”The Vacation Fic (alternately titled Help! I’m
Vacationing And I Can’t Get Up!)
Author: Chester D.
Rating: T+
Summary: Trowa wins 5 tickets out of a box of Major Munch®
to a Caribbean island vacation resort, and everything pretty much goes to hell
from there.
Disclaimer/Warning: This fic contains crude humour, excessive vulgar
profanity, implicit homosexuality, and various other low-brow shenanigans.
Sunrise/Sotsu/Bandai owns Gundam Wing and all characters, places, and
ideas therein. I only own this fic.
Feedback: Pretty please with roaches on top?
Author’s Notes: This was my first ever GW fic (first
written c. 2000). As bad as it was (and probably still is), a [very] few dedicated people have requested
I continue it, and so I shall, even if it’s half a decade in the works.
Day Three: The Wicked Whiff of the West
Just before dawn the next morning, Heero Yuy woke up naked in a bathtub of cold water with a hangover that felt like someone had beaten him in the head with a pipe all night long. He sat up with sudden fear and began to pat all over his body, looking for stitches or gaping wounds or anything that would tell him that one or two of his vital organs were on their way to Tijuana. He found his body still intact and sighed.
He looked to his left and noticed Trowa Barton sitting on the toilet lid in a hideous green pair of swimming trunks and looking as if he had thrown himself face down on one of Heavyarms’ afterburners. He was either sleeping or dead, lying with his head back against the tank and his arms hanging limp at his sides.
“Hey. Trowa.”
The sunburnt teenager opened his eyes. He was alive after all. “Hey,” he murmured.
“Trowa, why am I naked in a tub of cold water?”
“You came home drunk. Duo said he could stand the farts, but drew the line at the barfs. So we dumped you in here.”
“What are you doing in here then?”
“Sleeping.”
“…why?”
Trowa stared dully. “Because I wanted to know what it felt like to spend the night on a commode.”
Heero couldn’t tell if he was being serious or sarcastic. “…what happened to your skin?”
“Sunburn.”
“…it looks pretty bad.”
“Yeah.”
“…uh huh.” Heero stood up groggily, grabbed a towel from the hanger and wrapped it around his waist. He walked out of the bathroom and promptly tripped over Quatre, who had been lying just outside the door and had apparently slept there the entire night. The blond let out a yelp and Heero went sailing to the floor with a cry of “FUCKIN-” before impacting.
On the other side of the room, Duo and Wufei sat up in their beds.
“What the shit was that?” Wufei hissed, his hair in rollers and cucumbers over his eyes.
“Somebody drop the firewood?” Duo yawned. He had been dreaming about firewood.
Heero crawled onto his hands and knees and turned to look at what he had tripped over. Quatre lay whimpering on his stomach, wearing a hideous pink pair of swimming trunks and looking as if he had thrown himself ass down on one of Sandrock’s afterburners. Heero wanted to barf all over him, but his gag reflexes were shot and there was no way he could purge without being awesomely sick first.
“Oh. It’s only Yuy,” said Wufei, lying back down.
“Mm. Bonfires. Gotcha,” Duo said, rolling over.
“Nghk,” Quatre grunted. “Heero? Are you okay?”
“No. My face was just married to the floor. How about you?”
“Your toenails stabbed me in the ribs. You really ought to trim them sometime. I think I’m bleeding.” Pause. “Is Trowa still in the bathroom?”
Heero hung his head. “Yes.”
“Is he alright?”
“Trowa was never alright, Quatre, you know that.”
“Right. I forgot.”
“Are you using the mattress?”
“No.”
“Good.” Heero crawled onto the legless bed that belonged to the Young Men of the Charbroiled Skin and went to sleep.
~Three hours later~
Heero awoke to the feeling of somebody bouncing on the mattress, and he knew who that somebody was without even opening his eyes. “Duo, cut it out or I’m going to be sick,” he grumbled.
“Oh, you’re awake!” said Duo cheerfully. “That’s great. I made up a song for you while you were sleepin’. It’s a wake-up song. Wanna hear it?”
“Fuck off.”
“Okay, if you insist! Weeellllll-”
Heero cringed and tried to curl up into a ball. Duo began to spring all over the mattress like a sugar-high six year-old and sing:
“-good mornin’ Mr Sunshine,
I hope your night was fun!
But now it’s day, I gotta say
You look like shit, no pun!
Well, your eyes are kinda bloodshot
Your face is kinda green
And I must attest, you’re the ugliest
Bastard I’ve ever seen!
Well, your hair looks like fresh roadkill
I guess you’re out of luck.
So hear this song and move along
‘Cause I don’t give a-”
Heero’s fist shot out and caught Duo right in the throat; he made a sound like a bagpipe being run over by a cheese grater and tumbled backwards into the nightstand. He didn’t get up again, but he wheezed with each breath he took, so that meant he was still alive. Heero didn’t even care about that—his head was throbbing like an infected boil and he suddenly wanted nothing more than to crack his skull open to relieve some of the pain. Nothing was within arm’s reach though, so it looked like he would have to settle for two aspirin instead.
Suddenly a pair of jeans landed on Heero’s towel-wrapped body, and he looked up to see Wufei glaring down at him.
“Get dressed and come with me,” he said. “I need to talk to you.”
Heero gave the same response he had given to Duo when asked if he wanted to hear the song he had made up, and Wufei crossed his arms.
“Fine. You can lie there and suffer while I go get some coffee and a nice big bowl of Get the Fuck Up Before I Kick You in the Nuts.”
Heero shot Wufei the dirtiest dirty look he could muster before sitting up groggily and getting dressed.
~In the dining hall~
Wufei Chang was actually a gentle, peaceful and mild young man in about a 33.3% aspect ratio of his life, but that was only because humans naturally spend 33.3% of their lives sleeping. In any case, Wufei Chang wasn’t a complete bastard all of the time; sometimes he was a partial bastard or a borderline bastard, or in worse cases, a total bastard. But after threatening Heero out of bed and sitting him down at a table, Wufei slipped into one of his rare borderline-bastard moments.
“How’s your liver holding out, Yuy?”
“Substantially,” came the gruff reply. “I’ll be around for another Christmas at least.”
Wufei nodded and ordered Heero a cup of coffee, then turned to him seriously. “I think you ought to know that you are undoubtedly in terrible danger. Do you remember what you did last night at all, where you went, who you were with?”
“Last… night?” the brunette teen scrunched his face up as if it hurt to think.
“Alright, maybe that’s asking too much. How about yesterday? Can you remember anything from yesterday?”
“I remember… pineapples…”
Wufei waited for a few moments but apparently that was all that Heero had to say. The Chinese lad pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to think of happy thoughts like war and explosions and wrapping his hands around somebody’s throat and just shaking back and forth until their spinal column snapped like a-
“Oh, wait, I think I remember something about a man…”
Wufei looked up hopefully just in time to see Heero shake his head and frown.
“No. No, that wasn’t it. Never mind. Sorry.”
Wufei let out an impatient sigh and stood. “Fine. If anything comes back to you, let me know, got it? Your life could very well depend on it.”
Heero placidly sipped his coffee, by this point having grown used to the inexplicable bouts of irrational, military-induced paranoia his fellow Asian comrade seemed to suffer. “Where are you running off to?”
“I’m not running off, I’m patrolling. Some things just aren’t adding up. I’ll meet back with you around ten thirty. When you leave here, go straight to the bungalow and don’t let anyone out of your sight.”
“Okay, but I might have to kill one of them.”
“That’s alright. Just don’t let the others go wandering off alone.”
“Sure. Whatever you say, Chang.”
“Good.” And Wufei exited the dining hall.
Heero rubbed his temples and asked Tom Green to bring him some Advil. Six cups of coffee and nineteen caplets later, he was feeling almost as good as new. He might have even been in a good mood by the time he left the dining hall, but all hopes of a rare thing like that went out the window when he saw a familiar, braided American walking towards him up the path, looking rather guilty and slightly terrified.
They both stopped when they saw each other. Even at ten yards away, the tension was palpable.
“Uh,” Duo started in a hoarse voice as he rubbed his bruised neck, “I wanted to say I’m sorry about this morning. I kinda hhhhhn… forgot you were sick, y’know.”
Heero nodded. “That’s fine. I’m sorry you made me have to punch you in the throat.”
“Apology accepted.”
Heero nodded again.
Duo abruptly frowned. “Hey, wait, I’m the one who got injured. How is that my fault? You got drunk on your own, that was your fault. Why do I gotta take the blame for something that you did to yourself to make you sick when all I was trying to do was be nice and wake you up with a cheerful-”
Heero charged without warning. Duo let out a surprised shriek and tore away from him as fast as he could, off of the path, around the corner of another bungalow, and behind a cluster of palm trees. Heero didn’t chase him far; he only wanted to scare him away. When the sounds of fleeing-for-life faded into the distance, Heero brushed himself off and walked back towards the bungalow.
* * *
Wufei was effectively staking out a shady-looking tiki shack near the beach when suddenly he caught sight of a hairy blur running up ahead, approaching at a speed that looked capable of breaking the sound barrier. He casually stuck out his foot and braced; the hairy running blur inevitably tripped over Wufei’s foot and would have probably placed a hairy running dent into the sandy turf had Wufei not already known who it was.
He grabbed Duo Maxwell by the shoulders and shook him roughly for a few seconds, just to see if he could roll a seven in the pair of dice that constituted for the American’s brain. It must have worked, because Duo seemed to snap out of whatever state of adrenaline-driven panic he had slipped into and looked around as if surprised where he was.
“Wufei? What are you doing out here?”
“I should ask you the same. You didn’t see Heero did y-”
Duo blanched and was suddenly hugging Wufei like a mother saying goodbye to her son as she sends him off to Neverland Ranch. He was mumbling and squeaking softly. Wufei didn’t appreciate the gesture.
“What the-! Maxwell, get the hell off of me before I bodily remove you.”
“He-Heero. I saw him. I saw him, Chang! He came at me like a rabid dog, hackles raised and everything.”
“Heero doesn’t have hackles, stupid.”
“Those were hackles, man. I thought I was a-goners.”
Nearby people were starting to stare. Wufei twitched uncomfortably and considered using the Five-Point Palm Exploding-Heart Technique as a means of fixing the situation, but he could never kill Duo Maxwell. So mercifully.
“Rabid hackles, eh? You must have done something to piss him off.”
“All I did was say I was sorry for wakin’ him up this morning. He didn’t even accept my apology, and I’m the one who got a fucking fist to the windpipe.”
Wufei gently pried Duo off of his person and looked at him seriously. “Maxwell,” he said, “you’re a nice guy-”
Duo smiled.
“-but you have an obnoxious streak a MILE. WIDE.” Wufei held up his arms as far apart as they could be without being dislocated to indicate to Duo just how large of a streak it was. “You’re going to have to start thinking.”
“Thinkin’… how? Rationally?”
“Thinking, period.”
“Oh.”
“A little forethought goes a long way.”
“So does a little foreskin, but I wouldn’t know anything about that ‘cause I was circumcised when I-”
“See, that is exactly what I’m talking about, Maxwell.”
Duo looked lost. “What, foreskin?”
And then Wufei got the same look in his eyes that Heero had right before he charged him, and it was enough to tell Duo that this conversation was over. He walked away with swift and dignified silence.
* * *
Heero walked into the bungalow to find Trowa and Quatre, looking freshly boiled and dressed in the cheap hotel bathrobes, sitting on the de-legged bed. Quatre had his robe pulled down around his waist while Trowa peeled flakes of skin off his back. They looked like a pair of roasted, hairless monkeys grooming one another.
“Look, this one’s the size of a Dorito,” the monkey with the unibang said, showing off the piece of crispy skin he had pulled from the pigment-less monkey.
Heero cleared his throat loudly and tried to conceal his unease.
“Oh hi, Heero,” Quatre chirped. The Latin exfoliation job was obviously cheering him up. “Duo left here as soon as he got his voice back. Did you meet him yet? He was on his way to the dining hall to talk with you.”
“Yeah, I met him.”
“…and?”
“I sold him to cannibals.”
“Heero!”
“Don’t worry, they said they’d butcher him humanely.”
“That’s inexcusable! Duo was so upset that I thought he was going to start crying or something. We were all planning on going to the aquarium today and doing something together for once, and now you’ve gone and botched things up. You go back out there this instant and tell those cannibals to give him back, or else!”
Heero crossed his arms. “Or else what, Twinky?”
Trowa suddenly ripped a sheet of skin off of Quatre’s shoulder blade and said, “I bet we could make a fortune selling dermal cereal to those cannibals. This one’s real crunchy.”
“Hm, or maybe pork rinds. Except they’d be people rinds.”
“Or Winner brand Frosted Skin Flakes. I think it’s a plausible investment.”
Heero didn’t need to hear or see any more; he turned around and went to find Duo.
* * *
Duo was sitting dejectedly on the diving board of the pool at Captain Billy’s ‘resort’, sighing every now and then and hunching lower and lower until he seemed to have his chin on his lap.
This wasn’t exactly how one was supposed to spend a vacation. Vacations consisted of wild parties on yachts, volleyball, surfing, babe-watching, hitting the casinos, getting drunk at luaus, all kinds of fun stuff. Vacations shouldn’t be spent fleeing for your life from friends who would just as soon maim you as shake your hand.
Duo sighed again and looked around. No one was at the pool; anyone with half a brain was down at the shore, living it up on the white sand and blue surf. He closed his eyes and hung his head in defeat. Some vacation this was turning out to be.
He was so engrossed in his own angst that he failed to notice someone creep up the ladder and walk stealthily to the end of the board. That someone raised their foot, placed it on Duo’s back, and shoved him clear off the diving board.
Duo screeched, hit the water face first, and came up with a sputter and several salty curses. Heero watched him from the diving board with his hands in his pockets. Duo was not amused.
“YUY!” he screamed. “YOU BASTARD SON OF A FUCK!”
“That’s a bit redundant, don’t you think?”
“WHY DID YOU DO THAT!? MY CLOTHES ARE SOAKED!”
“They needed a wash, anyway,” Heero replied, stepping down the ladder and meeting Duo, who was dragging himself out of the pool and looking for all the world like a half-drowned cat.
“Listen,” Heero said, “sorry for running you off earlier. I just really hate it when people apologise to me.”
“Fine. Apology accepted,” Duo mumbled, wringing out his braid.
“Quatre said something about an aquarium. Thought what the hell, I’ll go with you losers.”
Duo looked up and blinked. “You? And us? Together?”
“Yeah.”
Duo stared blankly. “Y’know, I would have been more inclined to go had not somebody shoved me into the pool.”
Heero turned around and said over his shoulder. “So? You look terrible dry or wet.” And he walked off.
Duo ground his teeth in extreme annoyance and walked with soggy steps back towards the bungalow. “You look terrible dry or wet,” he mocked in a very nasally voice, even for Heero. “Who are you to talk, ya dumb prick? Kick me into the pool, wouldja? I oughta bust a cap in your ass. Nobody treats Duo Maxwell like garbage!”
He wasn’t paying attention to where he was walking, and crashed right into a cluster of metal trash cans.
* * *
Wufei opened the bungalow door, entered, closed it, turned around, and stopped short. He blinked a few times just to make sure he hadn’t lost his mind, but the image was still there:
Duo Maxwell, armed with a hairdryer and a can of pine-scented Glade, was alternating between spraying himself all over with the Glade and using the hairdryer to dry his clothes.
Wufei coughed loudly and Duo jumped, shutting off the hairdryer and looking rather embarrassed. “Oh! I didn’t hear you come in.”
Wufei crossed his arms and gave him a Look. You know which look I’m talking about: one eyebrow cocked way high up and the other down low, nostrils flared slightly in disgust, upper lip curled at one side like an Elvis Presley impersonator. Yeah, the one you’re making now.
“Maxwell,” he began, “why don’t you take yourself down to the 25¢ Laundromat, throw yourself in a dryer with a bag of garlic, and let yourself baste for about ten minutes, hm? It’d be a lot quicker.” He sniffed and made a face. “And you wouldn’t smell like a burning pine forest, either.”
“I was a little pressed for time.”
“Really. I ran into Barton and Whiner on the way here, and they said that they’re dragging everyone out to the aquarium. I think it would be a wise strategy from now on if we stick togeth-” He stopped and sniffed.
Duo blinked. “Stick together what?”
Wufei stepped a little closer to Duo, took a deep whiff, then wrinkled his face and covered his nose. “Damn, Maxwell!” he exclaimed. “What the hell is that wicked funk on you? Did you crawl into a rotting carcass or something?”
Duo scowled darkly. “I fell into some garbage cans.”
“What was in them, toxic waste? Did you see any biohazard warnings anywhere? Holy shit, I think I need to go put on a hazmat suit.”
Wufei left the bungalow in a state of great disdain, and Duo, sulking, followed a few dozen yards behind him.
* * *
Quatre looked up from a tourist’s guide to St Abalone island attractions in time to see Wufei stomp into view with Duo trailing behind him like a lost dog. Heero and Trowa stopped their game of hopscotch and the five vacationers assembled on the walk outside of the main lobby.
Trowa paused, sniffing the air. “Is there a landfill on fire somewhere?”
Wufei pointed to Duo, who made an evil face and took a step backwards.
Quatre said to Heero, “Glad to see you got Duo back from the cannibals.”
Heero shrugged. “They didn’t want him, anyway. Too much hair to digest.”
“Thanks a lot, guys,” Duo snapped. “I’m really feelin’ the love today.”
Quatre turned his attention back to the tourist’s guide. “Okay, the St Abalone Aquarium,” he read from the guide. “Says here, World’s largest array of tropical fish on earth. View exquisite sea creatures from the Seven Seas and then sample them at our four star restaurant where we serve a variety of cuisines including lobster, squid, and giant clam- ugh! Disgusting.”
“What’s the matter, Quatre? Not into seafood?” Heero asked.
“Absolutely not. I’m a vegetarian.”
“Then I guess seamen doesn’t count,” Duo chuckled.
Trowa did an astounding impression of a bleached bed sheet.
“What was that, Duo?” Quatre asked.
“Nothin’.”
“Alright,” Wufei grumped, “let’s just go look at the stupid-ass fish already.”
Duo blinked rapidly. “Wow. They have fish that look like asses?”
“Shut up, Duo,” said everybody else.
* * *
There had been a rather large throng of people lined up outside the aquarium, but after Duo got in line, the crowds thinned tremendously and the ticket vendor let them in for half price. Probably because the vendor’s eyes were watering and his main focus seemed to be on surviving the stench that invaded his nostrils. Duo took no notice.
Once inside, Trowa and Quatre veered off on their own while Heero pulled Duo aside and whispered, “Have you ever caught wind of burning garbage?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s what you smell like.”
Duo set his jaw stubbornly. “You know,” he stated, “back when I was in Maxwell Church, I got in trouble for beating up a couple kids—and I mean beating them so bad their own mothers wouldn’t recognise ‘em—because they said I stunk. I went to Sister Helen and she said I didn’t smell bad and she hugged me and told me she liked me just the way I was.”
“And where is she now?”
“She’s dead.”
“Case in point.”
Duo, nose to nose with Heero, shook his fist warningly. “One of these days, Yuy. POW.”
Wufei walked past them and snapped, “Will you two stop fucking each other with your eyes and get a move on? The barracudas are waiting.”
In a nearby room lit by black-lights and blue neon bulbs, Quatre stared at the multicoloured schools of tropical fish like he’d never seen them before (he hadn’t), oohing and ahhing and gushing at everything that swam by. Trowa looked bored out of mind, but looking bored out of his mind constituted for 93% of Trowa’s facial expressions anyway. He could have actually been as excited as his companion. Could have. He really wasn’t.
Quatre gasped softly, pointing to a red volitan and tugging on Trowa’s sleeve. “Look,” he whispered. “Isn’t that one just beautiful?”
“Hn. I suppose.”
“I’ve never seen fish like this before. You just don’t get this kind of variety on the colonies. More in one room than I think I’ve seen in my entire life! I didn’t know there were so many!”
“They’re just fish, Quatre.”
“Oh my gosh! Look at that one!” The blond grabbed hold of his tall friend’s hand and pulled him towards a huge tank filled with colourful coral and exotic looking sea creatures. Trowa remained silent as Quatre continued to wow and babble on about undersea rock formations and anemones and seahorses and jellyfish and lots of other things that Trowa wasn’t paying attention to because Quatre hadn’t let go of his hand yet. The Heavyarms pilot was appropriately sweating bullets.
“-and that’s why coral harvesting is really destroying the earth’s oceans. Did you know that coral is actually an animal?”
“…”
“I like that flowery-looking one over there. See it? The other fish seem to like it, too. It sure is pretty in this light, wouldn’t you agree? The glow that comes off of it is just gorgeous, and all this blue water reflecting on the walls… I feel like a mermaid, except the ‘maid’ part, of course. I think I could stay here forever. You know...” Quatre looked up at Trowa with sparkling, watery moon-eyes. “I think this is a very romantic place.”
Trowa’s face almost slid off. He glanced quickly around the room as if searching for an escape route.
“Don’t you think so, Trowa?”
“Uh. Romantic? Sure.”
“Trowa…”
Though he didn’t want to, Trowa—with a nervous, cocked-eyebrow expression on his face—turned his head haltingly (like how you sometimes catch a glimpse of roadkill out of the corner of your eye and you want to somehow look at it and not look at it at the same time) and stared at Quatre. The innocent young lad, with that I-Adore-You-Completely expression on his face, looked like he might have a “Made in Heaven” tag stuck on him somewhere. All he was missing were wings and a halo.
This was all well and good and not really that big of a deal, but when Quatre slowly began to rise on his tiptoes and close his eyes while pursing his lips and leaning towards Trowa, some kind of atomic bomb detonated in Pilot 03’s brain.
“Oh, look! More fish!” he said a little too enthusiastically, pulling his hand out of Quatre’s and walking to a tank on the far side of the room. He pretended to be extremely interested in the rocks at the bottom, but it wasn’t the object of his focus. In fact, he was completely aware of somebody’s broken-hearted expression he saw reflecting on the glass.
“Uh,” he said hesitantly, “I’m going to go look at the troglodyte fossils.”
And then he left the room, but not before tripping over his own feet.
Important note: Trowa is a tightrope walker.
* * *
It was amazing how quickly time passed at the aquarium, and soon the sun was starting to sink low in the western sky. Our five heros regrouped in the central exhibit room of the aquarium and discussed their adventures.
“I saw a shark that was THIS BIG,” Duo rushed, spreading his arms wide. “And it swam around like foom, foom, and then the keepers fed it, and it was all like ga-ROMROMRRARRROM! I was like, aaaaah! And then Heero got to feed the stingrays, and then we like went to the-”
“Duo reeked everyone out,” Heero said. “No crowds. It was nice, if you didn’t mind the smell.”
“I guess you get used to it after a while,” Trowa thought aloud.
Wufei nodded to 03 and 04. “What about you two?”
Trowa said nothing. Quatre looked the other way and muttered, “I saw a clownfish make an ass of himself in front of an angelfish.”
“Was that an angelfish?” Trowa countered. “I thought it was a ravenous piranha.”
“Even I know that piranhas are freshwater fish.”
“Or they just like getting fresh with other fish.”
An awkward silence descended. Heero, Duo and Wufei glanced around uneasily. Then Duo clapped his hands together and said cheerfully, “Well! Who’s up for some fine dining?”
* * *
When our four young heroes and one young Heero entered the restaurant known as Dead Lobster, many of the diners suddenly decided to ask for their cheques and retreat poste-haste while they could still keep their food down. Heero, Duo, Trowa, Quatre, and Wufei—who by now had grown used to the magnificent stench of fiery decay—sat down at a round table for five and looked at the menus.
Duo began to grow a little self conscious as those diners brave enough to stay behind began to asphyxiate or unexpectedly pass out altogether, or possibly one followed by the other. He attempted to hide himself behind his menu until Wufei chastised him about slouching at the table.
The boys went over their menus with curiosity.
“I didn’t know snail shells were edible,” Heero murmured.
“I didn’t know snails were edible,” Wufei responded with disgust. “Leave it Le Français to come up with eating garden snot.”
Trowa said bluntly, “Tone down the bashing, Chang. We’ve got a Frenchy at the table.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“Part French, anyway.”
“Who?”
Everyone slowly turned to stare at Quatre, who tapped his cigarette into the ashtray and stopped sipping his Perrier long enough to snap, “Que la baise regardez-vous?”
Duo, examining what little he could read of the menu, suddenly mooed, “Ooh, this looks good! El Muy Caliente Pescado. Hm. Sounds Asian. I think I’ll get that.”
Heero leaned over to Trowa and whispered, “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re Latin, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? I know you know what this means, Trowa. Don’t hide that Latino pride.”
Trowa almost scowled. “The Very Hot Fish.”
“Thanks, that’s all I needed to know.”
“De nada.”
Wufei stared at his menu. “Uh-oh.”
Trowa and Heero looked up. “Whuh-ut?”
The three huddled like football players as Wufei read under his breath, “It says here in fine print near the Caliente thing, not recommended for people with a heart condition, allergic reactions, Jews, pregnant women, nursing women, women who may become pregnant, anything with a vagina-”
“Quatre,” Heero and Trowa said automatically.
“-elderly people, people under the age of twelve, the list goes on.”
Heero turned to Duo and tapped his shoulder. “You’re over twelve, right?”
“Why? Do twelve-and-unders eat free or something? If that’s so, I just turned eleven last week.”
“You’re not Jewish, are you?”
“Do I look Jewish to you?”
“No,” Heero said. “But you do say oy a lot.”
“No, I’m not Jewish.”
“Okay. That’s all I wanted to know.” Heero turned back to the huddle.
“Should we tell him?” Trowa asked, but Wufei and Heero shook their heads.
“Nah. Let him find out for himself.”
“Well, here’s what it’s made of,” Wufei read. “The Caribbean Devil Fish, marinated slowly in a special blend of Tabasco, jalapeño peppers, cayenne sauce, and paprika.”
“Why do they call it the Devil Fish?” Heero asked.
“It’s probably hotter than hell,” Trowa replied.
“And hurts like the devil going down,” Wufei grinned wickedly. “This is gonna be great.”
The waiter appeared shortly and took their orders, and also asked if Duo had proper health insurance after he had made his selection, but Duo didn’t catch on. Wufei and Heero tried to hide their cackles.
Since Quatre didn’t like seafood (or seamen), he ordered a salad and a baked potato while everyone else indulged themselves in the underwater delicacies: Trowa ordered the cardboard-flavoured oyster soup, Heero decided on the octopus plate, and Wufei ordered the all-you-can-eat Blowfish Buffet, Hooties not included.
A short time later their meals arrived, and Heero motioned to the chefs standing by with a hose and fire extinguisher to go away. They shrugged and left, and everybody turned to watch Duo as he cut off a piece of his Caliente Pescado and put it in his mouth, chatting pleasantly with Quatre and paying no attention.
He chewed. He swallowed. Nothing happened. Everyone sighed disappointedly and began to eat their meals. Suddenly, Duo stopped talking, put his fork down, and placed a hand on his stomach.
“Woah,” he muttered. “I don’t... feel so good.”
“Are you sick?” Heero asked.
“No,” Duo said curiously. “It feels... it feels like I gotta-”
A loud rumble started in his stomach, growing with volume as it travelled up his esophagus and into his throat. Duo’s eyes went wide as he opened his mouth and let out a fearsome, earth-shaking, window-rattling belch that sounded like a blaring tuba with bad vibrato. Three feet of solid fire roared from his mouth and went blasting across the table. Wufei literally darted out of the line of fire just as the flames hit a display of fishing net hanging from the rafters and set it ablaze.
When the flames ceased to spout from his gullet, Duo grabbed his throat with both hands and-
* * *
The big, green alien we now know as Maldaar was sitting in his space pod, constructing a castle out of glass playing cards when all of the sudden-
* * *
-screamed.
* * *
The cards on Maldaar’s table shattered into a million pieces as yet another human scream reverberated through his space pod, shattering, need I say, every glass object in his possession. Even the last card he held in his big, green hand.
He threw the card on the table and cursed, “”
* * *
Duo jumped out of his seat, knocking his chair over.
“JEEEZES! H! TAP-DANCIN’ CHRIIIIIIIIIIIST!” he bellowed. Diners began to scream and flee for their lives while others stared, unable to move. Duo whipped around desperately, looking for any sort of cold liquid, and bolted towards the lobster tank.
Heero stood and shouted, “DUO, DON’T!”
But he had already ripped open the top and submerged himself into the tank up to his shoulders, gulping down mouthful after mouthful.
Wufei sprang up from the table. “THAT’S SALT WATER, MAXWELL!”
Duo realised all too late, and to make matters worse, he had agitated the lobsters crawling around on the bottom. One reached up and clamped a pincher right on his eyelid. Duo burst from the tank, screaming in pain.
“AUGH! AUGH! FUUUUCK! MY EYE, MY EYE! SOMEBODY GET IT OFF!”
Trowa saw the opportunity and stood. “Allow me,” he said, and picked up a nearby chair, raising it over his head and stepping towards the wildly thrashing American.
“GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!”
And Trowa said, “Okay.”
He lifted his leg, drew back for the pitch, and slammed Duo in the nose so hard that the lobster disintegrated and sent Duo flying backwards a good three yards. But even a blow to the head like that couldn’t keep him down for long; with the lobster off his face, he began to run around frantically, smashing into tables, breaking glass, toppling over chairs, and ranting all the while for someone to douse the burning fire in his mouth.
Finally, one of the chefs handed him an extinguisher and Duo put the hose down his throat and turned it on, then sighed in relief.
With the madness concluded, at least for the moment, Quatre crawled out from beneath the table and looked up at Heero. “You might want to leave a tip,” he suggested.
* * *
By the time the small fires had been put out and all the broken glass and water cleaned up, the moon was out and Duo was experiencing repercussions in the form of severe lower-gastrointestinal unrest from drinking the fire extinguisher fluid. His bowels were noisily disagreeing with the bromochloro… difluro… whatever by the time his comrades helped him limp from the restaurant, and so they decided it would be best to ditch Duo like a grenade back at the bungalow and take off, perhaps until the next morning.
Heero, Trowa and Wufei felt a little bit guilty for not alerting Duo to the fact that he had unwittingly eaten Satan’s Inferno Fire-Fish from the Red Reef of Hell for dinner, and did their best to offer him solace. Wufei even proposed to euthanise him for free, but Heero told him not to put the idea into Duo’s mind since in a little while he might actually be willing to accept the gesture.
They left Duo in the bathroom with a 5 gallon bucket just in case he had to throw up and throw down at the same time and didn’t know which end to put in the toilet, and then gathered under the yellow porch light outside the bungalow. They could hear Duo retching and moaning from inside, and spent close to five minutes just staring at each other in silence.
“Well,” Trowa murmured, “I don’t think I’ll be coming back here tonight.”
“Me neither,” Wufei said.
“Ditto.”
“You said it.”
Silence. Retch. Pause. Heave. Moan. Silence.
“I think I’m going to hit the midnight greens,” Heero said, turning around. “Anyone want to volunteer to be my caddy?”
“I’ll be your caddy, Heero,” Quatre said, after giving Trowa the Evil Eye. “It’s nice to know that some people are so accepting.”
“…right. Trowa. Chang. Meet up with you later.”
And Heero and Quatre wandered off into the night, presumably towards the nearest golf course.
Wufei sighed heavily. “Well, Barton, guess it’s just you and me. I’m going to try my luck at the slot machines and then go down to the Pink Clam, but you can tag along, I suppose.”
“What’s the Pink Clam?”
“Titty bar. And if you ask me, you look like you could use some straightening out, so make sure you’ve got lots of fives and ones on you.”
“I thought you didn’t like women?” Trowa mentioned as they began to walk away.
“I don’t,” Wufei replied. “But I’ve got nothing against hoes.”
* * *
Heero—decked out in plaid knickerbockers, a polo shirt, white leather gloves, and a matching plaid beret—swung a 4-iron in a perfect drive to Hole 2. He squinted his eyes and watched the glow-in-the-dark ball drop onto the fairway several hundred yards from the intended target. Though the moon was full and bright, the night sky was partly cloudy, so every now and then Heero and Quatre found themselves lost in the pitch darkness with nothing to do but wait for the moon to come out again. The headlights on the golf cart were busted, too.
“Damn it,” Heero muttered. “I knew I should have used a wedge on a par-5. Kaddi-san! My clubs!”
Quatre lugged the massive bag of golf clubs over to Heero and dropped it on the ground. “You know,” he panted, “I don’t know the first thing about golf, but I know enough to know that you really, really suck.”
Heero perused the selection of irons and said simply, “Hate the game, not the playa.”
“But it doesn’t make sense. Why play a game you’re no good at?”
“I’m Japanese, Quatre. I love golf.” Heero peered down the shaft of lob wedge like a pool stick.
“Even if you suck at it?”
“Even if I suck at it.” Pause. “Quatre, did you just see that?”
“See what?”
“That pineapple out of the corner of my eye.”
“Heero, I can’t see anything out of the corner of your eye.”
“There! Look! There it is again!” Heero exclaimed, pointing off towards where the green met with the edge of the jungle. “Just behind that fan palm. It was a monster of a pineapple, too. I bet you could make 20 upside-down cakes out of it.”
“Heero…”
“It looked pissed, too. I hope you’ve got some kind of tactical firearm, Winner, because my golf-jutsu isn’t what it used to be.”
“No, Heero. I don’t have any kind of tactical firearm.”
“Why the fuck not?” he demanded. “Golfing at 2 AM in tartans, with wild damned pineapples out there, with no WEAPONS? Are you out of you MIND?”
“No,” Quatre sighed, “but it sure sounds like you are.”
“Sugoi. Well then, I suppose we’ll just keep playing and hope that vicious motherfucker doesn’t come after us. Hand me another beer, Kaddi-san. All these pineapples are harshing my buzz.”
Continues in Day Four: Predatory Pineapples & Purloined Persons