cozzybob (cozzybob) wrote in cozzybabbles, @ 2008-02-25 21:56:00 |
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Entry tags: | drabble, duo, gen |
[GW] Death Goes Zero
Death Goes Zero
by cozzybob
Pair: Duo, mentions of Trant and Hilde
Warning: canon, violence, character deaths, massacre, what-if AU
Note: For GW500, "what if" scenario. Takes place during the episode, "The Battle Between Shinigami and Zero."
Summary: What if Duo's hallucinations in the Zero system came true?
There is a book that Duo had read when he was six. It was during that year at the church, when he had learned to read for the first time in his life and jumped five grade levels in five months. His teachers at the public school had said that it was impossible (and therefore there was something wrong with him), but Father Maxwell had said that Duo was a genius, and there is nothing wrong about being intelligent in a human sea of several billion morons.
By the end of the year, he had been reading George Orwell and Animal Farm. He'd read it four times in a row, and it ended up being his favorite book. Today, years later, he still owns a paperback hidden under the seat of his 'Scythe.
There's this quote in it. Something that he has never forgotten.
It says, "War is war. The only good human being is a dead one."
It's like the secret to life itself.
He giggles as he remembers, and Zero tells him to shut up and kill more dolls. So he happily guts open a Taurus and watches the insides spark open into space, igniting fuel lines and causing a deadly light show that destroys two more standing beside it. The light temporarily blinds him at it's close proximity, but he is unphased, marveling at the response times, the sheer raw power... three more down and then five at once with his rifle, which causes the giggling to evolve into hoarse laughter. Some sick part of him loves this new baby almost more than his 'Scythe, and if it weren't for the lack of a cloaking device, he'd even prefer it.
But there is something wrong.
His victims, they aren't. The dolls that he kills, they don't die. They don't have children who will starve without fathers in war with paychecks to feed them, they don't choke on their own blood when he rips out their throats, they don't breathe, they don't stop breathing, and they don't cry and they don't swear and they don't beg.
They aren't human. They don't die. They don't have souls to swallow. So what the hell good are they?
5 Taurus Units, 9 Aeries Units, 20 Leo Units remaining. 34 total units remaining. Estimated threat at current condition: 48%
Not a goddamned thing.
Dolls insignificant. New target sighted.
But the colony... oh, the colony has things with souls in them. Things that can die.
Life signs: 3.7 billion.
He smiles.
Dodging the doll's unending fire, Shinigami turns his blessed new gundam around and levels his buster rifle at the bay where Trant will be standing with his little robot toys, and more importantly, the control over Wing Zero. Vaguely, he remembers Trant being the one to capture him, Trant the one to put him here, and Trant the one to treat him like another Duo Maxwell lab specimen.
Well, not anymore, Trant ol' buddy. Trant is going to get Shinigami's bullet shoved up sideways.
He doesn't smile anymore. He has been prisoner enough in his life--prisoner of L2, prisoner of depression, prisoner of drugs and alcohol, prisoner of OZ, and he'd even been prisoner for the Maxwell Church Massacre even though it had been men like Trant to kill them in the first place. They won't take him prisoner anymore--not for the things that he didn't do, nor the things that he will.
And so he fires.
Across the vacuum of space, he can hear Hilde scream his name, but he laughs because Trant screams with her, and three point seven billion people die in a matter of minutes. Cut off from their remote, the dolls stop firing, drifting limply in space like their name, and he blows them up too, still laughing, quoting from Animal Farm as Zero begins to quiet, the enemy obliterated from the region.
The colony expands from implosions, fire piercing from bays around the ring like the red hot claws of sinners from hell, reaching out to escape their punishment. There is a silence in the vacuum between there and here where he can only feel his heavy shuddering breaths echoing off the walls of his helmet, still hitched with a laughter that had never been sane or even remotely delighted.
But then the fire of the colony reaches the reactor core, and the entire thing bursts like a bubble, titanic chunks of shrapnel ripping slices off of Zero and slamming into the suit, causing Duo to find out what it's like to live in an unbalanced washing machine. He groans when a nasty jerk bruises his ribs against the harness, but he doesn't move.
Zero is sated, like it just had the best cybersex of its life.
All enemies destroyed. No further threat detected.
Yeah. And so is Shinigami.
As the destruction finally calms, he can see his 'Scythe in the rubble. In pieces, having taken several direct hits and an entire colony exploding around it.
That's when he remembers Hilde.
And he screams.
--Fini