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Kyuuketsuki Duo
Sanguis Draconis
Part 10
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	Something needed to be done to pass the time as they travelled, 
and so they conversed.  They spoke of many things: the price of gas, the 
principles that went into the foundation of a ward, the recent weather 
trends, the way this one air elemental had followed Quatre around for a 
week like an over-zealous puppy dog.  It was only when they turned to 
Duo to ask his opinion on something that they noticed he had separated 
himself from the group.

	Quatre called his name, his voice hardly needing to be raised to 
carry across the slight distance between them, but the guardian did not 
answer.  He seemed preoccupied with something, not an entirely uncommon 
state of late.  His eyes darted shiftily over the landscape from time to 
time, his head twitching irritably as if to dislodge something on 
occasion.  The others shared a wary look amongst themselves before Hilde 
detached herself from the group and drifted over to Duo's side.

	"Duo-baby?" she asked softly.  "Something wrong?"  His head 
shook again, short and violent in its abruptness, and she could not tell 
whether that was a negative answer or more of what they had been 
observing.  His lips moved silently, and she could not tell whether the 
intended recipient of his unspoken words was her or himself.  "Duo?"

	"Do you hear that?" he ground out through gritted teeth, and 
almost before the words were out he jerked his head again.  "No, of 
course you don't hear that.  Of course.  All for me.  Just for me.  
Isn't that always right?  Well, you know what?  Stop it already.  Just 
stop it.  I'm sick and tired of being singled out and special and 
unique.  There is no good reason why I should be the only one that has 
to put up with this.  Do you hear me?  Can you even hear yourself over 
all the racket you're making?!  Just shut the hell up already!!"

	The others ground to a halt, and no one could say whether it was 
a better thing or a worse thing that Duo's shouted words had not seemed 
to be directed at any of them, but rather the empty land around them.  
One thing that did occur to each of them, however, as they bore witness 
to the guardian smacking the side of his head with the flat of his own 
hand, was, 'has he gone mad?'

	Hilde hurried forward a few steps to catch up to him, his barely 
hunched figure tracing a not quite straight path in the dust as he 
continued along his way, oblivious or simply uncaring of his companions.  
"Duo?  What do you hear?"

	Her cautious hand on his arm finally pulled him to a stop and he 
turned to pin her in her place with a pair of wide, intense eyes, their 
color shifting restlessly in tune with their owner from lavender to 
blue-violet and back again.  "This land...," he started quietly, before 
bursting out in full force.  "This land is freakin' BUZZING at me!"  He 
paused for a deep breath, and when he continued it was at a lower 
volume, although the cause was not that he had calmed, so much as had 
decided to grit his teeth in annoyance once more.  "It's been buzzing at 
me for a while now and I can't get it to shut up.  Although technically 
it's probably just my power buzzing in response to this stupid place.  
Either way, it's driving me crazy."

	"Is this normal?"  Wufei's voice cut cleanly through the edged 
humming in his mind.

	Duo laughed, and it was an almost disturbing sound to behold.  
"Is what normal?  Me being crazy?  Yeah, that's normal.  Buzzing?  Not 
so normal.  Buzzing while in a place like this?  I wouldn't know.  Never 
been in a place like this before.  So, normal?  Can't say.  Unexpected?  
Not really.  Power's been unruly for a while now.  Probably just ran 
into a bad patch of free energy or something."

	"So we shouldn't be alarmed?"

	"Ha!  There's always a reason to be alarmed."

	Wufei frowned, Duo's obvious imbalance making it difficult to 
determine the usefulness of that answer.

	Meiran tugged at his sleeve.  "What, you think this might be the 
trouble you were talking about earlier?"

	"Trouble?" Duo interjected, a false merriment, or perhaps it was 
madness, tainting his tone.  He skipped forward a few steps and got the 
group moving forward again, although at a slower pace.  "There's always 
trouble."

	Wufei cast an irritated glare at him, but had to grudgingly 
agree.  "There's always trouble.  The question is merely, how much and 
what kind of trouble will... 'this' cause?"  He hesitated to place a 
label on it, for fear of limiting their point of view with an improperly 
restrictive word.

	Quatre took a moment to take a reading off the ether around 
them.  "Everything seems normal to me.  I'm not getting any hostility or 
malice or anything that might indicate something like a trap or attack."

	"But the winds around here are wild, aren't they?" Meiran 
probed.  Quatre nodded.  "Could that be covering something up?"

	"I suppose.  It does make it harder to read anything.  But are 
you proposing that our enemy has chosen to try and drive Duo insane?"

	"Incapacitate him, maybe?"  She glanced at the long braid 
bouncing obediently behind its currently unbalanced master.  "I hope 
he's not hearing voices.  Anyone else notice he said that crazy was 
normal for him?  Anyway, maybe keep him from sensing something?"

	"I can't sense a bloody thing over all this white noise," Duo 
blithely threw over his shoulder in a singsong tone.  It was just a 
little louder than was necessary, as if he had to raise his voice to be 
heard over the noise in his head.

	"Maybe we should stop until we can figure this out," Quatre 
suggested.  "If there really is a trap up ahead somewhere, we don't want 
to walk right into it."

	Meiran disagreed.  "But if it's just a patch of bad energy 
that's causing this, like Duo said, even if someone planned it that way, 
then we should keep going and try to get clear of it.  Wufei?  What do 
you--"

	"Too late."  Duo's voice rang out quite lucidly before he 
stumbled to his knees.

	"Wh--?"  Suddenly her hands were full as Wufei crumpled silently 
beside her.  Trowa was running swiftly up to Duo to catch him before he 
planted his face in the dust.  Hilde was a few steps behind him.  All of 
them glanced around in high alert, expecting to be either attacked or 
stricken unconscious next, but it seemed that the strange malady had 
chosen only to strike the two already affected.

	Trowa and Hilde hefted Duo's limp body up after attempting 
futilely to rouse him and brought him back to the others, where Meiran 
was turning to Quatre for answers.  "What's happened to them?" she 
demanded.

	There was a brief moment of 'how the hell should I know?' in his 
eyes before they flashed with the determination to find out.  "Sure, Duo 
alone," he muttered to himself as he checked them out with his 
othersenses.  "But why Wufei as well?"  His investigation was cut short 
by the sense of an intruder in their midst.

	"Actually," a bored feminine voice drawled, "that should be the 
other way around."

	"You!" Meiran hissed accusingly.

                              ************

	He is walking one moment and falling the next.  It seems the 
ground disappears from beneath his feet, and in the blink of an eye it 
is back again, only it is a different ground.  Where once the landscape 
was barren and plain, he now is surrounded by an elegant simplicity of 
stones and trees and shrubbery.

	He knows this place.  He looks up into the early morning sky and 
realizes he knows this time as well.  His mind denies it, but his feet 
move forward against his will, retracing the steps he took that day.

	Fast forward.

	He is confronting his cousin by the stone shrine where it all 
started, his wicked girlfriend by his side.  He meets her eyes, and they 
flare with a dark power.  No, that didn't happen, he thinks, but it 
happens now, and it forces him to wonder if he should have realized 
something was amiss sooner.  There had been so much _other_ about her, 
but it had been simple and mundane, Western, foreign, disrespectful.  It 
hadn't screamed demon, not like the image of the demon before him now 
did.  He couldn't have known.  Could he?

	They are gone, and he is left studying the shrine in silence.  
There is a prickle of pride as he uses his newly awakened senses to see 
what he could not see before, but alas, does he truly not see?  The 
wards are dark and twisted, malignant and corrupted, weakened and ready 
to be broken.  No, that wasn't there, he thinks, but he remembers 
something else.  He remembers that day, and looking at the ward, and 
seeing the darkness that lay within, and thinking it the result of what 
was bound there.  That was only natural, was it not?  It had not been as 
overtly transformed as he sees it before him now, but there had been a 
hint, an inkling, a clue.  Should he have known?

	Fast forward.

	A shrill alarm pierces the night, and they know trouble is 
afoot.  He is sent after the sword, but when he gets to its resting 
place, it is empty.  Who could have taken it?  Images flash before his 
eyes, complete with sound bites.  His cousin sneers at him, mocks their 
bloodline, disdains their way of life, and yet his eyes always rest 
avariciously upon the sword, a powerful artifact denied to him when he 
denied his birthright.  Should they not have known his designs?  Had it 
not been obvious that he hungered for more than they could give him?

	Fast forward.

	A demoness is holding the sword of Shenlong, and the ancient 
blade cries out in outrage.  Reclaim me! it demands, and he must answer 
its call.  He fights against the demoness, but his blows are warded off 
with a scornful ease.  Every move in their deadly dance whispers to him 
that he is powerless against her, but he struggles to ground himself in 
the present. (what is the present?) He is trained now, he has come a 
long way from the immature adolescent that fought this battle so many 
years ago, and he denies the insidious murmurs of the vision that are 
attempting to persuade him otherwise.  He is angry that she would twist 
the truth so, and with a powerful strike intends to knock her down --

	-- but she is suddenly not there, and in her place is Master Oh.  
His open-palmed blow lands true upon his chest and the elder falls to 
the ground, broken.  No! his mind wails, this did not happen!

	Didn't it? a voice whispers.  Did the old man not give the last 
of his life to conjure the attack against the demoness, to overcome her 
where he, the unready youth, could not?  If he had not failed to defeat 
her himself, then would not the master have been able to save that last 
bit of his failing energy for himself?  Could he not have survived the 
night?

	No!  The demon tore right through the elder, disrupting his 
energy patterns beyond repair.  He was as good as dead the moment they 
entered the clearing.

	Are you really so certain of that?

	He is given no time to answer as --

	Fast forward.

	His father has been gravely wounded while he was being toyed 
with by the she-demon.  He hands over the sword to his father and knows 
that he is handing him his death.  Why could he not have been strong 
enough to take his father's place?

	They follow the path of the demon's destruction through their 
home, and spy bodies lying lifeless left and right.  These were branches 
off the main family line.  It was not their duty to die for the black 
dragon's wards, and yet they did.  Why is -he- still alive?

	Epyon is holding a woman's limp body up, and then he is tossing 
her aside.  It is his mother, but there is nothing left of her.  The 
demon has stolen it all.  So why does his mother yet breathe?  He needs 
to correct this abomination, but try as he might, he cannot.  He fails 
her and condemns her to a meaningless existence, and it is a desecration 
of her corpse.  The fact that her heart yet beats is a mere 
technicality.

	His father falls beneath the black dragon's flail, and he is 
powerless to stop it.  Epyon's image shimmers in the shadows cast by the 
raging flames around them, and it grows and stretches until it seems to 
fill the entire clearing with its evil presence.  He is the focus of its 
intensity, and he is frozen by its dark regard.  It laughs at him, and 
then it disappears into the night, leaving this mortal realm for one 
where he cannot follow.

	He is the only one left standing amid the wreckage.  Why?  Why 
him?

	Rewind.

	Epyon is holding a woman's limp body up, and then he is tossing 
her aside.  It is Meiran, but there is nothing left of her.  Somehow, 
that does not rob her of the ability to stare at him through lifeless 
eyes that demand answers from him.  Why?  Why couldn't you save me?

	- No!  This will not be! -

	But who is there left to hear his cries?

	Epyon's image shimmers in the shadows cast by the raging flames 
around them, and it grows and stretches until it seems to fill the 
entire clearing with its presence.  Otherworldly green flames regard him 
mockingly from beneath the ridge of a horned helm.  The fires around 
them flare for an instant, blinding him, and when he can see again, the 
helm that hid the demon's features is gone, and now the same glowing 
green eyes peer out at him from his own grinning face.  He is Epyon, and 
he has killed her.  He has killed them all.

	Denial fills his being.  He channels it with his will until it 
becomes a force unto itself.  This is not how it was, and this is not 
how it will be.  Bellowing a wordless cry of rage against the blatant 
untruth being displayed before his eyes, he tears himself free from the 
paralysis that seized him and snatches up the sword he himself had 
planted point-down into the ground.  It is cold for a moment, before the 
heat of his anger and his righteous fury stokes its flames to life.

	It responds to his need, and together they slash their way 
through the lying phantasm.  The image falls in two, splits and reforms 
into more of the same.  In another swift motion, he swings his sword 
once more, and where once there were two, now there are three.  They 
laugh at him in a jarring chorus of accusation that threatens to drown 
him in recrimination, but he looks again at the ruins of his family's 
home and braces himself against the onslaught.  He fixes in his mind the 
same icy determination he once felt in this place and prepares himself 
for a long battle.

                              ************

	"What have you done to them?"

	"Now let's see what we have here," the demoness said, ignoring 
Meiran's demand for an answer.  She picked her way over to the group, 
close enough to be a threat, but not close enough to be threatened.  
"The little dragon has certainly chosen interesting company to keep.  A 
Shinma, a succubus, and three humans."  She laughed, and it wasn't 
pleasant.  "Just what does he hope to accomplish with this?"

	"What did you do to them?" Meiran repeated flatly, carefully 
lowering Wufei to the ground beside the fallen guardian.

	The demon in the snug white dress glanced at her as if noticing 
her presence for the first time, a move calculated deliberately to be 
insulting.  "Why, I just encouraged the local power streams to be 
responsive to the emotional energy I thought the boy might be carrying 
about with him.  Who knows how the Shinma got caught up in it as well.  
I hadn't thought them capable of such things."  She shrugged 
nonchalantly.  "Oh well.  The more the merrier, I suppose."

	Quatre drew up even with Meiran and together they stood in front 
of their unconscious comrades.  It was only the one demoness they were 
up against, but he didn't want to underestimate her.  He called to mind 
everything Wufei had said about Lei Fang.  He decided that she was one 
of the more physical demons since she had engaged in hand-to-hand combat 
with Wufei, once upon a time.  A quick glance at her aura did not refute 
that.  There was also a good chance that although she was dangerous, she 
wasn't all that sharp, given that she didn't seem to realize that Duo 
was no ordinary Shinma, and that the humans weren't ordinary humans.  As 
a demon, she would probably not have too many reasons to be well-versed 
in the ways of others.  Unless, of course, she was just pretending 
ignorance, but Quatre saw no good advantage in that.

	His mind raced to identify her goals.  Was she there to kill 
them?  Toy with them?  Capture them?  From the disdain in her voice, it 
seemed as if she did not consider them to be any great threat.  That 
would definitely be to their advantage.  How twisted was her master?  
Was he practical enough to eliminate anything remotely resembling a 
threat, or was he arrogant enough to enjoy crushing an upstart 
challenger at the final moment?  Given that Epyon had not killed Wufei 
when he had the chance, so many years ago, and that over the intervening 
years he had never made a move to destroy the last of the Chang line, 
Quatre leaned more towards the latter than the former.  But Lei Fang was 
here now.  Perhaps she was there to evaluate them?  Or given that she 
had taken pains to incapacitate Wufei, perhaps she simply wanted to kill 
all of his companions and then watch him squirm.  That idea did not 
please him.

	He decided that he might as well go ahead and ask the demon what 
she wanted.  She'd probably tell them, with a laugh and a sneer, of 
course.  "What do you want with us?"

	As predicted, her crimson lips split into a mean-spirited grin.  
"I want nothing from you.  Only the quaint pleasure of your company, and 
perhaps the scent of your blood.  Oh, and the screams of your dying, of 
course.  We mustn't forget that."  See now?  She answered his question.

	Meiran sneered right back at her, refusing to be fazed by this 
hateful creature.  "You won't take us so easily."

	"What do you think you could possibly do, little girl?"

	Oh, she knew what she -wanted- to do, that was for certain, but 
that wasn't necessarily what she -could- do.  She was also mindful of 
the two unconscious figures behind her.  Her faith in them did not 
waver, and she fully expected them to make a full recovery.  Would they 
wake on their own, given time?  Or would they have to bear them away 
somewhere?  Would those standing have to fight to win, stall, or flee?

	Quatre elected to keep her talking to win them time, although 
time to do what, he didn't quite know yet.  Time was always good, 
though.  Half a mind he kept on the conversation at hand, and the other 
half he turned towards the trap that held their two friends.  He wasn't 
having any luck figuring out how to wake them up, though.  Perhaps Hilde 
and Trowa, kneeling by their sides, might be able to do something.  "If 
we're really so powerless, then why bother take us out?"

	"Why not?"  She brushed a non-existent piece of dust off of her 
preternaturally pristine bodice.  "It's always fun killing humans."

	Oh.  He almost pointed out that she didn't seem to be enjoying 
herself yet, but he hardly wanted to encourage her.  Instead, he ran 
through a list of things he could do that might be useful against a 
demon of her persuasions.

	"God, are you always this charming?" Meiran complained, 
discreetly shifting her weight to a ready position.  She couldn't fight 
as well as Wufei, but she could fight pretty darn well.

	Lei Fang laughed it off.  "Why do you follow the boy?  He's not 
worth it, you know."

	"What would you know of him?"

	"I know that he somehow managed to live when the rest of his 
household was slaughtered.  How do you suppose that is?"

	"If you're trying to suggest that he was a coward, forget it."  
If he was a coward, then he wouldn't be here.

	"Or perhaps Lord Epyon spared him for a reason?"

	"Yeah, typical evil villain flaw -- overwhelming arrogance.  It 
always gets them killed in the end, you know."

	"Somehow I doubt that.  No one's managed to kill him yet."

	"It isn't the end, yet."

	Lei Fang laughed her somehow chilling, feminine laugh again.  
"Maybe it will be for you."

                              ************

	His vision starts on a lonely starlit trail.  He looks around 
himself with a detached curiosity.  The landscape seems painted in the 
drab sepia tones of memory.  He knows what will happen if he takes a 
step forward, and so he does, and closes his eyes briefly as the 
expected wave of sensation passes through his mind.  Danger and death 
race down his nerves, a combination thrilling for only a moment before 
the familiarity kicks in, the whiff of smoke and the destruction of 
innocents.  He opens his eyes and stares off into the distance.  The end 
of the road is beyond the rise of the land, but he gazes fixedly at it 
as if he can see it anyway.

	With a small sigh, he walks.  His dream-feet still know the path 
in a way his real-feet probably wouldn't anymore.  It has been so many 
years that he has lost count, but it doesn't matter, because the path 
probably doesn't even exist anymore.  He wouldn't know.  He has never 
been back.

	The othercurrents urge him to fly, to speed over the land in a 
frenzied rush, but he ignores the call.  He knows better than that.  It 
won't make a difference, anyway.  He takes his time, and inhales the 
pain on the winds, calmly appreciating its finer nuances in a way he 
couldn't have before.  By the time he reaches the ruins of the place he 
once called home, he has so thoroughly familiarized himself with the 
feel of the scene that he is singularly unimpressed by it.

	The moaning of the dead and dying rises a notch, and he 
dismisses it.  He hears his name mentioned a few times, but that too 
fails to affect him.  Bodies twitch, eyes open to stare accusingly at 
him, fingers even point, but he is unmoved.  Flames jump out from the 
wreckage to consume him, reduce him to the state of its other victims, 
but he remains unburnt.

	He smiles grimly as the scene seems to falter.  He decides to 
throw it for another loop and tours the one-sided battlefield, studying 
each of the faces that he could see on the mangled, fallen bodies, and 
as he does so, their twisted limbs relax, their wails fade away, and 
they cease to bother him further.

	An inky blackness coalesces around him, surrounds him in a 
claustrophobic ring.  A thousand grating voices that once had the power 
to bring him to his knees now only makes him wince in irritation as they 
attempt to overwhelm the walls of his mind.  A deeper-than-black hand 
reaches out of the darkness to hurtle itself straight at his heart, but 
he brushes the attack aside easily, and the next, and the next.

	He shakes his head, disappointed condescension dripping from the 
motion as he waves his hand and forces the shadows back into the 
oblivion from whence they came.

	Behind the darkness stands a figure.  Its facade is a faint echo 
of the one he recalls from that night, whose minions bound his partner 
and would have taken their bloodthirsty pleasure in their newly-awakened 
prey.  Oddly enough, that creature never deigned to haunt his dreams.

	This creature is different.  It is not just another illusion, 
not as the others were.  He feels it.  It is the manifestation of the 
power that attempts to trap him now, and borrows from the consciousness 
of this false nightmare to communicate.  ::Impressive,:: it intones.  
::No one has ever been able to elude me so.::

	He chuckles nastily.  It cannot fool him.  The impressions from 
his mindvoice do not hint at it being impressed, but rather confused.  
It wishes to know how he has defeated its power.  He chooses to let it 
in on the secret.  ::This is all so passé.::

	:: ??? ::  The power seeks to draw the answer from the surface 
of his mind, but he holds onto his thoughts covetously and does not give 
ground.

	::Do you think I haven't done this before?  Do you think I've 
never seen this in a thousand different variations?  Do you think I 
close my eyes and fall into a dreamless slumber?  Do you think my 
conscience and my guilt lie dormant beneath my trappings?  You can throw 
nothing at me that I have not already had thrown at me.  I have been 
there, done that, and overcome it all.  You are a mere amateur when 
compared to my own ability for self-flagellation.  Your imagination is 
nothing when compared to the guilt-ghosts that I have conjured for 
myself.::  He has to laugh again, and even the shadows seem to retreat 
from the sound's dark overtones.  He has never thought he might take 
pride in such a thing.

	The trap retreats, regroups, sallies forth one last valiant time 
in an attempt to carry out its purpose.  It musters up an image of his 
partner, bound and bleeding beneath shackles that he himself has imposed 
upon him.  No effect.  It bombards him with bloodlust and thirst and the 
powerful pull of humanity's life force.  No effect.  It pulls a 
long-distant memory of his parents out, abandoning him to the mercy of 
the humans before being brutally slaughtered, their last thoughts of how 
their sacrifice was worth it if only their child could escape their 
curse.  Hmm, that is actually a line of thought he has not thoroughly 
explored, but still, it invokes nothing more than a passing curiosity.

	It screams in frustration.  ::How?:: it rails at him.  ::How do 
you see through it all?::

	He bares his teeth humorlessly at it before strolling over to 
the image of his partner lying chained to the earth.  He crouches and 
runs his fingers gently down the side of his partner's face, and eyes 
once pain-fogged clear immediately and smile up at him.  The restraints 
fall away, and then the image dissolves.

	He straightens and confronts the howling entity.  ::Enough of 
this.::

	It has one last thing to throw at him, and that is itself.  It 
attacks him inelegantly in all of its impotent glory, and is cast aside 
before it even reaches him.

	He looks around at the scene, already fading to tones of gray, 
and he sighs, thinking of his truth, and of how he is so far away right 
now.  For now, he wraps the indifference a little more snugly around 
himself like a blanket, and reminds himself that it can keep the chill 
out, but it can't keep him warm at night.  Well, perhaps when his 
security blanket -- his warm, familiar, soul-mated one -- returns, he 
can tell him of this little adventure, and how he managed to defeat this 
silly little thing all by himself.  But until then, he figures, he had 
best go find the other one caught up in this trap.

                              ************

	When Lei Fang moved forward with the obvious intention of 
attacking, Meiran moved forward to meet her, telling herself very firmly 
not to think about what she was planning on doing.  She was not about to 
get into a fight with a demon that even Wufei hadn't been able to 
defeat.  No, sir, she was just going to concentrate on the fight, one 
blow at a time.

	When the attack came, it wasn't too fearsome.  Mild enough to 
defend against, but hard enough to bruise.  Meiran decided that the 
demoness was playing with her, or testing her, perhaps.  She decided 
that 'playing' was the better option.  She always performed better when 
she felt she had something to prove to someone that had pissed her off.

	With a glance at the others to make sure they would guard their 
stricken friends, Quatre did what he could to assist in the fight.  
Timing the use of his power for its best advantage, for the demoness 
still didn't know that he had any power, he waited patiently, and when 
the opportunity arose, he plunged his power into the ground and called 
forth the earth to do his bidding.

	The elemental power was sluggish here, but it responded to his 
will, heaving itself upwards to break into large, jagged chunks just 
behind Lei Fang.  Maneuvered into stepping back in order to counter one 
of Meiran's kicks, she tripped over the newly arisen land and went down 
ungracefully.  Meiran retreated a short distance to avoid getting caught 
up in whatever Quatre was doing, but she cursed the fact that she had 
nothing more lethal than her bare hands with which to strike at the 
demon while she was vulnerable.

	The scowling demoness regained her feet quickly, but with the 
speed of a thought, Quatre encased her feet in earth and stopped her 
from advancing.  She paused in her tracks, and then she laughed darkly.  
"What is hell coming to when even the humans have powers of their own?"

	The earth was hers to command as well, to some degree, for this 
place was ever willing to be shaped by the order of a demon, and she 
shattered the casings that held her.  "You will pay for that insult, 
human."

	Quatre was not particularly eager to pay that price, and yet he 
continued to incur a greater cost.  A fire elemental was called to dance 
by Lei Fang's feet and set the back edge of her dress aflame.  There was 
a brief, comical moment during which she was unaware of it, after which 
her eyes widened in disbelief at the human's presumptuous prank.  Meiran 
smirked unrepentantly as the demoness tried once to turn and spy the 
damage, and hoped she would get to see her stop, drop, and roll, but 
alas, Lei Fang managed to dampen the flames with some sort of force.

	Death was being broadcast quite clearly now from outraged 
obsidian eyes.

                              ************

	His body aches, but in that satisfying way that one gets after a 
good workout.  His enemies have fallen, and he is left standing.  Very 
satisfying indeed.

	He straightens and surveys his surroundings, hoping that 
something might have changed since the defeat of his adversaries, but 
nothing has.  He still stands amid the burning ruins of his home, among 
the corpses of his family.

	"The demons are good at that, aren't they?"

	He whirls around, sword at the ready, but sees that it is only 
the guardian.  Somehow, he is not surprised that the seemingly eternal 
youth is in his vision.  He catches the attention of the guardian, and 
sees flames from the wreckage reflected in his large, luminous eyes, 
only somehow he knows that they are not simply echoes of the scene 
before them now.  It is the guardian's own deep pain he is witnessing, 
smoldering ruins from another time.  The boy with the braid understands.  
They are, perhaps, more alike than he has ever suspected, but oddly, he 
finds that he is not unnerved by that fact.  Instead, he feels... 
relieved.

	"Let's get out of here."

	He agrees.

                              ************

	With a snarl painted on her doll-like features, Lei Fang went 
after the insolent little blonde.  The others became inconsequential 
compared to the indignity he had inflicted upon her.  She would rend him 
apart with her bare hands, and then finish off the others.  It did not 
occur to her that she may have underestimated her prey.

	Quatre met her attack with a solidly constructed shield, 
reminding himself that he had encountered other demons out for his 
blood, and he had survived.  This would be no different.  His belief 
only reinforced his power, and the strike was deflected to the side with 
only a faint 'oof' to show for the force behind the blow.  Three punches 
were knocked aside in this manner before his opponent dropped into a 
crouch to sweep kick him.

	With a silent curse, Quatre realized his shielding didn't extend 
down to cover his feet.  That was an amateur's mistake.  He managed to 
hastily stretch his power down, enough to avoid damage, but he was 
off-balance and stumbled back from the hit.  When he saw that Lei Fang 
was moving on to press her advantage, he threw a bit of wind at her, 
pushing her back even as he fell to the ground.

	Meiran was covering the distance between them to take the 
pressure off of him when she discovered that someone beat her to it.  
Light glinted off metal as it slid through the air in a smooth arc that 
bit through the demon's side beneath an outstretched arm.

	Lei Fang screeched in outrage, the sound somehow incongruous 
with the rest of her image, and as she spun to deal with this new 
threat, the blade flashed forth once more with painful intent.

	"Wu--," Meiran started to herself, overjoyed that he had somehow 
woken, but the impression was proven false as Lei Fang pulled back and 
revealed the blade to be not a sword, but simply a knife, wielded 
skillfully by an auburn-haired man with a fiery glare for the demon 
standing before him.  Lei Fang lashed out at him automatically in 
retaliation, scoring only a shallow gash dangerously close to one 
emerald eye when he didn't quite dodge quickly enough to escape damage 
altogether.  He spun away with an almost unnatural grace to settle into 
a low defensive position, clearly stating without words that he would 
not hesitate to use his blade again if pressed.

	Lei Fang hissed at him, a hand pressed against the bleeding 
wound in her side.  This was not how things were supposed to happen.  
She thought the girl she could have taken easily enough, no matter her 
inner strength, but that strange blonde, how had he come to have power 
over the elements?  And this even more strange man that faced her with 
nothing more than a knife.  What bizarre anomaly had created such a 
creature?  And was Chang aware of what sort of companions he had 
gathered to his side?

	It was as if the thought summoned the man's consciousness.  
Hilde jumped when Duo's eyes snapped open suddenly, to be followed by 
the more disoriented blinking of Wufei.  He shook off the lingering 
effects of the trap quickly enough when his eyes were drawn to the 
standoff taking place not too far away.  Wufei climbed swiftly to his 
feet and slid the sword from his scabbard.  "Lei Fang!" he spat out 
harshly.

	She turned, and saw their would-be nemesis rising to his feet, 
and the Shinma beside him ignoring the offered hand of the succubus to 
rise gracefully on his own, and decided that the circumstances demanded 
she drop her former plans.  The trap had gone awry; very well, they 
would try again later, with resources more appropriate to their prey.  
No matter the surprising strength of Chang's allies, they would still be 
no threat to Epyon.  He was far beyond their reach.

	She smiled coldly for the boy.  "Found your way out of my little 
trap, I see.  Ah, well.  We shall meet again."  She faded from view, but 
in her place summoned seven minor demons to keep them entertained.

	Henchdemons though they were, they were still dark, leathery and 
toothy, and all too ready to attack.  With sinuous grace, they divided 
the prey amongst themselves and arranged their number accordingly.

	Wufei immediately left Duo behind to deal with the three that 
had selected the guardian as the target and moved to join Meiran and the 
others.  She almost wanted to protest when he pushed her back none too 
gently to stand behind him, but he was the one armed with the sword, 
after all.  She had nothing but a handful of bruises to her name.

	Quatre and Trowa stood behind them, guarding their backs, and 
the four remaining demons fanned out to encircle them.  The spiritualist 
readied his arsenal as they began their approach, but when Trowa took a 
step forward, they seemed to falter and pause in their steps.  His knife 
was still bared, but Quatre somehow doubted that that was what was 
stopping them.  He didn't spare the thought to consider the matter, 
however, and took the brief opportunity to glance over his shoulder to 
see how the others were faring.

	Wufei had closed with one of the four-legged creatures in 
combat, metal meeting with claw and tooth, and the other looked prepared 
to join the fray.  Using the tiny respite that Trowa had somehow won 
them on their side of the battle, Quatre called forth a spirit of fire 
to harass the second beast, nipping and darting at it in an attempt to 
keep it occupied while Wufei dealt with the first.

	Quatre turned his attention back to his own pair of demons.  
They appeared to be recovering from the momentary lapse and resumed 
their ominous approach, albeit in a somewhat less direct manner than 
before.  Whatever the reason for it, Quatre concentrated and wove a net 
of power that first stood as a barrier between them.  They jumped back 
as if shocked when they encountered it, but it did not deter them for 
long as they moved to circumvent it.  The net proved to be unamenable to 
that as a clean, glowing power was sent surging through the array.  It 
stretched and twisted to blanket the demons, and as they attempted to 
throw it off, they only further tangled themselves in it, and where it 
touched them, it burned.

	They growled and yipped and snarled, but the sounds of 
displeasure were nothing compared to the desperate howl that split the 
air from the third front of the battle.  Duo had his scythe in hand, and 
his first opponent lay oozing ichor upon the ground from the gaping 
wounds that marked the former resting places of its dismembered limbs.  
The remaining beasts circled warily beyond the reach of his deadly 
blade, but that was not an obstacle for the Shinma guardian.

	There were no shadows in this place, but that did not present a 
problem.  Violet lightning gathered swiftly in Duo's palm at his 
command, and with a flick of his wrist, he sent it towards one of the 
creatures.  It struck true, momentarily disabling the one demon while he 
took advantage of the dark glow the power gave off.  A faint shadow was 
cast by the second demon in that violet light, and as soon as the first 
bolt was thrown, Duo had summoned a thin shard of darkness to his hand.  
He sent it slicing through the air to pierce the fleeting shadow, 
binding the creature where it stood, and with a grim smile on his face 
turned his attention back to its companion.

	Wufei had dispatched his first opponent and now fought the 
second.  The length of metal he wielded was enough to put crucial 
distance between them, and he scored a number of cuts on it while he 
danced out of its range.  The battle was concluded quickly enough after 
he sliced it across its eyes.

	One of Quatre's demons had succumbed to the weave of power that 
clung to its skin, but its partner yet struggled.  It may have for a 
while yet, had not an obsidian lance flown through the air to cleave 
effortlessly through the net and stake it through its heart.  He turned, 
and saw Duo's outstretched hand and his coldly amused expression.  "Were 
you planning on keeping it as a pet or something, Quatre?"  Of the last 
two demons the guardian fought, one must have been that formless pile of 
something on the ground, and the other was nowhere to be seen.

	Something about those crystalline eyes made him abort his 
stutter of an answer, and he was relieved when Hilde's gentle hand on 
the guardian's elbow drew his attention away.  With a faintly guilty 
sigh, he turned back to the others.  "Everyone okay?"

	He received their affirmatives with a nod, but did not fail to 
notice the cut that was still oozing blood over Trowa's eye.  "I didn't 
know you could fight with a knife, Trowa," he said as he fumbled through 
his pockets to find something to clean the wound with.

	"My sister gave it to me," Trowa responded blandly, unconcerned 
with the blood creeping down the side of his face.

	"Oh."  Quatre supposed he couldn't be surprised.  He'd met the 
woman a few times.  Her interests and hobbies were unusual, to say the 
least.  "And how do you... do whatever it is you do, anyway?  You know, 
keep sneaking up on people and the like.  And those demons just looked 
at you and stopped.  Aha!"  He pulled out a handkerchief from his coat 
pocket.

	As he reached out to wipe up the blood, another hand beat him to 
it.  Duo ran a finger up the side of Trowa's face and followed the thin 
trail of blood.  "He's a null space," he answered calmly, before 
bringing his finger to his lips to lick the crimson life-stuff from it.  
"The demons can't sense him."

	Although Trowa was unperturbed, the others simply stared at him 
for a stunned moment before a ruckus erupted.  "Duo!" Quatre said 
sharply, a strange combination of disappointment and anger tinging his 
tone as he jerked Trowa away from him.

	Wufei reacted more directly and grabbed Duo's arm.  "What do you 
think you're doing?"

	The guardian regarded him with cool amethyst eyes before 
flicking those frighteningly intense orbs down to focus on the hand that 
gripped his upper arm.  Although the message was clear, Wufei held his 
ground.  His resolve didn't help when Duo's free hand reached over to 
remove Wufei's, the surprisingly strong fingers weakening his grasp with 
a shock that sent a chill all the way up his arm.  "I didn't cause him 
to bleed."

	"You drank his blood," the Chinese man stated flatly.  It didn't 
matter whether or not Duo had bled him to begin with.

	"Only a drop," the guardian answered with an infuriatingly 
nonchalant shrug.  "Trowa doesn't mind, does he?"

	The man in question shrugged slightly, earning him a strange 
sound of protest from the spiritualist at his side.  He didn't change 
his answer.

	The sword of Shenlong was still out, still ominously coated with 
fluids spilled during the fight, and Wufei interposed it between Duo and 
the rest of them.  He didn't quite hold it up in a ready position, but 
it was clearly meant as a threat.  "Have you done something to him?"

	A mirthless smile alighted upon Duo's lips.  "Trowa's always 
been like that."

	"'Always' as in 'after you bit him the first time', you mean?"  
Duo's careful non-expression only infuriated him further, and the tip of 
his sword came up another notch.

	This would not end well without intervention.  Hilde once again 
laid a light hand upon Duo's elbow, relieved when he seemed accepting of 
it.  Even if reminding Duo of the state of balance he wished to maintain 
was the only purpose she served in accompanying him, she would play her 
part gladly.  "Come on," she said soothingly.  "We should probably get 
going."

	Her words did not break the tense eye contact between the two.  
The sword lifted just a little bit more.  "I swear it, Guardian, if you 
come to be a threat to any member of this party, I will put you down, 
whether we need your help or not."

	"Come on," Hilde said again, applying a light pressure to the 
arm in her grasp, along with a subtle flow of power.  Duo yielded to her 
grudgingly.  With an expression that somehow hinted at a smirk without 
changing at all, he turned from them without a word and walked away in 
the direction they had been travelling.

	Wufei watched his retreating back with a glare and a sneer of 
disgust, although whether for the guardian or for himself, he didn't 
dwell on.  To think that he had shared a brief moment of kinship with 
that creature while within the demoness' trap.  It only disturbed him 
now.

_________________________________________
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The basis for this fic, i.e. Gundam Wing, 
Kyuuketsuki Miyu, et al., is the property 
of someone else.  The author can be con-
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been an entirely automated message.
http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~jchew/misc/gw.html

last modified : 6/6/2003 00:51:01 PST