"Just one more day." Rain wheedled.
Chibodee folded his arms with a mulish look. "I wanna get up NOW."
"Please stay in bed, Chibodee." Bunny pleaded. "We'll bring you whatever you want."
"I WANT to get up." Chibodee stuck to his guns.
"I'll sit on you if I have to, Chibodee. You're staying right where you are." Shirley told him sternly.
"FINE!" he unhappily capitulated, sulking.
Rain smiled brightly. "It's only for the day, Chibodee. You can get up tomorrow, okay? I'll go get you breakfast."
She was met outside the tent by the rest of the Shuffle Alliance, George first. "I heard some of what went on in there. I trust he wasn't too very difficult?"
Rain smiled while bustling around, fixing Chibodee a plate. "You just have to know how to deal with him."
George lifted an eyebrow. "I've found him to be incorrigible no matter what methods are used."
"Shirley." Rain replied simply.
George nodded appreciatively. Over the past few days, as Chibodee recovered, they had all stayed near the camp, and in the time they had spent together George (among others) had learned to tell Chibodee's crew apart.
George had also spent a good deal of this downtime thinking about Marie Louise- if he had been anyone else, this would have been classified as daydreaming. She was so different from the women here.
'Of course, she isn't a woman. Princess Marie- Louise is a girl.' he sternly told himself.
'However, she is no ordinary girl.' a traitorous little voice in his head piped up.
George hastily shut off that line of thought. "I suppose if Chibodee is well enough to bellow, recovery must not be far away."
"I'm going to let him get up tomorrow. But I think he's going to be unpleasantly surprised; he'll probably be a little shaky." Rain sighed. "And you know Chibodee; he'll want to train, and track down whoever it was that did this to him and beat them up."
"We won't let him do anything too stupid." Domon offered.
"Didja get those ingredients I asked you for, Bro?" Sai Saici asked Raymond, newly arrived from another shopping trip.
Raymond smiled. "I was able to find them all, Sai Saici." He pulled a bag out of the pile at his feet.
Sai rifled through it twice before satisfying himself that everything was there. "All right!" he whooped, springing into the air with a fist raised. "Thanks, Bro!" He zoomed off into the woods, where they saw him leap into a tree and begin swinging from branch to branch.
Rain looked after him wistfully. "I wish I could find some way to get that much energy."
Domon harrumphed. "I don't. That kid's a maniac." There was clearly affection in his voice.
"Now that we don't have to worry about Chibodee, let's get back to this." Nastasha shook a paper at them, the bold headline reading "War Imminent? Peace Talks Break Down"
"Nastasha, we've been over and over this and I don't see anything we can do, except go back to the colonies and try to advise our leaders." Rain argued.
"If we present a united front and make it clear we won't tolerate war, perhaps that will help." Argo suggested.
"Are we agreed, then?" Domon asked.
Everyone nodded.
"Someone will need to tell Chibodee and his girls, and Sai Saici. When do we leave?" Nastasha made the simple inquiry sound like an order.
"We should probably wait until at least the end of this week to leave." Rain thought aloud. "Chibodee should be fine by then. I'll go tell them now, if it's all right with all of you." She stood upon receiving their nods.
The rest of them sat in silence, somehow not quite as glad to go home as they should have been.
*
That night, Asherah crept into their camp. 'You'd think the Shuffle Alliance, of all people, would be more careful, especially when they have civilians along.'
She went straight to Chibodee's tent, having watched all of them earlier that day. Her opinion of the fighter Domon Kasshu went up another notch; he seemed to have a vague, uneasy feeling that something was out of place, but couldn't find a cause.
She stepped inside. Chibodee was asleep on one cot, situated in the middle of the tent where it was easily accessible. The girls had apparently pushed their small cots together on either side of their employer, far enough away not to crowd him but close enough to notice any disturbances.
They seemed to be soundly asleep. To ensure that things stayed that way, Asherah reached into a pocket and came out with a rag and a small vial. She moistened a corner of the cloth and moved from one girl to another, doing it so smoothly they didn't so much as twitch.
Replacing the vial and rag, she cleared her throat.
Nothing.
Sniffing in displeasure, she solidly thumped his foot. Chibodee bolted upright upon noticing the figure standing at the end of his bed.
"You!" he gasped, trying to untangle himself from his blanket.
"Don't bother getting up." She dismissed his attempts with a careless wave of the hand.
"Who are you?" Chibodee demanded, more than a little irritated.
"My name is Asherah."
"What the hell do you want with me?"
Asherah sighed and seated herself on the edge of Cath and Bunny's bed. "I used to work for the Neo- American government."
"Doing what?" he pressed, catching an edge in her voice.
"I was a spy, an assassin, whatever was needed."
"…"
"I'm sure you know that the colonies are just about ready to declare war on one another. The situation on Earth isn't much better. The people there are sick of the Gundam fights, of their home being destroyed. A rogue operative- also from the Neo- American government, named Jonas Harrington- is selling weapons to the people of Earth, and further agitating them. For the past year I- and certain contacts of mine- have been working against him, so things aren't as bad as they might be otherwise. But things are coming to a head, and I need your help."
"The way to get my help," Chibodee informed her through gritted teeth, "is not attacking and teasing me."
"I did that to show you your own weakness. I've watched all of you for a long time, Chibodee Crocket, and while the others just might be able to scrape out of this alive, you have several vulnerabilities that combined make you a weak point in the team."
She overrode him before he could protest. "You fight like a boxer, relying on strength. You have Argo Gulskii for strength, and his is much more of an asset. You lose your temper. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but you can't see red. You have to channel and control that anger, turn it into a force that you can use in combat. You're impulsive. Making quick decisions is one thing, but being impulsive is another- you have to act quickly and use your brain.
"I'm going to keep coming back and kicking your ass until you can," she ticked off the points on slim fingers, "quit relying on strength and learn to think more like a martial artist, use your temper to your advantage, learn to think, and, moreover, to think in stressful, life- threatening situations. You're going to have to learn how to be more resourceful, to notice everything about your surroundings."
"And how am I going to learn all this?" Chibodee inquired sarcastically.
"The same way you learn anything else." Asherah was unperturbed by his rancor. "I'll teach you, then I'll test you."
"Teach me." he flatly repeated.
"Teach you." she confirmed. "I'll tell and show you what to do, drill you on it, then test you. When you can bring it all together and make a worthy stand against me, I'll leave you alone."
"And what if I say no?" he challenged.
"I'm going to show up, regardless. It's up to you if you learn the easy way or the hard way- if you let me show you, or if you learn by getting your ass kicked over and over and over again." She got up. "I have to go. I'll come back tomorrow night, after you've mulled over this for a while." Asherah slipped out of the tent and was gone before Chibodee could get out more than two words of a protest.
Chibodee lay back, pondering the strange young woman, and it was a long while before he was able to fall asleep.
So, how do you like Asherah? I'm sorry I wasn't able to get this out earlier- our computer wouldn't connect to the Internet. But my uncle gave me his old one, which is very nice, so hopefully I'll be able to update more often from now on. Thanks for reading, please review!