Of Kitty Cats and Gundam Pilots
Prologue
Treize looked at his itinerary for the day and wondered why Trent had called a general board meeting of the upper echelons of Oz, and secondly, why had Une let him. Une had also, rather out of character for herself, taken the day off. She had cited stress and fled long before Trent could make an appearance. Treize privately suspected that she and Trent had once had a liaison and now she couldn't bear to look him in the eye.
As Trent stood in front of the white board as Otto and Mueller wheeled in three large cages from which various strange noises could be heard. Treize raised a perfectly coiffed eyebrow but deigned to comment.
“General, Lieutenants,” he said addressing Noin and Zechs in turn, “I have ended the war.” His left eye starting twitching.
“Do you know,” Zechs said leaning in to Treize's shoulder to whisper, “his first name is Clark, he's actually called Clark Trent.”
Treize sniggered as the twitch became more and more pronounced until his whole face was jerking. “I have, I have stopped the war, it was very simple really, you see the major obstacle was those Gundam pilots.” As he said that his body went through some severe contortions, over which he didn't appear to have any control over. Behind him, out of his sight, Otto and Mueller were doing super man impressions. Trent either didn't notice the upper echelons of the specials moving their chairs back away from him or decided not to. “It was very easy, you see,” the twitching of his face was really quite distracting, Treize thought to himself, “I asked Zero what to do, and he told me, yes he did, he said I had to capture the Gundam pilots.” The contortions seemed to happen, Treize noticed, only when he said the words Gundam pilots. “So I did, I captured all but number 5, I couldn't find him, but I thought, I can make do, I can use the four I have, I can make them harmless, and then we can win the war.”
Zechs stifled a snigger at Trent's expense as Noin curled her bang around her finger in a way that hid the gesture suggesting that Trent was crazy.
“I was going to give them labotomies, but Zero said that wasn't a good idea, because they were just brainwashed children, and Zero is very clever.” The twitching had grown so profound that he had begun to drool, Treize noticed. Genesplicing.”
Zechs blinked under his mask, obviously noticing what Trent had said. “Pardon.” He said.
“I gene spliced them, between us, Zero and I worked out a formula that reverted their genetic material to a foetal stage when it was much more malleable and then we mixed in feline dna to make the Gundam Pilots,” again he jerked around in front of the whiteboard, “less aggressive, they're still themselves, Zero quite likes Pilot 01 so it was loathe to change him, so they just don't care.”
“But isn't that inhumane?” Treize asked, finally paying attention.
“Oh, certainly not, sir,” Trent protested, “in fact the entire procedure was entirely painless.”
“What do you mean was?” Noin asked.
Trent smiled and lifted the cloth covering over the first cage to reveal pilot 01 and pilot 02 on a large cushion. Pilot 02's braid had come undone and pilot 01 was batting at it with a fist. They were the size of children, no more than six, and wide eyed with wonder. Both were wearing only a pair of very small denim shorts. “There was a logistics problem, cats are much smaller than humans so when the splicing took they got a lot smaller, so I had to raid lost and found for clothes for them, but,” he bent down to open the cage and show off his proud creations, “look at their lickle ears.” Reaching his hand in pilot 01 hissed at him and then snapped.
“Pilot 01 is very protective over pilot 02.” Pilot 02 stretched, flicking his tawny ears back and then yawned with his whole mouth. It was quite adorable to behold, then held out his hand for pilot 01 and climbed out of the cage. He walked up to Zechs and dropping 01's held out his arms, to be held, like a small child. “Pilot 02, however, is very affectionate.” 02 had nuzzled into the crook of Zechs' chest and was going back to sleep. “And they're both playful kittens.”
01 pulled on Zechs' trouser leg and looked up at him with soulful blue eyes. “Do you want to come up too?” Zechs asked.
“Nyao.” 01 answered.
“And all of them have lost the ability for human language, but they are very expressive.” 01 looked back at Trent and then hissed again.
“Kawaii,” Noin said looking at the two pilots, “they're so cute.”
“This is barbaric.” Treize protested.
Opening the second cage revealed pilots 03 and 04. O4 was wearing an oversized white tee-shirt that came to his knees, and pilot 04 was wearing a rather unattractive orange roll neck sweater that came to his ankles. (2) His bang was the exact same shade as his ears. “Noin, you are quite correct, they are adorable.”
“I was interrupted in my experiments by Relena Peacecraft, I hope no one minds but I accidentally treated both her and Miss Dorothy Catalonia.”
Treize looked at Zechs who looked at Noin. “We see no problem with that.” He said bluntly, “now these experiments, they didn't hurt them?”
“No,” Trent said as his face twitched, “Zero was adamant that we not hurt them.”
“Is it reversible?” Zechs asked as Trent coaxed the small cat that was now his sister from the cage, but Dorothy had emerged like a Siamese with her head held high as she looked in disdain at the people in the room before batting 04 with her hand like a cat.
“Absolutely.” Trent said. “but the process may be painful.
“And they can't talk?” Treize asked, looking at Relena.
“No.” Trent told him.
“Well, of course you will have to be court-martialled for your roles in this.” Noin said, “and we will have to take these poor unfortunate victims of your chicanery in.”
“But,” Trent protested, his twitch stopping. “I stopped the war.”
“I think,” Treize said helping 04 unto his lap, “we should take that into consideration, in fact I think you would be better served at the Bellevue Institute.” Otto and Mueller smirked, it was an insane asylum. “Zechs, as 01 and 02,” who were both asleep in his arms, “like you, you can take them, I'll take 03 and 04, and Noin you can take Miss Dorothy and miss Relena.”
“Does anyone know their names?” Zechs asked.
“I was going to just give them new ones.” Treize admitted.
“O1 is Heero,” Noin said, “02 is Duo, 03 is Trowa and 04 is Quatre.” She looked away from the two men as they gave her rather pointed looks. “Come on, Dorothy, Relena, let's get you home, before the big nasty Trent can do something else to you.”
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