Well, as always I start this project off with a request for a Beta. This story wasn't doing so good on my other account and after going through it, I can see why. I still may go back and fix this chapter more little by little. Nothing important will change, just my style. If you're interested in betaing this once badly done story, please email me or put it in a review. I would be glad for the help.

Warning: This story is dark. It is not meant to be happy. It has homoerotic themes and a hell of a lot of blood. Ya hear me? DEATH! You have been warned.

Disclaimer: GW is not mine but I do have the boys stashed in a secret hidey-place...checks Nope sorry. Just wishful thinking.

Chapter 1 of The Other

Heero Yuy

AC Two-Zero-Seven

Pluto

It was just supposed to be a routine search and seizure. Enemy had a weapon; we take the weapon. And if we can't take the weapon, we make damn sure no one else can. That was the way things were done long before we had ever stepped into our mobile suits and it would stay that way after our suits rusted in some hangar.

Protocol. Back then Protocol was everything.

We had found out from a fairly low level Red, what we call the current batch of rebels, that there was actually a secret bunker on Pluto. It was a long shot but it was the only one we had. These rebels seemed to be especially resistant. They had already commandeered three Class V fighters, a new brand of mobile suit class. Although I never really liked them much, -they were too small and… puny-, but they was faster and stronger than the Zodiac and almost, almost, as resilient as the Gundams.

Quatre didn't like this mission and in the last twelve years of working with him I'd learned his instincts could save lives. But Zechs would hear none of it. Since his new appointment as New Chief Military Advisor to the Crown, he had been playing politics far too much. It had grated the nerves of no few other soldiers but not for the same reason. They didn't trust him, but Zechs and I had formed a friendship of sorts in the last decade. I respected him as a soldier. No title would change that for me. In my mind, he was a soldier first and foremost.

Unfortunately, because of a troublesome coupe almost immediately following the rise of the newly elected President in AC One-Nine-Six, the government was in chaos for almost three years. Finally, Relena stepped in as Signitary leader once again. Whoever had been on the fence of the Mini-government -as it had come to be called before that, unofficially, of course- quickly formed around her familiar pink frame. The rebels were crushed easily, but the percentage that remained had formed splinter factions. The surprising forerunner being The Reds. We didn't know much about them and I know that bothered Zechs beyond belief. A lot was riding on his shoulders to succeed. In some eyes, HE was being seen as a possible successor to his sister if one of the assassination attempts on our Queen of Pink actually turned out to work. No worry of that thankfully. Sally Po was doing a bang up job protecting Relena. No pun intended.

That need to prove himself was what brought myself, Quatre, Trowa and Wu Fei to this spit of a rock hanging in the stars. We took the compound easily. This should have been the first sign of something strange, but after a long, long period of fighting them, I had pretty much lost my patience, and wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

I was a fucking idiot.

Trowa was back on the ship, just in case we needed a pick up or his marksmanship from a distance. I hated to go in without Gundams, but in a war of sneak versus size, suits were almost obsolete. Which is why we needed the Class V's back so badly. They were small and fast and, damnit, might just win us this war with an enemy everyone had thought would be crushed by Christmas. That was two years ago.

Quatre and Wufei were making their way to the Obs deck, which our initial scans had shown was almost linked with the supposed location of the Objective, just three floors below. As I made my way through the correct air grate, I suppressed a shudder. I had been the one to finally break the Red "soldier." It was harder than I thought it would be, but all worth it. She had described a bio-weapon that, when correctly harnessed, could destroy entire battalions. It sounds like one of Quatre's new cheesy sci-fi novels. I was sure, though, that the Red had absolutely believed what she was telling me.

After all, I'm good at what I do.

I checked for life signs before dropping to the first spot, when Quatre's clipped tone rang out through the speakers. I nearly had a heart attack.

"There's no one here, 01."

It took me half a second to realize anything besides my heart pounding in my head. Only half.

I secured the area before speaking into the voice-box by the door. "Find me answers. Maintain radio silence as much as possible." The hairs on my neck were telling me something that I couldn't decipher yet. Something here was not right.

I walked in the first area of infiltration, knowing Quatre and Wufei were following my movements from Obs just like we planned. Nothing. Next room was the same. Next room was a bathroom containing the cadaver.

I had seen bodies before, we all had to in our line of work, But there was something about this that made me examine more than the non-existent pulse. In all honesty, it looked like a suicide. There were jagged half-formed lines running along her wrists. It would have taken her a long time to bleed out in the bathtub. Her naked body had started to prune. Her dark wiry hair had come off along the way to float in the pink water. Her once bronze skin had turned almost purple and waxey, the water accelerating the decomp. Something about this wasn't as clean cut as it seemed, I could feel it.

I slipped one of her eyes open with a gloved hand. It was red and puffy. Most likely having burst an ocular blood vessel. With that certainty, a cold sensation moved up my spine. I prodded her mouth open. Her jaw was tight. She hadn't left rigor. That in itself was odd. But as her tongue flopped down, and I saw the steady stream of blue foam dribble from her chin, I knew what it was.

"Quatre?" I didn't bother to use code. I had the feeling no one was listening.

The line was silent for a moment, as he was opening his face screen to see through my small camera that we all had on our helmets. It was tuned to only our frequency, and had no way of being traced. One of Wincorp's newest inventions.

"Yes." He sounded resigned. "It's Tact." A dangerous poison sometimes used as a recreational drug. I could tell, though, that from the stench of her breath and the rigidity of the body that she hadn't used it to have a good time.

Wufei unnecessarily posed the question as it was. "Why would someone take poison only to slit their wrists? That's irrational even for a woman."

"Because the poison wasn't working fast enough." Sometimes Quatre scared me. There had been no reason for him to just say it out loud like that.

I processed things quickly. "Wufei, meet me at drop point one. Quatre run a sweep of the compound one more time. Tell Trowa to do the same from his station, and apprise him of the situation." Trowa was too out of range to hear us.

Five minutes later, Wufei met me beside the grate where I first emerged. Having walked the corridors unlike me, he gave me a perplexed shake of the head. He hadn't come up against any resistance, then. I held back the urge to vomit.

Without saying a word, I led him to Objective. We didn't bother to hide ourselves. If anyone was here, I wanted them to attack. We might well get some answers out of them. When we were positioned straight down the hall from The Room, we heard the scream. A loud shredding shriek like knives on a metal grate tore through me like tissue paper. I knew without a doubt that it wasn't human. No person I ever heard could make a soul-wrenching cry that could set my entire body trembling. My mind irrationally conjured up images of the Old Irish creature, the banshee. I would find out later that I wasn't that far off. I threw caution to the wind then and shoved all thought from my mind as I ran towards the sound. Whatever it was, was still screaming on the same breath, and I wanted- I had to save it.

Although my convictions were strong, Wufei made it to the door first, bounding through the opening door like a tiger pursuing his prize. It was completely dark but he found his mark easily enough. As the shot rang out, all other sounds stopped. I needed to shove past Wufei to see, but I couldn't move. I barely breathed. Again, Wufei acted first and walked over to the "soldier" he had wounded.

"Kill it," the Red gasped out, between the blood spilling from his mouth. He managed to point a pudgy finger to the back of the room that the light from the doorway hadn't quite reached. Wu Fei gave him a clean pop to the head and it was done.

We should have interrogated him, but as I said, all rational thought had fled us at this point.

Again silence settled on the small, dark, metallic, room, until we heard a whimper; a clink of chains, coming from where the Red had feebly pointed.

I switched my helmet screen to low res, seeing a vague blur but not much else. When I shifted to infrared, my breathing really did stop. I heard Wufei's knees finally give way and Quatre gave a strange sort of gasp that came out as a frightening giggle. At first glance, the form looked human. Slight, but definitely male. He clasped the chains above his head with small hands in an attempt to stand. And behind him... attached to him... I couldn't understand. My brain wouldn't process it. I thought there was only one at first, stretched around him protectively, but the other was hanging off at an angle, waving at me. It looked sawed through.

"I'm sorry," He said in a voice that was far too high for him. "I be good."

I was alone in the room with him and the executed Red. Wufei must have run out. Cautiously, as one would for a wild animal, I took a step forward. He wiggled on the chain anxiously, emboldening me the rest of the way. I crossed the room in quick strides. The cuffs were easy, I quickly disentangled them from his wrists and He collapsed into me, like a marionette who's strings had been violently cut. I lowered his shaking body to the ground, being carefully of the still sickening injury. He was so light. Almost like He wasn't there. He clutched my shoulders, burying his face in my chest. I held him close, sheltering him as best I could. After a moment I quickly realized how cold he was in my arms. He didn't have any clothes. At this point he was shaking so hard, the severed limb was waving uselessly.

I was about to pick him up to carry him out when again he spoke in that too-high too-sweet voice, saying, "Take it off."

Instinctively, I knew what he meant. For a moment I didn't think I could do it, I couldn't hurt him. "But-"

"Please!"

Finally he turned his face to mine. He had a heart shape face that ended in a pointed chin. His ears were small making his round eyes even bigger. I wanted to see the color so bad it was painful, but I was still in infrared. Everything was the color of blood. From this distance, I could tell he was crying.

I nodded, swallowing the lump in my throat. "Lean on me."

I moved my arms around him and grasped the dangling bone in my hands, one on each side of the cut. With a sickening squelch the rest of it came off in a single twist.

He gave another much quieter scream into my collar, as I tried to stop the bleeding with thick wire from a pocket in my sleeve, all the while making shushing noises. It wasn't necessary. He had thankfully passed out by this point. I carried him back to the shuttle where Quatre and Wufei were waiting. They didn't even look at us. It was only when we had been fully loaded on Quatre's ship, that I remembered that I had left His bloody, battered wing shining in the open doorway of the metal room. There was no use going back for it now.