The Urchin: Part Twelve

By Banshi

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Duo knew that he was overreacting. He knew it, but he couldn't help it. The thought that someone may have been poking around where they didn't belong, that they had gotten to his records, was making him boil over.

There was only one copy of his personal files, mostly medical history and things that could contribute to medical problems in the future. Especially mental medical problems. And he knew G was aware of the consequences of sharing all that information with anybody without a damned good reason.

And never without asking Duo first.

Duo took a deep breath and tried to calm himself down. He couldn't blow the old man's lab to Kingdom Come without getting all the facts. It may have been a break in...Duo's records were all hard- copy. It may have been a snooping assistant, in which case the explosives would go to another location. There were lots of possibilities.

Telling himself this, Duo stalked to his motorcycle and drove out to G's local base of operations. Even if the psycho himself wasn't there, they would know how to reach him.

Speeding away, Duo imagined all the lovely things he was going to do to the bad guys when he caught them. And few that he'd do to his dear, banged friend for keeping this tidbit of information from him.

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Trowa walked in to find Heero at the kitchen table ... again.

"Is it good news this time?" He was hoping it was. He and Duo were supposed to go to dinner with one of the local gangs. Duo had talked them into actually sitting at the tables in a fast food place, and eating on-premises. It had taken a week.

"I told Duo." Heero's voice was it's usual monotone, but it sounded unusually subdued.

"About the guy at the gala?" Heero nodded. "Did he threaten us with the wrath of Shinigami?" Trowa felt the urge to tap his foot while he waited for Heero to finish thinking about it. It was a ludicrous impulse anyway.

"Not exactly. He's mad at us...really mad at you." With that Heero stood up and prepared to leave. Trowa felt his blood run cold at the though of Duo really mad at him.

"Where did he go?"

Heero shrugged. "Probably to see ifhe could find anything. He knows we couldn't." Heero walked out of the door before Trowa could ask another question.

"Coward." Trowa hissed under his breath. Heero wasn't really, but he had just acted like one. Trowa didn't want to be the only one here when the light of his life came back. Duo was scary.

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Duo decided to circumvent all the nasty security precautions that went with walking through the front door, and just broke into G's lab.

It was deserted, which in and of itself had his instinctual alarms ringing. This was not good. G would have told him of he was relocating the important stuff. Like Duo's files. And G wouldn't have just mailed them, he knew how much tampering happened to official-looking documents in the postal system. Bored spies were a bad thing.

Duo wandered around the warehouse, noting which pieces of equipment were missing and which were still here. Funny, the ones that were still here were the ones that G liked the most, but not the ones he used the most often.

Taking one more look around, and feeling the anger bubbling within him again, Duo found a side-console and set up the back-up security system. Nobody was touching anything until he figured out what was going on.

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Trowa was going through the latest set of files they had "acquired" when Duo slammed into the house.

"This is so screwy and I want to know what's going on!" He stormed into the kitchen and stopped directly opposite Trowa. The look in the other man's eyes made Trowa very glad that the kitchen table was between them.

"What happened?" He kept his voice calm and even, hoping that it would encourage Duo to calm down...before any furniture was broken.

"G's lab had been abandoned, but not by choice. 'Cause if he had been in charge of their leaving, he would have taken the stuff with him! And now I don't know where he is, who has him, what they want with him, and how the HELL did that guy get a look at my files!"

Duo had to stop to take a breath, and Trowa used the pause to try and figure out what Duo was talking about. The only part he was sure of was the last, and it obviously was what Duo was really worried about. They all knew that the old guys could take care of themselves.

Trowa closed down the program he was using and pulled up what he had gotten about the guy at the gala. Without a word, he turned his laptop so that Duo could see the screen and pushed the whole thing across the table to his friend.

"Maybe you will see something we didn't." He stood to leave as Duo sank into a chair and looked over the information.

He would see where this lead them.

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Martin Gibraltar. Son of Steven and Heather Gibraltar. Has much money and nothing to do.

This was the guy who thought he could get away with talking dirty behind Shinigami's back? This was the guy who got his files away from G? It was unbelievable.

"Now I know why the guys didn't think to tell me. This is nuts." Duo whispered to himself as he went over they guy's info again. He knew he wouldn't have believed them if Trowa and Heero had told him that this guy was a threat. And what did that say about him?

Duo shifted uncomfortably before closing the files. He needed to go find Trowa. It was time to take the kids to dinner.

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continued in part thirteen