Disclaimer: It's not mine! STFU!

The woman that had screamed loud enough to almost make me take a freefall off the roof was still going strong, but apparently she was screaming in joy – go figure. I took that to mean that the woman had won something.

But her luck, however it may be or last, wasn't that strong a concern for me. I had to find out where Heero had gone, because he was going to secure the head honcho of this damn group. And that man needed to be killed. And... so did Heero.

Needed to be killed, I mean.

I knew he'd come out of the window, and I was pretty certain he'd gone up, since the idea that the man in charge of Caribol being close to the other execs or whatever was just ridiculous. If they were all in the basement and he wasn't anywhere near them, then he most likely was trapped somewhere far away. Being nearby was stupid – he could have just been in that room with the others and have a billion guards. Hell, just having Heero around would give him enough edge to probably escape with the rest of his little lackeys.

No. He was somewhere else. Somewhere high up. Somewhere that was not in easy reach of their little underground safehouse.

And when I found him, I would find Heero. Or vice versa.

The roof, red as those stupid tapestries, was tapered off at the top, though there was no helicopter waiting to conveniently lift the baddies off, the place still looked like someone could stand up there without too much of a problem at all. Was Heero waiting for me up there?

It was one of those look-it-goes-up-in-a-slant-but-levels-off deals, something that looks cool but is a real bitch to clean. The roof went up in curved metallic tiles that were difficult to be silent on. Those tiles seemed to go up above the flooring on the flat part of the roof, but I imagined that there would be a sort of red tile thing up there, too, but flat, to continue the appearance of classy opulence from a bird's eye view. Climbing up was an exercise in patience and annoyance both in turns; I pitied the poor soul that had to come up and spit shine this thing.

I was careful when I reached the top; I looked over the top of the roof – It looked almost Japanese, but the Japanese would never make a roof this god-awful color – and gazed up quickly before ducking back down. Yup, there were people up there, all right. But who the hell were they?

I had thought one was Heero. That was enough for me to act.

I decided for the surprise option and just leaped up then and there, deciding a grenade would work and just pulling out the pin as I jumped-

I deliberately missed and cried out in alarm.

Quatre and Heero stood on the roof together.

Quatre turned and looked at me in shock, seemingly hardly aware of the gun that Heero had trained on him and a bit more concerned with my sudden appearance and most likely to him unnecessary violence.

Heero reacted rather predictably, of course, turning sideways so that neither Quatre, who was on the opposite end of the roof, nor I was at his back, then turned his gun on me and fired. Quatre shouted then, yelling at Heero, telling him it was only me. Fuck. Wufei and I really should have taken the time to explain just what the situation was.

“Enemy!” I shouted to Quatre, who seemed to absolutely not understand the word whatsoever. I ran over to him, simply throwing my next-to-last grenade just to cause a distraction. Then I caught up the blond and jumped off the opposite side of the roof.

“Duo!” the blond shouted, “what the hell-”

“Not Heero,” I panted, then leaped up again, leaving Quatre behind. I was glad to see Trowa in that moment watching us in complete shock but already moving, already reacting. He went to Quatre's side from where he'd waited on this side of the roof and despite everything I felt relief, knowing he would protect Quatre. Then I turned my attention fully to Heero and watched him turn that gun of his on me. I had just enough time to regret the loss of my surprise attack when he fired.

I would say my brilliant dodging skills led to my getting only a clip on the arm, but it was simply because a piece of shrapnel from the stupid red roof paneling blinded him for half a millisecond. Lady Luck must not have hated me, after all.

My own gun was in my hand then, aiming for Heero. I couldn't explain the pain of it. It would be impossible. I didn't hesitate simply because I'd already resolved myself to this situation. But the pain never died, never receded, but only strengthened and morphed itself, taking my peace of mind, my happiness. It constricted my throat and chest and made it hard to breathe. It was all clichéd, all so... it sounded like a bad romance novel. A sci-fi romance, maybe.

But the pain tore through me as strong as ever as I aimed down my barrel and looked at Heero and knew without a doubt that he was gone to me and I was alone and it hurt so much to pull that trigger, even knowing that Heero would dodge.

He did, and to the right, scowling in a way that said he was tired of the interruptions. Obstacles. He'd always hated those.

I'll always wait, I told him, even though it was stupid, even though it may very well have been a lie, since I had no intention of waiting here, on Earth. I rolled to avoid Heero's counterattack and pulled out my last grenade – distraction – and threw it, not knowing how the hell the bastard managed to not even get his fucking clothes torn when I did it and not letting myself think about whether his clothes were merely some sort of... of mechanical thing, like a hologram – maybe there was nothing left of him that was human, nothing at all but a hologram of skin and eyes – and just moved.

I ignored the shrapnel flying pretty much everywhere and got up into Heero's face. It was a startling thought that pulled through my mind as I looked up at him, but my brain went on its tangent anyway and I wondered if Heero's lips were cold now.

But then I just reached up my hand and... and...

And I shot him.

I realized it as soon as I did it, as soon as I heard the squelch and sound of flesh and organs getting ripped apart and the splash of blood and there was no metal and he was human.

I think I might have screamed.

I caught him in my arms as he fell, those eyes of his completely unseeing, that beautiful body of his limp. And I just screamed and screamed and screamed.

“Strike! Strike!” I heard Une yell through the link, but I just couldn't think to answer her. I touched Heero's neck with a hand that shook like palsy as his blood fell all over me. For a second I couldn't hear his heartbeat and I just fucking freaked, but then I felt a weak thread of a beat and sobbed in relief.

I didn't know I was chanting his name until Quatre suddenly screamed out my name.

“Help him,” I begged, turning to Quatre, desperate, panicked. “Help him, please God help him; I didn't know, I didn't know. Heero. Heero, Heero...”

“Move, Duo,” Quatre ordered, and I could tell he was in his own little soldier mode and I backed off immediately, knowing I was useless. I felt Heero's blood all over me; my clothes were absolutely soaked. “Trowa, get in touch with Une right now and tell her we need an ambulance. Duo, what the hell is going on here?!”

My eyes didn't stray from Heero's and I recognized that look of death from when he'd blown himself up. I wasn't screaming anymore, thank goodness, but my head was swimming and I couldn't concentrate on anything but the fact that I'd killed Heero and-

“Report!” Quatre snapped and it made me jump. My mouth moved one hundred percent without my permission. G's training, after all, had been pretty damn grueling.

“Heero had been sent out for recon... mission failure. He hadn't reported back. And then Chang and I had gone in two months later and Heero had shown up and Giraffe-Neck said he was one of his cyborgs but he's not, he's obviously not because...” And I just gestured down at Heero's prone form and felt tears – oh shit, they'd been there this whole time, just begging to fall – and they did, right then and there. I didn't let them stop me from standing, from taking my gun and just saying to hell with it. My mission hadn't changed. Kill – and here my mind tripped – kill Heero, then kill Landsing, then kill myself. I altered that just a tiny bit – kill Landsing's boss, then kill myself. Fine. Plans needed to be loose enough for improvisation, anyway.

“Please, Quatre, take care of him,” I begged. I knew I had no right to even try. “I need to end this.” For both of us.

Quatre's clear blue eyes shifted for an instant, and I knew he was reading me. “I understand, Duo. Go ahead; we'll take care of things here. Trowa?”

Trowa carefully didn't look at me. “Fine.”

I didn't care whether he hated me or not anymore. It was fine – I absolutely, one thousand percent hated myself more than anyone else ever could. “I'm going.”

“Take care,” Quatre murmured. But he knew I didn't care enough to bother, and he knew he couldn't change that. Not as things were.

I ignored the shouts and messages and curses from the link for only another minute before they just drove me crazy – and I kept hearing 'Agent Yuy' over and over again and it just hurt too much. I took the thing off and broke it. That was the second one I'd broken – Une would no doubt be pissed.

I slid off the roof and simply went for the window right beneath me. The room was empty, but I had expected that. There was probably a hidden room up above, though, one most likely accessed from only one specific room, and most likely hidden. I didn't have the patience to look in each room.

Instead I just shot up into the ceiling in a circle and punched the plaster in. If I'd been in control of my senses, I might have cursed for the pain, because I'm certain something that made my knuckles bleed had to hurt. But I wasn't and I didn't and I just grabbed the ceiling with one hand, carefully aiming my gun with my other hand.

“Zero-one! What the hell took you so long?!” a man shouted.

Zero-one? Like the number? I felt a short, startling burst of fury and levered myself over in a short second, my gun turning to point unerringly in the direction of the voice. I was unsurprised to see a fairly fat man squatting up there in that dusty little room with a ceiling no higher than four feet and staring at me with wide, stubby little eyes and flapping jaws and fat lips, like some sort of old mafia boss or something.

“Wh-Who are you? What are you doing here?!”

Why? Why had Heero been working for this guy? What was it about this man that made Heero want to pretend...

Pretend. I almost choked on it as it came flittering into my mind – of course. Heero had been undercover because of this man – because we hadn't known about him.

God.

“Zero-one!” the man shrieked, panicked.

“Dead,” I told him, and took at least some small delight from his look of horrified realization. I saw a gun beside him, lying prone where he'd placed it when he'd stupidly thought I was Heero coming to save him. I wondered if Heero would have just come in here and done exactly what I was going to do.

I nodded to the gun. “Pick that up.”

The man jerked in surprise. “Huh?”

This time I jerked my gun over to point to it before steadying it once again on him. I carefully pulled my knee up to hold me as well as my arm and scowled. “Pick it up.”

The man managed by sheer force of will to pick it up, and I could've almost given him a couple of brownie points for it but for my utter hatred of him. Almost instinctively he turned it on me and stared in confusion. “N-Now what?”

I shrugged. “Now I kill you.” And before he could react, I emptied half a clip into the man's skull. He wouldn't be recognizable to his own mother now.

Then with a small sigh, I rose my gun up just a little bit more until it was resting gently against my temple.

<*>

A/N: NO! Could this be the END?! Pfft. Hey, can anyone list those three references? The first two could be filled in with a variety of things, but not the last. ^^; Yeah, I did make those references... I'm a nerd...

Note: I hate deathfics. But apparently I enjoy torturing you guys. *evil smirk* Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed so far. Obviously this saga is about to end, or at least calm down or something... huzzah... I've been fearing the growth of the cyborg idea and actually begun to fear that Duo is right and this story is becoming a big sci-fi wannabe. >_> <_< Yeah... and sorry it's a bit short. Perhaps done for a reason? *another evil smirk*