Well, if you remember, in the first chapter of this new series of mine, basically Heero and Duo got into the secret underground lab in their school and started chasing Judecca (Who, if you've read my When Cartoons Collide series, should be a familiar name) and of course a bunch of mutated monstery thingies started chasing after them and Duo got shot right in the stomache, which is probably not the most pleasant of places to be shot, and the titanium shell keeping the monsters from killing Duo and Heero is about to give out. By the way, if you haven't read my When Cartoons Collide series, read it. And now on with the story...
"Well, I finished bandaging it. I did everything I could possibly do in as short an amount of time we have with as little as we have available to us here, so hopefully it'll hold until we can get out of here and get you to a hospital. Think you can walk?" A monster hit the door and made a huge dent in it. "Okay, think you can run?" Duo stood up. "Well, either that bullet didn't do as much damage as I thought, you did a great job, it's just the fear giving me energy, or some combination of those, 'cause I think I can run juuuust fine." Heero glanced back at the door. "Good, let's go. We have about 30 seconds before that door breaks down, if Judecca was telling the truth." Heero and Duo began to run again. Wow, Duo's running just as fast as he was before. He isn't showing any signs of being hurt at all, let alone having been shot. They opened the door to the next room and Heero spotted another button that said to push it if monsters had gotten loose. "Hey, cool, that'll buy us another 5 minutes." Duo said, obviously ecstatic. Then they heard Judeccas voice again. "Oh, really? Go ahead and push the button, but it wont buy you much more than about 10 seconds. I did a bit of, er, repair work on the titanium shells." Duo looked Heero right in the eyes. "Heero, he didn't use the P.A. system. He's gotta be somewhere in this room. If we can get through that door before him, we could keep him in this room with the monsters." Heero glanced at the door to the next room quickly. "Duo, that has to be the smartest thing you have ever done, said or thought. Let's go!" They then found themselves running for a door once again.
"Hahahahaha! Yes, run! Run for the door and get inside first so I'll be trapped in here with the monsters!" Judecca yelled at them. Duo hesitated for a moment, but Heero said "He's trying to use reverse psychology on us and make us think that this place is safer than the next room." Duo opened the door and they ran inside. The P.A. system dinged again and they heard Judecca speaking to them. "That room is a dead end. I designed this place to be misleading. You run through enough doors that are all nice and lined up and you think that all the doors are that way. But, in reality, the door to the next real room was on the right, not straight ahead. You are now in a dead end room with no way out but the way you came in, and the monsters have just entered the room you came from. In other words: You're screwed, kids. You flunked survival class and it's going on your permanent record. HAHAHAHAHA! Your permanent record meaning your tombstone, of course. And I'm not talking about a pizza, either. No, you won't be having pepperoni on your tombstone, you'll just have your name, a few dates, and... Well, normally you'd have something written below that as well, but nobody really cares about you little brats. So nobody is going to volunteer anything to be written under the date of your death except for 'good riddance.'" Duo slumped down onto the ground. "We're trapped. There's no way out of here. Any minute those monsters are going to come in here and rip us to pieces. Nobody will know what happened to us except for that heartless bastard Judecca. For a while eeryone will wonder what happened to us, but then they'll just forget about us. Except our families. They'll probably look for us all over, but they wont find us." Heero looked around. "Not quite. For more reasons than one... But that isn't important right now. What is important is that we're in another room full of guns."
Duo looked around at all the guns and ammunition and knives and swords. "But Judecca has a bunch of traps set up so that if we take any of the guns or anything we'll die." Heero grinned. "well, that's one way of thinking. Another way of looking at the situation is that we can grab something when the monsters get close and jump away from the area so that the monsters die instead." Duo jumped up to a standing position. "That's brilliant! Let's do it!" Heero and Duo walked around for about a minute, looking at everything, getting a mental image of the place, and then the monsters busted down the door and came barging into the room. One of the vile creatures saw Duo and ran after him. Duo waited until the thing was close and grabbed a gun. Duo quickly jumped aside, still holding the gun, and a laser on the ceiling fried the monster that had been there. "Ha! One down, and now I've got a gun, too!" Duo had grabbed a machine gun. He aimed the gun at the monsters and fired until all the bullets had been used up, and although he had taken out a huge amount of the viscious monstrosities, there were still many to go.
One of the monsters suddenly jerked its head in the direction of Heero, who was hiding behind a shelf. "Heero, ones coming your way!" Heero waited until the beast had gotten to him and grabbed a portable missile launcher off the shelf next to him. He jumped aside just as a trap door opened up under the awful mutant and it fell to its death on a bed of sharp spikes. Heero jumped out from behind the shelf and launched all the missiles he had at the remaining abominations. Once again a great deal of them died, but more seemed to keep coming into the room. None of them attacked for a while though, as they were staring at the little creatures that had killed their brothers and sisters somehow. One of them, who seemed to be the leader, was the most horrible, disgusting, vile, most fearsome and terrifying one of them all. It took a step towards Heero and sniffed the air. Apparently it decided that Heero would make a good meal, because it rushed Heero, trying to knock him onto the ground where he would be more easily killed. Heero leapt over it though, and when it ran towards him again, he grabbed a sniper rifle off the shelf and jumped over it again. The creature also must have been the smartest of them, because it jumped aside, just barely avoiding another laser that had been triggered. The thing looked around, trying to find Heero, but it couldn't find him anywhere. Heero was hiding underneath one of the shelves, aiming the sniper rifle right at the things head. Heero fired three shots at the maniacal killers head, but each of them hit its head, made a dull thud, and fell to the ground. The creature shook its head and tried to find what had done that to it. Heero stared in disbelief and fired all the rest of the bullets at the thing right between its eyes.
Every bullet hit its mark, but seemed to have no effect other than making the beast angry. Duo had followed Heero to the bookshelf while all the monsters had been distracted by their leaders frantic scrambling about, trying to find its prey, and had hidden under the shelf with Heero when he had seen that the creature wasn't looking. "Heero," Duo whispered. "Since we're under the shelves, none of the traps can hurt us, right? So just grab stuff off the shalves above you when that thing isn't looking and then kill the damn freak." Heero took Duos advice and reached up and grabbed something off the shelf above him. He pulled his hand down to see what he had grabbed, and saw that he had a grenade in his hand, and he had somehow pulled the pin out. "Oh, shit!" Heero said as he tossed the grenade at the slightly birdlike beast that was running around trying to find him. The creature heard the grenade hit the ground beneath it, turned around, and swallowed the grenade. Seconds later, the creature blew up, pieces of it flying all around the room. "Ha! Guess it wasn't that smart after all!" Heero said with a large smile on his face. The two boys crawled out from under the shelf
and walked around it towards the door. "Uh-oh... I guess we seem to have forgotten that the other guys are still there." Duo said, staring at all of the mutated animals that were staring right back at them.
"Heero? Why are they all looking at us like that? Is it just me, or do they seem afraid?" Heero looked at all of them. "They do seem a bit nervous... Well, we did kill their leader, after all. Since he was their leader, he was probably also the strongest of them. Being their leader and the strongest out of all of them, they probably figure we must be a whole hell of a lot stronger than them to kill him." Heero made a sudden movement in the direction of the monsters, and they all turned around and fled the room, except for one of them. The one remaining one looked like a cross between a tyrannosaurus rex and a rhinoceros, as well as a few other things. It stood on its hind legs, which had claws like a t-rexs, and its body looked like a tyrannosaurus', but it's head was that of a rhinos except that it was as big as a tyrannosaurs head and was covered in bright yellow scales, like the rest of the body. On its back it had a spine, only instead of being on the inside, the spine was located on the outside and was covered in green armor resembling an ankylosaurus'. The tail was long and about half as thick as it should half been, and reminded the two boys of a whip. "Uh, Heero? Those scales look a lot brighter than they should be. Do ya think it's poisonous?" Heero shook his head. "I don't really know, Duo. What I want to know, though, is why it's the only one that stayed." The creature looked right at Heero and opened its mouth. "I stayed because I am not afraid of you, I know that if I do not harm you, you will not harm me." It said in a deep, throaty cross between a growl and words.
"It talked! You heard it too, right Heero? It did talk, didn't it?" Heero nodded his head, confirming that it had indeed spoken to them. "I would appreciate it if you did not refer to me as 'it.' My name is unpronouncable in your language, so if you wouldn't mind, I would appreciate it greatly if you would think of a name to refer to me by." Heero and Duo racked their brains, and then Duo said "Well, I saw a movie about something kinda like one of you guys that was called Proteus. Would that do?" The creature thought for a moment and replied with "Yes. I kind of like that name. So just call me Proteus. Anyways, I am the latest addition to that awful mans creations, and he ended up giving me free will, sentience, and the ability to speak. I tried to convince the others not to attack you, but all they could think of was how hungry they were, and they viewed you as food. I sense that you are both good people, and I have a feeling that you are trying to do accomplish a goal. If that goal has anything to do with this laboratory, I'd like it a lot if you would let me help." Duo smiled and said "Well, its okay with me if you come. I like the idea of one of that assholes creations helping to destroy him. How about you, Heero? Is it okay with you if he comes with us?" Heero looked at Proteus and then looked back at Duo. "Its fine with me. I like the idea of Judeccas demented mind being his downfall." "Well, it looks like you're coming with us, Proteus!"
Proteus did something with his mouth that looked like an attempt at smiling, but the end result was a very scary animalistic grin. Duo yelped and jumped into Heeros arms. "Uh...." Duo said, blushing as he climbed out of Heeros arms. "I guess I watch a bit too much Scooby Doo..." Proteus began to speak again. "I know where Judecca is right now. I don't really know how, but I do. It's as if there's a map of this place in my mind and a little beacon marking his position is placed on it exactly where he is... Follow me!" Proteus stamped his way out of the room on his giant tyrannosaurus legs and Heero and Duo followed him. Proteus led them through several rooms full of things even more disgusting and terrible than the tanks of acid before they finally arrived in a room that was pitch black. The two boys heard a sharp inhalation, and then Proteus spit out a ball of flame. The entire room lit up and the the fireball hit one of the creatures that had been trying to kill them before. The thing fell to the ground, burning brightly, giving off plenty of light. The boys and Proteus looked around and saw that the room was full of the beasts, and they were all closing in on them.
Proteus yelled "Get behind me!" And Heero and Duo jumped towards Proteus' tail and hit the ground rolling until they were right behind the mutated dinosaur. Proteus inhaled again, though not sharply like before, and then spit out a steady stream of flame at the remaining demon-like things in the room. All the creatures caught fire and died almost instantly. There was plenty of light in the room at that point, and a throne was visible 20 feet up. The throne was attached to the wall, and there didn't appear to be any way to get to it or back down from it. Seated on the throne was Judecca. Since he was facing them and there was lots of light, Heero, Duo, and Proteus actually saw him for the first time. He was a fairly good looking man with platinum hair. He wore glasses, fingerless gloves, ordinary clothes that you'd expect to see the average person walking down a street wearing, a blue cape, some brown boots with some sort of insignia on the sides, and a
green amulet that shone brightly in the the light of the burning mutations. He was holding a gun with a barrel slightly longer than it looked like it should be, and instead of just a slime piece of metal around the trigger, along the bottom part it was of average thickness, and on the side there was a square of metal. Judecca loaded the last bullet into the gun and aimed it at Heero. "If any of you move, I'll shoot Heero. I know you think he can dodge this bullet easily, but looks can be quite deceiving, cant they? I am the worlds greatest assassin, gun expert, and all around villain. The only time I ever miss is when I want to. So, if you think he can dodge a bullet, do whatever you want. If you want to take me seriously, then dont."
Duo and Proteus stood extremely still, but Heero jumped as far as he could to the left and continued rolling to the left when he landed. Judecca tossed a paper airplane down to Duo. Unfortunately for Heero, Judecca wasn't lying, and although Heero was moving very quickly, Judecca shot him on the inside of his right knee.
Duo unfolded the paper airplane and it said "Target: Inside of right knee." "Nobody move!" Duo yelled. "This guy isn't lying... He has excellent aim." Heero stood up and said. "Yeah, so I noticed. He hit me on the inside of my right knee, right in the very center. Not a hundredth of a millimeter off. Dead center." Judecca stared at Heero in disbelief. "How are you able to stand up? You should, at the very least, be in a huge amount of pain and have your knee slightly bent, but you're standing there just as straight as you were before I shot you, and you don't look like you're in any pain at all." Duo laughed. "Are you kidding? Hell, you could probably drop a truck on Heero, and he'd stand up perfectly straight and mock you. That guy can take anything. And he's pretty good at dishing it out, too..." Heero mumbled something and then said, a bit louder, "I didn't mean to do it. It isn't really my fault you ended up in the hospital for a month... If you hadn't been bugging me, it wouldn't have happened."
Judecca yelled "Shut up! Both of you! I don't care what he can take without showing signs of pain, and I dont care how weak and defenseless you are, Duo!" Duo was about to yell something rather impolite at Judecca when Heero pulled out a small handgun and shot Judecca in the shoulder. Judecca screamed and fell out of the throne to the ground, landing on his back. He jumped up to a standing position and whirled around so he was facinf Heero. "T-T-THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE! Nobody has ever managed to shoot me... I've been shot at over a hundred thousand times, and every single time I've dodged the bullet easily... And now I've been shot by a mere boy?!?" Duo looked at the gun in Heeros hand. "I grabbed it from the gun room just after I tossed the grenade, in case the grenade didn't kill that thing. I saved it case we needed it. He pissed me off and then I remembered it." Judecca glared at Heero. "Well... It doesn't matter!" He said, sounding extremely angry. "Because I've got far more bullets than you. And don't even think about using you fire breath, because it wont work anymore!" He yelled, turning towards Proteus. As soon as he said that, it got freezing cold in the room, and ice formed everywhere. Soon the walls, ceiling, floor and throne were frozen solid, and Duo and Proteus were shivering. Somehow the cold didn't seem to affect Judecca or Heero Ha, it's probably because Heeros too intent on killing Judecca to notice the cold, and Judeccas cold-blooded, so he doesn't feel it either. Then again, I have been known to be wrong before
"HahahahaHA! So it's... Five bullets against all the bullets I have." "Well, how many do you have, Judecca?" Heero asked. "That depends. Do you want to know how many I actually have on my person right now, or how many I have? And by that I dont mean the ones I have on me right now and the ones I have in the gun rooms." Heero looked confused by that last part, but said "How many you have on you right now." Judecca laughed. "Only the remaining 11 in this gun. So even without the others I have more than you. You know what, screw that, I don't want this gun or these bullets." Judecca unloaded the gun and tossed it and the bullets aside. He held up his hands and two guns that appeared to be ordinary handguns appeared in them. "Let's see how well you fare against me now, shall we?" Judecca asked smugly. "Your other gun seemed to have a lot better quality bullets than those. A lot more powerful." Heero remarked. Judecca began laughing. "So it would seem. These, erm, 'bullets', work best in extreme cold. So I'll just have the air conditioners turned on." An icy wind began to blow in the room. "Argh, Heero, could you hurry up and kill him already? I don't know how much longer I can stand this cold!" Judecca glanced at Duo quickly. "Oh, shut up, it's good for your bullet wound. Or maybe not... I don't know. I've never needed to know because I've never gotten shot before today." He turned back towards Heero. "Ready? I hope so, 'cause here we go!" Judecca aimed both guns at Heero and yelled "Sidewinder!!!" A purple ray of electricity shot out of both guns, twisted and turned, and hit Heero square in the chest. "AAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!" Judecca smirked and said "Well, he certainly seemed to feel that pain, didn't he?" "Hey, asshole, guess what?" A voice from behind Judecca said. "This'll make two times today."
A bullet flew straight through Judeccas heart and whizzed by Duo. Judecca turned around slowly and saw Heero standing behind him with a gun aimed right at him. "But... How?" Heero had a half-smile on his face as he said "I found an odd looking box in the room the stairwell leads too and took it with me so I could figure out what it does later. I guess I found out." Judecca nodded. "The... Holographic... Projector... Of course... Well, you may.... Have won this time, but... Next time, you won't be.... Quite as lucky..." Heero, Duo and Proteus looked at him oddly. "What do you mean by that?" Duo asked. Judecca smiled, pulled out a gun that had been hidden by his cape, and shot at Duo. The bullet that came out of the gun was solid gold and had a slight point on the end. The bullet was oddly designed, and had some strange runes circling the bottom. The bullet hit Duo in the chest and the runes could be seen glowing bright blue as it found its mark. As soon as the bullet hit Duo, Judecca laughed and said "I... Will be back... Very, very soon!" and disappeared. When Judecca disappeared, a circle on the ground below Heero, Duo, and Proteus began glowing yellow, orange, and then red. Some runes appeared in the very center, and the three were teleported
to just outside the school grounds. "Duo, are you okay?!" Heero shouted and ran over to Duo, checking for a heartbeat. "He's unconcious, but still alive! If we hurry, we can get him to a hospital and hopefully he'll be fine. Come on, Proteus!" Heero picked up Duo and started running in the direction of the hospital, but stumbled and almost fell. "Heero, your knee! You can't carry him like that! I can help. just pick him up and climb on my back." Heero climbed on Proteus' back, and all of a sudden huge dragon wings erupted from Proteus' back, and Proteus began to fly.
Very shortly afterwards, Proteus landed in front of the hospital and Heero got off of his back. "I'll be back as soon as I can, Proteus. Will you wait here?" Proteus nodded his head yes and Heero carried Duo inside. Once inside the hospital, a doctor who was walking by saw Heero and Duo and called for some help. The doctor took Duo and instructed the doctors and nurses on what he wanted them to do. Duo was taken to the emergency room where several doctors and nurses worked to get the bullets out of his chest and stomache and do everything they could to clean the wounds and bandage them. Heeros situation was less critical and so he wasn't taken to the emergency room, but was simply taken to the operating room where the bullet was pulled out and the wound was cleaned and bandaged.
A while later... "Hey doctor, how's Du... The kid I brought in here?" Heero asked. "The boy you carried in here? He's doing very well, actually. But the bullet in his chest must have had some kind of poison in it or something, and he would have died if it wasn't for the fact that, for some reason, he was freezing cold. The cold stopped whatever was on that bullet from working until after we had gotten it all out of his system. So now he's doing extremely well." "Thanks... And, uh, when can I leave?" Heero asked. "You can leave any time you want. Amazingly enough, that bullet somehow didn't seem to have done all that much damage even though it hit you in a very bad spot. Uh, by the way, I've been meaning to ask you something. How exactly did you boys get shot? It normally wouldn't really matter to me, and it is, after all, none of my business, but the bullet in the other boys chest... I've never seen anything like it. It's solid gold, the point is pretty sharp, and there are some strange blue markings around the bottom of it. Nobody here has any idea what the markings mean, and they haven't ever seen or heard of a bullet like that before, either. We took it to the police to see if we could figure out what kind of bullet it was, but they've never seen it before either." Heero thought for a moment, trying to think up an excuse, and said "I can't really remember how we got shot. I remember everything but that." The doctor shook his head, looking very confused, and left the room.
Heero walked out the door and asked a bypassing doctor where Duo was. The doctor led him to the room Duo was in, and Heero stepped into the room. Duo was sitting up in the hospital bed playing some video game, but turned off the video game console, which looked to be a playstation, as soon as he saw Heero standing by the door. "Hi, Heero!" Heero said hi back to him, and glanced at the playstation. "Where'd you get that?" Duo laughed. "Well, I said I was bored, and asked if they had any video games, and they brought me this. It's as good system, and a great game. One odd thing about it though... Come here and take a look at this." Heero walked over to Duo and sat on the bed next to him as Duo turned on the playstation and loaded a save game file. "This games called Wild Arms 2. And... Hold on, let me get to him..." Heero watched as Duo solved some sort of puzzle and then climbed a staircase to the top of a pillar. There was a man on the pillar, and the man and the characters Duo played as had a short conversation. Then it went into the games battle mode, and three of Duos characters were fighting the man. Heero stared at the screen in disbelief. "But that's... That guy looks exactly like Judecca!" Duo laughed. "Hey, it gets even better. Watch this." Duo opened up the attack menu and picked an attack. After he selected an attack, a list of the enemies he could use that on appeared. There was only the one man, and so the list consisted only of the name 'Judecca.'
Heero gaped at the name. "That guy looks like Judecca and has the same name as Judecca!" Duo glanced at Heero and then went back to the tv screen. "It gets even better than that, believe it or not." After Duos characters attacked, the enemy character called 'Judecca' used an attack called sidewinder. "That's the attack Judecca used on me! This is impossible! Some guy that looks like, has the same name as, and uses the same attacks as a guy from a video game almost killed us!" Duo nodded his head in agreement. "Either that or..." "Either that or what?" "Well, Heero, either that or the guy from the video game almost killed us." Heero turned his gaze towards the television. "That's impossible, though." As soon as Heero said that, the three characters that Duo controlled in the battle disappeared and were replaced by two characters that looked just like Heero and Duo, and the Heero on the t.v. pulled out a gun and shot Judecca, and Judecca said "I'll be back! Very, very soon!" and disappeared. Heero turned off the playstation. "Duo? Tell me you didn't see that. You didn't see anything, did you?" Duo stared straight ahead. "Uh... Well, to be honest, I was about to say the exact same thing to you, Heero." "Oh, great..." A nurse knocked on the door and came into the room a few seconds later. "Hey, uh, nurse? I'm gonna be checking out now, kay?" Duo said. "You can't leave." She replied. Duo rolled his eyes. "I don't think there's really all that much you can do to stop me from leaving. If you physically try to stop me, you could hurt me even more, and I'm not going to stay here because you ask me nicely." The nurse reached into her pocket and pulled out a small device. She pressed a button on it, and changed into Judecca. "You seem to have misunderstood me. You WILL NOT be leaving here, unless you do so in a coffin."
Ooooooohhh... Scary. Looks like Judecca survived and has decided to pay Heero and Duo a visit. Well, this is yet another short chapter, but hey, you don't mind being kept in suspense for a while, do you? Then again, you probably wont be in suspense for too long... I made both of the chapters in this series and the last chapter in my When Cartoons Collide series today, as well as fixed up the other 5 chapters in that series. So, all together, I've written 116 KB of fanfic today, plus probably about 10 more if you count the revising of the first five chapters in my other series. A sign that I have waaaaaay too much free time. Anyways, I'll probably have plenty more chapters for you tomorrow. Ciao!
"Well, I finished bandaging it. I did everything I could possibly do in as short an amount of time we have with as little as we have available to us here, so hopefully it'll hold until we can get out of here and get you to a hospital. Think you can walk?" A monster hit the door and made a huge dent in it. "Okay, think you can run?" Duo stood up. "Well, either that bullet didn't do as much damage as I thought, you did a great job, it's just the fear giving me energy, or some combination of those, 'cause I think I can run juuuust fine." Heero glanced back at the door. "Good, let's go. We have about 30 seconds before that door breaks down, if Judecca was telling the truth." Heero and Duo began to run again. Wow, Duo's running just as fast as he was before. He isn't showing any signs of being hurt at all, let alone having been shot. They opened the door to the next room and Heero spotted another button that said to push it if monsters had gotten loose. "Hey, cool, that'll buy us another 5 minutes." Duo said, obviously ecstatic. Then they heard Judeccas voice again. "Oh, really? Go ahead and push the button, but it wont buy you much more than about 10 seconds. I did a bit of, er, repair work on the titanium shells." Duo looked Heero right in the eyes. "Heero, he didn't use the P.A. system. He's gotta be somewhere in this room. If we can get through that door before him, we could keep him in this room with the monsters." Heero glanced at the door to the next room quickly. "Duo, that has to be the smartest thing you have ever done, said or thought. Let's go!" They then found themselves running for a door once again.
"Hahahahaha! Yes, run! Run for the door and get inside first so I'll be trapped in here with the monsters!" Judecca yelled at them. Duo hesitated for a moment, but Heero said "He's trying to use reverse psychology on us and make us think that this place is safer than the next room." Duo opened the door and they ran inside. The P.A. system dinged again and they heard Judecca speaking to them. "That room is a dead end. I designed this place to be misleading. You run through enough doors that are all nice and lined up and you think that all the doors are that way. But, in reality, the door to the next real room was on the right, not straight ahead. You are now in a dead end room with no way out but the way you came in, and the monsters have just entered the room you came from. In other words: You're screwed, kids. You flunked survival class and it's going on your permanent record. HAHAHAHAHA! Your permanent record meaning your tombstone, of course. And I'm not talking about a pizza, either. No, you won't be having pepperoni on your tombstone, you'll just have your name, a few dates, and... Well, normally you'd have something written below that as well, but nobody really cares about you little brats. So nobody is going to volunteer anything to be written under the date of your death except for 'good riddance.'" Duo slumped down onto the ground. "We're trapped. There's no way out of here. Any minute those monsters are going to come in here and rip us to pieces. Nobody will know what happened to us except for that heartless bastard Judecca. For a while eeryone will wonder what happened to us, but then they'll just forget about us. Except our families. They'll probably look for us all over, but they wont find us." Heero looked around. "Not quite. For more reasons than one... But that isn't important right now. What is important is that we're in another room full of guns."
Duo looked around at all the guns and ammunition and knives and swords. "But Judecca has a bunch of traps set up so that if we take any of the guns or anything we'll die." Heero grinned. "well, that's one way of thinking. Another way of looking at the situation is that we can grab something when the monsters get close and jump away from the area so that the monsters die instead." Duo jumped up to a standing position. "That's brilliant! Let's do it!" Heero and Duo walked around for about a minute, looking at everything, getting a mental image of the place, and then the monsters busted down the door and came barging into the room. One of the vile creatures saw Duo and ran after him. Duo waited until the thing was close and grabbed a gun. Duo quickly jumped aside, still holding the gun, and a laser on the ceiling fried the monster that had been there. "Ha! One down, and now I've got a gun, too!" Duo had grabbed a machine gun. He aimed the gun at the monsters and fired until all the bullets had been used up, and although he had taken out a huge amount of the viscious monstrosities, there were still many to go.
One of the monsters suddenly jerked its head in the direction of Heero, who was hiding behind a shelf. "Heero, ones coming your way!" Heero waited until the beast had gotten to him and grabbed a portable missile launcher off the shelf next to him. He jumped aside just as a trap door opened up under the awful mutant and it fell to its death on a bed of sharp spikes. Heero jumped out from behind the shelf and launched all the missiles he had at the remaining abominations. Once again a great deal of them died, but more seemed to keep coming into the room. None of them attacked for a while though, as they were staring at the little creatures that had killed their brothers and sisters somehow. One of them, who seemed to be the leader, was the most horrible, disgusting, vile, most fearsome and terrifying one of them all. It took a step towards Heero and sniffed the air. Apparently it decided that Heero would make a good meal, because it rushed Heero, trying to knock him onto the ground where he would be more easily killed. Heero leapt over it though, and when it ran towards him again, he grabbed a sniper rifle off the shelf and jumped over it again. The creature also must have been the smartest of them, because it jumped aside, just barely avoiding another laser that had been triggered. The thing looked around, trying to find Heero, but it couldn't find him anywhere. Heero was hiding underneath one of the shelves, aiming the sniper rifle right at the things head. Heero fired three shots at the maniacal killers head, but each of them hit its head, made a dull thud, and fell to the ground. The creature shook its head and tried to find what had done that to it. Heero stared in disbelief and fired all the rest of the bullets at the thing right between its eyes.
Every bullet hit its mark, but seemed to have no effect other than making the beast angry. Duo had followed Heero to the bookshelf while all the monsters had been distracted by their leaders frantic scrambling about, trying to find its prey, and had hidden under the shelf with Heero when he had seen that the creature wasn't looking. "Heero," Duo whispered. "Since we're under the shelves, none of the traps can hurt us, right? So just grab stuff off the shalves above you when that thing isn't looking and then kill the damn freak." Heero took Duos advice and reached up and grabbed something off the shelf above him. He pulled his hand down to see what he had grabbed, and saw that he had a grenade in his hand, and he had somehow pulled the pin out. "Oh, shit!" Heero said as he tossed the grenade at the slightly birdlike beast that was running around trying to find him. The creature heard the grenade hit the ground beneath it, turned around, and swallowed the grenade. Seconds later, the creature blew up, pieces of it flying all around the room. "Ha! Guess it wasn't that smart after all!" Heero said with a large smile on his face. The two boys crawled out from under the shelf
and walked around it towards the door. "Uh-oh... I guess we seem to have forgotten that the other guys are still there." Duo said, staring at all of the mutated animals that were staring right back at them.
"Heero? Why are they all looking at us like that? Is it just me, or do they seem afraid?" Heero looked at all of them. "They do seem a bit nervous... Well, we did kill their leader, after all. Since he was their leader, he was probably also the strongest of them. Being their leader and the strongest out of all of them, they probably figure we must be a whole hell of a lot stronger than them to kill him." Heero made a sudden movement in the direction of the monsters, and they all turned around and fled the room, except for one of them. The one remaining one looked like a cross between a tyrannosaurus rex and a rhinoceros, as well as a few other things. It stood on its hind legs, which had claws like a t-rexs, and its body looked like a tyrannosaurus', but it's head was that of a rhinos except that it was as big as a tyrannosaurs head and was covered in bright yellow scales, like the rest of the body. On its back it had a spine, only instead of being on the inside, the spine was located on the outside and was covered in green armor resembling an ankylosaurus'. The tail was long and about half as thick as it should half been, and reminded the two boys of a whip. "Uh, Heero? Those scales look a lot brighter than they should be. Do ya think it's poisonous?" Heero shook his head. "I don't really know, Duo. What I want to know, though, is why it's the only one that stayed." The creature looked right at Heero and opened its mouth. "I stayed because I am not afraid of you, I know that if I do not harm you, you will not harm me." It said in a deep, throaty cross between a growl and words.
"It talked! You heard it too, right Heero? It did talk, didn't it?" Heero nodded his head, confirming that it had indeed spoken to them. "I would appreciate it if you did not refer to me as 'it.' My name is unpronouncable in your language, so if you wouldn't mind, I would appreciate it greatly if you would think of a name to refer to me by." Heero and Duo racked their brains, and then Duo said "Well, I saw a movie about something kinda like one of you guys that was called Proteus. Would that do?" The creature thought for a moment and replied with "Yes. I kind of like that name. So just call me Proteus. Anyways, I am the latest addition to that awful mans creations, and he ended up giving me free will, sentience, and the ability to speak. I tried to convince the others not to attack you, but all they could think of was how hungry they were, and they viewed you as food. I sense that you are both good people, and I have a feeling that you are trying to do accomplish a goal. If that goal has anything to do with this laboratory, I'd like it a lot if you would let me help." Duo smiled and said "Well, its okay with me if you come. I like the idea of one of that assholes creations helping to destroy him. How about you, Heero? Is it okay with you if he comes with us?" Heero looked at Proteus and then looked back at Duo. "Its fine with me. I like the idea of Judeccas demented mind being his downfall." "Well, it looks like you're coming with us, Proteus!"
Proteus did something with his mouth that looked like an attempt at smiling, but the end result was a very scary animalistic grin. Duo yelped and jumped into Heeros arms. "Uh...." Duo said, blushing as he climbed out of Heeros arms. "I guess I watch a bit too much Scooby Doo..." Proteus began to speak again. "I know where Judecca is right now. I don't really know how, but I do. It's as if there's a map of this place in my mind and a little beacon marking his position is placed on it exactly where he is... Follow me!" Proteus stamped his way out of the room on his giant tyrannosaurus legs and Heero and Duo followed him. Proteus led them through several rooms full of things even more disgusting and terrible than the tanks of acid before they finally arrived in a room that was pitch black. The two boys heard a sharp inhalation, and then Proteus spit out a ball of flame. The entire room lit up and the the fireball hit one of the creatures that had been trying to kill them before. The thing fell to the ground, burning brightly, giving off plenty of light. The boys and Proteus looked around and saw that the room was full of the beasts, and they were all closing in on them.
Proteus yelled "Get behind me!" And Heero and Duo jumped towards Proteus' tail and hit the ground rolling until they were right behind the mutated dinosaur. Proteus inhaled again, though not sharply like before, and then spit out a steady stream of flame at the remaining demon-like things in the room. All the creatures caught fire and died almost instantly. There was plenty of light in the room at that point, and a throne was visible 20 feet up. The throne was attached to the wall, and there didn't appear to be any way to get to it or back down from it. Seated on the throne was Judecca. Since he was facing them and there was lots of light, Heero, Duo, and Proteus actually saw him for the first time. He was a fairly good looking man with platinum hair. He wore glasses, fingerless gloves, ordinary clothes that you'd expect to see the average person walking down a street wearing, a blue cape, some brown boots with some sort of insignia on the sides, and a
green amulet that shone brightly in the the light of the burning mutations. He was holding a gun with a barrel slightly longer than it looked like it should be, and instead of just a slime piece of metal around the trigger, along the bottom part it was of average thickness, and on the side there was a square of metal. Judecca loaded the last bullet into the gun and aimed it at Heero. "If any of you move, I'll shoot Heero. I know you think he can dodge this bullet easily, but looks can be quite deceiving, cant they? I am the worlds greatest assassin, gun expert, and all around villain. The only time I ever miss is when I want to. So, if you think he can dodge a bullet, do whatever you want. If you want to take me seriously, then dont."
Duo and Proteus stood extremely still, but Heero jumped as far as he could to the left and continued rolling to the left when he landed. Judecca tossed a paper airplane down to Duo. Unfortunately for Heero, Judecca wasn't lying, and although Heero was moving very quickly, Judecca shot him on the inside of his right knee.
Duo unfolded the paper airplane and it said "Target: Inside of right knee." "Nobody move!" Duo yelled. "This guy isn't lying... He has excellent aim." Heero stood up and said. "Yeah, so I noticed. He hit me on the inside of my right knee, right in the very center. Not a hundredth of a millimeter off. Dead center." Judecca stared at Heero in disbelief. "How are you able to stand up? You should, at the very least, be in a huge amount of pain and have your knee slightly bent, but you're standing there just as straight as you were before I shot you, and you don't look like you're in any pain at all." Duo laughed. "Are you kidding? Hell, you could probably drop a truck on Heero, and he'd stand up perfectly straight and mock you. That guy can take anything. And he's pretty good at dishing it out, too..." Heero mumbled something and then said, a bit louder, "I didn't mean to do it. It isn't really my fault you ended up in the hospital for a month... If you hadn't been bugging me, it wouldn't have happened."
Judecca yelled "Shut up! Both of you! I don't care what he can take without showing signs of pain, and I dont care how weak and defenseless you are, Duo!" Duo was about to yell something rather impolite at Judecca when Heero pulled out a small handgun and shot Judecca in the shoulder. Judecca screamed and fell out of the throne to the ground, landing on his back. He jumped up to a standing position and whirled around so he was facinf Heero. "T-T-THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE! Nobody has ever managed to shoot me... I've been shot at over a hundred thousand times, and every single time I've dodged the bullet easily... And now I've been shot by a mere boy?!?" Duo looked at the gun in Heeros hand. "I grabbed it from the gun room just after I tossed the grenade, in case the grenade didn't kill that thing. I saved it case we needed it. He pissed me off and then I remembered it." Judecca glared at Heero. "Well... It doesn't matter!" He said, sounding extremely angry. "Because I've got far more bullets than you. And don't even think about using you fire breath, because it wont work anymore!" He yelled, turning towards Proteus. As soon as he said that, it got freezing cold in the room, and ice formed everywhere. Soon the walls, ceiling, floor and throne were frozen solid, and Duo and Proteus were shivering. Somehow the cold didn't seem to affect Judecca or Heero Ha, it's probably because Heeros too intent on killing Judecca to notice the cold, and Judeccas cold-blooded, so he doesn't feel it either. Then again, I have been known to be wrong before
"HahahahaHA! So it's... Five bullets against all the bullets I have." "Well, how many do you have, Judecca?" Heero asked. "That depends. Do you want to know how many I actually have on my person right now, or how many I have? And by that I dont mean the ones I have on me right now and the ones I have in the gun rooms." Heero looked confused by that last part, but said "How many you have on you right now." Judecca laughed. "Only the remaining 11 in this gun. So even without the others I have more than you. You know what, screw that, I don't want this gun or these bullets." Judecca unloaded the gun and tossed it and the bullets aside. He held up his hands and two guns that appeared to be ordinary handguns appeared in them. "Let's see how well you fare against me now, shall we?" Judecca asked smugly. "Your other gun seemed to have a lot better quality bullets than those. A lot more powerful." Heero remarked. Judecca began laughing. "So it would seem. These, erm, 'bullets', work best in extreme cold. So I'll just have the air conditioners turned on." An icy wind began to blow in the room. "Argh, Heero, could you hurry up and kill him already? I don't know how much longer I can stand this cold!" Judecca glanced at Duo quickly. "Oh, shut up, it's good for your bullet wound. Or maybe not... I don't know. I've never needed to know because I've never gotten shot before today." He turned back towards Heero. "Ready? I hope so, 'cause here we go!" Judecca aimed both guns at Heero and yelled "Sidewinder!!!" A purple ray of electricity shot out of both guns, twisted and turned, and hit Heero square in the chest. "AAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!" Judecca smirked and said "Well, he certainly seemed to feel that pain, didn't he?" "Hey, asshole, guess what?" A voice from behind Judecca said. "This'll make two times today."
A bullet flew straight through Judeccas heart and whizzed by Duo. Judecca turned around slowly and saw Heero standing behind him with a gun aimed right at him. "But... How?" Heero had a half-smile on his face as he said "I found an odd looking box in the room the stairwell leads too and took it with me so I could figure out what it does later. I guess I found out." Judecca nodded. "The... Holographic... Projector... Of course... Well, you may.... Have won this time, but... Next time, you won't be.... Quite as lucky..." Heero, Duo and Proteus looked at him oddly. "What do you mean by that?" Duo asked. Judecca smiled, pulled out a gun that had been hidden by his cape, and shot at Duo. The bullet that came out of the gun was solid gold and had a slight point on the end. The bullet was oddly designed, and had some strange runes circling the bottom. The bullet hit Duo in the chest and the runes could be seen glowing bright blue as it found its mark. As soon as the bullet hit Duo, Judecca laughed and said "I... Will be back... Very, very soon!" and disappeared. When Judecca disappeared, a circle on the ground below Heero, Duo, and Proteus began glowing yellow, orange, and then red. Some runes appeared in the very center, and the three were teleported
to just outside the school grounds. "Duo, are you okay?!" Heero shouted and ran over to Duo, checking for a heartbeat. "He's unconcious, but still alive! If we hurry, we can get him to a hospital and hopefully he'll be fine. Come on, Proteus!" Heero picked up Duo and started running in the direction of the hospital, but stumbled and almost fell. "Heero, your knee! You can't carry him like that! I can help. just pick him up and climb on my back." Heero climbed on Proteus' back, and all of a sudden huge dragon wings erupted from Proteus' back, and Proteus began to fly.
Very shortly afterwards, Proteus landed in front of the hospital and Heero got off of his back. "I'll be back as soon as I can, Proteus. Will you wait here?" Proteus nodded his head yes and Heero carried Duo inside. Once inside the hospital, a doctor who was walking by saw Heero and Duo and called for some help. The doctor took Duo and instructed the doctors and nurses on what he wanted them to do. Duo was taken to the emergency room where several doctors and nurses worked to get the bullets out of his chest and stomache and do everything they could to clean the wounds and bandage them. Heeros situation was less critical and so he wasn't taken to the emergency room, but was simply taken to the operating room where the bullet was pulled out and the wound was cleaned and bandaged.
A while later... "Hey doctor, how's Du... The kid I brought in here?" Heero asked. "The boy you carried in here? He's doing very well, actually. But the bullet in his chest must have had some kind of poison in it or something, and he would have died if it wasn't for the fact that, for some reason, he was freezing cold. The cold stopped whatever was on that bullet from working until after we had gotten it all out of his system. So now he's doing extremely well." "Thanks... And, uh, when can I leave?" Heero asked. "You can leave any time you want. Amazingly enough, that bullet somehow didn't seem to have done all that much damage even though it hit you in a very bad spot. Uh, by the way, I've been meaning to ask you something. How exactly did you boys get shot? It normally wouldn't really matter to me, and it is, after all, none of my business, but the bullet in the other boys chest... I've never seen anything like it. It's solid gold, the point is pretty sharp, and there are some strange blue markings around the bottom of it. Nobody here has any idea what the markings mean, and they haven't ever seen or heard of a bullet like that before, either. We took it to the police to see if we could figure out what kind of bullet it was, but they've never seen it before either." Heero thought for a moment, trying to think up an excuse, and said "I can't really remember how we got shot. I remember everything but that." The doctor shook his head, looking very confused, and left the room.
Heero walked out the door and asked a bypassing doctor where Duo was. The doctor led him to the room Duo was in, and Heero stepped into the room. Duo was sitting up in the hospital bed playing some video game, but turned off the video game console, which looked to be a playstation, as soon as he saw Heero standing by the door. "Hi, Heero!" Heero said hi back to him, and glanced at the playstation. "Where'd you get that?" Duo laughed. "Well, I said I was bored, and asked if they had any video games, and they brought me this. It's as good system, and a great game. One odd thing about it though... Come here and take a look at this." Heero walked over to Duo and sat on the bed next to him as Duo turned on the playstation and loaded a save game file. "This games called Wild Arms 2. And... Hold on, let me get to him..." Heero watched as Duo solved some sort of puzzle and then climbed a staircase to the top of a pillar. There was a man on the pillar, and the man and the characters Duo played as had a short conversation. Then it went into the games battle mode, and three of Duos characters were fighting the man. Heero stared at the screen in disbelief. "But that's... That guy looks exactly like Judecca!" Duo laughed. "Hey, it gets even better. Watch this." Duo opened up the attack menu and picked an attack. After he selected an attack, a list of the enemies he could use that on appeared. There was only the one man, and so the list consisted only of the name 'Judecca.'
Heero gaped at the name. "That guy looks like Judecca and has the same name as Judecca!" Duo glanced at Heero and then went back to the tv screen. "It gets even better than that, believe it or not." After Duos characters attacked, the enemy character called 'Judecca' used an attack called sidewinder. "That's the attack Judecca used on me! This is impossible! Some guy that looks like, has the same name as, and uses the same attacks as a guy from a video game almost killed us!" Duo nodded his head in agreement. "Either that or..." "Either that or what?" "Well, Heero, either that or the guy from the video game almost killed us." Heero turned his gaze towards the television. "That's impossible, though." As soon as Heero said that, the three characters that Duo controlled in the battle disappeared and were replaced by two characters that looked just like Heero and Duo, and the Heero on the t.v. pulled out a gun and shot Judecca, and Judecca said "I'll be back! Very, very soon!" and disappeared. Heero turned off the playstation. "Duo? Tell me you didn't see that. You didn't see anything, did you?" Duo stared straight ahead. "Uh... Well, to be honest, I was about to say the exact same thing to you, Heero." "Oh, great..." A nurse knocked on the door and came into the room a few seconds later. "Hey, uh, nurse? I'm gonna be checking out now, kay?" Duo said. "You can't leave." She replied. Duo rolled his eyes. "I don't think there's really all that much you can do to stop me from leaving. If you physically try to stop me, you could hurt me even more, and I'm not going to stay here because you ask me nicely." The nurse reached into her pocket and pulled out a small device. She pressed a button on it, and changed into Judecca. "You seem to have misunderstood me. You WILL NOT be leaving here, unless you do so in a coffin."
Ooooooohhh... Scary. Looks like Judecca survived and has decided to pay Heero and Duo a visit. Well, this is yet another short chapter, but hey, you don't mind being kept in suspense for a while, do you? Then again, you probably wont be in suspense for too long... I made both of the chapters in this series and the last chapter in my When Cartoons Collide series today, as well as fixed up the other 5 chapters in that series. So, all together, I've written 116 KB of fanfic today, plus probably about 10 more if you count the revising of the first five chapters in my other series. A sign that I have waaaaaay too much free time. Anyways, I'll probably have plenty more chapters for you tomorrow. Ciao!