(Gundam Wing) Final Score: 21 to who cares (oneshot)
Final Score: 21 to who cares
A Gundam Wing fanfiction written by Masamune Reforged
Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing or the characters.
Rating/Warning: Mature audiences. Language, violence, death
Characters: Duo centric, but all the G-boys, and Hilde too
Setting/Type: Post EW, death, action, maybe a little slashy?
Words: 1795
Final Score: 21 to who cares
“Jackson down the far side-line. He breaks a tackle, cuts it up inside, to the thirty! Twenty-five, twent-OH! And he is met with a crushing tackle at L3's sixteen yard line! Tackle made by Paul Po--”
“POPCORN!” Hilde has a set of pipes. Even with the booming voice of the announcer over the stadium speakers and the cheering from the million plus in the crowd, she makes herself known.
“Butter? Caramel?” I lean over a very irritated Wufei to yell. The diameter of the big screen projector is just over two and a half acres, and as it instantly replays Jackson getting what has to be a concussion from the L3 defender, the crowd gets whipped up into another frenzied shouting spree.
Apparently I can't match Hilde's lung capacity, because she makes a drunk face of irritation and then shouts, clear as day, “I WANT FUCKING POPCORN!” The girl is something else when you get a little bit of booze into her.
But they don't have fucking popcorn on the big-ass list of over-priced stuff at the food vendor. It takes me almost twenty minutes to get to the front of the line of boozed-up, jersey wearing fanatics, and then I can't for the life of me pick between caramel and plain old butter. I wonder why, when Q went to all the trouble of organizing these stupid inter-colony sport events, he couldn't spring for a luxury box with catering and a private bar and...
“Hey, buddy! Hurry it up, will ya!” The fat, drunk guy behind me shouts a flurry of spit into my ear, and tells me how he doesn't have all day to wait while I pick out popcorn for a gal who is probably going to spill it all the next time she jumps out of her seat.
So the fat, drunk guy says, “I ain't got all day!”
That's when the lights flicker. That's when the ground shakes, the concourse lurches. That's when the sound of thousands and thousands of high-powered explosives reach my ears through the sick, dull roar of forty-nine billion credits of sub-structure simultaneously crumbling under the pressure of intense heat. That's when the fat dude loses his footing and barrels into me, and I dance like a cat on a hot tin roof to keep from doing the same. That's when I grab the counter and stare around in wild-eyed panic as the emergency lights all twinkle to life and the game is called on account of mass terrorism.
We ain't got all day. We got ourselves about ninety seconds.
Now, I'm not sure if you've ever experienced it. God willing, if there even is such a thing, you haven't. But when something like this happens, two seemingly totally opposite things happen at the exact same time. And that's that time slows down and everything else speeds up. You're going slow-motion on a tricycle through a middle of a lunar speeder Gran Prix race and still keeping pace. You can talk about forty three seconds for the rest of your life even though you can only remember five or six out of that whole time. You see nothing clearly, and razor sharp fragments of remembrance jar you out of bed fifty years down the line as they flash through your head clearer than the back of your eyelids. You're swimming in the sky and on the post game show the X-16 running back who is the only survivor from anyone on the field that Sunday is saying, “Never known nothing like it. I have no idea what happened.” And he is not talking about that fumble in the second quarter.
So I turn and I run. I run right back the way I came, right back out to section Letter, gate Number. And I'm running and I'm running and somewhere in the back of my head there is a voice screaming in this tiny, muted staccato, “Duo Maxwell, this entire building could collapse at any moment and you are headed away from all major and emergency exits.” But what it sounds like is a tiny little mewling of a, “NOOOOOO!”. And all I can hear anyway are alarm bells and this dopey as fuck voice in my head saying one thing that drives my feet right back into the clanging hell of Armageddon. And that dopey, sure and stubborn voice is saying a name.
“Heero.”
Don't get me started. Why, when all my friends are out there, when Hilde, who is drunk as sin, and Trowa, who has been my best friend since the wars (surprised? Me too), and Quatre, who's the smallest, best person out of all of us, and Wufei, who grumbled incessantly about how stupid it was to think you could placate inter-colony hate with American football of all things, when all of them are out there, facing the exact same thing, why am I going straight back into certain death to risk my life for the one man who, if the entire fucking domed roof fell right on his noggin would probably still find a way to be okay, and what all this means, I have no fucking idea. I have no fucking idea. Do not get me started.
Then there was the security guard. I remember him. Big guy. Though, well, all security guards are big guys. Sorta goes with the territory. I always thought it was funny, no matter how many times I went to one of Q's or Relena's official functions, how it would strike me that these bowser-thick goons would never accept me as capable of doing their job, even though I could lights-out murder them all in the time it took them to make their protein shakes in the morning. They wore yellow jackets at the L4 Dome that day, like bumblebees on steroids. There were two at every gate, and liberally sprinkled throughout the stands, like someone had spilled corn in a can all over the biggest indoor arena ever created. That security guard saved my life.
I had reached section gate whatever before most people were even able to pick themselves off of the floor from the initial shock waves. The gate cut in from the stadium concourse on a ninety degree angle, a small tunnel jutting right into the bowels of the mammoth building that would be so much rubble come morning. I reached that corner and tried to jack-knife around it, unconsciously keeping the smallest distance possible between the wall and my body. I might have even hit into the wall, in my hurry. I don't know. Because then there was Yellow, and he was going around that corner too, and he was a whole lot bigger than I was. Then, in about a quarter of a second, I was tumbling backwards and still holding my hands up in front of my face as a shield, and the rest of the people were still finally getting up off the ground, and screaming. Everyone was screaming.
I don't know if it was the shock of the blow or the screams running an off-pitch harmony with the alarms, but I was suddenly back to my senses. In front of me was the gate, and so many people rushing down out of it, silhouettes against the backdrop of the massive projector throwing one huge, monotone color up into the chaos. Against the stark, crimson red were six large, white block letters that I'm sure nobody had the time to read. They were all too busy doing their best to trample me to death. Two million, forty three thousand, three hundred sixteen pairs of shoes coming right to stomp my face into a thin smattering of red film. It took a million people, one wearing yellow, to make me forget about Heero Yuy.
The moment I forgot about Heero Yuy is the last moment I can clearly remember about that day. Well, that's not true, the second to last. But I don't remember most of the rest. Of course, it's all there, somewhere, locked somewhere deep down and far away. It'll always be there. I see it, sometimes, or at least think that I see it.
A mass of humanity running all together, running over one another, pulling each other down from behind in blind, murderous panic to save their own lives. A man with glasses, bleeding from the forehead, holding open the emergency exit door for everyone to pass through, bravely crying and knowing that door will never be open for him. A young woman looking up in terror, wide brown eyes, not particularly attractive, but young, and maybe, and trying to bring up her hands before my right leg smashes down onto her. The hand reaching up from the floor that is now made of people, reaching with flailing desperation, reaching blindly, although all hope was lost, reaching to pull someone down to join it. I remember all these, things, and yet I don't. I have no fucking idea. I have no idea what happened.
I remember, on the way to the stadium, I pulled up a sports article and read it to Wufei. He was in such a sour mood. I still can't understand how we got him to come with us to the L4 Dome Disaster.
I read, “It says here that there was once this guy who, before the big game, said to the press, 'I'd run over my own mother to make it.' Hell, can you imagine? Isn't that great?”
And Wufei just scowled at me and said, “No.”
I realized it had been a stupid thing to say, but the silence was so uncomfortable, and Hilde was giving me this look, like I should just drop it already. But for some reason I kept going, and I scanned the article quickly, and laughed, even though it wasn't funny at all, and I read:
“So they ask the big star player on the other team what he thinks about that, that the other guy said that, and the guy says, 'Well, yeah. I'd run over his mother too.' Hah! Isn't that great?”
And Wufei rolled his eyes just as we pulled up to the stadium.
I remember outside, as the building crumbled on top of itself and buried hundreds of thousands alive, I found the others. I remember just one thing. I don't remember Hilde. I don't remember Wufei. I don't remember Heero, but I don't even think he was there with us. I just remember Quatre, down on one knee, his handsome shirt torn, his entire body shaking, holding onto a small, nameless child, holding her so hard I thought the little girl would break in his arms, crying into her hair.
-end 'Final Score, 21 to who cares'
Note: So I rolled virtual dice, but accidentally rolled two of them. Not sure if this was what it was, or if I'm just so lazy these days that I can only write in a casual, first-person style that, to me, only seems to fit Duo, but I took that as a sign that I should write it from Duo's POV. Then I went back and was thinking how many dice to roll, and, in my head, I already had this idea for the story, about a football (and I don't mean soccer) game, and just complete, random chance as to who would survive. And in my head it was Trowa that would die, because I had this line all thought up about how his legs are so long that his long strides would make it so other people might easily step on his foot from behind, and then he'd get trampled.
I watched the Buffalo Bills (LETS GO BUFFALO!) game today, and I think this has to be the reason this scenario came to mind. The final score was 16 for Buffalo, so I rolled 16 dice. I figured the number that showed up the most would be the one to die. 1 three times, 2 twice, 4 twice, 5 and 6 once, and seven times Trowa's number. The random number generator must have been channeling my feelings.
The title, I admit, is pretty lame. 21 because seven x 3, and the rest because I couldn't remember how much the other team (KC) scored in the Bills game.
I couldn't help but throw some potential 1x2x1 in here.
The names from the games are, in my head, based on two Buffalo Bills players, RB Fred “Action” Jackson, and MLB Paul Posluszny.
The quote “I'd run over my own mother to win the Super Bowl” is by Russ Grimm, and the responding quote “I'd run over Russ Grimm's mother to win the Super Bowl, too”, is supposedly by Matt Millen.
A Gundam Wing fanfiction written by Masamune Reforged
Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing or the characters.
Rating/Warning: Mature audiences. Language, violence, death
Characters: Duo centric, but all the G-boys, and Hilde too
Setting/Type: Post EW, death, action, maybe a little slashy?
Words: 1795
Final Score: 21 to who cares
“Jackson down the far side-line. He breaks a tackle, cuts it up inside, to the thirty! Twenty-five, twent-OH! And he is met with a crushing tackle at L3's sixteen yard line! Tackle made by Paul Po--”
“POPCORN!” Hilde has a set of pipes. Even with the booming voice of the announcer over the stadium speakers and the cheering from the million plus in the crowd, she makes herself known.
“Butter? Caramel?” I lean over a very irritated Wufei to yell. The diameter of the big screen projector is just over two and a half acres, and as it instantly replays Jackson getting what has to be a concussion from the L3 defender, the crowd gets whipped up into another frenzied shouting spree.
Apparently I can't match Hilde's lung capacity, because she makes a drunk face of irritation and then shouts, clear as day, “I WANT FUCKING POPCORN!” The girl is something else when you get a little bit of booze into her.
But they don't have fucking popcorn on the big-ass list of over-priced stuff at the food vendor. It takes me almost twenty minutes to get to the front of the line of boozed-up, jersey wearing fanatics, and then I can't for the life of me pick between caramel and plain old butter. I wonder why, when Q went to all the trouble of organizing these stupid inter-colony sport events, he couldn't spring for a luxury box with catering and a private bar and...
“Hey, buddy! Hurry it up, will ya!” The fat, drunk guy behind me shouts a flurry of spit into my ear, and tells me how he doesn't have all day to wait while I pick out popcorn for a gal who is probably going to spill it all the next time she jumps out of her seat.
So the fat, drunk guy says, “I ain't got all day!”
That's when the lights flicker. That's when the ground shakes, the concourse lurches. That's when the sound of thousands and thousands of high-powered explosives reach my ears through the sick, dull roar of forty-nine billion credits of sub-structure simultaneously crumbling under the pressure of intense heat. That's when the fat dude loses his footing and barrels into me, and I dance like a cat on a hot tin roof to keep from doing the same. That's when I grab the counter and stare around in wild-eyed panic as the emergency lights all twinkle to life and the game is called on account of mass terrorism.
We ain't got all day. We got ourselves about ninety seconds.
Now, I'm not sure if you've ever experienced it. God willing, if there even is such a thing, you haven't. But when something like this happens, two seemingly totally opposite things happen at the exact same time. And that's that time slows down and everything else speeds up. You're going slow-motion on a tricycle through a middle of a lunar speeder Gran Prix race and still keeping pace. You can talk about forty three seconds for the rest of your life even though you can only remember five or six out of that whole time. You see nothing clearly, and razor sharp fragments of remembrance jar you out of bed fifty years down the line as they flash through your head clearer than the back of your eyelids. You're swimming in the sky and on the post game show the X-16 running back who is the only survivor from anyone on the field that Sunday is saying, “Never known nothing like it. I have no idea what happened.” And he is not talking about that fumble in the second quarter.
So I turn and I run. I run right back the way I came, right back out to section Letter, gate Number. And I'm running and I'm running and somewhere in the back of my head there is a voice screaming in this tiny, muted staccato, “Duo Maxwell, this entire building could collapse at any moment and you are headed away from all major and emergency exits.” But what it sounds like is a tiny little mewling of a, “NOOOOOO!”. And all I can hear anyway are alarm bells and this dopey as fuck voice in my head saying one thing that drives my feet right back into the clanging hell of Armageddon. And that dopey, sure and stubborn voice is saying a name.
“Heero.”
Don't get me started. Why, when all my friends are out there, when Hilde, who is drunk as sin, and Trowa, who has been my best friend since the wars (surprised? Me too), and Quatre, who's the smallest, best person out of all of us, and Wufei, who grumbled incessantly about how stupid it was to think you could placate inter-colony hate with American football of all things, when all of them are out there, facing the exact same thing, why am I going straight back into certain death to risk my life for the one man who, if the entire fucking domed roof fell right on his noggin would probably still find a way to be okay, and what all this means, I have no fucking idea. I have no fucking idea. Do not get me started.
Then there was the security guard. I remember him. Big guy. Though, well, all security guards are big guys. Sorta goes with the territory. I always thought it was funny, no matter how many times I went to one of Q's or Relena's official functions, how it would strike me that these bowser-thick goons would never accept me as capable of doing their job, even though I could lights-out murder them all in the time it took them to make their protein shakes in the morning. They wore yellow jackets at the L4 Dome that day, like bumblebees on steroids. There were two at every gate, and liberally sprinkled throughout the stands, like someone had spilled corn in a can all over the biggest indoor arena ever created. That security guard saved my life.
I had reached section gate whatever before most people were even able to pick themselves off of the floor from the initial shock waves. The gate cut in from the stadium concourse on a ninety degree angle, a small tunnel jutting right into the bowels of the mammoth building that would be so much rubble come morning. I reached that corner and tried to jack-knife around it, unconsciously keeping the smallest distance possible between the wall and my body. I might have even hit into the wall, in my hurry. I don't know. Because then there was Yellow, and he was going around that corner too, and he was a whole lot bigger than I was. Then, in about a quarter of a second, I was tumbling backwards and still holding my hands up in front of my face as a shield, and the rest of the people were still finally getting up off the ground, and screaming. Everyone was screaming.
I don't know if it was the shock of the blow or the screams running an off-pitch harmony with the alarms, but I was suddenly back to my senses. In front of me was the gate, and so many people rushing down out of it, silhouettes against the backdrop of the massive projector throwing one huge, monotone color up into the chaos. Against the stark, crimson red were six large, white block letters that I'm sure nobody had the time to read. They were all too busy doing their best to trample me to death. Two million, forty three thousand, three hundred sixteen pairs of shoes coming right to stomp my face into a thin smattering of red film. It took a million people, one wearing yellow, to make me forget about Heero Yuy.
The moment I forgot about Heero Yuy is the last moment I can clearly remember about that day. Well, that's not true, the second to last. But I don't remember most of the rest. Of course, it's all there, somewhere, locked somewhere deep down and far away. It'll always be there. I see it, sometimes, or at least think that I see it.
A mass of humanity running all together, running over one another, pulling each other down from behind in blind, murderous panic to save their own lives. A man with glasses, bleeding from the forehead, holding open the emergency exit door for everyone to pass through, bravely crying and knowing that door will never be open for him. A young woman looking up in terror, wide brown eyes, not particularly attractive, but young, and maybe, and trying to bring up her hands before my right leg smashes down onto her. The hand reaching up from the floor that is now made of people, reaching with flailing desperation, reaching blindly, although all hope was lost, reaching to pull someone down to join it. I remember all these, things, and yet I don't. I have no fucking idea. I have no idea what happened.
I remember, on the way to the stadium, I pulled up a sports article and read it to Wufei. He was in such a sour mood. I still can't understand how we got him to come with us to the L4 Dome Disaster.
I read, “It says here that there was once this guy who, before the big game, said to the press, 'I'd run over my own mother to make it.' Hell, can you imagine? Isn't that great?”
And Wufei just scowled at me and said, “No.”
I realized it had been a stupid thing to say, but the silence was so uncomfortable, and Hilde was giving me this look, like I should just drop it already. But for some reason I kept going, and I scanned the article quickly, and laughed, even though it wasn't funny at all, and I read:
“So they ask the big star player on the other team what he thinks about that, that the other guy said that, and the guy says, 'Well, yeah. I'd run over his mother too.' Hah! Isn't that great?”
And Wufei rolled his eyes just as we pulled up to the stadium.
I remember outside, as the building crumbled on top of itself and buried hundreds of thousands alive, I found the others. I remember just one thing. I don't remember Hilde. I don't remember Wufei. I don't remember Heero, but I don't even think he was there with us. I just remember Quatre, down on one knee, his handsome shirt torn, his entire body shaking, holding onto a small, nameless child, holding her so hard I thought the little girl would break in his arms, crying into her hair.
-end 'Final Score, 21 to who cares'
Note: So I rolled virtual dice, but accidentally rolled two of them. Not sure if this was what it was, or if I'm just so lazy these days that I can only write in a casual, first-person style that, to me, only seems to fit Duo, but I took that as a sign that I should write it from Duo's POV. Then I went back and was thinking how many dice to roll, and, in my head, I already had this idea for the story, about a football (and I don't mean soccer) game, and just complete, random chance as to who would survive. And in my head it was Trowa that would die, because I had this line all thought up about how his legs are so long that his long strides would make it so other people might easily step on his foot from behind, and then he'd get trampled.
I watched the Buffalo Bills (LETS GO BUFFALO!) game today, and I think this has to be the reason this scenario came to mind. The final score was 16 for Buffalo, so I rolled 16 dice. I figured the number that showed up the most would be the one to die. 1 three times, 2 twice, 4 twice, 5 and 6 once, and seven times Trowa's number. The random number generator must have been channeling my feelings.
The title, I admit, is pretty lame. 21 because seven x 3, and the rest because I couldn't remember how much the other team (KC) scored in the Bills game.
I couldn't help but throw some potential 1x2x1 in here.
The names from the games are, in my head, based on two Buffalo Bills players, RB Fred “Action” Jackson, and MLB Paul Posluszny.
The quote “I'd run over my own mother to win the Super Bowl” is by Russ Grimm, and the responding quote “I'd run over Russ Grimm's mother to win the Super Bowl, too”, is supposedly by Matt Millen.