Disclaimer: I do not own.

A/N: So someone finally called me on the 'using trees as method of sneaking' trick. Honestly, no, it would not hold up to intense scrutiny. But because the hunters are chucking large groups of kids onto the island and not keeping direct track of all of them (they aren't paying attention to which kids get killed; say one survived off a boatload and then died in the next round but a different kid survived from the second boatload, no one would know the difference because the number of kids didn't change), and since there are no obvious trails leading to the trees, no one is looking up. The one hunter that did follow the trail to begin with got killed earlier. That's basically my thought process, or at least as much of it as I can explain (I only about half think in words). And if anyone is curious, I'm pretty sure you can blame Mercedes Lackey for the basis of the tree plot bunny. Enjoy.

Chapter 7

Day three of waiting for the boat saw a slight collapse of the original plan. Apparently I wasn't the only one who was dead bored and getting frustrated with sitting around waiting for news, and Trowa and Wufei elected to come with us to beach watch.

It figures that that was also the day the boats came back.

Heero spotted some sort of speck on the horizon first, and pretty soon they were close enough that we knew for sure both boats were heading for the island we were on. We were well hidden in our trees, thanks to some judicious camouflage nets and the choice of some trees that were pretty much impossible to access from the ground, so we should be safe. And thinking that's about when I realized that we had planned just to watch the boats this time. Which meant watching while a bunch of kids were thrown out to run for their lives.

Oh shit. I felt sick as I watched the boats get closer and finally stop. "Guys…is there anything we can do to help them?" I kept my voice basically steady, and I didn't have to explain beyond that. Our very limited view of the beach had enough of a gap to see the chained group being led onto the deck of the left boat.

"No." Heero's voice was completely flat, and he never looked away from what we could see of the beach. "We can't protect that many untrained civilians, and we are not ready to chance an attack on the boats yet."

Fuck it. I stopped looking and turned my face to the tree trunk, breathing slowly and deeply to keep at least moderately calm. If I looked, I would do something stupid. If it were just me, I might have gone ahead and done something dumb like jump out and play distraction in the hopes that some kids would get away, but anything I did now would affect my friends, and I wouldn't risk them. I had about half a second to wonder when "allies" had morphed into "friends" before splashing warned me that our fellow innocent kidnappees had been thrown off the boat.

The sound of panicked running was louder than it should have been and I tried futilely to turn my thoughts and imagination off, shoving my forehead into the tree so hard I knew I'd have marks on it later.

The general thudding, crashing sounds were drowned about two and a half minutes later by a closer set of crashing noises. This time I had to look, and I shifted enough to watch as a young blond boy struggled between the trees below us, attempting to get as far from the beach as possible. I shot a pleading look towards Heero, Wufei, and Trowa. Heero had his eyes glued to the beach, steadfastly ignoring everything else, and Wufei was glancing between the beach and the boy. Trowa was watching the blond head, and caught my glance out of the corner of his eye. He gave me a helpless look. I flicked my eyes at the blond, then at the trees we were sitting in, silently pleading to rescue this one at least, since he was here, even though we couldn't save the rest of them.

By now Wufei had caught the silent exchange, and he looked torn. Finally Heero turned away from the beach, looked straight at me, and nodded. That was all I needed. "Hey!" I called. The blond froze and his gaze shot up to us. He un-startled himself fairly quickly and immediately awkwardly scrambled up the tree right next to him, which luckily for him was easily climbable. I swung my way over and picked the locks on his cuffs so he could move freely.

Heero shifted into a crouch on his branch and hauled his camo net up so he could carry it. "We can't stay here. Keep up. And be quiet." He shot a glare at the blond and then started moving in a direction parallel to the beach. We grabbed our nets and followed as carefully as possible given the speed Heero was setting. When I glanced back once, Trowa was helping the boy move, and since it seemed to be working I went back to concentrating on not falling out of the trees myself.

I'd lost track of time again when Heero suddenly stopped and shifted himself and some branches and his net to provide as much cover as possible. The rest of us quickly copied him, and a glance at the beach made me realize that Heero had stopped because he wanted to watch the hunters get off their boat. I made an effort to consciously slow my breathing again before I started hyperventilating. I just couldn't shake the feeling that we were treed prey, and I had to keep reminding myself that Heero had the shotgun and we weren't completely helpless. That helped.

Over on the hunter's boat, a ramp had been lowered to reach the ground and a group of men with various kinds of guns and other weapons were nonchalantly walking down onto the beach. My adrenaline decided that now was a good time to either fight or start running like hell; I told it to shut the fuck up. By some unspoken agreement, the hunters on the beach split up, most following various sets tracks in the sand, although a few simply headed straight into the woods.

Even after all the hunters had vanished into the woods we stayed put in our little surveillance position, and our next few hours were tense and extremely uncomfortable. Heero had managed to pick a place in the forest where none of the kidnapped kids had passed, so none of the tracking hunters went by us, and luck was with us since none of the ones who hadn't bothered with tracks picked our direction to walk in either. We, as a group, were at least moderately safe. But the sounds from the rest of the forest kept drifting back to us, full of gunshots and occasional screams. I was impressed with the new kid's ability to stay calm and quiet under pressure; this was killing me, and I'd already been through it once. Although I'd been too busy running for my life to pay too much attention to the sounds of the others dying then.

I winced every time I heard a gun go off, and I winced again when I realized that not all the hunters had had guns; some had held nasty-looking knives as well. I wasn't sure what was worse, hearing the deaths of others, or knowing someone was dying and that I couldn't tell it was happening at all. At least with the gunshots I could say a silent prayer for whoever got shot.

Eventually hunters started to trickle back onto the beach. We couldn't hear them and were too far back to have a great view of their gestures either, but from the body language of the ones I could see I could tell some of them were boasting. One smug bastard walked out of the treeline with a fist in the air and three fingers raised. That one was fucking obvious, and I wanted to take the shotgun and go blow that guy's brains out. Fortunately, Heero had the gun, which stopped me from doing anything stupid.

Eventually all the hunters were back, and three fingers guy had apparently won this round, because everyone else was giving him pats on the back and other congratulations. I gritted my teeth and concentrated on the thought of him with a hole in his head. I had a disturbing amount of images to pull from to imagine that, thanks to woods exploring the past few days.

If glaring and intent could kill, by the time the hunters got back on their boat, none of them would have been left. That boat slid back first, turning slowly around before moving off in a right diagonal direction. The second boat moved after it a minute or so later. It was riding higher in the water and so moved out slightly more easily than the other. I tried not to think about why.

When the boats were farther away, I turned to my right to look at Heero. "Can we go back now?" There was more of a pleading not in my voice than I wanted to admit to.

"Yes."

We were rather subdued as we shook out limbs that had fallen asleep from prolonged lack of movement and then tree walked our way back to our little hideout. When we arrived I immediately dropped to the ground, jammed my back against a tree, and hauled my knees up to my chest. I needed the solidity right then. "I can't do that again. If you want to watch some more, fine, but I can't just sit and do nothing. I'll go crazy."

I looked up at our little band of survivors. Heero was expressionless, but his eyes were practically blazing. Wufei was looking somewhat murderous. Trowa had a flat look on his face, and the blond we'd picked up was looking somewhat shellshocked. I don't want to know what I looked like.

Seeing the blond again, I forcibly derailed my current train of thought and focused on him; I could have my nice mental breakdown later, thank you. I uncurled and hauled myself off the ground. "I'm Duo. What's your name?"

He blinked as thought processes came back online. "Quatre."

My introduction caused a couple of guilty looks as everyone realized none of us had even introduced ourselves. No one else caught the conversation ball, so I continued. "This's Trowa, Heero, and Wufei."

I could see the gears in Heero's head turning. "Quatre Winner?" he asked abruptly.

Quatre's eyes widened a bit. "Yes."

"Care to share?" I drawled. Sarcasm to beat mental breakdowns. Let's hear it for sarcasm.

"The heir to Winner Enterprises. Kidnapped eight days ago with a ransom demand given a day later. The exchange was meant to take place yesterday," Heero rattled off.

"Apparently it never happened," Wufei muttered loudly enough to be audible. "We now have confirmation that whoever is running this operation is paying for additional people as well as grabbing them off the streets."

"Heero and Wufei are cops," I said to de-confuse the confused-looking Quatre. "Their undercover job didn't go as planned."

"Ah. Um…does that mean we have a chance of getting out of here alive?"

"Hopefully. That's why we were watching the boats come in, to come up with a plan." And Trowa finally joined the discussion. I was beginning to think he had lost his voice permanently.

Quatre finally looked around at the grove and his eyes widened. "Did you four build this?"

"Trowa did most of it," I answered as I mentally smirked. I was pretty sure Trowa was blushing. This was too much fun. "We helped add on when we got here three days ago."

Quatre turned to Trowa looking distressed. "You were here by yourself?" Behind him, Wufei rolled his eyes. I muffled a snicker.

"Only for a month," Trowa answered and shrugged. "I got by."

"We should format a plan now." Leave it to Heero to break up the banter. Although I noticed he only stopped us after we were all a bit more relaxed and feeling better about the situation. Maybe supercop was human after all.

Heero knelt down to draw in the dirt. "The two boats were about 500 yards apart. There were fifteen captives let off the first boat. There were ten in our group. Trowa, how many were in yours?"

"I wasn't counting. Maybe fifteen? More than ten."

Heero nodded. "Besides the captives, there were four armed guards, a supervisor, and at least one other person steering the boat. The hunters boat carried twelve men with various arms, as well as at least one other person to steer that boat. Tree cover does not extend all the way to the boats. The closest it gets is 100 yards. We know that the number of captives changes with each voyage. The number of hunters may vary as well. The boats left by sailing to the northwest. The mainland is probably in that direction."

Heero sat back to look at his drawings. "Stealing a boat and sailing it back to the mainland is too impractical given the circumstances. All we really need is a communications device in order to call for help."

Quatre crouched down next to Heero. "The trees don't go all the way to the boats, but there are some rocks over here." He drew a jagged line to the far side of the hunter's boat. "It would be possible for someone to hide in the rocks and swim to the nearer boat and board. Risky, but possible. When is the next boat going to arrive?"

"Odd intervals," Trowa answered. "We can't be sure."

"The ideal situation would be to steal a communication device without anyone noticing, so the police can trap the hunters. However, the arrival of the boats means more deaths. If help is on the way, it may be possible to protect at least some of the victims. That, however, has the potential to bring us to the notice of the hunters, posing a safety risk."

I felt slightly blindsided by the short blond taking charge since he looked like such an innocent, especially when compared to our two cops, but I decided to go with it since everyone else seemed to feel his ideas made sense. When in Rome…and where the hell did that stupid quote come from anyway? Ah, never mind. "If possible, I vote for saving people. Listening to them die when I know we can't do anything is bad enough; if we can help, I vote we do it."

"It is a risk, but one I believe is worth taking," Wufei acknowledged. Trowa nodded.

Heero stared at the dirt for a minute. "Agreed." He looked up. "We need to make a concrete plan, and anticipate as many problems as possible to minimize the risk."

I didn't end up regretting my vote, but I really really didn't like the plan we came up with.