AN: This is most definitely going to be a much longer story then I originally intended. I sit waiting for speech class as I type this up. Lol. Nothin' but time for now……for now.
Disclaimer: Looks like nothing has changed. I am still very broke, on bad relations with my dad and I do not own Gundam Wing at all!
It goes 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1…
Heero was indeed down the hall, leaning against the wall in fact. He had no idea what was going on, but whatever it was, Duo was in no hurry to get him up to pace on it. Now was a good time to fall out of line again and into some investigation that was not part of any mission but his own.
Heero had long given up finding anything on Duo Maxwell in the Earthly realm. There was nothing to find other then a burnt down church and all the basic information that G had gotten on him by compliance. No one could really ever force Duo into something. This ment what G had was very very little.
Heero wandered over to the living room again and opened up his lap top. The screen flicked on and asked him a question in a pop up window.
'01 02 01 02 01 02 DO YOU WANT ROW OR ROM 01 02 01 02 0102'
Heero typed in ROM.
'PASSWORD.'
Heero typed in CWZ CDSH.
'WELCOME BACK…….PRINCE HEERO'
Heero was logged onto the main system of the magic realm. This realm knew everything about anyone there was to know about magic or not. Heero, being royalty of the realm, had full access to all the files on record there. Pulling up the main search screen Heero dove in, looking up the characteristics that Duo had possessed when Heero saw him last.
In Duo and Heero's room
Duo sat on the bed trying to concentrate on making the markings go away. He had managed to get his eyes to look normal again. Well as normal as brilliant violet eyes get. His ears were the least of concern.
After trying for about an hour, Duo got the mark to shrink down to the size of a half dollar tattoo. It was shaped just like he looked like in Death Fox form done in all black with a violet outline. Just as he was pulling his shirt back on, there was a knock at his window.
Duo went over and looked out. There was Quatre dangling from the gutter rail. Duo opened up the window quickly and soundlessly.
"That was much faster then I would have expected Q-man." Duo smiled at the blonde.
"Well, I got here as fast as I could Duo. How are you now? It looks like your eyes are back to their usual." Quatre commented.
"Yeah and I got the markings down to a small tattoo thing on my back right shoulder blade." Duo smiled at his own work.
"Well that is better than by the sounds of what you had going. Do you know where Heero is and what he is up to now?" Quatre looked over to the door. "I would like to talk with him about all this to see how he is taking this all in."
"Haven't herd from 'Ro sense he was at my door." Duo adjusted his shirt.
"That does not sound like Heero at all. Normally he would be pounding your door down trying to get answers. Perfect soldier boy never does know his limits." Quatre sighed.
"Very true." Duo fiddled with his ears a bit.
"I am going to go down and see if I can find him." Quatre said.
Mean while with Heero
Heero was typing furiously looking up anything and everything he could. So far he had found several items and it could be one of any of them. There were 3 things in the magic realm that could have to do with it as well as several articles that were from this realm. Needless to say, Heero was perplexed.
He had narrowed it down to Duo being at least half of a demon or magical creature normally not seen by muggles. Duo could be part Black Magic Wood Elf, that would explain the eyes and the ears as well as the markings, but the markings didn't seem to indicate that was correct, though still a possibility as Heero did not see all of the marking. Duo could also be part Demon Death Fox, again indicated by the ears, the markings and the eyes. He could also be part Elfish Fox, rare, but they seemed to roam near old England and Russia. The last was unlikely as Duo was supposedly from L2 and American. Supposedly.
On another note of his search Heero had dug up next to nothing on Duo, a vague record of him on L2, criminal backgrounds from him being caught at young ages steeling and such.
Heero took an approach to try to search for anything on L2 of significance from the points of time Duo had supposedly been living there. Duo had once said he spent the first 10 years of his life before becoming a sweeper and then hooking up with the doctors (I made up the number of years for the purpose of the story). Not very many outstanding things came up. There was 3 riots over Duo's fist 5 years there that had caused a stir, but Heero could not see a young child getting into any of it, so he skipped those over in favor of a link for a church, called Maxwell Church. It was a link for a church that had been gone for a while now.
The front page read "The L2 tragedy, Maxwell Church burns due to MS attack." Duo always wore that collar so Heero thought he might be on the right track. Going down the page, reading as he went, Heero caught that it was a place that took in orphans and got them good homes. There was a picture from about 3 months before the church had been destroyed my MS. Heero clicked on the picture, it was chard a little, but you could still see all the people in it. There was an older kind looking man, the Father he assumed, and a young nun with a kind smile on either side of a group of 13 kids. There were names typed in under it.
BACK ROW: FATHER MAXEWLL, TIMMY, MARY, ANTONIO, JON, FRANK, MINA, SARA, SISTER HELEN.
FRONT ROW: BARRY, JOSH, VERGINA, DANTE, VERGIL, DUO.
Heero blinked and read it again and looked up at the photo just to make sure he was correct. He blew up the photo on his laptop and went over to the far right of the front row. Sure enough with a big goofy grin and almost snuggled into the front of the sister was little Duo Maxwell with a braid over his shoulder. Heero had finally found something concrete. Heero scanned down the page but found no more information other than the kids had been adopted or killed in the MS attack. There was another link to the next page that said "Lone survivor or my imagination."
The next page was by the website supervisor/owner. He had apparently been inspired to make this website because he had been there when it all happened, just down the road from the church on his way to 3 blocks just past it and had been past quite a lot as it was on his way to work. The man had taken a camcorder with him that day to lend it to a co-worker when he witness the church go up in flames and come down in rubble. The man had raced to the scene and called out for anyone. The vid, he put in, explained the rest. Sure enough, there was a video box just under the last paragraph of the story. Heero, of course, pushed play.
The video was short, but what the guy filmed caught his attention well enough. The man was walking through the rubble that used to be the church, from what Heero saw of the debris, he could tell it used to be simple, yet very lovely for what was on L2. All of a sudden, the man had stopped and zoomed in on what looked to be a little brunette child with long hair cradling the head of a young woman. The man gasped and called out and the boy looked up like a dear in headlights, violet eyes prominent in the poor resolution video. The boy got up and took off for another area in the debris, or to get out of there, obviously afraid of the man. The man took off calling for the boy and after several minutes stopped and scanned around with the camera after having it looking at the ground while he was running. The only thing the man saw on it was a little black fox running from the debris and into an ally way. The vid ended.
The story continued on saying that he never again saw the little child with the vivid violet eyes and long brown hair, but he had scene a black fox on occasion lurking in alleyways around where the church once was. Heero closed the browser; he knew what his answer was. Duo was park Death Fox, in a word, part demon.
Just then Quatre walked into the living room area of the safe house. Heero thanked his good fortune that Quatre had not walked in earlier. Speaking of the blond Arabian, he had sat down across from Heero and was looking at him. Heero 'hn'-ed to make him talk.
"I talked to Duo; he called me before I got here. Is he ok?" Quatre played it like he had not already been in the house.
"Don't know." Was all Heero said.
"He was talking rather fast and I didn't catch everything, well, not really anything to be honest." Quatre lied. "What happened?"
"I came here and didn't find a trace of Duo so I sat out here and waited knowing the baka would show up sooner or later. Sure enough he showed up in the shadows just beyond the kitchen into here. When I got a good look at him, he had funny tattoos, his ears were a bit more pointed and the whites of his eyes appeared black. I asked him what in the world he thought he was doing as they make him much more of an obvious person instead of trying to blend in. He then…how would he put it….freaked out and took off to his room. He locked himself in and refuses to come out." Heero said as shortly as possible.
"So that's what he was babbling about." Quatre seemed to think a moment. "What do you make of all this, Heero?"
"He's hiding something." Heero looked seriously to Quatre.
"Like what?" Quatre asked.
"Like his back ground, his past, what he does when he is not in his MS, and everything he did not tell G in his background questionnaire we all had to fill out." Heero supplied.
"We all have things we don't want to talk about, I am sure Duo would rather not relive what happened to him on L2. From what I have herd, it is not all that pleasant like the other colonies are and has a lot more myths and stories as well." Quatre replied.
"There was a myth that I herd while I was on L1." Heero was now lying.
"What was it?" Quatre asked, not used to Heero being so talkative.
"A black fox with four tails would roam the streets and appear to morn the loss of a church for several years. The locals called it Death for its four tails and the fact that people died in the destruction of the church. If one was ever to cross Death, they would wind up dead with scratches across their chest and their eyes bitten' out as if by a small creature." Heero tried to spook out Quatre a little. He figured he might as well make all this talking worth his while.
Quatre's eyes widened, not because of how Heero had embellished it, but because Heero was so close to the truth. Quatre knew that last part was a bunch of bull, and as far as he knew, from what Duo had told him, very few people ever saw him, even then, they never saw his tails, so how could Heero know. "Did you ever go to L2 and see if it was true?" he tried to remain calm.
"No." was all he got.
"Ah." Quatre nodded and got up from his seat. "I doubt that Duo has anything to do with all that nonsense, but I am going to go up and see how he is doing. Hopefully what you saw was not one of G's drugs gone wrong or a mission mess up." Quatre left the room and headed up to Duo's.
Heero herd Quatre knock, say a few words and Duo let him in. the soft click that sounded let Heero know that Duo had once again locked the door.
Heero smiled; at least he knew what was going on now.
TBC
AN: Sorry this has taken so long. I made it longer for you all. Life has been so busy with college and I got engaged last summer and well, life is life. My net hates me on top of it most of the time. Don't you all wish there was more than 24 hours in a day sometimes? Lol. I hope you liked the chapter.
