So... my plot bunnies have rose from the dead. And they're chewing on me like it's nobodies business.

The main two are The Growing Arc and Xenophobic.

...Did you catch what I said there? Yeah, Growing Up just turned into the first piece in a rather extensive Arc. An Arc with a sequel that already has almost 10,000 words written on it. I might be putting out the first piece in the second part of the Arc, Still Growing, in the next few days. I'm so busy going "Oh my god I'm writing an Arc", I don't know what to do, heh. I picked up a beta, aki_midori, and she is fantastic. After I get Still Growing back, I'll make the changes and post it. I figured that this Arc is going to be so freaking long that I need a beta for it, even just to make sure the end makes sense with the beginning, heh. Oh, and go read her writing. She's fabulous.

And since I'm nice and I want to bait people into being excited about Still Growing, here's a sneak peek.

This piece is dedicated to merith since this whole Arc is her fault, and sunhawk16 because her Ion Arc has continued to inspire me over the years.



My alarm had just started buzzing, reminding me unrelentingly that yes, I did have a day job and that it was in fact time for me to join the world of the living rested or not when a sharp rapping made itself known at my door.

“I’m coming,” I groused, hitting my alarm with a little more force than was necessary and pulling on my faded blue rubber ducky pajamas.

Yes, I wear pajamas with rubber ducks on them. Go ahead, laugh it up.

I opened the door with as much flair as I could muster with my braid half undone, shirtless and with bags under my eyes.

“Duo Maxwell?” The man asked in a gruff, unfriendly voice, and I gave his uniform and badge an appraising glance before I answered.

“That’s me,” I was trying to say to Tom Palamino – that was the name on his badge – but it came out as more of a yawn than a sentence. I frowned a little when he pulled something out of his pocket. “Can I help you?”

That was when I noticed his partner in the background looking like he was going to pounce on me if I made any sudden movements. Definitely not the best thing to wake up to.

“I have a warrant for your arrest. If you’ll just come quietly…”

I gaped at him. I ran over the last few days in as much detail as I could with my serious lack of sleep and an even bigger lack of sufficient time to wake up. I didn’t come up with anything remotely illegal. Hell, I don’t even think I’d been speeding. So when I opened my mouth again, it was genuine confusion laced in my words. “I think there must be some mistake, officer. I haven’t done anything…”

Two things happened then. The first cop – Jerry Steward – shoved the warrant in my face and the second moved to grab my arm. Both movements just served to drudge up that ‘kill or be killed’ instinct in me, and I am very proud to say that the scuffle was short and everyone came out of it mostly intact. I’d grabbed the man who had reached for me with my left hand and twisted – hard – and the much larger man’s eyes widened with shock and he cried out in pain. Tom started, and I took the opportunity to snatch the white and yellow carbon paper from his hand and effectively shove him back. He looked torn between trying to assault me and seeing to his partner who was now holding his wrist and cursing a mean streak. He went with the latter. Smart man.

As the two men examined the now swelling wrist and tried to decide if it was fractured or not, I scanned the document. When I got to the charges portion of the thing – it’s hard to find buried in all the legalese – I couldn’t help myself. I laughed. It came out just a little too unstable, since both men just stopped and stared at me, half afraid, I think, that I would start attacking them again. But then they seemed to realize that they had a job to do and the uninjured officer took out his cuffs and practically growled at me in warning. “Mr. Maxwell, you will come down to the station.”

I sighed in irritation and let the man slap the damn cuffs on me without any more of a fuss. Mrs. Palmer, the sweet old lady in the apartment next to me, was peeking out of her doorframe with wide eyes. “Duo? Are you okay? What’s going on?”

I tried to smile in spite of it all. Mrs. Palmer had been nothing but nice, and the brief conversations I’d shared with her over the past several months really gave me a sense of normality and it had helped more than I would have ever admitted in the beginning before me and Heero had started talking again. “Just a little mix-up. I’ll get it all cleared up at the precinct, don’t you worry.”

She looked slightly relieved, but I could still see the worry in the wrinkles around her eyes.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been hauled out of your home in nothing but pajama bottoms, but it’s a damned humiliating thing to experience. Several of my less well-known neighbors came to watch the spectacle, and I darkly amused myself with what they would think when they read tomorrow’s paper. ‘Local Mechanic Arrested for Setting Fire to an Entire Block’.

Did I forget to mention that when I’d set me and Heero’s house on fire, I’d accidently sent the whole neighborhood up in flames? Whoops is an understatement.

Does it tell you how fucked up I really am that I had to try really really hard not to bust out with a cheery rendition of ‘the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire’?

I settled on just letting it play in my head as Tom ducked my frame and pushed me into the back of the cop car like I were a feral tiger that could rip their throats out at any moment. I could have, but I wasn’t going to. It was my own damn fault, after all.

‘We don’t need no water, let the mother fucker burn. Burn mother fucker, burn.’

And that’s exactly what I had done. It had caught the rather extensive field behind our house on fire, and it had spread so damn rapidly that there wasn’t much I could have done other than run through the neighborhood screaming ‘fire!’ like some lunatic. I made damn sure that everyone made it out of there alive. They did, but by the time the fire trucks had made it all the way out to the boonies, there wasn’t much left to save of their houses.

It certainly wasn’t one of my higher points.