Blue Forest Banshee by PlaidDragon
Part 11
Duo sat cross-legged under a flowering tree in the garden. Strewn about him were piles and piles of papers; notes, memos, action reports and doodles. His appointment with Q less than an hour away, he was trying frantically to put his paperwork into some order.
He could have asked Heero to help him, but that seemed too juvenile, after his recent insistence that he could take care of himself. And, by extension, his own work.
::Good practice, lazy!:: he berated himself.
He did have an unfortunate habit of leaving things for the last minute. Not the important, life-and-death things, but the petty little details. Paperwork, he reminded himself, was surely the invention of the Judeo-Christian Devil. Why it had to bedevil him, a Banshee of no particular religious persuasion, was one of the great Mysteries of Life.
He paused for a moment, jogging pages into alignment. Heero. What made him think of Heero now?
They hadn't seen much of each other since the night that Duo got falling-down drunk with Wufei and Trowa. He didn't think Heero was avoiding him. The exotic brunette didn't strike him as a person who would avoid things, pleasant or not.
::Did I just label myself as unpleasant?::
He considered himself carefully.
::Well, sitting with a vomiting drunk is hardly a joyful experience. So, at least once I was very unpleasant.::
He reached for a stack of pages automatically, his conscious thoughts still circling about Heero.
::Q thinks a lot of Heero. Says he's one of the best at what he does. Very tenacious, very practical.::
He would like to work with Heero one day, but Heero mostly worked alone. His kind tended to be solitary, for all their clanning ways. Not aloof or secretive; no, that wasn't Heero at all.
And there was that phrase again -- "his kind". What kind was Heero, anyway?
At first, Duo thought he was Human, a Wizard like Q. But in the gym one day, Heero had remarked on the abysmal senses of Humans. And Q had told him that Heero's senses were magnitudes better than Humans were. Then, he wondered if Heero was an Elf or even a Dwarf. He was too big to be a Leprechaun or a Kewpie, a Kelpie, a Dryad or some other type of sprite. No wings, so he wasn't a Fairy. There were dozens of other sorts of Magical Creatures and Heero could have been any of them, or even something Duo had never heard of.
Damn. He'd gotten off on a tangent again; it was almost time to go, and his papers were still a disordered mess.
"Bloody blast!" he muttered to himself, surveying the aforementioned mess.
"Hi, Duo," said a cheerful voice.
"Hi, Trowa," he muttered, not looking up.
"Do you have a meeting with Q?"
"Yeah. How can you tell?"
"Paperwork. Always means a visit with Our Favorite Blond. Can I do anything to help?"
"Lordy, yes!" Duo exclaimed. "Check these to see if they're in order, while I try to fake the rest." He shoved the pages in his hand at Trowa and grabbed another handful from the pile.
A dinner-plate-sized golden-furred paw snagged the offered pages.
Duo froze, leaning over, staring at the enormous paw as it extended a single claw and began flipping pages.
"Trowa...?" he breathed.
"Yes?" said his friend's voice from directly above that huge paw.
"Umm... Did I ever ask what you are..."
"Not that I recall." A beat. The claw stopped moving. "Didn't Q tell you?"
"...no..."
"Oh. I'm a lunar sequential Were. So is Wufei."
::Never heard of it...::
Slowly, he raised his head, eyes traveling from the paw up a long furry leg, past a deep furry chest and muscular neck to a broad, golden feline face with deep green eyes and bicuspids at least two inches long.
Duo blinked. Blinked again.
"Trowa...?"
Deep green eyes blinked; one, nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the golden fur, eyebrow tweaked upward.
"Yes, Duo...?" came Trowa's smooth voice from the cougar's fanged mouth.
Duo nodded reflexively. "Umm... Nothing... I just wondered..."
"Oh." Trowa returned to the pages.
"You're a cat, huh?"
"Puma, Duo; I prefer to be referred to as a Puma. It's the name my Clan uses."
"Oh. Sorry."
"That's all right. Most people call us mountain lions, but cougar is the preferred term, and Puma is my Clan name."
"I didn't realise..."
Trowa 'chinked' the pages back together and laid his great paw on them.
"These are fine. How are you coming with those?"
Duo stared at him.
"Duo?"
The Banshee jumped. "Huh? Oh... I don't think..." His voice trailed away.
Trowa cocked his head to the side curiously.
"You didn't know that I'm a Were, did you? No one told you."
"Umm... Yeah..."
"I'm sorry!" The great feline moved closer and laid that huge paw on Duo's thigh, patting gently. "We thought you knew!"
"We...?" Maybe if he concentrated really hard, he could arrange this new information into a logical form.
"Wufei and I. Wufei's a Dragon." He peered anxiously into Duo's slightly glazed purple eyes. "He's really gorgeous, Duo; scarlet and gold and black."
Duo blinked. "You know what, Trowa? I think I might actually faint now..."
"Oh, no! Don't do that! Wufei will be furious, and Q will yell and Heero may kill me!" Long furry feline legs -- arms? -- wrapped around his shoulders and platter-sized paws patted his back.
"Oh..." said Duo slowly, pulling his slightly chipped consciousness back together. "Can't have that... Can we...?"
He looked at the terrible deadly jaws so close to his face, and swallowed.
"Holy shit, Trowa; you're a Puma!"
"Well, it's not his fault, so I make allowances," came another familiar voice from behind him. "Never let it be said that Chang Wufei is a snob."
Duo turned his head.
There, upright on its hind legs, long tail wrapped neatly around heavily clawed feet, wings tightly furled against its back, and front legs folded over its chest, stood a five-foot tall gold and black trimmed scarlet dragon.
Duo sighed. Duo's eyes rolled back. Duo fainted against Trowa's strong chest.
"Oh, now look what you've done!"