"Mobile suits?"

"Check."

"Treize's schedule?"

"Check."

"Schematics of the New York base?"

"Check."

"Mission orders hacked?"

"Check."

"Loudspeakers installed?"

"Check."

"Industrial size strap-on's?"

"Che… Wait!  Who the hell let you out?"

"Easter bunny?"

"Damn it!  Put him back in the closet!"

"But I don't wanna go!"

"Got him!"

"I've got the rope."

"Be sure to gag him."

"What did I…  Mmh!  Mmmm mff!"

"Finally."

"It's bad enough that I have to go along with this.  I don't want to listen to him too."

"Hey.  In all fairness, you were outvoted."

"Take his side and you'll be in the closet with him."

"No.  That's quite alright."

"Can I go in the closet?"

"No!"

"You guys are no fun."

"Quiet or I'll gift wrap you and send you to Wufei."

"I'll be good."

"Same here."

"Ditto."

"About time.  Now, back to the list."

"Choreography?"

"Check."

*     *     *

Heero was typing quickly, trying to get past the security on the files he was after.  He'd uncovered something called the Shinigami Project and he fully intended on getting the details.  Four hours had passed since he had started hacking and nothing had changed.  Whoever had set the security on the files had been a computer genius.  Growling, he kept at it.  He'd have answers if it killed him.

A small window popped up in the corner of his screen.  He glanced at it for a moment, fully intending on closing the annoying screen when he noticed what it was.  Frowning, he clicked on the small link marked 'Mission' and proceeded to enter his incredibly long and impossible to remember alphanumeric passwords.

He glanced at information briefly, noting that the file had already been accessed once.  The Maxwells already knew about the mission.  Sending his acceptance, he shut down the program and initiated a new one to continue work on getting the files he wanted.  Finished, he started searching for the other pilots.  The base was a large one and all of the pilots were ordered to attack.

*     *     *

Treize fidgeted madly, trying to keep his nerves under control.  He was on one of the largest Oz bases on Earth and he knew without a doubt that the Maxwells were coming.  He shuddered, wondering what horrors he would be subjected to this time.

Something that disturbed him even more, though, was the fact that a team of hackers he had hired had discovered a link to the information on the spastic L2 pilots.  Something called the Shinigami Project had been uncovered, but no one could seem to get any details past that.  Considering the fact that the Maxwells called themselves Shinigami at times, he was understandably worried.  What could be so important that over a hundred hackers couldn't access it?

He picked up a sheet of paper on his desk, glaring at it as though it held the answers.  Not even an hour ago, one of the best hackers in the group had located a subdivision of the Shinigami Project.  Honoo.

"Fire," he muttered.  "What in the hell does 'fire' mean?"

Suddenly grim, he turned to stare out the window again, wondering what was coming this time.

*     *     *

Heero glanced at the nine mobile suits following Deathscythe.  The fact that all of the Maxwells were joining in the destruction of the base didn't bother him.  But the suits did.  The insane pilots had painted the mobile suits with some sort of design.  He didn't know if the murals had significance or not, but they made him uneasy.

One of the suits was painted to look like it was on fire.  A second had dappled grays and blacks covering it, carefully depicting a forest at night, emphasizing the shadows.  The third had a large spotted cat on it that he suspected was a leopard.  He made a mental note to ask Trowa later.  The fourth was similar, a snarling wolf curled across the machine.  A fifth had a mountain range on it.  The sixth, a tidal wave.  The seventh sported a tornado that wrapped around the machine twice.  The eighth was black streaked with silver bolts of lightening.  It was the ninth and final one that worried him.  The first eight displayed something found in nature.  The final machine depicted a nuclear explosion.

Choosing to ignore the designs for now, he hailed Deathscythe.

"Duo here.  What does the almighty Spandex God request of me?"

"Baka," he snapped.  "You never sent details as to what formation you would take."

"Don't worry about it," Duo said, waving one hand dismissingly.  "We're big boys.  We can take care of ourselves."

"I'm not a boy," Deut snapped, a second window appearing on Heero's screen.  Before Duo could respond, a third window appeared with a grinning face.

"Compared to Duo, you are," he offered.  Deut scowled.

"Darren," Duo growled in warning.  Darren just laughed and flipped off the signal, disappearing before any more could be said.

Heero was ignoring their conversation.  He was busy tracing the signals back to the two mobile suits that had opened a frequency towards him.  Deut was in the suit with the tsunami and Darren in the one with the tornado.  He briefly considered questioning the two remaining Maxwells, who were currently bickering like children, on how they had known what the others were saying.  Snorting, he dismissed it from his mind, assuming they had another set of visual or audio feeds between them.

Though he would have liked to have figured out the names of the other seven Maxwells, he didn't get the chance to ask.  Quatre's face popped up on a new window.

"Trowa, Wufei and I are in position," the blond said immediately.  "Do you happen to know what the Maxwells will be doing?  I'm afraid to hail them again.  The last time I did, they responded with four moons and… one of them pretending to hump the screen."  By the time he had said that, he was a lovely tomato red.  "Wufei said they did much worse to him, but he wouldn't elaborate."

Heero suddenly felt relieved that he only had to listen to two of the braided idiots bickering for a few minutes.  He'd already disconnected the signals to get rid of the argument.  Glancing once more at the designed mobile suits, he turned to the Arabian.

"They're avoiding answering," he responded stiffly.  Cobalt eyes narrowed.  "They're up to something."

"I thought so," Quatre muttered.  He opened his mouth to say more but was interrupted by a window popping up in both his and Heero's Gundams.

"You always assume the worst of us!" one of the Maxwells wailed, clutching at his heart.  "It's not fair.  We haven't done anything!"

"You're planning something," Heero stated, glaring.

"You can't prove that."

"Who are you?" Quatre asked, interrupting before Heero and the American could get into a serious fight.

"Eh?"

"You're name, baka," Heero snapped, interested in the reply.  He was already tracing the source of the transmission.  "Which one are you?"

"Dustin."

Heero glanced at the information on screen.  The shadowy mobile suit.  Immediately after he had that information, Dustin's screen vanished and another popped into view.

"If you want to talk to us during battle, you don't have to find out our names," came a cold voice.  "Just call us by the designs on what we're piloting.  We'll respond."

"You are?" Quatre asked politely.

"Dante," he snapped.  "And before you bother tracing me, Heero, I'm in the lightening streaked mobile suit."  The screen disappeared.

Heero involuntarily twitched.  He didn't want to admit it, but they were creeping him out.  Clenching his teeth, he decided that they must have bugged his Gundam.  Another screen came into view, shocking both him and Quatre.

"No, Heero.  We didn't bug your precious Wing," he laughed.  The screen disappeared immediately.  Heero's blood ran cold.

He was in the process of tracing the last signal when all of the sensors on his Gundam lit up.  Cursing his inattention, he grabbed the controls, preparing for battle.  What he saw, though, was Deathscythe and the nine painted mobile suits flying towards the base at a rapid speed.

So much for planning, Heero groused.  Yanking on the controls, he threw himself behind the ten attacking idiots.

"Quatre, bring everyone else in.  They're attacking."

The signal from the blond disappeared instantly as he left to do as ordered.  In a matter of a few seconds, the other three Gundams were following him.  The four Gundams stayed close to each other, each of the pilots wondering the same thing.  What were the Maxwells planning this time?

Their question was answered immediately when the ten braided lunatics immediately engaged in battle with the mobile suits at the base in their own unique way.  Even Heero, the perfect soldier, froze when he saw what the ten Americans were doing.  From some incoming signal he didn't remember opening, he saw Wufei fumbling for something to quell a rather heavy nosebleed.  Heero couldn't blame him.

In perfect synchronization, the ten pilots had arranged themselves into a position that was both offensive and defensive.  However, their formation was unprecedented, the nine mobile suits and one Gundam lining up side by side as they fought, Deathscythe in the middle.  That wouldn't have bothered the other four Gundam pilots had it not been for the fact that the braided Americans were somehow managing to do the cancan in their appropriated mobile suits while still effectively fighting.  Loudspeakers that they hadn't noticed before were blaring an energetic tune that they seemed to be dancing to.

"I am not seeing this," Quatre muttered over the audio connection.  Somewhere in the background, a muffled giggle could be heard, sounding suspiciously like Trowa.

As if they had heard the soft words, the Maxwells changed formation, splitting into small clusters as they scattered into the attacking mobile suits.  Thinking it was over, Heero started to follow them, only to pull up short in mixture of amusement and horror.  He could feel blood rushing to his cheeks in a fierce blush.  The music shifted to some sort of techno music that would have done well at a rave.  In the background, he could hear Wufei going insane.  The Chinese pilot was screaming something about 'scurvy dogs' at the Maxwells.  Beyond the ear-splitting ranting, he could hear Quatre sputtering indignantly, his blush evident in his voice.  Trowa could be heard as well, hiccupping occasionally as he tried to control his laughter.  Wufei began ranting at the Heavyarms pilot instead, lecturing him on the foolishness of encouraging the harebrained imbeciles.

Heero chose to ignore the other three pilots in favor of watching the unfolding stupidity.  Despite the fact that the Americans had put themselves in less than perfect positions, the tactics they were using seemed to be working flawlessly, the opposing pilots too flabbergasted to do anything to counter them.  He couldn't blame them either.

The Maxwells had clustered into groups, each of which was doing something different.  In groups of two, they were dirty dancing with the mobile suits they had stolen, making the machines gyrate in motions never meant for the heavy metal contraptions to move in.  Two others had abandoned the pretense of dancing, opting to slam the machines together in a motion that had Heero blushing from the implications.  He knew that Darren was in the one with the tornado on it, but he hadn't yet identified the Maxwell in the flame-covered suit.  Even in such ridiculous positions, more or less tangled with another suit, all of them were easily dodging all attacks aimed at them and returned fire with unfailing accuracy.  The four groups were quickly decimating the stunned Oz pilots.

Blinking, he did a quick tally, frowning slightly when he realized that Deathscythe and the shadowy mobile suit were both missing.  Assuming the worst, he flipped on his scanners and located the two errant suits.  He swore when his sensors registered Tallgeese in the same area as the two missing Maxwells.  What he found nearly caused him to crash Wing Zero face first into the dirt.

Between the two of them, Duo and Dustin had somehow managed to flatten Tallgeese to the ground, where they were using Deathscythe to pound the struggling suit into the dirt.  Dustin's appropriated mobile suit was hard pressed to hold Tallgeese to the ground while they continued to torment the blond pilot within.

Heero's com beeped.  Shocked, he saw that the signal was coming from Tallgeese.  Hesitantly, he accepted the feed and allowed a window to pop up to show a very irritated, Zechs, who seemed to be doing his best impression of a lobster.

"What?" Heero asked coldly.  Inside, he was laughing himself sick at the older man's furious expression, which was currently jerking in a rhythmic motion along with his pinned Gundam.  Zechs glared, turning redder by the second.

"Get them off of me," he grated.  Heero couldn't help it.  His lips twitched upwards in something resembling a grin.

"Why should I?"

"What do I have to do to convince you to get the Maxwells away from me?"

"Surrender the base," Heero retorted immediately.  The window vanished immediately, leaving him blinking at the empty screen.  A few seconds later, his com beeped again.  Curious, he accepted the signal a second time.

"If we surrender the base, will you let all personnel evacuate first?"

Heero froze, shocked that he was even discussing this.  Keeping his face neutral, he nodded tersely in agreement.  The request was reasonable.

"Agreed."

"And will you get these idiots off of me?" he grated out.

"Done," Heero said, closing the connection.

Attempting to hail Deathscythe proved to be useless.  Duo was laughing too hard to hold on to the controls properly, let alone speak.  He didn't need to check to know that Dustin would be in a similar state.  Sighing, Heero moved forward warily, prying Deathscythe off of the Tallgeese to allow Zechs to get off of the ground.  Immediately, the freed Gundam spun and escaped, flying away from the base.  The formerly attacking Maxwells didn't move, still laughing too hard to pilot.

Heero quickly called up a link to all of the other pilots.

"Stand back and hold your fire," he called.  Several curious looks and numerous bursts of mad laughter met his announcement.  "Oz has surrendered the base on the condition that we allow them to evacuate."

"They surrendered?" Wufei asked, looking shocked.  Heero absently noticed that the Chinese pilot was still nosebleeding.

"Hey!  Where's the fun in that?" a braided figure asked.

"We were winning either way, Derrick," a second Maxwell retorted stiffly.  Heero stared at him, recognizing Dante immediately from the same cold tone he had used earlier.  After all, how many of the Maxwells could possibly act like Heero did?

"You just get embarrassed too easily," Deut interrupted.  "You should really remove the stick from your ass, you know.  You could almost challenge Wu-chan with that thing."  Wufei could be heard sputtering in the background.

"Stick?  Ass?  What did I miss?" Darren wailed.

"Darren," Dante growled.

All of the Maxwells pulled out of the group windows to argue amongst themselves.  Heero stared at his empty screen in horror, having suddenly realized that now that the battle was over, they would all likely be coming back to stay at one of Quatre's mansions with the rest of them.

As promised, all Oz troops pulled back, leaving their mobile suits where they stood on the field as they left quickly.  The Maxwells had pulled back, but continued to play amongst themselves.  Five of them were dancing the Macarena with their mobile suits.  After a few seconds, Duo joined in with Deathscythe.  The remaining four American pilots managed to secure two lengths of cable from somewhere and were having a Double Dutch Jump Rope competition.  The hopping of the multi-ton machines was making the ground shake and drawing a lot of attention from the evacuating soldiers.

"Just when I think they can't get any dumber," Wufei muttered.  Heero nodded silently in agreement.

Within an hour, the personnel had been removed from the base.  The pilots all converged to destroy the emptied buildings and abandoned suits.  The Maxwells did their part by forming a line and doing the Bunny Hop across the buildings to demolish them.  Knowing better than to distract them, Heero just shook his head silently, not wanting to draw their attention.

Once they were finished, the Maxwells immediately disappeared, going back to wherever it was they had come from.  The remaining four pilots watched them leave with extreme relief, not wanting to face the ten menaces yet.  Quatre led the way back to the hanger where they stored their Gundams.

*     *     *

Treize glanced over his shoulder at the smoke rising from the smoldering remains of the New York base.  Even though they were miles away, the smoke could still be seen clouding the air.

After driving for a short while, they came to a smaller branch of the base.  Treize wasted no time in going to his office, allowing the soldiers to do what they wanted for the meantime.  Checking the computer there, he froze.

A message waited for him in his email.  He cautiously opened the link, eyes widening when he saw what was on the page.  One of the hackers had managed to get past all of the security on the Shinigami Project.  He recoiled from the screen when the first picture came up, feeling like his blood had been replaced with ice water.

"My God," he breathed.

*     *     *

In high spirits from not having been forced to fight a battle he thought would be difficult, if not impossible, Heero walked quickly back to his room.  Not one to be deterred in anything, he opened his laptop, checking on the program he had set to hack the files on the Shinigami Project.  To his surprise, the files were accessible, his program having accomplished in the past few hours what he had been unable to.

Smirking to himself, he pulled up the decoded files.  The blood drained from his face as images and information started flickering across the screen.  For the first time in his life, Heero Yuy was afraid.

To Be Continued…

Yes, I am a sadist.  The next section will be serious, I'm afraid.  No humor for that bit.  But it will explain a lot of things I've been hinting at.  R&R!

I'm having problems with Pick Your Own Stupidity, so it'll be delayed for a while.  Sorry.  Afterimages is out now, so go check it out.  Be warned, that one is extremely dark and violent, so no squeamish people.

Well, ff.net took down the author name myself and a few friends were posting under, so I'm starting again here.  Since I've had to repost everything, REVIEW!  I lost my reviews!  *sobs*  I was over 200!!!  *wails like a banshee gone mad*