Kyuuketsuki Duo: Beginnings Part 2
Consequences

Duo hungrily drank in the unfamiliar, hot liquid, foreign delights rushing through his system with each sip. The taste was irrelevant -- his entire mind was consumed by the sensation, the power, the pleasure, the peculiarly sweet pain. What was his, and what was the hunter's, he did not know. There was only the power as he let go of himself, released his mind from the confines of his mortal shell to swim the strong currents of the energy being shared between the two powerful beings on the beach on that fateful night.

He knew not how long he spent drowning himself in the richness of emotion that flooded him, but he came back to himself when he felt his prey move, twitching helplessly in his light hold. Duo released his grip on the warrior, feeling his fangs retract as he sought to retrieve himself from the mindless ecstasy that had swept him away, his breath coming quick and shallow, Heero's heavy and labored. Duo stepped away from the cloaked hunter, absently licking the blood from his lips as he calmed himself. He had no clear idea of what had just happened, but he knew that he liked it, and he knew that it was right.

Heero stared at the boy with wide eyes, hand clasped to the wound on his neck that had already stopped bleeding. How could he, warrior and hunter... this mere slip of a man-child...? No answers were forthcoming as he fled from the scene, fading into the concealing shadows of the night, his mind in turmoil and confusion.

He found the quiet that he sought in the darkness, but found no peace. The boy's power yet infected his system, throwing his senses off-kilter and his mind off-balance. It had been a surprising experience, to say the least. How had the guardian's heir managed to overwhelm him, he who was the great warrior-hunter of the east? He had never been bested before, yet tonight, he had fallen to a mere boy, an untrained mortal. How was this so?

The conumdrum defied his understanding. Had it been the sheer force of the boy's power? No, Heero had stood amongst the most powerful of the Shinma, in the presence of the more intimidating creatures of the netherrealms, and had never been awed into submission. He had spent quite enough time among powerful beings to realize that quantity of power meant nothing if one did not know how to wield it properly. Granted, the boy was the heir to a guardian's unique power, but that alone ought not to be enough to guarantee a victory.

Had the fey quality of the power, the unique tang, captivated him and lured him into a moment of weakness? No, Heero was not some lowly beast, to be easily distracted by shiny objects. Had he frozen in the face of one not yet baptized in blood? No, he had gazed into the eyes of his prey many times before, and never feared what he saw there. Had he merely been surprised? Caught off guard by the unexpected flavor of power exposed this night? That was an exceedingly poor excuse for one of his caliber. Even worse, had he grown complacent during the chase? Had the uncertainty of possibility or completion rendered him unfocused? Had the completion of the hunt left him strangely unwilling to see it end?

He wanted to find out, to know about this boy and about himself. He needed to categorize this new and disturbing element that had just turned his life upside-down. If there was one thing that he had learnt, it was that one had to fight for survival, and only if one was strong, would one survive. The boy had more than survived, this night. He had tasted the warrior's blood, just as Heero had tasted his, but if he were to choose a victor in that confrontation, he would have to admit defeat to the heir. The boy had survived. Then by definition, he must possess some sort of strength, even mortal and untrained and ignorant as he was, to have overcome someone who was, all modesty aside, one of the best. But there were so many definitions of strength. Which one would apply to the boy? If this had been the boy's raw potential, what then, would be the power of the potential fully trained and realized?

As the effects of his exposure to the heir's power faded and the shock of defeat wore off, his normal clarity of mind returned. Rather than being angry at the situation, he found it rather... curious. He was in a rather peculiar set of circumstances. It was too late for himself; he readily recognized that. He had failed in his duty, likely through no fault but his own, and it would likely not be forgiven, nor forgotten, by his masters. His life was already theirs to take or use as they pleased. This failure would surely earn him no bonus points.

Should he try to redeem himself? Finish the task assigned to him and retrieve the heir? Or should he merely accept his fate as one vanquished, and go with grace from the house of life? If the Shinma decided to discard him, they would not allow him to merely slip away unheeded into the night. Perhaps, however, it was professional pride that forbade it, even if it would not save him. Perhaps it was his tidy habit of always finishing what he had started. Perhaps he was still unready to believe that he should fall without a fight, and without honor. Whatever it was, he found himself longing for another confrontation with the guardian's heir. He would have this issue resolved, one way or another.

*****

Duo wound his way home in a fog, his movements automatic as he followed the familiar trail. A part of him wondered why he wasn't screaming in terror, confused or in pain, repulsed or disturbed. A part of him wondered why he hadn't discovered his power sooner. And yet another part of him wondered who the mysterious man was, why he had been sent to find him, and just what the hell was going on.

But the majority of his mind was elsewhere, flying on wings of power, sweeping through the land as if truly experiencing it for the first time, and still, he felt empty. He could feel the remnants of tingle on his skin, and his body remembered the crackle of energy and the metallic tang of blood, but still, he knew there was more he was missing. His life was a thousand questions that never been answered, and still, he felt as if more questions had been raised this night than had been solved. He had spent his life trying to find those answers, and now he was a few steps closer to solving the mystery that was himself, but now that he had had a glimpse of the final solution, he was only more dissatisfied at not having the vision of the entire picture.

And of all the questions that he asked himself every day, the one question that he most wanted answered remained untouched.

Why had his parents dropped him off at the orphanage?

He felt that that one question held the key to everything. Find the answer to that one question, and he would know the answers to them all. No one else knew that he had been forsaken by his parents. As a very young child, he had been left on the doorstep of the old church in the middle of the night, old enough to remember that his mother had a heart shaped face similar to the one he saw in the mirror, old enough to recall his father's hearty laugh. Young enough to have been sufficiently traumatized by the abandonment that he refused to speak to anyone for a year. And afterwards, he had never told anyone what little he remembered of his first years.

Thoughts of his parents led his mind to reach out towards the two people that had become his parent figures, Father Maxwell and Sister Helen. His thoughts zoomed over the landscape, senses sensing things they had never sensed before, as they flew towards the old Maxwell church. He cruised over the untended field of wildflowers lying dormant this time of year. He sensed the life of the ants in the dirt, in their neverending quest to forage for sustenance. He felt the starlight tickle his face. He heard the cool night wind whispering to him of disaster as it rushed past. He smelled the faint whiff of smoke it bore, and with the realization came pain.

Duo tripped over nothing in the path, falling to the ground with a harsh thud, overcome by the sudden onslaught of images that were attacking his brain even as he instinctively drew his thoughts back to himself. He had seen the glaring light of fire, a cold agony and an anguished despair, the menacing shadows in the darkness, and he knew that the church was in danger. He struggled to his feet, concentrating on shutting the vision out as he sprinted the rest of the way home, more swiftly than he had ever run before, but he had no time to marvel at that now as he raced the messenger winds, somehow seeing the battered path before him with clarity in the faint starlight.

He arrived at the flaming remains of the church. Bodies littered the holy ground, some mutilated and discarded, some writhing in pain, covered in blood, some grinning in faroff bliss as they were tortured by dark creatures. Duo saw them and recognized them all, and felt the lassitude in his mind melt into anger. He howled in righteous fury, feeling his power gather within him into a coldfire core.

He attracted the unknown assailants' attention. They turned as one towards he who dared to interrupt their feeding, and as one converged upon him.

::You are the guardian.::

Duo heard the voice in his head, a combination of many voices into one, clashing together into a discordant harmony that made him long to clasp his hands to his ears, even knowing that it would be useless in shutting out the awful cacophony.

"Who are you?" he demanded, his anger only serving to focus his thoughts. He almost regretted asking as the inside of his head resounded with the raucous laughter of the many, grating upon every nerve in his body, and producing the creepy sensation of having some vile substance crawling over his skin.

::We are Shinma. Those who are both gods and demons.::

His consciousness was pierced by the failing heart beats of his former tormentors, his anguish building as, horrified, he heard their groans and last dying breaths. He sensed the power of all of the life force that had spilled into the earth, and found himself wishing to taste it, and finally all the disgust and revulsion of the night caught up with him. His knees hit the bloodsoaked soil as he staggered beneath the burden. "Who am I?" he whispered painfully into the night.

::You are the guardian. That which keeps vigil over the boundary between this world and ours.:: The shadows shifted, the forms merging and separating again and again in a dark kaleidoscope of non-color. It divided, and a part came to slither over him and around him, leaving an evil chill in its wake. He struggled to his feet in an attempt to flee, but to no avail. He knew they were testing him for something, and there was nothing he could do about it. His power had been roused, but it was now only singing in response to the flux of power surrounding him. It was still a passive entity, seething beneath the surface, unable to come close to matching the sheer force of the roiling murk, yet it danced and shone for them as they plucked at its strings, manipulating and playing with it. He could almost feel it bleeding from all his pores to feed the evil around him. He tried to avoid the tenebrous tendrils as they reached out to him, but they had him surrounded, and there was no escape. ::You are ours.::

Duo could not even gasp at the simple and sudden proclamation, for abruptly he felt the darkness invade his body and permeate his cells, and he could move no more. He saw a black appendage reach out from the cloud of malevolence, stared in stunned horror as it formed itself into the shape of a hand, the hand of a monster, and watched in a terror so overwhelming that it seemed to belong to someone else, as the hand reached into his chest and contracted painfully around his heart.

TBC...

 

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