Wufei stood frozen in his place, his eyes shifting between the blond and the black feline. Was he dreaming? The smoke was starting to clear, yells and groans no longer audible as Wufei assumed was due to the fact that the cat was no longer attacking. The black little creature gave a look of relief, her large cat eyes as excited as the wagging tail behind her.
Instinctively, he took aim at the unknown blond still not quite sure what to make of this whole situation. This had to be a dream! There was no other explanation! A talking cat? He would be sure to stop watching all those children shows before going to sleep.
Haruka raised her hands in the air, watching as the Chinese man tried to make sense of the scene. She herself was scouring for some way to explain this without spilling the actual truth behind this feline. If she were to do that, then questions about her own past would arise and she couldn't have that.
Four outlines of the Chinese man's comrades started to near through the haze, their attentive gazes still marred with tight-ended investigation. They could hear voices all of which were unfamiliar to them and when they came to see a little black cat adoringly gazing upon the blond character who was being gunned down by Wufei, they were confused.
"What's going on?" Quatre asked; gun still trained on the cat. Despite his ridiculous feeling for targeting this harmless house pet, he couldn't seem to withdraw his arms.
Wufei was speechless, his mind still unwilling to accept what had just happened. Just thinking about the response to Quatre's question seemed ludicrous. The cat spoke! The words grew larger within his head; his mouth however still clamped shut. THE CAT SPOKE! He shook his head.
"Tell them," he uttered simply towards the blond. "Tell them now!"
Haruka gulped. She had yet to figure out what to say, her mind jumbled in haywire at the topic. A welling sense of anger started throbbing in her chest, the black cat's foolish actions being the epicenter of her rage. Why the hell was she even breaking into this place? There didn't seem to be an obvious answer. Now Haruka only wished she hadn't addressed the cat by name.
"She's a genetically engineered cat," Haruka blurted praying silently that the lame answer would be sufficient. "I nabbed her from some mad scientist years ago."
"I don't understand," Quatre admitted, his brow scrunched in frustration that he still felt lost about the whole situation. What harm was there in the cat?
Wufei growled, shifting on his feet as he did so. "The cat was talking," he finally let out. The indigo-eyed American burst into a leaf of laughter.
"You've gotta be kidding me," he said looking at the face of the Chinese man. By the distressed brows and creased frown, Duo could see that he wasn't joking. "Really?"
"Yes," Haruka answered, hands still up. "But she's harmless, I swear!"
As if on cue, a blur of streaking white fur zoomed across the room towards Quatre. Shocked, he hastily stepped backwards, the billowing feline hissing by to hit the unsuspecting American.
"AH!" Duo yelled as he tried to pry the spastic thing from his already injured face. A tall male grabbed quickly at the back of the cat, his stark white body going limp in his hand.
"Artemis!" The black cat bellowed, the verdant eyes of the white cat's captor stoically gazing over them.
"So it does talk." He put the temporarily paralyzed male now known as Artemis next to the other feline, her small head nudging lovingly at the white one's head.
All eyes returned to the blond, her hands growing sweaty with anxiety. She had faced much more dangerous situations but it seemed that this one was the hardest by far.
"Care to explain how they could have gotten here?"
Haruka glanced in the direction of the Prussian eyed soldier who awaited her response and now too held a gun at her.
"I trained them," she lied. "I'm real paranoid about my safety so I trained them to find me if I don't check in with them every so often."
"Pfft, bullsh*t!" The American exclaimed, his face severely bloody from his encounter with the cats. Haruka almost felt sorry for him but shook away the notion.
"It's true," she tried. "I have a communicator in my watch, one that I use to contact them. Their communicators are in their collars. Seems I got too overwhelmed with all the recent news of the mission that I forgot to call them."
"So they come find you using explosives?" The unruly haired brunette spoke as monotonous as ever.
For the first time, Quatre assimilated that these cats were indeed the security breach they were sent after. A stern glance in their direction and he felt sick. How could such small animals bring so much destruction?
"Like I said before," Haruka insisted. "I'm paranoid. I gave them whatever I thought was necessary."
There was no sense of mockery in her voice nor was there any doubt cast deep in her hardened blue eyes. To be so adamant on a subject such as this, certainly she was telling the truth.
"Then why haven't we heard of them before?"
Haruka scoffed at the question. "You really think I would want others to know I had a pair of talking cats that I trained to find me in cases of emergency?"
Seemed reasonable enough, but the pilots couldn't bring themselves to accept the story. Conflicted, they stood there, weapons still drawn against Haruka who remained with her hands in the air. Luna had stayed quiet, anxiously sitting beside Artemis who still lay motionless. Perhaps breaking into this place wasn't such a great idea after all…
A long groan was heard, the Chinese man reluctantly lowering his arms. It was absurd, to say the least, that two talking cats were responsible for all this trouble, but being as he could sense no type of real danger present, he decided to put away his gun.
"Does Noin trust you?" He asked.
"Noin doesn't even know me. We barely met this morning. Before then, I was just a soldier under Prince Milliardo's unit."
Wufei groaned. "Then Milliardo can decide what he wants to do with you."
The other pilots nodded, uniformly escorting the blond and the two cats back to the meeting room. With a perturbed shake of her head, Haruka went without hesitation. Luna and Artemis had a lot of explaining to do when they were finished with this.
Haruka sat annoyed on the metal bed, her head buried deep in the palms of her hands. Milliardo had ordered that she be detained until further notice, not quite sure himself what to make of the whole issue. Aside from that, he was still frantic to find his missing sister and did not want to waste time with useless investigations that would not lead to Relena's whereabouts.
"Well, at least they put us together," Artemis voiced, his muscles now recuperating from the little jab he received from the green-eyed brunette who still remained unnamed. Haruka would be sure to ask him exactly which spot he hit for future reference…
Still unwilling to acknowledge the cats, Haruka laid down with her back turned to them. Certainly she wanted an explanation for their actions but at the moment, she didn't feel like hearing it.
"Haruka," Luna said, her paws lightly prancing closer to the blond. "If we think hard enough I'm sure we can come up with a way to escape!"
Haruka groaned, shaking her head. "I'm not escaping," she replied.
Flabbergasted, Luna sputtered for words, her little cat eyes blinking with uncertainty.
"B-but why not?"
"If you haven't noticed, Luna, this happens to be my life." She sat up, her glowering eyes piercing into Luna's. "I work for these people, they are the source of my livelihood. Not only that, but if I run, It'll make it seem as though I'm guilty of something. I'm confident that they won't find anything on me, I'll be let out eventually."
Luna frowned slightly ashamed that she had not considered that fact. She was just so accustomed to the girls being in grade school and not having to worry about frivolous things like work and what not.
"I'm sorry, Haruka, I wasn't thinking."
"Neither of us were," Artemis chimed in.
"I'll say," Haruka huffed, leaning back with her hands behind her head.
She took a deep inhale of breath and sighed. It was quite funny to spot Luna in the mist of a high anxiety security breach. Haruka smirked. The little black feline was dangerous, her deadly explosives, extensive computer knowledge and pointy claws…it was a wonder Haruka never realized just how powerful she was before…
"So," Haruka said clearing her thoughts as she again remembered what she had wanted to ask ever since she first spotted Luna. "You mind telling me what the hell you were doing when you broke into the Preventer's headquarters?"
Luna's eyes grew dim, Artemis too appearing with a tight frown. Immediately Haruka was concerned, her heart racing as she anticipated the answer.
"I had an urging, if you will, that I would find answers here."
"Yeah," Artemis spoke. "And usually Luna's urgings are right on."
The black feline nodded, Haruka leaning forward to listen.
"What kind of answers were you expecting to find?" she questioned.
Luna gulped hesitantly, her eyes shifting uncomfortably. Finally with a labored sigh, she responded with a statement that she assumed would tell all.
"Usagi-chan and Mamoru-kun have been kidnapped."
Night had come quickly, the five pilots finding themselves again in their own little pack apart from the rest of the team formed to locate Relena. After the incident with the blond who they learned was named Haruka and her two talking cats, very little progress was made. Scientists, historians and all types of intellectual minds labored over trying to decipher the symbols on the totem left in Relena's bedroom but were horribly unable, each lead eventually resulting in a dead end. With such luck, finding the princess was looking to be a tiring venture.
With a look at his watch, the Chinese man sighed knowing that soon he would have to leave. A lot of things had changed since he had last seen the other Gundam pilots, things that he wasn't even sure they were aware of. What, he wondered, would they think when they found out?
"Wufei," the voice of Sally Po was easy for him to recognize, his angular charcoal eyes moving to look at her. "You're free to leave as you usually do. If any leads come in I can always call you."
Sally Po was one of the few women in existence that he could stand, her knowledge of his current circumstances subjecting her to a sense of blind friendliness. He appreciated it, to say the least that she would consider his new lifestyle and with a silent nod he made his way to the door.
"Wo-ho!" Duo jumped, his now treated wounds already looking slightly better than before. "Where you headed?"
The question itself seemed to spark the interest of each pilot, their eyes peering curiously at Wufei's fleeting figure.
"Home," Wufei simply stated without slowing his pace.
"Can I come?" Duo asked innocently. Wufei scowled at him, the evident childishness the American always had still in tact despite the years that had passed.
"No," Wufei replied but to no avail. The faces of Trowa, Heero and Quatre were in close vicinity, Wufei sighing as he realized they would all be tagging along no matter what he said. It was a strange fact between them. Though they each started alone, once they all met each other, there was some unseen force that would always bring them together even if they were in the farthest outreaches of the universe.
With his keys, he unlocked the doors to his car, Yuy opting to leave his bike in the garage and hopping in the backseat. Duo jumped in front, his lopsided grin just the same as when Wufei had last seen it. Running his hands over his head, Wufei exhaled and got in to drive. What awaited them would surely bring shock to all his passengers. A smug grin on his face, he turned the key in his ignition and pulled out of the lot.
"Who are you?"
The approaching figures said nothing, their cloaked bodies hovering closer as she lay frozen in her bed. Hurling her covers at them, she made a mad dash for the door, an arm grabbing her in her plight. She opened her mouth to scream but was hindered by a rushed hand clamping itself over her lips. Her body flailed in attempts to get loose but her captor would not budge. In a last jerk from her hips she kicked up her legs aiming for the head of one figure only to kick off the top end of their staff. With muffled cries for help, she was dragged, a camouflaged vortex absorbing all that were present.
The small totem rolled beneath her bed, a small glow emanating from the engraved symbols until it again dimmed.
The dark lavender eyes peered in a trance, her raven-black hair pulled back in a neat ponytail. The fire had been showing her this event countless times, her research skills finally leading her to a name that matched the woman in the vision. A picture of the blonde woman lay on the cover of a political magazine, one that the young miko had stumbled upon by accident. She was far from civilization, her current stay being in the burning heat of Egypt. A member of her excavation team was strongly enthralled by the politics of the world and lugged with him his ever-growing collection of magazines that only spoke of politics. With a sigh, she called the fire to a low cinder, her heat-accustomed body lifting from its position on the ground.
She was in the middle of a dig, her instincts telling her that a new discovery was sure to follow but the promptings of the fire were something she learnt to never ignore. Walking out from her small solitude, her oldest archaeologist friend intercepted her.
"Dr. Hino," the man called out, hastily shuffling his feet to catch up to her. "You wanted to see me?"
She nodded in affirmation, picking up her bag along the way and throwing it over her shoulder. "I'm going away for a bit, I want you to overlook everything while I'm gone."
The man's eyes widened in worry, his mouth agape as he temporarily stalled in following her.
"B-but Dr. Hino, we're so close!"
She sighed, stopping to turn to him and placing a firm hand on his shoulder.
"I know," she said. "But I've got business that can't wait, I hope you can understand."
Before he could argue further, she proceeded on her path, a helicopter now flying into sight. It killed her to have to leave, but she knew it needed to be done.
"Sanq kingdom," she muttered. "Here I come."
Thank you everyone that reviewed! I truly appreciate it!
The Night Air: I'm glad I could catch your interest! Hopefully this chapter has managed to retain it...XD
angel313: Thank you for your review, hope you liked this chapter.
Lita of Jupiter: Heh yeah, I thought it would be interesting to throw Luna into the mix especially since I often leave the little feline advisors out a lot ^^ And hehe I forgot that Relena and Usagi had such similar features, didn't realize it til I read my summary complete accident ^^;
wolfspeaker01: Yeah, I agree. Wufei does seem the least likely to accept it. I hope that the reactions in this chapter were true to character. If not please feel free to tell me! And I hope you still find the story interesting.
IkariPanda: lol I must admit that the reason I put this story in this section is partially due to the fact that I didn't want to get reprimanded for starting another fic haha but the rest of the reason is because I wanted to see for myself if there was a difference putting it here instead of the usual place I like to use. So far, it seems the same! Hopefully, some of your ideas will come up soon in a new story from you *wink wink nod nod :P I do love to read!
Again, thank you guys for your reviews!
I was…really excited to write this chapter haha even though much didn't happen, I still liked it =] Anyways,
Thanks for reading!
And I hope you review!
JPandS