Demon's Angel
Chapter 4 (repost)
AN: the characters and settings of Gundam Wing AC do not belong to me, I'm just borrowing them to play with. OOC, AU, future Yaoi, and X-over warnings. I decided that I didn't like the way I ended the chapter. It left me backed into a corner, so I made a couple of changes. Hopefully the next chapter well be out in not too long...
Thanks to Kuno-Baby, Innortal, Jerry Unipeg, and ranma hibiki for the reviews.
Ranma had been awake for all of three days and already he had someone out to get him.
Of course, this someone was no where near being the kind of opponent he had been used to. Even that idiot Kuno had been more subtle and dangerous, not to mention intelligent. It was annoying none the less. Still, he had to admit that most of his old enemies would find him dead easy to deal with these days. Hell, most of 'em would either laugh in his face if he tried to challenge them or chuckle indulgently, pat him on the head, and tell him to come back when he'd gotten a bit older.
Not that he could really have blamed them.
It had been enough to shock the hell out of him once he'd figured out just what had happened to him in that empty grey space the Naban mirror had stranded him in. He'd lost a good foot of height, almost a third of his mass, and a third of his age, and he hadn't noticed. Not until he'd stripped to take a bath and noticed somethings missing. The only hair was on his head and his equipment hadn't been that small since he hit puberty! That's when he looked in the mirrror and saw a face he'd last seen before convincing his Pops that selling him off to be raped was a bad idea. It was him, he was a kid again.
That's about the time he screamed and scared the shit out of Duo and Father Maxwell. They'd come busting into the bathroom scared that he'd fallen and hurt himself or broken something. Soon after that he wasn't the only one who was confused about his age.
That had been three days ago, and since then Ranma had been settled into his and Duo's room, been given clothes that actually sort of fit him, and had started integrating himself into daily life at the orphanage. He'd also learned that a several of the older kids, all younger than him, were upset that he and Duo got a room all to themselves even if it had been a closet before he'd shown up. A few of them were downright nasty about it, especially that Slider kid Duo had benn complaining about since before Solo died. After dealing with the red-headed brat and his buddies for a couple of days and watching how they treated everyone smaller and younger than them, Ranma had to agree with Duo that everyone would be better off if Slider and his three 'friends' dropped off the face of the earth... or colony in this case.
The four boys all had asperations to be top dog, but Slider was by far the worst. It was also clear that the only thing keeping the brat from being an even bigger pain in the ass was the fact that Duo, while smaller, was smarter and more importantly could beat the other boy in a fight with both arms tied behind his back. Something Duo was quite proud of, thank you very much, and occassionally had to demonstrate when the larger boy tried to challange Duo's authority like he had the day after Ranma woke up. Ranma had been most displeased to be stuck watching from the sidelines with all the other kids, but he still wasn't up to doing much. He was still to weak to be of much use in a fight.
He had some serious work to do to recover what he'd lost while hanging in limbo.
When he first woke up, Ranma had noticed that he was much weaker than he was used to being but he'd chalked that up to the time he'd spent drifting in that strange nothingness the mirror had stranded him in for so long. The height thing, or rather the lack there of, had thrown him since he felt like he did when he was a guy, yet he was about the same height he was when a girl. But once again, he'd figured that after spending so much time in that grey place working on controlling his curse, he'd finally gotten used to his girl's body.
If he hadn't been so out of it, he might have figured out from the lack of boobs that something was wrong before it came up and kicked him in the balls so to speak.
As it was, discovering that he was once again a pre-adolecent twelve year old boy came as a bit of a shock to someone who hadn't been so small and relatively weak in quite a long time and who was still much older mentally. Though he had to admit that the lack of a libido, while somewhat distressing, was also something of a relief. He'd never really gotten used to being interested in sex. Sure he'd touched himself a few times when he got a bit of time alone, but he'd been beaten up and raped too many times by the guys his Pops sold him to to be comfortable even touching most people, let alone doing That to anyone.
Yeah sure he'd heard that if you 'did it right' with a girl it was supposed to feel good, especially if you where the guy, but he didn't really believe what Hiroshi and Daisuki had told him. There was no way that having some guy stick his prick anywhere could be anything but painful. Kissing was supposed to be fun too, but since the only girl he'd ever trusted enough to relax around (outside of the Neko-ken) was Kasumi, he'd never kissed anyone he'd trusted not to hit or attack him on a whim. So he didn't believe that either.
Still despite his personal opinions of sex, Ranma found the absence of the urge to touch himself left a ... gap in the way he expected to feel. Though given his current physical age, as estimated by Father Maxwell, that urge would start to return in a few months. So, no big deal. It wasn't like he missed it that much anyway.
What he really wasn't looking forward to was Duo starting to get those urges. Knowing the younger boy, he'd expect Ranma to have all the answers. Answers that he didn't have. He also knew that if he told Duo what he did know about sex, the younger boy would do his damnedest to weedle out of Ranma how he knew what he knew about sex, and that would end in tears. Duo's or his, he didn't know. With his luck it would be both.
He'd be more than happy if no one ever knew how he'd been hurt by the men his father sold him to. He didn't really think he'd get his wish in this matter. That was due to way he'd seen Father Maxwell looking at him a time or two since he'd woken up combined with the knowledge the older man had helped clean him up while he was still out. Ranma figured that the older man had seen the scarring that he knew existed.
That in mind he was quite pleased that the priest had yet to bring that particular topic up. Of course that might have had something to do with the fact that the only time the two of them had been alone together had been right after he woke up. While the Father seemed comfortable discussing most things around Duo, such as Ranma's curse and his age, he didn't seem willing to ask Ranma if he had been raped with the younger boy listening. And since Duo had been Ranma's shadow since the incident in the bathroom, he'd heard everything Father Maxwell had discussed with Ranma. Duo seemed to be afraid that the older boy would get hurt or somehow disappear if he didn't keep his eyes on him. It was getting annoying, but he was grateful since it kept the Father from asking the questions that Ranma could see in his eyes. Questions that Ranma really didn't want to answer.
-ooOOoo-
Jim Maxwell sighed as once more the new child, Ranma, avoided his gaze. There was obviously something the boy didn't want to talk about and while Father Jim thought that he knew what that something was, it was not something he was willing to discuss in front of Duo. Getting the boy he'd found bleeding on the steps alone for a talk was proving to be nearly impossible. The younger boy had followed the older about like a shadow since he and Duo had run into the bathroom to find Ranma staring first at the mirror and then at himself in horror.
It had taken a bit to calm the boy down to the point where Jim could understand what the problem was, and when that happened Jim almost wished it hadn't.
Ranma claimed to be eighteen years old, despite having the body of an eleven or twelve year old.
When he'd asked how that could be possible, trying to humor the boy, the tale that followed strained and ruptured the limits of credulity. If the boy was to be believed, he'd traveled into the future, somehow loosing six years in the process. Even when questioned later he kept to the same impossible story. It was clear that the boy was either lying or imagining things. Which, Father Jim really couldn't tell. The boy obviously needed help that he and Helen couldn't provide, but since he didn't seem to be dangerous he couldn't justify sending the boy away. Especially since doing so would break Duo's heart. The other problem was that if you watched the boy's eyes when he spoke, you could see that he believed every word he said. If he was lying, he was an incredible actor, but somehow that just didn't seem to fit.
Could the boy have been hypnotized and fed the tale? Because that was the only other scenario that Jim could come up with to explain the boy's belief in his fantastic story. However, even that wild idea came with it's own problems and bred further questions as well. Still, that idea made as little sense as any of the others that he'd come up with to explain the boy's reactions and story. Sadly, it was most likely that the boy had lied to him, likely to protect either himself or someone else.
In, the mean time, all they could do was wait and watch to how the boy did and to make sure he didn't become a threat to the other children in the orphanage. Maybe if they gave him enough time he'd trust them with the real story.
-oo00oo-
It wasn't fair.
Duo got all the special treatment like getting to skip school to tag along behind that freak Father Maxwell brought to the orphanage and getting his own room insted af being stuck in the dorms. It didn't matter that he had to share what used to be a closet with that freaky boy-girl, it was the principle of the thing. Duo was just a worthless street rat who'd eaten out of trashcans for most of his life. He had been a normal kid before his parennts were killed which ment that he should be the one getting special treatment since he was so obviously better than Duo.
It just wasn't fair.
AN: I'm sorry it's been a while coming people, I'm sure it's full of spelling and grammar mistakes and I apologize. for anyone who's following YGM, it might be a while before I post another chapter since I don't have access to my files at the moment. The processer in my computer is fried and we don't know if we'll be able to shift the hard drive from my computer into my husbands. If we can, I'll finish the chapter I was working on. If not, I'll have to start from scratch. Oh well, such is life, my laptop was at least 5 years old so it's not too suprising.
Again, please review and tell me what you think. Flames will be used to wipe my nose.
