Kracken
Mortal
Warning:Male/male sex, graphic, language, angst, lemon, violence.
Disclaimer:I don't own them and I don't make any money off of them.
Up To Snuff
1x2
The boy swung his legs idly, hands gripping the stool as he looked around him, eyes never still under the brim of his black hat. He was too young to know how to hide the 'dead' in his expression, the dangerous edge of a boy that had seen too much, too young. It gave off heat, that expression, an animal cornered and ready to bite. It was hard for the old man to look at this cast off bit of humanity, and recall that he had foiled his best security system.
"A proposition?" The boy repeated, his eyes finally settling on the old man and taking in his very odd appearance. "People use that word when they go into an ally and screw. I don't do that."
The old man chuckled. "People also use it when they want to do business, when they want to offer you something that you might want."
"Like I said..." The boy sneered. "Why don't you just say it plain, so I get it?"
The old man activated a vid screen. A nearly finished black gundam stood in it's bay covered in scaffolding. "How would you like to pilot her? That plain enough for you? Pass my tests, and go through my training course, and she's yours."
The boy snorted, disbelieving, but his purple eyes were suddenly alight with something other than the shadow of pain and bad memory as he looked at the gundam. "That doesn't look like a girl. That's a guy."
"It's a very deadly machine that no one's been able to pilot... yet," the old man told him. "If you succeed, you'll be the first."
The boy was looking at him again, too shrewd for his age. "What's your angle? That's a machine for killing people. Who do you want dead?"
The old man smiled tightly. "Our mutual enemy, of course, the forces that have been murdering us under the direction of tyrants."
The boy rubbed a hand down his long braid, as if it were a talisman. "I get to kill those bastards? As many as I want?" The fire in his eyes sent a chill down the old man's spine.
"You'll kill who you're ordered to kill," the old man corrected firmly, "but, I assure you, it will be enough to satisfy you."
Duo held out his hand, small and older looking than a boy's should be, a hand used to hard work and too many shortcomings. "Duo Maxwell," he said, as if they had just met on the street.
The old man smiled and took his hand, giving it a small, formal, shake. "You may call me Dr. G."
"I'm your man," Duo announced eagerly as he leaned to look at Deathscythe on the vid screen once more.
Man, not boy, but Dr. G doubted that he had ever been allowed to be a boy.
Dr. G sighed as he stood near the boy's hiding place. It seemed impossible that anyone could squeeze between and under the heavy machinery, but the boy had managed it. He doubted that the child was comfortable though. Coolant sprayed and pumped frantically to keep the old regen units from overheating. Still, they could make life quickly miserable in such an enclosed space.
"Report," Dr G ordered as he straightened and stuck old hands into his coat pockets.
The doctor was embarrassed, yet irritated at the same time. A tall, hatchet faced man, he looked more like a drill instructor than a skilled ship's medic. "I was giving him his medical exam, as per your orders. He accused me of molesting him, punched me in the jaw, and ran."
"Did you explain your procedures before you performed them?" Dr. G demanded in exasperation. "You were informed that he has little to no education. I doubt that he has even been in a charity clinic."
"That's a lie," an angry, young voice said over the loud drone of machinery. "Father Maxwell had all us orphans checked out and I did too go to school, so... shows how much you stinkin' know!"
Dr. G leaned down again and asked calmly. "Then why the panic, boy?"
"He tried to stick his finger where it don't belong!" Duo snarled back.
The doctor protested at once, in a fury, "It was a routine exam procedure! Don't you goddam dare accuse me of molesting you, L2-"
"That's enough!" Dr. G snapped, glaring at the doctor. When the doctor collected himself and throttled his temper, he asked, "How far did you get in the exam?"
The doctor raked fingers over his crew cut, as if it needed straightening, and replied, in a more professional tone, "He's half starved. I think he's been on his own since the massacre and not doing too well. His genetic markers tell me he was born in space, a test tube baby. He's been altered, definitely a Newtype, though I can't understand why someone abandoned him after going through the trouble and the expense to make him. His reflexes and bone structure are enhanced. Mentally, I give him a yellow light. He's twitchy." The doctor rubbed his aching jaw. "He reacted very negatively to pics of soldiers and seemed excited by explosions, fires, guns, and machinery. He also tested as a homosexual."
Dr. G blinked at that last. "Why would you test for that?"
The doctor looked exasperated, as if the answer were obvious. "To gage his level of mental stress and earlier trauma. You, sir, have on your hands an orphan who was abandoned on the streets of L2, lived through a plague that killed almost all of his street friends before his eyes, was taken in by a church orphanage, who then met an ugly fate at the hands of soldiers, and who is now a traumatized boy, being asked to climb into a death dealing machine and kill as many soldiers as he can."
"Who was also just molested by a sick fuck!" Duo shouted from his hiding place. As the doctor swore and turned red with anger, Duo suddenly asked, "What's a... whatever he said?"
"Homosexual?" Dr. G clarified uncomfortably.
"Yeah," Duo replied.
"You're too young for it to matter, boy," Dr. G retorted. "Please, get out of there, now, before the regen units fry you. They have a habit of arcing. I promise that the medic won't continue with his exam. I think we know enough about your physical and mental state."
The doctor said, in a lowered voice, "I'll have Jim and the crew take him down satellite."
"You will not," Dr. G told him with a glare.
The doctor was astonished. "But, I'm certifying that he's a basket case, a bomb ready to blow, a psycho just waiting to get the right weapon to slaughter wholesale."
Dr. G grunted. "He just lacks direction and a firm hand. I'll give him that."
"I wonder..." the doctor mused as he watched Duo slowly squeeze
out of his hiding place.
"You do?" Dr. G prompted with a grim smile for the boy.
"When he'll kill you," the doctor finished with a shake of his head.
"Not today, right, boy? Today you'll refrain from taking vengeance on me and the good doctor." Dr. G chuckled, but Duo glared and avoided his helping hand.
"Keep your hands to yourself," Duo warned sullenly, "That's all I want."
"Is it?" Dr G wondered. "Then you disappoint me."
Duo cocked his head at him. "You use a lot of big words, that make you feel smart?"
"Show me that you're more intelligent," Dr. G replied. "That's what I require of you."
"Done that already," Duo snorted. "If that defense system was the best you had..."
"Little, arrogant...," the doctor began but then started when Dr. G suddenly acted as if he were going to backhand Duo.
Duo flinched to avoid it, but he didn't cower. His eyes turned to fire and his fists balled up. "Come on!" he taunted. "Just try it!"
Dr. G laughed outright. "You're perfect!" he said. "Brave, intelligent, and physically capable. Come with me." He began walking, both the doctor and Duo watching him in confusion. "I want you to meet your Gundam. You should know, intimately, what prize you're striving to attain."
Duo rolled eyes at the doctor. "He's crazy."
"So are you," the doctor replied irritably.
Duo surprised him with a grin of defiance and then he watched as Duo ran after Dr. G eagerly. Completely crazy, he thought.
Dr. G watched the boy pace the room. A bundle of nervous energy, eyes looking at every centimeter, it was obvious that he didn't like the inactivity. He would have to learn to endure it, though, learn not to break in long periods in space, trapped in the small confines of a cockpit. For now, though, he was being tested on his ability to think quickly.
A panel opened up and the air began to leave the room at a nod to a technician. Dr. G opened a mic and said calmly, "You have twenty five seconds to crack that panel, before I space you."
He cut the mic and watched as the boy jumped for the panel. His eyes, the way they flicked rapidly, was a sign of heightened brain activity. His fingers flew and then he ripped the panel out, found the lock chip, tossed it, and then made the jump in circuits by stripping a wire with his teeth and jamming it into a board. His fingers hit several keys just as the hatch alarm began to sound. It cut off abruptly.
A new alarm sounded, just behind Dr. G. He whirled as several technicians shouted in fear and surprise."Little bastard!" Dr. G growled as he bent to override his own system to keep his air lock closed. He made it, just.
Slumping into a chair, he hit the mic, and then realized that he and Duo were both panting and glaring in the same angry adrenaline rush. It bled his anger away. "Very good," he chuckled. "Monster."
"Sick fuck!" Duo snarled, but then barked a laugh in return. "Told you I was better than you."
"But I'm still alive," Dr, G pointed out. "Perhaps we're only well matched?"
"Keep telling yourself that," Duo huffed. "Now, let me outta here!"
"I shall... in a few days," Dr. G promised. "A little lesson not to bite the hand that feeds you." And it would start his training, he thought grimly. The boy was up to the challenge, at least mentally.
TBC
On to Chapter Two