-1Chapter 5: The Calm before the Storm….

I spent the majority of the morning in my room. I was still trying to piece together the events of last night. What exactly led up to that kiss? I question to myself. Its not that she's not attractive, 'cuz she is smoking hot… I continued trying to think of what to do next. My next question was, Do I try to take this 'relationship' further or just ride it out and see what she does? While I was lying in my bed, thinking, Sean rings my door intercom.

"Who is it?" I asked, getting up slightly.

"Its me, Sean…" he replies. "You busy?"

"No. Just sitting here thinking…"

Sean enters my quarters, and immediately sits in my chair. I return to my bed, sitting up. Sean starts to tell me of his training. He tells me that his ARMS training with Chaos didn't go as well as he thought it would. He did better when it came to the explosives. His hand to hand combat was with MOMO, and he told me it went reasonably well. I asked him if he was looking forward to getting the A.G.W.S training. He was as excited as I was, naturally not showing so on the surface. He then asks me about my training.

"It went well in both parts," I told him. "KOS-MOS was impressed with my ARMS training."

"And you were surprised by this?" Sean asked me. "So who did you do ARTS training with?

I smiled nervously. "Shion," I respond, not sure if I should tell him what happened.

"That must have been a little awkward, seeing as how you spent majority of the first briefing ogling KOS-MOS," he said, smiling. "That had to have come up while you two were alone for 90 minutes."

I looked at him, wondering exactly how much I should tell him. "Of course it came up!" I decided not to reveal what happened last night. "But after a few moments of talking, I resolved any wrong ideas."

We continued reminiscing until Shion's voice came over my intercom. "Kevin, have you seen Sean?" she asked.

Thankfully, she's not acting any different towards me, I thought to myself. I would hate to see what would happen if they figured out that there was some chemistry between us. Shaking my head to get back to the subject at hand, I respond to the intercom.

"He's in the room with me," I say. "What's up?"

"You two need to meet me in the Conference Room. We need to assign an A.G.W.S. to each of you," she replies. "then at 1500 hours, you will have a crash course in Mecha-piloting."

"…Crash course?" Sean and I both ask simultaneously. I continued, "I don't think I even wanna know what the 'crash course' is composed of."

"Sorry to do this to you guys," Shion says apologetically. "But, due to intelligence, I fear we may need you both sooner than originally planned. Basically, you will learn a lot of stuff in a very small time frame"

With that announcement, Sean and I headed from my room to the main conference hall. Once we got there, Shion was waiting at the door. The three of us walked in together. Sean and I sat down in front of a desk and Shion moved a chair to the other side.

"We basically have two types of A.G.W.S. The first is the VX-series. The other is the AG-series," Shion informs us. "Would you like to choose which type or would you like me to assign you each one, based on our Intel?"

"I would like a VX-series," Sean says.

"Doesn't matter which one really," I said. "Long as I get some good ranged weapons, I'm happy…"

Shion makes a few notes in each file. Then she looks at Sean. "I will have your VX-6500 brought to your Mecha training with Chaos and MOMO shortly. Before you officially start the training, Final customizations will be made."

She looks over the scores for Sean and notes that were made by chaos and MOMO. Looking at Sean, she says, "Based on your scores, I have decided to equip your VX-6500 with arm-mounted daggers, and dual energy swords. Was there anything else you wanted to add?"

Sean shook his head. "No. That pretty much covers it…" Sean then went back to his DS.

Sometimes I have no idea if he's really paying attention or not, Shion thinks to herself with a sigh. "Very well," she says to him. "Proceed to Training Hall A on the 2nd floor."

With that, Sean walks out of the room and proceeds to his next training session, still with his face in his DS. I guess there's things about these two I will never understand… Shino sighs again…

I admit that at this point, I was nervous. Here we were, alone…again. Do I make a move or just attempt to appear non-chalant? I was not sure if she could notice my uneasiness, but she continued to approach me nonetheless. When she got close to me she sat in my lap and rested her arms on my shoulders. At this point, she just smiles. We stay like that for a couple of minutes (though in my mind, it felt like an eternity..) She gets up and returns to her file, jotting down some notes. After she stops writing, she looks up at me and smiles.

"OK, we got your AG-7500 configured," she says. "We've got an assault rifle for your main weapon, and a shoulder-beam cannon for secondary weapon." She then gets up and walks toward the door. "Well, let's go. KOS-MOS is waiting in Training Hall B."

I get up, walking fast enough to catch up with her. As soon as we are side-by-side, I slow my pace down, more or lees matching hers. I guessed at this point she could tell that I was still nervous from the events from last night.

As we walk to our next destination, she looks at me, smiling more than earlier. "If it makes you feel at ease," she starts saying. "Your impressive skills aren't the only reason that you're up here."

I looked at her, confused, but a little more at ease. "You mean…"

She puts her finger to my lips, as if to silence me. "Yes," she says, now whispering in my ear. "I admit that most of the Intel on you was done by me. Surprisingly, there are quite a few things that are in a 'personal' file that no one else has seen… not even KOS-MOS…"

At this point, she grabs my right arm. At this point, I look down and she's blushing slightly. "There was something about you…" she states, "that I somewhat obsessively looked into it myself on my own time. It didn't take too long for me to decide that I had to ensure that you were chosen."

Hearing that made my day. I even cracked a smile (that wasn't out of nervousness). We walked the rest of the way to our destination just simply enjoying each other's company.