A/N: Just a quick note: I started adding ellipses (...) to separate drastic scene changes. I thought it would help the reader a bit more to identify a scene shift. I try hard to segue into the next scene, but I can't do it all of the time. I apologize to those of you who had to go back and re-read a couple of paragraphs because there was no indication that the scene was in a different place as you pass from one paragraph to the other. Enjoy!


After arriving at Klan's quarters, Cal took a deep breath and knocked on the door. A few moments passed before the door opened, revealing Klan standing at the door with her arms crossed. "Alright, let's get started," she said, turning around and leading the way. Her room looked like it had been hit by a tidy burglar. There were several piles of clothes and linens in various places in the room. The bed had been stripped of its sheets and blankets. The drawers to the nightstands and dressers had been opened and partially unloaded.

At this point, Cal was fearing the worst. From the looks of it, he was going to be some sort of housekeeper for the next few hours. Klan began to explain to him what was going on, "Now that you've spoiled the sanctity of my quarters from your little intrusion last night, you're going to help me remove the layer of grime your presence left all over everything in here." Cal began to wonder if she was being somewhat literal about this, or if she was just taking a cheapshot at him as a way to lash out in retaliation.

"You can start by doing my laundry," she said while she pointed at the piles of linen and uniforms around the room, "Just in case you were thinking of doing anything indecent, I removed the unmentionables already. That way, you won't get any ideas." Already, Klan's offhand comments were starting to get under Cal's skin. She's treating him like he's some kind of disgusting lecher. "Once you've gotten that started, come back in here and get started on the floors. I need everything moved and cleaned underneath, so you'll be moving some furniture around too."

Cal couldn't believe he was being turned into Klan's personal housekeeper over all of this. "Isn't this some sort of abuse of power?" he asked. She casually walked past him to grab a book off of one of the shelves. "Probably," she shrugged, "I wouldn't complain about it, if I were you, though. I thought about having you wash my flightsuits, but then I realized that's it's pretty much impossible for you to do. At least that's one good thing about being a miclone, eh?" Cal snickered at the fact that she doesn't care if she's overstepping her bounds as his superior officer. This is just another way for her to get back at him for everything he's put her through the last couple of weeks. "What's so funny?" "Nothing..."

Elsewhere on the ship, Will and Nene found some time to spend hanging out with each other outside of duty. The mess was relatively busy, feeding dinner to off-duty crew members. The two members of Pixie Team casually chatted over their meals. "So, how long have you and your sister been flying together?" Will asked. "We've both had a lot of flying background since we were kids. Our family has a strong military tradition, so we were always around planes and power armors. I don't even remember how old we were when we took our first flights. Klan joined SMS when she turned 17. I followed her some time later when I turned 17." "So, Klan's the older one, then..." "Yup, she's always been the leader type. She is extremely protective of those whom she cares about, but seems to ostracize anyone else she comes across."

Will nodded in acknowledgment. Nene wanted to know a little about his history as well. "I get the impression that you and Wagner know each other from the past?" "Oh yeah... we went to high school together. We knew each other, but we weren't good friends. He was just one of those guys who'd show up at a party here and there and you would exchange a conversation with him if you saw him there or in the halls at school. We did have a couple of classes together, too. He was always with his girlfriend everywhere he went, so he was usually distracted."

Nene reacted to Will's statement about Cal's girlfriend. "Klan told me that his fiancee had died some time ago. Are they the same person?" Will nodded with a saddened look. "Yeah, she died in some kind of industrial accident. He only recently told me about it because we didn't remain in contact after we graduated. I gotta feel sorry for the guy because of that. He seems to be doing pretty well, despite that." Nene was intrigued by this information. "I wonder if that's why Klan acts weird around him." Will raised his eyebrow before speaking, "What do you mean?"

"You don't think it's odd that she picks on him so much?" Nene asked. "No, I thought it was just the way she is. From what I heard, he's done some stuff that's pissed her off." Nene laughed at his response, "I guess that's how you'd see it. I do know my sister way better than you. Ha ha... Maybe it's her sympathy that keeps her from completely destroying him." Will laughed as well. "He did mention to me that Commander Klang had something else for him to be doing as punishment... Otherwise, he probably would have come to eat with us."

Nene began to process the situation in her mind. "Something about all of this just doesn't add up. I think I'm going to have to do some investigating to find out about this out-of-place behavior from Klan." Will became intrigued as to what Nene was talking about, "Why is it so out-of-place?" "I don't know yet. I mean, from what I know of Wagner, I'd think that the two of them would be getting along a lot better. They have a hell of a lot in common, especially having lost the most important people in their lives very recently." Not knowing anything about what Nene was talking about, Will asked about more details. Nene told Will about the ordeal in which Klan had lost Michael several months ago.

"Jesus... That's such a terrible thing to have happen to you. I see what you mean about them having that one big thing in common, though. I don't think Cal knows that about her," Will said. By now, Nene was starting to formulate a plan to get Cal and her sister to get along better. "I think I know what to do about this..." she said as she leaned forward and put her chin onto her clasped hands, "So, tell me more about yourself. Do you have anyone whom you regard as 'special' back on Aimo?" Will was a bit surprised at the forwardness of the question. He blushed just a little bit as he thought of the answer.

Several hours had passed since Cal had started his work in Klan's quarters. He patiently and quietly did what was asked of him since he just didn't feel like starting any kind of arguments anymore. Perhaps he was finally being tamed? Such thoughts were quickly ushered out of his mind as he assured himself that he was only doing it as a bit of a peace offering.

Right now, he was really thinking about when he was going to get a chance to get some more sleep. Luca would be returning from his escort shift in about 4 hours and Cal had a meeting with him in order to roll out the test countermeasures. In 12 hours, he was scheduled to return to escort duty, along with the rest of Team Pixie. It didn't look like he was going to be finished with Klan's "feats of strength" anytime soon, either.

Sure enough, Klan approached him about his progress. "You know, I do need to get to sleep sometime soon. Since you've decided to take your time here, I'm going to add a little more onto your workload." Cal sighed and rolled his eyes, being as obvious about it as possible. "You got a problem with that??" "Yes, Ma'am, I do." No longer able to avoid conflict with Klan, Cal had to speak his mind. She put her hands on her hips to express her displeasure. "You can't handle a little hard work, I see?" Cal took a deep breath because he knew he was about to stoke the fires of conflict.

"You know, at any point in the last few hours, I could have gone to Commander Lee about the 'special treatment' you've been giving me. I didn't, though. You wanna know why? Because I don't back down from a little challenge, I'll admit. Most importantly, I felt like I was doing what it takes to make up a little bit of favor from you. Simply because I have made some mistakes here and there, I felt like I should at least oblige to some of my punishments. I think you're going way too far now," Cal angrily said. Klan got into his face to respond. "I'll continue to administer punishment as long as I see fit, you got that? The sooner you learn your place around here, the sooner it ends. You will learn to respect your superiors."

Cal tried very hard to not let his anger burst while she was in his face. With a deep breath, he sternly responded, "I have to meet with Lieutenant Angelloni in less than 4 hours. That means I will be getting very little sleep tonight." "Well, that's just too bad, isn't it?" Klan said, faking sympathy, "You're done here for now. You can come back and finish when I wake up. I need you on bathroom detail until your meeting with Luca. Move out!" Cal somehow managed to hold his anger in long enough to get out of her quarters. Fortunately in doing so, he probably avoided any further increases to his punishment.

While on his way to clean the restrooms, Cal began to detest this extremely hostile behavior he's been getting from Klan. This goes way beyond any kind of "monthly visitor" rhetoric that guys are so quick use to blame erratic female behavior. He was certainly not looking forward to the next 24 hours or so. There's little to no hope of getting a decent amount of sleep anytime soon.

The source of conflict was not entirely contained within the hull of the Macross Quarter. The currently-deployed teams of VFs were running into more and more hostile Vajra nests, the further they incurred into the uncharted areas of the Kihnes Asteroid Belt. Both Alto's and Ozma's teams had encountered and destroyed frenzied nests, followed by brief encounters with one or more VF-27s, who were undoubtedly working for Macross Galaxy. Each attempt at disabling or destroying the 27s were met with the same results as Klan's encounter several hours earlier.

After just losing contact with a 27, Ozma couldn't just blow these encounters off as nothing anymore. "Alto, have you had any luck shooting any of these bastards down?" "Nope. They're slippery as hell, but what's really concerning me is the increase in their numbers. I think something big is about to go down." Ozma nodded as Alto's words mirrored his own. "No doubt, their entire operation is alerted to our presence and motives. I wouldn't be surprised either if we fall under a counterattack soon."

For now, the area remained secure, thanks to the efforts of the fleet's squadrons. In the minds of many of the pilots in Skull Squadron, they think about how much danger they are being put into with each escort shift they perform. The danger will probably increase during the next change in the fleet's position, and could lead to more than they bargained for.

Upon returning from his shift, Luca prepared for his meeting with Cal in the squadron briefing room. Cal seemed to be running a bit late, but Luca remained patient. He had already grabbed some food to snack on while they worked together, so he was busily eating to pass the time. A few minutes late, Cal burst into the briefing room with several manuals and technical specifications to use. He had a thermos of coffee and a couple of pastries stuffed under his arm. His overall uniform and appearance looked disheveled.

"Do you need some help there?" Luca asked as he noticed Cal was struggling to hold onto everything without dropping a single item. "Naw, I got it. Just give me a sec here..." Cal made it to the table and dumped everything out in a random pile, while trying not to drop his coffee and food. He took a moment to sort everything out and straighten out his uniform. Luca continued to chew on his food, somewhat entertained by the balancing act that Cal had just put on.

Luca noticed the tired disposition Cal was wearing. "I appreciate you getting up in the middle of your sleep time to get me up to speed here." Cal looked at Luca after saying that and just chuckled. "I haven't gone to sleep yet. This stuff is the only thing that's keeping me awake now," he said as he lifted up his thermos for a sip. "What have you been doing all this time?" Luca asked. Cal didn't really want to talk about it and proceeded with his rollout, instead of answering Luca's question. "Okay, let's get started here, shall we? We've got quite a few things to cover."

Cal covered the easy stuff first. The flashbang and fold-magnetic chaff countermeasures were pretty straightforward and Luca had no issues understanding how to use them. Cal briefly touched on the holographic projector, but didn't give it much time, due to its non-practicality. The real meat-and-potatoes of the rollout was the radome enhancements; IFF hacking and EM/fold signature neutralization.

"I heard you're a computer whiz, so I figured you'd love to hear all about these babies," Cal said. Luca was already poring over the technical specifications and manuals related to these systems. "You're right about that, Cal. I can already tell that these modules have a lot of promise. What kind of luck have you had with them?" Luca asked. "Well, I use the enhanced stealthing all of the time and it works like a charm. The IFF hacking is very intimidating to me, however. I am just not big on decryption... especially doing it midflight. This is one thing I really am looking forward to in giving you these enhancements. I think you'll make much better use of them than I ever could."

Luca smiled at the compliment. "I'm already impressed by the schematics here. This is a project I wish I had gotten into earlier, but it looks like your friends at Bell-Casse beat us to it over at LAI." "Well, I am just glad that we'll be able to complete the testing for all of the systems. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to get them all done, considering my lack of expertise in advanced computer sciences." Luca shook his head at Cal. "It's really not that hard. I'll be sure to keep you up to speed on what I find out. You'll be able to quickly grasp the concepts with little explanation."

A couple of hours passed by before Cal and Luca finished with their meeting. They covered several RVF-related subjects and Cal offered a couple of additional pieces of combat advice for Luca to chew on. All in all, the two RVF pilots shared an enormous amount of information between each other that would serve them a lot of good in their upcoming missions. Unfortunately, Cal was running out of time before he could have any chance to get some sleep. He hurriedly bid Luca goodbye as he rushed to get to his quarters. Who knows when Klan is going to wake up and interrupt his sleeping schedule once again?

His quarters were quiet and dark. Will was fast asleep in his bunk and Cal did what he could to not wake him while he worked his shoes and uniform off. The bed felt so inviting as he sunk into the mattress, surrounded by the cool sensation from his pillow and sheets. Hoping to fall asleep only a few moments after closing his eyes, Cal focused his subconscious attention on how comfortable the bed felt, compared to the hostile environment he's been in for so many hours.

Before anything could happen, Cal's PDA began to chime from an incoming call. "Tch... what is it now??" he muttered as he fumbled to answer. "What??" he said into the phone. His conversation continued with the barely-audible voice crackling from the speaker on the phone. "But I just got to bed! It hasn't even been 8 hours. Fine... Fine!" he yelled. Frustrated, he sat back up and began to feel around for his shoes and uniform.

Will, woken by the phone call, rolled over in his bunk to get more comfortable while he tried to get back to sleep. "Who the shit was that??" "Don't ask. My life sucks right now." Will yawned before saying anything else. "Klang?" Cal didn't answer as he grabbed his things and walked out of the quarters. Will started to think about how he did not envy Cal right now. All he cared about at that moment was that he was in the safety of his quarters, able to sleep some more before waking up soon.

...

"Hurry up and finish things in here. We have to be on the tarmac in a few hours." Cal gritted his teeth as he walked past Klan, who was staring him down. By now, he was just too tired to even fight about it. He managed to wrap most everything up and was in the midst of moving all of the furniture back into their places. Klan had left the quarters to get some food from the mess, leaving Cal to work alone in her quarters.

As he moved some of the final pieces into their places, Cal came upon an opened box full of pictures and various mementos. It looks like these are the items that were on top of her dresser before she removed them to do the cleaning. Despite being extremely upset at her, he wanted to take this opportunity to find out a little more about Klan's past. A couple of framed pictures showed her standing amongst old friends, it seems. Nothing seemed too out of the ordinary so far. Cal unfolded a picture that showed a very young Klan playing with a miclone child. A touching, but peculiar picture... Cal wondered what it would have been like to have a Zentran as a best friend while growing up.

Folding the picture up and putting it back into the box, Cal dug around for a moment longer and pulled out a pair of glasses. "I didn't know she wore glasses. I know her eyes are sharp as hell when she's flying. I guess it's another genetic anomaly she has to deal with when she's in her miclone form," he said to himself. They seemed a bit large for Klan's head, though. To test this theory out, he put them on his head. Before he could take his hands off of the legs, the doors to her quarters flew open.

Cal grinned at Klan, who was standing in the doorway with a shocked look on her face. "Hey Commander, I didn't know you had to wear glasses. How come I never see you with them on?" A harmless question from a curious individual... Klan's point of view was far different, though. For a single microsecond, she thought she was looking at Michael standing in her quarters. As quickly as it came, though, the illusion shattered and revealed the one person who's been causing her a lot of grief ever since they met a few weeks ago.

Suddenly reminded of Michael's image, Klan's eyes were welling up as she was preparing to yell. "Take those off of your face right now!" Cal reacted quickly and removed them from his head. Klan walked up and snatched them out of his hand and grabbed the box of mementos. She cradled them in her arms as she proceeded to unleash her anger at Cal for being so nosy. "What gives you the right to go through my stuff?? Do you have any idea how valuable these things are to me? These are some of my most private belongings and you took it upon yourself to go sifting through them!"

Cal wanted to apologize, but it wasn't like the box had "DO NOT TOUCH" written all over it in multiple colors. "Well, I just found this box and it was opened. I've spent several hours getting to know your floor, furniture, and laundry on a more-than-personal basis and you're gonna expect me to not come across some of your belongings like that?? If you didn't want me to find them, you should have kept them out of my sight, like you so painstakingly did with your unmentionables."

Klan had to fight back the tears from the reaction to Cal going through her most treasured belongings. At the same time, she was becoming more angry that he was arguing back again. "I never thought I'd put up with someone who refuses to learn his place. No matter how much I punish you, you still argue with and disobey your superior officer." Klan felt the water works beginning to fire up the pumps behind her eyes. "Just get out. Go!" she said, pushing Cal out of the door with her free hand.

The door closed behind Cal, with him wondering what the hell is wrong with Klan. He slowly walked away, looking at the time on his PDA. Cal sighed as he realized that there was only 2 hours left before he was scheduled to launch from the Quarter. It would just be better to not go to sleep and deal with it. The only time that was left was enough to grab some more caffeine and a muffin from the galley.

Fresh from gathering up her composure, Klan stalked the halls looking for her prey. She came upon Cal's and Will's quarters and pounded on the door. "Wagner! I know you're in there. Open this door!" Nobody answered. She waited for a grand total of 6 seconds before punching a code into the panel on the side of the door. The door opened to reveal a dark and empty quarters. Cal wasn't there, and Will had already left the room to go take care of his early morning business, whatever that happened to be at the moment.

Klan entered the quarters, looking for something to get her hands into. She felt like she had to teach Cal what it was like to have his personal belongings fondled by another person. Immediately, she went for the items that were on the shelf near his bed. She took the VF models and tossed them onto the bed, which was already messed up from Cal's attempt at sleeping a few hours ago. The only other item was the frame with a picture of Cal and Marie happily smiling for the camera while they held each other close. Klan stared attentively at the couple, trying to imagine the kind of woman who'd put up with the behavior that he exhibits daily.

The door opened, and Cal stopped mid-step when he saw Klan in his room messing with his stuff. He had his thermos and a muffin in one arm, with another muffin in his mouth. A moment of silence followed as the two locked stares at each other. Cal calmly entered his quarters while removing the muffin from his mouth with his free hand. He chewed the bite he had taken nonchalantly while he put the food on his table near where Klan was standing. She still had the picture frame in hand.

"How does it make you feel to have someone going through your personal belongings?" Klan rhetorically asked. Cal knew that if he reacted the way he wanted to, it would mean that Klan would have the upper hand. He also didn't want to react how she wanted him to. He casually shrugged and reached back down to grab his muffin for another bite. Klan carelessly tossed the picture frame onto the bed. It didn't have any damage done to it, but the point was made already. She snatched the muffin out of Cal's hand before getting into his face again.

"Well? Do you have anything you want to tell me?" she sternly asked, trying her best to intimidate him. Cal took a deep breath before answering. "I don't know why I even bother..." he said. Klan quickly responded, "Bother what?" Cal gestured his hand out, pointing his open palm towards Klan. "This. Why do I even bother putting up with you when all you do is try to crush my spirit? I thought that joining your team was going to be a great opportunity to get to know someone like you and who you are and it's been nothing but a goddamn roller coaster. It doesn't matter what I do or what I say, everything pisses you off."

"We're not in a popularity contest, Wagner. This is the military. We're here to protect that which is important to us. If you don't like that, then you should have known better before you joined up," Klan responded. "Well, it looks like nobody else has a problem getting along with each other around here. When I met you, I could tell you were struggling to deal with the loneliness after the death of someone close to you, and it made me want to help you. The more I interact with you now, the more I see how self-destructive you want to be and it makes me want to not be around when you finally lose it." Klan reeled back a bit from the brazen response. "Well nobody asked you to help me. I was fine handling it on my own. You should learn to not stick your nose into peoples' business so much."

"Fine. I can see why nobody wants to hang around you anyways. All you do is berate them and put them down because they happen to show a little bit of concern for your well-being. Someday, you'll learn that that's what having friends is all about. It's about caring for someone and having that concern be reciprocated back to you. You can't tell me that you've never actually cared for someone because why else would you have all of those pictures of that blonde-haired guy in that box??" Cal retorted. Once again, Klan felt like she was being hit in a soft spot. Unfortunately for her, she knew that Cal was onto something. Michael was generally the only person whom she cared about, but he never gave her the kind of reciprocation that she really wanted from him; until it was too late. Finding out about his true feelings for her at the moment of his death made her hate herself for waiting so long to tell him how she felt. Although they both knew that they cared for each other, neither had the courage or the strength to admit it to the other.

Klan became slightly enraged by the fact that Cal was right. Rather than answering the question and admitting that he was right, Klan fooled herself into thinking that this was another display of outright defiance. Her eyes burned in anger as she took a deep breath before speaking again. "You will turn yourself around and march your ass into the hangar. I want you in your EX-gear and ready to do laps. This is the last time I will have to tell you: 'Learn your place!'"

Cal had already said what needed to be said. He told himself in his mind that he was right about what he said to her. Accepting his fate, Cal quietly turned around and walked out of the quarters. Klan followed him closely behind with her arms crossed. At this point, Cal knew it was about time to have Ozma step in to handle the situation. Unfortunately, Ozma should be sleeping right now and he'd have to wait to come back from his next escort shift to talk to the Commander.

Cal took little time getting into his EX-gear and stood waiting at the usual spot that laps were walked. Klan had disappeared after they entered the hangar, but she re-emerged in her natural form. Her flightsuit could be seen under the large-sized version of the SMS uniform: dark olive green pants and the signature black and red jacket. She took position in front of Cal and folded her arms before speaking. "Well, what are you waiting for? Get started! You'll stop when I say it's time to stop."

Cal glared up directly into her eyes, making his disapproval as obvious as he could without uttering a word. He started walking his laps; each motion accompanied by the creaking and grinding of the moveable parts in the EX-gear. "If she thinks she can intimidate me by doing this in her Zentran form, she's got another thing coming," Cal thought to himself. He was determined to show her that he was not going to roll over so easily; especially when she thought it'd be a good idea to administer this punishment while she towered over him in her natural form. With each lap, he made a concerted effort to stare into her eyes as he approached her, and then turned away to continue with the other half.

"I know you hate me right about now. You just keep on staring at me like that and we'll see how long you last," she said, becoming more vigilant with every pass. Cal's will was unwavering, but his body was another story. He began to feel the massive fatigue setting in with every step. The lack of any sleep in the last 24 hours was beginning to catch up with him and in his mind, only one person was to blame for it: Klan. The room began to slowly rotate on its own from Cal's point of view. Either vertigo or nausea could be to blame for this irregular sensation. Fortunately for Cal, Team Pixie was due on the tarmac shortly. Klan impatiently tapped her foot as she began to realize how soon it was going to be before she had to let Cal get into his RVF.

"Alright, Wagner. Get your ass into your bird. We'll continue this when we get back," she said as she glared at him before turning away to get into her Queadluun. Cal stopped for a moment to check the orientation of the room. The spinning had not yet stopped and the nausea was beginning to set in. Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, he made his way to his bird while squinting to help alleviate the dizziness.

Throughout the entire shift, Cal's flying became erratic at certain times. It was erratic enough for his team mates to notice. "Cal, are you okay there, buddy?" Will asked. He knew that Cal had not gotten any sleep and was concerned for the well-being of his friend. Cal took a long time to answer. His voice was raspy and tired, "Yeah, I'll be fine." He cut the comm line after answering, as if he was hiding something. Cal managed to stay awake for the entire eight-hour shift. His return to the hangar could not have come one moment sooner, as every second out there seemed like an eternity to him.

He climbed out of the cockpit and started to head across the hangar towards the exit that leads to the living area of the ship. His flightsuit was noticeably stained from some kind of liquid emulsion. Even the canopy had several brown splotches on it. Before he could even get halfway across the hangar, Klan emerged from her Queadluun to stop him from leaving. "Where do you think you're going? We still have unfinished business, chickling." Cal stopped his stagger and worked up the strength to look up at Klan and stare her down again to show his disapproval. Klan folded her arms as she saw that Cal had not yet learned the lesson she was trying to teach him.

"You got out of your EX-gear. Head back there and get it back on. You know the drill..." Klan said as she looked down into his piercing gaze. At this point, Cal could barely keep his balance, but he did his damnedest to continue to glare into her eyes. His vision began to come out of focus and blacked out entirely. Although his will was still strong, his body couldn't take it anymore. Trying to hold it in, Cal lost voluntary control of his mouth and spit out some vomit he had been holding. He fell forward and hit the deck with a very audible "thud" and remained motionless.

Klan puffed up from pride, having convinced herself that she had won the battle. "Wagner, you'd better not be faking it. You're just lining yourself up for more laps, you know." Will, who had seen Cal fall to the ground, ran up to see if his roommate was okay. Nene watched from behind Klan, concerned about the look on Will's face as he realized that Cal was now lying motionless on the hangar deck. Will tried unsuccessfully to wake Cal up from his unconscious state and looked up to Klan with an accusing stare. "What the hell did you do to him?" he demanded.

Klan unfolded her arms, a little worried that maybe she pushed him too hard. She quickly shook that worry from her mind and knelt down to prove that Cal was faking it. She prodded him with her finger, but his body remained motionless, a slave to her every applied force. She carelessly rolled him over and saw the emaciated look on his face. Cal's skin was extremely pale and his head was bleeding from the contusion suffered from the fall. It was an image that she would not soon forget... not to mention the looks that she was getting from Nene and Will.

...

A few people waited outside of the infirmary for some news, including Pixie Team. The pilots traded only silence and the occasional glance as they anticipated the diagnosis. Several minutes passed before the infirmary door opened and Kanaria emerged to deliver the results. Will and Nene got up from the bench they were sitting on to hear what Kanaria had to say. Klan remained seated, looking off into the distance. She only glanced at Kanaria once before returning her gaze to the same place as before.

"He'll be fine. It looks like he just needs rest. His body is suffering from exhaustion and extreme dehydration, brought on by the heavy amount of vomiting he had been doing while in flight. He seems to have recently contracted a flu virus, which is what caused the nausea and made him regurgitate everything back up. Apparently, he's been drinking a hell of a lot of coffee lately. Do any of you have any idea why he'd drown himself in so much coffee?" Will and Nene looked at each other; they had already agreed to keep this incident within the team until they could resolve the situation internally. They shrugged at Kanaria, who then turned her gaze to Klan. "Klan? Do you have any idea?"

All she could do was look back at Kanaria with a vacuous expression. Will interjected before any more scrutiny could be placed onto Klan. "Ma'am, what needs to happen to get him back to normal?" Kanaria turned back to Will to answer. "I've set him up with an IV drip to restore the water and electrolytes that his body needs. Right now, he needs to rest and sleep off the flu he's carrying and that nasty bruise on his head will heal up just fine with time." "Can we see him right now?" "I don't see why you'd want to. He's still out like a light. If you insist, go ahead. Just don't spend too much time in there. I don't want any of you to catch the flu, either." Kanaria continued down the hall to the desk nearby. She began to punch her medical reports into the computer while Team Pixie worked up the strength to go see Cal's condition inside of the infirmary.

Klan didn't seem to want to move under her own power. She was fighting with herself internally; deciding on what course of action to take moving forward, and thinking about the shitstorm she was bringing down on herself over this incident. Ozma was definitely not going to be happy to hear about why one of his pilots came so close to kicking the bucket because of her. "Come on, Klan," Nene said as Will went ahead of them through the infirmary doors. Klan remained motionless and it only incensed Nene's frustration with her sister. She reached down and grabbed Klan's wrist and dragged her inside. Klan only fought back a little bit, but she relaxed and accepted the fact that she didn't have a choice anymore.

A soft lamp glowed above Cal's bed, giving just enough light to see clearly; but not too much to disturb the sleeping patient. His bed was closest to the window leading to outer space. The stars in the distance slowly traveled longways across the visible area. Cal now wore a green hospital gown; his expression was empty while his body fought to replenish itself with the life-giving liquid flowing from the IV drip inserted into his arm. An EKG monitor beeped rhythmically in the background, informing anyone nearby of the condition of the patient's cardiovascular system.

Cal's skin color had pretty much returned to normal. He still looked a little thin from not having retained what little he'd eaten for the last day. Nene turned to her sister to gauge her reaction. "So, what happened?" she asked. "So, I put him through a little extra-curricular activity. He couldn't handle it," Klan said, shrugging. Nene was appalled at her nonchalance at the situation. "Okay, we need to talk about this in more detail, Klan. We have a few hours before Ozma comes back from his escort shift. He's gonna be looking for an explanation the moment he steps out of his Valkyrie. Let's hope Wagner wakes up soon so we can talk to him and figure out what to do about this."

Klan's eyes opened in surprise that her sister was being unusually ambitious about this. Although Nene is usually soft-spoken and reconciliatory, her sudden and swift reaction to this incident is refreshing. "I wasn't aware that you were the team leader here. When were you promoted?" Klan sarcastically asked. Nene stared into Klan's eyes; the same look that her sister has been using against Cal. "It's time that someone steps in here and mediates this problem. Obviously, you two can't be trusted to work things out, so I'm going to take it upon myself to fix the issues. I'll talk to you after I've talked to him first."

Klan wiped the smarmy grin off of her face. "Alright. Let's see what you can come up with. I'll be in my quarters if you need me." Will and Nene watched Klan casually walk out of the infirmary. She had undoubtedly washed her hands clean of the situation until Nene was to talk to her. Nene turned to Will to speak. "I'm sorry. I honestly don't know what's going through her mind right now. I'm actually a little uneasy about this behavior she's been exhibiting lately." Will put his hand onto Nene's shoulder with some tenderness. "Let me know if you need some help." He left Nene alone in the infirmary so she could be alone with her thoughts for a bit.

Nene was just getting comfortable having two miclones as her wingmates. The last thing she wanted to happen was to have the integrity of the team put into jeopardy. Her growing attachment to Will had transferred a bit to Cal, seeing as how the two guys were good friends with each other. Despite the cold, careless behavior coming from her sister, she knew that Klan's integrity as the squadron's XO was also in a bit of trouble. Ozma would not take this well if the truth to Cal's hospitalization came out. Will had mentioned to her the events that led up to this outcome. It was plain to see that Klan was determined to wear Cal down to this point. Whether or not she intended on him nearly meeting his death over this, it was still disturbing to Nene that her sister can be so nonchalant about it. This needed to be addressed very quickly or the ugly truth will make its way to the surface eventually.