Chapter LXII: Ecclesiastes 4: 9-11.

2300hrs, 24 December 2013, "Undisclosed Air Base", Qatar.

"Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up."

"Without friendship, there is no love. Simple. Love is friendship." Rahul, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai

Amy shut the door behind them.

"What do you want?" she asked Mina.

"Hold up a second," Mina replied. "Guys, leave." There were some airmen in the sleeping quarters; they were supposed to be reserved for the SAILOR team, but not all the airmen had gotten the hint.

"Hey, we're just getting all cleared up, you know? It's Christmas, and…"

"Get. Out." Mina hissed.

"Hey, what's your rank anyway…?" another airmen said suspiciously. They were wearing a completely different uniform than the ABUs that the airmen were wearing as well.

Mina closed her eyes, and tried not to get upset. "My rank is courtesy of Mr. Benjamin Franklin."

She held up a couple of hundred dollar bills.

"Now get out."

"Yes ma'am!" The airmen took the hundred dollar bills and immediately left.

"Too bad they're fakes," Mina said, after they had left.

"That was mean," Amy replied. "They could get in big trouble for that."

"Not my problem."

"What did you want to talk about?" Amy asked, looking around the now empty room. To her surprise, Mina turned off the lights, and they looked at each other for a little bit.

Mina stared at Amy for a little bit. She admired the petite frame of her body. Amy didn't have much body fat on her (not that having a little bit of fat was a bad thing. Being like those supermodels was most certainly not healthy), but she had certainly developed a certain toned state. Her blue hair shimmered in the dim lighting of the barracks, helped along by the half-moon outside. It would have been more romantic if it was a full one, but hey, you had to take what you could get. Amy's small breasts rose up and down with her breathing, covered up by her bra, black T-shirt and the chocolate-chip BDU blouse that she was wearing, like everyone else on the SAILOR team.

"I just wanted to say…um…"

Mina found the ideas she wanted to express difficult to put into words.

Amy looked at her strangely. "If you need help, shouldn't you talk to the medical staff?"

"That's not what I wanted to say…" Typical, always thinking with her brain and not with her heart.

"No…I love you." Mina finally said it. There was a long silence as the magnitude of Mina's words sunk in, for the two of them.

She finally said it, Amy thought. Took her long enough. Too bad that I don't really feel that way…

"Can…can we…? Just for this night?" Mina stuttered through the words, unsure of how to make her feelings known to Amy.

"What are you going on about, Mina?" Amy said, confused. "I hope you're not talking about what I think you're talking about."

"It is…" More very, very, uncomfortable silence. "Please Amy. Amy, this last year, we've been through a lot. Korea, China, Russia, Taiwan, India…Hong Kong…god, every time we've gone on a mission, I've fallen for you more and more. So please…just this time."

She started to take off her clothes, first her blouse, her pants, then her t-shirt. Amy was rooted to her spot, absolutely petrified in indecision as Mina continued to take off all of her clothes. In a few seconds, all that was left was her and some…

"Pink…?" Amy was certainly puzzled why one would wear matching pink undies and bra with those Desert Six-pattern uniforms that they were wearing.

"Hey, it's all that I had. Throw me a fucking bone here." Mina threw her arms around Amy in a comforting hug, nuzzling her face against her neck.

"Mmm." After doing that for some time, she started in on Amy's clothes.

"Your turn."

It was more like, Mina undoing Amy's clothes than her doing any actual work. She was still very unsure of what Mina was doing…maybe this was another trick or joke that she was playing or something like that. She shuddered as the last of her clothing fell away, and as Mina embraced her further, placing her hands on her waist and caressing her. Her hands sent tingles throughout Amy's body, and she flinched a little bit, trying to pull away from Mina's embrace.

"Mina…I…I can't." Amy was blushing so much so that her pale skin looked sunburnt in the dim half moonlight.

"What do you mean, 'I can't?' We've gotten this far, haven't we?"

"I…I don't know what to think."

Mina smiled at Amy's reluctance. "Just let me do most of the work. I'm experienced in these kind of matters." She took Amy's hand and guided her to a bed.

"I thought you liked guys."

"I like whatever I like, Amy. Now come over to the bed here." Mina laid on the somewhat comfortable bed (hey, it could have been worse…it could have been Army…), and let Amy get on top of her for a second, before reversing her position and sitting on top. She planted a couple of kisses on her mouth before continuing further.

"This might feel a bit odd for a newcomer," Mina winked. "Hold on."

"What are those two doing in there?" Lita, Raye, and Serena were all still in the common area, finishing up the last of the side dishes that had come with the fried chicken. Raye had brought out (appropriately) a game of Risk, and now they were taking over the world.

"Beats me," Lita said. She took a look at her position on the board. She controlled most of Europe, part of Africa, the Middle East and Asia (India). Raye was in full control of North America and part of Asia (Russia), and Serena was in control of South America, Australia and parts of Asia. Jesus, this was going to take awhile.

"I'm attacking you, Serena." She had ten pieces on India, and moved against Siam.

"I think Amy at this point, would probably come up with some sort of quote," Serena said, getting her dice ready for Lita's attack.

"Like, never fight a war in Asia?" Raye piped up. Lita rolled her dice; Six, four, two.

"Exactly like that," Serena replied, rolling her dice. Two sixes. "Hah!"

"Dammit!" Lita took two of her pieces off. Seven left. She tossed down the three dice again. Five, four, three. Serena rolled. Two, Five. One and one, which made six for the attackers and four for the defenders. It was going to be a close one, that's for sure. After a couple more rolls, Lita had won, with half her army lost, and Serena all of hers. She glared at her as she removed the pieces from Siam.

"Lady Luck seemed to be on my side today," Lita smirked.

"Fuck you, Lita." Serena rolled her eyes and looked at the clock on the wall. "Hey, it's almost Christmas day."

"Wish I were back in Japan." Raye sighed and looked out the window at the drab base. There was no snow, just miles and miles of sand, broken up only by the lights of the nearby city in the distance.

"What time are we leaving tomorrow?" Lita asked Serena, watching Raye and Serena duke it out on the board.

Serena attacked Raye in Russia, and managed to snag some territory from her. "I think it was leave here at 0700, hop a ride on a helicopter at 0800, and be on the destroyer at 1030,1100ish or something to that extent."

Raye groaned. "God, that helicopter ride is going to be a bitch. We have to go all the way around Socotra, do a midair refueling, and then land and spend a day on that destroyer. Not looking forward to it at all."

Serena eyed the board to see if there was anything else that she could possibly do. It didn't look like it, and from the looks of it, Raye would be attacking from some of the places in Russia that Serena had been unable to get during her turn. "Socotra will be even worse. We don't even know what to expect. Amy doesn't even know what's down there, and she's the one in charge of planning this entire thing."

She sighed, conceding both that Raye was going to attack her and that the mission tomorrow was going to be a clusterfuck. "Your turn, Raye."

"Oh, okay. Let's see." Raye eyed Japan. "Let's go, Serena. Gotta get you back somehow."

"Great."

Several more rolls, and Serena had actually won this round, much to the surprise of the two of them.
"Goddamn, I wanted Japan," Raye whined.

"Too bad, get more troops next time. Let's see…" She looked down at the board, but was distracted from the game by a loud yelp from Amy and Mina's room.

"What's going on in there?" Serena said, her interest peaked now. "Sounds kinky." She was curious of course, and all sorts of dirty things were flying about in her head right now, but it would be really rude of them to barge in and gawk at someone's private and intimate moment.

"Hey, I want to see what's going on in there," Raye said in a low voice to the rest of them.

"Leave them alone, Raye," Serena ordered.

"I'm going to get Amy back for peeping at my computer back in Japan!" She had a smartphone with a video function on it, and started toward the room that Amy and Mina were in.

"Raye!" Lita hissed. She reached back with her left arm and quite brutally pulled her back onto the couch that she had been playing the game on. Raye landed with a loud thud onto her lap.

"What, you want to start into that now as well?" Raye glared. Serena puckered up her lips and mock-kissed toward Raye. She recoiled a little bit, but continued to glare in her general direction until Serena cut it out.

"Leave it be," Lita sighed, looking at the door. "I think that we should go to bed."

"Yeah, we've got a busy day ahead of us," Serena said, packing up the Risk game. "I think you won that one, Lita."

"Thanks. Hope it transfers over to our operation in Soctora."

"Yeah, me too." The three of them trudged off to their quarters.

"That was…"

"…unbelievable," Mina finished, lying beside Amy. The remainder of their undergarments were strewn on the floor, and Amy wondered how the hell she had gotten herself in this type of situation. Mina had been adamant about going through with this…act, and now she felt just odd. There wasn't anything wrong with liking the same sex, nor anything "unnatural" about it, as some idiots would claim, but this might have gotten a bit too far. They were now lying underneath the covers of the bed, breathing heavily from the last thirty minutes or so of intense…er…"aerobic" activity.

"Mmm." Mina snuggled up to Amy, wrapping her arms around her body. The room was surprisingly cold, due to the fact that they were in a desert, and deserts can get extremely cold in the nighttime. Plus, the previous occupants left the damn AC on. Oh well.

"I wish we could be like this forever," Mina whispered softly into Amy's ear. "After this is all over, and you're done with all your medical schooling…"

Amy shifted around so that she was facing Mina. "How did you know that I was going to go to med school?"

"When you extorted the PM when he came to see us," she said back.

"Oh…right." That seemed like an eternity ago. They stayed like that for a couple of minutes, with Mina caressing her short blue hair.

"Amy?"

"Yeah?"
"You love me back too, right?"

"I…I…" Amy fumbled for the right words to say in this incredibly awkward situation. Mina just didn't seem to latch onto the fact that she just wasn't into her. The last thirty minutes, while exhilarating and physically satisfying, now felt hollow and empty. "Yeah…yeah," she said softly, trying to keep her ever increasing doubts pinned down inside of her.

"That's good to hear."

"I've got a question for you then, Mina," Amy asked. She shifted a little bit in the bed, trying to get a little bit more comfortable.

"And what would that be?" Mina replied.

"Well…why do you love me so much then?"

"Why…?" That question didn't seem to faze Mina all that much, although the response was long in coming. She fiddled with Amy's hair for a couple more seconds before formulating a response. "Why not?"

"That's not very helpful."

"Amy…" Mina whined. "Stop thinking with your head all the goddamned time." She put her hand on Amy's bosom, and guided one of Amy's hands on top of hers. "Feel this?"

"Yeah…"

"This is all that you need to know why I love you so much. Because of this bond we've created over the last six months, we are one person now. You've been there for me, and I for you."

Mina nestled her head against Amy's, and within several minutes, she was asleep, leaving Amy to ponder the situation she had found herself in, before she too, fell asleep.