Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Heero PoV. Very different take on Duo.
Spoilers: Just Duo and Heero jumping from school to school
Notes: This fic is the reason I am not a member of the SDDI. And despite my full support of the SDDI, I'm not ashamed of that. :)
"==========" - scene change
*blah* - emphasis
When I first met Duo Maxwell, I thought he was an idiot. He could have killed me - he *should* have killed me - and instead he decided to rescue me from an OZ-controlled hospital and recover my Gundam for me. Stealing parts from Deathscythe didn't faze me one bit: if he was going to be a trusting fool, he deserved whatever he got.
Seeing him in battle raised my opinion of him a little. Idiot or no, he was a damned good pilot, and earned his self-imposed title of "God of Death" in spades. If he had a tendency of showing up where I happened to be, so did Relena Darlain, and she was far less useful. I actually found myself looking forward to his company, especially after the Noventa disaster. His incorrigible good humor and unwavering determination helped me keep going, reminded me why we were fighting: so the colonies could enjoy the freedom they deserved. The next time I transferred schools, I forged registration records for him, as well. He didn't mind at all.
That was when things started getting interesting.
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"I figured it out!"
I looked at my roommate, who'd been spending the better part of the past hour trying to get around doing his calculus. Somehow I didn't think he was cheering over an equation he'd just solved.
"I figured it out," Duo repeated. "You're mad I'm a better pilot than you, and sticking me in all these hard-ass classes is your revenge."
It wasn't the strangest theory I'd heard from the American, but it ranked pretty high up there. "Duo," I replied slowly, "I'm in the exact same classes."
"Yeah, but you're good at this stuff!" He flipped back and forth through the pages of his workbook, then signed and tossed the thing aside. "Any chance we'll be out of here before the exam next Friday?"
"Just finish your work." I turned back to my own work, though in my case it was hacking into the records system of a nearby OZ base. Duo's workbook flying at my head was *not* something I'd anticipated, and I barely duck in time. "What was that for?"
"I'm telling you, I can't do this!" For the first time since I'd known him, there was no trace of humor in Duo's expression. He was glaring at me the way I glared at Relena when she made one of her surprise appearances. "Just like I told you at the last school, and the one before. I. Can't. Do. This!"
I didn't say anything at first, just stared at him until he flopped back in his chair with a huff. Then I picked up his workbook and flipped through the pages. The problems were simple enough; most of them I could do in my head. So why was Duo having such a hard time with them?
Only one way to find out.
"All right. What's so hard about these problems?"
He stared at me as if I'd grown another head. "Are you kidding? What isn't hard about them?" Before I could answer he shook his head. "Never mind. You've probably been doing stuff like that since you were a kid."
He said it as though it were unusual. That gave me pause. I knew my upbringing, first by Odin, then by Dr J, had been abnormal. Most people my age were not terrorists or Mobile Suit pilots. But Duo was, and it had never occurred to me that his training might have differed from my own.
I exited the system I'd broken into, leaving a back door for my later return, and broke into the school's main computer. Twenty minutes later I dropped a stack of papers on Duo's desk.
"What's that?" he asked, glaring suspiciously at them over his history book.
"Placement exams." The suspicious look turned to me. "Do as much as you can. I'll use these to select our classes in the future."
Still uncertain, he began skimming through the tests. "Oooookay."
I went back to hacking. It'd be at least two hours before he was done, which gave me ample time to get the personnel and armament listings for our next target. He was still working when I finished, so I opened his workbook and started solving equations on a separate piece of paper.
"I thought you'd finished your homework?"
Duo was standing at my shoulder, the tests in his hands. How someone who talked so much could move so quietly never ceased to amaze me. "Baka. This is yours." I traded papers with him. "Copy it."
"Hey, cool!" He set to work, singing something I couldn't identify, while I checked over his exams.
An hour later, grading complete, I was trying to make sense of the results. Far more problems than I'd anticipated were blank or had attempts at solving which trailed off to nothing. History was a miserable mess, literature not much better, and language a grammatical nightmare. Not a single math equation involving variables was finished, his computer coding was sporadic at best, and the sciences were a confusing mix of precise solutions and incomprehensible theory. Critical thinking and deductive reasoning were definitely his highest scores, and even they were not far above average. What was going on?
It was, I conceded, possible to pilot a MS without an extensive math background. History and literature didn't even come into the equation, so his knowledge of those would depend entirely on his exposure. Science was another matter; he had to have a thorough grasp of physics at the very least, and expert skill in programming. His chemistry should have been off the chart; I've seen him make C4 from scratch. "Duo, did you even make an effort at some of these?"
"Not all of it," he admitted. "A lot of that stuff made no sense, so I didn't even bother. Listen, I didn't copy all your answers the same since Ms. Ablrech already knows I'm no good at this, and if I turn in a perfect paper she'll know I cheated, okay?"
"Hn." More proof of his reasoning skills; I hadn't even considered that possibility. What was I missing in all this?
On impulse, I quickly located and printed one more test. Duo groaned when I handed it to him, complaining about the homework he still had and the new magazine he wanted to read, but set to work. It was relatively short, the grading simple, and if I hadn't seen the results for myself, I would never have believed it.
87.
Duo Maxwell had an IQ of 87.