~ Oops...I Did It Again; I Ran Out of Fuel ~
Tick,
tick, tick, the timer sang rather innocently. And then...BOOM! The
mobile suit repair and maintenance shop exploded into a million pieces,
literally flying through the air in all directions.
"It's
Judgment Day, I tell you! Judgment Day's upon us!"
"You
baka, it's just a bomb!"
"Oh.
Oh, heh, heh, it's just a...bomb?!"
Amidst all the chaos and confusion, nobody noticed
a thin, boyish figure stealthily creep away from the storage room, cloaked
in shadows.
A few miles away...
Heero
Yuy dumped the barrels of Vernea rocket engine fuel, needed to run the
Wing Gundam Zero, onto the grassy shore of a small river.
"Mission
accomplished," the fifteen-year-old gundam pilot muttered seriously to
himself, and promptly picked up a can and began filling the tank of his
winged MS.
* * *
Duo
Maxwell sauntered into the mobile suit supplies store, lugging with him
a giant shopping bag of God only knew what. The braided American set his
shopping bag onto the polished linoleum floor as he walked up to the counter
and asked the salesclerk behind the desk, "How much do two cans of Vernea
rocket engine fuel cost?"
The girl readily named a price, to which Duo
squinched up his face in reply. Yikes! he thought silently to himself,
wincing at the inflated price of the rather rare mobile suit fuel.
"Oh,
well," he muttered to himself, shrugging. "Guess I'll have to do it the
old-fashioned way, then," before taking his shopping bag and walking into
the nearest restroom, selecting two cans of fuel along the way.
Fifteen
minutes later, a slim, violet-eyed girl with flowing, waist-length chestnut
hair and excessive makeup strolled out from the direction of the restrooms.
One man paused to stare at her as she walked past him.
"Damn,
lady, those little friends of yours are bigger than beach balls!" he remarked.
"Thanks,"
the 'girl' called out in a surprisingly masculine voice.
* * *
The
group of OZ soldiers walked up to the counter of the MS Supplies 'R' Us
store, and slammed half a dozen cans of mobile suit fuel onto the counter.
"Charge
all this to the OZ account," the soldier in the lead said loudly to the
salesclerk. The tall teenage boy standing behind the counter, his one visible
dark green eye discreetly examining the officers, began to dutifully check
off the items, not bothering to flick away his gigantic mop of bronze-colored
bangs, which was covering his other, barely visible eye. As the cashier
finished his task and the OZ soldiers left the store, he quickly glanced
over to the windows, where one could see a large flatbed truck with several
items protruding from underneath the gigantic canvas tarp which covered
its cargo, the objects shaped suspiciously like large barrels of mobile
suit fuel. The salesclerk raised a hand-held recording device to his lips
and recited into it, "Trowa Barton reporting. Infiltration complete. Objects
retrieved. Mission to acquire Vernea fuel is...highly successful."
* * *
"Closer,
closer, closer," Rasid called out, waving around a couple of red lights
at the gigantic blue delivery truck. "Closer...closer...Stop!"
The truck obediently stopped, and the driver
cut the engine and hopped out of his vehicle, opening the back of the truck.
The forty Maganacs then proceeded to trot over to the truck, and began
unloading the several dozens of barrels of Vernea rocket engine fuel. Rasid
walked over to a pale, angelic blonde boy overseeing the operation, bowed,
and said respectfully, "Master Quatre, the mobile suit fuel has arrived
as per your request."
Quatre Raberba Winner beamed, and said cheerfully,
"Thanks a lot, Rasid." Her jerked his thumb toward a nearby garage and
said, "Just put them all over there."
Just
then, the truck driver walked over toward Quatre and, chewing a wad of
tobacco as he did so, mumbled, "Hey, kid, da boss told me to inform ya
that yer our Customer of the Month--yet again."
In response, Quatre beamed.
* * *
"I'd like to talk to you about women," the slender, dark-haired Chinese boy hollered from atop a statue in the plaza. "I don't like them. They're weak and unmanly, and yet they insist that they're equal to us manly men! It is an injustice that we have to share our lives with women, and it is an even bigger injustice that women think they can do everything manly men like myself can accomplish. Women are weak, and they belong in the kitchen, barefoot and humble, and preparing dinner for manly men like myself. And another thing about weak women who think they can stand up to manly men like myself..."
"...And
on to the subject of ginger-haired Aryans..."
One passerby stopped to watch the raving lunatic
perched on the statue, shook his head, and tossed up a coin at the boy.
"Hey,
kid, go buy yourself a life with this," the man hollered up. Chang Wufei
stopped raving about Aryans for a while, picked up the coin, dumped it
into a satchel which was stuffed to the brim with pity money, and promptly
jumped off the statue and headed toward the mobile suit supply store, muttering
about the injustice of having to deal with Aryan men sporting ginger-colored
hair all the way.
* * *
The
cameras panned in for a close-up shot of Zechs Merquise and Treize Khushrenada,
who were looking innocently into said camera.
"What?"
Zechs demanded. "We're in the military. All expenses fully paid (when on
missions, anyway). 'Nuff said."
