![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingHere we are: chapter 5 of "Lemonade," in which I once again fail to stick to my outline and instead let the characters ramble on about whatever they damn well feel like (calamari? my brain baffles me sometimes), and in which Duo and Sasuke throw me another curveball. *shakes fist at the characters*
---------------------------------------------
Lemonade
---------------------------------------------
Part V: in which night falls
They pressed on for something like an hour, until the tiny white sun balanced just above the horizon. Faith turned aside and headed for a rocky outcropping maybe a quarter mile off their path. "I want something at my back," she said when Duo asked where she was going.
He shrugged. "Fair enough. I'd flip you for first watch, but I'm a little short on cash. Wanna play stone-paper-knife instead?"
"Rock-paper-scissors? Sure. Winner picks the watch, loser plays Sasuke."
The outcropping was formed by two massive slabs of purple-streaked rock, one thrusting diagonally from the earth to lean against the other. A third, smaller rock blocked off the gap between them, leaving a sort of shallow cave. Faith examined the sandy ground before the overhang, and nodded. "I like it."
Sasuke snorted and muttered something. "So do other people, or demons," Duo translated. "See that hollow with the stones around it? That's a fire-pit."
Faith kicked at the ashy residue in the hollow. "Fuck that -- we're here, they're not, and all that shows is that this is a good campsite. Come on, let's settle the watch."
"It's kind of funny," Duo said as he ambled toward her, "that George Lucas and his tacky movies are the same in our worlds, and colonialism... but we use different names for kids' games, and I've got space colonies and mobile suits where you've got spells and demons. It's really funny that we both speak English, and Sasuke's Japanese is the same as my Japanese. One language could be coincidence, but two is pushing my suspension of disbelief. I wonder how that works."
"Sorry -- dimensional theory isn't my thing."
Duo sighed. "Some other time, then. Okay. Stone, paper, knife, and... go!"
His fingertips slashed the air an inch from her fist; instead of splitting his index and middle fingers to make scissors, Duo held them together almost like a mock-gun. "Rock crushes scissors -- knife -- whatever," Faith said. "I'll take first watch; I'm too keyed up to sleep."
"You need more discipline, chica," Duo said, smiling. He turned to Sasuke and switched to Japanese, presumably explaining things. Sasuke shrugged, and they swung their hands forward. Paper covered rock; Sasuke won.
Faith frowned. Duo had hesitated a fraction of a second before clenching his fist -- not enough to notice if she hadn't been watching his hand right then, and he'd lost, so it wasn't exactly cheating, but that was weird. She had to remember not to take him on face value; he might not lie straight out, but he hid a hell of a lot, and he was an assassin. He'd also been a soldier, and according to B and the Scoobies, throwing magic and demons at soldiers was a recipe for a Grade A cluster-fuck.
"I have third watch," Duo said as he dropped to the ground and leaned against a sheltering rock. "By the way, Sasuke calls that game stone-kunai-scroll. Bet you twenty bucks his world hasn't had books all that long, or they still do a lot of writing by hand for some reason."
"You're the only one who can ask him. No bet." Faith sank down beside him and pointed at the fire-pit. "Sasuke! Food?"
"What's he gonna cook with -- alien voodoo mind-rays?" Then Duo paused, looking like he'd bit into a lemon when he expected an orange. "That's so weird. I am never gonna get used to this magic shit."
"I just hope he doesn't burn everything to charcoal," Faith said as Sasuke unrolled Duo's jacket and skewered the meat. "I'm hungry enough to eat a horse."
"And that translates to eating demon bugs?" Duo shook his head, sending his braid flying, and laughed. "Swear to God, I thought I was past that sort of shit, but what the hell. When in Rome, yeah?"
"Yeah." Faith looked back at Sasuke, who was using knives and small rocks to improvise something halfway between a grill and a set of marshmallow-roasting sticks. "Hey, Sasuke -- do you need help?"
"No." The kid didn't even look up, just scowled and adjusted one slab of meat. "Move. Fire." He waved a hand and said something longer in Japanese.
"Doesn't want us to break his concentration," Duo said, jumping to his feet and leaning down to offer Faith his hand. "Dunno about you, but I, for one, would rather not be in the way of a fireball if he slips up."
"Good plan." Faith grabbed Duo's hand -- if he felt like playing Mr. Chivalry, she wasn't going to stop him -- and let him haul her upright. He didn't seem to feel any strain, and he winked when he let go.
That was interesting. Faith wasn't anywhere near overweight, but she wasn't light either -- muscle weighed more than it looked like, and she'd never seen the point of starving herself like B. For Duo to essentially lift her, after two fights and a long day's walk with only a few swallows of water from Sasuke's canteen... he was pretty tough. She was stronger -- no human was stronger than a Slayer, not without a magical cheat -- but Duo was fucking fast, and sneaky, and he had high-tech weapons. Definitely a good guy to have as an ally, assassin or not.
And it might be nice to get close to a guy without worrying too much about breaking him.
A soft whoosh distracted her, and she turned to see Sasuke exhale a wavering sheet of flame over the meat. Come to think of it, Sasuke had jammed his bare hand through that centipede demon's head, armor and all, and he didn't seem any more affected by the day than Duo.
What was that saying... every cloud had a silver lining? Hell dimensions weren't her first choice for a vacation spot, but this one had some compensations
---------------------------------------------
Sasuke couldn't do his poison spell on himself, so Duo volunteered to test the centipede. His immune system was a little weird -- Professor G had sworn he should've been dead twenty times over, considering no street kid could afford the treatments for various L2 plague strains he'd clearly caught at one point or another -- so he figured that even if the bug was poison, if he got the shit out of his stomach quick, he'd probably live. Besides, even if Faith's friends could track her if she keeled over, Duo had no interest in explaining her death to a witch who could punch holes through dimensions.
He chewed slowly. Centipede demon was a little rubbery, but it tasted a lot like chicken. Somehow, he wasn't surprised.
"Well, Sasuke-kun? What's the verdict?"
"Lift your shirt."
Duo decided to hold the innuendo; he didn't want to piss the kid off before he did his magic trick. He hiked his t-shirt up and waited. Sasuke's fingers flashed through a series of stylized positions, and then he laid his hands on Duo's stomach.
Sasuke's fingers were cool, dry, and oddly gentle -- his voodoo tingled, like low-voltage static. "Your spell tickles," Duo said, to distract himself from the sudden heat in his gut. "Nice hands, though -- you ever thought about going into massage?"
"They're jutsu, not spells, and this is non-invasive. You shouldn't feel anything," Sasuke muttered, like he wasn't actually paying attention to his mouth. Then he withdrew his hands and said, "It's harmless. Not kill. Good. Eat."
Duo blinked at the grammar degeneration, and then realized the kid had switched to English. He tugged down his shirt and mentally slapped himself. He'd been dealing with people one-on-one or online for too long; he'd gotten rusty at multi-tracking languages.
"So what's it taste like?" Faith asked.
"Guess."
Sasuke snorted, picked up his meal, and proceeded to do a virtuoso impression of going blind and deaf to his companions. Faith gave Duo a look of very limited amusement. "Smart-ass. Chicken?"
"Got it in one. It's chewier, though -- kinda like calamari. You ever had calamari?"
Faith tried a bite and worked through it before answering. "Few times. Robin -- this guy I was with for a while -- he liked it, but he was watching his weight. So he'd order a plate as an appetizer and we'd split it." She shrugged. "It's okay with horseradish."
"Heretic! Marinara sauce all the way... or just salt and lemon juice." Duo grinned and took another bite of grilled centipede. "I love calamari. I've got a friend, Howard -- he runs a salvage organization, space and Earthside. I used to dump Deathscythe on him for repairs all the time -- not 'cause I can't fix shit myself, but to save time, you know?
"Anyway, he had this converted aircraft carrier, and one time we spent a couple weeks cruising around the Mediterranean. One of the Sweepers, this guy José -- shitty mechanic, but he could work sonar like you wouldn't believe -- he dug out some nets and tossed 'em out every day to see what turned up. We had fresh calamari every day for dinner, and paella or this weird-ass spicy fish chowder for lunch. It was great."
Duo sighed. "Damn, I miss those guys."
Faith made an inquiring noise through a mouthful of meat.
"I keep in touch with Howard, but I don't want to call eyes down on the Sweepers. It's one thing in wartime, when you've got an organization at your backs. Asking them to cover just me and my private crusade... that's different. Besides, these days I need gunrunners, crackers, and chem-hacks more than mechanics and cargo transport."
"At least you had an organization," Faith muttered.
"Well, off and on. We had personal networks, but we lost the colonies halfway through -- they went after the carrot and forgot there's always a fucking stick behind it." Getting thrown in prison had not been one of the better weeks of his life, though Heero's out-of-the-blue rescue had almost made up for the interrogation and the intangible weight of repudiation and a death sentence. "War's confusing enough when you only have two sides. We had... oh, five or six at least, and the Alliance splintered into a mess of nationalist resistance fronts when OZ took over, so it was more like twenty or thirty without the propaganda."
"Mmmh. I still think you had it better," Faith said. "For, like, most of recorded history, the Slayers had something called the Council of Watchers. They said they helped us, and yeah, the research was damn useful now and then, but mostly what they did was snatch girls before they got Called, brainwash them, and act like we were living weapons."
She picked a bit of char from her meat and glared at the ground. "I screwed up big time, so I took myself off the board to get my head straight. I figured it was okay since B was still out there, keeping a lid on the Hellmouth. But you know what the Council did? They sent a team to kill me. They figured it was easier to get a new Slayer than to deal with me and B once we got wise to them and started acting like we had a right to live."
Betrayed by her mentors, almost killed -- seriously, what was with everybody reminding him of Heero or Chang these days? Not that Faith looked like those two... and he wasn't complaining one bit. "That sucks ass. Are the scumbags still around?"
"Their headquarters got blown up, and a bunch of others got hunted down by a group of demons, so no. Of course, the stragglers were usually guarding potential Slayers, who were the real targets... and most of the girls died too." Faith's mouth twisted. "Anyway, Slayers have an equal say in the Council now. It's a good thing, but I fucking hate the politics."
Before Duo could answer, Sasuke coughed from across their darkening campsite. "Night. Eat gone. Sleep. Quiet."
Duo heaved a deliberately theatrical sigh. "Killjoy. He's got a point, though -- I should probably sack out." He squinted at the unfamiliar constellations, running through options. "It was noon-ish when we got here, and it took about eight hours to sunset. If this place is like Earth, that means an eight-hour night. I wouldn't bet on that, though -- that sun moved damn slow -- so give it maybe four hours 'til you wake Sasuke."
Faith tapped her knife thoughtfully against her boot. "Extra hours in a day? I can buy that." Then she smiled, slow and wicked. "I'll trade you advice for advice. This is a desert, and we weren't roasting. I'd bug Sasuke about a more permanent fire... or at least go share body heat."
She hopped up onto one of the huge stone slabs, leaving Duo to contemplate Sasuke's probable reaction to that.
---------------------------------------------
Something light struck his shoulder, and Sasuke jerked awake with a drawn kunai. Faith crouched several feet away, a darker shadow limned by starlight and the eerie red wash of Sharingan sight. She held up a pebble, tossed it, and dropped it to the ground.
"---- is safer," she said. "So you don't ----- and -----."
He missed several words -- Faith was slurring them, like when she talked to Duo, and whispering didn't clarify anything. Still, he caught the gist, and he gave her credit for some sense. He certainly wouldn't stand within striking distance while waking a strange ninja in dangerous territory.
"Thank you," he said. "Sleep. I watch."
Faith muttered something unintelligible in a disparaging tone. She didn't like him questioning her common sense? If so, she should act professionally.
She lay down next to Duo while Sasuke bathed the back of their makeshift cave in fire until it radiated heat into the chill desert night. It wasn't the best solution, but there was no way he was going to sleep within arms' distance of either Faith or Duo. Then he perched on the level stone that formed one side-wall of their campsite, and settled in for his watch.
Middle watch was hard because it disrupted sleeping patterns, which left him vulnerable to nightmares later on. But there was no residual twilight or breaking dawn to look forward to, and Sasuke trusted his night vision much more than that of his companions, even without the Sharingan.
He frowned reflexively. Sharingan would soothe his paranoia, but even the first level drained his chakra, and he was tired.
In fact, he was very tired -- much more than he should have been. Chidori burned chakra like water, true, but he could easily pull off three a day -- four if he pushed it, and even more if he drew on the curse seal -- and he hadn't done any other jutsu on that level. So why did he feel like he'd used Chidori three times and run from Hidden Sound to Konoha and back? And why had Duo felt the poison check?
Perhaps... perhaps this world was like the worlds of the summon creatures. According to his snakes, those worlds weren't fully real -- things shifted without warning, time wasn't constant, and chakra flowed in sluggish fits and starts. The creatures gained strength from time in the real world; to them, that was worth the price of a summoning contract.
Chakra flowed here, but either it was slipping through his metaphorical fingers, or he was subconsciously draining his stamina in order to make jutsu work normally.
"Perfect." He wasn't a stamina-freak or a chakra control specialist.
Sasuke frowned again and rubbed the skin just above his collarbone. Normally the curse seal itched when he touched it, or spun in response to his moods, but now it might almost be a lifeless tattoo.
The seal's power was useful, but he had no intention of holding up his end of the implicit bargain with Orochimaru. He had a few months before the snake Sannin would be ready to switch bodies again, and he wasn't going to be anywhere near Hidden Sound when that moment came. He would kill Itachi himself -- not as somebody else's puppet, and not leaning on other people because he wasn't strong enough.
If Faith's 'red witch' could reach across worlds, like a summoning call, her magic was probably close enough to chakra that one could mimic the other. Maybe she could alter the curse seal so it didn't tie him to Orochimaru anymore. That would more than pay for the aggravation of this misadventure.
Sasuke spent the next hours considering a future in which he might not have to spend nearly so much effort hiding from Orochimaru. Unfamiliar stars wheeled slowly across the sky, and it was still fully dark when he leapt from his perch, reheated the stone, and threw a pebble at Duo.
The braided man jerked awake, gun out, and then flipped his middle finger at Sasuke. "Give me a heart attack, why don't you."
Sasuke shrugged. "If you want. That's not a hard technique."
"I'll pass, thanks." Duo slid his gun away, stood up, and stretched. Then he scrambled onto the stone where Sasuke had been sitting -- high enough to improve his lines of sight, and close enough to the leaning stone that he wasn't immediately visible.
Sasuke debated with himself for a long moment, and then sighed. "Duo. Why did you throw the game?"
---------------------------------------------
End of Part V
Back to part IV
Continue to part VI
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
---------------------------------------------
And just because, here are some snippets from chapter 6 -- subject to change, of course, as I actually write the thing:
Faith
Faith wasn't sure what had happened overnight, but Duo and Sasuke weren't talking to each other. This could be trouble.
She also had sand in her pants, which was more immediately annoying. If they didn't reach water today...
---------------------------------------------
Duo
"Spend five years throwing games and they never notice, but you guys catch me in less than a day -- I guess first impressions really do stick with people."
---------------------------------------------
Sasuke
"Simple words," Faith said. "You know, eat, drink, man, woman, knife, kill-- down!"
Sasuke dropped and rolled; the shadow-edged shimmer of a deadly jutsu passed through the air where his head had been.
---------------------------------------------
On a completely different topic, this weekend is the Ithaca Festival, which is an annual series of events, parades, music, and whatnot that I keep not managing to see or participate in. This year, it happens to take place on the wrong weekend -- in other words, yesterday was pretty much solid rain from 4pm onward, often with thunder and lightning, and today is equally grey and damp. Sunday, at least, is supposed to only be cloudy, without actual precipitation.
*sigh*
I don't want to go to work today. I want to contemplate the zen of the universe and otherwise be horribly lazy.
---------------------------------------------
Lemonade
---------------------------------------------
Part V: in which night falls
They pressed on for something like an hour, until the tiny white sun balanced just above the horizon. Faith turned aside and headed for a rocky outcropping maybe a quarter mile off their path. "I want something at my back," she said when Duo asked where she was going.
He shrugged. "Fair enough. I'd flip you for first watch, but I'm a little short on cash. Wanna play stone-paper-knife instead?"
"Rock-paper-scissors? Sure. Winner picks the watch, loser plays Sasuke."
The outcropping was formed by two massive slabs of purple-streaked rock, one thrusting diagonally from the earth to lean against the other. A third, smaller rock blocked off the gap between them, leaving a sort of shallow cave. Faith examined the sandy ground before the overhang, and nodded. "I like it."
Sasuke snorted and muttered something. "So do other people, or demons," Duo translated. "See that hollow with the stones around it? That's a fire-pit."
Faith kicked at the ashy residue in the hollow. "Fuck that -- we're here, they're not, and all that shows is that this is a good campsite. Come on, let's settle the watch."
"It's kind of funny," Duo said as he ambled toward her, "that George Lucas and his tacky movies are the same in our worlds, and colonialism... but we use different names for kids' games, and I've got space colonies and mobile suits where you've got spells and demons. It's really funny that we both speak English, and Sasuke's Japanese is the same as my Japanese. One language could be coincidence, but two is pushing my suspension of disbelief. I wonder how that works."
"Sorry -- dimensional theory isn't my thing."
Duo sighed. "Some other time, then. Okay. Stone, paper, knife, and... go!"
His fingertips slashed the air an inch from her fist; instead of splitting his index and middle fingers to make scissors, Duo held them together almost like a mock-gun. "Rock crushes scissors -- knife -- whatever," Faith said. "I'll take first watch; I'm too keyed up to sleep."
"You need more discipline, chica," Duo said, smiling. He turned to Sasuke and switched to Japanese, presumably explaining things. Sasuke shrugged, and they swung their hands forward. Paper covered rock; Sasuke won.
Faith frowned. Duo had hesitated a fraction of a second before clenching his fist -- not enough to notice if she hadn't been watching his hand right then, and he'd lost, so it wasn't exactly cheating, but that was weird. She had to remember not to take him on face value; he might not lie straight out, but he hid a hell of a lot, and he was an assassin. He'd also been a soldier, and according to B and the Scoobies, throwing magic and demons at soldiers was a recipe for a Grade A cluster-fuck.
"I have third watch," Duo said as he dropped to the ground and leaned against a sheltering rock. "By the way, Sasuke calls that game stone-kunai-scroll. Bet you twenty bucks his world hasn't had books all that long, or they still do a lot of writing by hand for some reason."
"You're the only one who can ask him. No bet." Faith sank down beside him and pointed at the fire-pit. "Sasuke! Food?"
"What's he gonna cook with -- alien voodoo mind-rays?" Then Duo paused, looking like he'd bit into a lemon when he expected an orange. "That's so weird. I am never gonna get used to this magic shit."
"I just hope he doesn't burn everything to charcoal," Faith said as Sasuke unrolled Duo's jacket and skewered the meat. "I'm hungry enough to eat a horse."
"And that translates to eating demon bugs?" Duo shook his head, sending his braid flying, and laughed. "Swear to God, I thought I was past that sort of shit, but what the hell. When in Rome, yeah?"
"Yeah." Faith looked back at Sasuke, who was using knives and small rocks to improvise something halfway between a grill and a set of marshmallow-roasting sticks. "Hey, Sasuke -- do you need help?"
"No." The kid didn't even look up, just scowled and adjusted one slab of meat. "Move. Fire." He waved a hand and said something longer in Japanese.
"Doesn't want us to break his concentration," Duo said, jumping to his feet and leaning down to offer Faith his hand. "Dunno about you, but I, for one, would rather not be in the way of a fireball if he slips up."
"Good plan." Faith grabbed Duo's hand -- if he felt like playing Mr. Chivalry, she wasn't going to stop him -- and let him haul her upright. He didn't seem to feel any strain, and he winked when he let go.
That was interesting. Faith wasn't anywhere near overweight, but she wasn't light either -- muscle weighed more than it looked like, and she'd never seen the point of starving herself like B. For Duo to essentially lift her, after two fights and a long day's walk with only a few swallows of water from Sasuke's canteen... he was pretty tough. She was stronger -- no human was stronger than a Slayer, not without a magical cheat -- but Duo was fucking fast, and sneaky, and he had high-tech weapons. Definitely a good guy to have as an ally, assassin or not.
And it might be nice to get close to a guy without worrying too much about breaking him.
A soft whoosh distracted her, and she turned to see Sasuke exhale a wavering sheet of flame over the meat. Come to think of it, Sasuke had jammed his bare hand through that centipede demon's head, armor and all, and he didn't seem any more affected by the day than Duo.
What was that saying... every cloud had a silver lining? Hell dimensions weren't her first choice for a vacation spot, but this one had some compensations
---------------------------------------------
Sasuke couldn't do his poison spell on himself, so Duo volunteered to test the centipede. His immune system was a little weird -- Professor G had sworn he should've been dead twenty times over, considering no street kid could afford the treatments for various L2 plague strains he'd clearly caught at one point or another -- so he figured that even if the bug was poison, if he got the shit out of his stomach quick, he'd probably live. Besides, even if Faith's friends could track her if she keeled over, Duo had no interest in explaining her death to a witch who could punch holes through dimensions.
He chewed slowly. Centipede demon was a little rubbery, but it tasted a lot like chicken. Somehow, he wasn't surprised.
"Well, Sasuke-kun? What's the verdict?"
"Lift your shirt."
Duo decided to hold the innuendo; he didn't want to piss the kid off before he did his magic trick. He hiked his t-shirt up and waited. Sasuke's fingers flashed through a series of stylized positions, and then he laid his hands on Duo's stomach.
Sasuke's fingers were cool, dry, and oddly gentle -- his voodoo tingled, like low-voltage static. "Your spell tickles," Duo said, to distract himself from the sudden heat in his gut. "Nice hands, though -- you ever thought about going into massage?"
"They're jutsu, not spells, and this is non-invasive. You shouldn't feel anything," Sasuke muttered, like he wasn't actually paying attention to his mouth. Then he withdrew his hands and said, "It's harmless. Not kill. Good. Eat."
Duo blinked at the grammar degeneration, and then realized the kid had switched to English. He tugged down his shirt and mentally slapped himself. He'd been dealing with people one-on-one or online for too long; he'd gotten rusty at multi-tracking languages.
"So what's it taste like?" Faith asked.
"Guess."
Sasuke snorted, picked up his meal, and proceeded to do a virtuoso impression of going blind and deaf to his companions. Faith gave Duo a look of very limited amusement. "Smart-ass. Chicken?"
"Got it in one. It's chewier, though -- kinda like calamari. You ever had calamari?"
Faith tried a bite and worked through it before answering. "Few times. Robin -- this guy I was with for a while -- he liked it, but he was watching his weight. So he'd order a plate as an appetizer and we'd split it." She shrugged. "It's okay with horseradish."
"Heretic! Marinara sauce all the way... or just salt and lemon juice." Duo grinned and took another bite of grilled centipede. "I love calamari. I've got a friend, Howard -- he runs a salvage organization, space and Earthside. I used to dump Deathscythe on him for repairs all the time -- not 'cause I can't fix shit myself, but to save time, you know?
"Anyway, he had this converted aircraft carrier, and one time we spent a couple weeks cruising around the Mediterranean. One of the Sweepers, this guy José -- shitty mechanic, but he could work sonar like you wouldn't believe -- he dug out some nets and tossed 'em out every day to see what turned up. We had fresh calamari every day for dinner, and paella or this weird-ass spicy fish chowder for lunch. It was great."
Duo sighed. "Damn, I miss those guys."
Faith made an inquiring noise through a mouthful of meat.
"I keep in touch with Howard, but I don't want to call eyes down on the Sweepers. It's one thing in wartime, when you've got an organization at your backs. Asking them to cover just me and my private crusade... that's different. Besides, these days I need gunrunners, crackers, and chem-hacks more than mechanics and cargo transport."
"At least you had an organization," Faith muttered.
"Well, off and on. We had personal networks, but we lost the colonies halfway through -- they went after the carrot and forgot there's always a fucking stick behind it." Getting thrown in prison had not been one of the better weeks of his life, though Heero's out-of-the-blue rescue had almost made up for the interrogation and the intangible weight of repudiation and a death sentence. "War's confusing enough when you only have two sides. We had... oh, five or six at least, and the Alliance splintered into a mess of nationalist resistance fronts when OZ took over, so it was more like twenty or thirty without the propaganda."
"Mmmh. I still think you had it better," Faith said. "For, like, most of recorded history, the Slayers had something called the Council of Watchers. They said they helped us, and yeah, the research was damn useful now and then, but mostly what they did was snatch girls before they got Called, brainwash them, and act like we were living weapons."
She picked a bit of char from her meat and glared at the ground. "I screwed up big time, so I took myself off the board to get my head straight. I figured it was okay since B was still out there, keeping a lid on the Hellmouth. But you know what the Council did? They sent a team to kill me. They figured it was easier to get a new Slayer than to deal with me and B once we got wise to them and started acting like we had a right to live."
Betrayed by her mentors, almost killed -- seriously, what was with everybody reminding him of Heero or Chang these days? Not that Faith looked like those two... and he wasn't complaining one bit. "That sucks ass. Are the scumbags still around?"
"Their headquarters got blown up, and a bunch of others got hunted down by a group of demons, so no. Of course, the stragglers were usually guarding potential Slayers, who were the real targets... and most of the girls died too." Faith's mouth twisted. "Anyway, Slayers have an equal say in the Council now. It's a good thing, but I fucking hate the politics."
Before Duo could answer, Sasuke coughed from across their darkening campsite. "Night. Eat gone. Sleep. Quiet."
Duo heaved a deliberately theatrical sigh. "Killjoy. He's got a point, though -- I should probably sack out." He squinted at the unfamiliar constellations, running through options. "It was noon-ish when we got here, and it took about eight hours to sunset. If this place is like Earth, that means an eight-hour night. I wouldn't bet on that, though -- that sun moved damn slow -- so give it maybe four hours 'til you wake Sasuke."
Faith tapped her knife thoughtfully against her boot. "Extra hours in a day? I can buy that." Then she smiled, slow and wicked. "I'll trade you advice for advice. This is a desert, and we weren't roasting. I'd bug Sasuke about a more permanent fire... or at least go share body heat."
She hopped up onto one of the huge stone slabs, leaving Duo to contemplate Sasuke's probable reaction to that.
---------------------------------------------
Something light struck his shoulder, and Sasuke jerked awake with a drawn kunai. Faith crouched several feet away, a darker shadow limned by starlight and the eerie red wash of Sharingan sight. She held up a pebble, tossed it, and dropped it to the ground.
"---- is safer," she said. "So you don't ----- and -----."
He missed several words -- Faith was slurring them, like when she talked to Duo, and whispering didn't clarify anything. Still, he caught the gist, and he gave her credit for some sense. He certainly wouldn't stand within striking distance while waking a strange ninja in dangerous territory.
"Thank you," he said. "Sleep. I watch."
Faith muttered something unintelligible in a disparaging tone. She didn't like him questioning her common sense? If so, she should act professionally.
She lay down next to Duo while Sasuke bathed the back of their makeshift cave in fire until it radiated heat into the chill desert night. It wasn't the best solution, but there was no way he was going to sleep within arms' distance of either Faith or Duo. Then he perched on the level stone that formed one side-wall of their campsite, and settled in for his watch.
Middle watch was hard because it disrupted sleeping patterns, which left him vulnerable to nightmares later on. But there was no residual twilight or breaking dawn to look forward to, and Sasuke trusted his night vision much more than that of his companions, even without the Sharingan.
He frowned reflexively. Sharingan would soothe his paranoia, but even the first level drained his chakra, and he was tired.
In fact, he was very tired -- much more than he should have been. Chidori burned chakra like water, true, but he could easily pull off three a day -- four if he pushed it, and even more if he drew on the curse seal -- and he hadn't done any other jutsu on that level. So why did he feel like he'd used Chidori three times and run from Hidden Sound to Konoha and back? And why had Duo felt the poison check?
Perhaps... perhaps this world was like the worlds of the summon creatures. According to his snakes, those worlds weren't fully real -- things shifted without warning, time wasn't constant, and chakra flowed in sluggish fits and starts. The creatures gained strength from time in the real world; to them, that was worth the price of a summoning contract.
Chakra flowed here, but either it was slipping through his metaphorical fingers, or he was subconsciously draining his stamina in order to make jutsu work normally.
"Perfect." He wasn't a stamina-freak or a chakra control specialist.
Sasuke frowned again and rubbed the skin just above his collarbone. Normally the curse seal itched when he touched it, or spun in response to his moods, but now it might almost be a lifeless tattoo.
The seal's power was useful, but he had no intention of holding up his end of the implicit bargain with Orochimaru. He had a few months before the snake Sannin would be ready to switch bodies again, and he wasn't going to be anywhere near Hidden Sound when that moment came. He would kill Itachi himself -- not as somebody else's puppet, and not leaning on other people because he wasn't strong enough.
If Faith's 'red witch' could reach across worlds, like a summoning call, her magic was probably close enough to chakra that one could mimic the other. Maybe she could alter the curse seal so it didn't tie him to Orochimaru anymore. That would more than pay for the aggravation of this misadventure.
Sasuke spent the next hours considering a future in which he might not have to spend nearly so much effort hiding from Orochimaru. Unfamiliar stars wheeled slowly across the sky, and it was still fully dark when he leapt from his perch, reheated the stone, and threw a pebble at Duo.
The braided man jerked awake, gun out, and then flipped his middle finger at Sasuke. "Give me a heart attack, why don't you."
Sasuke shrugged. "If you want. That's not a hard technique."
"I'll pass, thanks." Duo slid his gun away, stood up, and stretched. Then he scrambled onto the stone where Sasuke had been sitting -- high enough to improve his lines of sight, and close enough to the leaning stone that he wasn't immediately visible.
Sasuke debated with himself for a long moment, and then sighed. "Duo. Why did you throw the game?"
---------------------------------------------
End of Part V
Back to part IV
Continue to part VI
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
---------------------------------------------
And just because, here are some snippets from chapter 6 -- subject to change, of course, as I actually write the thing:
Faith
Faith wasn't sure what had happened overnight, but Duo and Sasuke weren't talking to each other. This could be trouble.
She also had sand in her pants, which was more immediately annoying. If they didn't reach water today...
---------------------------------------------
Duo
"Spend five years throwing games and they never notice, but you guys catch me in less than a day -- I guess first impressions really do stick with people."
---------------------------------------------
Sasuke
"Simple words," Faith said. "You know, eat, drink, man, woman, knife, kill-- down!"
Sasuke dropped and rolled; the shadow-edged shimmer of a deadly jutsu passed through the air where his head had been.
---------------------------------------------
On a completely different topic, this weekend is the Ithaca Festival, which is an annual series of events, parades, music, and whatnot that I keep not managing to see or participate in. This year, it happens to take place on the wrong weekend -- in other words, yesterday was pretty much solid rain from 4pm onward, often with thunder and lightning, and today is equally grey and damp. Sunday, at least, is supposed to only be cloudy, without actual precipitation.
*sigh*
I don't want to go to work today. I want to contemplate the zen of the universe and otherwise be horribly lazy.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-04 04:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-04 04:33 pm (UTC)