AN: Hmm, seems like I should have more than ten up by this point...

Maybe because they all sit untouched on my computer for so flippin long. .

*sigh* Okay, from this point on, I'm really gonna try not to work my stories to death - maybe then I'll actually get some uploadin' accomplished.

Enjoy!

3. Zodiac

I am thinking it's a sign
That the freckles in our eyes are mirror images
And when we kiss they're perfectly aligned
~The Postal Service, Such Great Heights

Tag: Do you believe that there is one perfect person for everyone?
Rachel: Well, I'm starting to…
~FRIENDS

"Just one more helping, and that's it!"

XR scowled and resisted the urge to slam his head down on the table. Booster'd been saying that for the past five helpings. It was starting to get tiresome.

Of course, he couldn't really be blamed… Booster was a big guy, he needed more fuel than the average organic.

It still didn't make it any less annoying.

Even Buzz was beginning to look irritated. He raised an eyebrow at Booster.

"It's really the last one this time, I promise!" Booster said, grinning sheepishly.

Buzz sighed heavily. "Alright, Rookie." As it was the weekend and they really had nowhere else to be, there wasn't much he could say.

XR smirked into his oil. It was funny when Buzz couldn't do anything about a situation.

With Buzz's approval Booster rose quickly to his feet, in the process knocking the table sideways so that Mira nearly lost what little was left on her plate and XR spilled oil all down his front. He glared up at Booster, who grinned apologetically before rushing back into the buffet line. XR shook his head and plucked a napkin from the table, mopping up the mess on his service panel.

Buzz was drumming his fingers on the table, staring absently toward the back of the restaurant. "Might as well see what they have in the way of desserts," he said suddenly, and he got to his feet as well. "Mira?"

"Oh, no thank you," she said, holding up her hands. She never was big on desserts. Probably trying to keep that trim figure of hers.

Well, good for her, he couldn't help thinking with another smirk.

Buzz nodded and left without asking XR if he wanted anything. Pfft. How inconsiderate. …Not that XR could have desserts, anyway, but still. A little recognition would be nice.

He finished wiping the oil from his front panel and stuffed the now filthy napkin away in his storage compartment. He leaned over the table, propping his helmet in one hand, and contemplated his surroundings.

It was a different sort of place, this restaurant. The lighting was dim; paper lanterns patterned with unfamiliar characters hung all around the walls. The tables were low to the ground (watching Booster try and sit had been quite amusing – he himself found that he rather liked them, they made him feel tall). On the far wall was a tank filled with the strangest fist he had ever seen.

"So… you like this place?" he asked Mira.

She nodded, glancing around the restaurant. "Sure. It's nice."

It'd been Mira's idea to come here. The four of them had decided to go out for dinner on Capital Planet and had come across something called a 'Chinese' buffet. None of them knew what 'Chinese' was, though Buzz had said he vaguely remembered hearing the term somewhere before. Mira'd suggested they try the place; she was always up for trying new and different things, which she attributed to nineteen years of being cooped up in 'boring palace life.' XR found it endearing.

And it actually wasn't a bad place. There was something intriguingly mysterious about the atmosphere – he couldn't quite explain it, but there was a strong sense of history to the place. And the smell… the smell was unlike anything he'd ever experienced. It wasn't… particularly bad, for a smell, but it was strong, rich and thick and… saucy.

And they had these tacky little paper placemats with pictures on them. At first XR had dismissed them as coloring pages for kiddies, but now that he was studying his a bit more closely he saw that each picture was accompanied by a short description. The pictures depicted animals – twelve different animals – and were arranged in a circle next to what looked like a timeline. And there were more of those weird characters. Which, now that he really looked at them, were starting to remind him of something he'd seen on Tradeworld…

"What are you looking at?"

He looked up. Mira was leaning over the table, watching him with interest.

He blinked. Mira rarely showed interest in what he was doing.

"Here – check this out," he said, eager to keep this newfound attention. He pointed back to his placemat, to the words written across the top, Standard words underneath more strange characters. "'The Chinese Zodiac' – what d'you suppose that is?"

She turned to her own placemat. "Huh… I dunno…"

XR had heard the word 'zodiac' before, but he knew it in the context of stars and constellations; it was a word he associated with signs, horoscopes, and Internet love matches. (He had, in fact, when he was exceptionally bored, input his and Mira's names into these various generators, with not-so-favorable outcomes.) He'd never put much stock in horoscopes – he lived among the stars, it was hard to think of them as having any kind of special power.

"Apparently it's a cycle that repeats every twelve years," Mira was saying, running one slender blue finger across her placemat. "Each year is represented by a different animal, and people born in the same year are supposed to have a certain personality."

He shifted his helmet onto his other hand, leaning farther over the table. He loved it when her voice got all serious and thoughtful.

She glanced up at noticed him watching her. "What?"

He jumped and straightened up quickly, looking away and clearing his throat. "So, um… so the animals are like signs? The, uh… animal determines the personality?"

She nodded. "Yep."

Well, that sounded pretty similar to the other kind of zodiac. "Let me guess, it also tells you who you're supposed to be compatible with and all that?"

"Actually… yeah," she answered. She was looking back at her placemat, running her finger down the timeline.

"Oh." Well, what had he really expected. Sooner or later everything came back to love, didn't it?

He glanced back at his own placemat, his interest piqued in spite of himself. He had no reason to believe this would be any different from anything he'd seen before, but at the same time – well, it was an entirely different Zodiac, and you never did know about these things.

Leaning over the placemat, he realized that what he'd thought was a timeline was actually twelve groups of years – one for each animal – listed, as Mira had said, in intervals of twelve. He scanned the page for the year he was born – well, made technically… Same thing, really… Then he glanced across to the corresponding animal. He was apparently something called a 'tiger.' Well, he supposed if he was going to be associated with an animal, there were worse options. In fact, he vaguely remembered meeting a dignitary on Capital Planet who'd said his species was related to the tiger, somehow… All he did know of tigers was good, anyway; they were strong and majestic, highly respected.

At least he got to be a cool animal.

On a whim he decided to look up Mira; the result couldn't possibly be worse than anything he'd ever seen before. He found her birth year, then glanced over her animal and her description…

And he froze.

For a long while he could not move, could not make a sound. He'd… he'd made a mistake, was what was happening… Because why else would it be saying… He must've gotten the year wrong…

"XR? Something wrong?"

He glanced up at her. She was watching him carefully, her head tilted slightly.

"Mira – what sign are you?" he asked hoarsely.

She blinked at him. "Horse. Why, what are you?"

So he had gotten it right. He swallowed and glanced away, unable to meet her eyes any longer. "Tiger," he murmured.

She looked back to her own placemat. After a moment her eyes widened. She blushed, ever so slightly, looking away. "Oh…" Was all she said.

Yeah. Right. OH. Because right there, next to the horse, under the part about being 'independent' and 'hot-blooded' were the words,

Marry a tiger early.

In my original concept I was going to use the other Zodiac, the one with the stars, and XR was just going to be typing his and Mira's names into a love calculator and getting a positive result (yes, the line where he mentions that is a throwback to that idea), but I'd already put him alone in front of a computer in '67 Percent,' I didn't want to do that again - and I'm trying to incorporate more dialogue into these.

So, instead I sent them to a Chinese buffet. Chinese culture has always fascinated me, the Zodiac in particular.

And I thought, rather than be clever with this one, it'd be funny if XR and Mira turned out to be astrologically compatible.

The first sign that came to mind when I thought of Mira was the Horse, because it's the sign of independence, strength, and passion. I had to look it up, and the Horse's primary match turned out to be the Tiger. And the Tiger personality turned out to have several things in common with XR; Tigers are sensitive, rash, hate to be ignored, and tend to have issues with authority figures. (I also read that Tigers are supposed to make great parents, which amused me.)

Anyway, I found an interesting site that, while probably not the best authority for this kind of thing, was nonetheless helpful in writing this story and I'd just like to point it out:

.com/Chinese-Horoscope/

I also feel like I should point this site out, since I got some ideas from it as well:

http://www.

So there's my bibliography. X3

Oh, right, one more thing; I pulled the phrase 'Marry a tiger early' directly from the Zodiac edition of the Ty Beanie Babies, because it just seemed to fit what I was going for so well.

I'm also trying to improve on dialogue, especially for Buzz and Booster, because they are awesome characters that I just don't write often enough.

Hope you enjoyed the story! Feedback is greatly appreciated!