Duo flinched as a lazer strike crackled over his head, throwing up dirt and rock with an ozone-stink boom. He threw himself to one side, bare feet skidding out from underneath him as he caught himself on his hands once again. He lost more skin, swore a bit to make himself feel better, and took off running from a crouch.
Duo remembered setting up that system, those lazers. They were a damn useful thing to have when you had half an army of OZ on your tail and nowhere to run but home. They sorta sucked when you had allies around. New people not registered with the system. People you didn't want fried.
The cockpit was wide open, wide enough that Duo could see the glint of inner workings. Wires and metal and the shine of light on illuminated screens. Then it slammed shut with a finality that made his teeth ache.
That wasn't anything he'd set up. The cockpit shouldn't ever open. Not without his say so.
Duo covered the last bit of distance in a blur of not-thinking. He ignored the warm-wet feeling wrapped around his foot that meant bloody bandages, the shake in exhausted limbs, the tightness in his chest, the warning signs of a body pushed very close to its limit.
He could sleep when he was dead. Now was the time for work-run-climb.
Duo reached where Deathscythe's feet should be and grabbed the zipline that threaded down next to his ankle, where it was almost hidden by the foliage grown over the Gundam. He pulled himself up, hand over hand and wondered what, exactly, it would feel like to die of exhaustion.
This was probably pretty close.
He staggered up the leg, dropped to brace on one knee when the world spun around him, laced with lazer bolts, and pushed himself back upright.
There was a key pad. There was a code. He found the first and felt his fingers sweep through the second without any conscious thought on his part.
There was Deathscythe. Still his, even if it wasn't.
Duo leaned his head against the cool metal that bracketed the cockpit and tried to stop shaking. "Hey, buddy," he whispered, "Need you to do me a favour. Quit killing my friends."