Duo and Maeko's Chaotic Date
This was written as a piece of a choose your own adventure story at I have had problems with the site's non functioningness so I haven't been there in a verrrrry long time.
However, I do remember the premise of the story. Duo and Wufei made a bet on a chess game where the end result was that either Duo would get doused with coffee or that… something would happen to Wufei. In this version, everyone else got doused with coffee (they're still trying to get the smell out of their hair) but Wufei and Duo made some kind of peace.
I forget the rest… but somehow, it winded up with Duo's attempt at going out on a date with a gal he met on the beach while running from Wufei (I shamelessly named her after myself…). As this part of the story begins, Heero is depressed about Rel and is hanging out at a diner – the same diner Duo decides to take Maeko to. Quatre is temporarily psychotic (for a good reason, oh yeah. shudders) and has a bit of a problem with Duo's carefree attitude, as you will soon see. And then Howard pops in because he's cool. So anyway, I was amused when I found an old copy lying around so I edited and added coolness and now here it is.
Warnings: Um. It's a spoof. Spoof spoof spoofiness. And a tiny bit of wish fulfillment (pretty car…).
Disclaimer: I know, I read the thing where it says that FFnet does not allow choose your own adventure stories. The end of this story is basically a joke, so yeah. This isn't a real CYOA story. Don't delete this! It's a one shot! Oh, and I'm not profiting from this unless people review and I feel special that my work is being read, blah blah blah.
The Story.
"You are not leaving this house! It is WAY past your curfew. Duo! DUO!" Quatre yelled as Duo ran past him and out the door of the chic townhouse. He took hold of Maeko's arm screamed,
"RUN!!!"
They hopped into Maeko's yellow Mustang GT through the sunroof and Duo (who insisted on driving) floored the gas. Quatre raced back to the living room, skidding on the tile floor and yelling,
"They're getting away!"
"Who cares? The less I see of that femmy baka the better," Wufei announced rudely and flipped the television on to Spike TV.
"Trowa?" Quatre begged.
"Uh, sorry Quatre. I have to wash my hair," he said.
TROWUHHHHH," Quatre whined. But his friend simply shrugged as he headed for the bathroom
It just wasn't fair. Quatre, being the good boy that he was, always obeyed the house rules. And Duo, being Duo, always broke them. It just plain sucked.
"Fine! FINE! It doesn't matter if none of you care about my feelings! If you won't help me, I'll stop him on my own!"
Meanwhile, Duo and Maeko were on their way to the diner.
"Man, I hate diners," Maeko complained.
"Huh? This is a great one! They have comics in the tabletops! I promise, you'll like it," Duo said, not knowing that he was about to run into you-know-who.
Heero, being rather depressed at having missed the speech that Relena gave earlier in the day, had been sitting at the counter drinking coffee until his eyes turned red. He needed something sweet.
"Milk," he said to the waitress. "Chocolate!" She slid the frothy beverage down the counter and Heero suavely grabbed it and took a big gulp, only spilling one little drop on his spandex shorts.
Weird, the waitress thought. Spandex.
At that moment, Duo and Maeko entered the diner and were seated at a booth.
"Nice night, isn't it?" Maeko said.
"I think I'll have fish sticks. No, wait – chicken fried steak. Yeah. No… Froot Loops."
Maeko sighed. Being below food on Duo's totem pole of interests was very sad.
The waitress delivered the Froot Loops and Maeko's chicken enchilada soup just as Heero decided to glance over his shoulder. He slid off the stool and went to sit next to Duo, just as Duo was starting to pay attention to what Maeko was saying.
"Hey buddy," Heero said, sounding a bit inebriated, even though he had only been drinking coffee and chocolate milk.
"Um, hi. Nice to see you Heero. Go away," Duo said.
"Wow, you're on a date. It's been a while…"
"Shut up, baka," Duo whispered. Maeko just stared.
"I was going to go on one myself," Heero said, "but I didn't get to the civic center in time to casually run into Relena… ohh, Relena…" Heero dropped his head on the table and didn't move. Duo and Maeko stared at him.
"Is he asleep?" Maeko asked. Duo poked him. Heero didn't even grunt.
"I think he's dead."
"REALLY?" a shocked and gullible Maeko asked loudly.
Heero grunted.
"Aw, shoot," Duo complained.
"You know," Heero moaned, "it's really weird. I pushed Relena away because I thought it was safer for her to be away from me. Now, everything's fine, but I have to go out of my way to see her! We used to run into each other all the time…" He plucked a dry green Froot Loop from Duo's bowl and began to play with it on the tabletop.
"You missed the speech?" Duo said incredulously. "Dude, I thought you were like stalking her! How did you miss it?"
"I've made every one of her public appearances until now. But this one…"
"What, were they holding it next to an NRA con and you had to go check out the fridge magnets? C'mon, what happened?"
"I don't know… I just don't… no, I do. Duo?" he said, looking up with big sad eyes that totally creeped Duo out due to their very-not-like-Heero-ness.
"Uh, what?" he asked.
"I'm not the soldier I thought I was…"
"Oh no, not now. Not in public… We can't have this conversation here!" Lowering his voice to a whisper, he added, "Look over there – it's a girl! That means I'm on a date. And no sudden weird display of your need to be psychoanalyzed is gonna screw this up, okay? So, like, can you hold it until we get home?"
Heero's glazed eyes began to focus. Duo watched as his pupils shrank.
"Ew," he said.
Heero continued staring at Duo.
"Okay, okay, I give up. Tell us why you're not the soldier you thought you were."
"I can't multitask."
"Oh, well, Heero, lots of men have that problem," Maeko offered sincerely.
Duo snorted.
"Actually, I can do many things at the same time, like place a bomb, rehydrate and dodge enemy fire. But I've found my limit."
He paused, going back to twirling the Froot Loop.
"Uh, Heero?" Duo said, waving his hand in front of Heero's face.
"What?" Heero asked.
"Um, you gonna tell us your limit?"
"Oh, right. I've discovered that I have difficulty balancing stalking with brooding. They both require a great deal of focus, and I'm having trouble balancing them in this new political atmosphere. It's affecting my time management. That's why I missed Relena's speech."
Duo squinted at him.
"Just when I thought you couldn't get any weirder…"
Sitting in front of this heartbroken (or something like that) young man reminded Maeko of the days when she had trouble finding dates and ended up spending her nights writing stories about going out with fictional characters. And of course in these dates something traumatic always happened, like an assassination attempt or someone running with scissors. She didn't want him to end up like that.
"Well Heero," began Maeko, who actually knew very little about Heero and Relena's relationship dynamics, "sometimes you just have to get up and make things happen. It would be just as effective for you to go to her hotel and say 'Relena, I love you' as running into her in a war zone and saying 'Relena, I love you.'"
Heero looked at her with another one of those glazed expressions. Then, he blinked and everything seemed to clear up for him.
"Yeah. That sounds about right."
"Well, now that we have this problem cleared up," Duo interjected, "Heero can leave Maeko and me to our date."
"Oh, sure," Heero said. "I have something to do, anyway." He gave a tiny, Heeroish smile to Maeko. "See you around, Duo. It was nice to meet you, Maeko."
"Yah, you too."
And with that, Heero exited the diner, almost knocking a reckless Quatre over as he left.
"Heero!" Quatre said, "you have to help me find Duo. He got in trouble last week and I set a curfew for him and he isn't obeying it!!!"
"Oh, uh, he's back there." Heero pointed with his thumb as he jogged thru the entryway, his mind clearly elsewhere.
Poor Quatre, who by now was suffering greatly from something like disgruntled business man vigilante syndrome, marched up to Duo and demanded that he come with him.
"I demand that you come with me!"
"Uh… no?" Duo said, turning away and ignoring him.
"GRR! Come NOW!" Quatre roared.
The waitress rolled her eyes.
Other customers muttered and gestured to their neighbors.
Maeko noticed that Quatre had really decent breath support.
"No," Duo responded.
Quatre's eyes filled with burning tears and his eyes did that little anime-eye-twitchy effect that makes girls so "AWW!"
"AWW!" Maeko said. "You've hurt his feelings! Poor, poor Quatre!"
Due to his fury, Quatre was shaking all over and sank into the booth next to Maeko. She put her arms around him and stroked his hair as he tried to keep his watering eyes on light mist.
"It's just not f-fair…" he moaned
"No kidding!" Duo said. "I'M the one who should be getting his hair stroked by Maeko, not the blond!"
"Oh hush, Duo. There'll be plenty of time for that later." Duo did indeed hush, as his imagination sped haphazardly thru different definitions of "that."
"So, Quatre, what's not fair?" Maeko asked kindly.
"Duo broke my flower pot and I assigned him a curfew to keep him from going out late at night and getting hyper and breaking people's ceramic flower pots!"
"Hey – now, you were playing capture the banana, too!"
"IT'S NOT MY FAULT!!!"
"No Quatre, it isn't your fault," Maeko said, not really caring about the details. "But you really can't make rules for other people. They have to agree to solutions. So, of course Duo went out. He was just trying to rebel against you and your rule."
"No, I just wanted Froot Loops…" Duo mumbled. Maeko ignored him for the time being.
"So, forget about this itty bitty incident. And next time, talk things through better. Do you hear me Duo? This is important."
"Uh, sure. Talk it out. Alrighty," he said, drumming his fingers on the Green Lantern's face.
"We DID talk it out! You just don't LISTEN, Duo! You want her to hurt me!"
Maeko glanced at Duo for an explanation, but Duo waved a hand around in a "his brain is on L4 right now" motion.
"Who?" Maeko asked.
"Dorothy gave me that flower pot… her prized Venus fly trap now resides in a PLASTIC CARTON. Do you have ANY idea how PO'd that woman is going to be??? She'll never speak to me again! How will I get thru to her??? Her life will be endless hateful sadness and it will have been ALL YOUR FAULT!" he growled at Duo.
"Dude, buy her a new pot, like I said-"
"'Hey, let's see how many times we can jump over Dot's flower while passing the banana' you said. Like it would be FUN. Like that was in any way a good idea, despite the fact that you were taking NO consideration for another's property!"
"OKAY, sheez, I'm sorry, all right? I'll apologize to her, okay, just, you know, quiet down, please. I think that dude at bar wants to spit his dinner on you."
"Apologize in person?"
"Hoooo…" Duo shuddered.
"Do it," he threatened, his eyes abnormally wide. Strangely, he also seemed to have stopped blinking.
"Um, now, Quatre, I mean, Dorothy is YOUR friend, I mean, I hardly know her and she's all into protocol and what not, and I'd just totally mess it up, you know that I'm just no good at-"
"Excuses, more lame excuses. You don't seem to grasp the severity of the situation."
"You don't seem to have much of a grasp on reality," Duo said, audible enough to be really rude.
"She's coming in tonight."
Duo went all frozen, then twitched as he thawed.
"……" he said.
"Yes. Right now, her car is probably just pulling into the driveway, and that's if we're lucky! She's probably already discovered our crime!"
"Don't blame yourself," Maeko said in an effort to keep him from his previous hysterics.
"MAEKO!" Duo sputtered, finally able to make sound come from his mouth. She shrugged helplessly.
"Yes, it's true. She's coming here. What are you going to do about it?" Quatre asked, leaning against the worn green leather bench-back.
Duo hadn't the faintest idea, which was terribly unfortunate, as Dorothy was a bit ahead of schedule. They heard the bell on the door clang, but no one understood its significance until the tall, sophisticated blonde declined the waitress' offer to be seated, as she had friends to meet. Maeko quickly scooted a foot and a half from Quatre, as she suspected this customer was none other than the aforementioned fly-trap owner.
Because, with everything else that had happened so far, it HAD to be, right?
"Quatre," a commanding yet lyrical alto called out from a few booths away. Duo, who had rarely feared death, did fear pain, and slunk to the far corner of the booth.
"Dorothy," he greeted with a mixture of delight and apprehension.
She approached slowly and determinedly, in the time stopping way only she could. The DJ who played the best mix of the 80s, 90s and today had coincidentally selected now as an appropriate time to revive the Jaws theme. Gentlemanly Quatre stood to welcome his love.
"Hello, darling," she said, sounding rather like Bette Davis. Maeko politely averted her eyes as they kissed hello. Duo stared much the way he had the last time he watched "The Creature From the Black Lagoon" in 3D at 4 AM. "I just got into town and came over as soon as I heard you were out," Dorothy said. She acknowledged the couple that sat very close to the window with a nod and slid onto the seat next to Duo, who whimpered and hugged his knees.
Quatre gazed at the blond with a look of sorrow and guilt. He knew that she knew and that she wasn't about to bring it up just yet. Oh no. She would make him suffer first. Dorothy raised an eyebrow.
"I'm sorry, I can't take it, I'm just so sorry!" Quatre blurted. "I didn't mean to disrespect you. I'm so sorry that Petey has to live in plastic house, but you know, not everyone has a house, and at least he does… he'll get through this hard time, I promise! I'll help! I'm so sorry! It's all my fault!" he wept into the very stylin' table top.
Dorothy reached over and patted his head.
"Dear, dear Quatre," she said. "Sit up now and look and me." He obeyed, not quite knowing if she were going to accept his apology or beat him senseless. Or beat him senseless and then accept it. She was a tricky one.
Perhaps her feelings of anger dissipated when she saw the sadness in his eyes. Or, perhaps she had hit someone with her car on the way from the apartment and that had made her feel better. Either way, it seemed she had no intention of causing her boyfriend-type-person any more pain.
At least for now.
"Quatre, it's all right. You're rich, remember? You can buy me another."
"Oh, that's right. Of course," he said, as if that logical response could have been expected.
"Now, come. Let's find someplace more… suitable to catch up." They stood, held hands and looked into each others' eyes. Duo clawed at the napkin holder.
"Ta ta," Dorothy said. "It was so nice meeting you," she added to Maeko, even though she still didn't know her name. Oh well, protocol, you know.
"See you later, guys!" Quatre said cheerily.
What is he on? the waitress wondered.
"Bye," Maeko said politely. As soon as they had turned their backs, she began trying to pry Duo's hand off the napkin dispenser. But he had a death grip on it and no intention of letting go.
"Duo, let it go! It's okay; she's gone now. Duo, geez you're strong… come on now!"
Finally he let it go of his own volition, leaving blood from his finger tips on the metal edge and the first few napkins. Maeko pulled them out and wiped off the metal, hoping no one would notice.
A little blood never hurt anyone right? Heh heh… she thought.
Duo stared at the blood on his fingers muttering, "She's… so… scary…"
"DUO?" Maeko whispered loudly. "Snap out of it!" He looked up at her and grinned, apparently all right.
"So, now that's we're all alone," he began slyly.
"We're not alone. We're in a restaurant."
"Oh yeah." Duo paid the bill and they departed. This time, Maeko drove because after all, it was her yellow Mustang.
A noise came from the roof. They glanced up and saw none other than the Hawaiian shirt clad Howard peering in through the sunroof.
"Hey, Duo!" he called while clinging to the car for dear life.
"Holy crap!" Maeko exclaimed and moved into the slower lane.
"Hey, Howie! How's the biz?" Duo asked congenially, as if this were a normal time and place for such a conversation.
"Goin' pretty well. I fixed your skateboard."
"Groovin'! I'll be by tomorrow to pick it up!"
"Okay, I'll see you then! Now if you'll excuse me, I just got a call from a lady whose '68 Corvette just broke down," he said and raised both eyebrows in that Groucho Marx way that said, "Yeah, and she's hot."
"Have fun, you old playboy," Duo said.
"Right on!" he replied. And with that, Howard disappeared, leaving behind only the echo of his voice singing, "I wanna rock and roll all niiiiight."
Maeko shrugged. She really really wanted to ask, but there just wasn't anything to say that wasn't pointless. Yes, it had been weird. But that was obvious. It was best to just keep on driving.
She drove to a cliff that overlooked the beach and a star filled sky. A sign at the turnoff to the gravel road read "Inspiration Point." She parked facing the water and they made themselves comfy on the hood of her car. Maeko made sure they sat far up, near the windshield, because otherwise the raised hood air scoop would have gotten in the way of comfortable cuddling. Because yes, she had a GT. And her car was hot. VERY hot. And yellow.
"I wonder how long I'll be able to see the moon like this," Duo thought out loud.
"As long as you stick around here," Maeko said.
Duo gently touched the side of her face.
"I think I'll be around for a while," he said before –
SHAMELESS WISH FULFILLMENT OMITTED FOR YOUR GREATER READING ENJOYMENT.
At about two AM, they arrived back at the Gundam pilot's townhouse. It was a generic trendy townhouse, but Quatre had painted chibi Gundams on the mailbox so it was hard to miss.
They walked up –they walked up– to his door –to his door– they walked up his door, then they kissed a little more. There she was, just a-walkin' down the street, singin'–
Oops. Sorry.
"Good night," Duo said as he reached to open the door. "I'd invite you in, but the place is just a mess. You know, ever since Martha got sent to jail, I've been relying on reruns…"
"Of course," Maeko said understandingly. She knew a little bit about his housemate issues and that was the real reason she wasn't being invited in.
"I'll call you," he said.
"Not if I call you first," she replied flirtily.
Duo opened the door and…
What do you do now?
A) Wufei runs out the door brandishing a… carrot?
B) Duo goes in and the pilots are waiting in the foyer for the details… oh geez…