Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Deadly Beautiful ❯ Sacrificed a Pawn ( Chapter 46 )

A/N: Just would like to note that you can add M rated stories to those C2 things now, so if anyone feels an urge to stick DB on one, have at it. Also, due to popular demand, in this chapter Trowa becomes a transgendered monkey with a back-hair fetish. How will the other G-Boys react?! Read on to find out....

 

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing, and while I rarely mean anything I say, that much is true.

 

Deadly Beautiful - Chapter 46

 

by danse

 

~*~

 

It was lunchtime and Relena was in the crowded, noisy cafeteria as usual. She got her tray with a tuna sandwich and salad and made her way to her regular table in the corner, exchanging smiles or friendly greetings with some of her better acquaintances on the way. Once she was seated at her table, facing the window, she picked up half of her sandwich with one hand and her current reading material in the other (she was reading a lot more frequently now than she ever had), and settled in for another quiet lunch.

 

Less than two pages later, Dorothy had appeared in the other seat, between Relena and the window. Sunlight from outside framed her body like a halo.

 

“The Rise and Fall of Tsarist Russia?” Dorothy read off of the cover of Relena's book. She wrinkled her nose. “Why not just stick to Harry Potter, Relena?” She smiled rather devilishly. “Or do you just watch the movies?”

 

If Relena had learned anything about Dorothy by now, it was not to encourage her. She took another bite of her sandwich and turned the page.

 

Dorothy fumed silently at Relena for a moment, looking speculative as she took a sip of Perrier. “It's rude to ignore people when they're speaking to you, you know,” she said finally.

 

Relena sighed forcefully and made eye contact over the top of her book. “What do you want, Dorothy?” she growled.

 

Dorothy put on an affronted expression. “Such uncouth behaviour!” she gasped, putting a hand over her chest. Almost immediately, though, her expression turned back to its normal, sly look. “I enjoy talking with you, at times,” Dorothy explained. “I find your naïve philosophies amusing.”

 

Relena put her book down and glared. “My 'naïve philosophies'?”

 

Dorothy smiled, showing a glint of pearly teeth. “Yes, of course. All of your wonderfully droll ideas about peace on Earth and 'love thy neighbour' and all that jazz.” She giggled. “As if it could ever happen.”

 

“It could!” Relena insisted. “It does! There's lots going on right now to help world peace, and there are a lot of fine people behind the effort! Progress is being made!”

 

Dorothy's giggle became a snicker, and then matured into a deep, belly laugh that gave Relena chills. “You don't know anything, do you?” she whispered, revelling in her superiority. “You have absolutely no idea what's going on under everybody's nose right this instant.”

 

The odds were in Relena's favour that she was going to be enlightened very shortly, so she merely crossed her arms and waited, giving Dorothy an expectant look.

 

The other girl twirled a lock of her shining hair around a finger as she fixed her quarry with a gaze that any prowling leopard would have accompanied with the licking of its chops. “My father,” she said primly, “is General Catalonia of OZ. My grandfather,” she said even more primly, “is Dekim Barton, the president of Romefeller Industries, Incorporated. I have cousins,” she said with a dismissive hand-wave, “who have more worldly power than you could ever think of wielding over this pathetic little country.”

 

Relena wasn't impressed. Rather than bothering to open her mouth, she used a look to communicate the thought, 'And I care about this why, exactly?'

 

The girl with all the answers snorted condescendingly, and then leaned forward to brace both hands on the edge of the table as she explained the situation, a happy gleam in her eyes. “I suppose you're not familiar with Romefeller. They're a massive oil conglomerate with holdings all over the world. Grandfather practically has a license to print his own money. But that's not the point. Why settle for taking a few pawns here and there,” she said, gesturing at an imaginary chessboard between them, “when you can have the king?” She clenched her hand into a fist in front of her, looking like a manic street preacher.

 

Relaxing, Dorothy flipped her hair back over her shoulder casually, crossing her legs demurely and folding her hands over her knee. “That's where Operation Zodiac comes in,” she said. “It was a plan cooked up by Daddy and Grandfather to put the Barton family on the map. It's over ten years in the making, and it's finally about to all come together. There are secret bases operating in strategic locations all over the world, and on one specific day in the very near future—it's already been decided when—they're all going to be mobilized at once.” She got a dreamy look on her face. “Each force is poised to strike major cities, military outposts and oil deposits. It'll be the biggest coup d'etat in history. The entire world will fall under the control of OZ, and in turn all of the oil will become the exclusive property of Romefeller. The world powers will have their feet knocked out from under them before they even know what's going on.”

 

Relena had gone deathly pale. She was waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for Dorothy to start laughing and tell her it was all an elaborate and sick joke before going back to belittling her some more. But the bitch just sat there and smiled. It took several tries for Relena to form coherent words. “You aren't serious?” she mumbled dumbly.

 

Dorothy gave her hair another flip, the afternoon sun making it shine like it was itself a sunbeam. Her eyes were murderous-looking and so cold, like chips of ice in her beautiful face. There was something terribly wrong with her. “Of course I'm serious, Relena darling,” she tittered. “Why would I ever invent something so ingenious just to anger someone as inconsequential as you?”

 

Relena stood up abruptly, grabbed her bag and book, and left the cafeteria, abandoning her lunch with Dorothy, who was shaking with contained mirth.

 

***

 

After the Maganacs had mobilized a search party to Turkey, with Quatre and Rashid at the head, it took about two hours to pinpoint the highway that Wufei had tried to describe to Quatre on the phone, another half an hour to find the place where the car had gone off the road, and then close to an hour for Quatre and a Maganac with a first-aid kit to track down Wufei in the brush below the edge of the cliff. Quatre's radio squawked intermittently with the voices of the search parties who were scouring the area for a trace of Heero. Quatre stayed with Wufei, wrapping him in a blanket and giving him a thermos of hot coffee to warm up as he and the Maganac checked him out for injuries. He seemed to have a concussion and a fractured wrist, as well as several minor cuts and bruises, but otherwise he was okay.

 

Three hours later, after Wufei had been escorted carefully up to one of the Hummers, buckled in, and given a painkiller for the trip home, they still hadn't found Heero. One of the three-man search teams said they'd found a few drops of blood, fifty metres downhill from the car wreck, but nothing more promising than that turned up. Feeling useless, they had to break up the search when they heard the beats of helicopter blades beyond the hillside. As much as the Maganacs cared for the welfare of Quatre's cohorts, they wanted nothing to do with police of any kind, and it was feeling more and more like a lost cause. They left.

 

Upon returning to their headquarters and handing Wufei over to Iria's capable hands, Quatre found his book of contact information and seated himself in front of one of the high-sensitivity secure lines, feeling old as he flipped through the book. B came before M; he dialled Trowa's emergency contact number first. He knew that it was Cathy's phone he was calling. He listened patiently to the rings, counting them silently. After three, a female voice answered. “Pronto?”

 

Quatre's mouth went dry; it had suddenly occurred to him that he didn't speak a single word of Italian and that he didn't know if Catherine knew anything else. “...Trowa?” he said finally, feeling stupid.

 

There was a pause on the other end of the phone. He suddenly knew that he'd said the wrong thing, and he braced himself to be hung up on, but he could faintly hear a man's voice murmuring something on the other end of the line. Catherine replied, her voice muffled, most likely by her hand over the receiver, and then he heard Trowa's voice, mercifully, speaking to him. “Quatre?” he said.

 

“Yes, it's me,” Quatre responded, wondering if his relief was audible. He sobered up immediately, though, not wanting to waste Trowa's time. “I have some bad news.”

 

“What is it?” Trowa asked, sounding alarmed.

 

Quatre took a deep breath, staring at the wall opposite him. “Heero and Wufei were in Turkey, and they had a bad car accident. Really bad. I-I saw the car, it was totalled. Went off a cliff.”

 

On Trowa's end of the line, tense silence filled the room. “Are they all right?” he demanded. Quatre's wavering tone was putting up his hackles, and Catherine approached his elbow hesitantly, hearing the stress in his voice even though she couldn't understand the words. He lightly flapped a hand at her, and she backed off with worry on her face as he tried to pay attention to Quatre.

 

“Wufei is alright,” Quatre answered. “He's back at headquarters, and Iria's looking at him. He has a concussion, but that's about it, we think.”

 

“And Heero?” Trowa prompted, feeling a cold lump in his stomach already.

 

“Vanished,” Quatre said simply. “We searched for over three hours around the scene, and there was no sign of a body or anything. There was a little bit of blood, but that got us nowhere. I have no idea what happened to him.”

 

Trowa sagged against the wall, the phone held limply against his ear as he stared at the kitchen ceiling. How could something like this have happened so soon? It felt like they'd barely started this... this war, and there was a casualty already? What was it going to end like? Dimly, Trowa brought his mind back to the conversation. “How did it happen? The roads couldn't have been that bad; it's July!”

 

“Wufei told me they were being followed. Chased, actually. He said he thought it was people from OZ, and he's probably right, but we can't be sure.” Quatre sounded tired.

 

“So what you're trying to tell me here, is that we've been compromised?” Trowa asked. “There must have been someone near the Maganac base, someone who followed them. How else would they have been tracked down in Turkey?”

 

“It's occurred to me, yes,” Quatre answered. “The Maganacs are also aware of the issue and are prepared for any chance of being discovered. It's an occupational hazard; they've been in that base for nearly ten years and their number was just about up as it was.”

 

Silence fell over the two boys then. It stretched painfully for a few moments until they broke it almost simultaneously. “Trowa...” Quatre started.

 

“Have you gotten ahold of Duo yet?” Trowa asked overtop of the other teen's hesitant start.

 

“...No, I haven't,” Quatre said quietly. “I was going to call him after talking to you, actually.”

 

“Well then, I won't keep you any longer,” Trowa said. “Let me know if anything develops. About Heero, you know.”

 

“Will do,” Quatre said, sounding suddenly brisk. “Well. Goodbye.”

 

“'Bye.” Trowa hung up, sighed, and turned to tell his sister the news.

 

***

 

After hanging up on Trowa, Quatre spent several minutes just staring at the phone in front of him. His mind felt blank. He was emotionless. Sometimes life feels like such a waste.... Finally, giving his head a shake, he picked up the phone again and flipped through his little book to the 'M' section, searching for Duo's contact number.

 

***

 

Duo had just gotten back to his own place, after helping Hilde move in the TV she'd gotten from someone at work, when he heard his cell phone ringing on the kitchen counter. He frowned as he ran toward it; it was a new phone and only a handful of people had the number, including Hilde and Quatre. G did not know of the phone's existence, hopefully. “Hello?” he said after flipping it open.

 

“Hi Duo, it's Quatre.”

 

A sinking feeling made itself known in Duo's stomach. “Hey, Q, what can I do for ya?”

 

“I hope I didn't catch you at a bad time. I-I have news. Bad news.” Quatre sounded kind of guilty.

 

“Let's hear it,” Duo said, not really wanting to hear it.

 

“Well,” the Arabic teenager started, “Heero and Wufei left late yesterday morning for France. They went to Istanbul to rent a car... and they were followed.”

 

Duo refused to let his imagination run away with him until Quatre was finished. He listened to the other boy telling the story quietly, although his grip on the phone was rather stronger than it needed to be.

 

“Wufei's a little muddled, so we don't know all the details for sure yet,” Quatre continued, “but they had a bad car accident. It went over the side of a cliff.”

 

'Wufei's a little muddled....' Duo's knees started to shake, and he sank to the floor without knowing it. “...How bad?” he managed. His voice sounded strangely calm.

 

“The car was totalled; it was wrapped around a tree,” Quatre answered remorsefully.

 

“Wh-what's the story with Heero, then, if Wufei's alive?” He paused, pressing his lips together into a thin line. “Did they find his body?”

 

“We couldn't find a trace of Heero anywhere near the car,” Quatre said.

 

Duo opened his eyes again at this news. “Well, then he must be still alive, right? He's gotta be hiding out around there somewhere! Why haven't you found him yet?”

 

There was a lengthy pause on the other end of the line. “All we found anywhere on that hillside was a few drops of blood that might not have even been his. Wufei doesn't remember the crash itself and he has no idea what happened to Heero.” Quatre had to raise his voice to override Duo's protests. He sounded strangely gentle. “Duo, nearly twenty Maganacs, myself and Rashid included, searched the area today. We were looking for over three hours. We couldn't find him.”

 

Duo scratched his nose as he glared at the refrigerator. “Well, if you can't find a body, then he must be still alive. I refuse to believe that he could be dead, especially if Wufei was alright. It takes a hell of a lot more than a car accident to kill Heero Yuy,” Duo snapped.

 

Another pause from Quatre. “I'll let you know if anything else develops,” he said softly. Duo heard a dial tone.

 

He snapped his phone shut absently as he continued to stare at the fridge. Suddenly, with a scream of rage, he hurled the phone at the white, metal door and watched it bounce off with a bang, skidding across the floor to the living room. Duo sank back against the cupboards behind him, staring blankly at nothing in particular as his eyes started to itch. Despite what he'd just said to Quatre about Heero being invincible, he didn't really believe it himself. Not really.

 

After all, for all of their collective bravado, they were only children.

 

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A/N: Don't throw your cell phone at the fridge, kids, it probably won't survive. As for me, I'm moving across the country in a couple days, yay.