Grabbing Church's body with her invisible hands, Kaede ran with Tucker and "O'mally" back to the blue base were she dug a grave close, yet far to the blue base. However, after awhile, Church didn't show up, so everyone went to relax for awhile.
Deciding to check up on the reds, Kaede heads outside to find Lopez walking towards the base while dragging Tex... or her exploded body.
"Espera, Kaede. Su iglesia". He says.
"Huh?" Is all Kaede can respond with. Since when did Lopez talk? Church then emerges from Lopez's body.
"I said, Kaede. Its Church." Church explains. "I've possessed the reds robot, but I can only speak Spanish in it for some reason. Get Tucker and Caboose to come help fix it." He says quickly before repossessing Lopez.
"Okay... come inside then." Kaede says.
"Deja de actuar tan incómoda." He simply responds as he follows Kaede inside the base.
"No. You can't hang that there." She hears Tucker say.
"If I can't, then I'll just have to hang you there." Caboose says in his deep voice. Right... Caboose has been acting weird since the few hours ago when Tex's attack on the reds failed. Maybe it has something to do with that voice she keeps hearing. She hasen't heard it since, but then again... only been a few hours.
"Guys, this is Church. He's just possessed the reds robot and its stuck on a language setting." Kaede quickly explains as she enters the room.
"Oh, uh Church. We buried your body. First chance we got, just like you wanted." Tucker says nervously.
"Lo que. Ya no me importa, solo ayúdame con esta maldita configuración de idioma." Church responds.
"Oh, you are not kidding... I did not understand that." Tucker says.
"Okay, I'm just gonna go then." Kaede moves to exit.
"Kaede. Esperar." Church calls out. "Bury Tex también. Justo a mi lado."
"Yeah... I'll go bury Tex..." Kaede says before quickly leaving. With the use of her invisible hands, Kaede quickly buried Tex. The reason she was in such a rush was to check up on the reds. It was very unclear to her how the battle was on their end. Hopefully no one was hurt... or dead.
Going up to the red base, Kaede spies Sarge and Simmons repairing the jeep.
"Oh, Kaede... hello!" Simmons greets upon noticing her.
"Wha, Kaede?" Sarge exclaims turning to her. "Yes... hello Kaede. Been awhile..."
"Sarge, why are you acting so nervous?" Kaede asks.
"Nervous? HA! Why would you think that?" Sarge asks. "Command sent us this here jeep, I call her the Warthog, but it must have been faulty so we're running repairs." 'Right, he's embarrassed about losing to the blues.' Kaede thinks. Did they technically even lose? Blue team lost their mercenary and their tank while red team just lost their robot.
"I see." Kaede says. "I just came by to see how everyones doing."
"Well, we're all good here. Simmons, me, Donut... and Grif." Sarge adds the last part begrudgingly. "Lopez isn't here, he's currently on a mission to eradicate the blues."
"Mission. You mean he ran off." Simmons clarifies.
"Anyway, come with me Kaede. I have something to show you." Sarge says. "Simmons, you'll be good working on the jeep for awhile?"
"Yes sir!" Simmons exclaims before heading right back to work.
"Hot dandy! Come with me Kaede." Sarge says before leading said girl into the base.
"Wait, you said Donut. Who is that?" Kaede asks. Could that be the pink soldier. Either way, it was a strange name.
"He's the newest member to red team! He's even more useful than Grif, though thats not something to brag about." Sarge says. "He successfully infiltrated the blue base and captured their flag! I have a good feeling the boy's gonna be useful in the future." The two then arrived in the red team barrack.
"So, what did you want to show me?" Kaede asks.
"This." Sarge says as he opens a large locker. Inside is a suit of armour different to the ones everyone in the canyon is wearing. It had a more rounded helmet with a grey visor and the rest of the suit was less bulky than everyone elses. A dark grey along with a bright red made up its colour scheme. "Kaede, this here is the armour I wore when I was with the ODSTs. I'm showing this to you because when you're old enough to fit in it, I want you to have it."
"Really!?" Kaede exclaims.
"Yeah. You can modify the paint scheme to whatever you like... so long as its a shade of red." Sarge says. "As an honorary member of red team, it is important to wear the red uniform proudly! For with it, we shall beat back these bastardly blues!"
"I... I don't know what to say..." Kaede lets out.
"Don't gotta say anything. You've help around the base a lot. And everyone here considers you a true comrade! For that, this armour is yours." Sarge says before offering a salute. Kaede salutes back. "Now, I've sent Donut to command to get supplies, hopefully he makes it in time to get us some water, so you won't get to meet him until he gets back. In the mean time, you can use the supplies here to customize your armour. Paint is with the rest of the tools."
"Thank you..." Kaede Eventually breathes. Getting her own suit of armour felt like a next step in being in this sort of family.
"Paint the armour outside. In the meantime, I gotta go help Simmons with the jeep." Sarge says before leaving Kaede with the armour. Picking up the helmet, she noted it was heavy, yet not to heavy as to be cumbersome. Taking the armour outside in multiple trips, she eventually gets it all outside and laid out onto the dirt.
"Okay. What colours then." She says to herself, thinking of the colour scheme. 'Maybe red AND blue to show I'm on both sides? No, who am I? Optimus Prime? How about a colour no one else has? Green? Not really my style.' Thinking about it some more, she decides on black to be her base. Now for a secondary colour. It did not take long to find it.
'Pink is already my natural secondary colour. Its on all my clothes and its the colour of my hair.' Before looking for the paint, Kaede covers the visor up with tape so it won't be messed up.
After the long task of spray painting the entire armour black and adding details with a dark pink, (she even used one of her invisible hands to make a hand print on the torso to represent them. [Kinda like Echo in Clone Wars, only centered]) the armour was finished.
Taking the tape off the visor, she noted the grey looked out of place now. Going back to the base and into the locker the armour was kept, she rummaged around the nearby boxes to see if there was anything to fix it. The first box was filled with tons of papers and topped with a picture of Sarge alongside some other red soldiers. Probably best leave that alone, might be something personal. The next box, however, had what she was looking for. Visors in all shades of red were neatly lined up in this box. Red, Orange, yellow, and pink!
Taking a pink one out, Kaede makes her way back to the now dried helmet. After almost 15 minutes of just trying to figure out how to remove the grey visor, Kaede eventually instals the pink visor, completing the look. After this, she takes the armour and puts it back into the locker.
Coming just outside the base she see's a spaceship pull out of the canyon. Did that mean Donut was back?
"Status Donut!" She hears Sarge exclaim. Going over to the voice, she spies a pink soldier with Sarge.
"I've successfully gotten the warthog parts you requested sir! Even got some headlight fluid." Donut informs.
"What about the water?" Sarge asks.
"Oh, water? They ran outta that stuff. Its in popular demand apparently." Donut answers.
"Guess there are more idiots in the universe then I thought." Kaede says to herself. But these idiots were her idiots.
"Dang nabit! Have to find Grif to punish him for falling asleep in the shower and wasting it all those years ago." Sarge says before storming off to find Grif.
"Hey! I've never seen you here before." Donut exclaims. Kaede then realizes he's talking to her.
"Oh, hello. My name is Kaede." Kaede greets.
"Hey! I'm Franklin Delano Donut." Donut greets. "I gotta say, I like your outfit. The black and the light red go together so nicely, especially in conjunction with your hair."
"Oh, thank you. I've never thought about it that much." Kaede admits.
"I would also like to say, the dye is really well done." Donut says. "I've seen people try to dye their hair and have it coming out less than stellar."
"Dye? I've never dyed my hair. This is it's natural colour." Kaede admits.
"No way!" Donut exclaims, getting close to her face to get a better look. "Can I take off your hat to get a better look?" Donut asks. Now, she wasn't comfortable showing her horns to Donut just yet, Sarge, Grif, and Simmons maybe, but not Donut. Not yet. She however, pulled it up far enough so it would cover her horns, yet show off more of her hair.
"Thats as far as I'm willing to go." She says. Donut doesn't seemed to mind as he gets looks deeply at her hair.
"Hey, you're right! It is natural!" He exclaims. "And your not wearing contacts? Your eyes are really red too?"
"Yup." Kaede admits. Now that she thought about it, no one else in the orphanage had pink hair or red eyes. They mostly brought attention to her horns so she never thought she was different to anyone in that way. And she's never seen anyone here without their armour before, so she didn't know what they looked liked besides the fact she learned Tucker was black from the rock "episode".
"Thats so cool!" Donut exclaims. "I've never met anyone with those feature before." Kaede smiles at the compliments. If only there were more people like him in the world. "So, why haven't I seen you yesterday?"
"Oh, I'm not OFFICIALLY a member of the red team. I just come and visit every now and then." Kaede admits.
"Nice! I'm officially a part of the red team, so I hope we see each other more often." Donut says.
"Yup. I'll come by when I can." Kaede says.
"Well, I have to unpack now. Didn't have time for it yesterday." Donut says.
"I'll help." Kaede says.
"Really! I mean, you don't have to if you don't want to." Donut says.
"No, its fine." Kaede assures. "Sarge is busy with Grif, and I don't know where Simmons is so I'm alright with helping you get settled."
"Awesome!" Donut says. The two then head into the base. Donut leads her to a small pile of crates. "Alright, this is my stuff." Going through the stuff, he had some odd things, Kaede thought. They were very girlish down to having nail polish and she thinks he also had some jewelry. Putting some of the stuff in the barracks or storage/ everything room, per Donuts instruction, they were left with one thing left. "Oh, I forgot about this. It was my mothers." Donut explains as he picks up a very small wooden box, its the size that it could easily fit in your pocket. Opening it, it played a very familiar tune.
"Lilium." Kaede breaths out upon recognizing it.
"I've never really liked this song. It seems so sad." Donut says.
"Can... can I have it then?" Kaede shyfully asks. "That song is very special to me. I haven't heard it in four years now."
"Oh? Yeah you can have it. To be honest, I was gonna throw this away and get one that played a happier tune, but it would be better to give it to someone else." Donut says as he hands her the music box. Getting a closer look at it, she noted that unlike Kouta's box, this one didn't have the tittle etched out on a plate of gold. It also didn't have much, if any, space to put something inside, probably a side effect of it being to small. Nevertheless, it played the song, just as she remembered it.
"Thank you..." Kaede manages out. "You don't know how much this means to me."
"Anytime. We're friends after all, right?" Donut replies.
"Yeah. Friends." Kaede smiles.