trans_9 | Summertime [Open]

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Summertime [Open]

Zouichi sat by a the mirrored black water of a small pond. Nearby, a wisteria plant was coming into bloom, dangling its delicate, curved violet flowers toward the earth.

As promised, a tray of chilled watermelon slices was set to the side, near the wooden steps leading down to the garden and free for any passersby to take. For his part, however, Zouichi occupied himself with feeding a small group of googly-eyed baby goldfish, who darted back and forth through the water to gobble up stray flakes of fish food.

It was nice to take a break from exploding ghost ~~wolves~~ lions once in a while.

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Zouichi looked first at Taro, who might as well have come out of nowhere, and then for the owner of that voice, which he recognized instantly as Hana's.

"Long time no see. Have you been down to Geartopia yet?"

Hana came jogging over, mane of hair bouncing as usual, bright grin on his face.

"Yeh! I went down with Cassandra!" Which was pretty much a given. Where one was, usually the other wasn't far behind. Often holding hands.

"Me, Ruffnut and Mindy hung out a little down there too. It's pretty cool." He shrugged. "I mean, its got trains which are kinda cool."

Zouichi smiled. "Glad you had fun. I was afraid you might have gotten kidnapped or something. It got a little rough down there. Not," he added, "That you can't handle yourself."

He just tended to worry about his friends. "Come to get some melon? Help yourself; I got it in exchange for some farmwork. Didn't really get to see the trains, though."

Hana plonked himself down next to Zouichi, grabbing a slice on melon and taking a massive bite. "Fanks!" He mumbled with full cheeks, juice running down his chin.

Taro trotted over to curl up in his lap.

"Why were you doing farm work?"

Pff. Zouichi reached over to pat Taro.

"Well, it seemed like I could get a better deal in trade than trying to buy things outright. I don't know a lot about farms, but I'm pretty strong." Which was... a bit of an understatement. "Besides, it was almost relaxing after that investigation we went through."

The winged creature let out an odd purr and rolled onto his back.

"You think working is relaxing?" Hana pulled a skeptical look. "You can do my training for me if you want."

D'aww. Zouichi patted Taro's belly.

"Well... it's a little more relaxing than explosions. But sorry, I can't really do your training for you. It'd kind of defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?"

"Guess you're right." He shrugged again. "Worth a try." Hana smacked his lips then took another large bite of the melon.

"Done anything else fun?"

"Well, let's see. During the investigation, I explored some haunted caverns, did some rock climbing, nearly got exploded, and helped rescue a baby. And then there was that stampede..." Yes. He'd been busy recently.

"That amusement park was surprisingly entertaining. It's where I got these guys," he said, tapping the water of the pond a little. The baby fish swam up to him in response, hoping for more food.

Hana's mouth was agape. "Man! That sounds so cool!" He bounced a little in place with excited and his hair seemed to ruffle up. "Dude, you realize you're like, the most amazing person ever, right? I wish I could do the stuff you do."

"Oh, goldfish, neat." Hana dipped his fingers into the water. "We had fish back home."

Zouichi smiled a little. "It's not like I did it by myself. And give yourself some credit -- I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who wish they could do what you can with a sword."

Besides, Hana had something else: a kind of infectious excitement that was hard to resist and probably even harder to duplicate. Zouichi didn't think he could ever be so openly happy about things the way Hana often was.

"Oh yeah? As pets?" A baby fish came up to nibble at one of Hana's fingers, attracted by the motion.

Edited 2011-11-02 20:19 (UTC)

He shrugged. "I'm okay. I'd be even better if I could just find Amidamaru..."

"Well, yeh, sort of. They're just for the pond in the garden. Some medium sized Koi. At least, I think they're Koi. They could just be massive goldfish for all I know, right?"

Hana chuckled and kept his fingers still. "Tickles."

"Amidamaru?" Kind of a weird name. Not that his own name wasn't a little weird.

"Well, koi have barbels on the front of their mouths. And they get bigger than goldfish. But I think they're both cute." Zouichi put a little of the goldfish's flake food into Hana's free hand. "Here, you can give them some of this."

"So you have a pond at your house?"

Edited 2011-11-02 20:42 (UTC)

"Mmmhmm."

"Thanks." He sprinkled the flakes across the water, watching carefully in anticipation. Taro trotted over to peer over the edge of the body of water.

"Yeh. I live in an inn so it was kinda there for the guests. Something nice to look at, you know? My parents used to rent it when it was an disused inn and it still had fish in the pond so when my moms took over and made it into an working inn again she kept the pond and made it a bit bigger and fancier."

Hana smiled. "It's nice sitting in the garden and watching them jump out. Like they're just so happy they have to leap out and show someone."

Just don't fall in, Taro. As Hana sprinkled the goldfish flakes over the water, the baby fish seemed to gain new life, zipping back and forth to devour the bits of food. Om nom nom.

"I didn't know you used to live at an inn. Was it a ryokan like this one?" Hana's mother sounded pretty industrious; it must have been hard work maintaining everything for the guests.

Zouichi leaned in a little closer to the pond. "They're sort of relaxing to watch, aren't they? It would be nice if they'd had more places like this where I came from." But alas, Zouichi's Earth was mostly concrete and buildings. He hadn't had much time to sightsee, anyway.

Taro ruffled his feathers in surprise and pawed at the darting colours in the water.

"Yeh. It's called The Funbari Onsen." He tilted his head in thought. "I think Ryu told me that it used to be the En Inn before we took over."

He turned to Zouichi. "What's your world like exactly? I mean, I know you told me about everyone getting sick but what did it look like?"

"Sounds like a nice place." Actually, it sounded a lot like this one, since there was an onsen here, too. Zouichi watched as Taro pawed at the water, not really sure how to answer Hana's question.

"Are you sure you want to know? I don't mind telling you, but... it's not very pleasant."

Taro gave an odd, happy chirp, flapping his wings and running back and forth along the edge, following the swimming fish.

Hana shrugged. "I know about Cassandras world. It's not nice either. But she's my friend, and I wanna know about her."

He kept his gaze on Zouichi, unwavering. "You're my friend too. I wanna know about you."

Zouichi nodded. "All right. Well..."

He paused for a moment, trying to figure out where to start. "A couple hundred years ago, the humans of Earth were doing fairly well; in fact, they were pretty far along in colonizing Mars as well as Earth, and thinking about space travel to other planets. But things went sour pretty fast after the scientists on Mars discovered an extraterrestrial organism out there in space. It was small, similar to an Earth arthropod, and infected by an unknown pathogen. They tried to research that pathogen, to figure out potential applications for human use -- but what they really ended up creating was a highly mutable virus that went airborne and began infecting the human population. It wasn't long after that Earth lost contact with the Mars colony. And as far as we knew, there was no one left alive there. That virus that wiped out the Mars colony -- that was the N5S virus I was created to counteract."

"Woah. You guys got people to live on Mars? That's pretty awesome."

Hana didn't want to admit he wasn't too sure was a pathogen was but as he listened, his expression grew sympathetic.

"That's harsh. Losing a whole planet. Sounds too big to be real..." He bit his lip in thought. "But then, what about Earth? And the zombies you mentioned before?"

"Yes. For a time, anyway. By the time I was created, however, I doubt anyone would have wanted to live in the Martian colony." Without anyone to run the terraforming operations, Mars had slowly reverted back to its original state: unable to support life. Terran life, anyway.

"About a year before I was released, a megacorporation called the DRF sent out an expedition to Mars, supposedly to investigate what had happened there. But something went wrong and one of the infected astronauts ended up contaminating Earth's atmosphere with N5S. It didn't take long for the virus to spread. Most of the people who were still alive and uninfected had to retreat into underground shelters. The people who didn't make it ended up as drones."

Zouichi's smile was without much humor. "That was the official story, anyway. In truth, the DRF spread the virus as part of a plan. It wasn't long before they sent out their people all over the globe to purposefully infect the humans that were left. The only people not in danger of being infected were the Accommodators, since they were naturally immune. But the DRF took care of them, too -- they kidnapped most of the Accommodators to help along their research on N5S."

"No way." He looked at the pond, trying to imagine what Zouichi was telling him. "That sounds horrible."

"What?!" Hana shouted, eyes wide in shock. "They what?! Did it on purpose?! Why would you kill everyone on purpose?!"

"N5S, in its original form, is fatal," said Zouichi. "But it can also give drones remarkable regenerative abilities and increased strength. They saw an opportunity in that, and took it. The virus they issued to members of the DRF was refined to grant infectees the benefits of the disease without affecting brain function. Of course, that didn't change what they'd done to everyone else on Earth."

"As for why they forced it on everyone... there was disagreement in the ranks. I think a smaller branch of the DRF wanted to use it somehow to convert humanity into a species of immortals. But the Matriarch wanted to use it to recreate the Earth to suit her own vision."

"Anyway, I was created as a countermeasure to the DRF and N5S. I was supposed to track down the remaining Accommodators, bring them back to Headquarters. It didn't turn out quite that simple, though."

Hana clenched his jaw and balled his fists in anger. "Sounds pretty messed up to me. Why do they get to make choices like that? Why do they get to hurt people like that?"

He blinked. Wait... Zouichi was made by those people? "It didn't?"

"Why? Because they had the power to back up those decisions, I guess. But they never would have been able to go through with it if there weren't people in the DRF willing to follow those kinds of orders. Maybe some people joined in because they wanted power, or because they thought there was no point in fighting back. Hard to tell."

Zouichi frowned. "It's kind of a long story. I was created by a company called Toua Heavy Industries; it was one of the DRF's corporate rivals and probably the best-equipped to try and counteract the DRF, especially after the world governments went down. In the end, though, it just wasn't enough. Toua's Headquarters was destroyed, and most or all of its personnel along with it. Those that escaped the infection, anyway..."

He looked a little distant then, like he was remembering something that had happened a long time ago. Except it wasn't a long time ago, was it? He hadn't been on the ship that long. "Anyway, that was what my world was like. I told you it wasn't particularly cheerful."

Summertime [Open]

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