Chapter 11: Little Master

Waking up early and making sure her illusions on her head and face were still in place (one of the problems she discovered, her illusions sometimes wouldn't hold overnight) she began to wonder what her 'new' uniform would look like.

It has to be similar to the standard one, but different so that my friends can still pick me out of the crowd she thought to herself. Eventually, she changed her 99-Series clothes to look somewhat like chaos' style of dress, yet keeping the blue-green color scheme the same as the Mass Production 100-Series. I wonder if he'll notice...

By the time she finished, she left to find MOMO and Shion. Realizing she was hungry, she asked Shion if she knew where the cafeteria was. Her friends stared at her a moment, before Shion commented "that's different" and all three left for breakfast.

While they were eating, everyone else came in as well, barely giving Kish a second glance. Apparently, it had been decided that they would head to the Kukai Foundation; a haven for those that didn't belong. Mainly, it was cyborgs and mutants from the Life Recycling Act. Kish had visited the free-floating space colony a few years ago, but left as soon as the Mass Production models were announced. People had begun to comment on how similar her appearance was to theirs.

Jr. had informed them it would take most of the day and next night to get there. That gave them about a full 24 hour wait onboard the Durandal.

Well, now Kish thought. What can I do with this much time? It also brought back memories of her 'extended breaks' onboard the Woglinde…

Bad idea...think of something else…something else… Every time she thought about that ship, she remembered all the people she had met; everyone that had died because she couldn't do her job.

Well, how about the firing range? She thought. I was kind of rushed yesterday, and I guess I could get more practice today.

Bidding farewell to Shion and the others, Kish took the tram to the Gym. To her disappointment, she spotted the soldier who was giving her a hard time the other day.

"Hey," he called after observing her for a while. "You're that little prick who was here yesterday." It wasn't exactly a question.

Huh…he's smarter than I gave him credit for she thought, before replying out loud; "Is this the way you always act, or am I a special case?" He had already begun trying her patience.

"And why are you here?" he shot back, completely ignoring her question. She had actually wanted to know that.

"Same as yesterday" she replied in the same cold tone. "Why else would I be here, to talk to you?" Where MOMO had shown patience and tried to make a good impression on people, Kish could care less what most people thought, especially this idiot.

"Hey, there a problem here?" called a familiar voice somewhere behind her. In front, the soldier stiffened and straightened up immediately.

"Hello Jr." Kish greeted him on seeing who it was. At the same time, the soldier saluted, and partially muttered "Little Master" to him.

"Hmm…hey, you're the 100-Series that was on the Elsa with Shion and MOMO, right?" when she nodded, he continued; "Thought so. Nice outfit, by the way. No more incidents like on the bridge before, eh?"

Kish nodded again, and risked a glance at the soldier now behind her, and almost burst out laughing. He wore an expression of pure shock, and also something else. Apparently, he didn't believe her story yesterday, so this came as somewhat of a surprise.

Jr. caught her glance, and looked to see what she was looking at. Seeing his expression, he also smirked, but continued addressing Kish; "So…what are you doing here anyways?"

Controlling herself, Kish turned and took out her pistol, and told him. "Well, I wanted some practice with this, but this guy's giving me a hard time about doing that."

"Well, shooting at still targets doesn't help so much; and enemy isn't gonna sit still and let you shoot at it. You need to practice with motion, and some slight danger" he added with a mischievous glint in his eye. "I was just about to start a mock-battle in the Encephalon, why don't you join us?"

His forwardness caught her off guard, and she stumbled over her answer somewhat; "Oh…oh, no. I'm not any good. It takes me forever to get anywhere near center of these targets" she said motioning at the range behind her.

"Yeah, that's why you should join us; better practice! Come' on, it'll be fun!" he persisted, then began dragging her off before she had time to object any further to a group of machines in the back talking almost nonstop about strategies and giving her tips to increase her accuracy. She got the impression that he was really into guns.

After set-up was complete, Kish found herself in the center of a virtual city, surrounded by buildings, and other soldiers in different colors. Looking at herself, she found she had been given a red outfit in the transfer sequence. Jr. took charge, and began leading her group to one of the 'bases' in the city, and the game began.

Three hours later, the group emerged from the training battle. All in all, Kish felt no better. If anything, she was more hesitant to participate in real battle. She mainly supported everyone else, and kept track of enemy positions. Jr. was the one doing all the killings.

"Woohoo! That was awesome!" needless to say, Jr. was very hyped after their win. Although, she doubted that whatever team Jr. was on ever lost. His small size, combined with his speed, made him quite hard to hit.

"Yes, well, I'm not sure if I'm any better now than before…" Kish told him, slightly trailing in the end of her statement.

"Well, yeah. But all you need's some more practice, and you'll do fine." He assured her, before becoming slightly nervous.

What's he acting all jittery about all of a sudden? She wondered, but didn't comment. She figured if he was going to tell her, he would.

Getting to the tram stop, he finally spoke up.

"Ah, Kish? Do you, well, do you know where MOMO is? I have something I need to give her, and…" he trailed off.

Slightly confused at the change of pace, she none the less closed her eyes and tried to 'feel' where MOMO was. She'd gotten quite good at pinpointing her based off the feeling she got whenever she was near her 'sister'.

"Yup. This way" she said, before grabbing his arm and pulling him into the tram. Then turning and pressing the button for "Residential", she sat and waited. She thought it quite odd that Jr. needed to find her sister for something, but Jr. had seemed to be acting weird ever since he caught sight of MOMO. Then again, this could be how he normally acts.

Once they reached their stop, she got out and went to the main corridor. "She's down there, on the left. By some rest area, or something. I don't really know that area yet."

With a smile and a wave, he ran off with a brief shout of thanks over his shoulder. Shaking her head at his antics, she decided to take a nap. While her body hadn't physically been doing anything today, her mind believed she was running, ducking, and shooting for the past three hours.

Making her way to her bed, she resolved to bother MOMO until she was told what had happened, or rather what was happening, as Jr. probably arrived at where MOMO was by now. With that in mind, she was asleep in minutes.

It was later in the day that Kish was woken up by none other than MOMO. After being shaken awake and a few moments of disorientation, she noticed MOMO was running around and washing up.

"What's the occasion?" Kish asked sleepily after a few more seconds of watching.

"Well, we're going to have dinner together in a few minutes and-" MOMO began, but was cut off.

"Wait, dinner? What happened to lunch? And what do you mean by 'we' and 'together'? Did someone plan this?" Kish asked, and MOMO gave her an odd look.

"You slept through lunch, and I told you about this maybe two hours ago."

"Well, was I awake?" Kish asked slightly frustrated.

"Oh, you were. You also told me to do quite a few things for simply waking you up to tell you"

"Oh…" Kish looked down for a bit. She didn't remember any of that. "So, umm…what's going on?"

"I told you before you interrupted me."

'Alright, now she's doing this on purpose' Kish thought to herself before trying to remember what MOMO had said when she woke up.

"…Dinner?" she asked tentatively. She really couldn't remember, but she was hungry. Besides, it sounded like something MOMO would want to get ready for. …wait a minute.

"What are you doing? I thought it was only our little group of six, eight if you count the rest of the Elsa's crew. Why are you spending so much effort in this?" she asked incredulous.

"Uh, well…" MOMO began, but trailed off. Suddenly, Kish got an idea.

"This have anything to do with a certain redheaded gunslinger?" After that, MOMO's face began to redden. "Ah, that's a yes, then. What'd he want to give you, anyway" she asked, remembering an earlier conversation. By now, MOMO's face was quite flushed.

"H-how'd you even know about that?"

"He asked me if I knew where you were. Said he wanted to give you something."

"He wanted to give me this; a good luck charm, he called it." Here she held up her arm, on which was a bracelet with a bullet attached.

"Huh, where'd he get something like this?" Kish wondered aloud. It almost looked like…

"Well, originally it was a simple bullet and a chain, but Jr. did something to it and they kinda fused together…" MOMO trailed off at the end, somewhat unsure.

"Really? Huh…I wonder…" Kish mumbled to herself. 'Could he be a URTV?' she wondered.

The URTV's were 'designer children', created by one Dimitri Yuriev for the Federation as the anti-existence to U-DO. Kish hadn't heard much about it, but had once visited the Yuriev Institute before the Descent Operation on Miltia. After catching sight of Juli Mizrahi, she decided not to stay. As the mother of the girl her design was based off of, she would be the first to recognize the run-away Kirschwasser, illusion or not.

"So, he's the reason you're spending all this time getting ready?" Kish confirmed with a slightly teasing tone in her voice.

"Oh, go back to sleep Kish" MOMO called from the closet she had disappeared into searching for…something.

"You're the one who woke me up in the first place!" Kish yelled back before taking her up on the offer and flopped back onto her bed.

All too soon, MOMO was once again shaking her awake.

"Come on, you only have five minutes now!"

Kish groaned, but dutifully rolled out of bed, only to fall flat on the floor. Three minutes and one illusion later and they were off. As Kish had predicted, MOMO was the only one who looked like they went out of their way for this.

Halfway through the meal, Jr. informed everyone that they'd be docking at the Kukai Foundation, and then Shion decided to plan a small shopping trip to visit the sights. When MOMO began asking about different tourist sights, chaos gave her a brochure from the Elsa.

All in all, not much happened until the next day when everyone gathered in the Park area to view the docking. Jr. had said these windows offer the best view. Soon enough, the Kukai Foundation came into view, and kept getting larger and larger.

'Wow…it's been a while' Kish thought to herself. 'I haven't been here in about three years. I wonder if they finished that private beach I heard about. And…Maria…'

Kish had spent a lot of time going from place to place after escaping from Proto Merkabah. Some of the places were planets, some free floating space colonies. One of the places she'd stayed the longest was on the Kukai Foundation. During her traveling was when she discovered her ability to copy the outer form of other Realians. She used this wherever she went, but inevitably had to leave whenever someone commented on how much she looked like the 100 Series Realians, especially when their development became widely known.

Still getting closer, the Foundation's true size became apparent. It seemed that the Durandal was built in proportion to the Foundation, which was saying something for a 4000 meter ship. Soon the others seemed to realize this too.

"We're going to dock like this?" Shion exclaimed looking somewhat uneasy.

"Oh, I can't wait to see the Durandal turn into a giant skyscraper!" This time it was MOMO who was yelling.

"What? Skyscraper?" Shion tried to confirm, more frazzled than normal.

"She means what she said," Kish answered, seeing both Jr. and MOMO a bit preoccupied. "See that blue hole we're coming up to? That's the center of the lake. When we dock, we come up through there point first and keep going. The Durandal rises above the water and looks for the entire colony a giant skyscraper. The ship's actually a pretty famous tourist attraction on the Foundation, and it's quite the sight to see when docking or leaving."

Not long after Kish's explanation, the Durandal reached their destination and began to dock. Because of their 'sideways' orientation, it was quite the odd sight to see all the buildings rushing across in front of them. For a minute, Kish had a feeling of vertigo. It looked like she was standing perpendicular on a wall and she briefly feared falling off.

Once before, during her stay at the Foundation, she had seen the Durandal both docking and leaving and was quite awed by the sight. Never before had she ever been on the Durandal, and found that simply being on board was an experience in and of itself.

"Wow! That was amazing! And look at the view!" MOMO gushed while pressed up against the glass window in front of them. Just then, Kish heard a door open behind them and then a voice.

"If you really want to see a sight, you should see it around New Years, when everything is decorated in lights."

Turning around, the group faced a man who had just walked in. Coming towards them, he spoke again.

"My name is Gaignun Kukai. Welcome to the Kukai Foundation."

(chapter 11; end)

AN: Again, special thanks to Robby Cartwright for reviewing and a general thanks to everyone else who reads this but doesn't review. I know you're out there; eleven people read the last chapter, yet only one reviewed. Well, sad news is there's only one more chapter of this I have to put up, then I'll be going under the radar, so to say, until I feel up to changing/rewriting this. Now, I forgot this for a bit, so lets finish this up:

Disclaimer: I do not own any part of the Xenosaga games or Xenosaga: the Animation.