A/N So, welcome to the first chapter of this story. It's a wee bit short this time around. Don't worry too much about it though, this is an establishment chapter, meant only to introduce the characters that will be in the story. Hope you all enjoy, check my profile for updates on production. Constructive criticism is appreciated, trolling will be shoved out an airlock.
Tokyo, Japan
In the city of Tokyo, a lone woman stands on top of a building. "My Ashikabe, I have found thee. Now prepare thyself for death!" The woman yells out as she spies the shaded figure approaching her. She flings out her hand and yells "Water Celebration!" A bolt of water streaks towards the shadowy figure, only to evaporate away at the last minute. Everything is suddenly unbearably hot around her! Gasping, the woman spins around and gazes out upon the city, a city now on flames, a sky wreathed in clouds of smoke and raining fire down upon the helpless citizens in it.
Tsukiume gasps as she jolts upright from her dream, still laying in her perch atop the building she had fallen asleep on, safely out of reach of any of the vile humans down below who might defile her body. That dream...it had started like so many other dreams she has had in the past week but now, now it has changed. Fire? "Doth Homura go insane?" She asks herself as she rises up to her feet, looking out over the city. The image of the city in flames flashes through her mind, briefly overlaying the beautiful panorama beneath her and causing her to shudder and hold herself.
"Such a nightmare. I love not these monkeys, but I do not desire to see their destruction." She says to herself, looking around. Figuring that some exercise will help clear her head, she starts leaping from rooftop to rooftop once more, seeking out a battle with any who would have it and otherwise staying on the move. She knows that the dream she had been having, before it turned to a nightmare, means that she is reacting to an ashikabe. "When I find thee, Ashikabe, I shall give thee death. Just as I have dreamed." She vows as she jumps from building to building.
Halfway across the city, Minato shivers a little bit. Someone is thinking dirty things about him, he just KNOWS it. Kusano, a young girl he just rescued from the atrium of the city, smiles up at him. "Are you ok, big brother?" She asks, smiling out at the back yard of Maison Izumo. She's having the best day of her life so far. Her big brother came and found her, kept the scythe lady away, and then Musubi beat her down. Now he's her ashikabe! Things couldn't get any better.
"Yeah, Kuu, I'm fine." He says to her, patting her head and rubbing it gently. "So, uh…Kuu?" He says nervously.
Kuu looks up at him with a smile. "Yes, big brother?"
He looks out across the back yard, now overgrown with all the plant growth that happened when young Kusano emerged due to him kissing her. "Are you…going to do something about all these plants?" He asks.
Kuu grins at him and laughs a bit in response.
"I don't know." Comes a sweet voice from behind as Musubi comes out in her gym outfit and sits next to the pair. "I think the yard looks very pretty this way."
"Well, won't Miya get just a bit upset though?" He asks.
"Well…." Musubi says, putting a finger up to her chin. "I dunno, maybe?" She smiles to her ashikabe and tilts her head to the side in that way that shows there's not a whole lot going on upstairs right now.
"Don't worry, Minato." Comes another voice. All three of them look back and up to see the landlady, Miya Asama, standing behind them. "I'll have you weed the yard tomorrow. Now come along, dinner is ready."
Okinawa, Japan
Lieutenant Brent Shepard sighs as he moves through the corridors of the US base he and his men are assigned to on Okinawa. Their end goal is to get to the briefing room. "I just don't get it, Jake. I don't even look like the guy!" He complains to his staff sergeant as he walks along the hallways of the main base building.
The man in question grins a big white grin, amused that this has happened yet again to his CO. "Yeah, but come on! You have 'Shepard' as your last name!" He says in his deep voice. Staff Sergeant Jacob Scott, a black man who grew up in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, has the build of a linebacker and a deep voice to back it up. Everyone who meets him for the first time, however, is surprised by how kind and friendly of a man he is. He's just as capable of cracking a good joke and enjoying a beer on his time off as he is capable of putting two in the chest and one in the head. "You should take it as a badge of honor to be called 'Commander Shepard' by the newbies. I mean, in the game, the dude saves the galaxy and pulls off all sorts of impossible shit."
Shepard nods and groans. "Yeah, but come on! That kind of thing puts expectations on my shoulders that I couldn't possibly live up to! I can just barely keep the squad running, and that's with your help. How am I supposed to do that AND pull off being some superhero?"
"I wouldn't worry about it too much. Hopefully, you'll never get so deep in the shit that you'll have to live up to the hype." He says as they turn into the briefing room. It only takes them a few minutes to find a seat and sit down for the briefing. "Besides, you give it a few weeks, they'll stop calling you by that name. You'll see."
Shepard nods a bit and groans, resting his head in his hands as the others continue to file in. Just as he is about to speak, the base commander comes in and everyone rises to their feet. "Be seated." The older man says. The marines all sit back down.
"Right, down to business. We are going to be loading up on the USS Valkyrie in thirty minutes' time. NASA has detected a meteor shower en route to our planet." The screen behind him shifts to show a telescope image of space. The next image to pop up shows several more dots where there were none before.
"It's looking like the first of these meteors will hit off the eastern coast of Japan in the next day. It's just the first in a long stream of meteors that are going to impact around the world over a twenty-four hour period. Fortunately, it looks like they'll all be water landings." The image shifts as he says that to a rotating globe, showing projected landing areas for the meteor shower in pulsing circles out to sea around the globe. When it finishes turning, it zooms in to show a map of Japan. There's a red dot in the Sea of Japan to the north of the main island, just inside the bend of the island itself.
"Still, the Japanese government has asked us to be ready after the impacts in case of tsunamis. The Valkyrie will station here with the Ronald Reagan task force and we will deploy around the countryside as needed." He says, pointing to the dot that has the label 'CVN-76'. "Are there any questions?"
One man, a captain, lifts up his hand and is recognized. "Why are we positioning there, sir? Wouldn't it be better to position to the south of the island, where we'd be closer to the possible disaster zones?"
The base commander grins. "The Navy is nervous about putting its precious ships in the firing line of a meteor shower. So, we're on this side of the main island, not the other. Anything else? No? Alright, head out and have your troops gear up and get ready to board."
With that, all the soldiers rise up from their seats, chit chatting among themselves as they head out of the room. The biggest question, and the one no one asked, is why the JSDF can't handle this on their own. A few meteors and they are deploying the entire MEU from Okinawa?
"Well, Sergeant Scott, gather up the men." Shepard says to his Sergeant, who nods and heads off. "Have them assemble in the squad briefing room." Scott waves as he leaves the room in the other direction to where Shepard is going.
Five minutes later, the squad starts to file into the briefing room on the other side of the base. Once everyone is there, Shepard gives them the same briefing, roughly, that he got from the base commander. "So there you have it. Any questions?" He asks, looking around the room.
"Yeah, why are they deploying us for a meteor shower?" Asks one of the many Private First Classes in the platoon, PFC John Davis.
"Hey, I don't like being cooped up in the ship with nowhere to go any more than you do." Shepard says, "But we're going to do it anyway. We get paid for this shit, so we're going to go and get it done. Anything else?"
PFC Gonzalez is the next to speak up. "Where are we going once the ship gets to where it's going?" He asks.
Shepard shrugs. "Your guess is as good as mine." He says, then looks around. No one else speaks up so he nods. "Alright, we've got this. Let's get our shit and get on the ship. Dismissed." He says, heading off with his troops to pack up for deployment.
By the end of the day, the Wasp class USS Valkyrie has set sail and is steaming north along with the US 7th Fleet to the position it would hold during the meteor shower.
Tokyo, Japan
Homura, the Guardian Sekirei, jumps around the city, following a series of flashes on the rooftops of a few buildings. He can see that the flashes are from electrical discharges. Those damn twins are at it again. Sure enough, when he finally catches up with them, the two twins of electricity, Hibiki and Hikari, have a Sekirei cornered on the roof top and are grinning and glaring at the girl while their electricity sparks up.
"I thought I told you two ladies before. The unwinged ones are not for you to fight." He says, landing between them and their target. The two girls recoil a bit.
"Shit, what are YOU doing here?" Hikari says in a loud, challenging voice. "Do you WANT to take us both on?!" Hibiki looks a little bit nervous, remembering the last few times they tangled with this particular Sekirei.
"Are you two sure you want that? Because I'm game if you are." Homura says, holding out a hand and sprouting a flame up in it. This seems to scare the twins as they take a step back.
After a few seconds of standoff, the more aggressive twin huffs angrily. "You're just lucky we don't fight winged ones!" She says, turning and hopping off, her sister following her.
Homura sighs and douses his flame, glad that this time his powers are listening to him. He turns to the Sekirei the twins were after and looks at her, his black mask covering the slight grin. "Still having a hard time finding your destined one?" He asks.
The Sekirei nods, unclenching her fists. "Yeah, thanks." She says. "I didn't want to fight them, I had no reason to."
Homura nods. "Yes, those of us with no ashikabe have no reason to fight. Good luck in finding yours." He says. He watches the other Sekirei as she hops off, heading to find a place to recover.
"So nice of you, guarding the unwinged ones like this." Says a seductive voice from above. Homura looks up and sees a tall woman, well-endowed and wearing a form fitting purple dress, come down and land behind him, a large bottle of sake in her hand.
"It's my job." He says to her. "To guard the unwinged ones until they have all been winged."
The purple dressed woman with dark hair looks at him seriously. "But what will you do after?" She asks.
Homura shrugs. "I guess I'll just kill that man. It'll be good to make sure that all the feathers I guarded until they found their partners will live happily ever after."
She smirks at him. "There's a storm coming though, one that's far worse than any we've ever seen before."