::A large pile of textbooks, papers, pencils, pens, and the like is seen.
Suddenly, the pile quivers. Then it shifts as a hand gropes its way up.
Finally, a battered looking girl emerges from the pile::
Rapunzel: I live! I live! HAHAHA!
::A noise comes from above her and she looks up.::
Rapunzel: Uh oh.
::A rain of textbooks comes showering down on her, burying her again. After a moment, the pile shifts and she emerges again, with less enthusiasm this time.::
Rapunzel: Remind me. Why did I think taking more classes this quarter was a good idea?
Part 7
After the incident that sent Quatre's laptop to an early grave in the trash pile, life seemed to settle down for the Gundam pilots. Heero was not at all pleased that the entire household had to be allowed to use his laptop, but since he had no better alternative, he suffered in silence for the most part, grumbling about it only occasionally.
Heero may have hated the arrangement, but Duo found it rather useful. It gave him an opportunity to delete any messages that contained the word "apoptosis" in them. He didn't try to hide the fact that he was eliminating these messages from Heero; on the contrary, he usually made a point of getting rid of them while Wing's pilot was watching him. Heero never commented, only grunted, and went on about his business, but Duo got the feeling that Heero was rather relieved not to have to deal with the problem himself. Neither one of them knew what to do about the situation besides ignoring it. It seemed to work, for after about a week of his messages being ignored, the emails grew fewer in number, and then stopped altogether.
Even though he was no longer being constantly confronted with orders to remove himself from the world of the living, Heero still seemed jumpy to Duo. As they sat side by side together in Duo's room (for Heero would not drop his guard until they were alone either in his or Duo's room, preferably with the door locked), Duo said, "J can't actually _force_ you to obey him, can he? I mean, if you ignore the mission orders, what's the worst he can do?"
"I don't know," Heero admitted. "I've never disobeyed before."
That brought Duo up short. "_Never_?! After all this time?! I mean, how long have you been with him anyway?"
Heero sighed. "A long time."
"And you've _never_ disobeyed orders before, or failed to carry them out completely? Even just a little bit? Jeez, I make deliberate mistakes all the time!"
"Deliberate mistakes? How can you make a deliberate mistake? What did you do?"
"Oh, I only blew up the ammunition supplies instead of the whole base once. And I'm always sending in my mission reports later than G asks for them. He doesn't seem to remember that I have to have enough time to get someplace with a secure line before I can send them, especially after infiltration missions. I'll bet it drives him nuts, but he never really gets on my case about it."
"Late mission reports are different. At least you complete your missions," Heero pointed out.
"Are you saying that you want to complete Operation Apoptosis?" Duo asked incredulously.
"No," Heero said.
"Good," Duo said. "Then stop worrying about it all the time."
"I'm not worrying," Heero answered, sounding almost childish.
Duo snorted. "Sure you're not," he muttered sarcastically, but decided to leave it at that.
~*~*~
Beep! Beep!
"I thought I said I didn't want to hear another beep out of you!" Duo growled, stalking towards the offender: Heero's laptop.
"Duo," Wufei pointed out mildly from across the room, "you do realize that you're talking to an inanimate object, don't you?"
"Yeah. So?"
Wufei rolled his eyes skyward. "Nothing. I guess I should know better than to try reasoning with you."
"Darn right," Duo muttered, only half paying attention. His attention focused on the laptop and the new message it displayed. "I swear," he muttered under his breath. "If this is one more 'Operation Apoptosis'... I thought we were finally over those things."
"Operation what?" Wufei asked, having caught some of Duo's mutterings.
"Nothing."
Wufei shrugged and went back to his reading while Duo opened the message, fingers poised to delete it. He paused, read through the message, then read through it again as if he couldn't believe it the first time.
"What is it?" Wufei asked.
"I don't believe it. It's a real, honest to goodness mission."
"And about time to," Wufei muttered. "Who's it for?"
"Heero of course." Duo frowned. "But he shouldn't be off on a mission yet. He's still recovering."
"He looks alright to me," Wufei said.
"That's because you don't look closely enough. He still walks with a slight limp, and his upper body strength isn't what it used to be either."
Wufei paused briefly to wonder why Duo had taken the time to notice such details, especially since Heero was trying to give everyone the impression that he was fine, but he decided not to ask.
Duo was in motion, typing a reply to the message. Curious, Wufei peered at him. "What are doing? You're not refusing to let Heero take the mission, are you?"
"I'm taking it for him," Duo said without looking up. "Someone's gotta do it, after all. Better me than him."
"Shouldn't you clear that with Heero first?"
"Nah, it'll be fine. It's just hitting some base at Terfield, pretty close by. Anyway, Heero's asleep, and I don't want to bug him." He closed up the laptop. "I should be back sometime tomorrow. Tell the others for me, 'kay?"
"Sure," Wufei said.
"Thanks, Wu-man, you're the best."
"Maxwell, for the hundredth time, my name is not Wu-man!"
But Duo was already out the door and didn't hear him. A few minutes later, the rumbling from the hanger told Wufei that he was gone.
"Well, it'll be awfully quiet around here," Wufei muttered to himself as he went back to his book.
~*~*~
Duo's departure seemed a little abrupt to Wufei, but then most of Duo's actions seemed abrupt to him. So he didn't kick up a fuss and didn't expect anyone else to. However, some time after Heero woke up, the lack of Duo's presence finally registered on the Japanese pilot. After not being visited by the boisterous pilot, he began to grow restless and wandered aimlessly through the house, eyes constantly seeking a long braid and a bright smile. His fruitless search eventually led him to the living room, where he found Wufei still sitting on the couch and the laptop still open on the table. It was the sight of the laptop that sent the first stab of uneasiness through him.
"Where's Duo?"
"Mission," Wufei said shortly.
"Mission?" Heero repeated. "When?"
"This afternoon. You were asleep when he left."
"Who sent the orders?"
"J, I believe. You can check if you're really so interested." Wufei flicked a hand at the laptop, indicating that the answers could be found there.
Pulling over a chair, Heero sat down in front of the laptop and started typing. A few minutes of digging on his part unearthed the message Duo had received. Reading over the parameters, Heero frowned. "It's off," he muttered.
Fingers flying over the keyboard, Heero typed up a message to Professor G, asking him to confirm the orders being carried out by his pilot. Then, pushing back his chair, he got up and stalked across to the end of the room. Upon finding a wall in his path, he growled, turned around, and then stalked to the other end of the room, where the process was repeated.
Wufei still sat on the couch observing with mild surprise. Heero Yuy was actually pacing. "What's going on?" he asked.
"I'm waiting for a reply."
"From who?"
"G."
Seeing that he wasn't going to get anywhere without asking lots of tedious questions for which he would get one word answers, Wufei fell into silence and let his comrade pace. There was very little else for him to do, and the back and forth motion continued for the better part of a half an hour.
The laptop beeped. Instantly, Heero sprang towards it, crossing the room in a bound to avidly read the message sent to him. Then, with a snarled curse, he ran out of the room faster than Wufei would have thought possible for someone still recovering like he was.
Curious as to what had provoked such a reaction, Wufei got up and crossed the room to the laptop. As he read the message on the screen, his eyebrows rose in surprise and alarm.
01,
I had no notion that such mission orders were sent, nor do I condone them. The Terfield base, while a definite threat, is too heavily defended. I would not send orders to attack it unless all five of you were to strike together. Please inform my pilot of this and call him back to await further orders.
-G
"What in the world is going on here?" Wufei muttered. His eyes rose to trace the path Heero had taken. Yuy knew. He knew and he was withholding information from his teammates. With a determined gleam in his eyes, Wufei stalked out after him.
It wasn't very hard to figure out where the other pilot had got to. In his frantic haste, Heero had left a trail of open doors through the house, too rushed to stop and close them. Wufei followed him out of the house and to the hanger, where he stopped in astonished fury.
"Yuy, what the hell do you think you're doing?!"
Heero was already half way up the winch line to Shenlong. "Wing's still with Howard!" he called. "Damn it, I'll bet he planned it that way!"
Later, Wufei would pause to wonder exactly who Heero meant when he said "he", although Duo seemed a likely choice. However, at that moment, he didn't care. He was too busy screaming obscenities at his fellow pilot, ignoring the fact that Heero had climbed into the cockpit and closed the hatch, and therefore could no longer hear him.
With a muted roar, Shenlong came to life, stepping away from the wall and moving to leave the hanger. As the thrusters fired up, Wufei was forced to retreat to a safer distance. His fury was intensified by the realization that there was nothing he could do to stop Heero now short of stealing Quatre or Trowa's Gundam, which would have been a very bad idea. After all, who knew what retaliation they would devise for him.
"Yuy!" Wufei screamed. "Nataku will punish you for this!"
His cry was lost in the roar of the thrusters as his Gundam took off.
Tbc
Alright, I finally managed to get out another part. And knowing my muse, I'll start getting the urge to write once every five hours since all my midterms start next week. @.@ I'm gonna die.
Rapunzel: I live! I live! HAHAHA!
::A noise comes from above her and she looks up.::
Rapunzel: Uh oh.
::A rain of textbooks comes showering down on her, burying her again. After a moment, the pile shifts and she emerges again, with less enthusiasm this time.::
Rapunzel: Remind me. Why did I think taking more classes this quarter was a good idea?
Part 7
After the incident that sent Quatre's laptop to an early grave in the trash pile, life seemed to settle down for the Gundam pilots. Heero was not at all pleased that the entire household had to be allowed to use his laptop, but since he had no better alternative, he suffered in silence for the most part, grumbling about it only occasionally.
Heero may have hated the arrangement, but Duo found it rather useful. It gave him an opportunity to delete any messages that contained the word "apoptosis" in them. He didn't try to hide the fact that he was eliminating these messages from Heero; on the contrary, he usually made a point of getting rid of them while Wing's pilot was watching him. Heero never commented, only grunted, and went on about his business, but Duo got the feeling that Heero was rather relieved not to have to deal with the problem himself. Neither one of them knew what to do about the situation besides ignoring it. It seemed to work, for after about a week of his messages being ignored, the emails grew fewer in number, and then stopped altogether.
Even though he was no longer being constantly confronted with orders to remove himself from the world of the living, Heero still seemed jumpy to Duo. As they sat side by side together in Duo's room (for Heero would not drop his guard until they were alone either in his or Duo's room, preferably with the door locked), Duo said, "J can't actually _force_ you to obey him, can he? I mean, if you ignore the mission orders, what's the worst he can do?"
"I don't know," Heero admitted. "I've never disobeyed before."
That brought Duo up short. "_Never_?! After all this time?! I mean, how long have you been with him anyway?"
Heero sighed. "A long time."
"And you've _never_ disobeyed orders before, or failed to carry them out completely? Even just a little bit? Jeez, I make deliberate mistakes all the time!"
"Deliberate mistakes? How can you make a deliberate mistake? What did you do?"
"Oh, I only blew up the ammunition supplies instead of the whole base once. And I'm always sending in my mission reports later than G asks for them. He doesn't seem to remember that I have to have enough time to get someplace with a secure line before I can send them, especially after infiltration missions. I'll bet it drives him nuts, but he never really gets on my case about it."
"Late mission reports are different. At least you complete your missions," Heero pointed out.
"Are you saying that you want to complete Operation Apoptosis?" Duo asked incredulously.
"No," Heero said.
"Good," Duo said. "Then stop worrying about it all the time."
"I'm not worrying," Heero answered, sounding almost childish.
Duo snorted. "Sure you're not," he muttered sarcastically, but decided to leave it at that.
~*~*~
Beep! Beep!
"I thought I said I didn't want to hear another beep out of you!" Duo growled, stalking towards the offender: Heero's laptop.
"Duo," Wufei pointed out mildly from across the room, "you do realize that you're talking to an inanimate object, don't you?"
"Yeah. So?"
Wufei rolled his eyes skyward. "Nothing. I guess I should know better than to try reasoning with you."
"Darn right," Duo muttered, only half paying attention. His attention focused on the laptop and the new message it displayed. "I swear," he muttered under his breath. "If this is one more 'Operation Apoptosis'... I thought we were finally over those things."
"Operation what?" Wufei asked, having caught some of Duo's mutterings.
"Nothing."
Wufei shrugged and went back to his reading while Duo opened the message, fingers poised to delete it. He paused, read through the message, then read through it again as if he couldn't believe it the first time.
"What is it?" Wufei asked.
"I don't believe it. It's a real, honest to goodness mission."
"And about time to," Wufei muttered. "Who's it for?"
"Heero of course." Duo frowned. "But he shouldn't be off on a mission yet. He's still recovering."
"He looks alright to me," Wufei said.
"That's because you don't look closely enough. He still walks with a slight limp, and his upper body strength isn't what it used to be either."
Wufei paused briefly to wonder why Duo had taken the time to notice such details, especially since Heero was trying to give everyone the impression that he was fine, but he decided not to ask.
Duo was in motion, typing a reply to the message. Curious, Wufei peered at him. "What are doing? You're not refusing to let Heero take the mission, are you?"
"I'm taking it for him," Duo said without looking up. "Someone's gotta do it, after all. Better me than him."
"Shouldn't you clear that with Heero first?"
"Nah, it'll be fine. It's just hitting some base at Terfield, pretty close by. Anyway, Heero's asleep, and I don't want to bug him." He closed up the laptop. "I should be back sometime tomorrow. Tell the others for me, 'kay?"
"Sure," Wufei said.
"Thanks, Wu-man, you're the best."
"Maxwell, for the hundredth time, my name is not Wu-man!"
But Duo was already out the door and didn't hear him. A few minutes later, the rumbling from the hanger told Wufei that he was gone.
"Well, it'll be awfully quiet around here," Wufei muttered to himself as he went back to his book.
~*~*~
Duo's departure seemed a little abrupt to Wufei, but then most of Duo's actions seemed abrupt to him. So he didn't kick up a fuss and didn't expect anyone else to. However, some time after Heero woke up, the lack of Duo's presence finally registered on the Japanese pilot. After not being visited by the boisterous pilot, he began to grow restless and wandered aimlessly through the house, eyes constantly seeking a long braid and a bright smile. His fruitless search eventually led him to the living room, where he found Wufei still sitting on the couch and the laptop still open on the table. It was the sight of the laptop that sent the first stab of uneasiness through him.
"Where's Duo?"
"Mission," Wufei said shortly.
"Mission?" Heero repeated. "When?"
"This afternoon. You were asleep when he left."
"Who sent the orders?"
"J, I believe. You can check if you're really so interested." Wufei flicked a hand at the laptop, indicating that the answers could be found there.
Pulling over a chair, Heero sat down in front of the laptop and started typing. A few minutes of digging on his part unearthed the message Duo had received. Reading over the parameters, Heero frowned. "It's off," he muttered.
Fingers flying over the keyboard, Heero typed up a message to Professor G, asking him to confirm the orders being carried out by his pilot. Then, pushing back his chair, he got up and stalked across to the end of the room. Upon finding a wall in his path, he growled, turned around, and then stalked to the other end of the room, where the process was repeated.
Wufei still sat on the couch observing with mild surprise. Heero Yuy was actually pacing. "What's going on?" he asked.
"I'm waiting for a reply."
"From who?"
"G."
Seeing that he wasn't going to get anywhere without asking lots of tedious questions for which he would get one word answers, Wufei fell into silence and let his comrade pace. There was very little else for him to do, and the back and forth motion continued for the better part of a half an hour.
The laptop beeped. Instantly, Heero sprang towards it, crossing the room in a bound to avidly read the message sent to him. Then, with a snarled curse, he ran out of the room faster than Wufei would have thought possible for someone still recovering like he was.
Curious as to what had provoked such a reaction, Wufei got up and crossed the room to the laptop. As he read the message on the screen, his eyebrows rose in surprise and alarm.
01,
I had no notion that such mission orders were sent, nor do I condone them. The Terfield base, while a definite threat, is too heavily defended. I would not send orders to attack it unless all five of you were to strike together. Please inform my pilot of this and call him back to await further orders.
-G
"What in the world is going on here?" Wufei muttered. His eyes rose to trace the path Heero had taken. Yuy knew. He knew and he was withholding information from his teammates. With a determined gleam in his eyes, Wufei stalked out after him.
It wasn't very hard to figure out where the other pilot had got to. In his frantic haste, Heero had left a trail of open doors through the house, too rushed to stop and close them. Wufei followed him out of the house and to the hanger, where he stopped in astonished fury.
"Yuy, what the hell do you think you're doing?!"
Heero was already half way up the winch line to Shenlong. "Wing's still with Howard!" he called. "Damn it, I'll bet he planned it that way!"
Later, Wufei would pause to wonder exactly who Heero meant when he said "he", although Duo seemed a likely choice. However, at that moment, he didn't care. He was too busy screaming obscenities at his fellow pilot, ignoring the fact that Heero had climbed into the cockpit and closed the hatch, and therefore could no longer hear him.
With a muted roar, Shenlong came to life, stepping away from the wall and moving to leave the hanger. As the thrusters fired up, Wufei was forced to retreat to a safer distance. His fury was intensified by the realization that there was nothing he could do to stop Heero now short of stealing Quatre or Trowa's Gundam, which would have been a very bad idea. After all, who knew what retaliation they would devise for him.
"Yuy!" Wufei screamed. "Nataku will punish you for this!"
His cry was lost in the roar of the thrusters as his Gundam took off.
Tbc
Alright, I finally managed to get out another part. And knowing my muse, I'll start getting the urge to write once every five hours since all my midterms start next week. @.@ I'm gonna die.