Note: Read my previous fanfics Time (#1), Chaos (#2), Lost (#3) and Fear (#4) before reading this finale.
Three Days
by JAG
"72 hours remain," said a pleasant, female voice from everywhere at once.
Milliardo looked up from the window he was staring out of. "He's given us a countdown, Heero," he told the other person in the Peacecraft castle throne room, "He really knows how to make an escape, the coward." Shaking his head, he turned back to the window. He watched the jet until it disappeared over the horizon. His brother, Logain (no, Mandron now), still had Dorothy in his clutches. That made Milliardo mad to no end. He had made a promise to himself to save her from that monster. He must keep that promise.
Heero moved to a position beside him. "Come on, Milliardo," he said, "We have to get going. It's only a matter of time before guards come, and then we can do nothing to save Dorothy."
"You're right, Heero," Milliardo sighed, "Let's get going." He turned from the window and walked with Heero to the main doors. Before they got there, the doors banged open, and Duo jumped through, brandishing a gun. Seeing Milliardo, he dropped his arm to the side.
"You don't go for discreet, do you, Duo?" Heero said sarcastically, "You would only have gotten yourself and Dorothy killed by doing that."
"Yeah, well she wasn't in the dungeon anywhere," Duo replied, "So we came up here to see if you had found her yet. You weren't hard to find. We just followed the trail of unconscious guards."
"Speaking of unconscious, where's Wufei?" Heero asked.
"Look behind you, Mr. Perfect Soldier," Duo retorted.
Turning, Heero saw Wufei with a gun to his head. "That wasn't a funny joke, Heero," he growled.
"He's right, Heero," Quatre said, walking in with Trowa, "You shouldn't get Wufei mad."
"Like I'm scared," he said, knocking Wufei's gun away and pulling his own, "Let's just have a party up here, and they can catch us all together."
"Sorry to disappoint you, Heero, but all the guards have been evacuated," Trowa told him.
"What?!" Milliardo practically yelled, "You mean the castle is ours? It has to be a trap."
"I don't think so, Milliardo," Heero said thoughtfully, "It follows that if Mandron left the castle, he would be afraid that Romefeller would take it from him. So he would get rid of Romefeller presence to stop that from happening."
"Well, than what do we do, Heero?" Duo asked.
"I can answer that one, Shinigami," Milliardo said, "Logain has escaped in a secret jet..."
"Well then we can just track it," Quatre broke in, excited.
"I'm afraid it's not that easy, Quatre," Milliardo said, "It's bound to have stealth technology, and I'm sure it's not registered. My father probably left it for escapes as well, but he was no coward."
"Well, we can still ask surrounding countries to watch out for it," Quatre said a little less heartily.
"They'll think Romefeller is trying to trick them, Quatre," Milliardo sighed, shaking his head.
"Damn!" Quatre yelled, punching the wall, "Well, then what are we going to do?"
"I don't know, Quatre, "Milliardo replied, "I suggest we find out our options."
"68 hours."
Dorothy awoke sitting in a chair. 'Where am I?' she thought. From nearby, she could hear the sounds of engines, but everything around her was pitch black. She remembered the cage falling, but nothing else. 'Wait a second. I'm in a chair,' she realized. Starting to get up, she found she was strapped down. 'I knew Mandron wouldn't be so stupid,' she thought to herself. What's more, when she was straining upwards, she could feel a hard, metallic cap. She could also hear electricity arc through the back of the chair. She was in an electric chair.
"63 hours."
Trowa ignored the voice from overhead. Quatre was working on stopping that, but he had not yet managed to find the source of it let alone how to stop it. Trowa just continued work on what he had been assigned to do. Peering at the computer, he tried once again to track the plane. 'It was heading west, and Milliardo saw that it wasn't turning at all. At the normal cruising speed of a jet, it could be anywhere in the world by now.' Trowa hated this. Nine hours had passed and nothing had been found. There was little hope that it would be after this long. 'It's not likely he'll take down the stealth no matter how much fuel it uses,' he thought, 'This is a lost cause.'
"54 hours."
Relena stared at the people gathered around the conference table through bleary eyes. They were all looking around as if they could locate the voice in the room. This was the third meeting in 18 hours, and they could come up with nothing new. Trowa had yet to find the jet, and no one could think of a place Mandron would take it. She turned to the window to see the beautiful sunset. Usually, she would take time to enjoy the tranquility of such beauty, but today it just meant their first day of searching drawing to a close.
"I still say he went to Romefeller HQ," Duo said for the hundredth time.
"I already told you, Duo," Relena replied without looking away from the window, "He would not take Duke Dermail's granddaughter to him in a cage. He is a wanted man in Romefeller."
"But there's a reward for Dorothy, maybe he wanted to collect on it," Duo mumbled. He had said this before too. They all needed sleep, and everybody was a little grumpy.
Everybody but Heero and Milliardo. "He doesn't operate on greed, Duo," Milliardo said, "He operates on revenge, and he's not that stupid."
At that moment, Relena's desktop phone lit up. Pressing the button, she saw Trowa appear at the other end. "Do you have something to report, Trowa?" she asked hopefully.
"Maybe," he said, "I've found the jet." The room was empty before he finished his sentence. Everybody was running for the control room.
"48 hours."
Milliardo practically jumped out of Epyon before he had finished landing it. He ran up to the still burning wreckage of the jet. the night sky was filled with smoke from it's burning. He was surprised when Trowa had found the jet so close to Newport City (the Sanc Kingdom's capitol). He wondered why Mandron would fly around the countryside. Milliardo knew it wasn't for the view. "Come on, Heero," he called to the Zero's pilot climbing out of the Gundam behind him, "We have to see if they survived."
"You know as well as I that Mandron wouldn't do this on accident," Heero called back to him, "Mandron was not on that jet."
Milliardo wanted to believe him. He didn't want Dorothy dead, but Logain was another story. He wished Logain had been on that plane, but not Dorothy. A look into the cockpit was all he needed though.
"You're right, Heero," he yelled, "This cockpit uses Mobile Doll technology. He just programmed it to come out here and fly around in stealth until it ran out of gas. It was all a diversion."
"We're a day behind, Milliardo," Heero said when he returned to the Gundams, "I doubt we'll find him if he doesn't wish to be found."
"42 hours."
Mandron loved that sound. The sound that counted down to the end of all his troubles. It was like music to him. He watched on his viewscreen as the Epyon and Zero returned to the castle. He smiled to himself. 'So they found the jet,' he thought, 'That was my favorite part of the plan.' They now had little time left to find him, and they hadn't even come close yet.
He looked through the one way mirror he had set up at Dorothy in the chair. He could bet she was very uncomfortable. Flicking on the loudspeaker in the darkened room, he said, "Why, hello, Ms. Catalonia. I see you are enjoying yourself."
Her head jerked up. He could see she had been crying. "Why are you doing this to me?" she whimpered.
"Foolish girl," Mandron yelled into the microphone, "You know very well that you are bait for my true catch. If I am forced to kill you, it won't matter to me. I will have my revenge at you for shooting me and at your grandfather for what he did to me."
"My grandfather is not a monster," she screamed, struggling at her bonds, "You are a liar."
"Why would you defend him so much?" Mandron asked slyly, "You know him for what he is."
"You are a liar!" she screamed, trying to drown out what she didn't want to hear.
"I see," Mandron said, "He is your only remaining family. You do not wish to lose even him.
Dorothy wept openly.
"36 hours. You have used up half of your time."
That one surprised Duo. It had never said anything other than the time remaining. Quatre had given up on trying to get rid of it. It just seemed to be a fact that it would be there. What's more, it added a sense of urgency to his search. They had now begun to sleep in shifts. Half were awake as the other half regained their energy for four hours. He had just been rudely awakened by Wufei shoving him out of bed and giving him orders. Wufei had then climbed into the bed himself. Duo envied him, but he could do nothing about it.
The only ones who did not take breaks were Heero and Milliardo. They just didn't seem to need sleep. He had run into them twice each in the secret passageways that crisscrossed the castle. Milliardo and Relena had pooled their knowledge of the castle to try to think of every one. It was a small hope since they didn't know if they had missed any. The trapdoor in the throne room was a bust. The bottom had caved in after Mandron used it. It would take weeks to dig through, and they didn't have weeks. They had a day and a half.
They had come to the conclusion that Mandron had stayed inside the castle. He could only have left with the soldiers, but he would never do that while taking a girl in a cage. There were too many questions for that. It was only possible that he had found one of the few secret passages that neither Milliardo nor Relena knew of. Duo continued to search.
"29 hours."
Milliardo had met up with Heero in one of the smaller passageways. So far, neither had found anything new. They decided that working together would be quicker. Right now, Milliardo searched the left wall as Heero worked his way down the right. They were looking for anything suspicious. Checking for loose wall stones or statues that had buttons on them. The meticulous search had yielded nothing, but they weren't about to give up.
"24 hours. You have one day left."
Duo had waken him as roughly as he had before. Wufei didn't like it, but he knew that turnabout was fair play. Outside, the owls hooted and the full moon was out. It was a beautiful night, but he was stuck in the musty passageways of the castle.
He saw Milliardo and Heero working their way down the hall towards him. Stifling a yawn, he wondered how anyone could go without sleep for so long. He felt ready to fall over. Leaning against a wall, he decided to wait for them to reach him.
"Wufei, is this your break time?" Heero asked as they drew near.
"No, Wufei said, "I'm searching. Can't you tell?"
"You could've fooled me, Wufei," Milliardo said.
Wufei shifted uncomfortably on the wall. Suddenly, he was falling through. He saw a look of surprise cross the other pilots' faces before he was enveloped by blackness
"19 hours."
Duo woke easily this time. 'Something's wrong,' he thought, 'Wufei should've woken me up an hour ago.' Climbing out of bed, he stretched until all the joints of his body popped. His priest clothes were wrinkly and his cross necklace was stuck somewhere in his disarrayed braid. Looking back at the bed, he wished he could stay.
Instead, he walked out of the room and continued his search for secret passages. Down one hallway, he found Milliardo and Heero crouched against a wall. "Finally taking a break, guys?" he asked.
"No," they replied in unison.
"Well, than what are you doing?" he pressed them for information.
"Wufei disappeared into this wall, we're still trying to figure out how," Heero told him.
"Ok, then I'll wait here until you guys do," he said, leaning against the wall. All three of them fell through the wall as an opening appeared in it.
"18 hours."
They had found Wufei passed out on the other side of the wall. After reviving him, they had begun a search of the new hallway. It appeared that there was no way back out of the small space. It was only about five feet wide and thirty feet long, but they had found no other ways in to or out of it.
"This is useless," Heero said, voicing everyone's opinion, "I think this is a trap."
"If it was a trap, why was it hidden so well?" Milliardo replied.
"It's too suspicious," Duo interjected, "If it was a trap, we'd be dead by now."
"No, he probably wants us to starve or suffocate first," Wufei said, no one asked which "he" he meant, but they all went back to searching
"12 hours. Half a day left."
Relena was worried. She had just been awakened by Quatre for her turn to search. He had told her that neither Heero, Milliardo, Duo or Wufei could be found. They had a scant half day left, and they were still no closer to finding Mandron and Dorothy than they were two and a half days ago. It was beginning to look like they would have to turn over the Kingdom to that monster or sacrifice Dorothy. It was after noon outside. Evening was drawing closer. The final night would be upon them soon.
"8 hours."
Dorothy sat in the chair and thought. She had had little else to do in the past three days. There was still hope that she would be found, but there was little time left for it. She knew that somewhere out there in the darkness, Mandron waited to throw the switch, but her thoughts kept turning to her grandfather. 'He's not a monster. I know he isn't,' she thought to herself, 'But do I just think that because I am too blind to see the truth?' She was just too confused to think straight.
From somewhere, she heard Mandron laugh at her.
"5 hours."
Duo gave up and sat down. There was no way out of the secret passageway. The air in the room was getting warm and he felt lightheaded. His worst fear about the room being airtight was true.
"What are you doing, Duo?" Heero asked threateningly, "Are you just giving up to die?"
"Yeah," Duo replied, "It beats struggling to the very end."
"This stupid room!" Wufei yelled at the walls, "Why were you built?" He got angry and punched it. Everybody watched as the stone he hit slid inward. It settled into the wall with a click.
"What do you think that does?" Duo whispered, afraid it would cause whatever it was to happen.
"How the hell should I kno...!" Milliardo yelled at him as the floor fell away.
"3 hours."
Relena looked out the window at the setting sun. She had given up. The only time she had ever done so. Mandron was an evil genius. He obviously knew how to get a job done. Whatever had made him her loving brother was now long gone. She sat at the window and waited for her time to be up. The only decision now was Dorothy or herself.
"1 hour."
Milliardo groaned and heaved Wufei off of him. He pushed himself shakily to his feet. Groaning again, he realized that he was not the first to regain consciousness. 'Heero's one hell of a guy,' he thought as he got up and walked down the hall. He did not wish to accidentally alert Mandron by waking the others. They were both dangerous to wake from a position of weakness.
The hallway wound down through the bedrock beneath the castle. After half an hour, Milliardo finally came to a fork in the corridors. This far down, it felt as if the castle was pressing down on him. He hoped he had enough time to save Dorothy. Wishing for luck, he ran down the right fork.
"15 minutes. Make your decision soon."
The voice had a sort of mocking tone this time. Dorothy was absolutely miserable. for three days she had done nothing but sit in the darkness and struggle in the chair that would mean her death. She had slept for maybe an hour or two at a time, but it wasn't restful sleep. She had been thinking a lot about her family. How her mother and father had died and her grandmother. Her grandfather was the only one left. She couldn't think of him as a monster. No matter what he had done in his life. The electric sound behind her grew and crescendoed.
"Do you hear that, Ms. Catalonia?" Mandron's voice came from the darkness, "It is the sound of our death. Prepare to meet your parents. Be sure to ask them what your grandfather did to them"
Just before ten thousand volts of electricity hit her, she saw Milliardo sneaking through the darkness. Light blinded her and burned her.
She saw her parents board a train to go on vacation. Her grandfather sent them off with a smile. Along the way, they had run into a mock Mobile Suit battle and died. The battle had been arranged by Romefeller. By one Duke Dermail. She remembered that her father had not agreed with Dermail.
"...bullet-proof glass!" Mandron laughed at Milliardo everything moving in slow motion, "The controls are on this side!" Heero was behind Mandron.
Light flashed and burned.
Her grandmother had taken sick after her daughter's death. She blamed Dermail for it, but he called her crazy with fever. As Dorothy watched, she saw him put rat poison in her grandmother's food.
"No!" Milliardo shouted as Heero pulled his gun and shot Mandron through the back of the head. Two. Three. Four. Five times. She could see every shot as if time was near stopping. She felt her heart stopping.
Light flashed and burned.
Mandron lifted parts of his hair, showing her scars of a long-past operation. "Look what your grandfather did to me!" he shouted at her.
Darkness swept away her soul.
Dorothy felt herself return to the land of the living slowly. Her whole body ached as if she had a bad sunburn. Her throat felt raw, and she realized she had been screaming. Fluttering open her eyes, she found she was still in the electric chair, but was no longer strapped down. She looked up into Milliardo's worried eyes.
Seeing she was alive, he breathed a sigh of relief. "You had me worried, Dorothy," he said, "You were only shocked for less than a second, but you weren't breathing."
"I can never go back to him, Milliardo," she shuddered, "My grandfather is a monster."
Milliardo stood up. He seemed to realize something. "I think you've just proved to me what Relena's known all along," he said thoughtfully, "Come on, let's get out of here."
Relena took the story with a straight face, even though she was overjoyed that Dorothy was still alive. Dorothy had been sent to the medical ward to receive treatment for her first and second degree burns, and Mandron's body had been taken to the church mortuary out near the Peacecraft family graveyard. It had been decided that, even though he was no longer Logain Peacecraft, he should receive a Peacecraft burial. No one should know about this horrible incident unless they had to. The news had been released to the public that a Peacecraft had been found, but he had died of illness soon after. There was no need to tarnish the Peacecraft name.
Two hours had passed since the conclusion of the incident, but no one seemed to want to go to sleep. Even though the sun hadn't even grayed the sky yet, too much had happened overnight.
"So, Dorothy really is one of us now," Heero said, "I was convinced she was too evil."
This made Relena happy. Milliardo had told everyone that Dorothy had denounced her own grandfather and rejected Romefeller outright. Now everyone knew as she had that Dorothy had changed.
"What do you think Dermail will do?" Quatre voiced everyone's thoughts.
"Whatever it is, we can handle it," said Duo, leaning back in his chair still looking very messed up, "I do have one important question, though."
"Yes?" Relena prompted.
"How do Heero and Milliardo go so long without sleep?"
Heero and Milliardo were fast asleep at the end of the table.
The End
Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to GundamWing. Those belong to the good people at Asahi TV and the Sotsu Agency. No lawsuits please.
Thanks to Grant, Becky, Lisa, Ruza and Amanda for all their criticism (very few comments) on the story. Thanks to all the reviewers that kept me writing at my best.