"We're going down, down in an earlier round
And Sugar, we're going down swinging
I'll be your number one with a bullet
A loaded gun complex, cock it and pull it"
--"Sugar we're Going Down", Fall Out Boy
"Clouds are comin
Air get's heavy
Looks like trouble on a rainy day
Sun starts sinking
Can't see my shadow
Looks like trouble on a rainy day
Holes uncovered
Walls will crumble
All spells trouble on a rainy day"
--"Rainy Day", Guster
Yeah…this chapter gets two. Any of you who read Rainy Day…which was the one shot/epilogue/prologue that linked The Past Becomes You and the Future Denies You will recognize those lyrics.
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The two Preventers were partnered with the same cop they had met at the police station. Apparently the murders had taken place a decent way across the colony, so they were riding over in the police car.
There was no worse time for something like that to happen. Heero and Duo avoided looking at each other. Heero just stared almost violently out the window. His smaller companion resorted to an old habit of his and played with his braid.
"Here we are gentlemen."
Both sighed loudly in relief and practically jumped out of the squad car the second it stopped moving.
"Bit excited are we?"
Duo grinned at the police man, officer Murphy as he had introduced himself. Together the three walked into the house. It was in the very small good part of L2. The houses looked like a typical upper middle class suburban neighborhood. Well kept grass. White picket fences.
Duo didn't know places like this existed on L2.
As they passed under the yellow police tape that was barring the door like some morbid limbo stick, they were assaulted by the sight of the living room. Corpses and blood were everywhere, but Duo's eyes were immediately drawn to two things.
A forensics officer with rubber gloves on who was very carefully placing a silver throwing dagger into an evidence bag. And at his feet, a file folder that had been thrown onto the floor, its contents spread around in the blood like leaves in puddles.
The pictures were all from different angles, and different lighting. But one thing was constant. A person's back, with a number carved into it.
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Solo walked quickly down the street. He normally loved being out at night. But under tonight's circumstances, he was understandably nervous. His body was still a little tired, in a good way, from his and Duo's earlier excursions. What he wouldn't give to be back in his ratty bed with Duo.
But no, timing had to be against him. Again. Here he was, wearing a jacket and a cap, trying to walk as quickly as he could without seeming even more suspicious down the streets of L2 at an ungodly hour of the morning. He'd passed the invisible barrier that kept the good area from the bad a few minutes ago. Houses were actually painted here, and looked like they do on tv.
Solo pulled the crumpled piece of paper from his jeans pocket. He was definitely on the right street. Now he just had to find the house. After memorizing the digits he put the printout back into his pocket and tried to straighten his cloths and adjusted his hat. The numbers on the mailboxes led him to a coul de sac. The pre-dawn light was barely enough for him to make out the small wooden letters.
'Well. Now or never I suppose.'
Having done a little research of his own, Solo knew that this man had to commute pretty far to his job every weekday. He would be up around 4:30 and out of the house by 6. He had no idea what time it was, but it couldn't be too far from 5 am.
Pulling himself up and plastering a bright smile across his face, Solo rung the doorbell on the suburban house. After a few quiet moments within the brightly lit house, a tall woman answered the door in two piece plaid pajamas. She paused and looked Solo over uncertainly.
"Can I help you young man? A bit early in the morning to be selling things isn't it?"
Solo detected the faint anger and just smiled wider.
"No ma'am, I'm not selling anything. I'm with the gas company. We've had some complaints of gas leaks in this neighborhood last night and I've been sent out to do some surveys. Perhaps I could come in for a minute and take a look at your gas line?"
The woman now seemed thoroughly pleased to see the raggedy youth. She ushered him inside and quickly locked the door after him. After all, this was still L2.
"Do you know much about gas lines miss?" Solo couldn't help but enjoy the humor of the situation. He had no clue how gas worked. In fact, he was pretty sure half of what he'd just said didn't make sense. Ah well.
After thinking for a minute the woman shook her head. Solo had to repress the urge to sigh. That could have thrown his whole plan into the crapper.
"If your husband is awake perhaps he could take me to where your gas line comes into the house. That way if anything is wrong I can speak to him about it."
The woman smiled again and headed upstairs. Solo wandered nervously about the large living room. There were pictures everywhere of the woman, her husband, and their two children. An older boy who wore a university sweatshirt in the more recent photos, and a young girl in pigtails.
Solo started alternating standing still and securing his knives to his wrists to pacing the room. The moment of truth was nearly upon him. Finally he heard some footsteps coming from a room upstairs. The woman was leading, now with a robe thrown over her pajamas and looking suspiciously more cleaned up. Behind her was a man, easily a few inches over six feet, with brown hair cut to a short business length. He was straightening his tie over his white button up as he followed his wife down the stairs. Solo meanwhile pulled his cap a little lower over his eyes.
"Hello young man. My wife told me all about the gas leak. Please, I'll show you where the gas line is."
Feeling a dismissal, the wife went into the kitchen where she had left her breakfast cooling. Solo and the tall man meanwhile headed down a short hallway that ended in a closet. The doors had slots in them and slid open with a small tug from the man.
Solo stood carefully behind the large man as he pointed out pipes and began explaining things. Every time he glanced back Solo shifted his gaze and pretended to be interested and calculating. Really he had been sizing up this guy. He was bigger and more muscular in person than expected. And the wife was in the kitchen just down the hall. He'd have to make this kill a quick one and get out before anyone was suspicious.
As the man began to explain some other piece of useless knowledge Solo reached into his wrist sheath. There was no hesitation as he lunged for the man's back. But it wouldn't be so easy. The large man had managed to sidestep him and now had his hand on the wrist that held the knife. His strong grip pressed the other blade and sheath against the inside of Solo's thin wrists.
"You play a bad gas inspector."
The man pulled him close and Solo could smell the coffee on his breath.
"Those are water pipes."
Solo snarled at this man's bad sense of humor. Then he head-butted the guy right in the face. Not wasting a second the blond was back to his feet, his cap having fallen off. He glared eye to eye with the man in front of him and got up from his crouch, pulling the knife's brother from his other wrist.
"Careful boy. This is my house."
"Ha. This is your grave."
Solo stepped forward and slashed both knives at the man. There wasn't much room in the hallway and the big guy had dodged down and rolled towards the living room. But not before one of Solo's blades had clipped his forearm.
For a second the streetrat realized that if the man got away he would have wasted all this time. He sprinted down the short hall and threw himself at the man, knives first. But the rather athletic upper middle-class worker kicked one from his hand to the side of the room, and grabbed the other wrist once again in his huge fist.
At this rather inopportune moment both the man's wife and his daughter decided to arrive at opposite ends of the living room. His wife screamed bloody murder, rather appropriate considering the situation, and his daughter cried out to him.
"Get back!"
"Ha! So you're kind to them if they're your family huh?" Solo finished this with a kick to the man's stomach, just hard enough to free himself to attack again. But the man's daughter decided to attack him at that time, latching herself onto his unarmed shoulder. Seeing the man coming at him instinct kicked in and Solo flung the girl behind him. Hard.
The crash didn't distract the man as Solo had hoped but seemed to enrage him further. He punched Solo so hard across the face that he felt a tooth loosen itself. Blood came gurgling out of his mouth but he couldn't pay attention to that now. There was screaming and crying from the man's wife, who had gone to their daughter somewhere behind Solo. But the blond wasn't paying attention to that.
Flipping the knife in his hand Solo hurled it with all his might. It hit the man directly in the chest with a satisfying thunk. As he doubled over and reached for the blade Solo darted forward and grabbed the hilt, forcing the short throwing knife even deeper. When his eyes went blank and the body fell to the floor Solo realized that there was a lot of screaming going on, and neither he nor the man at his feet were the ones doing it.
Turning around, blood pouring down his jaw and his hand splotched and sticky, Solo was surprised that the woman didn't run off screaming. But she stood over the still body of her child, next to a table that was overturned, blood on the corner. He felt a surge of guilt as he realized that she must have hit her head on the table. He didn't want to kill anyone. Just the man who now rested perfectly still on the floor.
The woman was yelling incoherently and Solo's eyes finally managed to process to his brain that she had a handgun in her hand.
'Well shit.'
The shot went off and Solo felt it dig deep under his collarbone. More blood everywhere. But he wasn't going to go down easy. The woman screamed and dropped the gun, her hands burned from the hot barrel. He took advantage of her mistake and leapt to his discarded knife, picking it up and throwing it in one fluid motion.
A man with a knife in his chest. A girl with a bloody skull. A boy shot in his chest. And a woman with a knife sitting between her eyes.
Solo stumbled through the living room, dry heaving as he tried to make it out of the room. This wasn't what he wanted. But it was too late. At least now he didn't have to make a hasty exit. He found the master bedroom easily upstairs. Every place that something might be kept, Solo tore into. The closet, beneath the bed, cabinets, everywhere.
He couldn't find anything other than normal family photos. Leaving the pile behind he checked the rest of the house. A few storage closets were torn open and destroyed as Solo avoided the living room and continued his quest. Eventually the only room left was the little girl's. Knowing what this man was capable of, Solo wasn't too surprised.
He had to find those pictures soon. The house smelled like death already. Feeling an odd sense of guilt he tried to search the girl's room carefully. In her closet there was a set of drawers. The bottom one seemed large compared to the small amount of things kept inside. Pulling back the bloody hand that had shoved a knife into his fellow killer's chest, he broke through the false bottom and tore the fake wood out. A small folder was there, and inside were twenty years worth of the worst kind of hobby.
Everything was starting to get fuzzy to Solo. He took one picture out of the folder, dropping the rest on top of the corpse. He finally took a moment to look at his gunshot wound. It burned and he knew that it was dangerous. There was no exit wound, so that meant the bullet was somewhere in his chest. The blond dry heaved again at the thought of digging the bullet out himself. Finally he left the house; blood splattered and racked with pain every shuddering stride he took.
The sun was barely rising, and Solo was thankful that no one had seen him escape. Soon he'd be to the halfway point. Where the colony became disgusting and poor. Then it was just a fifteen minute run to his home. Or wait, was his home the other way. The blond stumbled into an alleyway and collapsed. His head was pounding with every heartbeat. So much blood. That much blood can't be good. Suddenly feeling cold and sleepy he curled up on his side, hoping that no other thieves would find him while he took a little nap.
Even the sounds of the approaching sirens weren't enough to make him get up. Although some little part of his mind warned that 1) there were sirens coming, most likely the police looking for him, and 2) the sun was up and he'd broken another promise to Duo.
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Duo ran through the tarp and looked around, praying to see a familiar blond. But only the boy Ryan was here, sitting on the couch and apparently singing to himself.
"Solo why don't we get to sing? Annie does. So does Oliver Twist. I think we should take it…up…" Looking up the boy finally realized that it was not his leader who'd burst in.
"Ryan, is Solo here?"
The redhead shook his head. He looked a little worried now at the expression on Duo's face and stood up.
"No, we haven't seen him since last night. Is something wrong?"
Duo's stomach clenched up and he didn't think he could answer the boy right now. The images of the slaughtered family, with the pictures spread around on the ground. He knew that Solo did it. The knives that were found on two of the victims were his. There was no telling what Solo would do now. He's become a vigilante and killed two innocent people. And the blood trails leading around the house and out the front door were not comforting.
"I'm sure he's fine. But try and find us if he contacts any of you."
His voice was harsh from emotion but Duo tried to smile to Ryan. He seemed fine with this falsity and sat back down for a nap on the couch.
Heero waited outside and looked up as Duo came out into the midday sunshine. He looked like he's been through hell. Which he most likely had.
"They haven't seen him. Where should we check next?"
"The police are checking the morgue, considering the blood loss and all. We should start looking anywhere else he might go."
Duo could think of a few of Solo's usual haunts in the area and nodded shakily. Despite all that had happened, Heero wrapped an arm around the smaller boy's shoulders and kissed his hair. He could feel Duo sigh against him, before they separated and headed off.
'One killer down. One to go.'
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Oh the speed! The speed with which I am updating! considering how college is now I'm uber-surprised at how fast this update was finished. We're getting to some of my favorite parts of the story. I'm still not hearing too many theories, but that's okay. Tell your friends… and don't forget that if you put a fic on your alert list you'll get an email whenever I update. I use it all the time. Later readers.