PART NINE:
Disclaimers: Since this story is set about three hundred years after the Gundam characters existed, there isn't much here I don't own. Except maybe any characters I use in flashbacks or the actual names of the characters, which pop up a few times. Some OOC, but no yaoi.
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The inside of the Heavyarms Gundam was cramped and Via was forced to stand outside of the Gundam on a metal platform while Chance showed her what each button and lever was for and directed her on how to turn the mobile suit on and off. Via didn't appreciate the lesson; it all looked simple enough and she was almost positive that she would have been able to pilot the suit without any of Chance's instructions, but Chance insisted that she be shown.
"It's not as simple as it looks," he'd told her, smiling. "If you don't know what you're doing it can kill you."
So here she was, watching Chance pull and press every button he could without actually turning the suit on (insisting that it was dangerous for both of them if he started he Gundam when he had the cockpit door open), bored into a coma and irritability wishing that it was her turn. Looking at the control panel made her fingers twitch; most technological implements could do that. She frowned, easily letting herself ignore everything that Chance was telling her about the Gundams. She'd been pretending to listen for almost a full hour, taking note of nothing Chance had said except for the bit about how to turn the Gundam on and how to open the cockpit itself. So, instead of paying attention, Via tried to sort through what she'd learned that day.
The Gundams were still around, obviously, and, for the most part, fully operational. She could only imagine what people would say if they knew that everything they'd always been told about the legendary mobile suits' destruction was a lie. Probably not the same thing she'd done—decide to help this organization fix a broken war machine.
Why was she trying to help them, anyway? Via frowned. The very idea of fighting with mobile suits horrified her--knowing that two enemy organizations were using them for exactly that was, to her, unthinkable. So why help them? Besides her ancestry, of course. Sure, Deathscythe was technically hers, according the rules of this organization, and everyone here had some sort of connection with the original Gundam pilots (even the workmen who ran around the place doing odd jobs, she'd discovered), so that for the first time in her memory she actually fit in somewhere, even with the Maxwell look, but…
That was why she wasn't too worried about getting out of this place, she knew. She liked the stars, of course, and she liked this place a lot better than she liked her home on the colony. Here she was among her own, the people who knew what it was like to be remembered because of their parentage alone, not with a lousy school and an uncle who liked to swing his fists a bit too often. She still had the painful bruises and cut lip to remind her what it was like back home, with her uncle. She knew that Billy and Siri would be wondering where she had gone and when she'd be back, and she did already miss her two best friends, but this...
She would trade all of that, even her popularity and somewhat good grades, just in order to be in this place forever. Being with the ancient Gundam mobile suits felt right to her. Eating Shatajit's highly esteemed frozen food felt right. Chance and Khans and even Natasha… It all felt right. As if she belonged here. For the first time in her life, Via felt like she was a part of something more important than even a basketball team. She was with other people who knew what it was like to be important only because of who they'd had as parents. And that, she knew, was what kept her from yelling and throwing a tantrum and refusing to cooperate.
Well, that and the fact that Chance was ordered to shoot her if she didn't agree to go along with their plans. And he had seemed like such a nice guy, too… She sighed, making Chance look up at her and smile kindly.
"It's boring to listen to, isn't it?"
"A little," Via said, shrugging her shoulders.
He laughed. "I thought so too, when I first learned this stuff. And I was only four—imagine how hard that was for me!" He smiled again. "Trust me though, it helps to know all the most boring details, even if all you're going to be doing is trying to see what's wrong with Deathscythe."
"Whatever," she said with a shrug and a smile to let him know she was kidding around with him. He grinned, moving out of the cockpit to join her on the platform.
"How would you like to try it?"
Via's violet eyes lit up. "I get to play with the Gundam?"
"It's just Heavyarms--don't get too excited. If you turn on it'll move more than a foot, unlike Deathscythe, but the right arm weighs a couple tons, which you have to support by yourself, so even if you managed to get it in the air you wouldn't go very far without the support your arm needs to pilot." He grinned. "Natasha and Khans won't be able to yell at me too much if they catch you. It's not as if you could go anywhere without an arm brace--even Khans needs one of those if he's going to pilot this suit. And this way you can be inside a suit that works so you know what's wrong with Deathscythe—you can compare the two. There aren't many aesthetic differences between any of the Gundams."
"I thought I was just supposed to analyze Duo's disks for you."
Chance eyed her. "Wouldn't you rather work on it yourself? Deathscythe Hell is technically yours, after all."
"Plus you don't think I'll be able to do anything and plan on giving your technicians a break, right?" She laughed at the look on his face. "I know better than to assume you're just going to give me a ticket out of here, especially since I bet you know just how much I hate the idea of keeping all of this from the public. You know about the report I'm supposed to be doing on Duo's journals—I think Aristo might consider giving me an A if I unveiled one of the myths covering the history books. It's a lot more likely that you want to get this itch out of my system before you send me back to the colony with a reprimand and a slap on the wrist if I tell anybody about what I saw while I was here. That way you can have access to my disks and still get rid of me when you're done using me." Via grinned. "What do you think Aristo will do when I present my report to the class? The legendary Gundams are still in existence…" She laughed. "That sounds like a newspaper headline."
Chance hesitated. "Via, about Mr. Aristo…"
"What about him?"
"He's..."
"Anal? I know."
Via expected him to laugh at that, but the serious look on his face never flickered with any amusement at all. "No. Via, Mr. Aristo isn't quite the--"
A voice from down below made him stop. "Subduar! Are you up there?"
Chance peered over the edge. "Amber? What are you doing in the hangar?"
Via frowned, looking over at the girl Chance was talking to. She was tall and thin with shoulder-length reddish-brown hair that she wore in two short braided pigtails and wore a pair of black flight pants and a blue peasant blouse, an outfit Via would have loved to own herself, and she didn't look at all pleased with Chance. Via guessed that she was about the same age as she, around seventeen.
"I was looking for you! Khans wants to see the Maxwell girl soon so she can check out those disks--is there any way you can stop playing her babysitter for twenty minutes so that can get done?"
"Yeah. Tell him that we'll be along in a little while." Chance pressed a button on the platform and it started to go down. Via hung onto one of the railings--she wasn't too comfortable with the thing moving yet. It was fine standing still, but the idea of going up and down on one of them made her cringe. Amber had left by the time they reached the floor, where Via hopped off gratefully.
"What's the deal with Amber?"
Chance shrugged. "She's one of Khans' old love interests. Once she found out about the company he invited her to stay and she's been here ever since. I guess you could call her a kind of gofer, always going for different things and sending messages around and stuff. She's not good for much else and you won't see her around very much. She tries her best to keep out of the way and she's usually not allowed in the hangar at all."
Via frowned. "She didn't look very old."
"She's not. Eighteen, max, but the colony she's from encourages early marriages and such. She told her friends and folks that she and Khans were getting married and then ran away from home to come here. They think that she and Khans are living a happy life together on some remote colony or another." Chance grinned. "The truth is that their relationship was already over before she even decided to join the company; Khans decided it would be best to keep her here anyway, since she already knew about the Gundams and everything."
"Oh." Via frowned. "Is that what they're going to try to do with me?" she asked, following him out of the hangar. "Keep me here to make sure I don't tell?" Not quite to her surprise, the idea didn't horrify her as much as it should have.
Chance frowned, stopping to face her. "Via, your situation is a little bit different. You're not just someone's temporary lover; you're one of the actual descendants. I think it would be best if you stayed, sure, but not everyone is going to agree with that." He touched the bruises on her face. "Your uncle did that after Khans and I left, didn't he?"
Via squirmed out of range of his fingers. "It's not important," she said, feigning a grin. "Come on, Khans is going to be wondering where I am. Let's go."
He sighed, stepping away. "Fine. We'll go."
When she later asked herself how it happened, she was never able to answer her own question. All of a sudden she felt the space station shake too and fro as if they'd been caught in an earthquake and wasn't able to keep her balance, finally falling into Chance, who had stumbled up against the wall when the tremors started. He was struggling to get back to his feet and let out a quiet "oomph" when Via fell against him, forcing him back to the wall. His hands grasped her around the upper part of her arms, holding her there so she didn't fall or hurt herself, and Via bit back a scream. Chance didn't look worried, just annoyed, and Via tried to tell herself that it obviously wasn't a situation that she should panic over. Not yet, anyway.
After a long moment of this, the shaking finally stopped. Chance stood up straight, looking down at her with concern. "Are you all right?"
"Just a bit shaken," she said with a nervous grin. "Get it? Shaken?"
Chance didn't laugh. "But you're all right?"
"Fine. I'm fine," she reassured him. "What was that?"
"Have you ever been on an airplane when it hit a patch of turbulence?"
"I don't think I've never even been on an airplane before."
"Oh." Chance frowned. "Then I guess I can't use that analogy. Look, this is an old ship. We've had it since the original pilots died and it doesn't stand up to space bumps so well anymore, so every so often we'll hit a patch of turbulence and that will happen. This one was actually better than some of the one's we've hit lately."
"Is there any way to make it stop?"
Chance shrugged. "It's been doing this for as long as I can remember; I guess I'm used to it. If we wanted to make it stop we'd have to either make major reparations to the ship--meaning we'd be totally defenseless--or find someone on a colony or on Earth to build a new one with no questions asked. Either way we're vulnerable to attack, really, so we haven't done anything about it yet. Khans is pushing to land the shuttle on some remote colony so we can fix it up a bit, but I don't think many people want to do that quite yet."
"They'd rather wait until they think they're out of danger?" Via scoffed. "Give me a break."
"It's reasonable," Chance insisted. "There's lately been a lot of attacks from the descendants of the old OZ organization who have it in for us. More than usual over the past few months and it's got a lot of people worried."
"Like you?"
He smiled. "Exactly. People like me."
Via nodded thoughtfully, then decided it was time to tell him what she'd been dying to say for the last minute or so. "Hey, Chance?"
"Yeah?"
"Um… I…" Via shook her head. Forget that. Whatever she'd been planning to say could wait just a little while longer. "Would you mind letting me go now?"
Chance blinked, confused momentarily, before he looked down and saw that he was still holding Via by her arms, where he had grabbed her to keep her from stumbling down the hall and getting hurt. He laughed, letting his hands drop to his sides. "Sorry. I guess I kind of forgot."
"No problem." She mustered up a grin. "What were we doing before that happened?"
"Uh…" Chance laughed. "You know, it slipped my mind. What do you say we go back and play with the Gundams a little longer?"
She shrugged. "Cool with me," she said, following him back to the hangar. Neither one of them had forgotten that Khans was waiting, she knew, or where they were supposed to be going, but she didn't see the point in ruining a good thing while it lasted. Obviously Chance didn't either. She smiled to herself. Another reason why she wasn't too worried about being kidnapped and imprisoned in a space shuttle—Chance was here, in space, not back at home.
One might have called it teenage foolishness, which it perhaps was, but Via wasn't quite willing to leave Chance Grien behind so she could go on living life on the colony she'd finally been able to leave. The Gundams and the other descendants--especially Shatajit (who she cared for immensely, like the father she couldn't remember) and Khans (for whom she still supported a childish crush)—were a great side bonus, but it was her feelings for Chance, whatever they were, that were keeping her here. All her other excuses were just that… Excuses. Chance was the reason she wasn't pitching a fit and she knew it.
When he smiled at her, leading her back towards Heavyarms, she couldn't help but think that he knew it too. Wondering faintly if this was a bad thing, Via joined him on the platform, bracing herself for the upward motion which would make her wish she was back on the ground again. Chance laughed, punching in the code.
The inside of Heavyarms, once she was sitting inside of it, all of a sudden seemed expansive. The tiny cockpit had every button and lever imaginable within reach of her seat and it controlled a machine with enough power to destroy an entire colony in one or two blows. Sitting inside of it, she suddenly felt very tiny indeed. Chance stood on the platform outside, watching her.
"Amazing, isn't it?" he asked. "But that's nothing to the feeling you get when you step inside your own Gundam for the first time. The very first time I stepped inside the cockpit of Wing, I felt like I was about to sprout wings and fly Heavenwards all on my own. It's a surge of familiarity and connection that runs through you, I guess."
"Maybe." Via touched the panels in front of her with careful fingers so she didn't accidentally turn the Gundam on. "I really don't know what to think. This machinery and technology is ancient, but the suit itself seems so… unbelievable, I guess. Like you've got so much of an astounding, infinite power in your hands that otherwise would just be… sitting here."
He smiled. "The Gundams are a kind of magic all by themselves, aren't they? They hold so much history in and around them and people still find them just as beautiful as they once were."
Via paused. "Beautiful? It's a weapon of war, Chance. It's no more beautiful than a gun or a tank. Captivating, yes. Probably horrifying, and fascinating in a morbid kind of way. But they aren't beautiful." She leaned back in the seat, crossing her arms so she wasn't touching any of the controls. "They may look pretty, sure, but they're ugly things inside. Ugly, terrible, horrible things."
Chance frowned. "I'm sorry you feel that way." He touched the side of the cockpit's open hatch. "I think they're beautiful, in their own way. A thing doesn't have to be perfect in order to be wonderful, you know." He considered her with his blue-eyed gaze. "I think that of all people, you should realize that, Via Maxwell."
"What do you mean?"
"You're a Maxwell. You tell me." Chance shook his head. "Never mind. Pretend I didn't say anything. You want to turn Heavyarms on now?"
"I thought it was too dangerous to do that while the door is open."
"It is." He stepped inside with her, squeezing in behind her chair and squatting down. "Which is why I'm coming in with you. It's cramped, but this way I can watch you while you play around with it."
Via shrugged. "Okay. How do I shut the door?"
"The little lever by your right foot. Just press it down and it will shut automatically." He smiled. "Remember what I told you about turning it on?"
"Besides 'don't do it'?" Via frowned at the controls. "It's the little red thing, right?" She looked around. "Wherever it went."
"Here." Chance pointed. "Pull that down and press the small pedal to the left of the door. There are three over there, so press the smallest one, closest to you."
"This one?"
"Right. Then reach up and behind you and press this button here, above my head. That'll turn on the Gundam's power source."
"Why don't you push it, if it's right above you?"
"Because you're the pilot this time, not me. You've got to do this all yourself."
"Well, that's no fun."
Chance sighed. "Just do it, Via."
"Aye aye, Captain." She searched for the button in question with questing fingers, accidentally bopping Chance on the head once or twice in the process, and finally managed to get the Gundam's power source turned on. The machine roared to life all around her, lights flashing and beeping and whirring coming from every inch of the cockpit. The cold, dead metal began to heat up and Via shifted to keep her bare skin away, not sure how warm it would get. Chance laughed.
"Good! Now try to work the arms."
"How?"
"Like this." Chance reached around the chair and took his hands and hers, setting them down on the controls and covering them gently. Via frowned, realizing just how callused his hands were. He was obviously accustomed to working with the machines and to doing hard labor--how had she not noticed this before? His hands curved over the controls of the Gundam as though he had been born to work the complicated mechanics of the suit. It put Chance into a new perspective for her: just how long had he been doing things like this anyway? Three years? Five? More? He could only be eighteen or so, a little older than she, and already he had fought in battles that she'd only heard about in Mr. Aristo's boring history classes. He had enemies, and that startled her. What kind of teenager had enemies who could--and would--actually kill them if they could?
A teenager like Chance, Via surmised, still frowning. It was when she felt Chance squeeze her shoulder in an attempt to get her attention that she finally stopped musing about it. Looking at him, she mustered a smile.
"Sorry, what were you saying?"
Chance grinned. "That we could move the arms up and down a little now, but that the right arm is very heavy because of the guns, so I don't recommend trying to move it into an attack position or anything quite yet."
"Oh." Via nodded, staring at the controls. "Right. So what do I do now?"
Chance replaced his hands, setting them over hers again. "Well," he said, "you could do this…" With those words, he pushed the lever Via's left hand rested on and the suit trembled slightly around them as the left arm moved up, coming into view and still upwards. Via laughed.
"What did we just do?"
"Raised the arm up. If you pull the lever all the way back down, you'll move it down. Simple."
"How do I move it from side to side?"
Chance pointed to a red circle just within a hand span of the up and down lever. "This little switch here. If you want to move it side to side while the arm is going up or down, you have to reach over and hook this with your thumb and pull it up while you pull the lever up or down. Otherwise you can just move it around by itself. The way you move your thumb side to side as you do it will determine which way the arm goes--left or right. It's easy."
Via grinned. "So the arm is already up, right?"
"Right."
"Great." Via started to move the red ring back and forth at a slow speed, getting used to the resistance it put up, then gradually increased it. She laughed. "Look, I'm making Heavyarms wave at everybody! Hello down there!"
Chance laughed. "Well, it's a start," he told her, grinning widely. "What else do you want to do with this thing?"
"Can I try moving the right arm?"
His laughter died down as he frowned. "That might not be such a good idea. It's a little bit more complicated--you've got to be careful when you play with it so you don't accidentally open fire. Plus you might hurt yourself if you push too hard."
"Get real," Via scoffed. "What could happen? I'm not going to break it or anything. What harm could it do?"
He sighed. "If you want to try it, go ahead, but I'm warning you that it's not going to be as easy as you seem to think it will be."
"Great! Thanks, Subduar!"
Chance cringed. "Please don't call me that."
Via grinned. "Sorry. I just wanted to push your buttons a little bit." She set her hand on the lever that operated the right arm. "Let's see what I can do with this thing."
"Don't push it."
"All right, all right…" Via started to push on the lever, then frowned when it didn't move much. "Why isn't it moving any further?"
Chance looked over her shoulder. "You're not pushing it hard enough. Look." He reached around and pushed on it, moving it about halfway. Via could see that even that was a strain—the muscles on his arm were bulging and straining with the effort.
"Oh." Via pushed on the lever again, trying to move it further. Pushing against it with both hands, Via found that she could only move it the slightest bit--not nearly enough for it to be useful. "Why can't I do it? There's some sort of trick, right?"
Chance shook his head. "No. It's just heavy. Hence the name--Heavyarms."
"Right." Via sighed. "I guess that makes sense. So what happens if--"
"Subduar! Get your sorry butt out here before I drag it out!"
Chance cringed. "I think Natasha found us…" He reached around and opened the cockpit door and the two of them looked up to see a very angry Natasha standing on the platform a scant foot away from them. Chance mustered a sheepish grin. "Hey."
Natasha narrowed her eyes when she saw Via in the cockpit's main seat. "What do you two think you're doing?"
Via mustered a grin that she hoped looked innocent and charming. "Chance thought that I'd be able to work with Deathscythe better if I knew my way around the Gundams, so he offered to show me a little bit of how to work Heavyarms."
Natasha frowned at Chance. "Why didn't you take her into Wing, then?"
"Khans changed the access code for it. Again. Besides, I figured you didn't want her to fly away while we still needed her here."
The blond still was not alleviated. "Don't tell me you forgot that Khans needed to see you about the disks, Subduar."
"Uh…"
Via jumped in. "Sorry, it must have slipped our minds."
Natasha snorted. "I'm sure it did." She frowned. "Miss Maxwell, you need to come with me. Subduar, you've got work to do today."
Chance looked affronted. "Like what?"
"You've got to fix the left panel on Wing."
"Shatajit said he'd take care of that for me."
"Then you've got to do dish duty in the kitchens."
"I switched weeks with Jacov yesterday, remember?"
"File transfers."
"I'm good until next month," Chance reminded her, grinning. "Face it, Natasha, you can't get rid of me today. You and Khans have to let me into the taboo room for this meeting and let me in on what's going on or you know what's going to happen."
She shrugged. "Whatever. At least hurry up."
As they piled onto the platform, Via pulled on Chance's sleeve. "What was that about?"
He shrugged. "Natasha and Khans are the leaders of our group because they're pilots, so they're in charge of strategies and stuff, which means that I should be in charge, too. The problem is that they think I'm still ten years old and don't want to include me in anything but they can't just bluntly tell me that they don't want me to hang with them in the taboo room where they hold all their important meetings. So they try to pile a bunch of work on me instead so they can get rid of me."
"Oh." Via grinned. "I've got an idea of how that feels."
He smiled as the platform stopped and they stepped off onto the floor, following Natasha out to the hallway. "Yeah, I guess you would."
The room Chance referred to as the taboo room was a dim gray color. There were no windows, much to Via's disappointment, just a nondescript door and a white cloth covering one wall. Facing that wall was a large table with chairs surrounding it. Only one was occupied, though—by Khans, who was scowling at an old disk player and irritably toying with the buttons that made it work. He looked up as Natasha entered with Via and Chance and frowned.
"It took you long enough," he grumbled in his broken English, frown lightening very slightly. "Via, try to fix this contraption; it won't work for me. Subduar, you have other things to do."
"No, I don't."
Khans furrowed his brow. "Then just leave."
Via frowned, not quite oblivious to the tension that was in the room. "I won't help you if you make him leave, Khans. And you can't do this by yourself, can you, or else you wouldn't have kidnapped me, right?"
Khans rolled his eyes. "What is it about this boy?" he mumbled, throwing up his hands to display his mocking defeat. He started to talk to Chance in Airant in what struck Via as a condescending tone but Natasha's scowl made him stop. Via looked from one to the other, following this exchange vaguely, and wondered what was going on in this place. Who was the one in charge of all of this anyway? Natasha? Khans? Neither one? Were they in a kind of power struggle or did they have joint leadership? Was there someone else who they reported to? It was all so confusing!
The group of them took their seats, Via near Khans so she could fiddle with the disk player and Chance beside her. Natasha sat at the other side of the narrow table, glaring at Chance, Khans, and Via.
"We thought you might know where Duo left the directions to repair the Gundams, especially the plans for Deathscythe Hell." Natasha gesticulated towards the disk player. "We know they're on there somewhere, or at least there's something telling us where to find them, but none of us could find such a thing anywhere."
"Is Deathscythe really so different from all the other Gundams?" she asked while she carefully repaired the disk player's frequency. "I mean, you've seen one Gundam you've seen them all, right?"
Khans shrugged. "Deathscythe doesn't appear to be any different from the others, but nothing we've done has made it work in the correct way."
"I'm almost afraid to ask how it does work," she sighed. "And why are you even bothering to fix it? Chance already told me that only descendents pilot the Gundams--and only their own Gundams--except in the most extreme cases, which is why you keep Heavyarms in such good shape. So why bother with Deathscythe at all? Isn't one back-up Gundam enough?"
"We do it because we can."
"No, I'm serious. Why bother?"
"It doesn't matter, Via," Khans said with a growl. "Just find us that information!"
Via glared at him. "Yeah, yeah… Did you already try disk number 74282B?"
Chance looked surprised. "Isn't that the number on the wall in the hangar?"
"Ahuh. The wall thing is written in his handwriting; I think that it's a hint of some sort."
"That's the first one we tried," Natasha said. "Do you think we're stupid? We tried it but all that's on it is a summary of Duo's breaking into an OZ base for the second time and coming out extremely successful. That's all."
Via frowned vaguely. "That's not what's on the disk at all, though."
"Yes, Miss Maxwell, that's what is on the disk," Natasha insisted coldly. "We tried it twice."
"74282B doesn't have anything remotely like that on it," she said again. "Trust me on that."
"Yes, that is what's on--" Natasha was stopped by a wave of Khans' hand.
"Do as she says. Trust her on this one. She knows these disks very, very well."
Natasha opened her mouth to speak again but shut it quickly, scowling as she pulled a familiar box out from under her seat and thrust it at Via. It was her collection of Duo's disks! "Very well then. Find me the disk."
"I don't feel like it right now," Via said as she leaned back in her seat and crossed her arms behind her head. "Ask me again later."
"No. Subduar?"
Chance's gaze came up from where it had been studying the old box. "Yeah?"
"If she doesn't cooperate, shoot her."
There was a very brief two-second pause. "Yes'm."
Natasha turned a smug look on Via. "Now will you please find the disk in question?"
Via glared at Natasha and Khans as she pulled a disk out of the box and brandished it quickly. "Here. It's disk 74282B, the one labeled 'ceilings and socks', just like I said. You all just had the player programmed so it only played one of the messages on the disk."
"That's the disk you showed the boy and I," Khans said, looking faintly interested. "What do you mean there's two messages?"
"Almost every disk has two messages taped on them but you've got to change the wave formatting of the disk player in order to see them," Via said, fiddling with the disk player carefully so it would play Duo's more intricate and secret messages. She already knew the entire disk by heart, hidden bits and all, but here she was showing what she knew was meant to be hidden to these people, who wanted to use the information to kill who knew how many! At least Chance didn't seem too happy with all this, but Khans and Natasha were still acting rather fierce.
Natasha looked impatient. "Hurry it up. For one of Duo's brood you sure are stubborn."
Via ignored that, clenching her jaw tightly. Why was she helping them? Peace, that's what she wanted--why was she going to help these people commit murder? She sighed, throwing a side-ling glance at Chance and knew that she was doing this because anything Chance was doing couldn't be all that bad… She forwarded the disk to the appropriate spot and, with one final adjustment, she stood up, glowering, and the glowing image of Duo's room filled the white cloth that had covered one entire wall. Via looked up to watch and mouth the words silently.
Duo cleared his throat as Wufei stalked into the room, furrowing his brow. "Maxwell, what in the name of Nataku's justice did you do with my socks?"
"Nothing, Wufei," Duo chanted in singsong, trying not to look over at the pile of white socks on his roof. "Maybe you should go ask Heero or something. I think it was his turn to do laundry duty." Duo jumped off his bed and started to push Wufei out of the room. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to spill my guts and tell the world where we're hiding our Gundams and stuff."
Wufei's eyes widened. "Maxwell, you can't do--"
Duo pushed Wufei out of the door, locking it. "Bye, Fei-kins!" he called before turning back to the disks, wiping his brow. "That took some effort," he mumbled, reaching for a book on his bedside table. "And now that I've managed to freak out Fei-kins, I'm going to do some reading." He cleared his throat. "This is an awesome poem and if it gets lost in the sea of time I'll be really pissed, so I figure I'll save the beginning of it digitally for future generations of Maxwell's to check out." He winked. "If you can find the end, you'll be a better scavenger than Heero is--he couldn't figure out what I did with it. Which is too bad, because I hid the plans and stuff for the Gundams with that half of the poem. For safekeeping, you know how it is."
Natasha leaned forward to see the screen better. Via smirked, anticipating the reaction she'd be able to witness from the blond, but wondered if they'd be able to figure out where Duo had hid the other end of the poem--because if they could find the end, they'd find everything they needed to fix Deathscythe. It had taken her years to figure out what Duo had done with the other half of the poem--would they figure it out, knowing more about Duo's real history than she did?
"Here goes…" Duo cleared his throat. "Look at me. In the eyes. Tell me the truth--no more lies. No more sorrows. No more pain. Look at me. I am nothing. I am a shadow. I am a dead thing that walks this earth…" He coughed again. "And that's the beginning of the poem. If you can find the rest of it, great! If not… Well, sucks to be you." He waved his hand to say goodbye. "See you."
The disk finished and the screen went blank, leaving Natasha and Khans to stare and gape, no more enlightened than they had been before. Chance hid a smirk, seeing the triumphant look that flickered across Via's face. After a long moment, Natasha scowled.
"But none of that helped us!"
"It didn't help you," Via said with a shrug. "It did help me, though. A little." She stood and stretched, yawning widely. "Is it time for dinner yet? I'm starved!"
Chance grinned. "Shatajit will be happy to hear that. It's been almost three hours since you last ate, after all, and I could do with something to snack on myself before we get to toying with Deathscythe. Come on, let's go to the kitchen." He stood up and the two of them exchanged smiles, heading for the door and ignoring the protests and enraged comments that came from Khans and Natasha.
--to be continued--