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"I don't mean to be insulting, but you can't dance. And you can't sing. And you can't –"

The kid with the baseball cap grins broadly, and snaps his gum. "But I'm cute. And I can jump really high!"

Cute? Well, okay, maybe. Not that that really helps, in this instance. "We already have someone for the jumping. And he can also dance, and sing, and we're *all* cute. Are you sure you wouldn't rather be with Kanjani8?"

Now the kid – Sorata – rolls his eyes and sighs a heavily put-upon sigh. "Look, bro, I'm trying to help you guys out here. This Tokyo Dome thing is a kekkai, like I said. And we got reason to believe that it's next on the list. And your little concert thingie is going to suffer a whole lot more from the entire hall being blown to bits than from me not getting this poncy hip-shaking thing right."

Kame breathes for a little while and reminds himself that Johnny has personally requested they humor this – person.

"But what I don't understand is why you can't stay off at one side of the stage," Kame says doggedly. "If these evil angel characters –"

"The Angels of Earth," Sorata supplies helpfully. And snaps his gum again.

Kame grits his teeth. "What. Ever. There's no need for you to actually be on stage. Can't you just watch from the wings, or from the auditorium?"

"Well, yeah," Sorata says, and shrugs. "But where would the fun be in that?"

Glad you like! Sorata would actually fit into K8 pretty well, I think. Maybe if the apocalypse business should slow down, he will consider a different career. *g*

You can have another, but... well, we talked about that. ;-)

"How can you say that? You've know me for, like, forever! Stop being an idiot, buddy. Come on, let's get back to the rehearsing, huh?"

"You are not Nishikido Ryo. Do you think I can't tell –"

"But everyone else recognizes me! Haven't you talked to Johnny? I think you should call Johnny right now and –"

"No. No, I don't know what kind of joke this is, but it's not funny. You're old, and you're ugly, and you're a gaijin, and you are *not* Ryo. At all. Like, at *all*."

"Hey! I am not ugly!"

"You kind of are."

"That really hurts. Especially when I remember like it was yesterday that when you were seventeen you told me –"

"Stop right there. I am not listening to you. I am not –"

"Wait till you see me dance," the imposter says, and grins.

"My brother and your chief are well," Winnetou says after returning to the ground. He inspects the thing he pulled from the tree's trunk for a moment and then looks towards the horizon, and all around at the featureless plains of the prairie. "They were here only a day before us. They have also evaded the Kiowas' grasp, and will meet with us in the mountains."

He hands the thing to Schuldig. It's a twig.

Schuldig stares at it. The twig looks a lot like a twig, and the only thing it's saying to Schuldig is 'I am a twig'.

"You get all that from this?"

Winnetou inclines his head gravely and clucks his tongue. Schuldig is puzzled for a second until the man's horse is suddenly right there, and Winnetou swings into the saddle with a liquid grace that Schuldig – stiff from too many days in the saddle – is really beginning to resent.

"And it's really going to be another week until we get there?" No, that is not a whine. It's a legitimate question.

No answer. Schuldig guesses that means it was a stupid (if legitimate) question which merits no attention.

He tries to sneak up on the man's thoughts again, stealthily and just as quietly as the man himself sneaking through the enemy camp. No luck. Fuck these Indians and their superstitions and shamans and medicine bags. Nobody in Europe even believes in telepaths anymore.

"He's not really my chief, you know," Schuldig says after an hour or so, because he is about to go straight out of his mind with the silence. He isn't used to it, and he doesn't like it. "Or at least that's not all he is. In fact, I kind of get the feeling he's not my chief in the same way that your brother is not your brother."

Winnetou says nothing. Surprise.

"Do you really have to be quite so silently strong?" And yeah, now he is whining. "Just – talk to me, for god's sake. I'm willing to compromise on the subject. If you don't want to talk about your, err, *brother* then we can swap war stories. Or you can lecture me on the subject of twigs and their manifold meanings. Or – hell, if you want you can just tell me in detail about the many ways in which I annoy you."

"You do not annoy me," Winnetou says serenely. And – is that an actual *smile*? "You speak with your mind – and if you cannot, you must yet speak. That is your nature. You can no more change it than the wolf can walk upright like a man."

Huh. "I'm glad you picked a wolf there, and not a rat or something," Schuldig comments. "I guess you really like me after all."

"You are a warrior," Winnetou says. And that's the last thing he says that day.

Schuldig has had worse conversations.

MWAAAAAHAHAHA!

Who gets to be Frannie?

Heh! :-) Glad you like it - so you're an old X fan too, are you. They're everywhere. :-)

:-) Glad you like! This isn't the Isla Schuldig, of course; *that* conversation would have been a bit too short. *g*

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