"Gundam Wing Goes to Toys 'R Us"
By: Otaku Girls

It was an ordinary day when I walked into my local Toys 'R Us (TRUE - better known as "The Toy Store that Swallowed Your Town!") I didn't realize it, but I was about to get the surprise of my life. Not only was the Big Bland Store selling [Gundam] models, but they were the mecha from Gundam Wing! Thinking nothing could be better, I glanced up from the Epyon kit I was drooling over and found myself looking into blue eyes surrounded by platinum-blond hair. "They don't have Tallgeese," the figure said with a frown. "I'll have to speak to the manager about this." With a flash he was gone, but the fun was just beginning as I began to spot GWing characters in every aisle...

Zechs had appeared to be in no mood for [chit-chat] as he strode down the toy aisles to the customer service center. I watched him take hold of the night manager by that little blue vest all the employees wear and was about to cover my eyes when I heard a loud "whoooo hooo!!!" and was knocked to the floor by something flying past me. From my new vantage point on the floor all I could see of my attacker was a flash of rollerblades followed by a meter-long braid around the corner of the toy car aisle. Should of known it - that Maxwell kid is nothing but trouble.

"Out of the way, stupid onna¹!!" came the shrill command from behind me. I had just gotten up to a standing position after encountering hurricane Duo when I was [side-swiped] by a typhoon known as the Chinese Dragon. He was pedaling one of those fancy girls' bikes with clean white tires and pink-and-silver streamers off of each handlebar. He had a Star Wars Episode One Light Saber (the double-ended Sith kind) in the little basket up front and was hightailing after Duo.

I had just decided that the model aisle was too much of a combat zone and had begun to leave when I was pushed back into it by a mob of five of the ugliest men [that has been] my misfortune to know. They all wore lab coats of one kind or another and each had a rather maniacal gleam in his eye. "Aha! There's Epyon!" screeched one of them, snatching the small box out of my hand with a steely claw. The other four huddled around him, peering down at the cover of the box and making appreciative "ooh" and "aah" noises.

"But wait!" cried one with a nose the size of the Washington Monument. He swept his gaze over the rows of model plans and space vehicles, causing two of his colleagues to dive to the ground lest they be decapitated. "Look at all these other designs! What if we borrowed a few of these ideas, eh?" The five of them were reaching greedily for a scale model of Annikan Skywalker's pod racer when I left them, backing away carefully so they wouldn't hear me leave. I made it to the end of the aisle and ran like the wind to what I believed to be the relative safety of the board games. Only then did I hear the low chuckle that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end...

"It couldn't be," I whispered to myself. "Surely not him..." I turned around and saw Treize Khushrenada sitting at a folding game table. He seemed to be challenging the store's customers to games of Risk, and had drawn quite a line of armchair megalomaniacs intent on showing him up with their skills. I asked one of the women in line what she was doing.

"Oh, it must be some kind of promotional event - they even have him dressed up in the right costume for the era!"

The man standing in front of her sneered and replied, "Sure he looks like a general, but what kind of experience does he have, huh?" If only you knew, I found myself thinking.

I strolled up to Treize and said, "General, remember these are civilians - you will be kind won't you?"

He looked up, a smile of bemusement on his face. "My dear lady," he said graciously, "this is all about war and conquest. Why should we have need of kindness when there is such nobility and honor spread out before us!" He gestured elegantly at the game board before him, smiled, then proceeded to annihilate the entire African continent of his hapless opponent's army. I walked away, shaking my head, as the General said, "Now, let's talk about the Indian Sub-continent, shall we?"

Further down the board game aisle I spotted Quatre, sitting cross-legged on the floor and hunched over something I couldn't see. I peeked over his shoulder and saw a game of Monopoly set up. Each property had three hotels on it but there was only one game piece (the little dog) on the board. "Quatre? I believe that game is supposed to be played with at least one other person..." The blond looked up at me and smiled angelically. "What's the point of that?" he laughed. "I prefer owning it all myself!" It was only then that I saw he held the entire bank in his lap. "Hoo-kay, honey," I whispered, patting him on the back, "whatever you want." I needed a break, so I went to see how Zechs was getting on with the store manager.

I should have known things weren't going right when I heard the continuous beeping of a cash register scanner. Nothing could have prepared me, though, for the sight of Zechs, looking bored and holding the manager by the hair, passing his face back and forth over the little scanner opening. "Do you still insist you can't show me your computer data base?" Zechs said wearily, as if he'd been asking the question for quite some time. Being a bit squeamish myself, I ducked down the nearest available aisle so as not to witness the man's gruesome but well-deserved fate.

"Oooooo, he'd love this!!!" The unmistakable squeal of a female anime character in love hit me like a wash of heavy perfume as I stumbled into the housekeeping aisle. There she was, the house-girfriend of all house-girlfriends, Hilde Schbeiker, holding aloft a toy shopping basket filled to overflowing with plastic foodstuffs. She eyed me with delight, sending a faint shiver of horror through me. "Aren't these just the best!" she cried, "and so inexpensive! Duo goes through so much food - I'm usually at the market at least twice a day!" I murmured something to her about the possibility of getting her own life and tried to back away, but she grabbed my coat collar and the next thing I knew we were peering at little plastic vacuum cleaners. "I must have one of these," she cooed. "Living next to that scrap yard makes our shack so dusty." "Uh huh," I nodded, giving the happy slave a weak smile and heading for the end of the aisle. Things turned surreal as I ran smack into Cathrine, who had opened up a set of play dishes and was coming toward me, looking mildly zombie-ish and saying, "Here... I made some soup for you..." I waved my hands as if that would make the frightening vision disappear and then turned to run. "Oh, wait!" I heard Hilde calling. "Look! An Easy-Bake Oven!!!”

Ducking into the preschool toy aisle, I gave a sigh of relief to see that no GW characters were lurking there. I leaned heavily against a Tickle-Me Elmo, too tired to even tickle him, and rubbed my temples, suddenly aware of a raging headache. The peace lasted approximately 3 seconds, ending in a cackling noise that could only mean one thing: Duo was in the vicinity. Sure enough the braided terror came swooping around the corner of the aisle on his rollerblades, having acquired a hockey stick, a small plastic ball, and a headband with Pikachu ears on it. "He charges, he shoots, HE SCORES!!" came the familiar drawling voice, as he skated in circles around me, doing some sort of odd victory dance. His celebration was short-lived, however, as Wu Fei came around the corner after him, having abandoned the pink-and-white bicycle for a camouflaged-colored GI Joe electric Jeep. He was waving an ornate sword from the Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog collection and screaming, "Come back and fight honorably, Maxwell!!" Luckily this was typical of his behavior, so I was fully prepared to duck the swooshing sword as it came my way. I was not, however, aware of how bad a driver he was and was rewarded for my ignorance by the painful sensation of the Jeep running over my foot. "Geez, you'd think a guy who can pilot a [Gundam] could navigate [in] a toy aisle!" I yelled at him. His only response was to glare at me over his shoulder and shout, "Stupid onna! Stay out of the way. This is a man's fight!" whereupon he crashed into an end-of-aisle display of Furbies, who all started chattering at him at once. As I limped to the next aisle over, waving off Sally Po and her doctor's kit, I heard Wu Fei screaming something to the effect of "They're alive!! They're aliiiiiiive!!!"

"At last!" a voice said dramatically as I came around the corner, still chuckling at the image of Wu Fei awash in a mass of pink and blue fur. "Someone is here to review my troops! Well, you will be amazed to see the forces that I've assembled - Bwahahahahahahaha!!!!" That smug, slightly insane sounding voice could only belong to Dorothy Catalonia and, sure enough, there she was, her evening dress spread out around her and on it, more little green army men than I have ever seen, in mass formation, apparently ready for inspection before their great battle.

"You are going to inspect my troops, aren't you?" she murmured dangerously, raising one forked eyebrow. Knowing the eyebrow meant business I nodded and peered at the little men, lined up in neat rows. She was watching me carefully, ready to pounce on any mistake I might make, so I admit I was a little more harsh than I wanted to be. "You there!" I shouted, pointing at a little man clutching a machine gun. (I swear I could almost see him tremble as I did so, but it might have been just Dorothy getting excited at the prospect of someone being yelled at.) "Yes, I'm talking to you, soldier," I continued, "What is that little piece of plastic sticking out of your head for? Back to barracks and trim it, NOW!" Dotty was so pleased that she clapped and I used that opportunity to run like heck for the relative safety of the Barbie aisle. Looking back on it all now, I should have stayed with Dotty and her army.

Opposite the army men aisle (in more ways than one) was the Barbie aisle, and there, in the middle, blocking all traffic, sat a Princess on a little pink stool. She was seated at an equally pink make-up table and her self-satisfied smile in the table's built-in mirror changed to a disapproving frown when she saw me. "I don't remember inviting you in," she said bluntly. I was thinking up a withering reply when she waved a petite hand and said, "Well, as long as your here you might as well see my collection. That's probably why you came anyway, isn't it?" Discretion being the better part of valor, I simply nodded. Best to keep Relena Darlian mollified.

She had cleared out the long glass case where the really pricey Barbie dolls were usually kept (you've seen them - Renaissance Faire Barbie, Sickly Southern Belle Barbie, Thai Goddess of Fertility Barbie, etc.) In their places were Barbies that had their hair done in little braids on the sides and an odd set of costumes. "This one," Relena pointed out, "is Deserted Beach Relena. Her facial expression changes from dreamy to shocked when you put her next to Deserted Beach Lifeless Heero, but then changes back to dreamy when you take Deserted Beach Lifeless Heero's space helmet off."

"Then down here," she continued, her little fingers digging into my arm to pull me along with her, "is the South Pole Action Set. South Pole Action Relena comes complete with a sweater dress and scarf, and her own plane, and see this little hook on her dress? It attaches to the plane so she can hang out of the door almost all the way and not fall out. She says two things: 'Heero I have an important letter for you to read,' and 'Heero - Kill Zechs!'" Relena giggled (not a pretty sound) and murmured, "That was before I knew he was my brother." Further along the case I spotted Queen of the World Relena and then some sort of Relena and Heero Royal Wedding ensemble and I knew it was time to get away before my stomach turned. I slipped away while she was cuddling the Post-Self-Destruct Heero doll and darted into the electronic toy aisle.

Heero was there, surrounded by little plastic learning toys that all looked like laptop computers, only in a choice of primary or pastel colors. Heero had managed to find the only grayish-silver one in the bunch. It was actually a phonics-learning toy, but the Perfect Soldier had reprogrammed it and now it was connected with the rebel network on the colonies. He was staring intently at the grainy little screen and muttering, "No mission orders yet," when I walked up. With the help of a Barbie cell phone that Relena had given him he managed to use the little vowel keys the crack OZ's main computer. He was starting to look a little maniacal, so I leaned down and whispered, "Dr. J is building a new [Gundam] for you in aisle 10."

"Hn," he replied eloquently, as he closed the phonics toy and tried to carry it off. It had been attached to its shelf with a thick steel cable, but Heero simply broke the cable in half and headed for aisle 10.

By this time I just wanted to buy my little 1/144th scale Deathscythe-Hell model and get the heck out of there. Hopelessly lost, I saw a crowd of people around the TV set the store used to demo it's Playstation games. There was someone at the front of the group who was obviously playing a flight simulator game and the crowd was loving it. The plane appeared to do loops, rollovers, stalls, and other wild stunts. I poked my way into the knot of customers and found Lucrezia Noin at the controls of the console, her violet eyes intent on the screen in front of her, working the joystick like a real pro. Every once in a while she would pull some amazing stunt and then laugh harshly and say, "Ha ha! Try that one, Zechs!" I smiled and backed out of the crowd. She was having far too much fun to interrupt.

This put me in the Lego aisle and there, sitting on the floor amidst 30 or so open Lego robotics kits, was a familiar the Hawaiian-shirted figure of Howard, trying out a prototype of Tallgeese IV he had constructed out of blue and white bricks and God knows what else. "Look at this! Look at this!" he cackled, waving me forward. The [Gundam-like] invention rolled smoothly towards me, spun in a little circle, then launched a volley of tiny plastic rocks and miniature samurai swords at me, obviously borrowed from a Lego Ninja set. "It works!" he hooted, doing a warped version of the Chicken Dance. I looked around desperately for the exit but only saw Duo again. He came racing down the aisle waving madly at Howard to get the old engineer out of his way. Luckily Howard was slow enough that Duo had to coast to a stop and I was able to grab a hold of his braid.
"Hey, not the hair! Not the hair!!" he whined as I spun him around to face me.

"Look Death Boy," I said waving my D-Hell model kit in front of him, "this excellent mecha is just waiting to be put together, but I can't find the cash registers to buy it. Do you have any idea where they are?"

He grinned "Sure, I've passed 'em ten times already, grab on! I'll getcha there in - whoa boy! Here he comes, we gotta jet!" I was reaching for his shirt when Duo spied Wu Fei, now riding in a red, low-slung, electric Ferrari and packing a Supersoaker Bazooka water gun. The faster-then-planned exit left me holding on for dear life to the end of the boy's braid as we whizzed across the store.

"Now I've got you, Maxwell!" the martial arts expert cried, but Duo managed to keep us out of range as we sailed past the model aisle. Heero was suspended upside down in a huge [Gundam-type] machine that the scientists had made using every [Gundam] model in stock, most of the Star Wars collection and several fins from '57 Thunderbird kits.

Duo just shook his head and we flew past the military aisle, where Dorothy was now clutching handfuls of little green army men and crying, "Die for me, you beautiful boys! Die!" Luckily that scene passed quickly but soon the housekeeping aisle loomed ahead. Hilde and Cathrine had gotten the hang of the Easy-Bake Oven and were holding out trayfuls of miniature brownies. I declined, but Duo grabbed a handful as we rocketed past, waving at Hilde as he did so.

We nearly ran into Relena then, just narrowly avoiding her Barbie-pink sedan as she motored sternly in the opposite direction. In the board game aisle, Treize and Quatre appeared to have teamed up, with the General now firmly in charge of all the world's armies and Quatre controlling the World Bank. Currently they were sipping from Little Mermaid teacups and trading stories about how lonely it is at the top.

The check out aisle was in sight (and a good thing too as Wu Fei was fast approaching firing range and I had no intention of getting Supersoaked by Pigtail Boy.) I waved my thanks to the Braided One as he moved it into high gear and did a fancy little scissor step around the party favor aisle. Wu Fei, however, had already fired and the stream of water hit Zechs squarely in the face as he stood over the store's puny computer console, watching the manager order a large shipments of Tallgeese and Tallgeese II kits. Wu Fei slammed on the breaks of the Ferrari and watched with horror as Zechs picked up the manager temporarily and used the blue vest to dry his face. Dropping the man back into his chair, the tall blond gave Wu Fei an icy look. "We'll just see about this..." his voice low and threatening. The Chinese boy gave a little scream as the Ferrari's tires squealed on the tile floor and he flew off in the direction of Duo shouting, "I'm going to die, Maxwell! I'm going to die horribly and it's all your fault!"

I slumped against the check out counter and laid down the battered box containing my D-Hell model. As the bored, gum-chewing clerk rang up my purchase I calmed myself by watching Trowa, amidst the swing sets displayed in the front of the store, doing breathtaking acrobatic moves off of the child-sized trapeze, landing smoothly on the Rocket Rider and swinging it hard enough to make the whole thing spin around the top of the playset to the amazement of the large crowd that had gathered to watch him. "Wow," I murmured and handed over my money. Just then Zechs walked up looking weary but satisfied. "Hey Blondie!" I greeted him, waving with what little strength I had left, "did you get the manager to see things your way?"

"Oh, yes, Dear lady," he bowed graciously in return, thankfully ignoring my dishonorable use of a nickname in public. "I don't think there will be anymore problems in getting all the Gundam Wing models now. Right Bob?" He tossed a glance back at Bob, the hapless manager, who nodded his head a little too quickly and went back to his computer. I picked up my large Toys 'R Us bag that held my small model kit and then turned to Zechs and Bob once more. "Oh, Bob?" I asked politely. "Would you reserve a Tallgeese and a Tallgeese II for me, please?" Zechs smiled, obviously flattered, but Bob shook his head. "Nope. I'm sorry. Toys 'R Us doesn't reserve anything for anybo- " He broke off abruptly as Zechs, began to drum his gloved fingers on top of Bob's computer monitor. Bob's voice changed to a squeak. "Sure. No problem" he managed to get out as I walked out the sliding doors.

Notes:
¹ onna = woman

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Updated 2000.06.27.