Disclaimer: I don't own anything I didn't create.
A/N: Decided to give you a 20th birthday update. You only turn the same age as your birthday once in your life.
"Show us your Gundam."
"Wha?" Trio looked up from her lunch, Subway sandwich still clutched tightly between both of her hands, and she pouted at Duo as he stole one of her pickles. He grinned cheekily and chowed down. "Haven't you already seen it?" Heero quirked an eyebrow at the question, which had caught everyone else's attention too. Trio saw that and frowned. "But you…" She paused, thought, and realization dawned on her face. "Ooooh… you didn't know what it was, huh?" Heero frowned at her as she chowed down on her sandwich, eating faster, and Duo quirked a skeptic eyebrow at her.
"I think ex-Gundam pilots would know what a Gundam looks like." She shoved the last of the sandwich in her mouth, stood up, chewed, shook her head and swallowed with a bit of a grimace, rubbing her throat.
"Not mine." She said leaving the table, piquing everyone's interest, Duo standing up and following, leading the way behind her. "I didn't want people to catch onto what I was doing, so I got inventive and made Bullet easier to hide." She said, leading us outside and turning around and standing in front of her red and gold Chevy, arms out as if we were students and she was the teacher. "Luckily, both the gundanium and gunduriam alloys worked well with what I wanted to do, so it worked out perfectly. Now," she smiled impishly, dropping her arms, eyes shining. "-can you see my gundam anywhere?" I shook my head in a simple 'no', Trowa and Wufei folded their arms and waited, Heero did nothing but wait and watch, and Duo snorted, rolled his eyes and said 'Of course not.' She smirked, went to the driver's side door, opened it and climbed in. "You will in a sec!" She called, and we all frowned at her in confusion. What? She slammed the door shut, and for a moment, nothing happened, the headlights flickering on.
...
My jaw dropped. Duo jumped back about three feet with a yell of surprise, landing neatly on his ass while doing so, Heero's eyebrows kissed his hairline, and Trowa's and Wufei's eyes widened as we all looked up as the car shifted, changed shape and grew taller into a slender, red-and-gold human-esque Gundam. It turned it's head to look at us with two glowing white eyes and seemed to smile without anything changing at all. I heard the hiss of the Gundam's hatch opening, and what seemed to be two chest plates moved forward, away from the main body like a lady bug's wings. I snapped my mouth shut in mild, stunned surprise as Trio's hysterical laughter echoed through the area, and she slipped out of the opening at the bottom of her Gundam, landing on her feet but stumbling and falling to her butt on her Gundam's foot, leaning against the Gundam's leg as she clutched her sides, face turning red from laughter. We watched her in stunned silence.
"Oh my god…" She practically wheezed out through her laughter. "Duo! Ya shoulda seen!" She gasped. Apparently her accent got thicker when she laughed and spoke at the same time. "Ya nearly pissed yaself!" I looked around in curiosity, since Trio had pointed it out. Duo was sitting on his ass, leaning back on his hands, wide eyes quickly losing their half-surprised, half-frightened look due to Trio's teasing to be replaced by half-irritation, half-awe. He spluttered, and I grinned, noticing Heero smirking at the guy in amusement out of the corner of my eye.
"Well! Well!" Duo gave it up and simply rolled up onto his feet and charged at Trio at a crouch with a grin on his face, causing her to shriek with surprise and laughter as he pinned her against her gundam's leg, and proceeded to tickle her mercilessly. I shook my head in amusement, grinning while Wufei rolled his eyes and looked away, Trowa grinning at the ground. "Well, of course!" I twitched an eyebrow up. He admitted it. "That thing is freakin' AWESOME! How the hell did you come up with that on your own?" Duo smirked at the girl and paused when she tried to get her tickle revenge on him only to find that he had no reaction at all. She gave up with a gasp of laughter once Duo started tickling her again, and struggled to breathe amidst the laughter. I was starting to think she'd suffocate when she took matters into her own hands.
"Ho-ee!" I raised my eyebrows as she made a huff of air into a bit of a battle cry and managed to push herself up and away from her gundam's leg, taking Duo with her- much to his surprise- toppling him over onto his back with a victorious look in her eyes as she landed on top of him, and- Trowa blocked my eyes with his hand, and I shot him an irritated look. He was staring straight ahead, so I took hold of his fingers and moved them from of my field of view, and looked to see what happened. Trio was lounging on Duo, not bothering to climb off of him, smirking triumphantly, looking down at him like she had just raised her head from doing something around his head, and Duo was slowly turning beet red. I blinked, a curious frown flitting across my face as I let Trowa's hand slip from my fingers. What just happened?
I watched as the smirk slowly slipped from Trio's face as she watched her best friend's face turn red, as if she was worrying about having done something wrong. Then she blinked, and I watched her face flush as a look of realization dawned on her, and she moved to scramble off of him. At the last minute, Duo's hand shot up to grab her behind the neck, and he pushed himself partially off the ground, and his lips met her cheek dangerously close to her mouth. She looked at him out of the corner of her eyes, and I turned red, covering my eyes. Maybe Trowa had been right to cover my eyes in the first place. Red and golden-blonde didn't go too well together, and I could only think: 'Man, that progressed fast.'
What the hell just happened? What the hell just happened? I thought, as I stared wide-eyed into the cloudy blue sky. Trio had pushed me over onto my back, and I had tilted myself slightly to the side and curled up a bit instinctively before I landed so that any potential damage was avoided, but then Trio had landed on top of me, and in the space of a second, had pressed her hot, laughing lips to my throat. Kissing my throat, almost as if she was going to bite me like a vampire but softening just before her lips touched skin- in the sensitive area just under my chin, to the right of my adam's apple. It was as if time had stopped for a second, and a fast trail of freezing hot, electrical fire had sped down my spine in an instant, temporarily paralyzing and stunning me, putting me in my current situation. What the hell just happened? What the hell was that?
I liked it. I realized suddenly as Trio lifted her lips away from my throat, time speeding up again and I felt a heat start in my stomach and make its way up to my face. That was… well I didn't know what that was, but I certainly never expected that happening. I stared absent-mindedly into the sky, my face growing redder by the moment, and then I felt a pressure on my chest, and I refocused to see Trio moving away, her face red and anxious. Don't let her go. I won't. Impulsively, I reacted on my gut desire, reached up and hooked a hand behind her neck, preventing her from moving any more, pushed myself partially off of the ground, and placed a kiss right between her cheek and her lips. She froze, and slowly turned to look at me with, wide, surprised eyes. I searched her eyes for anything that could tell me if I was in the wrong. She was looking at me full-on now, and she was searching through my eyes. Then she smiled. I stopped breathing for an instant. It was a small smile, yes- but it was there.
"Right." I blinked at the sudden intrusion and quirked a frown when I saw Trio's eyes widen in surprise as suddenly she was lifted into the air, and suddenly I felt arms under my own, hefting me to my feet. I looked up and saw Trowa. He looked decidedly silent. Then I looked over and saw Wufei quickly yet carefully setting Trio on her feet. Oh. So he could be nice sometimes. I would've rolled my eyes if I wasn't still so blindsided by what had happened. "Before this goes anywhere, you should tell us more about your gundam, ok?" Wufei suggested, looking down the few inches in their height difference into her eyes. Trio and I both blushed slightly at the insinuation, but she brushed it off with a nod.
"Alright," She said, taking a deep breath and looking for something to say. "Well…" She looked up at her machine. "She's different, as you can see. I built her for speed, so I stream-lined her, starting with the hatch." She said, leading Wufei under the opening the lady-bug-wings made, and pointed, directing his attention upwards. He looked genuinely interested, and she was really getting into the swing of telling him about it. A little monster rumbled to life in the pit of my stomach and let out a quiet warning growl. I frowned, listening in.
"So how do you get in?" He asked.
"Like this." She jumped and smacked the bottom of the lady-bug-wings, and my eyebrows shot up in curious surprise at the action, which caused a rope with several foot holds in it to fall out. Just an average rope, which made me frown. That was fairly primitive compared to the pulley systems we had used on our gundams to get into the cockpits, yet she climbed up it like a monkey and waved Wufei on up. He followed, and the rest of us walked forward to stand under the lady-bug-wings and looked up. My eyes widened and my jaw went slack. Wow. So that's where the car doors went. Impressive. Trio and Wufei were crouch-sitting in the curve of the lady-bug-wings, and he was frowning as she pointed to a cavity in her gundam's chest between the doors in which a machine gun was folded up into the recess. "I currently have a 64-caliber machine gun installed in the recess I gave her, but really, she could take anything in there. Pretty much." She mused, looking at it. "I put the wind-shields" she patted the lady-bug-wings she was sitting on and Wufei glanced down to see were her hand was before looking back at the gun. Oh. So that's what they were. "-in to keep to gun and the recess it's in from slowing me down, but it slows me down anyways right before an attack, since I have to open the shields to shoot. I can get the gun out, aim, shoot, back in and the wings closed in a matter of seconds, but I've heard that's when the whistling stops." Ah. So she knew about the rumors. "Now the hatch itself is no different from any other MD's. It just doesn't have a door that swings open like others do…" She climbed up and out of sight, and I frowned as Wufei climbed after her. Two people was probably the maximum weight her gundam could take while on earth, or else I would've climbed up after her in a heartbeat.
Quatre moved to stand beside me, looking up into the space where Trio and Wufei had disappeared. I stared up there stonily, my eyes narrowed slightly. The little monster in my stomach was still letting out it's warning growl, which had gotten a little louder since I couldn't see the aforementioned two anymore.
"She's incredible, isn't she?"
"Yeah." My eyes softened slightly in response to Quatre's question, unaware that he was looking out of the corner of his eyes at me.
"Makes me wonder what she was like before… when you were kids." I lowered my eyes, frowning somewhat sadly in reflection as I looked at the human-esque foot of Trio's gundam. "Duo?"
"I don't think I ever really appreciated her back then." I sighed, bringing my hand up to the back of my neck. "We were five then, of course. Didn't know much about the world but for what Solo taught us. She's half the reason why I'm still alive anyways. Solo was the other half." I went silent, mulling things over. Quatre was looking at me fully now, yet I didn't look up at him. "I helped Solo look after her when we were kids, and she was the one who guaranteed we didn't starve to death on dust bin scavengings or stolen goods." I smiled to myself. "Not that she was much better, of course. She just got more stuff of a better quality." Quatre smiled at me, and that was the end of that conversation as we looked up and moved out of the way as Trio and Wufei climbed down and continued the tour.
A/N: ::Evil Grin::