***Disclaimer: You all know (or should know) that I don’t own Gundam Wing, the characters, storyline, music, pictures. Etc. This was just a piece I wrote for fun – completely non-profit entertainment!!!

Lunch time in the OZ Cantina

By Aurora Mulberry

"Glad you could make it, Noin!" Une smiled up as here friend approached the table. The group had decided to meet in the officer’s cantina in the central base. It was nothing fancy, only a bit more refined-looking than the main mess hall in addition to the group of attendants serving each meal.

"Yeah, we don’t get all that much time together anymore, what with all this new business cropping up. Nice to spend a lazy afternoon with friends," Noin replied as she tramped over and threw herself into a chair.

"The guys comin’?"

"Yeah, they’ll be here any minute now."

"What? Ya mean they’re a whole...[Noin glances at her watch]...1.87 minutes late???"

"Tell me about it! I never thought those stuff-shirts would be so stuck on timing."

"Naw, they’re just stuck on themselves - they want every last second to primp!" Noin chuckled, remembering the scene Zechs made after their rendezvous in the Amazon Forrest base...

<<"Aaghh! When I get out of this sweltering, smelly country I’m gonna chop down every god-forsaken tree in this hell-hole!!!" A nearby branch brushes his shoulder as he walks by, tangling in his blond tresses and jerking him back with a barely concealed whelp. He remembered Treize laughing at him & his vanity: "That mop of ‘golden kissed’ hair is going to do you in one of these days, my friend! Take my advise and have it shorn before you begin your MS combat training." He also remembered his haughty remark - no way he could back down now and go home to Victoria like a...a...a shorn sheep!!!>>

...Une was just about crying by the end of the narrative. "So there I found him," Noin continued, "in such a fine pout, with brambles sticking out every which way of his head.  It looked like some newly-canonized saint’s halo - I almost peed on myself!!!  I spent most of that night picking out leaves and untangling that bee-hive!"

"Ooh, poor Lieutenant Zechs," Une sobbed as she clutched her stomach.

"But that’s not the end of it - the real treat was when we made it back to Victoria and found out he had lice!!!" They finally erupted in a fit of laughter at the thought of the fair-haired giant’s plight. Both finally managed to gain control of themselves after a good five minutes.

Une added on a more serious note, "It’s good to see you laughing again, Lucy"

"Yeah" Noin replied as she took a last swipe at her eyes.

"So...What’s the matter?"

Noin didn’t reply at once. It was so embarrassing - how was she supposed to admit something that would make her the laughing stock of the whole base??? She should have gotten over it a long time ago.

"...Lucy???"

"It’s...just...Goddammit... I need a man!!! Do you know how long it’s been???"

"It’s nothin’ to feel bad about, Noin," Une said with a blush.

"You know Noin - there are ways to...ummm...take care of that," she finished lamely.    

Noin answered with a frustrated sigh, "Yeah, I know...but I can’t help lookin’ around at all this primed male flesh and not......."

"Believe me I KNOW!!! Did you see that cute little major the other day - the new transfer???"

"He’s not so little, you know," Noin added with a chuckle and a blush of her own.

"Who’s not so little???" Answered a deep curious voice, as the two highest ranking officers came trouping up to the table two-deep.

"Ahhh, nothin’, Noin answered evasively.

"Now Noin, that looks to me like the face of a women who hasn’t been out on the town in quite a while." Noin grimaced, wondering how the Lieutenant could read her so easily.

"You boys ought to know better than to listen in on girls swapping secrets" objected Une, in an attempt to buy her friend time to regain her composure.

"...Or else he’s just an excellent eves-dropper!!!" Noin thought as she let fly a solid mock-punch into the arm of a laughing Zechs Merquise. The scoundrel had the audacity to even look innocent!!!

"Glad to see we’re already on the good side of you ladies today," Treize Kushrenada noted wryly as he drew himself a chair and sat down between his insolent friend & Lady Une.

"So you ladies need men! Well ‘ask and the lord will provide!!!" Zechs continued, obviously enjoying Noin squirming in her seat.

"We asked for men, not salamanders! One of the angels obviously messed up!" That was all the reply that smart-ass was gonna get in one sitting!!!

"Nonsense." Zechs was obviously in a good mood, and it didn’t seem likely he was gonna let this drop anytime in the foreseeable future. "There is certainly someone here to suit your tastes my lady. Certainly mountains of ‘primed male flesh’ to suit you, wouldn’t you agree Treize???"

"Certainly," Treize replied in his usual charming voice, all the while sending warning messages to his idiot-friend with his eyes. "Amazing how stupid the elite forces can be at times," Treize thought to himself.

"Take for instance young Jackson - perhaps he suits your amorous tastes???"

Noin barely kept her anger from overflowing as she bit out "Jackson is an overweight paper-pusher!" "Tsk, tsk, beggars cannot be choosers, my dear. And they’re called ‘executive data maintenance engineers’ as I recall."

"Amazing how he can still manage that innocent look," Une thought with wonder.

"Well then, I’m sure that Pennyworth will fit the bill exactly," Zechs continued nonplussed.

"Pennyworth is old enough to be her father," Treize interjected smoothly as he observed the angry purple color shooting up Noin’s face.

"Well, then perhaps---"

"Noin look!!! Hunk at two o’clock!" Une could barely keep her eyes from bugging out. "Tall, bronzed skin, dark shimmering hair, cat-like grace, dark brown deep-as-space eyes, heavily muscled torso, handsome, and attractive as hell!!!" Une mentally assessed the new-commer with zeal. She looked over at Noin to see if she had reached the same conclusion.

"Check, Check, Check" Noins mind clicked off one by one, while her eyes sent over a ‘hell-yeah-affirmative’ to Une. The Ladies smiled like the sun. The men looked at each other blankly for a minute, dumbly not understanding what had just happened in the last half-minute. The Ladies were still smiling like the sun...but sure as hell not at them!!! As a glower gripped their faces like a muzzle, Trieze made a mental note to kill his right hand man.

"Thank God for Latinos," Noin thought with a mental sigh.

"Ummm....Noin, don’t you think this calls for some........investigative follow-up???" Une held her innocent look for all of two seconds - then she went back to drooling.

"Uh-huh" was all that came out of Noin. "Hold on!" Zechs let out a desperate yelp.

" How do you know he’s any good?" Trying to buy time - Good. Trieze could have hugged his right hand man.

"That’s true," acknowledged Une, "He may be gay or something."

"Well then we’d better go find out quickly, right?"

"Right!"

Scarcely a minute lagged between question and answer. "Kill him. I’m definitely going to kill him" resolved Treize silently. The Ladies surged out of their chairs and headed toward the object of their affections.

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"Well, nothing left to do except order." Treize had most assuridly not come to the officer’s cantina for the food, but he picked up a menu anyway. When his comrade in desertion didn’t answer, he looked up and studied his friend. He was busy studying something on the far side of the cantina. Glancing over, Treize followed his friends gaze...straight to...Noin’s swaying hips as she crossed the room.

"Enjoying the view?" He asked his friend wryly. Shaken from his trance, Zechs looked up and scowled.

"I think I remember seeing you enjoying a parallel view, not too long ago" Zechs answered his commander angrily.

"True," commented Trieze as his eyes hovered longingly at Lady Une’s form across the room. "But there’s no reason for us to be so angry with the fruits with our labor, hmmm?"

"Point taken, but what now???"

"Absolutely nothing."

"What? You mean you’re prepared to let them slip away?" Zechs could barely contain his shout of defiance - this was not a battle he was going to lose!

"Zechs, you know nothing about women," was the calm reply he got.

"What is that supposed to mean?" He just barely gained control over his face and voice again. Once again his pale blond features slipped into a semblance of peace that was more a mask then ever his helmet could be.

"We must simply wait and see what happens, then we will move."

"’All’s fair in love and war,’ is that it?"

His protege was learning fast, Trieze thought.

They placed their order in the elapsing time; theirs, as well as the ladies’ since they were preoccupied at the moment. Trieze found his eyes drawn once again to his love’s trim little figure again. "Would he ever get this under control? The only way he kept up some pretense of military decorum around her was to almost ignore her. Yet the minute she left the room he found himself yearning for her again." To make matter’s worse, he simply couldn’t get a clear view of his beloved’s bottom. Try as he might the end of her coat always came over her hips teasingly. And it would be too undignified to simply bend over and look. "Perhaps he could order a change in dress code - make the all uniform jackets higher??? No," Treize thought with a dejected negative. "Those pesky Romefeller ladies would never leave him alone then. As it was, he could never make his way through a crowd without feeling a rather indiscrete pinch on his derriere. He would be dead in a week without the slight buffering protection of his coat tails." Treize looked up in time to see the ladies making their way back to the table. He straightened his posture into a more dignified position. His friend did the same.

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"So...How did it go? - Oh, we ordered for you, by the way." Trieze managed a very casual, unconcerned tone.

"Not well, and Thank you," Noin answered for herself and Une.

"What’s wrong?" asked Zechs, striving for the same casual tone as his mentor. "Is he gay after all?"

"Worse - he’s married!" answered Une with a grimace.

"’Should have known - the way he got all clingy with us," Noin commented gruffly.

"You should have called me over. How did you get away?" Zechs wouldn’t have another man acting "clingy" with Noin!!! The girls began chuckling as Noin explained:

"Une pulled her old ‘Lady-Une-the-bitch" ruse. It worked like a charm - I almost lost it when she pulled out her ‘Ben Franklin’ glasses!!!"

The four of them shared the joke as Noin worked her way through a hilarious, if rather exaggerated synopsis of the episode. The rest of their meal was spent in the same light-hearted vein, resulting in a very satisfying hour, even by Trieze’s lofty standards.

"It will probably be a long time till we can sit around and joke like this. Yes, the upcoming months would be a trial indeed," thought Treize.