"Yes, Chang"
---------------------------------------
Note: Conversations in languages
not understood by the other pilots are denoted as "{text
here}"
---------------------------------------
The 'newly-arrived' Gundam pilots told
General Petrenkovich of their decision to help fight against the Theodorians,
and were welcomed with open arms. Literally; as the boys found out, people from
Tatarstan were traditionally enthusiastic huggers during emotional moments.
Trowa and Quatre took it pretty much in stride, and Duo hugged back, but Heero
didn't blink for almost a minute afterwards and Wufei nearly sprained something
trying not to reflexively break the General's neck.
It took only a few
hours for them to become official parts of the OZ Alliance's Gundam program
(though Duo was still holding out for the 'Colonial Irregulars/Irrationals'
title). Most of the paperwork was left undone or filled in at random by Jay,
Dan, or Mel (who filled all the blank spaces on Heero's psych evaluation with
quotes from 'Gundam Vixens'). They went onto the General's active duty list--
Dot promptly took Duo off active duty and put him on the wounded list
with Christy-- were assigned maintenance crews, and...
...nothing
happened.
"I thought the Theos would've done something by now,"
Christy mused, stretching her legs out in front of her and sipping at her mint
julep. "It's been a week since you lot officially joined, and it was three days
before that when they pulled their last sneaky trick. As I'm sure you
remember."
"Mm," Quatre agreed, poking at the sprig of mint floating in
his iced tea. "A couple of hundred mobile suits painted in near-psychedelic
colours do tend to stick in the memory."
"They're quiet
everywhere," Mel complained. "All the hot spots along the borders have
died down, all the mobile suit forces have pulled back, all the
interesting-looking factories and research labs have shut down or moved, and all
of the good personnel targets have gone underground. Everything that would be
worth sending a Gundam or pilot after."
"Can't even send me to
eavesdrop," Jay sighed. "There's nobody around to eavesdrop
on."
"Does this happen often?" Trowa asked
curiously.
"Fairly often," Christy nodded. "Every time something startles
the Theos, they have an attack of the screaming meemies and pull back a bit
while they think it over. Well, actually, the Emperor gets the screaming
meemies, and they have to put the war on 'pause' until they manage to coax him
out from under his bed."
Mel snickered. "We stalled a major advance for
three months once, just by releasing a few thousand illuminated weather balloons
over the area on a cloudy night. Looked really creepy. Even after they found a
lot of deflated balloons with coloured bulbs in them, it took so long to
convince Torovha that they weren't a cover for our 'new secret weapon', General
Noviento had fortified that border so well the Theos couldn't shift
him."
"And I think we can all guess what's given him the meemies
this time," Christy said pointedly, mock-glaring at Quatre and
Trowa.
"No big surprise there, chaps," Jay snorted. "Having five Gundams
turn up, on the other side, out of nowhere would give me the jim-jams all
right!"
"It certainly gave us the-- er-- jim-jams when you popped up in
front of us," Quatre said dryly.
"I might, hypothetically, if I were
drunk, admit to a brief qualm of my own," Mel drawled, wriggling slightly lower
in her deck chair and stretching her feet out until her toes peeked out of the
shadow of the building behind them.
"Christy makes a habit of dramatic
entrances, doesn't she?" Trowa murmured. "It showed."
"Why thank
you, Trowa," Christy smiled. "I've turned scaring the shit out of my opponents
into an art form. By the way, did it work?"
"Nearly."
"I must
practice more... if Dot ever takes this thing off of my arm so I can
practice!"
"One more week," Jay said soothingly, patting her on the hand
that held the mint julep and snitching the swizzle stick out of the glass. "Then
you can go flatten as many poor, unsuspecting practice dummies as you
like."
"Hn. You'd think she could turn that stupid bone-fusing machine up
higher."
"You guys may have scared the Theos off for a while-- for which
I'm sure lots of people are grateful-- but at least you brought another source
of entertainment with you," Mel interrupted, nodding towards the brightly lit
parade ground. "I mean, look at them!"
The five pilots lined up in deck
chairs in the shadow of the Gundam hangar might have chosen to stay out of the
sun today, but Duo seemed determined to grill himself. He'd announced his
intentions to sunbathe 'until I'm either nicely tanned or red as a lobster,
whichever comes first' at lunch, and had picked the parade ground as the ideal
spot... which meant that Heero and Wufei were out there, too.
"It's kind
of pathetic, actually," Christy mused, distracted from her woes. "They're
practically drooling every time they look at him, and he hasn't got a clue.
--Um, he doesn't, right?" she asked, glancing at Jay. "Is he as oblivious as he
seems, or--?"
"Not the faintest inkling of an idea in his pretty head,"
Jay confirmed cheerfully, "though he is confused by their attention. He's
practically drooling, too, but he's better at hiding it, and he's certain
they're both irredeemably straight." She shrugged, poking the swizzle stick into
her hair so it stuck out at an angle above one of her buns, then brightened. "Do
you think we should tell him?"
"Don't. Even. Think. About. It,"
Quatre said firmly, blue eyes suddenly stern.
"Yessir!" the three girls
chorused. Jay saluted.
"Good. They can work it out on their own. They
don't need any help from you."
A sudden burst of Glacin swears
erupted from inside the hangar, and a wrench whirred out through the door,
narrowly missing a file of soldiers marching by. "Get the fuck away from me, you
oversexed Gaulish prick! Find someone to work your own hormones off with
and leave me out of it!"
Dan skidded out the door and jumped to one side,
taking shelter behind the metal wall. "But Suka-babe, I just meant that you
seemed a little tense... looks like I was right!"
Another wrench clanged
off the edge of the door frame, and Dan jumped back, laughing.
"Can we
tell them?" Mel asked hopefully. "Those two are seriously in need of a
little advice. It's even money whether they'll screw each other or kill each
other first."
"Mmmm!" Jay nodded her head vigorously, making the swizzle
stick bob up and down. "The unresolved sexual tension between the two of them is
enough to give Valeri a headache."
"Especially if he walks past at
the wrong moment," Christy muttered, watching a large bolt sail past in a
graceful arc. "Hmm. Maybe I should page him or something."
"That's an
even worse idea," Quatre insisted. "Stay out of their sex life. In
fact--"
"But they don't have a sex life! That's the problem!" Mel
protested.
"--stay out of everyone's sex lives!"
"Why,
Quatre!" Jay gasped, clutching theatrically at her bosom. "You've shattered my
last illusions by saying the word 'sex'! We all thought--"
"--you were so
innocent!" Mel and Christy chimed in. Trowa choked on his cola, and
Quatre pounded on his back as he coughed, blushing bright red.
The next
object thrown from the inside of the hangar was a knife, blade glittering as it
skimmed past Dan's head to thunk into the wall of the next building, and the
Gaulish pilot decided that maybe it was time to leave Asuka alone. "Shit,
he's uptight today!" he laughed, jogging over to the peanut gallery. "He really
needs to get laid... if he can get someone into bed without pointing a gun at
them, that is."
"Please?" the three girls begged, leaning towards
Quatre.
"NO!"
Dan looked back and forth between them, bewildered.
"What did I miss?"
"According to Quatre, you don't need to know," Trowa
said, smirking. "Trust him. He's psychic."
"That's my line!" Jay
protested. "Well... nearly..."
"Hey, it's Drunk Night tonight, isn't it?"
Christy put in, grabbing at the first change of subject that offered itself, as
Dan looked puzzled and opened his mouth to ask another question. "Whose turn is
it?"
"Even if it's you, it can't be you, if you know what I mean," Jay
said, frowning in thought. "Dot's awfully strict about the whole
no-alcohol-for-the-wounded thing, don'tcher know."
"It was me last time,"
Christy said, "and you, if you can remember after all those Mai Tais,
which means it's Asuka and Mel's turn."
"Ooo," Mel sing-songed. "You'd
better hide, Dan; if Asuka's still mad at you when he gets into the Slivovitz,
you could be in trouble."
"Asuka doesn't drink Slivovitz," Dan muttered,
looking slightly nervous. "...But I'm still out of here," he added, strolling
oh-so-casually away.
"Drunk Night?" Trowa asked.
"That's right,
nobody's told you, eh what," Jay exclaimed. "We have a Drunk Night every
fortnight, unless there's some really big op on. Two of us get potted, and the
other three cover for 'em if anything comes up. Wellll, we don't have to get
potted, exactly, but we do get happy. Blowing off steam, that sort of
thing. We really should work you chaps into the roster-- oh, I say! That means
four of us can get potted at once! Much more fun."
"Er, Jay, I
don't drink," Quatre said apologetically. "I don't think Wufei does,
either."
"Well, we'll feed you two sugar and caffeine, then. It has
similar results."
"Yes," Mel said dryly. "Hangovers are nothing
compared to sugar crash headaches."
"We can drink whenever we want
to," Christy explained. "We just make sure we don't get drunk, in case
we're needed. For example, I have here a mint julep, definitely an alcoholic
drink--"
"Bad Christy, no biscuit," Mel muttered, looking pointedly at
Christy's cast.
"--it's the only one I'm going to have, and it's taken me
nearly forty minutes to drink it. The ice has all melted... and my swizzle stick
seems to have gone walkies. Jay?"
"Why do you assume I have anything to
do with it?" Jay protested, drawing herself up with an indignant sniff. In her
hair, the swizzle stick slowly tilted forwards until it was dangling in front of
her right eye.
"Because you have a swizzle stick fetish, and that's not a
hairpin in your hair," Christy said bluntly. "Unless there's a new fashion for
orange plastic hairpins with little pineapples on top of them?"
"Er...
yes?"
Christy looked at her for a long moment, then rolled her eyes and
looked away, shaking her head.
"Hey, the floor show is starting again,"
Mel grinned, pointing towards the parade ground; Heero stretched, rolled onto
his hands and knees, and reached into the drinks cooler next to him for a can of
soda. "Look! The Buns of Steel are flexing!"
"Ooh. Eye candy," Christy
muttered, settling back in her seat to watch.
"He does flex
nicely, doesn't he?"
"Trowa!"
"Wait until you see Wufei doing his
Tai Chi, though."
"TROWA!"
"I've seen it," Jay said smugly.
"Rowr!"
"Oooh, look at that," Christy said, sitting up alertly. "We have
a can of soda passed with meaningful hand contact!"
"Who? Where?" Jay
perked up, squinting towards the sunbathers. "Did I miss it? Pretty and Nasty
Boy, right?"
"No... Mister Unsociable and 'Fei-fei."
"Oo-er!
That's unexpected!"
"Jay... you're psychic!"
"Yes, but I'm
not omniscient," Jay grumbled. "I don't read everyone all the time, and even
then I can't read something if they're not thinking about it! ...Well, I
can, but I'm not allowed to read more than surface thoughts now that
they've joined the Light Side."
----------
Heero hadn't been
thinking about Wufei's proposition when he handed the Chinese pilot a can of
soda; he'd been thinking about his so-far-unsuccessful campaign to get Duo to
notice that they were interested, and wondering whether he could manage to touch
Duo's hand when he passed him a soda. Not that it's likely to get us
any further, he thought gloomily, holding the can out in Wufei's general
direction and peering into the cooler to find one of Duo's favourites. We're
going to have to be more obvious about it, but we really don't want to scare him
off--
Warm fingers wrapped around his on the can, feeling slightly
greasy from sunscreen, and he looked up with a startled jerk to find Wufei
staring at him with a definite question in his eyes. They stayed frozen like
that for a long moment, barely breathing; then Wufei's mouth quirked up into a
faint smile and his hand moved, one finger stroking across Heero's knuckles.
Suddenly realising that they were effectively holding hands and staring into
each other's eyes, right out in the open where anyone could see, Heero flushed
and yanked his hand away, grabbed a can out of the cooler at random and dropped
it in front of Duo. "Here," he growled, dropping down onto his stomach again and
burying his head in his folded arms.
"Mm?" Duo opened his eyes and
stretched, pushing his sunglasses up on top of his head. "Oh, hey, thanks
man."
"Hn." At least Duo didn't see that! Although... if he had, he
might have realised that Wufei and I aren't straight...
...and he
might also have jumped to the conclusion that we're only interested in each
other, not him. Forget it.
Heero opened one eye a crack, shooting a
glance past Duo to where Wufei was calmly drinking his soda as if nothing had
happened. I guess he was serious about being interested in me, too. I thought
maybe it was just a spur-of-the-moment thing, that he'd change his mind later
and be glad I never took him up on it.
Actually, I didn't think
about it much at all. He scowled, angry at himself. Baka. Anything else,
I work out exactly what I want to do and how to do it, and then I do it!
This time, I realised that I wanted Duo-- much later than I should have
realised it-- and then I seem to have switched off my brain. Wufei's been
thinking about it, so it's obviously not impossible to be logical about the
subject!
Looks like he's tired of waiting for me to let him know
what I want from him.
...What do I want? Would I get
jealous, if this all works out and I end up sharing Duo with
him?
Heero closed his eyes and deliberately imagined that the two
other pilots were lying on a bed, in front of him. Naked. Together. Pale skin
and bronze pressed tightly against one another, Duo's loosened hair tangled
around them, a tendril of Wufei's hair stuck to his forehead by sweat as he bit
gently at Duo's throat and...
Heero's eyes flew open and he winced as he
suddenly realised that the towel underneath him did not provide enough
padding to make lying face-down on a hard surface with an erection
comfortable.
Okay. I'm definitely not jealous. And I'm going to have
to calm down if I want to get up any time soon.
Unfortunately,
calming down was not particularly easy. Heero was acutely aware that both
Duo and Wufei were stretched out in the sun beside him, bodies glistening with
sunscreen and sweat, and at least one of them wouldn't object if he just reached
out...
Determinedly, Heero squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth,
imagining the least arousing things he could think of. Glaciers. Cold
showers. Lady Une with her glasses on. Relena. Dr. J. ...In a
bikini!
----------
Jay winced and took a large gulp of her
drink, shuddering. "I say, Heero really is a masochist, isn't he? I think
he's trying to make himself sick..."
* * * * *
"This is far more
boring than Drunk Night usually is, don'tcherknow," Jay pouted, slouched on the
sofa with her arms folded over her chest.
"I noticed," Christy yawned.
"Sorry, Mort; I honestly thought it was going to be entertaining. Mel's usually
a happy drunk, not... silent like this. Asuka's normally the silent
one."
"And he's not even here," Duo pointed out, leg propped up on a
chair. "Did he go somewhere else to drink, or did he go looking for
Dan?"
"He's in the Officers' Club," Trowa informed him, "sitting in a
corner with a ring of empty tables around him and a bottle of something
clear."
"Uh-oh," Christy muttered. "We might have to fetch him
later."
Jay, Christy, Duo and Trowa were sitting on various pieces of
furniture at one end of the room, watching Mel (at the other end) working her
way through a bottle of Han plum wine. Quatre was sitting next to Trowa, reading
a book and pretending that his fellow pilots hadn't turned public drunkenness
into a spectator sport, and Heero and Wufei were alternating between watching
Mel and fussing over Duo. Dan was, presumably, still hiding somewhere.
"I
fail to see the point," Wufei muttered, wincing as Mel poured the wine into a
water glass and immediately knocked half of it back. "She certainly can't be
appreciating the liquor."
"The point is to get drunk and have
fun," Christy said acidly, "but I will admit she doesn't usually drink this
fast."
"And she doesn't seem to be having fun."
"True."
"Is
she even getting drunk?" Duo wondered. "How strong is that stuff?"
"If
it's anything like the plum wine my clan used to make, about 100 proof," Wufei
said grimly. "It's more like white plum brandy than wine. I hope the sick bay is
set up to handle cases of alcohol poisoning."
"Oh, she won't go that
far," Jay said uncertainly. "Er... I think."
"She feels rather
depressed," Quatre put in quietly, reluctantly peeking over the edge of his
book. "And angry. I really don't think it's a good idea for her to be drinking
right now."
"Do you want to tell her that, Quat-re?" Christy
asked, stressing her use of his real name. "I've already got one broken arm.
I'm not going to get another."
"Somebody's going to have to do
something, if we don't want to drag her to sick bay after she passes out," Heero
shrugged. "She's got half a dozen more bottles down by her chair. Letting her
pass out would be simpler, but she could do herself serious damage... and even
if she didn't, she wouldn't be fit to pilot for about a week."
"Why don't
you, Heero," Christy suggested. "You're tough! You can patch yourself up
afterwards and not bother Dot!"
Wufei swore under his breath and stalked
towards Mel as she reached for the bottle again, movements unnaturally precise
and careful.
"Wu, man, don't!" Duo yelped, then groaned and hunched down
in his seat, peeking out between his fingers. "Oh, man, they're gonna take each
other apart! She already doesn't like him..."
"Bets?" Jay asked brightly,
then coughed and attempted to look innocent as Heero glared daggers at
her.
----------
"What is your problem?" Wufei snarled,
slapping his hands down on the table and leaning forwards over it, keeping his
voice down so that it wouldn't carry to the other end of the room. "You're not
an idiot, despite the way you sometimes act. You don't normally do this to
yourself, or your teammates wouldn't be surprised, so why
now?"
Mel blinked glassily at him for a moment, before focussing;
then her hand tightened around the neck of the bottle, and her face twitched.
"You want to know what my problem is?" she almost spat at him. "You are
my problem. Fuck off and leave me alone!"
"Why?"
She snorted,
picking up the bottle to pour another glass. "Because the sight of you is making
me feel queasy, and I haven't drunk enough to be sick yet."
"No," Wufei
insisted, controlling his temper with an effort. "Why am I your problem? What
have I ever done to you? I could understand if I were the counterpart of someone
you hated, but according to Jay, we can't have counterparts here or we
wouldn't have arrived. So what did I do?"
"You aren't--" Mel cut
herself off, and twisted to look towards the other pilots. "Jay!"
"Er,
yes?"
"Private!"
"Oh, bother," Jay complained. "You're such a
spoilsport, Mel... all right."
"Stay out of his head,
too."
"*sigh* Yes, Mel!"
Almost reluctantly, Mel turned
back to look at Wufei. She wouldn't meet his eyes, looking at the table, his
hands, the hollow at the base of his throat, over his shoulder...
"{You
aren't him,}" she said quietly, in Chinese-- no, in Han, Wufei
corrected himself. "{You aren't his counterpart. That is my
problem.}"
"{...I don't understand,}" he replied softly.
She
pulled a small, battered leather wallet out of the rear pocket of her cutoffs
and opened it, looking at the contents for a long moment before setting it
carefully down on the table and pushing it towards him.
"{Him,}" she
said. "{Tzu. My fiancé.}"
There were two photographs in the wallet, a
formal portrait and a more casual snapshot, and Wufei swallowed past a lump in
his throat as he registered their similarity to something he'd seen before. A
young oriental man was posed in elaborate robes, one hand on the head of a
carved stone tiger, face serene but a spark of humour visible in his eyes; the
other picture showed the same man, holding a blunt, tasselled Tai Chi sword,
laughing as he was seemingly interrupted mid-form.
The face looking up at
Wufei was nearly his own. The hair was longer, partly caught back with a
carved pin, and partly flowing loose; the face was slightly softer around the
jaw, and the eyes a shade lighter, dark brown rather than black.
"{You
don't sound like him,}" Mel said wistfully, "{but you do sometimes move like
him... when you're relaxed. You smile at Duo, and it's the way Tzu used to smile
at me. And then you do something that's completely unlike him, and it
rubs in the fact that he's dead.}" She closed her eyes for a moment,
swallowing hard, then continued. "{I even cast the I Ching the day you turned
up. I got K'uei, with the sixth line moving. 'He is seen at first as a filthy
pig,/ Then as a carriage full of ghosts'... I look at you and see Tzu's ghost,
and it hurts like hell because you aren't-- quite-- him!}"
Wufei studied
the photographs for a moment longer before handing the case back, noting almost
automatically that Mel must have carried them for a long time; the folder had a
permanent curve, moulded to the shape of her hip, and something-- probably
blood-- had seeped down the fold, staining the inner edges of both photos rusty
brown.
"{Excuse me,}" he murmured, setting the folder neatly in front of
her, then stalked towards the door leading to the pilots' bedrooms.
He
was back almost immediately, and Mel blinked as a frayed silk wallet was thrust
under her nose. "{Here.}"
She looked up at him suspiciously as she took
the wallet and started to undo the cords tying it closed; her fingers felt the
stiffness in the knot, stuck closed with dry blood, and she looked at it more
closely. Slowly, she opened it, revealing...
...a young oriental woman
posing stiffly in elaborate robes, one hand on the head of a carved stone
dragon, face calm but with rebellious eyes. Facing it was another photograph
showing the same young woman, holding a blunt practice sword, looking angry at
being interrupted.
"{My wife, Meiran,}" Wufei said quietly, reaching over
Mel's shoulder to trace one finger down the casual snapshot. "{I consider myself
lucky that I have not yet met her equivalent in this world... or anyone similar.
I don't know how I would react.}"
"{Badly, I suspect,}" Mel said flatly,
closing the wallet and handing it back to him. "{Judging by my own
experience.}"
He bowed slightly and began to turn away, only to stop when
she kicked the chair opposite her away from the table and slammed a second
bottle of plum wine down. "{Get yourself a glass and sit down already! I'm tired
of twisting my neck looking up at you,}" she growled, looking away. "{Besides,
you've got some catching up to do before you're as drunk as I am.}"
* * *
* *
"Should we pour them into bed?" Duo asked, snickering.
"Well,
I can't reach them," Christy shrugged, shading her eyes with one hand and
peering upwards. "I don't think you could climb up there either, even if your
leg is much better."
"I saw Dot looking out of the window of the
medical center," Duo told her. "I'd get three feet up the pipe before she
stalked over here and yanked me down."
"It's up to you guys, then," she
grinned, looking over at Jay, Trowa and Quatre. "If you think you can get them
down without them trying to fly."
The pilots-- and several other base
personnel-- were standing below one of the few buildings that didn't have roof
access. That hadn't stopped Mel and Wufei when they decided to serenade the
base, however; they'd climbed up a downpipe and were now balanced on the edge of
the flat roof, clinging to a pole supporting a bright searchlight, singing
something maudlin-sounding in Chinese. (Or Han, whatever.)
"I'm not sure
they're even singing the same song," Quatre murmured, listening as Wufei hit a
surprisingly pure high note and Mel seemed to be heading for a bass
register.
"They might be trying for harmony," Jay
suggested.
"They're not succeeding," Trowa said flatly,
wincing.
"Where'd Heero go?" Duo asked, looking around.
A huge
form silhouetted itself against the base's lights as it stood up behind the
building, giant hands gently scooping the two drunk figures up. < < Come
on, you two, > > Heero's voice boomed through Wing's speakers. < <
Time you went to bed. > >
"We've got three more verses to go!" Mel
protested, waving an empty bottle.
"{Five,}" Wufei corrected her,
hicupping.
< < You can finish it tomorrow. > >
"...All
right. G'night, Chang."
"G'night, Tangaroa."
On the ground,
Christy turned to Jay. "Can we give Heero a medal? Service to the Alliance,
above and beyond the call of duty or something?"
Trowa snorted. "For
saving everyone's ears, if not their sanity..."
* * * * *
THE NEXT
MORNING:
"So, Wufei, you gonna finish the song
now?"
"...what?"
"Yeah, Mel, you were hitting some... interesting
notes."
"Shaddup. The painkillers haven't kicked in
yet."
"Tangaroa?"
"Yes, Chang?"
"We're never doing that
again."
"Yes, Chang."
--------------------
End 'Warped
Mirrors'
Chapter 11
--------------------
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