Title: Alitaptap

Universe: Trauma Team

Rating: PG

Character/Pairing/s: Gabe, Joshua, Alyssa, CR-S01, Maria; some CR/Maria and Naomi/Little Guy if you squint

Warnings/Spoilers: Some spoilers for Trauma Team; crack-ish; mentions of OCs; a teeny-tiny bit of Tomoe-bashing

Summary: Gabe reads a bedtime story to Joshua and Alyssa.

Disclaimer: Don't own Trauma Team. I don't even own the game; I borrowed it from Panda. /sulks Also, I don't own Alitaptap; it's an old Filipino fable that I simply twisted to fit my own preferences. :I

Notes: Written 'cause I was really bored. :P You have no idea how many genre changes this story went through, haha. At first it was a Katekyo Hitman Reborn! fic, then it was a Super Smash Bros. Brawl fic, then it was a Katekyo Hitman Reborn! fic again for all of two seconds, before I decided, "What the heck, just go with Trauma Team and finish the story."

But anyways, enjoy my (verytwisted) retelling of Alitaptap~

Alitaptap

"Doctor Tomoe, doctor Tomoe, tell us a story, please?" Alyssa begged, pulling at Tomoe's labcoat. "Joshua and I are super bored!"

"Ah, hello, Alyssa! I can't read you a story right now, I've got a surgery in ten minutes," the surgeon apologized. "Could you please tell them a story?" she asked CR-S01.

"Why don't you do it, kid?" Gabriel Cunningham elbowed the black-haired man. "This should be interesting."

"C'mon, please?" Alyssa asked, staring at the prisoner with eyes full of hope. She held up a book. "One of the volunteers left this storybook here. Could you read it to us, pleeeease?" The girl's eyes literally sparkled. CR-S01, being ill-equipped to resist sparkling eyes (hey, you don't get much of that in prison, and Rosalia hadn't used "sparkling eyes" on him for years) caved and took the book from Alyssa.

"Yay! C'mon, Joshua, let's grab a blanket!" The prisoner sat cross-legged awkwardly on the ground. Alyssa and Joshua grabbed a couple of pillows and some blankets from the nearby couch (being in the children's wing of the hospital, the place was more comfortably equipped than the typical hospital lounge) and gathered around him. Alyssa draped a blanket adorned with smiling frogs over CR-S01's shoulders, then scooted over to sit next to Joshua. It looked for all the world like storytime in kindergarten, except that instead of little kindergartners, there were an eight-year-old and a ten-year-old, and instead of a nice kindergarten teacher, there was a convict reading the story.

Gabe decided to stay and listen in; he didn't want to go back to his office and that nagging RONI system, and aside from a couple of charts, he didn't have anything to do that night anyway. He decided to stay and watch the kid tell the story. Better than being nagged at by a computer; she's worse than my wife! He sat down on the ground and leaned his back against a couch. "Go on, kid, show us what you've got."

"Umm..." CR-S01 began. "Once upon a time, long, long, ago..."

Once upon a time, long, long ago, there was a beautiful valley at the foot of Mt. Pinatubo, called the Pinak Valley. A people known as the Pinak lived there, and they lived a happy and peaceful life. They grew rice and fruit on the fertile slopes of their valley, hunted boar in the surrounding forest, and caught fish in the nearby river.

"Can't you make it more interesting?" Alyssa whined. "This story's boring!"

"Shh! I wanna hear the story!" Joshua shushed his friend.

"Kid, no offense, but you're horrible at telling stories. Let me read it," Gabe said, taking the book from CR-S01. The prisoner relinquished the book gladly, and curled up under the aforementioned frog blanket. Hmm, this story is kind of boring. Maybe I'll jazz it up a bit. "Once upon a time, long, long, ago..."

Once upon a time, long, long ago, there was a beautiful valley at the foot of Warrior Mountain, called the Maryland Valley. A people known as the Resurgam lived there, and they lived a happy and peaceful life. They grew food and went to school, swam in the river and camped in the forest, did medical work, and traveled around the valley.

However, this life full of peace didn't last long; one hot summer, a terrible drought came and not a drop of rain fell for months. Their crops withered, and the river that ran through the valley dried up. The Resurgam knew that unless the rain returned, they would certainly starve to death.

Every night, the people gathered to pray for rain. Night after night, they sent many prayers up to their chief goddess, Esha Patel. "Hey! Esha!" somebody would yell up at the sky. "Would you mind sending us some rain? We're hungry!"

"And the people wondered why they didn't have any food?" One of the nurses, Darnell, rolled his eyes and handed Gabe a clipboard. "Dr. Cunningham, your storytelling is slightly skewed."

"Shut the ffffrick up, Darnell," Gabe muttered, remembering to censor himself just in time.

One black and starless night, their prayers were finally answered. Suddenly, a blaze of gold appeared in the skies. A golden chariot descended from the heavens and landed in the middle of Maryland Valley, and from it a man and woman emerged.

"I am Navel, and this is my wife Nozomi," the man said. "The Chief sent us to rule over you and to ease you of your suffering."

"If Naomi-san ever hears about this story, you may not survive," Tomoe advised him as she passed by. "It really isn't honorable to pair people up behind their backs, you know..."

Gabe simply smirked and continued with his story, noting as he did so that CR-S01 was asleep. Good, now I can insert him into this story too...

Navel continued to speak to the people, and as he spoke, the black skies opened and a fierce rainstorm lashed down upon the valley. The crops were watered and the river was refilled, and good fortune once again returned to the Resurgam people.

Years went by, and the people lived happily under Navel and Nozomi's rule. During these years, they had a son. He was a handsome but slightly strange child, because he was born without a heart. Instead of a heart, he possessed a magic star in the center of his forehead, which sparkled like a precious jewel. It was all that kept him alive. His given name was Erhard Muller, but the Resurgam nicknamed him Alitaptap, or bright star. Because, face it, nobody wants to live with a name like Erhard Muller.

"Erhard? That's a funny name, haha," Alyssa giggled.

Picturing the sleeping surgeon with a sparkly star in the middle of his forehead, Darnell broke out in giggles. Remembering where he was (and that the said surgeon had been convicted of killing hundreds) he decided to get away. Quickly.

Gabe smiled smugly at Darnell's retreating back before continuing with his story. Let's see, who to insert next...?

Erhard grew up to be a very handsome and powerful man. At eighteen years old, he was the people's pride and joy, in line to become the next leader, an amazing warrior, and to top it off, he was good at medicine too. Any who threatened the Maryland Valley were killed in an instant, and any who were injured in the valley's defense were healed by him. Many young women fell in love with him, and attempted to gain his affection. He rejected all of them, however, for he had no heart and could not love anyone.

One day, while Erhard was training, a black-haired woman limped past him. She was a rather odd sight for the Maryland Valley, with white face paint, hair tied up in a bun, and purple eyeshadow. When she saw him, she seized upon his arm. "O Prince Erhard! Please, take me to your parents!" Erhard politely complied with the woman's order.

He walked with her to the palace where he lived with his mother and father. As they entered the throne room of the palace, the woman let go of his arm and bowed before the throne. "O King Navel! I, the wise woman, Lady Tomoe, have had a vision. I have journeyed on foot from my cave in Japan to bring you sad news!"

"That's a long way to go on foot," Erhard remarked sarcastically. The king shushed his son. "What is it, Lady Tomoe?" he asked fearfully.

"I have seen that the future will bring ruin and sorrow. The warriors from the land of Rosalia will come with their warriors and conquer our land. They will throw poison into the lake, destroy our crops, kill our people, and bring destruction everywhere they go!" The woman gestured dramatically, her long, flowing kimono's sleeves trailing behind her arms as she did so.

"What're we going to do?" the queen asked. "Our warriors are fierce, but there aren't many of them; if we should lose them, we're doomed."

The woman sighed. "There is only one way to defeat the Rosalia. Erhard must marry and have a child; his child is the only one who will be able to lead our people and defeat the enemy. His child will conquer all invaders, and keep the peace in our land!"

"Wait, what? Alitaptap? Marry someone? Yeah. We're doomed," the queen moaned, putting her face in her hands.

"That wasn't in the story," one of the volunteers, a short Asian girl, contributed. "Half of the stuff you're putting in wasn't in the story." Gabe rolled his eyes and motioned for her to go away. She merely perched on the couch, grabbed a blanket, curled up beneath it, and listened to Gabe tell the story. Another volunteer plopped down next to her, and a few children followed Joshua and Alyssa's example, sitting on the floor to hear the story.

"Shh! I'm listening!" Joshua grumbled. Gabe smiled indulgently at his son and went on, not noticing the small crowd of children gathering around to listen.

"Alitaptap! Did you hear that? You must pick one of the young women and marry her, and you must do so at once! She has to have a child, so that the child can keep the peace and happiness that our people now enjoy!"

But Erhard didn't understand. He was heartless, after all; no plea could move him, no love for his family or his people could make him do anything. The king pleaded with his son, don't you see what will happen if you don't go along with this, but his son still would not cooperate. He remained as stiff as a statue, completely apathetic to his father's pleas. He merely stood in silence as his father pleaded with him.

His father finally lost his temper. "For the love of all the gods! You're such a dumba—"

Here the book was dashed out of Gabe's hands by Maria. "Quit corrupting the kids with your swear words," she scowled at him. Gabe's mouth fell open. Like you're one to talk!

"What's a dumba?" Joshua inquired innocently. Maria shot a smirk at Gabe. See? Corruption! He's gonna go home and your wife's gonna ask "Where did you learn that word?" and you're going to be in a hell of a lot of trouble, the smirk practically screamed. When he smirked back at her, she rolled her eyes and went to sit next to CR-S01, who was still fast asleep, and snoring slightly.

"Oh. Eh, hehe, moving on," Gabe continued, skirting around his son's question. The little kids began to yawn, while the older kids, mostly teenagers, looked amused and let the younger ones use them as pillows. It wasn't every day that you saw the great and sarcastic Dr. Cunningham reading a story to a bunch of little kids, after all.

"You're a stupidhead!" the king yelled. Taking out his sword, he jumped up and swung it at his disobedient son. To the bystanders' horror, the sword struck Alitaptap on the forehead and shattered the magical star into a thousand tiny pieces.

The throne room suddenly went dark, and Erhard collapsed to the ground, lifeless. The only thing that lit the dark throne room was the thousand pieces of his magic star, which flickered around as if they were stars with tiny wings.

"Oh, shi—"

Maria glared at Gabe and cleared her throat. "Ahem..." she gestured to the children surrounding the doctors on the floor. Most of them were asleep, but that didn't seem to matter to the young EMT.

"—itake mushrooms," the king mumbled.

"There goes that. We're doomed," the queen groaned, dropping her face into her hands again.

The next day, Lady Tomoe's predictions came true.

"Queen Nozomi! King Navel! The Rosalia are coming!" a tall man with dark brown skin and black hair called from his lookout post.

"Go, Captain Eagle, and defend our land!" King Navel commanded, pointing toward the rapidly advancing Rosalia army.

Despite Captain Eagle's and the rest of the Resurgam people's efforts, however, the Rosalia warriors came and laid waste to the Maryland Valley; their lead warrior, known only as "The Raging Bomber", nearly took out the King and Queen. Their second-best warrior, called "The Beast of the Lord", killed mercilessly, and wiped out nearly a quarter of the population on her own. They killed the people, poisoned the crops, and destroyed the lake. At the end, they had spread death, sorrow, and destruction everywhere, and only a few of the Resurgam people survived.

"This is a depressing story," Gabe commented to himself as he turned the page. He looked up to see if anyone was still paying attention, to see that almost everyone was asleep. Maria was sleeping on CR-S01's shoulder, Joshua and Alyssa were curled up under the same blanket and sleeping soundly, the rest of the kids were sprawled out on the ground and snoring, and even the volunteers that had been watching were asleep on the couch.

He considered stopping with his story— why bother finishing when all the people who had been listening were sleeping?— but when he saw the sleeping Joshua, he remembered when the boy had been small and he had read him bedtime stories. I haven't done this for a while... I forgot why I loved doing this so much. He smiled fondly. "Ah well, I'll just finish it, anyway..."

At the end of the battle, the beautiful and peaceful Maryland Valley had been turned into an empty and shallow swamp. When night fell, there was nothing but darkness, but later little sparkles of light came out. Reminiscent of the fragments of Alitaptap's star, they glimmered and flickered brightly in the black and starless night.

All that moved in the still night air were tiny sparks of light flitting to and fro. These glittering diamonds of light were really fireflies, but the people at the time believed they were the tiny fragments of Alitaptap's magic star.

And so, the fireflies came about; to this day, some people still call these sparkling fireflies Alitaptap, after the beautiful but heartless prince whose magic star remains scattered forever in the dark, dark nights. Once upon a time, a long time ago, these were fragments from the star on the forehead of King Navel and Queen Nozomi's son, the handsome Alitaptap.

Gabe closed the book quietly and extricated himself from the mass of sleeping children. Oh jeez, the nurses are going to kill me tomorrow... All these kids are on the floor and they're gonna have to carry them all to bed. Woken by the sounds of someone shifting around, Joshua blinked his eyes a couple of times and slowly, the blurry figure of Dr. Cunningham came into focus.

"D-doctor? Is the story done?" he whispered. Gabe, startled, turned to see his son.

"Uh, yeah, you kind of fell asleep," he informed his son in a whisper.

"Oh." The boy looked kind of disappointed. "Well, thank you for reading the story to us, Doctor!" Having said his piece, he squirmed back under the blanket and closed his eyes.

As he stood up and walked away, a faint smile touched the corners of Gabe's lips. "No problem, son. No problem at all."

Afternote: Thanks for reading! What did you think? Please leave a review! C: