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Children of War
By,
Luna Dragon
With a moan, the girl with shoulder length black hair opened her dark violet eyes. Her neck was stiff, and so were her legs. She tried to bring her hands up to massage her throbbing temples, but found that they were tied up.
"What?" She mumbled as her vision tried clear. Her ankles were bound to the legs of a chair, and her wrists were handcuffed behind her. "Great," She mumbled.
Her mind was foggy and she could barely see, an acidic taste was in the back of her throat, and her nose itched with an unfamiliar odor. Actually, come to think of it . . .
Everything seemed unfamiliar. She was in a strange room she didn't recognize, she didn't remember how she got here, or --
"Wh-what?" She stammered as the pounding behind her eyes intensified. "Wh-who am I?"
She probed her mind for anything, any clue on who she was or where she came from, how she got here, who was here . . . and she got nothing.
~*^*^*~
Akiko paced around her small apartment, which she shared with Kaiya. Unlike her partner who was calm, Akiko was anything but.
"You need to calm down, Akiko."
"Calm down?" Akiko shouted as if it were the craziest idea in the world. "How am I supposed to be calm at a time like this?"
Kaiya sighed. It was a hopeless cause to try to make her friend settle down, but it was worth another try. "If what Hotaru claims is correct, we have" -- she glanced at the clock for a split second -- "over thirty hours to complete this mission."
"Actually, more like twenty hours." Akiko whispered, in a barely audible tone, but even so, Kaiya's head snapped up.
"What do you mean?" She asked icily.
"Well, er, about the . . . time limit thing . . . we have only forty-eight hours to complete our mission . . . and then, er, we'll be . . . out of the job, so to say." Akiko explained uncomfortably under Kaiya's cold, defiant stare.
"That would've been proper to tell me, before we left!" Kaiya said.
"Sorry!" Akiko said sheepishly as she retreated a few steps back. "But I think I may have an idea . . . if the Prof buys it . . ."
"Would you do so kindly as to inform me before you go out and kill yourself if Professor Tomoe doesn't see things eye to eye with you?"
Akiko nodded and looked around. "He doesn't . . . spy on us does he?"
"No, we would've found out by now."
Akiko nodded numbly, looking around her once more as Kaiya rolled her eyes and waited patiently. "Well, what if you put your earring back on and--"
"I can't just put my earring back on!" Kaiya snapped. "I won't know what I'm doing or . . . anything for that matter!"
"Can you at least let me finish?"
"What else is there to say?"
"You could put your earring back on, after I tweak it up a little."
Kaiya nodded thoughtfully. "And if he asks for it back? What then? And what about yours?"
"Well, uh . . . you could say I'm home . . . recovering."
"Our main plan is to kill the guys and come back no matter what, remember?"
"Well yeah, but . . ." Akiko paused to think. "I could make another one . . ."
Kaiya shook her head. But an idea worked it's way up her mind. "Us three --you Hotaru and I-- fought here, right?"
"Well yeah, you can pretty much see that for yourself. We've got the el magnificento crimson stained carpet, with el magnificenceo bullet-holed walls." Akiko said in an attempt at Spanish, all the while gesturing to every place she named.
Kaiya nodded. "And Hotaru took off your earring, right?"
Akiko nodded, slightly confused. "Yeah, but what does this have to do with anything?"
"Did she leave it here by any chance?"
"Perhaps, but -- hey!" Akiko suddenly said. "I know where your going! If we find my earring and tweak it up a little, then we both go to the Prof, saying we completed the mission, and when he 'relieves' us of our duties, we'll go back for Hotaru!"
"Not exactly." Kaiya corrected. "We renovate the earrings, go to Professor Tomoe and tell him we've accomplished the mission by killing them. We hope he says yes after we ask him to let us leave, and then you and I go where Heero and the others are."
"But I said that . . ."
"No." Kaiya said. "We ask the ex-boys if we can join them to defeat Professor Tomoe."
"What?" Akiko shouted. "Are you forgetting that we, or you, almost killed them?"
Kaiya nodded once before closing her eyes. "Yes, I'm totally aware of that . . . obstacle. But if we can convince them . . . then we wont be able to do this on our own. We'll need all the help we can get."
"But they . . . you know." Akiko whispered. "What's done is done. I'm sure people hate us for going on all those missions, killing people who also had loving families."
"But they were not left completely alone!"
"How do you know?" Kaiya asked, awaiting an answer. "Maybe that person we killed, was the only one in someone else's life. And also, we're not entirely alone."
"We have no one!"
"We have each other. And that's better than nothing. We've mourned, we've gotten semi-revenge, what more, Akiko?" Akiko stared down at the floor, as if suddenly fascinated by her shoes. "How many more people have to go through what we have gone through? With their help, we can end all that once and for all."
"I . . ."
"At least think about it. If not, then we'll figure something else out after we get back from Professor Tomoe's."
Akiko nodded solemnly, taking the earring that belonged to Kaiya from her pocket, and set to work on it. Meanwhile, Kaiya went looking for the second one.
~*^*^*~
At around 5:30 AM, Quatre walked into Heero's office with a pot of coffee and found Heero slumped over the desk in his room, in front of his laptop.
'What's so important that he'd fall asleep in his chair trying to finish it?' Quatre wondered, carefully tiptoeing across the floor.
Soon Heero blinked awake as a mug of coffee clacked down next to his head, and he would've jerked upright if sudden muscle spasms hadn't stopped him after moving less than an inch.
"That didn't look like a comfortable position to be sleeping in, even if it was for only a few hours." Quatre observed, watching as Heero slowly levered himself off the desk to the accompaniment of several loud cracking noises. "Got a crick in your back?"
"Substitute 'several' for 'a' and you'd be closer to the truth," Heero gritted out, managing not to groan out loud. He was more surprised that he'd managed not to snap back a rude retort to Quatre's mildly sarcastic comment; the wonderful smell reaching him from the mug probably had something to do with it. "Thanks for the coffee." he muttered, not liking the feeling in his neck and upper back.
"Have you found out anything?" Quatre then asked.
"Have you ever heard of Professor Tomoe the scientist?" Heero asked. Quatre looked thoughtful for a moment then nodded.
"I think . . . was he the one who caused the lab accident which killed his wife?" Quatre answered softly.
"Yes. Apparently our . . . guest is his daughter."
"What?" Quatre blurted out. "His . . . daughter . . ." He then repeated, the words sounding foreign to him.
"It seems that way." Heero said. "Her name is Hotaru, Hotaru Tomoe."
There was the tapping of shoes and some grumbling, and both boys turned to see none other than Wufei. "Well than you'd better hurry if you still want to interrogate Tomoe, because the woman's regained consciousness."
Heero nodded and was out of the door before either of his comrades could speak.
* * *
Author's Note: I made this one . . . A LITTLE longer than the last one. My writer's block seems to be leaving, and I've decided to use Hotaru Yuy's idea of Hotaru getting amnesia. Special thanks to her. THANK YOU HOTARU YUY! And, until next chapter, **AFTER YOU GUYS AND GIRLS READ & REVIEW** Ja ne!
