wufei followed Duo's example and shot down a man who unseen from his comrades' vantage was trying to come around at their backs.
Three minutes later the garage was silent except for the hiss of the smoking van and a choked gurgle from one of the men.
The three pilots took a second to make sure they were clear before Heero stood fully and with a small grunt moved the front of the minivan from blocking the elevator.
"Should we?" Wufei asked as the doors opened with a small 'ping'. Heero shot the camera as he walked in.
"Yeah, we've got full control of the building's systems" Duo said easily and punched the floor number.
As they rode Wufei adjusted the t-shirt around his shoulder and checked to see how much ammunition he had left. Five bullets in that clip.
"They don't know the apartment number" he said not really asking.
"They know a number" Duo said and hearing the smirk in the words Wufei threw him a side look and gave a small growl of acknowledgement.
"They are going to see the floor number on the elevator" he added, keeping his mind from the pain in the shoulder.
"Right you are so we'd better shake a leg" the elevator pinged the floor and Duo sniffed" Heero'll take care of the door"
They exited the elevator cautiously with Duo in the lead giving the 'all-clear' with his hand. Heero passed them and with a precise kick brought the door down, splintering the wood and enforced plastic around the knob, and took position at the door, gun out.
"Don't forget the ZAI " was all he said as Duo passed him on his way inside and received a one-finger salute for probably reminding his partner of something obvious.
Wufei looked from Duo to Heero, this was their call, then took position on Heero's other side and scanned the left side of the corridor and the stairs.
Duo appeared not thirty seconds later with one of Wufei's duffels, the one holding his weapons and his sword and a second one that looked half-empty. He tossed Wufei his and Heero the other while he himself had an Uzi in one hand, the gun tucked in the back of his jeans.
On their way down Wufei took his own handgun out and made sure he had a couple of spare clips in his pockets before tucking it in his waistband. He wasn't going to waste ammunition and the Preventer's pistol still had five bullets in it.
With Duo in the lead they descended to the garage. The resistance was pitiful and soon they had it secured once again.
"Fei you 'n me will be going in your car. I'm driving." was all Duo said extending a hand to Wufei for the keys while he threw Heero the keys to his own car.
Wufei pressed the alarm button and threw the key over the hood to Duo who snatched it out of the air. The two fell into the seats at the same time and Duo had the car moving before Wufei finished clapping the four-point belt of the sports car.
The braided man worked the car like a whore – hard, fast and without consideration to the wheels which smoked at the track-start.
Then they were flying out of the garage and Duo wretched the car to the right at the last moment before he collided with the Preventer vehicle that was waiting there.
Giving a chilling laugh he slid the stick to the last gear and firmly took hold of the wheel with both hands. The traffic just after the lunch hours had thinned but was never-the-less there but the God of Death had no prejudices about using any available surface as a road including the sidewalk, scattering the pedestrians screaming and brushing one with the side of the car, mowing through the cafes and a small vendor's fold-in table.
The ride was a nightmare and Wufei knew that if his belt wasn't on the least he would have already had was a concussion and perhaps something broken. As it was his shot wound was sending out very clear messages in the Morse codes of painful throbs and burning waves of agony as it was wretched along with Wufei himself.
He could hear the bullets pinging on the car from time to time but the Preventers wouldn't risk hitting a civilian in such an obvious matter. Unlike them Wufei had no such problems.
As soon as they hit Central Boulevard he unbuckled half of his belt then opened the window and drew his right shoulder, head and half of his upper-body out of it, thanked that his hair was so tightly bound back that even at the insane sped they were going only a handful snapped in front of his face and returned fire, not wasting bullets.
He took careful aim, disregarding the sound of a bullet peeling the paint not a few inches from him and fired at the pursuing vehicle's front right tire. It took him four of the five bullets in the Preventer's gun and he used the last trying to get the shooter but then Duo swiveled at last, no longer able to keep the trajectory straight enough and Wufei's shot hit the car in the neighboring lane, making the driver lose control in his fright and drive its front in the Preventers' back, spinning them out of control in combination with the flat tire.
Falling in his seat with the car's next jerk Wufei struggled to belt in again.
"Damn, ya haven't lost yur touch after all Wuffers" Duo shouted over the sudden chaos of blaring horns around them, not looking away from the road, weaseling the car trough the traffic with suicidal ease.
Feeling the adrenalin that had been running short pulse trough him once more, dulling the pain, Wufei grinned, a fierce, violent grin that would have surprised Duo had he been able to look at him without turning them and the car into a tinned minced meat.
"You have no idea" he answered in a normal voice but somehow he thought Duo heard him anyway.
As they left the Central Boulevard Duo lowered the speed and drove well within the speed limit as they made their way trough the edges of the city and some of its more unfavorable blocks.
The expensive car stuck out like a sore thumb amidst the misery and decay of their surroundings but Duo didn't seem to care. They circled around the blocks some, going in a mangled circle before Duo pulled over in an alley. The end of the alley was a wall of solid steel, or so it looked before the steel cracked open and one wing of a set of large doors opened under a man pushing.
A rather large figure walked out and gestured shortly in a universal "Move that fat ass fucker and get in" gesture.
Grinning at the man Duo rolled the car trough the door, making a small turn, and Wufei blinked to clear his vision suddenly with the sound of the heavy metal door closing behind him, finding himself in the artificially lighted enormous garage.
The place was huge and Wufei's mind hurriedly supplied him with the observation that the garage probably occupied the condemned building that was to the right of the alley they had driven in. The ceiling, or floor depending, of the second and third floors of the five-story building had been removed and cranes and other heavy machinery was installed and operated by a small army of men to create a honest Preventer's nightmare – the largest stolen cars garage Wufei had ever heard of.
" Maxwell! You damned idiotic suicidal son ofa plagued bitch! You were over the goddamned news you longhaired freak!" the large man that had been at the door was striding over, voice booming and making the men around him scatter.
Duo was stepping out of the car already and Wufei followed though with some trouble as his wound throbbed angrily at him.
"Do NOT fuckin' mention the do or ya're deadmeat, got it Flux?" he growled but it wasn't as spirited as Wufei had seen him on different occasions.
"I'll fuckin' mention what I goddamned wanna fucker! Ya're hotter than hell! Why in the name of all shitty things didja land in MY garage!"
The two were just a couple of inches apart then and glaring at each other, the man breathing heavily.
Slowly Duo raised a brow.
The man glared.
Duo's other brow joined the first.
The man looked away and snarled something unintelligible before his eyes landed on Wufei who stood quietly observing while leaning on the car with his good side and holding his left arm in his right.
"And you hatta bring someone ta bleed all ova' my floor too!" he growled but the growl had lost its bite.
"We need ya'r sniffer" Duo's firm voice cut him off from ranting on and froze him.
"Move it" the man snarled, thankfully not reaching to take hold of Wufei to help him along.
As soon as the word sniffer left Duo's lips Wufei already knew what was happening and resisted the urge to shoot himself with no small effort.
Hurrying after them Wufei had time to ask only one question.
"Why aren't they already here?" and received a one-word answer that was as good as a detailed explanation on hacking and signal scrambling.
"Heero"
Then he was being shoved none too gently in a small metal cabin and a small blue light blinked to life in the dim confines that were not larger than a coffin.
A small ping sounded while Wufei contemplated that the equipment he was in was at first glance even better than Preventers' best, and a thin beam of a laser lit beneath his feet, covering the whole width of the cabin and slowly started climbing up, the red light sliding over his wrinkled clothes and then over his bloodied shoulder. Closing his eyes Wufei saw the light penetrate his eyelids for a second before moving on.
There were a few moments after that before the door of the cabin hissed open and a hand pulled him out. His eyes opened, his mind processing that the blood loss made it difficult to do so and he had time to see Duo's grim face before the felt the sting of a tranquilizer gun on the side of his neck.
The light started to fade to gray and he had only a second to give a barely noticeable nod to the violet eyes before the world was flushed away by the darkness of unconsciousness.
"…fei. C'mon, time to wakey, wakey!"
At fist Wufei had a fuzzily thought he was dreaming then he opened his eyes and dreaming was substituted by hallucinating.
The first thing he saw was pink. Lots and lots of pink – ping hangings, pink walls, pink carpet.
He blinked, mind unwilling to start comprehending. His eyes started to shut closed again.
"Now, now" a vague feeling of something on his cheek, patting it" Don't shut out again. C'mon have a something to drink"
Something touched his lips and he opened his eyes again to see the face hanging in front of him. The thing on his lips pressed and he opened them feeling the trickle of liquid in his numb mouth. He swallowed on reflex and something white flashed on the face above him.
It took him another blink before he decided that the face, Duo his mind informed him, was smiling at him.
"Ata boy. Now let's lift you a little"
An arm wrapped around his shoulder and he was brought up for a dizzying moment before he was settled back down, only not as low as before. He continued to blink.
"Whe…" his voice gave out as he tried asking and the glass of water was pressed against his lips again.
The cool liquid soothed its way trough his mouth and throat, giving him a little more feeling from them. Licking his lips he tried again.
"Where?" his voice was hoarse but the question was understandable.
"Somewhere safe. Don't worry"
" Is it …" his voice broke and the glass was on his lips again as Duo pre-empted what he wanted to know.
"We took out the tracker but you had surgery. It was in your hip bone. He took care of the bullet wound too. A couple of hours in the regen unit and you're as good as new. It might be tender for a while and we didn't have time to make sure it won't scar but I think you don't care about that anyway"
Wufei gave a small nod and rested full back into the pillows. His eyes started to slip closed but he snapped them open hurriedly.
His mind seemed to be coming out of the daze that had undoubtedly been heavily drugged and the situation he found himself in was coming to the forefront of his mind. He looked at Duo's face, noticing that his vision was clearer than a few minutes ago.
"Heero will be here in an hour then we're blowing this joint. The Doc said you'll be fully functional in a day, two at most"
Wufei blinked, slow to absorb the information.
"Good" he said at last, then he thought again and added" Where will we be going?"
Duo's nose twitched and he rubbed at it.
"We're going to visit a friend of ours. But don't worry about that now. Lets get you up and ready, hm?"
Slowly after a few seconds Wufei nodded then allowed Duo to help him up.
Throwing his arm around his neck Wufei decided he would wait until his mind was fully functional before asking more. He knew enough to be satisfied for the moment and in the end it didn't really matter. He'd decided it already – his sword and his life belonged to his friends.
As he pushed himself to recover some balance his eyes caught a fuzzy brown bear the size of a man with a giant baby pink bow leaning in one corner of the room. Against the pink wall.
Turning to Duo he blinked and before he could stop his mouth was already opening.
"Are in Peacecraft's room?", he asked and decided that he hated being drugged.
Duo next to him looked at him strangely for a second then looked around and burst laughing, shaking and nearly loosing his hold on the Asian.
"N-no, we're in the Doc's kid's room" he said stuffing his chuckles.
Wufei was glad that Duo didn't look at him, making sure they didn't fall, because in his drugged state he couldn't help the quirk of his lips not, he was sure, the way he was looking at him.
Heero arrived forty-five minutes later and helped Wufei to the back seat of the dark green jeep he had parked behind the Doc's house. He was better at least the fuzz was gone from his brain but as the drugs wore off he became aware of a deep ache in his left thigh that stabbed trough it crawling up the inside of it as he tried to step on it.
He'd not seen anyone as they passed trough the house and heard no sounds then Duo had explained that the Doc lived alone and had an underground extension of the house where he worked. His daughter and wife were dead as far the braided man knew, killed in an Gundam attack on an OZ base. The man had been the on-sight medic.
Wufei hadn't asked which Gundam it had been. He didn't wan to know. Duo told him anyway, seemingly finding morbid fascination with the tragedy.
The man hadn't wanted his family on-sight when he'd been called from his city post but the station was deep into the Amazonian jungle and the nearest settlement had been a day's flight with a chopper or a five day hellish drive trough nearly-there roads. It seemed the man's wife had been deeply in love with him and accidentally the daughter of the stations' head so with a little rule-bending she, as a nurse, and her daughter had been smuggled in.
The hit had come almost before the war's moving to space.
Unknown to the Doc at the time the station had been used for Mobile Doll research.
Wufei had had to fight to keep from showing his tension as Duo described in detail the horror that he attack had been for the man, the mind numbing terror of seeing his wife and daughter scattered into bits of bloody flesh while he faded under a fallen support beam.
He'd survived and quietly joined the resistance. He'd traveled with them as a medic and learned how to fight in the mean time.
After the war ended he continued to travel until he found his ex-wife's father then he'd killed him and retired to work illegally for us, as Duo had said. Wufei was yet to be told who Us is. He had the feeling that whatever he knew from his work for Une was but the top of an enormous iceberg.
Then he'd dropped it – the identity of the Gundam who'd killed the doctor's family.
Gundam 04, Sandrock.
The ride was long and Wufei dozed off a few times, the pain in his leg starting to ebb away as promised. The last time he woke they were surrounded by threes and the ground felt more like a rocky path than anything. From what he could discern he decided they were in a mountain.
The forest suddenly opened to a small clearing with a wooden hut in the middle.
Inside it looked like any other with a fireplace two beds, a table and a cooker that worked on wood. Then they went down to the basement.
Wufei looked at the racks of servers, the monitors and general strangeness of the machinery that packed the room after the absolute lack of civilization of the last five hours of road and the almost bare hut.
Heero and Duo sat down in front of the two terminals and started working and Wufei settled against the door. Five minutes later with a heavy silence hanging over them since Duo stopped chattering half-way up the path there, the clicking from his terminal stopped and Duo stood up then went to one of the servers and shimmied behind it. There was a clatter then a hiss and a small shot of sparks from where only a dark-clad foot stuck out.
"Crude" came Heero's voice.
Duo grinned at his back and leanedon the side of Heero's monitor.
"But effective. You nearly done?" he asked jovially.
"Five minutes.
"Cool. What damage?"
"20 of the systems will be shut down, 35 of the network is no longer secure" there was a pause"29" he amended with a final click he stood up" This is all we can do from here"
Duo's nose brunched up in annoyance.
"I'll be kicking some serious butt very soon" he stated then crouched behind a rack and did something that was followed by the appearance of a timers on both terminals counting backwards from ten minutes.
Duo grinned.
"I love to make things go kaboom"
Wufei arched an amused brow. There was something big going on. Something very big.
A/N: That little cute button that says "Review" is there for you to click and tell me how either you are madly in love with the story and can't wait for more or just how badly I managed to mangle it and how bad it is. Either way I'd be happy to know, or at least be none-homicidal if its constructive criticism. +innocent grin+