Now we get to the bottom of WHY this all happened to the G-Boyz. =@_@= Something about Louch's story just didn't sit right with Noin...read on and see why. =^_~= Shounen-ai 1x2, angst and suffering ahead. Rated R for language and mild gore.

A.N. All, I repeat, ALL of the text in italics, excepting single words in other people's dialogue, but including the dream/memory sequence, are Heero's thoughts. =^_~= Didja get all that? Good.

Disclaimer #1: I don't own GW...*cries*...but if I DID own it, things would be SO different, but then again if "ifs and buts" were candy and nuts, we'd all weigh 300 pounds, so there. =P

Disclaimer #2: I was an English major, so when I write, I write wordy. You have been warned. =P

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Sally and Noin had already lived one hell of a day. Home base had gotten just so far as to determine the five pilots had been given a fake mission, and figure out a rough location, before the message in question digitally self-destructed. Since the ladies were closest to the general area where the boys were supposed to be, having just finished some business of their own, they were dispatched to investigate covertly. Both were tired, hungry, overworked, and had been greatly looking forward to going home and putting their feet up, and now the two dunderheads in their custody had gone and ruined it for them, and possibly murdered the pilots at well.

They were more than upset; Sally and Noin were, quite plainly, in no mood to be fucked with.

"Why don't we try this again? You either tell me where they are, or you sit there all night with the gag on. Either way, you're not using language like that with me ever again, understand?"

Louch boiled over with anger, but eventually nodded at the dark-haired woman. The honeymoon was over. Resisting the urge to bite her fingers off, he sat still while Noin pulled the gag down below his chin.

She stepped back to stand next to Sally, who kept a vicious-looking rifle trained on the two men, in case three layers of quarter-inch nylon rope wasn't enough to hold them. Louch was glaring razor-sharp daggers at the pair, especially Noin; Burt sat quietly staring at the ground. He remained ungagged because he couldn't bring himself to use language like Louch just had, not in front of a lady...two ladies.

"Where are they!?" Noin demanded.

"Boiling in a lake of fire, I hope," Louch spat back.

Noin struck him hard across the jaw, adding one more bruise to his rapidly growing collection. "Try again."

"Why are you so interested, huh?" he scoffed. "Are you their babysitters or something? Or maybe you've got something going on with them..." he said with a disgusting smile. Sally swallowed and stiffened just enough to be noticed. "Yeah, you do, doncha?"

"You wanna keep making smartass remarks, or would you rather leave your knees in the middle of your legs where they belong?" Noin crouched in front of him, snarling an inch away from his face. "Haven't I gone easy on you? Haven't I been generous? You've still got everything attached to you that you came in with, haven't you? If you'd just answer one itty bitty question, you could take a nap right now and forget all about those nasty bruises." She smiled sweetly. "You don't want me to get bored, or I'll have to start breaking bones."

"Yeah, right," he said, "you don't scare me, little missy. I only let you tie me up 'cause it gave me a buzz." He smirked and made sloppy kissing noises in the air.

In a flash, Noin hit him with a swift right jab to the face, breaking his nose. Louch howled in pain, and Burt winced, cowering away from the woman. Noin stood, satisfied with her handiwork.

"OWW!! Geez...frickin'...God-damn..." Louch sputtered, eyes watering. Blood trickled into his filthy mouth.

Sally smiled. "Only two-hundred-odd left."

"You bitch!!" he screamed. "You don't know who you're dealing with! You don't screw with people like us! We're not your average pushovers, we're OZ!!"

Throwing a sympathetic look at Burt, Sally backed up a few steps. Things were about to get ugly. Noin sat down on the floor opposite Louch, crossed her legs and propped her elbows up on her knees, lacing her fingers together gracefully. The smile was still there. "Really, now?"

"I'm a war veteran! D'you know what that means? It means I've marched through blood and gore and guts fighting for something that mattered! I could break you in two with my bare hands!"

"Is that so?" The smile grew.

"We didn't just run around shooting stuff, we were a force! There's more of us out there, and when they find us they'll tear you to shreds! And it won't be quick either, because we've seen it all! We've seen all the shit that goes on in a war, and we'll give you a taste of it, make you two little pussies understand who's in charge!! I was a corporal in the greatest army there ever was, and you...can't...TOUCH ME!!"

Noin's smile never faltered. "Corporal, eh?" She reached into her pocket and pulled out her old lieutenant's insignia, which she carried for luck. She slapped it on the floor between them. "I'll raise you."

Louch blinked and squinted at the piece of metal, eyes wide. He began to blubber faintly. Noin grabbed him by the collar and dragged the heavy man closer, their faces an inch apart once again.

"Listen up, dicksmack." Louch froze at the sound of her well-trained military voice. "While you were out here playing Tarzan and learning how to type, I was training the Specials. When you were bumbling around in the desert getting pasted by the Gundams, I was fighting alongside Zechs Merquise. I've been in the same room with people who had their finger on the trigger that could have annihilated most of mankind. I've seen ten times the shit you've seen, and I happen to have some pretty powerful friends too. You're in WAY over your head, mister, so don't even THINK about threatening ME."

She threw Louch back against the wall hard; he was speechless, for once. Standing up, she took immense gratification in watching him squirm.

"I remember the New Mexico convoy," she continued. "I wasn't there, but I read the report. You weren't totally honest with us, were you? Was it the booze talking?"

Sally's ears perked up, slightly anxious to hear about the puzzling thing Noin had been mulling over in the bar. She still wished she'd hurry, though; if the boys were still alive, they probably needed help, fast.

Noin paced like a prosecutor grilling a witness. "You said you saw the Gundams steal the shipment of weapons. That's very strange, because the official OZ report was that the shipment was destroyed. The cleanup crews even brought back some of the burnt-out casings with the train cars and damaged suits.

"Just a minor change to your story, really...either way, the shipment never got through. But it's not what you told us, is it? How could you remember the rest of the battle in such perfect detail and not know the outcome? You never saw what happened to the shipment, so you had to guess, and you blamed the Gundams. Where were you when the shipment was destroyed?"

Louch looked up, head slightly lowered and seething with rage. Burt just looked whipped and a little confused. Neither man spoke.

"I'll tell you what I think," Noin declared, stopping in front of her captives. "I think you ran away. I think the Gundams scared you so much that you ran from the battle! You left your comrades in the middle of a fight because you couldn't handle it!!"

"SHUT UP!" Louch yelled. Noin had struck a nerve.

"You were stuck in a dead-end reconnaissance job and you weren't happy with it, so you enlisted to get some real action and found out it was too much for you. That's why you took your frustrations out on the pilots, because they were up to the challenge, because they were stronger than you and that's why they were the last ones left standing on the battlefield! Then OZ canned you because you deserted, and you blame the Gundams instead of blaming yourself! You can't face up to the fact that you're a coward!!"

"I'M NOT A COWARD!! They cheated! They must have cheated, how else.....how else....." Louch sputtered, red-faced.

Noin looked down at him with contempt. "You sicken me. Those five pilots are just kids, and you brought them out here to die because of your own shame...just so you could win at something."

Sally looked at Noin sadly. Did she really believe they were dead?

"It might not be too late, you know...if there's any chance at all that they survived, you'd make it easier on yourself if you told us where they are." Noin waited for his decision.

Louch clammed up and stared at the wall. At this point he didn't care if he spent the rest of his life in prison, so long as he could keep his victory. He stretched his crooked lips into a tight, defiant sneer, refusing to speak.

The women looked at each other for ideas, but they could only shake their heads. It would take days to search the jungle blind, but it appeared they had no alternative.

"I know where they are," a timid voice said. They all looked up. It was Burt.

Louch glared at him fiercely. "Don't you say anything, you brainless meathead," he spat.

"Hey!" Noin shouted, kicking Louch in the leg. "Let him talk."

Sally handed the rifle to Noin and crouched in front of Burt, studying him. He was cute, in a teddy bear sort of way; it was a shame that he let himself be bossed around all the time. "Burt?"

Burt swallowed. "We got their jeep too."

"Burt, shut UP!!"

Before Noin could strike Louch again, Burt turned to look at him. "I'm sorry, Louch. I can take it when you yell at me for being dumb, I mean, I know I'm not that smart...and I can take it when you call me names and put me down all the time," he said solemnly, "but I don't like it when people lie to me, and you lied when you told me those guys were thieves and cheaters."

Louch stared. "You believe them over ME?"

Burt looked up at Sally, who smiled, then looked back at his former friend. "Uh-huh."

Louch had nothing more to say; he just gaped at the man, then glowered at him. Burt seemed to shrink and wither under the steely hard gaze.

Noin switched out of disciplinary mode and spoke softly. "Burt, I said Sally and I had powerful friends, and if we're trying to save those pilots, it must be true, right? They're powerful, and they're on our side." Burt nodded. "Who does Louch have?"

"Just me," Burt said.

"The only reason he's got you at all," Sally said, "is because he knows you won't stand up to him. We stick with our friends for better reasons than that, and we protect each other. If you help us, we'll do our best to protect you too, alright?"

Burt actually looked thoughtful. "You'll look after Louch too, won't you?"

Sally smiled, touched that after all the abuse he had received from his so-called friend, he still felt concern for him. "We'll take him someplace where he can get some help."

"And the authorities will know how you helpful you were," Noin added.

Burt looked at Sally with the first true glimmer of hope he'd felt since the war. "Promise?"

Sally traced a pattern on her blouse. "Cross my heart."

A short pause later, the bottom fell out of Louch's world. "I can show you where the cave is," Burt said. "It takes a couple hours to get there by car."

Noin sighed with relief. Progress at last. Louch was re-gagged for the journey, and as soon as the way was clear, the women marched their captives out of the hut under cover of darkness. Burt led them to the jeep, and they drove out to Noin's vehicle, where she picked up laser rifles, climbing gear and other assorted equipment. Sally emptied the trunk of her medical supplies and piled it into the back seat of the jeep, between Burt and Louch. The ropes had been left on their arms and wrists, as a precaution. Burt didn't mind; he called it an intelligent and proper thing to do.

It was nearly midnight when they sped down the dirt road. Noin drove while Sally worked the controls on the radio, trying to raise a signal on the pilot's emergency transceiver frequency.

Unnoticed by all but the natives, storm clouds began to gather.

**********

With no light to guide him, Wufei stubbed his toe on a sharp rock; he scowled at it, then kicked it over in frustration. The reconnaissance mission was not a sterling success. All of their halogen lamps had either broken down or dropped out due to a dead battery, but still they'd been put through more punishment than the manufacturer had intended. From that point on, the three topside pilots got lost several times, and it became painfully apparent that they had little hope of finding their way to the main road until morning.

As for food and water, the situation wasn't much better. There was no standing water anywhere, unless they counted rainwater and dew that had collected in only a few upturned flowers. Trowa found a clump of bushes that bore pale red berries, but none of the boys could properly identify the plant, which seemed to be an obscure species outside their encyclopedic knowledge. They left the questionnable berries behind and returned to the cave entrance.

With only a few fruit bars and less than a litre of water between the five of them, Trowa, Quatre and Wufei agreed amongst themselves to abstain as long as possible, to give Heero the best chance of survival.

They began their dark descent in silence. When they were too far down to hear it, thunder rolled in from the mountains; the pilots' prayer for water was about to be answered in the worst way.


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Now you know by now I'm not going to make it as simple as "Sally and Noin save the day," oh no...I just HAVE to make things difficult for people. =^_~= It's my singular talent. I hope you'll all be good and hungry for the next chapter, because it's gonna be mega. Pain, suffering, angst, heartbreak...all that good stuff. =*_*=