Melody was feeling 'a bit under the weather.' As it had been explained to the chibis this meant that she wasn't feeling as good as the weather was on this bright sunny day. They reasoned that if it had been gloomy and raining she'd have to have felt worse to be a bit under the weather; and if it was blizzards of snow that'd be really bad. So the chibis had determined that their webmommie was feeling just ever so slightly a little not well. A simple problem to cure in chibis, easily remedied with frozen juice pops or a sucker; in some cases a hug and a nap. But Melody was an adult and after a long, in their view, nap and a hug she said she was still feeling a bit icky.

"I don't want Melody to feel not good," Relena confided to the boys as they finished off the last few triangles of watermelon.

"Phoot!" Heero responded, spitting his seed far into the yard.

"That was a good one," complemented Quatre.

Duo grinned wide. "Not as far as mine though."

The braided boy was prepared to prove it, recalling exactly where his last seed had landed. Of the six younger chibis Duo was the best watermelon-seed-spitter, that was the only spitting Melody allowed, and though he was getting cocky no one argued. Rolling his tongue into a mock barrel Duo displayed his talent, shooting just past Heero's. Maybe that's why Heero couldn't shoot as far, he had never been able to curl his tongue as tightly as Duo.

Trowa dug a hole into the ground and placed his last few seeds in the hole, then buried them. As they did every year with the first watermelon Quatre measured two of his feet distance from Trowa’s and planted his seeds. Periodically the two boys checked and wondered whose would grow first.

"I hope they grow this year," Relena said.

So far none of the seeds had ever grown; it might have been because it was usually quite some time before curiosity prompted one of the chibis to check on the seeds’ progress. "Mine will grow first," Duo enthused, firing another seed. "An’ if it don't at least this way’s funner."

"If you spit ‘um in the grass and they do grow, which they won't, the Mog-a-nocks will just mow over 'um," Wufei insightfully pointed out.

"Maybe it will grow real fast overnight like in Jack ana Beam Stalk an’ be too big to mow over," Duo replied in rebuttal.

Wufei answered, "That can't happen for real."

"Well the Mog-a-nocks doesn’t mow the yard every day so it can take a couple nights to grow too big." Persistence or illogical argument had won out and Wufei didn't respond to this new point.

"If we do sumthin’ nice for Melody maybe that will help her feel better," Quatre suggested, bringing the subject back to what Relena had said.

"Huh?" Duo responded; he hadn't been listening to Relena.

"Melody always does nice stuff for us when we're sick an’ then we get better," Trowa recalled.

"But she's not sick, she says she just don't feel good,” Duo explained.

"Same difference," Heero argued.

"Okay, but what kinda nice stuff should we do?" Wufei asked.

Relena looked to the sky, looked to the ground, posed a thoughtful posture, and then proposed, "Let's make her sum soup--they always gives sick people soup."

Trowa burst that thought by reminding them that none of them were permitted to use the stove. The chibis thought for some time.

"It's warm today," Quatre said. "We could give her cold soup."

Heero shook his head. "I think it has to be cooked then get cold otherwise it won't taste as good."

They listed off all the things Melody did for them when they were sick, but most of the things they remembered were things they couldn’t do and once again Duo pointed out that their webmommie was not sick, just not feeling good.

"How 'bout we clean the house?" Wufei asked, "Melody likes it when it's clean."

"But it is clean," Duo whined, "We ‘ready picked up our gundams an’ our stuffs put way. An' Melody an' John an' Tegan don't make that much of a mess, so it's not dirty."

"There's little stuff we can do that doesn't get done as much," Trowa clarified.

"Let's start by makin’ sure we pick up all the watermelon skin," Quatre added.

Duo looked glumly down at his juice-covered hands. "I s’pose we'll have to clean ourselfs before goin’ inside."

With all the rinds properly disposed of, Duo lead the small procession to the hose, where the chibis managed to get washed up without getting overly wet. There were a few unnecessary damp spots but nobody was dripping.

Other than the nursery, the chibis spent a majority of their time in the living room. By unanimous unspoken opinion they headed to that room first. They lined up in the doorway and looked around, thinking what they could do to make it cleaner.

Relena raised her hand. "I got it, me an' Heero'll dust. I'll go get some rags."

Before Heero could protest she had jogged away singing a song about how she was going to marry her pumpkin and they would clean house together always.

Duo sniggered, quickly covering it to avoid Heero's death glare by saying, "I'll clean out the couch."

"Here." Relena handed Heero a rag, holding out more. "An’ I brought extras."

"I’ll help dust," Quatre offered.

The blond took two of the rags and handed one to Trowa.

"I'll do the windows first," the quiet boy informed him.

"M'kay."

Wufei looked around the room again, "I guess I'll vacuum."

When he returned, lugging the contraption, Duo had his arm in the cushions up to his elbow; Heero, Quatre, and Relena were running their cloths over anything they had decided held the offensive dust, Heero staying as far away from the girl as possible. Trowa was standing on a chair, reaching up, and wiping back and forth on the glass. The Chinese chibi unwound the cord, located a convenient wall socket, and plugged it in.

"Duo!" Wufei called.

"What?" the braided boy didn't come out from reaching under the sofa.

"You haf'ta put that stuff sum where else. I can't vacuum with it there," he complained, pointing at the pencil stub, pen, rubber band, doll shoe, and other things that Duo's sofa diving had accumulated.

"Yeah, fine, whatever, Wufei,” Duo answered, "Just a sec."

With his check pressed against the couch Duo pushed and wiggled and maneuvered his body closer, trying to reach just a little bit further.

"Got it!" He pulled his arm out, rolled over and sat up. Opening his fist Duo exclaimed, "Ah, man! It's one of Heero's."

"My what?" Heero questioned.

"Ah, uh. Nuthin'." Duo pocketed the disembodied gundam model arm. As he thought more about it, he remembered that he might possibly more than almost likely have been the reason it had gone missing in the first place. He’d sneak it back into Heero’s stuff later. Right now he needed to find a new home for the other things before Wufei started getting impatient.

After the small pile had been moved Wufei turned the vacuum on and pushed it across the floor, steering around the furniture and other chibis. When he went over a patch of sand, remnants of taking off shoes after visiting the park, the Chinese chibi noticed that it didn’t come up, in fact it looked as though the carpet got dirtier. Wufei knew exactly what to do; he turned the vacuum off and said, “This thing don’t work right.”

“What da’ya mean it’s not workin’ right?” Duo took the vacuum from Wufei, tried it and came to the same conclusion. He squatted down to examine the floor. “Hmmm, vacuum vomit.”

“Is the vacuumum sick?” Quatre asked.

Heero unplugged the vacuum, laid the machine down, looked at it from one angle, glared at it from another, and for extra measure poked it a couple times.

Relena leaned over his shoulder. “How sick is it, Pum’kin?”

He ignored the last part and generously answered, “I think I can fix it.” He pulled the cord out from the light socket.

“Good, I’ll help,” Relena said. “I can be your lovely ‘sistant.”

She beamed a brilliant smile at her beloved Heero, who tried hard not to say anything that would get him in trouble; just because Melody was feeling ‘not good’ and she wasn’t in the room didn’t mean she wouldn’t know. Duo left the room, helpfully offering to get the appropriate tools. The other chibis gathered around to watch Heero operate on the vacuum.

“Screw driver.” The surgeon held out his hand as soon as Duo returned.

“Hey, gimme that stuff,” Relena ordered. “I’m ‘posed ta be the ‘sistant.”

Duo shrugged, handed her the tool, and then she turned it over to Heero. Carefully he unscrewed the cover, handing the screws to Quatre for safekeeping. Locating the problem, Heero stretched the, in his view, giant rubber band and looped it over a peg. The blond boy gave the screws back to him and he put the vacuum back together.

“That’s it?” Duo whined, “But we didn’t get to use haf the stuff I brought.”

He held out several of the tools he had fetched; secretly he had wanted to help disassemble the entire machine.

“Where did you get all those?” Wufei asked and added, “Why did you think we needed that many?”

“The Mog-a-nocks,” Duo answered, “And they’re all use full.”

“You didn’t ask, did you? The Mog-a-nocks don’t like that,” Quatre, the Maguanac Corps defender ‘Quatre-sama,’ chided.

“I’ll put ‘um back, promise,” Duo assured the blond boy.

Meanwhile, Heero had stood the vacuum up and was now testing it; the carpet remained sandy.

“Ha, Wufei! We may still need ‘um,” Duo gloated.

Repeating his earlier steps, Heero added a new request, “Scissors.”

Perhaps not standard equipment for vacuum repair, Duo had nevertheless procured a pair of scissors. Relena held the small cylinder while Heero trimmed and pulled stuff from the bristles.

“What is all that?” Quatre asked.

Heero glanced up for a second and answered, “Hair.”

“Long hair,” Trowa added picking up the stuff so he could put it in the trash.

“See, it’s Duo’s fault the vacuum’s not workin’ right,” Wufei laughed.

Duo tried to glare as harshly as Heero could at the other boy. The look didn’t seem effective so he defended himself by saying, “Relena’s got long hair too.”

“And Milliardo, and Tegan,” Quatre added.

Finished with the brush, Heero pulled some more hair and dirt balls from the vacuum and gave them to Trowa, who left the room as Quatre handed the screws back to Heero.

When Trowa returned, they had tried and still the rug wasn’t getting much cleaner.

“Here.” The green-eyed boy gave Relena a bag. She held it while Heero removed the lid and took out the old bag.

“Hey,” Duo caught Trowa’s attention before he automatically left with the full vacuum bag. “Let’s cut it open and see what’s inside.”

“Why?” Relena asked, bewildered.

Duo answered, “I dunno, I just wanna.”

“You’ll have to clean up another mess,” Trowa informed him. “Probly a big one.”

Deflated, Duo let the others finish cleaning while he stealthily returned the borrowed tools and Heero’s model mobile suit arm to their rightful places.

This time the vacuum sucked up the sand.

“How’d ya know that’s what the sick vacuumum needed?” Quatre whispered to Trowa after the room was finished being cleaned.

“I asked Melody,” Trowa answered.

The chibis decided it was clean enough, way more than clean enough by Duo’s insistent opinion, so they put away everything and went back out to play.