Chapter LXI: Downtime.
1900hrs, 24 December 2013, "Undisclosed Air Base", Qatar.
"Vacation is what you take when you can't take what you've been taking any longer." Cowardly Lion, The Wizard of Oz.
"Tomorrow shall be my dancing day; I would my true love did so chance, To see the legend of my play, To call my true love to my dance; Sing, oh! my love, oh! my love, my love, my love, This have I done for my true love." Tomorrow Shall Be my Dancing Day.
The "Undisclosed Air Base" had come a long way from its humble beginnings as a simple patch of land in yet another line of Gulf monarchies, fuelled by oil profits with a growth rate of about twenty percent per year. They had a lot of money to burn, and were more than happy to let the United States come in and establish a presence there. The emir himself had expressed his desire for a permanent US base there, and the United States was more than willing to indulge him. In addition to the normal military operations and airfield, there was a swimming pool, a Fox Sports News bar, a PX, and all the trappings of a nice place for some well-deserved R&R. When Iraq was still a hot item, thousands of soldiers, marines, seamen and airmen passed through this place on their way to that country, enjoying some downtime before heading to the real war, or de-stressing from their finished tour. Whether they also came back in a box draped in a US flag was something that no one in the US military could control.
Interestingly enough, this would be the first time that the entire SAILOR team would be reunited in person in about a couple of weeks. Ever since Amy and Mina had run off to Hong Kong, they had been busy trying to save the world and there had been no time to return home and catch up with the others.
"Hey guys!" Serena stood up from the chair she was sitting in. The USAF had been nice enough to provide a trailer for them (at the expense of some poor airmen), and it was even air conditioned.
"Serena." Amy gave a curt bow to her, putting down her heavy duffel bag and slumped in a chair in the common area.
"Hey, don't sit down, I haven't given you a hug yet." Amy smiled weakly, and stood back up. Serena embraced her. "Nice to see you again."
"Nice to see you too, Serena."
Serena turned her attention to Mina, who was coming in the door with her baggage.
"Mina, how are you doing?"
"Doing just fine," she replied, chipper as ever. She gave a warm hug to Serena. Serena then turned around and saw Luna and Artemis walking in the door.
"Luna, Artemis, glad to see that you made it here as well."
"Thanks." Luna and Artemis tiredly walked in, with Artemis almost wiping out on the small door ledge.
"Careful!" Serena helped Artemis steady himself.
"I'm just really tired. We've been moving around a lot, and I guess the last week or so has been rough on everyone."
"Well, we've all been through a lot," Serena reassured.
"Just a quick side note, we brought most of your equipment on one of the transport planes and it's been unloaded by one of the hangers. We'll pick it up tomorrow when we leave for the destroyer."
"Thanks," Serena said to her.
"Where's our rooms again?" Luna asked her, after shifting her bag about uncomfortably for a second.
"Ah, to the left, second door on the right," Serena pointed.
"Thanks. We're going to put our stuff down, and we'll join you later."
Artemis and Luna went to their room, and found it still packed with airmen who were trying to get out of there.
"Give us a moment, okay?" a senior airman said to them. "You can put your stuff over there." She pointed to a corner.
Luna and Artemis simply nodded their acknowledgement to the airman. The two of them put their stuff down and walked back out into the common area, where the SAILOR team was chatting amongst themselves.
"I guess since it's Christmas…why don't we get some chicken?" Serena suggested. Yet another peculiarity of Japanese culture.
"I think I heard one of the people on the plane talk about how the KFC and the rest of the restaurants deliver here," Amy said.
"Wait…there's a KFC nearby? They deliver?!" Raye immediately grabbed a landline phone and dialed for an operator (yeah, they still have those) before Amy could look the number up on her tablet computer.
"Hello…hello…?! Operator?!" She was shouting in the phone, loud enough to drown out the operator on the other side. Amy had to walk over to her and take the receiver away from Raye.
"Raye, you're speaking in Japanese, and they're speaking in Arabic. They're not going to understand you at all." She motioned to give the phone to her. Raye gave her the phone.
"Hello?" Thankfully, the operator on the other line spoke English. "Yeah, can you put me in contact with the delivery number for the KFC in the area? Which one? The one nearest to the air base. Yes, thank you."
Amy quickly looked up the menu for the KFC and discovered that there was a particular meal for 99 Qatari Riyal.
"How does this look?" she said, holding her computer up to the rest of the SAILOR team gathered. It brought a bunch of enthusiastic nods.
Again, since this was an MNC doing business in a foreign country, and since a great deal of their clients were foreign people (read, Americans), the delivery line was in English. Thank god for globalization.
Amy quickly asked for two of the largest meals on the menu, which came out to 198 Riyal, and with delivery, it would probably be 250-260 Riyal in total. Since the base "didn't exist," they were going to have to drop it off at the front gate (totally not suspicious). It would be there within the hour, and they would call when they got to the gate.
"So, what have you guys been up to?" Lita asked Mina and Amy as they sat in the common area of the trailer, looking at the now evicted airmen trying to get all their stuff out.
"Well, you know, this and that. Trying to save the world, per the usual." That got a chuckle from everyone.
"Excuse me." It was the senior airman again.
"Yes, ma'am, what is it?" Amy replied in English. That took the airman aback; they all had been talking in Japanese before and she hadn't expected all of them to speak English that well.
"We'll be leaving now," the airman said to her. "I think a couple of the guys here are finishing packing up, but most of us have moved out."
"Thank you ma'am," Amy politely replied. Rank or no rank, the SAILOR team was intruding in on someone's living arrangements at probably the worst time of year, when they were far away from home and on an important holiday. Amy felt pretty bad about doing such a thing, but there wasn't much she could do about that now. The senior airman, along with a couple of others took their duffel bags and left the trailer, the door hitting loudly against the frame.
"How was America?" Serena asked after they had left. She was curious about the happenings in that country.
"Oh, it was great," Mina said, cutting Amy off before she could say anything. "I drove really really fast on the highways, I got to eat all the donuts I wanted to have…"
"You WHAT?!" Serena's voice scared almost everyone in the room, and causing the remaining AF personnel in the trailer to stare at them for a second before moving on.
"Just kidding Serena, I only had a couple of donuts here and there." She turned and winked at Amy. "Right Amy?"
Amy scratched her head in confusion. "I don't remember that part."
"We stopped at that Krispy Kreme after we got Nephrite. You talked me out of going to see that Nephrite guy's girlfriend and so we went there instead."
"Yeah…" That still wasn't ringing any bells for Amy. She wondered how they managed to get donuts after a major terrorist attack on the United States. Oh well.
"What about Nephrite?" Lita asked, trying to get Serena off the topic of donuts.
"Well, after we rescued the President of the United States," Mina began, only to interrupted by Serena.
"Oh, only the President of the United States," Serena said sarcastically. "It's like I do that on a daily basis."
"Hush. We broke this entire thing open, hmm?" Mina shot back. "So show us some respect."
"Alright, alright," Serena held up her hands in defeat. "You saved the world and got donuts without me, I get it."
"Anyway, we caught up to Nephrite at this really small town in Mary…Mary…"
"Maryland," Amy added.
"Mary-land." Mina said it that way instead of the other pronunciation, "Marilynd." "Anyway, we got a lot of that information out of him…" She trailed off, remembering that cold night. "…and that's how we got here today." Serena smiled and nodded, oblivious to Mina's uncomfortableness on the subject. Amy quickly changed gears and got Serena talking about something else.
"Tell me about Italy, you guys," Amy said to Serena.
"Other than gunning down hapless Nakanishi goons in some of the most historically important parts of Florence? Nothing too special. We didn't have time to go see the Uffizi or anything like that before we had to go to Aviano Air Base and fly out of there. I would like to go back sometime and actually explore the place."
"Heh, that would be something else," Raye said, watching a fly lazily buzz about the room. "Mina, you've been to Italy, right?"
"Only once, and that was awhile back, when I was living in England."
"Oh, only once," Raye mocked.
"Stop it you guys," Amy said. "We'll get enough traveling in once this is over with, okay?"
"Yeah, I guess so," Serena said back.
Bring Bring. The landline phone rung, interrupting their conversation; Amy picked it up to discover that the delivery guy was about five minutes out.
"Chicken is almost here, guys," she told the rest of them.
"Mina, Amy, go get the chicken," Serena ordered, playfully. Amy was about to raise her voice in protest, but Mina grabbed her by the arm and led her out of the trailer.
"Nice one," Lita smirked to Serena.
"Well, they seem a bit closer than I remember," Serena noted, getting up from the sofa she was sitting on, putting her stuff away in the room that they were staying in for the night. She hefted her duffel bag onto the bed, looking at some of the equipment that was inside it before shoving in under the bed and flopping on the semi-soft mattress.
"Yeah, I noticed that," Lita said to her, putting her duffel bag underneath her bed. She did the same as Serena, and winced in pain. "Goddamn, these mattresses are really uncomfortable."
"It's like sleeping on a rock."
"Hey, it's better than what we had in China."
"We didn't have any mattresses in China," Raye said, coming into the room and discovering what Lita and Serena had already figured out about the beds.
"That's the point. God, I remember when Colonel Iwasaki chewed us out for that."
"Glad he's gone now."
"Well, I wished they would have kept him in that cell for a bit longer, but oh well." Serena played with her hair; it was still shorter than before she got burnt to a crisp, but at least she still had that nice blonde hair to go along with her figure. She had most certainly lost a couple of kilos in body fat, and while that had been replaced by pure muscle, inflating the scale a bit, she was fine with that development. She wondered how the hell she was going to keep that up after getting out of this stupid military unit; maybe she would do that "crossfit" stuff people were always talking about back home. It looked hard beforehand, but after all of this, it didn't look so bad after all.
"Mina and Amy better hurry up with that chicken," Lita said, looking at her watch.
"Alright, time to get this chicken. I'm hungry, how about you?" Mina was happily driving a SUV loaned to them while they were staying at the base, much to the irritation of everyone involved (hey, these things take up a lot of paperwork!)
"Yeah…I guess."
"You okay there?" Mina swerved around some patrolling Security Forces soldiers, who gave her the finger but didn't call it in. Like hell they were going to be doing any actual work tonight. She arrived at the front gate and parked by the shoulder, waiting for the delivery guy to show up.
"I…I don't know. I'm just down all of a sudden. It's like how I felt back in Russia. I just can't shake this feeling any more. Part of me just wants to go back to Japan and never leave my mother's house. I never wanted any of this…" Amy let a couple of tears come down her cheek before she felt Mina wipe them away.
"There there," Mina said. "I…I kind of understand where you're coming from. We'll get through this, I promise you."
"Since when did you start making promises?" Amy asked, suspiciously. She did know that Mina had a way with twisting around words, and that ever since Hong Kong, and probably beforehand, that she had had feelings for her.
Mina tried to reassure her. "Right now. I promise you, we are going to bring the Nakanishi Group, Beryl, and Kunzite to justice. We can do this."
"Okay…" Amy still wasn't convinced, but put on a brave face to make Mina feel better.
"Oh, there's the delivery guy now." Mina got out of the car, along with Amy, and walked over to a man on a scooter, who was being watched suspiciously by several Security Forces officers.
"Hey, we put in the order, so don't be hatin'," Mina joked to one of them. He just glared back and shifted his M4 Carbine around. They approached the delivery guy, who pulled out a receipt and read it off to them.
"That'll be 250 Riyal," he said in broken English. It was somewhat passible, at least.
"How's this?" Amy handed over three hundred Riyal in small bills and told the delivery guy to keep the change. At first, he refused, but after some insisting from both Amy and Mina, he took the money. He needed it anyway, and who was he to judge the generosity of foreigners...yeah, right. After handing over the ridiculous amount of chicken that they had ordered, the delivery guy puttered off on his scooter, his last delivery for the night finished.
"Mmm, that smells really, really good."
"Get us back to the trailer before I eat all of this," Amy said, jokingly. Mina however, wasn't, and nearly ran over the same Security Forces people that they had passed earlier in her rush to get back with the chicken.
Five minutes later, they were in front of the trailer and running up to it, buckets of chicken in one hand, and side dishes in the other.
"Hey, we're back!" Mina yelled to the rest of the group.
"And guess what we brought!" Amy added.
The buckets of chicken filled the room with their fried goodness, and the entire SAILOR team set up paper plates and plasticware on a small table in the common area.
"Itakakimasu!" they all chanted. The fried chicken was eagerly dug into, with the only sounds of chewing and munching resounding through the trailer.
"Oh my god, this is so good," Lita said at last. "Haven't had fried chicken in such a long time."
"Mmmpphhh." Serena had a drumstick in her mouth and was trying to get several potato wedges from Raye, who wasn't having any of that. She snatched them away from her, much to her chagrin.
Amy just smiled and gave some of hers to Serena.
"Thanks. Unlike someone here." She shot a glare at Raye, who cheerfully ignored her.
The fried chicken was gone in no time, but there were still some side dishes left, mainly rolls and some funky tasty coleslaw.
"Wow, that was certainly very tasty," Lita said, sitting back in her chair. Raye let out a huge belch in her approval of the meal.
"I think we're going to take off for bed," Luna said to the group. "We've got a long day ahead of us tomorrow, and we're going to need all the rest we can get."
"Agreed."
The SAILOR team watched as the two of them walked back to their room, and then started partying again.
"This stinks."
Poor Artemis and Luna had just gotten back into in their room, but the SAILOR team was making so much noise that getting sleep was impossible. As much as partying sounded good, they really needed to get some rest if they were ever going to get in any condition to fight. Luna had halfheartedly thought of going out there again and asking politely for them to keep it down, but that was going to be a losing battle either way.
"Don't complain Artemis," Luna said to him. She put away her duffel bag filled with electronics equipment, stuffing it under the bed. For them, they would on a plane flying over the Indian Ocean for god-knows how long. It would depend on how long the mission would take, but if a stiff back and a sore bottom was the price of bringing down the Nakanishi Group, she would gladly pay it.
"Yeah…I guess I shouldn't. These girls have been through alot of shit, and I shouldn't really complain."
"Mmm."
"Well, goodnight then. See you at 0500."
"Yeah, you too."
With that, they turned out their lights, and put earplugs in to block the noise coming from the common area.
Serena, Lita and Raye all looked like they were having a good time. Raye had brought out some sake she had stashed away, and had poured out cups of it for all of them. Drinking alcohol was not the smartest decision to make before embarking on a high risk mission, but after what they had gone through (and what they were about to go through) something to take the edge off was sorely needed. Mina was having a good time, chatting happily away with Lita about baseball when she looked at Amy. Amy looked like shit; she had huge bags under her eyes, she looked wilted, tired, and completely out of energy. It wasn't that she was tired, they were all tired. It was just that the last couple of months were taking their toll on her, and right before their very last mission, it was all starting to hit Amy all at once.
Mina thought of a way to cheer up Amy. She suddenly saw her chance when she looked into their room. It still had some people in it, but she could clear them out in no time.
"Amy, come in here, I've got something to tell you." It wasn't like Amy had much of a choice, as Mina grabbed her hand and dragged her into the room.
"Okay, geez, don't pull so hard." Amy groaned and entered into the room after Mina.