Aishiteru
Chapter Ten
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia
12:00 PM Local Time, Winner Mansion, L4-A01
"Understood. I will be there to pick you up within two hours. Smoke out." The monitor flickered off at the click of a button and the chair squeaked as it swivelled to permit its occupant release.
"Whatchya doin?" Wu Fei was startled to find himself faced with his former commandress in chief smiling innocently up at him.
"That is none of your business, Girl. Has Lady Une not taught you against sneaking up on your elders?"
"Oooo ... why so secretive, Wu Fei? Are you trying to slip a lover into the party under Quatre's nose? Will you make her climb up the trellis?" Wu Fei choked slightly and felt the blood rush to his face despite himself.
"You are entirely too young to be speaking in such a manner. It is not the place of a young lady to be making allusions to that sort of impropriety."
"If you say so," she answered flatly. "So who were you chatting with? It seemed a very terse discourse. Having a bit of a lover's quarrel, were we?"
"It is none of your concern and I would advise you to drop the subject. And what we?"
"What's wrong? You don't think a twelve year old is capable of grasping your 'adult' problems?" Mariemaia rolled her eyes. "I've heard that line a few times before. So how'd you screw up with Sally this time?"
"What!?" Wu Fei roared. "Will you get out of here! Couldn't you be telling the other juvenile delinquents how you took over the world instead of harassing me on matters you have no involvement in?" And with that, a less-composed-than-he-would-have-liked Wu Fei grasped her by the shoulders and guided her out the door of his room. When he finally released her, she stood outside his doorway, straightened her clothes, and more than a little smugly removed herself and her well-bred poise; off to find someone else to vex.
"Mother says I'm not to discuss global domination anymore ..." she murmured absently to herself, making her way down the hall. As she approached the stairway, she was ambushed by the household's two youngest guests, effectively knocking both her, as well as themselves, to the carpeted floor with noises of varying degrees of surprise. They had been fleeing, she realized, as the booming of heavier footsteps made their way up the stairwell, soon accompanied by a villainous "Mwahahahaha!" as their pursuer spied the small heap of tangled limbs.
Before she could extricate herself, Duo swooped down upon them, attacking with skilled fingers from which no one was spared. Amid shrieks and giggles, pleas for mercy were choked out, and finally the braided wonder relented, positioning the breadth of his body above them on widespread arms and knees, effectively keeping all three of them huddled together, pinned beneath him.
"Now then," he began jovially, "Just what were you all up to this morning, and how did Mommy end up lying down for a nap in a bed with jell-o in the sheets?" The two in question giggled nervously, while Mariemaia began to struggle.
"I had nothing to do with it!" Mariemaia spat with an accompanying scowl, resentful of the humiliating position, as well as being implicated with the four-year-olds. Carefully, Duo knelt up, freeing all three from his bodily prison without letting them escape his reach.
"Ezra did it!" Hope squealed, scooting backwards until her back bumped the wall, watching with delight even as Ezra scowled at her, mouthing the word 'traitor.'
"Did you put jell-o in Mommy and Daddy's bed?"
"No!" he shook his head defiantly, crossing arms stubbornly over his chest.
"Uh-huh, did you put jell-o in a bed?" He seemed less sure of himself.
"Well ... it wasn't Mommy's bed ... at the time. . . ."
"You know better than to ruin Uncle Quat's things."
"But it was Marie's bed!" he stopped abruptly, mid whine, glancing apprehensively from father to self-proclaimed-sovereign.
"It's Mariemaia, you little peon! And what do you mean, my bed!"
"Well, it was when we got the jell-o!" he stressed the 'we', shooting a glare at Hope, "B'fore Mommy asked Uncle Quatre to change the rooms around, dunno why she wants ta be closer to the kitchen anyway, but then we'd already done it!"
"And why would you want to put jell-o in Marie's bed anyway, little hell-raiser?" Duo gave him a poke in the ribs.
"Mariemaia!" Her cries went unheard.
"Cause she put a daddy-longlegs in my salad at thanksgiving." Duo couldn't help but understand the simple logic in the argument ... and it worried him. Thankfully, he was reprieved from any immediate action.
"Hark! the Q-man cometh. You can explain to him why he now has a very grumpy guest and a very stained set of sheets." With surprising grace, Duo scrambled to his feet, hanging on to Ezra's shirt in one hand. "And what does he mean, you put a spider in his salad?"
"It was a Pholcidae."
"What?"
"Pholcus phalangioides." Offered a new, somewhat confused voice as Quatre took stock of the situation lain out before him.
"Ah, yes ... good ol' Pholcus phalangioides. Torn hundreds of legs offa them. Here, Ezra has something he'd like to tell you."
"Um. . . ."
*
Two Hours Later
She flipped a page absently and smiled at what the glossy paper had effectively hidden. When she finished committing each pigmented pixel of the photograph to memory, she began reading the article, only to toss the magazine quickly under the dresser when her mother knocked on the door and without pausing for a response, entered the room. Mothers never waited for permission.
"Mariemaia?" Lady Une poked her head into the room and found her daughter lying on her stomach, feet up in the air, legs crossed at the ankles, and staring up at her innocently.
"Yes, Mother?" she answered with a smile.
"Just wondering where you went off to. Are you all unpacked?"
"Yes, Mother. I just finished and was about to go downstairs."
"And do what?"
"I promised I would tell Ezra and Hope a story in exchange for them acting civilly to me for the remainder of the trip."
"The jell-o."
"Oh, you've heard about the ... debacle, I see."
"And what story were you planning on telling them?"
"Just some fairy-tale," Mariemaia responded nonchalantly with a wave of her hand.
"NOT Little Red-Riding-Hood."
"But-!"
"No. It had better be G-rated; they're only four." Mariemaia's smile turned into a scowl and she stuck her tongue out at her mother's back as she left. When she was again alone, she stretched her arm under the dresser with a "hmph," felt around for a moment before retrieving her magazine, then quickly thumbed back to the article on South American soccer teams.
*
Half an Hour Later
"A-ha!" Duo's eyes sparkled gleefully as he retrieved the last can of his favorite soda from it's hiding place in the back of the refrigerator and slipped through the rear kitchen door.
He was walking down the hall with his head tilted back to savor the last bit of carbonated sugar-water when he heard a small squeal from the door he had just passed. Duo paused in mid step, then walked backwards as words started drifting into his ears.
"But the shoe ... sisters ... and then ... pigsty...." He recognized the voice as Mariemaia's but he couldn't decipher the story from the bits and pieces audible through the door. Duo placed his free hand on the door handle, turning it gingerly, and pushed the door open silently. "...so to make the shoe fit, the sisters were ordered to take the meat-cleaver and chop off their heels and toes since they would have no need to walk once one of them was queen-" Mariemaia was cut off with a shriek from Hope as she clamped her hands over her ears and started chanting "I can't hear you! I can't hear you!" to herself.
"What on Earth are you telling them? First of all it's still light out, so you have no business reciting horror stories. You are old enough to know the basic fundamentals of scary story telling; rule number one - it must be after dark, with the obvious exception of power outages where the teller preys on the natural human fear of lost control. Now if you were in a particularly unusual or frightening setting, I would see the extenuating circumstances, and therefore permit your dissidence. But come on! This is a mansion! It's not even a creepy mansion with, say, rotten stairs or bats in the attic. It's Quatre's mansion, for crying in the mud! Only there is no mud! I doubt if there's a single cobweb on this entire colony. And so, needless to say, you have some explaining to do." Duo waited patiently for his request to be fulfilled while Hope and Ezra stared blankly at him, reeling at the unexpected spiel from a previously absent parental figure.
Mariemaia, on the other hand, was completely composed and about to rebut when suddenly two shrill voices drowned out each other and completely precluded any possible response from her lips. Apparently, it had dawned on the children that Mariemaia was in trouble and at the moment, they were willing to take any opportunity presented to them to make her situation more condemning.
Finally some understanding had been met by the two and they chorused in perfect unison, "Mariemaia's making up stories!"
"And they're bad!"
"She's telling lies!"
"And trying to scare us!"
"No mommy'd make her kids cut off their feet!"
"A good princess would make them stop before they got hurt!"
"What's a princess got to do with it?" Ezra turned to look at her as if she had two heads.
"Cinderella's a princess; princesses are all kind and forgiving everyone." Hope explained matter-of-factly.
"Yeah, but she's not a princess now, she's just a maid."
"But she's still a princess!"
"Nuh-uh, only when the birdies dropped stuff on her! It wore off!"
"Princessness doesn't wear off, you dumb boy!"
"How would you know!"
"Cause I'm a girl! Girls know everything about princesses! So there!"
"That's stupid! Why would you know more than me?"
"Cause I am one!"
"Are not!"
"Quatre called me one! I bet no one ever called you a princess!"
"Not if they don't wanna get beat up!"
"You can't beat anyone up!"
"Can too!"
"Can not!"
"Too!"
"Not!"
"Too!"
"Not!"
"Too!"
"O-Kay! Fighters -- to your corners!" Duo finally stepped in between the rapid fire, "I mean it; sit. Both of you. Marie, your turn."
"Mariemaia," she corrected for the umpteenth time. "And it was not a horror story, as you put it. I was simply telling them a fairytale: Cinderella, unabridged, circa A.D. 1812."
"I see. And is it A.D. 1812?"
"No. . . ."
"Then I think it stands to reason that you should either be telling them an updated version, or be waiting until after dark, as per the rules of scary story telling. I'll be commandeering the imps now; Hilde's got ... crafts ... or something ... set up for them. I'm foreseeing glitter in Quatre's Persian rugs." He grimaced and waved his hands melodramatically over an imagined crystal ball. "And you just know that I'm gonna be the one blamed for it." With a huff he turned on his heel, an "imp" caught under either arm, still glaring at each other behind his back.
*
Two Hours Later
At the movement of the bookcase swinging open, Quatre glanced up from his computer. His benign expression turned into a small frown as Trowa set a small plate of cookies on the edge of his desk. He opened his mouth to say something and Mariemaia frowned, fiddling with the security monitor, looking for the sound.
"-and furthermore, I'm insulted that you think so little of me as to believe you can just waltz in and destroy my resolve with a few sweets." For a high profile billionaire gone undercover agent harboring who knew how many secrets and skeletons, spying on Quatre was not proving very interesting.
"Hilde helped Hope and Ezra make them; the children wanted you to have some."
"...Oh." Well, seeing him humiliated was something, anyway, but she wasn't overly enthusiastic about watching them bicker like an old married couple. She could get enough of that listening to Sally and Wu Fei. With a melodramatic sigh she pressed a button, flipping the monitor to a random room. She was rewarded with a view of some charming furniture. Another switch treated her to the sight of a hall carpet being vacuumed. A few more empty rooms, Duo and Hilde groping, and Relena dragging Hope to an ill-fated bath later, she found something more worthy of her attention.
She had seen the blonde woman but rarely, either in her mother's company or Quatre's. Dorothy Catalonia: she was a Preventer, that much she was sure of. She must have just recently arrived without fanfare. Mariemaia watched with impressed fascination as the poised young woman directed one of Quatre's servants around her room, unpacking her luggage for her. After the man had gone, she picked up a toiletry bag from the bed, crossing over to the vanity and neatly laying out a modest assortment of small tubes and bottles, followed by a gold backed hand mirror and its matching brush and comb.
Satisfied with the arrangement, she set the bag back on the bed and moved over to the closet. Throwing the twin doors wide she stood before an array of simple, but expensive looking clothes and a handful of formal gowns. As Mariemaia continued to watch, she crossed her arms behind her back: a posture that seemed more than a little militaristic in light of her current Preventer uniform, but Mariemaia suspected it was a natural stance for her. After apparent deliberation, Dorothy selected a relatively plain ivory dress from her collection of formal wear, and laid it across the bed. Returning to the closet, she next removed a decadent looking silk robe, laying it over one arm and once again retrieving her toiletries, before disappearing from the camera's view. Mariemaia pondered this for a few moments before checking her watch and realizing there was only an hour and a half before dinner was to be served.
*
One Hour Later.
"Mother, I acquiesced on wearing the dress. I refuse to wear the hair ribbon, or any other form of bow." She emphasized the last word with disgust before continuing on. "I am very nearly a teenager, and I have already been a world sovereign. I beseech you; do not make me pull rank."
"Miss Relena-"
"I am not Miss Relena. It's bad enough that I am dragged to the edge of outer space to pander to the needs of two children for the entirety of my winter holiday, without being paraded around like a prepubescent marionette in front of former subordinates. I don't even have the benefit of Napoleon for a companion."
"Well then, consider this penalty for expulsion from your fifth school in the last two semesters. If you maintain your current level of behavioral inadequacy, you will be sent to the edge of outer space for school, as you will have exhausted all other options."
"Mother..."
"Or, if you are bound and determined to remain on Earth, we will have to locate a suitable convent when there are no more schools willing to accept you."
"It isn't my fault, Mother, I try, I really do ... It's only when other girls begin to talk. . . ."
"You must learn other outlets for your anger, Mariemaia. Your father was never one to approve of idle violence. Now, you look very sweet."
"I don't want to look sweet. Sweet is as bad as cute, and cute is for girls. I am not a little girl." Une was pensively silent a moment, smoothing the fine red waves that brushed at her shoulders.
"He will address you as 'Girl' for as long as he sees it as appropriate for you. When he sees that your behavior no longer constitutes that title, he will alter it accordingly. You cannot force him to see you as older by changing your appearance."
"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about." Her face was burning.
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