WALTZ UP TO ME

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hey, sure i like you. why not?

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+ + + denotes a POV change

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*Fencing at seven in the morning...god, this sucks.*

Today the first class we had was fencing. And just my goddamned luck that Zechs was randomly selected as my warm-up partner. I must be cursed. I must have done something horrible in a past life or something to deserve all of this. I must have done human sacrifice or maybe some higher ups have found a reason to hate me. My life sucks!

I slipped on my fencing casket, finished linking together the loophole buttons on my boots and slipped my fencing sword out of its protective sheath. Although we were all required to use the three types of fencing swords, foil, épée, and saber, during the first ten minutes of class we were allowed to warm up and parry with each other with whatever type of sword we favored. I myself liked épée the best. The sword is much heavier than the other two and the French grip that my personal sword has is more comfortable than the others. And not to mention that in competition, épée is vastly more aggressive and doesn't adhere to the stupid right of way rules that the other two forms have.

*Which is good, because that damn narcissist always cries 'foul' because I can't remember all of the stupid right of way crap.*

I stepped up onto the strip and cringed as Zechs finished snapping his mask in place. He was smirking at me, I could feel it. I glanced at his sword and a small twitch started at my right eyebrow.

He was using a saber sword.

"I'm using épée. You can't use saber while I'm using épée. Go change it."

He swung the saber around, making it slice the air in quick, effortless movements. "Why? I don't care if you're using that as long as we parry by right of way."

I snorted, bypassed the standard beginning stance and crouched, knees slightly bent. I raised my arm, so that my sword pointed straight at him as it was supposed to and said, "You're not going to beat me with that right of way crap, Merquise. Get ready to die, DPD boy."

He laughed and crouched, pointing his own sword at me. "All right, have it your way. But remember, this isn't épée. En garde."

I stepped forward first and lunged. He moved and my sword tapped him on the leg.

*First touch, yeah baby.*

He didn't step back into position and I let my arms drop as I stood, sword limp in my hand. "Why aren't you back in position? That was first touch, idiot."

His fleché caught me off guard as his own sword touched me in the middle of the chest. "You're dead."

I gaped at him, behind my mask. "What the hell? I got first touch. What are you doing?" I scowled. "That doesn't count."

"In saber, only the area above the hips is valid. You tapped me in the leg, so that isn't valid at all. Which means, that you're dead and I win first round."

*I HATE MY LIFE*

I was about to start arguing again, but instead I just stepped back into position. "Fine, fine. Cheating bastard."

This time he lunged first. I fended him off and we went back and forth on the matt for about a minute until---

"Touch. You're dead."

And I stepped back into position and this time---

"Touch. You're dead."

And I stepped back into position again---

"Touch. You're dead."

And I---

"Touch, AGAIN, Noin. Come on, you're deaaad! Stop moving!"

"Alright, one more, one more! I'll kill you this time!"

He took off his mask and redid his ponytail. "We've tired this before, Noin. You can't kill me. It's impossible. I AM fencing GOD." He put a hand on his hip, placing the saber tip down and pretended to lean on it.

"ARGH!" I took threw off my mask. "I hate saber!"

Now I could see the smirk. I could see the upward curve of his lips, I could even see his teeth. Mocking me. He was mocking me. "You only hate it because you're no good at it."

I sat down on the edge of the mat and resolved myself to three minutes of outward pouting and inner bitching. "Saber is fencing for old rich bastards who don't want to get off their pure-bred horses with the ugly sheared manes. Épée is what separates the real fencers from the posers." I ranted.

I could hear the sound of him padding off the mat. "Are you going to just sit there and complain or will you finish helping me with warm-ups?"

*Go die, Merquise. Just go kill yourself. Eat at some fancy restaurant and just DIE.*

"Do you want me to beat him for you?"

The voice caught me unaware. The edge of it lined with a subtle hint of an accent. I admit that I've thought about that voice more than necessary, that I've thought about the person who it belongs to much more than I should. But I'm stupid like that, remember?

I looked up, abruptly cutting off my bitching-session after only two minutes. It was Trowa. Staring down at me with this look of...what? Amusement? Sympathy? He was smiling at me and my heart swelled because Trowa was the second best fencer at Lake Victoria. He could beat Zechs. There was still a chance. This could happen! Yeah.

*Don't worry, Zechs...I'll get the bandages ready for you.*

"Yes, please." I said and I think that my voice might have come out much more supplicant and whiny than I'd wanted, but whatever worked.

Trowa stepped onto the mat, slipped on his mask and signaled to Zechs that he wanted to bout by pointing at him with his sword.

*Which just proves that Trowa's better than you, Zechs. He's using épée. That's like the equivalent of him curing cancer or something. Man, he's so much better than you!*

Zechs shrugged and put his mask back on, but not before he sent me this nasty look. Oh well, you can't make everyone happy with you when all you really want is to see some blood spilled.

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Trowa stepped onto the mat, determined to beat Zechs. It wasn't just that he'd told Noin he would do it, but...well, actually, that was exactly why he needed to win.

He liked Noin. Sure, she was a bit flaky sometimes and anal retentive, but that was all mainly due to Zechs. And he was to blame for her getting even worse because everything Zechs Merquise did in life was somehow involved in making Noin suffer.

So what better way than to get in favor with a girl who's only goal in life was to somehow destroy her roommate, than to defeat him at his favorite game?

Zechs was staring at him as if to say 'What the hell are you doing, Barton? Out of your mind?'

He would never beat him. Zechs was top fencer. He was arrogant enough to have memorized all of the rules. To have studied with paid professionals. Damn, he wasn't going to pull it off, unless he cheated. Damn.

He glanced back at Noin who was giving him an enthusiastic thumbs-up as she stuck her tongue out at Zechs and tucked away his ego and stepped towards his best friend.

"Trowa, what are you doing? We're fencing here."

"You have to let me win." He whispered as softly as he could.

"Fuck that! I'm not letting you win!" Zechs hissed.

"Come on, Zechs. I'm doing it for Noin. She's your roommate, man."

"Christ, Trowa. You're telling me that you want me to lose just so you can impress my IDIOT ROOMMATE?" He yelled out.

Trowa motioned quickly for him to shut up. "You know I like her. This'll make her happy. Come on, you owe me, Merquise. You owe me."

"Can't you let her know that some other way?"

Trowa snorted. "What am I supposed to do? Should I go up to her and say 'hey, sure I like you. Why not? Want to go out?'" He shook his head. "That's not the way I want things to go. I don't want to pursue, Zechs. I want to be pursued."

Zechs wiped his mouth and craned his neck to look past Trowa to Noin. "How are you going about that exactly?"

Trowa's face lit up and he smiled. "Well, right now we're in phase one. I'm doing the pursuing right now, but that's just part of The Plan. I'm just dangling the prize man. Dangling. And then I'll be all sly like and pull away and she'll have to chase me."

Seeing that his friend was not about to be convinced otherwise, Zechs sighed, right foot pointed straight out, left foot behind it and set perpendicular to his body on the floor. "Fine. Fine. But I'm not even going to pretend here. I'm just going to stand there and you do the work. Because I'm not fencing here, THIS, this gross display that I'm about to do is a farce. A complete farce. I'm so disgusted with this that I'm not even going to try to cover this up."

Trowa smiled. "Whatever you want. As long as she sees that I'm victor, she'll fall right into 'The Plan'." He emphasized, raising his fingers to mark the quotation marks in the air.

Zechs rolled his eyes, pulling his mask down. "Yeah. I'm sure she'll go grabbing at what you're dangling." He aimed his sword up. "I still say that it would just be easier to get her some DPD points."

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I sucked in my breath. Zechs wasn't very accommodating. Practically the whole class heard that he was purposely going to lose. But hey, what did that matter? I didn't care. And if I didn't care, why should Trowa care?

*But then isn't the question, if Trowa cares, shouldn't I care? Damn, it's hard to keep track of these things when Zechs's about to get his face kicked in!*

And they got into positions and Trowa lunged...

And Zechs just stood there, rolling his eyes probably.

But why be picky?

I jumped up. "Yeah! Yeah! Go Trowa! You beat him!" I ran over to them and did a little 'In Your Face, Jerk' happy-dance around Zechs.

Trowa took off his mask and did Zechs' move of leaning on his sword. "Now, I AM FENCING GOD."

*HA! Getting your own stupidity tossed in your face! Yeah, yeah, go Trowa!*

Zechs eyes bulged out of his head. "What the fuck? No, I agreed to this much. But you're taking it too far. Come on, Trowa! It's Noin for Christ's sake! My idiot roommate. This moron right here who has some obsession with Heero Yuy!"

Trowa glanced down at me and I stopped dancing. And laughing. And smiling. Pretty much I stopped breathing, because he didn't look very happy.

"Trowa?" I reached up to touch him on the shoulder and he just brushed me off and stomped out of the room, throwing his sword and helmet on the ground.

*Zechs Merquise-2, Lucrezia Noin-0. Why is it that you always screw me over? Why?*

I turned to look at Zechs and he just shrugged. He goddamn shrugged. After saying what he just said he freaking shrugged.

"He'll be over it by lunch. It's no big deal."

"I hate you. You know that right? You know the poster's going back up, don't you?" I said as we both stood looking at the doorway Trowa had just gone through.

I contented myself by the fact that Zechs twitched visibly and I took that as a sign from god that I would be rewarded with some extra, highly-needed points that day.

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How was that? I know it's taken me a LONG timt to finally get this chapter out and I know it's short, but was it even decent? Please let me know what you think! I'm a rather slow writer/poster due to schoolwork and writer's block, but with encouragement and knowing that people are reading and enjoying my writing makes me want to write more and more often!

Thanks go out to Crary, who helped me with the difficulty of writing Trowa. And to Corbett, you crazy Communist! For helping me with the fencing portion of this chapter. [I know there are several unfogrivable mistakes roaming around still, but I wanted to post this up as soon as possible!]

And to my reviewers. Thank you so much!

Expect Heero, Duo and Dorothy to show up in the next section! For fans of those charactes, I think you'll find the interactions amusing. Especially Duo's relationship with the other charas. *snicker* And anyone have any ideas about what 'THE POSTER' is? ^______^ If you guess correctly, I'll take on a fic commission of your choice. [Sans lemons/limes or anything involving Relena. She's so hard to write well!]