Smells Like Teen Spirit
by Link Worshiper

(x) X (x)

Game 54
Voodoo Child

(x) X (x)

The room was plain and drab, with no furniture except for an old sofa that had springs popping out of it and a large wardrobe with a padlock hanging around the handles of its two, large doors; in the dirty, cracked mirrors fixed into the wardrobe's doors, Quatre could just make out his thinning, sickly face, a countenance he barely recognized anymore. A few old prints depicting various wild animals hung in battered frames from wire bits nailed into the crumbly, plaster wall, and the grimy, locked windows were hidden behind cheap, plastic blinds. There was a locked door that led to the hallway, and another that led to a little closet of a bathroom, with just a toilet and a sink.

Quatre, for his part, had tried to do as best he could, given the uncharitable circumstances. Ever the optimist, he held out that some twist of fate or spin of luck would turn in his favour with time. Meanwhile, he'd been keeping his newly found psychic powers sharp, constantly listening for anything that might save him. Not for the first time, he found himself wishing for Duo's teleporting ability, or Heero's telekinesis. But so far, all he had been able to pick up on was J's rambling, somewhat disturbing, mental commentary and idle thoughts that floated up from the street, where ignorant pedestrians strode by without any idea that there was a captive inside the house.

With a sigh, Quatre poked at the half-stale bread that sat on the old dish beside him. J came up twice a day with a sparse meal for his prisoner, and usually lingered in the room a few minutes to drill Quatre with questions he didn't know the answers to. Quatre had a nasty feeling that his inability to respond to J's questions in the way he wanted would end up in something quite unpleasant, though what that could possibly be was only as awful as the things Quatre's imagination could concoct. He wondered if anyone even knew what had happened to him.

A dark feeling suddenly clouded his Sense, and much to his trepidation, he realized that J was making his way up to the room again. Quatre could hear his various, synthetic limbs groaning metallically as the old scientist climbed the creaking staircase outside the locked door of the room. There was little Quatre could do to make himself feel safer from the crazy doctor, so he just huddled up on the floor and held his breath, hoping he didn't look nearly as unsettled as he felt.

There was a low, clicking noise as the various locks in the door were turned, and then the door swung open on its loud hinges, revealing J's bent and disgruntled form. He hobbled into the room, leaning on his cane; in his other hand, he held an old carton of Chinese food for Quatre.

“You gonna stop being stubborn, boy?” J asked, slowly making his way over to the couch, where he set down the carton. He sat down on the old sofa, laying his cane across his lap as he watched Quatre carefully from behind his dark, round glasses.
Quatre pretended not to hear. J had been asking him some rather probing questions about his friends, Heero in particular, and he refused to tell the man anything that might put them in danger. Even the seemingly innocent questions, Quatre didn't trust; he wasn't stupid enough to think that J couldn't glean something from those.

“Do you remember anything about killing Solo, boy?” J asked, switching topics. This was another favourite subject he liked to chase, and though it wasn't something Quatre was interested in really talking about, he considered it much safer than talking about Heero and the others.

J seemed to have an unnatural amount of patience concerning Quatre, but that was something that wasn't bound to last. “Look, boy,” he said, becoming much more cryptic, “if you don't start answering my questions, I can assure you things will be much worse than you could ever dare to imagine.”

From his spot on the floor, Quatre turned his head and glared over his shoulder at J. He grabbed the old crust of bread beside him and flung it at the doctor, growling in a clipped tone, “Fuck you.”

It was the first thing Quatre had said to J, and the old man certainly was not pleased by it. His lips twisted into a very dissatisfied frown as he glowered at the blond boy sitting in front of him. “You are not doing much to help yourself, boy,” J snapped, getting to his feet, his hand curled tightly around his cane. He dropped to his knees beside his captive and grabbed his bicep forcefully with his metal-infused hand, wrenching him around so they were eye-to-eye. “If you don't start doing as I say more willingly, I will go track down Heero Yuy and use him in your place. I have seen him in this town, and there's only so long he can keep away from me.”

Quatre tried to jimmy his arm free, but found that the doctor had a surprisingly steel-like grip. “He has a real family now. They won't let anything happen to him,” Quatre retorted before he even realized what he was saying.

A frightening grin replaced the sneer on J's face. “They are not really his family. The brat was mine when he ran away from me four years ago, and legally, he still is,” said J, radiating with grim triumph. “And besides, even if they should happen to find a way to impede my custody of Heero, I still have you.” That unsettling expression returned to J's gnarled face as he finished the comment. “Don't you find it a little disheartening that a family that has no blood or legal ties to Heero is more willing to protect him than your very own father?”
Bubbles of resentment began to gurgle inside Quatre's stomach as his fists balled up tightly. For some reason, despite all the hate he harbored for his father, Quatre felt the overwhelming urge to leap up and attack J for saying such things about him.

Without warning, something inside Quatre's brain changed, like a switch had been thrown to suddenly cause the normally calm boy to let out a malignant yell and throw a lightning-fast punch at J. Quatre's bony knuckles slammed into J's doughy nose with a very satisfying crunch, causing J to release him and grab his now-broken nose in agony. Quatre, still shaking with rage, started to get to his knees, already swinging his other arm around to try and hit J again. But then, just as unexpectedly as the episode had begun, Quatre's energy was suddenly drained from his body, and he ended up falling in a crumpled pile on the floor.

Though J's initial reaction was to be beyond vengeful towards the boy for injuring him so, he soon forgot such sentiments when he realized that he had just witnessed a minor Zero attack. He moved back over towards the unconscious boy and picked him up, carrying his limp body towards the sofa and laying him down on it.

Retrieving his cane, he stood beside the couch and looked down at Quatre, thinking how fortunate he was indeed. Having this boy would further his research in ways he never could have hoped to with Heero; his reserved grandson had always been able to control himself much better than this volatile boy, and that ability had made it nearly impossible for J to tap into Heero's mutated mind as easily as he would have liked. But this Winner boy seemed to react to outside stimuli much easier than Heero ever did, and J knew that he would be witness to phenomena he had only heard about in theory. Perhaps he would achieve his goal yet.

“It doesn't matter anyway,” he muttered grimly. “If no one listens to me, I have enough of the old plague, just as potent as ever, to change more than a few minds!” And with those thoughts in mind and a dark smile curling beneath his mustache, he left the room, locking the door tightly behind him.

(x) X (x)

When Quatre finally stirred, hours later, he sat up to find the room much darker. The flickering of the street lamp outside had replaced the tired sunlight that had been filtering through the slatted blinds before. However, the dim, innocuous lighting served to be much kinder on Quatre's slowly adjusting eyes and the pounding headache between his ears. The carton of Chinese food had toppled over and had left a disgusting, sticky stain of brown all down Quatre's pant leg.

“What the hell happened?” Quatre wondered to himself as he looked around, still feeling quite dazed. He pressed the heel of one hand against his forehead and tried to remember, but all he could come up with were flashes of J's angered face.

He could feel J's presence moving about downstairs, but that was nothing new. Groggily, Quatre toppled off of the couch and landed on the floor with a thump, where he proceeded to remove his soiled pants, using them to wipe off the residue of old soy sauce that had soaked through to his leg. In the almost oppressive warmth of the room, Quatre found it actually rather nice to sit in just his boxers and shirt.

Having nothing else to do, he occupied his mind by trying desperately to remember what had knocked him out, eventually deciding that he had probably just collapsed from exhaustion. Then, staring at the blank, chipped wall in front of him, he started to really wonder if he would go mad sitting there with no one to talk to. He had no way of reaching Trowa or any of his other friends, and there was little doubt his father was going to go out of his way to help. In fact, he was pretty sure that the old Winner millionaire was too busy with his corporations to even give a second thought to his wayward son.

Suddenly, as if to respond to Quatre's fears of being forgotten, the alien sound of the doorbell buzzing echoed throughout the townhouse. The rather friendly tone startled Quatre, and the normalcy of such a thing almost seemed like a far-away memory. As the caller proceeded to ring the bell yet again, Quatre crawled over towards the window, parting two of the slats wide with a pair of fingers to see outside. From his vantage point, he was unable to see who was on the doorstep, but he did notice an unfamiliar, pink bicycle chained to the street lamp.

Quatre's Sense could feel J's angry presence moving towards the door. The clack-clack of the front door's locks being turned filled the house, and the moment it was opened, Quatre was shocked to feel Relena Peacecraft's presence. Without a second thought, the blonde flung himself to the floor, pressing his ear against it in hopes of hearing any conversation that might occur. Never in his life had Quatre been more thankful to feel the cotton-candy fluff and sweetness of Relena's life aura.

“Oh, it's you. Come in,” J's gruff, muffled voice rose up from the floor below. Quatre felt Relena's presence move into the house, something he wasn't quite sure if he was grateful for or not, as he feared for her safety. He wondered what she was doing there in the first place.

“A friend of Solo's came to talk to me. He said you could help bring that damned mutant to justice,” he heard Relena say. Quatre's eyebrows knitted angrily over his crinkled nose as he scowled, whacking the hard floor with his hand until it stung. She was single-minded to a fault.

“Ah, yes,” said J, his abrupt tone evaporating. Quatre could practically hear the sinister expression on J's face. “What a terrible thing, my dear, to have to go through such an experience! I only want to help you.”

Upstairs, Quatre hissed, “Like hell, he does!”

“It would seem that way,” said Relena, sounding naively relieved to hear this from J. “But I'm still unclear as to why all this matters to you, Doctor. I mean, why bother with the quarrels of children?”

The tone J was using with Relena was so transparent, it made Quatre feel slightly ill that she was actually taking his words for truth. “I'm an old man, dear; young Solo was like a son to me,” J said in a way that was meant to be comforting.

Relena let out a barely-contained whoop of excitement. “So you mean that if there should be any legal action, you would act on behalf of Solo?” she asked hopefully. It made her heart pitter-patter with relief that there was someone other than herself who cared for the well-being of those less fortunate. “There are so many people who can't get around the fact that he was a mutant - they seem to think that he should get some kind of special treatment or something!”

J's clunking movements resonated on the hardwood floors as he moved. “They should be treated differently, because they are different,” he said flatly. “I don't think that the general public really understands what sort of caution they really should heed in the presence of some of these mutants. But I feel that this is the perfect time to educate them, do you not, my dear?”

“Whatever you think it takes, Sir!” said Relena obediently. She brought to mind an eager puppy with its tongue lolling stupidly about as it flounced in circles, hoping to please its master.

“I'm glad to see you so willing,” replied J, sound as if he was about to pat her on the head. “I sent a proposal to the governor of California the other day, demanding that in light of the situation, they seriously consider reevaluating the rights and freedoms of these mutants. Considering how little we really know about them, they've been allowed to roam too much.”

As Relena let out another excited whoop of agreement, Quatre was just short of yelling in anger. He wanted to get up and stomp on the floor, to shout out the window and protest the bigotry J was trying to poison Relena with.

Then he was struck with the sudden inclination to cry, frustrated with everything from Relena to his situation to his inability to truly understand and control his mutation. He failed to see what he had done in life to deserve such an unfair fate.

Worse still, he ventured onward to think, as he dragged himself towards the sofa, was that he had been forgotten by his friends. Knowing them, he had expected at least some kind of stir of protest, but none had come. He was growing increasingly frightened that they didn't know what had become of him and that they had just given up such a hopeless cause.

In his growing despair, Quatre was increasingly beginning to believe that he would be swallowed up in his own loneliness.

(x) X (x)

That night, the moon was shining brightly, its silvery-blue light infiltrating the darkness of Quatre's one-roomed prison. Sitting up in the middle of the floor and looking groggily around, the blonde realized he must have nodded off for a few hours without realizing it. Thinking about what he might have been doing when he fell asleep, he suddenly remembered Relena, and worried if something had happened to her in the time he had passed out. He had heard the way J dealt with the White Fang boys who hung around his house, and there was no telling what he would do to a girl like Relena; the prospect of what might happen to her frightened Quatre even more than his own fate.

“He is one sick bastard,” Quatre muttered to himself, kneeling on all fours and glaring at the dull floorboards, hoping his eyes would burn holes through the dirty wood. “I wish I knew what he was planning - oh, if only I hadn't fallen asleep!” He slapped the floor in annoyance, wincing as the sting spread across his palm.

With a stretch and a groan, Quatre sat back on his haunches, staring at the unreal shadows splattered across the walls. They swayed in the darkness, complimented by the stripes of moonlight that slipped in between the blinds. In the blackness, something stirred: a shadow that didn't mingle with the others properly. Startled, Quatre watched as the renegade shadow slunk along the wall, blotting out patches of moonlight as it moved.

“W-Who's there?” whispered Quatre, his voice so strangled, he almost didn't recognize it as his own. He blinked at the darkness, straining to try and catch sight of the mysterious movement. “Maybe I imagined it,” he whispered to himself.

Suddenly, a hand materialized from the darkness behind him and clapped itself over Quatre's mouth. “Shh,” a familiar voice hissed into his ear. “Don't move or make a sound - don't even breathe.”

With the hand still clasped firmly over his mouth, a series of muffled groans was all Quatre could respond with. Eyes wide, he nodded his head quickly, trying to communicate that he was willing to go along with whatever he was told.

“You promise to shut up?” The hand pressed tighter against Quatre's round face as the blonde nodded even more vigorously. “Okay, good….”

The fingers wrapped around Quatre's mouth began to filter away, wafting into a bodiless shape that he knew well.

“Duo!? What are you doing here?!” Quatre hissed as the shadow began to reform into that unmistakable slim, lanky body.

“I thought I told you to not say a word!” Duo whispered harshly, drawing his index finger up to his lips. Illuminated by the moonlight, Duo crouched, dressed all in black, his hair coiled up in a black muffin cap, wisps peeking out from beneath it. He looked the very picture of a spy infiltrating an enemy base.

Quatre rolled his eyes and inched over towards Duo as quietly as he could. “How did you get in without J noticing?” he said as softly as he could.

A sly grin spread across Duo's face. “Remember why Une landed me on the lax team in the first place?” When Quatre nodded, the Cheshire-like smile on Duo's face only became more mischievous. “Yeah, well, keep that in mind, okay?”

“But that still doesn't explain why you're here,” Quatre said again, his voice hoarse. A nervous flutter quivered in his stomach, worried that the slightest noise would alert J to Duo's presence.

Duo grinned again, as if he expected Quatre to just know. “I'll let you take a wild guess,” he whispered, cupping a conspiratorial hand around his mouth.

Quatre, still a bit dumfounded that Duo was even there, just stared back blankly. He had a few guesses as to what had brought Duo there, but all of them seemed to unreal to be true. Then again, considering the things he had been through over the past couple of days, perhaps not so much.

With a sigh, at last, Duo relented. “The guys and I are holed up in the joint next door,” he explained briefly. “We're gonna get you out of this mess if it kills us all.”

A protest tried to escape Quatre's lips. “That's crazy, Duo!” he said a bit too loudly.
Duo just shrugged. “Would you really expect anything else from me or Heero or any of the others?” Still seeing the unsure expression on Quatre's face, Duo went on, “Don't worry; we have it all under control… more or less.”

Quatre just blinked at his friend incredulously, still not quite believing what was happening. Knowing Duo, there was a good chance he was making this all up as he went along, and that worried him. Sure, it was easy for the teleporter to sneak in, but how would the two of them get out?

“A little faith, please,” huffed Duo, blowing his long, wispy bangs out of his face. Pointing to one of the buttons on his black shirt, Duo explained, “The guys are on the other end to give us a hand if we need it, so don't worry.”

“It's a… camera?” Quatre wondered, leaning in to get a closer look at the button. Sure enough, it was unlike the other ones, with a large, silver circle-the lens, no doubt-in the middle, and a thin, black wire that snaked down to a small, electronic pack that was hooked to Duo's belt. “Where did you get something so sleek?” he asked, clearly impressed.

“Tro dug it up at the police station,” Duo replied with a shrug, tapping the tiny camera with his index finger. “They got a whole bunch of real neat toys over there.”

“Seems so,” answered Quatre. He put his face right up to the button and waved with a large smile. “Hi, guys!” he said cheerfully, very comforted by the fact that his friends were so close.

“They can't hear you; it's only a video feed,” Duo informed him, feeling a little awkward with Quatre so close. He stood up and offered a hand to his flaxen-haired friend, who grabbed it eagerly. “So, you ready to blow this popsicle stand?”

With a vigorous nod, Quatre said, “Like you would never believe.”

(x) X (x)

In the light of a few table lamps, Heero, Trowa and Wufei clustered around Heero's white laptop, their eyes all glued to the window on the screen that displayed Duo's whereabouts in the house next door. The black and white display gave a wide view of everything that was in front of Duo. All three of them had let out a unanimous sigh of relief when Quatre had appeared on the screen in fairly good condition. At the moment, it seemed that Duo was carrying on a conversation with Quatre, though without an audio feed, the best they could glean from it was what they could pick up from reading Quatre's lips. Trowa chuckled when Quatre poked the camera lens and waved at them.

“He's in surprisingly good spirits, considering all the shit that's happened to him,” Wufei commented, crossing his arms as he stared at the laptop. “I don't think I'd even know what a smile was, much less how to make one, if it was me over there.”

Trowa snorted and said with a smirk, “Like you know what a smile is anyway.”

Wufei punched him on the shoulder.

On the screen, the view turned as Duo headed for the room's hallway door, Quatre flitting in and out of the edge of the frame as he moved beside Duo. There was a pause as Duo motioned for Quatre to wait, and then the screen suddenly went blank with static fuzz.
“I hate these moments of not knowing what's going on over there,” commented Heero as he stared intently at the screen. It was fairly evident that he was quite tense, even though it didn't show all too visibly; it was just little things, like the crease of his eyebrow and the set of his jaw, the erectness of his spine.

“It'll come back when he turns solid again,” Trowa reassured his brother calmly, patting him on the shoulder. Even though Heero knew that the video feed would be lost whenever Duo teleported, it didn't stop him from worrying. There were so many things that could happen, so many dangers, Heero had to force himself to stop thinking about them lest he drive himself beyond madness.

Seconds later, the video feed returned, but now displaying the other side of the door, in the hall. Duo's hand appeared in the bottom of the frame and reached out to turn back the column of deadbolts fixed into the door. Then he went for the doorknob and twisted it, pushing the door inwards and allowing Quatre to step outside of the room for the first time since he had been brought there.

They were moving down the hall at a pretty good pace, when suddenly Quatre froze in front of Duo, causing the longhaired mechanic to almost walk into his friend. When Quatre turned around to look at Duo, his eyes were wide with fear, which caused the three observers with the laptop to become uneasy.

Duo's hand shot up from the bottom of the frame again, grabbing Quatre's wrist and wrenching him behind him as he started to hurry towards the stairs. The increased panic from Duo led Heero and the others to conclude that Quatre had probably felt something with his Sense that caused him to be on guard. They just hoped that it wasn't the person they thought it was.

With the camera shaking as Duo moved, it was like Heero and the others were seeing an old, black and white horror movie on the computer, its intensity made extremely acute by the fact that what they were watching was real, and happening to their friends. Heero was frowning as he watched, the blues of his eyes shifting and turning like gears as he tried to rationalize the situation, and Trowa seemed torn between staying where he was and speeding off to help Duo and Quatre. Wufei, meanwhile, was biting the flesh between his index finger and thumb, trying to keep himself balanced as his eyes followed the erratic movements on the screen. At the moment, Duo was dragging Quatre down the stairs, his hurry and the downward descent making it even more nauseating to watch.

When the pair reached the bottom of the stairs and turned the corner, the front door of the house looming before them like the exit of a winding labyrinth, together, the trio of watchers let out a breath each didn't realize he had been holding.

But just as Duo's hand was creeping into the camera's field of vision again to wrench open the front door, there was a sudden, jerking shake that sent Duo stumbling back a few steps. Slowly, Duo turned around, and the camera revealed a sight none of them wanted to see: one of Quatre's arms extended out towards Duo, his wrist still gripped firmly in Duo's hand, but the other was stretched out in the opposite direction, locked in the metallic claw of none other than Dr. J.

The camera was focused right on J, whose lips were moving in speech, though there was no sound that went with the camera feed. “What the fuck is this!?” yelled Wufei, grabbing Trowa's sleeve and shaking him in frustration. “It was supposed to be in and out! How did this happen!?”

“Let him go,” Heero growled, his eyes still focused intently on the computer screen.
Trowa, meanwhile, was carefully watching the happenings onscreen, his shadowed, green eyes intent on J's lips as they snarled out some bitter comment to Quatre and Duo. Then, he spoke out loud to Heero and Wufei: “He said, 'You didn't think it would be that easy, did you? Like I wouldn't know what's going on in my own house!'”

“What?” Wufei demanded, his fingers still curled around Trowa's sleeve tight enough to rip the fabric. “How do you know that?!”

Trowa turned to regard Wufei, the computer screen's dim light flickering across his cheek and temple and highlighting his long bangs. “Do you think that I'd spend so much time hanging around a police station and not pick up a trick or two?”

Wufei just knit his brow and frowned at Trowa.

“I mean, I learned to read lips and all,” he said with a frustrated and impatient sigh. “There's all this basic training they make you go through that first week or so.” He quickly forgot Wufei, though, and returned his attention to the unfortunate turn of events that had befallen Duo and Quatre. His voice was grim as he reported, “That bastard is threatening them now, saying that he's got legal custody of Quatre and plenty of dirty reasons that Duo should do what he says-claims he can report him to the police or something….”

By this point, Heero had heard enough. Sitting in that darkened room with his friends, watching two more get hounded by the very man who had almost ruined his own life, Heero decided it was beyond time that some action was taken to stop things from becoming any worse. He was already getting to his feet by the time Trowa and Wufei turned their attention to him. “I don't care, I'm going over there right now,” he informed them blankly, cracking his knuckles as he glared down at the computer like it was the most abhorrent thing he'd ever seen.

“Yeah, you and what army?” Wufei demanded to know, also getting to his feet. He took two long strides in Heero's direction, pushing Trowa out of the way as he did so. “You can't expect to go over there and be the hero, Heero. That's suicide!”

“You're in a great place to be talking about death, Chang!” Heero snapped back, jabbing Wufei roughly in the chest. “Would you just take a look at what's happening to our friends? Do you know what he could do to them?” He took a brief pause to breathe, gulping in a deep gasp of air that almost covered his murmured addendum; “Do you know what I would do if something happened to Duo?”

Predictably, it was Trowa's level-headedness that calmed the quickly boiling moment. Stepping between his brother and his teammate, he said firmly, “In any case, standing here and yelling about it isn't going to help anything. So if we're going to do something, we had better do it now, and we'd better do it fast.” When he was sure that neither Wufei nor Heero were going to argue, he turned to his brother and said, “So, Heero, what were you thinking of doing? And what should Wufei and I do to help?”

Though urgency was of the utmost importance, Heero took a few seconds to think beyond impulse. “Well,” he began slowly, “I think it's best if at least one of us goes to intervene - which is what I had wanted to do.” He looked pointedly at Trowa, and then Wufei, before continuing. “Someone should go to the police right away….”

“I'll do that,” said Trowa, cutting off Heero's train of thought. “I have connections there already, and it will cut down on a lot of time and hassle.”

“Alright, good, then,” agreed Heero with a quick nod. Turning to Wufei, he said bluntly, “And no matter what you think, we still need someone to wait here with the computer and watch, just in case something else happens.”

Wufei looked like he was going to protest, but the glare Heero was giving him combined with the solemn expression painted on Trowa's face were enough to make him bite down any comments he was planning to make. “Very well,” he said tersely, though it was clear he wasn't pleased by the arrangements. “But the second-and I mean the very second-something goes wrong, I'm coming over there as well,” he told Heero flatly.

Heero didn't say a word, and instead, just nodded once more in understanding. Then, like a silent command, he turned on his heel and headed for the front door, Trowa not far behind, as Wufei settled back down in front of the computer, tensely waiting for the outcome of this nightmare.

(x) X (x)

a.n.: Title credit to Jimi Hendrix.