Part One
Everything dark became light as the spark from the canister ignited a web of high-voltage electricity within the blinding plume of orange dust. Lucifer shuddered from the blow and all of the monitors overloaded with glistening fingers of electricity. Duo's body stung with what felt like a hundred thousand static shocks. He reflexively released the joystick controls as they bit into his hands. The shockwave crawled up his legs and slipped its way forcefully into the base of his spine, causing his lower half to spasm violently.
He cried out and double over to grab his knees. Upon contact he realized that he couldn't feel them. He tried to move his legs but they wouldn't respond. His heart felt like it was overheating; its excess energy filled his chest and spread up his neck into his face. The familiar presence of chaos and panic made themselves known to him. Everything was silent except for the tremulous sound of his hitched, shallow breathing which echoed back to him from every corner of his deactivated cockpit.
The operating system had been forced off, leaving the suit immobile. A small screen on the control panel in front of him beeped faintly to alert him that the Gundam would need time to restart. He tried to activate the operating system but was once again made victim to an abrupt, high-voltage shock. This time his vision blurred as the electricity saturated his brain. He fell forward and clutched at his eyes with his burning fingertips, convinced that the viruses had finally penetrated him. He could feel them pressing into his mind to begin their destructive replication.
He knew it was over. He had lost, and it would be only a matter of time before the viruses were going to make him a rotting zombie corpse just like everyone else. This was the plague of space. The plague of mankind. The plague was inevitable suffering. Everyone would succumb to it. He couldn't stop it.
He had failed the Devil's mission. He had failed at being a bringer of death. He was no Shinigami. He felt ashamed for being so weak and useless. He closed his eyes and buried his face into the palms of his hands and groaned as the residual crackling electricity stung at him from inside.
For once… why couldn't I have done something right… I've lost them. I've lost you again, Solo. I'm so sorry.
His mind couldn't take much more of this stress.
Part Two
Heero was forced down and out of the pilot's seat, through the bottom of the ship and into the vast vacuum of space. He floated free and weightless for a moment before lifting his hands to his face to inspect them. They were free of gloves. His naked flesh was radiant and translucent. He held his hand up experimentally against a crowd of onlooking stars and saw them winking at him through the center of his palm. He became aware that his eyes were now both fully functioning. He blinked his previously injured right eye and lifted a hand to explore his unmarred eyelid tentatively with a fingertip.
He could feel himself but nothing else. The coldness of space was nothing but a distant truth; unable to reach him in whatever plane of existence he was currently suspended. He didn't need to breathe. He pressed his palm against his chest to check for a heartbeat that was no longer there. As he did he realized that his constrictive flight suit was gone, leaving his body completely naked* in suspension. He touched his tepid, sheer flesh with both hands and looked down through his torso and saw the distant blue orb that was the planet Earth swirling serenely beyond.
The hull of the Zàn was floating overhead, its blue shield system pulsating weakly from Lucifer's attack. The Gundam hung lifelessly nearby with its Taurus companion. In the distance the second Preventer Taurus was hovering with its beam weapon at the ready but had ceased fire.
Movement only required thought. Soon he was alongside the enormous demon suit's chest. He pressed his hand against the cockpit's hatch and found that he could pass through it without resistance.
What he passed into was not only the cockpit of the mobile suit but the very being of his partner. He felt the abrupt heaviness of anxiety weighing him down as he slipped into the cockpit and saw Duo curled forward in the pilot seat with his head in his hands. He reached a faded spectral hand out to touch his arm. Upon impact all of Duo's anxiety, fear, violation, anger, frustration and hurt began to circulate through him freely. Heero wasn't surprised at the density of Duo's emotions. He knew that he had felt this chaotic bricolage of feelings from his partner before. Now those emotions were distorted by drug-induced bewilderment.
He grabbed his partner by the shoulders. His hand settled gently against his flight suit rather than passing straight through him and allowed the free flow of energy to pass into his partner to form a one-way bond.
Part Three
Gundam Lucifer activated. As its cockpit lights illuminated the distortions in Duo's mind seemed to lift away. He was stricken with a sudden sense of clarity as a pressure settled upon his shoulders. He dropped his hands from his face and sat up, startled at the touch.
Everything around him began to slow down. His heart quivered in his chest before thumping at a more bradycardic pace. His hitched breathing deepened and slowed, and the scattered and blended thoughts that had been racing through his mind began to decrease incrementally. He felt focused and encouraged.
"What the hell am I doing here?" He muttered despite his calmness as he took in the cockpit. It was identical to Deathscythe Hell's in every way.
He blinked his eyes a few times and rubbed the side of his foggy head. He felt like he had just woken from a nap. Was this even real?
"I… I got the Gundam." The last thing he could recall clearly was his interrogation by Alex. Evidence of that encounter made itself known across his entire body. His cheeks and jaw twinged with what he assumed were bruises and the faint, metallic taste of his own blood still played on his tongue. He remembered them giving him two Eyeshine pills. He had tried to fight them and managed to get a hand loose from a handcuff. He looked down and saw the tight ring was still dangling from his arm, its silvery metal coated with dried blood. Everything after that was difficult to recover. He felt like he had abruptly woken from a dream and that the details of it were slipping away from him faster than he could recall them.
A distant, tingling sensation focused on the top of his head. He reflexively reached up to touch the spot but as he did it dissipated away from his fingertips. The monitors had illuminated once more to show the external ocular camera feed of the Zàn and a Preventer Taurus perched lifelessly beside him. He reached up to rub at the tension at the base of his neck and heard a familiar voice speak over general broadcast over the COM.
"Lieutenant Amada? Lieutenant Amada? Please respond."
"Noin?" Duo said aloud over the COM, his confusion obvious.
"Duo? Duo Maxwell, is that you? I knew it had to be you. Why did you attack the L2 CPD? Why were you attacking us?"
"Huh?"
"C… Captain Noin… attempting to initiate … mobile suit operations," a young male voice crackled over the line.
"I attacked you? No I didn't… I was… " Duo looked down into his monitors and scanned the surrounding area. The Zàn was floating nearby, its hull and fore panels were striped with long, diagonal gouges. Its force field shielding was flickering on and off. In the distance his cameras picked up thick clusters of debris. He zoomed in on them and scanned. His display had marked them as destroyed Virgo suits. "I… Oh my God…"
"Maxwell. Incoming ESUN cruisers and planetary defense forces. Active retreat." Wufei's voice commanded loudly over the COM. Duo hesitated. His scanners picked up the two cruisers flanked by a swarm of mobile suits as they began rounding the moon on a course for L2. Something within him magnified the urgency of the situation and he felt his hands automatically move to the control joysticks. He tried to force his legs down into the suit's pedal accelerator but couldn't move them.
"Shit… Wufei, I can't move!" Duo reported. The Taurus suit beside him sprang to life and had turned to face him. He saw that the Zàn was pulling away.
"Captain Noin, I'm going to attempt to restrain the Gundam unit," the pilot named Shiro said weakly across the connection.
"Shiro, no!" Noin called frantically over the COM. Lucifer shook hard as the Preventer Taurus struck its side. Duo responded by slamming the closest snaith of the nearest scythe into the other suit's main camera on the head. The Taurus had latched onto Lucifer's side. His scanners detected the heat register of its beam scythe as it was activated.
"You're makin' a big mistake, buddy! Get offa me!" He pounded his fist against the control panel on his armrest to activate his cloaking device and dialed up the field generators. They hummed as they were set to their highest output. Lucifer's topmost batlike wings began to descend. They folded as far as they could with the Taurus obstructing their movement. Duo's mind began racing again. He felt a strange pushing sensation in his arms. He looked down and realized that his right hand was hovering over the hyper-jammer control, while the left was poised over the vulcan guns. He slapped both of them on and aimed the vulcan guns at the Taurus, pelting it with shell blasts. He had struck its camera, rendering its optics obsolete. He struck the Taurus again with a snaith and kicked it off of him as it swung its beam saber. The beam blade caught against Lucifer's lower anti-beam coated wing. Duo couldn't thrust away but he could swing his suit's upper extremities. He slammed a fist into the Taurus and knocked it away.
"Shiro! Leave it! That's an order!"
"No, Captain Noin! He's a murderer! It is our obligation to bring him in!"
"Heh, looks like I wasn't the only one who didn't follow orders for Preventer," Duo said with a twisted grin as he tried kicking the thrust pedal again but his lower limbs refused to respond. He leaned across his right armrest and began wildly punching in a code that would reconfigure his pilot preference settings. If he could just get the controls to divert to the left joystick...
His suit was slammed to the side as Shiro slashed against Lucifer's completely down-turned bat wings. The cloaking device had been damaged and he wasn't able to shift into full invisibility.
"COME ON!" He growled as he punched in the code. His suit was vibrating as Shiro was attempting to carve his way through his protective shell. Finally he had managed to redirect the controls. The screen glowed green as the commands were adjusted and he snatched the joysticks and rolled Lucifer out of the way before the Preventer Taurus could land another swipe against its wings. With the controls redirected he only had use of one scythe. He unfurled the enormous bat wings to give his functional scythe arm clearance as he swung it at the Taurus. He sliced off its saber arm. He twisted the thrust joystick hard and opened the suit's accelerator to full force and pulled up alongside the retreating Ouroboros cruiser.
"Mantis? What about Heero and Hilde?" Duo asked desperately as he matched pace with the larger ship.
"They're here," Trowa's voice said over the COM. "Meet us up at Lennon. We have a lot to talk about."
Part Four
By the time Duo had landed Lucifer in Lennon's mobile suit hangar he had thankfully regained movement in his legs. They were weak but functional. When he opened the cockpit a catwalk had been rotated around to the front of his suit. Howard was standing at the end in a navy blue space suit, watching him as he pulled himself heavily onto the catwalk.
"Good to have you back, kid." Howard said with a smile. He had walked over to wrap an arm around his shoulder affectionately. Duo smiled the best he could.
"Thanks. Where is everyone?" He glanced around the empty hangar and saw no sign of any of the other pilots or the scientists.
"They're havin' a meetin'." Howard explained with a grin. "They want you up there ASAP. You better go. They're on the bridge."
Duo frowned and nodded. He knew he wasn't going to enjoy what was about to come. He had fucked up again, only this time he had no idea what had happened while he was doing it.
"Yeah, okay. You not coming?" Duo asked. The older man shook his head and gestured grandly to the massive Gundam parked beside them.
"No way. I've been waiting forever to get my hands on this thing." The sweeper said before slipping his arm away from Duo's shoulder. He watched as Howard practically skipped up to the cockpit and began inspecting its contents.
"Remarkable! Just like 'ol Hell, huh!?" Howard said to nobody in particular before climbing into the pilot's seat. Duo smiled before making his way wearily up the catwalks to the main hatchway that led into the fuselage of the ship.
As he trudged through the main passageway of the Lennon he was greeted with a tight hug by a familiar body. He tensed as Hilde grabbed him from the side as she jumped out from a nearby doorway.
"Oh thank you, Jesus! You're okay!" She exclaimed as she crushed him against her own body. He winced as her arms sunk into his bruises but he didn't have the heart to call her off. "Oh my God, what happened to your face? Who did that to you? Duo!? Tell me who it was, I will fucking kill them!"
Duo sighed and flinched as she poked and inspected the bruises on his face and neck. He forced a smile and gently grasped her elbows to hold her at arm's length. He couldn't be sure of what Heero had told her, and he didn't feel that this was the time to discuss the issues he had with her former boyfriend.
"I'm fine. It's fine. A really bad dude did this to me… but… I think I took care of him. I can't remember." He looked her over carefully. She was wearing an Ouroboros space suit and appeared to be in good health. "Looks like Heero got you off of the colony okay," he said with a smirk. Heero hadn't let him down. He knew he owed him one.
"Well, it was definitely a wild ride," Hilde said faintly, as if she was worried to say any more. Duo frowned.
"What do you mean by that?" He asked. Hilde was refusing to look at him. "What? What is it? What happened?"
"We had to take your Cobra. We couldn't get to the spaceport, the cops were onto us. I don't know why they were following us. Heero and I had to steal a mobile suit. That was how we got off of the colony."
Duo blinked. "My car? Wait a second. You both got in a mobile suit? How the hell…?"
"Duo! I'm glad you're okay," another voice interrupted their exchange. He looked down the passageway to see Quatre rushing toward him. The former Sandrock pilot appeared genuinely happy. That was one thing Duo liked about Quatre, he wore his heart on his sleeve around his friends. He fell into the taller pilot's hug and nodded.
"Yeah, I'm okay. Listen… about the CPD suits. I don't-" Duo began, but his words were cut short by Quatre shaking his head and frowning.
"It wasn't your fault. We all know that. Nobody blames you, Duo. It was just a horrible accident. Please, don't worry about it. We'll work everything out, okay?" Quatre had hooked an arm through his and was leading him carefully down the hallway to the bridge of the ship. "There's something else we need to talk to you about."
Duo had expected to receive a lengthy reprimand for what he had done. He hadn't expected to be soothed and pat on the head. Had this been Preventer he would have received an earful from Director Une, Sally or Noin. He would have been punished. Put on unpaid leave, or kicked out entirely.
"I don't even remember what happened. Is someone gonna tell me what happened?" Duo asked desperately as he was led down the hall. Hilde was walking silently on alongside him while Quatre led him through a narrow passage and onto the Lennon's massive bridge. As they entered Wufei looked up from his seat at the helm. Trowa was standing beside him. Dr. J and Professor G were seated in chairs beside a viewport. Duo immediately noticed Heero was nowhere to be seen. Everyone was avoiding looking him in the face. He tensed as Quatre released his arm.
"Okay, would someone tell me what the hell is going on here?" Duo asked, his stomach filling with dread. Why was everyone looking at him like that? "Where's Heero?"
|| Newtype Theory: I wanted to touch a little on this concept. It was discussed more thoroughly in Part I of the Ouroboros series. In Part I Duo finds out that Heero had advanced brain activity through Relena, who presents the data to him that Heero is a Newtype (though Heero adamantly denies it). It isn't until later that Dr. J verifies somewhat indirectly that Heero is advanced in some way, and that Duo is as well. This representation of Duo Maxwell was created to explain why Duo was incapable of mastering ZERO system in the series. I had a hard time accepting that he wasn't good enough, or that he was flighty in some way (ZERO tries to determine your goal and is supposed to present the pilot with all of the possible outcomes. In the series Duo is forced to test ZERO in Proto Wing Zero by OZ Officer Trant Clark. He goes bananas and thinks he kills Hilde and the colony. Somewhat similar to what is going on here in these past few chapters.) The idea I wanted to portray in Part I was that Duo couldn't connect to ZERO because his brain activity was advanced, but in a way different from Heero's. While Heero is analytical and has the ability to focus deeply, Duo's abilities are centered around quick thought and snap action. (Which compliments his melee style of MS battle with the scythes.) Part I explored the idea that Duo required certain crutches to reign in his rampant thought processes. Heero helps him develop playlists with specific BPMs to increase his focus, which he uses while connecting to ZERO through Wing-One (AKA Aurora). Heero himself is also a crutch for Duo. When they bond through Wing-One Heero's focus influences Duo to be calmer. For the purposes of this story Heero is a Newtype, though in this universe and AC timeline that has yet to be explored. Duo has been confirmed as well, though his ability is different.
Wing-One was used extensively in Part I in three ways. I have outlined these in a previous chapter, but since this is the first real occurrence of the system in this part I will poke at it again.
Wing-One was a concept developed by Treize and Zechs in their youth, but that didn't get developed until now because of the lack of technology to accomplish it. Noin had Heero help her develop it using aspects of ZERO. It is designed to allow seamless communication and cooperation between pilots. PAIR allows the pilots to communicate mentally (psionic communication^). BOND allows the pilots to share feelings, instincts. JOIN is a limited fusion between two pilots within a short range where they can work together as one unit.
In Part I Heero fused with Duo in a JOIN, but then removed the system from the Taurus suits shortly after. (He refuses to JOIN with anyone else, and once Duo was banned from MS piloting he would no longer use it.) However, the WING-ONE system is ultimately a project by PREVENTER, who have reinstalled aspects of it into the Preventer Taurus suits. Noin and Shiro are selectively using it. When Duo and Shiro get shocked Shiro is knocked out of connection from Noin, which is why he is using his verbal communication over the COM when he comes to.
Wing-One requires both pilots to have an immersion helmet to PAIR and BOND, and a helmet and ferroelectric flight suit to JOIN.
Heero's attempt to BOND with Duo through remote connection required increased electricity to facilitate. Because Duo was not wearing a helmet or directly connected to the system he and Heero were not able to mutually consciously BOND. Heero had forced himself on Duo, basically. Heero's automatic effect through BOND has always been stronger than Duo's. Any time they connect Heero's focus overrides Duo, and forces him into the same physiological patterns and thought processes.
As these characters continue to use the Wing-One immersion their Newtype abilities will gradually be evolving. I hope this helps to explain some of the previous plot and tech! ||
Footnotes:
* Newtype psionics^ always happen naked. It's a Gundam tradition.
** Snaith: snath, snath, snathe or sned are terms used to refer to the handle part of a scythe. - Wiki
^ Psionic Communication: relating to or denoting the practical use of psychic powers or paranormal phenomena. (Generally with the application of electronics.) Psi (psyche) - onics (electronics/machine).
