Focus: Heero/Duo (pre-relationship)
Genres: (attempted) Romance, humor
Rating: PG13
Warnings: OoC, random
Other: crack post-GW, for Sharon's Moments of Rapture 2010 contest, written from Duo's  perspective mostly.
Themes: Matchmaking, Supernatural/Vampires/Zombies
Notes: ... D: I'm sorry, I couldn't complete the one fic I was so intent on completing for the contest. That fic became scarily a long monster fic. Loosely based on a "You're Under Arrest" episode.
Overall summary: Quatre tricked Duo into playing a game.

Fishy Monkey Business
by Nekocin

He knew it!

There was a niggling part in his mind that kept warning him about the signs, the signs of danger that kept pointing out to him that something was off. Out of place. Isn't Quatre too busy with rebuilding damages they had all caused during the war? Why did he even suggest going to an amusement park to play some silly paintball war game?

His gut had been telling him that something just didn't add up. He had always trusted this gut feeling... it worked like an alert system back in the war, whenever the enemies in sight, or whenever he was about to get shot. He just didn't understand why he hadn't listened to that nagging feeling in the first place when Quatre asked him out. Maybe because they've always been close friends; Quatre would never turn on him.

Right? Right.

... until it was too late to fend himself from Quatre's evil scheme.

Quatre had urged everyone to play -- gosh, to play. He clearly fell into Winner's trap. He should've been more suspicious of his friend when the other guy had told him that the other ex-pilots were going to join them soon enough. His brewing suspicions were hundred percent confirmed the moment he was, more or less, shoved to partner with Heero; while Trowa and Quatre had readily agreed to be partners, dragging Wufei along with impish grins.

Shocking. Surprising. And the world still goes on.

Dressed in amateurish military gear, complete with military boots and bullet-proof vests, Duo found himself trudging into the battlefield -- the supposedly impenetrable jungle park filled with exotic trees and pre-recorded animal cries.  With Heero as his partner-not-in-a-real-crime. Although there's nothing wrong about the partnership -- Heero was a great guy/partner/friend/whatever. They worked well together and, and, and... aw, screw it.

"Don't you get the feeling that we've been set up?" Duo said airily.

Even though they were doing their best not to make any unnecessary noises as they walked down an unfamiliar path filled with wild bushes, stray leaf branches and greenery, the eerie silence around them save for the looped noises of bird cries and monkey chatters in the background, somehow unnerved him. As if something was out there, watching their every move with a calculated gaze. Something was out there, indeed. He could feel their eyes burning holes to his skin.

Heero paused in his steps, shifted his paintball gun to one side as he stared at something, his face looking all serious and not the least concerned about Duo's earlier comment.

"Someone has been here. And they did not even bother covering their tracks," Heero pointed out as he crouched to study the soil.

'We're in the middle of a game park, don't you know Heero? Any other previous player could have walked here, lost and scared, before the big bad guy attacked,' Duo had wanted to sneer but he kept his mouth shut and peered over Heero's head to check the site himself.

Before he could crouch beside his partner, the other guy suddenly jumped him, pressing him to the ground, fisted his bulletproof vest and hauled him along to roll him over the dirt until they could finally hide behind a tree trunk. A flurry of paintballs being compressed out of guns and hitting the nearest surfaces immediately followed. After what seems like 5 minutes, the attacks ceased.

"Shit, we almost got shot there!" Duo gave himself a cursory glance to see if any paint was splattered on him and then to Heero. Finding none, he peered over their temporary hiding place on Heero's opposite side. "Any idea where they came from?"

"Behind those bushes. One o'clock and the fake tree at ten from your side." Heero murmured, peering closer. "They're waiting for us to move."

Duo hummed and slung on the paintball gun's band over his shoulder, "Help me up."

Heero turned his attention back to him and nodded, folding his hands on top of each other and waited. Without another word, Duo placed one foot on the hands and he was airlifted to climb their hiding tree further to several stable branches to perch himself on. He scanned the surrounding grounds quickly for any life forms and then readied his gun to aim, locking onto his first target; the badly-dressed enemy that looked like a half-eaten apple. He pulled the trigger twice and watched amusedly how his target flailed, looking around wildly despite wearing an ugly suit and then dropped himself on the ground.

Dead. One clean hit and he's out of commission.

Right according to the rules.

It seemed his little plan didn't go unnoticed. The enemy at ten o'clock noticed his partner had gone down and wildly searched the area until he finally noticed Duo in the tree.

"Ho, Shi--," Duo cursed, and dropped himself down from the branch when a rain of paintballs were aimed his way.  Luckily, when he hit the ground, he hadn't broken any vital limbs and laid down flat on the ground, his face pressed onto the leaves and the dirt until the shooting stopped.

"Am I hit?" He asked, twisting his neck slightly to look at Heero, who had been staring at him with a blank sort of expression on his face. The guy picked up a stick and poked Duo's ribcage. Funny guy. Except, Duo didn't feel like laughing.

"... what the hell are you doing?"

"You seem fine." Heero said with a ghost of a smile.

Duo swatted the stick away and pushed himself off the ground, slowly dusting himself and picking leaves off his hair. "I just killed the Apple-man. The one still alive is his partner, Mr. Celery. "

Heero scrunched his face slightly. "What's up with those names?"

"I don't know." Duo found himself shrugging and disentangled his gun from his shoulder. " We're up against Monsters, right? They don't look that scary to me. I wonder if we'll ever meet the Carrot-man. This way I can easily shoot him down until he'll never find his way back into my plate again."

"You don't make sense." Heero pointed out fondly but then suddenly froze, as if having heard something. He gripped his gun tighter, already pointing it around. Seeing Heero's abrupt change, Duo quickly readied his gun.

"They're out there." Heero said cautiously as he watched how the bushes rustle. Oddly enough the animal noises had stopped looping. Did the tape come to a certain end? Duo didn't have time to wonder with all the tension crackling in the air and his body already set in battle mode. The steps became louder, the bushes rustled wilder...

"Make a run for it?"

"On the count of three." Heero said quietly and mouthed, 'One... two... three!'

And they scrambled out of their hiding place and ran like the hounds hot on their heels with paintballs flying everywhere. Heero shot random paintballs as a warning to them all but half way through he'd decided not to do that after the sixth attempt. Sure, just leave the enemies a trail to come and kill you with red, white or blue paint.

It wasn't until they had reached a sort of dead-end fake cave, did their pursuers corner them.  It's only then did they get to see their enemies, the opposing troops of the game. They consisted of a wanna-be vampire, a wolf, a Frankenstein, a celery, a broccoli, a gas mask and the apple. Duo didn't know whether to laugh at the scary Monster concept the game park had been trying to promote in this game or just be horrified at their definitions of Monsters.

"We've got you all cornered now." Vampire growled, while Wolf made a show of pointing his gun at either Heero or Duo. "Who wants to go first?"

"You have no way to hide now." Celery said almost triumphantly. "Just easily admit forfeit."

"Is this how you protect your date?" Gas Mask said disapprovingly, looking pointedly in Heero's direction. "Letting her use a gun and kill a monster. You're not chivalrous enough to be in a relationship. "

"Excuse me?" Heero blurted out and gave Duo a look. "Obviously, looks are deceiving."

"You're a guy?" Vampire sputtered, turning his gun to Duo.

"Now what gave you that idea?"  Duo huffed and made a show of throwing his braid behind his back. Something he had often seen some of the women do whenever they wanted to show off, whenever they were snippy -- and picked up just to mock some people. And then he noticed the familiar costume of a dead man.

"Hey, why is Apple man still alive over there. Shouldn't he be dead? I just killed him." Duo pointed at the half-eaten Apple and finally noticed that... all of them had been shot at least once before. They've probably run into the other three. "All of you should have been dead too. Why is everyone up?"

"We're the immortal Dark Creatures of the jungle. Of course, we've infinite life span. Some measly paintball won't be able to keep us down," Wolf replied too smugly that Duo wanted to gun down the creature that instant. But first... he was disappointed the game park didn't have carrots as Evil Doers in the forest as well.  He'd have a field day painting the carrot with rainbow colors.

"Dammit! You're right." Duo conceded. "How can we finish this game?"

"Just kill the Master Mind, the target board in our Monsters HQ." Broccoli explained. "Seriously, didn't you guys read the storyboard in the entrance?"

"No." And then, "That's all? Kill off the Master Mind. " Duo leered, sending Heero a look.

Broccoli received a violent kick in the head from Wolf. "Idiot!"

"Race you to the top," Duo winked at Heero and before anyone could react, he had fired at the monster suit obstructing his path.

"Do you think it's going to work?" Trowa looked away from the window, silently admiring the way Quatre was dressed for the game. Somehow, anything on Quatre makes him feel a little horny. That's an understatement. If only they were alone...

"No, it won't. We're ex-terrorists. A paintball war game won't make a difference to them." Quatre said calmly, taking off the artillery from his shoulder.

"We probably should've gone with Wufei's idea of locking them in a room." Trowa sighed.

"Excuse me? My idea was to leave them alone." Wufei said, "I believe you were the one who came up with that cliche idea. And I don't even want to know who came up with this one."

Quatre suddenly laughed, grinning. "Would you believe me that it's Heero's idea?"

Silence.

Quatre's grin became smug. "I only helped out with the details."

"Then... shouldn't this idea work?" Trowa was the first to recover from the shock. 

"Only by 80%... unfortunately. The rest is up to Duo. That is... if he's figured out the whole scheme yet."

By the end of the day none of them ever saw Heero and Duo make it out of the game.