A/N: Please drop a line if any of this chapter fails to make sense. Lambda drivers are microwaves to me- powered by magic!
The question had come out of nowhere, and Sousuke realized too late that his response displeased Kaname. It wasn't his fault. She asked for his opinion, he answered sincerely, and then she smacked him. It was another part of the same lesson for Sousuke. Sometimes Kaname wanted the truth and sometimes she didn't.
He resisted the urge to rub the new sore spot on his skull. They were scheduled to attend the first session on Lambda driver training in less than five minutes, and he didn't want to risk tardiness by provoking her again. Kaname would be even angrier if he failed to direct them to the right building in time.
"It's so obvious! Even a moron like you should see it," Kaname went on, more to herself than to her companion. "Mao and Kurz are totally having some sort of torrid romance."
Sousuke opted not to speak. Trying to refuting that his best friend and commanding officer were lovers had already earned him one blow from Kaname's harisen. He didn't wish to expediate a second encounter. In a way, the return of Kaname's temper was a good thing. It proved that the fourteen-day-long trial of MCA hadn't damaged her spirit, and she had been so excited about seeing their friends again that Sousuke didn't want to put her in a foul mood just before the reunion.
"I mean, you had to notice that they kept slipping off together when we were on the sub. Kurz knew about her snoring. And you should have seen how jealous Melissa got when I kissed him. It's right there! So clear!" Kaname rattled on. "Give me one reason why I'm wrong."
"You kissed Kurz?!" Sousuke exploded before he could think. Suddenly, he felt a little queasy.
"Yes. On. The. Cheek." Kaname rolled her eyes and looked more than a little pleased with herself. "It was a test to see if I was right about him and Melissa."
Sousuke checked his head and checked the landmarks against his mental map of Merida Island. Building F should be just ahead and around the bend in the road.
"Well?" Kaname prodded. She expected a response.
"We're almost there," Sousuke attempted to distract her. "If we hurry, we won't be late."
"Oh, no," Kaname huffed with her arms crossed over her chest. "I'm not going anywhere until you give me one reason."
"Because Bear told us to represent MCA well?" he tried.
"Not that, idiot! Why is it so 'impossible', as you say, for Melissa and Kurz to be together?"
She glared at him, and Sousuke blew out a long breath. Why were his options always all bad? Tardiness or Kaname's wrath. Duty or friendship. He sighed because there was never really much of a choice for him these days.
"Fraternization," he answered her. "Overly friendly relationships, especially between seniors and juniors, that might interfere with normal duties are not permissible in any part of Mithril, but especially in combat units. If poor performance in battle can be linked to personal matters, both parties can be court marshalled. I doubt that Kurz or Mao would be so reckless as to endanger the lives in our unit and their careers."
"Isn't that unfair? People can't help falling in love," Kaname countered. Her eyebrows knitted as she processed the new information. "Wait, so that means that you and Tessa couldn't-"
"We're going to be late," Sousuke reminded her.
"Yeah, okay," she muttered. To his great relief, she fell into step beside him. He held the door for her as they entered Building F.
Unlike the concrete bunker of Building D or the breezy office space of Building A, the majority of the floors in Building F were underground. Once inside and through the impressive security measures, all visitors took an elevator down into the heart of the island and the center of Mithril's Research and Development labratory.
Sousuke didn't miss the way Kaname's shoulders tensed up towards her ears when they stepped off the transport and nearly collided with a cow-sized mechanical hand. Her encounters with the Whispers had lessened since she disembarked from Tessa's submarine, but as Auntie's little exercise proved, Kaname's control over their power was not as fine as the captain's. Hanging around all the developmental Black Technology in the lab wouldn't be easy for her. Sousuke made a mental note to stay close to his former mission objective.
"Sorry, folks," the tubby gentleman driving the forklift called out. The electric motor whined and pushed the hand past them. Its enormous, spidery fingers flexed then extended on its accord, as if waving to them.
"That was creepy," Kaname observed.
"We're almost there," he encouraged her.
The meeting convened in a large-ish room with bare walls, concrete floors, and high, sterile ceilings. Even with his austere tastes, Sousuke noted that the space looked more suitable for storage than a class. The folding chairs formed five rows of five, and two tables were set up at the front. A dozen or so black boxes the size of mircowaves lined the far wall, and someone had set up a projection system. Sousuke recognized most of the faces in the room from his own SRT Pacific unit and the Atlantic one. The Indian unit had been wiped out four months ago, and their loss at the hands of a single Venom unit amid the otherwise unremarkable death toys of a small-time warlord had likely triggered Mithril's push to expand use of the Lambda driver.
One of the few people in the room not recognizable to Sousuke, a wiry man in his mid-twenties, greeted them.
"Ms. Chidori, we have save a seat for you at the far table," he said cheerily and pointed the way. He turned his attention to Sousuke with much less enthusiasm. "All pilots are welcome to any seat in the rows."
Kaname hesitated, and Sousuke read her fear. If the Whispers made an appearance, he couldn't be at her side. He selected the chair in the front row nearest to her table, caught her eye, and nodded. The corners of her pretty mouth quirked up in the tiniest of smiles. He would be there for her. They could make it work.
The room filled quickly, and as per the order, no one wore their insignia. The occupants of the front tables didn't look too familiar, but without their stripes, they could have been from R&D or from High Command for all Sousuke knew.
Melissa and Kurz were the last to arrive. Kurz winked at them while Melissa shoved him toward the empty seats at the back of the room. The laces on one of Kurz's boots were untied, and Melissa's hair stood up in every which direction. Kaname tilted her head and pointed at them under the table, so no one but Sousuke would notice. He shook his head. She was wrong; he knew better. It wasn't an illict affair that made their friends late and unkempt. It was a stop at the base cantina.
A woman in unmarked combat fatigues stood before the assembly and raised a hand to quiet the room.
"I am glad that Mithril has allowed us this time together," she began. "It is not an exaggeration to say that we must adapt to survive. Enabling and equipping all SRT units with Lambda drivers and trained pilots is just the first step."
Heads around the room nodded in agreement.
"We don't have time for introductions," she went on, "but even if we did, the information that we are about to share with you is too critical to be associated with names. Please trust that what you are about to see and hear comes from the best sources and the highest caliber intelligence. You may not take notes or discuss this meeting with anyone outside of this room."
She turned to the wiry man, and he scurried to take the floor. Even without official markings, Sousuke could tell that the man before him was no solider. There was something different in the way a man stood when he killed to earn his keep.
"I've taken the librerty of assembling the most recent clips from the field regarding our enemies. Please note the differing capabilities," the man started.
For the next fifteen minutes, they watched video clips of AS combat. Most of the footage had been harvested from the internal video feed on defeated Arm Slaves, but Sousuke recognized some shots from the Arbalest as well from the units of Gray, Kurz, Melissa, and the leader of the Indian squad. Most of it was recorded in the past three months. It wasn't hard to see the pattern. The quickness of the Venoms. The smash-and-grab tactics of the latest American M-10. The brute, blinding force of the frankensteined combination of the Savage with a hacked Lambda driver backpack. Sousuke had heard that in the rush to go Lambda, many small operations had begun retro-fitting any existing AS with a driver. Between his own experiences in the SRT and the recent training with MCA, none of the information was particularly new or revealing, but from the speechless wonder of the others, Sousuke suspected that most of the audience was not as well-informed.
When the footage stopped, the man turned back to the group.
"Our enemies are powerful, but they have made a critical error. As you should all know, the Lambda driver physically manifests human emotion. In other words, what you feel as you pilot your AS becomes reality. It takes both supreme confidence and incredible control to-"
"No."
Her voice echoed clearly in the bare room, and all eyes shifted to the seated, blue-haired girl. Kaname's balletic fingers glided over the table as if she were writing without paper or pen. Sousuke took in her dim eyes and slack mouth. The Whispers had her, but she did not appear to be in pain yet. He wondered if she would scream this time and how much trouble he would cause if he stole her out of the meeting and carried her out of that dank room into the sunlight.
"Not confidence. Will. It's not the same. Not the same," Kaname mumbled.
"Regardless, our enemies have made a mistake," the thin scientist continued. "They compromised power for control."
A series of schemas that made little sense to Sousuke flashed on the projection scene.
"We believe that our enemies forced the extraction of Lambda driver details from unwilling Whispereds, and as a result, their systems are less pure than ours. In other words, Mithril's Lambda drivers are the best in the business. " The wiry man paused as if expecting applause, but when the pilots only glared at him, he pushed up his wire-framed glasses and looked to the woman who had made the opening statement.
"'Best' isn't a comforting word to us," she prompted. "Everyone knows that Mithril suspended the introduction of more Arbalests when we could only find one person to pilot the deployed unit."
Sousuke felt the tingle of several sets of eyes settling on the back of his head.
"Pardon me, but are we to understand that Mithril has more than one Arbalest?" asked a Russian in the second row.
The thin man beamed. "Oh, we have something better than the Arba-"
"Mithril would like to confirm that we can train pilots to operate these advanced units before production is ramped up," the woman cut in.
The older gentleman seated next to her cleared his throat and reshuffled his stack of papers, and the thin man shifted nervously and turned his attention back to the projector.
"We discovered the Lambda driver through one of our Whispereds, but unfortunately, he did not have the knowledge to guide us to use it. His experiments in engineering a training device returned mixed results. After we lost him in unfortunate accident, Mithril suspended Lambda training. Our enemies did not. They do not value the sanity of their pilots like we do. They discovered that if the power of the Lambda driver is scrolled back, pilots can achieve limited success using by pyschostimulants and lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD for you crazy kids, in lieu of training."
An image of a young woman with crazed eyes, foaming at the mouth, and strapped into a gurney flickered across the screen. Sousuke had seen that expression before, frozen on the faces of pilots he had defeated.
"I'm sorry to interrupt, but I'm not taking any drugs," the Russian declared.
"Shut up, Mikhail. No one is saying you gotta screw with that stuff," Kurz broke in from the back row.
Sousuke turned around in time to see Melissa nod in agreement.
"Exactly," the scientist agreed. "The drugs overstimulate the frontal lobes which leaves users unable to control their impluses and irrational emotions. We don't want to 'go there'." He smiled at his own lame joke, but the thick silence in the room made him cough and shift his focus back to the task at hand. "Mithril recently acquired the assistance of a Whispered who specializes in Lambda drivers. Using the designs she supplied, my team was able to build the training devices that you see behind me."
Sousuke diverted his attention from Kaname to take a closer look at the black boxes. From his seat in the front row, he could see them clearly. A screen took up most of one side of the unit, and a thin wire connected to two electrodes provided the only input he could detect.
"The...ahhh...issue is, well, we aren't..." the man in glasses stammered, suddenly at a loss for words.
"Thank you, I can take it from here," the woman interjected. She stood up and smoothed her fatigues while the scientist skulked off to set up one of the boxes in the corner.
"We do face a significant challenge." She paused to tucked her hair behind her ears. Sousuke noted that she wore tiny silver crosses as earrings. None of the women in the combat units wore such jewelry, yet this woman had the hard look of a soldier. "We have tested the new training boxes on captured enemy pilots, so we can verify that they work. But we can't tell you how. We can only show you what we know."
She pointed to Sousuke and gestured for him to come forward. Whispering rippled through the room as he stood. If any of other pilots did not know of Sousuke's talents before, they would not forget his face now. Kaname watched as the scientist directed Sousuke into a chair and affixed the electrodes to his temples. She had the glassy look of a doll, but her hands rested calmly in her lap.
"If you could, please demonstrate how to trigger the Lambda driver," the woman with the earrings commanded.
Sousuke closed his eyes and re-enacted the same ritual that had always worked for him. He thought about Kaname- what it would feel like to lose her for good. He let the guilt and self-doubt bubble to the surface of his consciousness, and then he distilled all that emotion into a single point. He took a deep breath, just the way she had told him to do. Then, he imagined breaking through the imaginary wall to reach her.
A happy beep made him open his eyes. A graph on the screen of the black box spiked over the x-axis, and then dipped down to a jagged baseline.
"Can you tell us how you achieve that effect?" the woman asked.
"I think about doing whatever it takes to save someone," he responded.
Sousuke hated explanations. Actions were so much easier. The woman smiled at him, and he saw something motherly pass across her features. It reminded him of Kaname when she made him dinner. Kindness.
"Can you be more specific?" she asked gently.
Sousuke felt his palms go slick with sweat.
"Doesn't matter," Kaname's voice broke in. Her fingers traced some sort of design on the table. "A conquered fear. Self-doubt. Panic. Control."
"Please elaborate," the woman prompted Kaname. The girl's hands began to dance across the table again. She looked so pale.
"She means that you can't have confidence," Sousuke said.
"Hey, you guys know that you're not making sense, right?" Kurz complained from the back row.
Sousuke gulped while his mind spun in circles. How to explain it? It would be so much easier to just do it.
"Don't trust yourself. Don't want it. Do it," Kaname rattled off. "Find your fear and end it. Panic and then control it."
The woman pulled on a silver stud and sighed.
"Perhaps we can show the tape," she suggested.
The thin man jumped up to tinker with the projector while she continued. "We know from the tapes that pilots must do three things to fight with the aid of the Lambda driver. First is imprinting with the AS. Second, activating the defenses. Third, executing an effective attack. Ironically, the first step isn't fully complete until the third is achieved."
The man nodded to her, and the lights dimmed. Sousuke recongized the scene. It was from his first fight with the Arbalest against Gauron. The screen showed his point-of-view from the cockpit, and Kaname's voice walked him through the steps. Melissa and Kurz snickered when it got to the part where Kaname asked him to think about men hurting her to get Sousuke angry.
When the footage ended, Sousuke realized that Kaname was speaking. The woman in earrings watched the girl intently.
"-ideal pilot age: Under 21. Reason: Less developed frontal lobes lead to larger emotional surges," Kaname droned. "Ideal siutation: Desperate. Reason: Actual risk forces imprinting out of pilot need. Ideal combat: One on one, or one versus many. Reason: See above. Pilot cannot think about secondary aid. Forced controlled panic."
Kaname's words became unintelliable, and the woman moved to stand across from the Whispered girl. Every ear in the room strained to hear.
"You advised the pilot to imagine someone hurting you. Why?" she asked.
Kaname looked at her with empty eyes.
"Pilot: Young male. Loner. Lonely. Duty-driven. Emotional state: Conflicted. Suspected physical/emotional attachment. Exploit personal relationship to achieve imprint. Defense activiation complete following first enemy attack. Offense..." Kaname trailed off.
"Wow, who knew a teenage crush could power the scariest weapon since the atomic bomb?" quipped the scientist. Again, no one laughed.
Sousuke felt hot under the scrutiny of every person in the room as the commanding woman pinned him in her glaze.
"Please describe your relationship with her," she ordered and pointed at Kaname.
"I was assigned to protect her. We were classmates at the time," Sousuke got out.
The woman shook her head. "I mean emotionally. Did you have feelings for her?"
Sousuke stared at the wall to avoid making eye contact with anyone.
"Please be honest. It's for the greater good," the woman said gently.
"Yes," Sousuke admitted. "I was afraid to fail her."
"Have you used that fear to operate the Lambda driver since then?" she prodded him.
"Yes."
"Every time?"
"Affirmative."
The woman touched his shoulder.
"Thank you, you may go," she nodded to him. Sousuke didn't dare to look at Kaname as he fled the room.
Kaname felt someone touch her hand, and then she became aware again of the cold room in Building F. She remembered; they were there for Lambda driver training.
"Kaname?" someone called to her.
She blinked, and Melissa and Kurz came into focus.
"Jeez, you were out of it!" Kurz observed.
"Sorry," Kaname said absently. The headache retreated, and her own thoughts started to flow freely again. She took stock of the room. "What did I miss?"
Kurz and Melissa shared a strange look.
"What do you remember last?" Melissa asked.
"I remember that weird guy showing us video of AS combat," Kaname recalled. She frowned when her mind finally registered what was missing. "Wait, where's Sousuke?"
"That poor bastard," Kurz sighed.
"What did he do?" Kaname demanded.
"More like what did you do," Melissa poked her in shoulder. "You outed the guy as a dopey, love-lorn schmuck."
"And then you explained how you manipulated his crush on you to activate the Lambda driver. In front of half of High Command," Kurz picked up. He flashed her a toothy grin and a thumbs up. "Good job!"
"You can't be serious," Kaname groaned. She searched her head and recalled exactly nothing from the past 45 minutes.
"Now that you're back in the land of the living, do you think you could show me how to use this thing?" Kurz pointed to the black box on the table. "I should warn you that I'm way over my big crush on you, little sister, so you can forget about using that against me."
It took Kaname almost an hour to escape from Building F. Kurz figured out the device on the third try with very little coaching, but Melissa and the rest of the pilots had next to no success. The room echoed with the disappointing buzzing of the machines as they logged near-misses. The woman in charge had broken them into pods of two or three pilots per training machine, and Kaname bounced from group to group, trying to offer advice and tips. In the end, a couple of boxes were assigned to each SRT unit, and the meeting adjorned. Melissa disappeared with one of the devices given to her group almost immediately, but Kurz hung back with Kaname.
"You should apologize to him," Kurz advised her in a low voice as they rode the elevator to the surface.
"I don't even remember what I did!" Kaname argued. She couldn't be held responsible for the whims of the Whispers.
"So what?" Kurz reasoned. "He had to admit how much he cares about you, and you're just going to claim ignorance and pretend like he didn't just live every guy's nightmare?"
"If he cares so much, why didn't he stick around to make sure that my brain wasn't being eaten by a pack of Whispers! He didn't tell me anything!" Kaname hissed back.
"Unbelievable!" Kurz sagged against the railing on the elevators, ran a hand through his hair, and looked up at the ceiling. "Look, Angel, I'm only saying this because we're friends. You're an idiot."
The elevator's bell dinged, and the doors slid open. Kaname fumed as she and Kurz followed the crowd back through security and out the front door. Once outside, he caught up to her again. Kaname did her best to ignore him, but Kurz refused to be deterred. Kaname understood why Melissa hit the German so often. He could be so infuriating.
"That was mean, you know," she sniped at him.
"Mean but true." He stuffed his hands into his pockets and looked totally unrepentant. "Do you know what the worst feeling in the world is?"
"Having your friends insult you?" Kaname quipped.
"Saying I love you and not hearing it back," Kurz went on.
"He didn't say that he loves me."
"He might as well have." Kurz kicked at a loose stone on the path. "You gotta decide what is more important: being right or being with Sousuke."
When Kaname didn't answer, Kurz put a brotherly hand on her head.
"I'll take back the idiot comment when you stop acting like one," he said and then headed off down a different path.
Kaname thought about Kurz's advice for the rest of the walk back to her room. After the final test, the candidates had become official cadets and moved out of the communal barracks and into the MCA dorm. Kaname and Del shared a room next door to the three guys, who occupied one of the spacious corner suites. The rest of the rooms were filled out with upperclass cadets and a few warrant officers. Bear and Auntie had rooms somewhere else on the island.
Kaname did not realized that she had made up her mind until she passed her own door and stopped in front of Sousuke's. Before she could back out, she raised her hand and knocked.
Aristo answered the door, took one critical look at Kaname, and called for Sousuke. From the way the Greek glared at her, Sousuke had already told his roommates about what she had done.
"Kaname," Sousuke acknowledged her coolly when he stepped outside. He left the door open, and Kaname tried to ignore Dibs and Aristo staring at them from inside.
"Hey, can we go somewhere and talk?" she found herself asking. It would be hard enough to say what needed to be said without an audience. Sousuke nodded and took the lead. The dorms were too busy to be private.
It was weird, walking next to him in total silence. Things hadn't been this awkward between them since he used to follow her around when he had first arrived in Tokyo. Back then, she had thought he was just another creepy admirer. She caught herself smiling at the memory, but that expression shifted into a glare when Sousuke shoved her behind a shed.
"What are you-!" she got out before he pressed a hand over her mouth.
"So how are things with your sexy sergeant?" a female voice asked.
Kaname could hear two sets of footsteps coming down the path.
"Oh, stop it! You're embarrassing me. He is a member of my crew, you know," a familiar voice responded.
"You didn't answer my question," the other girl teased.
Tessa's light laugh was unmistakable. Of course, she would be back at base along with Weber and Mao. The TDD-1 had been on the docket for repairs since it dropped Kaname and Sousuke off on the island a little over two weeks ago.
"He told me that I was a very important person to him," she giggled. "And he called me Tessa!"
"That's it? It's been ages since we've had the chance to catch up. I thought you would have lots of juicy details."
"I'm supposed to meet up with him and some friends tonight. You should come, too!" Tessa pleaded.
"I can't. Work, you know..." the other girl sighed.
The voices moved away from their hiding place, and Kaname took stock of her companion's face. Sousuke's hair hung across his eyes, and when she touched his sleeve, he flinched like he had been expecting a blow instead. If Tessa's inane prattling hadn't been enough to push her over the edge, now Sousuke had to act like she was going to hit him.
She might have lashed out, but in that moment, the wind pushed Sousuke's hair back. Kaname could see how he had squeezed his eyes shut, as if trying to keep the world at bay. Of course, she realized when her anger abated enough to let her think straight, Tessa's comments were just as upsetting to him as they were to her. Fraterinization was the least of Sousuke's problems; he respected the chain of command and the boundaries of fellowship. Tessa's advances put him in the worst of positions, as both her friend and her subordinate.
"Let's go somewhere else, okay?" Kaname asked, careful to keep her tone soft. If she ever going to say it, she needed to do it soon or risk losing her nerve.
"There's a place in the warehouse that Kurz told me about," Sousuke said, pointing to the large brick-shaped building ahead.
"C'mon," Kaname prompted. She tried to sound comforting. Still, Sousuke seemed to drag his feet. She thought about yelling at him for being so slow but noted she wasn't moving any faster. In a few minutes, she would need to tell him, and the very thought of giving voice to the truth made her heart go cold.
She saw it first; once inside, a stray shaft of sunlight illuminated a blonde head ducking behind the stacks of crates in the dusty warehouse. Sousuke motioned her behind him, and they followed him through the labyrinth of discarded equipment and forgotten files. In the heart of the maze, Sousuke peeked around a corner, and then flattened himself against the stack of boxes. Kaname ducked past him to see what would bring Kurz Weber into a lonely warehouse.
Melissa heard him coming; that swagger in the footfalls coming towards her could belong to only one person. If she was lucky, she could get it done in time to have a witness. She closed her eyes, pushed out a breath, and tried. The buzzer went off, so she didn't even need to look at the screen to know that she had failed again. Melissa groaned and leaned back to get her sweaty hair out of her face. It was increasingly difficult to stop herself from smashing that damn box, especially when the hot, still air in the warehouse made her so irritable and tired.
He didn't say anything at first, just crouched behind her and pressed something deliciously cool between her exposed shoulder blades. He didn't need to explain how he had found her; he was the one who had told her about this spot. Building F's air circulation system had to go above ground someplace, and Mithril opted to disguise the enormous vent with the warehouse. The outer edges of the building were filled with the flotsam of the organization, but Kurz had been found a twisting path into the empty center surrounding the vent. They used to sneak back there to play poker with the other SRT guys.
"Hey, you," Melissa smiled without turning to look at him. "That better be beer."
"You know it," Kurz confirmed.
He trailed another cold bottle across her clavicle. The condensation from the chilled glass mingled with her sweat and trickled down her chest. It felt so wonderful that she tipped her head back, so he could work the bottle along her throat. He used his breath to cool her brow before crowning her with a kiss. She opened her eyes and reached for him. His lips were cool, and he tasted like ale.
It had been over three weeks since the last time they had a proper kiss, and Melissa had missed his slow style. Given the chance, Kurz took the time to do everything right.
The TDD-1 had picked up Peggy, the regular medic, on its last swing through base. The no-nonsense physician tracked down Melissa that afternoon and tackled the snoring problem with the Pillar procedure. The minor surgery hurt more than Melissa had expected, and the painkillers left her woozy and nauseated. She stopped taking them, and then her mouth hurt too much to eat or drink. She spent the week feeling like roadkill, and Kurz, to his credit, respected her need for space. After Peggy deemed her cured and Melissa felt well enough, the housing manager assigned her a new roommate, effectively killing any chance for privacy on the submarine. Then, a surprise operation delayed their return to base for an extra week. As soon as they had docked that morning at Merida Island, Melissa and Kurz managed to sneak away for the briefest of trysts, and they barely made it to Building F in time for the training. She thought that a physical release would ease the nagging ache that she had nursed since their last tumble, but as she sat in the back of the classroom, Melissa had arrived at the unpleasant conclusion that a quick encounter in an unused barrack hadn't satiated her need for Kurz's touch. She didn't like to admit how much she craved something as simple yet meaningful as an unhurried kiss.
"You want to take a break?" Kurz asked hopefully when he finally pulled away.
"I want to figure this out first," she said, tapping the electrodes back into place. The adhesive was no match for the humidity of the stuffy warehouse.
Kurz used the metal clip of his suspenders to crack open a bottle and held it out to her. When Melissa shook her head to refuse, he shrugged and took a pull for himself.
"You better work fast, babe, or there won't be any left for you," he teased.
"Like I need the motivation," she quipped. She turned back to the black box, shut her eyes, and tried again.
"Damn it!" she growled as the buzzer sounded out her failure.
"You want some pointers?"
"Not from you," Melissa shot back and then grimaced. She hadn't meant to sound so mean.
Of course, it didn't matter how bitchy she got. Melissa knew that she terrified most guys, even sturdy Mithril types, but she could say or do just about anything without fear (or hope) of getting rid of Kurz. He just didn't scare when it came to her. Of course, he was probably like that with all women, she reminded herself.
While she collected her thoughts for the next attempt at cracking the mystery of the box, Kurz sprawled out on the floor and ran the edge of his beer bottle down her arm.
"I'd be happy to help," he offered again.
"I'd be happy to hit someone right about now, so back off," she groused.
The buzzer blared out her failure, and Melissa put her head in her hands. "Damn it!"
"You're pretty when you're angry, you know."
"Shut up, Kurz," she pleaded. "Please."
It had to be the 'please' that tipped him off because she heard him set down the beer and scoot closer to her. When he spoke again, his voice was low in her ear.
"I'm sorry," Kurz said. "I know it's not easy. If it were, they wouldn't need to bother with the special training, right?"
"You made it look easy," she muttered. Melissa leaned back, and even though the heat was nearly unbearable, it felt good to let him hold her up. His hand, cooled from holding the beer, stroked the soft curve of her bicep.
"I have a lot practice with feeling too much and finding small ways to let it out," he admitted. "You know how much of what I do is an act."
She turned to rest her forehead on his shoulder.
He was right. She did know.
Kurz flirted shamelessly with every girl, but she had yet to hear about him taking anyone to bed but her. He joked around too much. He presented himself as a pretty-boy loser, but she counted on him to come through in combat, especially after Sousuke shifted to part-time status. The team depended on him, and she forgot that he was six years her junior more often than she cared to admit.
"If you've got any advice, I'm listening," she said into his shirt. If he could admit the truth, then so could she.
He tugged on her hair and laughed in relief. "You got it."
She reached forward and reset the box while Kurz repositioned himself to sit just behind her.
"Alright, you gotta conjure up the worst thing that you can imagine to really make it work," he coached.
"What do you think I've been doing?" she snapped.
"Easy, babe. I'm trying to help here." His voice dropped, so she had to strain to catch his next words. "Don't get mad because I'm really serious here. Whatever you've been trying isn't enough. You have to think about the absolutely most gut-wrenching, painful scenario that you can dream up. Real scary shit."
Melissa sighed. She had been thinking about saving her squad. Her men were her best friends and more, but now that she thought it through, she realized that she could do worse. What soldier doesn't fear losing her comrades? Hadn't she lost men before and made it through? It wasn't easy to admit what she feared the most.
"Okay. Got it," she said after a moment.
"Really think it through. Imagine all the gory details," Kurz instructed. "The more specific, the better."
Melissa shuddered. Her mind wanted to stop, to shut down and think about something else. Her mouth went dry. A part of her tried to pull back on her focus. Maybe she should sip on a little beer and then try again, it offered.
She set her jaw and forced out temptation.
"Now, what ever it is, just stop it. Find way to break through," he directed.
And she did.
The machine beeped merrily, and Melissa ripped off the electrodes and whooped in glee.
When she turned around, Kurz was leaning back on one hand and taking a drag from his beer with the other.
"That's my girl," he declared.
"I'm not your girl," she scoffed.
"Oh really?" Kurz asked smugly.
Melissa snatched away his beer, pinned Kurz to the floor, and held him down while she drained his bottle. Then, she grabbed the other beer and popped it open the heel of her boot. She expected him to fight her for it, but when she brought it to her lips, she noticed him smirking at her.
"What?" she asked
He hooked a leg over her chest, slammed her backwards, and was on her before the beer could spill.
"Your close combat is getting better-" she got out before his mouth closer on hers.
Kaname had to stuff her mouth into the crook her her elbow to keep from laughing out loud. She was right; just around the corner, Melissa and Kurz were kissing like it was the end of the world. Kaname suspected that they would be doing more than that in a few minutes, and so she pulled back to avoid seeing more than she needed. Sousuke would have to admit that he was wrong now.
One look at him, however, and Kaname didn't feel like gloating. Sousuke looked miserable. Between the incident in Building F, overhearing Tessa's comments, and catching his closest friends going at it in a sweatbox of a warehouse, Sousuke was having a terrible day.
He noticed her watching him, and his shoulders sagged lower. He opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it. Melissa and Kurz would hear them. Crouching down, he traced a simple message in the dirt on the warehouse floor.
SORRY.
Kaname felt her heart twist because he had done it again. She was the one who should be apologizing. She knew that she could be petty and selfish and foul-tempered, but Sousuke was a really sweet guy, despite his cluelessness. She usually called him names, but Kurz was right. She was the idiot today, and he deserved to know that much.
She looked him the eyes and shook her head. Then, she leaned over and erased his missive. He frowned, not understanding. Sousuke tried again, spelling out another message on the floor.
I'M WRONG.
She shook her head and smudged away the words with the toe of her boot.
He stared at the floor like she had erased his last happy memory instead of a silly message. Then he knelt and tried again, but she caught his hands and found his eyes. He didn't understand. Why would he? In all their time together, she never had to apologize. He always took the blame. He let her be prideful.
She put her finger to the floor and tried to spell it out for him, but words failed her. How could she explain her heart in a handful of dust?
And he looked so sad.
Kaname swallowed her pride for once and wrapped her arms around his neck.
He softened against her touch, and unlike that day in the hallway at school when she had cried on his chest, Sousuke didn't hesitate to hold her back. She stepped closer, pressing her whole self to him, and he held her there.
After nearly two years of inaction, Kaname almost laughed at how easy it was to be in his arms.
"Kaname." He said her name like a confession and a question.
"It's okay," she whispered back, and his head dropped into the bend of her neck.
She closed her eyes and breathed into him.
"It's so sweet. I think I'm going to be sick," Melissa's voice cut into the perfect moment.
Sousuke pulled away so fast that Kaname nearly toppled over.
"You guys are so busted," grinned Kurz.
Kaname felt her face go hot. "Speak for yourself," she huffed, and it was Melissa's turn to flush.
"Sergenat Sagara, I need a word with you," she barked and marched back through the boxes with a rigid Sousuke following a step behind.
"Mel, wait!" Kurz called after her, but she disappeared around the corner without so much as a backwards glance. Kurz kicked at the dust. "Shit. There she goes."
"She'll be back," Kaname chimed in.
Kurz seemed to cough. She thought the dust had gotten to him, so when she looked over to him, she didn't expect to see tears in the corners of his eyes. He managed a weak smile.
"Ever hear of fraternization? We can't even ask you and Sousuke to cover for us without getting you in trouble, too." Kurz rubbed at his eyes. "Nope. That's the end of my time with the best woman in the world- no offense to you, Angel."
Kaname's temper finally snapped. It had been a trying day, and damn it all, someone deserved to be happy at the end of it.
"You love her, right?" she roared.
'What does it matter?" Kurz shook his head. "That girl is gone gone gone."
"If you love her, you're going to get her!" Kaname proclaimed. "I have a plan."
She grabbed Kurz by the elbow and dragged him after her.
