Trowa rummaged through the dry laundry hamper, always before his uniforms had been issued to him but always before he'd entered through somewhat more official channels. He regretted that there wasn't more time for his usual strategy, if he'd entered as a test pilot he would surely have been shown the place where they kept all of their suits. He could have gotten an accurate account of their numbers to report back. Well, there was no real reason why he still couldn't get an accurate account of their numbers, dressed as a guard he would be as invisible as thought he really was a guard. He'd sneak Midii out of her cell first and then once he had her safe... on second thought, it would be easier of he did all of his exploring unencumbered, he could come back for her.
She's the reason I came here, he thought. It would be best if he located her first. He finished his selection and replaced his clothes with those of a sacred Omega guard, then backtracked to the holding section. There had only been three lighted windows aside of his own. The first two were empty, but the third held Midii suspended from the ceiling by lengths of chain while she was circled by...
He was a surprised but his expressionless face never showed it. He knew there had to be a reason why he didn't like that guy. It figured that he was a traitor; a vindictive person would have said "serves her right" but Trowa found that that wasn't the way he felt at all. He knew how it hurt to be betrayed by the person he'd come to trust and he felt pity that she would now be on the receiving end of it. He would have to wait until Bryson was done trying to extract whatever information he was after out of her.
He was her second in command, Trowa thought in puzzlement. If Sacred Omega wanted to know any information about Homeguard all they would have had to do was ask Bryson. It made no sense to capture her for that purpose, what could they possibly want out of her. He slunk closer to the door and took a "guard position" just outside of it. To the casual observer it would appear that he'd been placed there by the person doing the interrogation.
"... I want to know where that suit is Midii. Your captors will grow weary of your intransigence. Let me help you, help me and you can help yourself. They'll let you go just trust me."
"It's only a legend," she said, her voice heavy with somnolence. "It doesn't exist."
"The EX-01341 exists Midii, I've seen the old Alliance reports on its construction and testing," Bryson insisted.
"There is no suit, it doesn't exist."
Bryson sighed.
"I've been at it for an hour," he muttered. "Stubborn. If she doesn't give up soon they'll just try other methods." Louder Bryson said. "I'll be back in an hour, think about cooperation."
The guy exited the doorway and strode off without a backwards look at Trowa. Now was his chance. Trowa quickly picked the lock on the door and slipped inside. They had an hours grace period before anyone came looking for her, provided that Trowa himself remained unmissed. He quickly picked the lock on the cuffs securing her arms and she fell limply onto his shoulder. He quickly untied her legs and slung her more securely over his right shoulder. He checked the hallway before stealing out with her.
"Wh-wha?" she asked groggily.
He made a soft noise to silence her and found someplace out of the way, a weapons closet. He transferred her from his shoulders and stood her up, still keeping most of her weight in his arms. She was still heavilly sedated and her body was not inclined to obey her clouded minds instructions.
"I came back for you," he whispered. "I'm going to stash you here for a while while I go look at their..."
"No," she said softly. "Don't leave."
"I'll be-" he tried to reassure her.
"No," she said unequivocally. Her voice was slurred from the drugs but her tone and intent was unmistakable. If he tried to leave her behind, she would only follow him. "Don't leave me."
Trowa sighed. It looked like he was just going to have to do this in the obvious fashion. How he hated proving Duo right. "It's always the quiet ones who end up doing things in the loudest way." Well, it was going to have to be fast and it would be far from thorough, but he could probably take out their construction line at least. Even burdened he could still operate a suit.
Trowa picked her back up and slung her back over his shoulder; it would be easier for him to carry her than for him to attempt to help her to walk. Part of him whispered that he was enjoying playing the knight in shining armor to someone other than his sister. After accessing a local computer maintenance panel it was an easy matter for him to copy a general map of the place to a disk, in the process finding the location of the mobile suit hanger. The mobile doll control room was located elsewhere. It was closer to his current location. It looked like he'd just have to go that route then.
The room was in a tower with glass windows on all four sides of the top floor located at the very edge of the cliff. The mobile doll hanger was located beneath the control tower with a launch bay out of the clifface itself.
He quickly overcame the technical staff working inside the top room and barricaded the door so that he could work in peace for a few minutes. It was an almost exact replay of the scenario that he and his fellow pilots had used when they'd fought against the Barton Foundation. He administered a general stimulant to help re-awaken the woman he'd come to rescue, it would be more useful if she were fully aware and perhaps able to help out. She sat in the chair he placed her in in somewhat of a daze, her blank-eyes stare gave her an unusually vacuous look. He realized that much of what was attractive about her face was the character in it; the shine of intelligence in her eyes, the generous smile of her mouth and even the fain lines of pain that still shadowed her face made her look like no-one else.
Mind off the female, he ordered himself, setting to work at the nearby mobile doll control panel. There was a lot of security and passwords to hack through in order for him to be able to change the mobile dolls commands.
Reset Friend/Foe Recognition System Y/N? the computer demanded. Trowa typed the correct command, entered in a password override and then confirmed. Which took him to another menu, what would he recognize as a friend or a foe. He targeted a third of the suits on a specific location and the rest of the suits on the other sacred Omega Mobile suits, then entered the password and confirmed. He accessed another system which would allow him to lock off the system from accepting any other commands, then scrambled the passwords for the system. That should hold them off for a while.
It had taken too long for him to gain control of the system and Sacred Omega knew where they were now. Outside the sky had darkened to nightfall and another storm ripped through the teeth of the coast line. He walked over to where Midii rested in the chair. She was looking quite a bit better now, still not up to par but better than she had been a while ago. He could hear pounding on the outside of the door. They had come.
"Hey," he said, bending over her to take a closer look. "Are you ready to get out of here?"
She looked up at him with wide eyes.
"How can I trust you?" she asked him.
Trowa wasn't surprised she'd asked that question as soon as she came to her senses. He really hadn't acted very well in this situation, but he had a lot of different obligations pulling him this way and that and he'd had to compromise... Midii had just borne the brunt of that compromise. Perhaps she was better off if she didn't trust him.
"We're in this together," he replied. "Your choices are trust me and we escape or don't trust me, attempt to escape on your own and likely get caught."
"If anyone's going to get us caught it would be you," she replied. "That distraction tactic will keep the pilots and mechanics occupied and the system commands will distract the support staff, but this place is still crawling with miscellaneous guards."
"I have a suit outside the walls-" he started.
"Which does us no good, if we're inside the walls," Midii replied. "And what do you intend to do about the guards trying to break down the door?"
"Impersonate a real guard and take you as a prisoner," he said. "Then I'll pretend to escort you back to the prison cell. Once we have you alone with only a few guards I'll overpower them and we'll escape in the confusion."
Midii just looked at him for a moment and then said
"I have a better idea." She picked up a chair and swung it at a nearby pane of glass. It shattered into glittering stars that fell into the night. The wind screamed into the room ruffling papers into a vilent storm of white and letting in the scent of rain and lightning. Midii calmly walked over to the hole in the glass and looked out and down into the darkness. Trowa quickly caught her arm to keep her from falling.
"Be careful," he warned her. "You'll fall out."
"That's the idea genius," she said dryly. "The cliff doesn't slope outwards so it should be fine. Like one big diving board."
"It's seven stories down from here," he pointed out.
"I know," she said looking out and down again. The howling wind whipped at her hair making it blow wild.
"There are rocks below us as well as ocean," he persisted. This was crazy, surely she wasn't going to-
"Yes, but with any luck I'll miss them. If I don't... well it was nice knowing you." She walked back across the room from the hole in the wall.
"I'm glad you've come to your senses," he said, a little relieved that she'd changed her mind. The next thing he knew there was a sudden blur of mass and color streaking past him. He reacted to slowly to keep her from making for the hole in the wall. He watched helplessly as she jumped as far out as she could go and for a second she seemed to hang suspended in the air before beginning her six story plummet to the angry-white, crashing waves below her. Her body dropped into the sea as the storm raged on.
Who's the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows her? he wondered to himself as he sprung off from the ledge and into the wind that ripped at his clothes and skin and screamed inside of his ears. It seemed like he spent an eternity in the arms of the wind with rain lashing at his face and the sound of the sea below him gnashing its teeth. He pulled into a dive at the last second and entered the water cleanly. He quickly surfaced.
"Midii!" He yelled above the sound of the storm and sea. A wave sloshed over his head. "Midii!" he called again. If she'd drowned...
"Over here!" she called back. The lightning flashing across the sky and leaping from cloud to cloud lighting the insides of them like chinese paper lanterns illuminated the darkness for just long enough to see her face bobbing along the surface like a mermaid. When he got her onto dry land he was going to shake her until her teeth rattled.
He swam over with strong powerful strokes, waves occasionally breaking over his head but he remained undeterred.
"There's a reef off-shore not too far away," she said. "You can see the teeth sticking up out of the water from here. I'm going to swim out to it. They won't look for us there and I know of a place we can hide."
Trowa moved to grab her but she was fast and at home in the water. Some rescuer, she regains her senses and rescues herself only to drag him along with her on her half baked escape plan.
"if you know about it, so do they." Trowa argued while they swam. "Bryson works for them now remember? Anything you've told him, he'll have told Sacred Omega."
"He doesn't know about this place," Midii shouted back over the storm. "I never told him about it."
The current was rough and the waves and storm certainly made swimming more difficult than it had to be but Towa was easily holding his own. Midii looked like she was having a tough time of it, her head kept dipping below the surface. He caught her up in his arms in a rescue hold and side stroked for the nearest form of solid land.
The reef was in plain sight now, jags and piles of rocks pointing jutting up from the crashing waves like crooked teeth in the maw of an enormous dragon. Another lighting lit the sky up in the clouds and Midii pulled to change directions slightly, heading further north. A particularly large one that had an arch connecting it to a smaller island soon appeared into view silhouetted by the crashing lighting. The rough rock bit into the palms of his hands as he easily pulled them both up out of the water.
"This way," Midii called, hurrying nimbly over the treacherous and slippery rock with what looked like the ease of long practice. "Up there." She led him to a protected opening high on the skyward-jutting tooth, stooping down low to crawl inside. It was a tight squeeze for Trowa who had a chest and shoulders that were far wider than hers but the entrance soon widened out. Midii picked a flare up from a pile of them she had right near the dry part of the entrance.
The cave was large; unnaturally so. There were sealed plastic bins scattered about with the codes and insignia of the Alliance Military. It looked like some kind of hidden storage unit. Midii flopped to the floor, exhausted, while Trowa lit another flare and went to investigate the contents of one of the bins.
"What's this place?" he asked over his shoulder.
"It's a hiding place I was shown when I was a child," Midii said. She sounded like she was being evasive for some reason. "I stashed some stuff here in case I should ever need it."
"Seems innocuous enough," he said. Then he made a triumphant noise. In one of the bins he'd found a foam mat for sleeping, several blankets, a heating unit, an electric lantern and several bags of Meals Ready to Eat.
"Take your clothes off," he ordered as he plucked out a blanket and tossed it at her.
"Excuse me?" she said.
"It's late in the season and the water was cold, there is a possibility that you could get pneumonia," he said. "Get out of those wet clothes and put on something dry or in this case cover up with that. I'll attend to dinner, such as it is."
He had already peeled out of his soaked shirt and pants and was unembarrassed-ly clad solely in his underdrawers; now he was busy setting up the heating unit, the charger said that the batteries were already full so it would work properly.
"I'm not taking off my clothes," she said crossing her arms. Trowa flicked a glance over at her. Difficult as usual. Stubborn.
"Yes you are," he replied assuredly as he finished setting up the heating unit and flicked it on. It emitted a low hum then started purring like a kitten. The hollow would be warmed soon.
"I won't look if it makes you uncomfortable; I do live with my sister you know," he said. "I know how to respect a girls privacy, but you need to get out of those cold wet things as soon as possible. I don't want to see you getting sick."
He fished out the single sleeping roll and the four other military blankets from the bottom of the bin and next went to work setting up a place to sleep. He wasn't as exhausted as Midii looked but taking over fortified structures wasn't a walk in the park either. Besides, he should at least see that there was someplace comfortable to sleep for her. He could do that much.
After he was done setting of a place for her to sleep he flicked another glance over at her. She had fallen asleep against the side of the walls, with her clothing still unchanged. She was going to get pneumonia that way.
I'm not someone who would take advantage of an innocent, he reminded himself.
And she was an innocent; she might be the leader of a para-military force and a strong leader in her own right but she had that basic core of innocence about her. Sexual innuendo tended to fly past her and she clearly worried about her virtue. If he had come to rescue her and she'd lost that he would never have been able to live with himself.
He walked over to where she slept slumped over and shook her shoulder. She stirred for a moment, and remained asleep. He tried again but she was clearly too exhausted to want to even try to remain awake after she'd found a safe place to hide. She probably figured she could attend to unimportant details like taking care of herself later. She was one of those types, she probably needed someone to look out for her.
Well, it was just the two of them right now... If she wouldn't take care of herself then he was just going to have to do it for her. He swallowed a little, took a deep breath and reached for the zipper-head on her clothes. He wasn't doing this for a perverted reason, she needed to get into something dry. She could slap him in the morning if she felt like it. He hoped it wouldn't come to that although he probably deserved one for the trick he'd pulled.
Once he had the coverall unzipped only then did it occur to him that looking at a woman in her underthings while they were alone together was not...
Well maybe if I just don't look, he thought; but that would mean he'd have to peel her out of her wet clothes by touch alone. This was becoming vastly more complicated than he'd signed on for.
Surely she'd be reasonable if he explained that he'd had to look in order to avoid accidental physical transgression; it was the lesser of two infractions. He swallowed and started to work peeling the torso-piece off. The first thing he noticed was that even though her coverall pouched out over her body, she herself was actually very slight. She'd clearly seen some hard times, there wasn't an ounce of extra flesh on her anywhere and she had small various scars from battles past.
He was surprised to discover that there was an old bandage on her upper left arm and another on the bottom of her rib cage. When he peeked beneath the bandages he noted that the wounds were a few days old, so she hadn't gotten them as a result of her captivity. There were three dark bruises on her back and Trowa couldn't imagine what had caused them.
He draped the blanket over her shoulders as a modesty-covering and started to work below the waist. He was torn between the mission he'd undertaken and trying to actually look at what he was doing as little as possible. Not that it would matter anyway, he practically had an eidetic memory and he never forgot a face (or anything else for that matter). Once he had her stripped down to her underthings he bundled her into the blanket and guided her over to the sleeping roll he'd prepared for her near the heating unit to warm her chilled skin a little. Trowa wrapped them both up in the remainder of the top- blankets and debated whether he had the extra energy to eat something. He found his own eyes drifting shut at the relief of warmth and safety. He was feeling a little sleepy after all. Midii leaned against him so he groggily changed positions to accommodate her before slowly slipping off to sleep.
Warm. That was the first thing she was aware of. In all of the time Midii had spent as the leader of Homeguard, most of the time she'd awoken in some form of minor or major discomfort; either her muscles ached from a day of hard labor, or her back and neck were stiff from sleeping in her Mobile suit cockpit, or she'd been injured and was recovering, or her tent was freezing cold, or she'd slept on a rock. The list went on; she literally couldn't remember the last time she'd awoken completely content.
The sound of the ocean permeated her senses. Midii had always been highly attuned to it, her home was right above the coast and the rhythm of the waves crashing into the land in all of its moods had always been as much a part of her as her own breath sighing in and out of her breast. She'd missed the sound terribly when she'd been traveling. Awakening to silence had always felt so unnatural to her. The scent, the taste on her tongue, the feel of the air; all were as familiar to her as her own heartbeat.
Home, she thought. She was warm, and she felt safe and cherished for some reason she wasn't awake enough to place an actual reason to. She had the air that was so familiar and dear to her filling her senses. Surely she was finally home where she belonged; or at least that was the solution that her sleep fogged brain came up with to answer the jumbled collections of feelings and impressions she got as she faded into full wakefulness.
Then as reality became a little more clear to her she realized that the equation didn't add up to the solution she'd reached. She was surrounded by cave walls for a start, but more immediately she had her head pillowed on someone and she didn't immediately recognize his scent. That was when a few other impressions hit her. 'She was mostly naked' being the primary one, followed shortly by 'the chest she rested on was bare, male and comfortably holding her.'
Awake. She was now instantly and completely awake. She snapped her head up to look around her. Trowa.
...Was sleeping with her.
What's going on here? she wondered. It was like she'd stumbled into some kind of parallel world. She was casually and comfortably cuddled with the one person of the male persuasion she hopelessly adored even though they always seemed to be fighting. It was like a scene from her favorite honeymoon fantasy, well, she hadn't pictured a cave but the rest of the details were mostly right.
"Hey," she said, poking at him. "Wake up."
He grumbled a little, tightened his arms around her, but otherwise didn't stir. She poked at him again and in reply he made a soft shushing noise and rubbed one hand up her bare hip and waist as if she were a restive beast that needed to be soothed back to slumber.
Midii wasn't certain whether she should feel, flattered, embarrassed, turned on, or weirded-out. Frankly she was actually feeling all of them at the same time vying for supremacy.
What am I feeling awkward for? This is Trowa we're talking about! Mister Perfect-Soldier-All-My-Life wouldn't know a hormone if it bit him on the nose, she thought.
She considered just going back to sleep, but she knew that the world wouldn't go away. The universe had arranged for her to be in this exact place (well, maybe not this EXACT place) at this time for a purpose obviously and there was only one thing she could think of that it would be. She sighed. It seemed that she had no real choice but to use It...
Midii resignedly pushed off his chest to get up and do what she had to do. He grumbled a little, something that sounded like "go back to sleep" and he wrapped his arms a little tighter around her waist and made another soothing caress over her waist that caused her heart to start pounding.
"Wake up!" she snapped. He woke with a start instantly awake, took the cave in in half a second and his position in in a half-second more and abruptly let her go.
"Sorry," he said rising quickly and turning his head down and away (the blanket slipped down to his waist). Midii was surprised to see him look distinctly uncomfortable. She'd never seen Trowa emit anything but this fatalistic aura of soldier-calm at all times. This was entirely too good an opportunity to allow to pass by unremarked.
"So even you get embarrassed sometimes," she needled, unable to resist.
"Just like anyone else," he replied, looking over at her out of the corner of his eye. Odd, he wasn't falling for it. Then, Trowa never had done the expected; she just couldn't get a handle on how that guy thought!
"Didn't I fall asleep with my clothes on?" she asked pointedly, narrowing her eyes at him. He had already risen from the sleeping roll they'd wound up sharing and was walking over to where he had hung their garments to drip dry the night before. He had clowns on his boxers! Midii stifled a laugh; he really, seriously did not seem the type.
"You would have gotten sick if it had stayed that way," he said unapologetically. He tossed her her Homeguard coverall and turned his back so that she could dress herself.
Midii considered taking affront anyway, but dismissed the idea; she was actually feeling too tired to pick a fight with him right now and she needed to save all of her energy for the real battle ahead. Just thinking about having to dust off and use That Thing made her feel old and exhausted. She was the only one who could do it however; she had gone to great lengths to ensure it. She couldn't do it with mister Perfect Soldier Man hanging around; she'd made it this far without having any witnesses to know it existed and she really didn't want to ruin such a great track record.
"Trowa... I want you to leave. Now," she said. "About a mile up the coast bearing north there's a cliff-side entrance to a tunnel that will take you almost directly to Sector twenty-nine. I want you to go on without me."
"Midii? What's wrong?" He asked, his voice tinged with real concern.
"I'm too tired to keep going," she lied guiltily. "I'll only be a burden to you."
Trowa was silent for a long moment then he said
"That was very good, but now you may tell me the truth."
Midii looked up at him in surprise. He was tall already, he was also standing and she merely sitting up. He looked physically very imposing to her and it was almost as if he'd grown to an intimidating height that had nothing to do with stature. Midii, being very small, never fell for the height-size intimidation tactic; she was more apt to put a hand on a hip, cock her head back and cop an attitude. But right at that moment it seemed that Trowa was one of the few people who could pull off the height intimidation thing with her. He had an aura of physical presence that was a little intimidating. How had he known?
"I always know when you're lying," he said. He sounded a little smug about it. Jerk.
"Now what are you hiding?" he pursued.
"I can't tell you," she said honestly. "It's too great a risk."
"You can trust me," he said softly.
"I can't trust anybody now. I thought Bryson... he was like my own brother..." To her supreme embarrassment her throat started to close up and tears stung and hearted up behind her eyes. She tried to hold them back; now was not the time to be getting emotional! Trowa sat back down beside her, and rather stiffly and awkwardly put an arm around her shoulders. Midii tried not to let the sobs out or the tears fall, afraid very much that if she started she wouldn't be able to stop and they didn't have the luxury of time for personal grief.
"Trowa, we have to get moving," she said with raspy breaths. "We're in enemy territory right now, and they're going to be looking for us. We have to get back and tell my people that--"
She was cut off by his lips on hers. The kiss was soft and deep, tentative and passionate at the same time. All she knew was him for that moment, the world around her disappeared and it felt like her body flew apart into its separate molecules to gravitate around him. He was her whole world. All too breifly, it was over. She looked up at him, unable to move or speak or think or breathe. He stroked a cheek with his rough, callused thumb and said
"I know you've been hurt and it's all my fault. I couldn't leave my only family behind but I never wanted you hurt either. I returned for you as quickly as I could and if I could have spared you the pain of knowing I would have. I can't ever seem to get it right, I want to protect you too."
"Trowa..." she whispered.
"I know it's a lot to ask of you considering everything you've endured recently, but I want to ask you to let me do that much even if you can't trust or forgive me. Let me protect you."
"I forgive you," she whispered, reaching up to stroke his face with her hand. She had that soft look back in her eyes, she looked at him like he was the sole center of her world. Trowa leaned in to kiss her again but paused before he did so.
"Why?" he asked.
"If you love someone enough, you can forgive them anything." And again they beat as one.
When they pulled apart it was with the reluctant admission that, while their worlds had seemed to freeze the rest of the world was still spinning on without them and they had places they were needed in. Trowa helped her to her feet and looked toward the cave entrance.
"How do you think we're going to evade capture? Surely the enemy has patrols out skimming the waters looking for us."
"We aren't going to evade them, and their patrols don't matter," Midii said clearly. "They have worn out their welcome and I intend to evict them by force if necessary."
Trowa looked over at her, that was pretty big talk, he didn't have his Gundam so he wasn't so certain that it could be backed up.
"Oh? And how precisely do you propose we do that? Knock on their door and ask them to leave?"
"No..." she said, seeming a little unsure for a moment, she hesitated then plunged on. "I'm going to trust you."
"I think I can pull it off," he said considering, mulling over what he knew of their numbers, strengths, personnel, defenses and mobile suits. "I'm pretty sure I wreaked enough damage on them last night to have them licking their wounds this morning. If I called in the others and they came with back up we might be able to wipe them out before they deployed but that would mean--"
"Don't be arrogant," Midii interrupted. "You assume that I'm asking you to take care of my problem?"
"What else could you have meant?" he inquired. "Your people and forces are occupied miles away, the suit I borrowed is still on the mainland on the other side of the Sacred Omega base which would mean we'd have to somehow sneak across the water between here and the cliffside without being noticed and then sneak around the base without being detected in order to reach it. Neither of us have a way of contacting our comrades. Naturally I assumed that you meant to send me in."
"Why is that?" she asked, curiously. "You always seem to assume that facing impossible odds is something that you alone are uniquely suited for; whenever anyone asks about it all we hear is "you're a Gundam Pilot." What's so special about a Gundam Pilot?"
"You've never heard of us?" he inquired, mildly surprised. He wasn't bragging but he and the five others had become somewhat of a household name for everything they'd managed to do during the wars and after. Everyone knew about them, whether the subjects liked it or not. They were famous.
"I told you news of the Outside travels pretty slowly in our neck of the woods, if it even travels at all," Midii said defensively.
"Well, it's just that everyone's heard of us," he said, a little abashedly. He was one of the ones who wasn't quite comfortable with the notoriety despite the fact that he was a public entertainer most of the time.
"Not me, so what's the big deal about it?" she asked curiously.
"I, and four other elite fighters besides myself, were sent down to Earth from the five LaGrange point colony clusters on the year 195 in five specially designed mobile suits called Gundams. It was called Operation Meteor, it originally had a different purpose; but the missions we were all sent on was to destroy OZ. After a series of battles and events that would take way to long to tell you in detail right now the five of us at last ended all on the same side up in space fighting against the White Fang commanded by Wind or, Milliardo Peacecraft as he was known then, and the united forces of earth of the World Nation commanded by Treize and they wanted a war that would end all wars. We gave it to them."
"So who won?" she asked curiously.
"Everybody," he said cryptically. "But the reason Gundam Pilots in particular are so well known was because we'd never been defeated."
"Oh," she said. "Well, I'm not a famous war hero or anything but I'm not about to let those guys get away with thinking they can just come in here and start pushing me around with superior strength and numbers. Put shortly... I hate bullies."
"That's a very nice sentiment. It doesn't change the fact that they still have superior strength and numbers," he pointed out.
"Superior numbers perhaps," she said cryptically. "But I think I can even the playing field in the strength department."
"How?" he inquired mildly, Midii wasn't fooled, he was watching her like a cat at a mouse-hole just waiting for her to poke her little nose out. He knew she was in there. He knew she was hiding something.
"First I want you word that what I'm about to tell you stays between us. I've spent the better part of my life keeping this secret, I've never even told Bryson about it. I wouldn't reveal it under torture either. It's too dangerous."
"Who tortured you?" he asked alertly. He was still and his posture had only changed in the slightest degree but it looked like he was now poised to strike at anything that moved. His expression and demeanor hadn't changed but she could sense that he had just become very dangerous.
"That's aside of the point," she said impatiently. "Do I have your word or not?"
"Who was it?" he demanded.
"Could we focus please?" she said. "Now isn't the time to worry about trivial details." Actually she rather suspected that her mind was downplaying how much it had hurt because now in the light of morning she was thinking 'oh it couldn't ave been that bad, I've probably suffered worse in a fight.'
"Name him," he demanded flatly.
"If I do will you give me your word?" she asked tiredly.
"Yes," he said readily.
"Father Beneficence," she replied. "He wanted to know about the thing I'm going to reveal to you since you won't just go away. I guess in this case you leave me no choice, time is of the essence."
Trowa wasn't about to leave her behind, she knew that. As troublesome as it was in this instance she was warmed by it too. She'd been left behind and abandoned and now betrayed by everyone she'd ever really loved, she'd learned that all things in this life were transitory. She had to leave others, others left her, some died, some remained but all were people who moved through this life with strings that never remained knotted to another's for long. In those brief moments bonds were formed from soul to soul that added and detracted to the persons that they all became but the only thing that remained were the words that they had all written on each others hearts. Certainly they all passed by one another, bumping shoulders as they walked along their separate life paths, there were meetings and there were partings, and sometimes reunions; but it was all transitory. Despite knowing the futility of a relationship such as theirs, she felt a little better knowing that she was able to be at his side for now.
"He's the man in charge?" Trowa inquired. Midii nodded.
"Good, then there will be no objections," he said. Midii already knew what he left unsaid, Trowa intended to kill the man. Normally she'd argue, but this time she was willing to make an exception. There was nothing like the feeling of security that came from knowing your enemy was dead.
"Let's go," he said, apparently ready to simply sneak over there through enemy infested waters and destroy their base without a worry. He just assumed that he could do it.
"Hold it," she said. "I know that you're normally hot stuff when it comes to this sort of thing but I have a better plan."
"Like jumping out of a window and plummeting seven stories to the sea with the very real chance that you could hit a rock instead of water?" Trowa reminded her.
"Better," she assured him. "And since you've given me your word to keep my secrets you can be in on it too. Normally if you'd found out about this, I'd have to kill you."
"Does this have anything to do with the mysterious "Spooky" Bryson was interrogating you about?" Trowa inquired.
"Yes. Now you see why I'm so nervous about saying anything. Since you won't leave and let me do what I need to do in secrecy, and I'm not inclined to kill you right now, I have no choice but to reveal the big secret I've kept to myself all of these years."
"You're a natural blonde?" he guessed with a slightly teasing edge to his voice. Midii ignored it.
Instead she went over to one of the cave walls and pushed on a natural formation in the rock, a small panel slid aside to reveal a number keypad beneath it. Midii punched in an eighteen digit code and the sandy floor shifted nearby. A square panel three feet by three feet covered in sand and dirt suddenly slid open.
"Come on," she said beckoning to him. Trowa was brought up a little short by this sudden development. A tiny little finger-island out in the middle of a chain on a remote off-shore reef of some backwoods little country seemed a little... out there to hold a secret base or whatever this was. How had she come to learn of it and not Bryson or any of the other members of Homeguard by the sound of it? This was an interesting new development.
"What is this?" Trowa inquired, plucking up another flare from a nearby pile just as Midii did. Oddly enough the trapdoor led to a series of winding stone stairs instead of an elevator. The scientists had all used elevators. The stairs seemed somehow archaic and medieval.
"My hidey-hole," she said. "It's one of the things I guess you could say I inherited. It's where I put things I don't want to be found, and this is something I definitely didn't want found."
The stairs twisted round in the damp and chill and Trowa felt his ears pop telling him that they were below sea level. Only the sound of their two footfalls echoed through the silence.
"It seems I'm not the only one who's found interesting places to hide something that's too dangerous to let fall into the wrong hands. We keep similar secrets Midii. So what is this thing that you've sworn never to reveal to anyone else."
"Where to start," she muttered. "Back in the days Oz and the Specials were the acknowledged leaders when it came to mobile suits; they had the best scientists, they had the top materials, they trained the best pilots etcetera and so forth. So the UESA left them in charge of all mobile suits for the military because the military likes to make divisions that overspecialize like that. What most people didn't know was that the Alliance Ground Forces had a top secret Mobile Suit research and development team... kinda like how the old United States of America's military had the Air Force nominally in charge of missiles after World War two but the Army also had its own separate missile program."
"Interesting. But it doesn't make sense, if the Alliance had the blueprints ofr a new type of mobile suit surely they would have used such a weapon in Operation Daybreak or when I and the other pilots attacked. Militaries are highly competative internally."
"I'm getting to that. My father was a top scientist and had been coerced into working for the Alliance back when I'd been no more than a baby. It was his brilliant research that led to the development of planet defenders... he'd actually meant for them to be the first step in an energy shield that would help control the weather within its sphere for the eventual terraformation of new worlds. The Alliance saw their worth as a weapon naturally. Father didn't want all of his wonderful new discoveries and inventions being used for war so he stole the baby he'd spent so many years working on, destroyed the research lab, burned all of his notes, and hid the suit he'd designed, the EX-01341, his birthdate you see, and built this place especially for it."
They passed a wall of panels with steady green lights which Midii remarked were dehumidifiers, otherwise everything within the hidden base would have quickly corroded to unusable red dust.
"How did you come to know about it?" he asked next, looking around him. There were still more steps but he could see a light not too far off.
"One night, while he was delirious with fever he told me everything in his sleep. I was only nine at the time so a lot of the stuff he told me made no sense at all until after I'd met you."
"Was that why you were so fascinated by watching me fix my suit?" he inquired.
"That was part of it," she said smiling in amusement. "You reminded me of my father sometimes when he was whole and healthy, he'd always been fixing things. And you looked very cute when you were concentrating so intently on what you were doing, you've always had good strong hands. But we're straying from the subject. The point is he'd designed this special suit and hidden it and only I knew where to find it. It's the only legacy I have of him, and it's a very scary one."
"Ah," he said. "You've kept it a secret all of this time, do you miss your father so much?"
"That isn't why I keep it a secret. I've kept it hidden so very long because it's dangerous to operate. And here we are."
Midii stopped outside of a reinforced steel door with a pretty extensive security system in it. It took a voice print, a hand print, a retina scan, and demanded a twenty digit numerical code forward and backward. When she was done and her identity had been thoroughly confirmed the computer demanded to know who the extra being with her was and she ordered that temporary access be granted to him for the time being; they had to go through an extensive rigmarole of passwords, override passwords, and confirmation codes. The security was good, but time consuming. The doors opened at last, all five of them and the lights came on in an enormous underground hangar.
Trowa looked around, a bit disappointed; there was a locker on one far wall with extra parts and rigs for re-fueling, and there was an automated mechanics repair system to handle objects too heavy to be lifted for repairs in three-g... but no suit. Midii stepped over to a central command station and dialed up a security diagnostic while Trowa continued to look around. He walked over to the mechanics station and paused. A lot of this stuff was not regulation equipment.
"Midii," he said quietly. "There's a Rycheste 837-MOL here."
"Yeah, Auturo uses it to fix Callie's drive system," Midii replied absently, busily working over at her console.
"Callie?" Trowa questioned.
"Mm-hn," she said. Then, directly in front of him where there had been nothing before appeared the outline of something massive and tall backed up against the hanger wall. There was a soft glow of blue-white light and a mobile suit kneeling on one knee like a knight before his sovereign slowly faded into view. Trowa was taken aback… it had been invisible!
"I present the EX-01341, which I affectionately dub The Excalibur."