Warning: Relena-based criticism, shounen-ai if you squint, general oddness, GBoys out of character, language, and convenient situations ahead. This chapter in particular will jump a lot. You have been warned.
Disclaimer: Another one? The things we do to satisfy non-existent lawsuits though admittedly it would be creepy and unpleasant to be sued. Here it is: I don't own Gundam Wing, never had, never will, and I will claim not to know anyone who says otherwise. Now we can all dance in celebration.
Parabola of Mystery
Chapter Four
Try aga-in later
Trowa glanced back down at the perplexing gameboard. He was currently three spaces out of the parking lot, or that's what the crazy man inside the game had told him to do. All he knew was that this 'Mall Madness' definitely delivered on its promise. Just the electronic man's voice was enough to make him want to strangle himself with a wet noodle.
"What the Hell is the point of this game?" He asked, turning his cardboard point card around.
Quatre had the instructions brandished a good three feet away from his face, he was a little scared to be close to them.
"I've played it with Duo before but I was always confused. Uhh it says be the first to buy six items on your shopping list and get back to the parking lot…"
Red…move five.
Trowa stuck the cardboard, fake credit card into the little slot with a subtly hidden button.
Take seventy-five dollars
"Hmm should we really be encouraging this in young girls? And Duo?" he mused.
"Wow, there are a lot of nitpicky rules here…you have to go to the food court when it tells you…"
"I don't get why I have to buy an exotic parrot in the first place," Trowa added.
"I wonder if he has something else in there…"
Quatre got to his feet and ran back over to where Deathscythe was laid out right next to his Sandrock. It was a tight fit but at least they could get away with only three carriers rather then five. He easily shimmied up the side of the Gundam and stuck his head inside the cockpit. How Duo managed to stow away as much as he did in there was truly amazing. All of their areas had been designed to fit one person and one person alone. Quatre hit the panel underneath the controls where there were snarled wires and Duo's more personal necessities. These included a hairbrush, extra shampoo (in nondescript bottles so no one knows his brand), a mini-deathscythe model, a mismatched pair of socks, and far, far in the back was a dusty deck of cards.
"Hey, he actually has cards in here!" Quatre yelled. He pushed himself out of the Gundam with his prize in hand and sprinted right back to their spot in the front of the carrier. Trowa already had 'Mall Madenss' back in its box. He managed a half-smile as Quatre sat down and beat the box to try and get the excess dust off.
"I can't mix them so you do it," Quatre said as he extracted the cards and handed them to Trowa, who shuffled the cards like he was a Vegas dealer.
"So what do you want to play? Speed's pretty fun."
Quatre shook his head. "I don't know it."
"I guess I could teach you…well what card games do you know?"
The blonde Arab, kind of an oxymoron, smiled sheepishly. "Uh I really only know one…other then Go Fish and who wants to play that?"
Trowa stopped shuffling. "What's that?"
"BS."
"Okay…"
Heero, free of his two cumbersome companions, found it easy to skim over the heavy brush and make his way through 'Soralaff's' jungle. He honestly hadn't thought that any one of them would insist on coming since they all probably knew that this wasn't a real mission. Surpise surprise. The pilot figured that the two would wait at least two hours for his return before they went off on their own, three if Wufei knocked Duo out from the noise first.
The pilot's eyes snapped to the visible daylight and he propelled outside of the line of trees and brush. He rolled and stopped in an overgrown field. Heero straightened and put his hands on his hips before he settled on a stone creation in the center of the jungleless plane. It looked to be at least several centuries old. He had the 'ancient' part in the bag, now all he had to do was grab the first thing inside that wasn't part of the building itself and think of some lie about its importance to the symbolism of OZ's tyranny or something. He stretched his legs before breaking into a run toward the entrance. From this distance it was like some sort of temple.
"Hands behind your head, girly-boy," the annoying one barked as he none-too-gently rammed the barrel of his gun against Duo's forehead. He teetered on the spot before he complied, however sluggishly. Wufei glared. That was just a little unnecessary; they hadn't even heard Duo speak yet. The Chinese pilot already had his hands bound behind his back. One of the men grabbed Duo's hands and tried, unsuccessfully to wrap them up with a dark length of rope. He dropped his gun in the process and it landed hard on his foot. The man released Duo to jump up and down. Wufei couldn't help but roll his eyes. This had to be the least cohesive OZ unit he had ever seen. Hell, it was the least cohesive unit he had seen. Period. No wonder they were fringe. OZ's downfall must have reached them about two years after it collapsed.
"What's with that face?" Asked another soldier, this one with a nose that marked him as part-falcon. Duo turned and pointed to himself curiously, jerking around the man who was tying his hands together.
"It came with the body," he answered.
That earned him another barrel this one to the back of his head. To his assailant's horror, Duo's damp and tangled hair held his barrel captive, proving that it had a mind of its own. Duo's victory was short lived as the man merely yanked his gun out with all his might, bringing a few strands of the unfortunate pilot's hair along with it.
"Geez, just kill us already," he said, trying to get his now bound hands up to his head. Falcon face pushed him roughly into Wufei who didn't fall thanks to his excellent balance. Duo did fall backwards onto his rear, earning him yet another blow to the head.
"Move! We have to get there before the others do and we don't have time for your tricks."
Duo stood up and shook his head violently to deter his personal swarm of Sorolaff bugs. They actually moved away for a second, and Duo had time to reflect on the day thus far. He had been locked out, freaked out, taken halfway across the globe, eaten alive, and captured. Pretty eventful considering that it was only three. They started moving, slowly, since there really wasn't room in the overgrown jungle for so many people to be clumped up together. The leader stopped to let everyone pass him and his eyes settled on their prisoners.
"Come on, tell us who you are already," he said in his nasal voice.
Wufei's estimation of these people went down a few more notches. Now they were in the negative range.
"You don't already know? We were brought here by our resident psycho. I think that he really just wanted to get away from her and who could blame him, the woman would probably eat your soul if she got too close," Duo droned. His was just asking for a pistol whipping.
"Why do you weaklings think we're here?" Wufei asked. He didn't get hit for his rude terminology but the nasal man did scowl in his general direction.
"You're out to get 'it'. That's why we have to take you with us!" This came from an older, seedy man with a long scar down the side of his face behind Duo.
"Cowards. You should have just killed us back there," Wufei replied. Duo nudged him from behind. Well, more like he tried to trip him unsuccessfully.
"Don't encourage them," he hissed, which was more or less heard by all. Both of them were hit this time though Wufei felt that Falcon didn't put much force behind it.
About ten minutes later, Wufei turned to see his companion and snorted at the sight of him. His hair was sticking up at all angles, he was bleeding from the forehead, and was as red as lobster. How he still managed to keep that idiotic, self-important grin was beyond him.
"You look like a tomato. Or a beet. Not sure which," he commented.
Duo grinned like he was off his rocker, oh wait, he was. "Probably so. After being in the sun for so long and being bitten fifteen thousand times."
Wufei sighed. "Or maybe you're coming down with something like you said before. Who knows what lurks in this place? We're not even sure what part of the world we're in…other then the southern hemisphere."
Their captives didn't seem to care about the idle chatter. From their point of view it was either too difficult to beat out of them or perhaps they wanted to hear about Duo's health.
"Nah I've been taking my Vitamin C and Echinacea latently so I'll probably be okay," Duo said.
"Huh?"
Duo nodded like Wufei had actually said something meaningful.
"Yeah, I take all sorts of supplements for what my diet doesn't cover. Oddly enough my immune system's notoriously weak. Stupid crappy immune system."
This earned him a hit in the head. Duo turned to Scar in shock. "What the Hell, man?"
"Don't put yourself down."
Wufei couldn't take it anymore. He threw his head back and laughed.
It was about halfway into BS that Trowa and Quatre realized that it was pretty impossible to play the card game with only two people.
"Five," Quatre said, putting his card facedown on the pile.
"BS. I have three of them and I used one the first round."
Quatre took the pile, frowning, "I think I'd be willing to learn a new game."
What was the point of an ancient temple if you couldn't steal stuff? From the moment that Heero entered he only found crumbling rock or Cowskulls. He would have questioned the historical and geographical inaccuracy of it if he hadn't been so intent on completing the mission. He had put it together in his own head and set one himself. His personal mission included fooling his comrades and getting this whole jungle adventure over with.
Heero dodged left, striking the wall hard with his body as he avoided crashing rock from the ceiling above. This place was falling to pieces around him and still nothing of use. In his favor, he had tried picking up some of the ancient rock but it fell to dust in his hands and he couldn't pass off dust as an ancient artifact unless it was really cool dust.
Heero stopped when he saw a flight of crumbling stairs. The entire temple seemed to be made of nothing but stairs. He sighed and ran at his top speed up. Heero faintly wondered how he was going to get back down since they disintegrated under his weight. He went through the doorway and, surprisingly, there was more nothing. Heero wondered what the odds were that there would be another ancient temple on this rock.
An hour had passed and the down-at-the-heels troupe of OZ rejects still hadn't found whatever it was they were looking for in the Asian country of Sorolaff. Well, neither Wufei nor Duo had even asked if this was really Sorolaff, they didn't want to ruin the illusion. Having an idea of the location would just tell Duo what diseases he might have acquired.
The braided pilot sat down on the nearest rock and he crossed his legs before leaning back on his tied hands. The ropes were cutting of circulation a bit and he really wished he could just shrug them off but the idiots with the guns were currently under the impression that they called the shots. Wufei stopped near him and watched the Cowardly Lions who also thought that it was high time to take a break. Need it be added that they had taken fifteen breaks in that one hour? Despite their claims that they were in a hurry and the numerous proddings to their two captives, the Cowardly Lions were pretty lazy.
"So how much longer are we going to stay with this troupe of losers?" Duo asked.
"I thought that you were still assessing the situation. Though they are weaklings they're also morons...I want to rid the world of them right here and now. I mean, they don't have any idea who we are. It's like they expected to find teenagers in the jungles of…Sorolaff."
Duo scoffed, "Wonder if Heero noticed we're missing? Probably not, knowing him. I sent out the signal to Trowa and Quatre when the Cowards first showed up. I disguised it as getting away from the bugs."
Wufei somehow doubted that it was a diversion.
"At least Barton is perceptive."
There was a tracer's panel in each carrier, they was even connected to the Gundams. Their purpose was as simple as it sounded, to act as locators for each of the pilots if they were wounded, cornered by Relena, or captured.
Duo had, indeed, set his unit off. Deathscythe's panel blinked and beeped repeatedly and the remote one in the carrier did the same.
Beep Beep Beep
"…Two Kings," Trowa said, putting his cards facedown on the pile.
Quatre smiled sheepishly and put down a card on top, "one ace."
Trowa currently held three cards. "Uh…not that I'm complaining but why didn't you call it?"
They had spent the last hour playing BS and Trowa wasn't surprised that even though Quatre had nearly the entire deck in his hands, he hadn't called Trowa even once. The blonde shook his head.
"No. You said they're two Kings so I believe you."
Trowa sighed and gathered up the cards. "I'm teaching you Speed."
Quatre nodded and leaned back, taking a deep breath that was more of a disguised sigh. He cocked his head to the side curiously.
Beep Beep Beep
"Did you hear something?"
"…No."
Heero had a feeling he was at the end of the line. He had gone up an impossibly long group of stairs and none of them had crumbled. The top of the temple was still in relatively good shape even though logic would have dictated that with the lower structure gone the whole thing should have crumbled like a deck of cards. It was best not to question. Heero pushed open the last stone door before he was in a room made of metal. No typos, it really was metallic from the floor to the ceiling.
"…Odd."
There was a small platform at the door and the rest of the room was covered in water…but it didn't really look like water. It was far too blue and to his expert eyes it was apparent that the liquid itself was aqua not the bottom of the room like in swimming pools. Thus he decided to forego testing the water and instead turned his attention to the raised platform in the center. Like some fantasy altar, there was a podium covered with strange text that he couldn't make out for the distance. At the very top there was a stone box that belonged with the rest of the temple.
He had found his ancient artifact, maybe this one wouldn't crumble.
Heero looked at the walls to either side of the forward platform and he was as happy as he could be to find a none-too-disguised button to get to the platform. There was even a little sign above that said 'a walkway for your convenience'. That was another valuable piece of information: Sorolaff's main language was English. Convenience city indeed.
Heero pushed the button and tensed his body in case it was a trap. It wasn't. True to its word. an iron platform parted the strange water to either side as it went to meet the center rise. The pilot tried it with his foot before rushing across.
He smiled evilly as he approached his prize. Karma, or anti-Relena spirits, or some benevolent force was on his side. Not only did he find a temple but there was a mysterious artifact that nearly emitted 'ancient' from all directions. Heero picked up the box and turned it around in his hands. It was rough like brick but relatively light. He recognized numbers on the surface. They looked like they had been cut right into the rock. Heero stowed it under his arm and leapt back to the door. He had to hurry, Wufei and Duo were bound to have wandered by now.
There were no expected traps on his way out. As a matter of fact, Heero noticed that all the caving and deterioration seemed rather fixed. On closer inspection, the 'bones' of the temple were also made of metal.
I'm pretty sure all the parts with Trowa and Quatre are confusing unless you know the games they're talking about. Sorry about the obscurity…eh it's probably not funny even if you know the stuff.
On a more serious note, if anyone cares, though these chapters are coming at an alarmingly steady rate that's just till I encounter writer's block or have a lot of other things to do. I do hope that at least a couple of people like reading my work so I'm making an effort to continue as well as I can. As always, thanks for reading!