Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ Kishikata no Eos ❯ Tribulations ( Chapter 9 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: dawningfire 
Wherein Dawn's birthday is aborted by mercenaries, and the two are kidnapped
Anime/Manga: Sailor Moon Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Sci-fi / Romance | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 10.09.2004 | Updated On: 04.06.2005 | Pages: 5 | Words: 7.1K | Visits: 145 | Status: Completed
Wherein Dawn's birthday is aborted by mercenaries, and the two are kidnapped
Anime/Manga: Sailor Moon Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Sci-fi / Romance | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 10.09.2004 | Updated On: 04.06.2005 | Pages: 5 | Words: 7.1K | Visits: 145 | Status: Completed
Kishikata no Eos
Chapter Nine -- Tribulations
Breandon strolled through the Row, a sensual, elegant figure none the worse for a complete lack of sleep. His hands were nested deep in his pockets, one fisted tight around a small velvet box. The dawning sun added extra copper lights to his hair and tinted the plaza square with delicate rays of brilliance. The white marble fountain came to life as the morning light touched it, cascades of water silently flowing out of the rose finial to splash musically into the basin.
The dawn stillness was as crystalline as the water, punctuated by the hushed calls of women coming to the fountain, the shluff of feet transporting wares from cart to stall and shop, and the ever present song of the birds that made Crystal Tokyo their home.
At the north-east corner of the plaza, Dawn sipped coffee bought from an old man who complimented her pale rose sundress with grandfatherly appreciation. Hair hung damply down her back, left to dry to bring soft curls by mid-morning. Sandals made little sound against the brick walkways as she weaved in and out between the wagons and carts that would be moved before more of the Row patrons arrived. She paused to admire a display of carved crystal that sent fragments of the morning light dancing across white cobblestones.
Across the plaza, Breandon bought his own early morning beverage from his favourite chocolate vendor, who gave him a knowing wink and smile. He smiled back, and hopped up to his usual perch on a wall along one side of the plaza. He'd need the advantage of the height he lacked to spot Dawn across the filling square, despite her flaming hair.
Sunlight turned the white walls and cobblestones pale gold and tinted a lone cloud rosy amber, but didn't light up a tall red-headed figure. An old-fashioned brass bell, towered high above the crowds, began to toll the hour in sonorous tones as a line of mercenaries brushed past Breandon's dangling feet.
There was still no sign of Dawn.
"Not yet? Well, thank you very much." Dawn bobbed her head and gave a smile to a little boy who went back to sweeping the steps in front of his auntie's flower shop. The square becoming busier by the minute, Dawn made her way to a picturesque fountain at the centre, and hopped up on the ledge. No sign of a dashing and flamboyantly dressed figure here. She shielded her eyes from the morning sun as she stood on her toes, straining to see above the brightly coloured canopies.
Breandon drained his mug and handed it back down to the vendor with another smile. He'd hoped that Dawn would be early, but a wry little voice told him that was unlikely even in the best of circumstances -- which these probably weren't. He stood up on the wall, shading his eyes against the rising sun, and finally, finally spotted his love. He was just leaning over to jump down and race through the crowd when a movement near her caught his eye, and he froze.
Dawn's coffee fell into the fountain, with Dawn following as a heavy staff connected with her ankles and swept her feet out from under her. A rough hand hauled her from the fountain, pulling her into the arms of a well-muscled young man who grinned at her with gold-capped teeth. Instantly fearful, Dawn threw one hand up, ready to henshin then and there. Just as suddenly as she opened her mouth, the sharp jab of a needle behind her ear allowed a scream to escape rather than her transformation phrase. Medicine worked quickly, and her eyes glassed over as she fell limply into her captor's arms.
"Ohhhhhh, SHIT." The vendor blinked up at Breandon for about a millisecond before he leaped bodily off the wall and hit the ground running.
Or at least TRYING to.
The abductors had timed their attack perfectly -- the crowds were thick enough to prevent rapid movement, but thin enough to allow a moderately slow-moving group to simply blend in, supporting one of their number as though she was merely dead-drunk ... and not drugged asleep. Breandon fought his way to the fountain to discover the trail cold and turning colder.
Despair overwhelmed him, and he crumpled to the rim of the fountain's basin.
"Ay, papi, you don't look so good." A slightly accented voice came up behind him and a hand gripped his upper arm to pull him to his feet.
Sick frustration caused him to jerk his arm away. "Shove off."
Cold metal jabbed at the skin behind the ear as the hand grabbed his arm once more. "We will, as soon as you're on board."
Darkness overwhelmed his curse.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Dawn awoke long enough to realize that she was about to throw up and that she needed to move. Throwing her limp body to the side, she retched violently for a couple of minutes, stomach emptied of what little she'd consumed that morning. Dizziness overwhelmed her, and she rolled back over, curling in a foetal position as she whimpered softly.
A voice completely unknown to Dawn hissed over her head, "Is that SUPPOSED to happen? You promised to deliver them hale and whole to -- "
"Shut up, Valère!"
There was a smack as of flesh hitting flesh, and the metallic ring of a weapon being drawn. From the sound of it, a knife. An arm the hue of fine chocolate came into Dawn's view, holding a serrated blade. The blade glided along Breandon's cheek.
"Whatever we do to them, you'll heal, Valère. Understand?" the second voice whispered. "Before we arrive. I leave their fate up to you. If they die ... " The voice left the threat implicit.
"If we die," Dawn managed weakly, "you're gonna have a pissed off Princess and a really unhappy league of Senshi ready to chase you down for free." A hand cracked against her mouth and she went sprawling, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth.
Beside her, Breandon began to convulse against his bonds, olivine eyes flying open and rolling back in his head. The half-digested remains of his morning cocoa spilled from his mouth over the kneeling figure that had to be Valère, lighter in skin tone from the unknown knife-wielder. Both captors flinched back with a spacer's disgust.
"We got problems here?" A raven haired woman strode into the cargo hold, unfazed by the seizure or the rivulet of blood and saliva. "Valère, they coming off the medication yet?" She scowled at the other two crew members.
Valère stood up, brushing ineffectually at the vomit. "The girl has, but the male is having a bad reaction. I need him moved to sickbay."
"No can do," she answered immediately. "I'm not wasting resources on that. The bounty's for the girl, not her pretty-boy escort. Still..." She pursed her lips, deep in thought. "Get his clothes before he ruins 'em. We could sell them for dinner one night."
Dawn decided later that nothing less than a threat to his clothing would have brought him around. Breandon's eyes returned to normal, and he gasped for breath, the convulsions abruptly ceasing. He gasped out on the third breath, "Don't you touch me, misbegotten daughter of a space whore. I'm more than your life is worth."
"Strip 'em both," she commanded in a bored tone. "And get me some lunch, I'm famished." With that instruction, she left her flunkies to relieve her captives of their clothing, with Valère able to do little more than watch and wipe their bodies clean before leaving.
Alone now in the silence, Breandon closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the wall. "I don't suppose you have a clue, do you, my rose of summer?"
"Hardly." Still dizzy, she managed to lean up against him. "I didn't piss off anyone yesterday, so this has nothing to do with the events of the past twenty four hours." The world spun, and she fell into his lap roughly.
Involuntarily he strained against his bonds to put his arms around her. Essaying a smile, he looked into her eyes. "I knew you loved me, but I didn't realise it was quite that much!"
The comment didn't have the desired effect, as Dawn promptly burst into tears, sobbing loudly. "'S not funny! We were gonna walk and have breakfast and..." She sniffled, unable to control her running nose that didn't help her beat-up appearance. "This is the worst birthday EVER!" Bawling, she lay her cheek against his thigh.
"Oh dear ... " Breandon tried to bend over and comfort her, and decided that didn't work so well. "Dawn, love, sit up here and look at me. Please?" God, he wanted to gather her in his arms ...
Taking his suggestion to heart, she rolled onto her back and looked up into peridot green eyes. "This okay? I don't wanna sit up," she admitted.
"I mean, if you want me to, I can sit up. Might take a while, having my hands all tied up. At any other time, you in your boxers and me tied up could be pretty exciting, but at the moment..." She trailed off, the light-hearted attempt at humour failing miserably. "Sorry," she apologized, turning her head to the side.
"No, stop that. We have to get out of here and find out what's going on." He gnawed his lip. "You don't have long fingernails, do you?"
She frowned. "They're long enough for the manicures that Rini forces me to get, but why?"
His head thunked against the wall. "I was hoping you could cut the ropes, but that's a bit melodramatic."
Dawn rolled off his lap and ungraciously managed to manoeuvre herself to inspect their bonds. Braided plastic of some kind... "Hey, see anything that looks like a heater? An exposed pipe or something?"
Wryly, he replied, "I see your hands, Guardian."
"I meant, if that doesn't work." Pulling his wrists towards her, she bent her head and began to carefully unravel the ends with her own bound hands. "This could take a while."
Confused, he craned his head over his shoulder. "Don't you have some kind of ... power, spell, whatever it's called, that generates heat?"
"It's not very good." The knots consumed her attention and distracted her from the tragedy of floating in space trapped in an unknown cargo bay. "I'm a rather useless Senshi, unless someone attacks me."
"The best offence is a good defence, hmm? I'm sorry I asked, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings." He made a complicated writhe intended to move his hair out of the way better and succeeded only in jerking the knots out of her hands. "DAMMIT."
"You didn't." Calmly, she reached for the knots again and frowned. Maybe if she could control the heat before it actually materialized, that might work. "Hold still," she instructed. Forefinger and thumb around the knot, she closed her eyes and formed the image of a small white-lavender sphere in her palm. Heat moving from her extremities, collecting themselves, travelling towards her right hand, skin hot enough to burn the fibres of the ropes itself.
Breandon held very still. He remembered what her attacks did at close range. It would be ugly if she messed up, and he didn't want to be ugly.
She smelled something not unlike fibreglass burning. Her eyes flew open in shock and she quickly pulled her hand away from the knot. Only a thin strip of rope remained, the rest hanging off in gooey smoking strands. "Give it a yank."
He jerked hard, muscles swelling underneath smooth skin. "Shit this hurts," he chanted under his breath.
The ropes popped, leaving a long red mark around both wrists.
"Ew," he said, holding his wrists out to her with a grin.
She beamed, unable to throw her arms about him. "Want me to kiss it and make it better?" Dawn balled her hand into a fist, not wanting to show the burns on her fingertips from her successful experiment.
"Not yet." Nimble fingers applied themselves to her ropes, which took a few moments of grunting, cursing, and fumbling before she felt them loosen. "This stuff is nothing to some of the synth threads, Saint Serenity preserve us."
"Yeah, they could have tied you up with your own clothes." Pulling her hands apart, she shook them to get the blood flowing again. A few seconds of that, and she reached for his wrists, massaging the red lines with her thumbs. "Now what?"
"Now I gather you in my arms and warm you up, because this cargo hold is colder than the fabled ninth circle of hell." He suited action to words. "Now, my beloved morning sky, you are quite certain you have no idea who might despise us both to this degree? I really prefer not to be stripped by foreign women."
Dawn allowed herself to be snuggled, grateful for the body heat and solace that came with such intimacy. Resting her cheek on soft hair that had fallen over his shoulder, she sighed audibly. "The Arronnés, for embarrassing them at their own dinner party. Unless these are people from the same federation that attacked the _Prometheus_," she noted.
"Grand, just grand, and me with no clothes, much less a weapon. How much ARE you worth, best beloved?"
"'S much as anyone wants me, I dunno." She traced the contours of his collarbone and chest with her burnt index finger. "It's rather odd, knowing that you're regarded as an object, like a black poker chip in some wild intergalactic game."
"In other words all we can do is wait."
"So it would seem." She stroked the underside of his chin gently, lacing the fingers of her other hand into his and bringing it to her lips. "Love you," she murmured softly.
"I know."
She raised her head, her expression caught between a frown and an impish grin. "I would hope so, since I've told you before. Isn't there another response that's a bit more... reciprocative?"
"Sleeping in my bed isn't reassuring enough?" he asked, surprised.
"I..." Dawn tilted her head, unsure of how to take that question. "I don't want to bring up that whole past thing, because I know that I've said that it doesn't make a difference," she began, her explanation unsure in the delivery. "And really, it doesn't, but if we're going on that exact definition, then I'd hope that I mean more to you for that simple definition, or meaning, or proof, to apply." She dropped his hand.
He snugged both arms around her shoulders and propped his chin on her head. "I had thought actions spoke louder than words."
"It's not the same with something like this."
"That's true," he acknowledged.
"So?" Dawn twisted about, fixing her gaze on him. "Do you?"
"Do I what?"
"Love me."
He tipped her head up and kissed her thoroughly instead of answering.
Dawn broke the kiss after a moment, pulling away. "You're avoiding it," she accused softly.
"I'm speaking a different language," he returned, and bent his head again.
"Stop that!" She pushed against his chest with both hands. "I want to hear you say it, Breandon."
"Why of a sudden?"
"Why not?" she countered. "I've told you that I love you on more than one occasion. I don't think you even expected it the first time." Dawn grew more upset by the minute, the emotional injustice too much for her to comprehend. "And I haven't heard you say those three words to me yet."
He turned a dull red. "It's just words, Dawn. There are more important things."
"It's important to me." She swallowed hard, keeping her gaze steady.
"I will never understand you, golden star of my days." His eyes closed, he shook his head. "I promise you, when we get out of here, I will tell you that I love you in a hundred languages and with a thousand phrases ... but can we escape first?!" he exclaimed, looking pained.
"Tell me what?" Dawn's burned fingers stroked the side of his face tenderly.
He rolled his eyes at her. "Focus, Dawn."
She gave a defeated sigh. He did manage to say it, sort of, in the middle of a bunch of other words. "Fine." She dropped her hand and pushed away from him, attempting to stand. "Screw the small talk, you wanna get outta here. I understand completely."
"Do you think you can overwhelm them?" He looked down, about as shy as she'd ever known him. "I think we may have to gain control of the ship rather than just sneak off."
"No fuckin' clue," she snapped, sarcasm taking the place of anger. "Really, I'd thought about just staying alive, considering that escaping into the vacuum of deep space really wouldn't suit either one of us, you without clothes and me in a damp sundress. There's that whole lack of atmosphere thing, too, but..." Dawn waved a hand to indicate that such a thing was minor. "But sure, let's overwhelm them. I'll henshin and distract them with my cleavage, and you attack them with... oh, wait." She whirled about, hands in the air. "You don't have a weapon."
He bit his tongue rather than snap back. "I'm not a Senshi," he reminded her quietly instead. "I don't know what you can do. For instance, I don't know if you can communicate telepathically with other Senshi, or if the Palace has some way of keeping track of you when you henshin."
He folded his legs Indian style, hands composed to shield his nakedness, and glanced about the hold. "There may yet be something in here we can use."
She glanced around, still fuming. Three little words that he couldn't manage to say, and he was relying on her to get them out of this mess. /'Cause nothing says 'I love you' like saving your ass from certain peril/. Dawn began a slow circle about the room, snooping about in boxes and trunks. The first open box yielded a roll of duct tape and a few simple tools. She shivered as she rooted through the mess, gritting her teeth. "So help me look," she muttered. "And I'm not telepathic and no one's ever said they could track me, so I dunno about that."
"Yes, Mistress." He pulled a box over and began to dump things out of it, muttering under his breath. "I'm going to ruin whomever did this, I swear it, I'm going to skin them alive and turn the skin into a RUG, by Goddess, and dance on it every morning when I rise, I'm going to string them up by their toes and perforate them with darts ... "
It became a sort of low-level background drone as he searched through box after box, space's chill seeping through the walls and raising goosebumps on his skin where the hair didn't fall -- and fear of discovery or death raising goosebumps where the hair did fall.
"YES!" An excited whisper broke the silence. "Oh, this is fantastic!" Giggling, she dumped the contents of the bag onto the floor and began to rummage through the mess of fabric. Sure, the coveralls were ugly, but they'd keep them warm. "Here, put this on." She tossed a set two sizes too big at Breandon.
"Blessed Mother Serenity, those are UGLY." He scrunched his face up, making a comic face of classic dismay. He grasped the coveralls with bare fingertips, holding them out from his body and keeping an eye on Dawn's expression.
"Be ugly or freeze." She folded her arms across her bare chest. "I'm not changing until you're dressed, so make up your mind."
He flicked a glance up at her through the veil of his hair, and put it on. "You were supposed to laugh."
/And you were supposed to say that you loved me, but hey, who's counting?/ "Yeah, well..." She threw her hands up in the air, muttering her henshin phrase. Seconds later, she stood before him in her fuku, wearing not much more than before. "Funny. Now that you have clothes, let's find something that'll pass as a rapier, and you can challenge those bastards to a duel." She turned to rummage through yet another trunk.
He produced something black and mean-looking from behind his back. "Or I could just shoot them."
Her eyes lit up. "Where did you find that, and when were you going to tell me?"
"There was only one, and just now."
She traced her lips with the end of her tongue, fingers literally itching to examine the weapon. "Think it's loaded?"
Breandon jammed the thing in a pocket of his coveralls. "I know it's loaded. I also know it's loud, and not a safe weapon to use on a spaceship - you can puncture the hull. No, you can't use it."
"I didn't want to. You'll have to use it later on me." She raced across the cargo bay, dropping to her knees to find something heavy and blunt in one of the toolboxes.
A few minutes of scavenging yielded a rubber mallet and a rusty screwdriver, which Dawn brought over to a panel near the door. "You wouldn't happen to know the difference between the wiring that feeds, say, the life support system and the one that is connected to the door?"
Breandon shook his head. "Not a chance."
"Damn. Well, here goes nothing." Carefully, she began to pry the casing from the panel with the screwdriver. "So, you've got this issue with words versus action?" Dawn began casually.
He took up a position near the door and shrugged. "I just don't see why I should have to repeat myself so much."
"Reassurance, perhaps?" Concentrating on the panel tapped whatever energy that Dawn would have used to remain annoyed at him. "I tell you that I love you because I want you to know that, and it's the most direct way possible." The screwdriver slipped, etching a wide silver arc in the wall. She calmly wedged the flat end under the hinge and tried again. "I tell you that I love you because I love you... but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense." A bit of pressure began to bend the metal at a weak joint. "But really, what's wrong with repeating a few words if they mean so much to someone else?"
"Why don't you trust my other ways of saying it?" he returned, pressing an ear flat to the wall in hopes of catching approaching footsteps.
"I asked you first." Dawn repositioned the screwdriver under the second hinge and rocked the handle back and forth slowly. "And it's not that I don't trust that way, I'm just used to the other way." She frowned, replaying the words over in her head. "Well, not 'used to,'" she corrected. "I'm not used to any of this."
"That was my answer." He glanced over at her. "I do say it. The fact that you aren't happy with my language ... well, I can't do very much about that, now can I? I'm not the kind of person who is going to change my ways just because of your past."
She nodded mutely, concentrating on the hinge. Metal squealed as it separated from the casing, revealing a mess of wiring. "I change, you don't? That doesn't seem entirely fair." Exchanging one tool for the other, she took the mallet and gave the open panel a none-too-gentle whack.
Anger swelled up in him. "I didn't ask you to change."
"You didn't ask, but I've changed the way I react to things because of you and me." Another whack, and she refrained from looking at him. "You'd rather I not change anything?"
"The difference is that you are asking -- I didn't, and won't, although anything about you is a joy and a dream to me."
"Fine." A violent swing sent the casing to the floor, metal clattering against metal. Dawn flung the hammer across the room, the tool connecting with a half-full box of wires. "Is that a joy and a dream?" The screwdriver followed the same trajectory. "What about that?" Her voice rose as she ranted. "All I'm asking is for THREE SIMPLE WORDS! You can compare me to EVERY FUCKING OBJECT UNDER THE SUN with poetic finesse and still, you CAN'T SAY THREE SIMPLE WORDS!"
"Ow."
"That's NOT FUNNY!" With all of the charm of a grade-school child, Dawn stomped her foot as she continued her tirade. "Are you scared? I mean, sure, I can be scared of anything intimate and we talk through it nicely, but obviously, there's another standard here that I'm not aware of."
He regarded her coolly. "Are you finished? Either this hold is well insulated, or we're going to be interrupted soon, so you should wrap this tirade up."
"I'm not wrapping anything up any time soon," she spat back, face turning pink in her fury. "Why can't you say it? Do you not WANT to say it?
Now he arched a sardonic eyebrow at her. "If they are three simple words, why is it so important?"
"Because they mean something, that's why."
Breandon rolled his eyes expressively, but a thunderous banging on the door precluded any further argument for the moment. An unfamiliar voice, distorted by volume and echoes, shouted, "Captain says, shut UP in there!"
Venting his temper, Breandon yelled back, "Or what!?"
"You won't like that answer!!"
"Bite me!" Dawn shot back, louder than Breandon's first reply.
The thud of angry, booted feet resounded outside the door, and a murmured conference ensued. Someone else whacked on the door. "Captain's orders! SHUT UP!"
Dawn glared at Breandon, arms folded across her chest. "Well?" she hissed. "Why can't you say it?"
Goaded past all control, he shot back, "Because you demand it. If you can't accept that my feelings are real without the meagre evidence of a few words, maybe I should start doubting you."
"Go right ahead!" Arms flung outwards to accompany her dramatic outburst. "Doubt me. Doubt the fact that I've known you for barely a handful of months and yet, I love you enough to make an issue out of three damned monosyllabic words!"
The door slammed back against the wall hard enough to bounce. "Shut. The. F--" The curse was abruptly choked off by stunned amazement, quickly followed by a sour combination of panic, fury, and frustration.
In any other situation, Breandon might have admired the brilliant flush anger brought to the cheeks of the lady captain. As it was, Dawn's insistence on discussing what was, at bottom, a relatively unimportant subject combined with the indignity of being kidnapped, stripped nearly naked, and left in a cold cargo hold outweighed any idle emotions.
"They told me you were resourceful," the captain spat.
"Did they?" Lacking any sort of common sense, the Guardian folded her arms across her chest and approached the captain. Dark eyes danced with a fury. "Did they mention that my companion here has an inability to speak simply?"
The captain's hazel eyes burned with at least as much anger and frustration as Dawn's. "They didn't mention you had a mouth on you, girl. We can do this the hard way or the easy way, which would you prefer?" Two snub-nosed guns and four spacer's knives appeared in the doorway, clutched in the fists of varying crew members. One of them was the chocolate-skinned woman from before.
She resisted the temptation to give the captain a saucy one-fingered salute. Instead, she nodded at Breandon. "I'll be ladylike and let him choose. After all, you did take his clothes."
The captain shifted her gaze to Breandon, who was fingering his own weapon and debating whether or not to reveal it. "Oh, I don't know. Let's do it the easy way. I'm sure we can be civilized about all this, can't we, Captain ... ?"
"Civilized. Hmph. You would go and take all of the fun out of it," Dawn grumbled aloud.
The captain gave the Senshi a thin-lipped smile. "Civilized? I don't think that word exists on this ship, does it?" The majority of the crew behind her mumbled and chuckled in approval.
Breandon faked an innocent expression. "I only wanted to know our captor's name. Is that such a crime?"
"Not yet." The woman in charge struck a sultry pose amidst her crew. "Fehri. You're Rainault, and you're a Senshi. There, introductions." She straightened up and nodded at the pair in her cargo hold. "Now, something seems a bit different here..." Fehri tapped her chin in mock-thoughtfulness. "Ah, yes. Clothes and ropes."
"Oh, how terrible; you noticed. Does this mean we can go now?"
Fehri laughed maliciously, taking a few steps forward. "Not at all, my dears. It merely means I have to disappoint your poor, fragile hopes." She gestured at her crew, who moved into the room.
Dawn stepped closer to Breandon, realizing they were outnumbered three to one. "Got any ideas?"
"You're the Guardian," he said in return, pulling the gun from his pocket. "All I've got is this thing." Half the six crew members shied back, earning dirty looks from their captain.
She rolled her eyes. "We went over this already, but if you insist..." Arrogance guiding her actions, Dawn leered at the nearest gun-wielding crewman and sweetly flipped him off. "Shoot me. I dare ya."
Confused, he looked to the already-displeased captain. "Ma'am?"
Fehri raised a hand in denial. "They're to be unharmed!" She paused, though, and looked at Breandon. "He wasn't part of the contract, though." The expression on her face gave him chills. He kept the gun trained on the dark-skinned woman, though.
At least, right up until he swivelled and fired a carefully modulated shot at Dawn.
The shot caught her in the small of her back, leaving a rapidly-expanding field of burnt skin. She shrieked, body going rigid as she fought to stand her ground. Consciousness wavered for a split second, lavender mist gathering in each hand. Blood trickled from her nose, yet she grinned fiercely at the crew.
"En garde."
A bolt of orchid and rose erupted from her palms. Carefully aimed, it streaked over their heads and blew the door off reinforced hinges. Shrapnel stuck in the console, rendering the intercom and remote ship controls useless.
Everyone in the room promptly scattered, and Breandon found himself with a direct line-of-sight on both Fehri and the dark-skinned woman. Unfortunately, the woman also had a line-of-sight on him, and wielded a gun. Four of the crew members cast one glance at him, another at Dawn, and fled through the new hole in the wall.
Breathing hard, Dawn glanced at the odd stand-off. Hoping for the best, she promptly charged the other woman, leaving Breandon to sort things out with the captain.
"You spineless descendants of a cactus and a willow tree! Your mothers slept with black holes!" Fehri shrieked, flinging a knife at Dawn. "GET AWAY FROM HER!!"
Breandon cursed under his breath. No more line-of-sight on either of them. This was rapidly becoming a problem.
The dark-skinned woman backed up against the wall, discarding her gun. Clearly she recognized that it would be no use, after Dawn's display. Instead she brought her own blade up between them.
Three things happened at once then. Fehri flung herself on Dawn; Dawn tried to slap the knife away; and the woman tried to knife Dawn.
The end result was the dark-skinned woman stabbing herself in the upper left shoulder.
"Don't just STAND there!" Dawn yelled, struggling under Fehri's clawing and shrieking. Her hands ached, and the one woman was bleeding profusely. She brought an elbow back into the captain's stomach, and was rewarded with a knee to her kidneys. "Mother loving... get OFF!"
Fehri snarled back, "If Zorya dies I'm holding you responsible."
"Well, it's either your knife or hers that did it," Dawn snapped, the burn on her back rubbed raw by the struggling. "Rainault, what the HELL are you doing?"
"Staying out of your way and tying this woman up ... not that I need to, because she's going to bleed to death."
Fehri immediately flung herself off Dawn and shoved Breandon aside from Zorya, making a vain attempt to stop the bleeding. "I hate you," she hissed, not even looking up. "I didn't hurt you, either of you. I'm just doing what I was paid to do. This was not called for. Zorya, don't die!"
Dawn fell backwards, gritting her teeth in pain. "Paid? Paid for what? Kidnapping us?" A long shallow cut along the inside of her arm, probably from one of the knives, oozed red.
"Obviously. DAMMIT, Zorya, we've gotten this far." Fehri gripped one of Zorya's hands tightly. Breandon sat still, heart hurting for their tragedy. People were people, even if they did get paid for kidnapping. He couldn't be angry any more with that playing out before him.
Red blood bubbled up on Zorya's lips, and she gasped once. "Fehri -- !"
"Oh, shit," Dawn breathed. "Where's your medic?" she asked futilely.
Fehri closed the staring brown eyes. "It's too late." She turned around to glare at the two. The ship quivered under their feet.
The Senshi swallowed hard, her stomach knotting itself as cargo hold trembled. "I... I'm sorry, I didn't mean for that to happen."
"Sorry won't bring her back!" Fehri lunged to her feet. "Do you know what that tremble meant, Guardian girl?"
Breandon answered. "That was your escape pod taking off. I would imagine it's the only one. You're alone now, Fehri."
She sneered. "You don't know the half of it. My crew may have been cowards, but I'm not. Syrrene will have to take her revenge on your graves!" She spun and flung herself past Dawn up the passageway. Breandon cursed and ran after her.
Dawn glanced back to the body, mumbling prayers under her breath before scrambling to her feet. Up ahead, she could hear screams and slams as the captain flung Valère from her post on the bridge.
Both of them stumbled to a colliding halt in the doorway to the bridge, the sliding door blocked by the body of Valère, now half-conscious. Breandon knelt over the medic's body, supporting her under the arms. Fehri's hands flashed across the boards, and Dawn could see with horror the rapidly approaching asteroid field. Stepping back, the captain drew her laser pistol and fired a single shot directly into the midst of the boards.
The ship shuddered as alarms sounded throughout the bridge. Running towards the captain, Dawn took a flying leap as the main console crackled and sparked.
"Fuck," Breandon spat, heaved Valère out of the doorway and into a semi-recumbent position against a way, and grabbed at a lesser board. "She's completely overridden the crew interlocks."
"Completely?" Dawn shrieked at Fehri, backing her up against the far compartment wall. She reached for the pistol, her own voice frantic. "No navigation? No engines? No nothing?"
A frantic gleam lit Fehri's hazel eyes with hectic gold. She spat at Dawn. "You'll die too. You'll both die. You can't change the course I set," she boasted. "I locked all the crew boards, and the main board is so much plastic and metal now." As if on cue, the thrusters fired, driving the ship into a new position. A rather larger asteroid, the size of a small moon, began to fill up the viewscreen.
Dawn swore violently at the sight of the rapidly approaching rock and ran to meet Breandon. "All the boards? What about the engines? Could we override the AI, or the propulsion, or something?" Fingers twitched frantically, and her voice cracked.
Fehri took advantage of their momentary distraction to blow her brains out. Breandon took a step toward her, but made a disgusted face and returned to the boards. "Unless you can do anything hacker-like, I think we're screwed." From the corner came a low moan.
Dawn shook her head, tears welling up in her eyes. She tried to hide panic with concern as she broke away from the console, kneeling next to Valère. "You know of a way out? Or are we honestly going to crash and burn on some no-name rock out in the middle of nowhere?"
Valère's voice was ragged as she replied. "If the main boards are fragged like Fehri said, then I don't think so. Without the main boards, the crew boards are useless. The best you can hope for is a little manoeuvring out of the attitude jets to keep the ship from completely totalling."
Breandon jumped over the crew board he was working on and grabbed at the controls for the attitude thrusters. "I don't know how to work these!"
Dawn gritted her teeth. Altitude. Altitude meant thrusters, which probably meant main engine room. If she managed to make it through this, Dawn promised herself that she would never make fun of her father's sci-fi fascinations ever again. "Which way to main propulsion?" Valère pointed to the doors, then jerked a thumb to the left. The Guardian took off, wondering if three years of 21st century engineering school might be enough to get them to not crash. "Three words, love," she called over her shoulder to Breandon. "All I'm asking for if we make it through this!"
He whacked a tan fist in frustration on the sparking main boards, causing another spray of sparks. "Dammit, Dawn ... " But she was gone already. Grimly he concentrated on the swelling moonlet before them, hoping against hope that somehow their lives would be miraculously spared again.
Chapter Nine -- Tribulations
Breandon strolled through the Row, a sensual, elegant figure none the worse for a complete lack of sleep. His hands were nested deep in his pockets, one fisted tight around a small velvet box. The dawning sun added extra copper lights to his hair and tinted the plaza square with delicate rays of brilliance. The white marble fountain came to life as the morning light touched it, cascades of water silently flowing out of the rose finial to splash musically into the basin.
The dawn stillness was as crystalline as the water, punctuated by the hushed calls of women coming to the fountain, the shluff of feet transporting wares from cart to stall and shop, and the ever present song of the birds that made Crystal Tokyo their home.
At the north-east corner of the plaza, Dawn sipped coffee bought from an old man who complimented her pale rose sundress with grandfatherly appreciation. Hair hung damply down her back, left to dry to bring soft curls by mid-morning. Sandals made little sound against the brick walkways as she weaved in and out between the wagons and carts that would be moved before more of the Row patrons arrived. She paused to admire a display of carved crystal that sent fragments of the morning light dancing across white cobblestones.
Across the plaza, Breandon bought his own early morning beverage from his favourite chocolate vendor, who gave him a knowing wink and smile. He smiled back, and hopped up to his usual perch on a wall along one side of the plaza. He'd need the advantage of the height he lacked to spot Dawn across the filling square, despite her flaming hair.
Sunlight turned the white walls and cobblestones pale gold and tinted a lone cloud rosy amber, but didn't light up a tall red-headed figure. An old-fashioned brass bell, towered high above the crowds, began to toll the hour in sonorous tones as a line of mercenaries brushed past Breandon's dangling feet.
There was still no sign of Dawn.
"Not yet? Well, thank you very much." Dawn bobbed her head and gave a smile to a little boy who went back to sweeping the steps in front of his auntie's flower shop. The square becoming busier by the minute, Dawn made her way to a picturesque fountain at the centre, and hopped up on the ledge. No sign of a dashing and flamboyantly dressed figure here. She shielded her eyes from the morning sun as she stood on her toes, straining to see above the brightly coloured canopies.
Breandon drained his mug and handed it back down to the vendor with another smile. He'd hoped that Dawn would be early, but a wry little voice told him that was unlikely even in the best of circumstances -- which these probably weren't. He stood up on the wall, shading his eyes against the rising sun, and finally, finally spotted his love. He was just leaning over to jump down and race through the crowd when a movement near her caught his eye, and he froze.
Dawn's coffee fell into the fountain, with Dawn following as a heavy staff connected with her ankles and swept her feet out from under her. A rough hand hauled her from the fountain, pulling her into the arms of a well-muscled young man who grinned at her with gold-capped teeth. Instantly fearful, Dawn threw one hand up, ready to henshin then and there. Just as suddenly as she opened her mouth, the sharp jab of a needle behind her ear allowed a scream to escape rather than her transformation phrase. Medicine worked quickly, and her eyes glassed over as she fell limply into her captor's arms.
"Ohhhhhh, SHIT." The vendor blinked up at Breandon for about a millisecond before he leaped bodily off the wall and hit the ground running.
Or at least TRYING to.
The abductors had timed their attack perfectly -- the crowds were thick enough to prevent rapid movement, but thin enough to allow a moderately slow-moving group to simply blend in, supporting one of their number as though she was merely dead-drunk ... and not drugged asleep. Breandon fought his way to the fountain to discover the trail cold and turning colder.
Despair overwhelmed him, and he crumpled to the rim of the fountain's basin.
"Ay, papi, you don't look so good." A slightly accented voice came up behind him and a hand gripped his upper arm to pull him to his feet.
Sick frustration caused him to jerk his arm away. "Shove off."
Cold metal jabbed at the skin behind the ear as the hand grabbed his arm once more. "We will, as soon as you're on board."
Darkness overwhelmed his curse.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Dawn awoke long enough to realize that she was about to throw up and that she needed to move. Throwing her limp body to the side, she retched violently for a couple of minutes, stomach emptied of what little she'd consumed that morning. Dizziness overwhelmed her, and she rolled back over, curling in a foetal position as she whimpered softly.
A voice completely unknown to Dawn hissed over her head, "Is that SUPPOSED to happen? You promised to deliver them hale and whole to -- "
"Shut up, Valère!"
There was a smack as of flesh hitting flesh, and the metallic ring of a weapon being drawn. From the sound of it, a knife. An arm the hue of fine chocolate came into Dawn's view, holding a serrated blade. The blade glided along Breandon's cheek.
"Whatever we do to them, you'll heal, Valère. Understand?" the second voice whispered. "Before we arrive. I leave their fate up to you. If they die ... " The voice left the threat implicit.
"If we die," Dawn managed weakly, "you're gonna have a pissed off Princess and a really unhappy league of Senshi ready to chase you down for free." A hand cracked against her mouth and she went sprawling, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth.
Beside her, Breandon began to convulse against his bonds, olivine eyes flying open and rolling back in his head. The half-digested remains of his morning cocoa spilled from his mouth over the kneeling figure that had to be Valère, lighter in skin tone from the unknown knife-wielder. Both captors flinched back with a spacer's disgust.
"We got problems here?" A raven haired woman strode into the cargo hold, unfazed by the seizure or the rivulet of blood and saliva. "Valère, they coming off the medication yet?" She scowled at the other two crew members.
Valère stood up, brushing ineffectually at the vomit. "The girl has, but the male is having a bad reaction. I need him moved to sickbay."
"No can do," she answered immediately. "I'm not wasting resources on that. The bounty's for the girl, not her pretty-boy escort. Still..." She pursed her lips, deep in thought. "Get his clothes before he ruins 'em. We could sell them for dinner one night."
Dawn decided later that nothing less than a threat to his clothing would have brought him around. Breandon's eyes returned to normal, and he gasped for breath, the convulsions abruptly ceasing. He gasped out on the third breath, "Don't you touch me, misbegotten daughter of a space whore. I'm more than your life is worth."
"Strip 'em both," she commanded in a bored tone. "And get me some lunch, I'm famished." With that instruction, she left her flunkies to relieve her captives of their clothing, with Valère able to do little more than watch and wipe their bodies clean before leaving.
Alone now in the silence, Breandon closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the wall. "I don't suppose you have a clue, do you, my rose of summer?"
"Hardly." Still dizzy, she managed to lean up against him. "I didn't piss off anyone yesterday, so this has nothing to do with the events of the past twenty four hours." The world spun, and she fell into his lap roughly.
Involuntarily he strained against his bonds to put his arms around her. Essaying a smile, he looked into her eyes. "I knew you loved me, but I didn't realise it was quite that much!"
The comment didn't have the desired effect, as Dawn promptly burst into tears, sobbing loudly. "'S not funny! We were gonna walk and have breakfast and..." She sniffled, unable to control her running nose that didn't help her beat-up appearance. "This is the worst birthday EVER!" Bawling, she lay her cheek against his thigh.
"Oh dear ... " Breandon tried to bend over and comfort her, and decided that didn't work so well. "Dawn, love, sit up here and look at me. Please?" God, he wanted to gather her in his arms ...
Taking his suggestion to heart, she rolled onto her back and looked up into peridot green eyes. "This okay? I don't wanna sit up," she admitted.
"I mean, if you want me to, I can sit up. Might take a while, having my hands all tied up. At any other time, you in your boxers and me tied up could be pretty exciting, but at the moment..." She trailed off, the light-hearted attempt at humour failing miserably. "Sorry," she apologized, turning her head to the side.
"No, stop that. We have to get out of here and find out what's going on." He gnawed his lip. "You don't have long fingernails, do you?"
She frowned. "They're long enough for the manicures that Rini forces me to get, but why?"
His head thunked against the wall. "I was hoping you could cut the ropes, but that's a bit melodramatic."
Dawn rolled off his lap and ungraciously managed to manoeuvre herself to inspect their bonds. Braided plastic of some kind... "Hey, see anything that looks like a heater? An exposed pipe or something?"
Wryly, he replied, "I see your hands, Guardian."
"I meant, if that doesn't work." Pulling his wrists towards her, she bent her head and began to carefully unravel the ends with her own bound hands. "This could take a while."
Confused, he craned his head over his shoulder. "Don't you have some kind of ... power, spell, whatever it's called, that generates heat?"
"It's not very good." The knots consumed her attention and distracted her from the tragedy of floating in space trapped in an unknown cargo bay. "I'm a rather useless Senshi, unless someone attacks me."
"The best offence is a good defence, hmm? I'm sorry I asked, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings." He made a complicated writhe intended to move his hair out of the way better and succeeded only in jerking the knots out of her hands. "DAMMIT."
"You didn't." Calmly, she reached for the knots again and frowned. Maybe if she could control the heat before it actually materialized, that might work. "Hold still," she instructed. Forefinger and thumb around the knot, she closed her eyes and formed the image of a small white-lavender sphere in her palm. Heat moving from her extremities, collecting themselves, travelling towards her right hand, skin hot enough to burn the fibres of the ropes itself.
Breandon held very still. He remembered what her attacks did at close range. It would be ugly if she messed up, and he didn't want to be ugly.
She smelled something not unlike fibreglass burning. Her eyes flew open in shock and she quickly pulled her hand away from the knot. Only a thin strip of rope remained, the rest hanging off in gooey smoking strands. "Give it a yank."
He jerked hard, muscles swelling underneath smooth skin. "Shit this hurts," he chanted under his breath.
The ropes popped, leaving a long red mark around both wrists.
"Ew," he said, holding his wrists out to her with a grin.
She beamed, unable to throw her arms about him. "Want me to kiss it and make it better?" Dawn balled her hand into a fist, not wanting to show the burns on her fingertips from her successful experiment.
"Not yet." Nimble fingers applied themselves to her ropes, which took a few moments of grunting, cursing, and fumbling before she felt them loosen. "This stuff is nothing to some of the synth threads, Saint Serenity preserve us."
"Yeah, they could have tied you up with your own clothes." Pulling her hands apart, she shook them to get the blood flowing again. A few seconds of that, and she reached for his wrists, massaging the red lines with her thumbs. "Now what?"
"Now I gather you in my arms and warm you up, because this cargo hold is colder than the fabled ninth circle of hell." He suited action to words. "Now, my beloved morning sky, you are quite certain you have no idea who might despise us both to this degree? I really prefer not to be stripped by foreign women."
Dawn allowed herself to be snuggled, grateful for the body heat and solace that came with such intimacy. Resting her cheek on soft hair that had fallen over his shoulder, she sighed audibly. "The Arronnés, for embarrassing them at their own dinner party. Unless these are people from the same federation that attacked the _Prometheus_," she noted.
"Grand, just grand, and me with no clothes, much less a weapon. How much ARE you worth, best beloved?"
"'S much as anyone wants me, I dunno." She traced the contours of his collarbone and chest with her burnt index finger. "It's rather odd, knowing that you're regarded as an object, like a black poker chip in some wild intergalactic game."
"In other words all we can do is wait."
"So it would seem." She stroked the underside of his chin gently, lacing the fingers of her other hand into his and bringing it to her lips. "Love you," she murmured softly.
"I know."
She raised her head, her expression caught between a frown and an impish grin. "I would hope so, since I've told you before. Isn't there another response that's a bit more... reciprocative?"
"Sleeping in my bed isn't reassuring enough?" he asked, surprised.
"I..." Dawn tilted her head, unsure of how to take that question. "I don't want to bring up that whole past thing, because I know that I've said that it doesn't make a difference," she began, her explanation unsure in the delivery. "And really, it doesn't, but if we're going on that exact definition, then I'd hope that I mean more to you for that simple definition, or meaning, or proof, to apply." She dropped his hand.
He snugged both arms around her shoulders and propped his chin on her head. "I had thought actions spoke louder than words."
"It's not the same with something like this."
"That's true," he acknowledged.
"So?" Dawn twisted about, fixing her gaze on him. "Do you?"
"Do I what?"
"Love me."
He tipped her head up and kissed her thoroughly instead of answering.
Dawn broke the kiss after a moment, pulling away. "You're avoiding it," she accused softly.
"I'm speaking a different language," he returned, and bent his head again.
"Stop that!" She pushed against his chest with both hands. "I want to hear you say it, Breandon."
"Why of a sudden?"
"Why not?" she countered. "I've told you that I love you on more than one occasion. I don't think you even expected it the first time." Dawn grew more upset by the minute, the emotional injustice too much for her to comprehend. "And I haven't heard you say those three words to me yet."
He turned a dull red. "It's just words, Dawn. There are more important things."
"It's important to me." She swallowed hard, keeping her gaze steady.
"I will never understand you, golden star of my days." His eyes closed, he shook his head. "I promise you, when we get out of here, I will tell you that I love you in a hundred languages and with a thousand phrases ... but can we escape first?!" he exclaimed, looking pained.
"Tell me what?" Dawn's burned fingers stroked the side of his face tenderly.
He rolled his eyes at her. "Focus, Dawn."
She gave a defeated sigh. He did manage to say it, sort of, in the middle of a bunch of other words. "Fine." She dropped her hand and pushed away from him, attempting to stand. "Screw the small talk, you wanna get outta here. I understand completely."
"Do you think you can overwhelm them?" He looked down, about as shy as she'd ever known him. "I think we may have to gain control of the ship rather than just sneak off."
"No fuckin' clue," she snapped, sarcasm taking the place of anger. "Really, I'd thought about just staying alive, considering that escaping into the vacuum of deep space really wouldn't suit either one of us, you without clothes and me in a damp sundress. There's that whole lack of atmosphere thing, too, but..." Dawn waved a hand to indicate that such a thing was minor. "But sure, let's overwhelm them. I'll henshin and distract them with my cleavage, and you attack them with... oh, wait." She whirled about, hands in the air. "You don't have a weapon."
He bit his tongue rather than snap back. "I'm not a Senshi," he reminded her quietly instead. "I don't know what you can do. For instance, I don't know if you can communicate telepathically with other Senshi, or if the Palace has some way of keeping track of you when you henshin."
He folded his legs Indian style, hands composed to shield his nakedness, and glanced about the hold. "There may yet be something in here we can use."
She glanced around, still fuming. Three little words that he couldn't manage to say, and he was relying on her to get them out of this mess. /'Cause nothing says 'I love you' like saving your ass from certain peril/. Dawn began a slow circle about the room, snooping about in boxes and trunks. The first open box yielded a roll of duct tape and a few simple tools. She shivered as she rooted through the mess, gritting her teeth. "So help me look," she muttered. "And I'm not telepathic and no one's ever said they could track me, so I dunno about that."
"Yes, Mistress." He pulled a box over and began to dump things out of it, muttering under his breath. "I'm going to ruin whomever did this, I swear it, I'm going to skin them alive and turn the skin into a RUG, by Goddess, and dance on it every morning when I rise, I'm going to string them up by their toes and perforate them with darts ... "
It became a sort of low-level background drone as he searched through box after box, space's chill seeping through the walls and raising goosebumps on his skin where the hair didn't fall -- and fear of discovery or death raising goosebumps where the hair did fall.
"YES!" An excited whisper broke the silence. "Oh, this is fantastic!" Giggling, she dumped the contents of the bag onto the floor and began to rummage through the mess of fabric. Sure, the coveralls were ugly, but they'd keep them warm. "Here, put this on." She tossed a set two sizes too big at Breandon.
"Blessed Mother Serenity, those are UGLY." He scrunched his face up, making a comic face of classic dismay. He grasped the coveralls with bare fingertips, holding them out from his body and keeping an eye on Dawn's expression.
"Be ugly or freeze." She folded her arms across her bare chest. "I'm not changing until you're dressed, so make up your mind."
He flicked a glance up at her through the veil of his hair, and put it on. "You were supposed to laugh."
/And you were supposed to say that you loved me, but hey, who's counting?/ "Yeah, well..." She threw her hands up in the air, muttering her henshin phrase. Seconds later, she stood before him in her fuku, wearing not much more than before. "Funny. Now that you have clothes, let's find something that'll pass as a rapier, and you can challenge those bastards to a duel." She turned to rummage through yet another trunk.
He produced something black and mean-looking from behind his back. "Or I could just shoot them."
Her eyes lit up. "Where did you find that, and when were you going to tell me?"
"There was only one, and just now."
She traced her lips with the end of her tongue, fingers literally itching to examine the weapon. "Think it's loaded?"
Breandon jammed the thing in a pocket of his coveralls. "I know it's loaded. I also know it's loud, and not a safe weapon to use on a spaceship - you can puncture the hull. No, you can't use it."
"I didn't want to. You'll have to use it later on me." She raced across the cargo bay, dropping to her knees to find something heavy and blunt in one of the toolboxes.
A few minutes of scavenging yielded a rubber mallet and a rusty screwdriver, which Dawn brought over to a panel near the door. "You wouldn't happen to know the difference between the wiring that feeds, say, the life support system and the one that is connected to the door?"
Breandon shook his head. "Not a chance."
"Damn. Well, here goes nothing." Carefully, she began to pry the casing from the panel with the screwdriver. "So, you've got this issue with words versus action?" Dawn began casually.
He took up a position near the door and shrugged. "I just don't see why I should have to repeat myself so much."
"Reassurance, perhaps?" Concentrating on the panel tapped whatever energy that Dawn would have used to remain annoyed at him. "I tell you that I love you because I want you to know that, and it's the most direct way possible." The screwdriver slipped, etching a wide silver arc in the wall. She calmly wedged the flat end under the hinge and tried again. "I tell you that I love you because I love you... but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense." A bit of pressure began to bend the metal at a weak joint. "But really, what's wrong with repeating a few words if they mean so much to someone else?"
"Why don't you trust my other ways of saying it?" he returned, pressing an ear flat to the wall in hopes of catching approaching footsteps.
"I asked you first." Dawn repositioned the screwdriver under the second hinge and rocked the handle back and forth slowly. "And it's not that I don't trust that way, I'm just used to the other way." She frowned, replaying the words over in her head. "Well, not 'used to,'" she corrected. "I'm not used to any of this."
"That was my answer." He glanced over at her. "I do say it. The fact that you aren't happy with my language ... well, I can't do very much about that, now can I? I'm not the kind of person who is going to change my ways just because of your past."
She nodded mutely, concentrating on the hinge. Metal squealed as it separated from the casing, revealing a mess of wiring. "I change, you don't? That doesn't seem entirely fair." Exchanging one tool for the other, she took the mallet and gave the open panel a none-too-gentle whack.
Anger swelled up in him. "I didn't ask you to change."
"You didn't ask, but I've changed the way I react to things because of you and me." Another whack, and she refrained from looking at him. "You'd rather I not change anything?"
"The difference is that you are asking -- I didn't, and won't, although anything about you is a joy and a dream to me."
"Fine." A violent swing sent the casing to the floor, metal clattering against metal. Dawn flung the hammer across the room, the tool connecting with a half-full box of wires. "Is that a joy and a dream?" The screwdriver followed the same trajectory. "What about that?" Her voice rose as she ranted. "All I'm asking is for THREE SIMPLE WORDS! You can compare me to EVERY FUCKING OBJECT UNDER THE SUN with poetic finesse and still, you CAN'T SAY THREE SIMPLE WORDS!"
"Ow."
"That's NOT FUNNY!" With all of the charm of a grade-school child, Dawn stomped her foot as she continued her tirade. "Are you scared? I mean, sure, I can be scared of anything intimate and we talk through it nicely, but obviously, there's another standard here that I'm not aware of."
He regarded her coolly. "Are you finished? Either this hold is well insulated, or we're going to be interrupted soon, so you should wrap this tirade up."
"I'm not wrapping anything up any time soon," she spat back, face turning pink in her fury. "Why can't you say it? Do you not WANT to say it?
Now he arched a sardonic eyebrow at her. "If they are three simple words, why is it so important?"
"Because they mean something, that's why."
Breandon rolled his eyes expressively, but a thunderous banging on the door precluded any further argument for the moment. An unfamiliar voice, distorted by volume and echoes, shouted, "Captain says, shut UP in there!"
Venting his temper, Breandon yelled back, "Or what!?"
"You won't like that answer!!"
"Bite me!" Dawn shot back, louder than Breandon's first reply.
The thud of angry, booted feet resounded outside the door, and a murmured conference ensued. Someone else whacked on the door. "Captain's orders! SHUT UP!"
Dawn glared at Breandon, arms folded across her chest. "Well?" she hissed. "Why can't you say it?"
Goaded past all control, he shot back, "Because you demand it. If you can't accept that my feelings are real without the meagre evidence of a few words, maybe I should start doubting you."
"Go right ahead!" Arms flung outwards to accompany her dramatic outburst. "Doubt me. Doubt the fact that I've known you for barely a handful of months and yet, I love you enough to make an issue out of three damned monosyllabic words!"
The door slammed back against the wall hard enough to bounce. "Shut. The. F--" The curse was abruptly choked off by stunned amazement, quickly followed by a sour combination of panic, fury, and frustration.
In any other situation, Breandon might have admired the brilliant flush anger brought to the cheeks of the lady captain. As it was, Dawn's insistence on discussing what was, at bottom, a relatively unimportant subject combined with the indignity of being kidnapped, stripped nearly naked, and left in a cold cargo hold outweighed any idle emotions.
"They told me you were resourceful," the captain spat.
"Did they?" Lacking any sort of common sense, the Guardian folded her arms across her chest and approached the captain. Dark eyes danced with a fury. "Did they mention that my companion here has an inability to speak simply?"
The captain's hazel eyes burned with at least as much anger and frustration as Dawn's. "They didn't mention you had a mouth on you, girl. We can do this the hard way or the easy way, which would you prefer?" Two snub-nosed guns and four spacer's knives appeared in the doorway, clutched in the fists of varying crew members. One of them was the chocolate-skinned woman from before.
She resisted the temptation to give the captain a saucy one-fingered salute. Instead, she nodded at Breandon. "I'll be ladylike and let him choose. After all, you did take his clothes."
The captain shifted her gaze to Breandon, who was fingering his own weapon and debating whether or not to reveal it. "Oh, I don't know. Let's do it the easy way. I'm sure we can be civilized about all this, can't we, Captain ... ?"
"Civilized. Hmph. You would go and take all of the fun out of it," Dawn grumbled aloud.
The captain gave the Senshi a thin-lipped smile. "Civilized? I don't think that word exists on this ship, does it?" The majority of the crew behind her mumbled and chuckled in approval.
Breandon faked an innocent expression. "I only wanted to know our captor's name. Is that such a crime?"
"Not yet." The woman in charge struck a sultry pose amidst her crew. "Fehri. You're Rainault, and you're a Senshi. There, introductions." She straightened up and nodded at the pair in her cargo hold. "Now, something seems a bit different here..." Fehri tapped her chin in mock-thoughtfulness. "Ah, yes. Clothes and ropes."
"Oh, how terrible; you noticed. Does this mean we can go now?"
Fehri laughed maliciously, taking a few steps forward. "Not at all, my dears. It merely means I have to disappoint your poor, fragile hopes." She gestured at her crew, who moved into the room.
Dawn stepped closer to Breandon, realizing they were outnumbered three to one. "Got any ideas?"
"You're the Guardian," he said in return, pulling the gun from his pocket. "All I've got is this thing." Half the six crew members shied back, earning dirty looks from their captain.
She rolled her eyes. "We went over this already, but if you insist..." Arrogance guiding her actions, Dawn leered at the nearest gun-wielding crewman and sweetly flipped him off. "Shoot me. I dare ya."
Confused, he looked to the already-displeased captain. "Ma'am?"
Fehri raised a hand in denial. "They're to be unharmed!" She paused, though, and looked at Breandon. "He wasn't part of the contract, though." The expression on her face gave him chills. He kept the gun trained on the dark-skinned woman, though.
At least, right up until he swivelled and fired a carefully modulated shot at Dawn.
The shot caught her in the small of her back, leaving a rapidly-expanding field of burnt skin. She shrieked, body going rigid as she fought to stand her ground. Consciousness wavered for a split second, lavender mist gathering in each hand. Blood trickled from her nose, yet she grinned fiercely at the crew.
"En garde."
A bolt of orchid and rose erupted from her palms. Carefully aimed, it streaked over their heads and blew the door off reinforced hinges. Shrapnel stuck in the console, rendering the intercom and remote ship controls useless.
Everyone in the room promptly scattered, and Breandon found himself with a direct line-of-sight on both Fehri and the dark-skinned woman. Unfortunately, the woman also had a line-of-sight on him, and wielded a gun. Four of the crew members cast one glance at him, another at Dawn, and fled through the new hole in the wall.
Breathing hard, Dawn glanced at the odd stand-off. Hoping for the best, she promptly charged the other woman, leaving Breandon to sort things out with the captain.
"You spineless descendants of a cactus and a willow tree! Your mothers slept with black holes!" Fehri shrieked, flinging a knife at Dawn. "GET AWAY FROM HER!!"
Breandon cursed under his breath. No more line-of-sight on either of them. This was rapidly becoming a problem.
The dark-skinned woman backed up against the wall, discarding her gun. Clearly she recognized that it would be no use, after Dawn's display. Instead she brought her own blade up between them.
Three things happened at once then. Fehri flung herself on Dawn; Dawn tried to slap the knife away; and the woman tried to knife Dawn.
The end result was the dark-skinned woman stabbing herself in the upper left shoulder.
"Don't just STAND there!" Dawn yelled, struggling under Fehri's clawing and shrieking. Her hands ached, and the one woman was bleeding profusely. She brought an elbow back into the captain's stomach, and was rewarded with a knee to her kidneys. "Mother loving... get OFF!"
Fehri snarled back, "If Zorya dies I'm holding you responsible."
"Well, it's either your knife or hers that did it," Dawn snapped, the burn on her back rubbed raw by the struggling. "Rainault, what the HELL are you doing?"
"Staying out of your way and tying this woman up ... not that I need to, because she's going to bleed to death."
Fehri immediately flung herself off Dawn and shoved Breandon aside from Zorya, making a vain attempt to stop the bleeding. "I hate you," she hissed, not even looking up. "I didn't hurt you, either of you. I'm just doing what I was paid to do. This was not called for. Zorya, don't die!"
Dawn fell backwards, gritting her teeth in pain. "Paid? Paid for what? Kidnapping us?" A long shallow cut along the inside of her arm, probably from one of the knives, oozed red.
"Obviously. DAMMIT, Zorya, we've gotten this far." Fehri gripped one of Zorya's hands tightly. Breandon sat still, heart hurting for their tragedy. People were people, even if they did get paid for kidnapping. He couldn't be angry any more with that playing out before him.
Red blood bubbled up on Zorya's lips, and she gasped once. "Fehri -- !"
"Oh, shit," Dawn breathed. "Where's your medic?" she asked futilely.
Fehri closed the staring brown eyes. "It's too late." She turned around to glare at the two. The ship quivered under their feet.
The Senshi swallowed hard, her stomach knotting itself as cargo hold trembled. "I... I'm sorry, I didn't mean for that to happen."
"Sorry won't bring her back!" Fehri lunged to her feet. "Do you know what that tremble meant, Guardian girl?"
Breandon answered. "That was your escape pod taking off. I would imagine it's the only one. You're alone now, Fehri."
She sneered. "You don't know the half of it. My crew may have been cowards, but I'm not. Syrrene will have to take her revenge on your graves!" She spun and flung herself past Dawn up the passageway. Breandon cursed and ran after her.
Dawn glanced back to the body, mumbling prayers under her breath before scrambling to her feet. Up ahead, she could hear screams and slams as the captain flung Valère from her post on the bridge.
Both of them stumbled to a colliding halt in the doorway to the bridge, the sliding door blocked by the body of Valère, now half-conscious. Breandon knelt over the medic's body, supporting her under the arms. Fehri's hands flashed across the boards, and Dawn could see with horror the rapidly approaching asteroid field. Stepping back, the captain drew her laser pistol and fired a single shot directly into the midst of the boards.
The ship shuddered as alarms sounded throughout the bridge. Running towards the captain, Dawn took a flying leap as the main console crackled and sparked.
"Fuck," Breandon spat, heaved Valère out of the doorway and into a semi-recumbent position against a way, and grabbed at a lesser board. "She's completely overridden the crew interlocks."
"Completely?" Dawn shrieked at Fehri, backing her up against the far compartment wall. She reached for the pistol, her own voice frantic. "No navigation? No engines? No nothing?"
A frantic gleam lit Fehri's hazel eyes with hectic gold. She spat at Dawn. "You'll die too. You'll both die. You can't change the course I set," she boasted. "I locked all the crew boards, and the main board is so much plastic and metal now." As if on cue, the thrusters fired, driving the ship into a new position. A rather larger asteroid, the size of a small moon, began to fill up the viewscreen.
Dawn swore violently at the sight of the rapidly approaching rock and ran to meet Breandon. "All the boards? What about the engines? Could we override the AI, or the propulsion, or something?" Fingers twitched frantically, and her voice cracked.
Fehri took advantage of their momentary distraction to blow her brains out. Breandon took a step toward her, but made a disgusted face and returned to the boards. "Unless you can do anything hacker-like, I think we're screwed." From the corner came a low moan.
Dawn shook her head, tears welling up in her eyes. She tried to hide panic with concern as she broke away from the console, kneeling next to Valère. "You know of a way out? Or are we honestly going to crash and burn on some no-name rock out in the middle of nowhere?"
Valère's voice was ragged as she replied. "If the main boards are fragged like Fehri said, then I don't think so. Without the main boards, the crew boards are useless. The best you can hope for is a little manoeuvring out of the attitude jets to keep the ship from completely totalling."
Breandon jumped over the crew board he was working on and grabbed at the controls for the attitude thrusters. "I don't know how to work these!"
Dawn gritted her teeth. Altitude. Altitude meant thrusters, which probably meant main engine room. If she managed to make it through this, Dawn promised herself that she would never make fun of her father's sci-fi fascinations ever again. "Which way to main propulsion?" Valère pointed to the doors, then jerked a thumb to the left. The Guardian took off, wondering if three years of 21st century engineering school might be enough to get them to not crash. "Three words, love," she called over her shoulder to Breandon. "All I'm asking for if we make it through this!"
He whacked a tan fist in frustration on the sparking main boards, causing another spray of sparks. "Dammit, Dawn ... " But she was gone already. Grimly he concentrated on the swelling moonlet before them, hoping against hope that somehow their lives would be miraculously spared again.