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An interesting story that somebody told me once, is that in Belfast, by what street somebody lives on you can tell not only their religion, but tell how much money they're making - literally by which side of the road they live on, because the further you go up the hill the more expensive the houses become. You can almost tell what the people are earning by the name of the street they live on and what side of the street they live on. That said something to me, and so I started writing about a place where the streets have no name..."
-Bono, 1987
Lucrezia Noin, always a devoted huntress, finds it increasingly difficult to avoid thinking - and fantasizing - about Sally Poe.
The Italian Baroness had an informant of Nanashi's to contact within the boarded projects of L2.
"She runs a household of three disabled siblings, and burdens herself with being positive they'll all survive. She's my only reliable eyes in that district, so be discreet in contacting her," Trowa had advised.
Discreet, no problem, thought Noin, as she entered a pleasant café of agreeable standards. The doorbell chimed nostalgically, the classical ring often replaced by solid- state tones in younger establishments.
First, some caffeine to get started. The cashier resembled a composite of Relena and Silvia; dark-rooted apricot strands making a long crown. The hair split over both shoulders, and bangs carelessly dropped into both emerald eyes. Her ocher skin fortified a healthy smile at seeing an unfamiliar customer.
"How do, miss? May I help you?"
Noin momentarily gave a visual probe around the lady's upper-sternum, then steadily descended from the breastbone to a petit sample of cleavage, set between two folds of unbuttoned cotton uniform.
"Oh, sure," she said distractedly, "do you serve coffee with toffee?"
Noin adjusted focus to the menu blackboard. Letters were typed out in white.
"Black coffee with toffee?"
"Oddly, I like toffee in my coffee."
The cashier set one manicured hand atop the cherry wood, ginger nails clawed inward.
"Are you playing Dr. Seuss games with me?"
Noin displayed her un-callused hands forward, defensively.
"No, no, no, I'll drink it that way, though I'll take caramel, if you may," she uncharacteristically giggled. Flirtatiously?
"Coming up. Do you like chocolate?"
Noin jolted, taken aback.
"What girl doesn't?" She gregariously/nervously shrugged, reddened, simpered.
The blond cashier emitted a coquettish noise, recommended something alluring.
"Would you like to explore…"
"Yes?"
"The pleasures of…"
"Yes?"
"An enticing new fudge parfait?"
She accepted the parfait, and slumped in a secluded corner, looking out at the happenings of the breaks, when a poster caught her eye:
"What They Don't Want You to Know
In order to understand the Peacecrafts, you need to
realize that everything is controlled by an elaborate Oz plot made up
of Specials with help from Aristocratic donors.
The conspiracy first started during the Arab War Crisis
in the Middle-East. They have been responsible for many events
throughout history, including the assassination of Heero Yuy.
Today, members of the conspiracy are everywhere. They can be identified by pacifist symbolism.
They want to neuter soldiers and imprison gun owners in the Noventa Cannon Complex using fishing trawlers.
In order to prepare for this, we all must Uzi them. Since the media is controlled by Lady Une, we should get our information from The Autonomous Emporium of Systems, a group of gun-owning soldiers like you!"
The poster came complete with a war crime charge against Zechs:
"Milliardo Peacecraft plotted the Eve Wars loss to the vanquished Earthlings so that Ann Une and Queen Relena could destroy our resistance."
She wearily rested one palm against the glass, embedded her nails through the paper.
Where do these group get their ideas?
She resumed her original impulse to crumple the paper, and an even more asinine country song blasted on the local radio:
"I met her on the highway sort of pregnant;
I can still recall that burlap bra she wore;
She was crawlin' through the prairie in the twilight,
and I knew that she would be a crashing bore;
The judge declared I'd swear off booze forever;
She said to me that Nixon didn't lie;
But who'd have thought she'd yodel while in labor;
I now can kiss my credit cards goodbye."
What the freaking Hell?
She'd had the presence of mind to stock earplugs in her fanny pack, and chose to insert them.
She uncapped a fountain pen, and scribbled across a flan colored notepad:
' In the wasteland of conflation the soldiers strive, And there they will be found But are we sure that this is the life we want to live? The coffee, underground.'
Somehow, the poetic musings didn't sooth the Preventer. She retired to voyeurism, with one flat palm propping a smooth lopsided cheek, Noin ogled the flaxen waitress longingly.
The girl's confident smile cast a ray of hope for this downtrodden area. Noin lost herself in admiring every little confident gesture, every facial feature she met newcomers with. The girl hummed and stretched out knots as she wiped counters of residue, she offered advice to all that came to seek it. She looked like a younger, more idealized, Sally Poe.
Noin must have fallen asleep there, for when she next looked up, that girl smirked down while clad in a charming gold satin gown embroidered with canary yellow dragons and bedecked with seed pearls. She crowned her hair with a tangerine beret.
"Excuse me, Miss, are you displaced by the war?"
Noin shrugged lazily, then bothered to straighten her attire, which consisted of a forest- green linen, long-sleeved tunic, and emerald velvet short pants.
The girl fingered her earlobes.
What, cross earrings, big deal. Oh!
Noin timidly removed the plugs, and the lass repeated her inquiry.
"You could say that. Am I causing an inconvenience?"
The waitress instantly backtracked.
"No problem! Just wanted to know if you needed any help, was all."
An infectious lopsided smile disarmed Noin. The amethyst-headed fem dejected the dregs of that delectable chocolate parfait down her willowy alabaster throat.
"I wouldn't want to impose, but I'm looking for some cheap clean housing, but I think the public renters are gouging strangers like me."
The kind waitress puckered her lips together, and hummed rhythmically.
"I fit a new room on my little brick duplex, if you're interested in renting a little 12x14 foot insulated barn wing! It has running water for the tiny lav'/bath. It even has a working bulb and an outlet available!"
Lucrezia Noin responded to the girl's vigor impulsively.
"Sure, I'll go for that!"
They both shared a mellow moment of giddiness, ebbing down to a new appreciation for how young they both were.
Yes, far too young to molder under the burden of an unrealized and unrequited love.
Noin's new housemate reclined on her sofa/bed, ardently kicking one bare leg crossed over the other. She coolly gawked at the pages of a writer's magazine, completely oblivious of how Lucrezia's doting eyes conveyed the message of a thousand endearments.
Bravely, she cleared the silence.
"May I please have one? A magazine?"
"Wait, got one," their eyes locked a mere pico-second. The girl didn't reciprocate Noin's nonverbal feelings.
Noin fetched the paper, crinkled a page, and sought distraction.
Page two had a column worth reading:
"Texas Gulf is reporting that a band of fem fatales calling themselves the "Vicious Mistresses" have cracked their way into Winner Industries' internal servers and may have had access to sensitive information. Reportedly an uninstalled patch was to blame, and it has been fixed. No word yet as to how long they had been intruding, or if any customer credit card or private information had been compromised. I wonder if the Preventers consider their work on wormhole physics sensitive information? Just another reason to not do business with the controversial Winner family."
Noin read on another few minutes, before squirming into a comfortable position to gawk at her goddess of tranquility. Sight could not sate her any longer.
"If I were to combine your blood, toes, and hair, it might not be you, but it would be enough for my basic desires."
The girl sat her mag down, propped her head to Noin's attention.
"What was that?"
"I said to make friends, names are things you share with others."
Noin's potential paramour stifled a sheepish shout.
"I'm so sorry! I'm Ina Mae Barker! I grew up in this L2 neighborhood, and just never left!"
Noin amiably laughed.
"Ina Barker, my name is Lu- Loren Burl. Loren Burl, the soldier girl. That's me in a nutshell."
Those seemly normal pleasantries were just want Noin had angled for, because such a ritual normally leads to a series of tactile exchanges, such as a handshake, or a pat on the back, or a hug. She left the bed, and initiated a warm and fuzzy hug, for it is a mutual and reciprocal touching that's not agonizingly brief.
Her fingers wisp around Ina's thin gown, which is mostly white, and looks like a fusion of a Shinto priestess' robes and a scanty negligee. Ina's tempered back muscles flinched as Lu kneaded the loose fabric. It peeled away, exposing one bare shoulder.
Let go.
"Goodnight, Ina Mae."
"Goodnight, Loren Burl, soldier girl."
An impasse. Noin broke it.
"May I barrow your shower, clean up?"
"Sure, but money's tight, so hurry along"
Lucrezia Noin had messed up. Not every nice person is going to give up his/her body to comfort her pain. Sally is a valuable friend, and she'd compromised her reservations some, but doubtlessly, patience wore thin. Noin sighed deeply, taking in the lively ambiance.
Waiting alone in the now-familiar confines of the filthy streets, the cries of the frolicking children of the breaks, drifting in from outside; Lucrezia Noin- Zech's long- spurned lover- thought once more of Sally, the woman who had taught her how to feel. She was now, according to Trowa's shocking revelation, seeking a new life as a Preventer.
Then came a sudden commotion, heavy footsteps in the hall, and she gasped, her swelling breasts, heaving in anticipation within their velveteen prison. She was here!
"Even Jack Daniels and Jose Cuervo couldn't keep me from you, baby!" Sally bawled, sweeping her into her arms, and as outside the screams continued, she was surprised to find that loving another woman was a pleasurable sensation, after all.
A buzz saw roused the Italian dreamer from her pleasing reverie. An alarm. A garnet LED display indicated 6:00 AM. An automatic marigold brocade shade parted.
The curtains weren't pulled shut, as she'd prefer. An automatic marigold brocade shade parted.
The reason probably lies in their settings, which were set under guidelines Ina set.
This she planned to change, before going through it again the next night.
As a young woman in a largely male environment, Noin, always addressed by her family name, valued her privacy dearly.
This doesn't need to be tolerated right now.
Her bed feels to be made of feathers and air, something to sink into, and maybe never reemerge. Her hand blindly groped the phone, a retro unit cradled in antiquity, then thought better of making a call. She let the phone fall by her side, and stretched out some rigid spots.
She concealed herself in the bed's gauzy sheets, and modestly shirked from the window, carefully clamping the cloth over the convex portions of her front and back.
In some of her well-contrasted concavities, light successfully clawed through her flimsy shroud, gift-wrapping her waif-like aura for voyeurs to salivate over. She curtained the fantasy away in rapid order, then found the lighting, letting an invited light stroke over her most fair skin.
Privacy restored, Noin extracted some items from the closet, and set them for her future disposal.
I shouldn't have left myself in such a stark position in the first place, her musing counseled her, but I guess a suspension of normal inhibitions is sometimes in order.
She entered the chrome shower, and reaffirmed her self-image as a waif.
Being from an Italian household, that had always been her family's mantra. You're so thin. You should better enjoy our cooking, and try being more ladylike. Thinness is for boys, and tomboys afraid to develop.
But the exercise felt great, and my menstrual complaints don't amount to monthly torture for it, you estrogen tankers!
She dressed into her cotton tracksuit after drying, fell into some deeper stretches than she'd done waking up and in the shower. Never the trend-setter, she didn't notice her dark Nike sports bra bled through her white Adidas suit.
Running before breakfast is another holdover from her military life, something that stayed ingrained even on Peacemillian and Mars.
She recalled Ina saying she'd be at work by 5:30. Indeed, her ruffled sheet held few traces of evidence that such a girl had slumbered there.
Noin examined the ruffled sheets, breathed in the musky essence of vanilla.
My God! She exclaimed, I'm falling for anyone that offers an ounce of kindness! Poor Sally, I fell for my doctor, and Ina, I've made you a substitute. I'm falling to pieces!
She sank her body under the refuge of Ina's bed sheets, immersing in the arousing fragrance within.
"I shouldn't stay here another second!"
Noin madly dashed on her morning run, vainly attempting escape from the Earth Sphere. Thoughts, wishes, desires, and temptations kept her clouded mind company. Guilt and grief chased at the consciousness. Zechs, Relena, SALLY! Hip Hop resonated across seemingly the entire breaks, save little domains of R&B and light construction noise. Some noisy trucks came and passed, noise subject to the Doppler effect.
Noin didn't hear them. She didn't hear her inflamed breath. Her eyes kept stock of objects to skirt past, but she didn't really SEE the old mustached man with the sack of little pale oranges. The kids smoking on the stoop didn't matter. The alley-cat fishing sustenance from a gutter. She struck the ground harder, muscles expanded and contracted furiously. Fiber tensed, strained, pained, cried. So did the ducts in her eyes. Vision distorted, her head swiveled, seeking shelter, calm.
Feeling shamed and ugly, the frightened waif sought wildly for any place of refuge, warmth. Anything but these breaks.
A block past, she'd passed a church sign reading: "You aren't too bad to come in, You aren't good enough to stay out."
She turned, found gloom, a funeral. She evaded, found a club.
The cool flickering neon sign read "Leah's." Many ladies of brief simple dress filed in. The only male in sight was the aloof bouncer. This man had deep-set eyes that were the exact color of burnished iron. He had shoulder-length, plum-colored hair with two braids framing his face. His build was notably muscular. She found it all to easy to compare him to a darting, exotic fish. His arms were crossed, his face set frowning.
Lu stood behind an attractive white girl of military-length dark brown hair. She wore a patterned green cutoff tank, and beige cotton shorts. She actually looks a touch leaner than Noin. The Preventer blurted a name.
"Aliciana Scheisse?"
She turned, emerald eyes revealing familiarity.
"Louie? Is that our class valedictorian I'm seeing?"
They embraced.
"Alice, what brings you here?"
"A came looking for a date. You interested?"
Noin recoiled an inch.
"Sorry?"
Alice wore an amused smile.
"You're cute when you blush. We'll start slow, how 'bout that?"
Noin, rattled, gave an unsure nod.
"Um, okay."
Aliciana took her prospect's arm, and guided the way. The bouncer took a fee, and gave leeway.
My God, what did I walk into?
Earth
She worked behind a thick wall of Personal Computing boxes, all interwoven into what techies call a Beowulf Cluster, a poor woman's supercomputer. Their ages varied, but few of the pieces in the household boxes were younger than five years old, and in truth, many of the components were collected from the ickiest, dankest, smelliest wastes of Rural Florida.
The components grew loud and hot under the burden of continual labor. They tired crunching problems popping up, but they tired together, lockstep, in mechanical sync. They worked for the will of their maker, a benevolent and crafty leader, Amber Papillion, founder of the cyber-terror Amazon group, The Vicious Mistresses, a secret militant arm of The Autonomous Emporium of Systems.
Thank's to Amber's tireless wrestling, the small crack unit has operational autonomy from the male AES leadership, but implied threats of removing funding keeps her from completely practicing her own agenda, at least for now.
Yes, now. Now means rewriting the same tired routine of jamming the local Preventer Party's phones. The clever Preventers are figuring out an unintentional sequence in the "random" dialer.
I guess that means another long night of the gang bogged in the numbers.
She felt a large sweat drop in her long Glossy Chestnut hair, and the night's only started. She lent her ear some time of listening to one AES keynote speaker via radio, as watched the performance of her adjustment:
"Once again, the Nazis have STOLEN the so-called "election"! The henchmen of Relena Peacecraft killed gun-owners in Georgia! And their last-minute SCARE TACTICS of accusing gun-owners and veterans of being warmongers, and trying to focus on unexploded ordnance instead of REAL ISSUES like gun rights were calculated to frighten so-called "peaceful citizens" into VOTING! If you're not enraged about this, then you're a BIG IDIOT!
THE INNOCENT AREN'T PROTECTED WITHOUT WEAPONS, AND THAT'S THE PLAN. They will see their cities fall like children's BLOCKS!
Now means taking march orders from these shouting loons of talk radio just a little while longer. Now is not a fun time to be in.
Hopefully, things will soon be fester free.