A.N. This is my first actual fic that I'm proud of. Tell what you think of it, or any suggestions, as I am always open to constructive criticism.

Summary: Post Endless Waltz, the pilots have all moved on, all keeping in touch except for Duo who now has a rather 'riskay' profession. A week before Christmas he is found by an unexpected someone.

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing…if I did, the show would have been a lot yummier.

Sunrise, Come Again.

By: Chix0r Neko

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After the war, all of us pilots went into different job markets. Quatre, of course stayed on L4, his life brimming with meetings full of the snobby, high-class businessmen he worked with to keep Winner Enterprises intact. The last I heard he was trying to close some big deal with the L2 committee to incorporate numerous charity groups from Winner Enterprises to the orphanages there. Call me crazy, but I had a feeling this was less about feeling guilty about war orphans than it was because of me. The poor orphan none of them had heard from in three years. I actually wondered if he was still trying to find me, or help the new street rats and war orphans. We were, after all, the cause of most of them.

Trowa was, of course, self-employed at the moment and working on L4 as Quatre's personal sex-slave and formal male escort. I guess all that teasing about them having those nightly shag-fests during the Wars finally got to them so they decided to make with the gossip and screw each other silly. And FYI, I had every right to assume they were doing it during the war. I happen to have a 6th sense for sex and it was definitely tingling when they shared a room.

Both Heero and Wufei joined the Preventers with the help of Lady Une. I'm amazed they can work with her as a superior. I mean damn, I'd be scared as hell that she'd have one of her mood swings and shove a pencil up my…Okay, never mind. I don't really want to think about that at the moment and I'm getting a little off base here…Une…such a scary lady…

Eh heh, anyway, as far as I can tell all the pilots seem to be adjusting well to life without the every demanding call of War. Wufei, the traitor, went soft on us all and got married to Sally. It was a beautiful ceremony even if I did have to watch it from the roof of a building about a hundred feet away with binoculars and popcorn.

I'm willing to put down big bucks that Sally and Wuffers' had some big argument about whether to have it be a traditional Chinese ceremony or a regular American one. However, I'm also ready to throw down a few more hundred to say he caved and let her have whatever her little heart desired to make that day special to her. Wufei's like that you know. He'd easily whipped.

I sat on the top of that building smiling like a loon. Even though I wasn't there I felt like I was some how sharing some special moment with all the pilots. The whole idea was reinforced when I saw those Prussian eyes glancing back near the entrance every 3 minutes and 45 seconds. I almost felt bad. I figured they'd know by now that Shinigami was not ready to come out of hiding. Or that he was dead, I wasn't quite sure about that yet. Truth be told, I didn't really care.

But may I ask, who can really blame me? After the war, everyone had someone to turn to. Something to come home to. A steady job and place to live where the landlord wasn't breathing down your neck every other day for the rent. And me? Hell, I was getting paid to shoot, and run. That's right ladies and gentlemen. Meet Duo Maxwell, paid assassin and thief extraordinaire, at your service.

However at the moment, I'm sure all the other pilots have me bested as well. I'm guessing due to the time that Quatre and Trowa are at home screwing like bunnies, Wufei and Sally are cuddling on the couch, and Heero and Relena are doing…god knows what. I really don't even want to think about that last one. Makes my head hurt just thinking about it… Sigh, when does Duo get some love? When do I get to stop running down this alley, trying to get away from the person I was supposed to have shot a half hour ago? Come on, I'm drunk, did you really expect me to hit him my first try?

Now any other time I would gracefully accept defeat, stop running and then stab the poor guy when he was lecturing me about death. But as I told you before, I'm drunk. And if there's one thing I do know about myself it's this. I do very stupid things when I'm drunk.

I've been doing pretty stupid things since the war ended though, even when I'm sober. Unlike everyone else, I had nowhere to turn to. I didn't even have a clue on how to get an honest job making honest money. The war was my life. It was, though disgusting, the only real home I'd had, and it contained the only real family that survived living with me. But they all left, for bigger and better things. So I left too. Only I'm still under the influence of the military.

My full job description is actually to 'protect' the people left over from the war who were the founders and keepers of the peace. Example? Relena Peacecraft, bitch extraordinaire A.K.A Pacifist.

It wasn't really all that bad of a job. I got to see the guys a lot more than they think I did. Almost every other week I got to see at least one of them. Since they were all pretty much, officially or unofficially, working with the Preventers, I'd get wind of an assignation attempt on a Pacifist and take the guy out before he had a chance to complete his task.

Usually they have some of the Preventers on the defense too, no matter how sucky it may be. Now I'm not here to bad mouth the Preventers, but the they just go about this whole protection thing the wrong way. They stake out, get all coordinated with each other, stay close to the target, and wait for the shooting to happen. I'm sorry but that's just not the way to go. You gonna nic that thing in the bud. Or as I like to say, shove shit down their throat and watch 'em die BEFORE any shooting happens.

See the Preventers make their lives so much harder by adding so many steps to this protection thing. I do it the easy Maxwell way. My whole job in four simple steps. 1.) Find out where the hits going to take place. Not hard, usually provided for me. 2.) Locate target and assailant. 3.) Shoot assailant before target is eliminated. 4.) Run away before 'the fuzz' takes charge.

That's exactly what I was doing tonight; the only difference in the line up was that the stupid fucker was late. I mean, really, really late.

The 'sting,' as I like to call it, was supposed to go down in this strip bar on L2. I recognized it immediately as a place I used to hide out and so did a number of the dancers. A few actually came up and gave me a light hug before whispering, "What took you so long, Hon?" I didn't really know what else to say, so I just smiled back at them, giving them a little wink before going back about my business. My business being ordering shot after shot of Jack Daniels waiting for Mr. Takumei to show the fuck up.

Two hours and 10 shots later, I was very drunk, half naked, and I may as well have been dancing on the bar. If there was one thing that I gained from the wars that I'd enjoy during my 'real life,' it was my new found ability to drink unnatural amounts of alcohol. I'd never lost a drinking contest to anyone, except maybe Heero. You'd think that Wufei would be the master with his self-control, but I found that to be negative during the wars. Though it does take a lot to get him drunk, he was am amateur compared to Heero and me.

I'd started the night out thinking this was going to be an easy in and out job, when in fact, after the three whole hours I had been waiting, I managed to fuck it up in less than ten minutes.

When he came in through the door I recognized him immediately. Just because I was out of it didn't mean I had lost sight of my man or forgotten why I came here in the first place. Reason being Mr. Takumei.

I tell you though. I'd only just seen this guy and I could already tell he was the biggest fucking asshole I've ever had the pleasure to hunt down and slaughter. He sauntered through the damn door. I'm dead serious, not exaggerating this story at all. He sauntered over to the bar and calmly ordered a drink. I tell you, I didn't even know assholes came in this model.

I hate people like this guy. I could tell already that I was going to have one of my sick pleasure killings with this guy. I hated him already, and I hated him and I hadn't even met the man yet. I hated his stupid hair, all slicked back with something resembling Crisco. I hated his stupid shiny shoes. I hated his stupid designer brand suit. And most of all, I hated his eyes. They matched a little to closely to a certain someone's. That's just unforgivable. That color fucking belongs to Heero. There should be no person in the world with that color other than him. And by god, I'd hunt down every one of those poor fools with that eye color and slaughter them myself. Just so Heero could have something that would be his own.

The question was however, how the hell am I gonna able to avenge my love without breaking every bone in my body?

Even through my drunken gaze, I could still tell this guy was going to give me some trouble. Weren't Asians supposed to be short? I mean goddamn this guy had some height to him! He couldn't have been shorter than 6 ft. I vaguely thought to myself 'oh great, I get to take down a guy who's got at least a couple heads taller than me and looks like he could out weigh me by twice my body weight.

I am sad to say, I never really grew that much after the war. Yes, I'll be a little pip-squeak my whole life. It's pretty sad to think that I'm a twenty-one year old man and I'm only 5'6 and weigh 105 lbs. Honestly, I really did think I should put a little more weight on. People in my business never like or tend to admit this unless they have to, but if your on a job and something goes wrong, if the guy is bigger than you then you might as well kiss your life goodbye if he gets a hold of you. Cause dammit, I don't care how strong you are you aint getting away. Just put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye. It'd be over pal. But that's not to say there's nothing good about being ungodly skinny in this business. You can slip your way out of a lot of things if you're too small to be noticed.

Anyway, here's the 411 about what was supposed to be going down tonight. The plan was Mr. Takumei showing up at about quarter to seven, sitting down and ordering a couple drinks. I'm sorry to say that the head honcho of this operation wasn't making his appearance yet. He hired some chick to do it for him.

I can only assume that she was a woman looking for a way to make a couple easy bucks on the side of her everyday job. With the business these women were in, I couldn't really say I'd blamed them. If I were still in that business, if someone offered me some quick cash to deliver some stupid disk, I'd be sitting down next to the guy rubbing his knee saying 'tell me more.'

When I staked the place out a couple nights before I hauled up in my little corner out looking to see which one of the ladies seemed new around the place. It didn't take me long to find her.

She was a young girl. Couldn't have been more than 25 but I wouldn't say young enough to be any younger than 20. It didn't take much to loosen her lips up a bit. You see when you're dealing with people like this you gotta remember. The information goes to the highest bidder. And the guy who put her up to this certainly chinced her a bit on the cash and it didn't take much to convince her to see things my way.

All it took was five hundred credits and a check signed to Ms. Kitty and the disk was mine. Not only that, but she promised to stay away from the bar the night she was supposed to make the drop.

When Mr. Takumei settled down at the bar I couldn't help but smirk knowing he wasn't going anywhere for a while. At least I thought he wasn't going anywhere at the time, and the only place I thought I'd be going was out of that door after I shot his brains all over the bar. But things didn't work out like that. There's always something that must be taken into account for no matter what. Murphy's law. If something can go wrong, it will go wrong.

As you know, I'd been there a tad longer than he had been. Quite frankly, I can safely say without a doubt, my bladder was going to rupture if it wasn't emptied soon. And since I figured he wasn't going any where for the time being, I decided to slip off to the men's room to empty my bladder and sober up a little bit before I took him out.

I will reiterate. That is not, not, how it went down. Murphy's law had struck indefinitely.

Sure, I did get to go pee. Yes, I did get to splash a little water on my face to try to gain a little sobriety, but something happened after that. Something happened as I leaned over the sink and grabbed a few brown paper towels from the dispenser next to that rust stained sink. After briefly wiping the droplets of water off my face, by some slim chance I glanced up at the mirror.

Mr. Takumei had arrived in the men's room shortly after me.

A thousand little thoughts began running their way through my mind spouting things like 'oh shit' and 'fuck' and 'hey, I have a gun in my pocket…and my targets all alone with me in the bathroom.' Do we have to guess which one won my drunken mind over?

I can't say for sure, but I'm pretty sure when I actually made my move I looked like something out of an old cheesy Kung foo movie. 'Hello Mr. Takumei, I am the one you will be facing now, no one else, nothing else on the line, except your families honor! Mwahahaha!' …No I didn't really say that (thank god) but it was something as sad as this…

I could feel that stupid grin growing on my face as I raised my head. I stood straight, looking into the mirror to find that not only was the grin there, but there was Mr. Takumei, staring at my reflection.

This is the part where I turn into the killing machine. I've realized in the past that during my 'stings' I'm no longer Duo Maxwell. Hell, I'm barely even the god of death anymore. I turned into something that would give Heero a run for his money. I was a fucking killing machine. I was like the fucking Pillsbury Doughboy on cocaine. Just need someone to poke my stomach and I'll go teehee! Then kick some terrorist ass. Wow, isn't that irony?

In any other situation, at any other time. This guy would have had a bullet in his head the second he walked through the bathroom door, and I'd be pulling the loose change out of his pockets. However, this time, I'd forgotten a few fundamentals of assassination and I was really starting to hate Mr. Jack Daniels.

I'd missed that shot by a fucking mile at least and before I knew it the bastard jumped me. In the technical term I would say that he ran at me and we both fell on the floor. But in Duo-nese I'd say it was about 188 lbs. of fucking steel lunging at my chest and slamming my head onto the floor, and knocking my gun under the sinks. In all honesty, I lost the ability to breath for a minute. But shh, don't tell. I'm trying to keep this 'I'm not afraid of you or your big strong muscles act up.'

When that big lug got on top of me I thought I would die. If not for the idea of it, then the smell on his breathe. This guy was fucking wasted. Ha, wasted, doesn't that bring back some good war memories.

One big aspect in my line of work is definitely be able to think on your feet. Or in my case, on your back. And think my love, I can do.

I personally think that Mr. Takumei responded quite well to the fact that he may never be able to have babies again. Slamming a knee into someone's crotch can do that you know, but he took it like a man and only groaned a bit, curling in on himself. I kicked him in the stomach, forcing him up enough to where I could slip out from under that weight and let my lungs have some much needed air while giving him a few swift kicks in the ribs for good measure, and to ensure he wouldn't be moving any time soon.

Grabbing onto his slicked hair, I kicked open the nearest stall and proceeded to drag him into it. Drowning wasn't exactly my favorite way to dispose of people. Sure it wasn't really messy or anything, but drowning someone just seems dirtier to me. I'd much rather shoot someone in the head and have it be over with instantly. Drowning someone…it feels like it takes a lifetime to hold them under, waiting for the air to be flushed out from their bodies. You can feel them fighting the whole time, gasping for air as you take their last breaths. But I must say, death by toilet gave drowning a rather appealing flavor.

I'll never forget the look on that fuckers face when I kicked the back of his knees to force him down in from of the porcelain goddess that would soon become his last sight in this world. I probably should have been making sure he didn't have an opportunity to escape, but I wasn't. The only thing I could think of at that moment was 'wow…what a way to go.'

I'll admit, it wasn't my usual style, but hell, I'll try anything once.

"Please don't do this…who are you?" Sighing, I loosen my grip on his hair a little bit. It would figure. The tough scene is just an act. It's always the big, tall guys who give the definition of pansy a whole new meaning.

"I'm just your friendly neighborhood God of Death. But you can call me Santa Clause." I replied, regaining my grip and lifted up the seat of the toilet. "I mean think about it, Santa, Satan, rearrange some letters and you've got the real culprit don'tca?" (1)

And with that, Mr. Takumei went down the hatch. Taking a large chunk of his hair between my fingers I pushed his head down into the stale water. Definitely an unsanitary way to die.

I felt him struggling against me, thrashing his head about, trying to get free. Keeping one hand on his head, I grabbed his searching hands and forced them behind his back. Searching for the flusher…I swear people just love to make my job harder.

It was then I realized that I had begun singing. The death march was starting, so I knew he'd be dead soon. I never recall starting, but I always have a little tune going right at the moment when the struggle has become fierce. It's always a different song, and it's always sung in a calm voice. If I wasn't there to witness it, I would no believe my voice was capable of producing sounds such as those.

The tune this time was slow, soft and sung in my own way. Slow and deliberate, just like his death, drunken slurs and all. "Hey…I've come to snuff the rooster…"

I felt the jerky movements from the lack of air but didn't release my hold. I'm sad to say that I did let my guard down, and I let it down very badly. I should have known that a man of Takumei's power, and authority in the drug, terrorist, and OZ supporting world would never give up that easy. All in all, I didn't respond all that well to never being able to have children.

The second his foot connected with my groin I dropped him like a sack of potatoes. Two seconds later, he was out the door and I was hobbling out the door trying to get my gun into the back of my pants.

As I looked around the darkened bar I noticed that Mr. Takumei had up and left all together.

God fucking dammit. I had broke so many of my own fucking rules that night I should be locked up. The simple four step death method I had worked to perfect was turning into a ten step nightmare. Where does it fucking say to let your target kick you in the nuts and run away!? Well I'll tell you. In the Drunk Duo Assassination Squad that's were.

I didn't have anytime to think though. I had to go find him before he got somewhere to tell his big official man what had happened. So running out of the bar, that's where I made another fatal mistake. This one however was not just from my own book of rules, but from the war as well. Never, and I mean never let your guard down.

The board connected with my head in a sickening crack, causing me to fall to my knees, grasping the back of my head with my hands to feel the spreading wetness that begun there.

I didn't even put up a fight as he drug me into that alley and threw me down on my back. I couldn't think, and I couldn't breath. But it was the damnedest thing. When I was laying there, on the cold, dirty, alley floor, I felt a calm. I wasn't scared, I didn't panic, and I couldn't feel the sharp pains coming from the back of my head. Just laying there, the only thing I could feel was the steady weight being pressed against me. The only sound I could hear was the gunshot.

I stared into the lifeless face laying on top of me, a little trail of smoke still trailing from the barrel of the gun and the shot ringing in my ears. I didn't care about the blood that splattered on my face, or the lifeless body pinning me down. The song. That's all I cared about. I don't remember when I began singing again, but at the moment, it didn't really matter…

"Hey…I've come to snuff the rooster…"

End Chapter 1

1: This is kind of from the movie "Detroit Rock City." An excellent film where in one part they get a preacher/minister…some religious church guy high, and he's laughing about Santa…Satan…. same letters…. SAME GUY!

Alright people. Honestly, I need the feedback!! It's like…my life source…the will to go on! This will eventually be a 1X2 fic, and I think in the next chapter I'll be heading more into the lives of Heero and the other pilots, what they think happened to Duo, ect. ect. However if you have any suggestions please let me know.