Gundam Wing Fan Fiction / Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ A Thief in One Life, A Thief in the Next ❯ Theatre Disaster ( Chapter 5 )

A/N: My foot’s falling asleep. Just thought that you should know. Show me some sympathy and leave a review, okay?

A Thief in One Life, A Thief in the Next

Chapter Five

Theatre Disaster

The pair didn’t allow anyone but Hiei to watch them practice their skit for the next two weeks, though Heero could see that they worked perfectly together any other time. Despite Hiei’s explanation, he couldn’t help but to think that he was loosing the braided baka to Shuuichi, or possibly to their common past.

“This is it,” Duo whispered, staring at himself in the mirror. An extremely human face stared back, but only for a moment. When Duo glanced up at the glass again, he looked like a mix of his past and present self, Duo’s face, Kuronue’s ears and wings. Opening the ancient looking box on the counter, he added one last final touch in the form of a red pendant, one he hadn’t worn since his parting from the Makai. When he stepped out into the hall backstage, it was to stagger back in shock. Kurama? No, it was just Shuuichi.

The disguised redhead was having a similar reaction to the sight of Duo. Both recovered quickly, putting on nervous smiles.

“Have you checked the audience yet?” Duo asked casually, willing his wings not to move just yet. On stage, people might pass it off as a trick to make them look realistic, but not backstage.

“I haven’t, but Hiei says there’s a full house,” Shuuichi said, glancing back toward the stage door. “It took him two entire pints to convince him to come, and that’s after I paid for his ticket.”

“Hey, curtain call in five minutes, gentlemen,” Une said, walking past them wearing a headset and holding a clipboard. “Great job on those costumes, by the way.”

The boisterous crowd quieted down as the lights dimmed and Quatre walked out onto the stage to do the introductions. A collective breath was drawn as the curtains rose into a jungle castle where a battle was already taking place between two breathtaking demons and a continuous horde of ugly ones in matching shifts.

Heero gasped at the vision practically dancing on stage, twin blades flying around him in wide arches, cutting down enemy that fell behind the wall they stood upon. To his back, his kitsune partner wielded a long, green whip toward much of the same effect. Each had a small fortune slung across their backs.

“Where did he learn to move like that?” Wufei whispered, leaning over toward Heero where they sat in the third box, compliments of Quatre, who joined them as soon as his introductions were completed.

“I saw him like this once,” the blond said. “It was during the war. OZ had a lot of trouble identifying the bodies afterward. They,” he motioned to Duo and Shuuichi’s opponents, “are lucky that this is just acting.”

On the stage, Duo had to keep reminding himself to pull his attacks, that he wasn’t really back in the Makai fighting with his partner and best friend. But man, Shuuichi was good with that whip.

The actors on stage didn’t stop their performance when the auditorium doors were slammed abruptly open. They did, however, when the man who came in through them pulled a gun from his jacket, his eyes wild, and began to shout. “Here’s a better way to help war orphans! Kill the people responsible for their parents’ deaths!” He opened fire, gun pointing directly at Quatre’s box and the four pilots within.

Heero didn’t have time to react before a bullet slammed into his shoulder, followed by a second lower down the same arm. Wufei made a leap from the box, pulling out the handgun Une had permitted, only to be caught by the third bullet in the knee during mid-jump. Landing wrong, he could feel the bones in his ankle snapping. The fourth bullet went wild, grazing Quatre’s cheek and hitting the wall behind him.

It was then that the gunman swung his attentions around to the stage, where Duo was frozen in shock, staring at the unconscious Heero slumped over the box wall. His hands tightened around the handles of his scythes hard enough to leave an indentation in the wood. His eyes began to grow damp.

“At least one of you shows your true face,” the man sneered, aiming carefully. He caught sight of the glistening tears leaving Duo’s right eye, the others being held back and grinning in his madness. “Oh yes, that’s it, cry. Cry just like you made me when you killed my brother, my father, and everyone I cared about! Cry!”

In the back of the hall, crimson eyes widened in realization. Uncaring who saw, he ripped the ward from over his jagan. Youkai was surrounding the supposedly human boy like a thick fog blanket, flickering. Duo was a chimera, barely holding back a full transformation, and the tears of a chimera…

The tears turned a milky white as they grew closer to the man’s chin. Instead of falling to the ground as they should have, each assumed a form that was featureless and sexless. The right eyes dried up once there were twenty. “Protect them. Protect the ones I care about, my friends and the innocents here. Protect them.”

Shuuichi ducked behind the stage wall, pushing past all of the other actors and technicians. Out of sight, his pulled off the wig and withdrew a seed from the ever-present store kept in his hair. Fortune was upon him in the shape of a flowerpot that would have been used in a later skit. The flower may have been plastic, but the dirt was real enough and would keep the electricity fed vine grounded to the theater. With a shower of sparks, every light in the building went out.

Duo was grateful for the darkness. He didn’t anyone to see what he was about to do. His left eye finally released a tear, a single, bloody tear that also took form. But no protector was this creature. Letting go of the last shreds of his human form, Kuronue matched his gaze to the nonexistent eyes of his creation and uttered two words. “Kill him.”

In the panic, Quatre heard a single shot before there was a blood curdling scream of a man. Everyone was silent, too terrified to speak.