Well, well, sweeties, it's chapter 6! Please ignore my syntax, darlings, I've been reading too much and a certain character's attitude has infected me. This happans often- but don't worry dears, it goes away- usually... Anyway, this chapter is the second meeting of Duo and Heero, and is 95 percent original from me, myself, and moi! And all my insane muses, of course. Enjoy, sweethearts!


Last Chapter:

Jack glared, then stood and took a closer look at the hole- or, to be more accurate, at the small piece of it that protruded into their cell. "Hey, mate!" he called to Duo. "I bet all the beers I owe you that you can fit through this and bring back somethin' good to know."

Duo eyed the small opening with apprehension. "Maybe I could, but would I want too?!"

"Of course- you can check to see what the thieves are looking for, help yourself to a bit of what they've taken, and reassure your confidence that the smith shop boys haven't gotten themselves killed."

It would be hard to say just which of these opportunities appealed to Duo more (certainly it was one of the second two), but in the end, he went. He was able to dislodge more stones from the hole, and make it larger, but a number of pockets were ripped out before Duo stood outside the walls and ran off to the town.

Jack looked after him, caught between annoyance that he couldn't go and delight that the Pearl was so close again.

(x)(x)(x)(x)(x)

Overhead, the moon finally came out from behind the clouds that had covered her for half the night.

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Duo darted over the rocks that were brightly illuminated by the emerging moon. What, exactly, was he supposed to find out? And how was he supposed to get the information? Stop a pirate and ask him nicely?

As he mused to himself, the young pirate moved to the road and headed down it, in and out of the moonlight that was scattered across the way. Anyone looking where he happened to be would see only moonshine and shadow. No one could match Shinigami when it came to moving undetected, though many had tried.

Stealthily, Duo worked his way toward the nearest major source of light. When he reached it, he found it to be a large manor house. The place looked pretty thoroughly ransacked. Its doors were thrown open, several of the windows were broken, and there looked to be a fire burning somewhere on the other side of the building. Cautiously, in case any of the Pearl's crew had remained to look for further loot, Duo crept through the door and looked around. Lots of dust in the air, cabinets broken open, pillar knocked down... wait a minute. Someone was trapped under that pillar. Someone that Duo recognized.

Quickly moving over to the other boy, Duo checked for a pulse in his neck. It beat strong. In fact, it didn't look like he was injured at all. As Duo looked down at the pinned smith, cobalt eyes snapped open and speared up at him. Duo grinned and twiddled his fingers at the inadvertent captive.

"Hi!" he chirped. "How did this happen?" Might as well knock off two birds with one stone: ogle and get information in one blow!

Heero had been faking unconsciousness, hoping that any remaining pirates would ignore his body in the looting spree. It had worked very well, up until he felt fingers on his neck feeling for a pulse. Figuring that he should give up the ruse, he had looked up, fully expecting them to see a blade descending on him- but instead, he had looked strait into the violet eyes of one of the last person he had thought he might see. Maxwell was standing above him, grinning down at him. "Hi," the pirate said. "How did this happen?" Heero studied him for a moment, trying to decide what to say. He settled on something simple.

"What are you doing here?"

"I asked you first. And while we're asking questions, what's your name?" Duo glanced around, looking for something that he could use to lever the beam off.

Heero paused for another long moment as he thought about what he should or shouldn't tell to the other. "Heero Yuy," he said at last.

"Duo Maxwell, or Shinigami. I run, I hide, but I never lie. Nice to meetcha when there aren't nasty sharp things swinging around." Success! A curtain rod had been yanked free of its moorings. That would do quite nicely for a lever to get the pillar up. "What happened?"

Heero watched as Maxwell- what the hell did 'Shinigami' mean?- walked out of his line of sight. What was he doing? He really didn't see any need to answer the question about what had happened- it was obvious that the pillar had fallen on him, after all. And there was no point in answering, because the pirate was probably just going to leave.

Duo grabbed the pole, unfazed by Heero's lack of response- he just chattered on.

"I remember this one time in the Gulf of Mexico- we were havin' this huge cannon fight with a merchant ship.

"Huh. 'Merchant,' my ass. They were as much pirates as we were- they just stole and killed on land rather then on water. You should've seen everything that lot of bastards had in their hold. Not stuff you could get in most of the markets, let me tell you.

"But in the fight, one of their cannon shots hit our mast- knocked it right over. Pinned 'bout half the crew to the deck on its way down, and left us awfully short handed when we started the hand to hand fight!"

As he went on talking, Duo dragged the curtain rod over and wedged it under the lowest end of the fallen beam. A near by chair served as a brace. Now to get that pillar up...

Heero listened to Maxwell's blathering. Why hadn't he left? Heero didn't look to closely at this question- it opened too many lines of speculation. Enough that the pirate wasn't leaving- and besides, he was interested in spite of himself.

"Acourse, Jack had already figured out that the captain on the ship was afraid of heights. The idiot couldn't climb a flight of stairs without breaking into a sweat! How he survived being a sailor on the mast... anyway, Jack gets over to him, and threatens to pitch him over the side- and this ship is huge, mind- and the moron starts blubbering! He ordered his entire crew to stand down, and we took the whole ship."

"What was in the holds?"

Heero cursed his absent self-control. He hadn't meant to say anything, much less encourage the longhaired idiot! He cursed himself further as the sounds of movement around him stopped.

Maxwell would probably leave now. He'd already stayed longer then Heero had expected. But after a moment, the question was answered. The answer wasn't anything like what he had been expecting- something like jewels, or rugs, or smuggled gold, maybe.

"Opium. And other assorted drugs, hallucegens, and poisons." The change in the voice that Heero was using to locate Duo with was so profound he nearly didn't recognize it. Every time before now, when Heero had heard the braided pirate speak, he had been cheerful, mocking, or laughing. Now he sounded nearly dead. "The ship was part of a cover for an extensive drug running business.

"But it wasn't a total loss- they also had all of their profits from the last sell with them, and it came out to a tidy sum. And the looks on their faces when we dropped their entire cargo over board were some of the funniest things I've ever seen." During the last sentence, the voice gained more vigor, and got back some of the lightness that it had lost in the beginning of the answer.

Heero did more silent cursing- listening to voice modulations told him nearly nothing. If he could only look at who he was talking to!...

As if a deity had heard his wish and decided to take pity on him, the pressure of the fallen beam suddenly lessened. Taking instant advantage of this, Heero added his own strength to the force lifting the heavy slab of wood. As soon as it was raised up far enough, he slid out from under it and leapt to his feet. A quick look around gave another shock to his sense of what should be.

Once again, someone who should be his enemy was helping him! This fit in not at all with what Heero knew of the world. Enemies didn't help each other. Period. They robbed from each other, stole from each other, lied to each other, and never trusted each other. But this person, this pirate- and pirates by all accounts moved to save no one but themselves- was trusting him a very great deal. While he pushed on the makeshift lever that he had used to lift the beam, he was completely vulnerable. He was either completely insane...

...Or he wasn't an enemy.

Heero shoved this dilemma aside. Why did he care what one baka of a pirate did?

Before either of them could do or say anything more, be it a word of thanks or an attack, a sudden sound caught both their attentions. It was the thudding tromp of boots, out on the main drive. Voices came with them.

"Looks pretty done in, Racky."

"Yeah, but they might of missed somethin'. Doesn't hurt to check, and we might find a piece none o' the others got."

"Silver's probably still in the kitchen. C'mon, tha's 'round back." The boots of the would-be looters started to crunch past the windows in front of the house, the accompanying voices following them.

"Hurry, we don't got long afore they call us back to th' ship." The sounds continued to move past. One single slip from either of them would alert the pirates to the fact that they weren't alone. Heero turned to look at his rescuer, fully expecting his mouth to be open, about to call out. Pirates were each others allies-

But Duo was following the voices with as much caution in his face as Heero was feeling. The beam that had fallen on Heero was still in the air, when all Duo would have to do to attract two potential allies outside was let go of the lever. Instead, it was lowering slowly to the floor, settling softly without a sound.

Heero was grudgingly impressed with the muscle control this expressed. He already knew the braided baka was far stronger then he looked, having fought with him, but this sort of controlled release spoke of habitual use of that strength. He didn't dare move to help the pirate- any unexpected movement could startle him into completely dropping the beam the rest of the way.

There was nothing he could do but sit and watch. Dammit!

Duo focused on lowering the beam. The last thing he wanted was to alert anyone from The Pearl that Shinigami and Sparrow were around- they all thought that they were dead. There was a very large advantage in that kind of belief.

As the heavy section settled soundlessly onto the floor, he breathed an equally silent sigh of relief. He wouldn't have been able to hold it up for much longer- and having it crash down would have been the worst thing that could happen. Now to get out of here.

Taking great care not to upset or step on anything as he crossed the torn-up, looted room, Duo slid closer to Heero. When he reached him, Duo motioned for the two of them to get out now. Heero nodded cautions agreement, and both of them started picking their way carefully across the foyer to the door. If they were lucky, the pirates would stay busy looking for some already stolen silver and not come back to the front of the house.

They weren't lucky.

As the pair reached the door, the crunch of footsteps started to come back around the house, signaling the pirates return. The two trying to sneak off were presented with an urgent dilemma: Where to hide? They were in an open door way, with almost no options open to them. And they had to choose a direction within the next two seconds, or be spotted for sure.

As the footsteps drew nearer, Heero solved the problem for both of them. He grabbed Duo's arm and threw them both under one of the decorative bushes that the Swans had cultivated over their lawn. Once undercover, they froze, watching the shadowed side of the house and listening to the sounds coming from it. Judging from the crashing, the pirates were moving up the house and breaking the windows as they went. They hadn't found anything worth taking, then. As the two got closer, their voices came into ear-range.

"Damnit! How the hell did they carry off all o' it?"

"Dunno, Ter. Mebbe they came back with th' carry boards and got th' rest o' it."

"There wasn't enough cursed time! Argh! I haven't seen a place so cleaned out since Shinigami worked over that high-blood's rack in Seana."

"Yeah. Good thing we fixed him up, ey?"

"Him and Sparrow..."

The voices trailed off into chuckles that were probably meant to sound sinister, but in truth fell closer to stupid. Heero had stopped listening at the mention of the name 'Shinigami.' Maxwell had known this crew? Had sailed with them? So why hadn't he called out to them? Why had he treated them as an enemy to be avoided? As these questions ran through his mind, Heero turned his head to look at the pirate crouched next to him.

Duo was too focused on the approaching pirates to notice that Heero was studying him- not he two they were hiding from- intensely. He recognized, peripherally, that Heero now had to know that he and the pirates by the house were acquainted (or had been at one point) but he wasn't really thinking about the implications. He was too focused on the watching the pair as they came around the house.

As the two pirates reached the broad line of moonlight that separated the house's shadow from the shadows of the trees, Heero turned his eyes back to them. His experiences and instincts told him to concentrate on the known enemy and leave the unknown until information could be gotten on it- and to focus on the enemy, you need to have them in your sights.

So he didn't miss anything of what happened next.

As the pirates stepped through the line of pale light from the moon, they changed. Tattered cloths that had been draped across flesh hung on bare skeletons. Grubby skin vanished. Sea-strong muscles became nonexistent. In that single strip of white light, what had been pirates became undead creatures from the ghost stories that haunted every port.

And then, they were through the light, and simple pirates once more, as if the glimpse had never happened. Certainly the pirates themselves acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. The only thing that kept Heero from completely dismissing what he'd seen was the shock-rigid set of Maxwell's muscles. If he hadn't been pressed against his side under the bush, Heero would never have guessed just how tense his unexpected cohort was. And if they hadn't been in the enclosed space under the bush, he'd never have been heard the soft hiss from the other person occupying that space.

"There is a curse..."

Heero decided to question Maxwell very thoroughly about this pirate crew at the first opportunity. But before he could say anything at that instant, the braided pirate had grabbed his arm and rolled out from under the bush, pulling Heero with him.

"C'mon, we can get out of here while the idiots are looking for loot," Duo murmured, heading off down the road. He was not going to mention the skeleton effect- with any luck, Heero Yuy had dismissed it as a figment of his imagination and wouldn't ask.

"What do you know about what happens to them in moonlight?"

Damn.

It wasn't a question, it was too insistent for that, but it wasn't a statement, either. And no matter what it was, Duo had no intentions of answering it and telling the whole story to someone who he'd probably never see again in his life. But he didn't lie- so, running was his best, not to mention only, option.

"Quite a bit- but I'm not going to be telling it to you." And with that, Duo leaped away into the shadows, knowing his tattered black clothing would break up his outline and further confuse searching eyes. That was one of the reasons he wore it.

Heero let out a quickly stifled curse at Maxwell's sudden disappearance (and the disappearance of a very promising information source), and started scanning the area to try and find him. But it was like trying to track smoke- the braided pirate had simply vanished.

Grudging admiration warred with very deep annoyance for a moment, but the internal battle was interrupted by a loud thud from the manor, reminding Heero that he was still far from safe. Shoving his rebellious emotions back down, he started back to the town.

(x)(x)(x)(x)(x)

Bored with staring out of the hole the cannon had blasted, Jack let his gaze wander around the cells. Something sitting in the beam of moonlight from his window caught his attention. It was the bone that the others had been using to try and attract the dog- who had been holding the keys. Jack looked at it, trying to decide if he was up to swallowing the

last of his dignity.

What the hell. There wasn't anyone else in here now, anyway.

Quickly grabbing the bone, he began to whistle softly and talk in the soothing, soft voice that everyone who works with animals learns. Jack had learned it while trying to convince a pair of viscous crocodiles, pets of a rather vindictive lord he'd tried to rob while in the Egypt, that he really wasn't worth eating. He put it to another use now, trying to convince the mutt to come closer.

"Come on, doggy," he called. The dog looked up from where it had hidden under a bench. "It's just you and me now. It's just you an' ol' Jack." As he spoke, the dog crawled a little closer. Whether it was the voice, the bone, the fact that Jack was only one versus the four who were calling it earlier, or some combination of these factors was a moot point- the dog was responding.

Jack kept up the soothing flow, murmuring 'come on, a bit closer, come on, that's it, come on, come on,' over and over. And bit-by-bit, the dog crept closer, and closer- until it was a bare foot away from where Jack was holding out the bone. Not changing the tone of his voice in the slightest, Jack started to vent some of his frustration at being brought so low. "Come on, you filthy slimy mangy cur-" Suddenly, yells and thuds echoed down the stairs leading to the prison cells. Apparently some pirates had run into a pair of guards. The dog, spooked by the noise, left Jack and trotted away. "No no no!" Jack yelped, seeing his escape escaping, "I didn't mean it! I didn't-"

Further thuds resounded, and a pair of pirates burst into the cell room. Recognizing them instantly, Jack stood up. He wasn't going to be caught on his knees by anyone, and certainly not by these pieces of filth.

The pirates didn't see him at first. "This ain't the armory," one of them announced after a quick look around.

But the other had noticed the cell's occupant. "Well, well, well," he drawled, drawing closer. "Look what he have here, Tweak. Captain Jack Sparrow." He finished this little speech by spitting at Jack's feet. Jack prudently moved one of his boots out of the path of the gob.

"Last time I saw you," Tweak jeered, "you were with Shinigami on a godforsaken island, shrinkin' into th' distance." The sneering pirate turned to his compatriot. "His fortunes are about the same... off the island, but abandoned by his faithful follower..."

"Worry about your own fortunes, gentlemen," Jack responded fearlessly. It was a sad pirate who didn't know how to bluff. "The deepest circle of Hell is reserved for betrayers, and mutineers."

This struck a nerve with the second pirate- he drove his hand through the cell bars and grabbed Jack by the throat. This put his arm directly into the beam of moonlight that Jack had been standing in, and just like the pirates by the manor, it had an all together miraculous effect. It was not warm flesh that closed on Jack's neck, but a skeletal vise.

Jack seemed completely unaffected.

"So there is a curse..." he commented, studying the bones of the arm that held him. "That's interesting."

"You know nothing of Hell," growled the pirate holding him, while Tweak looked on. With that, both of them turned and left the prisons, leaving Jack behind. Jack ignored their exit, studying instead both his hand in the moonlight, and the dog bone he still held.

"That's veeery interesting," he repeated.

(x)(x)(x)(x)(x)

As if she had only deigned to come out to offer those few people those glimpses, the moon slid back behind the thick clouds.

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A/N: Well? How'd ya like it, sweets? Next chapter, Dorothy confronts pirates, Duo gets back to Jack, and Will goes into full out hothead mode! Review please, darlings- I really AM nice to all my reviewers...

The Elven Archer of Rivendell:
Cool. Thanks for catching my dialoge errors- It's so hard when you're working off the DVD- it's all phonetics, and they get screwed up so easily... If I can't get the exact, I just try to get the gist. See ya later!

Kimapatsu no Hoseki:
Thank you! Always nice for the ego, a kind review... ::looks wise::... Anyway, I try to update this every Thursday. Hope you liked it!

M-python-girl:
Bring on the rust! Muahahaha! And... lessee... is the knight's new word 'antidisestablishentarienism'? And as for the story... um... it'll finish... at some point. I'm REALLY bad with time...

Shaeric Draconis:
::bows in honor of a lovely reviewer:: Many, many thanks! Yeah, Duo and Hee-chan make me laugh... people's reactions when they get together are always either "FINALLY!" or "WHAT?!?" no matter what you're reading. Cracks me up. Thank you for your complement of my timing of the scenes. And I'm glad you liked Relena. Bwahaha! Oh, and as long as you're gonna be stuck at the computer by my story, work on your fic, The Unwanted (LOVELY thrid chapter, by the way). I'm hooked on it. If I gotta update, YOU gotta update!

Shayde-chan:
Glad to amuse! ::wink:: Yeah, pest extermination seems to suit Duo. Can't you hear him? "Die, you evil little bastards, DIE!" Muahaha! ... I think I got too much sugar again... Anyway, all of us thank you for our plushies! Catspurr hasn't stopped cuddling hers yet, Catslaugh hasn't let hers out of her sight, and Catclaws... er... actually, all I know about HER is that I saw a plushie hand in the hall. But that usually means she likes it, don't worry! I put mine in a place of honor on my desk.

Well, ya'll- I'll see ya next chapter. Wanna be sweeties and read my other fics? One of them's on it's third chapter, but only has one review... I'm sad...