Afterimages

Part 9

By Mieren

Hoping that his rendition of the Hokey Pokey had reached the proper ears, Duo hopped off the front of the stage, leaving a grinning Kurt in his wake.

"Fellow Preventers," Wagner called upon his exit.  "Thank Duo for sparing you from my singing for the last few minutes."  He paused to allow a smattering of cheers.  "Now, you may blame him for getting me in this particular mindset."  Grinning at the audience, silently pleased at their worried looks, he produced an accordion out of thin air and launched directly into the Chicken Dance.

Weaving between laughing and dancing Preventers, Duo made his way to where Wufei had spent most of the night, predictably finding the Chinese pilot waiting for him.

"I trust Winner enjoyed the show," Wufei drawled before Duo had the chance to open his mouth.  The American had the grace to blush.

"You knew he was there?"

"Maxwell, even if I hadn't seen him leave with you before you returned alone, did you really think that I wouldn't notice someone else in the room?" Wufei asked wryly.

"You're not mad?" Duo asked hopefully.

"Of course I'm mad," Wufei said flatly.  Duo wilted slightly.  "And as punishment, tonight you will receive a spanking."  Duo couldn't help it, he laughed.

"And how is that supposed to encourage me to behave?"

"Who said it was?" Wufei countered.

"You know," Duo mulled.  "Quatre and Trowa are probably scarring Aya for life even as we speak."

"That would be your fault," Wufei said dryly.  "So what exactly is your point?"

"I believe that Kurt has a camera in his office too."

Laughing softly, Wufei escorted Duo to the German man's office.  Little did they know that the following day, Aya and Kurt compared surveillance tapes.  The four pilots never did figure out who sent them the fruit baskets a week later.

*     *     *

Duo barely managed to make it back to the stage for his final singing block of the night.  Wufei met Quatre and Trowa in the audience, all the men looking rumpled but content.

Much to everyone's surprise, Duo suddenly began mimicking Shido's singing style, going through nothing but love songs.  Even strange to them, none of the songs were in English, sticking solely with Chinese, Arabian and Latin.  The three listening Gundam pilots were the only ones to understand, though Zechs, Noin and Une seemed to get the gist of it judging by their smirks.  Duo had just started a fast paced song in Chinese when Zechs called out to him.

"Sing something in English!" he yelled, amused.  Without missing a beat, Duo slipped between languages from one line to the next seamlessly.  Noin chuckled.

"You can't win," she said quietly to Zechs.

"Oh yeah," he whispered back challengingly.  "Lets see you do it in German!"

Waving in the blonde's direction, Duo hopped languages again, this time in the middle of a phrase.  Quiet laughter circulated the room at Zechs's expense, along with a few appreciative murmurs.  Noin was one of the latter.

"Zechs," she hissed demandingly.  "Listen to him!"

"What?" Zechs asked dumbly, trying to tune into the song at her demand.  Ice blue eyes widened slightly.  "He speaks German."

"He speaks German," Noin repeated flatly.  "And since he translated it from the original song, I'd bet he speaks Chinese too.  I don't think he just memorized the translations."

"Are you implying that he speaks Arabic and Latin too?" Zechs asked incredulously.

"Possibly," Noin mulled quietly before speaking up.  "Spanish!"  Again, Duo shifted immediately to accommodate her request.  Now, curious murmurs circulated the room like wildfire.

"Portuguese!" someone in the back of the room called.  Duo complied.  Everyone followed the example.

"Russian!"

"Italian!"

"Vietnamese!"

"Swahili!"

Only on the last request did Duo stutter, glaring evilly in the direction of the speaker and throwing the bird before changing over to Swahili.  Zechs gaped.

"How many languages does he speak?" he asked no one in particular, his voice slightly higher than normal in his shock.

"We're up to eleven," Wufei said to his right, making both Zechs and Noin jump.

"Did you know he could do that?" Zechs asked accusingly.  Wufei shook his head.

"No, but it would explain so much," the Chinese pilot mused.  "I always wondered why he was smirking so much after hearing some of our transmissions."

"In retrospect, we should have at least known that he spoke German," Noin said, amused.

"How so?" Wufei asked at the same instant Zechs muttered, "Zwitter."  Wufei arched a brow in question.

"He hacked into Oz security," Noin explained as Duo started a new song, this one in French.  "He changed the personal information on Zechs so that his gender read as 'zwitter' permanently."

"Zwitter?" Wufei repeated.

"It's German," Zechs sighed.  Noin elaborated when he refused to explain.

"It means 'hermaphrodite.'  He set it up as a virus so it would keep changing back whenever we tried to fix it.  Took us almost a month to correct what he had done."

"A week after he originally did it, he sent Noin a condolence gift that explained that I wasn't good enough for her through actions alone," Zechs muttered.

Wufei arched one eyebrow but didn't dare ask them to elaborate.  Since they were both blushing slightly, he assumed it was something fairly imaginative and extremely perverted.

"So why is it such a big deal that Duo knows twelve languages?" Wufei asked as he tallied up the list.  The American switched from French to Japanese and he sighed.  "Thirteen."

"We've been looking for a translator," Zechs explained, shaking his head wearily.  "I never even considered asking him how many languages he spoke."

"Our current best only knows five," Noin sighed.  "Two of those only brokenly."

"It wastes a lot of time for them to translate amongst themselves and they usually lose a lot in the process," Zechs said.

"Is that Laotian?" Noin interrupted incredulously, snapping her eyes back to the stage.

"I think so," Quatre answered, joining the group.

"Fourteen," Trowa intoned.  They had been keeping count too.  The Arabian held up one hand to forestall questions.

"Greek!" Quatre bellowed, turning to Trowa for confirmation.

"Fifteen," the European answered a moment later.

"How many languages do you speak?" Zechs asked suspiciously.  Trowa only smiled enigmatically.

"Enough," he answered, his expression giving away nothing.  Zechs sighed.  A German song started up.

"When Duo comes down from there, I'm going to ask him," Zechs said.

"Ask me what?" Duo asked, directly behind the platinum blond.  The older man nearly jumped out of his skin.

"Don't do that!" Zechs snapped.  He paused, finally processing that a song was still resonating through the room in German.  "Wait a minute…"

"Kurt's back up there," Duo answered before the blond could finish his question.  "You know.  The little German dude.  Now what did you want to ask me?"

Zechs tried to glare at the braided man, but found that he couldn't.  Now that he was over his shock, he had to admit that it was rather amusing.  Noin was straining to refrain from snickering and couldn't answer the American.

"They want you to work as a translator for the Preventers," Quatre supplied.

Duo paused, unsure.  He had been sure that he would be useless to the organization after losing his eyesight.  Being presented with the sudden opportunity to return to work left him a little stunned.

"Okay," Duo said, his voice a little shaky.

"You have to translate correctly if you take the job," Wufei said dryly.

"What makes you think I wouldn't?" Duo asked, still a little disoriented.

"Maxwell, I know what you wrote in that essay you submitted with your application to join Oz as your proof that you spoke Spanish," Wufei said drolly, more to cheer Duo up than anything.

"There was nothing wrong with that essay," Duo said in his defense.

"I was the one that eventually figured it out, you know," Noin said, eyes crinkling a bit with amusement.  "You're lucky that no one figured out what you were up to while you were still there."

"What did it say?" Zechs sighed.

"It wasn't so much what it said as what it did," Noin said.  "Hidden in the subtext of the electronic submission were at least four computer viruses."

"Six," Duo corrected.  Noin rolled her eyes.

"Wait a minute," Zechs muttered.  "Was that the week when the sprinkler systems would go off somewhere in the building every time someone on base flushed a toilet?"

"That was you?" Quatre demanded, mock glaring at Duo, not really upset.  Despite the collateral damage, it had been rather funny, the Maguanacs going positively berserk trying to figure out what was going on.  Wufei snorted.

"Who else would it have been?" the Chinese pilot asked.  Seeing the confused expressions on Zechs's and Noin's faces, he explained.  "Duo did the same thing to one of Quatre's mansions."

Zechs couldn't help but chuckle.  "You know, Treize nearly went insane trying to reset the systems.  I noticed that his quarters were hit at least a quarter of the time, as were mine if I remember correctly," he said.

Noticing that the music had died out again, Wufei glanced around.  "It would seem that the party is pretty much over.  Not many people left.  We should probably get going."

After that, they unanimously broke up and started for their vehicles.  Winking one eye in Wufei's direction, Duo trotted after Quatre and Trowa, easily following the sound of their footsteps.  Sighing in defeat, Wufei followed his companion as he caught up with the other two Gundam pilots beside the blonde's Jaguar.

"What is it, Duo?" Quatre asked.

"We forgot to do something," the American said.

"What would that be?" Trowa prodded.

"We all have to celebrate my new job!" Duo said triumphantly.

"And how do you propose to do that?" Wufei asked, a little suspicious at just how bouncy and amused the braided man was suddenly acting.

"Well, there is a camera in Zechs's office," Duo answered slyly.

Wufei gaped.  Quatre and Trowa exchanged startled looks before glancing at the Chinese and American pilots.  Trowa startled them all by snorting first in mild amusement, drawing his blond companion into his mind frame with a shameless look in his emerald eyes.  Wufei was the last to give in, nodding his head minimally.  The four pilots disappeared back into the building.

The following day, Zechs nearly suffered a heart attack.  When he recovered, and eventually wrestled the security tape away from Noin, who was intent on keeping it for her own personal collection, he removed the camera from his office for good.

OWARI

Finished!  Finally finished!  I had way too many stories going on right now.  What do you think?  I had to have a happy ending.  And for those of you who say Duo doesn't know that many languages, bite me!  I had to have something for him to do.  Besides, I'm all in favor of the braided loony being a genius.  No idiot can act that insane.  It's a fine line between genius and insanity.  ^_^  R&R!