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Kyuuketsuki Duo
Episode I
New Kid on the Block
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	The blonde boy stared out the window, trying to will the clock 
into ticking more quickly as he absently tapped his pencil against his 
notebook.  Time did not cooperate with him.  The bell had already rung, 
but the teacher was unusually absent.

	He disliked his history class.  None of his friends were in the 
class, for one thing.  Second of all, the teacher was one of his most 
boring.  He often had interesting things to say, but his delivery left 
much to be desired.  Quatre sometimes thought that if this weren't the 
first class of the morning, with him fresh out of bed and invigorated 
from the short walk to school, he'd never be able to stay awake through 
this class at all.

	Three minutes late.  The students were getting restless, and 
beginning to murmur of fifteen minute rules, which soon became ten 
minute rules.

	Quatre ignored them all, watching the woodpecker on the tree 
outside the window peck a seed into the wood.  It was storing them up 
for the chilly winter.  He knew that further up in the leaves was the 
bird's home, and around the other side lived the squirrel with the 
scrawny looking tail.

	Four minutes late.  The ten minute rule became a five minute 
rule.  Students snickered to themselves that Mr. Davis was tardy, and 
should give himself detention.

	Quatre watched as the woodpecker left his perch and glided over 
to a metal sign post, to peck with some confusion on the ringing, 
unrelenting surface.  In his mind's eye, the metal sign post became the 
post supporting the basketball backboard in the gym behind the building, 
and there he saw the boys suffer through the roll call of the physical 
education coach, a man who had once been military.  Tomas had forgotten 
to bring his gym clothes back to school again after the weekend, and was 
trying to hide the fact with a t-shirt flipped inside out.

	Five minutes late.  The door opened, and the ruckus of the class 
came to a gradual halt as the teacher shambled his way in.  He didn't 
have to look to know he was dressed in the uniformly brown suit he was 
always clad in, with the boring red tie and the old tie clip he said had 
been a gift from the former principal of the school, whom he himself had 
once taught in this very classroom.  He would be carrying the battered 
brown briefcase he always did, with the papers inside that he rarely put 
much time into grading.

	It was not the teacher's shuffling gait that recalled his mind 
to the classroom and snapped his eyes up front.  Something had followed 
the teacher, something odd and strange and wonderful and frightening, 
and it was coming in the door right now.  The first he saw of it was a 
shoe, just a typical shoe, followed by a pants leg resembling his own, 
and a shirt and blazer also his own, in strict adherence to the 
academy's uniform dress code.  Just another student, then?

	No.  No mere student would have attracted his eyes like this.  
In poked a head following the body, and Quatre's aquamarine eyes 
widened.  It wasn't just the terribly long and unorthodox dark honey 
braid trailing behind its master.  It wasn't just the perfect calm the 
boy used as he swept the room with his outlandish violet eyes, 
expression neutral, but not particularly inviting.  It was something 
else altogether, something he couldn't see with his eyes, that made him 
miss the teacher's and the boy's introductions altogether.  All he 
sensed of it as it flitted beyond his consciousness and sent a shiver 
down his spine was that there had been a 'new student', and said student 
had introduced himself in an smooth baritone, his name and a meaningless 
greeting.

	Quatre's eyes almost met the stranger's, but he pulled them away 
at the last moment, affecting nonchalance and boredom as the boy took an 
empty seat on the other side of the room, slightly in front of him.  
None of the other students in the room seemed to think there was 
anything different about the new student as they went about starting 
class.  There were a few whispers as the others began to pass judgment 
amongst themselves, though.  The girls in the back corner, the ones 
always punished for passing notes, were already evaluating the boy's 
looks.  From the sense of it, they seemed to approve.  The boy sitting 
next to them was shooting imaginary daggers with his eyes at the new 
student.  The boy sitting two seats in front of him was wondering if the 
new one would steal his title of top of the class.  Over in the second 
row, someone had taken the wrong notebook from her locker this morning.  
But from the boy with the violet eyes... he sensed nothing.

	Quatre had a feeling that first period history wouldn't be so 
boring anymore.

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

	"I'm telling you, Trowa, there was something decidedly weird 
about that new kid," Quatre was trying to explain to his friend during 
lunch.  Trowa didn't respond to his allegations.  He didn't speak much 
at all, really.  It was what had made Quatre approach him in the first 
place, when school had started, and it was everyone's first year there.  
Many people had old friends from middle school, but Trowa's family had 
just moved to the area.  Trowa had been making himself very 
inconspicuous, and Quatre would be willing to bet that half his class 
hadn't even known he was there.  In fact, many of them probably still 
had not noticed the quiet boy, but Quatre had noticed him, and sought 
him out, and they had been friends for a year.

	Now that he thought about it, Quatre realized that he had 
noticed that there had been something decidedly odd about Trowa, as 
well.  If it hadn't been for that, Quatre likely would not have noticed 
him either.  Something lingered about him.  Quatre couldn't quite 
explain it, but sometimes, he could sense things that others couldn't, 
and the first time he had seen Trowa, he had been overwhelmed by a very 
large sense of loss, only somehow, it hadn't been a very personal loss.  
Quatre was still somewhat baffled as to how one could have so much loss 
attached to oneself and not be suffering from any emotional loss.  It 
left the impression that he was extremely disconnected from reality, and 
Quatre, both consciously and unconsciously, did all he could to 
reestablish those missing links.

	Quatre suddenly had a flash of insight.  More appropriately, 
perhaps, an intuitive leap that crept up from somewhere deep inside him 
and sprang upon him unawares.  He had never known these hunches to be 
incorrect, but at the same time, he had never known them to be based on 
any particular evidence.  This one was telling him that somehow, the odd 
feeling he had experienced when he first met Trowa was somehow connected 
to the odd feeling he had had this morning.

	"This morning, I didn't even have to look up to know that he had 
entered the room.  He has this *presence*.  And sporadically, all 
through that class and the other one I have with him, I had this creepy 
feeling that I was being ... watched, somehow.  Evaluated.  And he was 
sitting in front of me both times.  It couldn't have been him."  One of 
Trowa's eyebrows lifted silently in doubt.  "Really!"

	The feeling suddenly came back.  He looked nervously over his 
shoulder, half afraid to see his invisible stalker, but he saw nothing.  
He turned his gaze elsewhere, sweeping the field with some anxiety as 
Trowa continued to eat his lunch calmly.  Only after finding the target 
of his search did he realize that he had been looking for the new 
student, sitting alone in the shade of a large tree in the corner of the 
field, observing the antics of his new schoolmates.

	Quatre stood suddenly, and with resolve.  "Let's go introduce 
ourselves," he suggested to his companion.  "He's sitting all by 
himself.  I bet he's lonely.  It's his first day here, after all."  
Trowa looked silently at his friend for a moment, as if weighing the 
matter, then gathered his things and stood with him.  Together, they 
marched across the field.  Well, Quatre marched, Trowa trailed along 
like his shadow.

	The stranger did not turn to greet them as they approached, but 
continued to gaze distantly over the crowd of students, leaving Quatre 
and his shadow standing awkwardly on the grass, as if sycophants 
nervously awaiting audience with their great lord.

	Quatre cleared his throat.  "Excuse me."  The stranger finally 
lifted his eyes, and suddenly, confronted by those peculiar eyes, he 
swallowed and had to moisten his lips.  He forged on.  "Hi.  My name is 
Quatre Winner.  We have the same first and fourth period class."  He 
held his hand out in greeting.

	The new boy looked down at the hand with a cool stare, and back 
up to the face of the one offering it.  Quatre was stricken by a sense 
of uneasiness when pierced once more by those deep violet eyes, and just 
as he thought he could take it no more, just as he was about to withdraw 
his hand and look away, the boy reached out and took it, shaking it with 
a firm, confident grip that somehow had a little zip to it.  "Duo 
Maxwell."  He smiled pleasantly, releasing the hand, but not his eyes.  
"Pleasure to meet you."

	Quatre tore his eyes away first, turning to his friend, who 
until now had been nearly hidden around the tree trunk.  "And this is my 
friend, Trowa.  Trowa Barton."

	He felt a sudden surge of ... something, as Trowa first laid 
eyes on the stranger, but he couldn't tell what it was, and it receded 
just as quickly as it had struck.  Duo looked intently at him as well, 
as if with eyes seeing right through him and straight to his soul.  
Quatre nudged Trowa, who had seemed frozen in his place, and he mumbled 
a vague greeting.  Duo just smiled benevolently again, judgment from on 
high having been rendered, and nodded.

	The air abruptly thinned, and the oppressive presence that had 
been weighing him down vanished, leaving him somewhat disoriented in the 
subsequent normalcy.  He was sensing nothing from the boy that he 
shouldn't be.  Quatre stewed in his own nervous discomfort for a moment 
before the new boy, Duo, indicated that they should seat themselves.  He 
gratefully took him up on the offer, glad for something to break the 
heavy silence.  Trowa followed suit.  "So, are you new to the area?" he 
asked, trying to make small talk and learn what he could about the 
stranger.

	The corners of Duo's eyes crinkled a bit.  "Not entirely," he 
answered.  "I'm just coming back to the area.  I've been away for quite 
a while."  His demeanor was easy-going, friendly and open, yet Quatre 
still couldn't shake the feeling that he was missing something very 
significant about him, something that was hiding in plain sight right 
under his nose, if only he could see it.

	"Oh?  Where do you live?"

	Duo gestured in a general direction.  "Northern part of town."

	Quatre frowned slightly.  "I didn't think anyone lived out 
there."  Mostly, there were small, privately owned businesses on the 
northern side of town.  To the northwest, there were also a few blocks 
of 'low-income housing', but none of them would be sending their 
children to this school.  To Quatre's knowledge, those children didn't 
attend school at all.  Besides that, there was only the house off the 
road, the one his mother had always warned him away from, while she had 
been alive.  Now, the housekeeper had taken her place, telling him dark 
stories of strange occurrences that had happened in and around the 
estate, generally rumored to be cursed or haunted.  He had always 
received a scolding from his father, whenever he discovered that his 
only son's head was being filled with tales.  The Winner patriarch was 
quite emphatically against such fancies.

	Duo chuckled lightly, and again, there was that tiny itch that 
hit him right between his shoulder blades.  "Oh, there are a few people 
out there, if you know where to look."  Quatre decided that perhaps his 
family was one of the store owners, and they lived above their shop.  
Likely, their children would be educated.  This school was just a little 
bit far from the northern side of town, but certainly not too far, if 
one wanted a decent education.  The family business must do fairly well.

	The school's bell rang once, a warning that lunch was going to 
be ending shortly.  They rose.  "I don't suppose you have math next 
period?" Quatre asked, brushing bits of grass off the back of his pants.

	"Afraid not," Duo replied, rolling his shoulders idly in a 
stretch as he waited politely for the others, and together they set off 
once more for the main school grounds.

	"Too bad.  And Trowa's got history, so I guess we'll be parting 
ways.  Do you need any help finding your next classroom?" he asked 
helpfully.  He always liked to help others, and yet in this case, he 
could not deny to himself that he felt a slight twinge of relief when 
Duo politely declined the offer.  They reached the school's side doors, 
and there they parted ways.  Quatre was just a little bit surprised to 
find that Duo moved as silently as Trowa did.  He shook his head sharply 
to clear it, then moved down the hallway in the opposite direction, 
startled to find that he was waiting for his next confrontation with the 
stranger with both eager anticipation and nervous trepidation.

-------
i don't know if this is a phenomenon common to all places of education, 
but where i was, at least, the n minute rule stated that after n 
minutes, if the teacher hadn't shown up, then the students could leave.  
it seemed to be quite a widespread urban (education institutional?) 
myth.

_________________________________________
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 : 1/26/2001 23:11:48 PST