Thank you: Jink, Tsubaki for all your help.  Thank you Urd-sama, Evan & Polepot for your imput. This is fic is meant to be read in stir-ups. (Thats fer you Lexi) -Mink-

The Ronin Universe- As Seen by a Gundam Pilot on the Street

part 6

    "We are go in 10...9...8...."

    He would not give in.

    "...7...6...5..."

    The orb was calm. It glowed lambent with a fire incongruous to the erratic light of the apparatus designed to extract its power and transfer it.

    Into his veins.

    The doctors had clustered in the theater window and were excitedly conferring with one another behind the reinforced plexiglass.

    It was not unlike an execution.

    "4...3...2..."

    The electrodes on his brow were chill; fingertips pressed against his brain. Would they turn to invisible fists of electricity? Thrusting him into blackness and who knew where beyond? Quatre's heart was resilient though it pounded. A tech dutifully checked his restraints one last time.

    "1."

    The switch.

    He stopped breathing, feeling nothing but his blood. The light surged strong and bright. Then there were none. A powerful hum from the machine, more sensation than sound, filled his senses. The metal points at his temple burned.

    A rushing blow in the chest made the air rush from his lungs in a gasp. Light sparked around him with frightening intensity. He heard Duo from somewhere shouting and cursing. He was suddenly afraid.

    "STOP!" His own voice rose above the crackling energy. "STOP IT!"

    But they could not. And the orb's power overtook him.

    The violence battered him with the force of a sandstorm, twisting his brain left, thrusting his body right. The reactions surrounding him were lost in the chaos, voices rushed behind and above him, warbled and frantic and he no longer knew or could see who they belonged to.

    The energy cleft his soul in two, it was an agony that seared him to his core and beyond, reaching places he had not known lay outside and below, within and above his realm of consciousness.

    He was in too deep.

    The clamor bore silence bringing all to halt, and each sensation that blossomed over another folded and slid into just one, and it was quiet, serene, empty but not dark.

    Quatre knew he was no longer firmly seated within his own body, his spirit jarred out of its place and sent adrift elsewhere pried, but then guided by the incredible energy of which he had been a medium.

    He could not see but he felt his feet gently meet the earth as if he had been floating in the ether in a physical form he could see. Light as air, he moved his phantom hands until he saw the faint wisps of light form into their familiar shape, insubstantial and then solid, the color of flesh.

    The empty light strained for him, and took to angles, forming nature from nothingness. Bit by bit, a blade of grass, the feel of a wind where there had been no air, the scent of upturned soil and crushed wild flowers.

       What is this?"  He wondered, the pain of the lab had faded like frost in the dawn.

      There was a vast open field. A single tree sat warped and wizened, unanchored in a sea of gently knee high waving grass. Beyond were the snow topped mountains and above that a golden sky, without cloud or sun.

    All of it, Quatre found, was unearthly and beautiful in its isolation and simplicity. Is this what the bearer wanted to show him? Or maybe, the device itself?

    Show me! Quatre pleaded. I want to understand?

   -clang!-

    Quatre swung, the familiar sound of the warriors battle bringing to him to a calm but intent fear.

    Two figures fought, both near collapse, under the gnarled branches of the tree. Their armor was stained with blood, damaged by the chaos of a long war.

    Quatre knew this battle from well within, he knew it as any human would know its own inevitable history through time. It was as buried deep as instinct. He knew the forces clashing here even if he did not recognize their guise.  

    The One in white faltered and fell to its knees, the Other garbed in black weary but triumphant, raised its sword.

    NoooOOOO! Quatre cried. Or he thought he cried. The sword glimmered for a beat, delaying the killing blow when all dissolved before his eyes in a nightmarish storm of petals. Pale and pink, they fluttered around him like snow, their fragrance like their presence fleeting. Around him their delicate beauty crumpled in a rain of blood. Quatre held his hands out to touch them and drew them back splattered with red.

    A metallic chime met his ears and the blood, warm like syrup on his cheeks, was forgotten. The sound came from afar, drawing nearer. A ghostly wail joined the metal and a robed figure appeared carrying a staff from which three metal rings swayed musically together. Long white hair flowed around broad shoulders, the face hidden by a wide-brimmed hat.

    Quatre balked. It was the garb of a priest.

    He tried to speak but his words were a breeze leaving his lungs, a useless, empty sound. The figure raised a pale hand and the hat slipped off the white head. Glass spun hair bled silver to midnight and he was equally shocked to discover that the bared face staring back at his belonged no longer to a man. Beautiful and alien, the girl's narrow, painted eyes regarded him solemnly.

    She was shaking her head.

    He blinked.

    She tilted her head, heavy with the burden of her hair, and from her pale lips rang peals of laughter. It was not the sound of the child she was but that of a grown woman. Quatre felt himself shudder.

    Behind her joy, he sensed foul intent.

    At her back, a majestic tower rose slowly from the ground like a seed to flower. Quatre felt his heart stop, recognizing the dark peaks of the pagoda. The castle in the clouds! Quatre felt dizzy, then faint, then for an agonizing moment, unbearably sick.

    That thing housed the evil.

    That thing was the cause.

    Pain leeched into the edges of his dream state, he heard the earth bound sounds of electricity and human voices speaking the language of science.

    He plunged through the layers of each vision, as the energy continued, unabated, to flow through his frame.

    The woman, with her strange scarlet-rimmed eyes appeared as fleetingly as his thoughts. .

    Not you.

    He didn't belong here, it was wrong in its most inherent form. This power that invaded him wasn't meant for him, it was for something else.

    I understand.

    And there was absolutely nothing he could do.
 

    There was absolutely nothing he could do. Duo's face and knuckles were bloodless. His chest heaved angrily, clutching and unclutching the folding chair before him. The technicians around him were occupied, the doctors calmly observant, their memo pads grasped loosely in their hands. They were stone-faced and Duo felt nauseous. This was not something he could observe.

    Not by any means.

    It was a thing he should be stopping.

    Beyond them in the lab observation window, Quatre writhed in his restraint, eyes squeezed shut, his pale hair a sweat- darkened gold clinging to his face. Light, like the green and pink residue of a camera's flash, formed around his body. Nebulous in shape and erratic in substance, it kept forming and reforming, trying to take hold where it could not until it smothered him. Quatre's slight form was rigid and paralyzed an instant, jerking uncontrollably the next. The light coated his arms and legs, surrounding his shoulders and chest.

    Like armor.

    Heero stared on. His eyes betrayed nothing. The fine, hard muscles of his arms and shoulders revealed more, like the haunches of a lynx, alert and ready.    

    Quatre writhed, trying to grope through the flashing energy surrounding him. His scream was barely his. Duo covered his ears and turned his face away.

    "Unstable cardiac activity." The medic reported blandly.

    "We have undocumented patterns occurring, sir." The technician did not tear his eyes away from the glowing screen.

    Dr J nodded. "We expected as much. Look at this gentlemen!" the other doctors bustled around him to watch the extraordinary read outs. "His brain activity has matched the weapon's cerebral signature!"

    "Excellent, we must be very close!" Dr H exclaimed, sharing smiles with the others.

    Duo bit at his lip furiously. Close? The lab's hum was an audible whine as if the place was being juiced to the max, the unseen generators pumping through the Doctors' energy source were struggling. He watched the computers flicker simitaniously, the monitor's images glowing hot from the strain.

    Duo didn't breathe. The lights flashing inside the chamber had reached such a height he could no longer see anything but the rapid emerald soundless explosions the orb sputtered violently, erupting in a blaze of illumination he had never seen before. He threw his arm up over his eyes when he realized they were burning from the intensity of it.

    "Sir?!" A tech yelled over the chaos, the machinery was whirling like several jet engines. "We are in the red sir!!"

    "No! Just a few more moments, it is working!" Dr J roared.

    Despite the aura glowing and swirling around Quatre's body, Duo had the distinct impression it was not working at all. It was trying to solidify and killing Quatre in the process.

    The light looked like a shimmering green fire, the heart of it white hot and expanding like an A bomb on impact.
A shower of sparks and a computer bank to Duo's left erupted into red angry flames. he had enough time to see Heero swing to the floor behind a terminal before he had done the same himself.

    The sound of the plexiglass shattering into a thousand shards splintered through the turmoil.  This is it. Duo said to himself, waiting for the blast to come and annihilate them all.

    But then it stopped.

    It was suddenly and irrevocably dark. The jet engine scream of machinery wound down to a dull grinding whine and then to nothing. The computers hissed and hummed in a dying wheeze and there was a deafening silence.

    Duo went cold.

    A lone red emergency light snapped on in the smoky dark, and the distant click clack, click, clack of circuit breakers attempting to reinitialize echoed from deep within the machinery.

    "Catastrophic power failure sir!" Some one coughed.

    "Failed?" Duo was ignored. He could see through the shattered pane of plexi glass and smoke into the chamber, Quatre was limp in his harness.

    No armor had solidified on his pale form.

    Quatre.

    The doctor sounded panicked. "Get it back online! Now!!"

    Duo thought at first that the Doctor was concerned about Quatre, but he quickly realized that the Doctor was worried about the power itself.   Without the fragile force that kept them at bay, the weapons locked away far below them were free to reign again.

    "System check!"

    "Back ups 2, 3 uh, 4 -" The voice was curt and tense. "Sir we have a total back up failure."

    "Out of the way man." Dr J shoved the lab tech firmly aside and jabbed at the computer. A small but hopeful hum, a breath taking flicker, and the monitors crackled back to life.

    The lights and rest of the complex had stayed eerily silent.

   "We have minimals sir, the main power grid is not back online-"

   "Impossible!" The Doctor pushed the assistant away to see for himself. "Simply impossible!"   

    The doctors were arguing in the semi darkness. The red light began to slowly flash on and off, lazy like a heart beat

    "It was too much, we've overloaded the matrix." Dr H said confidently.

    "I believe it was the beta converters!" Another Doctor suggested strongly.   

    "Well we had better get it back up, before-"

    "Son of a bitch!"

    Until now, there had been fear. It had risen in Duo's chest had ruptured to wonder in the emerald light and then dimmed in the smoke of failure and the stink of ozone, it smoldered, finally, to rage.

     "You killed him!" he snarled. "He told you! He told you it wouldn't work!" Duo choked, raising a fist.

    Dr. J's jowled cheeks were livid. He stroked his beard slowly but said nothing.

    Duo's gun was in his hand, teeth bared.  "He's dead, isn't he?"

    There was a pause.

    "ISN'T HE?" Duo screamed.

    There was suddenly a deep groan of metal from far below, snapping the tension violently. The structure whined and shuddered, as if it had been shook by an earthquake no one had felt. It was followed by several more, the last one violent enough to move the floor beneath them and send several people crashing to the ground along with sparking equipment.

    Duo's gaze went involuntarily to the circuit monitors that flashed from static filled life to darkness. His rage for Quatre was quickly overshadowed by a much more potent threat.

    The weapon they had dragged through the city lay still on its table, the jerky image spilling forth its vital data in spurts. Its heart rate had increased dramatically but it was secure despite the power outage.

    He clicked the closed circuit panel to the room which contained the wicked menace that still had access to its armor and had never been restrained or weakened enough to be rendered unconscious.

    "Uh Doc?"

    The cell where the other weapon had sat motionless for so many hours was now empty.

    "I think we have a problem."
 
 

    Heero and Duo had left the main lab quickly and without so much as a word. Duo forced his thoughts from the pitiful state Quatre was in, and his uncertainty if he was even alive. In all likelihood he hadn't survived the power transfer.

    It won't matter, he thought. If he isn't yet he will be unless we-

    Unless they what? Duo almost laughed outloud. Not only had the attempt to use the new type armor failed in every way, the power source keeping the captured weapons from gutting each and every one of them like the buildings in the street had been destroyed. No one had said it yet, but the Doctors had failed, in what one could say, a supreme and complete way.

    Duo followed closely behind Heero in the strangely silent halls.

    He hadn't noticed the steady thrum of electricity or the sizzle and buzz of equipment until it had all disappeared in a moment. The little power that was left to the insufficient back up generators now supported the bare skeleton of the place, illuminating the red back ups lighting system in a lethargic pulse, letting the passage go to almost total darkness before brightening back to its dim height.

    They left the upper and mid levels and went down and down, the emergency lights growing fewer and fewer as they reached the sub-basement levels the Doctors had devised as containment.

       As they traveled lower into the deeper recesses of the annex, they found the corridors were completely deserted.  It was a far cry from the activity he had to elbow his way through only hours before.    The sounds of damage they had all heard thus far yielded no proof of violence. The halls were empty of people or havoc.

    But something did linger. A faint scent of something rotted and sweet that made Duo choke and his eyes burn. He knew what it was well enough. Bio chemical warfare.

    Duo halted at a bank of small monitors when he saw static flowing in columns in gray rows. It was the computer he had seen earlier when he had visited the weapon they had captured. What was once the binary code, the raw data and guts of the voo doo the docs had pulled together to keep these beings in check, was now gone with the attempt to use the weapon's armor.

  Glancing around warily in the silence, he began hacking into the impaired system to gain the same access they had in the main laboratory area, hopeful to find some of the close circuit cameras still operating.

    "Munashii " Empty. Heero noted scanning the various long bleak passages that branched from their position.

    "Yeah."  Duo shivered, reminded of the empty streets far up above them. "Were'd everybody go?"

    Heero motioned impatiently towards the computer with his chin.  

    Evacuated or up in smoke.  It made little difference to Heero. "Right."  Duo said with a small sigh. One by one the monitors snapped into a wavering but working camera, showing the rooms and halls of the lower levels.

    "Shit."

    The answer to Duo's question was quickly answered.

    The bodies of the lab techs littered the surrounding lower corridors, in twisted throes of death, most with their hands over their faces or around their necks, fallen where they had stood.

     Duo fumbled for his comlink, glad it still had some power. "Seal off the entire lower lab!"  he cried.  It had moved faster than they both had anticipated.  It had already escaped the sealed cell area, hopefully the thing was still down here with them, and just maybe they could keep it here. And stop it.

    The Doc was agitated "My lab technicians have yet to be evac-'

    "They're already dead!" Duo spat.

    On the screen, a dark mist swirled around the inert bodies.   Duo leaned closer, mistaking it for smoke but it moved and worked around the corners and up the walls like a living creature. 

   Heero tapped the thick glass of the computer with a finger. "Biomeku."

    The strange mist in the monitor formed into a tendril and unwound itself. It paused, tilting towards the flickering camera as if it sensed itself being observed. It flowed towards the lenses like a snake striking  the camera.   It blinked to white noise static and went blank. 

   "Dead?"  The Doctor remained unconvinced. "What are you talk-"

    Duo swallowed.  "Just DO it."

    The distant grind of the lower lab doors lowering and locking echoed through the silence.

   Only after he turned and looked at Heero did he realize that if they had trapped the rogue weapon down here in the lower sub levels, they had just trapped themselves as well.

     It had stopped.

    Quatre heard grim voices and felt a hand on his neck.

    They announced his death. They spoke in rushed tones about maybe doing something with his body.

    They disagreed in their air of urgency and finally they drifted away and he knew it was for good.

    Very slowly he felt his heart thump once and then several minutes later it thumped again.

    He parted his lips and drew in a breath of smoky air. His chest rose in sublime agony and fell again with the same results.  His eyes opened slowly and he looked down to his hands still bound in their restraints. He expected to be horribly burned, or even charred black but instead his skin was white as death.

    Focusing all the energy he possessed he tested his wrist against the binds, and instead of meeting resistance, the brittle blackened material snapped like styrofoam. His other wrist followed. Reaching for the electrodes he knew had been placed on him, he found them missing, and seeing the ashy trails of dust on his clothing he knew they had disintegrated.

    Quatre pulled himself forward and slumped uselessly to the floor, his legs not yet working. He lay for a moment like that his cheek against the cool metal surface until his eye caught something across the room from him, a small object half buried in fallen plexi glass.

    It glinted green at him.

    He pulled his way forward on the ground, heedless of the sharp pieces of glass and acrid flow of hydraulic lines that had burst. Quatre closed his hand around the shimmering green orb and felt its cool fire flare through to its heart.

    He knew, finally, exactly what he had to do.

    In the silence, Trowa awoke. The air was repellent and he coughed, feeling as if his lungs were being squeezed within his chest. The back of his throat burned like acid, and his eyes stung, reflexive tears streaming down his face.

    He rolled onto his back and pushed himself weakly to his knees, blinking in the gloom. The power was out, and only a dim green glow lit the passage just outside the chamber of the pale haired weapon.

    Pale haired man. Trowa's foggy mind corrected itself.

    The man was vital. He had been on his way to find it when ...something had happened. He could not remember what.  He involuntarily swung his gaze behind him to the shattered remains of a thick metal door just a few yards away down the length of the passage.

    People had panicked and it was hard to breathe. He still felt some of the numbness in his fingertips and a tingling sensation on his exposed skin.

    The power was gone.

    Quatre.  He didn't permit himself to continue his thought.

    He stood with a small sway when his balance failed to keep up with him. He leaned against the wall, gazing listlessly at all of the bodies dressed in lab coats just as he was.

    But dead.

    He didn't have to touch their pallid skin to know death. He knew it well enough. Why had he survived?

    Movement.

    Trowa froze, his eyes flashing to the farthest dark corners of the passageway. All he saw at first were the still bodies of the Doctors' staff but then, in and out of the shadows, he saw coming around the corner a slow meandering flow of red vapors trailing and investigating purposefully through the dead.

    His eyes narrowed. The thing was long and thick as a rope, seemingly to be made from the very noxious poison that burned his eyes. How? His hand closed on the warm metal of his gun under his lab coat, but what good was a bullet against air? He watched it flow into a woman's mouth, frozen in a silent scream, making her chest rise in a grotesque semblance of life only to flow back out in an unnatural exhale. It was checking each and everyone for any sign of life so it could finish its duty.
Trowa removed his gun.

    The vaporous creature paused, sensing his movement in the dim hall.

    Trowa barely had time to react before it struck out.

    With a vicious shrieking hiss, it lunged through the air, flowing fluidly forward with lightening speed, its body zig zagging through the air like a snake in water. Bullets passed through it uselessly as he had predicted, making the poison death only hurry to smother him even faster. Outraged at his presence, perhaps at its own error, the thing's eyes glowed bright as it filled Trowa's vision and all he could do was throw himself backward and away.

    Trowa watched it come, waiting for the length of its body to rush into his mouth and wrap its tail around his lungs to choke him.

    The serpent was only a few feet from his face when it shrieked in warped pain, an animal caught in a trap.

    A soft green barrier pulsed between them.

    It had collided with what seemed like a thin film of light. Curious, Trowa forgot the threat of its noxious fangs and put his hand out to touch the gauze like luminance and watched it shimmer under his touch like water. Had it been there since he'd awakened? How could he have not noticed until now?

    The serpent writhed and twisted until it had dissipated, wisp by wisp, the angry red mist finally just mist once again. A small groan made him start and he saw that one other had been engulfed in the peaceful glow. A young man, barely out of his teens, enlisted by the doctors from who knows where.

    Where was that light coming from?

    He turned towards his original destination.

    He pushed the door open and saw the source of it. The serene radiance was coming from the figure on the table, emitting from his form in a dome, it was pure luck he had been close enough to be protected by it.

    It was strange to feel wonder, he rarely experienced it to know it for what it was at first.

    The man flexed in his bonds and looked to him, an intense and new charged look in his clear blue eyes as if he had woken from a good sleep. His eyes narrowed at the sight of Trowa and the pilot could see the green light shift like an aura, to dark, to anger, to malice.

    "Not me." Was all he said if that would explain anything.

    But as the aura flared it quickly faded, and the man fell back weakly, panting for breath and shifting frustrated in his binds. The green light pulsed with his movements, and grew steady again.

    Trowa stepped wordlessly towards him and began to undo his binds, taking the electrodes that kept him and then finally the clasps that held him captive. He sat up and slid unsteadily from the table to his feet.

    Trowa was certain, the green light around them brightened
 

 
    It wasn't hard to find the thing. One had only to follow the occasional door rent from from its frame. Note the frequent computer embedded into the wall.

    A more subtle trail and Duo may have been disappointed.  

    They could hear the thing before they saw it, its passage through the complex followed by the skittering hiss that sounded like dry leaves, and the rapid clicks of what sounded like jittering bones.  It walked slowly, swirling hundreds of writhing slithering phantoms in its wake, flowing over the floor and up around the walls to drip from the ceiling. 

    It had regained its strength.

    Duo found his tongue.   

    "Why is it still here?" Duo whispered. "It could've just taken off after it got outta the cell?"

    On the monitor it had been a disconcerting thing to see. This weapon was so unlike the one he and Heero had captured. It was hard to believe the Doctors when they maintained that they were both born from the same caste. Its immense size had been lost to Duo on the simple monitor screen and he had of course never seen it move.

    It was moving now. A biped, walking in powerful strides, knocking aside machinery that would crush a man with a casual motion of its gauntleted hand. The face was white and formed just enough like a human being as to not appear freakish, but just enough of its oddly slanted eyes seeped through with purple skin like a bruise, the fine angle of the jaw and its height made it more than alien.

    Helmet missing, Duo could see the odd shade to its hair, dark and similar to its bulky armor.  When the weapon moved aside part of a wall rather than find the next door, Duo considered forgetting the mission all together.  He looked forlornly back up the service way knowing that the lab was sealed.  How were they going to get out of here?  Heero was going on without him,  and before the dust could settle,  Duo carefully moved to follow.

    It finally stopped in a corridor and an open door way. It raised its head as if it was sensing the air, and for one moment Duo was certain it was aware of their clumsy progress behind it.  

    But instead of turning its bizarre and terrible gaze to them it smiled, and walked forth into what Duo was certain, some kind of storage area.

    "Kengeki." Weapons. Heero said when they had finally rounded the corner and heard the noise of its activity very close by.

    "It's lookin for its weapons?" Duo said to himself. The doctors had mentioned its swords. No wonder it hadn't left, Duo was certain that the weaponry that came with these bio suits were probably hard to come by. The storage area was a lock down of a series of vaults. He wondered how it was going to proceed without the Doctors coveted access codes.

    The weapon sent a mighty fist trough the re-enforced vault door, where it had apparently assumed its swords were, and twisted it nearly off its hinges.

    Duo bit his tongue in his shock. So much for codes.

    Sparks flew settling on bundled cables, the digital lock interface on the wall started blinking a frantic red warning.
The weapon didn't even turn from his work, rending the bomb proof vault doors like they were made of flimsy wood.

    A high pitched alarm sang out with an ear damaging shriek, growing into a piecing blare.

    "Kudaro." Get Down. Heero said simply and with two steps into a full run he threw himself onto Duo and they both slid into the corridor beyond.

    Duo was barely aware of what had happened before a wall of heat slammed into them followed by the deafening BOOM, sucking all of the air from Duo's lungs and the passage. An explosion rocked the structure around them sending shards of searing hot metal like bullets, and the ceiling above them to buckle and fail.

    Duo felt Heero roll off of his body and drag him away, slamming him into the opposite wall just as the cement and steel collapsed into the hall.

    He looked up wide eyed and breathless taking his arms away from his head. Orange flames licked out furiously from the door way they had been standing in moments ago, black oily smoke pouring through the debris.  An enraged mass of withered tendrils whipped out with the unfurling smoke and burnt instantly to ash with a sharp wailing scream.

    "Rigu " Heero explained and pulled him self to his feet glancing at a gash a shard of metal had made on the back of his arm and then ignoring it.

   Rigged. That is why Heero followed the beast down here. The Docs had set the vault with a special surprise.   Duo stared at the burnt remains of the creatures that had fallen like snow right before his face.  He saw he was hugging himself and stopped immediately.

    Without another word, Heero broke into a run, his arms up over his face, tearing right through the flames that roared through the passage and to the other side.

      There was the sound of shattering glass.

    -CLANK-

    A damaged groan of metal and an uncertain pause was followed by a loud whirring of a motor. The vault door, was closing and so were the only two others that lead to the corridor, one behind Duo blocked with what was left of the ceiling and the other beyond the flames where Heero had gone.

    "Ikuzo!" Came his voice. Lets go.

    Duo got to his feet, the flames weakened as the Vault door slid closed, the passageway doors already half way to the floor and the air filling rapidly with smoke. The well fueled fire had spread into the airducts bringing the furnace like heat with it.
Heero had shattered the lock mechanism.

    He got the point quickly.

    Dashing through the black smoke and licking flames Duo followed Heero dropping at the last moment to slide on the floor and clear the doors swift descent.

    The door sealed to the floor with a hiss, black tendrils of smoke cut off from the source and drifted up and dissipated in the smoky air. The labs fire alarms were blaring, Duo hadn't heard them before over the noise but the red generator beacons were flashing on and off, the rush and hiss of the emergency water system. Heero remained still as the over head sprinkler system swished to life, raining down on them in the semi darkness.

    "Let's get out of here!" Duo sputtered, the water soaking his clothes and hair, bringing home the acrid smell of smoke. "That thing is done."  He hoped.

    Heero ignored him, his eyes intent on the door, as if listening for something beyond. The red lights flashing slowly on and off threw them both in and out of glistening ruby light.

    "Nothing could have survived that!" Duo yelled, anxious to say anything to make Heero move. "Come on!"

    The floor underneath them shook.

    "What the-"

    Heero had started to back away, his grim look hardening even further.

    They had retreated almost 20 yards down the corridor when the door they had cleared was ripped aside.

    Duo paused a moment in disbelief before he hauled himself up behind Heero on a service ladder. The weapon stood poised with Its recovered swords.  The coiled shapes of serpents poured from the doorway over its head and flooded into the passage hissing and snapping like vipers.

    Whatever the doctors had said about the swords being damaged was erroneous. The blades were perfect and deadly, shedding along with their master, a sickly purple light.

    It had survived.

    And it was pissed off.

    Trowa helped him through the throng of bodies careful to not step into the dark pools of thickening blood that formed around some of the still figures.

    "H-halt!" Someone rasped.

    Trowa froze and turned. He had forgotten about the other lab assistant who had survived. Only one of them. An accident like Trowa, close enough to the pale haired weapon to be protected inside his green light. 

    He was a young man leaning weakly against the wall.  He had Trowa's discarded gun in his shaky grip.

    This was no solider but a scientist. And he was terrified.

    Trowa moved slowly knowing that a nervous man with a gun was more dangerous than a professional assassin.

    "You can-can't let that out of here!" He almost screamed, his frantic round eyes going around him to all of the bodies and back to both of them again. "We should destroy it, we shouldn't have-"

    To Trowa's surprise the pale haired man pushed himself away from his support, falling up against the wall before taking a deep breath and righting himself.. Trowa could see the verdant haze glow brighter as he stood and turned towards the wary lab worker.

    His gaze went to the slain bodies around them with regret. "This..." his voice was rough, unused."...wasn't meant to happen."

    The hysterical young man was shaking his head, white hands shaking badly as he aimed the gun again. "I saw the data, you are just like that other one, I saw WHAT IT DID!" he shrieked.

    "No" The yellow haired weapon stepped forward.

    The young man stepped backward reflexively in a panic and in his fear forgot about the bodies all around them.

    He stumbled and lost his footing.

    BANG-BANG-BANG

    The gun rang off three times as he fell, his hand reflexively closing on the trigger.

    Trowa watched the pale haired man jerk as each bullet struck him, and watched him fall, and crumple slowly down to the floor with the rest.
 
 

    bleep-bleep-bleep

    "Yeah?!" Duo asked scrambling up another corrugated steel platform and grabbing another service ladder. They were headed up. "Make it quick Doc, kinda busy."

    Another explosion shook him to cling to the swaying metal catwalk, flames shot up through the air shaft and hit the opposite side of the precarious bridge, cutting Heero off before he could reach it.

    Duo sighed and used one hand to drag the comlink to his face and the other to keep from plummeting hundreds of feet down into the lab interior. "Go ahead, turns out we a got a few minutes". Or less Duo mused.

    "Well Duo, we wanted to thank you for your great work!" came the tinny muffled voice through the faltering connection.

    The doc seemed a little out of breath as if he was in a hurry.

    Another shock of power rumbled through the air and the catwalk's bolts snapped and flew. The catwalk dropped to the side. It dumped Heero into the air but he caught onto its edge. Duo managed to lunge for the corner of the air duct he had been trying to reach and haul himself inside.

    "We have decided to abort this experiment."

    The Doc explained as Duo anchored himself in the shaft and leaned out to grasp Heero's arm and let him swing to the wall to pull him up. Heero's sneakers met the aluminum wall with a hollow bang.

    Duo could see the weapon below them watching their progress with its slanted eyes. Its attendants spitting and hissing around it in a boiling wave of collective agitation.

    It smiled and raised its swords again.

     Duo, murmuring an expletive used the last of his strength to HAUL Heero up and over before the thing could let loose its fire power again and disintegrate them both.

    In the process, the comlink was jostled and starting to fall from his belt.

    "We will be leaving as soon as possible, please try to do the same!" The Doctor said cheerfully.

    Heero was up, and the roaring burst of energy was already on its way to blast them from the face of the earth. The comlink slipped and fell into open air.

    "You might want to hurry,  good luck!" 

    The comlink said as it bounced off of the metal walls and was then swallowed by the cloud of swelling energy that surged like a fountain up the air shaft and hit, sending Heero flying into him and then sending them both careening down the air shaft as it took a swift turn DOWN.

    Duo lay panting as Heero caught his breath in the smoke and extracted himself from their fall.

    Heero kicked off a grate and they both stumbled into another dark hall, the sounds of the weapon not far behind them.

    A panel opposite of them flashed on in bright red digital numbers and began to click.

00:20:00

00:19:59

00:19:58

    A loud chime announced a broadcast and a pleasant woman's voice cut through the complex, calm and collected.

    All personnel please vacate this facility.  Self destruct has been activated.   

    Duo sighed.

    "Thanks doc."

To be concluded...