Gundam Girls: interlude The Assassin and the Swordsman A/N: Just to let you know, Chase has been on her own for a short time, and this is a critical point in which her personality starts to change and she begins maturing. She learns that the child that came into the GW world cannot survive on her own, so she must become what she needs to be in order to live. Oh, and also, Ryuujin is my b/f's character. Blame him for the chaos. ^^

Chase walked along the streets, deep in thought. Her senses jumped to life as the aura of a soldier flooded them. She looked at the man she was passing, taking note of the sword that hung from the sheath hooked onto his back. 'In broad day light?' she thought. He was tall, with blue hair and eyes. Her dark emerald eyes followed him until he disappeared into the crowd. She shrugged it off and continued on. There was no reason to go looking for trouble if it did not come her way. The young pilot found a room in a hotel down the street and settled in for the first good night's sleep she had had in a week. Or so she thought. When the clock struck midnight, she was awakened by the sound of gunshots outside her window. Her mind automatically came out of the fog of sleep as she leapt from her bed and over to the window, grabbing her gun as she went. Peering out, she saw the blue-eyed man from before. He stood in the street, sword held in a protective stance between his opponent and himself, ready for the man to shoot again. Chase looked at the blue haired man's opponent. He was a smaller man than the other one. His sandy blond hair was pulled into a small ponytail in the back and his gun was cocked and ready. He wore the tattered uniform of a soldier from Rockafellor and the symbol of OZ on his left shoulder. The young Gundam pilot slipped on a sweatshirt and her shoes, rushing out towards them. The first one to notice her was the man with the sword. His eyes flickered toward her, as if warning her to stay back from the battle. Chase paid him no heed as she cocked her own gun. "An OZ soldier all the way out here? I figured they wouldn't care about a little town like this." "And who are you?" the sandy haired man asked as he looked between her and his opponent. "What do you want?" Chase smirked. "For this war to be over and for the people of earth to live in peace," she answered. "But I doubt you really care, ne?" The man sent a shot off towards the swordsman to distract him as he rushed towards the green-eyed pilot. Chase jumped back, dodging the swinging fist. She dropped to the ground, leg swinging out and catching the man about the ankle and tripping him up. He fell with a thud to the ground and was up a half a second after Chase had reached her feet. She stopped as she found herself starring down the barrel of his gun. "Now this is an interesting predicament." "Who are you?" "Wouldn't you like to know, boyo?" Chase sneered. "Fine. Be that way, brat," the man said as he pulled the trigger. Chase dodged the bullet easily, but didn't see the knee that came up and caught her in the stomach. She skidded slightly across the pavement and coughed, landing on her rear, looking up. "Kuso," she muttered. The man smirked, but suddenly stopped as a sword sliced through him. Fear didn't have time to set in before he fell dead to the ground, blood raining down and splattering against the teenage girl's face. "He should have kept his mind on his original opponent." Chase looked up to see the blue haired man. She blinked once and then he was gone. "What the heck?" she wondered out loud. She stood up and walked back to her hotel room, baffled by the young man she had encountered. After she had cleaned up she curled back up and slept the rest of the night without a trouble.

Chase grabbed her bag and gun the next morning, leaving the hotel after checking out. She walked into the teashop and sat down. "Sleep depravation is never a good thing," she muttered. "Blasted OZ soldiers." She leaned back in her chair with her eyes closed, thinking. When she looked up she saw the man from the night before sitting with his eyes cast downward to the table. She lost her balance and fell backwards. "Itaii," she muttered as she picked herself up. "So who are you?" the swordsman asked. "Chase. You?" The man looked up and Chase got the first good look at his reflective blue eyes. They held her own for a moment and she blushed. "Ryuujin." Ryuujin leaned on the table and glanced to the side. "That OZ soldier was looking for someone last night when I found him. Now there are two more sitting over there, on the lookout for that same someone. Guess who I found in both of those places?" "Yourself?" "Cute. You." "Atashi?" Chase asked innocently. "Doshite atashi?" She leaned back in her chair again and took a sip of her tea. "Why are they after you?" "How should I know? Maybe I ticked them off at one time." Ryuujin glared. "They are looking for a pilot, is what they have been saying." "Good for them." "Look to your left." Chase did so and saw two uniformed men sitting and glancing at her every few moments. "Just great," she muttered under her breath. "I try to get away from the war and it follows me." "You're a Gundam pilot." "Question or statement?" "Statement." "Correct statement. It appears you've been entangled in my mess though," she said as she stood. "They've seen you with me twice. They'll think we're friends." Ryuujin looked at her as she placed enough money on the table for her drink and walked towards the door. He also watched the soldiers get up after her. One reached out and grabbed Chase's hand. "Hello there, 06. You've been avoiding us for a few days now. Maybe you are as good as your reputation." "Perhaps. Do you want to settle this away from innocent people?" "Now if we do that, I won't have the edge, now will I?" "But you will be dead," Ryuujin said from behind. "The girl's under my protection. Let her go." Chase felt her face heat up with anger. Protection indeed! "And as for you," Ryuujin continued, now speaking to the man coming up behind him, "please also leave this young lady alone. I wouldn't want to stir up trouble with the authorities, ne?" The first soldier felt the cold steel of Ryuujin's sword against his back. "Let's go." "But sir!" "I said let's go, Lt." Chase and Ryuujin watched as the two soldiers disappeared out of the teashop and out of site. The petite girl turned towards the tall man. "I need no protection," she hissed. "I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself." "Shouldn't we talk about this outside?" Chase looked back at the crowd who was staring oddly at them. "Hai," she whispered. They walked outside and back into an alley. She stopped and whirled to face him. "I don't need any help from you. I'm an assassin by profession, Ryuujin-san. I don't need a baby-sitter." Ryuujin reached out a gloved hand and cupped the young teen's cheek. The green-eyed girl felt her face heat up in a blush as her heart beat faster. "You don't want my help, Chase?" Chase took a shaky breath. "I doubt you're going to same way as me." "And where would that be?" Silence. "What are you running from, Chase?" The pilot stopped suddenly. "Running?" "That's what I said." "I'm not running from anything!" Ryuujin smirked. "Then why get so angry about the question?" "The nerve of you thinking I would run from anything," she growled. "I'm a Gundam pilot. I-" She stopped when his eyes met hers. Her breath seemed to be harder to push through her lungs as she looked at him. "Pretty confident, ne?" he asked. What was it about him? "I have to be. If I don't have any confidence in my skills then I'm dead. I have to rely on them and never anyone else's. I-" She stopped once more, but this time for a different reason. Ryuujin reached down and kissed her. Chase's eyes flew open as wide as they would go. Her mind raced. She had been in this position with Heero just a week before and had rejected him, and she had known Heero much longer than this man who had saved her the night before, but somehow, this seemed right. She relaxed as his arms wrapped around her shoulders. When the kiss ended, Chase's emerald orbs fluttered open. "How did you know I was running?" she whispered as she laid her head against his chest. "You don't seem like the type to distant yourself from people." Chase looked up at him and smiled. "So, Ryuujin, which way are you going?"

Chase yawned and stretched as she padded her way toward her bed. She stopped and looked at the mirror that was hanging on the wall of the hotel room. When she looked into it, she nearly jumped out of her skin. "RYUUJIN!" Ryuujin was sitting casually on her bed, looking at her. "Yes?" "GET OUT!!" He blinked, stood, and started for the door. "Matte." she mumbled, feeling slightly bad. "What are you doing in here?" The blue haired swordsman looked back at her, blinking. Go. Stay. Couldn't this girl make up her mind? "My window was broken in," he replied with a shrug. Chase blinked. "Broken in? Ba~ka! You do know that means someone broke into your room, ne?" she demanded, crossing her arms over her chest. "Of course. You asked why I came in here, I gave you the answer. Now do you want me to go?" The petite pilot sighed, slightly more dramatic than was necessary for the situation. "You can stay if you want," she grumbled, though she wasn't sure if she should offer. She barely knew this young man. A very dangerous young man at that. "You looked as if you were about to go to bed," he noted. "I was.I am," she corrected herself, taking note with a slight embracement that she was in her sleepwear of pants and a tank top. She grabbed her sweatshirt from the bed and pulled it over her head. "You can sleep here." "And where will you sleep?" he replied hesitantly. "I'll make a pallet," she said with a shrug. She stopped and thought a moment, blushing. "Pallet, baka.. Did you think that I would.? Oh! You're lucky I'm letting you stay here at all!" Ryuujin blinked, lost as to why he was taking the blame for it when he had said anything. Chase avoided eye contact as she made her pallet on the floor. She liked that arrangement better, as it was more of the Japanese style. She sighed heavily. "I never thought I could miss something so much," she muttered. "Did you say something?" "Iie," Chase responded quietly, switching off the light. "Good night, Ryuujin-san." "Good night, Chase," the blue haired man responded in the darkness.

Reflective blue eyes opened sluggishly to stare at the room around him. The happenings of the day before came back to him slowly. He sat up and looked around the room for the small pilot that had previously occupied the pallet on the floor. The pallet was now neatly rolled up and put out of the way. Her bag sat next to a small laptop that seemed to catch the elder man's attention. He looked back towards the bathroom from where the sound of the shower was heard. He then turned his brilliant eyes back to the laptop and reached for it slowly. The sound of a gun clicking made him stop. He turned around to see Chase standing with an odd shaped gun cocked and aimed at his head. The thought of how she had gotten out of the shower, dressed, and out into the room without him noticing barely had time to run through his mind as his eyes narrowed. "Step away from it, boyo," Chase growled. "And if I don't?" "You'll see what a Caster can do." Ryuujin eyed the girl carefully as he stepped away. He watched her every movement as she leaned down and scooped up the laptop and bag in one move and then swung the bag over her shoulder in a second, all the time the gun aimed carefully. "I wasn't going to hurt it," the blue haired man offered. "Just stay away from it," she growled. After glaring once more, she clipped her Caster onto its clip, turned, and headed out of the room.

Ryuujin found her waiting for him just outside the inn. She turned her emerald orbs up to meet his brilliant blue ones. "I'm edgy." "I noticed." "You try having OZ soldiers tracking you down and actually finding you. You'll be edgy too," she growled as she shoved herself away from the wall she was leaning against. "You're becoming paranoid." "Perhaps." Ryuujin snorted slightly. "If you're staying with me," he stated, "there is no room for paranoia, Gundam pilot or not." Chase allowed a dark smile to cross her lips. "I suppose better a little edgy than dead, ne?" "Death is not usually on my side of the equation," the elder said grimly. "Not from what I've seen. Anyway, I have good intuition, and that is all that it is. Like the laptop. Wouldn't you like to know how I pulled that little trick?" "But I doubt you'll tell me." "Not yet." Ryuujin chuckled. "Yeah, yeah," he muttered. His face darkened and he turned his eyes downward toward Chase. "I don't are about how you did that. All I care about at this moment is weather or not you'll do me any good on my travels or if I should just kill you now." "And who's to say that I couldn't kill you if you came at me?" The blue-eyed man shrugged. "I don't know, but I will find out. Meet me at the outskirts of the town at noon." Chase blinked and he was gone. She growled, slamming a fist into the inn's wall.
The wind was crisp and Chase pulled her jacket around her thin arms. This was the place, but she was still wrestling with the question of why she was there. Why had she come in the first place? "What am I doing here?" she asked quietly. "Proving yourself," a voice said from behind her. Chase whirled around, spotting Ryuujin standing a ways away, eyes sharp and piercing. "And how is that?" "A friendly little scrimmage," Ryuujin said with a small smirk lurking at his lips. "No real rules to speak of." "Sounds pointless." "Not really. It gives me some idea of how you work." Chase tensed at this. Was he working for OZ? He had been watching her closely since they'd met. Was it all a trap? There was no way she could let him walk out alive, not matter how good he was. She dropped her jacket and bag, pulled her Caster out and loaded a shell. "Ikou za." Ryuujin nodded and jumped up. right into to noon sun's glare. Chase lost sight of him as she tried to shield her eyes. She jumped back, muttering a curse under her breath. "Now that wasn't very nice," she growled through clenched teeth. "I thought you were good, Chase," Ryuujin said as he grabbed her wrist, flinging her toward a nearby rock. She flipped up and over the rock, landing lightly behind it and firing her Caster at her quick opponent. The Caster suddenly clicked, letting her know that her all ready short supply of shells was gone. She cursed again. "I always was better at hand-to-hand," she muttered as she leaned back against the rock. She used it to propel herself forward at the tall teen and jumped up into a high kick. He dodged and she struck out again. They went about it in this same manner for several minutes, making it look more like a graceful dance than a battle. Chase finally came back around, planting her gun's nuzzle in the center of the tall teen's back. "Give it up." "Oh?" he asked. "You think I should?" He jerked away, spun, and caught the light against the steel of his sword once more. Chase yelped slightly, growling something in Japanese that the other could not translate. She looked up to see Ryuujin coming at her, sword raised high. She had seen him fight with it before, and she knew she didn't want to be on the receiving end of his blade. She jumped up and used his shoulders to flip over him and land behind him. "Okay, now I'm getting mixed signals," she stated with feigned sweetness. "First you kiss me, and then you try to kill me." She jumped up, evading the swinging sword. Though her feet decided to take that time to loose coordination as she tripped over something and fell strait back onto her backside. Ryuujin blinked, surprise by the sudden turn of events and he too was caught off balance and tumbled over her. (A/N: Take a moment if you will and picture this. Chase is plopped down on the ground and Ryu takes a spill on top of her, more less. My boyfriend - who is the creator of Ryuujin - and I, originally wrote this particular part and we seemed to find the most interesting predicaments to put our poor, abused characters into. ^^) The young American teen turned a dark crimson as she stared up at her opponent, who was now on top of her. For once, Chase was at a loss for words. Ryuujin was also lost as to what to do, so he did something neither of them expected: he leaned down and kissed Chase. The younger person tensed at the suddenness of the action, turning an even darker shade of red. When he pulled away, she stared, completely baffled. "Tell me you're not working for OZ, because if you were sent here to kill me, you've got one hell've a way of doing it." The blue haired man blinked. "What made you think I was working for OZ?" he asked innocently. "Oh I dunno," the younger teen replied, sarcasm dripping from her voice. "Maybe the fact that you just tried to KILL ME!" Ryuujin chuckled. "If I'd have really wanted to kill you, Chase-chan, you would have been dead long ago!" Chase blushed again. "What did I say?" "You just called me 'chan'! Do you know what that implies?" Ryuujin shrugged. "I really don't know the first thing about the Japanese language. I just heard you call me 'Ryuujin-san,' so I thought I was suppose to continue with the Japanese titles, and isn't that what I would call you?" (A/N: In reality, my boyfriend knows a couple of phrases like "sore wa himitsu" and "baka" but that's about it^^ Poor guy is so deprived.) "That is either very mean or very forward!" Chase half yelled. "You don't go around calling just anyone 'chan'! It implies a certain closeness or if you're quite a bit older than someone, and I am certainly not a child, so you have no right to call me 'chan'!" "Eh. Sorry." Chase sighed heavily. Oh well. This was going to get interesting..

*deep bow* Gomen nasai, mina-san for the time it took me to get this far and it's still not that long *sobs* Oh! And I just saw some pics for the new Weiß Kreuz season. I can't believe it! How could they!?!??!? I demand to know why the screwed over the characters!!! NAZE!??!?!? *goes off to her room to cry hysterically and actually WORK on her manga for once in her lifetime*