Epyon's Biggest Failure
AN: This is set during an episode around 40ish in number, when Zechs is approached by Quinze the transsexual butterfly man. Ahem.
Zechs was cold. Zechs was in a rather uncomfortable and scratchy coat, stuck in the middle of Siberia – the only place he could hide from the world and the colonies, or so he had thought. Then that strange Quinze guy had showed up with his badly receding hairline. And his big nose. And his freaky-girly-man lips. Zechs kicked one of his booted feet out at an offensive log, only succeeding in hurting his toes. For a moment, he entertained the thought of Quinze in a ballerina costume. Then he mentally slapped himself with a pronounced shiver. The looks that Quinze person had given him back in the bar… errhk…
He trudged on through the snow, holding his coat tighter around his body while his boots crunched their way along the ground, sounding like a fond and distant memory of breakfast cereal. What Zechs wouldn't have given for a nice bowl of cheerios. OZ soldiers certainly couldn't cook, and neither could he. Bad beer and stale bread hardly made an appetizing fare for the Lightning Count.
Finally, he reached his destination – Treize's new Gundam, the Epyon. It was too good for that Heero child to pilot anyway. It looked kind of peaceful up there, half covered in the snow of the quickly approaching storm, and Zechs was almost sorry when he activated the rappel mechanism to bring himself up to the cockpit. Almost.
Shutting the door behind him and settling down into the pilot's chair, Zechs continued shivering. Cold metal, he decided, was really not an improvement upon cold weather. He would have to have some kind of seat padding installed in the Epyon at some point, or he'd freeze – just like every other mobile suit, the designers didn't have the presence of mind to put in a heating system that would start up quickly. It just wasn't fair…! Sighing, Zechs turned on the ignition. The Vernier engines started; spluttered; stopped.
"Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Shit."
He turned the key again, eliciting another pathetic whine from the engines. Growing frantic, the Peacecraft started punching buttons mostly at random, trying to get the system to run a diagnostic on itself so he could find out what in the world was wrong. Suddenly, a flashing icon that looked like a tiny engine replica started flashing at him from the corner of the Epyon's display screen.
Zechs cursed. "Blue? What the hell does that mean?" Growling, he hit the side of the cockpit with a gloved hand. To his utter surprise, it popped open to reveal a rather tacky glove compartment. Intrigued, Zechs leaned over to look inside the dimly lit space. "Oh, how cute," he droned. "Heero forgot his little penguin." He reached out and gave a few experimental squeezes to a tiny stuffed penguin that the Epyon's last pilot had hung in the compartment. It squeaked.
Victory! There, lying just under the penguin, was the holiest of holy tomes: the Epyon's instruction manual! Grabbing it with barely disguised relief, Zechs started flipping through the contents of the disturbingly thick-and-yet-conveniently-small booklet.
Avoiding Obvious Traps, Coercing Other Pilots, Facing Certain Death: A How-To, Flashing Engine Lights, What if my Epyon is out of Gas, What to Do if Under Attack, Zero-System 101, the…
Aha. Surely, after reading the Flashing Engine Light section, Zechs' troubles would be over and he could get that picture of the girly-man out of his head. Quickly, he thumbed through the pages – there! "'If green, your engine is fine. If yellow, your engine is almost out of power. If red, check your engine's oil. If blue, your engine is frozen.' Wait. Frozen? What does it mean, frozen!"
Zechs continued flipping.
The Epyon Gundam does not come with parachutes, straightjackets, insulin, Prozac, maps, additional software, helmets, or antifreeze. You must buy these items separately if you wish to have them.
The new pilot of the Epyon sat in the cockpit silently for a few minutes, just staring at the tiny disclaimer on page/section E7-509-b. No antifreeze? Treize builds a Gundam, but he doesn't include antifreeze! Zechs groaned. "Shit. I'm never going to get out of this miserable excuse for an icebox on steroids."
Something caught his eye - there was a small blip on the display screen. He tapped it. "You Have a Visitor!" proclaimed the Epyon's completely fake synthetic voice in an annoyingly happy tone. It zoomed in a video feed onto the face of Quinze, standing in the snow in front of the Epyon and waving upward with a pile of papers that looked suspiciously contract-like. Zechs paled.
"Shit. Shit, shit, shit…"
AN: And there ends the short but (hopefully) amusing story of how our dear Milliardo Peacecraft got suckered into leading White Fang by the over-the-hill trannie. Quinze was probably bribing him with antifreeze. Review, por favor!