The Devil's Symphony
Written by: Jon Hall
and Greg Housley

comments are appreciated!

"Access denied."

The figure stood before the doorway puzzled, but only for a moment. The computer voice that had activated had not accepted the code that he had been given to input. The system parameters shouldn't have been changed yet. They only change the pass codes every week so this one should still work. He reached up and punched in the eight-digit code again and waited a second before the voice came back again.

"Access denied."

Duo Maxwell scratched his head in slight puzzlement as it only took him no more than a fraction of a second to smile.

"Access denied, huh?" Duo reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a small device no larger than about half the size and shape of a rubics cube and hooked it to the keypad.

A few steps back and a puff of smoke later, the keypad was obliterated leaving the doorway sliding open to admit the long-haired American.

"I got to remember to thank those guys for these things." Duo took another of the devices out of his pocket and kissed it lightly before putting it back into his pocket. The devices were bombs that hardly made a sound as they emitted a heat field so intense that it would cause about the same amount of damage as a regular grenade, only in a small directed area, suchas a keypad. He smiled at the recollection.

He had been on the Peacemillion 2 when Howard had been explaining the bombs to himself and Wufei, considering that they were the only two gundam pilots that were willing to take up the cause again.

“Heh, talk about your Silent But Deadly!” That remark had earned Duo a slap in the back of the head, to which he still had no idea why. It was just a stupid joke.

He was in the Virazin Labs space colony division HA37. A place rumored by preventer inside sources to be conducting research on genetic super soldiers. There had also been hints of large shipments of gundanium to this lab, though the shipments were hard to validate.

Duo had found it hard to believe that yet another organization was readying itself for a governmental takeover, but had long since learned not to rule anything out. As a preventer it was his job to confirm and extinguish any hostile intent before it escalated into hostile actions.

It wasn't until he visited the lower sectors of Virazin that he realized just how serious these rumors might be.

It was a large warehouse-sized lab, barren with only a few exceptions. The control room for the lab was located several levels above over-looking the spacious work area of the lab that Duo was standing in. A catwalk bridged from the control room across the large lab to the opposite wall, for what Duo figured served for working with things that were particularly tall. The gravity was light so Duo pushed off the floor and floated up to the catwalk to get a birds-eye view of the lab area.

He recognized this lab setup easily enough. Anyone who had ever spent some time servicing mobile suits would. It wasn't proof though, he knew. But it sure did smell like a rat! He then idly wondered why it smelled like rats, and tried to refrain from visually imagining what rats floating around in a low gravity room would look like because it was just plain silly. A tiny thought of floating cats chasing floating rats tried to worm its way into his thoughts but he quickly snuffed it out before it had a chance to form.

He glided along the railing of the catwalk to the control room and entered into a room fitted with very expensive computer equipment. Wasting no more time he seated himself at what he assumed was the main terminal and pulled up all of the most current data he could.

Most of it was encrypted and what little wasn't was little more than equipment request logs, checklist, and 'Quake AC200'. Duo rolled his eyes, "Those guys are all the same."

He pulled out his disk and saved the un-encypted files and then set to the task of hacking the encrypted ones, which was fortunate that he had thought to bring a program that could do just that.

Several of the files were so heavily encrypted that his software still proved unsucessful, but he did manage to free up a little more data and found a log specifying a determined amount of gundanium alloy shipped to this very lab six months earlier. This find made him even more curious to find out what the rest of the encrypted files contained so he tried to save the encrypted files onto his disk to see if Howard could hack them a little bit later, but was discouraged to discover a write protect on these particular files.

Duo sat staring defeatedly at the screen as he tried to decide his next move when he suddenly heard a crackle in his earpiece.

"Duo, what are you doing? Can't you hurry this up a little?"

Duo smiled at Hildi's impatience, and proceeded to imitate a wrong number operator tone, "We're sorry, the number you have dialed is either disconnected or no longer in service, please check the number and dial again."

Hildi growled on the other end of the two way radio and began to give him a piece of her mind when Duo decided to hit the silence button. "Hurry up huh?" He said aloud to himself in thought. "Well, only one way to do that!" He finally concluded grinning.

Not wasting another moment he bashed in the lid of the CP unit and disconnected the hard-drive from the rest of the machine. "We'll just let Howard have a field day with the whole thing!" He smiled.

He quickly exited out into the hallway outside the control room and checked at his watches holographic map that blueprinted the entire building. He seemed to be one level below the genetics department. The next stop on his Tour de megalomaniac incorporation. Spotting the fire escape stairs indicated on his map he ascented to the next level into a long hallway branching in both directions.

The fluorescent lighting of the hallway made it seem gloomy and bare, the simple colors making it look like a prison or mortuary. Doors lined the hallway leading into various laboratories dealing with various genetic experiments. It totally creeped him out. It seemed like a place where someone would find their doom, which was exactly why Death had come. Duo smiled at the thought. He glanced to either side of him and saw a small computer terminal embedded in the wall to his right. He quickly went over to it and began to check through all of the lab descriptions for the floor. He wanted to make sure that nothing else had been changed as well. If a single pass code could be changed in just a few days, then there was no telling what else had changed.

His eyes began to scan the files as they ran over the computer screen in sequence. “C’mon baby, tell papa you ain’t gone anywhere since I last checked up on ya.”

It took a few moments to go through the list until he found the one that he was looking for. Duo smiled to himself and, pulling a disk out of his pants pocket he stuck it into the computer. “Now let’s see what we have here.” He quickly skimmed through the information to see if he was right on the money, "Bingo!" This was it, “And save!”. Duo saved the information to the disk and quickly pulled it back out once it was finished. It was a good thing too, because the alarm chose to go off then.

The hallway glowed an eerie red with each pulse of the alarm. Duo gave a sheepish laugh, “Eh heh heh... I’m fucked!” He quickly put the disk back into his pocket and ran back to the door from which he had come. He stuck his head out to check his clearance but quickly saw the security guards closing in on his location. “Ummm…shit?” He spun around and started to run down the long hallway. The sound of footsteps closing in caused Duo to stop. “Damnit, which one, there’re too many fuckin doors!” He quickly spotted a door labeled ‘Lab Room 2’ “Good enough.” Duo punched the keypad to the nearest door and jumped through with the door sliding shut behind him.

He sat motionless in the dimly lit room waiting for the sound of the running steps to fade away. He slowed his breathing down till it was barely audible, the excitement making him breathe heavy. Once no more sound could be heard, he felt himself sigh in relief. “Shew, that was waaay too close.”

Duo switch the silence button off to his radio, "...nother thing Duo Maxwell, you think this is some game?!! Well you've got another..."

"Hildi!" Duo whispered hoarsely in the mic piece.

"thing coming buster! I'll ha..."

"Hildi!" Duo, tried again. But as long as Hildi had her talk button pushed Duo could do nothing more than listen. So he switched channels. "Fire, we've got a situation here, the alarm was tripped prematurely, they must've discovered that guy I borrowed these threads from!"

Noin's voice crackled through the earpiece with Hildi's scronful banter in the background. "Roger that Duo, I picked that alarm up also, are you secure for the moment?"

Duo looked around the room quickly noting that he couldn't make anything out in the pitch dark. "Looks that way."

"Alright, lemme see if I can hack their security system and get a feed into their cammera systems. I'll need to get Hildi to establish a direct link with the buildings wiring so it'll take a couple of minutes, you hang tight okay?"

Duo grinned, "Whatever you say, Fire! Good luck convincing Hildi to shut up long enough to give her her orders!"

Noin chuckled, "Roger that, over and out!"

Now alone and in silence, Duo decided to try and get a look at his unknown environment. He felt along the wall next to the door until he located a switch and flicked it. Dim blue lights lit the interior of the small lab causing shadows to flicker accross the walls and equipment. A single flourescent white light at the center of the room lit up from the inside of what appeared to be a large aquarium tank sitting atop a rather technical looking control panel. Though the inside of the tank was lit, what was inside Duo could only guess at since the glass was so frosted over.

“What..the..hell…?”

Cautiously he approached the icy tank and brushed at the frost till he could peer through the glass. He gasped at what he saw. Frozen within the large block of ice was what appeared to be a young redheaded girl. Even though the distortion of the ice made it hard to tell any specific details about her, Duo could tell that she was quite attractive.

Intrigued by this new discovery he began examining the computer vid-screens that surrounded the base of the tank. He punched a few buttons and got the information that he was looking for.

From the data that Duo could gather, the girl had been frozen for around four hundred years. “Geez, a Stone Age babe!” He quickly caught notice of one particularly large red button that was simply labeled ‘DO NOT PUSH’. “They have got to be joking.” He rolled his eyes and continued to study the data on the large icy specimen, his interest growing as he did. He located some log reports of the various studies conducted on the subject and even discovered some interesting data on DNA examination. “This might be worth taking with me,” he surmised. He fished his disk out of his pocket and slipped it in the machines drive. It wasn’t long before he had the information copied and safely tucked back within his pocket. He found himself glancing back at the big red button periodically, something was buggin him about it.

He looked back up at the girl trapped in the large chunk of ice and noticed something that he didn’t see before. There at the girl’s side, frozen in the six foot block of ice was a large staff with a crescent shaped blade at the end bent over making it resemble a garden ho. Duo leaned in for a closer look but was startled as the lights began to flicker wildly on the gauges and a large humming sound began to broaden. “Uh-oh, what now?” He looked down just in time to notice his hand propped up on the big red ‘DO NOT PUSH’ button.

“Ah shit.” He stepped back a couple of feet as the light around the ice block began to glow red with melting heat. The audible sound of cracking ice began to echo off the bare room walls. It took only a short moment before the ice cracked into a large puddle of water and the girl within began to start moving. Duo’s eyes widened as he noticed a small sphere of light begin to form around the girls right hand. ‘This ain’t good,’ was all he had time to think before the tank shattered and the water gushed out in all directions, completely soaking him. The girl slipped out with the rush of water knocking into him, giving him time enough to let out a short yelp before toppling over.

It was over in a few short seconds and the only sound that Duo could hear was the forced breathing from the girl to the side of him along with her strained coughs. “Oh man, my head.” Duo thought aloud, but felt the air catch in his throat as he realized the pitch was several octaves higher than usual. “What the-“ Duo quickly looked down at himself feeling a sense of nausea as he did, something was wrong! He pulled himself up to a sitting position and began to feel at himself. “Ahhh, what the Fu-?“ Duo could feel the blood drain from his head. “I got….. Boobs?” And he was out like a light.

“Yeah you ain’t the only one.” The strange girl said to herself as she finished hacking out the water from her lungs. She looked about her surroundings and was a bit confused to discover that not a damn thing looked familiar. She then glanced over at the small girl lying on the floor next to her unconscious. She would have been cute to the girl if she didn’t know she was really a guy. Yeah, she knew that reaction real well. Though It had been slightly different, followed by a large panda fleeing for it’s life, but the look on the sleeping girls face had been enough to tell her what had happened. ‘Nian-ni-chuan strikes again.’ She thought distastefully.

She reached over and pulled the girl up to a sitting position and began to shake her at her shoulders. “Hey! Buddy, wake-up! Hey!” The girl began to stir within the strange girl’s hands and finally her eyes began to flutter open. For a brief moment the two stared at each other in silence…

“I’ve got boobs.” The girl announced, still in a state of shock.

“Yes and a nice pair at that, but look you’re gonna have ta help me out here.” The girl simply blinked. “For starters you can tell me where we are.”

Duo-chan slipped out from the strange redhead’s grasp and took a second to think. “We’re in sector 827A of Virazin labs, genetics department…” she replied with a somewhat distant tone.

“Uh-huh,” Was the only way the redhead could think to respond. “And… Okay, so how did I get here? And why the hell was I in that tank of freezing water?”

“I have no idea why you’re here, or why you were in that chunk of ice.”

"Chunk of ice?" the redhead repeated somewhat confused.

"Yeah, didn't you know, that was a chunk of ice before it was simply freezing water!" The girl's voice had a monotany of tone, as she tried to get a grip on the situation.

"Umm what was I doing in a chunk of ice?" The small girl asked, her own voice taking on a ghostly quality.

"I already told you I don't know." Duo-chan answered truthfuly.

"But then at least tell me how long I was in that thing?" The girl pleaded desperately.

Duo sighed inwardly, finally a question she could answer. "The read-out I got before I accidently melted the ice, hypothesized roughly four hunder years."

“Four… Hundred… Y-years?” The girl felt her heart catch in her throat. “I’ve been frozen for four...hundred....years?”
The redheaded girl slowly stood up and walked a few feet away, mildly mumbling something to which Duo couldn’t quite make out.

"Now wait a sec!" Duo-chan snapped, almost as though she was catching ahold of the situation. "what about me?! A minute ago I was a guy! Hell, I've been that way since birth as one might imagine! So why the hell do I have boobs?!!" Duo's voice rose with each comment till almost the point of yelling. "BOOB'S DON'T GROW ON TREES!!!" Okay, she was yelling now.

"Because you're a girl now!" The other girl snapped back. "But could you imagine if they did?" She added as an after thought

Duo paused as a mental image formed, her anger momentarily forgotten, and then shook her head of such thoughts even more angry at being side-tracked. "What do you mean I'm a girl, guy's don't just turn into girls on a whim!!! Was it some sort of genetic stuff?!! Am I some sort of mutant now?!!"

The redhead sighed as she could easily relate to this guy's anger. After-all she had been through the same ordeal. "No, your perfectly fine... Well a perfectly fine girl," the redheaed toyed with the idea of commenting on just how fine a girl she was but decided to let the original intended meaning sink in. "look, it has to do with the..." The girl was cut off when the other one stood up abruptly and began talking back in the mic that wrapped from her earpiece to her mouth.

"Yeah... Yeah okay, you've got control over their security system now? Right... Oh? Okay we're outta here!.. Oh we're? Uh heh heh, I'll explain later! Yes, and why my voice sounds like this too!"

Duo-chan looked over at the redhead, "Look we'll continue this conversation a little bit later, we're not exactly in the safest of situations right now, so unless you wanna wait around and see what else these people might wanna do to you now that you're not frozen anymore, follow me and stay sharp!"

The redhead could see the determination apparent in the other girls eyes where there had only been confusion and fear moments earlier. She nodded, but before setting out to follow she caught sight of the large crescent bladed staff and scooped it up.

Once satisfied the girl was ready to follow Duo nodded back and whispered into her mic. "Clear?" And then motioned for the redhead to follow as she punched the keypad to the right of the door.

The door slid open quickly and the two filtered out into the hallway beyond.

They followed along the hallway and exited out the door from which Duo had first entered in through. She craned her neck around the corner of the door and clutched at her earpiece quickly as Hildi's voice cracked over the radio again.

“There’s no one there, just keep going down the hallway to your left and make a right at the corridor labeled 736B, you’ll be clear beyond that point. Take the stairs to the loading docks and we’ll pick you up at the rendezvous. Over and out.”

Duo-chan glanced up and smiled as she saw the camera pointed in their direction. She then looked back at the redhead who still followed closely behind and cracked a smile. “Hildi, gotta love her.” The redhead simply shrugged and they began to make their way on the route made out by Hildi.

Their escape went unchallenged as they quickly made their way through the abandoned halls. Duo led the girl down the designated course until finally reaching the stairway Hildi had mentioned and they made their descent to the first floor.

It wasn’t long before the two girls stood at the bottom of the stairway looking out into the large area that served as the loading docks. Only a handful of people were visible and all seemed preoccupied with their own business. Duo looked back at the girl and winked. “Just play it cool and act natural with me, then were outta here and it’s smooth sailing, got it?” The girl simply nodded. “Good, now follow my lead.” They walked out into the room with a mild yet determined pace. Duo found herself looking out of the corner of her eyes scanning to see if anyone had taken notice. Astonishingly enough, no one had. Duo smiled to herself and continued her pace through the loading docks. Crates upon crates consumed the docks for thirty or so feet before the ramp descended to the streets of the city. Duo creeped through the lines of crates that blocked the view to the other loaders, but when an opening came up in between the crates, she just walked with a confidence as if she belonged there. She glanced back behind her once to see if the redhead was still following and was surprised to see the calm expression that the redhead wore.

Finally they reached the ramps and quickly made their way down to the street. Duo quickly glanced aound to get her bearings and then motioned for her companion to follow. "This way. The rendezvous should be a short distance away, so it won't take long to get there." They began to run down the street at a slow pace, just to make the trip quicker than just walking. Duo's gait heightened as she remembered what she had on her. The weight of the hard drive bumped into her leg as she ran down the street. She felt down in her shirt and smiled even bigger as she felt the small disk still in there. But then her hand felt one of the newly acquired breasts and her mood went downhill just as quickly as it had gone up just moments before. "Why me?"

The redhead, on the other hand, seemed to follow at a distant pace, her mind on other things. Like maybe the four hundred years she’s missed out on, Duo-chan thought to herself. She kept glancing at the crescent bladed staff that she still clutched in her hand protectively. For a second, Duo thought that she caught a flash of anger in the redhead’s, but she didn’t think to ask about it, because they had reached the rendezvous.

As the two girls waited for the pickup, Duo finally took notice of what the girl wore. A red chinese shirt and black pants that looked like they had seen better days from the rips and tears all throughout the material. Plus the fact that the whole outfit looked like it was way too big for her anyway. She just stood against the fence behind Duo and stared at the staff, moving her free hand along the blade, a tiny droplet of blood forming at her fingertip. “Hey, you’re gonna hurt yourself with that thing!” But as Duo watched, the droplet of blood fell to the ground, shattering in small icy slivers.

The redhead raised her cut finger and stared at it for the longest of time before looking back up at Duo-chan. “It has the power to freeze. That’s how I was frozen in the block.” Duo just simply stared back at the girl as she looked back down at the staff. The redhead then slipped the razor edged blade into the concrete sidewalk only a fraction and bent the blade so that it stuck straight up from the staff. A clicking sound was audible as the blade snapped firmly into it's new postion. Duo, though slightly confused, slowly turned around to face the street, her face hanging toward the ground. She looked at her watch and saw that it was almost time for the pickup.

Just then a large brown van pulled up to the curb in front of Duo. She looked up in time to look into the eyes of Hildi and Lucretia Noin. Duo looked back at the redhead as she distantly stared back. “You comin?”

Both Hildi and Noin looked at each other and at Duo with astonished expressions. “Who are you?” Hildi took on a mad expression and advanced on Duo. “I said ‘who are you?’ “

Duo backpedaled a few steps before stopping Hildi short. “It’s me, Duo! Who in the hell else would it be, Hildi?”

The dark-haired girl only grew even more impatient. “What are you crazy? Duo isn't even a girl, how the hell did you expect for us to fall for something so obvious? What have you done with him?!”

“Now calm down, lady. I don’t know who you think I am but there’s only one person that I could be and that’s Duo Maxwell.” Duo-chan’s voice took on a more serious tone as she progressed. “If you don't believe me then answer me this, who else would know about the time that you smuggled all of that information off of Libra just to help out us Gundam pilots?”

Hildi stood frozen in her tracks. She didn’t know what to think. What the hell’s going on? She thought to herself. A small snicker could be heard behind her as Noin seemed to assess the situation a little quicker than Hildi. Duo only grit her teeth and clenched a fist at hearing the laughter.

"So that's why you're voice sounded higher over the radio. What's the matter, have a lil accident in the Varizin genetics department?" Noin chuckled.

Finally Hildi stammered herself back to slight sanity. “Wh..what happened to you?” Duo-chan looked at the ground shyly, clenching both of her fists. “I don’t know yet, but I’m gonna find out.” Duo looked over to where the redheaded girl was staring at them with an only half-distant expression. Hildi looked over the girl for only a second before turning to Duo again. “And who’s the red?” Duo’s gaze never left the girl, whose own eyes had shifted back to the crescent-bladed staff in her hands. The mumbling words that came out of her mouth were too low for any of the company to hear, the tone itself reaching their ears told them that the words were longing and tearful. “I’ll tell you on the way back.” Duo said finally.

“You found her where?!” Hildi’s voice had risen up to another peak and could have shaken the van were it not for the van already vibrating from the motion that is was currently in. Noin had been driving with the other three passengers in the cargo area of the van.

The outburst started only moments after the van had begun its motion. Duo had to backpedal a little more, also, waving her hands in front of her in defense. “Whoa, Hildi, take it easy for a second, would ya?” Hildi dropped her voice to a hoarse whisper.

“She might have been one of those genetic experiments that the lab was cooking up. She might be dangerous or worse, some sorta new enemy.”

Duo-chan scratched her head, looking up in thought. “Well she doesn’t look like a genetic experiment, does she?” Duo looked at the redhead, who was sitting quietly in the back corner of the van, still clutching the staff in her arms. Her eyes seemed glued to the side of the van, as if staring off into
space.

“Besides,” Duo continued, leaning back against the side of the van with her arms behind her head, “I think I saved her life.” Hildi sat motionless as Duo went on. “She was being studied at those labs, Hildi, not created. And from what I read of the data on the studies, it looked like she had been in that ice block for over four hundred years.”

Hildi’s eyes moved over to the girl in the corner once again to find her in the same position as before, staring at the wall. “But who is she?”

Duo looked back at Hildi for a second and then to the redhead in the corner. “You know, I forgot to ask her in all of the rush to get out of that place.” Duo-chan moved back to where the redheaded girl sat staring at the wall and sat down in front of her. Her eyes focused on Duo as she sat. Hildi was close behind Duo and sat down against the opposite wall as the girl. Duo was the first to speak. “Hey, red. I’m just curious, since I forgot to ask you earlier when we were out of the labs, but what’s your name, mines Duo and this is Hildi, as you've no doubt heard, And the one driving is Noin.”

The girl stared at him quietly before looking down at the staff in her lap. “I’m Ranma Saotome. Sorry about all this.”