Playing Stupid
Chapter 9
Party Games
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Shinigami and Quatre ducked down a seemingly random corridor, weaving through the labyrinth of the base without any direction. Schematics and plans of the base had long been forgotten when seemingly all ways were blocked by a throng of OZ soldiers, some nearly climbing over each other to get to the escaped pilots, others reeling back after apparently hearing about Duo Maxwell's supposed wakening from the dead.
A random observation tower later lead them through a catwalk overlooking a Mobile Suit bay, a small army of Suits covered with large tarps. All but one.
Shinigami glanced at it as he followed Quatre down the catwalks, noting with amusement that OZ mobile suits had extremely out-of-proportion heads to the rest of their body.
Whoah, whoah, go back! Duo was yelling from their mind. What were those!
"Hold up, Kat," the braided god slid to a stop on the catwalk, leaning over the railing. "What is it?" he asked out loud.
Quatre back-peddled, joining the other. With a gasp, he answered the same moment as Duo did from Shinigami's mind.
"Mobile Dolls!"
Shinigami grinned widely and turned to the blonde pilot. "We've got a plan."
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"They're headed towards the Mobile Suit bay!" a commander was yelling, waving on a heard of troops in close pursuit of the escaped pilots. "We can corner them there!"
Treize was quietly bringing up the rear, irately thumbing the empty scabbard where his antique sword used to hang. If that heirloom did not find itself on his desk when he returned from his current pest extermination, there would be Hell to pay.
Rounding the corner, the Mobile Suit bay came into view, a line of soldiers with guns at the ready lining the upper catwalk.
"Split into teams no less than eight each. Work from this end of the bay outwards. Check everything, even the toilets! I want those pilots!"
A barrage of 'yessir's ran down the lines and soon the wall of soldiers was filing down the catwalk to do as told.
Without warning, the nearest tarp jerked to attention, creating a ripple effect that seemed to spread like a ripple on a pond to a great majority of the Mobile Suits in the bay. One by one, each tarp-covered Mobile Doll stood to attention, some knocking over military vehicles, other pulling loose from diagnostic equipment, showering the bay in sparks.
Treize pulled to an uneasy halt at the disturbance. "What the…"
"Sir," a random lieutenant began, listening intently to an ear piece. "All the Virgo Mobile Dolls, sir. Someone's started their defense program."
"Maxwell," Treize grumbled. Suddenly, his eyes went wide as saucers. Knowing the braided American lunatic's fancy for practical jokes, he could only expect the worst. "Fall back! Now!"
One at a time, the Dolls raised their hands to about shoulder level. Tarps fell from a good majority of the Dolls as they pursed their fingers together and opened and closed them in a quiet serenade of impacting metal.
Next, they all tucked their hands under their armpits as best they could, shaking their elbows up and down.
"For the love of…"
In unison, they all shimmied to the floor and back up again before clapping hands together in a nearly deafening pounding of metal.
Quatre had to chuckle to himself as he followed Duo into a ventilation shaft off the main bay control room. "The Chicken Dance, Duo?"
Shinigami offered a wide grin over his shoulder as he crawled on elbows through the shaft. "That'll keep them busy for a while. We also programmed the loudspeakers to play old Broadway show toons." As if on cue, various songs from Hairspray and Chicago began playing all at once in an indecipherable cacophony.
"Duo, if the Dolls are only dancing about, how is that supposed to keep OZ busy?"
Again, as if on cue, the sudden sound of dozens of Mobile Suits and various military equipment being pulverized shook the base.
"We also programmed the Dolls to form a mosh pit."
Quatre tumbled about as the base was very nearly being destroyed from the inside out. "You do have a plan for getting us out of here with our heads still intact, right?"
"Of course!" A bend in the ventilation shaft found them slip-sliding a bit down to the next level, a grate being kicked out in what looked like the base's mess hall.
"And exactly HOW are we getting out of here?"
"The front door, of course." Shinigami threw Quatre a 'well duh' look as he dropped out of the shaft, startling a few stray cafeteria ladies as they were cleaning up from the mass exodus of troops pulled into finding the two pilots.
One screamed and ran off into the back kitchens, Shinigami nabbing up the other into some odd dance to the horrible mix of music blasting overhead. She managed a scream before taking up a serving tray and bashing it upside his head, coating the dancing god in half-eatten french fries and most of a chocolate shake. It only added to the morbid mixture of dried blood and other body tissues that the body had accumulated during his previous re-enactment of Night of the Living Dead.
"Let's go!" Quatre tapped the other on the shoulder as he ran by, sidetracking to the lunch buffet and nabbing up a dinner roll and a handful of carrot sticks.
"You EAT that stuff?" Despite his complaints, Shinigami managed to raid the chip stand, pocket a small fortune in candy bars and take up a two-liter of diet cola as they ran out of the Cafeteria and back into the halls.
Together, they wound their way from the cafeteria, ducking down a few random halls with no troops in sight.
Hey. Shall we see who's more ornery? Let's say, a bit of friendly competition? Duo asked as Shinigami rolled into another hall, once again finding it empty.
You're on!
Me first.
Why you?
My body. I get trump.
After another random hall with Shinigami playing Harrison Ford, the god finally gave in. Fine. What's the plan?
We're unarmed, right?
Shinigami shrugged to himself, motioning Quatre down a hall after him. More or less. What's your point?
I notice you've pilfered some breath mints and a diet cola. Listen up and find me some ball bearings.
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Shinigami motioned them both to the floor, the distinct sounds of heavy boots hitting the cement hallways echoing up to their ears. In hand, the god cuddled a bottle of diet cola. In the bottle opening, he was stuffing an alternating concoction of ball bearings and breath mints into a tube that had been stuffed with fizzy candy.
"They're coming closer," Quatre whispered behind him, hoisting his gun, ready to follow suit around the corner of the hall and launch the attack.
"Good. We're finished." The god hoisted the diet cola and dangled the fizzy-candy-and-breath-mint version of the Claymore mine. "Sit back and watch a master at work."
"Why does that phrase worry me?" Quatre whispered to himself.
The footfalls had just reached the corner when Shinigami rolled into the hall, still playing out the ridiculous Indiana Jones shtick he had been using for the past half dozen corners or so.
Apparently, the feat of bad acting worked its charm as the approaching soldiers were caught completely off guard, the company shuffling to an uneasy stop, running into each other and jostling about in a manner unbecoming a trained group of professional soldiers.
The momentary break was enough for Shinigami and Duo to launch their attack.
Dropping the fizzy-candy-and-breath-mint tube full of ball bearings into the diet cola, Shinigami quickly capped the pop and gave it a stiff shake, pointing it at the guards.
Once again, the guards all shuffled about not unlike a startled heard of goats, running into each other and clunking about.
There were a few awkward seconds of random flailing by the guards before they settled, realizing that whatever attack they were expecting wasn't coming. That, and the fact that the supposed aggressor was armed only with a bottle of cola.
"Mr. Sandman," Shinigami began to sing. "Bring me a dream. Bum-bum-bum-bum."
The pressure that had been building up within the cola bottle suddenly let loose, the cap popping off to release a sticky shower of cola, half-dissolved breath mints and ball bearings.
The small steel balls hit heads, stomachs and unprotected appendages like a paintball-gun gone bad, the breath mint bazooka pelting all in attendance with incapacitating stickiness that was sure to leave more than its fair share of bruises and incapacitation.
The carnage was over in seconds, the cola bottle fizzling out as the carbonated sugar drink was used up and the last of the ball bearings sputtered out to fall harmlessly onto the floor, rolling to rejoin their brothers and sisters who had managed to knock out the entire group of guards.
"Whoah," Quatre marveled, peaking around the corner. "How did you figure that one out?"
Shinigami turned with a grin, hefting the mostly-spent bottle of diet cola. "The Discovery Channel." He blew air over the opening of the bottle as if blowing the steam off of a smoking gun. "They're all down and out, and will wake up with headaches from Hell and various Charlie horses."
With a giggle, the cola bottle was tossed into the pile of passed-out guards and the two pilots were soon scaling the mountain of bodies and fleeing down the hall.
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Treize was marching through the corridors of the base with a purpose, a displeased scowl set on his face. "Report," he growled to an officer who was running to keep pace.
"The Mobile Dolls program has been terminated and reloaded, but the Suit bay has been destroyed. Only a dozen or so Dolls survived the incident in a condition that can be used for further combat. Engineering support estimates it will take six to eight months to get the entire battalion back in working order following the… incident… sir."
By 'incident', Treize knew the officer meant 'attack by Braided Menace."
"The two pilots have apparently escaped the machinery wing. A cafeteria worker claims a walking corpse fell out of the ceiling and began dancing with her."
Again. Braided Menace.
"The fourth patrol could not be contacted and a reconnaissance was sent. The entire troop was found unconscious, apparently felled by a sticky substance laden with ten dozen ball bearings fired at high velocity. All soldiers are currently recovering from bad bruising and concussions in the infirmary.
Treize growled. It had only been about half an hour since said braided menace had been shot between the eyes and lived to tell the tale. Only half an hour and already the base was in chaos. "I want Duo Maxwell off my base. Dead or alive. Understood?"
A salute followed the exit of the soldier, ducking down a side hall.
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My turn, Shinigami was saying as he led Quatre tumbling about a few other halls. Over his journeys, he had managed to find a fishing hat, planting it lopsided atop his head to help him in his Indiana Jones shtick.
What's the plan?
Shinigami was grinning widely as he rolled into another hall, Quatre following behind in a somewhat reluctant walk.
"Do you HAVE to roll around each corner?"
Shinigami threw the blonde Arab a confused look. "Of course! Are you mad? Where's the fun in just peaking around corners?" He made it a point to roll several times into the next hallway, the feat earning him a clunk on the head as he ran into the adjoining wall.
"See?"
Hello!? Plan!? Duo called.
Shush. I'm thinking!
They had made it into one of the fuel rooms, piles of coal littering a far wall and various doors labeled with chemical symbols standing obediently closed. Rocket fuel canisters in one room proved too large to be of use, pounds of plastic explosives in another, too risky. But the last room found Shinigami with a huge smile painted over his face as he read the chemical symbol aloud. "Sulfide." He looked about madly until he found quite a stock of cleaning supplies. "Oooh! Ammonium Sulfide!"
Quatre's eyes went wide. "No! Are you kidding! Do you know what…"
Shinigami threw open the door to the room and immediately shot a hand to his nose as the distinct smell of rotten eggs hit him. "Worlds biggest stink bomb, anyone?"
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"Urgent call from the Vancouver Island Base," a soldier was saying, leaning into a spacious office.
Zechs Marquise nodded at the soldier, picking up the phone. "This is Zechs."
There was a brief moment of silence broken only by the sound of someone taking a gigantic breath of air before it let loose in one huge jumble of words, of which Zechs could only catch the occasional "menace" and "American idiot."
After a few minutes of verbal diarrhea through the phone, Zechs managed to surmise that an imprisonment went horribly wrong, Duo Maxwell was somehow un-killable and loose on the base commanded by Treize Khushrenada. "I'm on my way." He managed to get in, setting down the phone.
A stiff chill fell down his spine. Duo Maxwell, self-proclaimed Shinigami and master of mayhem himself, loose on an OZ base. And apparently, he was un-killable, as far as Zechs could discern.
With a gulp, he rose from his chair and began out of his office.
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Quatre had run off quickly to pilfer a few items from a storage closet in the fuel room, furiously tugging a gas mask over his face as he brought his armload of supplies.
In the middle of the fuel room, Shinigami was shoveling a towering pile of brilliant yellow sulfur into several piles. Around him, the boilers, furnaces and AC units had all been pried open, buckets of sulfur and bottle of ammonia hanging from wires, coat hangers and whatever else he could scrounge up.
Quatre had barely deposited his load of supplies when Shinigami nearly ran him flat, wrestling up the extra gas mask and pulling it over his head. "Phew!"
"Do I even dare ask what you're going to do?" Quatre said, his gas mask making him sound much like Darth Vader."
"Stink bomb," was all the other answered before diving into the pile of pilfered supplies.
"Yes. I know that," Quatre prompted. "Why are you…"
Twirling several pilot lighters about his fingers, Shinigami clicked one to flame and held it up to one of the many air ducts he had pulled away from the main air circulation system. "We're gonna take the highroad out of here… aka the ventilation ducts." He tested each pipe with the flame before one pipe in particular gently blew his flame back. He promptly crimped the pipe closed and went on.
"This cord," he said, hefting what looked like string, "burns at a specific length a minute. By my calculations," he said, gently laying out a few lengths of rope from the buckets of sulfur into a central spot on the floor. "Once I light this, we should have about five minutes to make like rats through the air duct."
"Five minutes? We can't be out of the base in five minutes. And if you're going to set fire to this mess," he gestured about the various bottles and buckets strung from the ceiling, "you'll blow this entire base sky high!"
Shinigami turned towards him, most likely grinning from behind the gas mask. "The amounts here are too small to explode, but they will make the entire base smell like bad ass gone wrong."
Quatre shivered at the thought.
"And plus, I'm sure the others are waiting for some sign to come and rescue us. There's no bigger way of saying 'here we are' than a towering blue flame bathed in the undeniable fragrance of rotten-eggs rear."
Scratching his head more in nervousness, Quatre watched as Shinigami carefully built his network of rope before herding him to an air duct.
"When I light this, we head up that pipe at mach ten, got it?"
The other nodded and began to pull the crumpled pipe away from the main furnace, wiggling his slender frame into the duct and starting on ahead of Duo. He had a gun, it was almost fully loaded, and running into anything threatening in the airshafts they were sabotaging was a next-to-none possibility.
"On the count of three," Shinigami's voice floated up the air vent after him. "One!"
Quatre began on elbows and knees, wiggling his way up the bend in the airshaft before it joined with a main vent and offered more space to maneuver.
"Two!"
A cool, fresh breeze was blowing towards him and he pealed off his gas mask, abandoning the headgear to make his trek easier.
"THREE!"
The sound in the air vent shifted unnaturally and the frantic sounds of someone scurrying up behind him eventually brought Shinigami up behind him. "Move your ass, Kat! We have five minutes!"
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Treize pinched the bridge of his nose. He had ordered reports of everything: missing towels from the bathroom, cans of deodorizer gone unaccounted. Everything. Judging from past missions that saw OZ go up against the booby traps set by one particular braided pilot, Duo Maxwell could turn a jar of peanut butter and a ballpoint pen into a weapon of mass destruction.
An inventory of the mess hall had come up with half a dozen snack foods missing, including the two-liter cola, breath mints and fizzy candy used to knock out nearly two dozen men in a corridor of the base. The loss of carrot sticks and a dinner roll he attributed to Quatre Rabarba Winner and ignored that information.
"Next," he grumbled, tossing the mess hall report. He thought about narrowing his search to more dangerous forms of supplies, but seeing as how an everyday bottle of cola had been turned into a machine gun, he kept all options opened.
"So far, the mess hall has been the only major finding. All over the base, there are various things missing; rope, some matches, a few buckets, two gas masks, a roll of pink tape, some…"
"Hold on," Treize said, grabbing the report from the officer. "Two gas masks?"
The officer looked confused and concerned at the same time.
"And matches," Treize finished. "He's planning on setting something on fire. Something that will smell pretty bad." He pounded a fist into an open palm. "Ideas. Give me some ideas!"
"Um… maybe…" the officer chewed a lip. "Maybe he's going to set the bathrooms on fire?"
"Hmm. That's one option. Others. Give me more."
The officer thought a moment, tapping a finger on his chin as the overhead air conditioner kicked on. As he thought, a funny odor drifted to his nose. An odor not unlike a particularly bad odor that would tend to come from one's posterior.
He looked up and noticed Treize was giving him a skeptical look. "No! Not me, sir!" the officer raised his hands in defense. "I didn't…"
Treize eyes went wide moments before a large bang was heard from somewhere in the base, followed closely by shuddering of walls and a rather hot wind that shot from the overhead vents, the distinct smell of rotten eggs suddenly overwhelming his senses.
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Wu Fei scanned the base with his binoculars, painstakingly surveying the base for the 'sign' that was sure to come from Duo Maxwell.
"Put those down, you're wasting your time," Trowa said, a hint of boredom in his tone. "If it's a sign from Duo, we'd be able to see it from space or hear it from the Grand Canyon. Remember Sicily?"
Heero grunted. "He managed to make every bell tower on the island chime "Old McDonald" for three hours straight."
Wu Fei reluctantly lowered his binoculars. "The base is five miles off," he pointed over a forested valley where the dim lights of the base could just be made out in the dim light of the moon. "How can we tell he's sent a signal if…"
Without warning, the base suddenly began to glow an eerie blue in the distance. Whirling about, Wu Fei raised his binoculars to find that it seemed that blue flames were leaping from open windows and air vents about the base. "Well, I'll be damned," he whispered.
"THAT would be the signal," Trowa said, hoisting himself to his feet.
"How can we be certain it's not a trap?" Wu Fei, still unconvinced, asked.
It was just then that the unfortunately recognizable stench of rotten eggs hit them.
"Sulfur," the Chinese pilot cursed.
Heero wrinkled his nose and grabbed the hoist to his Gundam. "It's Duo, alright," and he put the sleeve of his shirt to his nose. "Let's go."
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to be continued ...