Deut and Donovan wandered Quatre's mansion freely after their return, leaving Dustin to stay in bed with the excuse that he didn't feel well.  While the other pilots assumed that he was injured, the truth was that he was simply exhausted.  Though he hadn't exerted himself as greatly as had Dante or Derrick, he was still weary.  Keeping track of the pairings they had kept on base, they told the others that he was Darren.  Heero had thought he was with Duo and he had seen Deut just after Oz's announcement.

Unfortunately, this meant that Donovan almost made the mistake of pretending to limp, as Duo's ankle was still slightly swollen.  He only barely remembered in time that Derrick had accompanied Heero across the base without limping and resuming the gimp routine would have aroused suspicion.  To prevent further misunderstandings, he called David and ordered him to firmly tie up Duo until his ankle was completely healed.  Needless to say, Duo was not happy.

It took a lot of vague answers to evade the questioning of their friends.  Though they didn't lie, they could do a merry little dance around the truth.  Still not having pulled the pranks they intended, they remained secretive about their numbers, carefully sidestepping any question aimed at them.

"Is Darren up yet?" Quatre asked Deut without warning, causing her to pause in consideration.  Having received no distinctive answers, the other four pilots had resorted to questioning them at random, sporadic intervals, hoping to get a clear answer while they weren't paying attention.

"There's no telling with that pervert," Deut answered, grinning widely at her distinctively dirty interpretation of his innocent question.  "Besides, I wouldn't want to know, so why ask me?"  Quatre frowned, a blush creeping across his pale features.

"Is he awake yet?" Quatre asked, careful not to give her another opening to embarrass him.

"He could be up at any time," Deut grinned, still avoiding answering.  That answer was true for any of her brothers.  They all kept strange hours.  So did she, for that matter.  Even though that answer was somewhat innocent, she leered as she said it, further embarrassing the Arabian.  Huffing softly, the only display of anger the gentle blond would show, Quatre left the room, missing Deut's amused grin.  From her angle, she could see that his blush had spread across the back of his neck as well.

Once he was out of sight, she slumped against the wall, still slightly disoriented from her efforts on base.  Derrick, Dante and Dustin hadn't been the only ones to have given themselves a bit of a workout.  Even though she hadn't done as much as they had, she was still tired.  She wearily fished the communicator out of her pocket when she heard it beep softly, flipping it open absently.

"Yes?" she asked.

"Duo here," a slightly sheepish voice responded.  Deut stiffened slightly.

"What is it?"

"Um, I hate to ask you this, but we're sending in a strike team to get the blueprints from Oz before they can build a replacement for their prototype."

"Who all is going?" Deut sighed in defeat.

"David, Darren and you."

Deut paused.  "That's not the best grouping I've heard of.  We should wait until our numbers are higher before attempting that."

"Not an option.  I'm sorry, but G ordered that we destroy it now."

"I know, I know.  I'll be out to meet them in a bit.  Is it still in Madrid?"

"We believe so," Duo said quickly.  "Demitri said that they didn't move it.  Zechs and Treize apparently thought that we would never think to look for the blueprints in the wreckage of the base."

"He's awake?"

"Yeah, but he has one hell of a headache.  He'll be fine.  Dante is awake, but he's not up to moving around yet.  As for Derrick, he's awake, but he's kind of going into occasional seizures.  I've never seen him go all out before.  Hell, none of us have gone that far.  Not since the last time Demitri…  Anyways, I'm amazed that he's conscious already."

"It's been three days," Deut protested.  "Of course they'd be awake.  Dustin's fine, but still hamming it up so he can keep his lazy butt in bed.  I'm really going to hurt him if he keeps it up."

"Is he up to going on a run?"

Deut paused, considering.  "I don't think so.  He's doing better, but I don't want to send him on a mission yet.  To be honest, I'd rather not go either."

"We need someone fast," Duo said softly.  "I'd go, but I'm still chained up."

Hearing the statement, Deut finally smiled.  Apparently the others had taken the order to tie up the hyperactive loudmouth seriously.  The clear irritation in Duo's voice caused a smirk to slip onto her face, her good mood returning immediately.

"Will the others be ready by the time we get back?" she asked innocently.

The irked quality to Duo's voice vanished instantly.  She could almost see him grinning at the question.

"Of course.  I'll get everything ready.  Are you sure you want to do this now?  We could play with them a bit more, you know."

"You're right," Deut chuckled.  "I think we should play with them a bit more.  But I still want to stand their hair on end eventually."

"David and Daniel are going to hate us for that one."

"Too bad for them."

"So be it.  We'll be torturing them by the time you three are back," Duo responded, closing the connection.

Deut only paused to gather a few implements of destruction before leaving.  She left a hastily scrawled note left on the counter, explaining that she had an errand to take care of and she would be back soon.  In the nearly illegible note, she simply omitted the full details of her errand, knowing that Heero would be more than slightly ticked if he thought that she had gone back to the Oz base.  She grinned as she hotwired one of Quatre's many cars and drove off.

*     *     *

Deut frowned and pulled back slightly, motioning for her brothers to stay out of sight.  David stayed out of sight without question, but Darren was another matter.  He didn't seem to care what they were facing as long as he got a chance to blow something up.  Ignoring both of his siblings, he darted into the hall.  Gunfire resounded immediately through the halls.

"Idiot!" Deut hissed, remaining hidden.  She only snuck a quick peek to see what was going on.  Darren was sprawled on the floor, unconscious, grinning and surrounded by several furious guards.

"He hurt?" David whispered.

"No, I don't think so," she replied wearily.  "Judging by the expression on his face, he's acting like a decoy.  I guess it makes sense, but I'd still prefer that he hadn't done that.  Now Oz knows that we're here."  She sighed.  "You go get him out of wherever they put him.  I'll get the blueprints."

"Done," David answered promptly.  He immediately turned to a small room with a computer, already waiting to see where they were going to put his brother.

Deut dashed the other direction down the hall from where they were dragging Darren to a cell by his braid.  She was silently thankful that only she and David were along with the insane pervert, knowing that if Derrick were with them, the base would have already been destroyed.  Luckily, he was still unconscious for the most part and far away where he was unable to know what was happening.

In a matter of minutes, she had crossed the length of the base, doubling back several times when she saw someone in the distance.  No one saw her, but she wasn't concerned about being seen.  She was too fast for them to catch.  A few more seconds found her in the depths of the commander's quarters.  Unsurprisingly, the doors were all locked.  Using one of her favorite Maxwell skills, she pulled lock picks out her braid and was inside before five seconds had passed.  She kicked the door shut behind her.

Startled, the occupant of the room looked up at her from his computer and jerked back in surprise, scrabbling at his hip for a gun that was on a table halfway across the room.  Deut grinned and slipped to the holstered gun before the gaping blond could even rise to his feet.

"Well, well," Deut grinned, spinning the appropriated gun in her fingers.  "If it isn't the masochist who threatened to hurt my brother."

"We have one of your brothers in custody right now," Zechs stammered, visibly upset.  "It would be unwise to attack me when he's in danger."

"You won't have him for long, I assure you," Deut laughed.  An instant later, her features turned ice cold.  "Now.  About those blueprints."

Zechs flinched as her expression changed abruptly.  Even knowing that he was unarmed, and more than likely outnumbered by Maxwells, he stood his ground and pulled a small pistol from his desk drawer.  Deut shook her head.

"Men," she grumbled.

Zechs openly gaped when she seemed to vanish from view, her form blurring slightly as she circled behind him.  In the mere second it took her to slip around the room, he knew that he had lost.  Silently, and with as much dignity as he could muster with his eyes wide and expression disbelieving, he surrendered to the inevitable.  The butt of a gun slammed into the back of his skull, dropping him unconscious to the floor.

Deut barely paused to check on the blond to make sure he was truly incapacitated before she began rummaging through the drawers to his desk.  In the third drawer on the right, she found what she wanted.  Folding up the blueprints roughly, she shoved the papers down the front of her shirt and turned towards the door.  A brief bout of vicious mischievousness hit her and she turned back to Zechs's computer, tapping a quick series of commands before running for the door.  On the monitor, the words 'Formatting Hard Drive' flashed innocently as she escaped into the base.

*     *     *

David waited patiently by the computer until it displayed the location of the idiot he called a brother.  Memorizing the cell number, he ran down the halls, calmly decking any soldiers he happened to pass.  He didn't even bother to avoid security, merely opting to leave a trail of coldcocked soldiers in his wake.  No one even managed to raise a gun in his direction before they were down for the count and he was gone.

He found Darren's cell with minimal effort.  Bawdy lyrics of some obscure tavern song could be heard echoing from the tiny room.  Growling, he rapped sharply on the door and yelled at the idiot within.

"Put your pants on!  I know you're mooning the cameras!"

Darren paused in singing long enough to reply.  "I am not!  I was just drawing dirty pictures on the walls!"

Grumbling, David slipped his fingers into the metal bars around the tiny window worked into the upper door.  Muscles in his arms corded and he grunted softly, pulling the two hundred pound steel door off its frame and hydraulic supports, tossing it aside as though it wasn't a challenge, which to him, it wasn't.  He walked just into the cell and scowled.

"Moron!  What are you doing?  You told me your pants were up!" he roared.

"They were, but mooning the cameras was a wonderful idea," Darren said calmly, wiggling his bared behind at the small lens in the corner of the room.  "I'm surprised I didn't think of it."

"We're going," David snapped testily.

"Come on," Darren wheedled.  "Just five more minutes!  I haven't finished my drawing!"

David was livid.  He stormed in to drag his brother out by force when he noticed the picture on the wall.  Though incomplete, it clearly depicted Treize and Zechs in a rather compromising, and almost physically impossible, position.

"We're going," David repeated sternly.

"But…"

"If you hurry, we'll pause on the way out and you can paint it on Tallgeese."

"Alright!" Darren crowed.  "And later, I think we should get Dante to whip up a little computer animation of this to mail to everyone in Oz!"

David snorted, but he didn't protest.  Like any true Maxwell, causing anyone and everyone grief was in his blood.

*     *     *

Treize looked up at his computer, more than slightly miffed.  It was bad enough that they had lost the only set of blueprints, a feat that no one fully understood how it was accomplished.  Then, he had discovered that Tallgeese had been painted, again, just to irritate them with the depiction of something completely obscene.  Despite the fact that only a few people had actually seen it, every person on base knew about it.  To top things off, someone had hacked onto his personal computer.  He was about to snap closed the small screen that popped up from sheer irritation when a short computer animated film began to play.  Three words flashed on the screen almost too quickly for him to catch.  'A Maxwell Production.'

The blond present in the first few seconds caught his attention and despite himself, he paused to watch.  He recognized Zechs clearly from the stunning computer work, and wondered briefly what the insane menaces were planning this time.  His answer was immediate when Zechs stripped to the buff and entered a room filled with various whips, manacles and instruments of torture.  Chained to the wall was a perfectly depicted image of himself.  Treize swore and tried to close the window.  It immediately popped up again.

Furious, he pitted his hacking skills against whichever of the black clad menaces had sent the file.  He stopped cold when he saw that the file had been sent to every computer on every Oz base, playing on an endless loop.  He slammed his head against the wooden desk once, hard, to try to force his blinding humiliation under control.  Three words, barely audible from where his face was pressed into the wood, echoed in the room along with the sounds of the forged film.

"I hate Americans."

To Be Continued…

There you have it!  I worked the title into the storyline.  *evil smirk*  Now then… we just have to wait for the insane bakas to pull their pranks on the other unsuspecting pilots.  R&R!!!!  Oh, and be warned, updates will be monstrously slow since I'm being worked to the bone and all, having just started medical school.  I know I've said it once, but R&R!!!