Author's Notes: Before you start reading, please be aware that this chapter is the first in a series of one shots regarding the cast of characters, OC and canon, from my main story, Still Waters 3. If you haven't read some of that first, you won't understand these one shots much. Also, I am aware this first one is a little underwhelming; I just felt it was necessary at the time and later ones will be better, hopefully. If you have any requests or ideas for situations my OCs from my story Still Waters 3 or the canon characters' aged up selves can get into, let me know. If I feel like I can work with it, I'll write something up.

Title: How Taro Met Possum

Genre: Slice of Life, Action, OCs

Rated: T

Timeframe: August 3rd, 2007, two years before the start of SW3.

Spoilers: None, though reading to chapter four or five of SW3 might help your understanding of the characters. This one was written specifically to give a little insight into the relationship of Taro and Possum for the reader to understand them better in the upcoming chapters of the main story (25, 26, 27...).

How Taro Met Possum

'So, I'm finally here, huh?' Twelve-and-a-half year old Possum Cade thought as she stepped off the train and shouldered her bag. She glanced around the crowded platform and eyed the others around her. All it took was a short look at the tall man with the glasses and the cigarette, the cute boy a little older than her with the glasses and briefcase, and the smirking girl with the sideways ponytail the other two seemed to be seeing off, and she couldn't help but smile. Already she had found others like her... 'Looks like coming to Mahora was the right choice after all,' she thought as she strolled away from the train station with a spring in her step.

'I should call grandma and Lucy and tell 'em I made it okay...' she thought as she walked along. She caught a Japanese boy staring at her, and smiled. He turned away quickly, and her smile became a toothy grin. The boys were funny, too! "Heh~"

After a few minutes of walking, she stepped off the road into an alley entrance and knelt down, placing her bag in front of her. She unzipped it and rooted around inside for a moment, searching for the map she had drawn. Past the small roll of cloth, the bags of weird powders, and the leather bag full of small glass bottles containing a variety of mysterious oils, she found it. She zipped the bag shut and settled back, leaning against the wall of the building behind her as she studied the map.

"Hmm..." She looked for a street sign or anything that would make a good landmark, and frowned slightly. Everything was written in Japanese...then again, that was what she had expected, really. She contemplated pulling out the Japanese-English dictionary she had bought in San Francisco, but ultimately decided against it. All it had taken was a few awkward conversations with the natives upon her arrival to show her that the dictionary was all but useless.

Somewhere in the distance, the roar of motorcycles grew louder, and she realized for the first time that the sound had been steadily growing for some time. Curious, she moved to the mouth of the alley and looked both ways, but she couldn't see anything from where she was through the crowds of people. She shot a quick look around the alley and smiled when she spotted a telephone pole at the far end. She darted over and shimmied up until she reached roof level, then hopped over onto the roof of the convenience store to her right. The motorcycles were very close now, gunning their engines. She could hear shouts and drivers beeping their horns. She ran over to the edge of the roof and shaded her eyes as she looked out...and sure enough, there they were. She estimated about twenty bikes, all modified crazily. They seemed to be chasing something... She squinted her eyes against the sun's glare and made out a Japanese girl about her own age pushing through the mass of pedestrians as the motorcycles roared to a stop and gunned their engines. Several members of the biker gang hopped off their motorcycles and chased after her, shouting something in Japanese while their friends sped off, no doubt in order to circle around from behind.

She frowned. That just wasn't right. How could they chase after a girl like that? As she watched, the girl finally escaped the crowd and ran directly for the alley she herself had been standing in moments before. She ran over to the edge of the roof and looked down at the panting girl. "Hey! Hey you! Are you okay?"

The girl looked up at her, uncomprehending. "Ano..."

She blinked. 'Oh yeah, language barrier...' "Just a second! Wait a second!" she said, holding up her index finger in what she hoped wasn't some sort of obscure cultural insult. She dropped to her knees and began digging through her bag frantically, looking for the Japanese-English dictionary. She was distantly aware that from the sound of it, the group of motorcycles that had attempted to circle around had split up even further and were racing around the area in several groups. A moment later she pulled the dictionary from the bag and flipped it open, searching for the section she needed. "Okay...okay...there!" She ran over to the edge of the roof and looked over, but the girl was gone. She frowned. "Where did she go...?"

Thirteen year old Urashima Taro hopped onto the roof from the telephone pole and looked at the odd foreigner, who now seemed to be looking for her in the alley below. 'What the hell...?' she thought. What could this girl want with her? The girl didn't seem aware of her presence.

"Hey, what do you want?" she asked irritably, pleasantly surprised by the girl's swift turn toward her and the way her hand went into the back pocket of her shorts, as if reaching for a weapon. The stranger spotted her and relaxed, then opened a small book and muttered something in what Taro thought was probably English. Taro cocked an eyebrow. "Hey, this is Japan, speak Japanese."

The girl watched her speak for a moment, seeming to mull over the words, then flipped through the book for a moment, pausing here and there. "You...of...scooter..." Taro watched, curious, as the girl paused and frowned, and started over. "Motorcycle...man...strong insult...brawl...argument...fight...Yes, fight!" she said, seemingly proud of herself for this nonsensical spurt of words.

Taro just gaped. What. The. Hell. "Look, you ain't making any sense, so I'll just go away now-"

"Okay? You okay? Okay, okay, okay...You okay are you?" the girl said.

"...yeah" Taro said after a moment as she deciphered what the girl had been trying to say, then decided to take pity on her. "It's not 'You okay are you?', it's supposed to be just 'Are you okay?'," she said, carefully articulating the syllables so the girl could understand her. 'Honestly, these foreigners...just learn the language already!' It was embarrassing!

The girl seemed to think about it for a moment, and nodded. "Are you okay?" she asked again.

Taro nodded, and the girl nodded again, looking relieved. Then she stepped up to Taro and offered her hand, smiling wide. Taro was a little taken aback, but took the girl's hand awkwardly, and almost jerked her hand back when the other girl squeezed it and pumped it up and down a few times before letting go.

"My name is Possum Cade. What is your name?" she said slowly, her pronunciation almost correct. Taro had the feeling it was a phrase the girl had practiced a lot

"Urashima...Taro," Taro said hesitantly, looking away as she spoke her given name. Damn her mother for giving her such an embarrassing boy's name...! To her surprise, the girl simply nodded.

"Urashima Taro," Possum said, and nodded yet again. "Okay. Okay is name. Er...yes."

"Um...yeah. I'll be going now," Taro said as she moved over the edge of the roof and looked down into the alley. 'Okay, that was my good deed of the day, now back to the fight...' Then the girl grabbed her arm and Taro gave her an annoyed look.

"No. No no no," Possum said awkwardly. She let go of her arm and began to hastily thumb through her dictionary again, and Taro took the opportunity to climb over the edge of the roof. The girl who called herself 'Possum' let out an alarmed squawk as Taro lowered herself over and hung there for a moment, then let go.

Her landing was perfect except for one thing: it happened barely five feet in front of a rather surprised group of bikers, the same ones who had been so intent on running her down mere moments before.

"Oh hell," she said as she they looked down at her.

"Heh, imagine that, here we are looking all over for her and she just drops out of the sky," the lead one said as he pulled a length of heavy bicycle chain from a pouch on his belt and began spinning it. Taro took a step back as he slowly moved forward, the chain making an unsettling whooshing noise as he spun it faster.

Taro didn't like chains; they could really tear a person up if you weren't careful. She preferred something like a baseball bat: simple, easy to use, and you could take someone out with a single solid whack to the knee and not worry about really hurting them. With a baseball bat, there wasn't really any need to practice to get good with it, either...she just wished she had thought to take one along when she went out earlier. A chain, on the other hand...you needed to be pretty competent with a chain just to avoid hurting yourself. She frowned as she sized him up. He was maybe twenty three, twenty four, tall, strong looking...he made a quick motion with the hand holding the chain and it shot forward, missing her face by a hair's breadth as she jerked back. "You...!" she growled. How dare he aim at her face!

"Heh, what's the matter, little girlie? Are you scared of a little chain? Scared of getting a little scar on that pretty little face? That's the least you're going to get after what you did to aniki! We won't forgive even if you are a little brat!" he said as he darted forward again and the chain swung up and...wrapped around the end of a 2x4.

Taro looked at the guy, then up at the chain. The guy looked up at the chain, the end wrapped around a long board that a girl up on the roof was holding, and then back down at Taro. "Oh sh-"

What he was about to say, luckily, was garbled when Taro's knee smashed his nose to pulp. Unfortunately, he failed to let go of the chain as he fell backward into his compatriots, and Possum, being quite a bit lighter than his two hundred pounds, let out a yelp as she was unceremoniously yanked off the roof. She felt straight into the group of bikers, nailing one in the head with an elbow and sending him staggering against the wall while another took the honor of breaking her fall with his head. A hundred and five pounds of girl landed on him and drove him to the ground, gasping for breath. She rolled off still holding her stick and wasted no time, driving it into the stomach of the first available target and forcing him to double over and fall to his knees in agony. She bashed him in the head while Taro kicked the next one in the face. The last one, seeing what had happened to his five big, strong, adult biker friends at the hands of two girls who were barely into their teens, fled screaming.

And then the alley was silent save for the sound of two girls panting and the groans of the badly beaten bikers.

Possum looked at Taro and grinned, and Taro couldn't help but grin back.

"You know, you're not half bad," Taro said, grinning crookedly.

Possum grinned back at her, her expression slightly confused.

"Oh, right, you don't speak Japanese, huh..." Taro said, scratching her head as she glanced back down at the fallen members of the biker gang for a moment. "Um...GOOD JOB, YES!" she said in heavily accented English, adding a thumbs-up to make sure the other girl understood.

Possum brightened up and grinned wide. Until the sound of rapidly approaching motorcycles broke the relative peace of the alley. Taro grabbed Possum's hand and they ran, grinning like a maniac as a motorcycle turned into the other end of the alley and gunned toward them. Taro slipped aside, but Possum swung her bag around and hit the rider in the face as he roared past, knocking him off the back of the bike, which bounced back and forth between the walls of the alley before flipping and rolling over the injured members of the biker gang and ultimately somersaulting across the road, finally coming to rest in some bushes beside a bench to the accompaniment of startled cries from the locals.

The two of them looked at each other and took off running. Taro glanced back at Possum, who looked back at her with bright eyes and a wicked grin, and couldn't help but laugh; Possum broke out into wild laughter too. As they fled the scene of carnage, laughing like a couple of lunatics, Taro couldn't help but think that this might be the start of a beautiful friendship.

Author's Notes: Well, here's a little bit about Possum's arrival in Mahora and how she became Taro's best (and only) friend. There's nothing like a little street gang violence to bring two people together ;p Also, wondering who the bikers are and who 'aniki' is? They're part of a biker gang that was trying to terrorize Mahora at the time. No one took them seriously, and Taro beat 'aniki' up and left him in front of a police station. They are quite confused about the situation. It's okay, they'll realize what kind of place Mahora is and what sort of people live there before too long, and run away screaming like little girls.