Kyuuketsuki Duo: The TV Series Episode 3
Urusai Akuma
The leaves were falling, heralding the beginning of the long descent into winter. It snowed here. Duo had no recollection of any snow from when he was a young child here, but for some reason, the thought of the impending blanket of whiteness filled him with a sort of anxious anticipation. He'd seen snow before, been in snow before, in the midst of his extensive travels as he performed his duties, but it had never meant anything in particular before. This winter, however, he found himself wanting to drag Heero out and pelt him with snowballs.
Maybe this would be a winter to remember.
The turning of the leaves was painting the town in rich, autumnal reds and browns. He slowed momentarily in his walking, falling a little bit behind his friends, as he kept his eye on a leaf plummeting to the ground. It spiralled gracefully on its axis, stem down, the dried curvature of the leaves coaxing it into its final dance. He almost envied that leaf, for its beauty in its life and death, and the way it calmly accepted its fate, and exited the house of life with a simple, elegant flourish.
He hurried a bit to catch up with the others. He, Quatre, and Trowa were on their way to Quatre's home. Duo was going to help them out on their trigonometry homework. Mathematics wasn't his particular strong suit, but he was competent in it. Back when he had first been learning it, he himself had had Heero as a tutor. Duo supposed he was lucky that he had been amused, rather than resentful, that Heero had figured it out after just reading the chapters.
Quatre lived in a somewhat upscale neighborhood. The houses here were multi-storied, with well-manicured lawns and crisp, clean paint jobs. Duo was waiting patiently to see Quatre's own home and household, more than any of these insignificant homes along the way, but he studied them closely nevertheless. Wealth often led to debauchery or degradation of some sort or another, which opened the road to Shinma victimization, and he might be revisiting one of these homes himself in the future.
But Quatre's household, he was interested in for a slightly different reason. He knew he was taking a little bit of a risk, accepting the invitation from the spiritualist boy, but he thought it was worth it, to possibly find out from whom Quatre had inherited his stirring powers from, and why he hadn't yet been trained in them. He felt he would be able to hide his own nature from a fully trained spiritualist well enough to avoid being revealed, even in that person's own territory. Already he had tucked his powers away from prying eyes more carefully than usual. Besides, as Quatre's friend, he wouldn't be able to avoid going to his home forever.
"My house is just up this street," Quatre informed him over his shoulder, as they crossed the quiet street. "See the one with that funny looking tree in front of it?"
There was a subtle amount of power woven into that tree. Nothing obvious, it was merely a minor warding spell, and it seemed more than one generation old.
"If your house is over there, on that side, then why did we just cross over to this side of the street?" Duo inquired.
Quatre laughed somewhat ashamedly. "You know, I hardly even noticed that we did. I guess I've just been doing it for so long."
Duo leveled an expectant look at him.
"Well...," he prevaricated. "You see, there's this house on the other side. That one, actually." He pointed with his finger at a nice house, much like any other on the street, only it was surrounded by a short steel fence. "The people who live there are really nice, and their daughter is a really sweet girl...."
"...But?"
Quatre seemed hesitant to answer, so Trowa answered for him, typically laconic. "There's a dog."
Duo raised an eyebrow at the blonde. "You're afraid of dogs?"
He shook his head. "No, I like dogs. I just don't like that dog."
"And why not?" Duo responded, amused.
"It doesn't like me! It hasn't since the first day we met. It doesn't even like Trowa that much, and you know how he is with animals. Every time I pass in front of that house, it comes out and starts barking at -- now look what you did!"
"Hmm?" Duo turned towards the house. A medium sized dog had trotted around to the front yard from the side of the house, as if their conversation had summoned it. It was a fairly innocuous looking dog, with shortish fur the color of uncooked cookie dough. It was even a bit on the adorable side, up until it started glaring viciously at them from its side of the fence.
Duo turned back around to see Quatre trying to hide inconspicuously behind his taller friend. "That?" Duo asked incredulously. When Quatre nodded his head and practically hissed, "yes, that," Duo smirked mildly at him and began to cross the street.
"What are you doing, Duo?!" Forgetting himself for a moment, Quatre tried to reach out and grab his friend's arm, accidentally exposing himself to the canine's sight in the process. As soon as he was visible from behind Trowa's back, the dog began to growl, then bark aggressively at him. Quatre cringed back for a moment, then returned the greeting with a small growl of his own.
Duo eyed the young dog from a safe distance behind the fence as it continued its irritating barking. He blinked, and behind his eyelids he caught a swiftly passing vision of a newborn pup, weak and abandoned under a bush.
The commotion finally caught the attention of the loud dog's owner. A young girl, about thirteen years old, emerged from the house, a light shawl wrapped about her thin shoulders as she walked slowly and carefully to the fence. She waved cheerfully at Quatre, a smile on her pale face as she noted the wary distance Quatre was maintaining from the rowdy canine.
"Good afternoon, Deanna," Quatre greeted congenially, tearing his eyes away from the still barking dog. He trusted all the others here to keep it from harming him. "How are you feeling today?"
Deanna bent down and laid her hand on the dog's head soothingly. "Hush, now, Mario." The dog ceased its barking reluctantly, but continued to keep its stare on the nervous boy. "No worse than usual," she responded calmly, sounding older than her age. "I felt like getting up this morning, actually."
The oppressive weight of the dog's baleful eyes didn't stop Quatre from breaking out into a sunny smile for the child. "That's great, Deanna!"
Duo gave the waif-like girl a critical look. From their conversation and continued pleasantries, Duo could deduce that Deanna was a sickly girl, and had been for some time now. It was reflected in her delicate appearance, and the cautious, deliberate effort every move seemed to take. Her hazel eyes were wide and still bright with some life, although he guessed that this was a good day for her. He took a second look at her, this time with his second sight, and saw the ethereal swirl of colors surrounding her, rose quartz and faded jade, still somehow managing to hold its own against the smoggy brown of the ailment that was slowly choking the life from her.
Listening to their words with only half an ear, he traced the murkiness down to its root, finding it curiously spiraling away from the girl.
// the girl curled around a puppy in bed
// the puppy anxiously licking the fingers of the girl
// too weak to move
// the girl and the dog, playing fetch in the backyard
His eyes narrowed in suspicion as he blinked the visions away. As the two neighbors continued to chat, Duo knelt down in front of the dog. It noticed him after a while, and ceased its growling at Quatre to look at him curiously. With a silently raised eyebrow, Trowa also took note of the odd phenomenon of the dog actually being non-aggressive towards a stranger.
Duo offered his fingers to the dog to sniff through the bars. It hesitated, then cautiously stuck its nose forward and inhaled. A few moments later, it jerked its snout back suddenly as if hurt. It whined briefly, catching the attention of its owner before it fled back towards the rear of the house.
"Oh! I'm sorry." Deanna turned to him. "He's normally quite friendly with others."
"Except me," Quatre muttered.
"I'd better go after him," she apologized. "It was nice meeting you, Mr....?"
"Maxwell." Duo smiled charmingly at her and bowed extravagantly. "Duo Maxwell, at your service, madam."
"Mr. Duo Maxwell," she repeated, dimpling cutely as she smiled in response. "Maybe we'll see each other again. Excuse me." She nodded her farewell to the group, then moved to follow her errant dog.
As the trio continued down the street towards Quatre's home, this time on the right side of the street, Quatre made a brief explanation to Duo.
"Poor kid. She's sick a lot, but none of the doctors can figure out why. I make it point to visit with her, whenever I see her. Whenever that damned dog lets me. She doesn't have very many friends because of her condition."
As they turned up the walk to Quatre's house, Duo took the time to introduce himself to the old tree standing watch over the entrance to the Winner estate. It regarded him neutrally for a moment before judging him fit to cross the threshold. He gave it a small nod of respect before entering the grounds.
"How many people are in your family?" he inquired, removing his shoes at the entrance of the home. It may have been a Western home, but with a house as spotless as this one, it was clear what the rules were.
"There's five of us. I've got three sisters." Duo did some easy calculations that by no stretch of logic involved trignometry, and figured that something must have happened to Quatre's mother, because he knew he still lived with his father. Perhaps it was from her that Quatre had inherited his powers. If she was presently absent, then that might explain why he had remained untrained. Duo made a mental note to himself to try to make contact with the rest of Quatre's family, to confirm which side of the family was the spiritualist side, and to see if any of his sisters had inherited it as well. He thought it highly unlikely that the father would be a spiritualist, as well. "But no one else is home, right now. Father will probably be at work until right before dinner time, and two of my sisters are away at school. Iria should be around sometime, though. She's the eldest. She just graduated from college last year, and she works around here."
It was a big house for three, whether the three members of the family, or the three friends gathered there now. Duo was glad when they went up the stairs and closed themselves into Quatre's room, even though he was condemned to a couple of hours of math. The house had flared with images, as if it were eager to give forth its memories to one with eyes to see, and the ghosts of the past had lurked in almost every corner.
*****
The moon was half full tonight, but the two black-clad hunters of the night didn't require even that much light to see by. No one at all saw them as they slipped quietly across the street and over the cold metal fence of the suburban home, to circle around the building and to the spacious backyard.
Heero spread a blanket of silence over the local area, freeing Duo to approach the simple dog house without fear of waking the neighbors. He was lucky it had opted to sleep outside, tonight. It was unseasonably warm, for an autumn night. He would have hated having to go inside to deal with it, and he couldn't afford to wait until fortune brought the canine to a more fortuitous meeting place.
A soft wind blew, wafting the guardian's scent towards the entrance of the dog's occasional residence. The intruder's smell drew the dog out, and immediately its hackles rose at the sight of him. It growled fiercely, backing slowly away from him, but Duo speared it with an icy glare and it froze before it could retreat fully into its lair.
Although his amethyst eyes were distant, Duo knelt once more before the dog and murmured soothingly at it. Heero stood silently behind him. "I'm not here to hurt you, boy." He slowly extended his fingers again, clearly where the dog could see them approach and he reached out and scratched behind its ears. The dog's tail twitched involuntarily. "I'm just here to return something to where it belongs."
// A newborn pup, abandoned and near death.
// A piteous mewling.
// A presence approaching.
// It nudged curiously, then took up residence.
"Shinma Macura," he spoke softly. "Return to the Dark." He slowly lifted his fingers from the dog's head, and with them he drew forth an indistinct cloud. Its color matched the color of the sickness that had infected the girl. It clung tenaciously to the dog, but when Duo had finished extracted the viscously moving Shinma, the dog fell to the ground with a choked whine. Accompanied by a light blue blaze, the stray was disposed of.
The dog whined again. With the Shinma presence gone, the dog had reverted to the general mental state it had been in when the stray had first taken possession of its body. The stray had been too long attached to it, too large a part of its life and identity, for it to sustain itself independently, but it was a deed that had to be carried out. The stray had been feeding slowly from the lifeforce of its keeper, and Deanna would have died had it not been done.
The lingering signs of possession were still clearly visible. The dog had been corrupted by its long contact with the Shinma, and would have to be dealt with.
With a sigh, Duo stretched his fingers out again and touched the dog's heaving side gently.
// The girl finding it with a startled gasp.
// The girl taking it and giving it a home.
// The girl nursing it back to health.
// The girl slipping it scraps at dinner.
// The girl confessing her secret crush to it.
// The girl laughing as it chased its tail around in a circle.
He withdrew his fingers and stood, turning to face his companion. "I hate this," he informed him quietly, delaying the inevitable.
::The girl will miss it, yes,:: Heero responded, his robes shifting slightly in the breeze. He understood Duo's concerns, but sometimes the happiest choices weren't always the best. ::But nothing good can come of letting it live.::
"I know that, but...." Duo turned to face the dog again. It was struggling to get to its feet. It looked so innocent, until one looked deeper. It was innocent, in fact. It had been taken when young, and had befriended the girl in good faith, unaware that a Shinma rode its body and took advantage of it.
The decision was made for him. As one, Heero and Duo jumped back from the bolt of ice, alerted in advance by a twinge on the edge of their senses to the presence of a newcomer. The attack hit the dog, and it fell over, frozen.
Duo's jaw clenched in anger as he turned to see a familiar face. "Dorothy," he stated flatly. The snow demon stood about ten feet away from them, lips unturned in a smile that did not reach her eyes. Her platinum blonde hair shimmered freely around her like a pale cloak over the long, snow white dress that fell past her knees. She nodded politely in greeting. "What do you want from me this time?" he demanded without prelude, not unreasonably short-tempered. Duo would have ended up taking the dog's life as well, but that didn't mean that he wanted Dorothy to pop out of nowhere and turn the little guy into an ice cube.
Cold amusement filled her light blue eyes. "Now since when have I ever wanted anything from you, Guardian?" she queried.
"Oh, that's right. How could I forget? Since when have you ever needed an excuse to harass me?" They had met many times since their initial meeting, so many years ago. Duo's dislike of her had not decreased in the slightest over the years. They had never come into direct conflict, but the mere act of conversing with her was like to give him a headache. It was a battle of another sort, but very definitely a battle every time.
Heero offered a mental support. ::Calmly,:: he soothed, sending the thought on a private line, beyond Dorothy's ability to eavesdrop. He liked Dorothy no better than Duo did, but he had had many more years of experience dealing with the unpredictable demon. She had long been interested in his unique strength and power, and had only become more interested when he and the guardian had partnered.
Duo gratefully leaned on his steady mental presence, and put himself in a more proper frame of mind for dealing with the demon. It was a fine line to walk with her. He didn't have to be very nice to her. In fact, he would lose her respect, if he was completely nice to her. Not that he needed her respect, but in truth, her respect made her easier to deal with. He didn't need her as an ally, but he did not want her to be an enemy. He had enough errant Shinma hungry for his life already.
"Too true." Her attention shifted to the silent warrior behind him. "Heero," she greeted. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"
Heero declined to comment.
"Dorothy." Duo's low voice commanded her focus as he all too easily slipped into guardian mode. "Why do you interfere in my work?"
She laughed, and it was like tiny icicles filling the air between them. "I just thought I would be helpful. Consider it a house warming gift, and please forgive the irony. I heard you'd settled down again."
"Helpful?" he grated out civilly, squelching, for the moment, the halfway irrational anger he felt from knowing she was keeping track of his activities. He hoped at the very least that she hadn't bothered trying to find out where he lived. The wards would keep her out, but to him, his home was holy ground, and he would not tolerate unwelcome guests there. "This is my business. I'd prefer it if you would spare me your 'help' in the future."
"Hmm, yes, your business. Returning strays, and helping to maintain the Shinma anonymity in this world, at the same time. For instance, this dog." She gestured with one finely manicured finger at the frozen corpse. "It had to be eliminated to purge the lingering influence, yes?" She waited briefly for an acknowledgement, but received none. She continued, undisturbed. "I almost thought that, for a moment there, you were hesitating to do your duty." She glanced archly at the silent pair, baring her teeth in a chill smile. "You weren't hesitating, were you?"
Duo's hard eyes narrowed dangerously. "I keep my own counsel, demon."
"Of course. Forgive me if I presumed too much," she apologized gracefully, if not sincerely. "I would just hate to think you've been remiss in your duties. You might have to be removed from your esteemed office, in such a case, and I would be devastated to be deprived of your pleasant company." The threat was just barely there in the statement, a promise that she had never yet to fulfill. If she thought that the guardian was unfit for his task, she would see to it that he was displaced. They had yet to divine her personal reasons for doing so, but they had little reason to doubt that she could do it, if she tried.
"I think you have little to fear. I intend to continue to perform my duties to the utmost of my capabilities."
"Well, enjoyment of one's work always helps, doesn't it?"
"I will do my duty whether or not I enjoy it, Dorothy." There was a dull edge to his voice. This was ground they had covered many a time before. Ever since their first meeting, Dorothy had been enjoying her attempts to prove that he was nothing more than a bloodthirsty human who merely enjoyed exerting his power and dominance over others, yet she often condemned him for not displaying it enough.
"As long as I don't get in the way of your duties, then, you won't mind if I dabble, now will you?"
"Of course not," the guardian murmured dryly. As if she would care whether or not she had his approval. "Which reminds me. I have some work here to finish. No time for idle chatter, I'm afraid. If you'll excuse me?"
She curtsied mockingly, yet respectfully, at him. "Until next time." She disappeared in a swirl of snowflakes, and the air seemed to rise a few degrees with her absence.
Duo closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath, waiting for him to come back to himself, for the frosty distance to recede from his mind. It was a dreadful focus that seemed to come with his power, one that would consume him, if he let it, but he refused to submit. It was cold, impersonal, and ruthless, yet whimsical and irrational, as well. A part of him, yet not.
When he opened his eyes again, they had returned to their usual warm violet. "Tell me again why I don't just kill her?"
::Contrary to what you might feel at the moment, she's not worth it.::
"That's what I thought." Duo sighed, and his shoulders slumped a little, but no more. Perhaps he was getting paranoid in his old age, but he was wary that the snow demon was still watching, no matter how much he might reassure himself that he would know if she were. ::Why the hell did she have to kill it?::
Heero knew the question as rhetorical, and forebore to point out the obvious -- that Duo would have killed it himself. It was necessary. But likely, he would have just taken its life, quietly and untraceably. Now, they had a conspicuous body to dispose of.
Instead, he wrapped his presence lightly around Duo's mind in a warm embrace, and their colors danced together briefly before they returned to the matter at hand. ::What do you think we should do with it?::
Despite the comfort from his partner, Duo still felt weary. ::I don't know. We can't have her thinking that he froze to death outside. Not only does it make no sense in this weather, she'd probably go absolutely crazy thinking that it was her fault. It'll probably be traumatic if we had him run over by a car or mauled or something. And she might be hurt if she thought he ran away.::
Heero placed a hand on his shoulder. ::It's alright.:: The boy's compassion made things more complicated, but it was nothing they couldn't work around, like they had before. ::We'll think of something.::
*****
Duo studied the house carefully before opening the gate leading up the short brick walk to the front door, its hinges making not a squeak. He knocked twice on the door, and soon, a young girl opened the door, as he had known she would.
"Oh, Mr..., um... Quatre's friend, right?"
"Maxwell. Duo is fine." He smiled as he shifted the small bundle in his arms.
"Of course. Duo. What can I do for you?" There was a little more color in Deanna's face today, and the shawl was not clutched so tightly around her.
"Quatre told me about Mario, the other day."
Deanna's eyes saddened a bit. "Oh. It was so... unexpected. The vet couldn't find anything wrong with him. Just some general tissue degeneration that he couldn't explain, but...." She trailed off uncertainly. Duo was a little relieved that nothing more had been found. He hadn't been quite certain that the hours he had put into slowly reversing what he could of Dorothy's work would pay off. Luckily, her flash freezing of the poor dog had not damaged too much of its tissue, and although it had taken the rest of the night, he had been able to remove carefully most of the chill from the body without causing too much more damage.
Then Deanna forced a little cheer into a smile. "But I've been feeling a little better recently, physically, so it helps to think that maybe it's all just a part of the greater balance of life. Maybe he gave his life to help me."
"Well, maybe I can help a little with cheering you up. I thought this might help." He unwrapped what he was carrying, and a little slumbering puppy was revealed, snuggled warmly in the blanket. He looked to be no more than a month old. "I found him the other day, and it doesn't seem to me that he's got an owner. What do you say about giving him a home?"
Deanna gasped lightly in pleasant surprise. "Oh, he's adorable, Duo! Are you sure? I mean --"
"I'm sure," he cut her off gently. "Please. He needs someone to take care of him, and I think you'd be perfect for the job."
As she carefully relieved him of his burden, it stirred sleepily and looked up at its new keeper. She offered her fingers for him to sniff, which he did lazily before drifting off again. "Oh, thank you, Duo!" She shifted the puppy to one arm and gave him a light hug. "He's not Mario, but..."
"No problem at all, miss." He gave her a shallow courtly bow. "Now I'd best be on my way. I'll see you again, no doubt?"
"Absolutely," she dimpled. "Thanks again!"
He nodded his acknowledgement of the gratitude and took off down the street, whistling a jaunty tune until he came to a convenient, out of the way shadow, and he slipped on home.
TBC...
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