*** PART 5***

Author's Note: Um.... HEEEELP ME! **Picks berries from her hair and whines**

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The atmosphere began to soften with light trills laughter, She was amused for some ungodly reason. "You may be excused." She said dismissively turning her attention away from him and to a clear flute-glass in front of her. It was empty.

Duo couldn't move, his body was frozen and stiff, his skin cold like a shell that incased his animosity towards his captor. A woman. Suddenly, he felt like Wufei, quick to underestimate the female sex. When he knew very well, even at the tender age of nine, women where evil, not weak. A smile tugged at his lips, his body warming and melting against his chair.

As quickly as it had changed in the first place, the air around him iced, the pressure renewing his initial inflexibility. "Why are you amused, I said you are to leave."

How often do you have a chance to back talk death? "No." He drawled, "You said I was excused. I don't remember asking if I had to go anywhere, this chair really is comfortable."

The woman didn't bristle instead she smiled... A cold, skeletal expression carved into her porcelain face. "It's precarious to be so bold..." She whispered, her eyes shutting sleepily. "Precarious to be sure..."

The growing pain in his heart and the heated flesh on his neck burning unbearably, related to him Her sincerity vindictively.

"Make no mistake... I like you, I want to feel you under my hands, inside my body, I want to ... taste... you inside my mouth..." -she was swaying, the words breathed through her barely parted lips- "I want under your skin..." Her eyes snapped open, her body becoming still and fixed. "The penalty for perfidious behavior is pitiless and… agonizing."

Instantaneously the discomfort stopped, and a cool realization washed over him. He'd sooner die than be at her mercy as a witless minion, or even worse (in his mind at least) her caged sex slave.  "What are you going to do? Kill me?" His mouth shut immediately, his mind replaying what he said. Way-to-go, man...

"Now, Duo... Why would I do that when there are so many other ways... to slaughter your mind?"

Duo's eyes fluttered, his body-becoming limp and slipping to the floor under the table in a mess hurt.

***

As scheduled, Heero came off his paid vacation and returned the Preventers office. People who had caught wind of Duo's death gave their condolences, and Duo's secretary cried. The girl couldn't have been more than 18, and had been given the job out of charity.

Wiping her tanned hand across her eyes she sobbed, "He... he saved my life... He's gone." She wailed. "I-... I'd still be digging inside a dumpster and laying in some man's-... " A fresh flood of tears broke her sentence fortunately.  "He was a good gu-"

The noise the followed was sickeningly familiar to the secretary who had come off the streets and into the office, the rolling click of a revolver pressed into her agape mouth reverberating to her ears through her teeth. 

Heero's cobalt eyes where shut, his lashes damp but ungiving. "Shut up." He hissed.

***

Wufei glanced up from his files, his mind somewhere between terrorists, his uncle, and Duo, then looked back down and came to a halt. Was Heero holding a woman at the 'benevolence' of a gun?

Without dropping his paperwork, the young Chinese man sought to disarm his friend. "Yui!" With a swift round quick, Wufei sent the gun flying to the ceiling with a bang. Unconscious in the office above, Quatre lay unbeknownst to the bullet hole by his temple.

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Ending note: Opinions welcome (HINT HINT HINT). Sorry about the grammar, I am trying to edit it, but it is just not my forte. Sorry Nina, Quatre is not dead! LoL. ^-~