Smells Like Teen Spirit
by Shannon the Twisted Link Worshiper

(x) X (x)

Game 36
Take It Easy

(x) X (x)

For what seemed to be the zillionth time in the past hour, Quatre cursed the dog that lived across the street. The poor blonde was sitting on Dorothy’s front stoop, trying to get through some of the books he’d ‘borrowed’ from the Winner house, but that stupid dog kept barking and whining its stubby little tail off every time something even fluttered by its yard. Usually something so mundane and ordinary wouldn’t have gotten on Quatre’s case, but the closer he got to unraveling the mystery surrounding Heero, the more intently focused he became on it. Hence, even slight disturbances, such as barking dogs, were nothing but a distraction that needed to be shut up before Quatre truly went insane.

Beside him, sat a few of the books he had already been through, each cracked open to reveal pages dripping with highlighter and pencil markings. Bits of paper were sandwiched between other pages, sticking out in all directions. Still, despite everything Quatre had learned so far, the facts he’d found were either not detailed enough or didn’t delve quite into the realm he was trying to discover. It would seem that Heero was in some special class of his own, one that had yet to be researched and catalogued.

Which brought Quatre to another realization: that Heero was clearly a mutant. He would have liked to have just classified Heero as some kind of psychic mutant, especially when he thought back to the display in the garage and some of the things Milliardo had said, but there was always something that seemed to make Quatre hesitate every time he was about to go and pigeonhole Heero that way. To be honest, there were a lot of things about Heero that didn’t seem to quite fit. For instance, Heero’s mutation hadn’t seemed very controlled or refined in those two instances, but there was a definite aura of extreme power. Everything that Quatre turned up on the matter seemed to lead him back to square one. Why everything about Heero seemed to be some big, top-class secret was beyond Quatre, and for some reason, he was pretty sure whatever it was went far beyond simple worry about prejudice and other such criminal acts of discrimination.

“Just what is he?” Quatre wondered to himself yet again. “He’s like a mutant without really being one... at least... I think so....” He closed the book that was lying on his lap and massaged his temples, trying to think. “God, this makes my head kill,” he groaned. Setting the book aside with the others, Quatre stood up and turned towards the front door of the house, deciding that he needed a quick break and a glass of lemonade.

When Quatre reached the kitchen, he found Dorothy making a batch of emergency cookie dough, scrolling through the variety of forms she’d copied with her shape-shifter mutation. At the moment, she was in the form of a short, buxom girl with red hair tied back in a braided pigtail as she poured a cup of sugar into the large, silver bowl on the counter.

“Got anything to drink, preferably of the citrus variety?” Quatre asked, hardly batting an eyelash as Dorothy chose that time to flick over to another form, this time settling on a black-haired, male version of the pigtailed girl.

“There’s a thing of orange juice in the back of the ‘fridge,” said Dorothy, her voice the deep, masculine one that went with the form she was currently settled in. “Dad just squeezed it for breakfast this morning before he went to work.”

“Thanks, Dotty,” said Quatre as he made his way to the refrigerator, pausing briefly in front of one of the cupboards to grab a glass. “Say, Dotty,” Quatre said as he started to pour himself some orange juice from the glass pitcher, “what do you know about psychics?”

“Psychics, Q?” she wondered, snapping back into her usual, blond, female body as she turned to face him. She somehow sensed that Quatre was trying to build up to something big, and playing with her mutant quirks probably wouldn’t have been appropriate.

“Yeah, psychics,” he said, taking the first sip of his juice. “You know, people like me... or Milliardo... or....” He trailed off, unsure if going down this path of conversation really was that great of an idea.

“Or?” she prompted him.

In the end, Quatre chickened out, deciding that it would be a bad idea to say that Heero was a psychic before he was even sure if Heero was a mutant at all. “Well, never mind. It’s not important who else,” he said, pausing to take another drink. “The point is that I’m just curious and I was wondering if you knew anything. I mean, you always brag about how you do all that research and stuff.”

“Ah,” she said, returning to her cookie dough. “I always knew you had a brain in there, Q. Somewhere, that is.”

“Ouch, Dorothy. Ouch.”

“I lo~ove you, Q,” Dorothy chirped in a singsong voice as she dropped a bar of butter into her bowl. As she turned to pick up the eggbeater sitting on the counter behind her, she asked in a much more serious tone, “So what do you want to know about psychics?”

“Any and everything you know!” Quatre blurted before he had a chance to really think about the question.

Dorothy was thoughtful as she hooked the twin whisks into the eggbeater. “Well, I don’t know loads, since I’m not a psychic myself,” she started slowly, fumbling with the appliance’s plug, “but I know a few interesting facts here and there.”

“Such as?” Quatre asked with a roll of his hand, growing slightly impatient. He was going to let Dorothy talk until he finished his juice, and then he’d just jump right back into the books and get more direct answers quicker. Quatre had to admit that while Dorothy’s tendency to mysteriously hint at subtleties could be intriguing at times, at others it was just damn annoying.

“They’re the hardest mutants to classify, I know that,” Dorothy said, turning back to her bowl of ingredients, now armed with the eggbeater. She had to raise her voice when she turned it on to beat the eggs, butter and sugar together, or else Quatre wouldn’t have been able to hear. “I think it has something to do with the fact that they have the least physical traits of any other sort of mutants. There’s no physical way to discern them from anyone else and their powers don’t change their bodies in any way.”

“I know that,” Quatre said impatiently, glancing at his cup and noting that he had drunk about a third of it.

“Damned if you’re getting any of my cookie dough,” Dorothy threatened, sending a pointed glare over her shoulder before going on. “Anyway, like I was saying, psychics, because of their purely mental nature, are considered by some scientists to be the weakest class of mutants, especially since even ordinary people display slight characteristics of a sixth sense. Their powers can range from any number of things, like telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance... a lot of things! I mean, while it’s all true that psychic powers can be erratic, and often sketchy at best, there are some scientists that seem to think that there’s a huge gap for either gene manipulation or research or whatever. A big chunk of the MRP was spent on that kind of thing, I think.”

“That’s silly,” Quatre said with a frown. “There are some very powerful psychics out there. Milliardo is one, and I’m pretty sure that--” He was able to catch himself before he spilt Heero’s name and quickly took a long drink to cover up for his abrupt halt in words.

Dorothy, however, was nowhere near as dumb as some people took her for. Turning off the eggbeater, she turned around, a hand on each hip as she demanded, “Alright, Q. Spill the beans and tell me why you’re asking all these questions.”

Swishing a mouthful of orange juice around his mouth, Quatre fought for an answer that would be far from the truth, but not quite a lie. He swallowed the juice and said, “Well, it’s a sort of long and complicated story....” That sure as heck was true, he reasoned mentally.

“And I have loads of time,” Dorothy countered icily, pointing to her cookie dough as if the fact she was making it proved the fact.

Quatre sighed and gave up. It would have been stupid to try and hide anything from Dorothy anyway. “Heero,” he relented simply.

“Oh! Why didn’t you just say so?” Dorothy wondered, pulling a cheerful one-eighty out of nowhere and stowing the offensive attitude she’d been pushing moments before.

“Because I’m not even sure, that’s why!” Quatre snapped. Even as he was saying the words, his mind was shocked at the sudden outburst. He had never been one to just lose it with people like that. He amended by softly adding, “It’s only a hunch, really. Nothing solid. I just have this... feeling. I can feel him in my mind sometimes, and it’s kind of scary. Even before I started speculating he was possibly a mutant, I knew there was something different about him.” Suddenly finding the crisscrossing patterns of the floor tiles very interesting, Quatre mumbled, “I’m a little worried that it’s all connected to something way out of our league. I’m... I’m kind of worried about Duo.”

“You and your feelings are about as trite as the sea turning to blood and darkness overcoming the land for forty days and forty nights,” Dorothy said drolly, leaning back on the counter, though there was a definite note of graveness to her words. “Heero’s got more mystery oozing out of his left ear than anyone I know, Duo included... and that says something!” She dipped her finger into her bowl of sugar for a taste and sucked on it thoughtfully, “I wouldn’t worry about either Heero or Duo. They’re both big boys who can take care of themselves.”

Quatre nodded in agreement as he polished off the last of his juice. “Look, Dotty, there’s still a lot more looking into it I have to do,” he said as he set the now-empty glass beside the sink and started for the door. “Just... tell me if you think of anything, okay?”

Dorothy made some word of acknowledgment as she turned her full attentions back on her cookie dough and Quatre left. Stepping back out onto the front porch, he reassumed his position on the steps and went back to his reading, determined to find out more. Apparently, however, some higher power just didn’t want Quatre to get through this the easy way, and found yet another tactic to draw him in a roundabout loop.

“Doing anything interesting there?” came a familiar voice from the street. Quatre looked up, surprised when he saw Trowa, of all people, striding towards him down the front path of Dorothy’s house. “You look real deep in thought.”

“But I’ve only just sat down!” Quatre said with a small laugh. He was always glad to see Trowa, even if his timing was awful.

“No, you were out here about fifteen minutes or so ago,” Trowa corrected him nonchalantly as he made himself comfortable on the step beneath the one Quatre was sitting on. “I saw you studying out here and came over just as you were going in.”

“You’ve been sitting out and waiting for me to come back out?” Quatre asked, bewildered. With a playful punch on the back of Trowa’s shoulder, he chided, “What are you, a love-sick third grader?”

“Last time I checked, no,” said Trowa, making a show of examining his hands as if he expected them to be small and feminine. Dropping them to his sides, Trowa turned around so he was sitting sideways on the step, leaning his elbow by Quatre’s feet. “So, my friend, what are you so faithfully burying your nose in there?”

“Just some research,” Quatre said, choosing his words carefully. Trowa may have been Heero’s adopted brother, but that didn’t mean that they necessarily told every little detail about themselves to each other. For all Quatre knew, Heero had been hiding some immense, world-shattering mutation under Trowa’s nose for years without the Barton boy being any wiser.

His troubles were in vain, because Trowa immediately reached for one of Quatre’s discarded, highlighted textbooks with a speed that the blond teen had no chance of ever matching. “Mutants, eh?” Trowa said with interest, quirking an eyebrow at Quatre. “Never knew you had an interest like this. Any particular reason?”

“Not... really....” Quatre felt like a total heel for skipping around his motives, especially with someone like Trowa. “Just someone I know that I....”

Trowa took the pause in Quatre’s sentence to interject. “You don’t have anything against them, do you?” His voice sounded a little guarded, like whatever Quatre had to say about his comment would seriously have an effect on the future of their relationship.

Realizing this, Quatre decided to stop pussyfooting. “Of course not. I’m a mutant, Trowa,” he admitted in a voice that exuded far more confidence than he’d ever expected to have when saying what he just had. Still, there was a slight warning quality to his tone.

A strange, catlike glimmer darted through Trowa’s green irises as he regarded Quatre silently for a few moments. “Then why read up on them?” he asked, his voice still sounding a little apprehensive. He gestured to the book he was holding, “Shouldn’t you know all this stuff already?”

“There’s a reason people dedicate their lives to researching mutants,” Quatre said defensively. “It’s not all stuff you just magically know because you’re born with it,” he threw on morosely. He certainly wasn’t at the peak of good spirits that day.

Trowa didn’t seem to be listening to Quatre’s last couple of words, too busy flipping through the book instead. “Seems like you have a particular interest in psychics,” he said, looking up with that same, odd, catlike glint in his eyes. Quatre wondered for a moment if it was a trick of the light or something of that nature. Trowa went on, “I know a few of those.”

“I’m one,” Quatre said sharply, inwardly wincing at the gruff sound of his voice. What the hell was wrong with him that day? It had to be the heat (not that it was all that hot in the first place).

Before Quatre had time to realize what was happening, he found Trowa’s nose mere centimeters from his own, those strange green eyes of his shining close enough to confirm that it was no hallucination. “Is that so?” Trowa asked in a low, ragged whisper.

“Yes,” Quatre assented meekly, wondering what had incurred this sudden display of closeness.

“That would explain a lot,” Trowa murmured more to himself than to Quatre, his eyes flicking to the side. Returning his gaze to Quatre, Trowa asked bluntly, “What kind?”

Swallowing his nervousness, Quatre gathered his confidence and said, “An empath... though sometimes I get psychic readings on people’s thoughts.... That’s actually what I’m trying to figure out.” He flicked the hard bound book Trowa still held tightly in one hand. “Why do you ask?”

“Just curious. I’d always thought you were some kind of mutant,” Trowa answered a little stiffly, though he made no move to widen the space between their two noses.

Quatre could actually feel Trowa’s words ghosting on his lips as he spoke, and he realized that with just the slightest nudge forward, he could swallow them. “Do you have a problem with that?” Quatre asked in the same tone as Trowa, hoping that Trowa figured out he wasn’t going to be pushed around because of some prejudice.

“Do I look like I have a problem with it?” Trowa wondered softly, his voice losing its edge. Then, he suddenly leaned forward, closed the gap between their faces and crushed his lips against the startled Quatre’s. The ensuing action was classified as a kiss in name only, as they spent the next couple moments with their mouths frozen against each other, motionless, Quatre’s eyes wide and unblinking. Still watching Quatre carefully from beneath his thick eyelashes, Trowa quickly drew away and stood up straight.

Quatre was barely able to catch that strange look that was still dancing in Trowa’s eyes afterwards before the tall goalie quickly sped off the porch and towards the sidewalk. Books forgotten and staring blankly after Trowa, absently fingering his still parted lips, Quatre wondered if Trowa had been trying to allude to something with the conversation that had come before their unexpected first kiss. And for some reason, Quatre had the distinct feeling like it had been an invitation to follow.

So, following the feeling swirling around in his gut, he stood up and did just that. Trowa was walking pretty quickly, and his long legs made his retreat much faster than any ordinary person, so Quatre had to practically run to keep up. “Wait, wait!” he called desperately after the tall goalie.

Much to Quatre’s surprise, Trowa actually stopped and waited for him, before wordlessly resuming his pace when Quatre was at his side. Quatre was forced to jog to keep up.

“Hey, Trowa,” Quatre panted, already regretting that he was so out of shape, “why did you do that?”

“Do what?” Trowa asked simply, playing dumb as he jammed his hands in his pockets and looked straight ahead as he walked purposely forward.

Quatre resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Kiss me!” he huffed. “Why’d you kiss me, Trowa?”

At this, Trowa stopped, much to Quatre’s relief. “I won’t ever do it again,” Trowa promised in a flat tone, though if Quatre’s eyes served him right, he was pretty sure that Trowa didn’t seem happy to be doing so. To be frank, neither was Quatre.

“I never said that!” Quatre shot back, hoping he didn’t ‘sound like some desperate middle schooler. “I just wanted to know why you did, that’s all,” Quatre added when he saw the confused expression that flicked across Trowa’s usually calm face.

Trowa shrugged, leaning back on a nearby lamp post. “Because it felt right, I suppose,” he said, averting Quatre’s large, aquamarine eyes. The corners of Trowa’s mouth dropped into a well-defined frown. “But I guess I chose wrong, since you’ve come to confront me about it,” he said, his voice chopped and even a little dejected. “It was obvious by your reaction that you were appalled. I assumed you were a mutant, but I shouldn’t have also assumed that... well... you’d like me that... that way.”

“But Trowa, I never said I didn’t like it!” Quatre’s hand shot out and snagged Trowa’s from where it was dangling lazily at his side. Gripping Trowa’s fingers perhaps a little too tightly, Quatre’s cheeks pinked, realizing how awkward he’d just made the situation.

Trowa had nothing to say to that and settled for just blinking stupidly at the short blonde with his hand clamped tightly around his. Hell, he hadn’t even expected Quatre to follow him like this! After he’d given into the initial impulse, Trowa had expected to quickly walk away, think up some cock-and-bull story to shoot at Quatre on a later date and be forgiven, as Quatre was bound to do for such a mistake. Quatre was always so sweet that way, and Trowa hadn’t thought that the flaxen-haired teen had thought of him any differently than his other friends, given how he was just as kind to everyone else he knew. Nowhere in Trowa’s mind was there any plan should something like this happen, forcing the green-eyed lacrosse player to improvise.

“Trowa?” Quatre cocked his head and gave Trowa’s limp arm a violent shake. Though Trowa was a quiet person by nature, there was something very offsetting about the silence that was currently lingering between them.

“Look, I’m sorry about that,” Trowa said, sounding uncharacteristically sheepish. He was actually using his free hand to scratch the back of his head!

“I told you,” Quatre insisted, squeezing Trowa’s hand tighter, “I didn’t mind!”

Trowa’s eyes glinted in that funny way as he searched Quatre’s face for any hints that the blonde was just throwing out a polite lie. “You’re sure?” he asked again, just to be safe. Trowa had never been one to take unnecessary risks, which was part of the reason he kept beating himself up for kissing Quatre so impulsively. The negative reaction he had initially perceived from Quatre was just why he liked to avoid such confrontations.

Quatre’s head bobbed up and down enthusiastically. “Yes, yes, of course I’m sure! Why would I say so if I wasn’t!?”

“Well, okay,” Trowa said slowly, still a little doubtful, but willing to take Quatre’s word for it. “But I still promise I won’t kiss you unless you want me to.”

If the waves of sweetly embarrassed emotions pouring off Trowa hadn’t been enough to convince Quatre of what the goalie was truly feeling about the whole situation, the heated, full-body blush that warmed Trowa right down to the tips of his fingers most certainly was! “Well, alright,” Quatre said with a private little smile. “But if you didn’t mean to kiss me, then just what were you doing waiting for me?”

Needing to work off some extra nervous energy, Trowa pushed off the lamp post and started walking down the street again, a little surprised to find himself tugging Quatre, who kept a firm grip on his hand, along with him. “Well, I had just wanted to see if you were interested in going to Gifford’s with me,” Trowa said, still feeling shy. If Quatre hadn’t realized the true reason why Trowa kept inviting him to do things with him before, it most certainly was plain as day now!

“We can still go, if you want to,” Quatre offered. “I’ll even pay this time, since you usually always treat me.” He smiled sunnily at Trowa, which just made the green-eyed teen want to melt into a puddle of goo and die all at the same time. It didn’t help that Quatre was still latched firmly onto his hand.

The rest of the walk down to the boardwalk was made in general silence. Trowa was still feeling awkward, and though his insides were an absolute three-ring circus, his cool expression never once faltered. Meanwhile, Quatre was busy trying to piece things together, both with Trowa and with all the other strange happenings in his life. With both of them plunged in their thoughts that way, the walked turned out feeling extremely long for Trowa and all too short for Quatre.

Reaching Gifford’s, they walked in and headed straight for the geometric, blue, pink and green counter. The place was having slow business that day, and there was no one in line and only two people working behind the counter. In no time, they’d both ordered their ice cream, paid and had found a nice table near the wall with the yellow bench built into it. Quatre sat on the bench side of the metal table and Trowa in the chair opposite, neither saying a word as they dove into their frozen treats and tried to steal furtive glances at each other.

After about five minutes of that, however, Quatre decided enough was enough. With a sigh, he lowered his ice cream cone and said, “Okay, Trowa, what’s bothering you? You’re acting strange.”

Trowa’s eyes flicked over the large, beige lump of ice cream resting inside his waffle cone. Again, that disconcerting glimmer flew through his eyes, and for the first time, it was really starting to bother Quatre.

“Come on, not even you’re this quiet. What’s bothering you?” said Quatre, sounding a little worried. It might be noted that the only emotions Quatre had been able to glean from Trowa with his Sense during all this time were embarrassment, confusion, sadness and a little fear. The strange thing was that the way Quatre’s Sense was reading those emotions did not point them out as unfamiliar ones for Trowa, rather suggesting that they were there all along, but only hidden. This notion got Quatre thinking that if Trowa had known for some time that he was a psychic, then Trowa had been purposely dulling his emotions around him. Or perhaps it was just a natural inclination, like it was for Heero, and now Trowa was just finally opening up to him.

At last, Trowa spoke, the sound of his voice the most relieving thing to Quatre. “Really, I just wanted to talk to you, I guess,” he said with a trace of nostalgia. “Maybe it’s just ‘cause you’re so honest and nice and... and you understand me best... you know?” A weak smile was offered.

“Trowa, are you okay? Is something really, really wrong?” Now panic was the main thing on Quatre’s mind, his overactive imagination already spinning out millions of potential stories that could be plaguing Trowa.

“Well, it’s not really a terrible thing, in retrospect,” answered Trowa as he scratched the back of his head in that endearing, befuddled way of his. “It’s just... well....” He hesitated, as if he wasn’t sure if he wanted to go through with the discussion or not.

“You can trust me to be a friend, Trowa,” Quatre prodded gently, taking an idle lick of his ice cream and missing the way Trowa’s eyes both shifted with their odd glint and tracked every movement of Quatre’s tongue as it swiped the icy ball of vanilla cream.

Shaking his head and contemplating his own ice cream cone, Trowa came clean. “It’s Heero,” he said, not even bothering to do anything about the large drop of melted ice cream dripping over his knuckles.

“Heero?” Now Quatre was interested, not only because of his other reasons he was curious about Heero, but also because Trowa rarely talked about personal things like his family. It would be a good chance to get a glimpse of how Trowa’s mind was rigged. “He’s not hurt or anything? Depressed? Is something wrong?” Quatre demanded to know, realizing only a moment too late that he was being a bit forward.

“No, not really any of those things. I would actually venture to say he’s been happier than any other time I’ve known him,” said Trowa, apparently not minding the way Quatre tended to throw himself into such matters headfirst. “But I still think....” Trowa shook his head and tried again, his voice a harsh whisper, “There’s still something wrong.”

Quatre’s face scrunched up in thought. He licked his ice cream a couple more times as he mulled over what Trowa had said, and then spoke up. “Does it have anything to do with those... ‘fits’ you said he was prone to?”

“Well, that’s definitely a part of it,” said Trowa, exasperated. He was starting to loosen up a bit as they fell deeper into conversation. It seemed to be one of the sorts that’s somewhat personal hard to share, but once it’s out in the open, things feel much better. A glimmer of relief bounced off Trowa and was intercepted by Quatre’s Sense, proving that point.

“What’s the other part of it?” asked Quatre.

“Um, I’m not entirely sure,” said Trowa in a rare display of uncertainty. “But,” he added as a sort of afterthought, “I think it has something to do with Duo.”

“Duo!?” After the initial shock went away and rationality kicked in, Quatre’s brows dropped over his nose and he frowned. “I swear, if that little schlemiel broke Heero’s heart in any way, shape or form, I’ll stuff that stupid braid of his so far down his throat, he chokes and dies on it.”

Quatre’s little display of anger, no matter how genuine, seemed to be just the remedy Trowa needed for his disconcerted mood, and the goalie threw his head back in laughter. “Oh, what a sight that’d be!” he grinned.

Quatre quickly forgot Duo and replaced his upset expression with an instant smile. “I’d do it too!” the blonde said with a laugh of his own. “Just you watch me!”

Trowa nodded as if to say he totally believed that Quatre would. Then, his lips settling into a neutral line, he picked up the old thread of conversation. “No, see, the problem is Heero’s love for Duo,” Trowa explained, hoping he didn’t sound like he was complaining about Heero’s affections. “I’m sure you’ve figured out by the stories you’ve heard that Heero usually loses it when he’s affected very powerfully by something....”

Catching on, Quatre finished for Trowa. “So you mean that if something happens to Duo that Heero doesn’t like, he flips out?”

“Pretty much,” Trowa nodded. “I’m just worried that Heero might end up doing something really, really bad... or stupid... or both.” Trowa held up his ice cream, staring intently at it like it was a fiery torch. “Like all this talk about gangs and things. That scares me. I mean, you say that Duo’s got a track record with one of the worst in town, and here’s Heero beating the shit out of them because they touch Duo in a way he doesn’t like--”

“Trowa, if you saw the way those guys treat Duo, you’d be mad too,” Quatre cut in.

At last, Trowa seemed to be coming to the heart of the issue as he squinted his eyes closed and pressed out between gritted teeth, “I just... don’t want anyone to die.”

Perhaps at that moment, Quatre’s imagination became larger than life as he distinctly heard the large clock on the wall above speed up and then suddenly stop. The world and everything in it seemed still, like mannequins poised in a large dollhouse, as Quatre stared at Trowa with wide eyes. There, in that simple sentence, Trowa had poured out more of himself than all the other times they’d spoken combined. Trowa, himself, seemed a little shocked at his admission, his own eyes large and his shoulders heaving with short, uncontrolled breaths.

Without warning, the trance ended, and Quatre became acutely aware of everything around them again, the low hum and noise of the scoop shop suddenly far louder than he remembered them being. Quietly, Quatre said in as reassuring a voice as he could muster, “No one is going to die, Trowa.”

Trowa was staring at his ice cream with such an intense glare, it was a wonder that the stuff didn’t just liquidate and melt all over him. “You don’t understand, Quatre,” he said with a strange, choked voice that sounded very wrong for the usually together goalie. Looking around to make sure that no one was paying any attention to them, he spoke so quietly, Quatre had to lean over the table to hear. “You know that incident from last year’s championships you keep hearing about?”

“Yeah?” Quatre said, his voice strangled. He wasn’t sure why, but he had a feeling that what Trowa had to say wasn’t going to be pretty.

“He killed a guy,” Trowa whispered as if the words themselves were poison.

Quatre dropped his ice cream, the cone falling in slow-motion towards the white, linoleum floor and landing with a splatter beside his shoe.

Trowa nodded, the serious expression on his face enough to credit the truth of the statement. “Both Wufei and I saw it happen,” he said quietly. “Heero grabbed him ‘round the neck and took him down when he tried to hold Heero back. I think he got strangled.... I remember hearing that he died on the way to the E.R.” There was a pause. “Don’t tell anybody, okay?” Trowa added hastily, despite the fact that Quatre was still staring agape at him.

Finally finding his voice, Quatre managed to say, “So this is the big scandal that got covered up? How did something like that even happen?”

Trowa shrugged his shoulders and shook his head as he was prone to do when he didn’t have a complete answer. “Not even Heero really knows,” he said, “but I think he was... going through a level shift.” He said the last part slowly, averting Quatre’s gaze as he spoke, even though he knew that Quatre wouldn’t have been offended by the information in the least.

Quatre’s hands were gripping the edge of the table as he scooted his chair back and leaned almost flat against the tabletop, his jaw practically hitting the metal surface. “I knew it! He is a mutant!” he hissed with a touch of excitement, hardly noticing as his stray foot skidded on the melting lump of ice cream still on the floor next to him.

“I should have thought it would be rather obvious for another mutant to notice, even though Heero tries to keep it as hushed as he can,” said Trowa, cupping his chin in one hand as he thoughtfully bit into his ice cream cone a couple times. “To be honest, not even I knew he was a mutant until I found out by accident about four months after I met him.”

As that damned glimmer passed through Trowa’s eyes right then, something finally clicked in Quatre’s brain. “You’re one too, aren’t you?” he said in wonder.

Trowa nodded again. “Yes, but I’m a much more common breed than Heero.” He stopped to take the last couple bites of his ice cream before finishing. “My senses are far more adept than a normal person’s. Extra speed, reflexes, sight, hearing, all those kinds of things,” he explained. A smile flitted across his face, the most genuine expression he’d worn all afternoon. “Kind of like a cat, you know?”

“No wonder you’re so amazing in goal,” Quatre muttered to himself, though he was pretty sure he was grinning like a fool. But his smile was quickly lost when his thoughts darted back to something else Trowa had said. “Wait, you said you’re a more common breed than Heero? What does that mean?”

“It means that I have no idea in bloody hell what the heck Heero is,” Trowa said flatly, his voice grave. “Which is a problem, because it just makes more problems when it comes to trying to deal with him. You won’t find anything relating to Heero in some textbook,” he said, referring to the books Quatre had been pouring over earlier.

“But you said he was going through a level shift that one time. That’s a normal thing that happens to most every mutant, and even some regular people who develop mutations later in life,” Quatre said, furrowing his brow in thought. “And all of them usually aren’t quite themselves when it happens....”

“Yes, but it’s never quite that extreme,” said Trowa. “Most mutants usually experience dizziness or fatigue, perhaps some mood swings and strange occurrences with their mutation. Insanity is not normal, yet it’s definitely what happened to Heero. It’s the only thing that saved him from any real trouble.”

“He killed a guy, Trowa....” Quatre’s voice wavered slightly.

Trowa shrugged yet again. “I suppose being the best thing that happened to high school lacrosse since white sliced bread has it’s perks. They weren’t about to give up their little star so easily.” A hint of bitterness laced Trowa’s tone as he got towards the end of his sentence. Another pregnant silence befell the pair before Trowa started talking again. “Do you know about the Zero System?” he asked.

Quatre’s eyebrows shot up. “Yeah, I read a little on it,” he said, realizing that he shouldn’t have been as surprised as he initially was when Trowa brought it up. He supposed it was because he was amazed that Trowa seemed to be such a wealth of knowledge on the very subject he’d been pursuing for weeks, proving the theory that one never really knew what was right under his nose all along.

“How much do you know about it?”

Finally thinking to scrape the ice cream off his shoe, Quatre said, “Well, I know it has to do with the way they rank mutant level shifts, though I dunno where the name came from or anything like that. I think it has something to do with the way the DNA mutates itself, makes whatever skills it controls stronger and more erratic than they usually are... or something like that.”

“Yeah, that’s part of it,” said Trowa. “A mutant’s powers are intensified during a level shift, pushing his usual level, no matter what it is, down to zero, hence the name Zero System. It’s all very regular.” He laughed a little, the sound perfect for lightening the somber air between them. “But then again, everything with mutants are regular. The human body is such a precise machine.”

Quatre hummed with understanding and interest.

“Do you know how they came up with that system?” Trowa asked, looking down and noticing the blob of ice cream residue still on Quatre’s foot. He quickly went to fetch his friend some napkins.

Accepting the napkins from Trowa when he came back, Quatre answered the question as best he could while bending down to clean his shoe and the floor around it. “The Mutant Research Project is responsible for a lot of those breakthroughs in cataloguing mutants and all. That project’s been the main source for most of the known knowledge about mutants today, isn’t it?” Quatre balled up his soiled napkin and dropped the sticky thing onto the table.

“Well, yes, that’s all true,” said Trowa, offering Quatre another clean napkin. Stooping down on the floor beside Quatre, he helped the blonde clean up the mess. “But do you know how they came up with the system?” he repeated the question with new emphasis.

“Erm, no,” Quatre admitted sheepishly.

Tossing another dirty napkin up onto the table, Trowa grabbed another new one, spat in it and started rubbing at the sticky floor. “There was one mutant involved with the MRP that set the bar,” he explained, concentrating unnaturally hard on cleaning up. “He was a rather powerful psychic, which should interest you, given your fascination with them. The scientists did something to him to make his powers advance at an unnaturally fast rate, and at first it was good for their research, I guess....”

“You don’t like that they used live subjects, do you?”

Trowa grimaced. “Not the way they were, no, I don’t,” he said distastefully before picking up his story again. “Well, what ended up happening was that this kid kept developing to a point far beyond their control. One of the scientists managed to find ways to stabilize his rapidly mutating DNA, but it wasn’t totally sound and he still went through violent level shifts.” Finished cleaning the floor, both boys stood up and resumed their seats at the table as Trowa concluded his story. “To get to the point, he went well past the usual Level 1, so they just classified him at zero. Anyway, the name for the Zero System comes from that, because the kid constantly displayed the effects of an extreme level shift. Even managed to develop a few extra mutations on the side because of all the drugs they were shooting him up with.”

Quatre let out a long, low whistle. “How’d you even hear all that?” he wondered, leaning his elbows on the table. “It doesn’t sound like a story that would get thrown around so easy.”

“It’s not,” Trowa said curtly. “That’s why I don’t want you to tell anyone.”

“Then how did you--”

“Heero.”

“Heero?”

Trowa sighed and leaned all the way across the table, grabbing Quatre by the collar and dragging him close. With lips so close to Quatre’s ear, it was almost like he was kissing it, Trowa whispered, “That kid was Heero.”

(x) X (x)

a/n: Sorry to anyone who’d tried to read before and found nothing but a huge jumble of words. Formatting error on my part! I sure hope this chappy wasn’t too weird or anything! The chapter title is a song by the wonderful band, the Eagles. If you find yourself interested in them, look up the song ‘Hotel California’; I doubt I’ll use that as a chappy title because it’s about a whore house, but it’s their best song. If you’ve never heard it before, I’ll cry.

Oh, and anyone who’s interested in seeing our Otakon pics, there’s a link on my website. *points*

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