Qwenthur sighed for what felt like the hundredth time. There was only so much he could do with a full maintenance crew on base. The aviation crew had their jet-tugs fitted with snow ploughs. The security patrols were using small vehicles with ploughs too. Standing guards shoveled the rest of the snow off the traffic-ways every morning. The Major had tightened up every aspect of the battalion and was tolerating no relaxing of procedure or regulations. 'Titan-tits' had become 'Tyrant-tits'. Any department caught with inefficiencies got a reprimand over the PA system. Nobody dared test her after the second time.
Anyone would think they were the military or something.
Granny was having to find things for him and the maintenance crew to do just to keep them out of trouble. Even then a man could only take things apart, clean and put them back together so many times before going insane.
Qwenthur was starting to scribble down some designs for Object armaments, drive mechanisms and dabbling in the software on occasion. The boredom was allowing his creativity to sprout. It was the other Base-Zone personnel he was beginning to worry about. After months of serving an over-achieving Object the static nature of this deployment was demoralising.
"I wonder what Havia is up to." he sighed, leaning on the catwalk railing and watching some of the crew clean the floor. "He's got the nice and warm operations room, but I don't envy spending time under Froleytia."
"Why not?"
Qwenther jumped and whirled about. "I don't mean- huh?"
To his consternation nobody else was on the catwalk. Nor was anyone on the one above him.
"Down here."
He looked down over the edge but found nobody nearby. Something tapped his boot and he sprang across to the other side of the catwalk in fright.
"What the hell?"
"You've got a good jump." the voice said through a grunt.
Qwenthur looked down and found an orange shape moving around under the grating. First a set of fingers appeared at the edge where he had been standing, then a hand grasped the first bar of the creaking metal railing. Hand over hand the person climbed the railing, then hung from the top just able to see over the deck. The metal groaned in a decidedly dangerous way.
Unnatural green eyes blinked twice at him. "I thought you and Winchel liked working with the Major."
"Were you... Hanging from the catwalk?"
Coira cycled a deep breath, then hauled herself above the railing. The blond student couldn't quite avert his gaze fast enough and enjoyed watching the Elite's breasts squeeze over each bar of the railing, her unzipped orange jumpsuit slipping open to reveal her sweat soaked white singlet. She paused with her arms extended, giving him precious few seconds to compose himself, then swung from side to side and rolled over the railing.
Her boots hit the grating with a loud clang. The vibration travelled all the way up his spine - either that or he couldn't suppress the shiver of pleasure and embarrassment as she rolled her shoulders and pushed out her chest.
"W-well, um... Frole- er, Major Capistrano is under a lot of pressure lately, so... Well..."
"She is giving everyone a hard time." the redhead nodded in understanding. "I was surprised when she growled at me for wearing my uniform in the Baby Magnum. Now I'm stuck with overalls."
Qwenthur could still feel heat on his face, so he latched onto the Elite's words. "Overalls? Not a pressure suit like the Princess?"
"Haven't had one for years." she replied while twisting her arms in a familiar looking stretch. "I hate those anyway. As I'm the battalion Elite for the time being I have someone to help tape up my hands and arms, so I wont faint during highspeed turns. It will be hard to move my fingers, so I've been training a bit while I'm free."
"Um... Why were you under the catwalk?"
"I was bored." she sniffed. "Until they want me to drive her around I have little to do. I needed the exercise anyway."
Qwenthur's brow rose. "Most people go jogging."
"Major Capistrano revoked my clearance for all exterior access ports, so the only way I'm getting outside is for tests. It's too bothersome to run inside the base buildings." Cunningham grumbled.
"Isn't it more dangerous to hang a dozen metres above the hangar floor? Someone could stand on your fingers, or you could fall." he countered. "What would we do if you broke your legs?"
The Elite looked at him sharply. "That's not going to happen."
Something clattered on the other side of the hangar, resulting in shouts and a loud crash. Qwenthur peered over the railing to have a look but the activity was hidden by one of the Baby Magnum's huge feet.
"You'd best go and help."
He looked back to the strange Elite with a question on his lips, but it vanished at the sight of the short side-tail behind her ear resting between her collarbones, like a tongue of fire. She leaned backward over the railing a little further next to him, then paused and spread her arms along and gripped it tightly. The action pushed out her chest again, and Qwenthur guiltily observed the widening of the jumpsuit zip.
"That old woman is looking this way, Barbotage."
With that last utterance she pushed off the catwalk and swung over the railing, dropping until her fingers caught the edge of the grating with a violent jolt. Then she was gone.
"Idiot boy! Don't you see we have a situation here?"
Qwenthur suddenly snapped out of his stupor, a cold sweat forming at his back. "I'll be right there!"
"Hurry! Bring the fork-hoist! Someone, get the insulation tape!"
Ambling along the corridor, Qwenthur breathed a sigh of relief. Just before lunch he got lost in thought and nearly broke something, but luckily it wasn't too serious and Granny couldn't chew him out for long.
It was common for his mind to drift, just not to that extent while he was working. It felt weird ever since Melinda was stood down. Knowing she wasn't going to be sitting in the cockpit, or taking the Baby Magnum into battle. The girl was wound up like a spring whenever he had seen her.
Qwenthur sighed again, pushing through the doors to the mess hall.
Havia was sitting at the far wall, so he waited in line just long enough to get today's lunch dished out to him and went over to join his friend. As he approached he noticed the slow and mechanical way Havia scooped up soup. The radar technician stared at the table with unfocused eyes and swallowed, not hurrying or savouring the taste.
"Havia, you look like a zombie. What's going on?"
The man paused, let the spoon fall from his fingers, then looked at him as he sat down. "Tyrant-tits." he stated, as if all the life had been drained out of him.
Qwenthur blinked. "What about her?"
"I've spent all my shift time working with her breathing down my neck. Operations feels like a tomb."
"Wouldn't her breath make your heart race, Havia?"
Havia bowed his head over his soup and sniffed. "She runs that place like a prison." he lamented. "The only curves I've gotten a good look at are the radar pings and the edge of the monitor."
"Oh... Guess Frolytia really is under pressure from the higher-ups." Qwenthur thought aloud, dipping bread into his own soup.
"Yes, and she puts all that pressure on us - but not with those amazing boobs." the nobleman muttered, gritting his teeth. "What's more... While I'm forced to stare at readouts... Someone gets to walk around, to play with his favourite machines, to eye up the new Elite on the job. It's not fair!"
Qwenthur ducked his head. "I don't ogle the-"
"Damnit, you already have the Princess! Why do you get to work with that beauty? She's so crisp and formal, yet with a sly way of letting on how much she knows... Must be a bad girl inside."
"Crisp?"
Havia gave him a glare, as if to say 'don't play dumb' and retrieved his spoon. "Somehow that ginger officer makes her uniform look perfectly pressed. The kinds of people who make that effort climb the ranks fast, but she hasn't gone anywhere. I checked." he grumbled. "A beauty like her should at least have been snatched up by some officer. She has the act down-pat, too. If Tyrant-tits had said she was her new assistant Id believe it in an instant."
Qwenthur furrowed his brow and tried the soup. It was bad. "Well, she was an Elite. Maybe she doesn't have the skills for other duties?"
"Being a personal assistant is easy if you look good in uniform." Havia countered. "Special Situational Assistant Analyst? I've never heard of such a rank. Turns out only fifty-five of them exist in the whole Legitimate Kingdom. She was the twenty-second, and the others aren't real people, just false identification files."
At his confused expression the man elaborated, after collecting his thoughts over a spoonful of soup.
"Spies and counter-spies, black uniforms, internal affairs - those kinds of agents use fake ID to prevent harm coming to their families or superiors. It's not advertised but well known. They don't even try to hide that they are fakes, only the real IDs of the agents. SSAA Cunningham is a real person though, working class nobility."
"You know quite a lot about her." the blond observed, risking the soup laden bread.
Havia snorted. "If I really did stare at that monitor the whole time I'd have gone mad. More like, Id have forced my way down to the hangar to see her squeeze into the Baby Magnum's cockpit. I envy you, Qwenthur, getting to see all those different curves all day and every day..."
"Actually, object cockpit chairs can rise all the way to the outside for ease of access." Qwenthur snorted. "Climbing up a ladder is too unsafe after extended battles. The strain could be too much for the Elite after all those highspeed manoeuvres. Instead of risking a broken leg they just press a button and up they go."
Havia grinned and ducked his head closer. "I wasn't talking about the hatch."
The student engineer hummed in thought. After quickly exhausting his imagination he too ducked close to learn this mysterious potential 'lucky-perv' information.
"Data from our physicals gets entered into our files, you know. That includes measurements."
Qwenthur's eyes went wide.
"I snuck a peek at the Princess' file and compared them." Havia continued. "The age gap is about six years. Our heroine wins the first round only just, but if you make it a best-of-three? That SSAA is a champion."
"How?"
Havia let him hang in suspense for a few moments to devour some bland bread, grinning still. "Her waist seems like a loss at first, but she has been part of the regular military for a while now. No special Elite treatment for Coira Cunningham. That waist is all muscle - bulging laterals and rock-hard abdominals."
Qwenthur's mind conjured up images from the times Frolytia had forced them to help her in the gym. The major took good care of herself and they appreciated the results.
"Now, hips. How much more do you think?"
"Uh... Ah... Ten centimetres? Too much?"
Havia smirked. "Nearly twenty."
Wow... Wait a second...
"You get it now, don't you? If her hips are that much wider than the Princess' and she is going to sit in that custom chair... I've sat in one of the spares."
"The width of the body-form moulding..."
"She'll slowly get uncomfortable. She'll start to shift. To squirm. An uncertain and irritated blush upon her face... A moan of discomfort - maybe a pouting lower lip..."
"Sweat build-up from the excess movement..."
The pair chuckled, devouring their lunch faster than anyone in the room. The undesirable taste of a very lack-lustre meal was completely overshadowed by the guilty pleasure at the work of the human imagination. That same phenomena emboldened their appetite.
A loud and abrupt thud shook the table, breaking them from their musing.
"You like this crap that much?" a certain redhead asked with a single raised brow, setting down her tray. She immersed an entire slice of bread in her soup and stabbed it repeatedly with her spoon. "I'd prefer the ration bars."
Havia and Qwenthur shared a confused glance. Before the latter spoke up. "Don't you get the first-class menu now, Cunningham? What are you doing in the cafeteria?"
A shake of her head was followed by a spoonful of vegetable chunks and bloated bread vanishing at high speed. "Field rations contain all the nutrients modern soldiers need." she stated. "If I could have chicken or steak and what not I'd have to eat a lot more to get enough of everything."
Qwenthur couldn't stop the drool running out the corners of his mouth. Havia managed somehow - probably a nobleman's table manners.
The Elite with unnaturally consistent green eyes stared at them both for a minute, an expression on her face like one would have when discovering a pest infestation in the Base-Zone. "Never mind that. I want to know more about your thought process when you face enemy objects. How do you plan to take them down?"
The young men shared a look.
"Uh... We don't really have a process." Havia uttered, resigned.
Qwenthur scratched his head in thought. "Most of the time there isn't any plan. We're just using our knowledge of Objects and other things on the spot. Sometimes all we can to is survive a minute at a time."
Cunningham frowned and leaned forward over her bowl. "That explains why you two aren't instructing commando squads on how to destroy enemy Objects. It's not something you can teach, only learn."
"Sorry to be of no help." he offered nervously.
The Elite shrugged. "No worries." she said.
Coira then extracted the bloated bread from her bowl and stuffed the whole thing in her mouth. As their eyes widened at the rush of soup that escaped her closing jaws the woman chomped away quickly. With a mighty swallow Cunningham picked up the bowl and chugged the rest of it.
"If you'll excuse me, I have to begin acclimatising to the Baby Magnum's control systems."
As suddenly as she arrived the redhead departed, heavy footfalls shaking the deck plating.
After a moment of silence Havia and Qwenthur turned in their seats to watch her drop off her tray and stride quickly out of the mess hall.
"Oi oi, how can she completely lose all sense of decorum and still speak properly? That was such a vulnerable scene just now. Did you see her throat bulge?"
Qwenthur's face warmed up as the image replayed in his mind. "An amazing Elite, huh. Nothing at all like that Bright-Hopper guy or Ohoho, or the Princess."
"Once again, I am reminded of how much I envy you, lucky bastard. I stare at screens all day or run for my life from Objects, while you get to see sights like that..."
Qwenthur ducked his head and sighed, turning back his soup and bread. "You say that, but I am running for my life too. I experienced the shock first hand of learning G-cup mini-skirt Santa was really a no-cup chopping board."
"You felt-up Titan-tits."
"And I got my ass kicked for it."
"That's not a counter balance, you lucky perv. On the heli' during the Tri-core operation, right after Bright-Hopper, during Wing-Balancer - time and time again you get into these situations. What about the Princess, huh?"
The thought sent a chill through him. Melinda Brantini was beyond upset right now, and she had always responded to his strange fortune with retribution. To say she would be angry was an understatement, just like it would be to say his health would suffer.
"I don't want to die." he sighed pitifully.
Havia grunted. "Seriously, what a pain. Qwenthur, a little advice from a man of noble birth..."
The blond student perked up.
"Do something about your lack of awareness and you will know when to draw the line with other girls. You are too careless in your interactions so they receive signals they shouldn't. This is elementary for a white-collar young man - no, for any man or woman."
"Exactly! What are they teaching kids these days?"
The pair looked over their shoulders to find the chief engineer looming over them, fists on her hips. The large spanner in her left hand combined with the angry lines of her face seemed to be ill omens.
"Oi, brat." the old woman snapped. "Have you given up on your studies? Lunch breaks are thirty minutes long."
Qwenthur leapt to his feet. "Ah! I'm sorry! I wasn't keeping track of time!"
"This is no social club or commercial engineering firm, boy!" she bellowed with a ferocity never before seen by either young men. "This is the Legitimate Kingdom military! You are a member of the Thirty-Seventh Consolidation Manoeuvre Battalion's engineering corps - student or not! You exist to make sure its Object is in perfect order at all times! The Baby Magnum is your life! Understood?"
"Yes ma'am!"
"If you understand then get moving!"
Havia bit back a snicker as his terrified friend scampered away.
"What are you laughing about, punk? Think of your own position."
His tan seemed to steadily vanish over several seconds. "Oh... Fuck..."