Author: Sunhawk
Pairings: None
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Humor, Duo POV
Disclaimer: I do not own GW.
She breathed a sigh of relief and said 'Well, thank god THAT'S over!'
*ahem*
So here we are... another Christmas morning. Feeling a little off kilter this morning; what with being sick the last few weeks, I'm kind of having trouble with the timing... wait, it's Christmas morning? How did THAT happen? It can't be!
Continuing with this year's theme of 'half baked', I've got a Christmas fic that... doesn't feel right to me. I actually started this last year and then abandoned it thinking I would finish it for another year. Pulled it out this year and went back to work on it, but I'm not really happy with it. But... as dumb as the notion is, it's Christmas morning and I need (I need to! NEEEEED to!!) to post something, so here we go. *snort* Besides, I've been poking at this for weeks, and it just refuses to change shape, so maybe I'm over-thinking it and it is what it is? (Oh, and this is kind of a sequel to the 2006 Christmas fic 'Starting Traditions'. Duo POV and the only real warning is 'silly'. I'm going for Christmas humor here.)
So... Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it. And good morning to those who don't. ^____^
Christmas 2011
You should never make something like the end of a war into a holiday tradition. It tends to make bad things happen around that same time, year after year. Look at Mariemaia; I heard that whole thing was all about the timing.
Or you could look at my current situation; a week before Christmas and planted firmly in the middle of nowhere, holding a tiger by the tail and wishing I'd had better intel. Or wishing I still had a Gundam.
What is it with egomaniacal dictator wannabes, wanting to take over the world? Ever wonder what they think they're going to do with it after they're in charge? Most of the countries in the world are in debt already, if you were suddenly the owner of the world, wouldn't all that debt be yours? All the world's hungry would suddenly be your responsibility. And every ecological disaster out there would technically be in your own backyard. Who buys a house with an oil leak in the yard?
And let's put this into perspective per the season; they would own everything... how do you buy a Christmas present for the dictator of the world? They'd never get another gift as long as they lived, because it would be pointless. Does anybody ever stop to realize these things? There're draw-backs, for crying out loud, that nobody ever stops to take into consideration. Bet Mariemaia never stopped to realize she'd have been killing Christmas for herself better than the Grinch ever dreamed.
Not to even get into the Wyatt Earp syndrome; as soon as you own yourself a world, every other evil genius out there would be gunning to take it away from you. But do they ever think of that? No... egomaniacal dictator wannabes are all about the instant gratification.
And while marching into the office of the current EDW and telling him just that, might be fun in an experimental, psychological essay sort of way... it wasn't likely to convince him to go quietly. Nor was it likely to get my butt out of my current situation.
Probably no more than going in and asking nicely if the quasi-military coup could wait until after the first of the year, because I had a children's Christmas party to see to.
The microphone in my ear clicked and I heard MacMurdie say in hushed tones, 'Mission accomplished; sand has been inserted in all the oil drums. Orders, Captain?'
'Good job, now just... fall back and punt.' I replied and just got dead air in return. MacMurdie doesn't have much of a sense of humor.
'Captain?' Gray broke in, always there to keep me on track. 'Say again?'
I sighed and shifted to ease legs unhappy with all the crouching. I wondered idly if flipping a coin could be considered a valid method for making command decisions. 'Hold your positions and keep doing what you're doing,' I ordered and hoped they couldn't tell I was stalling.
'You're stalling,' Wilson informed me and I sighed again.
'No,' I said, rather testily, 'I'm just... running out of ideas.'
'So we're fucked?' Wilson asked, never one for the bush beating thing.
'There's a lady present,' I reprimanded. 'We're... uh... screwed.'
'Thank you, Captain,' Gray said, and I honestly couldn't tell if she was kidding or not.
It was one of those situations where you were pretty much damned if you did and damned if you didn't, and the likelihood of stopping the bad guys was somewhere between 'slim', 'none', and 'don't make me laugh'.
The situation was not the one of simple unrest that we were supposed to be investigating. It had escalated into full on going-to-war while the Preventers ¨C apparently ¨C hadn't been looking. And as I'd already mentioned, the timing was set for that oh so hallowed end of the year holiday season.
My team and I had come in for what we'd been told was a simple information gathering mission. There were some rumors, just like a million other rumors that crop up all over the Earth Sphere every day. We were just supposed to come in, talk to some locals, pin-point the EDW (emphasis on wannabe), and report back home with some reassurances in time to finish our Christmas shopping and hang our stockings with care.
What we found was way less wannabe than we'd been expecting. Way less. In fact, I think our EDW qualified as a full-fledged Egomaniacal Dictator Stage One... he even had the super secret base hidden in the jungle. With troops. And nukes. And other things that go 'boom' in the night.
We had arrived on the scene, by pure chance, twenty-two hours and thirty-five minutes before Operation Jingle Bells (I swear to God, I could not make this stuff up) was to have launched. There were four of us. We were not at all prepared to stop a full-blown attempt at world domination with fire-power and brute force. So two weeks before the season to be jolly, in the middle of bumfuck-nowhere, completely out of touch with home base, the outside world, and reality... we'd launched our counter-strike.
Operation Gremlin.
We'd infiltrated. We'd invaded. We'd faded into their woodwork and... we broke shit. Quietly, Unobtrusively. Undetected. We became the bur under the saddle. The thorn in the side. The grit in the gears. The gum in the... ok, you get the idea. We brought the revolution to a grinding halt, and we'd kept it halted for two solid days.
This was not a master plan that was going to win the day in the long haul. Eventually, one of us would get caught, or the repair crews would get ahead of us, or the EDW (ED-I?) would figure out what was going on, and it would all be over. Not like we could win by stalling them; not like if Christmas day came and went, they'd just give up until next year.
But, as I mentioned earlier... we sort of had the tiger by the tail. If we stopped, the coup d'état went forward only slightly off schedule. We needed backup but had no way of calling for it without withdrawing. It was taking every bit of effort the four of us could muster, just to stay ahead of the game.
Tiger by the tail, and the tail was getting slippery.
'Captain?' MacMurdie said, interrupting my hamster wheel musings. 'Uh... they've brought in dogs.'
'Ok,' Gray replied. 'Now we're fucked.'
Well, as they say, the jig was up. 'Sometimes guys,' I told my team, 'sometimes you just have to stick your knife in your teeth and jump...'
'Maxwell,' a sudden, new voice broke in, 'is that your answer to everything?'
I blinked, pausing in mid scratch of mosquito bite. 'Trowa? Is that you?'
'Well it isn't Santa Claus,' he chuckled darkly and I had to contain the whoop of delight.
'How did you manage communications?' I wanted to know, adding him into my calculations.
'I'm within range,' he informed me, and I could detect a broad hint of smug.
My calculations stumbled. If he was here, he wasn't any more likely to be able to communication with HQ than I was. My delight dialed back a notch or two. Or three.
'You're here?' I had to ask, wishing I had him in front of me so I could shake some information out of him that would make sense to my sleep-deprived mind.
'Yes, we are,' Quatre drawled, and it left me blinking more.
'Define we, Winner,' I said, and delight was trying to take an upswing again.
'I believe the phrase is 'the gang's all here',' Heero broke in, and I grinned from ear to ear. Because I may not always admit to it, but sticking your knife in your teeth and jumping, really isn't my favored method of mission completion. To be honest, it kind of sucks.
'You have trouble following simple orders, Maxwell,' Wufei interjected. 'Didn't you see the note on your calendar that said no heroics after Thanksgiving?'
I was saved from having to respond when MacMurdie said, his voice getting a bit high, 'Did I mention they brought in dogs?'
'Duo, can your people withdraw?' Quatre wanted to know, suddenly all business, and I was more than ready to let somebody else do the thinking. When you're stopping an EDW with nothing but malfunction maneuvers, sleep kind of takes a backseat.
'Can we?' I addressed the question to my team.
'I can be out in five minutes,' Wilson responded happily.
'It would take me longer,' Gray said, voice dropping to a bare whisper. 'Maybe an hour.'
'Currently moving deeper into the base,' MacMurdie chimed in. 'Gonna take me awhile to get around the guys with the dogs.'
'And I'm kind of... stuck,' I admitted.
'Captain?' Gray asked, with a hint of a growl in her voice. 'Where the hell are you?'
'I figured we were about done with Operation Gremlin,' I said. 'I was working on Plan B... I'm kind of parked in the EDW... uh... commander's quarters.' Where I had been hoping to actually take the guy captive when he got around to retiring for the evening.
'What I need to avoid here,' Quatre commanded, sounding like he might be holding the bridge of his nose in that gesture I've seen him make when I've done something that gives him a headache, 'is a hostage situation. If you can get out... get out. If you can't get out, hunker down.'
'Guess that means you guys didn't bring Gundams,' I sighed unhappily, imagining the mayhem I could have enacted on these guys if I'd just had a Gundam. Even a Leo. Or a Taurus, those were cooler than the Leos.
'Maxwell,' Wufei interrupted. 'We couldn't risk the nukes anyway.'
Wilson snorted, and I could hear the 'as if' in his tone of voice. 'We disarmed those on day one.'
'You sure of that?' Trowa wanted to know, sounding almost gleeful.
'Hell yeah,' Wilson reported. 'I've concentrated my efforts in the hangers, and nobody has gone near the missiles. They haven't noticed we touched them.'
'Awesome,' Quatre grinned ¨C you can hear that, in case you didn't know ¨C and began issuing orders in earnest. 'Screw negotiations; let's take this base apart. I need locations, people...'
And that was about where the resident EDW stopped back into his quarters for a fresh dress shirt, or his forgotten car keys, or... something. I am not one to allow a knocking opportunity to go begging. As soon as he shut the door behind him, I had him pinned to the wall, his gun removed from his holster and my own gun held under his chin.
'Hi,' I grinned cheerily. 'My name is Agent Maxwell, and you would be under arrest.'
EDW Eugene W. Rothchild Jr, gurgled something indignant, but prudently stayed still and listened intently while I read him his rights, nodding in the appropriate places. He was a short little guy, and I had to wonder, between the name, the height, and the somewhat baby face, about compensation syndrome and Napoleon complexes. Course, I also wondered how he managed to amass a group of followers in the first place, but I suppose money talks louder than baby fat.
'Duo,' Trowa broke in over my headset and gently chided me. 'I don't think personal comments about weight are really appropriate during an arrest.'
'Uh... sorry about that,' I apologized to Eugene. 'I guess I really need a nap.'
Eugene sputtered more incoherencies in a red-faced manner, and then it was all mop up. The somewhat shaky Plan B was so much more a plan with actual backup and more threat than, I won't let you out of your quarters until all your men promise to be good. Five Gundam pilots, a flock of Leos (herd?), and a squad of Preventers coupled with the capture of their leader was just... so much more effective.
My team and I were on a transport plane in less than eight hours, and Eugene was in a cell in less than twelve. Other than one infected mosquito bite (Wilson), a sprained wrist (Gray), and an unfortunate sinus condition brought on by dog allergies (MacMurdie), we were pretty much none the worse for wear. Nothing that wouldn't be fixed with a hot meal, a cold drink, and about thirty hours of uninterrupted sleep.
Somewhere over the Parati Valley, Heero plopped down on the bench next to me, gave me a smile, and handed me a bottle of ice water.
'I forgive every rotten thing you've ever done to me,' I told him, and half the bottle was gone before he had time to finish stretching his legs out and crossing his ankles.
'We just rescued you from a jungle deployment, but you forgive me for a bottle of water?' he wanted to know, his smile easy and teasing.
'Wait, you've really done rotten things to me?'
'I suppose that depends entirely on your definition of rotten,' he mused, uncapping his own bottle of water and taking a much smaller swallow. Course, it probably hadn't been a day since he'd had his last drink.
Trowa settled down on my other side and handed me a granola bar. 'You're my new best friend, man!'
Across from me, Wufei looked aside at Quatre, waving a package of beef jerky. 'I suppose that means he doesn't want this?'
'If he doesn't want it, I'll take it!' MacMurdie chimed in, and so we passed the bag around and dined on dried stuff.
'How come nobody ever gets the teriyaki flavor?' Wilson wanted to know, gnawing (otherwise) happily on his share of the jerky.
'Because we've seen how it makes you belch,' Gray informed him and they settled to arguing over flavoring choices of dried meat. MacMurdie fell asleep as soon as the allergy meds kicked in, which was just as well... he usually took off on tangents about sources that would have ended with Gray making Bambi jokes and Wilson getting teary.
I love my team, but they really needed a den mother more than they needed a Captain.
'We love you too, Cap,' Wilson snickered.
'We're not addressing you as Mom, sir,' Gray informed me, sounding somewhat affronted.
'That's Captain Mother to you,' I grumbled.
'That's kinda got a ring to it...' MacMurdie mumbled sleepily, and I groaned. Sure wish my mouth would stop running away with me when I was sleep deprived. It somehow seemed to happen a lot.
'Go to sleep, Duo,' Quatre commanded. 'We've got a busy day ahead of us tomorrow if we're going to pull this party off on time.'
I leaned my head back against the side of the plane and sighed. 'No way that's gonna happen, Quat... we're going to have to postpone it.'
'Everything's right on schedule,' Wufei said a bit smugly. 'If you will remember, Yuy signed up to co-chair the party with you this year.'
I rolled my head to the side to look at Heero who was trying to match Wufei's tone with a smug look, but I could see a hint of trepidation there too. 'I think I remembered everything,' he said, and I would have questioned him if I could have remembered what all a party involved. Phone calls, it seemed, lots of phone calls. I just couldn't seem to recall who.
'You did fine, Heero,' Trowa reassured. 'Everything will go fine. Especially now that we have the kid's favorite hero in tow.'
Somebody kicked my foot, but I wasn't sure who. 'Stand down,' Wufei said and I closed my eyes. The thrum of the engines was almost as good as a lullaby. Somewhere in the back of the plane, my team had given up on jerky reviews and had joined MacMurdie in dream land. I guess visions of dancing elk and bison was kind of like sugarplums, right?
'Sleep,' Heero said firmly and it made me snicker.
'And to all a good...' I began but whoever had kicked my foot earlier did it again with a little more emphasis, so I shut up. I was just starting to dose off when it occurred to me that I'd never said thanks for the whole ass out of the fire thing, but when I opened my eyes again, I swear to God all the guys were wearing little green elf hats. I blinked, rubbed my eyes and decided that a proper thank you could wait until my brain wasn't fried. I was definitely too far around the bend.
There was a snicker whose source I could not identify.
'God bless us every one...' somebody else said, in a wavering falsetto.
'Shut up,' Wufei warned, and then it was just the sound of the plane and a long dark fall.
They're really a great bunch of guys, but who would ever have guessed they'd turn out to be such a bunch of elves.
OWARI
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