Coming Through the Rye
By Shannon the Twisted Link Worshiper
~ Part XVI ~
Towards Zero
Sora drowsily rose the next morning, somewhat befuddled and unsure of where she was. Rolling the tense muscles in her back, she looked around and blinked a few times, trying to adjust her vision to the light. She had fallen asleep at the desk sometime during the night, waiting in Hoshi's dormitory, keeping watch out for the disappearing girl for Heero. It seemed she had not even come to visit the room, though Sora was panicked a bit that perhaps she has slid in silently when she had been dozing. She knew her friend had a tendency to slink around as well as a thief.
She stood, stretched and put her hands on her hips as she buried herself in thought; Now where could she have run off to? She ran her hand through her coppery red hair and readjusted her hair scrunchie. Fixing her glasses straight, she tried to ponder where Hoshi could have gone. Did she… just leave then? she asked herself fearfully. Did she think that Professor Cawdor knew too much about her?
Sora gave the room another quick look, deciding that nothing had been disturbed enough to suggest a midnight visit from Hoshi and made a quick exit from the room, all the while wondering where she should go from there. "Ah, Heero might have figured something out by now," she said aloud to herself as she started down the stairs. "I'll go talk to him later."
She was starting to get frustrated when she found that neither Heero nor Hoshi were present at breakfast that morning. She brooded over her meal, ate ridiculously fast and bolted from the cafeteria with her head in the clouds. She was not quite sure why she was so upset at the no-show, but she decided that it was time she got a few things straight with Heero. She just had to hear it all straight forward, and none of his pussyfooting around his guilt.
Shouldering her bag, she wandered through the slowly filling halls as the morning began to get into full gear. Students were starting out on their mundane treks through another day in the life, ready to either be intellectually stimulated or bored to hell and back. Wandering into her morning history class, she found the room empty, save the old monk who taught the class and Heero, who was sitting quietly in his usual spot and reading his usual, 'The Catcher in the Rye.' Sora was not quite sure she understood the whole infatuation with that book in particular, but she was pretty sure it had some sort of important meaning to Heero that he was just not willing to divulge out loud.
Though he seemed to be reading it with some interest, he looked as if his thoughts were not with the text, but strangely, not far gone beyond the windowpanes as was typical. It seemed he was more at home with himself. She could not quite put her finger on it, but something had happened since she had last seen him to change him somewhat. He did not seem to be swelling amidst his usual tornado of rain clouds and thunder.
"Oh, there you are Heero!" she said as cheerfully as she could muster for a Tuesday morning as she walked up the aisle between the desks towards Heero. Sliding into the row before him and spinning around to face him, she went on, "Did you ever find Hoshi?"
"Yes," was his simple answer. Heero never had been one to ramble, so the response was not totally unexpected. But still, there was something in his tone that noted a change…. Something almost… happier somehow.
"Did you find out what you wanted from her?" she prodded.
"Yes."
"What did she say?"
Heero blushed, his cheeks becoming a very noticeable shade of deep pink as he swallowed a large gulp and steeled his face as so he would not betray any more. "I'd rather not say," he replied evasively, his voice still curt, business as usual. He tugged at the slender black bow tie that slithered around his stiff uniform collar. "It's something between just the pair of us."
"Oh really," Sora said suggestively, waggling her eyebrows as if to insinuate that she was picking up on Heero's nervous vibes. "Was it a good encounter then? You have that 'I got some last night' sort of look on your face."
A look of indignant horror suddenly replaced Heero's flushed expression. He tugged harder at his necktie and coughed. "It's nothing like what you think!"
"Nothing like what I think, eh?" Sora returned idly, leaning on his desk with her chin cradled in her palm, drumming her fingers on her temple. "Then how come it's written all over your face."
"I beg your pardon, but what is written all over my face?" Heero scoffed, laying his book down beneath a pair of beautiful slender hands. "How do you know what I'm thinking?"
"I like to credit myself with being some denomination of a friend to you!" Sora retorted with feigned hurt. "You would hope that I would be able to at least tell when you've got something cranking between those cute little Japanese ears of yours. And don't think that whole book ruse fools me. I can tell when you're really reading, thank you, Mister Yuy."
"Then tell me," he demanded quietly.
"Huh?" Sora squeaked.
"What am I thinking?" he clarified, his voice dangerously silky. If Sora had known Heero's tactical maneuvers well, she would have been able to peg this as one of his best ways for prying information out of panicky or scatterbrained queries. All he would have had to add was that smoldering stare of his, and she would have been sold, hook, line and sinker.
"About Hoshi," Sora shrugged. Had she been looking closer, she would have noticed the slight twitching of Heero's brow at the mention of the name.
"Close enough, I suppose," he muttered in defeat to his book as he picked it up again and sunk into his chair, poignantly staring blankly at the words littering the pages.
"So what happened? Ya kiss her?" Sora kept drilling the questions, determined to sap Heero of all his juicy gossip. No one else had come to class just yet, so she was not worried about embarrassing him in front of anyone. The monk sitting behind the desk near the head of the classroom was too busy scrawling some unknown document to pay either one of them any mind. "Or maybe she kissed you?"
She was greeted with silence as Heero slouched lower and raised his book higher as so to shield his shimmering blue eyes from her. Truth be told, he was afraid she might see the dreamy-eyed sheen that glazed the melted blue rounds of his eyes.
"No worries," Sora said when she was met with nothing other than the spine of a white paperback edition of J.D. Salinger's American classic novel. A devious smirk crossed Sora's face with the sound of the classroom door opening. "I'll just ask her myself."
Heero's dark cobalt eyes darted up from hiding behind his book to see Duo standing beside Sora's desk, decked out in the disguise that had fooled an entire school for nearly a month. Hell, it had even managed to work its dark magic on the world's greatest assassin. Even though he knew Duo's secret, he had to admit that complete with makeup, the girly hairstyles and the added curves provided by that corset, of the longhaired villain's, even Heero had trouble telling that 'Hoshi' was actually a boy.
"Ask me what?" Duo asked, his voice slipping into that deep falsetto he had been using all the while.
"About last night," Sora said, turning her attentions to the newcomer. She noted out of the corner of her eye that Heero was watching them very peculiarly. She ignored it and just kept yapping. "How far did you and dear sweet Mister Yuy go?"
"Think James Bond seduction," Duo said as his mouth twisted into a sadistic teasing grin, raising his hands over his face and sliding them apart with much flourish. Heero just rolled his eyes. How he had missed that typical Maxwell bounce, he could never guess. But Sora was immersed. She was giving the chestnut haired devil all her attention and did not even suspect that all was not what it seemed. Duo exclaimed with another flash of his hands, "Think shaken, not stirred and wild spy-filled action all night long!"
"Wow," Sora breathed, totally sucked into the fantasy. She gave Heero a coy look as she said over in his general direction with a sly lilt in her voice, "Never thought you'd have it in you, you charmer you."
Heero let out a heavy sigh and sent a dark look Duo's way. It had not been a lie. If anything, it had been the god's honest truth. The night had been a rather alluring rendezvous between the two of them. They spent it like it had been their last night on Earth. "Keep off," he snapped, trying hard to end the conversation before he slipped and said something he regretted. Duo may have allowed his presence to be known to Heero, but that did not mean that the rest of the world had to know it.
By this point, the classroom was mostly filled and the first bell to begin class was pleasantly tolling across the campus. Duo shuffled to the spot beside Heero and took a seat in the same place he had been sitting since their first day. He shot a huge trademark Maxwell grin in Heero's direction and was rewarded with that secret smile that Heero saved only for him.
"Mrrmm, raise your hand when I call your name," the old teacher grumbled as he stood at his desk and started blandly rattling of the attendance list. When he was through, class ensued as it had every day that year with droning lectures and half bored students wondering what it would be like to either have an interesting teacher or just plain ditch school for a more thrilling time at the movies with a jumbo popcorn and an uber-gulp soda.
About a third of the way through the period, Duo raised his hand and asked; "Hey, can I be excused to the little girls' room? Feminine issue over here." He reveled in the tittering that rose from the other students at his comment. Only Heero pursed his lips and rolled his eyes yet again, obviously seeing an irony in the statement that the rest of the world did not.
"Make it speedy, little lady," answered the monk, granting permission in his feeble voice before returning to his lecture on the first World War and forgetting her existence the second he resumed the lesson.
Duo shoved away from his desk and sauntered down the aisle, giving his hips a little added sway for a certain Japanese ex-pilot's viewing pleasure. He ambled over to the door, flung it wide with much gusto, spun on his heel and gave the room a large wave goodbye before evaporating into the hall with the sound of the door closing on its loud hinges. Heero did not fail to notice the wink that had been sent specifically in his direction before going off.
Heero let out a heavy sigh and collapsed his head upon the table. That Duo couldn't change if you paid him, he thought, meaning the comment in the best possible way. He loved that Duo was still the same punk rocking loudmouth he had always known. He would not change that for all the money in the world.
Back to his usual, he settled down low in the chair with his book stuck between the pages of his history text. He stopped paying attention to his classes a long time ago, around the time he realized that they were just cramming information down his throat that he had known since he was a kid. He figured that it was about time that he started teaching himself the things that really mattered, instead of focusing on the somewhat needless material that could be memorized by any fool.
{"All right. Listen to me a minute now…. I may not word this as memorably as I'd like to, but I'll write you a letter about it in a day or two. Then you can get it all straight. But listen now, anyway." He started concentrating again. Then he said, "This fall I think you're riding for—it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave up before they even got started. You follow me?"}
He looked up from the text and turned his head slightly, staring at Duo's empty spot. He smiled at the sight of his disorganized binder that contained a mishmash of papers, doodles and handouts from every class he was taking. It was then that he noticed a torn piece of notebook paper that stuck out from the rest. It had been slid beneath the binder, protruding just enough to be noticed by an observant person who might have been sitting adjacent to the spot. Glancing up at the blind and bland teacher who was still droning on and on like there was no tomorrow, he furtively slid the paper over to his half of the desk. On it, printed in a loopy script that was nothing like Duo's usual hand, was a simple message that was certainly of typical Duo style. The lettering had obviously been laboriously practiced to help Duo melt more into the character he was supposed to be playing.
Heero glanced up at the clock and noted that Duo had been gone for at least ten minutes, quite a bit of time for someone who was only taking a quick jaunt down the bathroom at the end of the hall. Remembering the note, he suddenly realized what Duo had been hinting at. Making up his mind, he shot his hand up in the air, holding it perfectly still until he was noticed by the teacher, a full two minutes later.
"I need to be excused for a moment," Heero growled, hoping to intimidate the poor old monk into letting him get out of class with one of his patented death glares to meet with Duo.
"Why do you—" The monk was barely even allowed to finish his statement before Heero cut him off rudely.
"Never mind why, old man," he snapped, already preparing to walk for the door.
"At least wait until Hoshi…."
Heero shot the frail withered teacher a stare that had paled many an enemy soldier, which resulted in nearly giving the poor old man a heart attack. Needless to say, it was not long before he was strolling out the door, leaving a very befuddled class behind.
"What was that all about?" someone wondered aloud, staring at the door and then back at Heero's now deserted desk by the window.
"He is so weird," came another comment. Next thing anyone knew, the whole room had risen in a low clamour, Heero's strange oddities the main points of discussion.
Sora huffed angrily. If there was anything that bothered her, it was when ignorant people made nasty comments about that which they did not truly understand themselves. Slowly, the other students became bored with gossiping about Heero and slowly settled back into their drowned classroom stupor. Sora clenched her jaw and returned her attentions to the teacher as best she could.
Minutes ticked by, and still, neither Heero nor Hoshi had returned. No one else in the room seemed to have noticed their absence, but it struck Sora as odd. Those dirty sneaks, she mused sarcastically to herself. I bet they went and locked themselves up in a bathroom stall so they could mooch in as much lip locking as they could before the bell. God knows Hoshi's flipped Heero's personality around, but this is just ridiculous.
She raised her hand and waited patiently to be called on, her eyes never leaving the ticking second hand of the clock hanging over the blackboard. "Can I run to the bathroom?" she blurted out when she was called on at last. The teacher, remembering Hoshi and Heero and also realizing that they had yet to return, shook his head 'no.' Sora rolled her eyes and sighed. "Please?"
"Is it an emergency, Miss Sora?" the wizened teacher moaned, putting a hand on each hip. He was tired of having his kindness exploited by the students. In all his long teaching carrier, this had to be the first time he had ever refused a kid permission to leave the class. "Can you wait for the bell?"
"Yes," she spilled quickly, racking her brains for a liable excuse to present. "Uh, feminine issue!"
Before the monk could make the connection that he had just heard the exact same excuse fifteen minutes ago, the redhead was on her feet and hustling to the door. Everyone in the room was staring at her like she had the plague. Opening the door, she paused and spat out in one quick breath, "SorrytoinconvenienceyouSir!" Then she was gone.
She scuttled hastily down the hall towards the bathrooms at its end. Class still had a good twenty minutes to go before the bell, which gave her a good chunk of time in which to look for her missing friends. She felt like they were hiding something from her, and they were not about to let her into the loop unless she did something about it.
Reaching her destination where the hall ended and tapered off in three directions, the bathrooms on either side of her and a darkened conference room before her. She hung a right towards the girls' lavatories and peeked in to see if Hoshi was there. She found the place empty even after a hasty search through all the stalls and such. "That is so strange," Sora said aloud to herself with a huff. She pushed her oval shaped glasses further up her nose and looked around one last time. "She has to be around here somewhere. I would have seen her on the way back." But another glance around the room proved it to be devoid of life once again.
She returned to the hallway, staring across at the mirror image of the boys' bathroom door across the way. "Call me crazy," she murmured, clearing the distance between the two bathrooms. She sucked in a huge breath and looked around nervously, just to make sure no one was looking her way, and turned the knob. Quickly she darted around the door and found herself standing in a room that looked almost the same as the girls' lavatories on the other side of the hall. Sunlight filtered through the window and fell in hazy squares of golden yellow upon the white tiled floor. The sound a faucet dripping water into one of the porcelain sinks in the background ruled her ears. But still, there was no Hoshi—or Heero for that matter. She let out another puff of annoyed disappointment. If she had any doubts that Heero and Hoshi were up to something, they were all gone now. The added fact that Hoshi was a Preventers agent only added fuel to the flame.
Wandering out of the bathroom, she returned to her spot in the middle of the hall's juncture, gazing back down the hall in the direction of her history classroom. Suddenly, a loud thump jarred her from her meditative gawking. She whirled around in surprise, looking for the source of the noise. She did not have to search long, for the second she turned, she found what she was looking for. Through the blurry somewhat fogged glass window in the conference room door, she could just make out the darkened outline of someone being pressed against the door. Hesitantly, she took a few steps forward, hand extended as so to grasp the handle. As she approached, she could hear low hushed voices slipping out from beneath the door amid heavy breaths and sighing. Her hand now resting gingerly upon the doorknob, she could recognize one of the voices as Heero's low slightly accented voice, murmuring something indistinguishable to the other person with him, perhaps in Japanese. As for that other person—Sora had assumed it was Hoshi—but upon closer listening, though close, there was something about that other voice that certainly was not Hoshi. She gulped silently, prayed for luck, and pulled the door open.
Two bodies came tumbling out, no longer able to lean upon the door the second Sora ripped it from behind them. The one on top was undoubtedly a very rumpled Heero, whose lips at present, were glued to the person beneath him. A quick glance confirmed the other as Hoshi, but as Heero pulled himself up, glaring angrily around for the one who had interrupted them, Sora realized that she was mistaken. Yes, the figure lying there on the floor in the wrinkly cerulean uniform skirt had Hoshi's beautiful long brown hair and her wide indigo eyes. There was the same narrow build to the person and the same grin as wide as the sky, the same ear piercings and pert elfish nose, but nonetheless, there was something totally different about the likeness between the two. The person was still lying on the cold wooden floor, creamy yellow blouse rolling off the slim sinewy arms to reveal a flat chest and stomach rising and falling heavily with each breath. That was when she realized it.
The boy beamed cheekily at her, displaying a white toothed grin that oozed with an impish mischief. Pushing himself up onto his elbows, he winked at her and said in a deep baritone voice that carried only the faintest hints of her friend, Hoshi, "Hiya Sora. Skipping out on class too?"
Sora did not know whether she should be amused or upset by this startling revelation that 'Hoshi' was actually some crazy boy with long coppery brown hair. A boy with coppery brown hair, violet eyes and the initials D… M… just as it was imprinted on the lock picking kit he had giver her so long ago on the day they had first met.
"Duo Maxwell," she breathed, chancing a quick look in Heero's direction. He was leaning in the conference room's doorframe, but by the look in his eyes, she could tell that he had long forgotten her presence. Rather, he was staring at Duo as he picked himself up off the floor with a misted look in his eyes that radiated this strange sort of sultry ambiance, pale rose lips parted in an expression of lust and love.
"The one and only," he said, stretching his arms out akimbo, the blouse falling lazily at his slightly bent elbows. She could see how lean he was, and though quite muscular, he still had a very slim frame and somewhat feminine features. But for some reason, that just made him all the more attractive. She watched as he took a quick peek over his shoulder to see if anyone had sneaked up on them and then quickly grabbed Sora by the arm and dragged her into the conference room, Heero falling after him as if he were magnetized to Duo's mere presence. He closed the door behind him and shrugged aimlessly.
The moment they were safe from prying eyes behind that closed door, she whirled around to face Heero, seething a little bit. "You knew it, didn't you! You knew who it was the entire time and you didn't tell me!"
The sweltering heat dancing in Heero's eyes died down to mere embers as the corners of his mouth dropped into a frown. "I did not," he stated firmly, crossing his arms as if to emphasize his point. He stared dangerously at Sora before adding on another bit. "Besides, even if I did, what would it matter to you anyway?"
"That you'd let him get away with lying to the rest of us!" Sora fumed, her temper getting the better of her. Her face had become so red, her freckles seemed to blend in with the rest of her skin as she pointed an accusing finger in Duo's direction. Heero glowered darkly at her that anyone would dare make such comments about his koi, whether they were legit or not.
"Hey, excuse me a second. I'd like to speak on my behalf if you don't mind," Duo piped up, sidling between Heero and Sora before something dastardly happened and half the school was alerted to their presence. He held three fingers up in Sora's face, folding one down with each point he made. "One, I don't lie. Two, I didn't lie. And three; don't misdirect your anger. If you're mad at me, then get mad at me, not Hee-chan. He didn't do anything to you."
Sora glanced at Heero, who was smirking triumphantly as he straightened his rumpled clothes out, and then back at Duo, who had a look on his face that was somewhere between sly and smug. She got a little flustered, bit her lip and apologized.
Duo's malicious grin bounced into a more compassionate smile as he pulled up a chair and sat down in it backwards, arms resting on its back. "I'm an actor, Sora… an actor and a thief. I can become anyone you want me to. You're talking to the best spy to ever grace Preventers' records. And I didn't lie. Nothing I've ever told you has been a lie. I just might have skipped over a few details here and there. I just let you believe… what you wanted to believe. That's my job." His smile faded away, his lips parting somewhat as his face took on a somewhat pained expression. "I'm… I'm the one who should be sorry."
Heero was suddenly standing behind Duo, gently ruffling his wayward chestnut bangs, as he looked down at his lover, the expression on his face totally unreadable. Sora could never understand how he was able to make it seem like there was nothing more to him than flesh and blood. "Don't be… sorry Duo," he breathed in a small voice as he bent down to bury his nose in Duo's thick cinnamon brown hair, taking in that warm gingery scent that seemed to linger there always. "Never be sorry for what you do if you chose to do it with your heart. No regrets, remember?"
"Yeah, yeah, I remember that you goofball," Duo laughed, his eyes closing shut as he covered his face with his folded arms. He gave his head a little wiggle, knocking Heero up a little bit as he wrestled his way around in the chair so he could face the slim Japanese boy. "But next time, angel," he said, reaching up and grabbing Heero by his necktie and dragging him down to eye level, "make sure you take your own goddamn advice. Practice what you preach, you know? Got it?"
"Aa," Heero murmured with a coy smile as he leaned forward to give Duo a little kiss. Sora was about to melt into a puddle of goo and slop, the cuteness in the room was so intense. "Next time I'm about to do something stupid, hit me. Hard."
"What if that doesn't work?" Duo asked with that sly tone again. The more Sora listened to him talk, the more she could see where Hoshi lived in Duo's persona… and the less she missed her. She could see what Heero was so attracted to in Duo and why someone like the chestnut haired maniac could bring such emotions about in the more stoic of the two.
"I trust you to figure it out," Heero whispered so softly, Sora barely caught it.
She only looked away for a second and the moment she returned her gaze, they were kissing again. It was like they could not get enough of each other. She supposed she could understand that. They had been apart for almost three years. She felt a deep sinking pit in her stomach as she watched. Being reunited as they had must have been like filling up a deep empty void inside with the warm starlight of a soul mate. She blinked away a tear, realizing that the void within herself would never be completely filled ever again. Part of her had died when D.B. was murdered. Even if she found someone else who might help to soothe that wound, she would never be completely healed. She had lost her one special person just for her. He had been stolen away. And she wanted revenge.
"Duo," she spoke suddenly, prematurely ending the spit-swapping going on right in front of her eyes. Duo turned his large round eyes to her, not about to leave the contact he was sharing with Heero at that exact moment. "Duo, what can Preventers do to whip ass?"
That certainly shocked the braided thief into a stunned silence for once. He nibbled his lips for a second, drawing reluctantly away from Heero as he sunk down into a pensive position in the chair. "And by 'ass', you mean Cawdor's ass, right?" he asked with another quick look in her direction, waited for her nod and then returned to his brooding lip chewing. "For killing D.B., am I right?" he added on for good measure. Sora gave him another feeble but determined nod.
Heero just looked on with a blank expression decorating his beautifully chiseled features.
Duo's idle hands started groping around the floor for his discarded corset and such, trying to think up the best course of action to take. "We could always just blow—no, wait, scratch that. Too much attention—so maybe we could get him when he—no, no, too obvious… he'd expect that…." His vocalizations became low mutterings to the floor as he fixed the corset around his body and started to tightly bind himself into the constricting wire bodice.
"You're thinking too hard, koi," Heero said with a little sigh. He was leaning on a nearby table, one ankle neatly crossed over the other as he watched Duo intently. Though Heero might have had a little better idea of what they 'ought to do, he was not going to offer his opinion until he was sure Duo had given up all hope. It was still Duo's mission, after all. Duo looked up at Heero questioningly, the perplexed look on his face obviously daring Heero to continue. Heero's face hardened and he slipped into soldier mode without even realizing he had done so. "Mission orders?"
"Surveillance and, if necessary, detainment of Professor Cawdor," Duo rattled off by rote the objectives he had committed to memory what seemed like ages ago, not even looking up from the laces of his corset as he spoke. He had never realized how he had the tendency to slip into that same soldier mode himself.
"Specifications?"
"Infiltrate and enroll as a student. Alias required." Soldier Duo was silent for a second before the real Duo added onto the statement, "I figured pretending I was a girl was my best bet getting in here without anyone noticed. A guy with hair as sexy as mine is pretty damn hard to forget and you never know what these OZ fools remember about their enemies." He looked quickly up at Heero with big sad eyes, shining dully in the golden sunlight that streamed in between the wood slats of the blinds hanging in the room's one window. "Besides… you were here…."
"Acceptable tactics." Heero gave Duo a quick nod and kept drilling the questions. The frightened little child Heero had retreated to the most inner confines of the perfect soldier's soul and Sora no longer recognized the boy standing in front of her. This boy, despite his extreme likeness to the softened, melancholy and almost meek Heero she had come to know as one of her closest friends, had wicked shards of black ice for eyes and a jaw set with iron. His voice was hard and callused, like death could mean less to him. "Do you need him dead or alive?"
"Never specified."
"Make sure he's dead, dammit!" Sora suddenly interjected, fists balled tightly in front of her.
Heero held up a hand, silencing Sora with his dismissive gesture just as the end-of-class bell tolled across the campus. She clapped her mouth shut, realizing she was no longer dealing with two ordinary boys anymore; rather, she was dealing with expert assassins.
Heero gave the closed door of their little conference room a quick glance as the sounds of exhausted students began to fill the hall outside. Mechanically, he reached behind him and grabbed his uniform waistcoat, which he had discarded soon after Duo had dragged him off to the private confines of the little room. Meanwhile, Duo was just tightening the knot of his blue scarf, the finishing touch of his girls' disguise. Heero walked brusquely to the door, back facing the other two as he peered hard through the bleary glass at the undistinguished blurs of students milling through the halls. He straightened his jacket and turned around again, leaning hard against the door as he asked his final question. "What do you have with you?"
Sora arched a very confused eyebrow at the question, unable to discern what Heero was inquiring about. Apparently Duo got it though, for his answer came swiftly, and by no means did his words fall lightly on Sora's ears. "I packed light for this one. I've got three firearms—two standard issue handguns with rapid fire and a custom Falcon with scope and silencer—a hunting knife, cyanide, remote detonators and the usual song and dance."
"Always toting around the pyromaniac toys, aren't you?" Heero chided with a fond grin, the perfect soldier and the boy trading places again. "You always did like the big explosions, didn't you?"
"Fuck yeah. What can I do? I have a taste for destruction," Duo laughed as he stood up and twirled around the chair back into its usual spot underneath the table. He rubbed an eye as he went on with a laugh; "Ha, remember the time they had you locked up at that OZ facility and I came along and busted your ass out of there? That had been a fun romp in the park."
"Yeah, considering the fact I didn't trust a hair on your head at the time and was still moping about screwing up that first mission," Heero added to the story, completely willing to reminisce a bit about the incident that brought them closer to one another for the first time. "I really wanted to die then."
"Seems the Devil obviously likes you well enough," Duo smirked as he approached Heero and tugged his cheek affectionately. Heero tried hard to look annoyed by the gesture, but the twinkling in his lazy eyes and the slightly upturned shape of his mouth gave away that he was not. "You didn't OD on drugs; you didn't bleed to death; you weren't caught when you woke up, nor were you caught in my little explosion; the fifty-story fall without a parachute didn't kill you either—only you could get off with just a broken leg after that. I'd say you fared pretty well back then."
"Yeah, I always was a pretty lucky son of a bitch," Heero said softly, remembering each incident with a strange sort of lingering attachment. "I always did seem to have trouble dying. Hell, I can't even kill myself. Doesn't matter what I try!" He laughed heartily at that, soon to be joined by Duo. Sora stood apart from the merry couple, not quite sure she understood what was so funny. They were A), lost in a memory that did not include her, B), getting very morbid and C), laughing about it all to boot. She was beginning to wonder what kind of deranged sick people they actually were.
"You said it," Duo agreed with his largest grin. "Because if you had died that time you pulled that self-detonation move or some other careless stunt, I'd have murdered you! Hell, not even knives and cigarettes have an effect on the great Heero Yuy!"
More laughter filled the room. Sora was actually starting to panic a little bit. She had not heard all these details about their pasts and really only knew the basics from what she had managed to piece together herself. She had never found it her place to pry, and now listening to this, she was kind of glad she had tried hard to keep out of it. After reading Duo's journal entries, she had been quite a bit unnerved. "Are you two completely off your rockers?" she wondered aloud. That put a stopper in their inane laughter. Two sets of eyes bored right through her, a little confused at her apprehension.
"Uh, you'd kind of have to be to do what we did… still do," Duo said with a shrug. "Who the hell in their right mind would pilot a mobile suit or play assassin on his off hours?"
"Who in their right mind would rebel against just about every organization Earth and the colonies had to rebel against?" Heero added as he peered over his shoulder out the window again. He could see the crowds were beginning to thin out just a bit. The next bell would be ringing any second. "Only a mechanical doll soldier, a thief who calls himself Death, a sad clown with no name, an Arab desert prince and a justice obsessed martial artist, that's who."
Duo chortled with a very smug look on his face. Sora missed the joke. "You guys are… crazy…."
"Damn straight we're crazy."
Heero glanced over his shoulder yet again. "Okay, that's it, enough of this waiting around," Heero heaved, banging against the door in an annoyed fashion. "I don't give a crap if anyone sees we'd been hiding out here all together anymore. We need to get this show on the road. Let's take a little spin around town to see if there are any other ways of getting around to this mission of yours. I've got a nasty feeling that trying anything on campus will draw way too much unwanted attention to both of us."
"Great plan, Hee-chan!" Duo squawked cheerfully, donning his very impressive female falsetto as he redid his hair up in a swept up fashion. Sora could barely recognize him anymore. Even a trained eye like Heero's would have trouble placing the name 'Duo Maxwell' with 'Hoshi.' Duo grabbed Heero's wrist as he wrenched the door open. "We'll take a spin on my bike."
"No!" Sora exclaimed suddenly, remembering a certain encounter with Cawdor on her way back from town the night before. He had frightened her into making some adjustments on Duo's bike that she seriously regretted. But Heero and Duo were far from listening. In fact, they were already heading down the hall, chatting in hushed voices together as they went. Hell, Heero even had his arm draped around Duo's waist, his pretty fingers squeezing gently at Duo's tight ass.
"Don't worry about it, kid!" Duo called back down the hall with an idle wave of his outside hand, not even bothering to turn around to look at Sora. Had he, he might have seen the fear and worry streaked across her face. "We got it covered. Don't forget, we're professionals!"