Chapter 10: Welcome Distractions

The next morning would come anyway, despite Duo Maxwell's valiant attempts to stave it off--stall it, at least, with all the pay-per-view movies and laser satellite TV the ritzy hotel had to offer. Thoughtful Miss Relena had reserved rooms for herself and her traveling friends attending the Peace meeting. Though Miss Hilde's pocketbook was not a grateful as her pasted smile to Relena showed when her pinch-a-penny eyes took notice of the hotel's prices on the print out receipt the hotel clerk handed to her with a set of keys to her own room at the front desk.

"For heaven's sake, Duo! You've been stuck to that tube all night! At least turn it down a little! I do require more than a half hour of sleep a night, you know." Hilde groans as she trudges out of the luxurious bedroom in her nightgown, not looking at all rested considering the amount of money this stay-over cost.

"Huh? Oh, sure." Duo's eyes were still glued to the pay-per-access AWA channel (All Women's Aerobics channel) where more than a few brainless well-endowed ladies were practicing their charms on the no-doubt equally brainless male audiences watching their so-called "aerobic exercises".

"...One and two and three and..."

"What are you watching anyway? I thought exercise and aerobics were definite morning programs to give empty-headed males a reason to wake up." Rubbing her tired eyes, Hilde crosses the messy room, but she doesn't feel even the least bit sorry for the cleaning crew of this rip-off establishment. "The overpricing here is intolerable! Just because there's an important event downtown..."

At Duo's continued ignoring of her, Hilde goes to the couch and plops on it. After a second too many of watching Duo drool at the women onscreen, she hits the power button and switches the poor TV off after a long night.

"Hey!" That finally catches the bug-eyed Maxwell's attention. He jumps up, indignant hands on his hips as he stands over Hilde. "Empty headed males aren't the only ones who need to wake up!" He snorts out, trying to get a hold of the remote from a resisting Hilde.

"What's that supposed to mean?!" Hilde retorts, passing the remote back and forth over Duo's frustrated head. She started to giggle as he kept getting duped, reminding her of their days of their youth together.

She was that little girl again, pulling that bad boy's braid as hard as she could.
"Ow! Ow!!!!" Duo moans at the hair tug. He gives up on the remote and picks up the whole bad-tempered Ms. Schbeiker, clutching the remote in her hand.

"I wasn't the one who got a refund on her room and imposed on a friend's good nature of letting her stay in HIS own hotel bed while he got the couch, was I? Hmm?" Balancing Hilde's small frame right over his head as he issues his own complaints for his thrifty boss' tactics concerning return policies.

Duo's sneering face gets a walloping remote smashed to his head in answer from above.

"That's because you're...

>SMACK<

...not...

>WHOP!!<

...the boss!!!!"

>SMASH!!!!<

Hilde's frantic hands bang at him, finally making Duo put her down. The angry look on her cute face was scarier than those paw pats of hers. Duo smirks.

"I'm your boss!" Hilde sticks her tongue out as her "employee". Duo returns it with a raspberry of his own. The two bickered like school children again--never growing up. The turn their backs to one another until Hilde's angry eyes catch sight of the digital clock hanging on the wall.

"Oh my gosh! It's morning! Duo! Why didn't you tell me it's already eight in the morning!!!!!!!!!!!??????? We're supposed to meet Quatre, Relena and the rest of the gang in the lobby at 8:30 AM!!!! What am I going to wear?!! Do I have time for a shower?! Oh, my hair!! How am I ever going to make it now?!" Hilde frazzles about the room for 5 full seconds. Her mind was going a mile a minute until her eyes land upon one smug, crossed-arms, former employee/friend. He was looking at her as if he enjoyed her tizzy.

"You were supposed to wake me up at 7 AM, big doof!!!" Hilde lets her fury smack Duo across the chest with the problematic remote control. The impact consequently switches the TV on. The stations on auto-search flicker across the screen almost mind-numbingly fast. It was much the same as Hilde herself, racing into the bath, all doors between here and there slamming loudly in her speedy wake...

"It's morning, Hilde." Duo offers politely enough to the whooshing air Hilde left behind her. Duo's glance at the passing exercise channels interesting offerings give his beleaguered male mind food for thought on the dazzling array of beach-wearing females that would be on display this afternoon to look forward to...

~~~~~~~~~~~~

When it came to beautiful days with clear blue skies and crystal beach waters, today was one to put down in the books.

And why shouldn't it be? A young woman with a touch of sunshine in her long, long hair goes to her bedroom window, pushing it's lace curtains aside and shoves the window wide open. She lets the sun's rays and the gentle breeze from the blue skies above soak into her skin.

"I know you were waiting just for me." He high voice whispers to the sun and sky, and the ocean surrounding her on the expansive villa on the coastline that she called home.

In all her glory, riches and regalness, Senator Dorothy Catalonia was one who was always certain that the day began and ended just for her. It could never reach its ultimate peak of beauty and splendor until she woke up and greeted it with all the splendor and beauty only she in the entire world possessed.

There were two important men in her life that shaped young Dorothy into the haughty, overconfident woman she was today--and she treasured their memory and loved them for it.

Enough of the past though...today I'm looking towards the future...

Dorothy lets the thought trail off. Her perfectly groomed eyebrows raise at the crystal clear out there, somewhere. She waited with high expectations of HIS arrival...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"It's going to be a nice day, the weatherman says. Not a cloud in the sky." Quatre Raberba Winner finds himself babbling almost all the plane trip to their planned destination. He felt a certain nervousness--as if there was something waiting there for him--something circling in the purported deep ocean of blue. Something that could maybe even eat him alive!
But the wealthy (very very extremely wealthy) businessman and famed heir to the Winner foundation (Colony builders) wasn't usually this over, over talkative. He did his share when it came to speech making and public relations and such.

Oh, speechmaking...

Quatre pauses after the latest slew of weather announcements and closes his eyes. Behind them, he saw yesterday's speech clearly--no, not the one he stood on stage and spoke before hundreds of delegates and the like, not to mention millions wide live TV coverage--no, it was the speech where there was only but one of those delegates present. The meek, flustered, and unpolished one he knew himself to have read directly from the page with so much as a smile or eye contact as his usual flair for public speaking contained naturally.

Eye contact? With her? >gulp<

Quatre R. Winner, powerful businessman, well-traveled speaker and >ahem< brave Gundam pilot can't help but gulp at the way her faded indigo eyes pierce into him--right through to his soul. He was sure of it whenever he looked at her---beautiful, mysterious Miss Dorothy Catalonia...

"Umm, Quatre? Are you feeling all right? Trowa, look at his neck and cheeks! They've just gone all red." Another high-pitched woman's voice (though not the biting, innuendo filled one of the female in Quatre's dreams) was caring and more motherly like as she puts a hand to his head in worry.

And Cathrine cuts into Quatre's delirium. He often slipped into moments such as these since yesterday. Since he saw her again for the first time since....

Quatre no longer remembers the way Dorothy Catalonia had stabbed him straight through with a fencing sword on that Libra that day so long ago.
No, all he could recall from that time was her eyes. Her beautiful eyes so full of strength and yet so empty and forlorn. It made him want to fill those sad eyes and give them something to be happy about...

"He'll be all right.'' Trowa Barton was one man who knew Quatre R. Winner better than any. The cute smallish blonde and the tall handsome man had become fast and good friends even amidst the tumultuous battle. They understood each other's goodnesses, strengths and weaknesses by virtue of their friendship bond. And besides, Trowa himself was present first hand when Dorothy Catalonia had affected Quatre so much. Anyone with half a brain (and Trowa had that half and his whole one to boot) could see the genuine attraction between the two confused and life-saddened blondes. Trowa knew.

"It must just be the altitude." Trowa shrugs. Quatre's little secret was safe with him. Besides, maybe he'd share all his own secrets with this certain curious and caring lovely girl today...

As the Winner's private jet finally sets down on a small island off the Spanish coast, the group of vacationeers pile out onto the runway to find a limousine car awaiting their arrival. It was a gold-plated limousine no less at that.

"Oooh, guess who sent that." Duo mumbles under his breath, sighing. He wasn't much looking forward to today since Dorothy Catalonia and himself didn't mix well in social circles if you know what I mean.

"Give ya a clue." He giggles as his pulls his normal eyebrows into Dorothy's abnormal evil-looking split ones. The devilish look in his eyes was enough to make a cat laugh.

"Duo! Behave yourself! Miss Catalonia was very kind to invite us to spend the weekend here on this island getaway of hers. The least you could do is show some respect for a direct blood relative of His--" Hilde Schbeiker (former OZ soldier and admirer of a certain equally evil-eyebrowed gentleman) berates her partner for his disrespect. She had no clue why Duo was so down on the famous Senator Catalonia. But maybe after this weekend, trapped on Dorothy's island, she would find out that why for herself.

"---Excellency. Yeah, yeah, right." Duo has heard this awed claptrap of his little girlfriend so many times he could just spit. "You're still so intense, it makes me sick." Duo mutters, shaking his braided head, remembering that OZ uniform of a pipsqueak Hilde.

"Me too." Hilde turns her angered nose up at Duo and walks away from the airplane and him. She allows the chauffeur of the golden limo to usher her inside without so much as a look back at Duo. Hilde was so certain that if Dorothy's well known cousin earned her respect and devotion--that surely Senator Catalonia would too.

Boy, was she wrong.

"Welcome to my home away from home. I trust your trip here was pleasant? Jeeves, do see to their luggage." Dorothy Catalonia sported a tiny leopard-skin two piece bikini already. She was just finishing tying up her hair in a matching leopard skin hairband framing her face.

A face like that ought to be framed--in prison.

Duo smiled at this creature, so highly regarded by others, could even be liked or---

"How nice you look in that suit, Miss Catalonia. It's very becoming." Hilde compliments kindly, expecting nothing but graciousness in return. Her unbuttoned shirt showed her own two piece. It wasn't revealing at all like Dorothy's but...

"Yes, isn't it? Is that your swimming attire? It is such a shame that there was such short notice from yesterday that you didn't have a chance to find something more suitable for petite sizes such as yourself to wear. Ah well. Friends do have to make allowances for one another, don't they? Bring the bags right up to their rooms right away, Jeeves."

All in a sweep of a finger, Dorothy manages to garner Hilde's dislike right off. Her face reddens at the insult with as much shame for her own dowdy swimsuit ("Hey! It was cheap and on clearance!") as with anger at being taken down by the blonde witch in front of all the others. She was sure that Dorothy's penetrating eyes were insulting more than just her choice of clothing. Hilde blushes suddenly at her petite size as she looks down.

"Now do you see why I don't care for "His Excellency's" lovely cousin, Hilde babe?" Duo's whisper in her ear rubs it in her face. Hilde had the urge to smack him--so she does. She gives him a hard belt on the back of his snickering head.

"Shut up." She hisses. Trowa and Cathrine smile at each other as they follow Dorothy up the marble steps into her villa. (If a mansion on the coast was called that--it sprawled out forever it seemed.)

The only one who didn't seem to notice Hilde and Duo's bickering was Dorothy herself. She was caught up in her own world--and Quatre now looked like he wanted to be part of it too as he follows her like a little doggy--hook, line and sinker.