[O] Seventeen's Squad travelling alone (Day 2 and after)

[Belle Hibiki]

The camp fire was pleasantly warm against his rubbery skin. It was a detached sort of enjoyment, of course. He felt warmth as a mere registration of some degree of 'hot', acknowledged but not wholly felt by his brain, just as hurting was a mental signal of 'pain'. All signals. All known, but never truly felt.

Kid Buu rested two hands on his knees and two on his cheeks, having switched to his four-armed state long ago. He stared dully into the flames, licks of ruddy orange flickering in the black depth of his eyes and across his crimson irises. A vaguely grumpy expression had wrested control of his childish face, sending a shadow of gloom spreading out from his seat and contaminating the mood of his fellow soldiers.

The child had not been able to test himself against his counterpart, and the missed opportunity infuriated him in ways that he didn't even know existed. A vague pain - not of the signal kind - squeezed in his chest and caused his fanged teeth to clench together so tightly that they made an audible grinding noise. A soft animalistic growl wound its way up his throat and snorted through his lips. The other soldiers looked at one another before going back to their canned meals, not asking. Not bothering. The majin did not look like the kind that should be interrupted when in a fuming tantrum.

"Something bothering you?"

The voice cause the majin's head to spin, looking sharply behind him in surprise. He had not heard Seventeen's approach, so the android's sudden appearance directly behind him was enough to make the warrior jump slightly on his log. He stared for a moment in surprise before, with the inevitability of the tides changing, his eyes narrowed down into slits. The question had found its way to his brain - found its way, and rankled. Doesn't it look like something's bothering me, you stupid pretending son-of-a-!

"Feh," Buu muttered. He reached down to his side and took a hold of the stick that he had obtained from a tree earlier that day. He poked at the fire with the end, firefly embers soaring up out of the tangled mass of wood. The others had wanted to use his log for fuel later in the night, as the air was already turning chilly. But fuck them, he thought. No one took his seat.

"Talkative as ever," Seventeen observed, resting his hands on his hips and nodding to each of the men in turn with a half-smile on his face. There was something appraising in his gaze, Kid Buu thought, as if the android were not here on a courtesy call but checking to make sure that no one had yet been maimed or killed under his watch. Finally he spoke to the group at large. "I'm sorry to say that we'll be moving out in an hour or so, men."

The ebony-haired android - too old, Buu thought, to be called a boy but too young to be a man and yet still in command of one of the most powerful forces on this or any other planet - listened to the grumblings and complaints that read on every single face without flinching. They told him without speaking all he needed to know, and Buu hated them for it. "I know," he said with a favorable impression of kindliness. "It's night, and it's cold. But do you recall the sickened creature that I put out of its misery a short time ago?" He thumbed behind him and looked around the loose circle of tired men. He saw the some that were convinced to compete by what accounted for their friends, the some that were just eager for combat, and the some - like Buu - who were morose 'just because'. But all Outcasts, in every sense of the word. Forgotten. Polluted.

Sickened, Buu added privately; just like the creature Seventeen had put 'out of its misery'. He watched but did not take in a word as his commander explained the reasons for the move. Something about there maybe being others. The child didn't care. Unlike the others, he preferred to be doing something - anything - rather than just sitting and waiting.

Still, he wondered privately if the machine-hybrid realized just how much of a show he was putting on. He seemed... Unnaturally peppy. More than anyone had a right to be in a life and death situation. Perhaps he was putting on a show for the troops? Or maybe it was because he was fucking an angel. That could be it.

Buu made a face and poked the fire again, seeing in its depths the only object of his desire. The reason he kept on fighting, even living. 'One day', he thought, stabbing the end of his branch viciously into the center of the roiling flames. ?One day??