Golden Eyes

Chapter 1: Exposed

Yoko pushed her hair up into its usual long red pony tail. She wasn't going to be seeing any of her students today, so she felt free to dress as she pleased. Today she wore a tight beige tank top that showed only a thin strip of her lean tan midriff and a new pair of hip hugging jeans. She hopped on her bike and rode. She knew where she was going, but pretended that the beast who had once counted Kamina as an enemy was not who she was going to see.

It wasn't as if she could describe the attraction between them.

This affair hadn't started long ago.

It all started on the third anniversary of their defeat of the Anti-Spirals. Viral had been among those that had assembled to honor those that were lost and to celebrate the future.

Three years of living apart from everyone, and she didn't feel like catching up with the loud, obnoxious and still inexplicably immature Team Gurren. Instead she sat in a corner, wondering about Simon, and how they'd all come so far, and accomplished so much and how something still seemed to be missing.

"Not enjoying the party, I see," Leeron swayed over with two wine glasses and gave one to her. "Well you're not the only one," he gestured to the opposite corner where a certain pale Beastman sat brooding. He too was a hero, but the rest of the partygoers seemed less inclined to come over and bug him like they did her.

"Maybe we're just not the partying types. Did you ever think of that?" She tried to adjust her shimmering gold dress so that it covered her bulging breasts. She was trying to live down her previous fashion flops, without much success. Leeron had bought this specifically for her to where this night, and it didn't leave all that much to the imagination.

"Dear, I think the two of you should loosen up. We're all friends here, and the two of you are both two pretty to mope," Leeron crossed his legs as he observed them.

"Ha," she laughed. Yoko would have never described Viral as pretty. Nobody but Leeron would ever dare. He was…other, strange. He was a Beastman, but different, more humane looking somehow. He did have a very humanlike from, a tall, lean one with slim, lanky muscles, except in his forearms, bulged to accommodate huge powerful beastlike hands with their sharp clawlike nails. His teeth too were sharp and pointed, like a shark's.

When he wanted, he could look terrifying. But there was a tiredness to him now. His immortal purpose was to observe the humans and record it. He as a soldier turned storyteller. But there were no stories he wished to tell that this crowd did not already know. So there he sat. Yoko did sort of feel bad for him. An eternity of observation seemed like a hard thing to look forward to on your own.

Of course, that's what Yoko felt she was facing. Kamina, Kittan, and all the men she'd almost had. She found the most enjoyment in the heat of battle, or in her school house with the children she taught. Yoko was aware she could probably have anyone she wanted. The problem was wanting any man more than what she'd already had. Things were better than before, in a peaceful sense, but not…completely.

As she'd been lost in thought, Leeron had started chattering away aimlessly about how work was going in Kamina City, politics, how he and his newest lover were getting on, how he'd recently shaved a gorilla's ass…

"Wait, what?" She interrupted him.

"There you go, hon, that'll teach you to pay attention when people talk to you," Leeron stood to stretch his lean limbs and set his wine glass on the table beside her. "I'm going to see if beast-hunk is feeling any chattier than you are," he swayed away.

She watched with mild interest as Leeron went up to Viral and obviously made some offhand come-on. Viral squinted his eyes and said something, no doubt unwelcoming.

Leeron sat down anyway.

Yoko couldn't help but laugh.

"Hello Miss Yoko, it has been awhile." To be honest she didn't remember the short, scruffy looking man in the gray suit addressing her. Most likely he was one of the hundreds who had helped in the fight against the Spiral King, or perhaps one of the many involved in the battle against the Anti-Spirals. They all looked the same to her, these faceless males she fought for and with; the only ones that stood out were dead, gone, or had moved on with their lives. In some ways, at her school, she felt like she'd moved on too, and other times it felt like she was living more in the past than anyone.

"Yes, it has," Yoko finally paid enough attention to the man to notice he was looking at her chest, rather than her face, as he talked. She snorted and started to get up to move away from the little creep.

"Would you like to dance?" A large gray hand was extended before her and she looked up to see the pale Beastman had managed to extricate himself from Leeron.

Viral was taller, blonder, with longer hair, and a paler, softer face than she'd remembered. He was wearing a classic black suit that made him almost blend in with the rest of the men in the large, fancied-up convention center.

"I would love to." She couldn't help but glare at the man who'd been ogling her. He'd be ogling her for a different reason now. Why would she rather dance with a Beastman than stay and chat with him?

She almost asked herself the same question until she put her hand into his extended palm. She felt his fingers clasp over her hand and almost gasped. It was such a foreign, yet oddly familiar feeling.

She almost retracted her hand but his wise, golden eyes stopped her. Courage, loss, strength, honor, rage, cynicism, doubt, and understanding; all too very human emotions. Best of all, he was meeting her gaze. Viral wasn't looking at her breasts. She was Yoko of the human resistance, Yoko of the school room, Yoko who loved Kamina, Yoko who busted him out of prison, Yoko who was there when he piloted Gurren Lagann in the same place as Kamina once had. Yoko, a person he had so little but so much shared history with.

She allowed him to lead her out to the dance floor. She saw all her friends and adopted family, paired off and happy in peace. She tensed when he placed his other large hand on her waist.

"Viral…" She almost stepped away again.

"Yoko, it has been awhile," the other man's words seemed both humorous and mocking coming from his lips, but oddly more fitting. It had been awhile. She'd never known what to think of this strange foe turned ally.

"It has, how has life as a captain been treating you?" She placed her hand on his shoulder and kept up the strange eye contact they'd managed to keep up all this time.

"It suits me, much as being in charge of that school and those children must suit you."

Viral's dancing skills must have been entirely picked up from watching others. His movements were stilted but not altogether ungraceful. Yoko followed his lead solemnly.

"How did you know what I've been up to?"

"Leeron," he said simply, a slight grin displaying a few of his pointed teeth.

"Ah, I see. Um has Leeron discovered anything more about the bits of Spiral energy you seem to have gotten from Simon?" She asked because she was curious.

One of the many differences between Beastmen and humans was the way they were created. Humans were born, Beastmen were cloned, which was why most Beastmen did not have any Spiral energy. Viral, though was special. He had been subjected to so much of Simon's supercharged Spiral energy, that some had rubbed off, and stuck. Leeron was fascinated about what effect this might have made on the immortal Beastman, but Viral threatened him with his cleaver every time Leeron got within five feet of him.

"If he knows more, he's not saying."

"That sure is surprising."

"Yes, very surprising."

An awkward pause took hold as neither of them really knew what to say. Yoko found herself staring into Viral's eyes once more. They were gold, like hers, leaning more towards yellow than the amber her eyes held. Still, she'd never noticed how similar they were. He was taller than her by only a few inches, his long blond hair reached his shoulders, and hung in jagged, but well maintained strands around his pale face. She was filled with the sudden urge to move her hands just a little bit higher up his shoulder, to touch the golden strands and see if they were as soft as they looked.

Viral cleared his throat and Yoko realized that the song had ended.

"Oh, gee, sorry I—" Yoko started.

"Would you like to get something to drink?" Viral asked suddenly when she let him go.

"Yes, yes I'd like that." Yoko felt strangely exposed following Viral across the dance floor to the open bar. Out there, with him, she'd forgotten who they were and had felt warm and sheltered from everything she used to be, tried to be and wanted to be. She just was there, hidden from the rest of the world, and yet exposed.

All because of one stupid dance with a Beastman.