*“As bright as the lights were, he wanted them to be brighter. As cold as it was, he wanted it colder. If it was hot, it wasn’t hot enough, and if it wasn’t done by him it wasn’t done right. Oh, he is so annoying. He can’t be content. I’m telling you Lu. When I asked him to come to work with us, I never expected any of this! I could understand a few complaints, but everything is either done perfect by him or done wrong by someone else! I swear, if his ego gets any larger, he’ll start thinking he’s God!”
“Is he really that bad Sal?”
“Worse. Lu, what do I do?”
“Well, I don’t know.” Said one of the two women with a slight side smirk. The other caught it and called her on it.
“What was that smile for?”
“Nothing. I don’t know why you let him bother you in the first place. I mean, if you’re so much stronger than he is, why do you let his comments bug you so much?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I know I should ignore him. He’s Wufei Chang for crying out loud. But every single time I see him, I hear his voice, I tense up and let him bug me. I didn’t used to act like such a coward when I first met him. What’s changed?”
“The wars are over. He has no more Nataku and you have no more rebel cause. Both of you fight together for cause, but it’s not the same as the war. Things change.”
“I know, I know. Une gave me the same speech.”
“Sorry to be repetitive. Do you want me to switch you two from being partners?”
“Really?” The first woman smiled in reverie at the thought of having her perfect partner gone from making her feel inferior. Then she sighed. As much as she and Wufei fought, and as much as he annoyed her, she couldn’t abandon him after all they’d been through. “Nah. It’s alright. Just listen to my whining for me.”
“If you say so; but I’m not listening to your whining forever, so you’d better solve your problems soon.”
“Sure, right. Unhuh. I have to go, we have the new trainee class coming in today. Those poor kids certainly have their work cut out for them.”
“Bye Sally.”
The tall blonde woman walked out of her friend and boss’s office for the fifth time that week. She twirled one of her golden brown twist pigtails around her finger as she walked to the office that she shared with her partner. Sally Po was no quitter. She would continue to put up with her partner’s raging temper and femophobic personality until the day she either died or retired. As she loaded her guns and placed the gun straps around her shoulder blades and hips, her ears were rattled with an extremely loud yell.
“Onna! We are late because of you! Let’s go!” Sally sighed and turned to face him. She saw a shorter boy, same age but shorter in height than her self, with his midnight black hair pulled into a short tight pony tail at the base of his neck. His black eyes loomed over her, as if to suggest she was the slave and he the master. He almost scared her with those eyes. Almost.
“Wufei, if I’m so late, why don’t you go meet the trainees without me?”
“Baka onna! We have to go together. We are partners, and there is no justice in abandoning a partner. Let’s go!”
“Alright. Let’s go.” Sally sighed exasperatedly. It was going to be a long day.
As she and Wufei neared the field, they caught a glimpse of the other three head preventers, Lady Une, their ultimate boss and supervisor, Lucretia Noin, from who’s office Sally had just come, and Zechs Marquis, Noin’s ‘secret’ boyfriend. It really was no secret that the two did more then just hang out at bars together and have dinner a couple of times a week, but they had not come out and said anything, so people tried to be discrete when mentioning their ‘friendship’. She and Wufei joined the group on the platform to over look the newest recruits. Some had promise, but a few looked like discipline would be a necessity.
“Congratulations to you young men and women who have been able to reach this part of the preventer training program…” Began Lady Une. She introduced herself as the head of all operations that were to take place, both training and real. Then she introduced Noin, who would be heading their classes on mobile suit studies. Next came Zech’s introduction with the title of ‘teacher of battle tactics’. Finally, Une introduced Sally and Wufei, who would be working the most with the new recruits.
“Your hand to hand combat teachers, weapon’s instructors, and first aid teachers will be Sally Po and Wufei Chang. Also, if you have any personal problems, be it family, friends, comrads, or others, these are the two people to go to. They will monitor your dorm rooms, your free time, and your meal times. Any questions?” Since no one raised their hands, Lady Une told them to go and move into their dorms. Then she turned to face Sally and Wufei.
“Go wait in the dorms for them to be ready. Why am I telling you this? You know the drill…go.” Sally inwardly smiled. They had done this routine so many times that it was tradition for Une to try to tell them what to do, only to remember that they already knew.
As Sally sat on the chair at the end of the girl’s dorm hall, she watched them running in and out of the dorms, talking to their friends, switching and changing room assignments, and laughing in general. She watched them, almost wistful she could be like them; to have the years the war had stripped of her back. She had never had any friends until the rebel group in her hometown was formed, and even then it had been all guys for the most part. Sally wanted to know what it would be like to go shop with girls her age, to listen to music and rave about how cute the guys were. But she couldn’t. These kids, who were nearly all older than she herself was, were her responsibility. She couldn’t be one of them because too many others needed her to be who she was now. Oh well, that was life. She sighed again and wondered how Wufei was managing. ‘Probably got all of the boys scared to death of him and under control right now.’ She had never seen how exactly he got the boys settled into their dorms, but wished she could. Oh well. Time for dinner.
Wufei was having a devil of a time trying to get his boys in order. Dinner was in ten minutes, and they had yet to line up for dinner. It was a private competition he and Sally had begun since they had started training the new recruits. Whichever of them had their trainees lined up and in the cafeteria first bought the other dinner. So far, out of the seven times they had done it, Sally had won four. He didn’t understand how she did it, that weak onna and her perfect line beating him. This was their eighth time, and this time, he would even their score.
“Alright bakas! Get in line for dinner!” He raged at the top of his lungs. He didn’t know why, but when he thought of beating Sally, it suddenly got very hot in the room. No, it wasn’t that he was excited to beat Sally. Just the very prospect of seeing her made him suddenly feel like the hallway was too small. When he saw her, he never had anything to say to her, so he yelled at her. As usual, she was never offended by his snide remarks and made some civil ones back to him. Of course, that was what had been happening since the end of the war. When he turned around to yell at the boys for a second time, he found they were in a neat line behind him, ready to follow his every whim.
“Let’s go.” He said gruffly. This time, he would beat Sally for sure. Down the hall he marched his boys. As they turned the corner to the cafeteria doors, he saw Sally and her line just doing the same. He picked up the pace and his boys had to trot to keep up with him. He watched as Sally and her girls speed up to match their pace. Finally, it broke out into an all out race, running included. They both touched the door at the same time, and said:
“You’re buying.”
“Wait, you mean it was a race to see which was faster, the boys or the girls?” Asked one of the girls near the front of the line. Wufei hung his head in embarrassment that he had let their little competition get so out of hand that their new recruits saw it. He watched as Sally smiled good-naturedly and answered her.
“Yup. Whoever wins buys the other dinner. Looks like we buy for ourselves tonight, though.”
“Who has the lead so far?” Asked one of the guys.
“The girls of course!” Rang out a voice as clear as night and day from the back of the girl’ line. A girl with shoulder length bluish purple hair stepped forward to face the boy who had spoken. “Guys aren’t the best at everything you know.”
“Oh really? Stupid girl. What would you know, you probably can’t even…”
“Stupid girl? You sexist pig! Just because I’m a girl doesn’t make me stupid!”
“Oh really? Then what does, your hair color? You can’t even dye it one color, let alone a normal one.”
“I wanted my hair this color, thank you very much pretty boy. By the way, how’s your family? I heard the zoo’s best attraction were the monkeys…”
“Baka onna!”
“Egotistical maniac!”
“Enough! What is going on here?” Asked Une, who watched the whole scene from the time the two groups had rounded the corners. She was used to Sally and Wufei’s silent challenge, and even routed for Sally sometimes (silently, of course) but never had the trainees acted upon the game.
“Sorry Ms. Une.” The replied simultaneously. “You’re sorry? Stop that! No you!” followed, each of them saying the exact same thing at the exact same time.
“I said enough.” Intervened Une. “May I please speak to you two in private? The rest of you may go to dinner.” She dismissed everyone except for the poor boy and girl who had been fighting.
“This is all your fault, baka onna!” Shouted Wufei at Sally.
“My fault? How? You started the whole bet thing! How is it my fault?”
“You’re a weak onna who should have resisted! You have no will power.” He smirked, thinking she would bow at his feet, telling him he was right.
“Me? No willpower? That’s it! I’ve had it! Nothing is good enough for you Wufei, is it? I give up!” With that, a raving mad Sally stomped out of their office and down to Noin’s. The rest of the people in the office watched in delight as the scene brought life to the dull and usually quiet work office. “ Wufei, I want a separation! I can’t work with you any more!” She screamed, opening Noin’s door. Noin’s head looked at her directly. She had heard the fight all the way through her door and had know what was coming.
“A separation you weak onna? Fine you’re too weak to be my partner anyway!”
“Fine!”
“Fine!”
“Fine!” With that, she slammed Noin’s door closed behind her. Wufei slammed his right after. The office workers applauded at the wonderful fight.
“She’s awful. I don’t know what to do!” Cried the exasperated boy. It had been two months since the fateful day that Wufei and Sally had ‘broken up’. Here was the very same boy that had fought with the girl on the day of the food line race. The boy and the girl had been given a severe lecture on how to treat their peers by Lady Une, but the situation hadn’t improved.
Nothing had been right since that day, Wufei reflected. Ever since he and Sally had… ‘no, I can’t think of this now. But Gods I miss that baka onna.’ It was true. Ever since their fight, Sally and Wufei had avoided each other like the plague. They had split up the classes with the trainees, Wufei teaching hand to hand combat and a little of the more technical weaponry, where as Sally taught the less-advanced weapons and the first aid class. Instead of sharing an office with him, Sally had put up a desk in Noin’s, and instead of humoring him as he swore out his computer; she rolled her eyes and sighed in annoyance. What happened to how she used to laugh at him, or how she used to know just the right thing to make him calm down? Where had her smile gone? He missed the times she asked him to help her fix her computer; only to constantly block his light and lean against his back, in pure innocence of what she was doing to try to see what he was doing, making it extremely hard for him to concentrate.
“Wufei? Are you listening to me?” Asked the boy, Mike was his name.
“Yes. Go on, who’s awful?”
“Karrie, you know, the girl with the blue and purple hair?”
“Oh, Why is she so awful, she’s just another trainee. Why can’t you just stay away from her?”
“I tried. But I can’t help it, our best friends are good friends, so we have to see each other a lot. I mean, I’ve known her since before training here ever began. We’ve always fought. “ Wufei thought about the first time he met Sally, how she had fought him over what it meant to be weak and why the weak shouldn’t fight. Or in Sally’s case, should fight.
“Why do you fight?” Wufei asked the boy.
“I don’t know. I guess I always get nervous when she’s around, and I say mean stuff to try to get rid of her. It doesn’t work because she’s so weak and such an a stupid onna that she has to fight me in everything I say.” Wufei flashed back to the first day in the dorms, when he had realized he fought with Sally because he had nothing else to say to her.
“ So you fight because you’re the one too stubborn to be nice for a change and just say, hey how’s the weather?” Wufei asked the boy. He saw the boy’s wheels in his brain begin to turn and the boy’s face redden.
“ Well, yeah, but she’s just some stupid weak little girl who shouldn’t be here in the first place, why should I care enough to say anything nice to her?”
“Why shouldn’t she be here? Because she’s a woman? Does that make her weak? Don’t you think this Karrie has feelings too?”
“ Well, I know she has feelings too, but she really is weak.”
“Maybe she’s here to make herself stronger. Isn’t that why you’re here? We are all weak. A girl like that isn’t any different from any other girl in the world. Or any boy for that matter. Maybe you are the weak one for not admitting that she could possibly be stronger than you as you get older, or maybe you hide your true feelings.” He saw the boy blush and then begin to leave.
“ Thanks, I think. I’ll think about it.”
As Wufei watched the boy leave, his thoughts returned to Sally. ‘Damnit! I have to get this weak onna out of my… oh my God. Sally. Mike. I did the same thing to Sally that Mike did to Karrie. I’m so weak for not realizing it before it was too late. Of all the injustices I have done, this is by far the worst. I have to find Sally and apologize.’ With his epiphany fresh in his mind, he went off in search of Sally.
Wufei found Sally and the girl Karrie under a cherry blossom tree to the side of the archery-training field. He listened in, not wanting to interrupt the two.
“…can’t help it, he always calls me weak. Why does he think I’m so weak?”
“Maybe it’s because you’re a girl and you look weaker. But all of us are weak. I’m weak, even the Gundam pilots are weak, some more than others of course.” Wufei heard that and knew she was speaking of him. Sally thought of Wufei as she said her last comment. He had always thought of her as too weak to fight, even after she had shown him that she wasn’t. He always put her down, but damnit! She couldn’t get him off her mind. She really did feel weak now that she had given up on being his partner.
“Well, I know I’m weak now, but I’m not going to be one day. What is his problem? I mean, he can’t say one nice thing to me. It’s like he’s afraid of me and doesn’t want to talk to me, so he says mean things.” Tears came to the poor girl’s eyes. “And, and the worst part is, and I don’t know why, but I can’t get him off my mind!” Sally hugged the poor girl slightly.
“Maybe you like him. Maybe you want to be around him, so you fight with him to get his attention.”
“I like him? I like him? I do… huh. Who would have thought. I do like him. I like him a lot. Is that why it hurts so much when he calls me weak do you think?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you should go talk to him?”
“Karrie?” Sometime during the conversation, Mike had come up the hill and seen her and Sally talking. He had gone over and over heard Karrie and Sally talking. “You like me? That’s why you fight with me?”
“Maybe. You know, it’s not very polite to eavesdrop on people.” Wufei blushed from behind the tree. Now he felt really guilty.
“Sorry. It’s just that, well, I was coming to apologize to you and over heard you and…”
“Apologize to me?”
“Yeah, I guess I’m sorry for the way I treat you, I mean, you make me really nervous when I’m around you, and I just thought teasing you would make you go away. It backfired.”
“Are you nervous now?”
“Yeah.”
“Me too.” She blushed and looked at Sally. “Want to go somewhere else to, uh, smooth things over?” She asked the boy.
“Yeah, come on.” With that, the two young teens left. Sally sat for a minute thinking about the scene she had just witnessed. She thought of how much the situation reminded her of Wufei and started to cry. She missed him. She missed bugging him, his little quirks about how much he hated his computer, his complaining about her being weak, even their fights. Suddenly strong arms held her from behind. A soothing voice whispered in her ear.
“Sally, please don’t be sad.” Said Wufei. He saw her break down and felt he had to comfort her. He had to hold her. He wanted to hold her. He missed her. “Sally, I’m sorry about calling you weak. I would not have ever joined Preventers if you had not been strong enough to ask me, let alone stayed here without you being my partner. You are not weak.”
“Wufei?” She asked through her tears. She couldn’t believe he was here, much less apologizing, and yet here he was, with his arms wrapped around her and everything.
“When I was young, I married a young girl named Meirianne. I had to, it was my family duty. She died in a battle, and ever since then I call women weak because if Meirianne was weak enough to die, so could the others.”
“I’m not going to die. We don’t even have to fight anymore Wufei. We have peace.”
“I know, Sally. I’m sorry.”
“Wufei, let’s be partners again.”
“I want more.” He spun her around and kissed her softly on the nose, following it up with a soft kiss on the lips. He savored every second of her taste, her soft lips, and slowly deepened the kiss.
Sally allowed herself to forget anything but him. She responded quickly and passionately. So this was why she always felt funny when she was around him. She loved him. She too, helped to intensify the kiss. As they pulled apart breathless, they leaned against each other’s foreheads, smiling.
“Sally, you weak onna, I love you.”
“Wufei, you baka. I love you too.”
~~~xxx~~~
“So what happened to you two?” Asked Noin. A few moments earlier, a very disheveled looking Sally and a breathless and harried Wufei had entered her office. She, Lady Une, and Zechs had all been discussing possible expansion when the two had burst into the room.
“Nothing.” Answered Sally.
“We would like to be partners again.” Wufei stated bluntly.
“Why? I thought you two weren’t speaking to each other.” Said Zechs, now very much interested in the two.
“Were are now. Are we or aren’t we partners again?”
“Chill Wufei.” Warned Sally.
“Sorry onna.”
“Uh, yeah sure.” Answered Noin, baffled as to the change in the two’s mood towards each other. Then the door burst open again. It revealed Karrie and Mike, holding hands. Noin almost didn’t want to know, but, as they always say, curiosity killed the cat. “Did you two need something?”
“We were looking for Sally and Wufei. Sorry to have interrupted you.” Said Karrie. Then she saw Sally and did a double take. “Miss Sally, what happened to your clothes? They were perfect when I left you a half hour ago!”
“I’m fine Karrie.” Blushed Sally.
“As my friend always used to say when I’d come in looking like that, it looks like you have just been completely and thoroughly kissed senseless!”
“Karrie. You have until the count of three to tell us what you wanted. Then I shoot you and Mike.” Just for good measure, Wufei raised his gun.
“Um, just to say thanks for setting us straight.” Answered Mike.
“Yeah, we’re an item now! That was all. Bye!” With that, she and Mike walked out the door and shut it again.
“Thoroughly kissed, huh Sally?” Snickered Noin.
“And I’ll do it again too.” Said Wufei. He grabbed Sally and kissed her long and hard in front of the three others in the room. When they came up for air, all Noin could say was:
“Um when wha? Whe? Ye, what huh?”
“Looks like we set her stuttering.” Giggled Sally as the two walked out of the room.
~~~xxx~~~ Like it? Hate it? Tell me! Rix13Rix@aol.com! It’s not hard to do, I swear!