Duo didn't quite like getting kidnapped did he? Not to mention... he really needs a bathroom ^_^.
Part 13 of 15
Thanatos stood staring down at his new plaything, gloating. "I never thought Shinigami-baka would do such a thing, but it looks like he's taken care of *himself*. Kami-sama will never allow him to stop Death for long, and then he's going to be punished..." He grinned. "I wonder who will take over his job once Kami-sama gets through with him? I wonder if I'll be allowed to help punish him? I can think of such wonderful things to do to that justice ranting, moralistic bastard. He'd be even more fun to play with than you, my beautiful one." He reached down and patted Duo's face. "Whoever gets him, one thing's for sure, he'll never be allowed on Earth again." He went away, chuckling.
As the door closed behind him, Duo's eyes opened slightly. He carefully looked around himself through the slits in his eyelids. Seeing nothing threatening, he slowly eased himself up into a sitting position. "This guy needs some serious decorating help," he chuckled to himself. "I mean, I like black and red as much as the next psychotic killer, but this is ridiculous."
The room was faced with a combination of dark stone and ebony wood. The blackness of the walls and floor was only broken by abstract tapestries in shades of red and rugs the color of blood. Even the bed was made of ebony wood with black silk sheets.
Duo took a deep breath and started to gather his composure. If what he understood from his own observations and what Thanatos had said was true, then he wasn't going to die. Not yet anyway. Therefore the poison destroying his body from the inside out wasn't going to kill him immediately. That made it an enemy to be beat; no enemy had beaten him yet, this one wasn't going to either.
Duo concentrated and pushed the pain as far back into his consciousness as he could. Just because he thought Heero was stupid and masochistic for setting his own leg and then walking on it immediately, didn't mean he couldn't do the same thing. After all, he might not be as superhuman as the Perfect Soldier, but he was nowhere *near* ordinary. He was a Gundam Pilot. He was the beloved priest of Shinigami, though that thought really hadn't completely sunk in yet. No little pain was going to stop him from trying to save himself.
With those thoughts firmly in the forefront of his mind, Duo stood up. He wavered slightly as his weakened body wanted to fall back down. He refused to allow it. With pure determination fueling him, he set out to explore the room he had been left in.
Five minutes later he settled back onto the bed. This had to be a guestroom or plushy cell of some sort, because there was absolutely nothing around with which he could make a weapon. Luckily the lock on the door looked as if it would be extremely easy to pick. The problem was, there was no true way to tell if there was someone outside the door or not. He'd tried banging on the door and shouting, but got no response. Of course, all that meant was that if there was someone out there, they weren't responding.
Oh well, what's the worst they could do if there was? They couldn't kill him, that had already been tried. He also didn't see any way they could hurt him worse than the pain of the venom running through his system. Besides, he really needed to use the bathroom.
Duo pulled out the lockpicks he kept in his hair. He knelt down as close to the floor as possible and peeked out through the gap under the door. Not seeing anything, he checked the door for alarms. Only when he was as sure as possible that his escape would be unobserved did he quietly pick the lock.
As the lock clicked open, he waited, leaning his ear against the wood to try to hear any sound from the corridor outside. After five wary minutes, he slowly turned the handle and pushed open the door. A quick look through the opening showed open, dark corridor ahead of him. Slowly he oozed through the door, closing and locking it after him.
Duo spent a moment trying to recall how he'd felt as he'd been carried through the... castle? That's kind of how it looked, all dark and gothic like. He turned right and ghosted silently down the hallway. Several times he stopped to check adjoining rooms. All of them were empty of both people and anything that might be of use. And none of them were bathrooms.
Deathscythe's pilot was starting to wonder about this place. There were no people, there were no guards, and even worse, there were no bathrooms. Did anyone even live here? He turned down several more corridors, still finding nothing. This was not good. He was getting tired and it was getting harder to push away the feeling of lava pulsing through his veins. If he didn't find something soon, his best bet might just be to go into one of those empty rooms and try to hide.
Finally he found something different. A door made of steel, with a computer keypad next to it. "I wonder if they lock up their bathrooms," he muttered with a hint of a tired grin. He looked over the setup carefully. With the proper equipment, he could get through the computer lock in less than thirty seconds. Without that equipment, it would take a bit longer. Maybe too long. Oh well, there was always plan B.
The braided pilot strode up to the door and knocked loudly. When nothing happened, he repeated it, louder and longer. He was about to knock for a last time, when the door swished open.
"Whadda ya want?" the guard growled threateningly.
Duo grinned maniacally. "This!" he chirped before hitting out, aiming unerringly for the spots that would put a person down immediately. It wasn't until the guard was unconscious on the floor that he wondered whether the moves would work on dead people or demons. He shrugged, "I guess they do."
Inside was Nirvana. Well, not quite, there was no bathroom. Still, the computer systems in the room almost made up for that. Duo wandered around, looking over the setup. For the most part it looked as if this was a communications/security room. One monitor on the wall showed what had happened to the people. They were all gathered together in a large ballroom of some sort, having a party.
"Well, no need to bother them just yet when they're all having such a great time," he murmured to himself as he settled down at the communications console. It took him very little time to find a connection to Earth's Internet and start downloading. A long time before he'd found that it made much more sense to have his hacking and annoyance programs situated in different servers around the system, instead of just on disks, a laptop that might have to be wiped at any time, or his own memory. That way, in situations such as this, all he had to do was find a copy of his program, download it and he was ready to go. Then he could just wipe it from the system when he was done, and no one would ever know.
While waiting, he surfed over to one of his favorite sites. He had noticed that the public address system could be used from this console as well and planned on taking full advantage of that fact. After all, what was a party without music? He looked through the options on "The Most Annoying Songs Ever Made" webpage. "Songs that get Stuck in your Head" was a good mix, but he'd used it before. He'd never forget the sight of Heero Yuy singing "Blue (Da Ba Di)", and Trowa had gone around singing the Discovery Channel Song for days. Still, not quite right for a party. Ah! There's what he wanted. The dance mix. He laughed madly to himself as he set it to download.
For the next few minutes he reprogrammed and rewired, then buried all of his changes under other things and other changes. He'd really wanted to have the security system show only the porn channel, or maybe Barney, but unfortunately they didn't seem to get cable here. He had to make do with making sure it couldn't be moved away from the ballroom. The radar would show incoming unidentified objects at random intervals and with no predictable pattern, none of which could be checked by the camera as long as the monitor would show only the ballroom. The general alarm would also go off at random intervals, if that is, it could be heard over the music.
Duo had planned to mailbomb any gods he could find the addresses to, but unfortunately his hands were trembling that much by that time that he couldn't be sure he could even hit send. Still, anything else he did would just be pure mischief, the important things had been done. Now, when his friends came to get him there should be little interference.
Duo stood up and swayed violently. He might have a superhuman will, but his body was at the point of collapse. Concentrating on what he'd had to do had kept away the pain while he was busy, but now it wanted to be acknowledged. He refused to allow it. It took all of his strength but he stood back up. It was not over yet. He could not collapse here. Looking around almost stupidly, he noticed the guard's belongings. There was an almost full bottle of whiskey sitting next to his bag. Duo reached out for it like it was ambrosia. Normally he didn't like to drink, but if it could dull out the pain slightly, or brace him up until he could move? As he raised it to his lips, he suddenly thought of all those stories where a person eats or drinks in Hell and isn't allowed back out. Sure, it might all be myth and stories, but did he really want to take that chance?
He sighed as he moved it away from him. Looking at the guard, he realized there was a better thing he could do with it. Dragging the guard over near his chair, he forced the bottle into the unconscious man's mouth and poured the liquid down his throat, barely taking the time to make sure he didn't choke. Then he splashed some more on the man's uniform, and left the bottle tipped over next to the limp hand.
The young terrorist took a quick look around to make sure he hadn't left any clues. He quickly wiped down any surface that he touched, and got ready to go. His eyes caught on the image of the party on the screen. Everyone was yelling "Speech" and Thanatos was ascending the podium. Forget setting things up on a timer, there would be no better time than this. Duo quickly set up the song he wanted and waited with his hand over the enter button. Thanatos raised his hands and waited for quiet. Not quite yet, not quite yet. The God of Painful Death opened his mouth to speak. Now!
"OY! MACARENA!" poured at full blast out of every speaker and intercom in the entire building.
Quickly hiding the program, Duo ran. He only made it halfway through the first corridor before he had to slow down to a slow walk. The blocks over the pain were almost gone. He filled his mind with thoughts, trying to keep the pain away.
/Wufei's Shinigami. Man that's so hard to get. And he loves me. My god *loves* me. And he wouldn't say anything because he couldn't tell me until I was sixteen, which is still months away. Hey! Does that mean he knows when my birthday is? Maybe he knows who my parents are too, and what happened to them! That'd be *so* awesome. I've got to ask him. But wait a minute. What about all that stuff tall dark and ugly was gloating about? Not that I'd trust him farther than I could throw Deathscythe, but what he said made sense. Stopping Death just to save me, man that is so... I don't even have the words, but it's got to be seriously illegal. And knowing Fei-chan, he's going to do the "right" thing and turn himself in after he saves me. Was Thanatos right? Will he be forbidden to ever go to Earth again? Will I never see him again? I don't think I could handle that, I really don't. Besides, what about the war? We can't lose a pilot, there are too few of us as it is./
Duo's inner monologue came to a halt as he reached the room he had been in earlier. He carefully unlocked the door, taking almost three times as long as it had taken earlier because his hands were shaking so much. He walked through, relocked the door and collapsed to the bed. That was it. He was done. The rest was up to his god and friends. His abused body had gone farther than it should have, farther than most people would ever believe it could go, but it could go no farther. Luckily, it didn't have to. Dropping the blocks he'd put up, Duo dropped into unconsciousness. His last thought was that he never had found the bathroom.
The violet-eyed teen never saw the furor his actions caused. He slept deeply as minions ran wild trying to stop the music and answer all of the alarms. He never knew when "Macarena" switched to "Achy Breaky Heart", "Shake your Bon-Bon", the "Chicken Dance". And he slept as a large black dragon dropped from the sky letting off four young figures to join the madness.