Title: All Messed Up
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: General
Length: 600 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: I don't know what this is or what the NSX has got itself stuck in but post-canon voyages of the Starship NSX I guess.
Summary: Next time the FTO gets messed up this badly Zazu's going to quit his job. (Not really. Probably.)

oOo

“Status report.”

“No,” Zazu muttered, rubbing his hands over his face and accidentally knocking his hat off, again. His well-smudged goggles were still around his neck, so he ignored it this time, letting his eyes stay closed a moment longer. They were stinging, and not just from the fumes of the last day’s work, but also the fact he’d been working for the entire last day.

“Zazu,” Geo said, and that had to be his footsteps on the walkway. “I need a report on the FTO’s current status.”

Zazu turned at that, opening his eyes far enough to glare as he waved his hands around at the hanger floor – nearly all of which was covered with the disassembled legs and engines from the FTO. “What do you think the current status is?” Three of his team were working on cleaning a thick, oily sludge from each and every part, while Zazu had been going through piece by piece assessing the damage and starting repairs for nearly fifteen hours now, having spent the first several finding something which would strip off the gunk without damaging the parts too much.

Geo looked around, and winced. “I was hoping you’d say it wasn’t as bad as it looked,” he admitted, shoulders falling. “It’s completely trashed, isn’t it. How long-“

“I’ve got three hours work to get the hip joints back in working order before we can do anything else. The whole lower half needs re-wiring, too, this stuff has eaten through the coating on all the cabling, I don’t trust any of it.” Zazu shook his head, closing his eyes again. “Sure, maybe Eagle needed to get into a fight with that thing that was trying to eat him, but did he have to wade through the body afterwards? We don’t have a clue what this stuff is! It took me two hours to work out how to neutralise it! That’s not even anything like my job!”

Reaching down, Geo ruffled up Zazu’s hair, and he was tired enough to just let him without protesting he was in his late twenties now, he was too old for that kind of thing.

“Sorry, kid. I promise we’ll get you the largest bottle of whatever fancy alcohol you want. And snacks. As soon as we get somewhere with alcohol.”

“…And snacks.” Zazu sighed. “I’m going to need to sleep. My co-ordination’s going and I’m going to start to mess this up worse than it is. The team’s on rotation cleaning up, at least, that should be done if I take a few hours then I can get them on panel repair, but our only other mechanic trained on the bot electrics is Forza-“

“And she’s got a broken arm. Blast.” Geo ran his hands through his own hair, now, pulling a face. “Right. I think I can keep Eagle from trying to take the GTO out for another day, at least – we can’t have both of them down and still not have a way to get the NSX out of here.”

“We’ve still not managed to communicate at all?”

“Nope.” Geo looked just as tired as Zazu felt, as he reached down a hand to help Zazu up. “Not in any way that got a response we understood, at least. But no one’s being actively hostile, even with Eagle wading through the, uh, local fauna trying to work out how to sign his meaning at them – anyway, you get to sleep. We’ll work it out. We always do, right?”

“Right,” Zazu said, attempting and probably failing to sound cheerful. He was just so tired.

Hopefully things would look a little less mucked up when he woke up.