Yaay! New chapter! You guys are –so- going to disown me. XD

Enjoy!

Heero didn't know if he could put up with his mother any longer. He was sitting at the bar with the account books in his normal nightly routine before Midnight Masquerade opened...and he could hear her obnoxious voice float chillingly down from the upstairs loft as she spoke to Noin and Une.

"Nerve grating, isn't it?" Odin smirked knowingly, sliding into a stool next to him. "I wouldn't blame you if that alone was the reason you ran out on us. You at least have the liberty to leave, I'm stuck with her forever."

"And I've pitied you for it," Heero remarked dryly, snapping his ledger shut.

One of the entrance doors opened and Catherine slipped in, but before she could get out a greeting, her cell phone was ringing loudly.

"Hello?" There was a pause and she paled slightly. "I see...yeah sure, I can do that...all right, talk to you later."

"You look like you've seen a ghost," Odin joked.

"Yeah, that was one of my informants," she lied smoothly, shooting Heero a glance only he would understand. "The slayer named Duo is missing. They blame us for it, I need to know what Dorothy did to him before I go and try to make peace with these people."

"Well, she's upstairs primping herself, so you might want to do it now before I open this place up and she's distracted by all her newfound friends," Heero replied nonchalantly, though his mind was reeling. Duo went missing? How could he just up and go missing from an apartment full of people? "I'll come with you, just because you -are- human, and they'll believe it better if one of our kind came with you."

"Heero, that's suicide!" Odin objected violently, knocking his seat over as he jumped to his feet. "You will not go waltzing into a slayer's territory! That's the exact reason why we have associates like Catherine around!"

His expression went cold. "You don't control what I can and can't do. You never have," he said flatly, his tone matching the stone of his face. The red-haired woman came back downstairs with a neutral frown and Heero rose calmly from his seat, joining her on her way out. "So?"

"Nothing. Dorothy said she didn't know what I was talking about, but I know she's lying through her fanged teeth," Catherine seethed angrily. "How could he just vanish in a few seconds? I sat and kept watch all day. He didn't move a single damnable muscle. I put Lynelle on watch when I left to come here, she's the one who called. She said about twenty minutes after I left he start stirring and she went to go get Irea, and he was gone, just like that."

"Have you considered last night's theory then?"

"No one wants to consider that a possibility, us least of all. Unfortunately, we can't just ignore it, because it's looking more and more like our explanation," she sighed heavily.

"What's going to happen now?" Heero mused darkly.

Catherine had a disturbed expression on her face. "I don't know...but I do know that we're going to have two serious basket cases on our hands when we get back to the apartment."

"Wufei and Quatre," he nodded. "How is Wufei?"

"Both he and Trowa can't leave their beds for a week," she said sympathetically and recounted their sustained injuries. "Irea would like to keep Wufei down for two weeks with the state of his ribs and arm, but she knows she's lucky to even get a week out of that guy."

Heero smirked. "He's quite stubborn when he wants his way."

They were practically attacked by a frazzled Quatre when they entered and he demanded information out of them. They told him of their fruitless questioning, and that they should prepare for the worst.

"We will find a way to fix this!" the empath demurred determinedly. "We were able to help Wufei, so we'll just destroy Dorothy and stop this now."

"That's easier said than done," Heero returned sharply. "I think you don't seriously grasp the severity of this. My mother is vicious and cruel. She fought and killed her way to the place she is now. This is only another amusing game to pass time."

"Yes, well it's better to hope than to despair before you even try anything," Quatre replied crisply.

Before he could think of a response, Irea and Lynelle came out from the back of the apartment looking extremely vexed. "If someone does not go in there and shut that man up, I will murder him!" Irea said dangerously.

Heero took that opportunity to sneak out of the living room before Quatre decided to rip his head off as well. Wufei seemed to have fallen asleep, but the moment he heard approaching footsteps, he cracked a wary onyx eye open to see who it was.

"What the fuck is going on here?" the Chinese man asked angrily, attempting to sit up with an ugly wince.

"Stop it Wufei," Heero said, placing a hand gently on his shirtless chest to keep him down. "I can't allow you to be moving around, Catherine informed me of your week long bed rest."

He muttered curses under his breath and lay still. "I hate this. I hate being helpless and invalid when Duo needs me," Wufei adverted his face away from his intense Prussian gaze, staring at the wall.

"You're not the only one suffering here, so quit it with this 'Woe is me' act," Heero remarked harshly, a far cry from the delicate touch he had on Wufei's injured ribcage. "We're doing everything we can, and that's not much. Until we find him and figure out what's wrong, we're at a loss. The best thing you can do to help him is listen to Irea and the others and stay in bed. Let yourself heal up properly so you can fight your best."

"Are -you- giving me advice on a slayer's best fighting techniques?" Wufei said dryly, sending the vampire a sly smile. "You might want to watch yourself, Dorothy might come after you next and leave you like I am."

"What? No 'Thank you Heero for saving my life and putting your life at stake, no pun intended, more than once for us' or 'Thank you for being such a good friend even though you should be tearing my throat open'..."

Wufei turned a shameful shade of red. "I'm sorry," he sighed tiredly. "I seem to be apologizing a lot lately, and it's always to you."

"You make it sound like a bad thing," Heero replied, pretending to be hurt and started to pull his hand back.

"No! I didn't mean it like that-" he instinctively went to reach with the arm closest to the Japanese man, his shattered left, but failed and let out a low groan. "Fuck."

"Wufei-"

"Come on you two, some people are actually listening to doctor's orders and sleeping," Trowa grumbled suddenly, his voice full of sleep. "Try to think of it as a much needed vacation. Rather unconventional, but a vacation nonetheless."

"I would rather be out on the streets searching for Duo than on a vacation," Wufei drawled, saying the word 'vacation' as if it were something particularly foul.

"But you can't so get used it."

The Asian snorted, irritated and clearly in pain. As if on cue, Irea came creeping back in carrying several bottles of medications and fresh swathing. "Is it safe to come in here?" she asked amusedly.

"Here, I'll get out of your way-" Heero stood and made to leave.

"Don't you go anywhere, I need to you to assist me," Irea said, setting her things on the nightstand between the two beds. "You're the only one here I can trust with lifting them."

"How will I do it?" he asked, full of trepidation. "I'll hurt them."

"Not if you're patient and careful," she smiled warmly before going into full doctor mode. "Now Trowa's shoulder is completely immobilized, so you can lift him like normal, you just have to be soft when touching his shoulder and lift -very- slowly. I don't want any of those stitches in his torso to pop on me. Wufei's going to be difficult because...well, he's a difficult man. I can't help that one."

"I resent that," Wufei said scornfully.

"No, you -resemble- that," Trowa corrected smoothly, showing no change in expression as Heero sat him up as instructed, holding all his weight so the stitches didn't snap as Irea changed his bandages.

"All right, for Wufei, go over to the other side of the bed so you're not sitting against his left arm," Irea advised. "Support him with your arm along his spine, kind of like cradling a baby. It'll probably be best if you sit down behind him and lean him against your chest, I need him totally upright so I can look at the back his head properly."

Wufei felt awkward as the Japanese vampire slipped in behind him, one leg on either side of him, without jarring any of his injuries and settled him in the position Irea asked for, flush up against his warm body. He sat like this with Duo, when he would sit with him watching a movie or when his braided lover was in a particularly cuddly mood and crawled up into his lap when he was trying to read. To make it even worse, he was also aware of exactly how comfortable it was, and he felt dually guilty over his easy coziness when it wasn't Duo he was feeling it with...especially since he was almost naked.

He had known that what had been left of his shirt had been cut off so they could wrap up his ribs, but he hadn't realized that the Winner sisters had stripped him of his pants also, leaving him in naught but a thin pair of boxers.

Thankfully, Irea made quick work of changing the gauze on his head and doing what other adjustments necessary, though before Heero could get up and lay him back down, Quatre came in.

"We've got a problem," he said, his eyes shining with moisture. "A BIG problem. Catherine just got off the phone with Noin and Une. Clients coming into the club have been in an uproar over a renegade vampire killing others of their kind all over the city."

"Does anyone know what he looks like?" Wufei asked faintly, the sick, ominous knot in his stomach tightening painfully.

Tears slid down the blonde's cheeks as he sat on Trowa's bed. "A male with a slight build, thigh length brown hair, and violet eyes."

"Duo..."

"I'm glad you've finally come to your senses about things, for real this time," Une said, arching an eyebrow as she assisted her purple haired lover in closing up Midnight Masquerade.

"Yeah, well, you guys were right, I was wrong," Noin replied sourly, tossing her hand towel in a bin under the counter. "It was undignified to stoop to such low levels, even if they are slayers...and Dorothy just came in and took everything over. I nearly lost it all, and revenge just isn't worth it."

"How about we focus on a way to get rid of our...problem?" she muttered, kissing her on the back of her neck as she wrapped her arms around her waist.

"It's not that easy," Noin frowned. "We don't even know what really happened last night. Odin told me about earlier when Catherine came in."

"Everything's gotten out of hand, and we're stuck in the middle of it," Une shrugged, trying to be indifferent in spite of their precarious situation. "We just have to find a way to get ourselves out of this mess, somehow."

"Somehow being the key word," she remarked, reveling in her partner's warm embrace for a moment before grabbing a ring of keys off a hook on the wall. "Let me finish locking up, and then we can go upstairs. Tomorrow we'll think more about saving our asses."

Noin slid over the marble topped bar and walked over to the double doors. However, as she stuck the key into the lock, the doors blasted open and sent her flying back across the room.

"Who the fuck do you think you are?" Noin snapped angrily, glaring up at the imposing intruder. Shock instantly replaced the fury and all the color drained out of her face as her mind registered the sight in front of her.

"Lu...I think we should go upstairs now..." Une said numbly, completely fixated on the man she thought she recognized.

It was Duo, the person they had just been discussing, materialized before them as if summoned by their mere mentioning. Though it definitely wasn't the same slayer they had fought with last night.

He was lethally beautiful, with his unbraided hair falling in a glow of chestnut waves around him and an unearthly luminescence to his alabaster skin, but one look at his expression killed that divine radiance in an instant. Not even Dorothy at her finest could top the eloquently carved features of pure ice and calculated death that was his face.

Noin found herself utterly incapable of pulling herself back onto her feet. It was as if she were paralyzed in his amethyst gaze. And for the first time, she felt true fear.

"Ah, my darling, I was wondering when you would show up," Dorothy greeted dramatically, fluttering into the heavy standoff with unconcern about what was going on around her. "He'll be staying with me upstairs, I've sent Odin off to stay with Heero again."

The other women regained their senses as the blonde fawned over her new pet.

"Are you absolutely INSANE?" Une asked incredulously. "Do you know what you have done here?"

"Of course I do," Dorothy smiled winsomely, her fingers entwined in Duo's halo of hair as she held him close, now a lifeless doll at her mere touch. "I did what I do best. Whatever I want, whenever I want. Nobody can stop me. Now the real war begins."

Buwahahaha...what evil scheme is she plotting now! (dun dun dun)

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