Depressed, so depressed ... and all this over some anime character ... but don't worry, I wrote this when I wasn't depressed...^^'''
Ne, here I am mourning for Soujiro that I could hardly memorize my Christmas speech! Yeah yeah, I'm five months early but so what? *sniffle* I miss him...*sniffle* I'm slightly annoyed at the creator of Kenshin ... why couldn't you be able to relate better to Soujiro?! Why?!
Additional obsession: Escaflowne ... it's so depressing ... in a happy, fluffy, bloody kinda way. ^^
Disclaimer: I'm hyperventilating so would you really trust me if I told you I didn't own GW, SM, or the mentioning of RK in my ANs? Jeez ... we FF authors are so lazy ... so many abbreviations...-_-
Editors: *sigh* Though you didn't conjure up any more scenes of Soujiro or Escaflowne, you did do an amazing job with what garbage I gave you for this chapter ... Heh ... but still, if you could conjure up scenes.... or the person himself... heh heh ... I'd love you indefinitely!!! (Is that a good thing?)
Thank you to: Chibi Chibi GW for that one nonchalant line that banished writer's block. Your line now makes mothers weep everywhere, hating me for exposing their children to this horror below but ... I'll love you always. ^^
I won't tell you what the line was (but it's not like you can't get access to it anyhow...) because that might spoil a part of it ... and though not everything revolves around that one idea, everything did sprout from it. ^^ You can email Chibi Chibi GW at WaterKitten3000@netscape.net to thank her ... for allowing me to actually write ... even if it took a long time anyway…
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Deftly twisting free, she twisted to glare at her captor to find ... Duo. The rage left her so swiftly that all she was left with was a vacant feeling highlighted with terror of what might come to take place.
"W-what do you want?" she questioned covertly even though they were right smack in the middle of a hall with sparkling rays of sunlight flinging them into the spotlight.
"Hey! I'm here to save your butt and this is how you treat me?!" he snapped in a hurt tone distorted by anxiety and sniffed arrogantly.
"Save my butt? Why would my butt need saving?" she queried, frowning gently. The previous irritation was shoved aside by thick perplexity.
Duo exhaled noisily and did his best to look exasperated. "Hello! Are you blind or are you blind?"
"I'd have to say I am blind. Enlighten me," she shot back, eyes splinters of sarcastic indigo.
Realizing he made the ultimate mistake for this day and now would have to make up a story in place of 'Hiiro's hacking abilities led us to your profile which ... isn't entirely spotless', he shuffled around in his thoughts for an excuse.
"Uh, bwawijihuahieha," the braided boy garbled unintelligibly before at last coming up with something, if not something credible. "Wufei's cooking tonight and trust me, you do not want to eat Wufei's cooking. Hey, you know what? We can go out and eat ... yes, you know, somewhere far and, um, then we can ... go tour China and, uh, I'll leave you there until, um, until-"
"Oh, I think I know what's going on here," Usagi finally interrupted.
"You do?" came the piercing peep.
"You're asking me out."
Scarcely listening to her, he nodded before blinking and yelping a, "What?!"
"You're asking me out. I really have to give you credit on the artistic excuse." She cleared her throat slyly.
"No! Of course not! What are you kidding me?" he yelped louder, his voice echoing in the sun-speckled hallway.
"What was that supposed to mean?" she snarled, mind half working on the diversion and half (hurriedly) working out a strategy to dodge Hiiro's 'inquisition.' Naturally, knowing her own characters as well as her own children (if she had any) would mean she anticipated his next move...
"I, uh, um, uh, are you serious?" he finally managed, eyebrows raised.
"Oh there you are, Duo. For a second, we had thought you went to tell..." trailing off and shaking his head, Quatre smiled unsteadily at Usagi and gestured for her to follow him.
"So where are we going?"
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"Miss Tsukino Usagi of Guatemala, age fifteen, height 4'11, competent finance consultant and part time assassin. Blonde hair, blue eyes, location unknown, reward of 500,000 pounds will be given to the captor of her, active member of the search for gundam pilots, and has, to date, murdered over twenty-one victims."
Usagi gaped at them as the facts they had exposed were recited to her. After fifteen minutes of glowering and griping, Hiiro had finally consented in giving her the facts. Not only was she outright scandalized ... that so many people had matched her name in a reality she had fashioned, but also that another person, bearing the same name and physical features as herself was living in Guatemala as an assassin. Yep, Lady Luck was really happy with her today. Being cleverly tied to a chair did not help her put the problem into focus.
"What?" her voice finally responded to the urgings of her brain and squeaked at the accusing looks that were directed at the culprit -- her.
Batting her indignant question aside, Hiiro overwhelmed it with a question of his own, "Why were you at the OZ complex?"
"I want my lawyer," she pouted and looked away, glaring at the wall, deliciously visualizing what would happen if she took a torch to it.
Watching Hiiro's eyes narrow a fraction of a millimeter per second, Duo rapidly whispered, "Answer and save your butt or don't answer and die."
"Okay ... I don't know why."
"You don't know why?" Wufei echoed incredulously, staring at her as if she had indeed taken torches to the wall.
"No, I don't."
"Care to explain?" Trowa prompted leisurely.
"I, uh, was hit on the head and then suddenly I'm here." Well, it wasn't a total lie.
"Try explaining truthfully," Hiiro barked derisively, the thinning of the eyes speeding up considerably and warningly to an awe-inspiring millimeter per second.
Blanching, she licked her lips promptly and clarified, "You wouldn't believe me if I did."
"Try us."
Lapis eyes turned from one pokerfaced countenance to the next. All had varying degrees of compassion, from none at all (Wufei and Hiiro) to eyes that evidently stated I'm willing to get on my hands and knees if you will forgive me (Quatre and Duo) to silent detachedness (Trowa).
"What do you want me to tell you?" she countered with her own challenge.
"The truth is preferred, but why don't we start at how you got to the OZ base," came the snappish retort.
She took a deep breath to stifle the anger overshadowing her reason and began. "There is a world outside of this world and that's where I truly am supposed to be. In that world, I am a manga artist, a person who creates a story and depicts it in a comic-like fashion.
Quite a few months ago, I came up with the idea for this world, a world in the future where gargantuan robotic machines fight for peace. I came up with the idea of five teenage boys who, because of various reasons, decide to take up the offer presented to them by various scientists to battle OZ using special MS forged from gundanium.
I was rushing to a Christmas party held at my parents' home, but the taxi driver crashed, and I bumped my head. When I woke up, I was here."
Her hasty words brought in a tide of skeptical silence that washed over five of the six people in the room.
It was sliced by Hiiro's intimidating and demanding, "Prove it."
Her eyes waltzed from person to person before she remembered a certain something in her purse. "If you could get me my purse, I might be able to," she undertook the challenge in a mock-sweet voice and a mental cackle of victory.
At Hiiro's deliberate nod, Duo handed her her handbag, which had already suffered a weapon check. Flipping frantically through the sections with the only parts of her body that weren't entirely tied -- her forearms, she hunted for the item that could prove everything ... and save her from a horrible, horrible death.
"You wouldn't be looking for this, would you, onna?" Wufei demanded, eyes with no spark of humor in them. In his hand was the one thing she needed -- the seventh book of Gundam Wing which a younger cousin of hers had requested her to bring after probing for weeks in all nearby comic stores and being informed of all of them being sold out.
She gasped and nodded wordlessly, not bothering to fulminate over the taunt. It was then thrown to her and caught neatly by hands that were all too used to her assistants chucking various writing utensils in her direction (even if she couldn't move her upper arms).
Studying the slick cover, her mind finally registered what was so wrong -- it was blank with the exception of the mocking bold letters that declared the title of the manga. Even her name had disappeared from the cover though it wouldn't have helped much anyway -- she still used and favored the name Serenity Moon to her own.
"There was nothing in it," Trowa told her placidly. Breathing in one choking gasp of air after another, she flipped open the cover and fearfully cracked open one eye ... to find that ... he was wrong.
"Yes there is! Read it," she protested, shoving it back into Wufei's hands. He in turn shot her a funny glance and skimmed the pages for a second time.
Was the onna hallucinating? "Read what?"
The horrible plummeting feeling returned, doubling in potency and laughing maniacally with glee. "Y-you can't see it?" she faltered.
He confirmed her fears with a, "See what?"
Usagi gnawed at her lip restlessly, mind pouncing on each new solution but then tossing it away when it proved useless. Finally, she plucked the best one out from the swamp of half-formed ideas that threatened to surge over any sense of reason left in her.
"Can you get me a pencil?" She directed the request to Quatre (who currently looked like he wanted a deep pit to form under the richly carpeted floor and for him to fall into it) but Trowa, in his own way, already expecting the plea, responded by aiming a mechanical one in her direction. Her mind, about to go into nervous breakdown mode, failed to direct her arms quickly enough to catch the thrown object. Instead, it landed with perfect accuracy in her lap.
"Paper?" she asked entreatingly and was roughly handed a few sheets.
"Untie me?" She fairly prayed this time, roughly pushing away the dark doubts that awoke at this request.
The entire gathered crowd eyed her as if she had sprouted several new appendages, thinking what she knew they would -- Do you think we're crazy or what?
"Just one arm?" she compromised, mouth nurturing a pout and eyes flickering with tears. Finally Quatre walked up to her and undid the intricate sets of knots, letting her right arm completely go free. Flexing it gently, she took hold of the pencil with expert confidence and began. With scores of rapid strokes, faces surfaced in great detail onto the plain white of the computer paper.
"So you can draw, so what?" Duo spoke for everybody as he scanned the sketch of his friends and himself, all standing before detailed representations of their gundams.
The blonde girl seemed to pause in uncertainty at his almost taunting words but proceeded to add others to the expanding picture. Trowa silently handed her more pieces of paper. Relena, Dorothy, Hilde, Sally, Catherine, Iria, Meirin, Noin, Milliardo, and even Treize looked out at the gundam pilots from the picture, some smiling vibrantly and others sporting moody looks.
"You could have gotten pictures of all of them," Quatre supplied as explanation. The others nodded in agreement.
Sighing frustratedly, Usagi pointed out, "You're only trying to deny the obvious."
"Your explanation is not the obvious, only the most illogical. We might believe you if your proof was less flimsy," Hiiro bit out, finally speaking up.
Blue eyes edged with sharp silver dashed past his. "Oh yeah? Do you have any other explanation?" she challenged bravely.
Five pairs of eyes simultaneously flickered towards the computer screen, which still displayed the bold letters of her name and what led to the situation she was in.
"I can't win with you all, can I?" she muttered to herself.
An hour of trying, unsuccessfully, to prove she was innocent ensued. Nothing seemed to work. When asked for her to recount their past lives, the ones before the gundam pilots were ever found, she foundered and quieted. True, she was planning to add a prequel to the currently seven book series but due to the need for a vacation, she had hardly thought about it. Of course, there was a brainstorming session on the airplane to her mother's house, but she had only managed to come up with the general layouts of the covers.
"Wouldn't I have already hurt you if I wanted to?" she spoke tiredly after a five minute lapse into silence.
This remark at last seemed to warrant some reaction.
"Let's just drop this for today," Quatre pleaded, eyeing the dozing Duo and frazzled looking Usagi.
Wufei and Trowa nodded in unison at this suggestion and turned to Hiiro, waiting for a response from their unofficial leader. Decisively, making a movement as if he were mentally sighing, he stood up and aimed a gauging look at Usagi.
"We have to take turns guarding her."
The now shaken awake Duo's face lengthened. This would undoubtedly lead to another sleepless night. Typical of Hiiro to do this to him.
"Am I going to be untied?" Usagi asked scathingly, hardly wishing to push her luck.
Marvelously blue eyes continued to examine her and finally inclined slightly in a nod. "Take her to the room without any windows and lock the door. Duo, you first." He continued despite a mournful whimper from the braided and very sleepy pilot, "Then Trowa, Quatre, Wufei, and finally me." He stood up from his seat next to the still humming machine.
"So I'm trading the chains for a cell, ne?" Usagi kidded, overlooking the frown she got from the computer's direction.
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Ne, pretty short and pointless ... okay not really short compared to most if not all of the others but for some odd and annoying reason, my definitions of short and long are starting to change ... *sigh* Maybe you should be mourning ... once my chapters get long, they get pointless ... not that they aren't already.