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Kyuuketsuki Duo
Demons -- The Sixth Chapter
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	Hell.

	It was the term often, and often erroneously, used by humans to 
describe the demon planes.

	But that was where he was.

	Hell.

	Shit.

	Surrounded by a bunch of mindless, slavering demonlings, looking 
at him with glowing black eyes, ready to feast on his flesh, almost 
brawling with each other to be first in line to get to the fresh meat.  
They reminded him of the amorphous mass of Shinma darklings he had met 
the night he had awakened.  The ones that had slithered over him and 
through him and had bound him still as he had been impaled upon a spear 
of icy darkness.  The ones that had bound Heero helpless to the ground 
as his terrible punishment had been meted out.  Only these were 
hungrier.

	Double shit.

	Oh, and look.  There was that demon he had met back at the old 
man's house, the one with the sharp, pointy everything, following after 
him through the portal, smirking like a madman, and shutting down the 
only quick escape route he could see.

	He was so frozen by the whole tableau that he couldn't even 
think of another expletive, or another variation on the first.

	It wasn't that he was frozen in shock.  Or frozen in panic.  Or 
frozen in fear.  No, this went beyond that, to that realm where the mind 
has just received some unexpected news, and the information hasn't 
really sunken in yet, and it hasn't really occurred to it yet that it 
should be doing something about that information, so busy it was just 
being bemused by the whole situation, by that one single moment in time 
where everything just seemed suspended in frozen animation alongside it 
in a single, surreal shot, like that moment between when you down the 
hard liquor and when you actually feel it burning its way down your 
throat and bringing the tears to your eyes. (1)

	And then time resumed its natural flow, only it was much too 
fast, for he was being confronted by an angry, toothy demon and he had 
had no time to prepare.

	"Nice place you have here," he complimented, the first thing 
that came to mind.  "Decorate it yourself?"  The decor to which Duo 
referred was a remarkably bland landscape, the way you'd imagine hell to 
be if you ever stopped to think about it.  The cracked, barren earth and 
jagged ridges, the obsidian pools that shimmered in the heat, and the 
reddish sky, it all displayed a marvelous absence of imagination.  And, 
Duo thought as he observed the landscape come to an abrupt end seemingly 
a half a mile off, where the demon's territory presumably ended, it all 
lacked power, for if the demon had had power, then it would have had the 
power to create the illusion of infinity in all directions, as the 
other, higher order demons usually did.

	The boring domain, combined with the stereotypical appearance of 
the demon before him, caused Duo to recall this demon from a lesson long 
ago.  It was of a rather generic subtype, one lacking great imagination, 
stunning intelligence, and real status.  There were a great many of 
them, though, and they made great henchdemons for the higher-ups.  None 
of its kind had ever risen above fifth circle, and none ever seemed 
likely to, although this one apparently had other ideas.

	The demon seemed to lack a sense of humor as well.  It 
backhanded the guardian sharply across the face, throwing him to the 
ground.  He caught himself with his hands before he got a face full of 
dirt, his chestnut bangs hiding the irritation glittering dangerously in 
his cold eyes before the look was erased, almost instantaneously, and 
replaced by a suitably innocent, sullen glare of resentment at his 
captor.

	One of the demon's minions came up to nibble on one of his black 
boots before he kicked it away, glad that he had made the dark pants and 
tough footwear a part of his uniform.  Unfortunately, it showed when 
they got dusty.  That was annoying.

	The demon did not lose its snarl.  "You'll soon learn your 
place, human.  You will learn the meaning of pain, and then you will not 
be laughing, you will be begging me to kill you."  The surrounding 
demonlings bobbed their heads in eager agreement.

	Duo lifted an eyebrow in an elegant statement of doubt as he 
absently wished, in some distant part of his mind that was divorced from 
the situation at hand, that he had a band of merry yes-men, too.  
Although his groupies wouldn't be so ugly.  The drool was certainly a 
turnoff.

	"Oh, I'm sorry.  Did I ruin all of your terribly evil and 
devious plans?"  His mouth would no doubt get him into trouble, but he 
just couldn't make it stop.  Everything just seemed so disjointed, as if 
his mind had just settled back to enjoy the show, amused by its own 
antics.  It directed his body to stand and fussily try to brush as much 
of the dust off of his pants as possible, mostly ignoring the imposing 
creature before him.

	The demon howled, and the minor demonlings cowered in response.  
They slowly came back to a quivering, sniveling silence as their leader 
ceased his bellowing and regained a thin veneer of control.  No, if Duo 
had groupies, they wouldn't be cowardly groupies like these.  Those were 
the type that tended to run at the first sign of trouble.  He'd get 
foolishly fanatical groupies that would take hits for him.

	"No, human, you did not ruin all of my plans.  But you will die 
anyway, slowly, and painfully," it hissed.  Duo's expression twitched 
into one of bemused disbelief.  Didn't the guy have anything *but* stock 
phrases?  But hey, what could you expect from a generic henchdemon?  
Certainly not originality.  It was all playing out like a badly written 
story for a play that had gotten two thumbs down.  He supposed that at 
this point, he was to cower in fear, or else proclaim manfully that he 
was not afraid of anything the demon might dish out, that he would 
willingly sacrifice his life to the demon for the greater good.  As his 
eyes amused themselves by looking for seams in the demon costumes, his 
mouth decided to do a little improvisational work with the script.

	"Great.  When do we start?"

	The demon snarled again, giving the guardian just enough warning 
to turn his head with the blow and avoid getting his nose clawed off.  
As it was, there was now a nice set of shallow claw marks on one cheek, 
the other already blossoming with a lovely bruise from the earlier blow.  
Some part of his mind hoped it wouldn't ruin his charming good looks, 
while another wondered what the demon would do to the critics, if he was 
so unreceptive to others' words.

	"Don't worry.  We'll start soon enough.  But first --"

	No, it wasn't actually going to --

	"-- I want to tell you exactly why you're going to die.  You 
will know exactly why my plans have not been entirely ruined.  And you 
will know exactly how useless all of your efforts have been.  And then 
you will die, knowing that it was all in vain."

	It was.  Yup, definitely no originality.  Or intelligence.  
Duo's eyes widened in what the demon mistook for cowardly fear, and it 
was pleased.  It continued.

	"That stone which you went through so much trouble to destroy 
was a collecting device for my human pawn.  I was using it to drain and 
absorb Shinma energy into myself, rather than wasting time fighting with 
other demons to gain rank, and I had already absorbed a good deal before 
you ever showed up.  With the amount of free power I have already gained 
to augment my own, I can now easily rise through the ranks of the demons 
and become a force to be reckoned with.  So you see, you have stopped 
nothing."

	The demon came to stand directly before Duo.  Its eyes narrowed, 
and it picked him up by the front of his shadow-spun shirt until his 
toes just barely brushed the dry dust of the earth.

	"There is Shinma energy in you, boy," it smirked.  "Even if you 
are too craven to use it.  I think that, before I kill you, perhaps I 
will drink your power first.  I think it will make up for the rest of 
the Shinma whose power I will never collect.  And then I shall give you 
over to my minions to play with."  It surveyed its own work on the boy's 
face, observing the wide eyes, porcelain skin, generous mouth, and 
smirked again.  "You have that look about you that says you have a 
beautiful capacity for pain.  It should be interesting."

	No matter what may happen, the show must go on.  And go on it 
seemed to do, with Duo caught in the middle, a member of the audience, 
almost, with nothing that he could say or do changing the predetermined 
course of scenes and acts.  A confident, arrogant twist of his lips that 
could just almost be labeled as a sneer rose to grace Duo's face.

	Oh gods, what he wouldn't have given for a reality check right 
then, to be able to reach out to that presence that had always hovered 
on the edge of his consciousness, the one that he was certain of, the 
one he had always relied on, just to see if what he was seeing was 
really there.  But no, he had denied himself that, shut himself off from 
that reassuring presence and pushed him far, far away, and now there was 
nothing and no one to hold on to, to tell him if this was real, to wake 
him from this dream within a dream within a dream, to stop him from 
free-falling up into the pretty, endless sky, sparkling with a multitude 
of winking stars that shifted about like fireflies, to congeal into one 
gigantic, flashing neon sign...

	...and suddenly, the whole world came into focus.

	He laughed.  It wasn't his usual low chuckle that made you want 
to share in his warm, overflowing mirth.  It was a cold, ugly laugh, the 
kind that said, get out of my way, you aren't even worth my time.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(1) or that one singular moment between when the enemy goes "gundam!"
    and when they get blown away.... see, it's all clear now.  never
    identify your enemy, because the moment you do, you're a goner.

so i'm sitting here trying to uncomickify it by explaining that the
demon isn't very intelligent, but since duo's kinda tripping, he still 
finds the entire situation hilarious, and since it's his pov, he sets
the tone.  i feel like this should be an outtake, but nope, it's the
real thing.  sorry.  i don't really feel like i've trivialized the
gravity of the situation by representing the moment in a humorous
fashion.  this is duo, we're talking here, after all.  he'll get deadly
serious in a moment.


_________________________________________
This piece of fiction is the intellectual 
property of the little turnip that could.  
The basis for this fic, i.e. Gundam Wing, 
Kyuuketsuki Miyu, et al., is the property 
of someone else.  The author can be con-
tacted at jchew@myrealbox.com.  This has 
been an entirely automated message.
http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~jchew/misc/gw.html

last modified : 9/26/2000 22:51:48 PST