Between
Part 5
By Mieren
The debate on what to do raged wildly, involving much swearing from Duo's side. Treize just watched them in something of a state of shock. To him, it appeared as though all three of the younger men had lost their minds. For starters, their personalities were all wrong and their accents were shot, especially Zechs's, the blond now speaking like a street rat and using a curse word every few seconds. When they consistently called each other by the wrong name, he just shook his head in mute frustration and watched.
To make matters worse, the short Chinese pilot had taken his gun and seemed to be firing it at random, having already put several holes in the door. The only reason he hadn't lunged for the gun to reclaim it was that he believed the youth too honorable to shoot him while he was unarmed. At the same time, he was rather uneasy. If he hadn't known better, he would have sworn that the raven-haired pilot wasn't Wufei. The three newly awakened pilots seemed to be ignoring him completely as they spoke amongst themselves.
"We're not free to move around here," Wufei said, glaring at the long braid that seemed intent on falling in his face. "Duo and I cannot stay."
"If Duo goes back with you, he's likely to be shot," Zechs snapped.
"Then you go back and I'll stay here," Duo spat.
"If I go back, I'll be shot!" Zechs retorted sourly.
"Well too bad," Duo snarled.
"You're in danger as well, you baka!" Wufei interjected.
"Then what are we supposed to do?" Zechs asked bitterly.
"We all go to a safe house," Duo said forcefully, trying to cut off the other two before they could resume the argument. "Just us. We'll figure it out there."
"Figure what out?" Treize asked, speaking up for the first time. The conversation was growing stranger to him by the second and he wanted an explanation.
"We'll explain it later," Duo said, cutting off Zechs before he could say anything. "For now, we have to go. Arrange transit for us."
"Arrange nothing," Zechs said, glaring at Duo and flipping a lock of loose ebony hair out of his eyes. "I have a car."
"I'm sure you have a good reason…" Treize started, his sentence cut off with a swift strike to the base of his neck. Wufei watched him drop, sniffing disdainfully.
"That's what you get for molesting me in my sleep," Wufei snapped at the prostrate form, kicking Treize in the ribs for good measure. Zechs smirked, a bit amused by the temperamental pilot's reaction. Duo was snickering aloud. Wufei scowled at both of them. "Enough, you heathens! Let's go before I'm forced to shoot you both. Marquise, where is your car?"
"In the garage, I imagine," Zechs said flatly, reloading Treize's gun as he led them from the room. He hesitated before shoving the gun into Duo's hands and pushing him into the lead. "I assume you know the layout of this base. Go to the fourth level of the parking garages on the southern side of the compound."
Duo nodded and moved to the front, hissing back at Zechs as he walked. "I know that you're well known and all, but it's still hard to look intimidating in a hospital gown."
"You don't need to look intimidating," Zechs snapped back, keeping his voice low so it wouldn't carry. "I am a ranking officer. Try to look like it."
"While wearing this?" Duo asked incredulously. "I'm not even wearing underwear."
"Is he always like this?" Zechs hissed at Wufei, who nodded tersely. "How can you stand working with him?"
"Keep in mind who has the gun when you answer that," Duo called back at them, seemingly having no trouble hearing their whispered conversation.
"Shoot me and you'll damage the braid," Wufei retorted, gripping the rope of hair like a hostage. Duo started to respond, paused and slowed to a stop in the hall.
"We have company," Duo muttered back at the other two. "Soldiers ahead of us. I hear four of them." He studied the hall for a moment. "Strike when they round the corner. Zechs, take the right. Wufei, take the left. I'll get rid of the two in the middle."
"Just use your authority," Zechs reprimanded.
"They're not going to listen to their commanding officer if he's in pajamas and has two Gundam pilots with him," Duo explained patiently.
Duo didn't really wait for the other two pilots to reply. The moment the soldiers came into view, he attacked, leading with a flying kick that allowed Wufei to see more of Zechs's butt than he ever wanted to. He could only imagine what the soldiers saw just before they were hit. In seconds, all four men were down, Duo standing over them looking vaguely surprised.
"You have some good reflexes, man," Duo called back to Zechs.
Zechs pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed, feeling a migraine coming on. He reflected briefly that if the Chinese pilot got headaches so easily that it was no surprise that he was so temperamental. Wufei shrugged helplessly in response to his weary glare. Duo was ignoring them both, too busy stripping the soldiers to pay attention to them. He chunked clothes at them at the same time he tried to dress, pausing as he shucked his hospital gown.
"Whoa, Zechs! Way to go, man! No wonder you have such a deep voice," Duo crowed. He paused in pulling up his pants, eyes narrowing. "I knew it! You bleach!"
"Not one word," Zechs hissed. Wufei just laughed.
"Definitely not Jewish," Duo muttered. Zechs finally turned pink, the color looking strangely out of place on the sharp features and Chinese complexion.
"Enough!" Zechs barked. "Just pull your pants up already!"
"Head towards the garage," Wufei ordered, his voice strained by suppressed laughter. Despite his normal tendency to be rather sensitive to matters of a sexual nature, he was more amused by his comrade's antics than normal, mostly because the teasing was directed at someone other than himself, for once.
After dressing in the soldiers' clothes and stealing their weapons, they started moving again. Duo took point again, heading for the car Zechs had told him about. Luckily, they ran into no other guards, much to Marquise's irritation.
"No wonder you people run amok," Zechs griped. "Shots are fired, and no one hears it. Treize gets knocked out, and no one notices he's gone. Three people break out of the infirmary, and no one sees it on surveillance. Only one patrol in the halls and they were easily dispatched. We really need to work on security."
A quick argument on who would drive was settled when Duo pointed out quite reasonably that he was the only one who looked old enough to drive. Upon reaching the car, Duo thoroughly pissed off the car's owner by breaking into and hotwiring the red convertible. He continued to drive Zechs insane by speeding out of the garage and off of base at roughly sixty miles an hour, skidding around every corner and bottoming out the car at every dip they passed. Once he even managed to get the car airborne by hitting a speed bump at almost eighty. In his defense, he claimed that it was dark and he hadn't seen it coming.
"On the bright side, at this rate we'll be at the safe house in under an hour," Wufei offered, trying to placate Zechs before he had a seizure. The man nearly exploded at that information.
"There's a safe house that close to our base?" he demanded, black eyes flashing.
"Of course," Duo taunted. "Wouldn't be good for tactical strikes otherwise. And don't bother looking for this later. We never use the same place twice."
Zechs seethed. Any scathing comments he considered making died in his throat. He narrowed his eyes at the road ahead, trying to see into the darkness more clearly.
"Maxwell, what is that?" Wufei asked. Apparently he had seen it too.
"I don't know," Duo said, flipping on the high beams. The halogen bulbs flooded the abandoned road with light, revealing nothing. "It's gone now, I guess."
He flicked the lights back down to normal. A wispy form, barely visible was only a few feet in front of the car. Duo never had a chance to miss it. The car was jolted by the impact, jerking the shocks badly as the momentum of the vehicle took it over what he had hit. Duo slammed on the brakes, bringing the convertible skidding to a stop and leaving tire marks down the road for almost a hundred feet.
The three pilots turned in their seats to look out the back window. A visible heap was lying in the middle of the road, darker than the area surrounding it as though the meager red glow from the taillights was not reflected back from it. Slowly, it rose to its feet and took a staggering step towards the car.
"Maxwell, drive!" Wufei hissed.
"It's just an animal," Duo said uncertainly. "Panther, I think."
"Two things," Zechs said. "One, panthers don't get back up after being hit by a car doing almost a hundred. And two, panthers have skin."
Duo did a double take, squinting wildly at the large cat. Zechs was right. It had no skin and it's muscle mass was blackened, rotted, hanging from it's skeleton by tattered tendons. As it neared the car and came more fully into the red glow of the taillights, it seemed to fade out of existence, becoming less visible as it entered the light.
"Maxwell," Wufei whispered, afraid to speak any louder. "Go."
Duo, mesmerized by the ghastly figure, turned off the lights. The beast reappeared in the darkness, only a few feet from the car and crouched to spring. In the front seat, Zechs kicked Duo's foot from the brake and stomped on the gas, pulling the steering wheel out of unresisting hands. Duo was still staring wide eyed behind them as the car spun its wheels in a loud squeal. A loud thud told them that the large creature had landed on the trunk of the car. The shriek of tearing metal echoed harshly through the car as claws dug into the trunk to gain purchase.
A lipless maw opened in a silent snarl, the throat too torn out to possess functioning vocal cords. Duo stared blankly into the eyeless face. Finally, Duo snapped out of his trance and loosed several shots into the corpse's head. Although it didn't seem to notice the injury, the impact was enough to cause it to lose its hold on the car.
Spinning quickly, Duo reclaimed the wheel and pedals from Zechs, flipping the lights back on as he sped up to even faster than he had been going before. Neither of the other two pilots objected when he pushed the car to over a hundred and forty miles an hour. They remained in mute shock for several minutes until Duo broke the uneasy silence.
"The next time we see Reyn, he has some explaining to do. He never told us about those things."
"Keep driving, Maxwell," Wufei said. "We're not stopping at this safe house."
To Be Continued…
Like I said, this is all based on a dream I had. Part of that dream involved something that was already dead and could not be hurt… something that could only vaguely be seen in the dark and completely vanished in the light. You know, I really need to stop eating junk food before I go to bed. Anyways… Review! I live for the feedback. ^_^