Disclaimer: The G. Boys belong to me in another reality, but, unfortunately, not in this one. I'm not making any money off of them, unless you consider ego stroking payment. If you want to sue me for that, I'll happily stroke you plenty. :)
Warnings: Yaoi. Guy with Guy sex. Angst. Violence. Poor Duo (so misunderstood) and nasty Heero (but, maybe this time he has a reason, ne?) Duo torture ahead! Rape, but only in dreams. Finger sex! Sad, very sad, but then happy, so don't be afraid, okay?
This is yet another sequel, but you don't have to read the rest to know what's going on.
"I still don't like the idea of glue holding together my Deathscythe," Duo growled as he strained to hold two parts together while Heero leaned close with the glue applicator. It made a heated, popping sound as he worked over the crack in the Gundam's arm.
"This is all we have on site," Heero muttered. "It will hold until we can get to a welder, so stop complaining, Baka, and keep those parts together!"
"Yes, dear," Duo panted sarcastically. He was sweating buckets and his arms were trembling with the strain. "Hurry up, man! I can't do this much longer."
They were both balanced precariously on top of the extended arm of Deathscythe, crouched over their work, as they attempted to get the battle scarred Gundam operational enough to leave that dangerous area. Oz scouts had come very close on several occasions, tripping the outer motion detector in the deep woods around them. It was only a matter of time before they were discovered.
Heero had his shirt off, slim, muscled torso gleaming with sweat and dark hair a tousled, sweat filled mess. His dark, intense eyes were on his work. His mouth was a set, grim line smudged on the edge with a bit of grease. Duo found himself looking at that mouth and remembering hard, needy kisses, even as he gritted his teeth and tried to convince his screaming body to keep holding those two pieces of metal together for Heero. When he recovered feeling in his arms again, Duo promised himself he'd reward himself by taking that unyielding mouth with his and teaching it some sweet gentleness.
"Don't call me that," Heero said without pausing in his work.
"Huh?"
"I told you before, I will not be called stupid 'pet' names. Not 'dear', not 'honey'; none of that. I don't even..., " he paused to work on a particularly difficult spot and then continued tightly, "I don't even want anyone knowing about us. It could be disruptive."
"Uh, Heero?"
Heero flicked eyes briefly up at Duo and then back down at his work.
"I think everyone already knows about us. Sorry, Heero, but Quatre has a big mouth and there aren't a lot of us to hide stuff from, ya know?" A cramp began in Duo's shoulders and he hissed. "Damn it, Heero, I can't hold this forever!"
"Then shut up and let me finish, Baka!"
"Hey, you're the one who's talking!"
"No, I'm not!"
"Yes, you are!"
"Duo!"
"Heero!" Duo mocked.
They were hot, sweaty, and tired, their young bodies at the limits of endurance because of the backbreaking work and conditions they had been forced to endure in the last few days. Their tempers were bombs ready to go off. Duo, as usual, was only too glad to light the fuse. He shouldn't have been surprised at the explosion of anger from Heero, but he was.
"Kisama!" Heero snarled as he slapped the glue applicator into one hand and then reached out to grab Duo with the other, a furious expression on his face.
Duo reacted immediately and with nearly fatal consequences. Coming from a childhood filled with abuse and living a life on the edge as a Gundam pilot, Duo had any number of ingrained reactions when confronted by intended violence, even from the man he loved. The strongest reaction, was to get away. Duo recoiled from Heero's clutching hand. Balanced on the arm of the Gundam, there was only one direction to go, off.
Heero's shocked expression told Duo his mistake in the split second before he started to fall backwards. Heero flipped the glue applicator out of his way. Hot, chemical glue went spraying as he reached out with both hands, lightning fast, to snatch at Duo and try and save him from the nearly three story fall.
Heero's hands tangled in Duo's braid and the chain of his gold cross. Both snapped taught as Heero pushed himself backwards with strong legs. It was pure self sacrifice. There wasn't anywhere for Heero to gain leverage except by pushing himself off the other side of Deathscythe's arm.
"No!" Duo shrieked. His face twisted in horror as he clawed at Heero's hands. Brought back up to safety, Heero at first thought the man he loved was trying to save him now. He was dead wrong. Duo's amethyst eyes were wide, crazy even, as he tried to get Heero to let go of his two most precious possessions, his cross and his braid!
The only thing that saved Heero's life at that point was the fact that one of his hands, the one clutching Duo's nearly five feet of braid, was covered in an industrial strength epoxy glue. It had set instantly, binding hair and flesh together. Duo couldn't get him off now no matter how much he wanted to.
Heero reached up and clawed frantically at Duo. The man had a firm grip on the Gundam and Heero was confident that grip would hold as he literally climbed up Duo's body to safety, nearly jerking Duo's black shirt off of his body as he grabbed, twisted, and clawed for purchase. The boy was fighting him the entire time, emitting a mad, frantic cry over and over as he tried to get Heero to let go of his braid. Once Heero was safe, he turned and slapped Duo hard in the face with a resounding 'crack!' that seemed to echo in the forest even over Duo's noises.
Duo froze, staring, the crying ceasing and his face turning an ugly color of red in the shape of a hand print, as he abruptly sat down. Heero crouched before him, tense, ready for more trouble and roiling with emotions he hardly knew how to deal with. Duo was catatonic for almost a full minute and then he looked down at his braid and ran a hand along its length. When his hand reached Heero's, he said in a very dangerous voice, "Let go,"
"I can't!" Heero seethed. "We're glued together!"
"Let go!" Duo demanded again, louder, refusing to see reason. "You're going to hurt it!"
Heero studied the hand and the attached hair, not wanting to be trapped in that way any more than Duo. It was bad. A great clump of strands was solidly attached to the palm of Heero's hand by a thick smearing of dried glue. Heero wasn't about to break that news to Duo in their precarious position.
"Let's get down on the ground," Heero suggested. "We can't deal with this up here."
"'K," Duo bit out pathetically, "Just...don't pull!"
They awkwardly made their way to the ground, Duo repeating, "Don't pull", viciously more than once. When they were safely on the ground, Heero backed a few steps and tried to analyze Duo's behavior. At the moment, the boy was staring fixedly at his braid where it met Heero's hand, his eyes wide and his other hand clutching at the gold cross at his breast.
"Calm down," Heero ordered sharply. "If you get violent again, you may lose some of your hair." Duo's face twitched in fear, but it gave Heero some confidence that his next words wouldn't lead to another attack. "The epoxy can only be removed by a solvent. We don't have any." The next words were obvious and necessary. Heero found that he couldn't say them.
Weak, an inner voice snarled at Heero. There were Oz soldiers looking for them. The Gundams had to be saved. Heero and Duo couldn't pilot their Gundams, or even escape, stuck together by a length of braid. Duo knew that as much as Heero, but he was shaking his head in a manic fashion, denying the reality of their situation.
"It's all I have!" Duo suddenly shouted, to Heero, to the Gundams, to the forest in general. "My cross and my braid! They've always been mine no matter what! I-I can't lose either one! I can't! I won't! I won't let this happen!" His eyes bored into Heero's eyes now and he said, coming back a little to himself, "I'd rather be dead."
And, Heero thought, Duo would rather he, Heero, be dead, too. He had proven that when he had chosen the length of hair over Heero's life when they had been on the Gundam's arm. Heero couldn't name the emotion twisting him up inside. All he knew was that it hurt incredibly when he thought of that.
Emotions not locked up safely in the pit of Heero's being were a completely new thing to him. So, too, was his relationship with Duo. Heero was still trying to understand love. It was cruel that he was learning heartbreak sooner. He had forced himself to be patient with Duo because of the boy's violent past, understanding his emotional scars because of the ones he, Heero, had himself. That their relationship would be a slow blooming thing, had been understood. Even their brief encounters with lovemaking had to have stringent rules and hard lines never to be crossed. Duo, for all his innate cheerfulness and brash personality, was more like a wild, timid animal when it came to dealing with anything physical, but then, Heero was the same way when it came to expressing emotions. He had lived too long without them for it all to come easily and naturally. An impossible situation, the soldier part of Heero had said too often. Heero was wondering if that cruel voice had been right after all.
Heero looked at Duo and felt....he tried to sort it out, make sense of it. For the success of a mission, he knew he would sacrifice Duo. It was a given. Duo knew that, had always known that even before they had admitted that there was something between them. So, too, Heero would sacrifice Duo to keep the Gundams safe. That was also a given. Two things more important than Duo's life, but two things of incredible importance in the larger scheme of things. It was logical. It was right. This length of hair and a beaten, gold cross...they were mental crutches to the fragile heart of Duo's mind. Pacifiers, the disgusted, soldier part of Heero's mind snarled, but the part that had grown to love Deathscythe's pilot understood, understood that these things were unquestionably part of what kept Duo whole and functioning in their bloody, war torn, young lives.
"I won't hurt your braid," Heero announced slowly and carefully, so that Duo wouldn't doubt him. "Give me your knife."
Duo glared.
"You don't have a choice," Heero told him. "Either give me the knife or I'll be forced to knock you unconscious and take it. You know I can do it."
Duo relented reluctantly. He pulled the knife out of its sheath at his back and slowly handed it hilt first to Heero. Heero took it and tested the edge. Just as he suspected, it was razor sharp. Duo had a penchant for laziness, but not when it came to his weapons.
Duo was shaking and he hated it. He was watching himself from a mental distance, horrified by what he had done to save his precious hair and cross, but unable to stop the reflexes that had been ingrained in him over long years. So many people had tried to cut off his braid, for spite, for torture, for laughs. Accidents, too, had tied to claim that length of chestnut hair. It held memories of the whore house, customer after customer taking hold of it, jerking, pulling, wrapping it about their hands to control a small boy while they abused him. It held memories of torture, Oz soldiers hanging him by it, choking him with it, pulling it and him from man to man while they beat him to a pulp. Yet, it also held cherished memories. A dim, remembered mother and father... a mother stroking his hair, 'Such pretty hair. A shame to ever cut it.' Solo grinning and kissing it like a man would kiss a ladies hand, mocking, teasing, so cherished as he pulled Duo close by it and hugged him. Maxwell Church, the Sister brushing out his hair and braiding it while she hummed hymns, her last touch in the world amidst death and destruction that fall of chestnut braid. And lately, Heero's rough caresses and his inexperienced fingers stroking and running over one of the few things that a nervous Duo would allow him to touch unasked, his unbound hair.
The cross, too, had its memories, but it was mostly a reminder, a reminder of why Duo fought in the war. It was a symbol of the ones he had inadvertently caused to die; a grave marker of guilt and a standard for his need to avenge them. To part with it would have been like losing a part of his soul, a burned, tormented part, but one Duo needed as much as he needed his hair. Both reminded him why he went on living when he could have comfortably committed suicide long ago. Duo needed to remember his past, to know that he had been loved and had loved, and he needed to know that there was purpose to his life, one of exacting revenge and another of pure spite, to foil the enemy that had wanted him dead since the destruction of Maxwell Church long ago.
Braid and cross, both more important than the man Duo loved, but they were old companions and Duo's relationship with Heero was still so new and painful. To trust Heero, the intense eyed pilot of Wing Zero, a man who could be single minded and violent where the mission and the war were concerned, with the two most important things in his life, was a mark of desperation on Duo's part. He saw that the situation was hopeless. His mind had run through every point in his brain, trying to think of a solution that wouldn't entail losing some hair. Nothing had come to him. Heero was right, not in that he was stronger than Duo or that he could do what he intended by force, but that Duo didn't have any choice. He also knew that if Heero was lying and that knife cut any amount of hair, Duo was going to lose his mind and either kill himself or Heero. It was in his tense stance and most certainly in his manic, glittering eyes.
Heero saw it as he took long deep breaths to force an adrenalin rush. His face went grim and hard as he sank into the mental discipline that would switch off pain receptors and allow him to reach a plateau of determination to accomplish what he knew he had to do. When he was ready, Heero acted without warning, bringing the knife blade down on his own hand. It took five sharp slices downward to severe skin from hand and to free him of Duo's beloved braid.
Blood splattered them both. Duo's eyes went wide and he took a breath to scream in horror. Heero dropped the knife and slapped his good hand over Duo's mouth. Duo's scream was muffled against it as Heero brought pressure to bear and pushed Duo to the ground. He held the pilot in an unbreakable grip, waiting for the panic to subside and the noises Duo was making to stop.
"I need," Heero panted, his cut hand clutched hard in a fist of blood and rent skin. "I need the medical kit. You'll have to wrap this up. Damn you, Baka! Get over it and do as I say!"
Duo was shaking in every limb. When Heero cautiously released him, he shrank away from Heero as if he were a monster. His braid, trailing the dirt, clearly had a piece of glue and Heero's bloody skin attached to it.
"I did what you wanted," Heero said brutally. "I saved your precious hair!"
Duo flinched. "I- Heero! I never wanted-"
"Didn't you?" Heero spat back. "Go get the medical kit. Now!"
Still Duo hesitated, in a kind of shock. He couldn't refute what Heero was saying as much as he wanted to. It was true. Every word.
"Ike!" Heero snarled and his hand cracked across Duo's face. Duo cringed inward on himself, hands coming up defensively. "Ike!" Heero shouted again and drew back his hand for another slap.
"All right!" Duo shouted back and exploded out of his crouch to his feet, face red and eyes more sane than they had been since the whole incident began. "I'm going! D-Don't hit me again! Ever! I won't- I can't, oh, God, Heero! Why did you do that? Why?"
Heero glared, still panting in pain. "Tell me," he said viciously. "Tell me that you would rather I had cut your hair than myself."
Duo struggled but he never told lies. He couldn't start now.
"Thought so," Heero snarled. "Get the medical kit. At least patch me up when I make such sacrifices for you."
Duo ran over to their supplies, still packed in metal containers by the remains of their last night's camp. Opening the lid of one and rummaging for the medical kit, Duo tried hard not to cry. He was trembling so badly that he could hardly make his fingers close on the familiar case with the red cross on the cover. Heero had saved his life and his braid, sacrificing himself, just as he had said. He had proved how much he loved Duo, that he was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for him. Duo had traded that love for a cold cross and a length of hair. He knew that Heero would never forgive him. Whatever they had, was gone now.
Duo made a bad job of binding Heero's hand. The man stayed stoically silent as Duo smeared the large wound with an adhesive bandage and an antibiotic. When he was done, he could hardly see through the haze of emotion and unshed tears. He wanted to say something, but everything Duo thought of to say sounded like so much wasted breath. Thank him? Heero didn't want his thanks. He should never have had to make the sacrifice. Apologize? Duo wasn't sorry, couldn't be when he still couldn't wish that Heero had cut his braid instead of himself. In the end, there was nothing to say and Duo clenched his jaw in anguish when he realized it.
Heero saw that clenched jaw. It wasn't a mystery to him, what Duo was thinking. The boy felt guilty. That was something, Heero supposed, but was it enough? At that moment, nursing his wounded hand, Heero didn't think it was. Common sense excused Duo. Every one of the Gundam pilots had their own brand of madness because of their violence filled lives. Duo's obsession with his cross and braid wasn't any different, yet in what he was willing to sacrifice for it was different. Heero's heart, so newly opened to love for the braided boy, was bleeding as much as his hand. Heero's heart was angry. It was, as yet, unforgiving.
"We have work to do," Heero said at last, rising and heading back for Deathscythe as if he wasn't wounded and still bleeding heavily.
Duo wanted to protest. He followed Heero and began to say that he should rest, until he saw the smattering of glue burns on Heero's upper body. That stopped his tongue. His fault, all of it. Heero had lived up to his name and Duo had lived up to his. Heero had sacrificed. Duo had revealed the other side of himself, the mad, desperate side of Duo Maxwell, the side of himself that was weak and needed crutches to survive. It was the side that Duo had never wanted Heero to see or anyone else for that matter. Once Heero had asked Duo, "why the name?" , and Duo remembered replying that it had been better than what his customers had named him, 'Bitch'. Heero had looked so sad for him, Duo recalled, but the response had been pure self defense, a savage attempt to divert Heero from finding out the truth of his name. Well, now he knew. Now he knew that there was the competent, smiling Baka Duo and the mad, frightened, selfish Duo. Two sides of a tarnished coin.
The work on Deathscythe's arm had to be finished. Once again, they crouched in position, Duo holding the parts together and Heero fumbling and attempting to use the glue applicator with his good hand. They sweated, they swore, but they managed to forget their emotional turmoil long enough to finish the job.
"Deathscythe will be operational tomorrow," Heero said in a tone of voice that let Duo know that there wasn't an option. They WOULD finish. They WOULD leave that place and get the Gundams to safety. The demise of their relationship would have to wait until they reached the safe house where the rest of the pilots were waiting for them.
Night fell. Crickets and frogs began to call. They ate cold rations, not willing to chance a fire and draw Oz scouts to their position, and then stretched out on blankets spread over the rough ground between the Gundams. They turned their backs on each other without saying a word, the motion detector alarm near enough to wake them should it go off. If that happened, the only choice they had was to run and try and draw pursuit away from the precious Gundams.
Duo listened to Heero breathe. It wasn't steady. He was in pain. All his fault, Duo thought and wanted dearly to punish himself somehow. Nothing should have mattered more to him than Heero. Nothing! Why couldn't love overcome his selfish need for his emotional crutches? Why couldn't love be enough?
That question followed Duo into dreams. Those dreams quickly turned into one terrible nightmare....
Duo was naked. That was his first indication that it was a nightmare. The second, was that he was bent over at the waist, upper body spread across a badly scarred table top, hands tied tightly to something ahead of him and under the table. A knife stood up, pinning his braid, through a twisted loop, to the table top. It wasn't harming the hair yet, but it was a threat nonetheless. The third indicator was Duo's gold cross, hanging from a man's clenched hand to his right. The man had a hammer in his other hand. The last thing was Heero, seated in a chair in front of him, hands tied behind his back and face grim and intense under his wild, disordered, dark hair.
"Choose," A voice said behind Duo.
Duo tried to twist his head to look, but he couldn't. The other man was indistinct as well, only his hands clear and 'present'.
"Are you listening, Bitch?" Yes, definitely a nightmare, Duo thought, but he couldn't convince himself to be less afraid because of it. It was too real, too close to the harsh reality he had known. When a hand reached from behind to take hold of his genitals, hard and rough, he jumped and shook from head to toe, letting out an involuntary sob.
"Don't like anyone touching you, do you, Bitch? I won't if you choose something else."
"Choose?" Duo tried to be brave. Heero was watching. He wouldn't crawl in front of Heero. He wouldn't beg that hand to stop. He wasn't a boy any longer. Heero had taught him that with patience, passion, and love. It wasn't any less true because he was suffering in a nightmare.
"I think we're owed some revenge for the lives you've taken in combat," the voice informed him, dripping with hate. "We know about these things that are so dear to you. Your cross, that beautiful hair, your sweet body, and that poor man over there. We're going to utterly destroy one of them. The only mercy we will show you, is that you get to choose which one."
"Me," Heero said in a desperate, wild tone of voice, almost as if he were threatening Duo. "Choose me. I will die for you, Duo. I love you. Let me do this!"
"You don't have much time, Bitch," the voice taunted. "If you don't choose now, we'll destroy all of them, everything you love."
It was only a dream, Duo chanted to himself, but that violating hand was 'real' enough. Duo had enough memories of such touches to fuel his imagination. He didn't have any doubt that it would feel 'real' enough if it went further than a crude grope. The rest had a solid quality to it as well. Duo couldn't banish the fear that braid, cross, and Heero really could come to harm.
"I want to die for you, Duo!" Heero shouted. "Please, choose me!"
The cross and the braid didn't have any voice, but they were equally in danger, equally liable to be sacrificed for the other. Heero, the man he loved. The braid, holder of all his memories. The cross, symbol and reason for living. Duo couldn't live without any of them. In order of importance, Heero had come last. Now that Duo knew that the pilot of Wing Zero would die for him, loved him enough to cut the flesh off of his body, he had moved up to a position equal to the others. Duo couldn't choose to destroy any of them, that left...
No! Duo didn't want to be the sacrifice. He had avoided even masturbation until he had fallen in love with Heero, hating any reminder of his abused sexual past. It was Heero who had taken the frightened boy Duo had been and taught him how to make love and to love his body without fear as a man. Duo knew that the voice behind him wasn't going to be so gentle or caring. Duo knew it was going to be a rape in the worst way.
The hammer rose over the cross. Another, bodiless hand, pried up the knife out of the table and poised it over Duo's chestnut braid. A club hovered over Heero's head. Time was up. Time to choose. Time to find out what was at the heart of Duo Maxwell.
Duo gripped the table and closed his eyes, whimpering despite his best effort not to. "Me...," He whispered it, not trusting his voice with much more than that. "I ... I choose me."
There wasn't a preamble. Credits were tossed on the table top. They clattered and turned end over end, coming to rest around Duo's head as hard hands sunk steel fingers into the flesh of his hips. Payment for a whore. That's all he was now. He wasn't Duo Maxwell. He was only 'Bitch', as his hips were spread wide and something hard and too large crammed into a place never meant for it.
"Like it, Bitch? So sweet and tight! I'm going to split you in two! Come on, ride me! Ride me, Bitch!" One hand left Duo's hip, wrapped around his braid, and used it to keep Duo in place for the tearing, pounding, pole of flesh to get its pleasure.
"Duo!" Heero's voice thundered and reverberated in the dream. "Duo, wake up!"
Cold water hit Duo in the face. He came up out of the nightmare, sobbing for breath, uttering heart rending cries. He was a child, a terrified child, but he had the strength of a man as he kicked, punched, and scrambled to get away from the figure hovering over him. A voice followed him, calm and gentle, but tinged with anguish too as it said, "I will never touch you, Duo, unless you want me to."
That stopped Duo, woke him up completely. He crouched, huddling in on himself, shaking arms wrapped around shaking legs. "S-Sorry, Heero," Duo managed to say.
"Sorry, for what?"
Heero's voice was genuinely puzzled. Duo groped for an answer. "For being a bastard to you. For thinking you-"
"You chose to save me, in your dream," Heero replied in the darkness. He stepped cautiously forward, but stopped several paces from Duo, not wanting to panic him. "I heard you. You talked in your sleep. You let your dream rape you rather than let me and your precious things get destroyed."
Duo shuddered at the word 'rape'. "I didn't choose you over them," Duo pointed out, hating himself. "I couldn't."
Duo couldn't see Heero smile, but he could feel it, a grim smile, maybe, as grim as his voice as he said. "I think I can settle for that. I think I'll have to, Duo." He paused and then added, "Just- Just try not to get me killed for them, okay, Little Baka?"
Duo blinked in wonder, feeling Heero's distress and the emotions he was struggling to reveal. It was clear that the man still loved him, still wanted Duo, even after- Duo unclenched and stood up. Gathering all of his strength and resolve, the dream still pricking with sharp claws at his deepest fear, Duo stepped forward to stand directly in front of Heero.
Duo could hear Heero breathe, but his features were still indistinct. Duo couldn't offer him much, not after the fright he had just suffered, but he thought that he could be brave enough to offer something. He slowly reached out and touched Heero's face. Searching over it delicately, he found Heero's mouth. Duo caressed Heero's lips with his trembling finger tips.
"You called me a pet name," Duo told Heero softly. "Little Baka. I thought we weren't giving each other names." I thought it was over between us, Duo thought to himself, but didn't say it, hoping against hope that it wasn't and that Heero would respond.
"Hn, suits you," Heero breathed on Duo's fingers and that breath was warm and sensual.
"What shall I call you?" Duo wondered, marveling at how very soft Heero's lips were. Duo thought about it and then said, "Baby."
Duo could imagine Heero scowling. "If you ever call me that in front of anyone, Duo Baka-!"
Duo winced at the tone, almost pulled his fingers away in trepidation, but he felt Heero's tongue lick out and catch one finger before it could leave his lips. Duo paused like that and Heero didn't move, didn't offer anything more, until Duo said, "All right," and then Heero was taking that finger into his mouth and swirling his tongue around it. Duo could hardly breathe after that, let alone call Heero a pet name.
"Love me," Heero said around that finger.
"I do," Duo replied in a strangled, passion filled voice.
"Say it," Heero demanded. "Duo Maxwell doesn't lie. Say it, or I won't believe it."
Duo reclaimed his finger so that he could form the words. "I love you, Heero. Baby," he said and grabbed the back of Heero's neck, needy and needing him closer. Heero slowly complied and their bodies touched. Maybe he could, Duo thought, the dream fading fast as nightmares usually did, only leaving a faint horror and a bad taste at the back of his throat. Maybe he could show Heero as well as tell him?
But Heero knew Duo better, knew that it would only end in panic and frustration. He resisted Duo's pull and said simply, "Tell me what's most important to you, Duo. I need to know."
Duo felt his body burn in frustration, but he understood what Heero wanted, needed more than any physical closeness. "I love you, Heero, as much as my cross, as much as my braid, much more than my Deathscythe."
Heero leaned close, as if he were sharing a secret. "Let's go up into Deathscythe, then" he said, "All of us together. I think we're going to have to learn how to share."
***Owari***
Duo: Hm, that was short.
Kracken: Short and sweet?
Duo: Short and lazy.
Kracken: Hey!