Episode 5
Fuyuki: A Mysterious Occult Girl Makes her Appearance!

Part 1:

"Is that him?"

"Yup, that's him," answered the other female voice from the tree branch outside of the school.

"This is useless, what are we doing back here, anyway?"

"Quiet, old man, you talk to loud!" answered the younger female voice. "That's supposed to be the kid who knows ever more about the occult than me… Hinata Fuyuki…."

"His first name is Fuyuki, they say it backwards here," the male voice reminded her.

The more mature female voice shushed him, "All right, well, it looks as though we found him, so what're your plans now?"

"Easy; challenge him…"

"Challenge him? That's the most idiotic thing I've ever heard… What kind of challenge could you have over the occult?!"

The mature female voice and the younger one both shushed him now.

"If I can wait a little bit longer… I think things will fall into my favor…" answered the younger voice.

"Thank… Thank you for letting me come home with you today, Fuyuki-kun… It… It really…."

"It's no problem, Nishizawa-san! We have to prepare our booth for club recruits anyway!" Fuyuki answered, cutting off the poor girl from expressing her feelings any further. "I just wish we could think up a few more strategies to get more people to join…"

"Well… Whatever Fuyuki-kun can come up with, I'm sure it'll be just great!" said Momoka cheerfully, all while thinking, 'If someone does join, and ruins my Fuyuki-kun one-on-one time, there WILL be hell to pay….'

"Come on, let's get posters made!" Fuyuki exclaimed, snapping her out of her bitter thoughts.

"Hehe, right!" she giggled, but stopped, as did Fuyuki, as a rumbling came from right outside his front door.

"Eh? Fuyuki? What's going on?" Natsumi, who was walking up with Koyuki beside her, had just turned in to go to the house, and also heard the same rumbling.

All gave a yell as the front door gave way, and out barreled a huge wave of water. Washed up in the wave already was the Keroro Platoon, with Mois, Haruki (who looked like he'd been in the middle of repairing something) and Romama. All wore looks of panic matching the four schoolchildren, who were swept up in the water, that had transformed into a water spout.

When Fuyuki did wake up, he was coughing and soaked with water, but the floor around him was dry. He looked ahead, blurry-eyed, and gave a yell as into focus came a great white shark. He backed away from it, stopping as it swam away, disinterested in the boy.

"Gero… I should've listened to Natsumi-dono and not run the sink and bathwater at the same time…" Keroro still held his toothbrush in hand from where he had been brushing his teeth, and the others were sprawled out on the ground, still knocked out. Fuyuki stood up, and only now got a good look at his surroundings…

It looked like an indoor stadium of some sort, with the key difference that instead of a white dome above his head, there was a darkened teal color. A school of fish swam in front of the dome, and it finally clicked with him his exact surroundings.

"Wha…. Gunso! Gunso, wake up!" Fuyuki pleaded, kneeling down in front of the frog and shaking him.

"Ehh…? Fuyuki-dono?" Keroro blinked a few times, then looked about, and gave a squeak of a gasp. "How did we end up at the aquarium?!"

"I don't think this is the aquarium, Gunso!" Fuyuki exclaimed worriedly. At this time, Natsumi woke up, too, and kicked away Haruki, who to her horror had been right next to her. The mechanic gave only a grumble in response.

"Stupid Frog, what've you done now?!" she demanded in a yell, and Keroro looked helpless.

"This isn't something of my doing, Natsumi-dono!" he shouted out in defense. "We're as surprised as you and Fuyuki-dono!"

"Ehhh… Haruki? Dad? Papa?" Kirere muttered as she came to. She frowned, shook one of her gloves a bit, then removed it, allowing the sea water and lone fish to rush out.

"Wait…" Natsumi stood and took a few steps into the center of the large dome. "I think… I remember something like this once before…"

"Mm, I also recall something similar to this, Natsumi-dono," Keroro nodded and stood next to her, looking around at the ocean passing by them idly.

"It's about time you woke up!" a set of the doors in stadium slid open, and out from the shadows stepped out a girl, no older than Fuyuki and Momoka.

She wasn't a particularly tall girl, but she was scrawny, and dark-skinned, with jet black hair parted in the center and tied in a loose bun in the back. She wore a loose pink scarf about her neck, a three-quarter sleeve gray shirt, a few golden bangles, and dark jeans. Her brown sandals walked silently on the grass, and she smiled wickedly at the group, her dark brown eyes sizing up each of them.

"They wouldn't let me wake you up, said it was rude…" she said in Japanese, although she still maintained her Indian accent as she spoke.

"They? Who's they?" asked Natsumi.

The girl sighed and looked off to her left, bored with Natsumi already, "That doesn't matter… I just brought your friends here so they could watch me beat you, Fuyuki Hinata."

"Beat me?" Fuyuki repeated.

"But Fuyuki-dono's not particularly good in anything competitive!" Keroro chimed in.

"…Gunso…"

"Wow, so Keronians come in all different sorts of colors… And intelligences," she smirked. "You're more famous than you know, Fuyuki. A lot of us occultists know about you… You're one of the best in the world. And if I beat you, I'll be the best then!"

"What… Fuyuki-kun….?" Momoka's eyes fluttered open upon sensing something distressing Fuyuki, and sat up slowly. "Fuyuki-kun?"

"Listen here, you! I don't know what kind of weird alien you're supposed to be, but you need to get us back home right now!" Natsumi snapped, placing her hands on her hips and speaking sharply to the girl.

"I'm a Pekoponian, just like a lot of you," she answered. "And you really should be nicer to hosts!"

"Pekoponian?" Giroro repeated. "Where did she learn that word?"

"We don't even want to be here!" Natsumi snapped.

"What kind of challenges did you have in mind?" Fuyuki asked, and the Indian girl grinned; she was getting somewhere now…

"Like I told you, your knowledge of the occult versus mine," she answered, kicking at the ground and grinning, "Your friends can be spectators!"

"Fuyuki…."

"It's all right, Nee-chan. I don't think she's going to let us go unless I do what she wants…" Fuyuki answered calmly to his sister. "All right, I accept your offer, um…."

"Chandi," she replied.

"Shandi?" Keroro repeated.

"Sandy?" said Fuyuki questioningly.

"CHANDI!" she barked back and stomped her foot. "If you can't get it right don't say it!"

"So moody…" Keroro murmured.

"Kick her butt, Fuyuki!" Natsumi called out.

By the time he and Chandi the occult girl had taken their spots in a game-show like setup, complete with podiums and buzzers, the rest of the platoon was awake and now watching from the sidelines.

"There's so much to this that feels odd…" Giroro admitted as he sat there, folded arms, in between Natsumi and Kirere.

"Don't we need an announcer for this?" Fuyuki asked Chandi, who looked pleased and confident with herself as she stood beside him.

"….You're right… You! The red one!" Chandi called and pointed to Giroro. "You'll be the host!"

"W-What?! Why me?!" Giroro asked in a yelp.

"The sooner this is done, the sooner she'll let us go…" Natsumi answered, then tossed him out onto the field.

Then there Giroro was, looking tired, annoyed, holding a microphone in one hand, cards in another, and now with a bowtie on. "…I hate this…" he muttered.

"Go get 'um, Dad!" Kirere chirped out.

"…" Giroro sighed, then read over the first question. "Name the first colonists who traveled and mysteriously van—"

"Roanoke!" Fuyuki called out after buzzing in quickly. Chandi frowned and glared at her competition, a strong look of determination over her darkened features.

"One point, Fuyuki Hinata… Next question… The process by one is sent back in time and—"

"A time slip!" Chandi rang in for this one, and smiled confidently, straight at Fuyuki. Tamama looked over at Momoka, whose hands were gripping the armrests of her seat. She gripped them so hard that after a few moments they snapped right off.

"Boy, I need to find friends who aren't kids or aliens, this is beginning to be too much trouble for me!" Haruki sighed, and Natsumi went directly into shrew mode.

"It's not like we asked you to come over, Bill Dodger! What were you doing at our place today, anyway?"

"Fixing a washer…" Haruki answered, and at this point Keroro, who was sitting out of Natsumi's sight, grew panicked, and motioned for him to shut up.

"What was wrong with it… Exactly….?" Natsumi asked.

"One point, Fuyuki Hiniata!" Giroro called out.

"I hate game shows…." Romama muttered, leaning forward and outwardly bored.

"N-Natsumi-dono, forgive me!"

"Could you say, it all came out in the wash?"

"…I really hate game shows…" Romama mumbled as his nephew went flying over his head.

"One point, Sandy!"

"Chandi!" she shouted back.

The rest of the round went through, with the Keroro Platoon and company watching as Giroro went through question after question, and the round came to a tie.

"Is it me, or is he really getting into it?" Keroro asked Kururu as Giroro was now much more at ease and lively, emulating a regular Japanese game show host almost.

"What does he think he's hosting, Iron Chef?" Tamama wondered aloud.

"This is so embarrassing…" Kirere muttered, burying her face in her hands.

"Kuku, wait until he sees the playback!" Kururu grinned widely and held up his video camera a little higher.

"And it looks as though we have a tie!" Giroro announced. "For this we move on to our sudden death question!"

"Wait… I want to up the stakes a little bit…" Chandi said sharply.

"Up the stakes?" Natsumi said to herself.

"The winner gets to be the king of all occultists…" Chandi began. "…The loser gives up on all occult for good."

"What?!" there was a gasp in the audience.

"Fu… Fuyuki-dono wouldn't do something so foolish!" Keroro sputtered. "He's the more level-headed of us!"

"Ahhh… It seems as though the stakes have been raised! Will Fuyuki Hinata chicken out and accept defeat, or take the strange Pekoponian's offer?!" Giroro asked dramatically.

"What in the hell are you doing encouraging him!?" Natsumi barked.

"Ugggghhhh…" Kirere gave a groan, and buried her face even deeper.

"Hehehe…" Tamama giggled at his sister's plight, and then looked up as Fuyuki cleared his throat.

'All occult?' he thought, now sweating a bit, and his hand shaking as it held the buzzer. 'My books, my websites, the occult club… Gunso and everyone…'

"And your answer to the challenge?!" Giroro asked, and held the microphone out to Fuyuki.

"I… I decline…" Fuyuki answered quietly. "It… It isn't worth losing everything for!"

"Good job, Fuyuki…" Natsumi whispered beneath her breath.

"Heh… So you are a chicken after all… Jeeze, I would've thought you'd been at least a little bit tougher!" Chandi sighed. "What a disappointment…"

"That's enough, Chandi, you've had your fun," the group looked about as they heard a gently chiding female voice. It was followed up by a gruff one that made Romama's blood chill.

"The only thing that was a disappointment was how much of a waste of time this was!" Rokiki snapped as he walked through the same doors Chandi had come through, a blue, floating alien at his side.

The strange alien, the group realized after a moment, was a Meronian. She was a lighter blue than the ones they had met in past, with the same body shape, but with bright, yellow eyes, and wearing a dress that was bell shaped, with a large gold band around the center of it. On the top of the blue dress was a golden anchor symbol, one that was also on her forehead, and she had a small nub of a horn protruding from high on her forehead and further to the back. She had a short, fin-like extension coming from the back of her head and circling around halfway, giving the impression of bobbed short hair.

Next to her was the red tattooed Keronian, who looked none too happy as he walked out onto the field to fetch Chandi, and still wore his full uniform, looking as fierce as the day they had met him.

"I knew it was a mistake to tell you about any of them…" Rokiki sighed.

"Aw, I just wanted some fun…" Chandi moaned. "You two are so boring all of the time!"

"I think I missed some vital information…." Keroro mumbled.

"Ummm… Chandi-san, would you mind telling us what all of this is about?" Fuyuki asked nervously, and the Meronian floated over to him and laughed, bowing apologetically.

"Chandi just wanted someone to play with… She remember Rokiki-kun telling her about you, and she wouldn't be quiet until we introduced you!... We'd thought it'd be something a bit more civil, though…."

"It's not a battle to the death or anything…." Chandi sighed. "I was just having a little fun is all."

"Chandi-san has a really weird sense of fun…." Fuyuki said aloud to himself with a nervous chuckle.

The Meronian now sat in the field with the others, beside Chandi and Rokiki. Rokiki sat with his arms folded, looking grumpy and ready to strike at a moment's notice. The Meronian was the complete opposite of him, wearing a cheery grin. Chandi looked bored and ready to move onto something else.

"So were you here for a long time, too?" Fuyuki asked the Meronian, and she giggled.

"Only a few years…" she answered.

"Don't tell them why unless they want to think you're totally insane…" Rokiki said, shutting his eyes.

"Eh? Why did you come here, um…."

"Mora," she answered. "And Rokiki-kun's right… I know that it'd sound insane to the regular person, but I came out here to fulfill my dream… A few years ago a fortune teller from a different planet visited my town, and told me that the love of my life would be here…"

"And she fell for it and came to this hellhole purposefully…" Rokiki added in a mutter.

Mora's cheerfulness didn't seem deterred by Rokiki's attitude, "So I came to Pekopon, started searching, and in the process I found an abandoned baby… I guess you could say I fell in love when I saw her, so I took her as my own…"

"And she took me and raised me," Chandi answered, giving a fond smile to Mora.

"So how do you play in this?" Romama asked, and Rokiki shut his eyes and flushed a bit.

"We were going through Australia looking at some crop circles that had been left there and saw him," Chandi answered.

"I was being attacked by a group of wild animals, and I was overcome. They helped me fend them off is all…"

"What sort of animal?" Romama asked.

"…Kangaroos…" Rokiki answered quietly, and Chandi snorted.

"They were wallabies!" she snapped, and Rokiki grunted. "That's smaller than a kangaroo!"

"Now, now, let's not get into anything…" Mora started, floating up and setting herself in between the two. "Rokiki-kun is indebted to us for saving his life—"

"And he lost a competition to me!" Chandi answered excitedly.

"Not hard to believe, but what kind of competition did you challenge him to, anyway?" asked Natsumi, and Rokiki was quick to go on the defense.

"It doesn't matter!" he shouted. "All that matters now is that I'm stuck with these two for at least a decade, being pulled along by the whims of some foolish Pekoponian brat."

"We take you on a lot of fun adventures, Roki! Searching all the occult mysteries of the world… What's not to love?!" Chandi said with a devilish grin.

"…Excuse me…" Romama was stoned-faced as he stood up and walked to the doors Chandi, Rokiki, and Mora had come out of, shutting them behind him. All watched this curiously, but this turned to shock as there next came a loud series of laughing.

"…Is that was Ojiisama's laugh is like?" Keroro wondered aloud.

"It's kinda scary…." Kirere mumbled.

"Why that little—" Rokiki went to chase after Romama, but Chandi lifted him up, holding his arms down in the process.

"What did we say about anger management?!" she barked, and Rokiki, after a few more moments, relaxed, allowing his shoulders to fall, and Chandi set him back down on the ground. He went make another attack as Romama walked back out, wiping his eyes and holding his aching side, and Chandi and Mora both held the dark red Keronian back this time.

"Do you think we could go home now?" asked Natsumi nicely, although her voice was tired from the excitement of the day.

"Oh, certainly! And it'll be much nicer than the water spout, I promise!" Mora floated up and began to form a watery globe in her hands. The globe began to light, but this was interrupted as there was a crash, and water burst through the roof. The hole quickly repaired itself, but it was clear after a moment that something… Or someone… Had gotten in.

Rokiki went for his first instinct as he reached for his sword, and the other aliens and humans bolted up at the sight of the shadowy black thing with the huge black wings.

"Mora, you and Chandi run, I've got this!" Rokiki called out, and Mora nodded, pulling along the human girl. "Come on, this way!" she called out, motioning to the others.

Mora stopped her quick dash to the exit when the black thing swooped down in front of her and Chandi, and Fuyuki gave a gasp.

Rokiki went to attack first, drawing his sword and cutting at the creature. It only molded back to its original wing-like shape after a moment, catching Rokiki by surprise. Mora went to fight it now, forming one of the shape orbs of water she had before and throwing it at the intruder, only to have it not deterred by her attack in the slightest way, and to have it open something that looked like a set of massive black fangs, intent on devouring bother the Keronian and Meronian.

"Alisa-san, WAIT!" Fuyuki called out, coming in between the pale redhead and her alien father and the tan Indian girl and her mother.

"…Fuyuki… She tried to hurt you…"

"N-No, you have it all wrong!" Fuyuki answered. "Chandi-san's just… Someone who wanted to play a game is all…"

"A Nebulon?" Rokiki was stunned as the black alien returned to its normal shape, forming two cat ears atop Alisa's head. "You brought her to someone who's friends with a Nebulon!?"

"They're a lot nicer to us than you were…" Natsumi said sharply, and glared down at Rokiki.

"Come on, let's not start anything…" Fuyuki said with a nervous laugh as Rokiki returned this glare.

"I've had enough with all of these fools… It's time we got going…" Rokiki said, and turned away from the group.

"Right! Back to the Hinatas house!" Chandi exclaimed.

"…I've never met someone so straight-forward…" Fuyuki mumbled.

"At least Alisa-chan's always polite…" Natsumi sighed.