---------------- Kyuuketsuki Duo Sanguis Draconis Part XVIII ---------------- Had he not had a system installed in his mind that was very good about providing him with accurate predictions of the future, he might have been surprised to run into Dorothy while he was out ostensibly scouting for information. Trant had sent him on reconnaissance, undoubtably a simple task meant only to occupy his time while Trant attended to his other affairs. Heero sensed her coming a moment before she arrived. In the little pocket of shadows where she found him, she elected to show herself with a little less flare than she normally employed. A flurry of snowflakes would be amateurishly conspicuous indeed in such a place. Heero did not greet her, only stood there staring passively at her while she took advantage of his silence to inspect him at her leisure. At last, she smiled at him, and dipped her head in a mild show of honest, yet mocking, respect. "You're looking as magnificent as always, my dear Heero." True to form, Heero held his tongue and made no response. She laughed. "Even without your mask, your face is as blank as ever. I can't believe you were freed of your punishment, and you never told me. How long has it been?" Heero found it amusing that he had been free for almost as long as she had known Duo. Perhaps that was why she had never noticed. Any changes in him that were caused by Duo's companionship may have been attributed to the punishment since she had not been present to observe him in his punished state before those changes had been wrought. "I'd almost forgotten how beautiful the dreadful hunter could be." Dorothy lifted a hand as if to touch his face, and found it quite suddenly seized around the wrist in an iron grip before it managed to reach its target. Heero's eyes burned into hers, her gesture abruptly reminiscent of Trant's unwanted attentions. His irritation at being unable to think about ways of retaliation against his so-called master redirected itself to what avenues were left open to it, and the system gleefully provided him with dozens of visions involving the suffering of the snow demon caught in his grasp. As if she could see the violence brewing around him, she drew back imperceptibly, and Heero released her. She laughed throatily, and it was difficult to tell if she had been afraid or thrilled. "Just like old times, isn't it? Only you're more glorious than ever. I like this new you. But if I have one complaint, it's that you're still Trant's dog." Heero tried to transfer his ready thoughts of violence to Trant, and found them all snuffed out before their journey had begun. His expression shifted into a faint scowl. "I'm not too pleased with that myself." A delightful shiver ran up Dorothy's spine. The threatening edge to his words were delicious, and Trant heartily deserved it. The Shinma was not even very powerful in his own right. He was crafty, but his initial claim to fame had always been his command of the Shinma's deadly weapon, Heero. After Heero had defected, Trant had managed to get by on his established reputation and use of others such as Walker to back it up. "Well, if nothing else, the miserable worm was always good at realizing your potential." "Not all of it." No, Duo had to take a large part of the credit for that. The guardian had expanded in him in ways the Shinma never could have. "No, not all," Dorothy repeated musingly. "The last time I saw Duo, he was well on his way to fulfilling his potential, too." Without Heero's steadying influence, the guardian had seemed more much willing to indulge in the darker side of his gifts. Of course, such instability was dangerous not only to his enemies, but to Duo himself. Perhaps when they were together again, the guardian would not lose his newly found edge entirely. A wistful sigh blew quietly through Heero's mind. He would really like to be reunited with his partner. The desire was stronger than his wish to hurt Trant, and the power in his mind responded. It was amazing how nearly sentient power could become when impressed with a purpose. Options flickered in and out of his mind's eye, but they were vague, incomplete, broken. He caught a glimpse or two of Trant amongst the images, and realized that getting back to Duo meant disposing of Trant. The strands of starlight were getting confused, caught between a conflict it should have been able to solve, and one it was not allowed to solve. Heero reached a conclusion, innocuous enough that the power matrix did not pick up on it. He smiled thinly at Dorothy. "Excuse me. I think I need to be going." Dorothy had a satisfied smirk on her face as he vanished with no further ado. Who would have thought it possible? The guardian had managed to press some manners into him. Then she, too, faded gently into the shadows, pondering where she might find the best seat for the upcoming show. ************ Heero found himself another little corner of nowhere to plant himself and think. Think, plan, and experiment. He concentrated on Duo, rolling the sensation of their partnership around his mind until it filled the farthest corners of him and left him feeling saturated. A tiny smile of victory curved his lips when he felt the matrix stir and take an interest in his thoughts. Cautiously, he introduced a thread of longing, a soul-deep ache to be with his partner once more, and again, the system responded, attempting to provide him with the possible scenarios and failing. Heero intensified his wishing, but after some effort, the system continued to fail, coming up with images only slightly more coherent than before. The power decided that it needed more input. It was not flawed, so obviously, that was what was wrong. Heero was simply not providing it with data sufficient enough for it to compute a viable answer. These concepts of love, companionship, interdependence, they were all too new, too unexpected. In its quest for greater understanding, it decided to go straight to the source. Without much warning, it sent its power racing down through Heero, plumbing his depths until it found what it wanted. The sheer force of its search surging through the dormant thread was more than enough to revitalize the sleeping link connecting Heero to his partner. The bond flared back to life with a pleasurable burn as two halves of a whole were rejoined. ::Wha--?:: Duo's mindvoice came ringing through loud and clear as he tried hastily to pull back from the invasion of foreign energy. ::Don't fight it, love!:: Heero answered gaily in response, the rush bringing with it a surge of exultation. A brief mindsending of complete trust came across the line, chased with a cautious bewilderment. Their connection was too deep for any hint of corruption to have escaped Duo's notice, and he would follow Heero anywhere, regardless, even to his own ruin, but that didn't mean he had any idea what was going on. Still, he let the power enter him with perhaps an unhealthy faith. It washed through him, and with the access granted to it by coming as it did through the connection with Heero, it sought out all his strengths and weaknesses, his characteristics and quirks, and tried to work them into its equations. It had accepted that Heero felt Duo important in making him a better, stronger warrior, but it had been nothing more than a black box that was only now being filled. ::Now, love, think of me,:: Heero whispered to him. Duo did so gladly, but had presence of mind enough to ask, ::What the hell is going on?:: ::I'm getting out of here. You'll help me, won't you?:: The guardian laughed, Heero's good cheer infectious. ::You need to ask?:: Their colors mingled in a wild, jubilant storm as they took advantage of the moment to draw strength from each other, filling in all of those spaces between them that had been empty too long, and the power observed that, too. Mixed in there was the desire to see each other again, to feel each other skin to skin, to join with each other on all levels, and Heero encouraged it, drew it out until it almost became a force unto itself, and threw it at the power trying to assimilate the overload of information. It struggled, working to keep up, and Heero started seeing the results of its frail attempts. The images were still fragmented, his thought processes still limited, but they were getting closer, he could feel it. ::Duo, think of all the wonderful things you want to do to Trant.:: A flood of lingering, painful deaths and eternal damnations flowed effortlessly into the system, and it froze with indecision. ::Will that do, love?:: Duo had much, much more up his sleeve if necessary. ::Yes,:: Heero hissed in response, reveling in the suffering Duo brought to his mind. He wove it through his being from the bottom up, merging the thought pulses with his own until they lay seamlessly in parallel. The power residing inside his head was no longer conflicted. Heero carefully kept Duo's thoughts separate from his own, enough so that the power would not think they were his and thus in need of squashing, but not enough for it to reject the input as coming from outside of its host. It leapt into action with a mission now clearly defined for it. Duo had identified an enemy, and it knew what to do with enemies. It recognized that the enemy was Trant, but since it wasn't technically Heero that was thinking the naughty thoughts, it bypassed its normal nullification directives and proceeded to process the enemy as it would any enemy. ::Yes!:: Heero cried out in triumph as the system poured the visions into his mind, wonderful, brilliant, graphic visions of Trant dying a thousand deaths, and even Duo had to rejoice. ::Care to join me, my love?:: ::I wouldn't miss it for the world.:: It wasn't necessary for Duo to be there in the flesh. He was still hampered in doing so by his foreignness to the realms of the Eastern Dark. The Western guardian's physical presence there would have broadcast a beacon to any that cared to see, and that was undesirable. But with his thoughts carried along by Heero and clothed in Heero's aura, his mental presence blended in as well as the hunter bred to these shadows did. Of one mind, they tore through the shadows to Trant's lair, scythe at the ready. Despite being the one wronged, it was Heero that had to restrain some of Duo's wilder urges. ::We need information out of him, remember?:: Pouting assent. ::But then?:: ::Then he's fair game.:: Vicious delight. They were intercepted before they had penetrated Trant's inner sanctum, and found out firsthand just what had occupied the Shinma's attention when he had sent Heero away. Walker's claws came slicing out of the darkness, and Heero leapt back to avoid the attack that had flown much more swiftly than he had expected. The power matrix provided him with an answer: its twin had been installed in the mind of their opponent. Trant, confident that, with Heero's success, he had mastered the construction of the system, had chosen to put it into effect in the mind of his Shinma enforcer. But Walker can't handle it, Heero thought, and his own version of the system concurred, taking it into account as it spun the weave of futures for him. Nevertheless, even if Walker went mad under the power's influence, he still had it at his command, and was a force to be reckoned with. Duo took a step back from the glowing potentialities filling his partner's mind. Privy to Heero's thoughts, he understood why it was that Walker would not be able to stay sane beneath the system's onslaught, and it made him eager to stay away from its workings. His own way of thinking could be far too chaotic to work properly with the power, and he took meticulous care not to get in its way and muddy the clarity of Heero's vision. The scythe proved to be an advantage, giving Heero the reach needed to stay safely out of range of Walker's deadly claws, but it was less maneuverable, despite its nearly insubstantial mass. At the speeds they were thinking and reacting, every little bit mattered. Simple attacks would not do. They were too easily predicted and avoided. It was a dance of traps and decisions, trying to leave each other only the choices between one type of damage and another. The choreography seemed brilliantly acted, with strikes so swift and movement so smooth, but in a strange way it also seemed poorly executed, with attacks countered before they had begun, and timing so unnaturally premature it should have been a folly of fits and starts, only it wasn't. As Duo's burning desire for justice mingled sweetly with his partner's, his presence, though still masked to the region at large, became more and more visible to the perceptive eyes in front of them. Where there should only have been one opponent, there seemed to be two, and with the cloaking active, Walker, and the power that guided him, could not comprehend it. It seemed that the Western guardian was present, but that could not be. He would be able to tell if the guardian was hiding somewhere nearby, which, in any case, would not explain how the outside signature came to be intermixed with Heero's own. And Trant had broken the bond between them, hadn't he? Walker's power interpreted the data to the best of its ability. If it sensed two enemies, then there must be two enemies, regardless of whether or not they could actually pinpoint them. Heero fought on, as clearly level-headed as always. There was no confusion in his mind. He knew he only had to wait until his opponent's flawed system produced an opening. There came a time when Walker lashed out, and Heero did not even have to move in order to avoid the strike. He noted the anomaly, running through the calculations to see what Walker's game might be, but his search produced no results. Another slice curved off to his right, seemingly off-target but deliberate. A stretch of combat proceeded as expected, and then there was a lunge through the space he had occupied a second ago, though he had made no effort to dodge. Heero's system had finally seen enough to form a pattern for analysis, and informed its host that his opponent seemed to be fighting enemies that were not there. It explained the attacks aimed at nothing, the way his opponent twisted to avoid strikes unthrown. Duo snickered quietly in the corner of Heero's mind, and the system was reminded of his presence, prompting a quick recalculation. Its revised declaration was that Duo was messing up its faulty counterpart. Because of Heero's effort, it understood the guardian's presence. Walker's system did not, and could not compensate. It could not comprehend the what or the how or the why, and so it was failing. The notion brought a nasty little smirk to Duo's mental lips. He cast a trickle of his power out to the side, and watched in amusement as Walker went blindly after it. ::That's not very nice, Duo.:: He smirked again, growing only more satisfied as Heero's newfound friend accepted the addition of this new weapon and told them how best to use it to their advantage. Following its instructions, Duo threw it just -so-, and when Walker spun to deal with the perceived threat, Heero took advantage of the fatal distraction to take off the Shinma's head. The separate parts of Walker froze, hung in limbo for a few long moments before a silent wail split the air and he dissolved into the shadows. Duo conveyed a mental yawn. It simply wasn't as fun when there was no blood involved. ::Next?:: His partner snorted slightly in dry amusement, taking a moment to wrap himself tightly around that most loved and missed presence in his mind before proceeding towards their final destination. Trant was waiting in his 'parlor', that place where Heero first found himself reunited with his old master. He sat in front of his conjured fireplace in one of the large, padded seats with a deliberately relaxed pose, but there was a hard edge to his eyes and a sharp ugliness to his aura. "I am displeased, my pet." "...So?" His eyes narrowed even further. "It appears you need to be retrained." He reached out to twist the power that should have given him control over his servant, but Heero brushed it aside with contemptuous ease. "I think it is you that needs to be taught the lesson." Black velvet shadows slipped over the Shinma, binding him to his seat. Trant sneered at the effort. He was a creature of the shadows, after all. What harm could shadows do to him? He willed them to return to the darkness, but found his attempt thwarted as another's power was threaded through his bonds, hardening them against his power. His eyes widened in alarm when he recognized that signature. "The guardian? But how?" Heero smiled darkly, and it had an edge of Duo in it. "You broke our bond of blood and thought that that was all you had to do to 'cleanse' me of the guardian and leave me a blank slate for you to rewrite. Foolish Shinma. You know nothing of love, or devotion, or loyalty. How small your mind is." Even now Heero could see only the faintest hint of understanding in the creature's dark eyes. Confronted with the reality of it, Trant still could not see that he had managed to overlook something so simple and obvious. Such things were incomprehensible to him, and thus invisible and irrelevant. He had not counted on there being anything more tying the pair together than what he understood. ::Enough talk,:: Duo urged. ::If he doesn't get it, it's no fun rubbing it in. Let's just off the bastard!:: ::Information, remember?:: He sent the request to the power system that Trant himself had gifted him with, and savored all the possibilities presented for the extraction of said information. ::Oh, oh!:: Duo bounced excitedly in his place and tweaked their aura just enough so that Trant could see that his own weapon was being used against him. The guardian was gratified to witness a certain dread settle upon their prey, and his cold laughter rang out in the space between his and his partner's mind. Then he turned his attention to the future, and Heero indulgently allowed him to help sort through the possibilities. Trant was working to undo his chains when he suddenly felt the attention of two dangerous beings focus upon him. Thoughts of fury, outrage, hate, vengeance, bluster, all of it was turned to dust and blown away by the searing twin force that rose up against him. Duo had, of course, pointed his partner in the direction of a solution both efficient and ruthless. All in all, he had to say he was growing rather fond of this thing Trant had planted in Heero's head. On advice from its uncanny intuition, they tore through all of Trant's shields with excruciating precision, flawlessly targeting all his vulnerabilities and exploiting them. Soon, his mindscape lay bare to them, and they raped and pillaged as they saw fit, taking no care to see that they left the land the same as they had found it. A frantic resistance was raised, but it meant nothing to them as they took him apart from the inside out. Every last bit of information, they uprooted, every last thought they overturned, and when they were done, they left only smouldering ruins behind. If Trant had been human, he would have been nothing more than a drooling vegetable, but he was a construct of darkness bound together by will, and with that will torn away from him, he was nothing. As a Shinma, he was dead, disassembled, unmade. Its master gone, the hideaway he had carved out of the darkness slowly faded, free to be claimed by another. Then even Trant's body faded, melting and unraveling with no more mind behind his matter, no more will to mold the shadows into his chosen form. And then it was as if he had never been. All was gone without even a cry of anguish to mark its passing. ::Now come back to me, my love.:: Duo's whisper slipped smoothly between them, filled with longing and desire and so many more things, and Heero, sparing no second thought for this place, was quick to oblige. _________________________________________ 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 : 8/1/2003 19:19:21 PST