Dun-dun-dun! Chapter three! Fear the cheesy fanfares! Bwahahahaha!

But seriously. Okay, not seriously. I can't be serious. I've tried, but it never seems to work. I wonder why? [thinks hard] Ow. Dislocated brain. Ow. Ow.

And I DO have something against Relena. I am the president of the Relena- Hater's Club. I even made a cool badge with the URL of a great site on it for the members. Who wants to join?

To Patricia16- Are you sure you're not just feeling sorry for me? Cause if you are, it's making me feel better anyway. Heehee... Anyway, I'm updating as fast I can, what with all the other stuff I'm working on, like my other stories [throws a fit because she's stuck on The Ties That Bind] and my websites.

To Comechatcha- What explains thing?

To Dreamwinds- Lol. I'm glad you like it. I'm one of three or four people who know some of these characters, so it's okay.

To ZmajGoddess- No, it wasn't an accident. Not unless he was trying to break the table and hit my CD player on accident. Glass bottles full of soda simply do not break on electronics on their own, my friend. And Trowa's not a big bad demon thingy; he's actually really nice, he just doesn't like bullies. Duo's not a wimp. He has his reasons, and he'll get better later on. The whole point of this story is Duo getting better at being a demon.

To Mystery-child-001- I'm glad you like it. I tried to make Duo as cute and innocent as possible, considering he's a powerful demon and has killed people. And does that 'so far' an implication that it won't be as good later on? You're hurting my feelings over here, people.

Okay, I think that's everyone. Let's get on with the story.

"Get out of my kitchen, you second-rate thief!" Trowa winced at the heavy sound of metal hitting metal resounded through the small apartment.
"I r'sent that, wench! Ow!" Tasuki and Beck were definitely fighting again. "Tro," Tasuki said, wandering into the living room with one hand rubbing the side of his face, "ya gotta git ridda tha' crazy wench."
"She wouldn't hit you half as often if you'd stop calling her 'wench' and kissing her every time you get the chance." Trowa advised, turning the page of the old, tattered book in his lap.
"I was here firs." Tasuki said sullenly, stomping back into his bedroom. "Call me when th grub's done." He added before closing his door.
Beck walked into the living room, her hair falling into her eyes, her apron falling off one shoulder, and a dripping ladle held in her hand like weapon. "I! Hate! Him!" She screamed, throwing the ladle at Tasuki's door hard enough to crack the wood. "You hear me, you bastard?! I hate you!" With that, she stomped back into the kitchen.
Trowa sat blinking on the sofa for about a half a minute before he closed his book, picked up the phone, and dialed Duo's number.
"Hey, Duo?" He said when his fellow demon answered. "I think I'm going to spend the night at your place tonight, okay? Beck and Tasuki are at it again, only more so this time. Uh-huh. Okay. Yeah, don't worry about it. Okay, see you later."
One hastily-packed bag and a quick note on the TV later, Trowa slipped silently out of his apartment and started across the dark city.

"I really regret letting her stay with us until her house is ready again." Trowa said with a sigh, rummaging through Duo's freezer. "Do you have anything in here besides frozen dinners and ice cream?"
"Not really." Duo said, blushing slightly. "I... like ice cream a lot. What happened to B-beck's house, anyway?"
Trowa laughed, finally choosing a small carton of mint-chocolate-chip and grabbing a spoon. "A friend of hers by the name of Lien tried baking a cake as a surprise for her and wound up burning the place down instead." He plopped down on the couch and started eating his for once unhealthy dinner. "This is about the third or fourth time he's done this, too."
"The thought's what counts, though.." Duo pointed out, pausing in the systematic inhalation of a frozen TV dinner. "He was trying to be nice."
"Yes, but he has the attention span of a knat." Trowa said. "He was trying very hard to concentrate on the cake, but then he found out she had an anime he'd never seen and he sat down to watch it. The kitchen was totally up in flames before he remembered he should check on his food."
"That was... absentminded of him." Duo said, blinking.
"That's the understatement of the week."

"They came to school together?!" A voice shrieked from ten or so feet below Duo, almost startling him off his narrow perch.
"I know!" Another girl exclaimed. "They might as well have been holding hands! I've never seen Maxwell so red!"
Duo groaned under his breath. He and Trowa seemed to be the only thing the girls at school gossiped about anymore, save for each other. It was fast approaching the point of being irritating; he hated people talking about him behind his back, especially when it was stuff like this.
"Are you sure you're not just being romantic about it, Catherine?" The shrieker asked dubiously. "Maxwell's always red as a beet. Maybe Trowa's just trying to be friendly, like Quatre and that Japanese girl of his."
"I'm telling you, Relena, there is something going on with those two!" Catherine asserted. "It's obvious if you know what to look for."
"Oh, and you do?" Relena asked archly.
"As a matter of fact, I do. I was adopted by a gay couple, remember?" Catherine reminded the other girl with a tone of smug superiority. "I definitely know what I'm talking about; Trowa and Maxwell are as gay as they come, and smitten with each other to boot."

Trowa buried his face in his hands and counted slowly backwards from ten. When he reached zero, he looked Relena Peacecraft right in the eye and kept a tight rein on his temper.
"Once more, Miss Peacecraft," he said as calmly as he could, "and try not to shriek this time."
"I asked you if you were Duo Maxwell's boyfriend." The brunette dunce repeated slowly, as if talking to an idiot.
"Wherever did you get such a ridiculous idea?" Trowa demanded, blinking at her. "I am most assuredly not Duo's boyfriend. Forgive me for saying so, but you as a romantic interest for either of us is a more plausible notion."
"But you came to school with him this morning!" She protested, a stubborn mask of denial covering her features. "You talk to him all the time, and you both disappear every day at lunch!"
"I'm his only friend in this hellhole." Trowa said flatly, his voice dropping to a dangerously low tone. "If I spend the night at his house, that does not mean he is my boyfriend. If I'm the only person he feels it safe to talk to, that is not my fault, nor is it his. Do you have anything else you'd like to say, or are you going to leave me alone now?"
Relena looked about to respond waspishly, but thought better of it, turning instead and flouncing to her seat.
"Dude." The boy behind Trowa, a tall boy with dark, messy hair named Gawl said, clapping Trowa on the shoulder. "You are my hero. If you want her dead, I'll gladly kill her for free."
Kyoji, the boy next to Gawl, kicked his friend in the shin, frowning. "It's unseemly to speak that way, Gawl." He said, as serious as he always was. "No matter how you feel about her, she is still a lady and a human being."
"I beg to differ." Gawl said. "I think she's an alien. A male alien. She has absolutely no feminine grace, Kyoji. Just looking at her gives me the creeps."
"Don't let Ryo hear you say that." Kyoji unbent enough to smile. "He's fallen for her, you know."
Gawl shuddered, theatrically, making a face. "That's cruel, Kyoji. Don't tell me stuff like that. You know I'm sensitive."
"As a brick wall." Trowa muttered, hiding a smile of his own.
"Why's everybody ganging up on me?" Gawl asked the ceiling, pouting. "You'd better not fall on me, either. People teasing me is bad enough. I don't need buildings joining in, too."
"Talking to the ceiling again, Gawl?" Miss Mizuno, the slim, pretty Biology teacher, smiled herself as Gawl fell out of his chair trying to sit up straight.
"This ain't fair." He complained, climbing back into his seat. "I wanna go home."
"Nothing doing, Gawl." Miss Mizuno said. "We have a test today, and you don't want to have to take the make-up. That one's twice as hard."

"Something's seriously wrong here." Trowa said, staring at the scene before him.
"How so?" Beck asked, flipping the page of her manga.
"Well, for starters, you're using Tasuki as a backrest." Trowa noted, tossing his overnight bag in the corner. "Tasuki isn't complaining about it or kissing the top of your head. I could swear that's anime on the TV screen. None of the furniture is broken. The building is still standing."
"An?" Tasuki asked, watching the TV with mild interest.
"And which one of you is a robot made by the other to hide the fact that you've been brutally murdered in your sleep?"
"That would be him." Beck said, absently shifting position. "Tasuki's not smart enough to build a robot. Come to think of it, neither am I. We just reached an agreement while you were gone, Trowa."
"And what agreement is that?" Trowa sat down on the chair, as his roommates were taking up the whole couch.
"He stops torturing me, I stop hitting him." Beck explained calmly. "And my tummy hurts, so I'm not up for any fighting." She added.
"Oh. That's good to know. I'm going to bed, you two. I've had a very tiring day." Trowa stood up and wandering back to his bedroom, muttering under his breath about brainwashing.

Duo sat on his couch, idly flipping through the channels. Not that there wasn't anything good on; he'd seen five things he would've been glad to watch at any other time, if he hadn't been so distracted.
His mind was involved in a long, complicated argument with itself at the moment, discussing something Trowa had said that morning. So while his brain yelled out the pros and cons of getting training, his hand clicked away.
Part of his thought center freed itself long enough to tell his hand to turn off the TV and turn on the CD player. Maybe background music would help resolve his whole internal struggle thing.
He thought back over the times he'd lost control in the past while 'This Isn't What We Meant' pounded through his small apartment. There was the time he'd burned down his school, the time he'd accidentally blown up a few empty cars, the earthquake he'd caused, and those boys he'd killed.
"Maybe training wouldn't be such a bad thing." He said out loud, ruthlessly suppressing the memory of the five twisted, bloody corpses he'd left in that back alley. "If I don't learn to control my powers, I could kill someone else." The part of his mind that always argued for the sake of argument shut its yap and left him alone. Training it was.
"I hate this song." He said suddenly, throwing a rubber ball at the power button on his stereo. "Why do I even have that CD?" Halfway through the chorus, the song cut off, and the brunette was able to nap in relative peace.

"It's not working, Trowa." Duo said for what seemed like the hundredth time in the past hour, dropping his hands in defeat and plopping down on the ground.
"Defeatist." Trowa accused good-naturedly, sitting down in front of Duo. "It's not working because you don't believe it'll work, and that doubt is getting in the way of your power."
"Oh, is that all?" Duo asked sarcastically. "Well, how do you know I can do this in the first place? It's way hard!"
"Did you just talk back to me?" Trowa demanded incredulously. "Duo, does this mean you're finally getting a backbone?"
"Shut up." Duo muttered, blushing a little. "I'm tired and sore, my head hurts, and I still can't control the littlest bit of energy in my body. I'm irritable."
Trowa couldn't help it; he burst out laughing, burying his face in his hands.

When Trowa made it back to his apartment later that night, the relationship between his roommates had gotten worse. Not only were they both sitting on the couch and not fighting, but the were both fast asleep, Beck curled up in Tasuki's lap with her arms wrapped around his neck.
He stared at the two for about a minute, then shook his head and started for his room. "I give up." He muttered, quietly closing the door. "I'm never going to understand those two."
He put his things away and stripped off his shirt, then decided he'd better turn off the TV and light, at least. He slipped out into the living room again and turned off all electronics, pausing to smile at the fact that Tasuki's hand had found its way to Beck's thigh. He was so in for a beating when she woke up.

Yes, it's short. I know this, because I wrote it. Now review, and chapter four might be longer.