And... Morpheus 6 (pt 1)
See, I have not killed this fic!
She descended into one realm and then quickly moved into the one beside it. These two realms were alike in all but a little history. At one point, they had even been the same realm, until a decision made by a single individual had caused the realm’s destiny to diverge. She knew about the strangely twinned realms because of Setsuna who had known because of the role Time had played in the split, but she did not know what the critical difference between the two had been. The two realms still had strong ties to each other, while the ripples of change from the twice-made choice were still small.
The choice itself did not matter for her purposes. She just wished to use the relationship between the two realms to her advantage. Most of what happened in one should still occur in the second and she hoped that whatever trail she was leaving would echo between the two realms, confusing Galaxia as to the one Usagi was in. If it did work, she might find it possible to move between one and the other and avoid any of Galaxia’s attempts to apprehend her. The disadvantage to this was that she would need to stay where the echoes were still the strongest, which was near yet another pair of alternate Earths, teeming with mortals, defenceless against Galaxia.
They certainly wouldn’t have encountered a force like her before. Mystery, Awareness, Imagination, the three dimensions that most leant themselves to the practice of magic in one form or another did not touch the twin-realms at all and Will was present only peripherally. Inner power here would be found in strength of arms and mind. Those that might have been mages, had the nature of their worlds been different, were no more than the others around them. Occasionally, however, there came individuals with such strong minds that, regardless of their intelligence or lack thereof, their determination would let them tap into Will and accomplish deeds that would have seemed almost miraculous to those witnessing. But, no matter how strong the twin-realms’ defenders were in Will, all that those strengths could manipulate would be the world around them. Galaxia would arrive wielding abilities derived from three dimensions they had no comprehension of. They would lose, and badly.
As a compromise, she would not descend to Earth, but remain in space. In these two realms, Earth still had a presence in space, though not to the extent her ‘own’ Earth had before the Fall. She would go to one of the colonies that floated in Earth’s space. The risk of death due to her would hopefully be minimised, even should her worst fears be realised.
She moved quickly and entered the nearest colony undetected. It took her only a moment to seek out and find a quiet park with public amenities. She appeared in an empty stall, adjusted her illusions and shields accordingly and then walked out as if she were any other woman who had just needed to visit the loo. She strolled across the grass casually, curiosity prompting her to look into how different the energy fields here were from a natural field under a real sky on a planet. As she allowed her vision to drop into a spectrum that drowned out visible light, she kept out mental feelers to inform her of when Galaxia entered either of the twin-realms.
It was a pity that she neglected to watch for mortals. A hissed, “Stop that! Duo!” broke her from her contemplations and she blinked her eyes back to a less distracting manner of seeing and then blinked because what she was seeing was very distracting.
There were two young men, one with short, messy, dark brown hair and the other with a long chestnut braid. She couldn’t see much of their faces because the braided one, Duo she surmised, was attached devoutly to the other man’s lips. Well, that would explain why, despite his physical objections, if flailing ineffectively while your partner pressed your back against a park bench while he ravaged you was a physical objection, his vocal protests had been muffled. It was not that he objected to the aggressor, Usagi realised with amusement, he was just very embarrassed about the locale. Duo felt like he knew this as well and was enjoying his partner’s chagrin immensely. It would have helped that, while the short-hared man struck Usagi as intensely private and dangerously protective of his own space, Duo, himself, was somewhat of an exhibitionist with very little shame to speak of, although she sensed that he possessed his own hidden reserves of lethality. They were a good match for each other.
The besieged man managed to push Duo away for a moment and Usagi had to bite her tongue not to giggle at the sound of strong suction releasing as he did so.
“Duo!”
The braided one’s back was to her but she could feel his evil delight along with a strange sense of purpose as he whispered coaxingly, “Hee-chan, c’mon. ‘S normal for couples to neck in th’park…” He began to nibble on his partner’s jaw. “C’mon, koi, let’s give’r a show!”
Usagi was amazed. Not at Duo’s brazenness or the fact that his real intent was not so much driven by his libido as an overwhelming love for the man he was sitting on and a desire to help him. Help him to do what, Usagi had no clue, but she was confident in her reading of the situation. What really amazed her were the fragments of the old tongue that littered Duo’s speech. She’d never heard the influence of the language of the Stars so prominent in realm where there were none.
“Yamatte!! Duo no baka!” She caught a glimpse of intensely flustered blue eyes as they glared down at the incorrigible menace busying itself in the crook of his neck. “Omae o korosu!”
Usagi felt both the embarrassment turning into real anger and heard the death threat and thought that she should step in before he made good on it. “Excuse me,” she asked them politely as she stepped off the foot path, “But I couldn’t help over-hearing you. If I may, what language were you speaking, Sir?”
The sir in question didn’t answer, he just stared at her stonily. On his lap, Duo craned his neck around to look at her. His split-second examination was thorough for all of its brevity. He shook his head sadly and rolled his eyes. “Hee-koi,” he scolded affectionately, “I know you’ve got me, but when a major babe like that wants to talk with you, then even you should dust off the ol’ speech centres and make with the chatting!”
His partner grunted, uncaring. “Hn.”
“And you call me the baka.” Duo sighed in a long-suffering kind of way. He craned around again and told Usagi, “Sorry ‘bout that and he’s speaking Japanese, Miss.”
Not any form of Japanese she’d ever heard before. How very strange. “Konnichi wa? Watashi wa Usagi desu? Livien mane teorielyn?” she tried curiously, the emphasis altered so that they were simply words.
He looked at her with more interest then, shuffling Duo a bit so that he could see Usagi more clearly. A few interrogative syllables spilled from him in his so-called Japanese.
She frowned slightly. She knew most of the vocabulary and the syntax was amazingly untouched considering the missing elements. His pronunciation was only slightly deviated from her own, an accent but not one from this world’s Japan. She asked him about it. “Mane reahlln herin a deniyao deska?”
Duo looked very put out when his partner shoved him off his lap completely so that he could stand up. Usagi met him halfway as he approached her and, between the two of them, they spent the next five minutes standing there, trying to see where their native languages meshed and where they deviated.
Heero, as he introduced himself, used the L1 dialect, which wasn’t classical Japanese, just as she’d thought. His accent, on the other hand, was more of a lack of one, though he never said as much. Her own ‘dialect’, as he considered it, was obviously an intriguing puzzle to him. Once he was certain she was not just mixing in a liberal dose of gibberish, demonstrating to her that he possessed a phenomenal memory of his own, he was determined to establish what the other elements it possessed were from. He spoke broken and halting Welsh to her at one point, surprising her anew, but she saw his reasoning. Some of the words she used did sound very like that.
Discussing where the extra vowels in her dialect had originated occupied them both as they slowly made their way back to the park bench where Duo was watching them with a sulky pout. His supposed peevishness at losing his friend’s undivided attention was belied by the pleased satisfaction he was emoting enough for any sensitive to pick up. The look of delighted pleasure on his face after his partner sat down again, almost on top of him so that Usagi would have a proper space between her and them, and then threw his arm around Duo so he didn’t get pushed off the bench, was entirely genuine. Hero wasn’t as oblivious as he appeared, either, as his small burst of invisible satisfaction told her, even though not one iota of it was hinted at on his face.
After that, Duo joined the discussion, adding his own rather extensive knowledge of language to both Heero and Usagi’s. He might have been a native English speaker but he had already shown that he had an adequate grasp of Japanese and went on to prove his mastery of it. Usagi was enjoying the intellectual discourse so much that she almost forgot why she was there. Heero and Duo were two unique and brilliant young men and, although she was never allowed close enough to touch one or the other to engage her telepathy even had she wanted, the dynamics between the two fascinated her. The level of trust between them was as remarkable as their ability to converse intelligently on linguistics on the spur of the moment, despite neither having formally studied the theory behind languages.
The intrigue she felt for and inspired in both young men might have been why none of them immediately reacted to the strange and transient chill in the air. Duo shivered but kept explaining why English was such a compromise between ‘nihongo’ and ‘eigo’ while Heero just pulled him closer. Usagi frowned but, as nothing else happened, allowed herself to be drawn back into the debate against Duo. This was why it took her a full four seconds to realise they were being watched and not benignly.
Unobtrusively, she sent out mental feelers and then her head snapped up in shock at what she found. Her eyes only confirmed what her other senses had already told her. Heero was watching them with suspicion and quickly building hostility. Usagi had already determined that he could be dangerous if provoked but she was far more concerned with the incensed blonde man with him. She was surprised that his possessive fury was not visible as it poured off him. He was very angry and already acting on it.
Confused, she turned to the young men she had been talking to and was not entirely comforted to find them both still there and staring at the two newcomers with the same astonishment as she. Well, Duo was but she could feel Heero’s emotions and knew that he felt equally surprised, despite how expressionless he looked. Then the angry blonde reached them and snatched at Duo. Shocked anew, Usagi let Heero push her clear just before he and Duo were both pulled into a brawl.
From her view on the ground, Usagi was quite sure the blonde hadn’t intended it to be anything other than a quick and clean snatch, but a brawl it became. The blonde man must have been so bothered by the manner with which Duo had been practically draped across Heero that he had not thought about the consequences of so carelessly yanking at the braided man like that. Additionally, the astonishing reflexes of all three had turned a surprise attack into something much messier.
“Daijabou?” a familiar nasal tenor asked her.
She blinked wordlessly as she regarded the strong hand offered to her and the man it belonged to. Short, lean, blue-eyed, messy hair and incredible leashed strength, it was Heero all over again. The only difference to her senses, and she used all eleven of them, was his clothing. Where the Heero she had been talking with about languages had been in jeans and a tanktop, this Heero was elegantly garbed in grey slacks, dress shoes and a blue silk shirt.
“Were you injured?” he asked again, in English.
She shook her head weakly and accepted the hand up. Oh, this was bad. This was very bad.
“Who are you?” she demanded as soon as she was back on her feet, not that she had to ask. The two seconds her hand had been in his had told her more than she wanted to know.
“Odin Lowe Jr,” he answered flatly as he turned to regard the small ruckus were his lover was currently brawling. And Milliardo Peacecraft was Odin’s lover, Usagi knew, just as she knew that neither of them were in the wrong realm. They belonged here just as Heero and Duo did. The very properties of the twin-realms that she had hoped would help her were now conspiring to give her a monumental headache.
“Oh…” she murmured faintly, “Not Heero?”
This brought his undivided attention back to her. “How do you know that name?” he snapped at her, one of his hands grabbing tightly at her shoulder. “Who are you and who do you work for? Why are you here?”
Brought out of her daze by the threat directed toward her, she immediately attempted to sooth him. Through his touch on her arm, she sent calm and a wordless assurance that she was no threat and meant him no harm. All the while she did this, she tried to convince him verbally as well. “I’m Usagi, I don’t work for anyone! I’m here just for some exercise. I just wanted to walk in the park!”
“Who are they? What do you have to do with them?”
“Duo and Heero. That’s all I know. I just met them!” Personally, Usagi thought Odin already knew very well who the two of them were. He was just very reluctant to believe the evidence of his own eyes. Once more, back in control of herself, Usagi began devising ways to calm Odin down and break the other three up when Odin and Heero did it for her. Her upper arm still firmly in hand, he dragged her over a few steps, far enough to reach Duo’s flying braid which he then grabbed and yanked mightily. Duo left the fight as precipitously as he’d entered it. His sudden absence gave Heero the chance he needed to immobilise Milliardo.
Intense blue eyes met intense blue eyes.
“Heero Yuy,” Heero said shortly.
“Odin Lowe,” Odin said at last and both nodded in apparent satisfaction.
Duo squirmed and Odin gave him enough slack on his braid to stand. He did not release it completely. “Hee-koi?” Duo asked with wide eyes as he looked from one to the other.
“Hn,” both grunted simultaneously. Duo’s eyes widened further while Usagi’s closed in annoyance. This was going to be a real witch to straighten out.
Then she had a dreadful thought. “You two know each other, don’t you?” she questioned, hoping she’d be wrong.
“Of course they do~” Duo exclaimed, “Just look at them! Heero why didn’t you ever tell me you had a twin?!”
Odin sighed and cuffed Duo across the back of the head. “Baka!” they snapped in synch and frowned at each other.
“Odin, what is this about?” Milliardo questioned from beneath Heero.
Usagi saw Odin and Heero exchange another identical glance, this one communicating far more than recognition. If Usagi’s empathic senses weren’t wrong, it went something like:
Odin, “He’s going to start causing trouble soon.”
Heero, “Duo as well.”
Odin, “We need to keep them calm if we wish to understand what has happened.”
Heero, “Aa, swap?”
Odin, “Aa.”
Then, in a split second of motion, the two of them released their respective captives and switches places in the time it took Usagi to open her mouth in warning. Not even a breath later, Duo was being held by Heero, Odin was restraining Milliardo and Usagi was standing on her own, watching the four of them in horror.
“Don’t do that!” she shrieked at them, once her heart had left her throat. “You can’t risk touching each other!”
Four sets of piercing eyes fixed on her, taking in her fear.
“Why not?” Duo asked slowly.
Ah, damn. Well, se wouldn’t be able to sort this out if she was a normal human girl, anyway. “Because they’ll become one person again,” she informed them all.
Suddenly, four guns were aimed at her. She sighed in vexation. “Don’t blame the messenger,” she snapped, “I didn’t make this happen!” Which did beg the question, what had? Considering the kind of trouble Usagi was running form, it was a question she should ask sooner rather than later.
“Look, Miss,” Milliardo enunciated carefully, “I think that, despite initial impressions,” and here he spared a moment to glance cooly at Duo, “We all agree that this is not quire normal-”
“No duh, Einstein!” Duo muttered.
Milliardo ignored him and continued, “I very much doubt that man is Odin’s twin and you just indicated you know something about this. Now I believe we and our lovely firearms would all appreciate it if you would educate us with all you know.”
As he asked courteously, Usagi didn’t make things difficult, despite the guns pointed at her. Besides, this was a rather serious situation. “They already suspect,” she said, indicating Heero with one hand and Odin with the other. “But for Duo and Milliardo, it’s very simple, if very frightening. Heero and Odin are the same person.”
“You’re kidding?!”
“You are jesting, I hope!”
Once again, Duo and Milliardo glared at each other and their respective lovers were required to intervene. Heero gave a sharp yank on Duo’s braid. “Itaii!”
Odin merely tightened his hold on Milliardo but, with his strength, it was more than enough to distract the, now wincing, blonde. “Odin!”
Usagi watched this calmly, all the while determining how much of the truth she could tell these men and how much they needed to know. “Are you all finished yet?” she inquired calmly.
“Aa”
Yes, the twin-realms were still closely tied, indeed, if, after two different lives, the thoughts of the two versions of the same man still ran so closely together. “Well, then, I am not kidding or jesting or whatever synonym you’d prefer. Odin and Heero are indeed the same individual but for the fact that their lives took different turns in the past. For whatever differences they have lived through, though, they are still the same person. If they were to touch, that truth would be made fact.”
“Excuse me?” Milliardo interrupted, “Do you honestly expect us to believe that? Obviously I was incorrect. You plainly have no idea of what this is about and less idea of what reality is!”
Hmm, the little mortal could be insulting when he wanted. The urbane façade was just that, a façade. It seemed that Milliardo Peacecraft was not just a rich pretty boy, after all… well, Usagi had already learned that from Odin. Milliardo and Odin had met in battle and tried many times afterwards to settle their rivalry conclusively. By Usagi’s reckoning, they would have had an interesting courtship. Milliardo was a revolutionary, failed pacifist, King of Sanq and would very likely lead the Earthsphere within the next ten years. He was not someone to underestimate, irritate if time permitted, but not underestimate.
“Look at them,” she commanded, “Do you honestly think they’re twins or clones?”
Duo whispered to Heero, “J didn’t clone you, did he?”
“Baka!”
“For once I agree with Maxwell,” Milliardo announced, looking at Odin, “Cloning you is something that old madman is very capable of.”
“Hn.”
“Well all you need to do is have them touch, then,” Usagi reminded them casually. “If I am just some random fruitcake, nothing will happen.” She shrugged lightly but her eyes were very serious as she met Milliardo’s. “But, if I am right, then either you or Duo will lose your lover. Maybe both. With both lives behind him, he’ll certainly change.”
That made both Milliardo and Duo pause uncertainly. They both loved their partners and were reluctant to risk losing them.
“You said we were the same,” Heero recalled perfectly.
Odin nodded in agreement. “Aa. You are contradicting yourself.”
Usagi thought that the two of them were already beginning to see, though. All they had to do was look across at the other’s choice of mate to see how they were different. “You are the same,” she repeated patiently, “You share a soul, but have lived two different lives. If Odin were to relive Heero’s past, he would make the same decisions and vice versa. You would have been viewing this situation from the other’s point of view.”
Duo snorted and, disbelievingly, Milliardo retorted, “Odin, you cannot possibly believe this!”
Odin frowned and looked at Heero. “Picked up by Odin Lowe in the L1 spaceport and…”
“Remained with him until AC188 where he was killed…” Heero continued.
“Attacking a federation base on the orders of…”
“Dekim Barton who…”
“Issued Dr. J orders for my retraining shortly before…”
Operation Meteor because I reacted… badly to…”
“The death of a young girl and her puppy during a training exercise gone wrong.”
Heero nodded. “Where do our lives deviate?”
“You participated in the altered Operation Meteor?” Odin questioned.
“Aa. Duel with Zechs?” Both glanced at Milliardo before Odin nodded.
“Threaten to shoot Relena before being shot by Duo?”
“Aa.”
Usagi was bemused by the rapid exchange of critical events in their lives. To be honest, the two of them were taking it much better than she would have expected. Even with their twin in front of them, Usagi wondered how many mortals would have accepted the strangeness so quickly and then proceeded to investigate how it worked without at least stewing about why the universe was not the way they thought it should be… as Duo and Milliardo currently were.
The two in question only forgot their sulks, if not their dislike of the other, when it was determined where the lives of the two doppelgangers had split.
“So Zechsy was the one who picked you up after that idiotic attempt to self-destruct?”
“Aa.”
“You nursed him back to health, Blondie?” Duo pushed.
Milliardo sneered. “My name is Milliardo, you simpleton, you may call me Lord Peacecraft or your Highness. If you call me ‘Zechsy’ or ‘blondie’ again, I shall certainly tear your braid out by the roots and proceed to garrotte you with it!”
Duo sneered right back, “I’d like to see you try!”
Heero and Odin, aside from ensuring that they could physically restrain their other halves should need be, had continued to see how live had diverged after the initial split.
“Quatre went mad?”
“Zechs injured Une?”
“Relena was named queen of the world?!”
“Trieze lived?”
“Dekim Barton had Marimeia?”
“You chose Zechs? Is that why you went back to that old name? Less notoriety to be dissected by the public?”
“You chose Duo. Is that why you did not?”
Usagi covered her smile as they both went, “Hn,” simultaneously again.
Odin looked over at the fuming man in Heero’s grasp. “Do you regret it?”
For an instant, Heero’s expression was fond, as he glanced down at his braided lover. “Iie. He challenges me. You?” Milliardo was arrogantly looking down his aristocratic nose at Duo.
“Aa,” Odin agreed, “Always a challenge.”
They smirked in perfect understanding and then quickly recalled their mates to the matter at hand rather than allow them to continue sniping at each other. After identical slaps across their heads, Milliardo and Duo found themselves in rare accord as they glared at their mates.
“What was that for?” Duo whined.
“Being a baka,” Heero answered while Odin stared at Milliardo with one mocking eyebrow raised. Wisely, Milliardo chose not to comment and they all turned to Usagi who was watching them absently.
“So?” Duo quizzed.
“Hmm?” she murmured distractedly.
“Why do we have two Heeros here?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” she agreed, “I don’t know.”
“What?!”
The others had apparently decided to let Duo be their spokesperson so she addressed him. “I don’t know,” she repeated slowly.
“But,” he spluttered, “How could you not?”
She looked at him strangely. “What do you think I am? Omniscient? If I was, trust me, I wouldn’t be here.” Ah, how true that was.
“But you knew what they were!”
She snorted. “One look would tell anyone with even half a brain what they were!”
Duo disagreed. “No, most people, normal people, woulda thought they were twins, you’re probably the only one who would immediately jumped to the conclusion that they were the same person!”
“So normal people don’t even have half a brain,” she retorted. They were all starting to get impatient, not just Duo and she frowned at them. “Look, what do you want me to say? That I’m a divine being hiding from an all-powerful agent of evil and I know more about how your reality works from one glance than you do despite having lived here for x years?” She wondered if they’d take it seriously. It was something she’d learned from Mamoru who had pointed out that her life was unbelievable to most mortals. She was curious to see if the use of the truth as a misdirection would work as well here.
She felt both Duo and Milliardo hesitate, balking at what they felt to be impossible, but, surprisingly, both Odin and Heero seemed to take the comment seriously.
“Are you?” Odin asked.
A remarkable soul indeed. She couldn’t help herself. She smiled mischievously. “And if I were?”
Odin seemed to be the more talkative of the duplicates. “Then I would ask how long before your enemy followed you here and if the enemy could be responsible for our present circumstances.”
She sobered. “Important points, I wish I could answer them.” She still couldn’t feel Galaxia’s presence but something had to be responsible for Heero and Odin both being here and she doubted that it was just a coincidence it had happened now, just after she had arrived.
“You are kidding…” Duo repeated, looking at her incredulously.
She regarded him with unmoved blue eyes. “Whether you believe me or not is irrelevant, it will not change the truth.” She turned back to Odin. “I can’t sense her nearby, but that is no guarantee that Galaxia has not already followed me. It is easily within her power to disrupt your reality without even meaning to.”
“If such a being exists,” Heero began, “How do we fight her?”
“You don’t!” Usagi responded sharply, her face paling. “I do!”
“You?” Milliardo was disbelieving as he examined her closely.
“Yes, me!” she insisted. She caught his gaze and held it ruthlessly, letting her own eyes convey just how serious she was. “You are, pardon me, only mortal without even a reservoir of power to call on. You wouldn’t even be a hindrance to her.”
“And you would?”
“If she does find me?” she asked, “Then I will gain her attention again and draw her away. I will not engage her in outright battle because she is far more powerful and skilled than I am. I’d be like a rabbit challenging a rabid wolf. No, once I have her attention, I will run again. When I am certain that she won’t turn back, I will do everything in my power to lose her.”
“You are afraid,” Odin stated.
“Yes,” she admitted candidly. “Very. I am powerful but she is beyond me. I can heal worlds with years of intensive work but, with only a thought, she can destroy stars.”
“It is easier to kill than to heal,” Heero pointed out knowledgably. Usagi knew from Odin’s memories that all four of these men would have had personal experience of the truth of that statement.
“Okay,” she agreed, “I’ll agree with that, but I couldn’t destroy a sun either, not with a snap of my fingers.”
“Which isn’t to say that you couldn’t with a bit more effort,” Duo drawled. “You expect us to believe that you, an itty-bitty li’l blonde girl, has that kinda power? You?”
“Well,” she sniped, irritated, “I could show you what I really looked like but that’d be like lighting a huge beacon and screaming out, ‘here I am, come and kill me.’ I would have expected you to understand the concept of camouflage, Duo Maxwell, pilot of Deathscythe and self-proclaimed god of death. Oh, and let me enlighten you on something you might find interesting. Death or Shinigami or whatever you want to name it? He prefers to be called Saetan or Thanatos. Of course, I prefer to call him ‘Tou-san,” and she pronounced the word exactly, forcing the shades of meaning into their vulnerable minds.
She saw them all flinch and remorse washed through her. Her anxiety was making her ill-tempered and these men did not deserve to have her venting her very real fears on them. “I apologise. My worry is making me short.”
Duo was watching her unreadably. “You say Shinigami is your dad?”
“Hai.” Again the word echoed in their mind, reinforcing its Japanese meaning with the deeper echoes that it contained in the old tongue.
“You’re for real?”
“Hai.”
Duo smiled crookedly and shook off Heero’s restraining grasp. “I always knew that if there was a god, he was the God of Death.”
“Shinigami,” she said, deliberately using his name for her father, “Is only one of many Stars.” She nodded solemnly at him. “But, for all intents and purposes, you may as well be correct, for, in your realms, he is the only Star that matters. Your realms have no Stars, guardian or divine, those that you would call gods. You will only encounter divinity when your soul leaves this realm for that of Death. There is no one out there to limit what evils you mortals visit upon yourselves and there is no one out there to protect you from evils that are entirely alien.”
For a few minutes, they were all silent as they contemplated what she had just told them. Odin allowed Milliardo to stand and he did so without a word. Usagi watched them quietly, even as she searched fruitlessly both Galaxia and some sign of what was happening.
“Is it allowed for you to tell us this?” Milliardo asked, breaking the silence. “If it was, wouldn’t this knowledge have been passed around a long time ago?”
“By whom?” she asked, “There is no one here who knows. If this were the realm where I stood as the Guardian of Selene, then, no, I would not have been permitted to discuss such things with you. But this is not that realm and there is no Law here forbidding the sharing of such knowledge.” She gave a soft, rueful laugh. “If you stay here, near me, then it is only fair for me to tell you these things because they will be threatening you as well as me.”
“Because this enemy, this Galaxia, is coming for you. You’re what’s drawing it here and if you weren’t around, then she’d have no reason to come here,” Duo summarised.
“Correct,” she admitted softly.
“Then why are you still here?” Duo demanded.
“In the middle of a park, no less!” Milliardo added. “Why aren’t you drawing the enemy to somewhere where there would be no civilian casualties?”
“Because then you could not hide,” Odin guessed for her, “There would be no way to conceal yourself from an enemy if there was nothing to camouflage yourself against.”
“Correct, again.”
“But the kind of battle your hinting about could kill thousands!” Duo interrupted.
“Millions,” she corrected.
Duo reddened. “Then why are you still here?! Go away, find a place where you can just fight it out and get it over with. There are kids here! Y’don’t just pick a fight in the middle of town like this!”
“No, I should go into the depths of space and then I should fight and then I would die.” Usagi nodded vaguely. “This realm would be spared Galaxia’s depredations for a time but she is implacable, eventually she would return but I would be dead. The worlds I could have healed must wait for another with that power. The world I guard would stand vulnerable. My soulmate would be bereft and would soon follow after me, leaving not one but two Stars lacking a course for renewal. As the embodiment of all that is good in the universe waned without a successor, the evil would wax and overrun those that opposed it. The universe would be lost but, for a time, this realm would not know the malice of Kaos or its minions.” She looked into Duo’s wide violet eyes and asked him, “How much is my one life worth? I don’t know, all I know is that I have a responsibility to survive and that I must do it by risking your realms, then so be it. The alternative is conceivably worse.”
“You expect us to believe that you’re the ultimate Relena-fricking-Peacecraft?” Duo spluttered.
“I don’t expect you to believe anything,” Usagi told him. “Not that I’m a potential Star, that Galaxia is coming or that the universe is bigger and stranger than you could imagine. I’m just talking aloud to hear my options laid out before me.”
Her plan was in ruins, she suddenly realised. Her intentions made meaningless by the ill workings of her enemy. She suddenly saw the meaning in the presence of the two doppelgangers, the twin-realms had been re-united. She could feel the beginnings of chaos as the consequences of the joining echoed in the energy fields. Odin and Heero were but the first to come face to face with themselves. Across the colony others were meeting, even now, and soon the effects would spread, first to the other colonies and then to Earth. There were no longer two realms to hide within, only the one and Galaxia could now locate her.
She laughed then, mirthlessly and hopelessly. “Ah well, no point in hiding anymore now, anyway.” And then she sent out a telepathic warning with all the strength she could manage. She felt her illusions flicker for an instant and heard the indrawn breaths of the men watching her as they caught a glimpse beneath her many masks. She had accomplished her goal, however, despite the consequences she would need to deal with. Each and every individual on the colony, from humans down to the lowliest worm, would feel an instinctive and overwhelming fear of touching their double. She could do no more than that for the inhabitants of the twin-realms. Hopefully, she would be able to give word of what had happened to a Star who was in the position to do something about it but it would need to wait until after Galaxia no longer pursued her. Until then, she could only hope the cautions she had sent to every mind within reach would prevent two bodies with one soul from touching.
Not even she could tell what would happen when they did. Rejoining might very well be the least of it.
The four veterans stared at her and she bowed to them. “I am sorry that I have brought this upon you. I did not intend for this, not any of this and I never thought that she would go so far. Foolish of me.”
“What? You’re going? Now?”
Usagi looked at Duo, torn. “What else can I do but hope that my leaving will draw her away after me!”
“But what about Heero and them!” He waved at Odin and Milliardo. “You can’t just leave them like this! What if they touch?”
“I don’t know!” she exclaimed in return. “They would become one person with two memories? Would they be a new person? Would they even still be human? I don’t know! It’s never happened before! I have warned you all, that is all I can do. I am sorry!”
“But-”
“Duo!” Odin and Heero snapped in concert. Heero then shook his head at his lover. “She’s fighting for stakes that are beyond us. You know as well as I do, there are always losses in a war, Duo.”
“But…”
“We are not defenceless, ourselves, Duo,” Odin agreed.
Usagi did not stay to hear any more, she could not. She left, making sure that her leaving was as loud as possible and praying that she had not just doomed an entire realm.
That is not the whole thing, there'll be more shortly
She descended into one realm and then quickly moved into the one beside it. These two realms were alike in all but a little history. At one point, they had even been the same realm, until a decision made by a single individual had caused the realm’s destiny to diverge. She knew about the strangely twinned realms because of Setsuna who had known because of the role Time had played in the split, but she did not know what the critical difference between the two had been. The two realms still had strong ties to each other, while the ripples of change from the twice-made choice were still small.
The choice itself did not matter for her purposes. She just wished to use the relationship between the two realms to her advantage. Most of what happened in one should still occur in the second and she hoped that whatever trail she was leaving would echo between the two realms, confusing Galaxia as to the one Usagi was in. If it did work, she might find it possible to move between one and the other and avoid any of Galaxia’s attempts to apprehend her. The disadvantage to this was that she would need to stay where the echoes were still the strongest, which was near yet another pair of alternate Earths, teeming with mortals, defenceless against Galaxia.
They certainly wouldn’t have encountered a force like her before. Mystery, Awareness, Imagination, the three dimensions that most leant themselves to the practice of magic in one form or another did not touch the twin-realms at all and Will was present only peripherally. Inner power here would be found in strength of arms and mind. Those that might have been mages, had the nature of their worlds been different, were no more than the others around them. Occasionally, however, there came individuals with such strong minds that, regardless of their intelligence or lack thereof, their determination would let them tap into Will and accomplish deeds that would have seemed almost miraculous to those witnessing. But, no matter how strong the twin-realms’ defenders were in Will, all that those strengths could manipulate would be the world around them. Galaxia would arrive wielding abilities derived from three dimensions they had no comprehension of. They would lose, and badly.
As a compromise, she would not descend to Earth, but remain in space. In these two realms, Earth still had a presence in space, though not to the extent her ‘own’ Earth had before the Fall. She would go to one of the colonies that floated in Earth’s space. The risk of death due to her would hopefully be minimised, even should her worst fears be realised.
She moved quickly and entered the nearest colony undetected. It took her only a moment to seek out and find a quiet park with public amenities. She appeared in an empty stall, adjusted her illusions and shields accordingly and then walked out as if she were any other woman who had just needed to visit the loo. She strolled across the grass casually, curiosity prompting her to look into how different the energy fields here were from a natural field under a real sky on a planet. As she allowed her vision to drop into a spectrum that drowned out visible light, she kept out mental feelers to inform her of when Galaxia entered either of the twin-realms.
It was a pity that she neglected to watch for mortals. A hissed, “Stop that! Duo!” broke her from her contemplations and she blinked her eyes back to a less distracting manner of seeing and then blinked because what she was seeing was very distracting.
There were two young men, one with short, messy, dark brown hair and the other with a long chestnut braid. She couldn’t see much of their faces because the braided one, Duo she surmised, was attached devoutly to the other man’s lips. Well, that would explain why, despite his physical objections, if flailing ineffectively while your partner pressed your back against a park bench while he ravaged you was a physical objection, his vocal protests had been muffled. It was not that he objected to the aggressor, Usagi realised with amusement, he was just very embarrassed about the locale. Duo felt like he knew this as well and was enjoying his partner’s chagrin immensely. It would have helped that, while the short-hared man struck Usagi as intensely private and dangerously protective of his own space, Duo, himself, was somewhat of an exhibitionist with very little shame to speak of, although she sensed that he possessed his own hidden reserves of lethality. They were a good match for each other.
The besieged man managed to push Duo away for a moment and Usagi had to bite her tongue not to giggle at the sound of strong suction releasing as he did so.
“Duo!”
The braided one’s back was to her but she could feel his evil delight along with a strange sense of purpose as he whispered coaxingly, “Hee-chan, c’mon. ‘S normal for couples to neck in th’park…” He began to nibble on his partner’s jaw. “C’mon, koi, let’s give’r a show!”
Usagi was amazed. Not at Duo’s brazenness or the fact that his real intent was not so much driven by his libido as an overwhelming love for the man he was sitting on and a desire to help him. Help him to do what, Usagi had no clue, but she was confident in her reading of the situation. What really amazed her were the fragments of the old tongue that littered Duo’s speech. She’d never heard the influence of the language of the Stars so prominent in realm where there were none.
“Yamatte!! Duo no baka!” She caught a glimpse of intensely flustered blue eyes as they glared down at the incorrigible menace busying itself in the crook of his neck. “Omae o korosu!”
Usagi felt both the embarrassment turning into real anger and heard the death threat and thought that she should step in before he made good on it. “Excuse me,” she asked them politely as she stepped off the foot path, “But I couldn’t help over-hearing you. If I may, what language were you speaking, Sir?”
The sir in question didn’t answer, he just stared at her stonily. On his lap, Duo craned his neck around to look at her. His split-second examination was thorough for all of its brevity. He shook his head sadly and rolled his eyes. “Hee-koi,” he scolded affectionately, “I know you’ve got me, but when a major babe like that wants to talk with you, then even you should dust off the ol’ speech centres and make with the chatting!”
His partner grunted, uncaring. “Hn.”
“And you call me the baka.” Duo sighed in a long-suffering kind of way. He craned around again and told Usagi, “Sorry ‘bout that and he’s speaking Japanese, Miss.”
Not any form of Japanese she’d ever heard before. How very strange. “Konnichi wa? Watashi wa Usagi desu? Livien mane teorielyn?” she tried curiously, the emphasis altered so that they were simply words.
He looked at her with more interest then, shuffling Duo a bit so that he could see Usagi more clearly. A few interrogative syllables spilled from him in his so-called Japanese.
She frowned slightly. She knew most of the vocabulary and the syntax was amazingly untouched considering the missing elements. His pronunciation was only slightly deviated from her own, an accent but not one from this world’s Japan. She asked him about it. “Mane reahlln herin a deniyao deska?”
Duo looked very put out when his partner shoved him off his lap completely so that he could stand up. Usagi met him halfway as he approached her and, between the two of them, they spent the next five minutes standing there, trying to see where their native languages meshed and where they deviated.
Heero, as he introduced himself, used the L1 dialect, which wasn’t classical Japanese, just as she’d thought. His accent, on the other hand, was more of a lack of one, though he never said as much. Her own ‘dialect’, as he considered it, was obviously an intriguing puzzle to him. Once he was certain she was not just mixing in a liberal dose of gibberish, demonstrating to her that he possessed a phenomenal memory of his own, he was determined to establish what the other elements it possessed were from. He spoke broken and halting Welsh to her at one point, surprising her anew, but she saw his reasoning. Some of the words she used did sound very like that.
Discussing where the extra vowels in her dialect had originated occupied them both as they slowly made their way back to the park bench where Duo was watching them with a sulky pout. His supposed peevishness at losing his friend’s undivided attention was belied by the pleased satisfaction he was emoting enough for any sensitive to pick up. The look of delighted pleasure on his face after his partner sat down again, almost on top of him so that Usagi would have a proper space between her and them, and then threw his arm around Duo so he didn’t get pushed off the bench, was entirely genuine. Hero wasn’t as oblivious as he appeared, either, as his small burst of invisible satisfaction told her, even though not one iota of it was hinted at on his face.
After that, Duo joined the discussion, adding his own rather extensive knowledge of language to both Heero and Usagi’s. He might have been a native English speaker but he had already shown that he had an adequate grasp of Japanese and went on to prove his mastery of it. Usagi was enjoying the intellectual discourse so much that she almost forgot why she was there. Heero and Duo were two unique and brilliant young men and, although she was never allowed close enough to touch one or the other to engage her telepathy even had she wanted, the dynamics between the two fascinated her. The level of trust between them was as remarkable as their ability to converse intelligently on linguistics on the spur of the moment, despite neither having formally studied the theory behind languages.
The intrigue she felt for and inspired in both young men might have been why none of them immediately reacted to the strange and transient chill in the air. Duo shivered but kept explaining why English was such a compromise between ‘nihongo’ and ‘eigo’ while Heero just pulled him closer. Usagi frowned but, as nothing else happened, allowed herself to be drawn back into the debate against Duo. This was why it took her a full four seconds to realise they were being watched and not benignly.
Unobtrusively, she sent out mental feelers and then her head snapped up in shock at what she found. Her eyes only confirmed what her other senses had already told her. Heero was watching them with suspicion and quickly building hostility. Usagi had already determined that he could be dangerous if provoked but she was far more concerned with the incensed blonde man with him. She was surprised that his possessive fury was not visible as it poured off him. He was very angry and already acting on it.
Confused, she turned to the young men she had been talking to and was not entirely comforted to find them both still there and staring at the two newcomers with the same astonishment as she. Well, Duo was but she could feel Heero’s emotions and knew that he felt equally surprised, despite how expressionless he looked. Then the angry blonde reached them and snatched at Duo. Shocked anew, Usagi let Heero push her clear just before he and Duo were both pulled into a brawl.
From her view on the ground, Usagi was quite sure the blonde hadn’t intended it to be anything other than a quick and clean snatch, but a brawl it became. The blonde man must have been so bothered by the manner with which Duo had been practically draped across Heero that he had not thought about the consequences of so carelessly yanking at the braided man like that. Additionally, the astonishing reflexes of all three had turned a surprise attack into something much messier.
“Daijabou?” a familiar nasal tenor asked her.
She blinked wordlessly as she regarded the strong hand offered to her and the man it belonged to. Short, lean, blue-eyed, messy hair and incredible leashed strength, it was Heero all over again. The only difference to her senses, and she used all eleven of them, was his clothing. Where the Heero she had been talking with about languages had been in jeans and a tanktop, this Heero was elegantly garbed in grey slacks, dress shoes and a blue silk shirt.
“Were you injured?” he asked again, in English.
She shook her head weakly and accepted the hand up. Oh, this was bad. This was very bad.
“Who are you?” she demanded as soon as she was back on her feet, not that she had to ask. The two seconds her hand had been in his had told her more than she wanted to know.
“Odin Lowe Jr,” he answered flatly as he turned to regard the small ruckus were his lover was currently brawling. And Milliardo Peacecraft was Odin’s lover, Usagi knew, just as she knew that neither of them were in the wrong realm. They belonged here just as Heero and Duo did. The very properties of the twin-realms that she had hoped would help her were now conspiring to give her a monumental headache.
“Oh…” she murmured faintly, “Not Heero?”
This brought his undivided attention back to her. “How do you know that name?” he snapped at her, one of his hands grabbing tightly at her shoulder. “Who are you and who do you work for? Why are you here?”
Brought out of her daze by the threat directed toward her, she immediately attempted to sooth him. Through his touch on her arm, she sent calm and a wordless assurance that she was no threat and meant him no harm. All the while she did this, she tried to convince him verbally as well. “I’m Usagi, I don’t work for anyone! I’m here just for some exercise. I just wanted to walk in the park!”
“Who are they? What do you have to do with them?”
“Duo and Heero. That’s all I know. I just met them!” Personally, Usagi thought Odin already knew very well who the two of them were. He was just very reluctant to believe the evidence of his own eyes. Once more, back in control of herself, Usagi began devising ways to calm Odin down and break the other three up when Odin and Heero did it for her. Her upper arm still firmly in hand, he dragged her over a few steps, far enough to reach Duo’s flying braid which he then grabbed and yanked mightily. Duo left the fight as precipitously as he’d entered it. His sudden absence gave Heero the chance he needed to immobilise Milliardo.
Intense blue eyes met intense blue eyes.
“Heero Yuy,” Heero said shortly.
“Odin Lowe,” Odin said at last and both nodded in apparent satisfaction.
Duo squirmed and Odin gave him enough slack on his braid to stand. He did not release it completely. “Hee-koi?” Duo asked with wide eyes as he looked from one to the other.
“Hn,” both grunted simultaneously. Duo’s eyes widened further while Usagi’s closed in annoyance. This was going to be a real witch to straighten out.
Then she had a dreadful thought. “You two know each other, don’t you?” she questioned, hoping she’d be wrong.
“Of course they do~” Duo exclaimed, “Just look at them! Heero why didn’t you ever tell me you had a twin?!”
Odin sighed and cuffed Duo across the back of the head. “Baka!” they snapped in synch and frowned at each other.
“Odin, what is this about?” Milliardo questioned from beneath Heero.
Usagi saw Odin and Heero exchange another identical glance, this one communicating far more than recognition. If Usagi’s empathic senses weren’t wrong, it went something like:
Odin, “He’s going to start causing trouble soon.”
Heero, “Duo as well.”
Odin, “We need to keep them calm if we wish to understand what has happened.”
Heero, “Aa, swap?”
Odin, “Aa.”
Then, in a split second of motion, the two of them released their respective captives and switches places in the time it took Usagi to open her mouth in warning. Not even a breath later, Duo was being held by Heero, Odin was restraining Milliardo and Usagi was standing on her own, watching the four of them in horror.
“Don’t do that!” she shrieked at them, once her heart had left her throat. “You can’t risk touching each other!”
Four sets of piercing eyes fixed on her, taking in her fear.
“Why not?” Duo asked slowly.
Ah, damn. Well, se wouldn’t be able to sort this out if she was a normal human girl, anyway. “Because they’ll become one person again,” she informed them all.
Suddenly, four guns were aimed at her. She sighed in vexation. “Don’t blame the messenger,” she snapped, “I didn’t make this happen!” Which did beg the question, what had? Considering the kind of trouble Usagi was running form, it was a question she should ask sooner rather than later.
“Look, Miss,” Milliardo enunciated carefully, “I think that, despite initial impressions,” and here he spared a moment to glance cooly at Duo, “We all agree that this is not quire normal-”
“No duh, Einstein!” Duo muttered.
Milliardo ignored him and continued, “I very much doubt that man is Odin’s twin and you just indicated you know something about this. Now I believe we and our lovely firearms would all appreciate it if you would educate us with all you know.”
As he asked courteously, Usagi didn’t make things difficult, despite the guns pointed at her. Besides, this was a rather serious situation. “They already suspect,” she said, indicating Heero with one hand and Odin with the other. “But for Duo and Milliardo, it’s very simple, if very frightening. Heero and Odin are the same person.”
“You’re kidding?!”
“You are jesting, I hope!”
Once again, Duo and Milliardo glared at each other and their respective lovers were required to intervene. Heero gave a sharp yank on Duo’s braid. “Itaii!”
Odin merely tightened his hold on Milliardo but, with his strength, it was more than enough to distract the, now wincing, blonde. “Odin!”
Usagi watched this calmly, all the while determining how much of the truth she could tell these men and how much they needed to know. “Are you all finished yet?” she inquired calmly.
“Aa”
Yes, the twin-realms were still closely tied, indeed, if, after two different lives, the thoughts of the two versions of the same man still ran so closely together. “Well, then, I am not kidding or jesting or whatever synonym you’d prefer. Odin and Heero are indeed the same individual but for the fact that their lives took different turns in the past. For whatever differences they have lived through, though, they are still the same person. If they were to touch, that truth would be made fact.”
“Excuse me?” Milliardo interrupted, “Do you honestly expect us to believe that? Obviously I was incorrect. You plainly have no idea of what this is about and less idea of what reality is!”
Hmm, the little mortal could be insulting when he wanted. The urbane façade was just that, a façade. It seemed that Milliardo Peacecraft was not just a rich pretty boy, after all… well, Usagi had already learned that from Odin. Milliardo and Odin had met in battle and tried many times afterwards to settle their rivalry conclusively. By Usagi’s reckoning, they would have had an interesting courtship. Milliardo was a revolutionary, failed pacifist, King of Sanq and would very likely lead the Earthsphere within the next ten years. He was not someone to underestimate, irritate if time permitted, but not underestimate.
“Look at them,” she commanded, “Do you honestly think they’re twins or clones?”
Duo whispered to Heero, “J didn’t clone you, did he?”
“Baka!”
“For once I agree with Maxwell,” Milliardo announced, looking at Odin, “Cloning you is something that old madman is very capable of.”
“Hn.”
“Well all you need to do is have them touch, then,” Usagi reminded them casually. “If I am just some random fruitcake, nothing will happen.” She shrugged lightly but her eyes were very serious as she met Milliardo’s. “But, if I am right, then either you or Duo will lose your lover. Maybe both. With both lives behind him, he’ll certainly change.”
That made both Milliardo and Duo pause uncertainly. They both loved their partners and were reluctant to risk losing them.
“You said we were the same,” Heero recalled perfectly.
Odin nodded in agreement. “Aa. You are contradicting yourself.”
Usagi thought that the two of them were already beginning to see, though. All they had to do was look across at the other’s choice of mate to see how they were different. “You are the same,” she repeated patiently, “You share a soul, but have lived two different lives. If Odin were to relive Heero’s past, he would make the same decisions and vice versa. You would have been viewing this situation from the other’s point of view.”
Duo snorted and, disbelievingly, Milliardo retorted, “Odin, you cannot possibly believe this!”
Odin frowned and looked at Heero. “Picked up by Odin Lowe in the L1 spaceport and…”
“Remained with him until AC188 where he was killed…” Heero continued.
“Attacking a federation base on the orders of…”
“Dekim Barton who…”
“Issued Dr. J orders for my retraining shortly before…”
Operation Meteor because I reacted… badly to…”
“The death of a young girl and her puppy during a training exercise gone wrong.”
Heero nodded. “Where do our lives deviate?”
“You participated in the altered Operation Meteor?” Odin questioned.
“Aa. Duel with Zechs?” Both glanced at Milliardo before Odin nodded.
“Threaten to shoot Relena before being shot by Duo?”
“Aa.”
Usagi was bemused by the rapid exchange of critical events in their lives. To be honest, the two of them were taking it much better than she would have expected. Even with their twin in front of them, Usagi wondered how many mortals would have accepted the strangeness so quickly and then proceeded to investigate how it worked without at least stewing about why the universe was not the way they thought it should be… as Duo and Milliardo currently were.
The two in question only forgot their sulks, if not their dislike of the other, when it was determined where the lives of the two doppelgangers had split.
“So Zechsy was the one who picked you up after that idiotic attempt to self-destruct?”
“Aa.”
“You nursed him back to health, Blondie?” Duo pushed.
Milliardo sneered. “My name is Milliardo, you simpleton, you may call me Lord Peacecraft or your Highness. If you call me ‘Zechsy’ or ‘blondie’ again, I shall certainly tear your braid out by the roots and proceed to garrotte you with it!”
Duo sneered right back, “I’d like to see you try!”
Heero and Odin, aside from ensuring that they could physically restrain their other halves should need be, had continued to see how live had diverged after the initial split.
“Quatre went mad?”
“Zechs injured Une?”
“Relena was named queen of the world?!”
“Trieze lived?”
“Dekim Barton had Marimeia?”
“You chose Zechs? Is that why you went back to that old name? Less notoriety to be dissected by the public?”
“You chose Duo. Is that why you did not?”
Usagi covered her smile as they both went, “Hn,” simultaneously again.
Odin looked over at the fuming man in Heero’s grasp. “Do you regret it?”
For an instant, Heero’s expression was fond, as he glanced down at his braided lover. “Iie. He challenges me. You?” Milliardo was arrogantly looking down his aristocratic nose at Duo.
“Aa,” Odin agreed, “Always a challenge.”
They smirked in perfect understanding and then quickly recalled their mates to the matter at hand rather than allow them to continue sniping at each other. After identical slaps across their heads, Milliardo and Duo found themselves in rare accord as they glared at their mates.
“What was that for?” Duo whined.
“Being a baka,” Heero answered while Odin stared at Milliardo with one mocking eyebrow raised. Wisely, Milliardo chose not to comment and they all turned to Usagi who was watching them absently.
“So?” Duo quizzed.
“Hmm?” she murmured distractedly.
“Why do we have two Heeros here?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” she agreed, “I don’t know.”
“What?!”
The others had apparently decided to let Duo be their spokesperson so she addressed him. “I don’t know,” she repeated slowly.
“But,” he spluttered, “How could you not?”
She looked at him strangely. “What do you think I am? Omniscient? If I was, trust me, I wouldn’t be here.” Ah, how true that was.
“But you knew what they were!”
She snorted. “One look would tell anyone with even half a brain what they were!”
Duo disagreed. “No, most people, normal people, woulda thought they were twins, you’re probably the only one who would immediately jumped to the conclusion that they were the same person!”
“So normal people don’t even have half a brain,” she retorted. They were all starting to get impatient, not just Duo and she frowned at them. “Look, what do you want me to say? That I’m a divine being hiding from an all-powerful agent of evil and I know more about how your reality works from one glance than you do despite having lived here for x years?” She wondered if they’d take it seriously. It was something she’d learned from Mamoru who had pointed out that her life was unbelievable to most mortals. She was curious to see if the use of the truth as a misdirection would work as well here.
She felt both Duo and Milliardo hesitate, balking at what they felt to be impossible, but, surprisingly, both Odin and Heero seemed to take the comment seriously.
“Are you?” Odin asked.
A remarkable soul indeed. She couldn’t help herself. She smiled mischievously. “And if I were?”
Odin seemed to be the more talkative of the duplicates. “Then I would ask how long before your enemy followed you here and if the enemy could be responsible for our present circumstances.”
She sobered. “Important points, I wish I could answer them.” She still couldn’t feel Galaxia’s presence but something had to be responsible for Heero and Odin both being here and she doubted that it was just a coincidence it had happened now, just after she had arrived.
“You are kidding…” Duo repeated, looking at her incredulously.
She regarded him with unmoved blue eyes. “Whether you believe me or not is irrelevant, it will not change the truth.” She turned back to Odin. “I can’t sense her nearby, but that is no guarantee that Galaxia has not already followed me. It is easily within her power to disrupt your reality without even meaning to.”
“If such a being exists,” Heero began, “How do we fight her?”
“You don’t!” Usagi responded sharply, her face paling. “I do!”
“You?” Milliardo was disbelieving as he examined her closely.
“Yes, me!” she insisted. She caught his gaze and held it ruthlessly, letting her own eyes convey just how serious she was. “You are, pardon me, only mortal without even a reservoir of power to call on. You wouldn’t even be a hindrance to her.”
“And you would?”
“If she does find me?” she asked, “Then I will gain her attention again and draw her away. I will not engage her in outright battle because she is far more powerful and skilled than I am. I’d be like a rabbit challenging a rabid wolf. No, once I have her attention, I will run again. When I am certain that she won’t turn back, I will do everything in my power to lose her.”
“You are afraid,” Odin stated.
“Yes,” she admitted candidly. “Very. I am powerful but she is beyond me. I can heal worlds with years of intensive work but, with only a thought, she can destroy stars.”
“It is easier to kill than to heal,” Heero pointed out knowledgably. Usagi knew from Odin’s memories that all four of these men would have had personal experience of the truth of that statement.
“Okay,” she agreed, “I’ll agree with that, but I couldn’t destroy a sun either, not with a snap of my fingers.”
“Which isn’t to say that you couldn’t with a bit more effort,” Duo drawled. “You expect us to believe that you, an itty-bitty li’l blonde girl, has that kinda power? You?”
“Well,” she sniped, irritated, “I could show you what I really looked like but that’d be like lighting a huge beacon and screaming out, ‘here I am, come and kill me.’ I would have expected you to understand the concept of camouflage, Duo Maxwell, pilot of Deathscythe and self-proclaimed god of death. Oh, and let me enlighten you on something you might find interesting. Death or Shinigami or whatever you want to name it? He prefers to be called Saetan or Thanatos. Of course, I prefer to call him ‘Tou-san,” and she pronounced the word exactly, forcing the shades of meaning into their vulnerable minds.
She saw them all flinch and remorse washed through her. Her anxiety was making her ill-tempered and these men did not deserve to have her venting her very real fears on them. “I apologise. My worry is making me short.”
Duo was watching her unreadably. “You say Shinigami is your dad?”
“Hai.” Again the word echoed in their mind, reinforcing its Japanese meaning with the deeper echoes that it contained in the old tongue.
“You’re for real?”
“Hai.”
Duo smiled crookedly and shook off Heero’s restraining grasp. “I always knew that if there was a god, he was the God of Death.”
“Shinigami,” she said, deliberately using his name for her father, “Is only one of many Stars.” She nodded solemnly at him. “But, for all intents and purposes, you may as well be correct, for, in your realms, he is the only Star that matters. Your realms have no Stars, guardian or divine, those that you would call gods. You will only encounter divinity when your soul leaves this realm for that of Death. There is no one out there to limit what evils you mortals visit upon yourselves and there is no one out there to protect you from evils that are entirely alien.”
For a few minutes, they were all silent as they contemplated what she had just told them. Odin allowed Milliardo to stand and he did so without a word. Usagi watched them quietly, even as she searched fruitlessly both Galaxia and some sign of what was happening.
“Is it allowed for you to tell us this?” Milliardo asked, breaking the silence. “If it was, wouldn’t this knowledge have been passed around a long time ago?”
“By whom?” she asked, “There is no one here who knows. If this were the realm where I stood as the Guardian of Selene, then, no, I would not have been permitted to discuss such things with you. But this is not that realm and there is no Law here forbidding the sharing of such knowledge.” She gave a soft, rueful laugh. “If you stay here, near me, then it is only fair for me to tell you these things because they will be threatening you as well as me.”
“Because this enemy, this Galaxia, is coming for you. You’re what’s drawing it here and if you weren’t around, then she’d have no reason to come here,” Duo summarised.
“Correct,” she admitted softly.
“Then why are you still here?” Duo demanded.
“In the middle of a park, no less!” Milliardo added. “Why aren’t you drawing the enemy to somewhere where there would be no civilian casualties?”
“Because then you could not hide,” Odin guessed for her, “There would be no way to conceal yourself from an enemy if there was nothing to camouflage yourself against.”
“Correct, again.”
“But the kind of battle your hinting about could kill thousands!” Duo interrupted.
“Millions,” she corrected.
Duo reddened. “Then why are you still here?! Go away, find a place where you can just fight it out and get it over with. There are kids here! Y’don’t just pick a fight in the middle of town like this!”
“No, I should go into the depths of space and then I should fight and then I would die.” Usagi nodded vaguely. “This realm would be spared Galaxia’s depredations for a time but she is implacable, eventually she would return but I would be dead. The worlds I could have healed must wait for another with that power. The world I guard would stand vulnerable. My soulmate would be bereft and would soon follow after me, leaving not one but two Stars lacking a course for renewal. As the embodiment of all that is good in the universe waned without a successor, the evil would wax and overrun those that opposed it. The universe would be lost but, for a time, this realm would not know the malice of Kaos or its minions.” She looked into Duo’s wide violet eyes and asked him, “How much is my one life worth? I don’t know, all I know is that I have a responsibility to survive and that I must do it by risking your realms, then so be it. The alternative is conceivably worse.”
“You expect us to believe that you’re the ultimate Relena-fricking-Peacecraft?” Duo spluttered.
“I don’t expect you to believe anything,” Usagi told him. “Not that I’m a potential Star, that Galaxia is coming or that the universe is bigger and stranger than you could imagine. I’m just talking aloud to hear my options laid out before me.”
Her plan was in ruins, she suddenly realised. Her intentions made meaningless by the ill workings of her enemy. She suddenly saw the meaning in the presence of the two doppelgangers, the twin-realms had been re-united. She could feel the beginnings of chaos as the consequences of the joining echoed in the energy fields. Odin and Heero were but the first to come face to face with themselves. Across the colony others were meeting, even now, and soon the effects would spread, first to the other colonies and then to Earth. There were no longer two realms to hide within, only the one and Galaxia could now locate her.
She laughed then, mirthlessly and hopelessly. “Ah well, no point in hiding anymore now, anyway.” And then she sent out a telepathic warning with all the strength she could manage. She felt her illusions flicker for an instant and heard the indrawn breaths of the men watching her as they caught a glimpse beneath her many masks. She had accomplished her goal, however, despite the consequences she would need to deal with. Each and every individual on the colony, from humans down to the lowliest worm, would feel an instinctive and overwhelming fear of touching their double. She could do no more than that for the inhabitants of the twin-realms. Hopefully, she would be able to give word of what had happened to a Star who was in the position to do something about it but it would need to wait until after Galaxia no longer pursued her. Until then, she could only hope the cautions she had sent to every mind within reach would prevent two bodies with one soul from touching.
Not even she could tell what would happen when they did. Rejoining might very well be the least of it.
The four veterans stared at her and she bowed to them. “I am sorry that I have brought this upon you. I did not intend for this, not any of this and I never thought that she would go so far. Foolish of me.”
“What? You’re going? Now?”
Usagi looked at Duo, torn. “What else can I do but hope that my leaving will draw her away after me!”
“But what about Heero and them!” He waved at Odin and Milliardo. “You can’t just leave them like this! What if they touch?”
“I don’t know!” she exclaimed in return. “They would become one person with two memories? Would they be a new person? Would they even still be human? I don’t know! It’s never happened before! I have warned you all, that is all I can do. I am sorry!”
“But-”
“Duo!” Odin and Heero snapped in concert. Heero then shook his head at his lover. “She’s fighting for stakes that are beyond us. You know as well as I do, there are always losses in a war, Duo.”
“But…”
“We are not defenceless, ourselves, Duo,” Odin agreed.
Usagi did not stay to hear any more, she could not. She left, making sure that her leaving was as loud as possible and praying that she had not just doomed an entire realm.
That is not the whole thing, there'll be more shortly