Calm before the Storm
Ryan yawned as he outstretched his hands and feet. He rubbed his eyes and stretched his arms one last time before returning to his Pentium 4 laptop. He jostled his mouse a bit, causing the inky blackness of the computers energy saver screen to vanish. Replacing it was a cluttered desktop containing various virtual documents, and a large pan shot of Bagan, standing amidst the rubble of Asuka temple wallpapering the background.
Ryan's white arrow danced around the screen for a few seconds before finally settling on a word document entitled Shisa lion museum tour. Ryan double clicked, revealing an empty wasteland of unconquered paper.
He sighed a little bit and began typing random letters onto the bare white sheet, "The Shisa lion statue is a big ugly rock, and I want to go home." Ryan said aloud as he typed it.
Another long sigh escaped Ryan's lips as he pressed the odious backspace button. "I'm never going to get this article written!" Ryan complained.
Ryan's moment of despair was temporarily displaced as he heard a creaking door sound effect, indicating someone on his instant messenger service had just logged in. Ryan moved the cursor over to the appropriate icon to see who had come aboard. Ryan read the name Reporterchic and knew instantly that it was Kari Hiraki one of his fellow journalists. Ryan began to type out a greeting to his friend when two more door sound effects were heard. Ryan scanned over the; names RIKanda and Specterman, Ryia Kanda and Ryoja Endo.
After a few friendly greetings the four screen names began to converse amongst themselves reporting the latest news on their given assignments.
"This bites!" Ryan typed. "Kari gets to cover the phantom moth, Ryia's seeing if she can bring Walkers Kongzilla project out in the open and Ryoja gets to go to the united states to cover that Daikaiju convention in Chicago, I'm from Chicago! It should be me over there!"
swoosh a response from Kari flashed onto the screen;" I thought you were from Philadelphia." she teased.
swoosh another message this time from Ryia, "And before that he was from Washington D.C."
An lol coming from Ryoja caused Ryan to grumble something unintelligible under his breath.
A second message from Ryoja appeared, "Seriously Ryan, your assignment isn't that bad. The Shisa Lion statue is one of the greatest archeological finds of our century; frankly speaking I would be honored to have been chosen to cover it."
Ryan sighed and typed a response to Ryoja, "Sigh yeah I know. Sorry for sounding like such a jerk."
"Hey, don't worry about it." Ryoja wrote back.
Ryan nodded even though it could not be seen, " It's just I'm so very tired of being a nobody, doing such mundane work."
"You call stumbling upon an enormous secret bio-weapon factory run and financed by the world's most successful and lucrative business man mundane?"
"No-I mean yes, I don't know. I just have this feeling, this burning desire to do great things. Ever since I saw Bagan appear in Ausuka I knew that I had to find a way to stop such evil from taking advantage of good people. Blast it! I should be going after Walker! I didn't sign up to become a journalist so I could study rocks, I became one so I could expose people like Ataru Walker for the scum that they are and make them pay for their crimes."
Ryan's fist tightened in anger, "I don't want to talk about this anymore. I've got a big day tomorrow and I need to get some sleep."
Before anyone could respond Ryan logged off and shutdown his laptop. He took a quick glance at his arm in time to see the bluish armor that had wrapped itself around it vanish back into his body. Ryan stared at his arm, poking it a few times to see if he could get the armor to return. Walker had done something to him when he had been knocked unconscious back on Sollgel, and as a result every now and then when he became angry or emotionally distressed a blue armor would cover his right arm. The armor troubled him greatly, there was no telling whether it was harming or helping him.
Ryan sighed as he plopped onto the hotel room mattress, he wished Gabara his gray tabby cat was here. Doctor Seiryuu, Ryan's Kaijuology professor had offered to take care of Gabara, but Ryan still missed him. He couldn't help but chuckle as he imagined Gabara driving Dr. Seiryuu completely insane. With images of a gray tabby jumping on the head of his university Professor Ryan fell fast asleep.
