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Disclaimer: I do not own Escaflowne and/or the characters in it. This story though IS MINE. Any person who copies this story will find my wrath upon their doomed heads (and a bottle of Coke up their nose). YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
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Chapter 2
Unfortunate Discovery
Realizing someone might have heard her, Hitomi nervously looked around for any lights or open windows, as there so often were. But luckily she saw neither, and quickly picked the man up by his armpits and began dragging him up to her apartment, praying that everyone in her building were sound sleepers and wouldn't hear her grunting and huffing, then come to see what was going on, and find her pulling some strange, weirdly dressed, unconscious man into her apartment.
She really didn't need that little stressor right then.
She reached the second flight of stairs, and took a little breather. She turned to the stranger, and said aloud, "It's not as if I could just leave you there in the courtyard for other people find! They'd lock you in a loony bin and throw away the key!" Sighing for the second time since she'd awoken, she once again grabbed him under the armpits and began dragging him up the stairs.
Thankfully, they made it back to her apartment without anyone seeing them, and Hitomi dragged him into her bathroom, where she faced with an entirely new set of problems.
"Now, how am I going to get you out of those clothes so I can clean you up and still maintain a semblance of decency?" Hitomi, upon double-checking the locks on her door, began to undress the soldier (careful to keep her eyes in one place, of course) so she could clean him off a little bit, take care of his wounds, and then put him in her pristine white tub filled with nice hot water. Judging by the amount of blood on him, he had quite a few wounds that would need cleaning and bandaging, and as there were no other people to assist her, well.
Hitomi was on her own.
She took a loufa sponge and very gently began scrubbing him in preparation for stitching. It surprised her when she found very few wounds on him. It seemed as though he had taken just three very big sword blows, and though long and nasty looking, and to mention bloody, they actually weren't all that deep. Painful later, definitely, and requiring a little stitching too. But nothing too bad, and certainly nothing life threatening. The next thing to strike her was how extremely pale his skin was. He practically matched her tub and when placed on a white towel it looked more like milk then human flesh!
Hitomi had only met one human Albino in her life, and he had live on Gaea. But it was impossible that it this young soldier could be him! He'd been destroyed! Her and her friends had personally seen to it. Yet here was a young, Gaean Albino, right here. . .
Trying to ignore her gut instinct to run, she found herself talking to the mysterious stranger lying on her bathroom floor, getting a nice good cleaning from a perfect stranger. She started by explaining the situation to him.
"Hello, my name's Hitomi, and you're on the Mystic Moon. I'm not sure why you're here, or how you got here, but here you are." She paused for a minute, scrubbing a particularly nasty cut, and then slowly lifted him up to stitch it a little bit, "That and you're lucky I know a nursing major who taught me how clean and stitch a wound, so I know how to take care of these for you. Though, I wasn't exactly expecting to have to treat someone in my house, or my bathroom for that matter." She paused a second time, thinking hard, then suddenly found herself laughing. "You know, I've never even had a guy in my apartment, much less my bathtub, so I hope you appreciate me risking my 'delicate feminine reputation' for you!" Hitomi let out a nervous chuckle, and then began to scrub his slim, fair face, trying to be very gentle.
"I really liked your planet, once the Great War was over. It reminded me somewhat of home. I made really good friends there. I miss Van and the others a lot. I hope Celena is doing okay with Allen. She has it rough, going from a five to fifteen, but if she's anything like her brother, she'll learn fast. And Millerna, I wonder how being the princess again suits her." Hitomi couldn't stop a laugh, a real true laugh, "Last I heard, she and Allen were dating, but she took him to some huge ball, and he hit on all the women there!" Hitomi burst into another fit, picturing the scene that must have followed. "I guess even a settled old dog still has bad habits!" Continuing to laugh, Hitomi began scrubbing the last bit of blood from his face, as the last of the blood remaining on his face slid off and the washcloth slipped from her hands as she stared into the face of the one man she feared more then anyone. The one man who had come so close to destroying Gaea and everyone living there.
Dilandau.
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Sorry so short, but I couldn't really think of adding anything else without totally ruining the overall affect of the chapter, and I'll try to make the next a little bit longer, and now you know Hitomi's situation. She's alone, and got Dilandau naked in her bathroom(fanservice! And yes, the Japanese do clean themselves before taking a bath. I have sources to confirm this, so all of you get your mind out of the gutters RIGHT FREAKING NOW!) on a weird planet. . . This should be interesting yes?
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