Well, this chapter was actually the short one. I am sorry.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Mostly just Natsumi stuff.

Natsumi jumped back at the thing that was now noticeably Kululu to her. She saw his tiny little hat and his headphones and the only difference seemed to be the tail-like chain trailing after him.

Kululu perked up and turned to her, turning his head at the loud noise she had made.

He stayed on the floor and stared at her like a cat, waiting for any sudden movements she made.

"K-Kululu... is that you?" she asked finally, trying to keep her voice from shaking. The new appendage he had had shocked her, but she could feel the fear finally leaving her body.

Kululu... was alive, despite what she had believed! Did that mean Giroro could be alive, too?

Kululu rubbed his face. "How do you know my name?" he asked suspiciously.

Natsumi did a double-take. How did she know his name? She had known him a very long time! Did he seriously not recognize her? "It's me, Natsumi! Of course I know your name," she told him.

Kululu was silent for a bit. "So I knew you at a time." He observed her.

"Of course you did! You lived in my basement," she responded. Kululu didn't look like he believed her.

What's going on? Why doesn't he know me? Natsumi wondered.

"Did someone tell you to tell me this?" Kululu asked suspiciously. He honestly didn't know who Natsumi was.

Natsumi shook her head. Kululu waited for an answer. She continued fervently shaking her head.

"Well?" he asked.

"No! I shook my head like fifteen times!" she pointed out. "You were looking right at me. You acknowledge that as a response, right?"

Kululu's hands went up to his glasses for a moment, briefly touching them. "Ku, ku, ku."

He seemed disoriented. Suspicious of her, but mostly like he didn't know her. "Kululu? Do you really not know who I am?" Natsumi asked hesitantly, fearing the worst.

Had something happened to him, giving him amnesia? Had he only forgot her, or had he forgotten everyone else, too? At least he knew his own name.

"I do not know who you are," he confirmed. "Ku, and I don't really care who you are. But I suppose it's interesting that you know me. If I cared enough about your well-being, I'd question you about me, too. But I really don't."

Well, he's still a jerk. Natsumi frowned. "How'd... How'd this happen to you? You look so different. You don't remember anything, do you?"

Kululu sighed. "I'll tell you, but only if you do something for me. Ku, ku, ku. I ain't giving information for free, after all."

"What do you want?" Natsumi asked.

"Are there any water bottles in this store on the higher shelves?"

Natsumi looked around, "Yes."

"Reach it for me."

"Why?" she asked.

"Keronians need fresh water a lot. And in this apocalyptic world, there's not much of it. So we've been fighting over it," he told her.

Natsumi perked up. We? So there were at least a couple other Keronians alive. She smiled, but shyly hid it.

"Don't think anything stupid. I'm not smiling because I'm happy those stupid frogs are alive," she denied, embarrassed.

"You were smiling?" Kululu asked. He hadn't seen. Natsumi frowned. His glasses seemed to be perfectly intact.

She handed him the water bottles. "Tell me why you don't know who I am."

"Amnesia. Duh." Kululu stated the obvious. "Side effect of mutating."

"Mutating?"

Kululu drank a bit from the bottled water. Then he got up and started circling Natsumi.

"From what I know and briefly remember, the radiation was pretty thick at the point in time I was out here. It didn't kill us, but we did mutate into monstrosities. Nice, huh? Ku, ku, ku."

She didn't know why he was circling her. And circling badly, too. She tried to step to the left, but his circling got better every time she moved.

He continued talking. "From what I know, only one similar desire was left in our keronian minds. Find water and invade. We were invaders of this pitiful planet, correct?" Kululu asked.

Natsumi nodded, but he didn't notice. Instead, he jumped toward her leg, trying to bite into it to attack.

Natsumi easily kicked him off. Kululu was a weakling.

"Ooof!" Kululu was tossed in a pile of packaged toilet paper. He tried to get up, but was a bit bruised. "Ku, I was going to kill you before you reported to Keroro, Natsumi-whoever-you-are, but I seem to have underestimated your strength."

Natsumi smiled a little bit. Keroro? So he was alive! Maybe he was the other Keronian Kululu was talking about. "I can't believe you tried to attack me." She pouted. "And I'm not working for the stupid frog! I live in the base you made safe for us, remember? I'm on a mission to find food for my friends... Friends like Saburo. You remember Saburo, right?" He was his best friend, after all.

"Doesn't ring any bells," Kululu wincing. "Ku. I thought I'd be stronger as a mutant. Boy, was I wrong." He spoke mostly to himself.

Natsumi bent down to his level. She felt pity for him. He looked so pitiful. She offered him a hand, but he didn't seem to see it.

"Why did you think you'd be stronger?" she asked.

"Ku, the other Keronians... At least the ones I've encountered on a more frequent level... have gotten more powerful. They seem to embody some sort of sense out of the five stupid senses. Ku. But me? Nah. I've got nothing."

"A... A sense? What do you mean? Who have you encountered? I mean, besides the stupid frog... well, Keroro," she asked. Kululu didn't know her nickname for him.

"Like the sense of touch. He can feel vibrations in the ground and a lot of things. Makes him tough in a fight. I can't win any water over him," Kululu murmured, speaking a little too much due to his pain from the kick. His glasses spirals narrowed suspiciously at her asking about the other Keronians. "Why do you want to know about the other Keronians?"

"Because they're my friends," she answered quickly. "Have... Have you encountered Giroro?"

Kululu grinned. So that's her ally. The one she wants to know about. Truth be told, he had encountered his entire old platoon, but Natsumi did not have to know that. "I've encountered Tamama," he pretended to admit. "The guy's unfortunately strong with his stupid tongue."

"What about Giroro? What happened to Giroro?" Natsumi asked again urgently.

"He died," Kululu said simply. He heard Natsumi stifled sobs. "Before our radiation suits ran out, he decided to commit suicide before becoming a monster. He killed himself." It was a half-lie. It had been Giroro's plan, but Kululu had eventually seen him again and remembered briefly about his old platoon member. He remembered a little bit, like Giroro holding him back as he tried to kill Tamama.

Natsumi started crying, unable to hold in the tears. Just when she got hope, it had been crushed.

So he was her ally. Kululu grinned.

"Now, I've answered a question for you. Answer one for me," Kululu ordered. He was at a disadvantage against Natsumi. He hadn't gained anything mutating except a tail that he didn't like lifting that had a weighted thing at the end of it and a heck of a lot of things he couldn't do, like feel things properly, taste, or even see. In fact, he was deaf on top of all that. The only reason he could hear Natsumi and was relying on his hearing was because he had managed to adapt his headphones to picking up sound much better. It was the only thing he could rely on now.

"A-all right..." Natsumi answered.

"Who was I close to back before I mutated?" It was a simple question - he was just trying to learn more about his past.

Natsumi's expression softened a little through her tears. She wiped her cheeks. It was such a simple, honest question that she couldn't deny it to him.

"Saburo," she told him. "He was your best friend."

"Hmm..." Kululu didn't remember the name at all. "What eye color does he have?" He asked a more specific question. Although he couldn't see any more, he could remember colors. It wasn't like everything was black. It was more like everything was extremely blurry, about as blurry as it was when he didn't have his glasses on.

"Blue." Natsumi tried to smile at the attractiveness of his blue eyes, but all she could think about was Giroro's death and how he had killed himself.

"Oh." Kululu was silent for a moment, the slight hint of disappointment going through his voice. Natsumi was too sad to pick it up.

Natsumi sniffled and it gave Kululu time to think.

She's alone now that I cut off her ally Giroro. And from what I heard from her, she's been kicked out of her safe house on this mission thing. She's all alone, Kululu realized. This suited his purposes just fine.If I spend a bit of time with her, it might benefit me. I'll have someone strong with me and I might be able to reclaim some of my lost self. He grinned wickedly. Although weak, he was still smart and he was sure he could easily figure out a way to find the food she desired for her friends.

He sat in front of her, thinking and waiting for her to stop sobbing over Giroro, thinking of how disappointed he was that he was so weak.

His transformation had taken a long time. It didn't take long for his hearing to stop, but growing a tail was quite painful and took a bit of time.

He had hidden out in a cave while he had mutated.

I'll be as strong as Tamama when this happens, he remembered thinking. He needed to be stronger. He was already physically weak.

But he had to complete his goal, to kill Tamama. No matter what hell he went through, he would kill him.

Giroro wouldn't hold him back this time. He'd be so strong that he wouldn't be able to be held back.

Kululu moaned in pain as he covered his ears. They were rupturing, and sounds were cutting out. He was losing his hearing, and it hurt.

His fingertips became numb as he could no longer feel things properly. Soon enough, his other senses had begun fizzling out, as well.

No... No! I'm not losing my hearing! I need to hear Tamama's screams... To hear him beg forgiveness and mercy as I grant him none for what he did to... to her... Who? Kululu's mind was drawing a blank.Uh... her. That's what matters. He had forgotten Mois's name. He had to focus before he forgot anything else.

He quickly started working on his headphones. They already were connected to his ears and brain, so it would be easy enough to adapt them.

He might lose a sense to nature, but he'd manually make it better than it had been before. He was a genius.

He wouldn't let himself lose his hearing.

Quickly, he worked, thinking happily about Tamama's screams.

Natsumi's tears eventually waned and she turned to Kululu and looked at him. He made no expression as she stared at him... She started to suspect he couldn't see her.

"What now?" she finally asked. Was he going to stay with her now that she had found him again, or were they going to separate?

Should she get his help, or was she in this alone?

She waited for Kululu's response of the next step.

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