Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ The Palace of Justice ❯ 4 ( Chapter 4 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: Lethanon 
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Sci-fi / Thriller | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 01.15.2011 | Pages: 3 | Words: 4.4K | Visits: 341 | Status: Work In Progress
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Sci-fi / Thriller | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 01.15.2011 | Pages: 3 | Words: 4.4K | Visits: 341 | Status: Work In Progress
4:
The bed, as beds went, was surprisingly comfortable. Trowa woke feeling well rested and hungry as hell. His stomach even growled at him, not a quiet mew but an actual growl. As his food supplies wouldn’t be there until close to the end of his work day, he opted for breakfast on the run and went to his closet to get dressed. There were no options save the white suit so that was what he put on after a hurried shower and a quick brush of his hair. He was out the door long before he had to be, but he was taking into account that he would likely get lost.
He took with him only a card in his jacket breast pocket; His Room Key, so he could buy anything he felt like, now that he was rich enough to do so, and didn’t that just beat all.
There were far fewer people around, most still being in bed, not needing to navigate several Levels to get to work, and knowing where to go to boot. He passed the odd night worker returning home for the day, but otherwise had the shuttles to himself. He stopped at one the interchanges he’d become familiar with the day before, Level 3 Sector 30’s station 3. He liked the numbers, for obvious reasons, but it also happened to be a particularly large hub with a decent looking twenty four hour food establishment called ‘On The Go’. Which he was. So he supposed it was the sort of place he should be eating.
“Good Morning, Sir! You’re up early!”
“Yeah...new job, I’m a bit nervous. Not sure where to go actually...”
“Oh, I know how that is! I switched not long after my arrival and I swear, I took the wrong shuttle for a week! Where are you headed?”
“Level 1?”
“Ah...” The girl smiled and reached over the counter for of all things a shuttle map. Just what he’d spent half a day looking for yesterday. He doubted she understood the significance of the small upturning of his lips.
“If you to the shuttle straight to interchange 30 on Level 2, there is an express service that’ll take you right to Level 1.” She even highlighted it on the map for him. He thanked her profusely which led to her asking his name and hinting at wanting his number and he made sure she would be obliging when he came in to get breakfast each morning; that she would think him a ‘local’, as it were.
His egg and bacon muffin, when it came, was surprisingly good, and actually tasted freshly made rather than reheated in a microwave as he suspected it must have been. Or maybe they really did have fresh food here, he had no idea and absolutely no interest in where the food came from inside of Frank. He really just wanted to know two things, how the hell he got off the ship, and who the hell Frank wanted him to save. As he knew neither of those things, he finished his breakfast and hurried out to catch the express shuttle down to Level 2, and then the other express shuttle to Level 1.
“There are way too many shuttles,” he grumbled to himself, and a man across from him winced sympathetically but didn’t ask. Trowa was quietly grateful for him minding his own business.
He reached Level 1, and wasn’t the only one arriving. The express from Level 2 was crowded, and people talked incessantly. It was the most life Trowa had seen inside Frank yet, and he finally felt like he was on solid ground. These people were mostly young, and spoke with crisp, clean sentences, and moved with familiar purpose. These were military personnel, trained to stand tall, march, and fire when needed. He knew where he stood with them, and knew exactly how to blend in.
He asked a girl sitting toward the back of the shuttle if she knew where he had to go, because he was new, and she was nice enough to take him through the process of getting off the shuttle and into the changerooms that immediately greeted them. He was given a uniform and had to change there and then, and it just made him smirk because there was no white on Level 1. Down here, the uniform was a uniform black. That suited him just fine.
She took him through to the next gate where everyone was scanning themselves through on a large gate using their cards and they did the same. Trowa was unsurprised when his worked flawlessly. Then she led him away from the people hurrying through the next lot of corridors and instead took him into a small office with a single clerk already punching numbers.
“Morning Davis.”
The man looked up and smiled at them, far too happy to be there doing his job in Trowa’s opinion, but that wasn’t exactly unusual. He tried to smile back and the man took his card and scanned it, only smiling brighter.
“Ah, recruit Bloom. Excellent.” He pulled a bag from his drawer and put it on the counter. “There you go. Your badges are in there, as well as a folder of information you might like the read when you get home, a map of the Level, where you’ve been assigned and how to get there. Thank you.”
Trowa was sure he had never been so politely and thoroughly dismissed before. He shook his head, took the folder and hurried out the door, rummaging in his bag for the map because his nice guide had abandoned him as soon as they entered the office.
He had been placed in a hanger, as a pilot. He barely restrained his laughter and instead hurried through the final gates into the Level’s shuttle system and got on board the first available one. It was easier to navigate than the upper levels, mostly because it just did a massive loop around the outer edge of the Level, dropping you off at whichever massive hanger you needed to go to. He found hanger 75 with ease and hurried in, scanning his ID at the entrance and then scanning his surroundings.
It looked like any military hanger, except the ‘planes’ were unlike any he had seen before. If Heero saw this he would want to blow Frank into oblivion and wouldn’t leave until the job was done. But no one had actually seen the Hanger doors open, which left him wondering just what the point was of having several hundred thousand of these little Fighters.
“Bloom, I presume?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Excellent. Simulators are down the left side, you’re in Sim 100.”
The last one. That suited Trowa just fine and he hurried to his post, taking in the details as he did. There was a mechanics team roaming the hanger floor, moving from one thing to the next seemingly at random, though the clipboard in one man’s hands probably had the to do list. Other than that the hanger seemed abandoned until he got to the long line of simulators.
A person sat at each, helmet covering their head, hands on the controls, oblivious to the real world. Trowa didn’t like it. He could have snuck in and killed every one of them without them blinking an eye. Someone could sneak in and kill him. That didn’t sit well at all.
It was a long walk to Sim 100 and when he got there he simply sat in the chair for a long time, looking around and getting a feel for it. If this was what the cockpit looked like, it was rather boring. Nothing like the chaotic mess of his Gundam. He shook his head at his feeling of nostalgia and pulled out the contents of his pack.
Introductory guide, flight manual, recruitment details...He went for the flight manual, flipped through it curiously and then had a go. He still didn’t like the closed in Helmet, but he saw the necessity of it when it was what he was going to have to wear while piloting. It sealed around his head and he left Frank and the mystery of the person he had to save behind, sucked into the feeling of freedom and release he only got when flying.
He emerged at the end of the work day, stunned and awed, and just sat for a long time. Heero was going to have a heart attack, or cum in his pants. Either way, there was no denying Frank was incredible. The bay doors never opened because they didn’t need to. The Fighters, or SiS-50s, simply de-molecularized on this side of the door, and re-molecularized on the other side, with shields up, making them invisible to external sensory devices. The Preventers shuttle could be thoroughly surrounded and they would never know.
Disturbing didn’t begin to cover it. He took his time in the changerooms getting back into his white suit, letting his nerves come down from the high, and for calm to settle once more in his head. He took his pack with him, because he had a lot of reading to do tonight. He tried not to think much on the shuttle ride back, and when he got to His Room he busied himself by putting away the groceries and having a shower, getting back into his house pants before sitting at the desk and pulling out the manuals, and beginning the long haul.
He finished at midnight and pushed the books aside, sitting back in his chair and staring at the ceiling for a long time. Preventers needed to know about Frank. And he thought he might have a way to tell them. He just needed to build a blocking device first.
He got on the Computer and selected ‘Shopping’. There was a search option and he went for circuitry first, ordering several components that sounded similar to what he wanted, making sure he ordered them all separately to make it look less suspicious. He set them for delivery at different times throughout the day tomorrow. He was nearly done when he noticed a light flashing in the corner. A closer inspection found he had a message and when he opened it he wasn’t surprised to find it was from 37265.
“A friend.”
So he had simply gotten distracted and taken a while to respond after all. Curious, Trowa tried to call instead of responding on the message board, but there was no answer and he went back to the board, staring at it for a long time before responding.
“Are there other Franks floating around then?”
“No. I am one of a kind.”
Of that Trowa had no doubts whatsoever. Building Frank once would have been feat enough to satisfy a million mad scientists.
“I need backup. I need Yuy and Maxwell.”
“Impossible.”
You don’t say. Trowa didn’t want to admit he was asking for help either, but he was in so far over his head he felt like an ostrich, and he knew he wasn’t getting out of Frank without help.
“I can’t save your friend without help.” Like he even knew how to save Frank’s friend anyway. Who was friends with a giant killer disappearing space station?
The pauses were long again and he wondered just what Frank was doing that he needed time to maintain a very simple conversation.
“I cannot help you.”
“Then I cannot help you.”
There was no reply, and Trowa suspected there wasn’t going to be one in the morning. He sighed and shut down the computer, going to the fridge and making himself a peanut butter sandwich, setting the lights to come on when he needed to be up in the morning, and he went to bed.
He had disturbing dreams and woke feeling not rested at all. He packed some lunch, his manuals and his card in the pack the military had given him and left early, having breakfast at the Level 3 interchange again.
“Ah, Mr Bloom!”
“Tracey,” he greeted the waitress with a smile. “The muffin please?”
“Sure thing, be just a few minutes.”
He took a seat by the window where he could observe people walking by and pulled out his flight manual again, learning as much about the thing he had to pilot as possible, particularly things he could do to alter it without gaining unwanted attention. A plan was starting to form and was glad he’d gone shopping last night. If Frank wouldn’t help him, he would just have to help himself.
Thanking Tracey profusely for the wonderful muffin, making her blush, Trowa headed out feeling better about the day. He had purpose now and the dreams had faded into a vague sort of memory he couldn’t quite recall, pushed aside. He got to work early, made sure his uniform was exactly right, put on his name badges and insignia pins and hurried down to his simulation unit at the back of the hanger.
It was several hours before anyone interrupted him, and even then it was just to ask if he wanted to see his SiS-50, which of course he did, so they took him out and he got to sit in the cockpit and they left him to it, to practise where he felt like it. He wondered if there was any other job in the entire universe that basically left you to do whatever the hell you wanted all day. Not that he minded, since his cockpit was exactly where he wanted to be. He pulled off the front panel and admired the wiring inside, learning it quietly as he tried to find a way to rig a second system inside of this one, that could run off its power but would otherwise remain separate from Frank’s systems, which he was now thoroughly convinced were all connected.
He stayed late, leaving long after everyone else had retired for the night, a plan finally solid in his head. He was almost giddy, except ex-Gundam pilots didn’t do giddy, when he opened his door to find a rather huge pile of boxes filling the middle of his apartment. He still went and showered first.
He turned on the Computer once his had his house pants on and put music on softly in the background; the pathetique sonata. Good thinking music, and he got to work, opening everything up first and laying it out in a circle around his chair, putting the boxes into a stacked mess in one corner to be disposed of in the morning. When he had everything laid out he split it into two groups; things he knew he needed to make specific things, and extra pieces he could use to make something else. There wasn’t much left, so he went for a quick shop for some additional items he knew he wouldn’t be able to steal from Level 1 or incorporate from his SiS-50 system.
Then he began to build. He launched the program he wanted on his laptop, keeping a log of the components he used and why and how he incorporated them in case he needed to alter anything later, which he ended up doing quite a few times.
It was well past three in the morning when the message light blinked on the Computer screen and he curiously activated his message board.
“Nataku might be able to help you.”
“Good morning, Frank!” Was he even aware of the time? Did space ship-like stations know that there was day and night? Did they care? What use was time to something that didn’t need to sleep. Or did Frank sleep? Clearly not, since he was messaging him just before four in the morning.
“Good morning, Triton.”
“Nataku is the woman who helped me when I first came here.”
“Nataku is not a woman.”
Right. Interesting. Trowa just shrugged, fiddling with a particularly difficult connection for a few minutes, trying to think of what he needed from Frank, and more importantly what he could say that didn’t give away what he was doing.
“Might?”
“We are limited in what we can do.”
Trowa seriously doubted that. More likely, Frank was being observed and couldn’t do anything to draw anyone’s attention to what he had done. Bringing Trowa on board could go unnoticed. Once was always doable, but repeating? That was never a good idea.
“I’ll keep it in mind. For now, I’ve found my own way to get them on board. I do need your help with it though.”
“I can’t help you.”
Trowa wished Frank could see the way he rolled his eyes at him. The computer liked to repeat itself way too much, it was getting on his nerves. Weird space stations should not be allowed to abduct you for their own nefarious purposes and then not help you to do whatever it was they kidnapped you for.
“If you make another satellite disappear, Duo and Heero will be the closest to the incident and will respond immediately. It’ll take them twenty minutes to find out the station didn’t send an active signal response at its quarterly hour check in. That leaves them one hour thirty eight minutes to get to us. From there, I can help them provided I’m on duty as the scout outside the station.”
The silence this time was extended. Trowa imagined Frank as a funny old man toddling around in the command tower trying to figure out what Trowa’s plan was, but they both knew it was important that Frank not know what was going on, because Frank was being watched. By who was a question Trowa suspected would soon nag at him horribly. For now, it didn’t matter.
“It can be arranged.”
“When?”
“The day after tomorrow.”
“Perfect.” The sooner the better, but Trowa needed a day to install what he was building on his SiS-50, so an extra day was a huge help. He felt everything finally falling into place after the morning’s unease.
“Are you ready to tell me who this friend of yours is?”
“No.” The word was laced with a range of meanings. No, because he couldn’t tell, no because it might distract Trowa from doing what he was doing, no because he didn’t know, no because Trowa might decide not to help him at all? So many possible reasons for no.
“In that case, I have work to do.” That’s right Frank, you are dismissed!
He drank his entire week’s order of juice in a night, but when the lights blinked to tell him it was time to get up for work, he had everything he needed designed and built and ready to go. He smirked to himself as he packed it all in his backpack and once again went to shower, annoyed that it was almost becoming routine. Maybe that was why everyone was so set on it here, because there was no other option, nothing else at all to do other than what you were supposed to do.
He stopped at the interchange for breakfast again.
“Hey Mr Bloom! Muffin?”
“And coffee please!”
“Ah, late night? New job pushing you hard?”
“Yeah, first week, you know how it is.” She did, apparently, and told him so at length while she made him his muffin and coffee. He asked her to make a second to take away while he drank the first and devoured the muffin, and she made it an extra large and gave him a free promotion thermal mug. He thanked her, feeling warm inside for reasons that had little to do with coffee and more to do with seeds that bore fruit. He’d only been here three days, and he was becoming a local. Locals were never suspicious, and were always accused last.
He got to work right on time, changing into his uniform quickly, completely unsurprised when no one interrupted him at all as he went to his cockpit, climbed in and sealed himself inside. He unpacked his supplies and got to work right away, weaving his additional communication system around the original. It wasn’t state of the art by any stretch of the imagination, but it would do the job provided Frank did his part.
He was on his lunch break, doing his best to take his time with his sandwich instead of scoffing it down the way he wanted because not taking the full lunch break would look suspicious. These people liked doing their jobs, true, but no one was that keen that they didn’t want their lunch break. So he was taking his time, just watching people move around the hanger when another soldier sat opposite him at his table, pulling out a sandwich and picking at it but not actually eating.
Trowa looked up at the other person and only hesitated with his next bite for a second, watching her curiously. He didn’t care what Frank said, that was definitely not a He, it had breasts. Though he supposed it could be transitioning, but in that case what on earth were they doing here?
“Hi.”
“Hello.” It seemed to have no interest whatsoever in the sandwich and Trowa wondered why it was even trying to maintain the facade. Unless it was a warning that even here they were being observed. Or they were just really, really paranoid, it was impossible to know, so he went with caution.
“I heard you need help.”
“Sorry, I don’t talk to shrinks.”
It just stared at him and Trowa stared back, wondering if it had a sense of humour, because it didn’t really seem like it. Strangely, Frank seemed to have more emotion, and Frank was the one who was supposed to be a robot or something.
“Frank is going to take in a satellite, which will bring my team to our location. I’ve rigged my SiS-50 to communicate with external devices and know the codes for the Preventers network. I intended originally to get them to attach the shuttle to the external of Frank and ferry them inside in my SiS, but it would be time consuming.” He hesitated, watching it absorb his plan until it nodded for him to continue.
“Can you get the eye thing to open and bring them in? I mean, if they were able to actually go to the eye, rather than the eye having to find them? Does that make it easier?”
“Yes. Much easier.” It put down its sandwich, abandoning the pretence of eating it, contemplating what was to be done. “It will be noticed if they leave the shuttle attached to our hull. Frank says they will meet us at exactly two fifteen tomorrow. I will open the eye at two seventeen, for only thirty seconds. If you miss the window, I cannot help you.”
“They’ll make the window,” Trowa promised immediately, easily because he had no doubt he could get Yuy at least to drag Maxwell to where they needed to be. And then maybe they could finally start figuring out what the hell he was doing here in the first place. That would be a nice change, actually knowing what was going on.
“Alright then. I will bring them to you that evening.”
“Thank you Nataku.”
“You are welcome, Triton.”
It left, just like that, leaving him once again alone at his table. It was a strange feeling, watching Nataku leave, wondering what it really knew of the warrior goddess, or the woman who had died who bore the same spirit. She was Asian in appearance, and walked like a soldier. Could have been a warrior for all Trowa knew. He sighed, finished his sandwich and water and got back to work. He had a timeline to work with now, at least.
He ended up staying behind for several hours. When he clocked out the clerk smiled and asked him if he had jitters about his first flight tomorrow. Trowa agreed, trying to look as sheepish as possible and was reassured that everyone felt that way the first time, which was odd since Trowa didn’t recall feeling that way the first time he got in his Gundam. But perhaps he’d been too young and stupid to know he was supposed to be scared, it was hard to say.
He stopped by the supermarket on the way home and got more juice, but otherwise went straight there. He showered quickly and checked his Computer, unsurprised to find no messages. Frank couldn’t risk leaving a random time somewhere to be discovered, when that time would match an event very soon.
He lay in bed for a long time, figuring out timing and what to say when things had to happen so quickly. But after a while he details were all there, concrete and flawless and he was left with nothing to think about as he waited to fall into sleep’s embrace.
Strangely, he found himself thinking of old times, sitting around the campfire during the war, Wufei on the other side. And then he slept.
The bed, as beds went, was surprisingly comfortable. Trowa woke feeling well rested and hungry as hell. His stomach even growled at him, not a quiet mew but an actual growl. As his food supplies wouldn’t be there until close to the end of his work day, he opted for breakfast on the run and went to his closet to get dressed. There were no options save the white suit so that was what he put on after a hurried shower and a quick brush of his hair. He was out the door long before he had to be, but he was taking into account that he would likely get lost.
He took with him only a card in his jacket breast pocket; His Room Key, so he could buy anything he felt like, now that he was rich enough to do so, and didn’t that just beat all.
There were far fewer people around, most still being in bed, not needing to navigate several Levels to get to work, and knowing where to go to boot. He passed the odd night worker returning home for the day, but otherwise had the shuttles to himself. He stopped at one the interchanges he’d become familiar with the day before, Level 3 Sector 30’s station 3. He liked the numbers, for obvious reasons, but it also happened to be a particularly large hub with a decent looking twenty four hour food establishment called ‘On The Go’. Which he was. So he supposed it was the sort of place he should be eating.
“Good Morning, Sir! You’re up early!”
“Yeah...new job, I’m a bit nervous. Not sure where to go actually...”
“Oh, I know how that is! I switched not long after my arrival and I swear, I took the wrong shuttle for a week! Where are you headed?”
“Level 1?”
“Ah...” The girl smiled and reached over the counter for of all things a shuttle map. Just what he’d spent half a day looking for yesterday. He doubted she understood the significance of the small upturning of his lips.
“If you to the shuttle straight to interchange 30 on Level 2, there is an express service that’ll take you right to Level 1.” She even highlighted it on the map for him. He thanked her profusely which led to her asking his name and hinting at wanting his number and he made sure she would be obliging when he came in to get breakfast each morning; that she would think him a ‘local’, as it were.
His egg and bacon muffin, when it came, was surprisingly good, and actually tasted freshly made rather than reheated in a microwave as he suspected it must have been. Or maybe they really did have fresh food here, he had no idea and absolutely no interest in where the food came from inside of Frank. He really just wanted to know two things, how the hell he got off the ship, and who the hell Frank wanted him to save. As he knew neither of those things, he finished his breakfast and hurried out to catch the express shuttle down to Level 2, and then the other express shuttle to Level 1.
“There are way too many shuttles,” he grumbled to himself, and a man across from him winced sympathetically but didn’t ask. Trowa was quietly grateful for him minding his own business.
He reached Level 1, and wasn’t the only one arriving. The express from Level 2 was crowded, and people talked incessantly. It was the most life Trowa had seen inside Frank yet, and he finally felt like he was on solid ground. These people were mostly young, and spoke with crisp, clean sentences, and moved with familiar purpose. These were military personnel, trained to stand tall, march, and fire when needed. He knew where he stood with them, and knew exactly how to blend in.
He asked a girl sitting toward the back of the shuttle if she knew where he had to go, because he was new, and she was nice enough to take him through the process of getting off the shuttle and into the changerooms that immediately greeted them. He was given a uniform and had to change there and then, and it just made him smirk because there was no white on Level 1. Down here, the uniform was a uniform black. That suited him just fine.
She took him through to the next gate where everyone was scanning themselves through on a large gate using their cards and they did the same. Trowa was unsurprised when his worked flawlessly. Then she led him away from the people hurrying through the next lot of corridors and instead took him into a small office with a single clerk already punching numbers.
“Morning Davis.”
The man looked up and smiled at them, far too happy to be there doing his job in Trowa’s opinion, but that wasn’t exactly unusual. He tried to smile back and the man took his card and scanned it, only smiling brighter.
“Ah, recruit Bloom. Excellent.” He pulled a bag from his drawer and put it on the counter. “There you go. Your badges are in there, as well as a folder of information you might like the read when you get home, a map of the Level, where you’ve been assigned and how to get there. Thank you.”
Trowa was sure he had never been so politely and thoroughly dismissed before. He shook his head, took the folder and hurried out the door, rummaging in his bag for the map because his nice guide had abandoned him as soon as they entered the office.
He had been placed in a hanger, as a pilot. He barely restrained his laughter and instead hurried through the final gates into the Level’s shuttle system and got on board the first available one. It was easier to navigate than the upper levels, mostly because it just did a massive loop around the outer edge of the Level, dropping you off at whichever massive hanger you needed to go to. He found hanger 75 with ease and hurried in, scanning his ID at the entrance and then scanning his surroundings.
It looked like any military hanger, except the ‘planes’ were unlike any he had seen before. If Heero saw this he would want to blow Frank into oblivion and wouldn’t leave until the job was done. But no one had actually seen the Hanger doors open, which left him wondering just what the point was of having several hundred thousand of these little Fighters.
“Bloom, I presume?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Excellent. Simulators are down the left side, you’re in Sim 100.”
The last one. That suited Trowa just fine and he hurried to his post, taking in the details as he did. There was a mechanics team roaming the hanger floor, moving from one thing to the next seemingly at random, though the clipboard in one man’s hands probably had the to do list. Other than that the hanger seemed abandoned until he got to the long line of simulators.
A person sat at each, helmet covering their head, hands on the controls, oblivious to the real world. Trowa didn’t like it. He could have snuck in and killed every one of them without them blinking an eye. Someone could sneak in and kill him. That didn’t sit well at all.
It was a long walk to Sim 100 and when he got there he simply sat in the chair for a long time, looking around and getting a feel for it. If this was what the cockpit looked like, it was rather boring. Nothing like the chaotic mess of his Gundam. He shook his head at his feeling of nostalgia and pulled out the contents of his pack.
Introductory guide, flight manual, recruitment details...He went for the flight manual, flipped through it curiously and then had a go. He still didn’t like the closed in Helmet, but he saw the necessity of it when it was what he was going to have to wear while piloting. It sealed around his head and he left Frank and the mystery of the person he had to save behind, sucked into the feeling of freedom and release he only got when flying.
He emerged at the end of the work day, stunned and awed, and just sat for a long time. Heero was going to have a heart attack, or cum in his pants. Either way, there was no denying Frank was incredible. The bay doors never opened because they didn’t need to. The Fighters, or SiS-50s, simply de-molecularized on this side of the door, and re-molecularized on the other side, with shields up, making them invisible to external sensory devices. The Preventers shuttle could be thoroughly surrounded and they would never know.
Disturbing didn’t begin to cover it. He took his time in the changerooms getting back into his white suit, letting his nerves come down from the high, and for calm to settle once more in his head. He took his pack with him, because he had a lot of reading to do tonight. He tried not to think much on the shuttle ride back, and when he got to His Room he busied himself by putting away the groceries and having a shower, getting back into his house pants before sitting at the desk and pulling out the manuals, and beginning the long haul.
He finished at midnight and pushed the books aside, sitting back in his chair and staring at the ceiling for a long time. Preventers needed to know about Frank. And he thought he might have a way to tell them. He just needed to build a blocking device first.
He got on the Computer and selected ‘Shopping’. There was a search option and he went for circuitry first, ordering several components that sounded similar to what he wanted, making sure he ordered them all separately to make it look less suspicious. He set them for delivery at different times throughout the day tomorrow. He was nearly done when he noticed a light flashing in the corner. A closer inspection found he had a message and when he opened it he wasn’t surprised to find it was from 37265.
“A friend.”
So he had simply gotten distracted and taken a while to respond after all. Curious, Trowa tried to call instead of responding on the message board, but there was no answer and he went back to the board, staring at it for a long time before responding.
“Are there other Franks floating around then?”
“No. I am one of a kind.”
Of that Trowa had no doubts whatsoever. Building Frank once would have been feat enough to satisfy a million mad scientists.
“I need backup. I need Yuy and Maxwell.”
“Impossible.”
You don’t say. Trowa didn’t want to admit he was asking for help either, but he was in so far over his head he felt like an ostrich, and he knew he wasn’t getting out of Frank without help.
“I can’t save your friend without help.” Like he even knew how to save Frank’s friend anyway. Who was friends with a giant killer disappearing space station?
The pauses were long again and he wondered just what Frank was doing that he needed time to maintain a very simple conversation.
“I cannot help you.”
“Then I cannot help you.”
There was no reply, and Trowa suspected there wasn’t going to be one in the morning. He sighed and shut down the computer, going to the fridge and making himself a peanut butter sandwich, setting the lights to come on when he needed to be up in the morning, and he went to bed.
He had disturbing dreams and woke feeling not rested at all. He packed some lunch, his manuals and his card in the pack the military had given him and left early, having breakfast at the Level 3 interchange again.
“Ah, Mr Bloom!”
“Tracey,” he greeted the waitress with a smile. “The muffin please?”
“Sure thing, be just a few minutes.”
He took a seat by the window where he could observe people walking by and pulled out his flight manual again, learning as much about the thing he had to pilot as possible, particularly things he could do to alter it without gaining unwanted attention. A plan was starting to form and was glad he’d gone shopping last night. If Frank wouldn’t help him, he would just have to help himself.
Thanking Tracey profusely for the wonderful muffin, making her blush, Trowa headed out feeling better about the day. He had purpose now and the dreams had faded into a vague sort of memory he couldn’t quite recall, pushed aside. He got to work early, made sure his uniform was exactly right, put on his name badges and insignia pins and hurried down to his simulation unit at the back of the hanger.
It was several hours before anyone interrupted him, and even then it was just to ask if he wanted to see his SiS-50, which of course he did, so they took him out and he got to sit in the cockpit and they left him to it, to practise where he felt like it. He wondered if there was any other job in the entire universe that basically left you to do whatever the hell you wanted all day. Not that he minded, since his cockpit was exactly where he wanted to be. He pulled off the front panel and admired the wiring inside, learning it quietly as he tried to find a way to rig a second system inside of this one, that could run off its power but would otherwise remain separate from Frank’s systems, which he was now thoroughly convinced were all connected.
He stayed late, leaving long after everyone else had retired for the night, a plan finally solid in his head. He was almost giddy, except ex-Gundam pilots didn’t do giddy, when he opened his door to find a rather huge pile of boxes filling the middle of his apartment. He still went and showered first.
He turned on the Computer once his had his house pants on and put music on softly in the background; the pathetique sonata. Good thinking music, and he got to work, opening everything up first and laying it out in a circle around his chair, putting the boxes into a stacked mess in one corner to be disposed of in the morning. When he had everything laid out he split it into two groups; things he knew he needed to make specific things, and extra pieces he could use to make something else. There wasn’t much left, so he went for a quick shop for some additional items he knew he wouldn’t be able to steal from Level 1 or incorporate from his SiS-50 system.
Then he began to build. He launched the program he wanted on his laptop, keeping a log of the components he used and why and how he incorporated them in case he needed to alter anything later, which he ended up doing quite a few times.
It was well past three in the morning when the message light blinked on the Computer screen and he curiously activated his message board.
“Nataku might be able to help you.”
“Good morning, Frank!” Was he even aware of the time? Did space ship-like stations know that there was day and night? Did they care? What use was time to something that didn’t need to sleep. Or did Frank sleep? Clearly not, since he was messaging him just before four in the morning.
“Good morning, Triton.”
“Nataku is the woman who helped me when I first came here.”
“Nataku is not a woman.”
Right. Interesting. Trowa just shrugged, fiddling with a particularly difficult connection for a few minutes, trying to think of what he needed from Frank, and more importantly what he could say that didn’t give away what he was doing.
“Might?”
“We are limited in what we can do.”
Trowa seriously doubted that. More likely, Frank was being observed and couldn’t do anything to draw anyone’s attention to what he had done. Bringing Trowa on board could go unnoticed. Once was always doable, but repeating? That was never a good idea.
“I’ll keep it in mind. For now, I’ve found my own way to get them on board. I do need your help with it though.”
“I can’t help you.”
Trowa wished Frank could see the way he rolled his eyes at him. The computer liked to repeat itself way too much, it was getting on his nerves. Weird space stations should not be allowed to abduct you for their own nefarious purposes and then not help you to do whatever it was they kidnapped you for.
“If you make another satellite disappear, Duo and Heero will be the closest to the incident and will respond immediately. It’ll take them twenty minutes to find out the station didn’t send an active signal response at its quarterly hour check in. That leaves them one hour thirty eight minutes to get to us. From there, I can help them provided I’m on duty as the scout outside the station.”
The silence this time was extended. Trowa imagined Frank as a funny old man toddling around in the command tower trying to figure out what Trowa’s plan was, but they both knew it was important that Frank not know what was going on, because Frank was being watched. By who was a question Trowa suspected would soon nag at him horribly. For now, it didn’t matter.
“It can be arranged.”
“When?”
“The day after tomorrow.”
“Perfect.” The sooner the better, but Trowa needed a day to install what he was building on his SiS-50, so an extra day was a huge help. He felt everything finally falling into place after the morning’s unease.
“Are you ready to tell me who this friend of yours is?”
“No.” The word was laced with a range of meanings. No, because he couldn’t tell, no because it might distract Trowa from doing what he was doing, no because he didn’t know, no because Trowa might decide not to help him at all? So many possible reasons for no.
“In that case, I have work to do.” That’s right Frank, you are dismissed!
He drank his entire week’s order of juice in a night, but when the lights blinked to tell him it was time to get up for work, he had everything he needed designed and built and ready to go. He smirked to himself as he packed it all in his backpack and once again went to shower, annoyed that it was almost becoming routine. Maybe that was why everyone was so set on it here, because there was no other option, nothing else at all to do other than what you were supposed to do.
He stopped at the interchange for breakfast again.
“Hey Mr Bloom! Muffin?”
“And coffee please!”
“Ah, late night? New job pushing you hard?”
“Yeah, first week, you know how it is.” She did, apparently, and told him so at length while she made him his muffin and coffee. He asked her to make a second to take away while he drank the first and devoured the muffin, and she made it an extra large and gave him a free promotion thermal mug. He thanked her, feeling warm inside for reasons that had little to do with coffee and more to do with seeds that bore fruit. He’d only been here three days, and he was becoming a local. Locals were never suspicious, and were always accused last.
He got to work right on time, changing into his uniform quickly, completely unsurprised when no one interrupted him at all as he went to his cockpit, climbed in and sealed himself inside. He unpacked his supplies and got to work right away, weaving his additional communication system around the original. It wasn’t state of the art by any stretch of the imagination, but it would do the job provided Frank did his part.
He was on his lunch break, doing his best to take his time with his sandwich instead of scoffing it down the way he wanted because not taking the full lunch break would look suspicious. These people liked doing their jobs, true, but no one was that keen that they didn’t want their lunch break. So he was taking his time, just watching people move around the hanger when another soldier sat opposite him at his table, pulling out a sandwich and picking at it but not actually eating.
Trowa looked up at the other person and only hesitated with his next bite for a second, watching her curiously. He didn’t care what Frank said, that was definitely not a He, it had breasts. Though he supposed it could be transitioning, but in that case what on earth were they doing here?
“Hi.”
“Hello.” It seemed to have no interest whatsoever in the sandwich and Trowa wondered why it was even trying to maintain the facade. Unless it was a warning that even here they were being observed. Or they were just really, really paranoid, it was impossible to know, so he went with caution.
“I heard you need help.”
“Sorry, I don’t talk to shrinks.”
It just stared at him and Trowa stared back, wondering if it had a sense of humour, because it didn’t really seem like it. Strangely, Frank seemed to have more emotion, and Frank was the one who was supposed to be a robot or something.
“Frank is going to take in a satellite, which will bring my team to our location. I’ve rigged my SiS-50 to communicate with external devices and know the codes for the Preventers network. I intended originally to get them to attach the shuttle to the external of Frank and ferry them inside in my SiS, but it would be time consuming.” He hesitated, watching it absorb his plan until it nodded for him to continue.
“Can you get the eye thing to open and bring them in? I mean, if they were able to actually go to the eye, rather than the eye having to find them? Does that make it easier?”
“Yes. Much easier.” It put down its sandwich, abandoning the pretence of eating it, contemplating what was to be done. “It will be noticed if they leave the shuttle attached to our hull. Frank says they will meet us at exactly two fifteen tomorrow. I will open the eye at two seventeen, for only thirty seconds. If you miss the window, I cannot help you.”
“They’ll make the window,” Trowa promised immediately, easily because he had no doubt he could get Yuy at least to drag Maxwell to where they needed to be. And then maybe they could finally start figuring out what the hell he was doing here in the first place. That would be a nice change, actually knowing what was going on.
“Alright then. I will bring them to you that evening.”
“Thank you Nataku.”
“You are welcome, Triton.”
It left, just like that, leaving him once again alone at his table. It was a strange feeling, watching Nataku leave, wondering what it really knew of the warrior goddess, or the woman who had died who bore the same spirit. She was Asian in appearance, and walked like a soldier. Could have been a warrior for all Trowa knew. He sighed, finished his sandwich and water and got back to work. He had a timeline to work with now, at least.
He ended up staying behind for several hours. When he clocked out the clerk smiled and asked him if he had jitters about his first flight tomorrow. Trowa agreed, trying to look as sheepish as possible and was reassured that everyone felt that way the first time, which was odd since Trowa didn’t recall feeling that way the first time he got in his Gundam. But perhaps he’d been too young and stupid to know he was supposed to be scared, it was hard to say.
He stopped by the supermarket on the way home and got more juice, but otherwise went straight there. He showered quickly and checked his Computer, unsurprised to find no messages. Frank couldn’t risk leaving a random time somewhere to be discovered, when that time would match an event very soon.
He lay in bed for a long time, figuring out timing and what to say when things had to happen so quickly. But after a while he details were all there, concrete and flawless and he was left with nothing to think about as he waited to fall into sleep’s embrace.
Strangely, he found himself thinking of old times, sitting around the campfire during the war, Wufei on the other side. And then he slept.