(A/N: Hi guys! Thanks for all the great reviews! Hopefully this chapter's as good as the last, though I tried to make it better – but wait until the next one! I promise, it'll be great! But until I get it up, enjoy this one! 'Kay?)
Missions two out of four having been successful, although painful, Duo sat in his room editing the pictures, nursing his black eye, and waiting for Wufei to calm down. By the time the Chinese pilot gave up on kicking down the door, Duo had long been done with the images (which, quite obviously, were too funny to handle) and was opening his thirty-second box of pocky. (That's thirty-two out of… somewhere around four hundred.)
Silently cursing himself, Duo shoved several pieces of pocky into his mouth. Should've gotten Wufei last… that way, nobody would've been woken up until Duo had everything he needed. Unless, of course, Heero kept a gun under his pillow… which would probably wake them all up anyways. Now he'd have to wait at least an hour for his final two victims to go back to sleep. And waiting was no fun…
Immediately bored (it was approximately four minutes into the hour he'd decided to wait), Duo began looking around his room for something to keep himself busy with. When he opened the door to his closet, he noticed a dusty pillowcase on the shelf. Pulling it down, Duo was overjoyed to find what was left of his year-old Halloween candy. Not everything was eatable anymore… but the one thing that caught his eye was perfectly fine. (At least, it was to a pocky-high God of Death.)
A mint-condition, unopened package of pixi stix.
His hands trembling with joy, Duo paused a moment before shredding the package and tearing the tops off several pixi stix and emptying them into his mouth.
He immediately began to cough, having inhaled the brightly colored powder. But no sooner had he recovered than every single pixi stick was emptied and discarded, their sugar-high-inducing goodness already beginning to take effect.
He glanced at his computer. He went over and sat down, opening a picture-editing program. Loading every picture he had of the others, he started playing around.
"Hm… If I take his hair, and his eyes…" He giggled. "…And those shoes… with this shirt…" He giggled again at the result, deleted it, and began again.
-=-
The digital clock beside the computer beeped, signaling to Duo that the hour was up. By now the room was littered with empty pocky boxes. Duo turned the alarm off, retrieved another camera, and got ready to set off.
Suddenly he stopped, his hand just inches from his doorknob. How was he supposed to get a degrading picture of this one? Trowa was easy enough, since he thrashed around so much – and drooled. Wufei was easy to get angry, and Heero would probably be the same. But Quatre…
As Duo sat in his swiveling chair, spinning around and toying with a lighter he'd found, an idea came to him. To test it out, he snatched up a stick of pocky and held the lighter beneath it. The chocolate melted slowly, eventually dripping onto the floor. As he stared at the spot of chocolate on the floor, Duo's smile grew. Suddenly he knew exactly what to do to Quatre.
Sneaking into Quatre's room was easier than Duo had expected. He apparently felt safe enough to leave his bedroom door unlocked, despite the screaming that had gone on only an hour earlier.
In slow motion (the author's trying to add some drama here), Duo pulled out a stick of pocky with one hand and his lighter with the other. He softened the chocolate slightly (not enough for it to drip) and then, leaning over carefully, began to draw.
When Quatre didn't wake up after the first few lines, Duo added a few squiggles, and then some pictures and finally a single letter: L.
Giggling to himself, Duo pulled out the camera and took several pictures. But he paused and frowned after the third. Quatre still hadn't woken up. He still had a pulse and was breathing, but he didn't seem aware that his face was a chocolaty mess. Kind of disappointed that, for once, he hadn't been caught in the act, Duo put away the camera and scribbled a note that he left beside the bed before he trudged back to his room.
He sat down in front of his computer, eating pocky (box #47) and sulking. Heero would definitely not be as easy to get a picture of as Quatre had been.
With a heavy sigh, Duo got up and decided he'd repeat what he'd done to the others if he had to.
Heero's door was locked. Duo sighed, pulled a hairpin out of his braid, and began picking the lock. There was a faint click, and he opened the door slowly and stuck his head in.
The moon shone directly in the window, so the room was quite bright compared to the others. Heero lay on his side, one arm clamping his pillow over his face. Duo was slightly surprised he could breathe, but he decided not to bother worrying about it and focused on his task.
Creeping over, Duo reached out for the pillow. He had the camera in his other hand, fully prepared to snap a picture and run for his life.
The pillowcase was grasped between his fingers and he was still alive. It was slipping out from under Heero's arm, and he was still alive...
Taking a deep breath, Duo pulled on the pillow and it came free, falling to the floor. Heero stirred and opened his eyes.
"Who...?" he mumbled sleepily, looking at Duo with his eyes half closed and unfocused. "Whozawha..." He reached out clumsily, trying to get a hold of Duo's face. The braided pilot backed away, more than a little wierded out.
"Heero...? Are you... asleep?"
Heero continued to mumble, stumbling out of bed and shuffling toward Duo, who slowly raised his camera.
The camera's flash brightened the room, showing a rather drunken-looking Heero, his hair messier than ever, stumbling toward Duo with his arms outstretched, an insane grin on his very sleepy face.
Heero blinked, and his eyes were suddenly fully open. He looked at Duo and at the camera in his hand. Realizing that his dream had been more real than he'd thought, he snarled and lunged forward.
"DUO!!!"
"...Painful," Duo whimpered, "very painful..."
He was beginning to wonder if his plan was really worth getting beat up. And he'd never really wanted to know why it was called an "uppercut" – well, now he knew, the cut on his forehead proof of his newfound knowledge.
"Heero has really hard knuckles," Duo muttered, examining his many cuts and bruises in the mirror. Glancing at his computer, he grinned. Those pictures he'd taken were pretty funny. And the picture he'd gotten of Heero reminded him of that video game "Fatal Frame". If Heero's head had been backwards and upside-down, he would've looked exactly like one of the ghosts from that game. At that thought, Duo sat back down and started playing around with the images.
Within five minutes, all of the pictures had been made to look like screenshots from "Fatal Frame", people's heads put on upside down and backwards, arms and legs stretched and spider-like, colors changed... "This is fun!" Duo said, giggling.
The he remembered. He had to make the preparations for what would happen next if the others did what he'd told them to do – and of course they would. They were all too proud to allow those pictures to be shown to the rest of the world.
This was too perfect...!!