reallyaduck | (no subject)

Fakir has dragged Mytho to a private lesson with Mr. Cat. Even Mytho couldn't get in trouble there, Fakir thinks. Fakir might as well go to the woods and brood.

Unfortunately (due to the demands of narrative convenience) the particular stand of trees Fakir chooses is already occupied. There are those boys, moving in a blur of elbows and knuckles and knees. One of them might be bleeding. It's hard to tell in the shadows.

Fakir informs himself firmly that he does not feel sick. They're just fighting, that's all. Warriors fight.

Warriors in stories don't fight like that.

I don't know how to fight like that.

Fortunately, at this juncture, Princess Tutu starts glimmering like a medium-sized and extremely irritating lantern. Fakir can be annoyed at her instead of ... whatever he was feeling before.

Duo's distracted.

Good.

If there's any other reaction, any inner faltering, it doesn't show. Duo's left an opening, carelessly, and Trowa takes it.

Duo's attention snaps back to Trowa, but not in time. Trowa's kick takes him right in the chest and drives him back. All his breath leaves in a whoosh.

So much for his impassioned speech about friendship, anyway.

Duck?

Sorry, Duo - Duck is temporarily out of commission.

Which doesn't mean that there is no help to be had.

"Please," says a voice that doesn't really sound much like Duck's at all - "Stop!"

When Duck flings herself between the combatants, she gets battered away.

When Princess Tutu leaps between the combatants, on the other hand, she has magical ballet powers to back her up - not to mention some nifty hard-core battle fans.

"You must stop this fighting!" says Princess Tutu, her voice ringing sorrowful and musical in the air. "Do you really wish to harm a friend who cares for you?"

(No)

Yes.

The ballerina is between them; Trowa springs back enough to circle, watching for an opening.

WTF, says Duo's face.

The rest of him doesn't say anything but wheezing, sadly. He should have known. That's Duck, all right. And likely, her magic that she was so worried about giving up.

What is she doing?

Tutu lifts her arms and pirouettes, and vines spring out under her feet, spreading until a thicket of green separates Trowa from Duo. Tutu keeps turning, en pointe, lifted atop the vines as they grow, until she stands about a head above Duo and Trowa.

"You don't need to express your feelings in violence and pain!"

She snaps the fans up in a graceful movement, and they vanish. Her arms rise further; her left hand and right twirl around each other over her head, before she extends them down in an imploring motion, one to Duo and one to Trowa.

"Instead - please, dance with me!"

Duo continues to stare.

She is a magical girl.

He is trapped in a shōjo anime.

What the hell kind of fight strategy is that.

"Please," Tutu says again, and smiles - somehow managing to aim it simultaneously at Duo and Trowa, even though she is standing directly between them.

"When you fight, it's like a dance too, but a dance that causes each other suffering. Won't you try a different kind of dancing?"

She holds her pose without apparent effort, and her arms remain outstretched, in position, without moving a millimeter from their pose.

(No.)

Duo squelches that voice inside of him, it isn't his, and he can feel it now, it's subtly wrong.

And if it doesn't want him to, clearly the right thing to do is grab Duck's hand.

Well. Pretending to cooperate is an easy way to get back in range.

(And Tutu has the kind of shining earnestness in her eyes, an unflinching and transparently open friendliness, that you can't help but listen to, and that rings a chord somewhere deep in memory--)

He'll play this game. Until he chooses not to.

Tutu's gentle smile brightens.

She curtseys to her partners; they may or may not feel a faint breeze as they rise in the air, until they stand once again on a level with her.

"Tell me," she says, as she leads them each in a turn under her arm, "what has caused you to turn your hands against each other?"

Duo may be sort of clutching her arm at this point. And eyeing the foot that separates him from the ground suspiciously. He is never believing anything Duck says again ever.

"Something's weird," he tells her. "And I don't mean the ostrich."

Trowa is silent.

There's a shocker.

If this is a dance, though, body language is louder than words; everything about him is motionless, assessing, controlled and inward-turned and waiting.

- well, Duo's making this easy.

"That's because these feelings you have right now are not truly your own," she says, and her necklace shines as she leans into an arabesque. "They should go back to the person that they really belong to."

"What!" Duo scowls. "Someone's fucking with our heads? Trowa, man, snap out of it."

Trowa's gaze flicks to Duo, to

(everyone is my enemy)

Tutu, and back to Duo: cool and unreadable.

Except

(everyone is my
No.)

it's not, after all; his eyes narrow slightly, and he pulls in a sharp breath, because

(Open your eyes, Trowa!)

because he's been stupid, he's been blindsided, this is familiar in all the wrong ways--

Tutu leads Duo and Trowa into one last turn, and steps backwards.

Two shadows step with her, out of the bodies where they were hiding.

Meanwhile, Trowa and Duo spin at just the precise angle to end up in each other's arms.

Edited 2009-08-29 03:50 (UTC)

...

Duo extracts himself from Trowa, and his foot from one of the vines they're now standing on.

"Okay, so. I'm fine with never talking about this again. You?"

"Yeah."

(Dear Duck: what drugs is your world on, and who thought they were a good idea?)

There is the soft sound of approaching footsteps.

"Princess Tutu!" a voice exclaims.

Or, well, it comes as close to exclamation as someone who's tone is so perpetually breathy that it must be assumed that they have but one functioning lung and that it is in desperate need of replacement.

Princess Tutu turns to Mytho, and - though it seems odd for someone so magically poised - it's possible that she flushes a little.

"My prince," she says, and curtseys low, and then turns to the shadows she still holds by the hand.

"Tell me - what feelings are you?"

"I am the feeling of insecurity," says the first, and shoots a nervous look at Mytho, before it sparks a bright red light and compresses in on itself.

"I am the feeling of desire for control," says the second, frowns, and follows suit.

Princess Tutu now holds two bright red gems in her hand. She smiles down at them - if it's a little doubtful (really? insecurity? another bad feeling?) no one could tell from the outside - and releases them, like birds, towards Mytho.

Edited 2009-08-29 04:24 (UTC)

One might think that Mytho would be used to this by now, but to be fair he's never gotten two shards back simultaneously. Still, one might be forgiven for feeling that his harsh cry of emotion (head thrown back and everything) is a touch melodramatic.

A spotlight

(why are there spotlights in the woods?)

falls on a particular patch of ground. Actually, it falls on Fakir, who is standing on that patch. When Fakir ~~sashays~~ steps forward, the spotlight follows him.

Princess Tutu and those two boys are here too, of course, and Duck is probably around somewhere, but Fakir is giving his entire attention to Mytho.

He is not amused.

"Can't Mr. Cat keep you out of trouble?"

Fakir extends his arm to take Mytho's. "Come away now, and stop screaming. I told you to stay away from Princess Tutu."

Fakir leaves the corollary, If you had stayed away from her, you would not now be screaming in soulrending agony, unstated.