--------------- Kyuuketsuki Duo Episode II Shinma Paehina --------------- The woman browsed the shelves of the secondhand store idly, eyes sharp for bargains of unusual quality. She stopped in front of a pair of tarnished silver candlesticks, the taint on the surface somehow not diminishing the sure beauty of the pieces. She lifted one carefully, finding it slightly heavier than she might have expected from the delicate looking work of the exterior, and flipped the chillingly cold metal upside down to check for a maker's label. Surely the person who had set the value of the candlesticks had been unfamiliar with the field, for they were severely underpriced for work of this caliber. She set first the one, then the other, into her basket for purchase, adding it to the dark green, wool overcoat and the Homer's _Odyssey_, in the original Greek. "Mommy!" The woman's six-year-old daughter ran up to her, triumphantly holding up a battered looking doll. "Look what I found!" The doll's soft plastic face sported green, glass eyes that opened and closed when she tilted its head. Its dress was a faded pink with white stars, but the shiny bronze spiral tresses fell cleanly down the doll's back. The woman took the doll from her daughter and examined it with a critical eye. The seam holding the doll's head to the neck was torn, leaving a large hole whereby the stuffing was leaking out. Lifting the doll's skirt, she found signs of wear and patching on the rest of the doll's body as well. "Sara, dear. Put this back where you found it," she said, handing the doll back to her daughter. "But, Mommy~!" the child whined. "It's not worth anything, dear," her mother informed her, long since past the point where her daughter's whining and tantrums could affect her. "Mommy!" Sara stamped her little foot down. "I don't care if it's not worth anything to you! I want it!" Her mother sighed. "Sara, you have so many other dolls at home already, and you already don't play with half of them. Now put that back where you found it. I'm going to be up at the counter, paying for these. Okay?" Without waiting for an answer from the young girl, she turned and headed to the cashier with her new acquisitions. Behind her, Sara tried glaring a hole in her mother's back. ************ "Sara?" her mother called up the stairs. "It's time for bed." "Okay!" Sara shouted back down in response. Mrs. Anderson finished up wiping down the dinner table, meticulously rinsing and wringing out the washcloth when she had finished, then hanging it from the hook above the dish rack to dry. She turned off the kitchen light, then headed up the stairs to tuck Sara in, on the way, passing by her husband in the family room, watching the evening news. She knocked once on Sara's door, then, without waiting for an answer, entered her daughter's room. Sara was lying in her bed, seemingly already tucked in, with the covers drawn up tightly to her chin, smiling up at her mother with the sweet innocence of a six year old. Mrs. Anderson smiled back fondly at her offspring, glad that Sara had not given her too much trouble in the secondhand store. Although she ran a strict home, she loved her daughter very much, even if it was hard for a six year old to see. "Good night, dear." She leaned down to kiss her daughter on the forehead and tucked the blankets securely around her anyway. "Good night, Mommy," the child responded, as her mother carefully smoothed down the sheets around her. Her mother's hand stopped by her side. "What's this?" There was a large bump under the sheets where there shouldn't have been. Several months ago, her daughter had proclaimed herself a grown-up, and as such, she no longer slept with her dolls. She looked over to where the dolls sat in the corner by the window. There was the teddy bear she had received for last year's birthday from her grandmother, the slightly lop-sided bunny holding a carrot, which she herself had made for Sara. The long-fuzzed duck, the happy star shaped pillow, they were all still there, on the shelf where they had been relegated. Her daughter tried to squeeze the object to her side inconspicuously. "Nothing," she replied. Her mother frowned. "Don't lie to me, Sara." She gave the lump a poke with her finger. "That's not you right there. There's nothing to be ashamed of if you're sleeping with one of your dolls again." "It's nothing," Sara insisted obstinately. Her mother reached to untuck and pull the covers down to uncover the secret, but Sara's fists held on to the comforter tightly. "Sara, let go," her mother commanded, but the child did not follow her mother's directive. Grimly, her mother pried her fingers from the covers, her alarm growing by the moment, and wrested the blanket away from the daughter. She gasped, horrified. "Sara! I thought I told you to put that back where you found it!" The girl snatched the doll from the thrift shop away from her mother's grasping fingers and hugged it tightly to herself. Mrs. Anderson attempted to pull it from her, but to no avail. "How did you get that? You didn't steal it, did you?" she asked, unable to keep the accusation from her voice. She thought about it carefully, and figured that it may just have been possible. She had been distracted this afternoon, for it had been very windy today, and there had been a number of bags she had had to keep track of, from the thrift store and the grocery market. It would have been simple for the girl to just have slipped it in, and then slipped it back out again before she had noticed. She hated to think that her child could have committed such an infraction, but she could see no other possible way she could have acquired the doll. The child remained stubbornly silently, still clutching the doll. "Sara, now I don't know how you got it, but it's going right back to the store tomorrow," she judged sternly. It wasn't that the doll was particularly expensive or important, but Sara had to learn that she couldn't just have anything she wanted, and she especially couldn't go disobeying her mother or the rules so irresponsibly. She held out her hand. "Give me the doll, Sara." The girl didn't budge. "*Now*, Sara." Sara shook her head vehemently, lips pressed together thinly in an angry pout. "Sara, if you don't hand over that doll this instant, I'm going to call your father up here, and you know --" She halted suddenly as the window shutters unexpectedly banged open. "Now how did that ...?" She walked over to the window and unlocked it, trying to figure out how the shutters on the outside could have become unlatched as she slid the glass up. A gust of wind blew into the room, throwing her hair into her face as she leaned out the window. She pushed the dark brown locks out of her face and reached out for the shutters that now seemed glued to the side of the house from the force of the wind. Behind her, Sara was glaring at her mother with a peculiar intensity. ************ Downstairs, the evening news was suddenly disturbed by the shrill scream that split the night. Mr. Anderson froze for a few seconds, then rushed up the stairs to his daughter's room, where he thought the scream had come from, almost tripping over the low coffee table in his haste. "Sara? Kathy?" he called breathlessly, barrelling to a halt in the doorway. Sara was still sitting in her bed, hugging something to her chest in a fiercely possessive manner, and she was staring straight out the open window. The icy wind gusting in through the window made Mr. Anderson shiver apprehensively. "Sara? Where's your mother?" he asked, with some trepidation. Sara did not respond, only continued to look blankly out the window. Mr. Anderson approached the window carefully, and looked out as well. His hands clutched the windowsill convulsively, and a sob caught in his throat, when he saw the body of his wife below, impaled on the white picket fence that surrounded his neighbor's property, not eight feet from his own home's walls. ************ Father and child walked down the street in the late afternoon, returning to their pleasant home in suburbia, when the daughter halted before a shop, her eyes trained on the people in the window. She gave her father's sleeve a tug. "Daddy~", she called. Mr. Anderson looked down at his daughter, looking so innocent with her doll clutched in one hand, and her wide, pleading eyes. Gods, but her eyes were so like her mother's.... "Yes, honey?" "I want some ice cream!" He looked through the window into small cafe, seeing kids still in their school uniforms, talking over coffee. There were others, bolting down a quick, early dinner, or just having a late afternoon snack. A bored waitress stood behind the counter with her pink, candystriped uniform, inspecting her fingernails. He glanced at his wristwatch. "But, honey, it's almost dinner time. As soon as we get home, I'll start dinner, okay?" "But, Daddy~! I want ice cream now!" The father gave a troubled sigh. He knew he had been spoiling his only daughter, ever since his wife had died in that freak accident, but he couldn't help it. Sometimes it just felt as if he couldn't refuse her anything. She pulled insistently on his hand, half dragging him into the shop, and he relented. She pulled him over to the counter, and he helped her up onto a red vinyl swivel chair. The young waitress was suddenly all smiles and sunshine as she welcomed them to the cafe and handed them their menus. Sara didn't bother looking at the menu. "I want a chocolate vanilla ice cream swirl on top of an apple cobbler," she declared imperiously. The young lady flashed her a smile straight out of dental assistant commercial. "I'm sorry, sweetheart, we don't make those." "I want a chocolate vanilla ice cream swirl on top of an apple cobbler!" she demanded again, with a loud edge to her voice. The waitress' smile hardened. "I'm sorry, kid," she repeated. She turned to the child's father. "We don't make those," she explained, trying to appeal to higher reason. "I want a chocolate vanilla ice cream swirl on top on an apple cobbler!" Mr. Anderson tried to soothe his daughter's ruffled feathers, but to no avail. From behind the swinging doors leading to the kitchen area, a flash of light was visible through the small windows, and a small shout of surprise was heard as the grease from the meat being fried suddenly caught flame. The cook swiftly jerked it from the fire and searched frantically for something to put the blaze out with. The light from the flames reflected off the glass green eyes of the doll, making them seem to glow with their own fey power. As suddenly as it had flared up, the fire went out. The waitress' bright countenance dropped away. "Look, kid," she said, annoyed. "Choose something else." "I want --" The girl's voice suddenly caught in her throat, and she looked wildly around the small diner. Her arms tightened protectively around her doll when she spotted a pair of icy, lavender eyes observing her from a table by the window. The boy held her eyes for a brief moment, and a chill travelled through her. Then, he nonchalantly turned away and casually replied to something one of his companions had said. Sara abruptly slid off the stool and began to depart. Her father rushed after her hurriedly, his tongue tripping over itself as he hastily poured out apologies to the irritated waitress over his shoulder. ************ Sara was seated on her bed again, her eyes empty as she idly cuddled her doll. The hole in the doll's neck had been clumsily fixed, leaving the head slightly lopsided. The head's position left the doll's glass eyes wide open, as if on alert. A chill breeze swept through the room, sending the doll's bronze curls swinging across its face. A light chiming accompanied the cold wind. Sara's lips moved, but the voice coming from it was not her own. "I've been expecting you, Guardian." Mechanically, Sara shifted the doll in her arms until its emerald stare was directed towards the open window. "You don't belong here," Duo stated calmly. The breeze from the window caused his shadow-woven garments to ripple gently, and the silver bells attached to his hair by the blood red ribbon threaded through his long chestnut braid tinkled delicately once more. "Leave the girl," the guardian commanded. Sara's lips curved upwards in a malicious smile, and the doll's eyes flashed with a wicked emerald fire as the girl slowly began to unfold herself from the bed. Duo's amethyst eyes narrowed, and he flicked his wrist out, holding his right hand palm up, and a globe formed there, filled with a blue flame. The guardian drew his hand back sharply, as if to hurl his power across the bedroom. The possessed child tensed in preparation for the attack, her eyes locked on the glowing sphere. Taking advantage of the distraction, Duo's partner swooped in from the shadows and knocked the doll from the girl's grasp and in Duo's direction. The guardian's hand changed position once again, fisting closed over the sphere and reforming it into a shaft with half a thought. As he swung the rod across in a broad underhand sweep, a blade sprung from the leading tip, and he lopped off the head of the doll hurtling at him. The girl suddenly collapsed with a weak cry, as if she were a puppet whose strings had just been cut, and the masked hunter caught her as she fell, lowering her safely to the bed before returning his attention to the guardian. From the decapitated doll, a dark mist seeped out and gathered over the headless body, slowly forming itself into a shadow of deepest night, vaguely resembling a gargoyle. Ethereal black wings sprouted from its back, its elongated fingers sharpened to deadly points. It growled harshly at the guardian, then leapt for him. Duo blocked it easily with his summoned scythe, and dodged to the right. Swiftly maneuvering for position in the small room, he dismissed his scythe and flung a small ball of flame at the stray's feet. The stray jumped up to avoid it, but could not avoid the second, larger sphere aimed at its chest. It caught the power, but the force of it threw it through the window and out into the night. Sensing a chance for escape, the Shinma turned to run, only to face a silent Heero. Heero slashed at it with his energized hand, and the creature shrieked as he made contact with it. It turned again, but was halted in his flight once more, this time by an implacable Duo, hovering in the air with a cold look on his face. It attempted to dart between them in desperation, but the two hunters of the night stayed close to him, deftly avoiding all of its attacks as it sought escape. It fled upwards and into the sky, but two crackling bolts of power chased it, and struck it down. Energy caught it as it fell, surrounding it helplessly in a glowing ring. "Shinma Paehina. Return to the Dark." From the guardian's outstretched fingers, black and indigo power flowed out in a spiral formation, swirling around the stray and sweeping it into the Dark. The guardian and his guardian looked at each other in silent communion, and then drifted together towards the open bedroom window of the girl, as yet lying unconscious on her bed. Duo looked at the girl, and then back at his partner, an odd look in his eye. A moment passed, and then the cowled hunter nodded once, slowly and almost imperceptibly. A sadness passed over the guardian's face momentarily as he went to straighten the limbs of the girl who had been possessed by the Shinma. He brushed the girl's brown hair back and off of her neck with gentle fingers before leaning down and taking her blood, blurring the memories of the Shinma possession until it was nothing more than a terrible dream. He straightened, absently licking the blood off his lips. Heero came to stand behind him and wordlessly put his right hand on the guardian's shoulder. Duo's own left hand reached up to lie on top of it, and together, their forms dissolved into the shadows. ----- i don't know what the hell a chocolate vanilla ice cream swirl on top of an apple cobbler is. i just strung together whatever came to mind... you can get chocolate and vanilla frozen yogurt swirled together at my dining hall, and on sunday nights they have apple cobbler... *shrug* hmmmm.... let it be declared that heero doesn't need to feed as often as duo does because of the doc's tinkering. he wouldn't have been a very efficient warrior if he was always having to hunt for sustenance, or always at the whim of his body's needs. not to mention the fact that heero's powers are derived from very diverse sources to begin with. _________________________________________ 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 : 2/4/2001 01:08:52 PST