The Devil's Triangle: Trapped on the Obsidian Rosemary
By Xandra
Chapter Two: Jake and Toby
****
The dim light outside the porthole windows was quickly waning, signifying that the day had worn on much further than they had thought. As the night slowly approached, darkness set in on the hearts of the other four pilots at the news. The ship wasn't the only gloomy thing in the area, now.
"What do you MEAN the boat is GONE?!"
"Just what I said, Maxwell!"
"How can it be GONE, WUFEI?!"
Trowa sighed and smacked a hand to his forehead. "Hold on, hold on!" he cried over the others. Everyone quickly went silent and as he seated himself in an overstuffed chair in the middle of the ballroom. They had agreed that this would be their meeting place, because it was by far the biggest and most easily accessed area of the ship. He sighed and put a hand on his forehead. "Okay...let me get this straight, Wufei, and correct me if I'm wrong. You were in the wheelhouse and the door shut and locked without warning. When you BUSTED the DOOR DOWN"--he raised his voice a fraction on those words, because it ticked him off a tad bit--"you were met by a little girl with a strange box. You asked her questions and her only responses were 'play with me.' When you told her no, she said you'd regret it and disappeared. When you turned around, she was jumping rope with the mooring line and she threw it to you, then disappeared again. When you looked, the boat was gone, and now we're stranded on this ship. Am I missing anything?"
The Chinese pilot sighed, nodding. "I know it sounds crazy, but that's what happened. This weird little girl with black hair somehow managed all this, and she couldn't have been any more than seven. The disappearing is what really gets me."
"Wufei," Duo said, flatly, "Are you sure you weren't just having an insane moment and you decided to blame it on a little girl?"
He was up and out of his chair in a blink, but Quatre caught his arms and held him still. "Why you little son-of-a--"
"Please, we can't fight!" Quatre exclaimed. "In any case, the sailboat is gone and we're stuck on this ship, so we'll just have to figure a way to either get off it or get it working so we can get somewhere."
"But I doubt a tanker from several hundred years ago is going to have FOOD on it, Q," Duo retorted.
Heero's hand came up and clipped the back of the braided boy's head. "Damare, baka." He turned back to the others. "This thing might still be in good working condition, if we're lucky."
"Fat chance, this whole day has sucked," Duo muttered under his breath.
The perfect soldier's icy eyes hit him. "I believe I told you to SHUT UP, Duo, and if you do NOT, I will shut you up MYSELF."
The brunette scowled and slouched down in his chair, folding his arms.
"I suggest we finish searching the boat, and either find a radio and call for the coast guard or get this old thing working and find a way back to Bermuda," Heero continued. "Either way, we have to do something before we starve."
That was very true. Trowa nodded. "All right. We have to find some sort of food, the tools to fix this thing or a radio. Heero, can you draw up a few copies of the map for us?"
"If I can find some paper."
"There was mapping paper in the wheelhouse," Wufei said, dully.
"Good," Trowa said. "Heero, you go with him. Duo, do you know where the kitchen is?"
He nodded. "Yeah, Hee-chan and I found it on the way, and once I've been somewhere, I remember it."
"Could you go down there and see if you can find some food?"
He stood up and stretched, then sighed and nodded. "Yeah, whatever." With an aggravated sigh, he quickly headed off down one of the residential halls and was gone.
"Trowa..."
He looked up at his lover, then smiled, weakly. //Well, it could be worse.//
Quatre frowned, then hugged himself. "I don't like this...it feels wrong..."
Trowa's smile strengthened and he got up, enfolding the blonde in his arms. "I know...but it isn't like we really have a choice."
"No, that isn't what I mean...everything feels so wrong for some reason...like we shouldn't be here."
"You're right," the green-eyed boy sighed. "We shouldn't, but we are and now we're stranded."
Quatre pouted, angrily. "I told you this was bad."
"And I was wrong and I'm sorry..."
"Sorry? We might die here and you're sorry. That's nice." The blonde pulled from his arms and headed off across the dusty floor of the ballroom toward the hall in which he had found that strange doll. It was still tucked under his arm, where it had been for the last hour.
Trowa sighed. "Quatre--"
"I need to think," he spat. "I'll be back later."
He sighed, then dropped back into the overstuffed chair and sighed. //God...trapped, and now Quatre hates me...this is just wonderful...//
Why had he suggested this in the first place? There had been no point to it. Certainly, going on a cruise would have been a blast, but no, he had wanted to prove that he was talented in more than a few ways by suggesting they take Quatre's sailboat out on their own. He was no captain, after all, and now they were lost in the middle of the ocean, without supplies or a way of contact leading to the world on dry land.
The worst part, excluding that Quatre was angry with him? It was HIS fault, and now there was a good chance he and his friends would die.
He sat back in the chair, exposing his throat as his head lolled back over the headrest. //I am such an idiot...this couldn't get any worse...//
~
"What's this?"
Wufei looked up at Heero, who was holding up an untitled book. "Voyage log. Lists of all the people on-board each trip."
He inspected it, then flipped it open. It had dates upon dates and pages upon pages of names of at least a dozen voyages carrying a thousand people each time, but that was all. After that, the book was blank. "Is there a CAPTAIN'S log?" he asked.
Wufei looked up from his searching again. "Why?"
Heero shrugged. //I wonder how this thing got all the way out here...// He absently pocketed the novel-sized book, then went to the helm, setting his hands gently on the ancient wheel, which was half rotten and missing fifty perfect of itself. Slowly, he looked up, his cautious, ready eyes scanning across the calm, dark sea in the red light. The cloud-cover hadn't lifted, and the light of the sunset dyed it a shade of crimson that made it seem as if the sky was on fire. The ocean, lacking the light of the sky, was as black as onyx, or perhaps obsidian.
Obsidian was an igneous, glass-like rock that was made when molten lava from a volcanic eruption cooled just right, and it was one of the darkest substances. Yes, the ocean looked to be made of just that, and the sky of the lava that created it, pouring down and cooling in the sea to make obsidian. It would have been creepy to many, or a bad omen to others, but from where Heero was standing, it was beautiful.
He wasn't sure why, but morbid things struck him as beautiful, while calm, blue skies and green meadows made him uncertain--even frightened him. He assumed that it was because he was so used to death and carnage that his perspective had been warped to a good extent. Anything calm he had ever known had been untrustworthy and turned to gory torment and eventual doom, while things like the gory battlefields and fiery walls of death that had been the war were simple, straightforward torment and doom. As his mentor and adoptive father, Odin Lowe, had taught him: the path of least resistance is the one most likely to be a trap or worse. Certainly, it wasn't the old gentle caution of the old days, but it had saved his life many times.
"Heero."
He looked up. "What is it?"
The Asian pilot set a copy of the map in his hands. "Here. You'll need this."
He inspected the map, which was a perfect copy of the blueprints of the ship. "Thank you."
"I have three others and the blueprint, so I think we should be all right."
Heero nodded. "All right."
~
"I found food," Duo said, waving a bag of chips in front of Trowa's face. "C'mon...you know you want it."
He sighed. "Not hungry, you eat them."
"Nah, they're stale," the brunette said, smirking. Then, it faded as he saw the look on Trowa's face. "Why so blue, T?"
"Quatre's angry at me."
"For what, getting us lost? And stranded?"
Trowa scowled up at the young man, who quickly recoiled. "Excuse me, WHOSE idea was it to get on this damn deathtrap?"
"Hey, don't blame ME!" Duo exclaimed, defensively. "I was just asking..."
He sighed, then sat back in his chair as the blonde came back once again, still carrying that creepy doll. "Quatre, are you going to talk to me yet?"
The boy said nothing. He sat down in a chair nearby and pulled the doll from under his arm, then began inspecting it, as if Trowa hadn't spoken.
"Hey, what's that?" Duo was playing peacemaker, as he usually did when they fought, which was rare. He was Quatre's best friend and Trowa's...well, he was Trowa's best friend's boyfriend. It sort of helped. He hopped down next to the Sandrock pilot, looking at the odd little creature. "Where'd you get that?"
"I found it in the hallway up there," he replied, gesturing absently. "It belonged to some young passenger. I personally find it interesting."
Duo poked at it. "Hey, it's like a zombie doll! Only half a face, and it's all messed up."
Quatre nodded. "Yes, It was probably made by hand...I want to find the room of the child that owned this, so I can put it where it belongs. I wonder if they have a list of the people on the voyage somewhere..."
"Hey, look here!" Duo poked a finger at a section of the doll's marred and colorful hide. "What's that say?"
Curious, Trowa cocked his head and squinted. There was something written on the back of its left leg in bad handwriting.
"It says...Jake..."
"You think it belongs to a little boy named Jake?" Duo asked, sitting down and cracking open the bag of chips. He offered one to Quatre, who quickly demurred, then stuck it in his mouth with a loud crunch. "Hmm...not bad for being so old." He shrugged.
"Possibly..."
Heero and Wufei arrived. "Any food Duo?"
"Chips, and some old bones, but other than that, there isn't a damn thing."
Wufei sighed. "Figures." He dropped a bundle of rolled-up paper on the floor at Trowa's feet. "Maps, copied and ready, but I don't see the point, because there's no food and no way off this damn thing."
"Yeah, we'll all starve within days," Quatre muttered, hugging the mutant clown doll.
The Asian pilot scoffed. "Not Maxwell, he's got enough fat on him to survive for a few WEEKS."
"*HEY*!"
"Don't talk about him like that, Wufei," Heero said, threateningly.
"What are YOU going to do about it?"
As Heero pulled his gun, Trowa intervened and grabbed the barrel, wrenching it from his hand, then flipped it and put it to his head. "Look," he spat, irritated beyond reason, "You're not the only one that wants to get the hell out of here, but the only way we WILL get off this ship is if we work together and either find a radio that works or fix the damn ship itself. Other than that, we die. As far as I can see, we don't have a lot of options, so all of you need to shut up and get in gear. We're Gundam pilots, damn it, and we're acting like children! We haven't got time for this and, personally, I HAVEN'T GOT THE PATIENCE." He smacked the gun back into Heero's open hand. "We can do this if we act like the adults that we are instead of the children we used to be. God knows, if we had to, we could fix this thing. It floats, so all we'd have to do is find the tools. Heero, you've been taking care of yourself and Zero ever since God knows when, and I've been a mechanic since I was seven. If we find a radio, broken or not, we may be saved, because Duo, you're a communications whiz. Wufei has the survival skills to keep us alive and--" he paused as he noted Quatre hadn't even bothered to do what he was doing. He turned on him. "For Christ sake, Quatre, YOU should be giving this speech!"
"DON'T SHOUT AT ME!" he roared back, surprising the others. He stood up and leered at Trowa. "*I* did my part, Trowa," he hissed, darkly. "I warned you that I had a bad feeling about this whole thing and you acted like I was being childish. This is YOUR fault, so YOU can handle it, WITHOUT *ME*." With that, the young Winner heir turned on the heel of his shoe and marched away down the residential hall he had come back from not ten minutes prior.
The ballroom was dead silent as the pilots stood there, all of them stricken, but none more hurt than Trowa. The little blonde had never been angry with him, and that outburst had reminded him a little too much of the time he had nearly killed him. He loved Quatre more than anything, and he had not only hurt him but made him angry and forced him to lash out against him. Slowly, he sunk back into the chair and closed his eyes, willing the entire thing to be a nightmare. It hurt too much to be real.
A hand grasped his shoulder and he was sure it was Duo by the feel of it. He wasn't as strong as Wufei or Heero, and he wasn't too proud to lower himself and offer assistance, no matter how futile. "Trowa..."
"Please, just don't," he said, flatly, trying desperately to keep the pain from his voice. It was another one of those times that he wished he hadn't started feeling again, because when one felt, one hurt.
Duo knelt in front of him (he could tell because of the footsteps and the sudden weight on his knees) and leaned on his thighs, looking up at him in an attempt to draw his attention. "Aww, come on, Trowa. He'll be okay...just let him get it out of his system and he'll be all right."
"But it IS my fault," he murmured, hopelessly. Certainly, Quatre would forgive him in time, but he was having trouble believing that it would be any time soon.
"No it isn't. It was me, Heero and Wufei that said we should come aboard, and I tied the boat up. Maybe the rope just broke--that would be my fault. See? It wasn't you."
"I didn't LISTEN to him, Duo. He told me he had a bad feeling, and I brushed it off, thinking he was just afraid. I should have known better..."
"Nah, you keep forgetting that you're only human, Trowa," the brunette said, smiling warmly up at him. "Lucky for you, Quatre DOES know that you are and that you made a mistake about it, and it will be okay once he cools down and remembers that mistakes aren't evil. I mean, as long as we have each other, everything should be fine, shouldn't it?"
Even the assertive one. He sighed and weakly smiled at him. "All right..." He only hoped that Quatre would come back soon, so he could hold him and grovel like there was no tomorrow. He loved him, and he needed him, especially when in such a tight spot. Otherwise, he would once again become what he had been so long ago...unfeeling, ready and willing to die without pause or qualm, and he did not want that. He wasn't ready to become his former self, Nanashi, ever again, but he could feel the edges of the blankness quickly creeping up on him. //Hurry back, koi...I need you to be with me...//
~
Quatre held up his candle as he passed into the next corridor, looking from one wall of doors to the next, then down at the floor, momentarily admiring the jade carpeting. It seemed that all the wings of halls were color coordinated, because the carpeting of the residential wings was green, the main hallways were red, the dining hall was blue, et cetera, and it all led to the ballroom, which wasn't carpeted at all. It was all so interesting...
The green color glowing in the light made him think of Trowa's beautiful eyes, and that, of course, led to his thinking of the owner of those eyes. That was depressing. He quickly pushed the picture of the handsome young man from his mind. He was angry with him! He couldn't miss him if he was angry with him!
His heart froze as the candle flickered out and a melody caught him off- guard. It was soft and floaty, like the music of a baby piano or maybe a music box, with an odd rhythm like 'Dee Dee, Da Da, Dum, Da Dee...Dee Dee, Da Da, Dee.' The question was, where was it coming from? "Hello?" he called. His voice echoed deafly down the long, door-lined corridor and faded.
There was no answer, but as he commenced his journey down the corridor, the music became steadily louder. A soft, childish giggle echoed out, whimsically. It sounded like a little girl...
"Hello?" he repeated. "Is someone there?"
Suddenly, the music became louder still and a soft, innocent voice began to sing to it...
{{"Come with me to my special place/come to me, let me see your face/come with me to a world of grace/see how long you last..."}}
Quatre swallowed hard. //That sounded like something from a horror flick, like Children of the Corn...an innocent evil...//
Her song didn't stop, and the music got louder, playing the same cute yet eerie song.
{{"Play with me...sing my song/come to me, it won't take long/you'll be sorry when you're wrong/see how long you last..."}}
Then, he remembered Wufei's mention of a little girl with a music box that had demanded he play with her before cutting the rope to the Jade Prince and letting it go. Could this be her? It had to be! "Little girl!" Quatre called. He barely noticed as a gentle thud resounded.
Her song stopped, though the music continued to play, and a bright light appeared at the end of the corridor, marred by the shadow of a small figure in a dress, holding a box with a refracted facet of light rotating in the center of it. It was her!
The blonde pilot quickly hurried toward the light in hopes of finding some answers, but the light quickly faded as he approached and the music died off, leaving him in the dark hallway once again with his candle, which remained out. However, now that he was at the end of the hall, the light from a cabin around the corner halfway lit the area with the eerie, dull blue illumination of the night. He turned the corner and came across an open door, which led into a room.
Curious, he stepped carefully around that corner into the next hall and peeked in the doorway, assuming this to be the area where the little girl had been.
It was a room, carpeted with a green plush rug strewn with toys and decked with a pair of blue-fitted single beds that had mussed covers, a dresser covered with clothing and an oil lamp on a shelf. That was about all there was, excluding a door in the left-hand wall leading to the next room. The light outside the porthole window was dim, but it lit the room effectively.
Then, his eyes locked on one of the beds. There was a little lump in the one furthest from the door, shivering slightly, and a sniffling could be heard just scarcely...
Quatre looked around for a light switch and wasn't really surprised to find that there wasn't one. He set his candle down and approached the other bed. He reached a hand out and grasped the covers, then yanked them back roughly. What he surprised him.
It was the little boy he had seen in the hall this afternoon! Dirty blonde hair, blue pajamas and so small one would think he wasn't even supposed to be walking. He was barely the size of a toddler! He was crunched into a ball, shuddering and sniffling. "Please don't hurt me!" he squeaked.
Quatre had found throughout his life that he had a strange nurturing instinct that made him more effeminate than he would care to admit, so this touched him. He was so cute and fragile! He sat down and set a hand on his shoulder. "It's okay!" he whispered, rubbing the boy's back tenderly. "It's okay...I won't hurt you..."
He looked up, his wide, gray eyes shining, then he jumped into Quatre's arms, hugging him. He really WAS tiny, less than three feet tall and maybe thirty-five pounds! "Oh, it's you!"
He blinked, then slowly began to rock the tiny boy in his arms, somewhat stunned but still ignoring the strange vibe he was getting. So odd... "Yes...what are you doing here by yourself?"
"Hiding..."
"From what?"
"My Papa."
Quatre brought the boy's adorable little face from his shoulder and sat him on his lap, then looked at him. The look on his face reminded him of how he had felt often as a child. "You're afraid of your father too, huh?"
He nodded. "Yeah...my Momma saves me from him, but she's gone...have you seen my Momma? She's got long brown hair and pretty eyes, and she's really nice."
Quatre's heart ached. He was alone...and his father was abusing him. "Sorry, but I haven't seen much of anything..."
The boy's eyes started to glaze, but he didn't cry. He sniffled instead. "My Momma and my best friend are gone and my Papa's angry at me...I'm scared he's gonna find me...but if he finds YOU, it'll be worse."
"Me? Why?"
He opened his mouth, but a sound in the hall made him stop. Someone was coming? "Uh-oh...it's my Papa...you better go in the other room! Hurry and hide, or he might hurt you!"
He blinked. "What about you?!"
The boy shook his head and hopped out of his arms, then quickly shoved him toward the other door. "Hurry! Hide! I'll be fine!"
Quatre tried to resist, but his chest flared with pain and his heart stopped momentarily, inflicting a pain so intense that he knew he was definitely in danger. Empathy flash. With an angered sigh, he ducked into the next room and closed the door almost all the way, leaving a crack wide enough to allow him a look into the other bedroom.
A dark shadow entered the room in the form of a muscular man in slacks and a ripped undershirt. He had something in his hand, large and long, thinning into a point...
A KNIFE!
//Oh no...oh no, no, no!//
The little boy had climbed into his bed, beneath his sheets, and was now shivering again as the indiscernible form moved towards it. A scratchy voice whispered out to him in a low voice, shaking strangely with possible insanity. "Oh, Toby..." he breathed. He chuckled peculiarly and raised the knife above the lump. "Come out...play a game with your Papa..."
Quatre's heart stopped as the knife came down and he looked away, holding his ears against the oncoming scream, but it never came. He looked into the room and found it empty, untouched. He threw the door open, checking the floor and all around. As a bolt of lightning crashed outside, illuminating the dim chamber, it became apparent that no one was there.
//No one...there's no one here...but how?// He got that creepy-crawly feeling up his spine and he suddenly felt unwelcome, but before he left, he checked the bed.
There was a large, brown stain that covered the white sheets, and as he looked, the rancid smell of blood attacked his senses, making his eyes water and his stomach churn. He was utterly petrified, but his fear propelled him to the door.
//Oh my God!// he thought, terrified. //This can't be happening! We're trapped on a haunted ship with a murdering GHOST!//
His feet caught on something and he cried out in the darkness as he fell headlong on the floor, his face smacking flat on the carpet, which wasn't as soft as he had hoped it was. He quickly kicked what he had tripped on, then flipped over and grabbed it, squeezing it tightly in his fists to assure that it wouldn't hurt him.
It gave in his grasp...it was soft...
He brought it close to his face and looked at it through the darkness. It was the clown doll! He must have dropped it when that little girl had surprised him! The sight of it gave him a tiny bit of relief, but the need to run was still very prominent. //Whew...it's only the doll...//
Through the darkness, that plastic smile grinned up at him, so creepy though it was meant to be comforting. The purple star-eye seemed to glitter with mischief, and that smile, so false and strange...
His mind began to wander briefly. The face of the clown doll...it was like a mask...Trowa's mask...
//Trowa!// God, he wanted to see Trowa! He got up and felt his way along the rows of doors in hopes of groping his way back to the stairwell, the doll clutched to his chest so tightly it was amazing it didn't go flat.
Then, that music started again, that creepy, loud 'Dee Dee, Da Da, Dum, Da Dee...Dee Dee, Da Da, Dee' again, and a blinding light blared through the hall, lighting his way. The hair on the back of his neck went ridged as the singing commenced.
{{"Come with me to my special place/come to me, let me see your face/come with me to a world of grace/see how long you last.../play with me...sing my song/come to me, it won't take long/you'll be sorry when you're wrong/see how long you last..."}}
The awful song continued no matter how he tried to ignore it, and finally, he stopped and looked at the doll out of impulse. In the blaring light, a stain of deep crimson red became evident against the chest, and that grin almost seemed to become more maniacal.
Quatre closed his eyes and rushed up the stairs, yelling as loudly as he could in hopes of drowning out the song as he ran. "STOP IT! STOP! STOP! STOP! STOP!!!"
He reached the top of the stairs and kept running, his eyes shut tightly as he ran blindly into the hall that led into the ballroom. His heart was pounding so hard that he could scarcely breathe, and the only reason he knew he was in the ballroom area was because of the light.
Something grabbed him and he screamed, terrified beyond himself.
"Quatre! Quatre! It's me!"
He opened his eyes and looked up at Trowa, who was holding him by the shoulders. Tossing the doll aside, he latched onto his koibito and cried, shuddering so violent that he could barely keep his feet before he was lifted into the air.
"Quatre, what happened?"
He hugged him tightly, trying so hard to force the picture of the little boy from his mind. The smell of blood stayed with him, and the song of the girl resounded in his head, making him cry harder. "TROWA! PROTECT ME, PLEASE!"
"Always, Little One, always, but tell me, what's wrong?"
Quatre took several deep breaths and sighed, nuzzling Trowa's neck and inhaling his spicy scent. "Just hold me...please, just hold me..."
**** ~
Yet again, the party of boys were being watched. {"Aww, he won't play with me either?"} She frowned as the tall mortal walked quickly away with the blonde one cuddled against his chest, then shrugged. {"Guess I'll just have to make them ALL play with me...I wonder if I should bring out more friends for them to play with...hmm...hee hee! I LIKE this game!"}
~
Little did the young ghost know that she, too, was being watched, and by one of her own. The difference was, this one WASN'T looking for a game that could result in MORE deaths on the floating tomb. {"Someone has to stop her before it happens again,"} he murmured to himself, sadly. {"Too many times before has this occurred and it MUST end in order to free us...but to stop her game, I might just have to play it. I certainly hope these mortals are stronger than the last ones, or else they stand no chance against the evil herein."}
****
TBC
By Xandra
Chapter Two: Jake and Toby
****
The dim light outside the porthole windows was quickly waning, signifying that the day had worn on much further than they had thought. As the night slowly approached, darkness set in on the hearts of the other four pilots at the news. The ship wasn't the only gloomy thing in the area, now.
"What do you MEAN the boat is GONE?!"
"Just what I said, Maxwell!"
"How can it be GONE, WUFEI?!"
Trowa sighed and smacked a hand to his forehead. "Hold on, hold on!" he cried over the others. Everyone quickly went silent and as he seated himself in an overstuffed chair in the middle of the ballroom. They had agreed that this would be their meeting place, because it was by far the biggest and most easily accessed area of the ship. He sighed and put a hand on his forehead. "Okay...let me get this straight, Wufei, and correct me if I'm wrong. You were in the wheelhouse and the door shut and locked without warning. When you BUSTED the DOOR DOWN"--he raised his voice a fraction on those words, because it ticked him off a tad bit--"you were met by a little girl with a strange box. You asked her questions and her only responses were 'play with me.' When you told her no, she said you'd regret it and disappeared. When you turned around, she was jumping rope with the mooring line and she threw it to you, then disappeared again. When you looked, the boat was gone, and now we're stranded on this ship. Am I missing anything?"
The Chinese pilot sighed, nodding. "I know it sounds crazy, but that's what happened. This weird little girl with black hair somehow managed all this, and she couldn't have been any more than seven. The disappearing is what really gets me."
"Wufei," Duo said, flatly, "Are you sure you weren't just having an insane moment and you decided to blame it on a little girl?"
He was up and out of his chair in a blink, but Quatre caught his arms and held him still. "Why you little son-of-a--"
"Please, we can't fight!" Quatre exclaimed. "In any case, the sailboat is gone and we're stuck on this ship, so we'll just have to figure a way to either get off it or get it working so we can get somewhere."
"But I doubt a tanker from several hundred years ago is going to have FOOD on it, Q," Duo retorted.
Heero's hand came up and clipped the back of the braided boy's head. "Damare, baka." He turned back to the others. "This thing might still be in good working condition, if we're lucky."
"Fat chance, this whole day has sucked," Duo muttered under his breath.
The perfect soldier's icy eyes hit him. "I believe I told you to SHUT UP, Duo, and if you do NOT, I will shut you up MYSELF."
The brunette scowled and slouched down in his chair, folding his arms.
"I suggest we finish searching the boat, and either find a radio and call for the coast guard or get this old thing working and find a way back to Bermuda," Heero continued. "Either way, we have to do something before we starve."
That was very true. Trowa nodded. "All right. We have to find some sort of food, the tools to fix this thing or a radio. Heero, can you draw up a few copies of the map for us?"
"If I can find some paper."
"There was mapping paper in the wheelhouse," Wufei said, dully.
"Good," Trowa said. "Heero, you go with him. Duo, do you know where the kitchen is?"
He nodded. "Yeah, Hee-chan and I found it on the way, and once I've been somewhere, I remember it."
"Could you go down there and see if you can find some food?"
He stood up and stretched, then sighed and nodded. "Yeah, whatever." With an aggravated sigh, he quickly headed off down one of the residential halls and was gone.
"Trowa..."
He looked up at his lover, then smiled, weakly. //Well, it could be worse.//
Quatre frowned, then hugged himself. "I don't like this...it feels wrong..."
Trowa's smile strengthened and he got up, enfolding the blonde in his arms. "I know...but it isn't like we really have a choice."
"No, that isn't what I mean...everything feels so wrong for some reason...like we shouldn't be here."
"You're right," the green-eyed boy sighed. "We shouldn't, but we are and now we're stranded."
Quatre pouted, angrily. "I told you this was bad."
"And I was wrong and I'm sorry..."
"Sorry? We might die here and you're sorry. That's nice." The blonde pulled from his arms and headed off across the dusty floor of the ballroom toward the hall in which he had found that strange doll. It was still tucked under his arm, where it had been for the last hour.
Trowa sighed. "Quatre--"
"I need to think," he spat. "I'll be back later."
He sighed, then dropped back into the overstuffed chair and sighed. //God...trapped, and now Quatre hates me...this is just wonderful...//
Why had he suggested this in the first place? There had been no point to it. Certainly, going on a cruise would have been a blast, but no, he had wanted to prove that he was talented in more than a few ways by suggesting they take Quatre's sailboat out on their own. He was no captain, after all, and now they were lost in the middle of the ocean, without supplies or a way of contact leading to the world on dry land.
The worst part, excluding that Quatre was angry with him? It was HIS fault, and now there was a good chance he and his friends would die.
He sat back in the chair, exposing his throat as his head lolled back over the headrest. //I am such an idiot...this couldn't get any worse...//
~
"What's this?"
Wufei looked up at Heero, who was holding up an untitled book. "Voyage log. Lists of all the people on-board each trip."
He inspected it, then flipped it open. It had dates upon dates and pages upon pages of names of at least a dozen voyages carrying a thousand people each time, but that was all. After that, the book was blank. "Is there a CAPTAIN'S log?" he asked.
Wufei looked up from his searching again. "Why?"
Heero shrugged. //I wonder how this thing got all the way out here...// He absently pocketed the novel-sized book, then went to the helm, setting his hands gently on the ancient wheel, which was half rotten and missing fifty perfect of itself. Slowly, he looked up, his cautious, ready eyes scanning across the calm, dark sea in the red light. The cloud-cover hadn't lifted, and the light of the sunset dyed it a shade of crimson that made it seem as if the sky was on fire. The ocean, lacking the light of the sky, was as black as onyx, or perhaps obsidian.
Obsidian was an igneous, glass-like rock that was made when molten lava from a volcanic eruption cooled just right, and it was one of the darkest substances. Yes, the ocean looked to be made of just that, and the sky of the lava that created it, pouring down and cooling in the sea to make obsidian. It would have been creepy to many, or a bad omen to others, but from where Heero was standing, it was beautiful.
He wasn't sure why, but morbid things struck him as beautiful, while calm, blue skies and green meadows made him uncertain--even frightened him. He assumed that it was because he was so used to death and carnage that his perspective had been warped to a good extent. Anything calm he had ever known had been untrustworthy and turned to gory torment and eventual doom, while things like the gory battlefields and fiery walls of death that had been the war were simple, straightforward torment and doom. As his mentor and adoptive father, Odin Lowe, had taught him: the path of least resistance is the one most likely to be a trap or worse. Certainly, it wasn't the old gentle caution of the old days, but it had saved his life many times.
"Heero."
He looked up. "What is it?"
The Asian pilot set a copy of the map in his hands. "Here. You'll need this."
He inspected the map, which was a perfect copy of the blueprints of the ship. "Thank you."
"I have three others and the blueprint, so I think we should be all right."
Heero nodded. "All right."
~
"I found food," Duo said, waving a bag of chips in front of Trowa's face. "C'mon...you know you want it."
He sighed. "Not hungry, you eat them."
"Nah, they're stale," the brunette said, smirking. Then, it faded as he saw the look on Trowa's face. "Why so blue, T?"
"Quatre's angry at me."
"For what, getting us lost? And stranded?"
Trowa scowled up at the young man, who quickly recoiled. "Excuse me, WHOSE idea was it to get on this damn deathtrap?"
"Hey, don't blame ME!" Duo exclaimed, defensively. "I was just asking..."
He sighed, then sat back in his chair as the blonde came back once again, still carrying that creepy doll. "Quatre, are you going to talk to me yet?"
The boy said nothing. He sat down in a chair nearby and pulled the doll from under his arm, then began inspecting it, as if Trowa hadn't spoken.
"Hey, what's that?" Duo was playing peacemaker, as he usually did when they fought, which was rare. He was Quatre's best friend and Trowa's...well, he was Trowa's best friend's boyfriend. It sort of helped. He hopped down next to the Sandrock pilot, looking at the odd little creature. "Where'd you get that?"
"I found it in the hallway up there," he replied, gesturing absently. "It belonged to some young passenger. I personally find it interesting."
Duo poked at it. "Hey, it's like a zombie doll! Only half a face, and it's all messed up."
Quatre nodded. "Yes, It was probably made by hand...I want to find the room of the child that owned this, so I can put it where it belongs. I wonder if they have a list of the people on the voyage somewhere..."
"Hey, look here!" Duo poked a finger at a section of the doll's marred and colorful hide. "What's that say?"
Curious, Trowa cocked his head and squinted. There was something written on the back of its left leg in bad handwriting.
"It says...Jake..."
"You think it belongs to a little boy named Jake?" Duo asked, sitting down and cracking open the bag of chips. He offered one to Quatre, who quickly demurred, then stuck it in his mouth with a loud crunch. "Hmm...not bad for being so old." He shrugged.
"Possibly..."
Heero and Wufei arrived. "Any food Duo?"
"Chips, and some old bones, but other than that, there isn't a damn thing."
Wufei sighed. "Figures." He dropped a bundle of rolled-up paper on the floor at Trowa's feet. "Maps, copied and ready, but I don't see the point, because there's no food and no way off this damn thing."
"Yeah, we'll all starve within days," Quatre muttered, hugging the mutant clown doll.
The Asian pilot scoffed. "Not Maxwell, he's got enough fat on him to survive for a few WEEKS."
"*HEY*!"
"Don't talk about him like that, Wufei," Heero said, threateningly.
"What are YOU going to do about it?"
As Heero pulled his gun, Trowa intervened and grabbed the barrel, wrenching it from his hand, then flipped it and put it to his head. "Look," he spat, irritated beyond reason, "You're not the only one that wants to get the hell out of here, but the only way we WILL get off this ship is if we work together and either find a radio that works or fix the damn ship itself. Other than that, we die. As far as I can see, we don't have a lot of options, so all of you need to shut up and get in gear. We're Gundam pilots, damn it, and we're acting like children! We haven't got time for this and, personally, I HAVEN'T GOT THE PATIENCE." He smacked the gun back into Heero's open hand. "We can do this if we act like the adults that we are instead of the children we used to be. God knows, if we had to, we could fix this thing. It floats, so all we'd have to do is find the tools. Heero, you've been taking care of yourself and Zero ever since God knows when, and I've been a mechanic since I was seven. If we find a radio, broken or not, we may be saved, because Duo, you're a communications whiz. Wufei has the survival skills to keep us alive and--" he paused as he noted Quatre hadn't even bothered to do what he was doing. He turned on him. "For Christ sake, Quatre, YOU should be giving this speech!"
"DON'T SHOUT AT ME!" he roared back, surprising the others. He stood up and leered at Trowa. "*I* did my part, Trowa," he hissed, darkly. "I warned you that I had a bad feeling about this whole thing and you acted like I was being childish. This is YOUR fault, so YOU can handle it, WITHOUT *ME*." With that, the young Winner heir turned on the heel of his shoe and marched away down the residential hall he had come back from not ten minutes prior.
The ballroom was dead silent as the pilots stood there, all of them stricken, but none more hurt than Trowa. The little blonde had never been angry with him, and that outburst had reminded him a little too much of the time he had nearly killed him. He loved Quatre more than anything, and he had not only hurt him but made him angry and forced him to lash out against him. Slowly, he sunk back into the chair and closed his eyes, willing the entire thing to be a nightmare. It hurt too much to be real.
A hand grasped his shoulder and he was sure it was Duo by the feel of it. He wasn't as strong as Wufei or Heero, and he wasn't too proud to lower himself and offer assistance, no matter how futile. "Trowa..."
"Please, just don't," he said, flatly, trying desperately to keep the pain from his voice. It was another one of those times that he wished he hadn't started feeling again, because when one felt, one hurt.
Duo knelt in front of him (he could tell because of the footsteps and the sudden weight on his knees) and leaned on his thighs, looking up at him in an attempt to draw his attention. "Aww, come on, Trowa. He'll be okay...just let him get it out of his system and he'll be all right."
"But it IS my fault," he murmured, hopelessly. Certainly, Quatre would forgive him in time, but he was having trouble believing that it would be any time soon.
"No it isn't. It was me, Heero and Wufei that said we should come aboard, and I tied the boat up. Maybe the rope just broke--that would be my fault. See? It wasn't you."
"I didn't LISTEN to him, Duo. He told me he had a bad feeling, and I brushed it off, thinking he was just afraid. I should have known better..."
"Nah, you keep forgetting that you're only human, Trowa," the brunette said, smiling warmly up at him. "Lucky for you, Quatre DOES know that you are and that you made a mistake about it, and it will be okay once he cools down and remembers that mistakes aren't evil. I mean, as long as we have each other, everything should be fine, shouldn't it?"
Even the assertive one. He sighed and weakly smiled at him. "All right..." He only hoped that Quatre would come back soon, so he could hold him and grovel like there was no tomorrow. He loved him, and he needed him, especially when in such a tight spot. Otherwise, he would once again become what he had been so long ago...unfeeling, ready and willing to die without pause or qualm, and he did not want that. He wasn't ready to become his former self, Nanashi, ever again, but he could feel the edges of the blankness quickly creeping up on him. //Hurry back, koi...I need you to be with me...//
~
Quatre held up his candle as he passed into the next corridor, looking from one wall of doors to the next, then down at the floor, momentarily admiring the jade carpeting. It seemed that all the wings of halls were color coordinated, because the carpeting of the residential wings was green, the main hallways were red, the dining hall was blue, et cetera, and it all led to the ballroom, which wasn't carpeted at all. It was all so interesting...
The green color glowing in the light made him think of Trowa's beautiful eyes, and that, of course, led to his thinking of the owner of those eyes. That was depressing. He quickly pushed the picture of the handsome young man from his mind. He was angry with him! He couldn't miss him if he was angry with him!
His heart froze as the candle flickered out and a melody caught him off- guard. It was soft and floaty, like the music of a baby piano or maybe a music box, with an odd rhythm like 'Dee Dee, Da Da, Dum, Da Dee...Dee Dee, Da Da, Dee.' The question was, where was it coming from? "Hello?" he called. His voice echoed deafly down the long, door-lined corridor and faded.
There was no answer, but as he commenced his journey down the corridor, the music became steadily louder. A soft, childish giggle echoed out, whimsically. It sounded like a little girl...
"Hello?" he repeated. "Is someone there?"
Suddenly, the music became louder still and a soft, innocent voice began to sing to it...
{{"Come with me to my special place/come to me, let me see your face/come with me to a world of grace/see how long you last..."}}
Quatre swallowed hard. //That sounded like something from a horror flick, like Children of the Corn...an innocent evil...//
Her song didn't stop, and the music got louder, playing the same cute yet eerie song.
{{"Play with me...sing my song/come to me, it won't take long/you'll be sorry when you're wrong/see how long you last..."}}
Then, he remembered Wufei's mention of a little girl with a music box that had demanded he play with her before cutting the rope to the Jade Prince and letting it go. Could this be her? It had to be! "Little girl!" Quatre called. He barely noticed as a gentle thud resounded.
Her song stopped, though the music continued to play, and a bright light appeared at the end of the corridor, marred by the shadow of a small figure in a dress, holding a box with a refracted facet of light rotating in the center of it. It was her!
The blonde pilot quickly hurried toward the light in hopes of finding some answers, but the light quickly faded as he approached and the music died off, leaving him in the dark hallway once again with his candle, which remained out. However, now that he was at the end of the hall, the light from a cabin around the corner halfway lit the area with the eerie, dull blue illumination of the night. He turned the corner and came across an open door, which led into a room.
Curious, he stepped carefully around that corner into the next hall and peeked in the doorway, assuming this to be the area where the little girl had been.
It was a room, carpeted with a green plush rug strewn with toys and decked with a pair of blue-fitted single beds that had mussed covers, a dresser covered with clothing and an oil lamp on a shelf. That was about all there was, excluding a door in the left-hand wall leading to the next room. The light outside the porthole window was dim, but it lit the room effectively.
Then, his eyes locked on one of the beds. There was a little lump in the one furthest from the door, shivering slightly, and a sniffling could be heard just scarcely...
Quatre looked around for a light switch and wasn't really surprised to find that there wasn't one. He set his candle down and approached the other bed. He reached a hand out and grasped the covers, then yanked them back roughly. What he surprised him.
It was the little boy he had seen in the hall this afternoon! Dirty blonde hair, blue pajamas and so small one would think he wasn't even supposed to be walking. He was barely the size of a toddler! He was crunched into a ball, shuddering and sniffling. "Please don't hurt me!" he squeaked.
Quatre had found throughout his life that he had a strange nurturing instinct that made him more effeminate than he would care to admit, so this touched him. He was so cute and fragile! He sat down and set a hand on his shoulder. "It's okay!" he whispered, rubbing the boy's back tenderly. "It's okay...I won't hurt you..."
He looked up, his wide, gray eyes shining, then he jumped into Quatre's arms, hugging him. He really WAS tiny, less than three feet tall and maybe thirty-five pounds! "Oh, it's you!"
He blinked, then slowly began to rock the tiny boy in his arms, somewhat stunned but still ignoring the strange vibe he was getting. So odd... "Yes...what are you doing here by yourself?"
"Hiding..."
"From what?"
"My Papa."
Quatre brought the boy's adorable little face from his shoulder and sat him on his lap, then looked at him. The look on his face reminded him of how he had felt often as a child. "You're afraid of your father too, huh?"
He nodded. "Yeah...my Momma saves me from him, but she's gone...have you seen my Momma? She's got long brown hair and pretty eyes, and she's really nice."
Quatre's heart ached. He was alone...and his father was abusing him. "Sorry, but I haven't seen much of anything..."
The boy's eyes started to glaze, but he didn't cry. He sniffled instead. "My Momma and my best friend are gone and my Papa's angry at me...I'm scared he's gonna find me...but if he finds YOU, it'll be worse."
"Me? Why?"
He opened his mouth, but a sound in the hall made him stop. Someone was coming? "Uh-oh...it's my Papa...you better go in the other room! Hurry and hide, or he might hurt you!"
He blinked. "What about you?!"
The boy shook his head and hopped out of his arms, then quickly shoved him toward the other door. "Hurry! Hide! I'll be fine!"
Quatre tried to resist, but his chest flared with pain and his heart stopped momentarily, inflicting a pain so intense that he knew he was definitely in danger. Empathy flash. With an angered sigh, he ducked into the next room and closed the door almost all the way, leaving a crack wide enough to allow him a look into the other bedroom.
A dark shadow entered the room in the form of a muscular man in slacks and a ripped undershirt. He had something in his hand, large and long, thinning into a point...
A KNIFE!
//Oh no...oh no, no, no!//
The little boy had climbed into his bed, beneath his sheets, and was now shivering again as the indiscernible form moved towards it. A scratchy voice whispered out to him in a low voice, shaking strangely with possible insanity. "Oh, Toby..." he breathed. He chuckled peculiarly and raised the knife above the lump. "Come out...play a game with your Papa..."
Quatre's heart stopped as the knife came down and he looked away, holding his ears against the oncoming scream, but it never came. He looked into the room and found it empty, untouched. He threw the door open, checking the floor and all around. As a bolt of lightning crashed outside, illuminating the dim chamber, it became apparent that no one was there.
//No one...there's no one here...but how?// He got that creepy-crawly feeling up his spine and he suddenly felt unwelcome, but before he left, he checked the bed.
There was a large, brown stain that covered the white sheets, and as he looked, the rancid smell of blood attacked his senses, making his eyes water and his stomach churn. He was utterly petrified, but his fear propelled him to the door.
//Oh my God!// he thought, terrified. //This can't be happening! We're trapped on a haunted ship with a murdering GHOST!//
His feet caught on something and he cried out in the darkness as he fell headlong on the floor, his face smacking flat on the carpet, which wasn't as soft as he had hoped it was. He quickly kicked what he had tripped on, then flipped over and grabbed it, squeezing it tightly in his fists to assure that it wouldn't hurt him.
It gave in his grasp...it was soft...
He brought it close to his face and looked at it through the darkness. It was the clown doll! He must have dropped it when that little girl had surprised him! The sight of it gave him a tiny bit of relief, but the need to run was still very prominent. //Whew...it's only the doll...//
Through the darkness, that plastic smile grinned up at him, so creepy though it was meant to be comforting. The purple star-eye seemed to glitter with mischief, and that smile, so false and strange...
His mind began to wander briefly. The face of the clown doll...it was like a mask...Trowa's mask...
//Trowa!// God, he wanted to see Trowa! He got up and felt his way along the rows of doors in hopes of groping his way back to the stairwell, the doll clutched to his chest so tightly it was amazing it didn't go flat.
Then, that music started again, that creepy, loud 'Dee Dee, Da Da, Dum, Da Dee...Dee Dee, Da Da, Dee' again, and a blinding light blared through the hall, lighting his way. The hair on the back of his neck went ridged as the singing commenced.
{{"Come with me to my special place/come to me, let me see your face/come with me to a world of grace/see how long you last.../play with me...sing my song/come to me, it won't take long/you'll be sorry when you're wrong/see how long you last..."}}
The awful song continued no matter how he tried to ignore it, and finally, he stopped and looked at the doll out of impulse. In the blaring light, a stain of deep crimson red became evident against the chest, and that grin almost seemed to become more maniacal.
Quatre closed his eyes and rushed up the stairs, yelling as loudly as he could in hopes of drowning out the song as he ran. "STOP IT! STOP! STOP! STOP! STOP!!!"
He reached the top of the stairs and kept running, his eyes shut tightly as he ran blindly into the hall that led into the ballroom. His heart was pounding so hard that he could scarcely breathe, and the only reason he knew he was in the ballroom area was because of the light.
Something grabbed him and he screamed, terrified beyond himself.
"Quatre! Quatre! It's me!"
He opened his eyes and looked up at Trowa, who was holding him by the shoulders. Tossing the doll aside, he latched onto his koibito and cried, shuddering so violent that he could barely keep his feet before he was lifted into the air.
"Quatre, what happened?"
He hugged him tightly, trying so hard to force the picture of the little boy from his mind. The smell of blood stayed with him, and the song of the girl resounded in his head, making him cry harder. "TROWA! PROTECT ME, PLEASE!"
"Always, Little One, always, but tell me, what's wrong?"
Quatre took several deep breaths and sighed, nuzzling Trowa's neck and inhaling his spicy scent. "Just hold me...please, just hold me..."
**** ~
Yet again, the party of boys were being watched. {"Aww, he won't play with me either?"} She frowned as the tall mortal walked quickly away with the blonde one cuddled against his chest, then shrugged. {"Guess I'll just have to make them ALL play with me...I wonder if I should bring out more friends for them to play with...hmm...hee hee! I LIKE this game!"}
~
Little did the young ghost know that she, too, was being watched, and by one of her own. The difference was, this one WASN'T looking for a game that could result in MORE deaths on the floating tomb. {"Someone has to stop her before it happens again,"} he murmured to himself, sadly. {"Too many times before has this occurred and it MUST end in order to free us...but to stop her game, I might just have to play it. I certainly hope these mortals are stronger than the last ones, or else they stand no chance against the evil herein."}
****
TBC