Chapter 15
The group stood in the Witch Doctor exhibit, sighing and shifting impatiently as Duo tried to argue with Heero.
"But I can play it!" Duo insisted loudly, reaching around Heero to get the piece of paper with the drum sequence.
"The longer you stand in my way, the longer we will be here." Heero growled.
"Just let him play it, Heero..." Quatre sighed from the wall. "If he starts messing around, then you can pull him off."
Heero hesitated, which gave Duo the opportunity to snatch the paper. "Alright! Let's see...uh..." He glanced from the paper, up to the drums, and focused on the original player, sitting behind the drums. Behind the set, an off-color witch doctor doll sat. He had scraggly hair down the back of his head, two small bones pierced through his pointed nose and a small mass of black hair set on his chin. Two heavy drum sticks were crossed in his hands. Duo snickered at the figure and glanced at Heero. "Hehe...kind of reminds you of J, doesn't he?"
Heero didn't respond, but did give the character a long, hard look.
Rei frowned from the wall opposite Quatre. (Who is this J person?) She turned to ask Treize, but his equally confused expression made her question pointless to ask. (I'll have to ask Heero later.)
"Just play the sequence, or I will do it." Heero commanded firmly, obviously not amused by the likeness of Doctor J to the stuffed witch doctor.
Duo rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah..." He gave a short sigh and plucked a drum stick from the witch doctor's shriveled hand. "Ti, ka, ka...we, bo, ka..." He slowly sounded out the drum beats. Then, biting his lip, he gently beat out each one on the correct drum. "Next one is...ti, bo, ti," He thumped on the two drums needed. "And we, ka, we, ti." He tapped the last beats out and smiled a little too smugly as the section of wall Relena happened to be leaning on gave way and she dropped to the floor with a short cry of surprise.
She looked indignantly up at Rei as the others made their way over. "You know you could have told me this was where the door would open!" She hissed.
Rei rolled her eyes and leaned down towards Relena. She lowered her voice. "I did tell you remember? But you just 'hmph'ed at me and looked away." Rei flashed a classic 'I-told-you-so' look and reached out her hand to help Relena up.
Relena pursed her lips and stood up on her own.
Trowa watched the exchange silently from a few steps away. (Relena will not be able to stay passive for long, especially if she really believes Rei started that fire.) He stopped a frown that edged its way to the front of his mind and followed an unnaturally happy Duo, who had gotten an eyeful of interest when Rei had leaned over to explain to Relena.
The room that had opened was oddly colored, with an ugly red clay tint to the walls and ceiling. The floor was deep blue and so were a set of stairs that disappeared into a passage in the wall. A large jade dragon was set on a stand in the corner, which would have looked valuable, had it not been chipped and scratched in several places. A stone head, or two heads rather, set on the floor next to the door. It was of a Norse god, a man with a face on either side of his head and a horse beneath each side. On the other side was a perfect, most likely fake, skeleton. It had on a metal helmet and its bony hand clutched a spear to its side.
"There's a Wood Ixupi in the figure across from the dragon." Rei called from behind Zechs and the group directed their attention there. A statuette of a man holding up a boat stood on the corner that led the room away from their line of sight.
Heero nodded to the others and stepped forward, gun drawn. A few cautious moments and all decided it was clear. Quatre and Trowa had already investigated the small room up the three stairs in the wall. A large, ornamental harp and a wooden bull stood in the otherwise bare room.
"Rei!" Quatre called. "Come look at this." Rei leaned her head around the corner and moved into the room, stepping over the few stairs in the doorway.
Rei stretched her arms. "What? The harp?"
"Yes, it plays on its own." Trowa explained, turning away to focus back on the harp.
"You have to play Repeat with it, and that bull will open to give you a talisman." Rei pointed at the large bull in the corner.
"Okay then." Quatre sighed and turned back to the harp.
Trowa backed away to the wall and let him have space. Quatre reached out and plucked a string, and the harp immediately responded by sounding a short melody, then stringing a single note. Quatre repeated this note and then another two played. He played these two as well and continued playing until he was up to eight notes. He hesitated over the last one. (This one? Or was it this one?) He moved his hand back and forth between the two strings, but finally decided on the one to the right. The harp right away played, not the next sequence, but a somber melody too complicated to copy note to note.
"Hey, I think you did it!" Duo looked over at the bull hopefully, but it remained closed.
"No, I messed up." Quatre sighed and plucked another string to start it up again. This time, he made it past the eight note mark and all the way to ten notes, and after the last string played, the harp sounded out an upbeat melody something creaked from the far side of the room.
Rei turned her head just fast enough to see a black mass shoot at her and splat against her chest. "What is..." She reached down and tried to pull at the thing, but she couldn't get her fingers under it and the thing only spread further to cover all of the white cloth that had covered her chest.
Suddenly, the cold hit her. A piercing, icy cold darted through her chest and worked its way down to her Mars crystal. (No!) She dug harder at the black substance, but it clung to her to tightly. The beating of her Mars crystal dimmed and her breath came ragged as her energy was pulled up in her chest. (No! I can't let you take me!) Rei clenched her teeth and dug her fingernails into the thing, finally getting a hold on it. (Get off my power!) Wrenching the substance off her chest, she flung it to the wall, where it darted away around the corner, closely followed by a barrage of gunshots, making craters in the wall.
Silence descended on the room, broken only by Rei's heavy breathing and a few soft clinks as Heero absently put the new talisman in the bag.
Rei slowly opened her eyes to see Heero crouched in front of her. "Say something." He commanded.
"I'm cold." Rei suppressed a shiver, but failed as Heero's icy blue eyes cut into her. "Just cold."
He waited a moment before continuing. "What was that?"
"I...don't know." Rei closed her eyes and scanned through her memory for anything that would have gone after her very power like that.
(She doesn't know?) Relena looked up at the words and stepped around Zechs to in front of Rei. "You don't know?" She tightened her hands. "What if that had been Heero, or any one of us? You told us you had done this all before, yet you have failed to recall anything other than the simple basics!"
"Relena." Zechs warned.
"There's a lot of things different!" Rei shouted, clenching her hands on the floor.
"Why are we following you in the first place?" Relena turned her head to focus on the boys and men around her. "She didn't know about the zombie creatures, and now this thing shows up and she doesn't have a clue? We don't know anything about her! She's been leading us around by our noses, and she has only told us what we need to know to keep ourselves from dying! Please, someone tell me why we are following someone who could very easily be trying to kill us!" She looked around pleadingly.
A tense silence once again descended. Rei closed her eyes tightly, her face hidden behind her hair. (Please, someone say something! My own defense means nothing now! Please help!) But no help came and Relena continued to look from face to face, looking for an answer.
"Someone just tell me." She shrugged her shoulders, her face a mask of confusion.
Rei swallowed hard. (Why am I leading them? That thing tried to take my power; I'm leading them into a trap everywhere I take them!) She opened her eyes, her face still hidden. (I can't do this to them.)
"Well?" Relena asked and immediately, the temperature in the room shot up and everyone gasped as their lungs seemed to deflate in the sudden heat.
Rei whipped around and hooked Heero in the stomach, pushing just enough power into it to take him down. (I'm sorry, Heero.)
Snatching up the bag, Rei tore out of the room leaving plenty of power to keep them on their knees for a few moments.
And it was at least a minute they were on the floor, trying to catch their breath. Eventually, the heat drifted away, and they stood up, wiping their faces of sweat.
"What was...that?" Duo breathed.
"I proved her to be an enemy...and she ran." Relena said heavily, straightening.
"Exposing an enemy like that was a mistake." Heero said firmly. "You should have waited until she proved herself, then we would have all been ready for an extreme reaction."
"I would say that was fairly extreme..." Quatre commented quietly.
"Temperature controls." Trowa said decisively.
"Huh?" Duo put his hand on the back of his head.
"She was here before we dropped down." Trowa explained quietly. "She may know much more about this place than she initially told us."
"I saw her clench her hand when the ship thing in the other exhibit blew up." Relena crossed her arms. "She must have had the control in her hand."
"She's gone." Wufei called from the doorway.
Heero closed his eyes. "Of course."
Treize walked up behind him. "We ran all the way to the Burial Rites room, but she wasn't anywhere."
"Like the temperature controls, she may know of some easier ways around the museum," Relena rolled her eyes. "If that's even what this place is." She sighed and looked at Heero. "What do we do now? She took the bag."
Heero stood in the cool silence, as everyone waited for someone to fill Rei's place and tell where to go. (How could she hit that hard?) He recalled the heat that hit his stomach and turned to look at the hollow, now empty bull behind him. (Is she the enemy?) The waves of heat still coming off the wooden bull hit his skin and small goosebumps prickled his arm. He also recalled the subtle 'I'm sorry' Rei had slipped just before she slammed into him.
Yey! I finally got this chapter done!!! I'm sorry for the long wait, but I haven't been able to work on it at all...(I know, excuses, excuses...) But I hope it was worth the wait! Okay, I will have to admit, this seems to be about the size of all my chapters recently, but it's better than nothing! Anyway, how do you like the little twist I added??? I thought it would make things interesting... Well, as always, review!
The group stood in the Witch Doctor exhibit, sighing and shifting impatiently as Duo tried to argue with Heero.
"But I can play it!" Duo insisted loudly, reaching around Heero to get the piece of paper with the drum sequence.
"The longer you stand in my way, the longer we will be here." Heero growled.
"Just let him play it, Heero..." Quatre sighed from the wall. "If he starts messing around, then you can pull him off."
Heero hesitated, which gave Duo the opportunity to snatch the paper. "Alright! Let's see...uh..." He glanced from the paper, up to the drums, and focused on the original player, sitting behind the drums. Behind the set, an off-color witch doctor doll sat. He had scraggly hair down the back of his head, two small bones pierced through his pointed nose and a small mass of black hair set on his chin. Two heavy drum sticks were crossed in his hands. Duo snickered at the figure and glanced at Heero. "Hehe...kind of reminds you of J, doesn't he?"
Heero didn't respond, but did give the character a long, hard look.
Rei frowned from the wall opposite Quatre. (Who is this J person?) She turned to ask Treize, but his equally confused expression made her question pointless to ask. (I'll have to ask Heero later.)
"Just play the sequence, or I will do it." Heero commanded firmly, obviously not amused by the likeness of Doctor J to the stuffed witch doctor.
Duo rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah..." He gave a short sigh and plucked a drum stick from the witch doctor's shriveled hand. "Ti, ka, ka...we, bo, ka..." He slowly sounded out the drum beats. Then, biting his lip, he gently beat out each one on the correct drum. "Next one is...ti, bo, ti," He thumped on the two drums needed. "And we, ka, we, ti." He tapped the last beats out and smiled a little too smugly as the section of wall Relena happened to be leaning on gave way and she dropped to the floor with a short cry of surprise.
She looked indignantly up at Rei as the others made their way over. "You know you could have told me this was where the door would open!" She hissed.
Rei rolled her eyes and leaned down towards Relena. She lowered her voice. "I did tell you remember? But you just 'hmph'ed at me and looked away." Rei flashed a classic 'I-told-you-so' look and reached out her hand to help Relena up.
Relena pursed her lips and stood up on her own.
Trowa watched the exchange silently from a few steps away. (Relena will not be able to stay passive for long, especially if she really believes Rei started that fire.) He stopped a frown that edged its way to the front of his mind and followed an unnaturally happy Duo, who had gotten an eyeful of interest when Rei had leaned over to explain to Relena.
The room that had opened was oddly colored, with an ugly red clay tint to the walls and ceiling. The floor was deep blue and so were a set of stairs that disappeared into a passage in the wall. A large jade dragon was set on a stand in the corner, which would have looked valuable, had it not been chipped and scratched in several places. A stone head, or two heads rather, set on the floor next to the door. It was of a Norse god, a man with a face on either side of his head and a horse beneath each side. On the other side was a perfect, most likely fake, skeleton. It had on a metal helmet and its bony hand clutched a spear to its side.
"There's a Wood Ixupi in the figure across from the dragon." Rei called from behind Zechs and the group directed their attention there. A statuette of a man holding up a boat stood on the corner that led the room away from their line of sight.
Heero nodded to the others and stepped forward, gun drawn. A few cautious moments and all decided it was clear. Quatre and Trowa had already investigated the small room up the three stairs in the wall. A large, ornamental harp and a wooden bull stood in the otherwise bare room.
"Rei!" Quatre called. "Come look at this." Rei leaned her head around the corner and moved into the room, stepping over the few stairs in the doorway.
Rei stretched her arms. "What? The harp?"
"Yes, it plays on its own." Trowa explained, turning away to focus back on the harp.
"You have to play Repeat with it, and that bull will open to give you a talisman." Rei pointed at the large bull in the corner.
"Okay then." Quatre sighed and turned back to the harp.
Trowa backed away to the wall and let him have space. Quatre reached out and plucked a string, and the harp immediately responded by sounding a short melody, then stringing a single note. Quatre repeated this note and then another two played. He played these two as well and continued playing until he was up to eight notes. He hesitated over the last one. (This one? Or was it this one?) He moved his hand back and forth between the two strings, but finally decided on the one to the right. The harp right away played, not the next sequence, but a somber melody too complicated to copy note to note.
"Hey, I think you did it!" Duo looked over at the bull hopefully, but it remained closed.
"No, I messed up." Quatre sighed and plucked another string to start it up again. This time, he made it past the eight note mark and all the way to ten notes, and after the last string played, the harp sounded out an upbeat melody something creaked from the far side of the room.
Rei turned her head just fast enough to see a black mass shoot at her and splat against her chest. "What is..." She reached down and tried to pull at the thing, but she couldn't get her fingers under it and the thing only spread further to cover all of the white cloth that had covered her chest.
Suddenly, the cold hit her. A piercing, icy cold darted through her chest and worked its way down to her Mars crystal. (No!) She dug harder at the black substance, but it clung to her to tightly. The beating of her Mars crystal dimmed and her breath came ragged as her energy was pulled up in her chest. (No! I can't let you take me!) Rei clenched her teeth and dug her fingernails into the thing, finally getting a hold on it. (Get off my power!) Wrenching the substance off her chest, she flung it to the wall, where it darted away around the corner, closely followed by a barrage of gunshots, making craters in the wall.
Silence descended on the room, broken only by Rei's heavy breathing and a few soft clinks as Heero absently put the new talisman in the bag.
Rei slowly opened her eyes to see Heero crouched in front of her. "Say something." He commanded.
"I'm cold." Rei suppressed a shiver, but failed as Heero's icy blue eyes cut into her. "Just cold."
He waited a moment before continuing. "What was that?"
"I...don't know." Rei closed her eyes and scanned through her memory for anything that would have gone after her very power like that.
(She doesn't know?) Relena looked up at the words and stepped around Zechs to in front of Rei. "You don't know?" She tightened her hands. "What if that had been Heero, or any one of us? You told us you had done this all before, yet you have failed to recall anything other than the simple basics!"
"Relena." Zechs warned.
"There's a lot of things different!" Rei shouted, clenching her hands on the floor.
"Why are we following you in the first place?" Relena turned her head to focus on the boys and men around her. "She didn't know about the zombie creatures, and now this thing shows up and she doesn't have a clue? We don't know anything about her! She's been leading us around by our noses, and she has only told us what we need to know to keep ourselves from dying! Please, someone tell me why we are following someone who could very easily be trying to kill us!" She looked around pleadingly.
A tense silence once again descended. Rei closed her eyes tightly, her face hidden behind her hair. (Please, someone say something! My own defense means nothing now! Please help!) But no help came and Relena continued to look from face to face, looking for an answer.
"Someone just tell me." She shrugged her shoulders, her face a mask of confusion.
Rei swallowed hard. (Why am I leading them? That thing tried to take my power; I'm leading them into a trap everywhere I take them!) She opened her eyes, her face still hidden. (I can't do this to them.)
"Well?" Relena asked and immediately, the temperature in the room shot up and everyone gasped as their lungs seemed to deflate in the sudden heat.
Rei whipped around and hooked Heero in the stomach, pushing just enough power into it to take him down. (I'm sorry, Heero.)
Snatching up the bag, Rei tore out of the room leaving plenty of power to keep them on their knees for a few moments.
And it was at least a minute they were on the floor, trying to catch their breath. Eventually, the heat drifted away, and they stood up, wiping their faces of sweat.
"What was...that?" Duo breathed.
"I proved her to be an enemy...and she ran." Relena said heavily, straightening.
"Exposing an enemy like that was a mistake." Heero said firmly. "You should have waited until she proved herself, then we would have all been ready for an extreme reaction."
"I would say that was fairly extreme..." Quatre commented quietly.
"Temperature controls." Trowa said decisively.
"Huh?" Duo put his hand on the back of his head.
"She was here before we dropped down." Trowa explained quietly. "She may know much more about this place than she initially told us."
"I saw her clench her hand when the ship thing in the other exhibit blew up." Relena crossed her arms. "She must have had the control in her hand."
"She's gone." Wufei called from the doorway.
Heero closed his eyes. "Of course."
Treize walked up behind him. "We ran all the way to the Burial Rites room, but she wasn't anywhere."
"Like the temperature controls, she may know of some easier ways around the museum," Relena rolled her eyes. "If that's even what this place is." She sighed and looked at Heero. "What do we do now? She took the bag."
Heero stood in the cool silence, as everyone waited for someone to fill Rei's place and tell where to go. (How could she hit that hard?) He recalled the heat that hit his stomach and turned to look at the hollow, now empty bull behind him. (Is she the enemy?) The waves of heat still coming off the wooden bull hit his skin and small goosebumps prickled his arm. He also recalled the subtle 'I'm sorry' Rei had slipped just before she slammed into him.
Yey! I finally got this chapter done!!! I'm sorry for the long wait, but I haven't been able to work on it at all...(I know, excuses, excuses...) But I hope it was worth the wait! Okay, I will have to admit, this seems to be about the size of all my chapters recently, but it's better than nothing! Anyway, how do you like the little twist I added??? I thought it would make things interesting... Well, as always, review!