As promised, the next chapter, made possible by the magic of the three-day weekend.
Repercussions
The police men in black stood in stark contrast to the pastels and maroons of the dining hall, but they weren't there to be aesthetically pleasing. They looked grumpy, and while waiting for this to be finished, some students hypothesized whether it was deliberate because the officers wanted to look tough, or if they were enjoying this as little as all the civilians. Well, civilians and ex-military personnel who didn't count themselves as civilians but who were living a civilian lifestyle and had technically never been part of any legitimate army anyway. Either way, no one in the room looked particularly happy. And the people outside the room probably weren't too thrilled either, because it was dinner time and the cafeteria was off limits for now. No dinner for them, sigh.
At one end of the vast room were most of the people, thirty-odd students, a counselor or two, and three uniformed police officers who were in charge of keeping all these people present and accounted for. It did not escape even the densest of people that the three officers tended to gravitate to the vicinity to where the three remaining pilots were sitting, silent and serene. At the far end of the room every body could see where some detectives were interviewing witness number seventeen, out of earshot.
Despite their outward calm, Trowa, Wufei, and Duo were perhaps the most anxious. Their original attempts to talk about this had been shot down by the eavesdropping policemen, who objected to their use of anything other than Danish, the language of the land (this was putting a halt to many of the usual gossips, who mostly came from countries other then Denmark, and attended a mostly-English school). The trio was left to their own thoughts, and none of this was pretty.
First and foremost was the fact that Heero and Quatre hadn't been seen since they mowed down a Teachers Aid on their way out the door. So the two of them were out there, with almost the entire police force and fire department out there too to look for them. The three still stuck in the school wondered if the fighting had stopped, or if one of their friends had been over come by the other, and was now incapacitated, or dead. Heero wasn't exactly inspiring faith in his sanity, and Quatre, well, Quatre was against unnecessary violence, and was fiercely loyal to his friends, but he might have been force to take drastic actions against the crazed Heero.
Second was the vague and uncertain consequences this would mean for them over in…where ever the new government was debating their futures. In their own time, they reached the idea that jail would be a little like the prison camps from the war, and no one was in any particular hurry to return to one of those. And no one voiced the possibility that they might be executed as criminals, or be put down like rabid animals. These boys lived through a mission that came close to demanding their lives, but while they would have willingly given it up for their cause, they were of the understanding that their life was the most valuable thing they had, and weren't going to die for no cause at all.
Thirdly would be the changes in their immediate surroundings, from the presence of the law enforcement, and any shifting in how their peers thought of and treated them. Would they be branded as rejects, like some of the hapless students before them? Or would they be further immortalized, heralded as warriors and rebels with out a cause? Something like this was not going to be ignored.
Hypothesizing about one friend returning with the body of the other, mobs of students to swarm upon them for what ever reason, and the government ordering a ballistic missile strike on the school, they had to struggle to keep their minds in the realm of reason, and not visualize worst-case-scenarios. Especially the ballistic missile thing.
And other witness was called up, and another and another. Someone was dialed up by Prof. Severus, who was at the hospital with the injured man, and the police commandeered that student's cell phone to tell the professor to come back to the school for questioning. The police were getting edgy, from either the late hour, or some sort of unconscious signal from the students that they were getting antsy, the pilots in particular. These three tried not to give anything away, but they were having trouble. All their war instincts told them to get away, and they had to fight to get a hold on themselves and their training. Every so often a member of the search party would radio in, and report the same thing, absolutely nothing. They were combing the woods, scouting the city, but no one had any real idea which direction they had headed or how far they could have gone. The quartet of helicopters had already had to land and refuel twice, and by the estimation of anyone who knew what they were talking about (cough cough) were already three-quarters of the way into their latest tank.
Another witness came back and sat down with those already processed, and the next up took his turn. Five minutes into the interview, one of the doors at that end of the room opened quietly and admitted a very brown person. The fact that those doors had been ordered locked was the immediate concern of the officer that angrily strode over, and when the people from across the room saw that policeman fall to the floor, everybody immediately realized who this person was. The Gundam pilots were already on their feet and walking over there, and the trio of officers had to jog to catch up, hands at their sides ready to draw their firearms.
The boys greeted the mud-covered delinquent in a language that the officers didn't understand, so they crowded around and demanded compliance. The clean three explained the rules to the newcomer, who shrugged and said 'okay'.
"Did you get any trouble from the search party?" Trowa asked.
"Was that what they were? No, not really."
"How did you get past security?" one of the policemen demanded.
"I walked." The muddy boy droned tiredly.
"Where is the oth-" the same man tried another question, but was silenced with a wave of the boy's hand.
He faced his peers, ignoring the officers crowding around them and the curious faces of the rest of the students peering from half way across the room. "I think you guys need to see this. Heero's reached a new level of weird."
"Aww." Duo groaned. "He beat me to it."
"I'm serious. This is kinda freaky."
"Politics-type-freaky or Mobile-Doll-type-freaky?" Duo asked.
"Wing-Zero-for-the-first-time-on-no-sleep-type-freaky."
The three warriors went 'woah' and looked to Quatre for more information. He didn't provide any, however, he just said "I can't explain it. You really need to see this for yourselves. Come on." He turned to leave.
"You're not going anywhere." The officer growled, and grabbed Quatre by the shoulder. The officer then squealed as Quatre ripped out of that grip, and twisted to break fingers in sickening snaps. Officer Stupid was on his knees, and letting out mewling sound as Quatre said calmly, "do not touch me."
The other two officers drew their guns, only to be elbowed in the stomach and have their weapons snatched away.
No one tried to stop them after that as they filed one by one out the door.
"He's over here." Quatre kept his voice low to not attract any attention from the search party. Said party could be heard from here, crashing trough the woods and scaring the wildlife like only humans can. The four crowded around Heero, who was sitting on a rock in the middle of one of the small clearings that they often trained in. He had a look of utmost concentration on his face, and his arms were extended before him, palms down and fingers curled around controls that weren't there.
"Shit." Duo hissed. "He thinks he's in a Mobile Suit."
"Uh huh. And how long has he been like this?"
Quatre habitually looked at his watch, found the face to be smashed beyond recognition and bits of glass in the skin around it, and dropped his arm back down. "Since after sundown. He stared shouting 'initialize system' 'initialize system', and I finally made the mistake of shouting back 'system initialized.' And then he commanded me to ready missiles and fire up beam saber, and he sort of collapsed and…I only said it once. All it took was one reply from me, and now he's-he's, um…"
"This is bad. I've heard of soldiers having combat flashbacks, but this is just wrong. What do we do? How do we get him out of this?" Wufei sounded worried.
"Ideas? Any one?" Trowa looked at each of the others in turn.
"The only way I know of to deal with anything like this is to either let it pass, or knock them out." Quatre said sadly.
"Why didn't you do that then?"
"What, knock him out? Well, the way I was taught was to use sedatives, and all of mine were taken away. And I was warned that just hitting him would be a bad idea, something about how when he wakes up he's going to need to be as coherent as possible, and he can't do that if he has a concussion. And I don't trust myself to use pressure points."
"Why not?" Duo wanted to know.
Quatre held out his hands. They shook and twitched. "I've got too much adrenaline in my system, for one, I'd be too clumsy. And if that's not enough, Heero wasn't exactly holding back, and I smashed up my knuckles pretty good, and I need to give myself time to recover from the pressure points that he used on me as well."
"Wufei, would you do the honors?" Duo quipped.
"Glad to." He said and stepped forward. All though this, Heero had remained oblivious to what was going on around him, unaware that any of this was going on. It was disturbing how focused he looked even as Wufei touched places in his neck, and also how he dropped like a puppet with its strings cut once the deed was done.
Their first trip off campus was to take Heero to the hospital. They were aware that a nurse called the police as soon as they arrived, but couldn't bring themselves to care. Quatre tried to explain that medical insurance would not be a problem, but no one really listened. Heero was rushed up the emergency room for his broken ribs, and the look on the nurses' faces when they saw the amount of bruising on his body was kinda priceless, if you liked that sort of thing. As a doctor patched up the young man, his superior questioned the boys and waited for the police to arrive. He didn't get much from them, they remained silent of the possibility of their team mates descent into madness, holding on to the hope that he would be okay.
"So let me get this straight." The doctor said still fishing for information. "You bring in your friend from a fight, and expect me to treat him without proof of insurance, a parent or guardian's signature, and no semblance of a medical history, and all you can tell me is just how badly you beat the crud out of him."
"That sounds about right." Duo said cheerfully. "Is there anything else?"
The doctor frowned, and wondered when the police would get here.
"You wouldn't be able to get a release form for treatment for him any way." Quatre said more seriously. "And like I keep trying to tell you, I don't think he has insurance, but the rest of us have more than enough to cover any bills on his behalf."
The Doctor didn't look any happier. "Is there any thing at all you can give me to work with here?"
The group was silent, looking up at him from their chairs out side Heero's room. "Well," Quatre said, "I could call my sister and get her permission for treatment."
"How would she be able to give permission to treat an unrelated person?" the doctor fussed.
"She wouldn't. But she would be able to give you permission to treat me, and then you would at least be able to verify that we have some sort of income, and be able to get a legal adult to take responsibility for all this."
"What would you be treated for?"
"I think the most stressing problem would be all my broken toes." The doctor stared at him. "Other than that it's just getting antiseptic on my cuts, and making sure I didn't crack any of my knuckles."
A passing nurse stopped in her tracks, and stood side by side with the dumbfounded Md.
"Why," the doctor finally asked, "did you not mention that you need medical attention?"
"You didn't ask."
Quatre had to be cut out of his shoes. Luckily, it was around lunch time for his sisters on the colony, so Trowa didn't even have to wake anybody up when he made the call in his stead. A very pissed off detective strode angrily into Heero's room while they were gone, and Duo had to fend off his angry questions by himself until Wufei came back, offering no explanations of his absence, but the Chinese boy had better luck in getting the man to listen to reason.
"You can question him later." In the meantime, you can get in touch with my superiors."
"Your superiors?" the detective sneered. "And who would that be?
"General Une of the Preventers."
The detective laughed. "Nice try boy, but I'm not going to call up and annoy the leader of all military forces in this region just to get her mad at me. You'll have to do better than that to get rid of me."
Duo placed a hand on Wufei's shoulder, not needing to have another friend attack a public figure, even if he was a pompous idiot.
The man's sneer widened. "You're all coming down to the station, and we'll have a nice talk about assault."
"That's not going to happen." Wufei said coldly. "The only one with charges against them is Heero, and he is already in hospital custody." He was counting on the hope that this man either didn't know, or would have forgotten, the fact that four different police officers had been attacked back at the school.
"I'll just need you for questioning." The man wasn't giving up.
"Why?" Duo said, "We didn't witness what happened, and all we did was haul Heero to the hospital."
"We need to be getting back to school." Wufei said. "We're going to be in a lot of trouble." Now he was playing on the fact that this man really just wanted to cause them grief, and was pointing out that there was a lot more problems facing them back on campus than the officer could cause for them.
It took a while longer, but they managed to ditch the detective and start planning to contain this. They were worried what would happen if Heero was still crazy when he woke up, but they had no real way of changing that. Quatre would spend the night in the hospital, under the watching eye of the police, who put the two boys in the same room to make them easier to keep an eye on, unknowingly playing right into the pilots' hands.
The police were slightly distressed when the other three disappeared again, right out of the hospital, but they weren't missing for long, reappearing back at the school in due time.
Thankfully, no one really wanted to mess with them, so they could finally talk about all this.
"Zechs was in that same hospital." Wufei said over his geography homework. "Heero stabbed him with a pencil. They would have considered that part an accident, if he just had it in his hand when he jumped him, but then they realized that Zechs had been stabbed three times, and not just once. They had to fish pieces out of his muscle wall. He's also got a minor skull fracture, and a broken nose."
"Heero and Quatre weren't much better off." Trowa said softly.
"What about the officers we hurt, how are they doing?"
"Fine, as far as I can tell. There have been no complications worth mentioning."
"I wonder how long it will be before they realize they're missing these." Duo was playing with the gun he snatched from the guard.
"I don't know." Wufei said. "Where is the other one?"
"I hid it out in the woods." Trowa explained. "I didn't want to get caught with it on me."
"Good idea. I should probably hide this one." Duo said and placed it in his desk drawer until later. He sighed. "But I don't know why we're bothering. They know we took them, and we won't be able to get much use out of them. We don't have any extra bullets."
The room was silent for a while they gathered their thoughts and got their home work out of the way, until the door burst open, sending all three to their feet in anticipation of trouble. They needn't have bothered, it was only Toni, Wufei's roommate.
"So incredible, never going to believe this back home, it's just, just, Yeaaaah!" The boy was having trouble forming coherent sentences, and was randomly switching from English, the language of the school, Danish, the language of the country, and Italian, his first language. They watched him rant for a few minutes, and settled back down, not caring about him at all.
I am debating on whether or not to use a line from one of my reviewers in my fic. If I do, then I will be sure to name the source. So hey, one of you lucy reviewers might end up mentioned in this thing. Its like winning the lottery by signing your name at the top of your homework. And all those people who didn't review, well, think of this as an incentive.