Short disclaimer: I must say this again; I do not own any of the GW boys or (new one) the song lyrics from Madonna's 'Rescue Me'. So please do not shoot me or sue me. It won't do any good.
Part One – Duo's past
Chapter four: Friends Betrayal
"He told me that they were just 'very close friends'," she said, spitting it out as if it were a curse.
"I guess he thought that was all you needed to know." Quatre smiled at her and pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. "But I wouldn't know, you need to ask Duo why he didn't tell you."
Kit laughed and got up, heading towards the door. "That's what I was planning, Quatre."
She started down the stairs angrily, nearly causing Trowa to fall down them. "What's the hurry?"
Kit glared at him and put a hand on his throat, pushing him against the stair rail, "Where. Is. Duo." She slowly started to close her hand around his throat.
Trowa's eyes widened when he saw madness swirling in her eyes. "He-he's in…sector…th-three." When her hand let go he collapsed to the stairs, gasping for air. Quatre, hearing the commotion, knelt down beside Trowa and helped the taller pilot stand.
"Duo's got some strange friends." Quatre observed quietly, laying an affectionate hand on Trowa's bruised neck. The two pilots watched in silence as the temperamental fox demon stormed out of the church in a swirl of fur and angry aura.
Outside, Kit stalked down the broken sidewalk in a fury, nimbly jumping over debris and rubble and even flipping down off of a tall pile of what used to a building. A blind anger consumed her thoughts and she broke into a run, flying through the devastation like a whirlwind of rage, her tail streaming behind her and her long hair fanning the air. Tears stung her cheeks as she clenched her fists and ran faster.
After a while she slowed, wondering how long she had been running and realizing that her strong body was weakened and exhausted. She collapsed on a jutting outcrop of cement, ignoring the dust and dirt as she tried to catch her breath.
"Stupid, stupid boy." She hissed between clenched teeth, just a little bit of fang showing. "Stupid Duo." Her eyebrows narrowed. "Stupid Hee-chan."
Voices rose above the rubble and her copper eyes widened fractionally. She was miles from the church and the colony was deserted – who would be out here?
"Duo, I told you not to call me Hee-chan."
Kit stifled a growl as she recognized the owners of the two voices. She scrambled across the shattered ground and tumbled agilely into a perfect little niche that allowed her to nestle into the wall.
"Of course not, Hee-chan." The innocently boyish voice responded, then continued with a lowered voice. "You don't mind, do you, Hee-sama?"
"Duo-" Heero began, but he was cut off suddenly and Kit shuddered to think what could be happening right outside her little hidey-hole. When the silence was then filled with an "Mmmmm," sound, she grimaced and decided she had heard enough.
"Don't you worry, Hee-chan." She muttered darkly as she clambered through the skeletal building and disappeared into the deep alleys that remained snaking around the colony. "You'll get what you want. Duo won't be calling you Hee-chan ever again."
**************
The next morning, Kit bounded down the church stairs, jumping expertly over missing steps, in a happy bustle of energy. She pranced into the kitchen with a decided feminine air.
"Good morning!" she sang, skipping around the table and settling down in a chair with a bowl of cereal in front of her. Trowa nearly leapt out of his chair as she reached over and playfully tickled his ribs. "Hiya, Trowa!" she chirped, digging into her cereal with gusto.
Across the kitchen, WuFei stared at her with a perplexed look on his face.
"Women!" he announced, and then left the kitchen.
Kit started to spoon cereal into her mouth at an amazing speed. When Duo wandered into the kitchen, braided hair bushy and tangled, he stopped dead.
"Kit?" he asked uncertainly. The teenaged fox demon glanced up, noted the messy hair, throttled the urge to slaughter him, and forced more cereal into her mouth at a renewed speed. As soon as she was done, which didn't take very long, she glanced up and gave Duo a huge grin.
"Morning, Duey!" She giggled. Duo's face contorted into an expression of total disgust and revulsion.
"Du… Duey?" he choked, and let out an odd gurgling noise. Then he swallowed visibly and gave her a weak grin. At least she's not chasing after Heero with my scythe, he soothed himself.
"I've got someplace special to show you after breakfast," she told him, flouncing to the sink and depositing her dishes. She took two steps and leapt into his arms, throwing her own around his neck and using her momentum to force him to spin her around. "Wheee!" she exclaimed, laughing brightly. Her fingers deftly plucked a bit of elastic from the end of his braid and wrapped a strand of hair around in place to hold the weave still for just a few more moments, then wriggled out of his embraced and ran lightly out of the kitchen.
Shaking his head, Duo began to prepare his own breakfast until his braid collapsed around his shoulders and began fluttering freely under the kitchen fan.
Trowa, who had been calmly eating his cereal, froze, and prepared to duck for cover.
"KITSUNE!" Duo narrowed his eyes and stalked towards the front of the church. He stopped out side and looked around, where did she run off to…damn fox.
A laugh echoed off the buildings. "I was wondering when you would be coming out…I was about to go to sleep." Kit leaned over the church's gable and dropped a rock beside Duo. "You-who! Up here!"
Duo stepped back and looked up, glaring at her. "Where is it."
She blinked her copper eyes innocently at him, "Oh…you lost something?" Kit looked at him and grinned, holding out his hair elastic, "You looking for this, Duuuey?"
He growled under his breath and yelled up at her, "You goddamn thieving fox! Give it back!"
Kit stood up, laughing at him. "Do you really think I'll give this up that easily?" She flipped off the roof, landing about three feet in front of him, wiggling the hair elastic between her fingers, "If you want it," she narrowed her eyes and growled at him, exposing her sharp fangs, "Then come and get it." Then she bolted away from him.
Duo groaned and ran after her, while somehow managing to keep pace with her.
After a while of not seeing Kit, either her or the end of her tail tearing around a corner, Duo stopped to catch his breath. He bent over and put his hands on his knees, muttering under his breath, "damn…fox…"
Again a laugh echoed through the ruins, like it normally had whenever he stopped to catch his breath.
He stood up, still breathing hard. "What do you want?!"
"I told you. I wanted to show you someplace special."
A groan escaped his lips at the thought of more running. "So when am I going to get back my hair elastic?"
"When you catch me."
Duo frowned, of course… He looked around and saw Kit's hat hanging off of a piece of metal in an open door. His frowned softened into a slight smile as he walked over to the hat, and picked it up. He looked it over and saw some scribbled writing inside the cap, 'Up stairs.'
Cautiously he went up the stairs, looking at all the ruin through the open hallways as he climbed. When he got to the top floor, he was shocked, there was hardly any floor left to stand on in the hallway, but at the end of it, was an open door into a room where he saw Kit's shadow waiting for him.
He started jumping over the holes carefully, but almost fell when he heard Kit's voice echo all around him.
"This has always been my favorite building."
He jumped into the room and looked around for her, "And why is that?" When he looked back at the door and saw Kit holding the door, grinning.
She tossed in his hair elastic and sneered. "Because it has the only rooms that lock from the outside."
Duo's eyes widened as he realized what she was thinking. He leapt for the door, only to have it slam in his face, and as he reached for the doorknob he heard it lock.
Suddenly he heard things being placed on the door, and his heart sank when he heard metal clang. He started banging on the door. "Kit! Lemme outta here!"
Stinging tears came to the corners of his eyes as he heard a soft voice singing, he wiped them quickly away, "Kit?"
"I'm singing, I'm singing, I
believe that you can rescue me.
With you I'm not a little girl, With you I'm not a man.
When all the hurt inside of me comes out, You understand.
You see that I'm ferocious, You see that I am weak.
You see that I am silly, And pretentious and a freak."
Duo banged on the door again in vain. "Don't you hurt Heero, Kit. You hear me?! You do I'll hunt you down!"
He stopped when he heard her laugh, "Don't worry, Duo. I won't hurt him…" Then he heard her growl, "I'm going to kill him."
"Heero!" Kit burst through the church doors in a panicked frenzy, cascades of tears streaming down her cheeks. Her copper eyes were wide with fear and her silken silver hair was in disarray. Heero stood across the room by the church's altar; staring up to the rafters with a distanced look. Shafts of colored light played across his face and shoulders, and Kit screamed his name once more and broke him from his reverie. "Heero!"
The Japanese pilot jerked back and would have blushed at being caught unaware if he hadn't been the perfect soldier. Then the terror in Kit's voice took effect and his heart jumped within his chest. There could be only one person who could make Kit so frightened.
"Kitsune?" he asked, and the look on her face as she crumpled to the ground and broke into sobs made his chest tight. "Kit, what's wrong? It's Duo, isn't it?"
"He's fallen through one of the old buildings!" She mumbled, clutching her tail with both hands and using it to wipe away the stream of tears. "We were racing on the rooftops and he hit a weak patch and it all fell! He tried to stay on top but he's under there somewhere and I can't get it off of him! Heero, he's hurt bad!" Kit inhaled deeply and gazed soulfully into his cobalt eyes, her eerie metallic pupils glimmering with tears and terror.
"Take me there," Heero uttered tersely.
"Can you keep up with me?" Kit asked uncertainly. "I'm a fox demon, you know – inhuman speed. And adrenaline and fear just makes me faster." She searched Heero's eyes trustingly.
"Don't worry about me." Heero said with a tense smile. "Just run."
That was all Kit needed. Her lightning reflexes sent her feet skittering across the floor in a mad dash made faster by panic – or assumed panic, at any rate. Kit could hear Heero's footfalls behind her and she made sure she was just out of the Gundam pilot's reach. She'd speed up later.
For now, the fool was chasing along behind her, totally convinced that his precious Duo was trapped beneath a collapsed building.
Humans were so totally gullible. For a brief moment, she allowed a smirk to cross her face, inwardly gloating over the success she knew was coming.
In that one moment of self-satisfaction, she failed to notice WuFei watching her dash away, followed closely by Heero. If she had, she might have remembered that WuFei was Chinese, very superstitious, and well versed on the capabilities of demons like her.
"Heero, faster!" Kit yelled, letting terror creep into her voice once again as she picked up speed. The former asylum loomed ahead of her and just beyond that, a collapsed building that served as a perfect decoy. Her legs pumped faster – nowhere near their actual limit but fast enough that Heero was running full tilt behind her, with too much momentum to pull an abrupt halt. Her right leg hit the ground and tensed beneath her weight, and she bent ever so slightly before leaping into the air. She tucked her knees close in and flipped over a wall – she knew Heero could top this one, of course. It was the one after it that he'd never be able to avoid.
For added emphasis, she screamed. "Duooooo!" she voiced, allowing all the anger and fury she had felt earlier that day to come streaming out like a waterfall. All the rage and hurt and boiling betrayal she had felt. The emotion coursed through her like fuel and she bent both legs at a full run, pushing her weight down and vaulting into the air. Her feet caught the top of the second wall – a good twenty-five feet into the air – and clipped her backwards, curled into a ball and tossing end over end until she straightened out and turned herself upright. She was flying backwards through the air, silver hair flapping around her face as she fell and watched Heero leap over the first wall.
"Watch out, Heero." She called as gravity sent her zooming downwards to land nimbly on her feet. In front of her, Heero tried to halt, but he was going too fast – much too fast. His sneakers skidded on the cement in a desperate bid to lose momentum, but he never had a chance.
In a final attempt to lessen the blow, he turned to the side and tucked into his body so that his shoulder and hip hit the wall at an angle and allowed him to almost roll across the wall.
His head struck the solid cement and he was unconscious before he fell.
Somebody screamed his named. Duo's head snapped up as the cry echoed through the building and he shivered – Kit's cry had been so full of fury that he was becoming even more ill at ease than he already was.
Then something else: "Watch out, Heero." Duo shot up and crossed the room into two steps, pressing a fearful ear to the metal door. He heard footsteps walking around, apparently unaware of where he was.
"Hello?! Is someone there?!" Duo waited for a few minutes, but he didn't hear a reply. Then he heard something like someone jumping over the holes outside in the hall.
"Maxwell?"
Duo's face lit up as he banged lightly on the door. "Wu-man, I never thought I'd be so happy to hear you."
He heard someone grunt then something hit the ground, "Just don't get too happy."
Duo laughed slightly and smiled, "No worries there." The thought of what Kit might do or have done to Heero passed into his head. "Um…Wu? Do you think you could speed it up a lil?"
He heard something crash through a few floors, "Maxwell, if you don't shut up, I'll leave."
More crashing could be heard, and a few elegant curses from one fox demon rose into the air. "WuFei? Is Heero okay?"
WuFei was silent for a few moments while he worked on the door. "When is he not okay, Maxwell?" the Chinese pilot said gruffly. "Heero will survive. He always does." A final grunt was heard and the metal door creaked open. Duo flung it open in haste and nearly toppled WuFei over.
"Wu-man, she's crazy." Duo said. "She's hurting my Heero-" he turned and began vaulting over the holes in the floor before calling back, "…and if she kills him it'll be the last thing she does."
"Stupid Hee-chan!" Kit said, and the tears streaming down her face this time were real. She gave one last, half-hearted kick to Heero's ribs before collapsing next to the unconscious pilot. "DUO! Why are you doing this me?" Her forehead hit the ground and she pounded her fists against the cement in unfeigned pain. "Ye gods, Duo, you left me for a man…!"
Heero groaned beside her and Kit looked up in disbelief. The Japanese boy beside her fluttered his eyelashes and let out another groan.
"Are you some sort of freaking robot?!" Kit yelled, grabbing her opponent by the front of his green tank top and lifting him into the air. Heero's arms moved weakly and Kit slammed him against the wall. "What is it that makes you so much better than me? What does he see in you, anyway?" She shook the pilot furiously, his head wobbling unsteadily as he fought to regain consciousness. "You can never have him! He's MINE!"
She flung Heero to the side with careless ease just as Duo and WuFei burst out of the abandoned asylum door and onto the roof where she stood.
"No! Duo!" she yelled, glaring at WuFei and him both. "You can't do this!"
Duo's eyes locked onto Heero's prone form, collapsed against the wall behind her. Kit saw his gaze and the anger rose within her chest again, making it difficult to breathe.
"Give him up, Duo." She growled almost imperceptibly. "I never forgot about you, even when you abandoned me. Now I'm going to make sure you never forget me."
"How could you?" Duo yelled, and rushed forward. Kit hesitated for a fraction, then leapt into the air to spin and land on her feet behind him.
"Duo, I can't fight you!" she cried. "I love you! I could never hurt you!" Duo rushed her again and she evaded him in the same way, astonished to see tears in his eyes. The poor fool really thought he loved him, she thought wonderingly. As if Duo could be capable of loving anyone but her!
An arm suddenly tightened around her throat and Kit realized she had forgotten about WuFei. It wasn't really a problem, though - she gripped his arm, slid out of his grasp, and tossed him away.
The Chinese boy was a martial artist in his own right, however, and he executed a flawless flip in midair to land on his feet. He took a stance and clapped his hands together, bowing to Kit in a classic invitation to battle.
"You want to fight, boy?" Kit laughed. "Gladly!" She crossed both arms and gave him a cheerful grin. "Your move!"
WuFei moved forward cautiously. "Demons are worthless." He spat. "Worse than cowards, liars, cheaters, and-" and flicked a glance in the direction of Duo Maxwell, "thieves."
Kit's face hardened into a mask of concentrated anger. "Mortal," she sneered. "Try me."
Without warning, WuFei was a whirlwind of motion as he attacked. Kitsune became her own blur of action as she countered. The two teenagers fought too fast for Duo to see who was throwing the jabs and who was countering them.
Suddenly from the whir of fighting, Kit skid back from blocking a kick, and bent down into a fighting stance.
WuFei stood up and centered his fists, "You finished yet?"
Kit laughed and wiped a hand at the corner of her mouth, "Finished fighting? Ha! Never." She stood up and put up her fists in a boxing like style. "I'm not even warmed up yet."
WuFei narrowed his eyes, "Demons can't fight."
She grinned, "I never said we could, but I learned all I know from Duo." Then her crouch deepened and she wavered slightly on the balls of her feet. "Thing is, WuFei, I'm a hundred times stronger, faster, more agile, and smarter then you." She flexed out into the splits and lifted herself off the ground with both hands. "Plus I've had plenty of time to practice." Again she vaulted into the air and performed one of her seemingly-impossible flips and descended on WuFei. "Here I come, China-boy!"
The blur of action resumed.
Duo watched the action, paralyzed. Kit was acting crazier and crazier by the passing second. He needed to get Heero out of her reach before she lost interest in WuFei and went after her true objective.
"Ow!" Kit shrieked, dancing back and clutching her arm. "That hurt, you ass!" She rubbed her shoulder and gave WuFei an offended look. "This time for real."
The blur of action resumed.
Duo shot across the roof and away from the fight, scooping Heero into his arms and skidding around a pile of rubble to rest his unconscious lover on the ground.
"Hee-chan?" he asked softly, stroking the side of Heero's face tenderly. "Come on, babe, wake up." Dammit, this isn't supposed to happen. Duo thought. Heero's the one that always rescues me from stupid shit like this.
"Mmm," Heero mumbled, grimacing and tucking into a ball. "Ouch."
"Baka," Duo said affectionately. "The perfect soldier never says 'ouch'."
"Most perfect soldiers never get smashed into a wall by wily fox demons, either." Heero said sourly, struggling to sit up. Duo looked at him in astonishment.
"Hee-chan, did you just crack a joke?" Duo asked.
Heero looked surprised at the concept, too. "I guess you're rubbing off on me." He remarked, and then drew in a deep, hissing breath as he moved and one of his ribs objected by sending white-hot pain jolting through his body. "I think I broke a rib."
"I have to get you out of here," Duo said, trying to life Heero into his arms once more.
"Baka!" Heero said. "You don't understand, do you? Kit's obsessed! This has to end here on this colony. If it doesn't, she'll haunt you wherever you go. This isn't going to stop until one of us is dead."
"Heero…" Duo said, staring aghast at his fellow pilot.
"Duo-chan," Heero began in a rare display of open affection, "help me stand up." Duo silently offered an arm and tried not to jerk as Heero hissed through his teeth as he stood. Once up, he let the majority of his weight lean into Duo. "Duo-chan," Heero said again, "trust me." The Japanese teenager then placed a firm kiss on Duo's mouth.
From behind them, past the rubble, an enraged snarl was heard, escalating into a feral noise that sounded more demonic than human.
"Pathetic human!" Kit yelled. Heero forced himself to walk around the pile of cement to see what exactly was happening. Duo was close behind. Together they found Kit standing with a hand around WuFei's throat, holding him against the wall with his feet a good two feet off the ground. "See what happens when you trifle with demons?"
Heero saw his opportunity. He picked up a stray block of wood, a foot or so long and thicker at the end than in his hands, and took a few steps forward before swinging with all his perfect solider might.
The impromptu bat connected with Kit's skull and gave off a resounding crack. Her eyes lost focus and her grip on WuFei slacked, allowing the pilot to slump to the ground and gasp for breath. Kit staggered back and dropped to one knee. "Duo…!" she called hoarsely, her copper eyes fixed on some point in the clouds. She gulped and blinked, then tried to speak again, but couldn't force the words out.
"KIT!" Duo screamed, rushing forward as the girl crumpled to the ground in a boneless slump. He gathered up the first friend he had ever had into his arms, remembering days from long ago when they had just been kids, running in the streets like any normal child. Now he was a killer and she was insane, and somewhere along the way neither of them had realized just how much they had lost the day Maxwell Church had been devastated by fire.
"Why'd you leave me, Max?" Kit managed to say, one hand tracing his cheekbone with tenderness. "You told me you'd never leave me…" her copper eyes dimmed and closed for a moment as she sucked in a short breath. "I never left…" Her eyelids drifted shut and she slipped into unconsciousness.
Next time in: It's all in the Past
-Is Kit still alive?
-and if she is, is she still psycho? Or is she now just depressed?
-How will Duo take all this?
-Will Trowa ever get to talk?
All this and more in next times: It's all in the Past!
A/N: Um….two words….massive collaboration. Melody came over to my grandma's house with me…and in during breaks from DDR we wrote this….it goes in a order of somewhere along the lines of me her me her me her. But, cha…I feel like writing…and Melody wants to do an A/N so here she is…
A/N: Hi all! This Melody, otherwise known as adulaith. (read my fics!) Massive collaboration, indeed! In between playing DDR (droolie addiction now) we took turns typing out this wonderful new chapter. This happened in the span of a few hours. Amazing, isn't it? *SNIFT!* See what happens when you use DDR for inspiration? Plus I have two beautiful piccys I drew today. *nodnod* So please review my stories too (search for adulaith) and I will give you a cookie! *snift*
~adulaith
A/N: me again, and adulaith now has three new drawings, and I have a revamped picky of Kit I drew…she looks a lot better now …and that's a wrap…I'm going to get started writing on the next chapter before the inspiration goes ::poof:: ^^;.
Please Review…you have no idea how nice it is to read nice reviews *uses her 'is it too much to ask' reviews to get happy* ^^;
Chaio!
~Alora-chan~