The Chibi Files

By Cat

Copyright © Cat 9/2007

Disclaimer: The boys from Gundam Wing don’t belong to me. I’m just borrowing them for a little while to play with. I promise to return them almost exactly the way I found them. ^-_-^

This work is not to be reproduced in any way without the express written permission of the author. Skippyscatt@aol.com

Chibis are courtesy of the ‘Heero is not Toast’ website and adoptions agency. You can find the link to the site on the adoption page of Cat’s Bishounen Garden.

~*~*~*~*~

Chapter Six – Sick and Tired

By Monday morning I was beginning to worry about my chibi HeavyArms pilot. His fever had come down but not gone away and his cough was worse. I couldn’t take him to a doctor or the hospital because I had nothing that proved I was responsible for him. Wufei and Heero suggested it was time to bring someone else in on our secret, someone that probably should have been told when they’d first found themselves like this. Rashid and I both agreed realizing we should have considered it sooner and Heero set to work making contact with the person in question.

The big Maguanac and I had been taking turns sitting with Trowa, trying to keep him comfortable despite the fever. Doing what we could to sooth him when the coughing made the slender chibi curl up fighting the pain in his chest and throat. When I wasn’t with Trowa, I was making sure the other boys were doing well, getting fed properly and resting. The last thing I needed was for all of them to come down sick. I wasn’t all that worried about myself getting rest, I knew I could still function well or sick and there were no worries of what an illness might do to me as there was to my chibis. Also sleeping on my little couch was not optimal, even for me, even if I’d tried to. Rashid had taken to sleeping sitting up and admitted he was used to doing that in his mobile suit so not to worry.

We’d also gotten two calls that morning for houses to go and look at but I’d had to turn them down. I was too afraid to leave Trowa even though I knew Rashid was capable of taking care of him. After the second call I told the realtor that I would call him when I was available to go out looking. But I had him email the particulars on the houses for us to go over. It was one of the nicest aspects of the pilots retaining their adult knowledge despite the emotional changes. Quatre and Milliardo turned out to be great judges of property value. Not to mention Quatre’s business experience came in handy looking over paperwork.

At three o’clock on Monday afternoon I opened the door and almost hugged the woman standing on the other side. I had never been happier to see someone on my doorstep than I was to see Sally Po and with Rashid’s arrival I’d given up on trying to figure out how all this was happening.

“Thank god! Dr. Po come in, Trowa is this way.”

I didn’t even give her time to look around I was in such a hurry to have her see him. I only know that when I finally stopped next to my bed where our sick chibi lay she had huge eyes that were staring in shock at my six little boys. It only took her a moment though to recover as Trowa coughed in his sleep curling up and pressing tight closed fists to his body as it hurt his chest. Setting down her bag on the nightstand she pulled out her stethoscope, a thermometer and several other pieces of equipment. Then she shooed everyone but Rashid and I out of the room.

“How long has he been like this?” she asked sitting down on the edge of the bed.

“Since a little before noon on Saturday,” I told her sitting on the bench seat lid of my cedar chest against the wall out of the way. I was assuming that she meant the illness and not his chibi form.

Rashid was standing on the other side of the bed in the foot wide space between the edge of the bed and the outer wall. His arms were crossed over his chest and his eyes concerned. “He spent too much time in the cold that morning, sitting on the little balcony feeding the squirrels.”

Sally made a small hmming sound in her throat as she listened to that bit of information and then looked at the medications sitting on the dresser. “Is that what he’s been taking?”

I looked at the bottle of children’s Robitussin® sitting beside me on the bureau and nodded. “The five and under children’s dose every 6 hours. I was afraid to give it to him any closer together or in a larger dosage because I don’t know what that would do to him. It’s got ingredients to ease the fever, cough and congestion. Other than that we’ve simply tried to relieve the discomfort of the fever, make sure he rested and drank plenty of fluids. He’s been almost too tired to eat, but he tries,” I told her.

“Good you’re doing the right thing under the circumstances,” she told us as she pulled a notepad out of her bag. Sally quickly wrote several things down on the pad, pulled the top page off and handed it to Rashid. “I want you to go to the nearest drugstore or supermarket and pick up the items on that list.”

Rashid frowned, a touch of uncertainty on his face and I knew it was because he didn’t know the area. So I held out my hand for the list. “I’ll go, Trowa may be more comfortable with Rashid here while you examine him anyway.”

“Cat…” Trowa’s raspy voice was just barely audible and we all turned to look at him. His hand was held out to me and I took it with a comforting smile. “…Stay,” he finished tiredly his fingers limp in mine.

“I’ll go with Rashid,” Heero said from where he stood in the doorway. “I can sit in one of the booster seats in his rental car and direct him.”

I knew what kind of a sacrifice our Wing pilot was making to his pride by doing that and I gave him a big smile. “Thank you Heero that would be wonderful. Don’t stay in the car. Make sure you go in with him. Since you’ve been to the store before you can direct him there too.”

Heero nodded decisively and turned already heading into the other room to get his coat. After a moment Rashid followed and a few minutes later I heard the front door open and close. After that all my attention was on following directions from Sally Po as she began her examination and had me writing down the information as she called it out to me.

~*~*~*~

Forty minutes later the examination was done, Sally reassured me that it was not sitting out in the cold that had made Trowa ill. She admitted that it might have contributed simply because it pulled resources away from fighting an infection in order to keeping the pilot warm though. Otherwise it was more likely that Trowa had picked up a virus or that he’d already been fighting it when the accident happened. She’d taken some specimens, patted Trowa’s cheek telling him to sleep and headed for my kitchen which she quickly and quite effectively turned into a mini medical lab.

Keeping my sick little chibi propped up was the easiest way for him to breath, but I quickly found he was too restless for pillows. Settling behind him on the bed I held him against me glad to note that he began to rest better. Quatre peeked in often, aqua eyes anxiously studying his auburn haired friend before he would slip away again.

Almost exactly an hour from the time they had left, the front door opened and after a pause I saw Rashid come in and close the door. I had to smile lopsidedly at the fact that Heero would have been in front of him, but was so tiny that I couldn’t see him over the breakfast bar, room divider. Sure enough my wing pilot came around the corner of the wall with his small hands wrapped around the handles of a bag full of over the counter medical supplies. Rashid came behind him with a large box with the picture of vaporizer on it.

“Sally we got everything you put on the list.” I heard Heero tell Sally as he looked into the kitchen.

“Thank you, Heero. I think I’ve got a good idea of what Trowa has also. I just finished doing some tests.”

I looked at her expectantly as she came into the room eager to know what my chibi HeavyArms pilot had contracted. I also wanted to find out if it would be contagious to my other chibis. “Sally, what does he have?” I asked her softly trying not to wake Trowa.

“Mycoplasma pneumoniae, is the technical term for it,” she told me.

“Walking pneumonia?” Heero looked at her with a frown. “He wasn’t sick when we arrived.”

“Not that you know of,” Sally stated giving my little Wing a telling look.

I had to smile as his face took on a bit of sheepish look. I had already realized that my boys weren’t ones to say much if they were in discomfort, so it looked like I was going to have to keep an even closer eye on them if they could even hide things from each other like that.

“Anyway it looks like he probably had the flu, but didn’t say anything. Now it has turned into a rather bad case of bronchitis or a light case of walking pneumonia. He might have been alright if this little incident hadn’t occurred,” she continued. “But I suspect that all the pilots are a little out of whack and may be a little more susceptible to things they weren’t before. Most children are rather resilient, Quatre, Wufei and Zechs will fight things off easier because their gene coding for this age was strong, well fed and cared for. Trowa and Duo will be more susceptible and with Heero we’ll have to wait and see.”

I watched her turn to look at my boys who were crowded in the doorway listening intently. “That means that if you feel the slightest bit ill you have to say something so that Cat can get in touch with me. I will talk to the… scientists… to see if they have any more information on the anomaly and whether it will right itself with time or not. Until then it’s important to be sensible, understand?”

They all nodded and Sally nodded back before taking the bag from Heero and shooing them all out of the room. Between myself, Rashid and Sally we got Trowa and the room situated. I set up the steam vaporizer with a bit of mentholated liquid in the dispenser to help ease his breathing and cough. Sally established an IV drip with an antibiotic to kill the virus and keep Trowa hydrated. Rashid retrieved the portable oxygen tank from Sally’s vehicle outside and set it up at the head of the bed.

“I’ll have to get a couple of prescriptions for him. I came prepared for a Gundam teenager not a child so the medications I brought with me would be too dangerous,” Sally said once we had slipped out of the room to let my HeavyArms chibi sleep. “What is the closest hospital to you?” she asked.

“The closest hospital? Is he that bad?” I asked wondering why we had just done what we’d done if he really needed a hospital. The other pilots were crowding their way into the small hallway that led to my bedroom and the kitchen.

“No, no,” she reassured us all quickly. “But I’ll go over there and get myself established with them as the boys’ primary care physician while I pick up the medications I need. I can make sure that if any of the boys end up there in an emergency they will call me. I can also set up to send them medical records — once I’ve had a chance to… doctor them,” she finished with a small smirk.

I nodded then sighed. “We may not be in this same area once we move.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem. Once you move just contact the hospital closest to you. I’ll make sure you have the paperwork you need for them,” she confirmed.

“I’ve started working on legal paperwork for Cat and all the stuff we’d need to have,” Heero stated from beside us. “I’m just waiting on some equipment from Dr. J, then we won’t have to worry about custody issues.”

This was the first I’d heard about any of this but it was a relief all the same. It also explained all the time Heero had been spending on my computer and then on his own. I assumed that the equipment he was talking about was some kind of sophisticated forgery paraphernalia. I was actually hoping that it came very soon. We might need that paper work sooner than we thought. So far I’d been lucky that my neighbors kept to themselves and that the complex managers hadn’t been inquiring about my guests. All of them except Milliardo I could explain away as being under age for school. We’d have to deal with that situation as well.

“So the nearest hospital?”

Sally’s question returned me to the situation at hand and I shook myself mentally. One problem at a time, that was all I could do. “Hmm there are two about equal distance.” Quickly I got my phone book and got the names, addresses and phone numbers for both hospitals. Heero got onto his computer and Duo onto mine and by the time I’d written down the information they had driving directions for both places.

“I’ll be back… shortly,” she commented then chuckled as she looked around at the boys. Ignoring their glares she started for the door. “When I get back I want to check each of you, take some blood that sort of thing. I can test it and give Cat and I a better idea of your current health issues.”

With that she was gone. Rashid and Quatre went to sit with Trowa while I made dinner for everyone.

~*~*~*~*~

“Dinner was excellent,” Sally told me as she finished the last bite of lasagna in her spaghetti bowl. She chuckled and handed it to a hovering Duo who had been waiting patiently for her to finish so he could bring me the last dish for the dishwasher. “It’s too bad that the scientists are certain the boys will grow according to the stored DNA information in their systems. Some of them could have used the extra nourishment and care.”

I watched her nod imperceptibly toward Duo and knew she was probably including Heero and Trowa in to that statement as well. Honestly I felt the same way, but knew that in their own way each of them had achieved a physical and mental strength from their experiences that they would still need when they grew up again. “Well if nothing else maybe good food and more rest will enhance what they will get back,” I said settling on the couch and looking over at Sally who was working on my glass topped table.

The boys had helped me clean it off for her while dinner was cooking and she had settled there with the medical files she had brought for the boys. While at the hospital she had taken the time to introduce herself to the Medical Chief of Staff and the Head Pediatrician. They’d checked on her credentials and she’d explained that though she wasn’t local the boys were under her care privately. After due discussion and concerns laid out and dealt with they’d placed her in their database along with the boys’ names as the on call physician. I didn’t ask how she’d managed it or how she’d explained how un-local she was, because I doubted I wanted the headache.

Along with the prescriptions for Trowa she had also picked up two pads of medical forms so that she could ‘adjust’ the boys’ files to fit their current circumstances. She’d been working on the files one at a time starting with the pilot she had the least information on and moving to the largest folder, Heero’s. In between that and checking periodically on Trowa now that he was taking prescription medication, she had eaten the dinner consisting of lasagna and tossed salad.

None of the boys had ever had the Italian dish which surprised me. I’d thought at least Miro would have had it being stationed everywhere during his service to OZ. Even Trowa had perked up at the scent and asked to try it instead the lighter soup we’d been trying with him. After Sally gave the okay he’d eaten nearly two thirds of the portion I gave him and fell asleep with a sigh and a smile. I could only imagine he’d been hungrier than he’d felt from being sick and the new taste had enticed him to eat more.

“Heero can you come over here and take your shirt off for me?”

I looked over the breakfast bar from the kitchen wondering what she wanted Heero for watching as my Wing pilot walked over to her stripping out of the dark blue flannel shirt he was wearing. As I watched, Sally turned the knob that controlled the overhead light in my tiny dining room so the light was on full. Crouching down next to Heero she turned him to study his upper right arm. It only took me a moment to realize what she was looking for.

“Well that answers one question,” she commented standing up again. “Go ahead and put your shirt back on, Heero that was all I wanted to check.”

“Is it still there? The scar where he got shot?” I asked. I hadn’t noticed it myself but then I hadn’t been looking for it.

“A gun shot wound?” Quatre asked though he wasn’t really surprised, he’d just never noticed it either. I noticed Duo scuffing his feet and not meeting anyone’s eyes. Obviously he hadn’t forgiven himself for shooting Heero when they first met.

“Yes, I checked it because it was a new wound the first time I encountered him,” Sally answered. “That means that any old outer wounds they had will still show. I’ll come up with logical explanations. There is one problem though. I need to do x-rays on all the boys. The first time Heero was in my hands we did x-rays and he had dozens of old breaks. I’m going to have to check and see if he still has them.”

“God you don’t think that old injuries they had in the past would have to be relived do you?” I asked appalled at the idea of Heero going through broken bones multiple times all over again. I could see that my chibis weren’t too fond of that idea either.

“At this point your guess is as good as mine. That is one of the reasons that I want to get x-rays. Heero would be the one to start with. But I need to check all the boys, my paperwork on Quatre, Milliardo and Wufei is sketchy at best. And with this monkey wrench in the works I can’t even certain about illnesses.”

That stopped me in my tracks and I turned to look at Duo, who was looking up at Sally with eyes I could only admit were frightened. “Hunny about how old were you when you came down with illness that swept through L2?” I asked him, I saw Sally’s head come around to look at Duo with appalled eyes.

“You lived through the L2 epidemic Duo?” she asked motioning him over to her immediately.

“Yes,” he told her walking over to where she was sitting at the glass topped table. “I guess I was about this age, I never really knew how old I was, but I was about this big.”

Sally pulled out another chair from the table and had Duo sit down. She rolled up the sleeve on his left arm and searched through her bag coming up with what she needed to draw his blood. “I don’t have any of the vaccine with me and the L2 disease was very contagious, you and all the boys as well as Rashid and I will have to be vaccinated if he’s showing the presence of the illness in his system. If not then I can vaccinate him only and that should kill the disease before he can even get sick.”

“What about other people?” I asked watching as she removed the first vial of blood and hooked up another. Heero was holding Duo’s hand watching and listening intently.

“We were in contact with a lot of people the first day here and Saturday too,” Heero informed her.

The Preventer agent frowned upon hearing this, if Duo had the active illness in his blood stream then any number of people could have been infected by now. “I’ll test his blood immediately. If it’s active we’re in trouble, but he’s not showing any symptoms. If he’s already had it… by this age then it would be dormant because it means he developed anti-bodies. You didn’t get the vaccine did you?” She looked Duo in the eyes compassionately.

“No, they said they didn’t have enough for the homeless and bums in the L2 slums. Mostly it went to the few wealthy and the… Alliance soldiers,” he trailed off not looking at Sally, feeling bad since he knew she’d been part of the Alliance.

“That doesn’t surprise me,” she sighed removing the second vial and the needle she’d used to draw the blood. She covered the small hole with a cotton ball and then a Band-Aid. “All done, you relax and I’ll go and start testing this.”

I found myself shooed out of my kitchen as she began setting up her testing equipment again. It was starting to get late so I suggested to the boys that they might as well get ready for bed. Quatre, Wufei and Milliardo insisted that Heero and Duo have the bathroom first, so while they showered and brushed teeth the other three helped Rashid get all the sleeping mats laid out.

“I don’t know what we are going to do about sleeping arrangements tonight,” I sighed to the big Maguanac as I helped lay out the sleeping bags for Duo and Heero. “I really do need to find us a new place soon.”

“I will sit with Trowa for the night,” he told me as he carefully stepped over the sleeping area with his long legs. “Tomorrow I will find a place that Dr. Po and I can share in shifts to make things easier for you.”

“Will you be okay with that?” I asked feeling badly that Rashid felt he had to find someplace else to stay when he’d come with express purpose of protecting Quatre.

“Master Quatre will be safe for the short time I would be away and you are already very full here. Sally is needed here more than I am for the time being,” he answered.

“All right, I’m sorry that it’s come to this,” I told him apologetically.

Heero and Duo came out of the bathroom and Quatre went in promising to be out quickly since there were still five more people who needed time in it. Trowa was still sound asleep when I slipped into the bedroom to get blankets out of the cedar chest for myself, Sally and Rashid. It made me thankful because he’d been sleeping so restlessly the last two days.

By the time I came out of the bedroom Wufei was in the bathroom, which surprised me because I hadn’t realized I’d taken that long to get the blankets. Duo and Heero were in their beds but not asleep. My braided chibi was watching the door of the kitchen waiting for Sally and Heero was trying to distract him but not having much luck.

All the boys had had their time in the bathroom and Rashid was taking a quick turn when Sally finally came out of the kitchen, turned laboratory. She laughed softly seeing all the anxious eyes turned on her, including my own. I was not looking forward to helping another of my chibi’s through a horrendous illness especially as I had a strong impression that the L2 disease had been devastating even for the people who survived it.

“Duo already has anti-bodies in his blood stream,” she announced. “So either he is past the age where he had the disease or the regression has not affected it. I did some checking at the cellular level and there are some anomalies there just like I found with Trowa. I’m assuming I will find them with all the boys when I test their blood. I think the anomalies are the genetic encoding that Dr. J was talking about. At this point we will simply have to see what level of encoding is there.”

There was a collective sigh of relief from all the boys as well as myself. I didn’t know of any other potentially deadly or serious illnesses that my chibi pilots had been through so, from now on it would be easy to handle stuff. Or so I hoped anyway. A thought struck me and I looked back at Sally.

“Sally what about things like measles, chicken pox, that sort of thing? Are there vaccinations for them in your… area?” I asked shrugging slightly at knowing exactly how to ask the question. I was still trying not to think about how all of this was even possible. I assumed that at some point an explanation would be found or I would simply stop worrying about it but for the moment it was much too soon for me to just ignore the weirdness.

“Yes and all the boys have had them. I already had that in my files that they all remembered getting the vaccinations for the childhood diseases. The most you should have to worry about for now are colds and the flu until I’ve had a chance to take x-rays, but with Heero still retaining the gunshot scar I would bet that any broken bones are still old news also. I would really expect that to be the case,” she reassured me.

“We never did hear about that gun shot wound Heero,” Quatre said from his own sleeping mat. “When did that happen?”

“A couple of days after I first arrived on Earth,” my Wing pilot explained from his own bed. “I was trying to destroy my Gundam suit because it had been seen and was badly damaged. I thought my mission was a bust.”

“I shot him,” Duo revealed sitting up in his sleeping bag. “I was there retrieving his Gundam thinking it was junked. I was going to use the spare pieces for my own. When I showed up he had a gun on Relena, I automatically thought he was a bad guy. Who else would have pointed a gun at an unarmed girl?”

Quatre blinked at the two in shock and Wufei was chuckling. “You should have let him kill her, stupid onna.”

“Hey that’s my sister, jerk,” Milliardo growled and reached out to swat Nataku’s pilot. “Even if she was annoying sometimes.”

The others laughed and Wufei reached out and smacked Milliardo back softly without anger. “One guess as to who shot him down,” he commented rolling his eyes.

“Me,” the Talgeese pilot admitted. “My team and I spotted the ‘Meteor’ coming in and knew it was no meteor. But I lost my Leo too and it wasn’t repairable so Heero won that battle by default.”

We were interrupted in the conversation when Rashid came out to tell me that Trowa was awake and asking for me. I left them talking to check on my sick chibi and found him sitting up in the bed with the pillows behind him. He actually seemed to look a little better. I couldn’t be sure if that was just my wishful thinking or if the good dinner, rest and medication had made that much of a difference so quickly.

“How are you feeling hunny,” I asked sitting on the bed beside him.

“Better,” he told me and I was surprised to see a small smile curve his mouth, much more than his usual Mona Lisa.

“I knew you had a bigger smile in there somewhere,” I told him sitting on the edge of the bed. “We may actually get a grin out of you yet. The day I get a real laugh out of you and Heero I swear we’re having a fireworks celebration.”

He chuckled a bit and curled on his side trying to get more comfortable. “I could hear everyone laughing and wondered what was going on.”

“We had some good news and Heero and Duo were telling the story of how Heero got a gunshot wound on his upper arm,” I explained.

“That was good news?” Trowa asked blinking.

“No the good news was that Duo’s bout with the L2 illness won’t be reoccurring. We are a little concerned about the things that were encoding during the accident and stored in your genes for later retrieval when the process is reversed or as you age. It seems that he had the disease before he was five so the rest of us aren’t in danger of getting it,” I reassured him. “Sally was looking for clues that some of the outward injuries you all have had are still there and won’t be spontaneously reoccurring. The gunshot of Heero’s was brand new the first time she came in contact with him so it was a good way for her to judge.”

“Oh, that must be the one he got from Duo?”

I looked at him surprised. I hadn’t realized that he even knew about that story as the others seemed to have not heard it. “How did you know about that?”

“Well, we did travel together for several months. That arm was broken pretty bad when he self detonated, but the scar was already getting old so I asked about it once. Just something for conversation on a long drive, you know?” he answered with a shrug.

“I do know,” I told him with a nod. “It’s just about time for your next dose of medication, then you should try to sleep some more, the more you rest the faster you’ll start getting better.”

I got up and went out to get Sally as I was not comfortable with working with the IV line. Instead I took the humidifier and rinsed it well adding more water and menthol syrup so that the steam would continue its work. Trowa had barely coughed and each time he had he had sounded better. Thirty minutes later my Heavy Arms chibi was asleep again. His IV had been replaced and medicine introduced. The oxygen tank would last until morning as it was only open a little bit, feeding oxygen into the small nasal tubes to give Trowa a little helping hand.

Rashid settled on the cedar chest with a blanket to take the nighttime vigil over our patient. I insisted that Sally take the small couch because it was at least more comfortable than the floor and over the next few days she would be the most important person in my boys’ lives. With Trowa to help and blood work for the boys to see to, not to mention finding a place to take the x-rays she needed to check them all over before sending medical file copies to the hospital. I could only assume she might take the boys one at a time to our local hospital or back with her to their — whatever — to make them. My last thoughts before sleep claimed me were that I desperately hoped we were right and that the boys wouldn’t have to face any of the externally caused injuries they had faced in their life. If they did then Heero was looking at reliving some horrible periods in his life.

~*~*~*~*~*~

End Chapter 6