![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingPart III of "Lemonade," in which various things come out of nowhere. There's a bunch of talking and introspection that I couldn't figure out how to work around, but there's also a fight scene. And a cliffhanger, partly because I can do that if I want to, and partly because the chapter was just getting too long. :-)
---------------------------------------------
Lemonade
---------------------------------------------
Part III: In which various things come out of nowhere
Normally, walking in front of two guys she was thinking about jumping, Faith would've put some extra swing in her hips and made sure to casually flip her hair now and then, but right here and now, she didn't think that was a good idea. No telling what might pop up in a hell dimension, for one thing, and for the other, she was pretty sure strength and competence would turn Sasuke on more than acting girly. Duo, now... he acted like he'd jump anything that moved, but with the shadows she'd spotted in his eyes, she thought that was as much an act as it was real. And he was a strong enough fighter not to get intimidated by a Slayer, which was of the good.
They both seemed a lot tougher than normal, even though her senses read them as pure human. Which, come to think of it, might be why the Sarguls had gone dimension-shopping -- they needed bodies strong enough to hold magic that could take out Willow, but that wouldn't trip any Slayers' alarms. About the only people in her world who fit that bill were Slayers themselves, and they sure as hell wouldn't go down easy. Demons probably figured it'd be easier to trick or surprise people pulled through a portal.
Faith pictured the way Sasuke and Duo had come through the portals already swinging, and snorted.
Although... She absently flipped her knife from hand to hand as she walked, trying to put her thoughts in order. If the Sarguls were calling people dedicated to darkness, death, and vengeance, she kinda fit that bill herself. B fought the good fight because it was the good fight, and to protect Dawn and the Scoobies. Faith, though...
She hadn't had much of a life before she got Called, but then Pritchard, her Watcher, pulled her off the streets and away from her mom. She'd always been good at fighting, but nobody praised her before Pritchard. For a few months, she felt like it mattered what she did, felt like someone cared about her, even just a little -- and then Kakistos killed Pritchard in front of her. You damn bet she'd sworn vengeance, even though she had to start by running for help. Then she'd wanted revenge on B and her gang, then on herself, and finally on the fucked up world that made people like her. She knew vengeance inside and out.
She had a pretty good lock on darkness, too. And death? That came with the territory.
Maybe it wasn't just luck that let her crash into that warehouse just as the Sarguls finished opening that portal.
And that raised the question of just what Duo and Sasuke wanted revenge on, and just how far she really could trust two assassins. She looked back -- Duo was talking to Sasuke, keeping it quiet, but she could catch English mixed in with the Japanese and she figured he was giving language lessons. That made sense for fights, and she'd like it if she could talk to Sasuke herself instead of having to trust Duo's translation. He might say he never lied, but she had no way to prove that.
"Hey, Duo?" she called.
He looked up, gave her the kind of automatic once-over that spotted all her stakes and both her knives, and then shook himself into relaxing. "Yeah? What's up, chica?"
"What's your vengeance?" she asked before she could change her mind.
For just a second, Duo went blank and still. Then he laughed. "You go right for the throat, don't you. Aw, what the hell. I told you I'm from a space colony, right? Well, did you have colonialism in your world? Africa, India, South America, shit like that?"
Faith nodded.
"We got our world more or less together -- at least on the surface -- and went into space. It started all right, 'brave pioneers' and shit like that. L2 started off that way, all gung-ho American spirit." Duo's smile twisted. "After a while, though, nobody wanted to pay to do it right, and the same old shit started all over again. They built tin-can modules by the thousands and stuffed 'em with everyone they wanted gone.
"Got ethnic groups you don't want? Toss 'em in space. Got political dissidents? Toss 'em in space. Got criminals, ghetto kids, the homeless, all the Have-Nots? Toss 'em in space. And then they sat down on Earth and called us all colony scum, used us as factory labor at rates you couldn't live on if you ate like a mouse, declared martial law when we protested, blew up hundreds of civilians to get at handfuls of rebels... Colonialism, pure and simple."
Sasuke frowned at Duo's expression and made an inquiring noise. Duo shrugged and tossed off something that sounded like an evasion; even if Faith had no fucking clue what the words meant, she could recognize the tone.
"Sounds like hell," she said. "So you had a war. But if you won, why the fuck do you still run around killing people?"
Duo's eyes darkened. "Yeah, we won, and it looks all pretty on the surface. Underneath, it's still rotten, and the bloodsuckers who got rich off the old ways are still around, still milking the system. The law doesn't see them or can't touch them, so they think they're safe." He smiled. "I see them just fine, and I don't have any rules telling me not to clean up."
"Gotcha," said Faith. Vigilante justice? Well, she wasn't in the best position to throw stones -- it wasn't like she brought demons in for trial or paid much attention to laws about property damage herself. L2 sounded pretty bad, but then, she hadn't grown up in a bed of roses herself. She could see where Duo was coming from. She felt a bit looser, knowing that.
So, then... "What about Sasuke?"
---------------------------------------------
What was Sasuke's vengeance? Good question. Duo asked it.
Sasuke scowled, which wasn't surprising. "You don't need to know."
"Bzzzzz, wrong! Guess again -- the Sarguls were summoning people on vengeance kicks, so it's obviously important, and I'm not planning to get bit in the ass by something you forgot to tell us. We're in this together, so shape up and act like you have a brain."
"We're not a team," Sasuke snapped, moving a few steps away. Duo waited, humming under his breath. He'd obviously hit a sore point -- and that bore further investigation, oh yes -- but if the kid was half as good as he thought he was, he'd see sense sooner or later.
Sure enough, Sasuke took a deep breath and said, grudgingly, "My clan. I'm going to kill the man who killed them."
Man, this guy was reminding him more of Chang every minute -- black hair and eyes, pissy attitude, love for fire, thing for edged weapons, twitchy about sex, and now revenge for a dead clan. Well, there were worse -- and uglier -- people to resemble than Chang Wufei, and the man had finally learned to relax a little, which gave Duo hope for Sasuke. Of course, Chang didn't relax until after he'd snapped. Couldn't take a good piece of advice if you pounded it into him with a sledgehammer, that guy, but he was solid construction once you finally broke through and got him to listen. You just had to use a beam saber.
But enough of Chang. "Just one man?" Duo asked. That sounded a leeeetle bit unlikely, especially if Sasuke's family were ninja, too, and could blow shit up like he could. "How big was your clan?"
"Nearly two hundred, including children and non-shinobi. He killed them in one night," Sasuke said. His voice was almost dead, but he couldn't quite hide the anger, and his hand was clenched on one of his funny short knives with the loop in the hilt, so Duo didn't push any more just then.
"Man killed his clan -- about two hundred people -- in one night," he told Faith. "He didn't say, but I'd guess that includes his parents, and that it wasn't recent." Faith winced, and he knew she'd caught the implication. And now Sasuke reminded him of himself, not Chang. Chang's clan committed suicide, essentially, and he was already a warrior when they went; that was bad, but they weren't his whole world anymore. Sasuke, though... some bastard had ripped away Sasuke's family when he was little, when he probably still thought his parents hung the moon, and that did funny things to a guy's head, especially when you knew who was responsible.
"Don't pity me," Sasuke said, interrupting Duo's thoughts.
Duo blinked innocently. "Who, me? I don't do pity; it's a waste of time. Shit happens, and either you pull yourself together and do something about it, or you don't. There's no point sitting around and whining, not unless you want to make people underestimate you, or you just wanna irritate the fucking shit out of them, in which case it's kind of fun. I remember this one time when-- nah, never mind, it's not important and I'm getting off trajectory. Anyway, pitching a screaming hissy fit is one thing -- kills stress, and you can think better after -- but crying's useless."
Sasuke looked at him suspiciously.
"I had four families," Duo told him. "Dunno what happened to the first, but I wound up on the streets. Second and third ones died." He tossed off a nonchalant shrug and pushed on; no need to go into detail. "Now I have my friends. Losing family's hell, but life goes on. You find new people to care about, or you die."
He waved his hand carelessly -- he'd learned how to back off and let an idea grow its own roots -- and then leered at Sasuke, who looked slightly poleaxed. "So, changing topics, you wanna learn how to say 'fuck off, bastard' in English? A lot of people say stuff like that to me, and you look like you want to join them."
"What I want," Sasuke said, instantly recovering his scowl (and that was so familiar that Duo really missed Heero, for one endless second that felt like a punch to his gut) "is to go home, where I won't have to put up with you or Faith."
Duo shrugged. "Tough luck. If I had a pair of ruby slippers, I'd be clicking my heels a mile a minute, but I don't so you're stuck with me, and we're both stuck with Faith since she's the only one with--"
He spun and pulled the trigger before he consciously realized something was wrong.
---------------------------------------------
As he dove away from the huge, centipede-like creature's rush, Sasuke had a moment to be frustrated that Duo had noticed the creature first. What kind of shinobi was he if a loud, careless idiot reacted faster than he did, especially since Duo had been talking at the time!
Sharingan painted the world in a faint red wash, highlighting lines and motion and slowing everything for easy assimilation. Sasuke held his hands ready for seals, and watched.
Duo's weapon -- a small, blocky thing that spat metal pieces at high velocity -- was having no effect on the creature; the metal bounced off its armored sides and ricocheted off the jagged, purple-streaked rocks. Duo cursed and unfolded his metal staff -- greenish energy curved from its tip like a scythe. The centipede-thing reared upward -- half again the height of a man even with two thirds of its segments still on the ground -- and clicked its mandibles threateningly.
Faith rushed in from the side, slashing at its legs with her knife. The creature screeched and danced aside -- its tail whipped around, slashing -- Faith dove for the ground, rolling under the barbed sting and behind a rock. The legs were cracked, but still functional; clearly, knives weren't much more use than Duo's metal-shooter.
It didn't like Duo's scythe, though. Duo noticed that too -- he circled, one eye on the creature's tail, and made short, tentative swipes with the glowing blade. The centipede-thing hissed and clicked, sidestepping, its faceted eyes gleaming with a sickly inner light.
"Sasuke, right legs," Duo said, and then yelled, "Faith!" followed by something in English that included the word 'left,' naturally. Faith grinned fiercely and charged, whooping as she ran -- Sasuke followed, from the opposite side -- his knife skittered off the armored legs, and he flung up his arm to deflect the barbed sting with a kunai. Behind him, Duo sliced toward the back of the centipede's head.
Something sizzled and cracked, and Sasuke smelled a peculiar mix of burning organic trash and electrified steel. The creature convulsed, one eye a smoking ruin; the whipsnap of its head hurled Duo away onto the stony ground. He tucked and rolled, but he'd lost the scythe.
Sasuke heard him cursing as he stood and drew a long knife; it was good that he wasn't injured, but they'd have to change their strategy. "Duo," he called. "Switch places."
"You have energy weapons?" Duo asked as he dodged the centipede's wildly slashing tail. "Faith, down!" She dropped, and the sting passed through her hair instead of her neck. "It takes a lot to crack that exoskeleton."
"Yes," Sasuke said. "Go!"
Duo whipped his knife up in a careless salute and attacked, yelling all the way. "Hey, ugly! Catch me if you can, you useless piece of shit! Hah, too slow!" He slid into English and Faith laughed as she mirrored him. She aimed at the score marks she'd left before; through sheer repetitive stress, her knife sliced through. The centipede hissed and clacked, writhing in fury and pain.
Sasuke gathered himself, slowed his breathing, and formed the seals for Chidori. The world slowed as chakra crackled like a deadly glove around his hand. He focused, watching, waiting, gauging the lines -- Duo hacked at the tail -- Faith grabbed a leg in her bare hands and ripped it off with brute strength -- the creature reared again, towering, and turned its head just the necessary fraction--
Now.
The creature tried to dodge, but it was too late. Sasuke's hand crunched upward through the base of its mandibles, into its brain, and out through one of the eyes on top of its head. Chakra licked the wound, searing anything that wasn't crushed. He held one second, then another to be sure, and dropped away.
The centipede creature took nearly five minutes to finish dying. Sasuke watched its thrashing from a safe distance, while Duo hunted for his scythe and Faith cursed and tried to comb poison out of her torn hair.
"That thing with your hand -- that was damn impressive," Duo said as he trudged over to sit beside Sasuke and Faith. "What the hell was it?"
Sasuke shrugged. "Chidori, an assassination technique. One of my teachers created it."
"Assassination?" Duo laughed. "Man, that's even more cracked than giant robots -- anybody in half a mile could see and hear that. It's fast though, I'll give you that. You must have damn good eyes, to correct your aim when that demon-thing twitched its head. Speaking of which..."
Duo's blocky metal-shooter was pressed against Sasuke's temple before he realized anything was wrong. "Your eyes turned red. That's not human, and I'm not feeling real charitable toward demons at the moment. Explain. Now."
---------------------------------------------
End Part Three
Back to part II
Continue to part IV
See the original crack pairings meme and the scene that attacked me and became the first section of part I
Read the final version on ff.net
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
Lemonade
---------------------------------------------
Part III: In which various things come out of nowhere
Normally, walking in front of two guys she was thinking about jumping, Faith would've put some extra swing in her hips and made sure to casually flip her hair now and then, but right here and now, she didn't think that was a good idea. No telling what might pop up in a hell dimension, for one thing, and for the other, she was pretty sure strength and competence would turn Sasuke on more than acting girly. Duo, now... he acted like he'd jump anything that moved, but with the shadows she'd spotted in his eyes, she thought that was as much an act as it was real. And he was a strong enough fighter not to get intimidated by a Slayer, which was of the good.
They both seemed a lot tougher than normal, even though her senses read them as pure human. Which, come to think of it, might be why the Sarguls had gone dimension-shopping -- they needed bodies strong enough to hold magic that could take out Willow, but that wouldn't trip any Slayers' alarms. About the only people in her world who fit that bill were Slayers themselves, and they sure as hell wouldn't go down easy. Demons probably figured it'd be easier to trick or surprise people pulled through a portal.
Faith pictured the way Sasuke and Duo had come through the portals already swinging, and snorted.
Although... She absently flipped her knife from hand to hand as she walked, trying to put her thoughts in order. If the Sarguls were calling people dedicated to darkness, death, and vengeance, she kinda fit that bill herself. B fought the good fight because it was the good fight, and to protect Dawn and the Scoobies. Faith, though...
She hadn't had much of a life before she got Called, but then Pritchard, her Watcher, pulled her off the streets and away from her mom. She'd always been good at fighting, but nobody praised her before Pritchard. For a few months, she felt like it mattered what she did, felt like someone cared about her, even just a little -- and then Kakistos killed Pritchard in front of her. You damn bet she'd sworn vengeance, even though she had to start by running for help. Then she'd wanted revenge on B and her gang, then on herself, and finally on the fucked up world that made people like her. She knew vengeance inside and out.
She had a pretty good lock on darkness, too. And death? That came with the territory.
Maybe it wasn't just luck that let her crash into that warehouse just as the Sarguls finished opening that portal.
And that raised the question of just what Duo and Sasuke wanted revenge on, and just how far she really could trust two assassins. She looked back -- Duo was talking to Sasuke, keeping it quiet, but she could catch English mixed in with the Japanese and she figured he was giving language lessons. That made sense for fights, and she'd like it if she could talk to Sasuke herself instead of having to trust Duo's translation. He might say he never lied, but she had no way to prove that.
"Hey, Duo?" she called.
He looked up, gave her the kind of automatic once-over that spotted all her stakes and both her knives, and then shook himself into relaxing. "Yeah? What's up, chica?"
"What's your vengeance?" she asked before she could change her mind.
For just a second, Duo went blank and still. Then he laughed. "You go right for the throat, don't you. Aw, what the hell. I told you I'm from a space colony, right? Well, did you have colonialism in your world? Africa, India, South America, shit like that?"
Faith nodded.
"We got our world more or less together -- at least on the surface -- and went into space. It started all right, 'brave pioneers' and shit like that. L2 started off that way, all gung-ho American spirit." Duo's smile twisted. "After a while, though, nobody wanted to pay to do it right, and the same old shit started all over again. They built tin-can modules by the thousands and stuffed 'em with everyone they wanted gone.
"Got ethnic groups you don't want? Toss 'em in space. Got political dissidents? Toss 'em in space. Got criminals, ghetto kids, the homeless, all the Have-Nots? Toss 'em in space. And then they sat down on Earth and called us all colony scum, used us as factory labor at rates you couldn't live on if you ate like a mouse, declared martial law when we protested, blew up hundreds of civilians to get at handfuls of rebels... Colonialism, pure and simple."
Sasuke frowned at Duo's expression and made an inquiring noise. Duo shrugged and tossed off something that sounded like an evasion; even if Faith had no fucking clue what the words meant, she could recognize the tone.
"Sounds like hell," she said. "So you had a war. But if you won, why the fuck do you still run around killing people?"
Duo's eyes darkened. "Yeah, we won, and it looks all pretty on the surface. Underneath, it's still rotten, and the bloodsuckers who got rich off the old ways are still around, still milking the system. The law doesn't see them or can't touch them, so they think they're safe." He smiled. "I see them just fine, and I don't have any rules telling me not to clean up."
"Gotcha," said Faith. Vigilante justice? Well, she wasn't in the best position to throw stones -- it wasn't like she brought demons in for trial or paid much attention to laws about property damage herself. L2 sounded pretty bad, but then, she hadn't grown up in a bed of roses herself. She could see where Duo was coming from. She felt a bit looser, knowing that.
So, then... "What about Sasuke?"
---------------------------------------------
What was Sasuke's vengeance? Good question. Duo asked it.
Sasuke scowled, which wasn't surprising. "You don't need to know."
"Bzzzzz, wrong! Guess again -- the Sarguls were summoning people on vengeance kicks, so it's obviously important, and I'm not planning to get bit in the ass by something you forgot to tell us. We're in this together, so shape up and act like you have a brain."
"We're not a team," Sasuke snapped, moving a few steps away. Duo waited, humming under his breath. He'd obviously hit a sore point -- and that bore further investigation, oh yes -- but if the kid was half as good as he thought he was, he'd see sense sooner or later.
Sure enough, Sasuke took a deep breath and said, grudgingly, "My clan. I'm going to kill the man who killed them."
Man, this guy was reminding him more of Chang every minute -- black hair and eyes, pissy attitude, love for fire, thing for edged weapons, twitchy about sex, and now revenge for a dead clan. Well, there were worse -- and uglier -- people to resemble than Chang Wufei, and the man had finally learned to relax a little, which gave Duo hope for Sasuke. Of course, Chang didn't relax until after he'd snapped. Couldn't take a good piece of advice if you pounded it into him with a sledgehammer, that guy, but he was solid construction once you finally broke through and got him to listen. You just had to use a beam saber.
But enough of Chang. "Just one man?" Duo asked. That sounded a leeeetle bit unlikely, especially if Sasuke's family were ninja, too, and could blow shit up like he could. "How big was your clan?"
"Nearly two hundred, including children and non-shinobi. He killed them in one night," Sasuke said. His voice was almost dead, but he couldn't quite hide the anger, and his hand was clenched on one of his funny short knives with the loop in the hilt, so Duo didn't push any more just then.
"Man killed his clan -- about two hundred people -- in one night," he told Faith. "He didn't say, but I'd guess that includes his parents, and that it wasn't recent." Faith winced, and he knew she'd caught the implication. And now Sasuke reminded him of himself, not Chang. Chang's clan committed suicide, essentially, and he was already a warrior when they went; that was bad, but they weren't his whole world anymore. Sasuke, though... some bastard had ripped away Sasuke's family when he was little, when he probably still thought his parents hung the moon, and that did funny things to a guy's head, especially when you knew who was responsible.
"Don't pity me," Sasuke said, interrupting Duo's thoughts.
Duo blinked innocently. "Who, me? I don't do pity; it's a waste of time. Shit happens, and either you pull yourself together and do something about it, or you don't. There's no point sitting around and whining, not unless you want to make people underestimate you, or you just wanna irritate the fucking shit out of them, in which case it's kind of fun. I remember this one time when-- nah, never mind, it's not important and I'm getting off trajectory. Anyway, pitching a screaming hissy fit is one thing -- kills stress, and you can think better after -- but crying's useless."
Sasuke looked at him suspiciously.
"I had four families," Duo told him. "Dunno what happened to the first, but I wound up on the streets. Second and third ones died." He tossed off a nonchalant shrug and pushed on; no need to go into detail. "Now I have my friends. Losing family's hell, but life goes on. You find new people to care about, or you die."
He waved his hand carelessly -- he'd learned how to back off and let an idea grow its own roots -- and then leered at Sasuke, who looked slightly poleaxed. "So, changing topics, you wanna learn how to say 'fuck off, bastard' in English? A lot of people say stuff like that to me, and you look like you want to join them."
"What I want," Sasuke said, instantly recovering his scowl (and that was so familiar that Duo really missed Heero, for one endless second that felt like a punch to his gut) "is to go home, where I won't have to put up with you or Faith."
Duo shrugged. "Tough luck. If I had a pair of ruby slippers, I'd be clicking my heels a mile a minute, but I don't so you're stuck with me, and we're both stuck with Faith since she's the only one with--"
He spun and pulled the trigger before he consciously realized something was wrong.
---------------------------------------------
As he dove away from the huge, centipede-like creature's rush, Sasuke had a moment to be frustrated that Duo had noticed the creature first. What kind of shinobi was he if a loud, careless idiot reacted faster than he did, especially since Duo had been talking at the time!
Sharingan painted the world in a faint red wash, highlighting lines and motion and slowing everything for easy assimilation. Sasuke held his hands ready for seals, and watched.
Duo's weapon -- a small, blocky thing that spat metal pieces at high velocity -- was having no effect on the creature; the metal bounced off its armored sides and ricocheted off the jagged, purple-streaked rocks. Duo cursed and unfolded his metal staff -- greenish energy curved from its tip like a scythe. The centipede-thing reared upward -- half again the height of a man even with two thirds of its segments still on the ground -- and clicked its mandibles threateningly.
Faith rushed in from the side, slashing at its legs with her knife. The creature screeched and danced aside -- its tail whipped around, slashing -- Faith dove for the ground, rolling under the barbed sting and behind a rock. The legs were cracked, but still functional; clearly, knives weren't much more use than Duo's metal-shooter.
It didn't like Duo's scythe, though. Duo noticed that too -- he circled, one eye on the creature's tail, and made short, tentative swipes with the glowing blade. The centipede-thing hissed and clicked, sidestepping, its faceted eyes gleaming with a sickly inner light.
"Sasuke, right legs," Duo said, and then yelled, "Faith!" followed by something in English that included the word 'left,' naturally. Faith grinned fiercely and charged, whooping as she ran -- Sasuke followed, from the opposite side -- his knife skittered off the armored legs, and he flung up his arm to deflect the barbed sting with a kunai. Behind him, Duo sliced toward the back of the centipede's head.
Something sizzled and cracked, and Sasuke smelled a peculiar mix of burning organic trash and electrified steel. The creature convulsed, one eye a smoking ruin; the whipsnap of its head hurled Duo away onto the stony ground. He tucked and rolled, but he'd lost the scythe.
Sasuke heard him cursing as he stood and drew a long knife; it was good that he wasn't injured, but they'd have to change their strategy. "Duo," he called. "Switch places."
"You have energy weapons?" Duo asked as he dodged the centipede's wildly slashing tail. "Faith, down!" She dropped, and the sting passed through her hair instead of her neck. "It takes a lot to crack that exoskeleton."
"Yes," Sasuke said. "Go!"
Duo whipped his knife up in a careless salute and attacked, yelling all the way. "Hey, ugly! Catch me if you can, you useless piece of shit! Hah, too slow!" He slid into English and Faith laughed as she mirrored him. She aimed at the score marks she'd left before; through sheer repetitive stress, her knife sliced through. The centipede hissed and clacked, writhing in fury and pain.
Sasuke gathered himself, slowed his breathing, and formed the seals for Chidori. The world slowed as chakra crackled like a deadly glove around his hand. He focused, watching, waiting, gauging the lines -- Duo hacked at the tail -- Faith grabbed a leg in her bare hands and ripped it off with brute strength -- the creature reared again, towering, and turned its head just the necessary fraction--
Now.
The creature tried to dodge, but it was too late. Sasuke's hand crunched upward through the base of its mandibles, into its brain, and out through one of the eyes on top of its head. Chakra licked the wound, searing anything that wasn't crushed. He held one second, then another to be sure, and dropped away.
The centipede creature took nearly five minutes to finish dying. Sasuke watched its thrashing from a safe distance, while Duo hunted for his scythe and Faith cursed and tried to comb poison out of her torn hair.
"That thing with your hand -- that was damn impressive," Duo said as he trudged over to sit beside Sasuke and Faith. "What the hell was it?"
Sasuke shrugged. "Chidori, an assassination technique. One of my teachers created it."
"Assassination?" Duo laughed. "Man, that's even more cracked than giant robots -- anybody in half a mile could see and hear that. It's fast though, I'll give you that. You must have damn good eyes, to correct your aim when that demon-thing twitched its head. Speaking of which..."
Duo's blocky metal-shooter was pressed against Sasuke's temple before he realized anything was wrong. "Your eyes turned red. That's not human, and I'm not feeling real charitable toward demons at the moment. Explain. Now."
---------------------------------------------
End Part Three
Back to part II
Continue to part IV
See the original crack pairings meme and the scene that attacked me and became the first section of part I
Read the final version on ff.net
---------------------------------------------