Chapter 4
The Road to Recovery
By: Miguela
Heero slowly awoke from a deep sleep feeling rested and better than he had the last time he had come to his senses. Sitting up slowly, the sheets fell off his chest and down to his waist. He was still in the same clothes that he had worn on the mission, his muscle shirt and an old pair of jeans that the right leg cut off to above the knee. Mia was asleep hunched over the side of his bed, her head resting on her arms that were constricting his legs from moving. He noticed that new bandages had been wrapped around his wound and a pair of crutches was leaning against the far wall.
Great, he thought to himself, I'm stuck hopping around for a while.
His movements had awakened Mia, who sat up slowly rubbing her eyes blearily and yawning. She slowly focused on him and smiled. "Glad to see you're awake," she said softly. "I was starting to get worried." She stretched, wings flexing slightly. Her hair looked freshly washed and shimmered in the morning light, and she had on a new shirt, one that had holes cut into the back for her large wings. It never ceased to amaze him at how she could've managed to put it on without tearing it to shreds in the attempt. He'd have to ask her to show him how she did it some time.
"How long have I been asleep?" he asked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed.
"About three days," she said, rising. "I've gotten a lot done while you were asleep, like get transfer papers to that school you and Duo were hiding at, as did Quatre, Trowa, and Wufei, though Wufei wasn't too pleased about having to go to school while you healed."
He scowled. "And if we do go back to that school, how are you going to hide those big, feathery things coming from your back?" he asked, reaching for the crutches leaning against the wall. "I don't think that it would be wise for you to show those things off in public."
"Quit lecturing me," she snapped impatiently. "I already got that talk from Quatre, and as I told him, I've got it covered." She demonstrated by folding her wings tightly and they seemed to melt into her back where they became part of her shirt. "Oz wasn't completely stupid when they designed these things, and made it so that the person could hide them at will to make things easier."
Heero was impressed at how thoughtful Oz had been when designing their new genetic weapon of destruction. Now he knew how she was able to put her clothes on, and it didn't seem all that difficult. "So you'll keep those things folded the entire time at school?" he asked, beginning to make his way out of the room with the help of the wooded supports, his injured leg bent at the knee to keep it from hitting the ground.
"Yeah, and Quatre said that we'll have a car to use so that we'll be able to go back and forth from the school at our own convenience," she said, trotting along behind him as he made his way down the hall to the kitchen. "I don't think that I'd be able to keep them a secret if I was with a roommate, so he suggested it to make things easier."
She rambled on and on about what courses she was taking, all the same ones as him, and how she would need his help since it had been a while since she had done any school work, though she remembered how to pilot the Gundam as though she had been taught just yesterday.
He hobbled his way over to Quatre, who sat sipping his morning tea at the dinning room table and was looking over the global news on his, Heero's, laptop at the dinning room table.
"Where did you get the passwords for that?" he demanded quietly. "Only I was supposed to be able to break those codes."
"Mia did it for me," Quatre explained, gesturing to the young woman who had ducked into the kitchen to hunt for something to eat. "She's better at cracking codes than you are."
Heero scowled. "Mia, come out here," he commanded quietly, sitting himself down across the table, staring at the doorway leading into the kitchen area. "Now."
Mia's head poked out from around the corner. "What, do you want something?" she asked pleasantly, but her pleasant mood turned into a dark one as she scowled at him. "What's your problem?"
"Why did you break into my laptop?" he demanded, glaring at her and daring her to refuse to answer him.
"Because I could," she replied smugly. "Your passwords always were hard to break, but it seems like you're no match for the master code-cracker."
He snorted. "Then how come I was always the first one that broke the codes that Dr. J gave us when we were practicing?" he asked, mocking her slightly.
"Because I didn't want you to look bad," she retorted, and ducked back behind the wall separating the dinning area from the kitchen area as he glared at her fiercely. "Face it Heero, you can't produce a code that I can't break."
Duo chuckled at his friend's disgusted look at her comments from his seat between Quatre and Heero. "Don't worry man," he said, patting Heero's shoulder, "If it makes you feel any better, she only broke the code after five tries."
Heero smirked. That was good to know, but it still pissed him off that she had broken his code. Oh well, he thought, I'll just have to put a harder one on there once Quatre's done.
Mia soon returned with a tray full with pancakes, tea, bacon, and toast for all of them, calling at the top of her voice, "Come and get it before it's all gone!"
Trowa and Wufei slowly meandered their way up from the basement and to the breakfast table with everyone else, in no great rush, while Duo was already digging into the delicious meal that the cooks had prepared for the famished Gundam pilots. Mia sat down and ate lightly, mostly sipping green tea, her favourite from what Heero remembered of her. She used to always drink it and Dr. J would always reward her with a cup or two when she performed well on her exercises. No wonder she did so well, he thought scornfully, she had incentive to do well. He used to chide her about her weakness for tea when they were younger, but he guessed that it didn't come into play anymore after she had gone without it for a year or so now.
He picked at his food solemnly, stabbing the poor pancakes mercilessly. He ate little; his stomach having shrank from not eating for a while. After everyone had eaten their fill—Duo having eaten enough for three people—the six of them sat down in the sitting room and went over everything that they knew about the new Oz project, Mia telling them exactly what she remembered about the procedure.
"They basically remodelled my genes to create large wings," she explained. "It was in their intentions to erase a person's memory so that they would become winged assassins, ones that couldn't be heard when they landed on the roof, when they went down the halls. They also wanted them to have night vision, similar to that of animals. That's why my eyes are golden coloured."
Quatre nodded in understanding. "So the only way to reverse this is to cut out the bad genes so that the wings would disappear," he speculated.
"That or just cut them off," Wufei suggested.
Mia glared at him fiercely. "I think not," she said, outraged. "It's like amputating a perfectly fine limb from someone's body; you just don't do that."
"But not everybody has wings coming out their backs," he retorted.
"No, but they are attached no matter what you think," she said. "They can't just come off when I want them to either."
Wufei crossed his arms, stumped, while Quatre and Trowa discussed their next move quietly together. Mia curled up on the couch, another cup of tea in hand, sipping it quietly. Heero sat in an armchair while Duo sat in front of the T.V. on the floor and listened to a news report from earlier that day. It was talking about how one of Oz's development projects had been stolen days early and how the specialists were currently trying to replicate the prototype with minimal success.
"If the Gundam pilots continue to interfere with our medical and scientific advancements," said the general from the New Star Base, "This war will never finish. We research is crucial to the ending of this war."
"What a load of crap," Duo said and flicked off the T.V. "They just want to rule the world and when they have control over everything, the war will end."
Mia nodded. "I think that we should go back to school so that we can soon return to the New Star Base to destroy the plans that they made that demonstrate what genes to change."
Heero along with the rest of the Gundam pilots nodded their agreement to the plan. "We have to just be sure that no one finds our Gundams before the time comes," Quatre said. "And we have to return that car that you took Duo," he added apologetically.
Duo snapped his fingers, "Nuts."
So it was settled, the next day they pilled into mini-van driven by Abdul to the school since Duo had returned the borrowed vehicle the pervious night to avoid arising suspicion. The six of them checked in after breakfast the next morning, each dressed in the school's uniform of a dark green sweater, a button up dress shirt and black pants—in Mia's case a skirt that fell below her knees and her hair was braided expertly by Duo.
Duo had insisted that they could pass as siblings and put on her forms that they were to stop the flow of questions and allow for Heero's looks of longing at her to be correct. Even though Heero would never admit it to his face, Duo knew that he liked the girl more than in a brotherly way.
Mia carried Heero's laptop case since he didn't have any free hands at the moment. She walked with the five Gundam pilots to their first class, biology, down in the basement of the class. It was slow going because of Heero and they were more than a few minutes late, which wasn't too bad considering…
Heero took his usual seat at the back of the class, placing his crutches on the back heater. He received many stares, some pitying, others loathing. Mia sat down next to him, placing his laptop on his desk. She received many stares of the males present in the room, which caused Heero's protective nature to rise within him. He glared at the whole class, especially the jerk whose car he and Duo had stolen just days earlier. He seemed transfixed; he stared at the girl from his seat surrounded by his other friends for the entire class, unable to look away.
When biology was done, the six of them made it over to the industrial section of the school for their mechanics class. Heero wasn't in the least bit surprised that Mia had signed up for the class with the rest of them. She had been very good with her hands before, always fixing things and making little devices that she'd use on a mission; that was before Oz had caught her.
She was silent for the most part; keeping to herself was she doodled like Duo on a pad of paper that Quatre had supplied them. She was constantly glaring at any boy who stared at her for any lengthy period of time, including Heero, who was caught on numerous occasions. She was tinkering with an engine of an old car when Jack Cromwell, the rich, snobby jock whose car they had borrowed to get to Quatre's, came over.
"A lady like you shouldn't be fiddling with cars and automotives," he said in her ear, tickling her skin with his breath. "You'd best leave all the dirty work to the guys."
"Then what are you doing here?" she asked in a retort, it was quiet but cunning, making the young man glare slightly at the yellow-eyed beauty before him.
"Shouldn't you be in sewing class or something?" he asked. "You don't seem to know what you're doing here."
She snorted, "Neither do you by the way you just tried to put the spark plug in backwards," she said, fixing the said item. "Now why don't you just run back and kiss the teacher's ass while I finish fixing this thing on my own?" she suggested and shoved him roughly to the side to get better access to replace the broken fan belt.
Jack was more than a little tired of her smart-ass comments to him. He liked the way that she thought that she could win a battle against him, one of quick wits and smarts. So far, even though he hated to admit it, she was winning.
"Listen bitch," he growled in her ear, "There's no one to save you from me if I lose my temper so why don't you just save it for a minute. I like you, you know, so why don't you meet up with me at the main gate at lunch and we could go somewhere, just you and I, to a restaurant or something. How about it?"
She chuckled dryly. "I don't think that my brother would approve of me going to lunch with some strange boy from class," she said, fixing the problem with the car and wiping the grease from her hands on a rag. "He's more than a little more than over-protective of me, you know." She leaned back on the front bumper after closing the hood of the car, looking calmly back into Jack's brown eyes with her golden ones. "And frankly, I already promised him that I'd join him for lunch today."
He scoffed, "Then let's go and talk to your brother about it then," he suggested. "I'm sure he wont say no when I talk to him."
She shrugged, "He's over there," she gestured to where Duo, Trowa, and Heero were trying to find the source of a noise in another car in their little shop just a ways away. "Knock yourself out."
He sighed, Duo Maxwell was one of those people that he just wanted to punch rather hard instead of talk to, but if talking to him was going to win him a date with his sister, then he would ignore all his senseless babble and get to the point.
Heero watched from the driver's seat of the car they were fixing, pressing the gas while Trowa and Duo looked at the engine while it revved, as the boy, Jack, tapped Duo on the shoulder and gestured over to Mia, who had gotten to work on another car closer to where Quatre and Wufei were working. He glared as Jack and Duo stepped away, leaving Trowa to fix the car on his own.
"Would you allow Mia to come to lunch with me today?" Jack asked, getting right to the point and asking the question that he had come to ask.
Duo scratched his head in uncertainty. "Naw man, she promised to come and eat with me and my friends today, since this is her first day here and all," he said, trying to sound apologetic. "Sorry, can't change my plans now."
Jack sighed. "Sorry to tell you, but she really wants to go with me," he said, draping an arm around Duo's shoulders.
"No I don't," came her voice from behind them. "I said no such thing." The two of them turned to see Mia cleaning her hands on her rag, her face smudged with grease in various places and her hands were virtually black with grease and oils.
"There you go man," Duo said cheerfully, removing the boy's arm from his shoulders. "She'd rather eat with good friends than go with some strange guy who only likes her for her looks. Don't you have any other little girlies that you could take with you? I seem to remember that you had a fan club a couple of days ago."
Jack was furious after his offer had been declined. This was the first time in his life that a girl had resisted his charming smile and gracious comments and didn't fall completely in love with him at first sight. That was probably why he liked her so much, because she was so different from all the other girls at this school. He vowed to himself that he would get her, some how, some way.
I'm so disappointed :'( :'( I didn't get any reviews for the last chapter. I have lost all my faithful reviewers... That's what I get for dropping a story... :'( Please review! I'm begging you! I'm almost done this story, and if I can get the changes done, Somewhere I Belong will be updated too. Please continue to review!