Disclaimer: Don't own anything. Would you want my version of events anyway?? Didn't think so
Notes: Sorry this took so long and it's so short! My computer crashed again, and I've been in England with no access to a computer apart from this super expensive internet café. This has been on my computer for a loooong time, I just couldn't get at it for ...well..forever. Updates to this fic and 'don't tell me...' in the next two weeks, promise! So sorry for the wait!
Chapter 10: Finally
"What the hell?" Hotaru frowned, and pointed as the arm-cannon of the Libra closest to her pointed in their direction and made a loud 'whirring' sound.
"Get down!" Duo screamed, tackling Hotaru to the ground as the wall exploded behind them. Hotaru scrambled to her feet, rolling up to face the wall. Her eyes widened and her mouth made a small 'o'. As if in slow motion, the wall was flexing impossibly over them. It hovered for a moment, then began to crash down.
"Silence wall!" Hotaru screamed, her staff suddenly appearing in her hand and her clothes morphing instantly to her fuku. Turning the glaive-end to face down, she slammed it into the ground. A translucent purple dome exploded outward, incinerating the incoming debris.
Her eyes shone effulgent in the glory of her power. Duo gaped at this display, but for some reason, a part of him wasn't shocked by it. He felt something stirring, but he was too busy at the moment to give it much notice. His gun at ready in one hand, he grasped Hotaru's hand in the other. Her head snapped to the side where they locked eyes. Duo had no idea what was going on, his body was moving independent of his mind. He was confused, and he would have been terrified if this hadn't felt so...neat. He dropped his gun and laid his hand on top of hers on the glaive. He opened himself to the power rushing through him, becoming a conduit rather than a vessel that would be washed away in the flow. He threw his head back and opened fully, letting the power fill him.
*****
At first Trowa thought it was because he hadn't slept for over thirty-six hours. However, when the plaster of the walls began to crack and old surveillance tapes began to shower him from the shelves above, he realized that yes, the mansion was indeed shaking on it's foundations. Stepping back from the debris and pulling his gun in one fluid motion, he flew down the emergency stairwell. Bursting outside, the scene hit him like a harsh slap in the face, hundreds of mobile suits being incinerated by a malevolant purple glow. A glow that was about two feet away and closing in, all he thought was...
*****
Mina sniffled and hit the punching bag half-heartedly. Screaming at Wufei hadn't made her feel any better, even if he had deserved it. Even if he was a prick.
She wanted to go talk to someone, and she was still pissed off at Quatre, so she reached out with her inner senses, passing the broken cords of green, blue, red, and aqua and pulled along the thick violet cord, following it back to Hotaru.
She wondered at their growing powers. She had never been very good at visualization before. In fact, the only one able to get a clear picture and see the connecting strings during the exercises taught by Luna and Pluto in their combat years. She wasn't clear on why their powers were growing so fast, and so much.
Was there some great evil that they needed to fight? If that was the case, then why hadn't their powers increased to this level while fighting Galaxia? Or before the final Negaverse strike?
Maybe it had something to do with this future. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that there were only two senshi left.
This musing was cut off as a huge surge of power bulging along Hotaru's thread knocked Mina off her search, then a huge purple wall knocked her off her feet as it passed through the room around her, shattering glass and embedding dumbells in the far gym wall...
She snapped back to outer vision, limping toward the door, still not noticing the dim silver, yellow and dusty, faded pink threads shimmering in the tangle of broken connections, still connected loosely.
*****
Heero toweled himself off as he stepped out of the bathroom in his bedroom. He disengaged the laser alarm he set up for his laptop. He sat down at his desk and flipped up the false patches of skin on his inner elbows, knees, his outer thighs , biceps, and at the top of his spine, where his hair began. Carefully he took a briefcase from under the desk and unlocked it. Taking out his electrodes, he set them into the circutry revealed. He hated having to rely on a machine. What would happen if it were damaged or lost? Would he just stop functioning altogether?
His logic, said no. Without his laptop to recharge him, he would simply revert to eating normally again. He would feel the pain no-longer dulled by the circutry in his brain. He would feel the weight of the metal that re-inforced his skeleton, and lose his near-supernatural speed.
Worst of all, he would lose the programming that made him able to function absolutely without emotion.
Without his laptop, he would be human again, and that scared him most of all.
Fear was not something Heero allowed himself, so he simply sat back and began to download and re-charge. His eyes went blank and didn't so much as blink while his room shook around him.
******
Some people may call Wufei narrow-minded. Obsessive, or sexist, or brash, or even mean. Some people may be right, but of all the things in the world, he is not stupid. Before the war he was to be a scholar, not a warrior. No, that path was for Meiran. They hadn't hated each other at first sight, nor was it love. They were merely indifferent, paying less attention to each other than to their surroundings. Then again, their first meeting was at twelve, in during their arranged, ceremonial clan marriage.
They hardly spoke that first year, Wufei spending most of his time in his study, while Meiran studied the art of war. During that time, and in subsequent years, Wufei learned politics, higher mathematics, the sciences, tech and became fluent in five languages; Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, English and French. Human nature, however, was not on the curriculum.
In french there is an expression, "l'esprit d'escalier", it means 'spirit of the stairway'. It's all the clever things you should have said that only come to you walking down the stairs after a fight. This is what Wufei was doing.
"Even WE monitor each other.... security cannot be compromised...."
He was on his way to the kitchen exit when the floor began humming under his feet. As the increasing vibrations of the foundation built from a gentle buzz to a dangerous jackhammer, he began to run, he had just reached the door as...
*****
Quatre and Iria
*****
Oh.
My.
God.
*****
NO! Thought the youma commander as a bright purple dome fell upon his troops. "NO!" He screamed as the light engulfed him, and his hope of seeing his home dimension died with the smell of his own flesh burning as the mobile suit cockpit was blown apart.
******
An eternity, or a few seconds later, the dome collapsed inward onto itself, draining back into the glaive standing alone on the battlefield. Hotaru and Duo knelt together, wavering.
"What in all hell's name was that?" Duo croaked.
"I-I don't know." Hotaru replied. It never happened like that before...never with such violence and intensity.
They leaned against each other, now sitting, panting, out of breath. Now lying down and drifting away from the harsh shore of consciousness.
******
Mina was the first one to reach them, shortly followed by Trowa and Wufei. Both boys looked amazed, and slightly battered, while Mina was used to senshi power and how to shield herself from it. It was a good thing the attack wasn't directed toward them, or they wouldn't have fared any better than the incinerated troops and mobile suits in the now bare orchard. For all intents and purposes, it was simply amazing that the mansion remained standing. They were growing powerful, almost too much so. The sheer amount of destruction shouldn't have surprised her, but it did. Though Hotaru was the senshi of death and destruction, as well as being the most powerful after Serenity and Pluto, she had never shown power of this magnitude before.
Mina also wondered why Duo was collapsed with Hotaru his hands still entwined with hers around the glaive.
Shrugging, Mina tried to lift Hotaru off the ground, but noticed her hands were still tightly clamped around the glaive. A small line appeared between Mina's brows as she pried at Hotaru's fingers with no effect.
Still in shock, but still Wufei, he snorted and shoved Mina aside. "So weak." He grunted and began to attempt to free Duo's hands.
Trowa watched in silence.
******
Meanwhile in unconsciousness:
Hotaru/Shi and Duo/Shini looked at each other. They were merged, the tremendous burst of power from repelling the mobile suit attack had blown open the links between each other, and their mutual past. The links were new, and bloody, from their painful opening. They explored them carefully in wonder, like a cripple suddenly able to walk on his atrophied legs.
They smiled at each other as they remembered. Standing together, Hotaru felt like staying in the unconscious plane forever in companionable silence with her twin. However, Duo had other plans.
"Ha! You're still wearing that uniform?" He snorted.
"It's a FUKU. And yes, I happen to like it." Hotaru defended her senshi garb. It was REGAL.
"Some sort of fetishy sex thing right?"
"What?
"Never mind. Still yelling out magical commands?"
"Shut up."
"You are, aren't you?"
"Hmph."
"Going all Heero on me are you? Still, it's shameful, millennia in that body and you still need word commands."
"I do not! I just...like using them."
"Geez, it's worse than I thought, no more magical girl manga for you!" Duo chortled.
Hotaru glared and decided to wake up. She wasn't going to just stay there and let her twin tease like that! Duo rolled his eyes and joined her as she swam back to the mainland.
****
Duo suddenly relaxed and opened his eyes, causing Wufei, still tugging futilely on a wrist to fly backward, landing in the dust. Mina would have laughed if the same thing hadn't happened to her as Hotaru's eyes fluttered open.
Duo sat up, and looked around. "We did all this." He stated calmly, "Cool."
So.... what now? dramatic music it's all part of the master plan m'dears! Many twists yet to come!
Soon! : They find out how they've been tracked!
Mina and Q make up!
Heero gets plastered!
Mina kicks Treize in the groin~!
Review and maybe it'll get done right quick! C'mon guys! Motivate me!
