Disclaimer: *Disclaimer goes "Uff!"* Usual applies.

Here's the other part of Ch.17 - enjoy, liebchens! Thanks for the patience.

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With but three days before his shuttle left, Duo found his new student a very uncooperative pupil - coordinated, technically good on his feet and talented in learning the steps quickly, but otherwise spiritless.

He had been everything from instructor to fellow classmate to dancing partner: Heero told him on multiple occasions that he had mastered ballroom dancing some time ago and that, considering their limited time for practice, he thought it wise to move on to other subjects. Duo was simply stalling: he wondered what difficulties they would come up against when they began the art of 'boogying.' Heero's mechanical and even simple moves were made solely from much practice without any real feeling in any of it.

But at one point, it became obvious that Heero's lagging was due to boredome. Duo prided himself on being a very spontaneous, fun character whose jolly qualities gave him a kick others lacked and envied him for. The second day, he urged Heero out of bed at an unusually early hour, a small radio at his feet. Upon turning, giving Heero a somewhat snide remark on being slow, he tripped over the little machine and landed on his knee caps with all his body weight.

Bow-legged, and carrying the radio, he walked Heero down the hall to the fencing court. Setting the radio off to the wall and fixing the controls on it, he explained the lesson while Heero glanced around. The court was spacious and he actually felt some regret at never having bothered to come. The sound of abrupt music so early in the day made him tense. Behind him, he heard the pad-pad of Duo's stomping to the rythm. With an energized whoop he threw his arms around Heero's shoulders and twisted him in a circle, hanging on the whole while.

"This is what boogying is all about!" Unlatching himself from Heero's neck the boy trotted off, his braid now whipping against his back with extreme force. "Fast-paced and foreign! There isn't much better!"

Heero stretched his arms over his head, reaching, reaching...

Settling back into a normal stance, Heero set his fists on his hips and watched Duo take a place just a few steps from him.

"Okay, Heero, show me what you got."

Heero glanced over at the radio, and back at Duo.

"Is this the correct pace with which to dance to?" He sounded concerned and Duo's shoulders drooped.

"If you want to cop a feel, yes." Heero glared. Duo grumbled, upset of his distrust. "Of course it is - just never mind the jokes, you wouldn't understand the humor anyway..."

"Fine. But I need a partner." He said this while advancing with his arms held out.

To him, it did not matter. Dancing was like a sport, if less of an exercise than one. As long as he was learning he could have been dancing with a Giraffe and been just as content with any progress made. Duo, on the other hand, shook his head: he had had enough of being in the female position.

"No, Heero, this does not require a partner. You dance on your own opposite someone." Heero stopped, retreated, and planted himself squarely across from Duo with is arms crossed and legs splayed sturdily.

"In that case, how exactly does this work?" Duo squelched his face together, almost sneering.

"What, you want me to show you?" He bated, unsure.

"Yes, that might be informational." Snorting, Duo bobbed his head disarmingly.

"Stiff." Duo jerked his chin in the direction of the radio. "Turn the knob back and increase the sound."

Doing as he had been directed, Heero stood off to the side while Duo concentrated. Seeing as how this type of dance did not require any set rules, he did not think to see his friend in such a state of concentration. Really, he had thought this to be easier - but underestimation did everyone in.

Duo was much better at...this, then he was at Heero's specialty. Keeping time to the music with his feet and movements, Duo seemed to stray to every corner of a forty foot square piece of area in a matter of seconds. After some thinking Heero turned the knob to the sound to its highest level: the walls were more or less soundproof and none of the Preventer staff had their rooms nearby, ensuring enough time for him to learn something new.

This way, they were alone without anyone to interrupt them and Duo could display his skill without intervension.

Duo's hips swung and he sidestepped neatly. He had on clothes much like Heero's, exchanging the sleeveless top for a loose shirt, this allowing him to move freely. His head bowed, he began to arch and dance on the palms of his feet: at a peak in the song he leaped and Heero watched with deepening interest.

The practiced focus of being that activity and not simply performing it was, admittedly, a capturing sight. Duo shook out his shoulders, threw his head, shook his shoulders, twisted. His braid often slammed him in the side and Heero, being a reasonably good visionary learner, imagined a girl dancing along with him to complete the effect. Unknowingly giving her long hair in his mind, he had her stand just two feet across from his friend - this seeming to be the appropriate distance.

With some difficulty he managed to conjure up some sort of likeness to dance opposite his friend. Each gyrated motion or pranced stepped she did as well to keep in time. Duo gave himself over not just to dance but to his body: the sheen of sweat brightened under the ugly, harsh light above them and his eyes were squeezed shut. Heero frowned; although he had nothing to trip over, was dancing without seeing at all sensible?

Duo crossed his arms over his torso while Heero mused from the sidelines, stepping up onto his toes and dancing to the left. The imagined vision of the girl followed; Duo's shirt, upon his jump to spring around in a full body twist, was seen clinging to his shoulders and lower back.

The music, he noticed, was getting quieter. Duo's ragged breathing become louder in the waning of the song but he continued the wild arching, jerking and spirited spinning that marked his style of dance.

Whoever was singing gave one last yell and Duo stopped in mid-spin, on his toes again, hands pinned behind him, head rolled to the side. He gave a sputter, shook himself loose again, and dried his hands on his pant leg. The vision of a girl disappeared once Heero caught the eye of his friend. Long hair fluttered and left.

With a grin Duo trotted over to Heero, asking him to pause the tape for further instructions. Heero did so, after which he stood waiting for Duo to tell him how to do what he had just done - surely that only took a needed amount of concentration, something he could certainly make work.

"Now then," Duo clapped his hand and pointed to the court, "Show me what you learned from that."

Heero stared at him expressionlessly. After what seemed to be thoughtful hesitance he stepped out, pondering on just where to start. Coming to a point on the floor where he deemed it well to start, Heero turned around with his hands behind his back and stared at Duo expectantly. His hair, yet unbrushed, still shadowed most of the upper region of his face and Duo could not make out much above the tip of his nose. He cleared his throat: one finger was about to press on the button to start the music up again and he was waiting for Heero to take on some type of stance to start with. Yet, without any sign of moving from his position, Duo was feeling some impatience.

"Well?" Heero's head bent down a little as though he were trying to catch Duo's words easier that way.

"What should I do?" Duo staggered, stricken with disbelief.

"Are you really that helpless?" Heero turned his face to the ceiling, baring his throat, his hair brushing the nape of his neck.

"I am not used to this freelance pattern of dancing," He said, loudly enough for the sound of his voice to carry over, "Helpless, no, uneducated in the field, though, yes."

Rasping a small growl of discomfort Duo started the music with a jab of his finger, twisting the sound to its highest placement once again and marching to stand beside Heero some two feet away.

"Fine, I'll teach you step by step."

"Synchronization?" Duo straightened and lifted his chin, Heero copying him studiously, eyeing him severely.

"Sort of." He said slowly. "Now, listen to the music and try to give this your own style. We can't do this if you act robotical." He swung his hips around and held his arms out in front of him again. "Got it?"

Heero did not reply, rather considering the strange hopping of his friend. The music was brought to the foreground in his conscious, as Duo said he should do, and he hoped to learn something from that beat. Otherwise, the past two days of this odd studying would not be worth much.

Duo had a life to him that Heero could only manage copying through much concentration. Here was not the problem, though. While Duo knew what to do Heero floundered around, his motions halted by inexperience, thoughts fettered with watching Duo and performing the stunts correctly at the same time.

At some point down the line he gave that up, leaving Duo to his peripheral vision while he stared at the wall. The music, now different from the former to which Duo had first moved to, was slower but at least more understandable. Now more gibberish of lyrics. (Farther into the lesson Heero thought Duo to have taken a ballet course, as well, seeing the fluidity of his movements. It irked him more than he thought wise).

In due time Heero found a niche in the music he had not thought he would find. Much like the other activities he took to that required his body to the fullest, dancing gradually became a release. Duo would have jokingly said that Heero danced to keep from death - his feet twisted dangerously while everything else he did was aggressive and calculated.

It was as much a personalized-style as Duo could have moved Heero to discover. Maybe something not so cold would come about later, but it was a certain start on which to build on. Heero did not care about Duo's approval, though, only interesting in the bountiful ways of this form of dance.

Maybe an hour later, while, they finished up and Duo paused the music to take a break, chortling of the most infuriating kind reached them from the main entrance to the training room.

Gloved hands clapping ostentatiously, helmet under the crook of an arm, and leaning against the doorpost was Dorothy Catalonia. Her slightly smug expression found itself in her eyes alone: the rest of her face was emotionless. She stopped clapping once their attention was hers to play with.

She walked in, clearing her throat. Clasping her hands behind her, a fencing tool latched to her hip over the training suit she wore, she gave them a detached and meaningless smile.

"I hadn't thought someone would be up so early. Setting the mood for the Preventers, are we?" She nodded to Duo. "I see your back."

Duo shook his head, very much wanting to peel his shirt from his body and let himself dry. He thought doing so in front of anyone like Dorothy might turn into an uncomfortable situation, so he stewed in his thoughts and watched, only nodding when she gave him her empty greeting.

Heero, though, possessed little modesty faced with her and stripped. Using his shirt as a towel he dried his shoulders, underarms and chest, all the while staring sideways at Dorothy in a silent dare for her to come any nearer than she already was.

Settling her weight onto one hip she watched the two cockily, head tilted, one hand finding its way to the hilt of her saber.

She had hoped to come before the training hall was full and practice with it - the saber, a family heirloom brought from the Catalonian estate in Spain, was hers and not just any training equipment. As was tradition it had been given to the more dominant descendants of the family's bloodline and she had been accepted into the responsibility of caring for it early on.

Now, she would have to wait, wanting only her privacy and not feeling up to sharing the space with the other two. Granted, it was large, but now it did not feel large enough.

Taking the saber's hilt into her hand, she turned her eyes from Duo and Heero and fondly swung it, testing the familiar balance of it in her hold. Glancing up from under thick eyelashes at them, a slow grin spread across her mouth. The saber bounced in her nimble hand and she lifted it, at the same time lifting her chin, to meet their stares boldly.

She wanted to practice hacking away with her saber, something it had been made to do. She could not. She wanted to find another way of carrying herself from inner problems she was not even sure existed through mind-boggling exercise, and could not.

Dorothy did not, and never had, really cared for the prim and proper behavior people took on when fencing in a duel with each other: Treize and Zechs Marquise had seemed most comfortable with it, acknowledging it as an honest, respectful way to sort out personal spats, but she felt incredibly restrained when using the slim foils provided.

The saber was for slashing and hacking: it demanded a certain amount of trained, experienced recklessness, something a fencing duel did not require and actually forbid. That was her kind of fighting, though, and she had grown attached to the tool she now rubbed her thumb against so deftly.

Turning on her heel, she marched off from then, returning the saber to its holster and going left sharply before disappearing from their view. Duo exhaled, relieved: Heero stared after her thoughtfully, unconvinced of something that shadowed his mind and his own personal life before he shook them off and rubbed his hair roughly with his shirt.

"She is really frightening sometimes: I thought she'd try to run us through for fun there." Duo muttered. "'Glad she left."

"She was too preoccupied to care much; I think she had only wanted to get away from something." Duo's head swerved to meet Heero's vague and distanced eyes.

"You'd be the one to her understand her. You're alike in some ways."

Heero snapped around to stare back at Duo.

"In some ways, yes." He repeated. Duo shadowed his eyes from the perspiration that went down his face, half-closing them against the strong lighting: rolling his shoulders, he continued talking in a louder voice now that their unexpected visitor had most certainly left from hearing reach.

"I mean, Dorothy is attractive, but..." Heero turned from aloof to rather amused.

"You find her attractive?" Duo's cheeks blew out and he ran a hand through his bangs, uncomfortable.

"Well, don't you?" Heero shrugged. Duo added, "I mean, she's not pretty, but..."

Shaking his head at the conversation Duo turned the music again. The break was over, the lesson was continued. It was too strange, the thought of being pulled toward Dorothy Catalonia in any other way than inquisitive wonder and apprehension.

True. Dorothy was not pretty, or beautiful. There were so many terms for beauty that most often other, meaningful ones were forgotten: things such as 'striking.' While Dorothy was striking, both in appearance as well as forebearance, one could not define her that way.

Dorothy Catalonia was definitely striking. Mainly though, she was handsome. Beauty was given to people such as Lady Une and people with more soft-edged facial characteristics and more alluring personalities; it was a very general group.

Dorothy did not allure people to her but yanked them forcibly and she was not soft but angular. Her high forehead was that of an intelligent, belligerent woman with cheekbones and a chin that was breath-catching, yet somehow combative with the rest of her and at the same time, harmonious. It fit, in a strange way. The sharp, acute position of nose and eyes gave way to a predatorial personality, to some degree.

While comparing Dorothy to beauty one would think of comparing her to Relena. While Dorothy snagged eyes whether people liked it or no, Relena was simply a commanding, fulfilling presence that people felt if not saw.

She was not beautiful - pretty, yes, but not beautiful. (At least, she had not matured enough at that point to be considered beautiful). Her attractiveness was tied in with her personality, honesty, integrity and truth combining to give her a very demanding air that she did not realize she had or knew existed in her body.

Relena's mouth was normal, not as thin as her brothers', but still very normal, as were her nose and chin. These traits came together in a very right, very correct way: her face was so carefully balanced that it gave the illusion of beauty. Her eyes, though, were sound, calm and open, enhancing the effect of that illusion - they were wonders of their own, her eyes, something many people harped on.

Comparing the two - Relena Darlian and Dorothy Catalonia - ended up as different in opinion as gravel differed from petrified rock, even if this was not a pretty way to explain it.

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It has taken so long to get to this - again, this has been a part of the fic I've been wanting to write ever since the first chapter. In so many fics Relena is gorgeous (as well as Dorothy) when I believe that what I wrote here is true. (In the series, there really aren't that many extreme beauties - why dwell on it?). I was going to continue with other characters, but won't - I doubt anyone would keep from skipping it entirely. *Grins*

I love every review, so commentary would be appreciated!