"Ban was saying that the element of surprise is our only major advantage at this point. I have to say I agree," Duo-kun commented. "We can't put this fight off too long."
Trunks-kun nodded his agreement. "The longer we wait, the longer the Reapers have to try again to kill us." He gave her hand a quick squeeze to temper the worlds, but she still had to fight back a shudder. Sylphiel-san had made it sound like a close thing for her and Trunks-kun, even with the older woman's magic wiping out all the poison in the four of them, and she couldn't help still being a bit shaken by that whole incident. It was almost a relief when Trunks-kun continued with "We have to take the fight to them before it comes to that."
Normally at this time of the morning, the three of them that ate breakfast would be doing just that. Not so much this morning, though. Food had arrived again, but it had set off the detector in Heero-kun's laptop just like the offerings that nearly killed them had. Clearly, the Reapers were big believers in 'if at first you don't succeed, try, try again' because they were practicing it with extreme prejudice.
Instead the four of them were sitting in the room between the room that was nominally hers and Trunks-kun's and the room that was in name Duo-kun's and Heero-kun's. She had thought of it before as a former office break room or small meeting room, and that description was probably the most accurate for all she could tell.
It made a good place for the four of them to relax, though, since the common area was a bit more exposed than any of them wanted to consider right now. That was where the food was always dropped off, after all; clearly, it was a favored place by the Reapers, the same Reapers who apparently wanted her and Trunks-kun dead.
The four of them were sitting close, a lot closer than all of them had done before. Well, after last night, they were a lot knowledgeable of the intimate details of one another than they had been before. She had dragged of one of Sylphiel-san's large blankets in here, and all of them were cuddled beneath it. Duo-kun had called it a cuddle puddle; Heero-kun had smacked him for it; and as embarrassing as the term might have possibly been, it was pretty accurate.
She knew she was leaning against Trunks-kun, and she was pretty sure it was Heero-kun's legs that were beneath hers and Duo-kun's hands that were wrapped around one section of her hair. It could have been the other way around, though, and really, she didn't care. She didn't overly care which limbs belonged to whom.
"I'm not arguing," she commented. "I just wanted to know if you think we're all ready for this."
Were they ready to take a fight to monsters like the Reapers? Did they have any idea what they were getting into? Did they know whether or not the Carrions would get involved, and if so, on which side? There were a lot of unanswered questions that she didn't feel comfortable leaving that way before going into this fight.
Heero-kun glanced up, barely meeting her eyes before looking back down. "The time machine is ready to go. It just needs a power source." He frowned for a brief second before his face quickly eased back into a neutral expression. "I think I have the coding correctly."
She leaned over to kiss him briefly. "I'm sure it's right. Like I said, we'll get it figured out somehow."
"Without the Ginzuishou, unless it's absolutely necessary." He repeated the terms of their agreement, as if she could have forgotten.
"I'll second that one" came from Duo-kun. Trunks-kun didn't say anything, but he didn't have to; the expression on his face told entire volumes of stories about how much he agreed with that. She could have sighed, if she hadn't swallowed the urge to. "That thing is hell on you, Usagi. Don't use it anymore than you absolutely have to. Please?"
She wasn't any good resisting anything, any plea, like that. "I'll do my best. If I have to use it, though, I will."
"Do you think you'll be able to transform?" came from Trunks-kun. He was the one she had talked the most about Sailor Moon with, so perhaps it was unsurprising that that question came from him.
"I think so. I haven't tried it yet, though." She didn't want to say that, one, she had been too busy with the poisoning and giving powers back and all to try her own abilities again yet, and two, she was a little afraid to try for fear that she might be wrong and fail. It was an abrupt change of subject, but she continued, "Has anyone talked to Ginji-chan about powering the time machine?"
At least they seemed to be willing to go along with her rather pitiful attempt to save face. "He's willing to give it a go," Duo-kun commented. "He's not too sure how well it'll work, but he will give it a try, for what it's worth."
"Here's hoping," she returned.
Heero-kun snorted rudely. "He's probably the only power source here capable of jumpstarting the time machine, so my programs will work. If they work," he qualified. "I'm not completely positive that they will. I'm sorry, but I'm not the genius that Trunks' mother obviously is."
"At least not for temporal physics," Trunks-kun qualified, and she would have grinned if she didn't think it would embarrass both Heero-kun and Trunks-kun. "My mother always said that time machines should be impossible by the laws of physics, but she managed to break some to send me back to the past." He shook his head and then made his own obvious jump in topics. "I think we're as ready as we're going to be for this fight. It'll have to be soon, though. We can't afford to put it off for too long."
Heero-kun nodded slightly. "Every moment we put it off is a moment they gain an advantage we can't afford to hand over to them. They already have us at a huge disadvantage."
"Tomorrow or the day after?" She couldn't think if she had ever heard Duo-kun sound so serious. If this situation didn't call for seriousness, though, she didn't know of one that did.
Trunks in turn nodded his affirmation. "No later than that. We'll be ready for them when the time comes."
And she had no doubt it was coming--and soon at that. It wasn't that far a jump from attempted assassination to war, after all. She could anticipate that it was coming and coming soon. She'd bet money on it.
01 November 2012
So close to having all of this uploaded.
So... You guys have managed to give this story the second highest number of reviews I've received here on FFnet, behind Gods and Other Creatures. It's somewhere around 9th or 10th place for hits, though, with the first being, again, Gods and Other Creatures. So... I guess that's pretty good. Way to go, you guys.
See you in the next chapter!
Apollymi