Well, tomorrow is my big organic chemistry final, and we all know what that
means... Hey SkyE, do you still have any of that muse spray?
Disclaimer: Gundam Wing is owned by people far more rich and powerful than I am (for whatever that's saying). Warnings: AU, shounen ai (1+2) Author's Ramblings: Okay, when I went off to college, I started writing these "everyday life" stories. This is sort of the culmination of them, since it depicts what I think would happen if the guys lived "normal" lives and met in college. I know that this idea is far from new, but hey, you know what they say; you write what you know.
Welcome Distractions
By Rapunzel
Chapter 20: Satisfactory Endings
(or Everyone Needs a Cameo)
Relena stretched lazily as she stepped out into the sunshine. May had come, and the weather was being nice for a change, with clear skies and warm temperatures. Her good mood was helped along not only by the weather, but by the day of the week as well. It was Sunday, one of the best days of the week, in her opinion, and all of her school work was done. She was free! Free! Free! At least until tomorrow.
"You look like you're practically floating on air," Dorothy observed wryly.
Relena beamed at her roommate. "It's just such a lovely day, don't you think so? I love Sundays!"
"I've always been more partial to Saturdays, myself," Dorothy mused. "But never mind that; we'd better get going, or there won't be any day left to enjoy."
"Oh, yes, of course!" Relena followed her roommate towards the parking lot. Since they both had free time on their hands, Dorothy had offered to take her out shopping. Relena had agreed; she liked getting away from the dorms, and Dorothy's car made such outings possible. Relena herself hadn't brought her car, and so she relied solely on her roommate for transportation.
Unfortunately, it was a bad day to rely on that.
The first indication Relena had that all was not as it should be was when she nearly walked into Dorothy's back. The blond was standing at the edge of the parking lot behind the freshman dorms, her back rigid, her face displaying an expression of blank shock.
"What's wrong?" Relena asked.
Dorothy didn't answer verbally, she simply raised a finger and pointed.
Looking out into the parking lot, Relena quickly spotted Dorothy's car. It was the only yellow car in the entire place, and it stood out a little normally. Now, it stood out even more, for it was resting on blocks. All four tires were missing.
"Oh!" Relena exclaimed. "Someone's vandalized your car! Do you think it was Wufei?"
Slowly, Dorothy shook her head. "It can't be. It was fine yesterday, and he's been gone all weekend."
"Then who?" Relena asked.
"I don't know, but I intend to find out." Dorothy's icy tone implied that when she did find out, the perpetrator would suffer greatly at her hand.
"Maybe we should call the police," Relena suggested tentatively.
Dorothy was about to answer, when something caught her eye. Hurrying over to the car, she snatched a piece of paper from under one of the windshield wipers and read it. Then, snarling, she handed it to Relena.
It was actually several sheets of paper, Relena realized. On the front one was written a sort of poem.
A wrong avenged, with justice done With new foe, a war begun. Wufei may not have been so tough But I am made of sterner stuff.
For carelessness, you now must pay For innocents caught in your way. Do not seek me, I am gone. I came here just to right a wrong.
But hunt a while, you'll surely want What I have taken on this jaunt. I'm not so cruel; you'll see I've left Directions to help the bereft
Just remember as you seek your pelf You brought this down upon yourself.
"I don't understand," Relena said. "What's it talking about?"
"I'm not sure," Dorothy said. "But I've found my tires. Whoever did this somehow unlocked the door and put them in the back seat."
"Well, that's good!" Relena said, brightening. Curiously, she removed the top paper containing the type written poem and looked at the one underneath it. It was a map of the campus, with an X marked on the parking lot they were at. Flipping back that page too, she was surprised to find a list of instructions, the first of which read, "Begin at the X and take twenty paces to the north."
"Dorothy, look at this!" Relena exclaimed. Dorothy came over grudgingly and surveyed the paper. Then she looked back at Relena, confusion written all over her face. "Do you think we should follow it?" Relena asked.
Dorothy considered it, looking over the instructions again. "There are various stopping points in here. Let's go as far as the first one and see what we find."
And so, they wandered around the campus in a vague series of loops, backtracking every so often to try and follow the directions precisely. This was difficult to do, as most of the instructions specified a direction, such as north or south, and neither of them had a compass. Finally, after about twenty minutes, they reached the first stopping point, in front of a large oak tree.
Going up to the tree, Dorothy surveyed it, then, finding a small bowl in it, reached her hand up and groped around inside. A moment later, she let out a triumphant cry, and pulled something down, only to look at it and begin cursing violently.
"What is it?" Relena asked.
Dorothy held out her hand. In it was a small, metal object.
"A lug nut?" Relena asked, confused.
"From my car," Dorothy ground out.
"Well, at least we found it," Relena said consolingly.
"We found one," Dorothy snarled. "We need nineteen more to make my car functional again." And she snatched up the directions, looking at them and stalking off.
Relena sighed heavily as she trailed after her roommate. Suddenly, Sunday didn't seem like such a nice day anymore.
~*~*~
When Heero returned to the dorms late Sunday afternoon, the whole place was practically buzzing. Most of the people living in the building seemed to be clustered in the lounge or in the area around the front door, and almost all of them were talking excitedly about something or other.
Heero was ready to dismiss the whole thing as nonsense, and was just trying to think of a way to get through the crowd without anyone trying to drag him in for a conversation, when everyone suddenly went quiet. Looking to see what had caused the abrupt silence, Heero turned around in time to behold Dorothy, looking extremely pissed about something, striding down the stairs. Most of the people in her path parted to make way for her, and she passed through and out the front door without so much as a glance at her clustered dorm mates. The minute the door closed behind her, however, everyone began talking even louder than before.
As much as his common sense told him to just ignore the whole thing, Heero's curiosity was piqued. Whatever was going on, it obviously involved Dorothy and something unpleasant. He had a sneaking suspicion that Duo was right, and Quatre had chosen this weekend to have his revenge. While it probably wasn't a good idea to get involved, Heero wanted to know exactly what the blond had done. And after all, he mollified, it would be a good idea to know what was going on anyway, just in case he or Wufei became involved.
With that thought in mind, he cautiously approached a long haired girl standing near the edge of the crowd. He recognized her easily; she was one of the girls from the second floor who had offered him a place to live. Happily, she wasn't the one who had taped the picture of Wufei above her bed, but Heero was still wary of her as he asked, "What's going on?"
She gave him a surprised look. "You mean you haven't heard?"
Heero just shook his head.
"Well, it seems that your roommate isn't the only one who has it in for Dorothy."
"Wufei isn't here," Heero put in quickly at the mention of his roommate. It was a good idea to point that fact out, just in case. After all, the last thing he wanted was for Dorothy to engage in another vengeance-crazed attack on Wufei.
"I know," the girl said. "And Dorothy knows it too. I think that's why she's so upset. If she knew who it was, she would at least have a target. But right now, she doesn't have a clue."
"What happened?" Heero wanted to know. "What did this unknown person do?"
A girl from the first floor overheard the question, and inserted herself into the conversation, seeming pleased to have a fresh audience. "It was terrible! Dorothy went out this morning and found that someone had taken all four tires off her car!"
Heero blinked. "That's it?" he asked. The way Duo had gone on about Quatre's plots, he'd been expecting something more elaborate. "Someone just stole her tires?"
"Oh no," a young man from the second floor said, sidling over to join in the telling of the tale. "They weren't stolen. Someone just took them off and hid all the lug nuts."
"And Relena told me that they left a treasure map telling her where to find them! They were out all morning, looking for them," the girl from the first floor said.
The guy from the second floor chuckled. "I live in the room right next to hers, and so I got to listen when she called her parents to complain. Ooh, you should have heard her screech!"
"I think the whole thing was very clever, myself," the long haired girl said. "A lot of fuss, but no permanent damage done. Too bad Dorothy doesn't see it that way."
"She is _pissed_," said the girl from the first floor, laying a heavy emphasis on the word "pissed."
"What do you think they did it for?" the guy asked.
The long haired girl shrugged. "Maybe her reputation as a prankster has gotten out, and someone is challenging her."
"But that can't be!" the other girl objected. "Relena said that there was a note, and it mentioned justice!"
"That sounds like Wufei."
"But it's not Wufei. It can't be; he's not here."
"That's really a good thing for him, if you think about it..."
Heero left them to their speculations and slipped quietly away towards his room. They would probably spend most of the rest of the day talking about it, but he doubted that any of them would ever guess the real reason behind the whole thing.
Quatre's revenge was complete.
~*~*~
The next day, as Heero was preparing to leave for the library, he was surprised to hear Duo calling his name. Looking around the area, he finally spotted his boyfriend standing over by one of the other dorm buildings. A young woman with her light brown hair in two twists was standing next to him.
"Hey Heero!" Duo greeted him enthusiastically.
"What are you doing here?" Heero asked. "Don't you normally have to work soon?"
Duo shrugged. "Not today. One of my coworkers swapped shifts with me so he could get the time off to go somewhere with his girlfriend. So I though I'd come visit you, and then I ran into Sally here." He gestured at the young woman next to him. "Heero, this is Sally. She was a friend of mine last year who became an RA. Sally, this is Heero."
"I think I've heard about you," Sally said, smiling. "Aren't you the one with the roommate who's always trying to get back at one of the girls on the second floor?"
That surprised Heero. "Wufei, yes, I'm his roommate. How did you know?"
"Noin and I are pals," Sally said.
Heero frowned. "Noin? Who's that?"
" 'Who's that'?" Sally repeated incredulously. "She's one of the RAs for your building!"
"I know the RA on the third floor is female," Heero said slowly. "But I thought her name started with an L."
" Lucrezia. That's her first name, but she's not too fond of it, so most of us just call her Noin," Sally explained.
Heero just nodded. It was a little disturbing, once he thought about it, to think that the RAs spent their free time swapping stories about their residents. Then again, maybe Wufei and Dorothy were just a special case. After all, they had both done some rather extraordinary things to each other.
"Actually," Sally continued, "speaking of Noin, I'm planning to enlist her for my little project here." She gestured vaguely, and Heero finally noticed what she was standing in front of. It was a large wooden box full of soil. Sitting on the ground next to it were a few small flower containers, fresh from the nursery, from the look of them.
"You're gardening?" Heero guessed.
"Yup!" Sally looked enthusiastic. "And I'm thinking about recruiting my residents, and maybe even some of Noin's residents, if she agrees, to help me. Right now, though, I'll settle for roping Duo into the project."
"You're laboring at a lost cause, hon," Duo told her with a shake of his head. "I don't live here any more, remember?"
"That doesn't mean you can't help me today," Sally protested. "All I'm doing is putting in the flowers."
"I'll help," Heero volunteered.
"See?" Sally gestured at Heero. "Here he is sacrificing his time for the betterment of the dorm community..."
"Fine, fine," Duo interrupted. "You're evil and conniving sometimes, Sally, but okay, I'll help you."
So, Heero spent an hour digging holes in the flower box and listening to Sally and Duo quip at each other. Things were relatively peaceful until they reached the end of the planting. That was when Duo got a hold of the hose.
The first Heero knew about it was when he heard Sally shriek. Turning around, he saw that she was soaking wet from the waist up, and Duo was standing a few feet away, garden hose in his hand and a mischievous grin on his face.
"You said you wanted to cool down," Duo offered by way of explanation.
"You brat!" Sally howled. "I'm wearing white too!"
Duo shrugged, totally unrepentant. "If you're gonna flash the goods, at least you get to do it in front of someone like me who doesn't care."
"That's not the point! What are my residents going to think? I'm supposed to be dignified in front of them!"
"Dignity be damned," Duo responded.
An evil gleam came into Sally's eyes. "Well, in that case..." She made a lunge for the hose, but Duo danced out of her way, holding the hose above his head and splashing her again in the process. Heero had just decided to leave them to their childish games when a blast of cold water hit him in the back. In trying to get away from Sally, Duo had inadvertently squirted him as well.
"Duo..." he growled menacingly.
"Um, would you believe me if I said that that was an accident?" Duo asked.
Heero's glare was answer enough.
"Let's get him!" Sally crowed.
"No! Wait! Two against one isn't fa-ack!"
Two against one might not have been fair, but Heero and Sally didn't especially care at that moment. They both sprang at Duo, Heero holding him down while Sally attempted to wrestle the hose away from him. Both of them got soaked for their efforts, but they were past caring at that point. After all, they fully planned to make Duo suffer the same fate.
"Heero, you traitor!"
~*~*~
Wufei was walking back from his class towards Nebula, when he heard the sounds of a struggle. Curious, he altered his course slightly and headed over to one of the neighboring dorm buildings. The sight that met his eyes there made him pause.
His roommate was there, rolling around on the ground with Duo, attempting to pin the other. There was also a woman he had never seen before, sopping wet holding a garden hose. She had Duo by the braid and was attempting to stuff the hose down the neck of his shirt.
"What a bunch of weirdoes," Wufei muttered to himself, shaking his head as he walked away.
~*~*~
"I must admit, this wasn't exactly how I planned to spend the afternoon," Heero said.
Duo didn't look up from where he was spreading his shirt out on the lawn to dry. "But you've got to admit, it sure beats doing homework."
"Are you sure no one's going to care if we just sit out here without our shirts on?" Heero asked.
"Judging from the looks you're getting," Sally said, gesturing to an admiring group of females nearby, "I think they'd be more upset if you put the shirts back _on_."
"That's kind of what I'm worried about," Heero muttered, eyeing the girls warily.
"Your shirt will dry faster this way," Duo said, stretching out in the grass next to Heero.
"Oh you who can actually take your shirts off to let them dry," Sally groused.
"You could too, you know," Duo said cheekily. "After all, you said yourself, you're wearing white, and as long as the shirt's wet, you might as well not be wearing one."
Sally leaned over and smacked Duo on the head. "And whose fault is it that my shirt is wet?"
"Now don't get mad," Duo protested. "Just look at it as an excuse to sit outside in the warm weather and enjoy the sunshine before summer comes in earnest and it gets too hot to move."
"I won't be here for the summer," Sally told him with a smirk. "I could care less how hot it gets here."
"You're leaving?" Heero asked.
"Yup. I move out at the same time you do, the end of finals."
"That's not all that far away," Heero mused.
"Thank goodness," Sally sighed. "I'm ready for this year to end. I just have to get through the chaos that always comes at the end of the year, and then I'm free!"
/Free,/ Heero thought, /at least until next year./
~*~*~
"This is ridiculous!"
"What is?" Heero asked, despite the fact that he thought he already knew what Wufei was talking about.
"How can they expect us to pack and take finals at the same time?!" Wufei demanded, throwing a set of school supplies into a box rather haphazardly. "It's absurd! We're supposed to be studying, and they want us out by the end of the week! I have a final that day! What the hell am I supposed to do?"
Heero shrugged. "Find somewhere else to stay," he suggested.
Wufei sent him a withering look. "You say it as if it's easy."
Heero shrugged again. For him, it had been. Most of his stuff was going into storage for the summer anyway, so he didn't have to worry about where to keep it. As for where he was going to stay, he'd already made arrangements to stay with Duo. Heero smirked slightly, thinking that it was a good thing all his finals would be over by then, since he doubted he'd be able to get much studying done.
"You look entirely too smug," Wufei groused irritably.
Heero quickly wiped the smirk off his face. It wouldn't do to let Wufei know what he'd been thinking.
However, a minute later, the smirk was replaced by a genuine smile as there was a knock on the door and Duo stuck his head in. "Hey guys!" he said. "How's the packing coming?"
"Miserably," Wufei answered. "And how did you get in?"
"Sally let me in," Duo replied. "Not that she really needed to. I swear, I should get a job as a doorman, holding the door open for people carrying lots of stuff out of the building. It seems to be all I've done so far anyway."
"Don't you have finals to study for?" Wufei asked, looking not at all happy to see him. Then again, he had been feeling unhappy in general for days, so Heero wasn't sure if Duo was the cause of the frown on his face.
"I'm done with my finals," Duo answered, grinning at him.
"Lucky bastard," Wufei growled.
"What are you doing here?" Heero asked. It wasn't that he wasn't glad to see Duo, but Duo almost never came to the dorms unless he had a specific errand there.
"I've come to enjoy sitting on an island of calm in the sea of chaos," Duo said.
"Meaning?"
"Meaning I've come to amuse myself by watching all you guys scrambling to finish finals and packing."
"Have you no compassion?" Wufei sputtered. "Must you amuse yourself by watching our suffering?" He got a look on his face that Heero quickly recognized as the one Wufei often had when he was about to launch into a rant. Hastily, he interjected himself.
"I'm almost done packing, why don't I go with you," he blurted.
"Okay," Duo agreed, "but I'm not really doing anything. Just wandering around seeing if people need a hand. Oh, and as for delighting in your suffering, your RAs do it too. What do you think Sally and Noin are doing right now?"
~*~*~
Actually, at that moment, Sally and Noin were engaged in a slightly different activity.
"Isn't he the most gorgeous thing you've ever seen? Look at that hair!" Noin gushed.
"I don't know," Sally replied critically surveying the blond man Noin had pointed out. "It's probably not natural. It looks almost like he bleached it."
"Nonsense. His eyebrows are the same color," Noin protested. "But I wasn't referring to the color, I was talking about the length. How many guys do you know with hair that long?"
"There's Duo," Sally answered immediately.
Noin didn't seem to hear her. She was trying to catch the eye of the blond man, which was rather difficult, as he had his back to her just then.
Sally gave him another critical look over, then shook her head. "He's not my type," she said decisively.
"Oh, good," Noin said. "That leaves the field open for me."
At that moment, the blond man's attention was drawn by Relena, who stuck her head out of her room and said, "Milliardo, will you please help me with this?"
"Enough watching," Noin muttered. "I'm going in."
Sally watched, mildly amused, as Noin sauntered up to room 210 and engaged Relena in conversation. "How's the moving out going? Need any help?"
"Oh no, thank you," Relena answered politely. "My brother and I can manage."
"So, this is your brother, is it?" Noin turned to the man with a bright smile. "I'm Lucrezia Noin, the RA from the third floor."
The blond man smiled. "I'm Zechs." Relena cleared her throat rather pointedly behind him, and he amended, "That is, my name is Milliardo Peacecraft, but I go by Zechs."
"Well, that's not too unusual. I usually go by Noin, instead of my first name..."
Growing bored, Sally turned around and sauntered down the hallway, leaving Noin behind her to discuss names and nicknames with Milliardo Peacecraft. At the end of the hall, she ran into Duo and Heero, who were apparently having a small argument.
"Come on, Heero, she's not going to bite," Duo was saying.
"I wouldn't be too sure about that," Heero muttered.
"Surely you're not going to let Dorothy keep you off the second floor altogether," Duo said.
"Dorothy's gone," came Noin's voice from behind them. "She had her last final yesterday."
Sally turned to smile at her friend. "That was fast. How'd it go?"
Smiling triumphantly, Noin held up a small slip of paper.
Sally whistled. "He gave you his phone number?"
"Uh huh!" Noin was beaming.
"Who's this?" Duo asked, peering at the piece of paper.
"His name is Zechs, and he's Relena's brother," Noin explained. "All I can say is, damn, but I wish she'd had him visit her sooner!"
Noin then went off happily describing all of Zechs' various attributes, and Heero tugged on Duo's arm. "Let's go," he said, and Duo nodded, allowing himself to be towed away from the two RAs.
~*~*~
"Ready to go?"
Heero smiled at his boyfriend as he hefted the last of his luggage into the back of Duo's car. "Almost."
"Are you going to miss the dorms?" Duo asked, looking back at the buildings behind them.
"I don't know. Do you?"
"Yes and no," Duo answered. "I liked living there, but there are some advantages to leaving. You can keep in touch with the people you liked, and you don't have to associate with the people you didn't."
Heero nodded vaguely as he looked back at the dorms. "Well, I'm not sorry to leave. And I think we'll have fun on this road trip of yours."
"You bet we will!" Duo said enthusiastically.
"And when you drop me at home, you can meet my parents," Heero continued.
"Oh, yeah." Duo sounded a little less enthusiastic about that, but he quickly brightened again. "Well, enough standing around. If you're done packing, let's get this show on the road! Goodbye college, and hello freedom!"
Heero smiled as he closed the trunk and moved around to the front seat. Hello freedom indeed.
Owari
AN: Finally! It's finished! Okay, so I didn't accomplish my goal of finishing it within a year. It was a nice dream...
On a different note, M.E. has suggested that there will be people who will want a sequel to this (i.e. Heero's Sophomore year). My response is as follows. I'm done. Finished. That's it. It's over. That's all she wrote. No more. Twenty chapters ought to be enough for anyone. It's certainly enough for me. I have no plans to continue this story, and, baring an all out raving attack by a horde of muses, I probably never will. The most you can hope to get out of me is a side story, and then only if M.E. finds something really good to bribe me with.
Disclaimer: Gundam Wing is owned by people far more rich and powerful than I am (for whatever that's saying). Warnings: AU, shounen ai (1+2) Author's Ramblings: Okay, when I went off to college, I started writing these "everyday life" stories. This is sort of the culmination of them, since it depicts what I think would happen if the guys lived "normal" lives and met in college. I know that this idea is far from new, but hey, you know what they say; you write what you know.
Welcome Distractions
By Rapunzel
Chapter 20: Satisfactory Endings
(or Everyone Needs a Cameo)
Relena stretched lazily as she stepped out into the sunshine. May had come, and the weather was being nice for a change, with clear skies and warm temperatures. Her good mood was helped along not only by the weather, but by the day of the week as well. It was Sunday, one of the best days of the week, in her opinion, and all of her school work was done. She was free! Free! Free! At least until tomorrow.
"You look like you're practically floating on air," Dorothy observed wryly.
Relena beamed at her roommate. "It's just such a lovely day, don't you think so? I love Sundays!"
"I've always been more partial to Saturdays, myself," Dorothy mused. "But never mind that; we'd better get going, or there won't be any day left to enjoy."
"Oh, yes, of course!" Relena followed her roommate towards the parking lot. Since they both had free time on their hands, Dorothy had offered to take her out shopping. Relena had agreed; she liked getting away from the dorms, and Dorothy's car made such outings possible. Relena herself hadn't brought her car, and so she relied solely on her roommate for transportation.
Unfortunately, it was a bad day to rely on that.
The first indication Relena had that all was not as it should be was when she nearly walked into Dorothy's back. The blond was standing at the edge of the parking lot behind the freshman dorms, her back rigid, her face displaying an expression of blank shock.
"What's wrong?" Relena asked.
Dorothy didn't answer verbally, she simply raised a finger and pointed.
Looking out into the parking lot, Relena quickly spotted Dorothy's car. It was the only yellow car in the entire place, and it stood out a little normally. Now, it stood out even more, for it was resting on blocks. All four tires were missing.
"Oh!" Relena exclaimed. "Someone's vandalized your car! Do you think it was Wufei?"
Slowly, Dorothy shook her head. "It can't be. It was fine yesterday, and he's been gone all weekend."
"Then who?" Relena asked.
"I don't know, but I intend to find out." Dorothy's icy tone implied that when she did find out, the perpetrator would suffer greatly at her hand.
"Maybe we should call the police," Relena suggested tentatively.
Dorothy was about to answer, when something caught her eye. Hurrying over to the car, she snatched a piece of paper from under one of the windshield wipers and read it. Then, snarling, she handed it to Relena.
It was actually several sheets of paper, Relena realized. On the front one was written a sort of poem.
A wrong avenged, with justice done With new foe, a war begun. Wufei may not have been so tough But I am made of sterner stuff.
For carelessness, you now must pay For innocents caught in your way. Do not seek me, I am gone. I came here just to right a wrong.
But hunt a while, you'll surely want What I have taken on this jaunt. I'm not so cruel; you'll see I've left Directions to help the bereft
Just remember as you seek your pelf You brought this down upon yourself.
"I don't understand," Relena said. "What's it talking about?"
"I'm not sure," Dorothy said. "But I've found my tires. Whoever did this somehow unlocked the door and put them in the back seat."
"Well, that's good!" Relena said, brightening. Curiously, she removed the top paper containing the type written poem and looked at the one underneath it. It was a map of the campus, with an X marked on the parking lot they were at. Flipping back that page too, she was surprised to find a list of instructions, the first of which read, "Begin at the X and take twenty paces to the north."
"Dorothy, look at this!" Relena exclaimed. Dorothy came over grudgingly and surveyed the paper. Then she looked back at Relena, confusion written all over her face. "Do you think we should follow it?" Relena asked.
Dorothy considered it, looking over the instructions again. "There are various stopping points in here. Let's go as far as the first one and see what we find."
And so, they wandered around the campus in a vague series of loops, backtracking every so often to try and follow the directions precisely. This was difficult to do, as most of the instructions specified a direction, such as north or south, and neither of them had a compass. Finally, after about twenty minutes, they reached the first stopping point, in front of a large oak tree.
Going up to the tree, Dorothy surveyed it, then, finding a small bowl in it, reached her hand up and groped around inside. A moment later, she let out a triumphant cry, and pulled something down, only to look at it and begin cursing violently.
"What is it?" Relena asked.
Dorothy held out her hand. In it was a small, metal object.
"A lug nut?" Relena asked, confused.
"From my car," Dorothy ground out.
"Well, at least we found it," Relena said consolingly.
"We found one," Dorothy snarled. "We need nineteen more to make my car functional again." And she snatched up the directions, looking at them and stalking off.
Relena sighed heavily as she trailed after her roommate. Suddenly, Sunday didn't seem like such a nice day anymore.
~*~*~
When Heero returned to the dorms late Sunday afternoon, the whole place was practically buzzing. Most of the people living in the building seemed to be clustered in the lounge or in the area around the front door, and almost all of them were talking excitedly about something or other.
Heero was ready to dismiss the whole thing as nonsense, and was just trying to think of a way to get through the crowd without anyone trying to drag him in for a conversation, when everyone suddenly went quiet. Looking to see what had caused the abrupt silence, Heero turned around in time to behold Dorothy, looking extremely pissed about something, striding down the stairs. Most of the people in her path parted to make way for her, and she passed through and out the front door without so much as a glance at her clustered dorm mates. The minute the door closed behind her, however, everyone began talking even louder than before.
As much as his common sense told him to just ignore the whole thing, Heero's curiosity was piqued. Whatever was going on, it obviously involved Dorothy and something unpleasant. He had a sneaking suspicion that Duo was right, and Quatre had chosen this weekend to have his revenge. While it probably wasn't a good idea to get involved, Heero wanted to know exactly what the blond had done. And after all, he mollified, it would be a good idea to know what was going on anyway, just in case he or Wufei became involved.
With that thought in mind, he cautiously approached a long haired girl standing near the edge of the crowd. He recognized her easily; she was one of the girls from the second floor who had offered him a place to live. Happily, she wasn't the one who had taped the picture of Wufei above her bed, but Heero was still wary of her as he asked, "What's going on?"
She gave him a surprised look. "You mean you haven't heard?"
Heero just shook his head.
"Well, it seems that your roommate isn't the only one who has it in for Dorothy."
"Wufei isn't here," Heero put in quickly at the mention of his roommate. It was a good idea to point that fact out, just in case. After all, the last thing he wanted was for Dorothy to engage in another vengeance-crazed attack on Wufei.
"I know," the girl said. "And Dorothy knows it too. I think that's why she's so upset. If she knew who it was, she would at least have a target. But right now, she doesn't have a clue."
"What happened?" Heero wanted to know. "What did this unknown person do?"
A girl from the first floor overheard the question, and inserted herself into the conversation, seeming pleased to have a fresh audience. "It was terrible! Dorothy went out this morning and found that someone had taken all four tires off her car!"
Heero blinked. "That's it?" he asked. The way Duo had gone on about Quatre's plots, he'd been expecting something more elaborate. "Someone just stole her tires?"
"Oh no," a young man from the second floor said, sidling over to join in the telling of the tale. "They weren't stolen. Someone just took them off and hid all the lug nuts."
"And Relena told me that they left a treasure map telling her where to find them! They were out all morning, looking for them," the girl from the first floor said.
The guy from the second floor chuckled. "I live in the room right next to hers, and so I got to listen when she called her parents to complain. Ooh, you should have heard her screech!"
"I think the whole thing was very clever, myself," the long haired girl said. "A lot of fuss, but no permanent damage done. Too bad Dorothy doesn't see it that way."
"She is _pissed_," said the girl from the first floor, laying a heavy emphasis on the word "pissed."
"What do you think they did it for?" the guy asked.
The long haired girl shrugged. "Maybe her reputation as a prankster has gotten out, and someone is challenging her."
"But that can't be!" the other girl objected. "Relena said that there was a note, and it mentioned justice!"
"That sounds like Wufei."
"But it's not Wufei. It can't be; he's not here."
"That's really a good thing for him, if you think about it..."
Heero left them to their speculations and slipped quietly away towards his room. They would probably spend most of the rest of the day talking about it, but he doubted that any of them would ever guess the real reason behind the whole thing.
Quatre's revenge was complete.
~*~*~
The next day, as Heero was preparing to leave for the library, he was surprised to hear Duo calling his name. Looking around the area, he finally spotted his boyfriend standing over by one of the other dorm buildings. A young woman with her light brown hair in two twists was standing next to him.
"Hey Heero!" Duo greeted him enthusiastically.
"What are you doing here?" Heero asked. "Don't you normally have to work soon?"
Duo shrugged. "Not today. One of my coworkers swapped shifts with me so he could get the time off to go somewhere with his girlfriend. So I though I'd come visit you, and then I ran into Sally here." He gestured at the young woman next to him. "Heero, this is Sally. She was a friend of mine last year who became an RA. Sally, this is Heero."
"I think I've heard about you," Sally said, smiling. "Aren't you the one with the roommate who's always trying to get back at one of the girls on the second floor?"
That surprised Heero. "Wufei, yes, I'm his roommate. How did you know?"
"Noin and I are pals," Sally said.
Heero frowned. "Noin? Who's that?"
" 'Who's that'?" Sally repeated incredulously. "She's one of the RAs for your building!"
"I know the RA on the third floor is female," Heero said slowly. "But I thought her name started with an L."
" Lucrezia. That's her first name, but she's not too fond of it, so most of us just call her Noin," Sally explained.
Heero just nodded. It was a little disturbing, once he thought about it, to think that the RAs spent their free time swapping stories about their residents. Then again, maybe Wufei and Dorothy were just a special case. After all, they had both done some rather extraordinary things to each other.
"Actually," Sally continued, "speaking of Noin, I'm planning to enlist her for my little project here." She gestured vaguely, and Heero finally noticed what she was standing in front of. It was a large wooden box full of soil. Sitting on the ground next to it were a few small flower containers, fresh from the nursery, from the look of them.
"You're gardening?" Heero guessed.
"Yup!" Sally looked enthusiastic. "And I'm thinking about recruiting my residents, and maybe even some of Noin's residents, if she agrees, to help me. Right now, though, I'll settle for roping Duo into the project."
"You're laboring at a lost cause, hon," Duo told her with a shake of his head. "I don't live here any more, remember?"
"That doesn't mean you can't help me today," Sally protested. "All I'm doing is putting in the flowers."
"I'll help," Heero volunteered.
"See?" Sally gestured at Heero. "Here he is sacrificing his time for the betterment of the dorm community..."
"Fine, fine," Duo interrupted. "You're evil and conniving sometimes, Sally, but okay, I'll help you."
So, Heero spent an hour digging holes in the flower box and listening to Sally and Duo quip at each other. Things were relatively peaceful until they reached the end of the planting. That was when Duo got a hold of the hose.
The first Heero knew about it was when he heard Sally shriek. Turning around, he saw that she was soaking wet from the waist up, and Duo was standing a few feet away, garden hose in his hand and a mischievous grin on his face.
"You said you wanted to cool down," Duo offered by way of explanation.
"You brat!" Sally howled. "I'm wearing white too!"
Duo shrugged, totally unrepentant. "If you're gonna flash the goods, at least you get to do it in front of someone like me who doesn't care."
"That's not the point! What are my residents going to think? I'm supposed to be dignified in front of them!"
"Dignity be damned," Duo responded.
An evil gleam came into Sally's eyes. "Well, in that case..." She made a lunge for the hose, but Duo danced out of her way, holding the hose above his head and splashing her again in the process. Heero had just decided to leave them to their childish games when a blast of cold water hit him in the back. In trying to get away from Sally, Duo had inadvertently squirted him as well.
"Duo..." he growled menacingly.
"Um, would you believe me if I said that that was an accident?" Duo asked.
Heero's glare was answer enough.
"Let's get him!" Sally crowed.
"No! Wait! Two against one isn't fa-ack!"
Two against one might not have been fair, but Heero and Sally didn't especially care at that moment. They both sprang at Duo, Heero holding him down while Sally attempted to wrestle the hose away from him. Both of them got soaked for their efforts, but they were past caring at that point. After all, they fully planned to make Duo suffer the same fate.
"Heero, you traitor!"
~*~*~
Wufei was walking back from his class towards Nebula, when he heard the sounds of a struggle. Curious, he altered his course slightly and headed over to one of the neighboring dorm buildings. The sight that met his eyes there made him pause.
His roommate was there, rolling around on the ground with Duo, attempting to pin the other. There was also a woman he had never seen before, sopping wet holding a garden hose. She had Duo by the braid and was attempting to stuff the hose down the neck of his shirt.
"What a bunch of weirdoes," Wufei muttered to himself, shaking his head as he walked away.
~*~*~
"I must admit, this wasn't exactly how I planned to spend the afternoon," Heero said.
Duo didn't look up from where he was spreading his shirt out on the lawn to dry. "But you've got to admit, it sure beats doing homework."
"Are you sure no one's going to care if we just sit out here without our shirts on?" Heero asked.
"Judging from the looks you're getting," Sally said, gesturing to an admiring group of females nearby, "I think they'd be more upset if you put the shirts back _on_."
"That's kind of what I'm worried about," Heero muttered, eyeing the girls warily.
"Your shirt will dry faster this way," Duo said, stretching out in the grass next to Heero.
"Oh you who can actually take your shirts off to let them dry," Sally groused.
"You could too, you know," Duo said cheekily. "After all, you said yourself, you're wearing white, and as long as the shirt's wet, you might as well not be wearing one."
Sally leaned over and smacked Duo on the head. "And whose fault is it that my shirt is wet?"
"Now don't get mad," Duo protested. "Just look at it as an excuse to sit outside in the warm weather and enjoy the sunshine before summer comes in earnest and it gets too hot to move."
"I won't be here for the summer," Sally told him with a smirk. "I could care less how hot it gets here."
"You're leaving?" Heero asked.
"Yup. I move out at the same time you do, the end of finals."
"That's not all that far away," Heero mused.
"Thank goodness," Sally sighed. "I'm ready for this year to end. I just have to get through the chaos that always comes at the end of the year, and then I'm free!"
/Free,/ Heero thought, /at least until next year./
~*~*~
"This is ridiculous!"
"What is?" Heero asked, despite the fact that he thought he already knew what Wufei was talking about.
"How can they expect us to pack and take finals at the same time?!" Wufei demanded, throwing a set of school supplies into a box rather haphazardly. "It's absurd! We're supposed to be studying, and they want us out by the end of the week! I have a final that day! What the hell am I supposed to do?"
Heero shrugged. "Find somewhere else to stay," he suggested.
Wufei sent him a withering look. "You say it as if it's easy."
Heero shrugged again. For him, it had been. Most of his stuff was going into storage for the summer anyway, so he didn't have to worry about where to keep it. As for where he was going to stay, he'd already made arrangements to stay with Duo. Heero smirked slightly, thinking that it was a good thing all his finals would be over by then, since he doubted he'd be able to get much studying done.
"You look entirely too smug," Wufei groused irritably.
Heero quickly wiped the smirk off his face. It wouldn't do to let Wufei know what he'd been thinking.
However, a minute later, the smirk was replaced by a genuine smile as there was a knock on the door and Duo stuck his head in. "Hey guys!" he said. "How's the packing coming?"
"Miserably," Wufei answered. "And how did you get in?"
"Sally let me in," Duo replied. "Not that she really needed to. I swear, I should get a job as a doorman, holding the door open for people carrying lots of stuff out of the building. It seems to be all I've done so far anyway."
"Don't you have finals to study for?" Wufei asked, looking not at all happy to see him. Then again, he had been feeling unhappy in general for days, so Heero wasn't sure if Duo was the cause of the frown on his face.
"I'm done with my finals," Duo answered, grinning at him.
"Lucky bastard," Wufei growled.
"What are you doing here?" Heero asked. It wasn't that he wasn't glad to see Duo, but Duo almost never came to the dorms unless he had a specific errand there.
"I've come to enjoy sitting on an island of calm in the sea of chaos," Duo said.
"Meaning?"
"Meaning I've come to amuse myself by watching all you guys scrambling to finish finals and packing."
"Have you no compassion?" Wufei sputtered. "Must you amuse yourself by watching our suffering?" He got a look on his face that Heero quickly recognized as the one Wufei often had when he was about to launch into a rant. Hastily, he interjected himself.
"I'm almost done packing, why don't I go with you," he blurted.
"Okay," Duo agreed, "but I'm not really doing anything. Just wandering around seeing if people need a hand. Oh, and as for delighting in your suffering, your RAs do it too. What do you think Sally and Noin are doing right now?"
~*~*~
Actually, at that moment, Sally and Noin were engaged in a slightly different activity.
"Isn't he the most gorgeous thing you've ever seen? Look at that hair!" Noin gushed.
"I don't know," Sally replied critically surveying the blond man Noin had pointed out. "It's probably not natural. It looks almost like he bleached it."
"Nonsense. His eyebrows are the same color," Noin protested. "But I wasn't referring to the color, I was talking about the length. How many guys do you know with hair that long?"
"There's Duo," Sally answered immediately.
Noin didn't seem to hear her. She was trying to catch the eye of the blond man, which was rather difficult, as he had his back to her just then.
Sally gave him another critical look over, then shook her head. "He's not my type," she said decisively.
"Oh, good," Noin said. "That leaves the field open for me."
At that moment, the blond man's attention was drawn by Relena, who stuck her head out of her room and said, "Milliardo, will you please help me with this?"
"Enough watching," Noin muttered. "I'm going in."
Sally watched, mildly amused, as Noin sauntered up to room 210 and engaged Relena in conversation. "How's the moving out going? Need any help?"
"Oh no, thank you," Relena answered politely. "My brother and I can manage."
"So, this is your brother, is it?" Noin turned to the man with a bright smile. "I'm Lucrezia Noin, the RA from the third floor."
The blond man smiled. "I'm Zechs." Relena cleared her throat rather pointedly behind him, and he amended, "That is, my name is Milliardo Peacecraft, but I go by Zechs."
"Well, that's not too unusual. I usually go by Noin, instead of my first name..."
Growing bored, Sally turned around and sauntered down the hallway, leaving Noin behind her to discuss names and nicknames with Milliardo Peacecraft. At the end of the hall, she ran into Duo and Heero, who were apparently having a small argument.
"Come on, Heero, she's not going to bite," Duo was saying.
"I wouldn't be too sure about that," Heero muttered.
"Surely you're not going to let Dorothy keep you off the second floor altogether," Duo said.
"Dorothy's gone," came Noin's voice from behind them. "She had her last final yesterday."
Sally turned to smile at her friend. "That was fast. How'd it go?"
Smiling triumphantly, Noin held up a small slip of paper.
Sally whistled. "He gave you his phone number?"
"Uh huh!" Noin was beaming.
"Who's this?" Duo asked, peering at the piece of paper.
"His name is Zechs, and he's Relena's brother," Noin explained. "All I can say is, damn, but I wish she'd had him visit her sooner!"
Noin then went off happily describing all of Zechs' various attributes, and Heero tugged on Duo's arm. "Let's go," he said, and Duo nodded, allowing himself to be towed away from the two RAs.
~*~*~
"Ready to go?"
Heero smiled at his boyfriend as he hefted the last of his luggage into the back of Duo's car. "Almost."
"Are you going to miss the dorms?" Duo asked, looking back at the buildings behind them.
"I don't know. Do you?"
"Yes and no," Duo answered. "I liked living there, but there are some advantages to leaving. You can keep in touch with the people you liked, and you don't have to associate with the people you didn't."
Heero nodded vaguely as he looked back at the dorms. "Well, I'm not sorry to leave. And I think we'll have fun on this road trip of yours."
"You bet we will!" Duo said enthusiastically.
"And when you drop me at home, you can meet my parents," Heero continued.
"Oh, yeah." Duo sounded a little less enthusiastic about that, but he quickly brightened again. "Well, enough standing around. If you're done packing, let's get this show on the road! Goodbye college, and hello freedom!"
Heero smiled as he closed the trunk and moved around to the front seat. Hello freedom indeed.
Owari
AN: Finally! It's finished! Okay, so I didn't accomplish my goal of finishing it within a year. It was a nice dream...
On a different note, M.E. has suggested that there will be people who will want a sequel to this (i.e. Heero's Sophomore year). My response is as follows. I'm done. Finished. That's it. It's over. That's all she wrote. No more. Twenty chapters ought to be enough for anyone. It's certainly enough for me. I have no plans to continue this story, and, baring an all out raving attack by a horde of muses, I probably never will. The most you can hope to get out of me is a side story, and then only if M.E. finds something really good to bribe me with.