Coming Through the Rye

By Shannon the Twisted Link Worshiper

~ Part II ~

If a Body Meet a Body

Hoshi eventually made it to the girls' dorms. As she was making her way down the narrow corridor, she nearly fell over the crouched form of a girl who was bent at her door, rattling the handle in vain and knocking upon the door, peering through the keyhole all the while.

"Whoops, sorry!" Hoshi apologized quickly as she gathered herself together. Looking down at the girl's strange predicament, she ventured, "Uh, what's wrong?"

A sound that could have been either an extremely heavy frustrated sigh or a growl of despair fell from her lips as she explained. "Argh, my roommate locked me out again. She's in there, I think, taking a shower, so she won't open the door. I've been here for twenty minutes!"

Hoshi pulled the girl to her feet, shaking her head as she dug around in her skirt pocket. "Ah, that's no way to treat a lady." She let out a happy exclamation as she pulled out the object she had been looking for. Flicking the small leather pouch open, she removed some thin silver tools and set to the keyhole. "Everyone should have one of these. You never know when you might have to get somewhere that's locked."

"But usually things are locked for a reason," the girl said, wringing her hands a little. She pushed her small glasses higher up on her nose. "Are you going to break the lock doing that?"

"Hey, I'm a pro. I learned from the best there is," Hoshi grinned over her shoulder as a faint click sounded from inside the door. "There you are. All set!" She pushed the door open.

"Wow, thank you," the girl smiled, stepping into her room.

She was about to close the door when Hoshi suddenly shoved the small lock picking kit into the girl's hands. "Here, take this. I can always make do with what I have, but you never know when this might come in handy. Maybe I'll teach you a trick or two one day!"

The redhead examined the small black pouch with much curiosity, running her fingers over the letters embossed upon the leather. Because they seemed not to be Hoshi's initials, Sora assumed that the kit had once belonged to someone else once. "T-thank you so much! That is very kind!"

"Don't mention it," she grinned back as she started off down the hall, her hands back in her pockets as she searched for her room key. "See you around!"

Upon entering her room at the end of the hall, she found her one duffel bag of stuff had been brought to her room for her and now sat on the only bed in her little single room. She probably would not have minded having to share with someone else, but the privacy of a single dorm was something that one could not take for granted in a place such as a school where one's business was everyone else's, and the solitude could be taken much for granted sometimes. As she plopped on the edge of the bed, there was a quiet knocking on her door. With a little sigh, she heaved herself back onto her tired feet (the walk from Heero's loft dorm room to hers on the complete opposite side of the school had proved to be quite a hike) and opened the door.

"Hi!" said the strawberry haired girl with a light dusting of freckles on each cheek, standing in the doorway, an anatomy textbook and a thin journal-looking book clutched in her arms. Though she seemed collected, the whiteness that painted the tops of her knuckles as she gripped her books tightly gave away she was a bit nervous to be greeting the new girl on her own. "Uh, hello," she said again, the uncertain grin shining fully now.

"Ciao!" Hoshi said with a cheerful grin as she swept the door completely open, inviting the girl to come in.

"Um, yeah, hello," she fumbled her books as she stepped through the door. "I'm Sora. I just wanted to thank you for helping me out. Uh, you're the one who came on the motorcycle. Your name's Hoshi right?"

"Sure am!" Hoshi said proudly as she closed the door behind her new friend. "Hey, sit down and put your books there. It wierds me out that you're just standing in the middle of the room."

Sora was quick to comply, jumping to the small bed and dropping her books beside her as if disobeying the request would end this newfound friendship. She was a sort of fidgety girl, but seemed to be a kindhearted person nonetheless. Hoshi was unzipping her duffel, proceeding to just dump all her clothes, rumpled and unfolded into the wooden chest that sat at the foot of the bed for keeping her belongings. A pair of books fell from the bag and bounced to the floor. Sora quickly swooped down to gather them up and return them to their owner. As she waited for Hoshi to stand and close the trunk, casting the duffel unceremoniously over her shoulder, Sora could not help but look at the titles of the books. "God Hoshi, where did you get these?" she practically squealed. She seemed very excited. "These are mobile suit tech manuals! You can't just get them!"

Hoshi grinned knowingly as she tugged the books free. "I got friends in with Preventers. You can get anything that way."

"You like that sort of thing then?" she smiled hopefully. "'Cause I'll admit to looking at your motorbike after last period today. It's a wonderful piece of machinery!"

"It's practically my god," Hoshi laughed, flinging the tech manuals onto the bed. "You aren't kidding though; I do like bikes and all. I have a thing for building stuff. You?"

"Oh yes, yes, yes," she said excitedly. She sat back down on the bed, trying hard to compose herself. "I think we'll be excellent friends, Hoshi."

"I think so too," Hoshi smiled, kneeling on the floor beside the bed, her elbows sinking into the mattress. Pushing the MS books towards Sora she said cheerfully, "Well from one mechanic to another, read your heart out. You can check these out whenever you'd like."

"May I then?" When Hoshi nodded, she happily took the books and flipped through each slowly, taking in each mechanical drawing and plan with interest. Hoshi smiled appreciatively.

They chatted idly while Sora went through the books, about MS, school and other random things as they came to mind. Hoshi was grateful that Sora was not such a snotty stuck up girl, as one would expect to find at most ritzy private boarding schools. Rather, she was much the opposite, into science and machines, liked punk rock and played soccer. She had a fair deal in common with Hoshi and then a few things they she was passionate about on her own. It was good that they had found such a quick friendship in each other among a sea of so many lemmings.

"Oh these are suits that OZ used during the war!" Sora was saying, pointing to an Aries mechanical draw up. "War is a dreadful thing, but one still has to admit that the technology that was used to create such things is extraordinary. "

"Those are nothing," Hoshi grinned, pulling the other book towards her. This was not a tech manual like the book in Sora's hands, but a blank sketchbook littered with drawings and photographs pasted on its empty white pages. "Check these."

Sora found herself gazing upon a pen and ink drawing of a Gundam mobile suit with a large beam scythe and hyper jammers. "Did you make this up? This is amazing!"

"Make it up? I wish, though I can say I have worked repairs and maintenance on a suit very much like this during the war," she shrugged. "It was the best I could do for the colonies. Besides, I had a friend who was… very involved… with all that…."

"Oh you're from one of the space colonies?" Sora asked. "No wonder you came at such an odd time of the year. Where from?"

"L2."

"It must be very different here on Earth than L2," Sora said sympathetically. She knew how poor the L2 colonies were and that most the people who loved there were in desperate straights. "You must have been very gifted for them to decide to send you down here."

"I guess you could say that," Hoshi shrugged.

"So your first day was okay?" Sora realized how awkward the conversation was becoming and quickly changed topics. "I hope you managed to make some other friends besides stupid old me."

"Don't say shit like that! You're perfectly cool!" Hoshi smacked the bed passionately. She might have been a bit courser than most girls, but she had personality and attitude, and as far as Sora was concerned, that was what mattered. "But yeah, I did meet a few other people."

"Oh who?"

"Let's see," Hoshi put a finger to her lip in thought. "There was the dean who showed me in this morning, uh, a nice girl whose name I've forgotten, much to my embarresment, who helped me to my afternoon classes after lunch and… ah yes, a boy name Heero! Do you know him?"

"Heero Yuy?" Sora arched a skeptical eyebrow, her face somewhat darkened the mention of the cobalt eyed boy. "The jerk that practically lives by himself up on the top floor of the boy's dorms? The damn bastard who's barely said two words to anyone all year and has never ever smiled? That Heero Yuy? You spent your afternoon with him?"

Hoshi pouted, resting her chin in her hands. "Oh you shouldn't be so dismissive of him. Have you ever tried to talk to him? He's really just lonely, you know."

"I don't think I'd want to," Sora frowned even deeper. "He seems like a very coldhearted individual."

"Well he's also a very lonely individual, so there," Hoshi stuck out her tongue. "If you knew half about him, I'm sure you would change your opinion."

"You just met him!" she exclaimed. "How could you say you know so much about him? I'm telling you, Hoshi, the guy is bad news."

"Aw, might have just met him face-to-face," Hoshi smiled a very knowing smile, "but when you have friends such as mine, you hear more than enough Heero stories to last you a lifetime."

It was a nightly ritual for Heero to sit down at his laptop after showering, and try what he might to find any traces of Duo before collapsing to bed clutching the tattered old ripped photograph in his hand. Of every picture of Duo that Heero possessed, this was his favourite. Sometimes, he liked to think that wherever Duo was, he still kept the other half of the photo. Once a picture of the two of them, they had ripped it in two so they would have something to remember each other by. Then again, most everything reminded Heero of Duo, and he kept a lot of Duo's old things, so it's not like just one photograph made a difference. But it was the idea that Duo might still have the other piece, the side that portrayed Heero, which made this particular picture of value. Heero stuck the Duo half of the photo beside his computer as he settled down for another long night of hunting for a man that seemed to have vanished from the world.

Sneezing, he logged onto the web and began his routine quest, not really expecting to find anything new, but not about to give up. A usually fruitless night was about to give way to something drastically different though. As Heero started his search by hacking into Professor G's private databases for what seemed the six millionth time since the war, hoping for something, anything he might have overlooked. The loudmouthed never silent Duo had always had the uncanny gift to make himself disappear, but for such a length of time, well, even that was strange for Duo Maxwell. Suddenly, a window popped up in the corner of his screen, grayish fizz splaying across the box. Heero blinked at it oddly for a few seconds, not used to anything as out of the ordinary as this to happen. Just as he was about to troubleshoot it and get rid of the annoyance, the static sailing around the window subsided, the little colourless particles forming the outline of a slender figure whom Heero almost mistook to be Duo. But as the picture clarified, Heero found it was not his missing love at all, but just Hoshi, her hair in a low-slung ponytail and a white baseball cap shadowing her eyes. She raised her index finger to her lips, glancing up at Heero from beneath the baseball cap's white bill as a message in green lettering flew across the screen after the white cursor.

Play my game_

Heero had barely any time to react to this message before the window flicked off of his screen as quickly as it had come, leaving nothing but the green worded message, which was soon followed by another short sentence, one that grabbed Heero's attention as well as slapping him across the face.

I know where Duo is_

The next day was a Saturday, so no classes were held. The majority of students had packed up and headed home for the weekend, but there was still a good handful of children left who stayed at school. Ever the victim of routine and the avoidance of others, it came as a huge surprise not only to Heero, but the rest of the student population, when he stalked down the stairs early that morning, walking to the dining hall with dark purpose on a day when he usually locked himself in his dorm alone to waste away with his computer, never even showing up for meals.

Upon arriving, most everyone hushed their quiet chatter to look up with amazement that Heero had made an appearance on an off day in such a public place in the school. He glowered darkly at them all as he readjusted his satchel on his shoulder, his books and thin laptop shifting about in the brown bag as he did so, before striding with long short angry steps towards the food buffet where he snatched for himself a carton of milk, an orange, a shallow dish of pudding and a pair of ladyfinger cookies. Eyes still darting unhappily around, terribly unused to not only the irritating hubbub, but all the attention his mere presence seemed to attract as well.

A senior class boy named D.B. was making his way with his breakfast towards the table where he usually sat with his unruly friends. He was a somewhat tall lean boy with blondish locks and decent fair looks. Just as he was about to start towards the long table where his usual gang was squeezed hip-to-hip on the wooden benches, he felt a hand with a grip of cold steel clutch his shoulder and whip him around. The motion was so fluid and quick, D.B. could have sworn he was being attacked and was on the verge of screaming "Rape!" as he fought to save his generous breakfast from falling to the floor. Looking up from his red tray of food found him staring into a pair of unwavering dark blue eyes that stared at him threateningly from beneath thick elegant brown brows. "Y-Yuy!" he managed to stutter, his words ceasing all conversation in the dining hall once more, the students preparing for either a very interesting exchange or a fight to end all fights. Though D.B. was considerably taller than Heero, who had not grown much since he was sixteen, the flaxen haired boy could not help but be struck with an all-consuming fear at this confrontation. He had heard stories about how strong Heero was, and he was not sure he wanted to find out firsthand if the rumours were true.

"Where is that girl Hoshi?" he growled quietly, his voice soft but still very commanding and able to instill no other emotion save fear in D.B.'s soul.

"What? Little longhaired Hoshi?" D.B. managed a weak smile. "S-she's sitting with us."

"Where?"

D.B. pointed at his table quickly. Heero glanced over his head to see Hoshi crammed between a red haired girl with freckles and oval shaped glasses and a lanky brown haired youth. She was munching contentedly on a carrot stick, watching the argument—Heero with unmoving eyes. She did not have to hear a word either boy was saying; she knew Heero was looking for her, and she knew exactly why. She smirked to herself as she said offhandedly to Sora, "So he's decided to play. Good."

"Play?" Sora looked rightly confused. "Play what?"

"My game," Hoshi grinned. She turned her contagious smile to her freckled friend and said, "You might want to watch. It could prove to be extremely entertaining."

"I don't understand…." Sora bit her nail nervously. Hoshi was acting very enigmatic, almost like a different person than the normally bubbly cheerful girl that had bounded over to her dorm room at the ungodly hour of six to get first dibs at breakfast. She was not quite sure she liked the idea of meddling with the obviously explosive emotions of one Heero Yuy.

"You'll just have to watch and see," Hoshi was saying between munches of carrot. "It's the kind of game where we make up the rules as we go. Only time and luck can tell us what will happen, hehe. This will be good fun!"

By this time, Heero had flung a very surprised looking D.B. aside and was making his way over to the table. A few of the students sitting there tried to discreetly slide as far to the end of the bench as they could, as far from Heero as possible, and two even got right up and made for the other side of the room. Heero really did have an unfriendly reputation around the school, and this sort of reaction almost pleased him, to a point. The soldier part of him was practically jigging with happiness at the fear his very presence seemed to leave hanging in the air. But then there was the softer side, the real Heero that was near sobbing at the loneliness this way of being incurred. It was the side that only Duo had seen entirely, and Heero was not quite sure if he was ready to let anyone other than the braided moron that plagued his very existence see his true colours.

"Ah, Heero," Hoshi grinned as the Japanese boy approached. "What can I do for you?"

"You," he said, gripping the strap of his satchel so tightly, the brass buckle was beginning to leave an imprint upon his palm. "You and I need to talk."

"I told you we'd be continuing our conversation soon," she said with a cynically sadistic laugh. Sora was looked extremely edgy, her green eyes darting back and forth between the grinning Hoshi and the sullen Heero as they stared each other down in a mental battle of wits.

"Let's just say I didn't think you'd have the skill to hack into my system," Heero spat venomously. "But I'll only hear you out because you're now saying you know where Duo is."

This was obviously the most any student aside from Hoshi had heard from Heero's mouth about anything at all, particularly something—someone who seemed to be a very important part of the cobalt eyed boy's mysterious past. There were a few comments floating around like "He's a hacker?" and "So that's what he does with his computer all the time…" or "The hell is this Duo person?" It caused a light clamor to rise up amongst the students, which was then immediately hushed by Heero's glare of impending doom that he sent over the room.

"Yep, I know a thing or two," Hoshi leaned on Sora's shoulder, looking calm and casual as you please. "Told you I had met the guy a couple times and I just happen to know where he is and what he's doing—"she glanced at her black wristwatch— "right now at exactly nine forty-two in the morning on this fine March Saturday, if you care to know."

Heero elbowed a poor junior who was trying to eat his food as peacefully and quietly as possible out of the way as he slammed his palms upon the tabletop, making everything atop it jump at least a few good inches in the air. "Where?!"

She wagged a finger at him. "Aw, now that's not to say I'm just going to hand it to you. You'll have to work for it if you really want to know where he is. After all, the game would be no fun for me if I just up and told you where he was."

"I'm not going to be your slave or anything idiotic like that," Heero said glibly. "I would sooner die… or perhaps kill you first."

"I never said that, though now that you mention it, it doesn't sound like such a bad idea," Hoshi was tapping her chin quickly as if she were in deep thought. "We'll see as it happens. Anyway, since we all know how long and hard you've been trying to find Duo for these past few years, I'm willing to bet you'll do near anything for a lead."

"What do you need me to do?" Heero crossed his arms impatiently as he straightened back up, regaining his composure and stowing the sudden burst of emotion that had breached his mask.

"Well I haven't decided how nice I'm going to be to you yet," she grinned. "Meet me in the library at noon, and we'll see what I've come up with by then."

Heero was seething, and the look on his face showed it. He muttered and stoic "Fine" and marched out of the room, his storm clouds rolling out behind him in his wake. The atmosphere in the room immediately loosened the moment he left. The chitchat rattled up a few ungodly decibels and people went back to their lackadaisical morning meal as if there was not a care in the world, as every Saturday breakfast should be.

"God Hoshi, I could swear he was going to destroy you with that stare of his!" Sora let out a heavy sigh as she dug into her plum pudding with a plastic spoon. She had not dared to move, barely even to breath, when Heero had been standing right there only moments before. "Argh, I've never been so near him before! He's so foreboding! I really could swear he was going to beat you!"

Hoshi shook her head, looking almost forlorn as she did so. "Heero would never hit anyone."

"What?" Sora looked a little reluctant to believe that. "Well I just got this feeling like he was going to murder something. I mean, he got really livid when you mentioned that… Duo, was it? What's up with that? I've never seen him react to anything like that… or even to anything at all!"

"Ah yes, Duo," Hoshi smiled knowingly as she helped herself to Sora's pudding. At the mention of the name, all eyes were immediately upon her. It was obvious that this person who seemed to mean worlds to the puzzling Heero was the foremost thing on every student's mind. Realizing the attention she had received for the utterance, she gathered her plates and started to leave, saying quickly, "Duo is a story we'll have to save for another day."

And with that, she made her way hastily from the dining hall, Sora hastening to catch up with her, wondering what elements her new friend had brought to the typically dull school mix.

The library was a very beautiful place, probably the most magnificent in the entire school, at least in Heero's opinion anyway. Located in a much older section of the building, the very gothic styled room was fitted with iron ribbed glass windows that rose in pairs of arches down the length of the long stone wall amid the heavy wooden bookshelves and stuffed with everything from heavy leather volumes to flimsy old paperbacks that were crumbling with age. There were a few mahogany tables and desks littered about the labrynth of high bookcases, each set with metal lanterns that cast out a dim glow upon the desks with little tongues of gas flame. Iron chandeliers hung from the high vaulted ceilings and lighted the dark, almost gloomy room with a more cheerful glow.

Heero sat at one of those tables alone, with his satchel resting between his sneaker clad feet, his laptop set up beside him and his nose buried in 'The Catcher in the Rye.' He was waiting for Hoshi, anxiously reading a part of the book that he remembered Duo saying that he liked very much. He knew all the parts Duo had been fond of not only from memory, but also because of the dog-eared pages and red pencil marks strewn all throughout the book. Notes and commentary about the text, underlined passages and circled words here and there could be found almost all throughout the old book he had entrusted to Heero so long ago.

{Anyway, these two nuns were sitting next to me, and we sort of struck up a conversation. The one right next to me had one of those straw baskets that you see nuns and Salvation Army babes collecting dough with around Christmas time. You see them standing on corners, especially on Fifth Avenue, in front of the big department stores and all. Anyway, the one next to me dropped hers on the floor and I reached down and picked it up for her. I asked her if she was out collecting money for charity and all. She said no. She said she couldn't get in her suitcase when she was packing it and she was just carrying it. She had a pretty nice smile when she looked at you. She had a big nose, and she had on those glasses with sort of iron rims that aren't too attractive, but she had a helluva kind face. "I thought if you were taking up a collection," I told her, "I could make a small contribution. You could keep the money for when you do take up a collection." }

He could almost hear the braided American's voice in his head, telling him how he thought of Sister Helen whenever he read this particular part. Heero shook his head wistfully at the memory, smiling at the thought of Duo and the nun who he had come to love as his mentor and mother. He could almost place Duo in the book, finding that this sort of interaction was just the sort that Duo would have once had with his dear old Sister Helen.

He was so lost in his thoughts, he nearly jumped out of his skin when Hoshi laid her hand upon his back, as she leaned over to read over his shoulder. Whipping angrily about, his finger wedged between the pages of the book to hold his place as he held it aloft over his head, as if he were going to strike her with it.

"Heero would never hurt me." he heard Duo's voice echoing in his head. At once he felt his hand drop numbly to his side, the book falling facedown upon the wooden floor.

"What's wrong?" Hoshi asked, cocking her head at Heero's faraway expression. "Did the big bad Heero Yuy just refuse to beat someone up?"

"Why would I hit someone weaker than me?" Heero smirked sadistically, leaning back in his chair, turning away from the amused girl behind him. He bent over the arm of the wooden library chair to pick up the discarded white book. Setting it back facedown upon the table, he settled back into the chair, his fingers reaching to his neck to idly twist the chain from which Duo's old cross hung.

"I don't know; why would you?" Hoshi shrugged. "But if you had hit me, well, I can't say that I would have minded. I might have even hit you back."

"And then I would break your neck," Heero growled, not bothering to turn around and face her with his glare of death. "Sit down. I want you to tell me everything you know about Duo now, or else I might really have a reason to kill you."

"Violent, violent," Hoshi shook her head as she casually strode around the table, swaying her hips as she moved, almost like she was trying to make a production of herself. Heero noted that usually did not walk this way, and typically carried herself very evenly. That knowledge made her hip-swaying all the more obvious.

"You have five seconds to start talking before I throttle you," Heero clenched his fist, inwardly hoping for the chance to smack her across her pert little face. Then he heard it again: Duo's voice, echoing in his head.

"No, Heero would never hurt me."

"Yuy?" Hoshi's voice cut the memory off quickly, Heero snapped to attention, his hands gripping the edge of the table tensely as he fought to ground himself in reality. This was Duo at stake! This was the end of years without a single word about the braided American!

"What?" he said a little more angry than he really need to have been.

"You were zoning out," Hoshi squinted one eye shut and pointed at him, moving her hand back and forth as she did so. "Save it for when you're in your room alone to fantasize about him. Do you want to hear what I have to say or not?"

"Shut your mouth," Heero snapped defensively. "Duo, now."

"Fine, fine, fine," she waved her hands for emphasis. "My, you're the impatient type."

"Where is he?" Heero crossed his arms. "You know and you're not telling me. If you're not going to spit it out, tell me what I have to do to get you to talk."

"Well, he's been lying low, so to speak, for the last couple years," she said, folding her hands on the tabletop. She sent him a dark grin, "Shinigami can be like a shadow, you know, hiding in dark corners."

"He was always like that, but never this long before. I want to know, where is he?" Heero said again, punctuating his words coarsely to further his point. A sudden cold hand of doubt clenched his chest, "He's… he's not dead is he?"

"Dead? Dead?" she cackled, throwing her head back as her laughter bounced through the still library, causing a few heads to turn. She shook her head hopelessly as if Heero's suggestion was the most far out, ludicrous thing she had ever heard in her entire life. "Ha, dead he says! Dead!"

"That's not very funny," Heero growled menacingly, his fingers tightening around the arms of his chair. He was virtually rising out of his seat, as if he might leap over the table and rip her to pieces. His glare darkened and flew in waves of ominous electricity at the grinning girl across from him.

She calmed down, looking at him with a very sly unreadable look painted on her face. "How could the God of Death die? Oh he's still alive, don't you worry."

"He's well then?" A biting fear that perhaps Duo was lying somewhere on his deathbed jumped into his mind.

"Oh he's fine, just fine," Hoshi waved a dismissive hand. There was a faint glimmer in her eye as she went on. "You should remember, Heero, that fair is foul and foul is fair."

"Macbeth?" Heero looked perplexed, his eyebrows knitted in an expression that just made him look ever so defenseless and adorable. The expression melted away in a moment though, not about to let this girl see that brief display of seeming weakness. It was a barrier that he had only lowered around Duo. Duo had been the only one to see who Heero really was.

"It's one of Duo's favourite plays, you know," Hoshi was saying with that same sly grin, as if she certainly knew something that Heero did not.

"I know that!" Heero snapped, a little offended that anyone would dare insinuate that there was something he did not know about the braided American. "But what does that have to do with anything?"

"I told you I wasn't going to just tell you where he was," Hoshi explained. "I'm going to have fun with this. So keep that in mind while you're milling around here." When all that she met was Heero's stare of daggers and his unconvinced demeanor, she elaborated. "If you have to know, he's working for Preventers right now, okay? He's fine; he's on a mission, so don't worry, okay?"

"What is this mission? How would you know?" Heero was becoming more and more suspicious of her with her every word. He was beginning to wonder if she was perhaps a spy for some underground organization or something. How else would she be able to tell so much about Duo and himself unless she had some underhand means of obtaining information?

"I can't tell you that," she shrugged again, "and even if I could, do you think I would?"

"No, I guess you wouldn't," Heero reasoned, relaxing the slightest bit back in his chair, slouching a little bit.

"Oh, now this shouldn't be too hard for the code breaker of the century," Hoshi smiled as she drummed her black painted nails on the side of the table, making a hollow noise resonate through the huge quiet room. "I've decided that I'm not just going to give you a list of clues and watch as you melt your head trying to figure them out."

"So what are you suggesting?"

"I'm suggesting that you hang out with me 'n' Sora and the rest of the gang for a while," Hoshi said cheerfully, like what she was asking was the smallest task she had ever entreated anyone to perform. In a sense, it was, but considering just who it was she was asking it of, it sure left it as something to be desired. "You never know when I just might let another little hint 'slip.'" She held up her hands made little quote mark motions with her index and forefingers as she spoke that last word.

"Absolutely not." There was the rejection, blatant and obvious as Heero crossed his arms and his knees, looking off in the other direction haughtily. "I don't want to spend any more time than I have to with you."

"Can I ask why?" Hoshi decided that she really wanted to hear an honest answer to this question. She could not think of a single legitimate reason as to why Heero would be so apprehensive of her friendly gestures.

"You're… you're too much like Duo," Heero chanced a quick glance back at her, his callous mask slipping loose for a quick moment.

"So wouldn't that make you want to hang out with me?" She arched an eyebrow at him as she rose out of her chair a little bit, leaning over the table.

"But," Heero greeted her movement in turn by leaning over the table himself, meeting her big violet eyes with an icy stare of his own, as if the look in his eyes would communicate exactly the point he was trying to illustrate, "you are not Duo."

"Aw come on," she looked somewhat crushed, the most defeated Heero had seen her as of yet. Her resemblance to Duo just shot pains of seeing his own longhaired lover upset, and it hurt him despite his unwillingness to accept her. "I… I just want to be your friend."

"Why?" was all he found he could ask.

"I like you," she answered ambiguously. "I like you a lot."

"So have many other people," Heero frowned at her, still holding his halfway standing up position. "They were all wrong to like me. No one should like a killer."

In one fell action that Heero never in a thousand years would have expected, Hoshi closed the gap between them and crushed her mouth against his. It was not a passionate throat-licking kiss like so many he had shared with Duo (both in and out of bed), but a simple press of the lips against his. Heero's eyes were wide with shock, unable to make anything of this action as he felt a delicate hand on his temple. His eyes roved around the room, his worst fear that someone might turn a corner and see a very hard-to-explain scene unfold before his eyes becoming horribly true as Sora stepped out from behind a bookcase and let her jaw drop in complete and utter shock.

"Sometimes people just can't help themselves," she murmured almost inaudibly as she slowly pulled away, though her mouth was still intoxicatingly close. "I liked you before I even met you. I just had to see you once, and I knew I liked you more than anything."

"Does spending time with you mean that I have to like you back?" Heero asked unhappily as he drew away, putting as much distance between him and the Duo rip-off that he could. He was frightened and intrigued by her sudden act, and even he himself could not explain what was going on behind those clouded mysterious eyes of dark blue glass.

Realizing things were finally going her way, she leaned back into her seat, propping her black and white canvas shoes on the table. "Nope, doesn't mean a thing. Just… try us on for size. You do want to find Duo after all, don't you?"

"I suppose you are right," Heero sighed, knowing that he had lost the battle. He stood, closing his laptop and sliding it into his bag as he hefted it onto his shoulder. "Just don't expect anything out of me. And I if I don't get what I want to hear out of you within the next two weeks, woe be to you, Hoshi."

"Oh, that's the first time you've said my name I think," she giggled happily. Sticking out her hand, she said jovially. "Well it's a deal then. You have two weeks to play my game. If you win, you get to see Duo again."

For the first time, a sporting evil grin fell upon Heero's lips. "One thing you should never forget about the perfect soldier, Hoshi, is that I always win. And this is a game I intend not to lose at any cost."

"Heh, good," she replied with a curt nod. Then, making little scooting motions with her hands she said. "Now shoo, shoo you. Sora and I have things to discuss."

As Heero disappeared from sight, Sora slinked out from behind the bookcase she had been pretending to be searching for a book on. She dashed over to the table and took over Heero's old seat, her eyes both excited and fearful. "Oh my God Hoshi, I can't believe you did that! You're not here two days and you kissed Heero Yuy! And you're still alive to talk about it! Oh my God!"

She shrugged. "It was fun. I got what I wanted out of him anyway. Now we get to play with him! If you're good, I'll share." She smiled lightheartedly across the table at her still shaking red haired friend. "You just need to know how to push his buttons right. There's another trick I can teach you, hehe."

"I still don't quite see how this is so amusing to you," Sora covered her mouth as she pondered the thought. "Maybe I'm just missing the punch line or is it an inside joke?"

"Of sorts," she rocked back on the hind two legs of the chair as she started to fiddle with her blouse, her hand eventually slipping beneath her collar to adjust her bra strap. "We'll see when I get him to come out to dinner with us tonight."

"Nuh-uh, no way." Sora was suddenly shaking her head adamantly. She still was not used to the idea of toying with someone who was so potentially dangerous. She had heard rumours that he slept with a gun under his pillow. "We planned this yesterday for all of us to get together and get to know each other, not to get killed. The last thing anyone needs to spend a meal worrying about whether or not their breathing is pissing off a perfect maniac. He's not coming and that's that!"

"Aw, but I said he could hang out with us," she said with a little pout, dropping her feet to the floor once again. "He would be crushed if he couldn't go."

"Somehow I don't think so," Sora said realistically with a bit of a cynical glint on her tongue.

"Look," Hoshi had her finger in Sora's face before the freckled girl had even realized that Hoshi had stood up again, "I've worked way to long and hard for this to be screwed up so easily. It's been a couple of long hard years for everyone who got landed in the war. You might not understand, but Heero's still feeling the burden of it all. You know he was fucking fifteen years old when they got him fighting in the war? And that's not to mention all the training they put him through as a child. He was fifteen and they called him the perfect soldier. He was already prepared to die at fifteen. I can't even begin to tell you how hard it was for him, for Duo, for all his friends and the soldiers on both sides, okay? If there's anything anyone who needs anything, it's Heero. And what he needs isn't for you all to ostracize him, but to welcome him. Did you ever stop to think that maybe his antisocial tendencies are as much your fault as his!? That maybe he just wants to be loved as an equal? Well, did you?"

Sora was silent at this sudden explosion of passion. Though she still doubted Hoshi's confidence in Heero, she did admit that she had a point. At long last, she consented, "All right, I guess so."

"Good," Hoshi grinned. "What Heero needs now are friends, right? I think we both 'ought to try and make him feel more like a human. It's the least we could do to show him that we are thankful for the innocence he lost as a soldier."

"Yeah," she agreed. "Yeah, you're right. Why are you always right?"

"I just… have a way about things," she flashed that wide grin as she happily smacked the table, earning her a scolding from the librarian who had huffed over to the table to piss at the two students who were making a commotion like heaven had come to Earth.

{{A/N}} Heh, I hope you're enjoying this story 'cause I'll tell you right now that it took a long ass time for me to write it and it has pretty much plagued my every thought almost all year. Anyway, the thing is only just getting started, so keep tuning in. by the way, the song in the first chapter is called Superman's Dead and its by Our Lady Peace. Yay!