Warnings: Language, Tomb-Raider-type craziness, and... did I mention LANGUAGE?

Disclaimer: The Gundam Wing characters are not mine. Neither is the Tomb Raider franchise. Welcome to my geekgasm.

Duo POV

Theme music: "Bleeding Out" by Imagine Dragons

"Myths and ancients… monuments and statues… temples and tombs… altars and…"

Altars! Of course!

I am such an idiot. It was so obvious. How had I not seen this? Chang had. He'd damn well glared at it – gotten down on his knees and fondled it! – the stone ledge at the base of the statue of Buddha – too tall to be a step and too low to be a table – was an altar. And what did ancient people do with altars?

Oh yeah, that's right: sacrifices.

It was the only way to close the portal. Somebody had to chuck a sacrifice into it – enough matter to set off a chain reaction in the swirling antimatter. I didn't really know how much matter that would be, but I was willing to bet that my good buddy Khushrenada would be the perfect size. All I had to do was draw him out into the open and get close enough to shove him into the portal.

The bad news was the explosion was probably gonna take me out, too. If the tiny speck of antimatter in Yuy's "Star Trek" grenade – and how much did I love Trowa for coming up with that? – had caused a freakin' crater and obliterated a massive block of metal-infused-stone, then a collision between a 170-pound dude and the source of the antimatter itself was gonna be cataclysmic.

I closed my eyes as Trowa exhaled against my scalp, as the sound of distant gunfire punctured the unending whoosh of the swirling gateway. There was no time to call for backup. There was no backup; the Bartons were cut off from us. Fine. Whatever. It didn't matter. I knew what I had to do.

Keep him safe. Keep everyone safe.

And I knew he wasn't gonna like it, but it was time to either shit or get off the pot, as they say. I twisted around and grabbed Trowa's shoulders. It took everything I had in me to keep myself from yanking him close, wrapping myself around him and never, ever letting go.

Don't think about what you've gotta do. Just get it done.

OK, then.

"Where are the Bartons?" I hollered. The portal no longer alternately sucked up and spat out sound waves. Placing the halves of the key in the opposite formation had been like trying to open a door by ripping at its hinges instead of picking the lock. I'd hoped that, given enough time, it would have simply collapsed in on itself. It was a moot point now that the whole damn framework had been blasted to hell. The unrestrained portal spun and shone seamlessly. I guess that meant it was stable now. Stable and ready for me to kick some Khushrenada into it. It almost killed me to say it, but I knew Trowa wouldn't move unless I told him, "We've gotta get outta here. Now!"

We. There was no "we." Couldn't be. The glass ring burned against my skin. Partners: I'd promised him that was the end game. I was about to break that promise, but I couldn't bring myself to take off the ring he'd slid onto my finger "so you don't forget to say yes." Maybe a part of me was hoping I'd make it through this. That there'd be a miracle of some kind.

There are no miracles. Only death.

When Trowa lifted his hands to his mouth and drew in a deep breath to give a sharp whistle, I squiggled out from between him and the tree, scrambled up and over the tangle of roots, and started running. Khushrenada was already waiting for me, standing as proud and as arrogant as you please in the middle of the clearing between me and the thing my mom and Solo had given their lives to protect. Now it was his turn.

Time to die, Khushy.

I heard Trowa's shout, but it came too late to be more than a speed bump in my momentum. I was beyond his reach and just moments away from slamming into my target.

And then Khushrenada shifted – no, he didn't shift. Someone else moved out from his shadow.

Chang.

"Oh, fuck," I muttered and brought my arms up just as the guy attacked with a flying kick. I dropped low, swept out with my arm, trying to push him out of the way. Still, there was no way I could get him clear of the big boom that was coming and the longer I dicked around, the closer Trowa would get!

"Fuck off!" I snarled at the guy. My fist connected with his cheek, but my second punch missed and, leaning into it as I was, there was nothing I could do to avoid stumbling.

Chang's hand clamped around my wrist and I knew exactly what kind of arm-bend was coming. I slithered around, flowing with his shifting weight and came back around swinging. He ducked. I angled my elbow down, slamming it into his collarbone. He kicked at my knee and I grabbed for whatever I could hold onto. I'm not proud of the fact that his silky ponytail ended up in my fist and yes, dammit, I pulled for all I was worth as I kneed him in the belly. Then the heel of his hand erupted upward between us on a direct course for my chin.

One shot and it was all over.

I don't remember the impact – only blank white exploding behind my eyes – and I sure as hell didn't give my legs permission to fold under me, but when I blinked, falling back into my own head as time – seconds or epochs – swirled around me, I was in a headlock and staring across the clearing at Trowa.

I scrambled for the arms holding me and choked out a single word, "No!"

Get out of here! Go!

Of course he didn't. Wouldn't. Couldn't.

"Weapons on the ground, Mr. Barton," Khushrenada instructed calmly.

Trowa's gaze reached across the distance and found mine. Oh, God. I did not want him to surrender. Khushrenada would only use him to get me to deliver his fucking mystical weapon on a damn silver platter. But I couldn't just let him be shot, either.

I lurched to my feet and suddenly the pistol that had been aimed at my lover was now pointing at my forehead. Pointing at my forehead and I just didn't give a damn. I snarled through gritted teeth as I twisted in Chang's grasp.

Bring it on, you gutless—!

His eyes narrowed. His jaw clenched. It looked like I was gonna be eating a bullet for lunch.

Crack!

I jerked, at first with surprise, wondering if Trowa'd fired that shot. Or the Bartons. Or Heero double-pistol-action Yuy. Gaping at Khushrenada's looming face, I fell with a bone-jarring thud to the ground. I stared, but no bullet hole appeared between the fucker's eyes. No, Khushrenada wasn't the one who'd been shot.

I had that honor.

"Ahhhh!" It wasn't a very manly scream but getting shot in the leg fucking burns.

I figured out I was free – Chang had let me collapse like a sack of laundry – an instant before the guy turned toward his boss and, quick as a lightning strike, spun around and hit the bastard square in the chest with a roundhouse kick that would have made Bruce Lee shed tears of joy at its utter perfection.

"For Meiran!" Chang screamed.

Khushrenada's arms flailed as he stumbled back one step, two. Gritting my teeth through the fire eating away at my leg from the inside out, I twisted my lower body, coming close enough to kick the sonuvabitch's supporting leg out from under him and then—

Crack!

His chest jerked and the motion rippled out through each of his limbs. A small, black hole appeared in the center of his fucking pastel necktie. The gun in his hand tumbled through the air and I watched as the man who would have taken away every single, solitary person I cared about crashed into the surface of the portal.

Oh, shit. Here we go—!

But then a weight was crashing down on me, a shadow falling over my eyes and an arm tucking my head into a familiar vest. I sobbed from the pain of my leg being jarred, but I didn't stop watching, not until every last part of Treize Khushrenada was engulfed by light. In that moment, Chang joined our pile, blocking my view of the eruption as light just obliterated the universe.

In silence. And, yeah, I'll admit to being disappointed. I'd expected more, uh, bang. But there was nuthin'. Jesus, you could hear a damn pin drop. And the shockwave I was all braced for? That didn't happen, either.

"What the hell?" I bitched, breathlessly. Was I dead? Were we all dead? There was an elbow poking me in the left kidney. My nose was smashed into a damp, musty armpit. If this was death, it kinda sucked.

But it wasn't. We were inexplicably alive.

It took forever for the flashing, retina-searing light to fade and the other two guys in our football tackle to give me enough space to get a decent lungful of air.

Of course, once I did—"Fuck! Ow! Goddamn it!"

"I'm sorry," Trowa rasped, voice raw and face utterly naked. "I'm so sorry, bokkie."

"This hurts," I informed him.

"I know."

Yeah, he sure did.

Yuy entered my line of sight, nodded to Trowa and went to kneel next to Chang who was unbuttoning his jacket and staring at my bloody pants. I hissed as Yuy started poking at the leg with the bullet hole in it.

"Nice shot, Barton," Yuy assessed and I had no freaking clue what he was talking about until Trowa swallowed thickly, his hands convulsing in the folds of my shirt. I gawked at the guilty look on my lover's face.

He whispered in a rush, "Khushrenada was about to shoot you between the eyes and you were standing between me and him, so I—"

"Hold up. This was you?" I squeaked.

"It was all I could think of."

"Jesus fuck, Trowa!" I couldn't deal with this right now, so I aimed my ire elsewhere. "Goddamn it are you trying to squeeze the bullet out with you bare fucking hands, Yuy?"

Yuy ignored me, pressing down harder on the wound, and I was this close to howling.

"Here," Trowa crooned. "Look toward my eyes. Tell me how much you want to donner me black and blue."

"Gah!" I managed and squeezed my eyes shut. Too bad that only made the pain worse.

"We'll get you to hospital just now. Keep your eyes on me."

Jesus! Trowa had fuckin' shot me?

And yet you'd been yea close to tackling Khushrenada into the portal?

I jerked my head to the side in denial but both were true. Trowa hadn't just saved my life. He'd saved me from my own stupid self. I shook my head harder and Trowa responded to my token struggle by saying shakily, "I hate Khushrenada for making me do that and I will get down on my knees and beg your forgiveness after you're safe. I swear."

Having said much the same to him only a day and a half before on a sandy tarmac in Egypt, I believed him. I twisted my fingers into the slack in his vest and just held the hell on.

"Stay with me, bokkie."

I pressed my face into his shoulder as the impossible happened – even more pressure came down on my thigh – and I screamed through my teeth. I glanced down in time to see Chang tightly knotting his jacket around my leg where Yuy's hands had been mercilessly squeezing. Unfortunately, that tiny shift in my attention was almost enough to make my head spin off my shoulders in dizziness.

"No exit wound," Yuy assessed before Chang pinned me with a merciless, black stare and informed everyone within earshot, "You'll live."

Oh, well, that was good news. Great. Wonderful. Wasn't this just the most fun double-date ever?

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Yuy suddenly pivot toward the east. Chang's head snapped around and he glared in the same direction. Beneath my hands, Trowa's shoulders stiffened and his arms tightened around my chest. Oh, shit, now what? I braced myself, my mind racing in lopsided circles trying to figure out how I was gonna fight whatever was coming at us this time.

That was when I heard it over the pounding of my head and the wheezing of my panicked breaths, when I felt it vibrate beneath my tailbone and along my throbbing leg: the low, hungry rumble and teeth-rattling shift of geological indigestion.

"Oh, fuck no," I objected, but my protest was lost in the booming snarl of a massive volcano.

Mount Fuji was erupting.

Notes:

We have fanart for Tomb Raiders by the amazing Tanuki02 - look her up on Deviant Art! To date she's given us "glissandos and chords", "though I walk through the shadow", and her latest - "wherever"! Thank you, darling!

We have one more part to go in The Quest. Then it'll be on to the epilogue-type stuff.