AN (012605): Okay, I understand I haven't updated this story for years. And the truth is, I haven't written anything in addition for almost two years. But what I did manage to finish was 90 percent of chp 4; this should've been finished around two years ago. Some people are still emailing me about this story, and I hate the thought that you wouldn't get to read the last chapter I wrote just because I didn't finish it. xD Well, unlike "Legend of Serenity", I can actually still manage to continue this as it is AU. Just don't hold your breath 'til I do, cos if there's any of my fanfics I'd be continuing soon, it's gonna be the Suikoden ones. Anyhoo, enjoy. Please keep in mind that this was written about two years ago, so pardon the old style.

Oh, and I don't use the penname Spatula Gurl anymore. I went back to my original handle, which is thundersenshi/Jov.

Angel of Chronos

Chapter Four: Then There Was Light
by: thundersenshi
(Rated PG13)

"Who are you?
Are you even alive,
Or are you a figment of my imagination?"

"Good morning, sir," the desk lady greeted, as the silver-haired man entered through the elegant glass doors. He nodded in acknowledgment and continued his brisk pace.

This was just not his morning.

Kunzite found himself waking up a half-hour later than usual. In his haste to leave for work, he momentarily forgot that he had an unknown woman inside his suite. When he did finally remember, he almost groaned out loud in frustration. He was going to kill Ryougo for this little stunt. But for the meantime, there were more important matters to attend to, and he was already running late. When he stepped outside his room fully dressed, he hadn't even bothered for a quick caffeine fix. Throwing a final glance at the sleeping figure draped on his living room's cushioned long-seater, he paused only for a brief moment before leaving. He hadn't even bothered waking the woman up, and that she was handcuffed to the brass handles of the seater was
completely forgotten. He left without preamble, only with strict orders for the cleaning crew to leave his suite undisturbed for the meantime.

"Good morning, Minamoto-sama," came another greeting, from his secretary this time. Without skipping a beat, she continued. "Mr. Amawa had called earlier. He is currently in Hiroshima, checking on the plantation, but as you were out, he left a message for you." She handed him a tiny memo. "He'll be calling again later. Also," she handed him a folder "the documents you have
requested for two days ago have arrived. Amawa-san checked them again just before you came in."

"Arigatou, Kurata," Kunzite said, as he accepted the folder. He leafed through it very briefly before turning again to his secretary."Has Ogasarawa-san come in yet?"

"No sir, she hasn't," came the reply.

Kunzite glanced at his watch. "Well, is there anything else?"

"Just a few more things," his secretary said, pulling out a brown envelope. "This just came in." She cleared her throat before continuing."Also, you have a conference at 10 sharp, and another meeting at 2."

"Nothing else?"

"That's just about it, sir."

"Okay then. Thank you." Then, just before the secretary exited through the door, he called out again. "Fix me a cup of coffee, Kurata. Oh, and call Ryouga in. I want to talk to him."

"Right away, sir."

Brightness.

She tried in vain to ignore the intruding beams of light that were rousing her from slumber. But after a few more minutes, she gave up. She opened her eyes slowly, yawning.

A white ceiling.

The first thing she saw was the only thing that did not bring forth the uncomfortable, gnawing spark of panic within her. Just as it was yesterday.

Minako did not move from where she was, but her eyes took possession of her surroundings. Nothing around her was familiar. Nothing made sense.

She blinked once. Then twice. But still, it did not disappear.

Yesterday was real. She did not just dream of it. It was all real.

She tried to get up, but found that she could not move much. Her body was tired and aching because whatever it was that she had slept on was simply not made to be slept on...but much more than that, the sound of metal against brass caught her attention and she visibly scowled. This... thing linked her wrist to the brass bars of her "bed", and not only did it bite her skin red from rubbing, it also limited her movement in sleep. She had adapted instead an extremely uncomfortable and unmoving lying down position with her one arm sticking out because it simply could not be helped. It was fortunate that sleep even came to her. No, not fortunate--an act of miracle, even. Her cuffed arm was already numb from the lack of blood
circulation.

She gave a low growl of pure frustration.

This was just not her morning. And someone was going to pay...

"Yo!"

Kunzite looked up from all the paperwork piled up on his desk to see Ryougo, casually leaning on the doorway, with a hand in his pocket and his usual grin.

Kunzite did not return the smile, but instead told him flatly, "Come in. And close the door behind you."

The seriousness in his tone sobered Ryougo's typically amused expression a little. He raised a single brow, instead, and did as he was asked. "What's up?" he said, finally sauntering over to where Kunzite was, and taking a seat on the other side of the desk.

Kunzite did not mince words. "There's a woman inside my private suit."

When he didn't say anything else for a moment, Ryougo smirked."Well, go on. I can't imagine why you'd want me to know, but hell, Kunz, I didn't think you were...you know, into these kind of things..." The silver-haired man opened his mouth to protest, but Ryougo held up both of his hands, as if in surrender, and cut him off before he even had a chance."Hey, dude, it's cool with me. I don't want you to think that...well, it's just that I never saw you as that kind of person." He made waving motions with his hands and hastily continued. "It's just that you're always so... serious. I mean, this sort of stuff, it smacks of myself, but you?"

"Ryougo--"

"Well, come on, give me the bloody details! It's why you rang, didn't--"

"Shut up for a moment!" Kunzite half-shouted in exasperation.

"Well," Ryougo said, surprised, but merely feigning an offended expression at Kunzite's dark one. "You didn't have to be so damned touchy about it. Why did you even--"

"Ryougo." There was warning in that tone of voice, and it was enough for the other man to shut his trap.

"Okay, okay, shoot. I'll listen."

Kunzite inhaled deeply. "Last night, when I came home from work, I found a woman inside of my room. On top of my bed."

He continued glaring, but Ryougo merely returned it with blank staring. It was almost enough to drive him mad. "Did you have anything to do with it?" he finally bit out.

"Oh so that's what's bugging you," Ryougo said, understanding. But there was also puzzlement in his usually amused face, and, scratching his head, he continued, "I know this may come as a surprise to you Kunz, but I didn't do it. Wish I could've thought of it, though, it was a brilliant--" he noticed Kunzite's darkening expression, "--mistake. Man, ya know I wouldn't do that to ya," he finished, grinning.

Kunzite's grunt said as much: yeah right. Ryougo looked even more like a cheshire.

"Well if you didn't do it," Kunzite looked at him directly, "--and I'm not saying I'm ruling you out completely" Ryougo smirked, but raised his hands in surrender "--who else could've done it?"

"Beats me. That's your private suite. Shouldn't you know who goes in and out of the place?"

"That's another thing. I barely invite people over, so there's only a very small list of possible suspects." Kunzite gave him a look
laced with a hint of suspicion again. "You've been to my place several times, and the staff is fairly familiar with your face. That why I thought of you."

"I'm flattered, Kunz, but well, I really didn't do it," Ryougo shurgged helplessly.

Kunzite took a deep breath. This was confusing the hell out of him. Ryougo wasn't owning up to the deed he was being accused of, and he couldn't think of anyone else who could've done it. But he had this alarming feeling that Ryougo was telling the truth. It wasn't like him to deny such a stunt.

"Didn't you ask your staff if anybody came in?"

"I was occupied this morning, and I was already running late. It completely slipped my mind."

Ryougo grinned again. "Occupied, eh? Well that's one way to put it." Kunzite frowned at his insinuating remark, but he ignored it. "Where is she now, then?"

Kunzite looked as if the thought hadn't crossed his mind. "I left her back there," he replied.

Ryougo sobered instantly and gave a low whistle. "You left an unknown woman in your place?"

"Well, it's not like she's going anywhere..."

It was Ryougo's turn to frown. "What do you mean?"

Kunzite hesitated briefly before finally answering: "She's handcuffed in my living room."

"She's what!" Ryougo's eyes bulged incredulously.

"She's cuffed to a brass seater."

Ryougo went on, as if Kunzite did not spout out that ridiculous, additional piece of information. "You've got a female in there man," he sputtered. "We're not talking about your pet pooch!" He continued to eye Kunzite with disbelief. "Or did you jump in on her last night? Is that why you forgot to take off the handcuffs?"

"I didn't touch her!" Kunzite exclaimed, scowling. "Hey, and those were your handcuffs..."

"Oh, blame it on me now, will you? I hope you had the decency to leave her something while..." Ryougo trailed off, noticing Kunzite's sudden silence and the considerable paling of his face. "You didn't even leave her anything to eat?"

Minako tried not to cringe at the sound of breaking glass. Yet again. She told herself, for the nth time, that it was that damned man's fault anyway for leaving her still chained to the blasted seat. He was nowhere in sight, and perhaps that only suited her purpose better.

Purpose?

She looked around her with a strange sense of satisfaction. The curtains hanging from the window were once pristine white. Now they were ripped on one side, and had brown stains on the other. She displaced the seat and table arrangement in the center of the living room, knocking off the glass table while she was dragging along the seat she was chained to. The glass surface was pretty hard, and so the fall only resulted to a tiny chip at the edge...there was carpeting, too, so that helped in breaking the fall. But the carpet itself was dirtied with more brown stains and sprinkled with potpourri, because a tiny jar of it was knocked off from the glass table, too. The other side of the carpet was damp, and several pieces of a broken vase lay scattered on her feet.

Minako tried not to feel too sorry about the mess she made. It wasn't as if she had meant to wreck the place purposely...more than half of the havoc she wreaked was purely accidental. First off, she was dragging the rest of the long-seater she was linked to, since she tried hammering it with any solid object she could get her hands on and it didn't work (a now dented wooden artifact of some sort, and what used to be a ceramic paperweight now broken into three pieces on the floor lay as evidence). So she settled for dragging it with both hands, and though it was a bit painful to do so, she got around the place...albeit like a drunkard, knocking off more than a few things which were unfortunately in her way.

Just then, her stomach growled. Minako winced, as this was the second time it did that. She was hungry, and she had to find food before she herself expired. But then, the first growl was what made her move in the first place. It was the reason why her surroundings were now in ruins. She didn't care what that man would say if he were to come back home and find the mess she had made--if he was even going to come back. Maybe he just left her there to starve...

No. She had to find food. Picking up one side of the brass seater she was cuffed to with both hands, she made her way to the next room, stumbling a bit with her back to the direction she was going. The long, brass seater made a tiny squeaking-screeching sound against the floor, but she paid it no heed. If she was going to die in hunger today, she couldn't possibly worry about something so trivial as scratching the polished floor surface. Let that arrogant man do the worrying. Right now, she was
concerned about the stupid brass seater blocking the doorway behind her and unabling her to stumble further into this new room she had found.

"No."

"Oh, come on, Kunz! Don't you trust me?"

The silver-haired man shot him a meaningful look, but Ryougo thought to try again.

"Hey, you have a meeting in an hour. You don't have to miss it, you can just as simply delegate this task to me, and--"

"Ryougo," Kunzite interrupted him, exasperated. "That is precisely the point. I have approximately sixty minutes to pick up some lunch and drive back to my suite and then go back here in time for my meeting. I don't need you to make matters worse than it already is." He swiped his car keys from his desk and briskly went outside his office, Ryougo hot on his trail."Kurata," he called out to his secretary.

"Yes sir?"

"I may be late for the 2 o'clock meeting. Call up Ogasarawa-san and make sure she attends early. If I can't make it on time, or can't make it at all, she should at least be there."

"Understood, sir."

"And you," he pointed out to Ryougo, who backtracked abruptly when Kunzite suddenly swiveled around, "will shut the hell up. You will not breathe a single word of what you've learned this morning, or I'll skin you alive and feed you to the pigs."

"Whoa, Kunzite, must we be so graphically violent?"

But Kunzite was already outside, too far for him to have heard. Ryougo could only shake his head, an amused grin creeping its way up to the edges of his mouth.

After all, it wasn't everday that Mister Control lost his cool and got his feathers ruffled...

Damned everlasting hell. He should have gotten his secretary to order the lunch while he was in a meeting. Now it looked like he was stuck in heavy afternoon traffic, and of course he couldn't remember a single goddam number for something as simple as take-out. Angry and frustrated, his eyes were left to wander the sidewalks. It was then that he caught sight of a ramen and okinomiyaki cart in a narrow corner of a small street. He thought for a moment, glancing at the flow of traffic in front of him, then back at the sidewalk. It didn't take him a long time to decide. Well, it certainly wasn't gourmet food, but at that precise moment, it ceased to matter at all. He swivelled his car to the left, and parked near a quaint, familiar teahouse. He was a usual
customer there, and the proprietress probably would not mind having him park his vehicle for no more than ten minutes. He got out of his car and walked towards the wooden food cart.

The old man behind the cart had seen Kunzite approach, but was almost certain that he was going a different way, so he didn't bother about broadcasting his wares. When it finally occured to him that the important-looking young man was really heading for his cart, he jumped to attention and smiled toothily.

"What is it, sir?" the old man asked.

Kunzite eyed the food stand uneasily, not having been near one since he was a kid in junior high. It seemed silly to ask for a menu, so he looked up instead at the ones plastered on the wooden railings of the cart's small roof. He realized that he was a bit hungry, too, and that he had not eaten himself. He turned to the old man. "I'll have everything in these two," he said, pointing to the lists of food written on two pieces of cardboard tacked at the wooden railing. "It's to go, and make it fast, please."

The old man beamed at him. "Right away, sir!"

She was ready to scream her head off.

She wondered if anyone would hear her. Not that she was intent on having someone barge inside her queer dungeon, and come to her rescue. It was already doubtful that anyone could possibly help her in her current demise.

'Strange contraptions,' she thought to herself, eyeing the room bitterly. 'Where in nine hells does he keep his food? How many more things do I have to break?' She gingerly stepped over pieces of broken glass--or what used to be a jar of sugar...she had accidentally tipped it over when she was dragging the long-seater behind her and knocked off a few things from the top of a tiny, well-polished wooden table.

Minako tried to be a little adventurous and tasted some other things that looked edible to her. But she had never been a lucky woman, as if the situations she got in could speak for her. That last thing she barely tasted was so nasty that she almost turned her back on her original intent-- to look for food. She just hoped she wouldn't come across anything poisonous. But between starving to death and the possibility of swallowing something toxic...well, she'd take her chance at least.

Somehow, she had managed to wedge open a couple of cupboards (or what she assumed to be cupboards). But there had only been silver and metallic pots...for cooking, perhaps. She didn't really know. They looked a little small to be used for cooking food. Still, after inspecting most of her surroundings, she suspected this was a kitchen.

But where was the food?

She trudged towards another cupboard. Actually, she wasn't sure if it was one, because it was larger than the rest and it was painted a glossy white. But it had slender handles on one side; there had to be something inside it.

She opened the top first with a swift pull, and was shocked when a cold, slightly freezing sensation prickled the skin of her face. She knew she shouldn't even be surprised anymore; nothing made sense in this world. They even have a convenient box to keep winter in. 'Well,' she remarked to herself dryly, 'There's still the bottom box...maybe that's where they keep rain.' She pulled it open anyway, and felt a bit of triumph when she peered inside it.

Eggs. Transparent, lightweight pitchers of water, and a couple of unrecognizable kinds of liquid. And those looked like vegtables. And perhaps cheese. Minako picked it up and sniffed it delicately. It certainly smelled like cheese, only it was cold. And brick-hard. Her eyes searched for more distinguishable objects. Although it seemed packed, she could not find much that looked safe to nibble on. So she dragged her eyes back to the block of cheese in her palm.

She shrugged her shoulders daintily. Might as well.

The sight of tattered furniture took a few more seconds to register, after the initial shock at seeing his living room. Or what was left of it.

'What the hell does she think she's doing!' he thought to himself angrily. His gray eyes searched the room around him, but the girl was nowhere to be seen. But it was easy enough to discern which way the she went--the path of destruction was clear in contrast to the pristine, untouched surfaces of the rest of his suite. In long strides, he quickly reached the kitchen. However, the vision that greeted him almost dissipated his anger, and he momentarily came to a halt as his bewildered eyes made contact with hers.

She looked pitiful. She was still wearing the golden gown that she had slept in. Her hair was in disarray, and her face pale and exhausted. She looked up at him with eyes that seemed to speak of her distress, and Kunzite found it terribly disarming. She also looked like she was about to cry, but bravely biting back her tears so she could salvage her pride.

A deep frown marred her features as she caught sight of him. "You," she managed to choke out.

"Is it your intention to destroy everything in sight?" he said coolly, breaking eye contact. By the gods, he should be steaming with anger right now. He would not be moved by pity.

"Is it your intention to tie me up like an animal and starve me to death?" she countered.

Author's Notes:

Okay, i was so totally making things up! I have no idea what cheese looked like in Minako's supposed time...I don't even know if there was cheese then! ; But I have no time for research, as I'm sure you guys can do without that much detail. After all, this is just a fanfic. ; Let's all just have some fun, shall we? Hnn...but maybe to be on the safe side, I should change Minako's timeline from medieval to a european regency era... hehe... It would make things so much easier as time difference wouldn't have been so large...