Gundam 00 Grad School Trio Headcanons

 Happy Birthday, @durinswizardwheezes!  I thought about doing some Sumeragi-centric headcanons, but I got sucked in by the idea of what she, Billy and Kati were like in grad school.  Hope you like these!

 

Kati and Leesa’s grad school cohort was pretty tiny, so they ended up talking a lot during orientation, but mostly about their hometowns, what classes they were taking–just introductory stuff. Billy spent most of his orientation hiding in corners and hoping no one would notice him–he was a shy kid.

 

The point when they actually became friends was the second day of class.  They were discussing a reading, they had completely opposite opinions, and it turned into a full-out debate.  No one else got a word in edgewise and the teacher had a hard time stopping them so the class could end.  They scared their classmates with that, but the two of them were just thrilled that the other was countering their points so well.

 

Kati met Billy before Leesa did–the two of them were in the library looking for sources for projects.  Billy was writing a mock grant proposal, Kati was doing a paper on a historical war, and they both needed information on how the UN funding process worked in 2107, so they ended up in the same section of the library stacks, passing each other books that looked useful.  In the end, Kati got Billy’s email so she could send him any web sources she found.

 

Leesa was in the habit of stealing Kati’s computer–not surreptitiously, in full view of Kati, usually out of her hands.  The point wasn’t having the computer.  The point was watching Kati sputter and maybe sending a couple of weird messages from her accounts.  She was careful–she never did anything that was more than annoying.  But it was fun watching Kati’s eye twitch!

 

One day, not long after meeting Kati in the library, Billy got an email from her that just said, in all lower case, no punctuation: “so are you kati’s new boyfriend now or what because i need to know i’ve never given a shovel talk before and it sounds fun,” and that was how he met Leesa.

 

Leesa never got to give a shovel talk, either.  Kati didn’t date anyone at all, for the entire time they were in grad school.  None of the men there interested her, or so she told Leesa. Leesa would tease back that her first love was her extracurriculars.  And she had a point–Kati was president of three different clubs and a member of two more.

 

Billy and Leesa did date, for about a year, right before Leesa graduated.  Kati didn’t end up feeling like a third wheel too often, though she did end up in the middle of their fights a few times.  That was not pleasant–Leesa was direct, Billy was passive-aggressive, and Kati actually had to draw them a flowchart once.

 

Leesa broke up with Billy when she graduated.  She said she wasn’t ready for a long-distance relationship, or the kind of commitment it implied.

 

Dr. Eifmann knew all three of them because they spent half of their free time in his office once Billy started working with him formally.  He liked them, too, and thought they all showed great promise.

 

Leesa didn’t drink much in college.  None of them did.  When they did drink, it was socially, usually at department mixers or the like.  Leesa’s alcohol tolerance wasn’t what it later became, but it was still exceptional, while Billy could barely get through more than a single beer without getting tipsy.  No one knew how quickly Kati got drunk, because she never drank enough to get near that point.

 

Socially, Kati mostly just spent time with Billy, Kujo and people she knew from extracurriculars.  Billy’s other friends consisted of the kinds of engineering students who lit chemicals on fire to see what colors they would burn (which, really, should have prepared him for Graham).  Leesa somehow knew at least a little bit about every other person in her classes, but she still liked the time she spent with Billy and Kati best.

 

After Fallen Angels, Kati got invited back to the school to speak with the tactical forecasting program about the battle.  When the A-Laws rose to power, Billy was invited to speak with the robotics and engineering students about GN Drives.  After the war with the A-Laws, Leesa–Sumeragi–had her turn, but she spoke to the whole student body, about pacifism and the future.  And wondered if, next time, maybe Billy or Kati would be willing to stand on the same stage and talk about that, too.