Mischief mage: Just a kinda short intermission. One more chapter to go. Enjoy. Please review.


Duo tossed and turned, trying to get comfortable. Quatre had recommended that everyone have dinner and sleep, the competition would continue the next morning. Dinner had been eaten silence and afterwards, the pilots retired to their assigned rooms. The braided pilot groaned, trying to rub the small of his back which was slowly killing him. It wasn't that the bed that Quatre had gotten him was no good. It was a new king sized four-poster with goose down pillows and duvet and scarlet velvet hangings. The room included a window over looking the desert and a squashy couch which looked just as comfortable to sleep on. The only problem was that he was still tied to the pillar in the chess room.
Upstairs in his own room, Quatre squeezed his pillow tighter over his ears. Why oh why had he put his room beside Wufei's? Why? Actually…Why the hell had he asked the family planning doctor how to fix low confidence levels? Ear plugs and his thick pillow still weren't enough to block out the moaning and groaning of bed springs coming from the next room. Quatre lay eyes wide open the whole night, strange and horrifying images inspired by the sounds next door swimming tantalizingly across his vision.
Next door, the bed's springs rhythmically creaked indignantly. Nothing in the job description had prepared it for this. But Wufei ignored the peals of reproach as he continued. He had woken up in the room without his clothes, the door locked, an odd feeling that centred around the lower part of his torso, enough adult material to keep all of the world's troops happy for the next three decades and a helpful telephone. He had done what seemed right and came naturally at the time. He was still going at it. He had since learnt that DVD's and video tapes made a satisfying crack when layered on top of telephones and the new bed helped him gain altitude when it came to stomping on things. During his break from CD desiccation, he had greatly alleviated his feelings of worthlessness by making little men out of the magazines and posters he had found in the large cardboard box and then crushing them beneath his bare feet.
Trowa sat silently on the sill of the open window, watching the serene mini desert tornado's twist themselves out of existence. War and life as a mercenary had cemented his face into a poker-face mould. It would be difficult to change his expression without physically breaking his face into bits and gluing it back together in the desired shape. On the surface, he was absolute zero cold; one could swear that they could see small ice crystals forming at the end of his fringe, no apprehension of the upcoming match showing through as he devised complex yet brilliant strategies. On the inside, his resolve could be most succinctly described as a bowl of jelly on a park bench nailed to a ship sent see if there really is a God living inside the sun as ancient lore said; he was beyond wobbling.
Cracks echoed through the spacious room. Heero was putting the shooting gallery that he had requested to good use. His very being seemed to centre around the rifle that he held in his hands. His cobalt eyes narrowed behind his streamlined goggles. With one fluid motion, he would pull the trigger and jerk backwards as the gun recoiled from the impatient bullet. Within seconds, the gun would be reloaded and set back in place. Literally hundreds of shells littered the ground, he had known that learning to make his own ammunition at the Christmas break programme would be helpful. Despite the number of shots fired, only about three holes could be seen in the distant picture that he had stuck over the blank black silhouette at the end of the room. At last, Heero seemed content. He sat the end of the rifle on the ground and leant slightly on it. His eyes still never left the target, not even to blink. Needless to say, his eyeballs were getting quite dusty. The shape of words formed on his lips.

'I'm going to kill you-', he hissed at the enlarged picture of a white chess king.

-'Lucifer'


splash

The sun had crept over the horizon like a jogger after a summer holiday of beach bumming. The dinner table was now laid out with breakfast foods. None of the pilots had gotten any sleep. Wufei of course was still locked in his room. At this moment in time he was flinging the VCR at the window, trying to find away out. Quatre had just fallen asleep in his cornflakes, small bubbles breaking the milky surface, forcing droplets out of the bowl onto the table. Heero was having pancakes and had been enjoying them immensely until he had found the shape of a king chess piece in his maple syrup and had begun hacking at his hot cakes, flecks of brown turning the white walls into an abstract work of art. Trowa had painted out a chess board on his toast with the marmite if you don't know what it is…look it up. What d'ya think the internet's for? and prodding at the black and toast white squares with his butter knife, muttering under his breath. He glanced down as he felt something dripping on his pants. Milk. It was only then that he and Heero noticed that Quatre was drowning in six centimetres of milk and bran cornflake. The pulled him out and cleaned him up before looking to Duo who was face down in his eggs and bacon.

'Do you think he's dying too?' Trowa asked

'Don't think so. How can you drown in egg?'

Trowa shrugged. 'It's possible'

They were both right. It is possible to drown in an egg, it's just quite difficult. But Duo wasn't drowning in his breakfast, the others had still forgotten, or perhaps had decided not to untie him. So he had been forced to lengthen the rope that was holding him to the pillar so that he could eat. Eating eggs and bacon without utensils had been quite amusing until he had gotten yolk up his nose.

The two pilots who weren't supposedly satisfying the needs of the sealed section of a soldier's mind or hadn't just been face down in their breakfast glanced across the table where Quatre had regained consciousness, coughing half digested flake onto the table.

'Shall we get started then?' Trowa asked Quatre gently as the blonde he brushed himself down, making a retching sound as he smelt the patch of milk on his vest.

'What? Oh, that. Yes, lets get going. We'll have to start without Wufei.'

As the four pilots walked, or in Duo's case, crawled into the other room, the noise of a video player coupled with a television breaking through thick glass and the sight of a cloud of sand forming on the horizon of the desert went unheeded. Well, Quatre would have heard it and Duo would have seen it if they each hadn't still had food products in their ears and eyes.