Hello again! LOTS of thank-u's to hand, out, so here we go!

Free Thinker: Well, I try to write longer, but sumtimes it gets hard .. I wanna multi-chapter fic or else I have to keep thinking up new ideas, and that takes me a little while...

Violet_eyes: yes we all gets the school thingie. sumtimes u can rewrite these fics a bit and use them for English assignments. That's always funny, when you get an A for sumthing originally writ for nothing but sheer boredom ^_^ But mesa try to crank things out faster! ::shoots jar jar binks:: there we go no more mesas now.

Emily Hato: hey welcome back to the realm of Du-Kun! Yes, q-man is over the top, but hey, kinda funny imagining some big business guy going "Oh Boy!!" and jumping around like a buffoon, n'est pas?

: ) : well.. What was good? Heero: hn.. Pink bunny slippers... DK: uh, heero wake up and answer the question! H: huh? Oh hn....... Iie I won't.::goes back to sleep:: Dk: ^_^' oh well..

Penny: well, okay since you asked nicely... you can experience more randomness! ::starts doing a little cheerleader dance:: YAY!! ::shoots cheerleader:: okay no more jumping now.. heehee I kill off a lot of characters to stop the random affects!

*Vic*: Yes, that'll be different, trust me.. I 'll make it weird, even if I gotta burn down the school or sumthin..which hopefully I won't.

Akennea: Ohhh.. u misspelled cool. I is gonna kill u now.. U no I dun like misspelling things... ^_^ thanks for reviewing , very imformative.

Triton Bloom: yes and since when was heero nice, either? No, introducing heero now would make the fic too short. thanks for the positive review about the past thing, u wanna know the real secret to why I won't tell anyone about the past yet? IT"S CUZ I DUNNO IT!!! Heeheehee I luv making fics off the top of my head and seeing how they turn out. ^_~ think I've almost got this one down now though. Oh and thx for the sympathy about school, seems lots of peeps hate it too, so it's strange how we read fics about them, n'eh?

Shini-girl Kit: uh okay there I posted it in about 5 seconds, pretty impressive eh?

Sir-Gabs-a-Lot: Don't worry, that's about how I sound now. if ya look at the previous reviews, they are kinda strange, invololving me shooting jar jar binks and a cheerleader , as well as burning a school down. My suggestion; get more sleep, and if you can't, rev yourself up with so much chocolate you can't go to sleep if you try. heehee mmmm Hershey's..::starts drooling like homer simpson:: And for your information, it's Sister Rebecca, not Sister Helen! ( I like to pretend I have SOME originality in my stories.) : )

ShadowedSoul: Well, sure you can use that quote if you wanna... rather diepressing though, n'eh? But thanks for thinking it's so great! (you can thank my English teacher for that, she always made me write these depressing things. strange lady..) Keep the reading up, might get a little happier, but will try to keep it a little weirdy-dark feeling. ^_^ You don't even have to give me credit for that line if you don't wanna.

Well, offer the same as before, if I didn't get you, yell at me and I'll get you next time, and I'll have a nice present for you too ::hides grenade behind back:: But really, I welcome flames, they make me sound less like me and more like a . less insane person?

Warnings: Just enough AU to confuse you about the real story line, in terms of past and family tie-ins, so be warned. I'm not ignorant, I just love slightly screwing up Duo's past to fit my whims. Also mild 3+4, will be 1x2 in later chapers, as already mentioned.

Okay finally, chappy 3!

Chapter 3 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How could he have known? This boy, who didn't even know me five minutes ago, just named me Solo. How could he have known?

Inside, my mind was a mix of confused emotions, but outside, I kept my deadpan expression for the aqua-marine eyed boy to see. He didn't seem to care, though. He kept babbling incessantly about this and that, including such useful facts as "And this hallway we're walking down, it's a hall!" Thank you captain Obvious, I thought to myself. It had been like this for nearly half an hour before I realized that this was his way of stopping from being uncomfortable. I wasn't filling up the empty air, so he felt he had to. This was his way of covering up for my abnormality.

"... and this is where you take your English classes in 3rd grade, of course you don't need to know THAT, that'd be silly, you in 3rd grade. Ha ha that's funny!" He laughed out loud halfheartedly, making the sound rebound off the empty walls, creating the feel of the dead air to be even more stoic. "Well, Solo.." Quatre trailed off, looking dejected and full of failure, "I guess I'll see you tomorrow, for school. We'll pick up your books then and stuff." I just stared at a spot over his right shoulder, pretending to be very interested in the wall, not really paying attention to a word he was saying. The Arabian stopped the trivial chatter, and looked me hard in the eyes. "Solo.. Why don't you say anything? I know you understand me, and I know you are smart enough to speak, so why don't you? What are you afraid of?"

I couldn't tell him what I was afraid of then, I was still withdrawn, in my shell. And this shell was not going to break.

~~~~~~~~~~~the next day~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sleep and consciousness never really make a huge difference to me. They're always full of my past memories, images that you never want to see again, but you always end up seeing nothing but them. Whisps of the dream kept flitting through my mind as I dressed myself in the school uniform I had been fitted for the day before. Nice deep blue pants that cost more then anything I'd ever bought..er stolen in my life, and they had been given to me for free along with the light blue shirt and colbalt tie. They really had a thing for blue here. The blazer that we wore in winter was blue too, matching the slacks. About the only thing that wasn't blue was the silver badge that glistened with the name "Wentworth Boy's School" and the motto "Honor ante Honorees" ; "honour before honours" Bet you didn't know I could read latin, huh? A lot of people don't think I can. 'Course, none of them really know how much I know about anything...

I stepped out of my dorm room, which for the night was empty. My unknown dorm mate would be coming that evening, with everybody else. Hurriedly I scurried downstairs, about to head off to get my books, when I was met by none other then the smiling Quatre. "Ohayou gozaimasu So-chan!" I groaned inwardly at the name and how it was being demeaned. "You weren't going to leave without breakfast, were you?" He queried, looking at my eyes hopefully, obviously in search of an answer. I was confused. What was this breakfast thing? I'd never heard that term before. I decided just to follow the blond to a large room, probably 3 times the size of the entire orphanage, filled with small tables that seated about 12 each. Only a few of them had people sitting in them, most of them teachers. However, there was one boy that Quatre obviously knew, from the way he greeted him: A kiss straight on the lips. "Ohayou tro-koi!" He said loudly, while I just stood there, waiting until Quatre took his seat to take that as a sign that I should sit too. "Good morning, Little One." The other boy said. He was tall, about 5 foot 11 or so, with a bang that defied gravity by pulling straight over one eye, leaving the other eye as the only one you could see, which was a pretty emerald green. There was no pretty about him though. 'cute' just wasn't a word you'd place with him. That was Quatre. This guy was HOT. I almost gasped out loud when I heard myself say that. A guy, hot? Even I knew that was not normal in everyday society.. I shrugged it aside as I just stared down at the table, drawing imaginary shapes with my fingers. Was this breakfast? Because if this was, I didn't think I'd be coming back, there was nothing to do here. I didn't have anything to do with either 'Tro-koi' or Quatre.

Quatre didn't think so, though. "solo. this is Trowa, my friend."

"Just a friend? I think I'm hurt now." Trowa said, putting up a mock frown. Quatre quickly kissed him on the cheek. "aww, I knew I'd get some emotion out of you eventually.." he practically purred. Then he pulled himself away abruptly "Well, I think I'll go get breakfast. How does bacon, eggs and toast sound to you?"

"just fine, but can you add a grilled tomato? I'm quite partial to those." The chestnut-haired boy called to the boy sauntering over to a siverish thing that smelled like food. "So, tell me about yourself." Trowa said, leaning forward in his chair. I just stared out into space. "Where are you from?" 'Don't say anything' I told myself again. 'It'll all be better if you don't say anything at all.' Trowa didn't seem to get exasperated like Sister Rebecca and Quatre had, though. "I understand, Solo. I know what you're doing, and trust me, I've been through it. It's better to give up the silence, better to open up about yourself." Sure. I had thought that once before, and had paid dearly for it. That's when I knew, just shutting up, just watching, was the best way.. the images flashed before my eyes again, but quickly I shook them away as I saw Quatre coming back with three plates stacked high with enough food to feed my entire orphanage for 3 weeks. I gaped at the sheer volume of the nourishment of bacon, eggs and toast. I must have shown that on the outside, too, because Quatre replied "I know, look at the crap they call food. How are we supposed to live on this junk?" He was blind and stupid sometimes, I realized. Little did he know how much less a human can live upon. I knew though, and this was heaven to me.

45 minutes later, both Trowa and Quatre had eaten the entire plateful of food. Mine had only lost half a strip of bacon. Forcing myself to eat 2 bites of egg, I shoved the plate away. I couldn't stuff any more into my already hugely full stomach. Quatre gaped in shocked horror. "No wonder you're so slim! You're an anorexic, aren't you? That's no way to live you know." He didn't realize I'm an orphan, I realized. He thinks I'm an ordinary kid. I fingered the glass dove I had hidden in my front pocket, felt every curve of it, as I had many times before. No, I thought, I haven't been a normal kid for 8 years. And after that, I'll never be a normal kid again.

"Well, come on then, Solo. First class is American History, and then Art, then you get to meet your new dorm mate at recess time, we get a whole hour for it here you know." I laughed silently to myself as I thought how interesting that meeting would be, and the months to follow of absolute silence in the room. I could deal with that. Atfter all, I've found you shouldn't do things if you can't handle them, and I was the one who would have created that silence.

I got up and followed the slightly shorter Arabian, who was happily chatting to the taller brown-haired man. He seemed not to talk very often, because there was a lot of body language rather then actual oral language. My eyes darted to and fro across the now-crowded hallways, memorizing faces as I went. Never writing anything down, I'd gotten used to just observing, watching, and trusting my memory to bring it back up at any time.

Eventually we took a sharp left and ended up in a small, cozy room that was not so cozy at the moment from the over-crowding of bodies. The smell didn't annoy me, unlike most people, who were complaining loudly "Who had beans for breakfast?" I laughed slightly in my head at the stupidity surrounding me. Try smelling a guy who probably hadn't taken a bath for 3 days, and smelt of beer, sex and sweat, then try imagining stealing from his grimy pocket a crust of bread that was soaked with booze and eating it. Then, once you do that, then you can complain to me. Of course, nobody was. I wasn't saying anything, wasn't showing any signs of openness, so others ended up complaining to themselves.

No, the smell didn't annoy me, but the heat DID. I wasn't and still am not used to being in a room full of 25 sweating boys standing around in a room the size of a laundry room, crammed between the wide receiver and the lead of the wrestling team, and still trying desperately to get a seat and open my books. The noise immediately stopped, however, when the stiff- necked teacher waltzed through the door. A pair of gold eyeglasses swung from it's chain as the woman looked severely around the small class. Finally she sniffed and said "Good Morning, class" and where there was supposed to be a "Good Morning, Mrs. Bitnarch" there was quite a few "Good morning, Mrs. Bitch" Oh clever, I thought, rolling my eyes slightly. I was not the only one who hadn't said anything. Two others nearby me hadn't even looked up. One was a large guy, but he didn't look very smart, especially since he appeared to be taking a little morning nap. The other one was the one that got my attention, however. Unruly brown hair stuck out in random directions as the eyes glinted from beneath the mass. I could see immediately that this guy was not a approachable bloke. In fact, he reminded me a lot of ....me.

Swiftly I turned my attention back up to the board, watching as Mrs. Bitnarch droned in a voice that would put a rock to sleep, talking about ancient things, like the Great War of Iraq, which was often portrayed as a great American victory, but most people knew better then that. Mrs. Bitnarch didn't seem to think so though. "And then, the great 'President', that's what they called their leaders then, George W. Bush swept in on those who were trying to oppress the Americans, freeing the poor country from almost sure slavery from the Iraqis." Some of the boys snickered at that, saying "Oh sure, helping America.. They weren't always poor you know.. I heard once they had a lot of money, and were eating like 2 as much as they needed too." I wasn't paying any more attention then they were, of course. All my attention was focused on that Japanese boy. Who was he, I wondered. He hadn't talked or acknowledged anybody since the class started. His eyes seemed to burn with an intensity, a light. Looking down at his book, I found he was not looking at the American History book like everybody else. Instead, his book was covered with blueprints, blueprints of armour, blueprints of robots, and many others. But the one that stood out at me was a blueprint for a gun. Could he have been the one? The one that murdered... my eyes flared up in anger as the realization struck me.

I fingered the glass dove again, feeling the material slide cold against my hand. 'Yes' it told me 'he was the one...' I knew what I had to do, but I can't tell you. Not yet.

TBC....
::plays X-Files music:: strangeness in the air... 's death on the wind!

Okay enough about that subject.. Anything else to add?

Duo: There weren't any flying bunny rabbits! DK: uh... ya? So what? D: I WANNA FLYING BUNNY RABBIT!!! Dk: okay, here's a flying bunny:: hand him a blue one:: D: I WANNA PINK ONE! Dk; okay that's just a little creepy, even worse then the fic. D: ::changes into Quatre:: I wanna pink bunny rabbit! Dk: ::sighs:: finally, normality.
R&R or else you'll get more stupid skits at the end of chapters, capice?