by Melody
Part I: The Secret Building Projects
Melody sighed. The incessant banging and clanging in both the back yard and the basement had been going on for the past five days and it was getting to her. She was tired of hearing the noise, tired of the Maguanac Corps running in and out of the house, tired of the chibis’ constantly checking on her to make sure she didn’t go down the basement or into the back yard and tired of mopping up the slush brought in on the boots of chibis and Maguanac alike.
The lights had to be on in the house even during the daytime because all of the kitchen windows had been covered with cardboard, as had the ones on the back porch and all along both sides and the back of the house of the house, upstairs and down, to prevent Melody from even getting an accidental glimpse of what was going on. A Maguanac or two often appeared to tell her to go into the living room so they could bring tools and building materials through the kitchen because that was where the door to the basement was located. Chibis in little yellow hard hats were constantly underfoot. But John had approved the whole undertaking so she thought that nothing too strange could be happening.
There had been a few laundry mishaps by the Maguanac who had taken over washing the clothes because Melody was not allowed to go into the basement. The boys had objected strongly when Relena’s new eye-searing hot pink sweater had bled so that they now all had pink underwear, but Quatre—ever the family’s peace-maker—pointed out that at least it had happened to ALL of them so that some didn’t have pink briefs and boxers while the others did. That soothed the small angry mob a bit, but they all took heart when Quatre had said, “An’ ‘sides, it’s ALL t’ make our webmommie happy.” So the grumbling had ceased, at least for the present. And Relena had successfully used her most pathetic ‘sweet little girl’ expression when she had pled with the entire Maguanac Corps to please, please, please PROMISE not to tell that the whole disaster had been her fault for throwing her sweater into the washer when they weren’t looking. “Else Heero’d never fergive me an’ I'd die a THOUSAN’ DEATHS!” she’d exclaimed dramatically, with a tear trickling down her cheek at just the right moment. So they were chivalrous and took the blame for the sweet, calculating princess in distress.
“Well,” Melody thought, “if the boys can put up with pink underwear I can put up with the extra chaos. After all, they are doing this for my birthday.”
The silence almost echoed in the kitchen when the construction stopped. Melody had nearly forgotten what quiet sounded like. She didn’t get much time to get used to it before a happy Quatre came bouncing into the room.
“Now all we gotta do is get the Mog-a-nocks to go get you your supprise!” he announced with a brilliant smile on his sweet little face.
Melody was confused. “I thought the surprise was in the basement and in the back yard.”
“Nope! The most ‘portant part is in the secret base in the back yard,” Quatre explained. “Relena an’ Heero went to get John ‘n Tegan to come downstairs.”
When John and Tegan had made their appearance and everyone had bundled up for the cold weather the chibis escorted their family through the back porch and out into the back yard. Trowa and Wufei were leading Melody because her eyes were closed.
Melody startled violently when she heard some unexpected banging and loud scraping, creaking sounds that set her teeth on edge.
“Okay, you can look now,” said Heero.
Everyone shouted “Happy Birthday!” when Melody opened her eyes. She could hardly believe what she was seeing. Two adorable Chinstrap penguins waddled out of an opened wooden crate into the snow and stared up at her.
“They already know they b'long to you!” Quatre exclaimed delightedly.
“They’re…penguins,” Melody said slowly as though she were in a daze, because she was.
“We knowed how much ya like pengins ‘cause of yer HUGE penguin cleckshun,” Duo explained. “So Quatre asked the Mog-a-nocks to get some for ya.”
“An’ we named ‘em Chester an’ Chessie,”
“They’re the kind called Chinstraps penguins. Ya see that black line under their chins? That’s their chinstraps,” Quatre explained.
“Relena tried to put a pink bow on Chessie to tell ‘em apart by but it didn’t work,” Milliardo said.
“That’s ‘cause Chessie wouldn’t hold still,” Relena grumbled and scowled at the wiggly, uncooperative female penguin.
“But then Rashid said that we can tell ‘em ‘part by the black spot under Chessie’s chinstrap,” Trowa added.
“So that’s a lot more pracktull than puttin’ a bow on her.” Wufei looked disgusted.
“An’ she won’t look redictless now neither,” Heero added.
“If they are my present, what was all the racket for?” Melody asked, puzzled.
“For this!” the chibis shouted.
Melody turned just in time to see some of the Maguanacs pulling a curtain away from a custom designed penguin pool and play area. Milliardo and Treize picked up the new members of the family and put them into the glass-contained penguin world. Treize flipped the switch to the snow-making machine. The little black and white birds curiously looked at their new habitat--at the slides, the pool and the snowflakes floating down all around them. They looked at each other as if to have a conference about what to do next and when they had made their decision they climbed up to the platform of the curved plastic slide but they hesitated when they got there. They peered down the slide, looked at each other and peered down the slide again. Then Chessie shoved Chester and he shoved her back.
“Why are they fightin’ for?” Quatre was distressed by their disunity. “They should take turns an’ play nice.”
“Chester should let Chessie go first 'cause she’s a lady and the rule is ‘ladies first,’” Relena freely gave her opinion.
“Penguins do this in the wild, Quatre-sama,” Rashid explained to his little master. “Just watch them.”
The contention continued for a few more moments and then one of the penguins lost the battle.
“Yay!” Relena shouted, clapping her hands. “Chessie won! Chester’s bein’ a gennleman after all!”
“No, HE is the winner,” Treize corrected the happy girl. “He was NOT being a gentleman.”
“But she got t’ go first,” Relena argued. “So he WAS TOO a gennleman!”
“In the wild, penguins contend with one another until one of them loses and takes the plunge,” Treize explained patiently. “If that one survives the rest will follow suit.”
“Huh?” was the general consensus of the little ones, who turned to Milliardo for interpretation.
“He means that if the one that falls into the water first doesn’t get eaten then the rest know it’s safe for them to go in too,” Milliardo enlightened them.
“That’s, that’s so UNCIBBILIZED!" Relena sputtered.
“What was going on in the basement if the pengins are going to live out here?” Melody asked.
“Oh, that’s their Indoors playland!” Quatre answered happily. “An’ it’s different than this Outdoors one. Come ‘n see it!”
That night after the penguins had been given their supper of krill and Relena had kissed them both good-night the tired flightless birds went to sleep in their new indoor playland. Relena had declared that she was going to teach Chester to be a ‘gennelman’ because ‘cibbilized penguins should act better 'n wild ones do" and ran off to prepare the lecture she planned to give to him the next day.
Now that Melody had access to the basement again she decided that she should dye the boys’ underwear so that it wasn’t pink anymore. The youngest boys found her rummaging through the bag in which she stored the dye packets she had confiscated from Heero and Duo after the dye-in-the-water-balloons fiasco. There was a bit of squabbling over the colors. Of course, Duo wanted black and Heero said that black would be okay if there wasn’t any olive green left—which there wasn’t—Wufei wanted red because he perceived it to be a color of strength, Trowa favored any shade of green and Quatre didn’t care what color it was just so long as everyone wouldn’t fight about it. Because of the extra work involved, Melody wouldn’t even dream of the idea of dying each boy’s underwear a custom color so she chose a nice denim blue, figuring that it was the color which would receive the least number of complaints. All of the boys were waiting by the washer—some unhappily because the dye wasn’t their color of choice and some were just happy that their briefs and boxers would no longer be pink—until the dye had drained from the machine, but only Quatre was delighted when he saw their newly redyed purple underwear.
~Standard disclaimer~ The author does not claim ownership of Gundam Wing nor any of its characters, including the adorable chibis. >_< Gundam Wing belongs to Sunrise, Sotsu Agency and TV Asahi.
E-MAIL THE AUTHOR! webmommie@gmail.com
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