Author: Asuka Kureru
Warnings for this chapter: Blood, violence. Hints of shounen ai? (3+4 prolly, if you take in account how he worries... ^^ mebbe 1+4? If you look at it that way I guess... Boy do I like to make possible couples change like that)
As for the end of the chapter, it probably shows that I had had enough, but it was seven am, I was beginning to feel sleepy... ^^

Garou + Part 8
Kidnapping

In the small house, all was calm. Quatre was sleeping on the bed, turning around every second, prey to the beginnings of a nightmare caused by his fever. Chased off by his kicks, Duo had abandoned the idea of sleeping at his side and was sprawled out on the floor. Trowa was sleeping on the couch. Heero was resting on a chair, dozing.

Wufei finished his perimeter check and sighed silently. He wasn't stupid enough to think that the turns they were taking staying awake were useless and that he could go to sleep, but still, he was getting bored to death. He couldn't get some exercise without disturbing his comrades, he couldn't read without light, and he didn't know what he could think about not to think about Yuy and Winner's "illness", nor the repercussions it caused.

Quatre hadn't even seemed to realize the voracity with which he had attacked his meat during their evening meal. But it hadn't escaped their notice. They had all glanced at each other after that, while Quatre was ... wolfing down his meal.

Neither did it escape his notice, nor Yuy's, nor Barton's, nor even Maxwell's, the way Sandrock's pilot fairly crackled with nervous energy, even tired like he was. The so intense and so calculating way he had stared at the window and door, like Yuy had done, to judge the distance and resistance. His nervousness. His refusal to let them out of his sight. His fingers tapping away on the table. And his moments of absence, too concentrated on only one sense.

His thoughts were abruptly interrupted when Yuy jumped up from the chair he was sitting on, going from sleep to wakefulness in a mere second. He turned to Wufei, a hand on his gun already.

"They are here," he articulated in silence, knowing that Wufei could read lips as well as any one of them.

Wufei's eyes went wide briefly, then he went to the small bedroom, silent like a shadow. Heero caught his elbow before he could go too far.

"Not Quatre," he murmured.

Wufei nodded and went to wake Duo up, while Heero put a hand on Barton's shoulder, carefully placing himself out of harm's way if the other woke up in battle mode. Trowa woke up instantly but didn't open his eyes, his breathing rhythm not even modifying, something he had learned in the mercenary unit. But unlike most people, Heero could tell he was awake, for his scent had changed. He bent to whisper in his ear: "Weres, outside."

The four pilots gathered in the tiny room, their eyes hard and distrustful.

Heero caught himself losing his concentration for a second when he caught sight of a very amusing tableau, Duo with his face utterly serious and his hair in disarray, disheveled in a crown or a halo around his head, but his attention came quickly back to the problem at hand.

"How do you know?" asked Duo, still silently.

Heero pointed out his nose. Then he showed them his open hand, closed it, then lifted two fingers

before hesitantly unfolding the last three. Between seven and ten outside.

"Hostile?" asked Trowa, still without making a sound.

Heero shook his head and shrugged with one shoulder, not stopping from preparing his gun.

"Don't know. They're just walking around the house for the moment."

Suddenly a paw scratched at the door, and they tensed. Then a muzzle sniffed under it, once, before disappearing.

Heero uncovered his teeth in a silent growl. His canines were too long for a human mouth. The way his eyes gleamed wasn't human either. Wufei felt faintly relieved that he was on their side.

They waited.

* * *

They had been staying unmoving and ready in the middle of the room for ten minutes already, and the Weres hadn't done anything else at the moment other than walking around the house... and then, one of them howled, not ten meters away from the door, making them jump.

"ahrrrrrrrrrrrh...."

Duo turned his head and glanced toward the low sound. Heero was growling low in his throat, snarling, and his knuckles were becoming white. Without really thinking about it, Deathscythe's pilot put a hand on his shoulder and gently squeezed.

"Shhhh..."

Yuy muffled his growl, but it was visibly an effort to do so.

"What can we do?" asked Duo. "I mean, how long will they stay here? They have to know that we are here, and if their senses are as developed as yours, they even know that we are awake and at the same place... right?"

Heero scowled. Duo was right. But he couldn't just go out and see what they were doing, could he? Humans could, maybe, be left alone, even though he wasn't too sure with the way he had been attacked while he had just been walking, but he was an intruder here. Staying even just one night wouldn't be tolerated.

He froze suddenly, gripped by a dark sense of foreboding. They were making themselves scarce outside...

And then, there was a smashing of planks behind them.

Heero was already dashing off to Quatre's room when the door and front window underwent the same assault, preventing Trowa from following. The three remaining pilots began to shoot through the wood planks. There was a yelp of pain and the ruckus stopped shortly. Duo, Wufei and Trowa huddled closer to each other, back to back, in a triangle, and left their firearms ready to shoot.

* * *

The forest of his dreams was dark and menacing. Even more so than usually, and it was saying something. But this time the menace was other than before...

/hate anger aggression/

and he woke up in a leap, sweating, confused and disoriented, his heart hammering in his chest, a second before the window which had been hidden under the old wallpaper exploded and showered him with wood splinters.

He rolled on the floor by reflex, crouched in a combat stance, but his feeble legs betrayed him and he couldn't step back fast enough to avoid the man...the wolf... the thing rushing toward him.

A clawed and hairy hand closed on his forearm and dragged him toward the being at the same second as the door behind him went to crash on the wall, violently kicked open. He heard a howl of pure rage /heero/ and a hand closed on his throat, cutting off his air and the blood flow to his brain, dragging him till he had his back against a fur-covered torso. /fear! anger!/ He tried struggling, but without results. Half-awake, weakened, he began to see blurred images and to feel his world spin around him, and the nausea gripped him.

/pain... hurts, it hurts... Hee...ro... help.../

He had just the time to feel that he was picked up and to look into intense blue eyes sparkling with furor in a face in the middle of transformation, before losing consciousness.

* * *

Yuy couldn't even articulate the scream of fury ripping out of his throat when, irrupting in the blond pilot's room, he discovered a Were in an hybrid body, humanoid but with a head and lowed body like a wolf's, dragging back the teenager. He jumped toward them... only to have to stop when the intruder took Quatre hostage, his claws against the whiteness of his neck, and mock-clenched. If the other Were had only half of his own strength, he could crush his trachea without having to strain. Heero knew it too well.

Two aquatic sea blue-green eyes, clouded over by pain and fear, stared at him in a desperate plea for help, then slowly fluttered closed.

/MY pack/ he thought bewildered, /he's attacking MY pack!/

/HE DARES TO ATTACK MY PACK!!!!/

Rendered unable to think any longer by the Wolf's fury, he leaped, snarling, already transforming.

Totally forgetting the gun he had had in hand.

/KILL!!!/

But the intruder hadn't been waiting for him and had already jumped out of the window, Quatre still pressed against him. He missed him by about two centimeters and howled his rage, jumping after him. He slid in the narrow passage between the house and the cliff it was pressed against, his run rendered difficult by the progressive transformation of his arms and legs into paws.

But as he was turning by the house's corner, three Weres jumped on him. Only the fastness of his reflexes permitted him to jump back into the narrow passage. He crouched low on all four, already more animal than human, and glared at them one after the other with his eyes burning with hate. In the forest, he could see, disappearing between two trees, a thing with dark fur carrying on its shoulder something bright. A golden-haired head rolled from right to left, lifeless, with the man-beast's steps.

"QUAAAAAAAAAAATRRRE!!!!!" he roared, the end of the call a bestial scream.

The three Weres growled at him and stalked toward his position, and he reported his glare on them. His ears inclined forward on his skull already nearly wholly lupine and his tail curled high, signaling his dominance, hairs standing on end. His fur resembled that of a porcupine more closely than anything else. He crouched, ready to spring. They were preventing him from rejoining a member of his pack. He was going to kill them all.

One of the wolf-men flattened his ears back and whined when he realized, too late, that even at three against one the dark brown wolf was not in their league.

Which didn't prevent him from finding himself jostled on the ground, four of his ribs shattered upon impact when Heero charged and shouldered him out of the way, after having properly torn one of his comrades' throat out and disemboweled the other with a lateral clawing, letting his intestines pour on the grass. He curled up and whined, offering his pale belly.

Heero nearly killed him anyway, too furious, but his Wolf side didn't let him.

/he submitted, doesn't attack anymore, let him go/

He struggled with the instinct, his soldier training telling him to finish off the down enemy to be sure that he didn't come back after him, but it was hard. The Wolf was adamant about this rule, not ready to concede.

One of the other Weres tried to profit from his second of inattention to attack his neck by behind. He just let himself fall low, letting the assailant's momentum carry him and making him trip him on Heero's own back, then opened his revealed throat with a snapping of fangs.

He turned away, and without glancing back to the submissive wolf, jumped over the bodies of the two beasts killed by his comrades' guns and ran after Quatre's abductor.

* * *

Duo had just the time to lower Wufei's hand when he tried to take out the dark brown wolf dashing off in the woods, like they had done with any other wolf stupid enough or slow enough to stay in plain sight when they had begun to shoot by the holes in the cracked planks.

"Duo!!" protested the Chinese teen when he realized that this moment of distraction had been enough to let his target disappear.

"It was Heero, idiot!"

Wufei's eyebrow arched slightly, even as he was gunning down the few wolves trying to follow the brown one.

"You sure?"

"He's the only one I ever saw with a creamy white throat and tail-tip," answered the American disinterestedly, calmly reloading his weapon. "Plus he was slightly smaller, and looking slimmer, definitely a teen, not an adult like all of the others. You see what I mean?"

"Guess so... But after all, I never saw Yuy's animal form before, how could I know?" answered Wufei.

"Wouldn't have prevented me from kicking your ass for having shot him, Wu-dear" Duo said back, blowing him a mock-kiss. Wufei snorted.

The pack outside seemed to have retreated; maybe they had had their asses kicked enough for the night. The two long-haired boys glanced at each other then looked at Trowa.

He was standing in the bedroom's door, turned toward the empty bed and the smashed window, his hand clenched on his gun so hard his tendons were sticking out.

"Trowa... Heero went to rescue him. He'll find him. For the moment we should find a place to hide... we can't get out in the forest like that, don't you think, would be stupid..." the American tried to tell him.

Trowa didn't seem to even hear him. Then, as Duo was going to put his hand on his shoulder, he swore violently in Spanish and Italian and punched the wall so hard a bloody smear decorated the wallpaper.

"Trowa, he's gonna get him back. He WILL get him back. "

"Why didn't we see this fucking window?"

Duo looked surprised, then noticed the yellowed bits of paper still floating around.

"It was hidden under the wallpaper... It wasn't truly a window, just a thing to aerate the room. Tro..."

"We should have seen it!! Why didn't Heero see it ? It's HIS hut, foutredieu de bordel de merde!!!"*

"Trowa, you..."

"Vaffan'culo!* Lemme go!!"

"TROWA!!! ENOUGH!!! "

It wasn't the time to place the blame, and certainly not the time to fight amongst themselves, Duo's glare told the other boy. Without waiting for his assent, the braided boy caught Trowa by the wrist like if he was a disobedient boy throwing a temper tantrum and dragged him to the kitchen, where Wufei was already pulling down the pole opening the access to the attic.

"We'll wait here" decided the Chinese boy. "Less openings if they come back for more. Take munitions."

Trowa climbed in silence, without making a fuss. Duo emptied the fridge before following, and Wufei rolled his eyes at him, appalled.

"What? We don't know how long Heero'n'Quat will take to come back, right?" Deathscythe's pilot answered back while climbing the frail ladder.

Wufei sighed and shook his head. He was going to follow him when he remembered something. He turned around and grabbed the Japanese's laptop. Once they were up there, the two long-haired boys dragged the ladder up and closed the trap.

When he saw the extra passenger, Duo lifted an eyebrow at him.

"Do you know the password for his laptop?" asked the Chinese without bothering to explain himself.

"Wu, if we go and put our noses in his comp..."

Chang stared irritably at him, half serious only.

"Let me do it" sighed Duo, taking the laptop on his knees and powering it up.

Luckily, it had been recharging all night. It could work for some time ...

Duo typed in the password and the secret codes and gave the laptop back to Wufei.

"I don't even want to know how you know the codes," he said absently while searching through the programs.

"Hey, it was you who wanted to get in! You're not in any place to berate me! And whatcha doin anyway?" asked Duo, trying to erase the guilty expression from his face.

"If I know Yuy well enough..." answered Wufei absently, looking through the programs.

"Yeah? If you know Yuy well enough?"

"Here it is" answered the Chinese pilot with a superior smirk.

<..................... log on...

<back alarm on

<front alarm on

<movement detector on

<Would you like to open a view of the heat detectors?

<yes>

<thermal video cameras on

<Would you like to open a view of the video cameras?

<yes>

<Security system fully operational

<Close video feedback by clicking on x

Under Duo's appreciative eyes, three little windows opened, each one showing an infrared view of the surroundings of the little house.

"The alarms are on..."

[cont]