Angel Feathers and Dragon Scales, part two.
By Koneko Shido
Duo finally stopped screaming when the flame of his lighter flickered out. He made a strangled "Eep!" noise when he heard a scrabbling sound in the darkness and flicked the lighter into life again, staring with wide eyes into the gloom. The angel was now holding his torch, turning it over and looking at it from every angle. The darkness didn't seem to bother him and he turned to Duo, walking back over to the braided boy, who was wondering what the signs of going into shock were.
"What is this... contraption?" The angel asked in a slightly nasal voice, frowning down at the dead torch. Duo, without thinking, immediately answered.
"It's a torch!" Then he clapped a hand over his mouth, his wide eyes still running over the angels' wings. He noticed and smirked.
"My wings bother you? So be it, then. I will conceal them." The angel said in his sexy voice, and Duo almost choked as the huge, white wings began to retract into his back until there was no sign that they were ever there.
With his wings gone, the angel looked almost like an ordinary teenager, were it not for the silver breastplate and sword, which he had sheathed in the scabbard at his side, sensing no threat from Duo.
"Well?" The boy asked, tilting his head to the side a little.
"Um... well what?" Duo squeaked, trying to dig himself into the wall. The armored boy sighed.
"What is this?" He held up the torch, shaking it a little. To his shock the light flickered on and the angel dropped the now lit torch, jumping back, his sword in his hand.
"What are you, a sorcerer?" He growled, glaring menacingly at Duo, who was still trying to get over the fact that he was talking to a guy with wings. That question shook him from his uncharacteristic quietness and he stood up straight, giving the angel a glare of his own.
"No I'm not a damned sorcerer! I'm Duo Maxwell, human, unlike some people! And just what the heck are you supposed to be, huh? And what's the deal with the wings and the crystal and the sword and everything?" He asked irately. Duo figured that if he was about to die, at least he would find out what on Earth it was that would be killing him. The other boy kept his sword drawn as Duo picked up his torch, still glaring.
"I," he said proudly, "am Heero Yuy. And I am human, thank you very much! I just happen to have wings. Is there a problem with that?" He demanded. Duo raised an eyebrow.
"Of course there's a problem with it! Nobody has wings! Birds have wings, not people! And how can you be human if you were trapped in rock a few minutes ago and now you're walking around like nothing happened?!" Duo slid down the wall and sat on the cool stone floor, his torch dangling limply from his hand as he stared up at Heero. "I'm too young to be crazy... So, are you going to kill me or what?" He asked. Heero frowned.
"Why would I kill you?" He asked. Duo looked confused, yet again.
"Well, what do you want with me then?" The braided boy asked, watching the angel sit down cross-legged opposite him and put away his sword.
"What do you mean what do *I* want with you? You're the one that awoke me, what do *you* want with *me*!?" Heero growled.
"Huh?" Was all the reply Duo could manage. Heero sighed, wondering what the world had come to while he'd been asleep.
"Listen, a very long time ago I was a knight and I killed an evil dragon, which you now happen to be standing in, by the way." Duo's jaw dropped at that but he let Heero continue, looking around him at the walls of the cavern and seeing them in a new light, so to speak. After all, why would a cave need *ribs*?
"The dragon was very cruel and nasty," Heero carried on, speaking as he might speak to a child. Duo scowled. "And countless other knights had been killed by it. Once I had defeated it, I was rewarded by the great Red dragon with these wings. The red dragon told me that one day another green dragon, like the one I had killed, would rise again and I would be needed to help defeat it since I am the only one ever to have succeeded. That said, I agreed to be frozen in the crystal, here inside the corpse of my old enemy, until such time as I was needed again. There, do you understand now? Only one suitable could awaken me, and only at the right time." Heero explained. Duo took a moment to process this tale and then scratched his head, swinging the torch around the cavern, which he now knew was the inside of a dragon, and taking in everything.
"So, I woke you up, and now you have to kill a dragon. I guess it's a little pointless to argue that dragons don't exist, but I think if there were one terrorizing the area I'd probably know about it. The red dragon... That's the one on the welsh flag, right?" He asked, turning back to Heero. The winged boy nodded, following suit as Duo stood up.
"Well, there's no dragon for you to kill, so what are you going to do?" Duo asked. Heero folded his arms across his chest.
"I will wait for it to appear. Green dragons are clever; it has undoubtedly been in hiding until it was fully-grown, they take many centuries to mature and it is likely to be the offspring of the one I destroyed. It will know that I am freed from my sleep and come after me, since I killed its predecessor." He told Duo, who looked thoughtful for a moment then snapped his fingers, grinning.
"Well, you can come back with me, if you like! I have a hotel room that you can share. It doesn't look like you have anywhere else to go, and I'd hate to leave you down here in the dark, since you didn't kill me and all. This holiday is turning out to be more fun than I thought!" He chattered. Heero nodded, following the braided baka out of the cavern and up the neck of the dragon, into the cave that was the dragon's mouth.
"Do you always talk so much?" Heero asked when they reached the cave mouth, having spent the last few minutes listening to Duo chattering about his holiday and how cool it was to actually meet someone right out of a fairy tale.
"Yep!" Duo grinned cheerfully, having gotten over his shock finally by telling himself that stranger things had happened, though he couldn't actually think of any at the moment...
Heero sighed, following Duo as they climbed their way awkwardly out of the dragon's mouth and up onto the top of the cliff then began walking back over the Orme in the easing rain.
A little way around the side of the Orme, in the "Hornby" Cave that Duo had passed earlier, there was a soft slither and a rumble as something began to awaken. Small stones and rivulets of dust ran down the walls of the cave as, deep within, a pair of evil, glowing slits opened in the darkness.
Ddraig Gwyrdd [1] was awake.
When Duo and Heero reached the hotel and entered the reception, the girl at the front desk was on the phone. Duo fidgeted while he waited for her to finish her call, grinning slightly at the way Heero was staring at everything with wide eyes.
"Ga i helpu chi? ...Ydw...Ydw... Diolch yn fawr, hwyl!" [2] The girl said into the phone, putting it down and scowling at it. Heero wondered silently why on Earth the crazy girl had been talking to an inanimate object, but he kept his thoughts to himself. The receptionist turned around, seeing Duo and Heero, and grinned at them.
"Hello! Do you need anything, Mr. Maxwell?" She asked, looking at Duo, who nodded.
"Yeah, he'll be staying with me. How much do I owe you extra?" The girl smiled and looked around for her boss, then shrugged.
"Don't worry about it, as long as my boss doesn't find out! You two have a good time, and make sure you make a lot of noise; she hates that." The girl winked. Duo blushed and thanked the gods that Heero wasn't listening.
"Uh, thanks...um..." He trailed off.
"Rhiannon. [3] You're welcome!" She laughed softly as Duo led Heero off up the stairs to his room.
"Mae o'n olygus!" [4] She called after them, winking at Duo. "Love the armor." She went back to shuffling papers, trying to look busy, and muttered to herself.
"These guys are getting kinkier all the time!"
Heero sat down on the bed, a look of surprise passing across his handsome face as it bounced slightly. Duo grabbed some sheets from the cupboard in the bathroom and spread them out on the floor; a little unnerved by the way Heero watched everything he did, but not letting it get to him.
"Hey, pass me a pillow, bird-boy!" He grinned, ducking easily as said pillow came flying at him. He picked it up and punched a little life into it then arranged it neatly on his floor-bed.
"Gonna take a shower? Mind if I go first? I'm soaked!" He asked. Heero looked confused yet again and scowled.
"What is a shower? Another of your contraptions?"
Duo sighed.
"Forget it. I'll get a towel, you can dry yourself off and I'll find you some *normal* clothes to wear. You look like a knight of the freaking round table!"
"Too young. Anyway, I could beat that group of idiots with one hand tied behind my back! Legendary he may have been, but I didn't see Arthur come running when the dragon started torching villages! Lancelot was cute, though..." Heero muttered to himself, getting up to take a look out of the window at AC197 Llandudno. He missed the amusing sight of Duo trying on a full-body blush before he scrambled up to get the towel and dry clothes for Heero.
Recovering a little, Duo put the items down on the bed and paused at the bathroom door on the way to his shower.
"Hey, how come if you're such a hero, I've never heard of you?" Duo asked. Heero turned and smirked at him, placing his sword and scabbard down on the bed carefully.
"*Some* people aren't in it for the publicity."
Duo rolled his eyes and shut the bathroom door, grinning to himself as he wondered if Lancelot really had been cute.
Far away, in a place named Mythia that no mortal had ever reached, a group of creatures watched the scene waver on the wall before them. These were the beasts of legend, and they had awaited Heero's awakening for centuries. They had seen everything, from the first drops of rain heralding the great storm that had signaled the awakening of both Heero and Ddraig Gwyrdd, to the smile on Duo Maxwell's lips as he closed the bathroom door. These creatures, who appeared in the world of mortals as great beasts, were lounging leisurely around the room on silken cushions in their human forms, talking and arguing amongst themselves, as was their favorite pastime.
"Honestly, give the poor boy some privacy, you hentais!" Hilde, the queen of the sea, otherwise known as the mermaid, the Kraken, the Leviathan or Miss Neptune, scolded. She had a line of translucent fins up each arm and three slits of just-visible gills on her neck. She waved her trident at the picture of Duo getting undressed to shower on the wall.
"We should see what Ddraig Gwyrdd is doing." Quatre the Pegasus put in. His silky wings, the same colour as his hair, rustled as he moved to lean against his silent lover, Trowa the Gryphon. Trowa purred softly, his lion's tail curling around Quatre's waist as his green cats' eyes watched the screen.
"No, we should watch Heero!" Relena the Banshee wailed in her piercing voice. The tone with which she screeched Heero's name would have killed a human, but, luckily for them, these creatures were not human, so it just made them wince and scowl at her.
"Shut up, Onna! Your voice is almost as annoying as the rest of you!" Wufei the great red dragon scowled at the white-robed girl. He was the one who had granted Heero his wings and was the unofficial leader of the strange group, seeing as he was the only deity to have his likeness on a flag, which he was immensely proud of.
"My, aren't we in a black mood today?" The Phoenix, and lover of Wufei, Treize, smirked. His burning golden wings hung at his back, just as Wufei's red, bat-like wings hung at his. Wufei had tiny red horns poking out from his forehead, which Treize found irresistible.
"I'm sure Heero will do just as well as the last time." Treize comforted, running his fingers down the back of Wufei's red, dragon-scale armor.
"I don't doubt it," Wufei said, waving his hand and changing the view on the magic wall to a scene they all knew too well. A green, slithering form was moving in the darkness of its cave, preparing itself for the battle to come.
At that moment a figure strode into the large room, wearing a helmet with a single, twisted horn sticking out from the forehead. He wore no shirt and instead of hair on his chest he had downy white fur. Walking over to sit with his two lovers, Zechs the unicorn took off his helmet, shaking out his long, white hair and smirking at Treize and Wufei.
"Has it revealed itself yet?" Zechs purred, looking up at the screen.
"Soon," Treize replied, his fingers playing with the small ponytail in Wufei's raven hair.
"Well, what will we do while we wait?" Zechs grinned. Wufei raised an elegant eyebrow and Treize licked his lips, an evil look coming over his handsome face.
"Oh, I'm sure we can find *something*, don't you agree, Wufei?"
"Absolutely." Wufei replied, following as the trio made their way out of the room and into their private chambers.
"Do call us if anything interesting happens, won't you?" Treize asked Quatre on the way out. The blonde Pegasus boy nodded, then gasped as he felt Trowa's slender fingers dance their way down his back between his golden wings.
"I think they have the right idea," Trowa murmured, leaning to lick his lover's throat like a cat. Sufficed to say, it ended up being Relena and Hilde who watched the screen for developments in the plot of the story unfolding on the mortal plane.
Deities are *very* horny creatures, it's a well-known fact.
Down below, far across space and time, on the other side of the fiery lakes of Hades and the silver fields of Heaven, Duo was getting out of the shower.
TBC
[1] Green Dragon. I hope! Gwyrdd might mean White... Or is that Gwyn?
[2] "Can I help you? ...Yes...Yes... Thank you very much, bye!
[3] Nope, it isn't me! Rhiannon is the only Welsh (hopefully) name I could think of. Pretty, isn't it?
[4] He's handsome! (Can't argue with that! =^_^=)