shiegra (shiegra) wrote in no_true_pair, @ 2008-06-24 22:14:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! 2008 twelve characters challenge, author: shiegra, fandom: baccano!, pairing: chane/luck |
Baccano!, Luck & Chane
Title: Hijacking in the Name of Good!
Author/Artist: shiegra
Fandom: Baccano!
Pairing/characters: Luck Gandor, Chane Laforet
Rating: PG13/R
Prompt/challenge you're answering: * Chane and Luck Gandor: they fight crime!
A/N: Despite the title, this is a totally serious fic no lie.
She chewed jerky when they stopped, shared it perfunctorily with them while keeping the lion’s share.
They were glad for it. Luck watched her while they rested, the horses cropping outside of the field they were in. Claire’s girl, perhaps; he’d mentioned nothing of her opinion of him, only sang her praises. A slim girl, with luminous honey-bright eyes, soft dark hair cut short and the supple grace of a lethal fighter. She would have split him open in a second had he not had Claire’s message, for all that it wouldn’t have stayed.
“What now?” Berga asked, and she dug in her saddlebag and tossed Luck a tight scroll of paper.
He unwound it curiously and found a map, neat markings drawn between obscure points and labeled with names that had a familiarity the sketched landscape lacked.
Claire’s hand was a bold, artistic scrawl, and it was full of suggestions and humor and, in one corner, a personal script that would have made Luck blush if he’d been any younger. Chane’s—it had to be hers—was a graceful, slightly stilted script that pressed the ink deep into the page.
The path was clearly illustrated.
He nodded, let it snap shut, and looked at her. “What do you intend to do?”
She gave him a long, obscure look, ash-dark lashes dipping over her eyes. She looked terribly remote in that moment, surrounded by the tall umber-brushed gold stalks, and he wondered how Claire had ever managed to touch her, how his volatile brother had found something to fascinate him.
Chane lifted the saddlebag and took the map back, her mouth a stern line. She began walking down towards the horses, and he exchanged a glance with his brothers and had no choice but to follow.
The train went almost as planned. They'd boarded with no difficulty and Berga easily dispatched the guards on mafia cargo they had no interest in--Keith had ridden ahead, and hopefully would smooth over their arrival.
Chane had vanished the second they'd boarded, slipping down into well lit cars. She wore a long dark dress she'd unearthed from somewhere, and when she had changed in the small room they gathered gear in, he had caught glimpses of silver scarring traceries against her ribs and legs.
And now the train rushed along below them. He adjusted his collar absently as the wind whipped at him and stepped along the partition, feet striking the metal with too-loud sounds.
The dining car was dimly lit and empty. Lucky, he supposed; if this really was the Russo family handling things, it might have been full of corpses. He had met Ladd Russo once; he was full of the hot sharp immediacy that Luck felt the lack of once--most sharply in his perusal of Poe--and still did not have but no longer regretted. And he had never regretted his possession of the sanity that Ladd lacked.
He spared a thought to hope that Chane did not encounter him and set to securing the car as a deadblock for reinforcements further down the line before moving ahead again.
Berga was cracking his knuckles, slow thoughtful movements, and a shadow flickered around the edge of the door, old instinct pulling Luck out of the way—an instinct derived from more harmless subterfuge as children, usually headed by Claire’s impetuousness—as someone grabbed the handle, rattled it absently as they spoke to other men and pulled a low, female murmur from one companion. Brash and rough, the underlying edge of unstable glee in his voice was easily recognizable as Ladd Russo on the blood scent.
Luck nodded to Berga, and as the door swung open his fist swung forward. A hard crush and a gurgling cry, but the man who crumpled was dark haired and the second was pulling a woman in white back towards the car they’d come from, eyes wide with alarm. Luck stepped over the corpse and looked up in time to see Chane leap with animal grace over the division and land on the car above him. Their eyes met and he frowned, but then a shot rang out and she twisted to look ahead and was gone in a flicker of movement.
Berga cursed, a sharp and irritated sound. “She’s going after him?” He rumbled, and metal sang above them, clear through the rushing wind. A male shout of delight and exertion and no sound, of course, from Claire’s mute fiancé.
Luck made a split second decision, nodded ahead. “Go.”
Berga obeyed and he hoisted himself up. Not terribly difficult, but he was absently glad that he had selected less ostentatious clothing for this little trip by the time he had reached the roof.
Ladd saw him first; Chane was backing towards him, light footed as a cat, and knives gleamed long and surprising and well kept in her hands, a neat balanced grip. Different from the way Firo held his, but sure enough that he doubted it meant incorrect.
When Ladd laughed and said something harsh and too low to catch, she twisted to look at him and her eyes widened. She gestured to the cars ahead of them and he said, “Berga.”
A frown flickered over her face and she shifted her grip on the knife, stepped toward him—
And then whirled, a stunningly fast mercurial move that swept aside Ladd’s arm in a vicious blow, slicing it open to the bone and lunging forward, snake-fast and keeping him off guard, blocking the brutal downswing of the gun he held—Luck caught her muted gasp of pain—and slamming her heels at his instep, shin, twisting back and dropping so long her neat curving sweep very nearly successfully hamstrung him. Ladd cursed, voice bright and amazed, and staggered back with an almost petulant grin.
There was no missing the dissonant, dangerous edge in his gaze when he cut a glance at Luck. “You’re interrupting, Mister Gandor. Mind your manners and wait your turn!”
Chane darted in front of him; he’d move forward, hand on his gun, and her shoulder blades brushed his chest as she brought the knives up in a sharply protective stance.
The surprise brought him up short. “Chane?” He asked, and the gun barrel swung up. She leapt forward, heels ringing on metal, and slapped aside bright hot sparks of bullet, going forward in a streamlined and viciously well-honed lunge. Ladd howled with laughter and lunged in as well, answering.
He only barely got the shotgun up to counter the first bullet, and as Luck fired—damnable aim and balance as the car rattled down the track, he noted with distaste—Chane came upwards in a clean, graceful sweep that tore open the front of his pristine white suit and might have even touched skin beneath. It certainly would have gutted him had he not toppled backward in a strange convulsive movement, grin never faltering. His feet left the roof and he went tumbling backwards, a manic laugh tumbling through the air back to them.
Chane rose to her feet and turned to look at him, eyes wide and unreadable. There were light spatters of blood on her cheek—she must have cut Russo after all.
He checked the bullets in the gun and frowned faintly, shaking his head, then looked up at her. “Shall we?” He asked, tipping his chin towards the roof of the car, and a slow, almost shy smile lit her face like golden dawn.
And he understood everything that Claire had fallen in love with.