Chapter 8: Repairs and a Warm Bed
"He's taking too much of a chance with her. She could easily betray us regardless." Ayame heard Duo say as he walked in. Inwardly, she shrugged. She didn't see anything wrong with the girl. Sure, she was strange, carrying around two cats with her wherever she went, but there was nothing wrong with her.
Ayame went back to the repair bay to get to work repairing the missile cannons for Quatra's Sandrock Gundam. It would have to be operational for the raid the next day on the OZ compound.
"Ayame!" She perked up at hearing her name a while later. She pushed herself out from under the missile launcher segment of the cannon on a trolley platform. Duo was standing there looking at her. Ayame wiped her hands on a cloth. Duo immediately started laughing.
"What? What's so funny?"
"You have the biggest grease spot I've ever seen on your forehead." Duo commented still laughing
Ayame ran her hand across her forehead and sure enough, there was grease there. She saw Duo trying to hold in his laughter and threw a monkey wrench at him. He barley caught it, as Ayame began laughing.
"All right, what do you want?"She asked when they had stopped laughing.
"What? I can't come in here just to laugh at you?" He backed up in mock terror when Ayame picked up the fire extinguisher.
"No. What do you want?"
"Heero wants you to stay here tomorrow. This is a high risk operation and he doesn't want us to lose our only full time engineer."Ayame raised an eyebrow and nodded.
Duo peered at the launcher.
"You know what. I never thought I would see this thing working again." Ayame shrugged and lay back down on the trolley. She pushed herself back under the launcher to resume work. She heard Duo leave right after he slid her the monkey wrench along the floor.
She had just finished working on it when Meika entered the repair bay. By now she estimated it to be around 10 at night. Meika smiled at her and waved.
"You're the engineer here right? I'm Meika Hou." Ayame smiled
"Yep! I'm Ayame!"
"Have you got this thing working yet?" Meika questioned as she walked over to the other girl. Ayame was shocked when Meika suddenly started screaming. Heero was the first to come rushing through the door, followed by Katsumi and Quatra. Heero had his gun drawn as he rushed to Meika's side.
Meika, still screaming, hid behind Heero and pointed at the floor near Ayame's foot. Ayame burst out laughing when she saw the small spider beside her foot. She was actually quite surprised that the spider was still there after all of Meika's screaming. Katsumi sighed and shook her head as Heero walked over and stomped on the spider, effectively killing it. Heero walked back over to Meika and patted her on the back while asking Ayame if the missile launcher had been fixed.
"Fire it up." Quatra said. Ayame nodded and pushed the switch. The launcher sputtered to life.
"Well I'm impressed." Heero said. Ayame blushed a bit. Katsumi clapped as Ayame shut the launcher down.
Katsumi turned and asked Meika. "So think I'm good enough with the sword yet?" Meika considered her for a moment.
"No definitely not. You need to practice a good deal more." Meika answered. Ayame perked up. She always enjoyed watching people use the sword in tournaments. She'd never actually seen someone learn to use one.
"Your teaching Katsumi to use a sword? Cool." Quatra stated. Heero was less enthusiastic about the idea than Quatra or Ayame, but he didn't say anything on the matter.
"I suggest we all go to bed. We'll need all our energy tomorrow at the OZ compound." He told Meika as he walked off. There was a muffled agreement between Katsumi and Ayame as Meika yawned. Ayame and Katsumi split off to their respective rooms.
It wasn't until everyone was gone that Meika realized that she hadn't been given a place to sleep.
"Eeehhhhaaaa!" She sighed in frustration and decided to sleep on the small couch in the meeting room where she was earlier. She walked over and kicked off her boots. It would be a long day tomorrow, she secretly hoped that she wouldn't screw it up. She fell asleep almost immediately.
She was awakened the next morning to the sound of people bustling around. She also awoke to realize that she was lying in a bed. She looked around groggily as her eyes made out a dark green comforter. Lying on top of her. She surmised that this was Heero's room seeing the mass amounts of green tank tops hanging in the closet to her left. Her suspicions were confirmed when Heero walked in the room.
"Relena and Hilde called this morning, the meeting has been moved. We'll have to be there in an hour to stay on schedule." Heero stated before turning to leave.
"Heero!" Meika called and he turned to look at the blonde girl in his bed. "Thank you." She smiled as Heero nodded and walked out the door closing it behind him.
Meika got up and got dressed, putting her boots back on and the jacket Heero had given her. She walked out to begin getting ready for the raid.