Set Up

-----part 1------

Heero nodded, curtly and closed his laptop.

"Assignment?" Duo asked.

Heero gave another nod and left the room.

Duo sighed and opened the message he'd been delivered. The letter had been sent to "DM2 Enterprises" and looked like someone was paying a bill. But he knew better. Inside were the instructions for his own assignment. 

"Duo," Heero said. "You can't come with me. Neither can you other guys." he added to the other three pilots who soon joined them.

"We aren't." Quatre replied, giving surprised looks to the other pilots. "Seems we all got our own missions to go on."

"That's a bit odd, isn't it?" Duo asked.

"Not really." Heero said. "Things have been escalating a bit this past week."

"Let's just get it over with." Trowa shrugged. "I just want to get through this assignment and be home with my friends."

"Yeah! Sounds perfect." Duo agreed.

"I'll treat everyone to a pizza when we get back home." Quatre offered.

"I'm holding you to that promise." Duo grinned manically.

The five pilots headed off, each into a different direction.

Duo was the first pilot to experience a problem with his gundam. He cursed and beat at the controls, trying everything he could think of, but it was no use. The system was no longer responding to him.

Shinigami crashed into a field and Duo leaped out, his weapon drawn. He managed to kill off two thirds of the men surrounding him before he was forced down by the remaining third. Duo kicked, struggled, and screamed as they tore away his clothes. But the fight left him as soon as the first man thrust into him. 


Several miles to the East, Heero was lying semi-conscious on the ground. He'd hit the self-destruct on Wing when the Gundam had stopped responding, and by some miracle it had gone off. He was alive, but dazed and slightly concussed. At first, he wasn't sure why he couldn't get up. Then, he began to realize that he was being pinned down by another man. A man who was taking the Perfect Soldier's clothes off. Heero was outraged. He began to fight the man off, but his wounds left him too dizzy to maintain any advantage and his attacker soon got the upper hand.

"Omae o korosu." He promised, as the man thrust into him over and over.


Trowa descended into the missile silo, his skills from the circus once again proving invaluable to his mission. As soon as he was on the ground, however, someone struck him from behind and broke the flashlight he'd been carrying. In the dark, unable to see his attackers, Trowa fell victim to a brutal rape. He thought about fighting. But no... not with the odds this uncertain.

//Why is this happening again?// he sobbed inwardly. Outwardly he could only submit until they grew tired of him and either left him or killed him.



Wufei was lifted out of the wreckage of his Gundam, which had self-destructed despite his lack of pressing the button, and carried into a motel room. His wrists were tied to the headboard on the bed and his clothes were removed.

His eyes flew open as the rapist penetrated him for the first time. He tried to scream, but his mouth was covered with duct tape and all he could manage was a muffled protest. He kicked at the rapist's back, but this only served to anger the man and make him thrust harder, so Wufei finally stopped and lay still.



Quatre staggered away from his Gundam, wondering why it had crashed. He felt troubled. Something was wrong. One of his fellow pilots was in pain. He tried to see if he could pinpoint whoever it was, perhaps send a bit of comfort, some encouragement. An alarm went off in his head and he returned his attention to his own predicament...

... just as someone bent him over a low rock wall, yanked down his pants, and began thrusting into him.

"NO!" he screamed. "STOP! PLEASE?! Great Allah, why is this happening to me?!" his sobs filled the valley as the rapist went at him again and again and again.

-----part 2-----

Duo dragged his sperm and blood stained body into the safe house. He'd been subjected to dozens of attacks before his assailants had eventually worn themselves out and had fallen asleep. He'd almost given in to the temptation of just staying there, of letting his mind blank out forever and letting them have him until he died under one of them. He wasn't really sure why he hadn't.

In the haze of shock, he almost didn't hear the voice. No, he heard it, but it just wasn't registering that he was hearing it.

"Why?" it asked, through sobs of confusion and shame. "Allah, why? Why?!"

"Quatre?" Duo hurried into the living room, ignoring his own pain.

Quatre looked up, clearly distressed at Duo seeing him the way he was now, naked, hurt, defiled. He could see that Duo was also stripped of his uniform. 

"Not you, too." Duo felt sick that anyone would hurt sweet Quatre that way.

"I'LL KILL THEM!" Heero declared, ferociously, as he stormed into the door, looking as naked and as stained at Duo and Quatre. "I'll..." he felt silent as he stared at the other two pilots.

"What the hell is going on?" he demanded.

-----part 3-----

"Duo," Heero said, "get dressed and get Quatre and yourself over to the Winner mansion."

"No." Quatre shook his head. "Please... if my family found out, they'd take me away from you. Please. I can't go home. I can't let them see me this way."

"I understand how you feel," Duo agreed, "but Heero's right. That's the safest place for us. Your guards and staff will do all they can to keep you and me safe. Heero, too."

"I'm not going with you." Heero said. "I'm going to find the bastards who set us up and I'm going to make them pay."

"I'm going with you, Heero."

Heero turned and saw Wufei standing naked in the doorway, looking like he'd just spent a long trip through someplace that usually involved travel by hand basket along with Trowa who was equally unclad and looking very grim.

"Looks like they got to all of us." Trowa said, quietly.

"Who is they?" Duo asked, pulling the still-sobbing Quatre into his arms and reassuring him.

Quatre sobbed and clung to Duo. //If only I hadn't been ruined by those men.// he thought. //If only I were still worthy of you...//

It was a sentiment that was echoed in the heart, mind, and soul of Duo Maxwell.

-----part 4-----

Two doctors frowned over their observations as the reports on the five pilots' whereabouts came through to them.

"All five returned to the safe house." Dr. G observed. "I didn't expect that. Given their diverse backgrounds, I was sure they would each seek a different shelter depending on those backgrounds."


"But to return to the safe house," Dr J mused. "I mean, I was sure Heero would, it being an ingrained military response to return to the base of operations after an attack. But the others... I thought Duo would seek out a church or a shelter."

Dr. G nodded. "Duo's response was a bit unusual. So was Quatre's. I thought the same thing about Duo. And Quatre. I expected him to run to his family for support.

"Activate the safe house monitoring system." Dr. J suggested. "Let's see if we can find any insights as to Duo's and Quatre's odd behavior.



Quatre turned away as Duo walked by him. looking in the opposite direction, he failed to notice the wounded expression on Duo's face.

//I'm not even good enough to look up on a being as wonderful as Duo Maxwell.// Quatre lamented deep in his heart.


//He's ashamed of me.// Duo thought //He can't even bring himself to look at me.//

-----part 5-----

In his bedroom, Quatre examined the bottle for a moment, then unscrewed the cap and swallowed the contents without hesitation.

//If you don't want me anymore, Duo,// he thought //I have no more reason to live.// And then the world went away and darkness swallowed him.


In Duo's bedroom, the Shinigami pilot stroked his braid. "You've been a comfort to me during all the pain of my life." he told it as he wrapped it around his throat, then stood atop a stepladder and tied the other end around a wooden support beam near the ceiling. "Please... be a comfort once more to me. Let me leave this unloving world."

//Without your love, Quatre, I have no hope, no life, and no future.//

He kicked the ladder out from under him, and everything went black...


Heero glared at his computer screen. He'd managed to hack into Dr. J's system and had learned that he and Dr. G were responsible for the assaults on himself and his fellow pilots. Closing his laptop, he ran from his room and into Duo's

"Duo..." Heero began as he ran into the room. "I've found out who..." he stopped short in horror. Then, he pulled his gun from its hiding place and fired two shots at the support beam. It would've been a little faster to shoot Duo's braid. But that seemed a sacrilege . He uncoiled it from around Duo's neck and began First Aid at once.

"Heero!" Wufei ran into the room. He'd just got to ask Quatre to set the table and had found him on the floor near a bottle of pills he'd apparently tried to OD on. "Come on! We're going to the hospital!"

"How'd you know..." Heero asked, between mouth-to-mouth exhales.

"I didn't." Wufei replied. "It's Quatre I was talking about. He just took a little more than half a bottle of sleeping pills."

-----part 6-----

Quatre opened his eyes and saw Trowa looking down at him.

"You died, too?" he asked.

"No." Trowa shook his head. "You lived."

"Why did you stop me?" Quatre asked. "You know I'd rather not live than live without my Duo's love."

A sob came from the braided occupant of the next bed. Quatre turned from Trowa and saw Duo lying there.

"Duo?" Quatre asked. "What... what happened?"

"I wanted to die." Duo said. "When you turned away like that. I thought... I thought you were ashamed of me."

"I did it because I thought I wasn't good enough to look upon someone as angelic as my Duo." Quatre explained.

"Oh." Duo was both relieved that he'd been mistaken and ashamed that he'd thought Quatre would have been as superficial as that.


Dr. J put his equipment into his car and closed the trunk. As he was turning, he looked up and into the angry glare of Heero Yuy.

"You got us raped, you son of a bitch."

"Yes." Dr. J didn't even deny it. "It was an interesting experiment, I must say."

"Experiment?!" Heero exploded. "You son of a bitch! You could've at least spared Quatre and Duo! I mean Wufei's been married so he probably wasn't a virgin, and I'm tough, I can handle stuff like that, and Trowa... well you know about Trowa. But Duo's had enough hardship in his life and Quatre was a virgin."

"That was the point." Dr. J pointed out. "To see how people with a variety of background experiences would all react to the same crisis."

"I'll tell you how they fuckin' reacted, you piece of shit." Heero screamed at the doctor, "Duo and Quatre tried to kill themselves!"

"Did they succeed?"

Heero stared at the doctor in horror. "They would have if they hadn't tried so close to dinner time." he replied.

The doctor started to laugh.

That's when Heero shot him.

-----TBC-----