Silent Requiem, a fanfic by Nightmaresama, chapter 11

"How are you doing this morning?" Michelle asked as she walked into the sterile white room.

"How the fuck do you think I'm doing, doctor?" Hilde spat, filling the last word with as much sardonic irony as possible. "I had my damn leg hacked off and I've been stuck in this stupid bed for almost forty-eight hours while my teammates lost miserably in combat against a squad of Zeek terrorists! In my professional opinion, I'd have to say the diagnosis is that I'm doing pretty damn bad about now!"

"Well, it's you own bloody fault your teammates had to leave you, Ms. Schbeiker. I offered you the option of a prosthetic limb and you totally disregarded me!" Michelle shouted back putting her hands on her hips.

"Don't you have any sense of honour? Mien Gott in Himmel!" She said slapping her forehead. "Think about it this way, Herr Doktor, when the great Carthaginian general Hannibal, lost his eye crossing the Alps all those centuries ago, do you think he went whining to a medic begging for a replacement? Shit no. Real soldiers find a way to go on in spite of physical injury."

Michelle did not hold her in any esteem, and Hilde knew she was only making matters worse, but she didn't care. Whether or not her obdurate refusals for help were really a matter of her sense of honour or just stubborn pride, she would not yield. Least of all to a pushy doctor like Michelle, who cringed at the mere sight of blood.

"Well, I'm sorry you feel that way," the doctor responded. "I'm also sorry that you have allowed yourself to be deprived of all that is close to you by staying so stubborn. I'm sure Liutenant Sanders would've allowed you to come along if he had felt that you were healthy, but as it stands, you'd just be a hindrance to that whole unit. If you really wanted to fight with them, you'd shut the hell up and let me help you!"

"How dare you lecture me on my bonds with my MS team? You don't know anything about that; about how I feel for them. Commander Sanders has always been there for me to help make sure I succeeded, even if we had to run the simulators for an extra hour to make sure! Sam was the one who saved my life out there-I could never repay him for that. And Trowa…" her voice faded as she began to talk about the third member.

"That just emphasises my point," Michelle picked up, defiantly. "If they really mean that much to you, then why won't you do everything in your power for them? You just said you owe them, right?"

"Kiss mien arse, bitch. Leave me alone." She rolled over on her side and pretended to fall asleep again, but all the same, still mumbling gutteral German curses.

Michelle just shook her head and walked down the hall. Of all the soldiers she had ever tried to treat, Hilde Schbieker was by far the most hostile.

She continued down the hall until she reached Alex's room. She was actually supposed to stop off at the room of another patient, before this one, but, Alex was leaving inside of the hour and she wanted to talk to him one last time.

As much as she'd tried to deny it over the past few hours since she'd known him, she was really starting to believe that she had feelings for him. It was a strange sensation, but she found it comforting when she was in his presence.

The door was already opened so she walked right in. "Good morning!" she called in a cheery voice.

"Um, good morning Dr. Bannock. I'm feeling much better now so I think I'll be ready to go at noon when the transport gets here."

"That's good to hear! Hey, where's you're friend Kiyone this morning?" 'Doctor Bannock? Wasn't I 'Michelle' yesterday?'

"Oh, 'er? She and Duo both got totally plastered last night. They'll probably be sleeping right until the Transport gets here. Or until Karen wakes them up, whichever comes first. Personally, I'd rather not mess with Karen if I could help it." He gave a brief but almost nervous sounding laugh.

Michelle laughed too. "Well, I don't think that'll be a problem this morning. But I'd like to talk with you a little while you wait-if that's okay with you?"

"Ah, talk? With me? Oh, you mean my injuries. Yeah, they're fine. All better now, really." He noted a peculiar scent when she sat down next to him. `Is that perfume?' he winced imperceptibly.

"Actually, I was hoping to hear a little more about your writing career. You never told me what your latest work was about." She said clumsily attempting to wax provocative.

He now became visibly more stressed. "Ah, well, you see, I'm still working on it right now. It's…it's not yet finished. I…can't tell you about it until I'm done! Yeah, that's it. It'd ruin the surprise."

Michelle wondered why he was acting so jumpy, when a tough-looking, red-haired woman stepped through the door.

"That's good. Okay Alex, we're leaving in fifteen. Get your shit and be waiting by the dock. I've gotta go wake the party animals." She said as she left.

"Well, I guess that's about it. It was nice meeting you Miche-I mean, Dr. Bannock. Thanks for looking after me." Alex said as he stood from the bed and grabbed his crutches and duffel bag.

"I don't want you to go…without your discharge papers, I mean!" She reached into the pocket of her lab coat and pulled out some documents and signed them glumly. Was he really so dense? No, he was deliberately trying to leave her, and in a hurry.

"Here," she said. "The last one has my address and number on it. Um, please, do be sure to write me!" She tried to sound cheerful, but even she could tell that she had failed there.

Alice Miller awoke suddenly from her fitful, dreamless sleep. Ever since the failure to apprehend suspected traitor Shiro Amada, she had had trouble getting anything done fully, even sleeping.

She sat at the edge of her cot and ruefully contemplated the past twenty-seven years of her life as she watched the stars glisten dully out the porthole of the ship. An orphan living in the streets of Side 3, she was found and adopted by a wealthy German couple who were visiting the colonies on a holiday from earth. Her biological parents, staunch Federation loyalists, were brutally murdered right before her eyes in the purges following Side 3's declaration of independence. Following the traumatic experience, Alice had remained catatonic for two years, but after recovering, she had renewed her studies with impressive zeal under tutors provided by her foster parents. In UC 0077, upon Graduating top of her class from the Otto von Bismarck Tactics and Combat Academy at Berlin, one of the most prestigious military academies in the Federation, Miller had decided to pursue a career in counterintelligence and espionage. It was during these studies that she encountered another young officer named Heero Yuy.

The relationship between Heero and Alice had bloomed rapidly. Heero had even gone so far as to propose to Alice after several months. However, she mused as she fiddled with the ring he had given her so long ago, as all such early-blooming flowers do, it was met with an abrupt and unfortunate end. Nine months ago, in what was meant to be a simple sabotage operation against a Zeon mobile suit development facility, Heero cornered an enemy soldier trying to escape. The soldier was a young woman named Rei Ayanami.

`Damn that wench', Alice thought as she stood and reached into her bureau and pulled out a starched white blouse.

Rather than killing her on the spot, as any other sane Fed Intel agent would have, Heero had given into his emotions; he offered her a chance to escape, unharmed. Seconds later, before Alice could've reacted, the Zeon girl had pulled out a hand-gun and shot him from point-blank range. As she watched in horror as the only man she'd ever had feelings for was gunned down right in front of her face, in the exact same way her parents had been all those years before, she made a vow that she would have no peace, nor love anyone again until the threat of insurrection had ended.

It was a noble pledge, but, it was also one made at a moment of high duress, and had she been in control of herself as she usually strove so hard to do, she would've realised that she'd been had. Last month, just as her role in the inquiry into the conduct of Ensign Amada was drawing to a close, she received word that Heero was alive. This wonderful news as it was, came bitter-sweet to Alice. She slammed her fist on the dresser and allowed tears to flood her eyes as she recalled the rage and confusion she had felt when she learned of his defection to the enemy. The same enemy she had pledged herself to eradicating.

As a woman of principle, Alice held this vow in nigh-sacred regard. If Heero was the enemy now, she had no choice but to finish him off; outside the realm of military justice if necessary. She unconsciously reached for the cigars and lighter on her night stand and lit up as she considered the problem. Betrayal, along with failure, was one of the two things she simply could not stand for, and Heero's betrayal was far greater than any she had yet witnessed. Not only had he sold out his country (and probably released highly classified data that only Intel agents-or rather, former Intel agents-have access to), but he had also sold out his fiancace. She had loved him deeply, but he had cast it all aside for some Zeon tramp.

Now the problem arose; what was she going to do with him? Obviously, as a traitor, he deserved to be executed. But…It wasn't as though she could just turn off all the old feelings she had for him. She had been going to marry the guy right up until the war broke out. Still, how had he repaid her feelings? By leaving her for someone else!

"Why would he do that?" she whispered the stars outside her window. "Wasn't I good enough for him? Hadn't I already given him everything?"

Her questions were not to be answered at this time however, as a rapping at the door called her back from her musings.

"Yes ma'am," a soldier replied from the other side. "I only wanted to inform you that the next round of interrogations will begin in just under half an hour."

"Thank you. I'll be there." Maybe now I'll be able to get my answers, she thought.

"Dammit Duo!" Hilde shouted at him sounding royally pissed off. "What the hell is wrong with you? You leave me here on this God-awful sterilised ship, with Psycho-Bitch for a doctor, and one leg and you don't even come by to fucking say good-bye to me?"

He winced as if under physical abuse, even though she was only yelling at him over the phone in his quarters on the 107's new carrier, the Kaiser II, and he was safely a hundred kilometres and counting away from her wrath. He also winced because he had a helluva hangover from his night on the town and his head hurt at the slightest pin-drop and threatened to split apart when someone shouted.

Hilde raged at him regardless, though. "Well?" she demanded. "What's your excuse this time?"

"I-I got drunk last night?" he tried. He'd heard somewhere that honesty was the best policy.

"Yeah, right," she scoffed. "That's what you told me the last time you forgot to say good-bye. Remember? The training camp in Hong Kong? I was right down the hall from you then and it was like you fell off the face of the Earth!"

"I'm sorry," he said. What else could he? 'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned' he quoted to himself.

"Damn right you're sorry," she sniffed. "I don't even know what I saw in you in the first place."

"You never call me. Call? Hah! You don't even write, you dopey fuck! What about your cousin Michel? Didn't he always make time to write letters to his girlfriend? Well, it can't be genetic, that's for damn sure."

She kept talking for a few minutes after that but he'd sort of stopped listening. 'Whoa, hold up a sec. Did she just say what I think she said? She called herself my girlfriend? Well, she didn't actually say it, but it sure as hell was implied, wasn't it? Is that how she feels about me? Maybe now is the best time to pop the question then!'

"…and even Kiyone takes time out to write a letter to her nephew every so often," she was saying when he started paying attention again, "and he lives all the way in Old Tokyo. For Christ sakes, Duo, I don't know if you've realised this or not, but this is a fucking war we're fighting here. Nobody knows when he or she is going to cash in, and neither do their family and loved ones. The least you could do is say 'I'll see you later' when you leave someone, especially someone who matters to you like I thought I did. I…why the hell are you sweating so much?"

"M-me?" he stuttered. "I'm not sweating. What would make you think something like that?"

"Don't lie to me, Duo," she said very frankly, "I can see your face very clearly over the monitor."

"You know what? You've been acting really weird around me the last few times we've been together. It's like you've always got something to say, but you're too scared to come out and say it."

"And what was that you were trying to tell me about the day after Solomon? Something about a present?"

'Shit!' he thought. 'Why the hell didn't I do it then? I can't propose over the phone…that'd look so stupid! But…what if I don't get another chance?'

"Okay, Hilde, you've got me," he said with much more confidence than he felt. "I really do have something to say and to give to you."

"Then tell me what it is, already!" she demanded imperiously. He could tell she was still pissed, but it made her look really cute; like a little girl throwing a tantrum.

Motivated, but still nervous, he pressed on; "I…I know what you're saying about never knowing when the next time you might see someone you care about" (It still felt so strange, saying that; he'd always carried a torch for her, but to know she felt the same way? That felt really good!) "Ah…and so…I, um, I was wondering if you, you know, if you would do me the honour of…" his hand rested on the small box he kept in his pocket, finally, almost ready to be given to its new owner.

"Hey Duo-chan! Karen says we got to check the new issue MS in the hangar!" Kiyone shouted as she barged in the room without bothering to knock.

Duo freaked and instead of pulling the ring from his pocket instinctively shot his hand out and turned off the phone. "Jesus, Kiyo-chan! You nearly gave me a heart attack!"

"Sumimasen, otaku-chan, but you know how Karen is," she bowed slightly to emphasise her apology, but she was giggling nonetheless. "We're waitin' on you in the lounge!" she called over her shoulder as she walked away, not bothering to shut the door.

Duo sat on his bed, facing the blank phone-screen for a full minute before he realised what he had done. "Oh my God! Hilde!" he started to dial in the numbers again, but then he thought about the monumental ass-pounding Karen would bestow upon him if he was much later than he already was.

He faltered for a second in indecision. Ultimately, he decided to go and help on the MS deck. It was the Lady or the Tiger, but the Lady was behind a door a helluva lot farther away at this point.

`So this is the new ship?' Trowa thought as he and the other two members of the SR company stepped into the main hangar of the EFF Assault Weapons Carrier Lexington. `Not too bad at all.'

Unlike the older ship, the Getteysburg, the Lexington was one of the new model Grey Phantom-class carriers. Armed with multiple anti-mobile suit cannons and two, twin-barrelled mega-particle cannons, this ship, an improved model of White Base, was truly a force to be reckoned with.

Just then, the ship's captain came forward through the bustle and activity of the hangar to greet them. He was followed by a striking young blonde who's arm was in a sling. Sam, Sanders, and Trowa all came to attention.

"So this is our first active mobile suit division?" the captain asked rhetorically. "I am the commanding officer of this vessel, Captain Gendo Ikari. You will refer to me from this moment onwards as `sir,' or `captain, sir'."

`What a pompous jerk,' Trowa thought. `how `bout if I refer to you as `ass-hole' or `captain ass-hole' from here on out?'

"This," captain Ikari gestured to the woman behind him, "will be the fourth member of your team, Lt. Amy Bauer. She is an excellent soldier and has served the Federation well on numerous occasions. Now, if you'll excuse me," he turned and walked in the direction of the bridge.

"Your not paid to like him, Barton," Sanders commented, "your paid to do whatever he tells you to do. If I catch you making comments like that again…"

"Hi, Lt. Bauer," Sam ignored his comrades. "I'm Sam Younge. Those guys are Trowa and Commander Sanders. They're kinda loud, but after a while you sorta get used to it."

"Well, it's very nice to meet you Sam. I hope I'll be able to help out our unit; I've only just recently began to pilot mobile suits. Up until about a month ago, all I've ever been behind the controls of was a jet core fighter."

"Holy shit! You're…you're the Odessa Eagle!" he suddenly exclaimed. "You're the one who wasted ten Zeeks in a single sortie! In a fuc--friggin' fighter!" He remembered to watch his French around a lady at the last second.

`All the rumours said she was a babe, but none of them really did her justice!' he thought with a slightly crooked smile of admiration. "Well, it was great to meet you Lt. Bauer, ma'am," he said as he stuck out his hand.

She smiled and shook it heartily. "Nice to meet you too, Trowa was it? And by he way, since we're going to working together, you can just call me Amy."

"All right," Sam answered, "but you've gotta show me around. These Pegasus carriers are a lot bigger than the other ships we've been stationed on."

"You two are welcome to come too, if you'd like. I really want to get acquainted with you all, especially my team commander."

Hilde lay flat on her back staring up at the ceiling, the same way she had been for the past hour and a half. Sleep just didn't come easily for her under these sun lamps.

Irritated she mashed the button on the side of her bed to call in an orderly to turn them off so she could get some damn sleep.

'What the hell was Duo's problem anyway?' she was thinking as she pulled the picture from under her pillow. Was he really so thick-headed as this? She'd almost like it better if he was as clingy as Gene sometimes. At least then she'd be able to tell him how she felt.

He was just so damn goofy. No, that wasn't the right word. Gene was goofy; Duo was more…more…naive, yes, that was the word. He was like a little kid a lot of the time. In a way, that made him more attractive to her; he was someone she could grow with.

Other times…other times she thought he was too petulant and not worth her efforts.

She lifted the pillow and put it over her face. What the hell was taking that orderly so long to turn off the damn lights?

She should call Kiyo-chan. Maybe she would talk some sense into Duo for her. No, bad idea. She still had the diminutive attached her name for a reason, last time she checked. Besides, Kiyone…

Nevermind. What about his commander, what was her name? Karen? Hilde liked Karen from what little she had seen of her. She reminded her a lot of herself: hardcore and no-nonsense. Still, from what she had seen of the way Kiyo-chan and Duo acted around her, she got the idea that Karen wouldn't be much for pulling something like this off.

But, then, what was 'something like this', anyway? What did she want from Duo? Did she even know, herself?

"All right, dammit!" she said aloud, "I'm going to turn these fucking lights off myself!"

With that, she swung her leg over the side of the bed and fought to sit up straight. She grabbed her dialysis stand from its position and used it to hoist herself to a standing position and clung to it for support. Thankfully, the ship's simulated gravity was less than one ninth of that On Planet, so, from her position, bedside, she leapt across the expanse of the small room, still gripping the stand and tubing thereon.

As she landed next to the switch, Michelle walked in. "Ms. Schbeiker, I heard your page and I--Oh, my! What are you doing out of bed?"

Hilde smiled smugly on the inside. Outside, she shrugged and said, "I wanted the lights off, but you were taking so long, I just did it myself."

Michelle flushed a deep shade of crimson, and a vein popped out under the skin of her throat. "How are you supposed to get better pulling stunts like this?" she exploded. "Why…" words had apparently failed her.

"I don't have anything to say to the likes of you." Hilde retorted turning up her nose.

Enraged, Michelle backhanded her across the face. "You arrogant bitch!" she shouted, "I've had it with you!"

"Finally showing some spine eh, herr doktor?" she asked, rubbing the red mark on her face. It wasn't the first time another woman had hit her, but thankfully Michelle put more of her energies towards healing than hurting. "I bet your supervisors would love to hear about this."

"Hah! You can't blackmail me, you slut!" Michelle answered defiantly. "I've already put in my request for a transfer to a different ship! Not that it's any of your business, but that was why I was so late turning off your damn lights!"

"Good! Maybe now I'll get a real doctor instead of some ditzy-ass bitch like you who thinks that just because she knows how to take someone's temperature that she can spend all day pretending to be a medic!"

"Yeah? Well, fuck you too!" Hilde called after her, not wanting her to have the last word.

Turning off the lights, Hilde returned to her bed and lay back down. She knew it would avail her not at this point though; she was far too angry to get to sleep now.

"So here we are, together again," Alice Miller opened the interrogation. She had to keep the cynical edge in her voice, even if she didn't feel comfortable about talking with Heero in this manner.

"You know, I was mentally reviewing the text of the Antarctic Treaty after our last meeting, and I've remembered that, according to it, I only have to tell you my name, rank, and unit number. Tough luck, sweetie," he finished with the same tone of iron-clad cynicism she had used against him.

Alice was familiar with the document too, and as much as she hated the smug, backstabbing, lecherous son of a bitch, he had a point. It was because he was so adept at making points like that, that she had disconnected the video feed out of this room. Now it really was just the two of them.

She laughed. She had a beautiful voice, and, under different circumstances, it would have been a pleasure to hear it. But the situation, much like the tone of her laugh, was very dark.

"You haven't called me `sweetie' in over…" she paused to think, "Over eleven months! It's good to know you still feel kindly towards me." It was part of the plan to take his sardonic remarks literally.

He must have noticed. He had been in Intel too, and she had trained him herself. "What are you getting at, Miller?" he asked suspiciously. "Yesterday, you nearly rupture my lung, and now you want a trip down memory lane? You always did have an ulterior motive for everything; that's one of the main reasons I left the Fed, everybody's so fucking underhanded."

"Calm down, Heero!" She crooned. "We got off to a bad start yesterday. I hope you got the coffee I sent ahead to you this morning. I meant it as an apology." She tried to make her voice sound very sweet and innocent.

"You think I'd fall for that? Keep your drugged coffee! I poured that shit out as soon as they gave it to me." Oh yeah, he was definitely her pupil.

She'd figured he would have done as much; it had been enough to fool that traitor Shiro, but he hadn't been trained at Intel.

Fortunately, she'd taken that into account and taken the liberty of having the drug pumped directly into the cell through the ventilation duct.

She smiled. Perhaps he wasn't as smart as he thought he was. Or better yet, perhaps the drug was already working; he shouldn't have told her he'd poured it out…

"But Heero, what exactly happened to you to make you want to betray the Federation?" She jumped right into the interrogation.

"I-we had just begun our infiltration of the production facility in Side 3. I had already had my doubts then, about the justice behind the Federation's motives, and I saw them everywhere. Even in…you"

Rage coursed through Alice's veins, but she fought to remain in control. "And in the process of the raid, you allowed yourself to be…stopped, correct?"

"Yes, I was stopped by a wounded Zeon soldier." He didn't even hesitate to tell her as much.

"And it was, a woman, right?" she was going to shame him the same way she shamed Shiro.

"A woman named Rei, right? Rei Ayanami?" her left eyebrow twitched--as much emotion as she would allow herself to show.

"Hmm. And to escape with this Rei Ayanami, you had to perform a certain act. What was that?" She knew what he was going to say already, but hearing it from him-from his own mouth…

"I allowed myself to be shot in the line of duty. I took a bullet from her to feign my own death."

As infuriated as Alice was, she had to press on with the interrogation. There was no way of telling how long the drug would last. "And after you escaped with Rei, did you divulge any military secrets to her?" she was out of known territory now, and could no longer ask the leading questions she felt most at home with.

"Specifically, did you mention any of the specifications of the V-project? Anything about the Gundam?"

"As soon as being inducted into the Elite Blood Drakes Squadron in early December, I told them all I knew, and accessed restricted data on the subject."

"Major Cirrus O'Rielly was the highest ranking member of the Blood Drakes, and the second-in-command was one Captain Anavel Gato."

"One final question, Heero," She licked her dry lips in anticipation. "When you took that bullet and ran off with Rei, did you ever, at any point thereafter, think of your fiancace?"

Alice Miller's fingernails were digging so hard into her clenched fists, that a trickle of blood had formed in her right palm. "That will be all." She stood, shutting off her tape-recorder, and left the room, not knowing whether or not the last comment had been given of Heero's own free will, or under the influence of the truth drug.

Bubbles floated upwards in the blue fluid of the rejuvenation chamber. Nimbus' eyes flicked open and he searched wildly to find some familiar feature of the room he was in. He gagged suddenly as he consciously realised he was inhaling oxygen-saturated fluid and in a fury, he tore the monitoring wires from his body.

"Where the hell am I?" he shouted, though all that came out was a stream of bubbles.

Then, suddenly, it all came back to him. Two days ago, he had been involved in the Battle to hold California Base. He had been at the helm of the new-model EXAM system suit, Iflyte, and was fighting against the Federation's Blue Destiny GM. He had a vague recollection that the battle had been fierce; the enemy pilot-no, not the pilot, the mobile suit-had been incredibly strong. So strong, in fact, that the Iflyte had ultimately been totally destroyed in a fiery explosion.

"A very good question Colonel," through the hazy blue liquid he could make out the voice and form of a young woman, "but likewise, one I believe I can help you answer."

"What the hell is going on here?" he raged at her for sounding so calm. "Who are you, and where am I?"

She took a seat next to the tube where his body floated. "One question at a time! Let me introduce myself, I am Doctor Ritsuko Akagi, with the medical cybernetics testing project."

`Medical Cybernetics?' Nimbus thought. He'd heard of the project-rebuilding damaged human tissues with the integration of cybernetic components-but she still hadn't answered why he was being held in such a place. Did it have something to do with the battle against the Blue Destiny?

With the same air of control of the situation, Dr.-Akagi was it?-continued with her explanation. "I believe you were the soldier who was the pilot of the EXAM-system mobile suit, Iflyte, correct? And surely you remember the battle that suit had two days ago against the Federation EXAM suit, Blue Destiny, right? What you may not recall, though, is the conclusion to that battle. In this case, I'll fill you in: the physical strain of combat against the other pilot, compounded with the mental strain of the EXAM, ultimately proved to be too much for you, and in a fiery explosion, you were killed. You were awarded posthumous promotions too." She said the last sentence as casually as if she'd been talking to him over a cup of coffee.

"The fuck did you just say?" Obviously he did not take the news in the same fashion, but now he was confused and afraid rather than angry. This woman had said he was-had been-dead? Then, was this…Heaven? A dream?

But she had already said she as with the Cybernetics branch. That, and the fact that, while she looked good, she was obviously no angel, made him suspicious of actually having reached Heaven just yet.

She shook her head. "I'm sorry, I should have clarified that. Your body had died in the explosion, but a rescue team arrived before your brain died. Thus, in order to save you, your body was sent here to the cybernetics lab where myself and numerous other doctors worked to rebuild your body to working function. I suppose the fact that you're awake and having a conversation with me now is proof positive that our work was a success," she smiled, but with an air of self-congratulation.

Dr. Akagi shrugged. She was taking this situation pretty damn easy and that was really starting to piss Nimbus off. "You can do whatever you feel like. I'm not paid to baby-sit, but by tomorrow, you'll be released from the tank and begin to learn to use your new body. Within the week-I'd actually say two days tops-you'll be able to get back in a mobile suit."

"What kind of suit? If I was so badly wounded, surely, the Iflyte won't be back in any sort of working condition?"

"Not my department," she said matter-of-factly as she gathered her belongings and prepared to leave. "I'm just a doctor."

"Okay then, but will my body still function the same after I'm out of here? You should at least be able to tell me that," the last remark was filled with as much sarcasm as he could load into it.

"Hmph," Ritsuko snorted. "Well, Colonel, if you must know, the enhancements that have been implanted into your coelomic cavity have been specifically designed to enable a higher heart-rate and more efficient breathing capacity than most normal humans. In layman's terms, you'll be able to fight harder for more prolonged periods of time."

Now she sounded quite arrogant, as if her hand had made all the accomplishments alone. She continued: "Furthermore, special care has been made to allow your synapses to fire at a higher rate and your reaction time has been upped one-hundred and fifty per-cent. I trust that will be more than enough to satisfy you?" Without waiting to hear his reply, she left the room, as silently as she had entered.

`The only thing that will even come close to satisfying me,' Nimbus thought darkly as he surrendered to the calming effects of the rejuvenating liquid, 'will be having Yu Kajima's head on a platter,'.

Silent Requiem This fanfic is complete.

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Silent Requiem

Chapter 11: Inter-Bellum 2 continued