Heero-kun had been exploring the inner workings of Trunks-kun's time machine for hours now. He was absolutely silent in there, and so she couldn't exactly tell what it was he was up to. Even Duo-kun had wandered away by now, though not very far.
She probably shouldn't have too surprised that the time machine had been stripped pretty bare by the time they got out to it tonight. Even the pilot seat was gone.
That didn't seem to matter much to Heero-kun, though. He had managed to pry a few panels open and was down into what Duo-kun had called 'the guts' of it now. Whatever it was he had found was apparently quite interesting to him.
She had no idea what it was he saw in there that was so fascinating. To her, the wires and gears and such in there all looked pretty much the same. She had been staring since Duo-kun and Trunks-kun wandered off to the far side of the street to talk about something, and she still hadn't made any sense of it. Obviously, that wasn't the case for Heero-kun.
"Usagi."
Anyone else might have phrased that as a question, she thought to some amusement, but not Heero-kun. Apparently that just wasn't how he worked. From him, it was more a demand for her attention. "Yes?"
"You wouldn't happen to have a pin or anything for your hair, would you? To hold it up?"
Completely without thought, she reached up and patted at the twin buns on top of her head. She already knew the answer to that. "No, sorry, I don't." Heero-kun merely nodded, going back to what he was doing before. "Is there something I can help with instead?"
He shook his head, but then after a moment, he expanded on that. "There's a small latch here holding this panel in place. It's about bobby pin size. I'll come back to it in the morning. Duo might have something I can use then."
"So what exactly are you looking for, Heero-kun?" She had been biting down on that question for what felt like hours now. It couldn't have been that long, though, since it was still twilight.
"You and Trunks say this thing could travel through time." She nodded. That was what Trunks-kun told her, and she thoroughly believed it. "If I can figure out how it works and do some reverse engineering on it, maybe it can be rigged to send us all back to our respective... points of origin."
First off, that was a rather impressive speech for Heero-kun. Clearly, if she wanted to hear a speech from him, she needed to present him with an impressive technology puzzle. Good to know, for future reference. Secondly and probably more importantly... "You think you can do that? Make Trunks-kun's time machine send us all home?"
He shrugged. "Maybe. Trunks said his mother built this?" She nodded, even though he wasn't exactly looking at her. All his attention was on the machine in front of him. "She's a genius then. I've never seen work like this before. It's impressive."
More impressive than the Gundams? she wanted to ask. She made herself hold onto that question for a bit yet. She wasn't sure if she wanted to tell the two of them that she had seen their world, their past. There was something... intimate about that.
Instead, she looked up at the sky, stretching as she stood. "There's not a lot of light left, Heero-kun. We should probably all head in." She pitched the last part loud enough for the other two to hear her as well. Trunks-kun nodded, and he and Duo-kun started back. It wasn't exactly a long journey, but it wasn't the easiest terrain. Besides, unless she was gravely mistaken, Trunks-kun seemed to be playing the whole flying thing close to the chest. She couldn't say that she blamed him for that.
Heero-kun nodded. Quickly but quietly, he began to reattach the panels to the side of the machine he had been working on. It didn't make a lot of sense at first, since he had worked so hard at getting them off, but once he had the first done and had moved to start on the second, she understood. He was only partially reattaching them. They looked intact to the casual observer, and if she hadn't been looking at it for so long, she probably wouldn't have been able to tell the difference.
Hopefully this small measure should keep most scavengers out of 'the guts' of the time machine, at least until Heero-kun had had the chance to finish working this miracle he was trying for.
He did keep out a few small chips and... She thought that Ami-chan called them 'circuit boards'. Maybe he was going to try to work with them a while longer once they got indoors. Well, they did have the crank lantern to put out some light into the night. She and Trunks-kun had avoided using it as much as possible, trying not to draw too much attention to themselves, up until last night, when they had used it while sitting up with their two new arrivals.
If Heero-kun wanted to use it into the night to work on this, then that was between him and Duo-kun. Personally, she was going to do her level best not to pay any attention to whatever any of her boys might get up to, because she was planning on sleeping once they got upstairs.
Still, it would be best to ask instead of just assuming that that was what Heero-kun was up to. "Going to work on those for a bit tonight?" she questioned quietly.
He nodded. "There should be some kind of data encoded on this. I'm going to see what I can get out of it without a computer."
So with a computer, he could do more with it? He might even be able to make this crazy idea work? Man... Then it'd be great if he had one, I guess, she thought dourly.
"Maybe there's something on there you can find without one?" she offered hopefully.
"Worth a shot, right, buddy?" Duo-kun answered instead, dropping an arm around Heero-kun's shoulders. It seemed very telling to her that Heero-kun didn't even try to shrug it off, leaving it as it was.
And maybe it was equally as telling that Heero-kun had been willing to answer her questions. She wasn't going to get into that right now.
And she wasn't going to get into the laptop that was sitting in the middle of Duo-kun and Heero-kun's bedroom when they came up the stairs either.
Clearly, the Ginzuishou liked her boys as much as she did.
12 October 2012
Yeah, I don't even known anymore.
I would, however, like to state that I'm now on Chapter 50... and that's the last one. I'm hoping to finish up over the weekend. Once I'm done, hopefully I'll be able to move to a daily update schedule.
See you in the next chapter!
Apollymi