AN: Okay, so I was looking at my stats, right? Because I write for those people who make those cool-ass stats, you know? I noticed that behind (or even just in before) my latest updated fics, Arcadia was there. This meant that people really loved Arcadia, or still do. So I prompted a sequel with a prologue. 12, 000 HITS. The prologue was, what, at most 300 words? So yea, I started this sequel.
This is no joke people. I write for reviews. You don't review… I don't write. YOU DON'T REVIEW=I DON'T WRITE. That's all I ask, what you like and what you didn't like. It's not that hard. Stop the group loafing. (psychological term meaning that if you're in a group, you get lazy with doing things someone wants you to do. I.E. You're a group of readers letting several people do all the reviewing)
Summary: This is a Gundam Wing AU Crossover. This is mainly a crossover with Harry Potter, Gundam 00, and Ai no Kusabi (actually, Kira Takeunochi's Taming Riki, but that's a weird story). This is a sequel to the mainly Gundam Wing fanfic Arcadia.
Trowa and Duo, still new to the supernatural world as pets for low-class demons, find themselves in the hottest part of Louisiana. They are then caught in a large-scale plot for the supernatural half of the world to take over the human half. In between all this, they find new friends, new enemies, and love in unlikely places: from the very (evil, sick, sadistic) beings that brought them to this world in the first place. Not quickly, they must overcome the Heart of Darkness in everyone they meet, including themselves. In the end, they will find their own Arcadia.
Warnings: Not for the weak-hearted. At all. Read Arcadia for explanation. Or the end of Deathly Hallows.
Disclaimer: I got the title Heart of Darkness from (you guessed it) novelist Joseph Conrad. I was intrigued by his book, and realized that the dark side of everyone (including you) enjoy the bad guys, or the good guys that do bad things. It's just our nature. This fic expands on this idea.
I own none of the anime from which the characters came. They belong to their respective owners. I get no money, don't want it, just reviews. THERE ARE SPOILERS. Besides the anime and book I listed above, I do wish to incorporate other newer anime like Bleach and Naruto, and have already have decided on Death Note. If you haven't noticed, Arcadia listed anime of old: Heart of Darkness has the newer anime I have looked into.
Read, Enjoy, and Review
Power Sickness
Trowa stared intently at his golden manacles. They were heavy, yes, but that was not the direct reason why he stared so. Besides this direct reason, he was trying to figure the incomprehensible mess of shapes the bindings were made of. To see what he was trying to do, one would have to imagine a paper plate (which is usually made of plastic, anyways) as an object made of several zillion sphere shapes with a thick viscosity oozing against each other. Still, it is an easy thing to take apart. Next, one would imagine a diamond, also made of spheres, except these spheres are enclosed in rectangular prisms, and these rectangular prisms are held tightly in triangular prisms somehow directly attached to surrounding spheres in their own rectangular-triangle prism worlds. The object was to, if you had the ability to see these things and the power to move them, separate each of the shapes following a set a rules. The plate usually had little rules (one would be that the spheres cannot separate through another sphere), but the diamond, damnable little cramp it was, had harder rules: the rectangular prisms were largely immovable in shape and space, while the spheres could become smaller or swell to the size of the rectangle but couldn't move within their space, and the triangular prisms could move, but could not decrease or increase in size. So if Trowa, say, would want to dismantle a diamond completely (he never would again) he would have to decrease the size of the spheres, move the triangular prisms on their axes to disconnect from the spheres without disturbing the rectangles, and wait until these shapes 'die' and fall off from disuse. Unfortunately, the attraction of the shapes to their original forms was extraordinarily strong, like sunflowers to light, and they would eventually turn back to their bonds. So Trowa couldn't do all these shapes at the same time and was forced to look upon one small group in the face of a million others and concentrate only on them, forcing itty bitty crumbs off diamonds at one time until the entire things were dismantled to dust.
Now multiply the complexity of this process by a thousand and that would be the manacles.
Okay, as aforementioned, Trowa didn't do this because he was terribly fascinated by the work, after several crumbs it gets tedious and only a viscious master could whipp you to the finish line, which is what happened. Trowa finally knew the true meaning of watching paint dry, and it was the same as crushing diamonds with your mind.
He was digressing. He was digressing with that horrible voice in his head. He was digressing from its indignant crying since Milliardo had his vision and told the rest of them what was going to happen in the near future. Actually, it was crying before that, when Milliardo made his declaration that none of them would be freed, Order or no Order. It may have been crying when they were gathered to Iason's house , before Milliardo even had his dream.
"All of you realize that not a single one of your masters is going to set you free, right?"
No, he didn't realize that. He wasn't going to anyway, if he had to tell the truth, like the voice in his head was doing. He was going to stare down the gold (which wasn't like any gold he's ever seen- it wasn't gold) until reality started to make sense, or he faced reality, whatever came first.
Duo had obviously faced reality; it just hadn't started to make sense yet. He had Milliardo repeat himself entirely.
Milliardo was over a hundred years old, Trowa remembered, with only sixteen years of a break in memory, the other years taken up with being a slave to whatever Order held him at the moment. A toy mercenary, he called himself once.
The blonde patiently explained again to the group, which had grown despondent and dull as the afternoon of their absent masters wore on. "It seems that Dekim was the traitor with our affiliated Umbrella members, and now there are two groups. Dekim's group- which is only Jupiter, Voldemort, and Dekim himself- and Mishima, Naruku, Nakago, et cetera. The traitor group has been banished, and those in that group will be going to Louisiana,"- Duo's home state from long ago- "while the rest of you stay here and rule over the zombie-infested land."
"That was a lot less words than before," Forrest Law of the Mishima Family observed aloud.
"Yea, I skipped the unimportant parts this time."
Christie added, "Like the part about us never being set free because… What?"
"Because you still have an Order, and we're going to join the Southern Order. So, technically, no Orders have disbanded and we still have slave rules to follow."
"So,"-Duo faced crumpled sadly-"We can't go back?"
This unconsciously broke Trowa away from his digressing. "Go back to what?"
"To…To…To…to…" Duo couldn't find the words. They didn't exist.
"There's nothing to go back to."
"At least we would have been free," Riki commented, his wolf ears flickering angrily. He stood against the wall, brooding.
Milliardo muttered back, "Freely lost."
"You don't care! You don't care a fiddly fuck!"
"I tend not to worry about things I can't control. Don't fret, I used to be like you, so it's not like I don't understand where you come from."
"You don't understand. If you did, you would be mad."
"Since when do people have to feel the same about something in order to understand it? How can I not understand it?"
Riki folded into the floor, balling up and covering his ears in defiance. "Shut up," he said.
Milliardo, smiling, began to drag his heavy chains to get to Riki- holy shit, they were heavy- and nearly broke his arms bringing his them around him. He had to take a breather for the exertion. Poor Riki had to bear the weight of his own manacles and Milliardo's and eventually had to unfold himself. He noticed the sultry smell of the blonde's hair. It was fresh but husky, and biting scent. He'll do him in a minute if anyone even hinted at it.
"Get off me! You smell funny, and you're heavy."
"Stop moping and I'll be happy to get off on you." Riki smelled surprisingly masculine, deep and throttling, an almost edible charisma oozing from him.
"What?"
"Excuse me, slip of the tongue. Get off of you, I meant."
"Sure you did." But Riki couldn't help smiling, or feeling a little flattered.
At that gesture, Milliardo shuffled to the other side to collapse on a pillow. "We should start saying our goodbyes to our good friends of the Mishima Family. Bye guys."
"Are we really going to be separated?" Christie whispered. "We just met."
"We were going to have fun!" shouted Xiaoyu.
"Well, the Traitorous Three and Mishima never agreed much on anything, anyway. Mishima is old-fashioned. Though it makes me wonder what Voldemort has under his sleeve."
"That is strange," Forest muttered. "I heard that Jupiter said that in the dictionary, Voldemort is the definition of medieval."
Riki tried hard to suppress a snicker.
"I would try and hug," Hwoarang laughed, "but these things are too heavy."
"Let's just say good-bye, then; we have little time." Milliardo began naming off everyone quickly. A bit slowly, everyone else in the Mishima Coven began saying their good-byes to the Mink Coven and the Kushrenada Family. Trowa felt like he was graduating, and instead of throwing hats, they would be taking off chains, and that is only for a moment.
Not long after the last goodbyes tapered off did the latter groups' master come charging into Iason's house. The door wasn't so much opened as it was knocked off it hinges, crashing against the wall and floor into splinters sliding around. This shocked so many of them that they didn't realize that all the masters there were working together- Iason and Raoul shouting orders to each other as well as Treize and Dorothy. The formidable woman had her slave, Relena, not cuffed, help her free Duo and the other pets that weren't from the Mishima Coven. Dorothy herself took the manacles off of Trowa, who was so surprised he merely sat there staring.
"What's going-" he began, feebly, only for Dorothy to snatch him up and lift him to her back. In mere seconds, he was shoved inside a car. A few more and he watched Treize shove a helmet on Milliardo's wild hair; Milliardo threw off the headgear with a scowl. He promptly fixed his face, and the protection, at Treize's no-nonsense stare. Duo was shoved in next to him by a woman who he had yet to meet, an auburn beauty wearing glasses. Her hair was in those Princess Leia bunches that seemed to work for her, and a uniform, tight, shaped her form. One of the prettiest women Trowa had ever seen.
"Wow… She was hot," expressed Duo with no cheer. "What the hell is going on?"
They sat in the idle car watching the scenes unfold. The other pets- Riki, Juthian, Relena, another woman Trowa's never met, all of them- were now being hustled into vehicles. Soon, the scariest man Trowa has ever seen came flying over the house. He was bald, with slits for nostrils, or a nose for that matter, and a tight, lipless mouth; and he had white leather for skin! Somehow, something deep inside made Trowa want to sink lower in his seat so that the reptile man couldn't see him. Duo did the same. They watched the reptile man and Dekim Barton argue heatedly, Jupiter zapped into the fray and seemed to start screaming immediately.
The Prefects of the families- a woman almost as scary as the reptile man, Dorothy, and Iason- watched solemnly, but they didn't interfere, as if it wasn't their place to do so. After the Order members continued their argument for a time, the Prefects waved the other Families off.
Treize soon jumped in front of Milliardo on the motorcycle, Wufei on the high seat behind him. They were speeding off before Heero and Quatre entered the car, with Heero driving, putting it into gear, and zooming off after them.
Duo and Trowa's heads were whiplashed backward then forward as the car abruptly went even pace.
Now what made their hearts skip several beats was the appearance of definitely dangerous persons. Many fine young men and women, armed to the teeth with strange weapons and wearing even stranger clothes attacked them from above the buildings; the not-so-attractive souls were similar to the rugged creatures they saw street fighting some days before. With their pretty gadgets, they could inflict some cool damage as well.
And they tried, the whole lot of them. Quatre and Heero, though his eyes had to concentrate on the road as well, had to fight them off with low-powered guns. However, it was obvious that they were not aiming to kill. Without an ounce of explanation, they gave weapons to Duo and Trowa as well. The two, watching each other wearily as their situation continued to spiral tirelessly out of control, began firing.
Quatre had not ordered him to use magic, so Trowa didn't. The car jumped into high gear when a fresh band of pursuers appeared behind them. They seemed like more ill-willed strangers until Christie of the Mishima Coven climbed atop the nearest van.
Quickly, Heero told them, "They are now our enemies." He caught their eyes in the rearview mirror. "If they try too hard, don't hold back."
On cue, Christie hunched on the van before launching with eerily precise aim on the trunk of their car, landing softly so as not to disturb her balance. Her pained expression shocked Trowa more than anything else, then Wufei's bullets, then the answering bullets of Jun Kazama on her own motorcycle. With him distracted, Christie easily kicked off the top of the car, earning on a few large gashes on her voluptuous leg for her trouble. She kicked Duo's gun away in the next instant, unsmiling as she was in the battle just the day before, the battle in which they were all working together to win.
That past was just a puff a smoke. And so was his little high school career of the time before. Trowa was so distraught by this fact that he did nothing when Christie rained down palmed blows on Duo's disadvantaged form- he couldn't reach her face to hit her; otherwise he would have to try to break her arms or play dirty with her large breasts to get in a hit.
One slap spurted blood from Duo's nose, and the sight of red on that pale face knocked Trowa out of his reverie. In instinct, pure gut, complete Id, he shot her. The bullet went through her neck. She grabbed her wound with both hands, brown eyes completely wide and disbelieving. Trowa gave her the same look, with just as pale a face.
"What the hell?" Quatre yelled, just taking in the scene happening just behind him for he was too much focused on the people in front of them- Nakago's and Naruku's gangs. If Inuyasha or Tamahome decided to come down to fight one on one, they would never get out of the city, and then they would be just as good as dead.
Duo, both taking the opportunity and wanting not for the girl to die on top of him, punched with all his might. Christie flew out of the car, streams of blood followed her wake and covered Duo with a light shower that made him shake with nausea.
Why wasn't this the same as fighting the zombie dogs? Or even the vampire lords in the hide-and-seek? This should feel the same right? An accomplishment… Saving your own skin…
Simple, these people didn't want to fight. Behind them Heihachi was shouting orders left and right, sending the cavalry on motorcycles, and powered weapons shot from the larger, slower cars. They aimed specifically for the bared car. They aimed specifically off on purpose as well; Trowa knew it. He watched with a heart-wrenching feeling as Christie fall over the car onto the street. Jun immediately stopped her futile attack on the trio on the motorcycle- two used magic. She got to Christie and immediately began healing her.
Afterward, Trowa began to concentrate on the faraway symbols of the tires of the van. They were too far away.
"Get us back there," Trowa told Heero, leaning forward so that he could hear.
"You want me to do what?" It was such an even tone, one could easily mistake the question as hard to hear instead of incredulous.
"If I can see just a bit better, I can tear their tires apart."
Trowa saw in the rearview mirror Heero's mouth thin to nothingness. He seemed to be prompting the advantages of having them all with blown tires and comparing them to the momentary cons of backing into enemy territory. Speaking of enemy territory, he turned once, and Trowa recognized the street leading to the zombie land. The first entryway was already open. But there were unfriendly people above the sides, they were all girls in some sort of uniform. The one with a bazooka had two large meatball-looking buns on her blond head with pigtails reaching from both.
The pros won out for Heero; he was already swiftly backing up when he told Trowa, "One minute. Then I want you to form a shield as big as you can around all of us. If Voldemort doesn't betray us, we would survive the passageway into zombie territory."
"Who's Voldemort?" asked Duo.
"The scary guy you saw talking to Dekim and Jupiter."
"We're doomed," moaned Duo.
Trowa was using his minute to disintegrate the tires to nothingness. They were merely spheres and some other two-dimensional objects, like hooks, constricting their movement, but it was nothing like diamonds. He went easier on the motorcycles, though with his speed he was clumsy on his precision, so he couldn't do much when the bikes spiraled out of control. He hardly noticed the minute was over until Heero shouted his second part to the plan.
Duo was early in mourning. The other side was already open; the ladies atop the gates, bemused, tried to shut the gate to no avail. Unfortunately, this also allowed many of the roaming zombies to enter the passageway. In this narrow, sitting-duck area, Trowa created a shield with just the particles in the air, splitting their atoms apart before putting them back together in intricate little shape-symbols even he was amazed to see. The high-adrenaline of the situation must be influencing him beyond his normal capabilities.
Bullets bounced off the makeshift shield. Meatball head's rockets exploded midair. Riki, in a car in front, jerked a thumbs-up sign.
No matter how rewarding it was, Trowa couldn't hold it up much longer, and his nose, eyes, and ears blood with the pressure of keeping such an immense structure afloat and strong.
"Let go as soon as we're on the other side!" Quatre shouted, sounding worried. He blasted away incoming zombies, concentrating on the ones around Treize's bike, for Milliardo was useless against the rotting living dead whenever they moved their mouths' were too wide.
When Trowa, through a red-lighted atmosphere, saw the last car- of their side- leave the passage, he let go the shield. The force squeezing his skull together reluctantly released his hold, as if hoping he would try so hard once more in the future. He simply fell back, unable to think any further than breathing. There was only a single protest from him when they stopped the car and took him out, still shooting running undead, shouting about some "Portkey" this and "Portkey" that. Then there were so many voices, Trowa was sure he was surfing a delirious crowd at some heavy metal concert. He wanted to pass out before…!
Someone screamed when his vomit hit him or her, cursing colorfully. He was then wrapped in something large and warm. Though his eyes were blind, he was sure it was Quatre. But it was probably something of Treize's he was wrapped in. There was a count-off somewhere out there in the universe and he felt a vicious, dizzying tug at his naval. He blacked out completely.
No noise awoke Trowa. He blinked into dying sunlight. This place was… high-tech. It had the comforts of any regular room, but had the shiny floors and lights and machinery of a hospital room, and just as blindingly white. Where was he?
The air was sort of hot… No! It was unbearably hot! He was steaming. But it was just the end of April, maybe even May, but it shouldn't be this hot… It was never this hot this time of year. Never, never, never. And now the blindingly white was blindingly psychedelic, pulsing and swirling, with condescending smiles of deep colors churning from the deep whorls. He felt the nausea again, leaning over to puke, but nothing came out. When he turned back, a disastrous twister of blackness had formed in the middle of the room, spinning towards him with the obvious intent of disconnecting various limbs. Moments later, it took his legs, and he began to scream.
Several voices rushed in, colorful pallid creatures came with them, getting sucked into the black hole of destruction. He could hear their terrified screams when they were pulled apart. A shining moment of transcending, and he heard, "He's delirious! It must be the heat!"
"We pushed him too hard at that last moment…" That voice was mournful.
"Don't worry; he'll be out of it sooner or later."
"His brain…" The moment flickered. "-Fried?"
"No, no… If it does, we can heal it. He'll be fine."
The shine went out, and he was in blackness once more.
He came to but was afraid to open his eyes. It was still hot, and even the sight behind his eyelids were horrifying.
"It's been a week."
Quatre.
"Don't tell me you're worried." That was Wufei teasing. "You treated him like any other pet. He's no different."
"He really liked having sex with me… Though he was afraid."
"Well, that's understandable… He wasn't a crier like all the others. But that fear… You'll never get through with that fear. But you don't need it."
"I… I'll be nice. Would that be better?"
"Probably. I remember the gentle you Quatre… It was nice."
"Nice." The world flashed brilliantly, and he was comatose once more.
The next time was the final time, he was sure. It was hot, but not scorching like before, and Trowa could actually feel the sweat-soaked sheets on his naked skin, but also, and more importantly, he could feel the cool gentle breeze coming from an open window. The room he remembered to be blinding was now more beige.
Then someone walked in. The calmer ambiance went to pieces. What Trowa saw through his magic-enhanced eyes was what he would see if he looked through a mirror with very few differences. And since he wasn't moving, then this wasn't a mirror image and this was either a nightmare or another hallucination. He waited for the nausea.
But his copycat went to his bed, and Trowa saw that his eyes were completely different from his, one gray, the other gold. From them, Trowa saw a multitude of other dissimilarities between his reflection and him- but they were too much the same not to make a connection. Like apes and people, except the two percent genetic difference was now a 0.0002 percent difference.
Wearily, he took out a needle filled with a greenish-yellow fluid, raising the other high in the air as if in surrender, and gave him the shot. Watching carefully, a smile spread across his face.
"You should be able to see me clearly, now." His voice was drastically different, a nasally almost whine, but it was gentle. Trowa liked it.
"Who are you?" Trowa thought for a moment and continued, "What are you?"
The boy bit his lip. He then answered, placing a warm hand on his bare shoulder. "I'm Allelujah Haptism… Your clone."
TBC
To all reading, review and tell me what you think.