A/N: This is a joint Pizza Hut Challenge of Ladybug Oblivion and Rally, conceived in a day not in Pizza Hut but in Panera Bread, T.G.I. Friday's and in a brief bout before the movie at MJR Theater.
Disclaimer/Warnings: We don't own, nor will we ever own Mobile Suit Gundam Wing or any of its characters. They are owned by Bandai, Sunrise and Sotsu Agency. Pairings are completely a secret until a later date. There will be no spoilers or intentional character bashing, but there will be some violence, a little shonen-ai (which means boys kissing boys so, if you don't like that take a hike!), a dash of OOC-ness, a lot of AU-ness, potentially a ton of humor and a likable Relena (you heard me!). And yes, it's based on Swan Lake. That's Lady O's fault. The Relena thing is Rally's.
Noticing her bodyguard's focus, Relena looked up, absently blew on her nails and then raised a hand. "You finished yet? I'm bored."
"Two minutes, Relena," he managed before the enemy pounced all at once, burying him under a pile of stinking thieving flesh. Two minutes did not prove to be a sufficient estimation of the elimination of a mere bandit gang but it was just enough time for Heero to finally wade himself out of the pile.
One of the brigands cackled, crawling to his feet and wiping his mouth with the back of a sleeve. "Aw, bite yer lip there, pretty-boy?"
The statement was incredulous. Heero Yuy, bite his lip? Impossible.
Wait a minute. His lip did sting a little. Heero's hand rose to his lips of it's own accord. It pulled back. His finger was spotted lightly with red. His lip was bleeding.
Oh, shit.
All of the normal sounds of the forest were swallowed up by a preternatural silence and time did a damned fine imitation of stopping as Heero shifted his focus from that tiny drop of blood on his finger to the Princess. Relena was gone.
Heero ducked and then rolled to the side as a fountain of red sprayed over his former location. And then, from the opposite direction of the blood sprinkler there came a hideous sound. It was something in between the cry of a panther and the scream of a dying man. Oh, wait. That part was the scream of a dying man. Heero ducked and rolled again, snagging his travel pack as he passed it and putting a tree to his back. From inside the pack he pulled out a small yellow pouch that held a folded up piece of oilcloth. He snapped his wrist, opening the oilcloth in a single move and then wrapped it around himself. He was just in time. A severed hand hit him square in the chest. "Can you please not aim for me?" It was a useless question, he knew, but he had to get it out there.
Heero was squinting through the red spray, trying to make some sense of the death and destruction around him when he noticed that Relena's sword was innocently propped up next to her pack. His eyes were pulled down to the hand that held his own sword. If her sword was there and his sword was here then what the hell was causing the blood orgy and flying body parts?
His mind flashed back to the last image he had of Relena. She was leaning against a tree, buffing her nails. His eye twitched. No, she was filing her nails. The same eye twitched again. Filing her nails... Filing her nails... He looked up. There was a circle of carnage, outlined in bright crimson, that encompassed the entire clearing, up to but not quite including Heero's toes and Relena had done all of that with a mere nail file. He got hit by an ear.
It was time to end this. "Stop." He got hit by an elbow.
"It's over." This time half a head.
"Ollie ollie oxen free." Another hand.
"They're all dead." Money pouch.
Oooh! Money pouch. That was worth saving. It found a new home in Heero's pack.
Heero finished stashing his new treasure, took a deep breath and, in his softest tone, breathed, "Relena?"
Relena looked up with a sweet smile. "Yes, Heero." She was all innocence despite the splatters of various body fluids coating her peony traveling dress and the still-dripping instrument of death clasped tightly in her right hand.
"You did it again."
"What?" She looked down, eyes going wide. "Oh, I have, haven't I?" She shrugged. "So, do you want to clean up or should I?"
"You kill it, you gut it," was his only response.
Relena shivered. "I'm not staying in Freakston any longer than absolutely necessary. I'd rather sleep in the 'Forest of the Lost'." She had said the last bit in a fake deep tone, cupping her hands around her lips and repeating the 'Lost' four or five times in a bad imitation of an echo.
"It's nearly sunset," protested Heero stubbornly.
"It's nearly sunset," a voice echoed from somewhere inside the building they had just exited.
That's strange, Relena thought. It must be catching.
"Are you sure you'll be alright?" continued the voice.
"Yeah! Yeah!" responded a new voice. "How many times do I have to tell you, I'll be fine?" A head poked briefly out of the building before disappearing back into the darkened recesses of the inn, trailed by a long brown braid. "Oh, crap! Look at the time! I really gotta go, Annabelle. Kiss, kiss. Give the husband my best."
"Sure thing, Duo." The first voice again.
The head made a new appearance accompanied by the rest of the second voice's owner and was followed by the owner of the first. The first voice turned out to be the grizzled old barkeep. Only now, she wasn't grizzled in the least. Her formerly rancid locks were clean, dry and pulled back into a neat bun at the base of her neck and her rude disposition and atrocious diction had been magically replaced by that of a loveable grandmother. She was almost—dare Relena think it—almost squeezable.
The barkeep's companion was a young man dressed exclusively in black. His cobalt eyes shined with harmless mischief above a smile fit for a cat. He stepped out into the road next to Relena, swung a bulging pack over his shoulder and turned to wave goodbye to the barkeep.
As he turned the heavy pack hit Relena in the arm, spinning her off to the side. The young man saw his mistake too late, and reached out to catch her. He managed to snag her wrist, which only served to redirect her path from the hard packed dirt of the road to the horse trough. It had been months since Smithton had seen a horse and anywhere from six months to a year since anyone had cleaned the trough. Relena watched the stagnant water approach in a numb horror. She had just spent an hour scrubbing unidentifiable muck off of her body and sticky body fluids out of her hair. She was on her last set of clean clothes, which also happened to be her favorite traveling dress and she was not spending another hour Smithton.
There wasn't a thing she could do to prevent the inevitable. She did manage to catch and hold her breath as she hit the water's surface.
Her fingernails scraped over the slime coating the inside of the wooden trough as she scrambled for purchase. Eventually, her hand found the rim and she managed to push herself up out of the water. She spotted her assailant, dry as a bone and holding out a hand to help her up.
"Sorry about that," he said, waiting for her to grasp that offered assistance. "Lemme—" He broke off.
And then he flinched, yanking his hand back to safety. Heero refocused on Relena. Her eyes could kill an elephant at a thousand paces and a stop a politician's heart at two thousand. She eased herself into a standing position, never wavering her scorching glare. One foot stepped out of the trough and Heero would have sworn in a court of law that the foot was steaming. The young man took a step back, still cradling his hand. The other foot left the trough bringing along more steam. He scraped a foot back, positioning himself to turn and bolt.
"I," began Relena. "Am," she continued taking a single shuffle forward, a black shoe-shaped singe mark in her wake. "Going." Another shuffle and at this point the steam puffed into smoke. "To." This time a hand compressed into a fist. "Kill You!" she ended in a scream.
The assailant let out a high-pitched screech and made use of his preparations, sprinting out of town as fast as his legs could carry him.
Relena wasn't far behind.
Consequently, Heero was forced to leave behind all their supplies and traveling packs to follow at his hardest run. His attempt to catch up was fruitless. The guy, on his own was faster than Heero. With a hell-bent Relena screaming like a banshee and close enough to bite his ass he was the fastest runner Heero had ever laid eyes on.
"Scream all you like," the somewhat miffed, very smelly princess yelled to the dead man sprinting for his life ahead of her, "It won't change your fate!" The chase had continued for what felt like miles and she had only just managed to get within two arm lengths of him. The man's foot twisted, causing him to stumble and granting Relena another two feet. Ha! He was beginning to waver! There was no pain for Relena; only a singular purpose, a drive that kept her focus planted firmly on that bouncing length of rope connected to his fat unruly head.
"—AIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIOOOOOOOOO—"
Five more inches to go. It was all a matter of placing one foot in front of the other.
"—EYUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU—"
Four more inch—Didn't he ever stop to breathe?—No! Focus! Three more inches...
"—AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND—"
Two inches...
"—SOMETIMESWHYYYYYYYYYYYY—"
Her hand stretched out, entering her eye line and Relena's brain refused to acknowledge the perfectly good manicure gone to waste. Those gunk encrusted fingers wrapped around the braid, squeezed and caught nothing but air. The guy had vanished.
There was a strangled "Oof!" off to Relena's left. She skid to a halt, flipped around to face the sound and found her attacker in a tangled heap on the ground with another man standing on top of him. Due to the dim lighting of dusk, Relena couldn't make out any fine details but she could see that the stranger had one foot firmly planted in the middle of the screamer's back; the other was holding Screechy's face in the dirt. She would have silently applauded the beating of the rogue if that attack hadn't resulted in stealing her own revenge.
"Wu-Bear!" cried Screechy. He gave a twist of his hips and, knocked off balance, the stranger hopped off of his victim. Screechy jumped up and immediately latched on to the stranger's legs. "Save me!"
To be continued...