Author: Keiran
Title: First Impressions 1/2
Rating: 14+
Warnings: slight gore, no romance.
Characters: Duo, Wufei.
Genre: Action/Adventure.
Summary: Star Wars universe fusion. Kids often cost us an arm and a leg – in Duo Maxwell's case, the statement is literal.
Notes: I am a SW geek. I couldn't pass a chance to do g-boys with light sabres. This one was originally an explaining one-shot, that somehow had gotten a life of its own. I have a 1x2 sequel in mind (so far in the form of several LJ drabbles), if I manage to draw a plot for it, that is. Enjoy!
Duo is about 23 in this fic. Wufei is 13.
Thanks to Shenlong Deb, for betaing!
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Cursing with a fluency far beyond an average Jedi's skills, Duo decapitated yet another droid-guard. Not bothering to return his light sabre to its rightful place on his belt, he stalked on, creatively presenting the parentage and ancestry of one Chang Wufei, in a way that would make neither proud.
"All that fucking trouble for one pigheaded initiate. I really ought to get paid," he muttered to himself, relieving yet another droid of its so-called brain unit. Hacking and slashing his way through the metallic crowd, Duo's way and monologue came to an abrupt end in front of huge, heavy-looking doors. "Here goes nothing," he muttered, looking for a lock. Finding none, he shrugged and detached a small explosive from his belt and attached it to the crease in the gate. Flicking his long braid behind his back, he withdrew a few meters, picked up a random gun from the floor and fired it at the charge.
"Uncivilized they might be, but damn, aren't they useful sometimes. It would have taken me a whole three minutes to appropriate a detonator," he announced, carelessly throwing the blaster backwards.
It came as a total surprise to the droid trying to sneak up on the young Jedi, when the blaster stopped mid-air and fired in his direction. The knight didn't even bother to turn, before striding through the revealed room and further into the palace.
"Surprise," he intoned evenly, making his way into what seemed to be a control room, of some sort. Two heads turned in his direction. "Chang Wufei, I assume, as well as Dekim Barton. That be your given name, or just an artistic alias?" Both the older man and the boy stared at the long-haired Jedi, long and hard.
"I was expecting the council to send someone; but you?" contempt and amused disbelief (or offended pride) sounding loud clear in his voice, Dekim shook his head. Duo merely grinned in response.
"I was expecting you to at least have some guards in here, to tell you the truth. A five-year-old with a can opener could grind these droids to dust."
"We didn't know you'd arrive this fast," the thirteen-year-old boy piped up, a ferocious expression on his round face. Duo resisted the urge to go 'Aww'. Dekim had less trouble – obviously, this wasn't quite what he would have wanted out in the open.
"I surprise even myself, sometimes," Duo grinned rather unnervingly. Well, it wasn't his fault the council usually sent him as far from Coruscant as possible, thus resulting in him being in the direct neighbourhood to the Force-forsaken place Barton chose as his base.
"Enough," Dekim growled. "What do you want?"
"Let's see. I want the kiddo back. That's one. I want the detonator to the bomb you kindly left in the Temple; that's two. I want a chocolate sundae with fresh cherries; that's three. I want you to jump off a cliff; that's four." A pause. "I am prepared to negotiate in the case of the latter two though." He noted, with a mix of surprise and satisfaction, that the black-haired boy blinked at the mention of the bomb.
"The order obviously suffers more than I thought, if they sent a clown like you to fight us." Dekim said with a snort.
"That's only one man's opinion," Duo countered cheerfully. Barton glared at the young man, but relaxed only moments later.
"I do not take kindly to being made fun off. Wufei," he called, "Attack." The teenager spared no second thought, before springing into action. Duo looked only vaguely surprised.
"I sincerely hope your plan does not depend on this little brat stopping me?" he asked, barely glancing in the black-eyed boy's direction, as the blades of their sabres met. Wufei gritted his teeth.
"Don't insult me, you bastard!" he yelled, trying to stab his older colleague. Duo laughed briefly and shook his head. With a quick twist of the handle, the blue blade hooked the silver one and brought it up sharply, allowing the knight to pry the metal tube from the initiate's hand.
"Good technique, boy," he said in an encouraging tone, "but you suck on the delivery." With a well-aimed kick, Wufei flew backwards and into the wall, where he sat dazed for a few moments.
"Now, Mr Barton, sir. Please kindly stop the count down. Or – and I promise you this – you will end up in as many pieces as the Temple."
Dekim glared hatefully at the young Jedi. "Do not assume I will be defeated easily," he growled, fury colouring his tone.
"I am, 'sure' hoping you will refrain from fighting," Duo said calmly. He had heard the stories once he arrived at the temple on Coruscant at the age of ten. Barton was among the few initiates who didn't find their own masters and left the order wholly, with only the most basic of training. No one said it explicitly, but hints carried on well enough that Dekim was simply too cowardly to face the challenge.
Somewhere behind the knight's back, Wufei rose to his feet a little unsteadily. Duo turned slightly, keeping most of his attention focused on Barton.
"Do not attack me again, boy," he drawled. "I will not hesitate to take you out."
"You dishonourable bastard!" the boy sputtered. "You wouldn't dare!"
"Wanna bet? And who're calling dishonourable? The old coot here is all set to blow the Jedi Temple sky-high; that's honourable? How?" Wufei paused.
"He would not. He is a Jedi."
"Funny, he looks a lot like Dekim Barton to me," Duo said, raising a brow. "But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt," he said, bowing graciously and activated his light sabre. "Fight me. Now." He shot a pointed look to the weapon the older man had strapped to his waist. His suppressed, sadistic side gave a wild grin at the gleam of sheer panic in the man's eyes.
Yet he was pleasantly surprised when the older man decided to rise to the challenge. 'Wow, this must be a first,' he though sardonically. But then again, Duo mused, had he refused or run, Wufei would probably not follow. The sheer talent the boy displayed was most likely indispensable to someone like Barton.
Even though he strongly suspected this was a fight he could win by dodging alone, the violet eyes narrowed, as Duo cleared his mind of the running commentary and focused on the duel. He might taunt and jeer, but he never underestimated his enemies. Even when facing an initiate, and a most likely under-trained ex-initiate, he focused as if he was to fight a legion of Sith lords. After all, there were two of them. He had a lot less space for mistakes, the violet-eyed man thought, whirling between his opponents.
Catching the first horizontal attack of the green blade, the knight took a step to the left, leaving plenty of space for his own sword to whiz through the air and bounce the well-aimed hack, that the boy executed, away from his shoulders. In no time at all he realized, that for Barton the fight was hopeless either way – even if he failed and Barton did kill him as he so obviously wanted. Wufei wanted – yet, at least – no corpses on his personal account.
Which ultimately led to the question, 'What exactly was it he wanted to achieve with this stunt?'
Deciding it was high time he found out, Duo dropped his light sabre in mid-turn, caught it immediately with his left hand and blocked a horizontal slash behind his back. With an almost unnoticeable bounce, he executed a perfect back flip landing on the console a few meters away. The pair were better than he'd anticipated but still well within the estimated levels. The fact that they shared no bond made their fighting haphazard and uncoordinated. A potential danger, but only if he got really careless.
All things considered, he wasn't even amused, like he'd been when master Windu ended up flat on his ass because he thought a ten-year-old Corellian Jedi initiate could not hold his own. It was largely sheer luck and surprise that made him fall (he cheated, a little, if full truth was to be told), but still.
"Why do you follow the loser, Wuffers?" Duo asked, observing his adversaries carefully. "You're far too talented to waste yourself like that."
"Shut up, you bastard!" the child yelled, launching into the air and attacking yet again. Barton, the Jedi noted, was already slightly winded and withdrawing. Smirking lightly, Duo made to follow, pushing the teenager after him with a few well-aimed pokes.
It wasn't particularly exciting, but still of amusement value, poking at a ferocious-looking, adorable boy, whose little face was so scrunched up that he actually resembled master Yoda.
Not to mention the expression on Barton's face, when he found himself backed into the industrial section of the base, complete with construction droids, furnaces, liquid metal and overwhelming heat.
Seemed a little cliché, but hey, he wasn't the one writing the script. Now he would have to pay attention so that the boy didn't hurt himself accidentally. Part of his mission was to retrieve him, alive and whole, for the council to execute. Or scold, or whatever they felt like doing.
It seemed though that worrying about Wufei wasn't all that important at the moment, as the battle would prove to be short-lived. Barton had seemed to realize that a fully trained Jedi knight in battle mode is a lot less friendly and inclined to perform much more complicated (and deadly) manoeuvres, than those he'd encountered as a child in training sessions. It also occurred to him that the other exit in the hall (namely, the one without said Jedi knight in front of it) was far, far away.
"Drop your weapon, Jedi," he growled, his abrupt realization finally breaking through some walls in his brain. Fumbling only slightly, he fished a vial from the folds of his robe, a vial roughly as long as half a light sabre and of about the same diameter. The long-haired man stopped dead in his tracks. "Or I will detonate the bomb in the temple."
Out of the corner of his eye, Duo noticed the small frame of Wufei pause. There was an almost imperceptible tremor running through his body.
"What?" he asked very slowly. The knight gritted his teeth and cursed his soft spot for and, by extension, the ease with which he was able to tune in to kids. He could sense it from a parsec away, that this boy meant no actual harm. Sure, he was a small, chauvinistic prick, who yelled, mocked and complained a lot, but there was a very sweet child underneath it all. If one was prepared to wait, be yelled at, complained about, insulted and discriminated against, that was.
Nevertheless, he hated seeing the boy be robbed of his illusions like that.
"Barton," he said finally, his tone losing both teasing qualities and pleasantness. "You will drop the detonator. And you will do so NOW."
"Yelling at me will not help you, Jedi," the man sneered.
"You lied to me!" Wufei cried, struggling to sound like the Jedi he hoped to be and not a lost little boy. "Why?"
"Barton, I won't ask again. Drop the detonator," Duo commanded sharply, focusing all of himself on the small device. The violet fire, alighted in his eyes by passion, was rumoured to unnerve even droids; its full effect on living beings, it was said, was almost as effective as mind-control. It was never proven though.
Therefore, to say the older man felt disturbed, would be an understatement. His universe narrowed in that single moment, centring on the blazing orbs among reddish haze of the industrial unit. Considering he was not of the brave persuasion, his option for running wasn't a big surprise.
Under-trained he might have been, but no Jedi skills are necessary to have a hunch that negotiating with (or even standing up to) that gaze, would not end up favourably for him. With a malicious sneer, largely designed to mask the uneasiness, he extended his hand and dropped the detonator.
Straight into a bucket of liquid iron, just off the pathway.
"Go looking for it, if you care that much," he yelled, moving to run. He didn't get far. Duo, though his time for decision-making was cut short, reacted immediately. Sending Barton and Wufei into their nearest walls simultaneously, he jumped off the pathway.
Rolling up the sleeve on his right hand, he hesitated briefly. "All this to save the pompous assholes of the council…" 'And all the baby Jedi,' he added mentally. Grinding his teeth and clenching his eyes, he plunged the bared arm into the – fortunately fairly shallow – pail.
All things considered, he said to himself wryly, he shouldn't be surprised that his arm felt as if it was being barbecued. 'The bloody training did not included diving through fire!' his mind wailed. This was agonizing!
So he screamed.
Twenty seven excruciating seconds later, his face flushed from the heat, yet somewhat pale at the same time, Duo Maxwell staggered back and sat heavily on the walkway, the detonator clutched in the smoking remains of his fingers. Wufei, having gotten back to his feet a moment before, walked to him unsteadily. Black eyes wide, bile rising in his throat, he watched as the Jedi tore off the cap on the device with the trembling fingers of his left hand, releasing several fat glow-bugs. Removing the electrical circuit, he threw it back to the melting pot.
Having done that, he fell to the floor which seemed ice-cold by comparison. He regretted immediately the glance he cast at his arm as the attempt to assess the damage resulted in him rolling to his stomach and throwing up violently.
A mass of charred tissue and blackened bones would do that to the owner of said limb.
"Hope you're happy now, kid," he managed to grind out eventually, cold sweat running down his face. "I fucking liked this shirt." Getting to his knees clumsily, he managed to get up, with Wufei's help. Unfortunately, a split second later he was forced to roll away, ending up on the floor once again, as Dekim Barton was apparently looking for notches on his light sabre.
"Look asshole, back off will you?" Duo yelled, getting unsteadily to his feet, his face paling rapidly.
"I think not. You don't look so cocky now, do you? What's the matter, the fire got to you?"
"No, your lame lines did." The Jedi rolled his eyes. "Fuck off, will you?" Dodging yet another feeble attempt at taking his head off, Duo rolled his eyes. And almost fainted from the effort. 'Well,' he thought, 'one thing I need to admire is how he actually brought me down to his level of physical fitness.'
"I wonder how you will get out of this one, Jedi?" Duo stopped and gave the man a look. Locating a loose piece of equipment, he made it connect sharply with Barton's skull with the aid of the Force.
"How's that for getting out of this one?" he asked the dropping body cheerfully. Or at least with as much cheer as he could muster, when the slightest move brought his injured arm into contact with things of no soothing qualities whatsoever. In the brief silence Wufei approached him hesitantly, trying to ignore the heap that was Barton on the floor.
TBC.