Byakuan walked out
of the forest to watch Kousei leave. The tiger proceeded
towards the giant pet flap where he rubbed his fur on it for a few
minutes. Ever since Sage left, there was a strange smell on
the flap and Byakuan, for the mortality of him, couldn't identify
what creature that strange smell belonged to. He didn't like
it.
Then, he went into
the kitchen to check his food bowl, wagging his tail happily.
To his horror, there were more vegetables in there than usual.
The tiger whimpered slightly. As always the meat was at the
bottom and he had to paw through all the nasty stuff in order to get
to it.
Lita unzipped her
sleeping bag a bit, allowing her to sit up. The sound reached
Pikachu's ears and the furry pokemon also woke up.
"Can't sleep, can
you, Lita?" It asked, stretching.
"No. The
ground's just too hard. How can he sleep like
that?" She looked at Sage who appeared to be very comfortable
wrapped up in a few blankets and resting his head on a very soft and
fluffy pillow.
Pikachu shrugged,
"He's used to it, I guess. We should reach the next territory
tomorrow. I doubt we'll be in any other towns until
then."
Lita frowned and
gazed upwards. The sky was an interesting shade of light
blue. The sun would be up soon. "Might as well wake him
up so I can fix breakfast." Lita grabbed Sage's small pillow
and gave it a hard tug. Then, she put the cushion in her
sleeping bag.
His head fell on
top of his backpack which was previously under his pillow. His
eyes flew open upon impact though they were still glazed over with
sleep. He blinked and rubbed his eyes a few times, coming to
his senses. "Where's my pillow?"
"I think Team
Rocket took it," Pikachu said with a straight face.
"Very lame
joke. Very lame."
"You needed to
wake up anyway," Lita told him.
"The sun's not
up," he complained.
"It'll come up
sometime soon." Then, she ordered the two to get wood for a
fire. She loved to cook and they had to eat
sometime.
Rowen stumbled
into the living room and squinted at the clock. His head was
still dizzy from forcing himself out of a peaceful sleep and getting
out of bed at such an awful hour. 10:37 A.M. Rowen
rubbed his eyes, wondering if he read that correctly. He
did. 10:37 A.M.
Then, he made his
way into the kitchen to eat up the chocolate that Kousei didn't
get. The Ronin Warrior of Life went to bed early in hopes of
waking early and snatching all the leftover sweets. To his
horror, there was an empty plate on the table.
Ryo sat at the
table, eating a bowl of cereal, waiting for Sai and Kento to wake
up. There was a soccer ball in his lap. The Ronin
Warrior of Virtue looked surprised to see Rowen up so early.
He noticed Rowen's horrified expression and saw what his fellow
Ronin was looking at. "Kousei ate it all last
night."
Pikachu was forced
to endure endless banter. Sage wanted peace and quiet, but
Lita kept trying to strike up a conversation. Sage just wanted
to bask contentedly in the wonderful thing that is nature.
Lita, however, was a people person, not a nature person.
Whenever she sees a person especially a very fine-looking male, she
absolutely has to start talking.
He hoped an honest
compliment would shut up her up, "That was a very good
meal."
"Thank you," she
took that as a sign he wanted to talk. "Cooking's my
speciality. I've always loved to cook."
Somehow by midday,
Lita had Sage away from nature and into a discussion albeit he tried
whenever he had a chance to get back.
Ryo shook his head
sadly, sitting on the bottom steps of the porch and stroking
Byakuan's fur. Suddenly, he didn't feel like playing soccer
anymore with the Ronins of Trust and Justice. Kento kept
trying to treat it like an American football game and Sai for some
reason had a hard time keeping his balance. The reason for his
lack of balance was probably due to either the tall grass or the
rain water from a few weeks ago that hadn't evaporated yet.
Ryo sighed ruefully.
Byakuan got up
behind him, put his paws on Ryo's shoulders and began sniffing the
fuzz on Ryo's head. "Hey! Quit that!" The tiger's
constant sniffing was tickling his head. He tried to stand up,
but Byakuan had him pinned firmly where he sat. "Rowen!
Get him to stop!"
Rowen, at the top
of the porch stairs, looked up from his pamphlet. He closed it
with one finger inside to keep his place and hit the tiger between
the shoulders with the spine of his book. The tiger looked at
him imploringly. He gripped Rowen's free arm in his jaws and
flung the blue-haired teen into Ryo. Then, the playful ancient
animal deftly pounced on the bearer of the Wildfire
armor.
Rowen crawled away
from the tackling pair up the porch stairs towards his
booklet.
Duo Maxwell sat
down, mentally bracing himself for an hour of what was basically a
lecture. This was the second cult sermon that he attended and
hopefully the last one. He was doing a person
experiment. It seemed that Quatre attended sermons when a
certain priestess named Mishalli did the preaching. In Duo's
opinion, Quatre's plight was similar to a schoolboy having a crush
on a teacher. The schoolboy, Quatre, would be most attentive
in the class that the teacher would be in. Duo was an expert
at reading people like a book, but he couldn't read people if they
weren't around.
And so this was
this experiment. He would drag Quatre to two sermons.
One without Mishalli and one with.
A priest by the
name of Resnik preached at the first sermon of the "experiment" a
few days ago. Resnik's speech was fairly typical in Duo's
opinion. He basically tried to hammer in the idea that those
who commit act of violence are acting against the Messiah's
wishes. Quatre really wasn't all that interested. The
pilot of the Gundam Sandrock had his eyes pointed slightly towards
the ceiling before that sermon began and throughout the rest of
it! He even fidgeted uncomfortably as though he didn't want to
be there.
This time
priestess Mishalli herself would do the preaching. Duo eyed
his fellow pilot cautiously. Quatre was alert and
attentive. Quatre stood perfectly straight like a good little
schoolboy. Duo stifled a yawn. He wished Hilde hadn't
gotten him to stay up so late last night. An idle thought
floated up to his brain. Dorothy
blond. Quatre blond. Idly, he
wondered what Mishalli's hair color was. The priestess walked
out onto the podium. Quatre
blond. Mishalli blond. Duo opened
his mouth to yawn, but snapped it shut before anything could come
out.
Mishalli preached
out pacifism in general, occasionally going on the what Resnik was
saying, but not going too far into that topic. She got into
some of the philosophical aspects that trouble people.
Mishalli had a gentle yet forceful voice which automatically got
people's attention. She was very attractive although Hilde was
the most beautiful in Duo's opinion. After over an hour of
speech, Quatre's unwavering eyes were still focused resolutely on
Mishalli.
Finally,
Duo thought,
waiting for the sermon to be over so that he could get some
sleep. Quatre was in love.
The sun began to
set for the night and so they made camp again. Sage was in a
good mood. Lita actually wanted to listen to one of the CDs
that he suggested. The day's march was quite pleasant.
Lita didn't feel like cooking a meal which suited Sage and Pikachu
just fine then.
Sage took his pack
off his shoulders, laid it on the ground, and began pulling out his
blankets to lay on the dirt floor. Only one thing was
missing. "Where's my pillow?"
"I told you
before," said Pikachu. "Team Rocket took it."
Lita tossed him a
hard brown cushion.
"That's your
pillow, not mine," Sage tossed her pillow back.
"So? You can
still use it." She tossed the pillow to him.
"I don't want to
use your pillow." He tossed the pillow to her.
"Tough. Use
it." She tossed the pillow back to him again.
"No," He tossed
the pillow back to her again.
Pikachu came up
with an idea, "Why don't you two share Lita's pillow?"
"No!" They shouted
in unison.
"I have Sage's
pillow, so I'm not going to use mine," Lita blurted without
thinking.
"Would you please
give my pillow back?" Sage asked nicely.
Sage took a deep
breath. He absolutely hated women. They always bugged
him, teased him, and they never leave his stuff alone.
"Would you please
be so kind as to give my pillow back?" Sage asked a teeny bit more
tensely.
In Lita's mind, he
was using his good looks to get her to obey his will. If Sage
was doing that, he didn't know. "Can I please use your pillow
just this once? Pretty please?" she said in her most
flirtatious manner. The Samurai's expression grew sterner and
Lita fought down the heart-transformation her eyes tried to
make. "Please?"
Sage took a deep
breath. She reminded him of his two sisters, Yayoi and
Satuki. The women in his family were the powerful leaders of
his household. His grandfather, whom he admired, was the only
man with household power. "Sure, but just this once,
okay?"
"Okay!" Lita
promptly glomped him.
"Hey, stop
that! Someone help!" Ryo called out as Byakuan continued to
tackle him into the ground everytime he tried to stand up.
Kento hit Byakuan with the soccer ball. The tiger merely
rolled it over with his paw and deflated it when he bit into
it. Then, he promptly pounced on Ryo once more. Before,
Byakuan used to pull on Ryo's mane of hair, but ever since that hair
cut, the tiger found himself having a hard time gripping onto the
fuzz that was left of the mane...
Meanwhile Rowen
continued to read the booklet that he received in the mail on top of
the porch stairs. It was a Messiah-worshipper pamphlet, not
one of those invitations to sermons. A pamphlet like that only
appears in the mail every now and then, and Rowen hadn't been able
to attend one of the religious discourses recently. In the
booklet, he read:
What is the reason
behind our creation? What is our purpose for our
existance? Those are questions always asked and always never
answered. The reason is simple. Our purpose is to serve
our Creator (s). But that leads to yet another question.
What do our Creators want with us? Is there one Creator or
more than one?
In truth, there
has been some controversy over that debate since the construction of
the Northern Capital. The scientists there are rumored to be
in contact with the Creators because they control the vortex that
connects us to our Creators. That is true, but the priests and
priestesses speak with the Messiah who is indeed a Creator and
therefore they know the truth about the other Creators. Even
though the scientists know the same thing that we do, they refuse to
take action and inform and protect the people.
The Realm of our
Creators is full of barbarians who are constantly at war with each
other. Although that may be harsh and hard to accept, it is
the truth. Our Creators are perpetually warring with
themselves and we may as well be non-existant in their
eyes.
How many Animes
and Main Characters have been devastated completely because of
dubbing? Dubbing seems to be a mere fad in the Realm of the
Creators as more and more Animes are succumbing to the horror.
When will it end? All across the Realm, dubbing has caused the
corruption of several Anime Characters.
Names have been
changed and misplaced. Yukito, a male in the Card Captor Sakura Anime, had his
name changed to Julian, which sounded feminine to come people and
sparked several insults. The name "Anubis" once belonged to
the Yami Masho of Yoroiden: Samurai
Troopers, but that name
was instead given to the Oni Masho in the American Dub.
Some Animes that
the Card Captor
Sakura Anime have been
dubbed out of order, resulting in confusion for the characters of
those Animes. Certain parts of Animes have been "Censored" or
merely not dubbed, leaving Characters angry and
bewildered.
Voices were
changed drastically and charcters were forced to say things that if
they were in their normal state would have never said.
A few of the most
horrendous changes took place in the Sailor
Moon Anime where a
male character by the name of Zoicite was dubbed into a
female. The other characters also suffered through dramatic
voice changes later on. In the Dragonball Animes, the
character, Freiza, while keeping the orgininal male gender, was
given the voice of a female. Why do our Creators insist on
doing this? How many have suffered as a result? How many
more WILL suffer if this continues?
Rowen took a deep
breath. The depiction of the Creators although harsh made
sense. He himself had been a victim of the Creator's twisted
mind, given a voice no one could've ever imagined belonging to the
great Hashiba Touma.
The sermon was
over and the exits were blocked by people leaving. Duo and
Quatre were confined to their chairs, deciding to avoid the usual
melee and be the last ones to leave. Priestess Mishalli would
wait until everyone else had left before leaving herself which would
mean that Duo would have no problem introducing the two
blondes. Finally, there was enough room for the two to
stand.
"That was a very
good speech," Duo noted. "We should probably congratulate
her."
"Um, I don't think
we should bother her. She's probably very busy."
"Who doesn't love
a good compliment?" Duo dragged Quatre up to the platform to greet
her.
She noticed the
two boys approaching her and stepped down from the podium in order
to greet them properly. One boy had a long brown braid and the
other one, who seemed dazed and relunctant, had blond
hair.
"Hello, Priestess
Mishalli," the braided boy said formally. "I am Duo Maxwell,"
he shook her hand and guestured to the other boy, "And this is my
friend." Duo let the sentence hang, making his comrade speak
for himself.
The dazed one with
yellow-whitish hair also shook her hand. "I'm Quatre Reberba
Winner."
"I'm pleased to
meet you, Quatre, Duo."
"Oh, well, it's
really an honor to be in your presense, Priestess Mishalli," Quatre
barely avoided stuttering, a friendly smile across his
face.
Duo didn't want to
waste precious moments and led them into a conversation.
"Quatre and I, we were really influenced by tonight's
speech."
"How often have
you been going to the sermons?"
Quatre answered
for himself, "Off and on for about a year. This is the second
one that Duo's been to."
"Ow!
Geez! Great-grandmother, would you please let go? I'm
not a child anymore," Kousei Mahoujou scowled as Yogenchi dragged
her into her dorm room, using her braid like a leash.
"Are you older
than me?" The Magia inquired. She found Kousei far away from
the capital where she was supposed to be.
"No." The
younger woman sat down on the bed as soon as her braid was
freed.
"Then, you're
still a child. I'm going to make some tea." Yogenchi
walked off to take control of her small kitchen.
Kousei muttered
something under her breath that rebellious children usually say
about their elders, reached down under her bed and pulled out a
basket. She began searching for something that she knew would
upset her Great-grandmother. Finally, she found what she was
looking for and started munching on a large beef stick.
Yogenchi, carrying
two cups of tea, walked into the room, ready to talk to her relative
about some really important issues at hand. "You're eating
flesh," Yogenchi, a Vegan, noted distainfully.
"Let's just say
the capital corrupted me," Kousei said as she took her cup of tea,
enjoying her beef stick.
The Magia knew her
heir had been eating meat ever since she was eight when Kento took
her to see his family's restaurant. Yogenchi also knew that
Kousei was respectful enough not to eat meat in front of
her... until now. Yogenchi muttered something under her
breath about disrespectful youths, trying to control her huge bad
temper. There was much more important matters at hand than a
certain disrespectful teenager's cannibalistic eating habits.
Yogenchi knew she wouldn't see the end of this era.
"Kousei, I know
you hate the capital, but this is important." She began her
lecture as she sat down on the bed.
The child tore a
piece of her beef stick off as an offering, "Would you like a
bite?"
"I don't eat
another creature's body parts." She was going to have to get Kousei
out of this mood. "The cultists and extremists are getting
really tense and things are heating up between the two. It's
my job to calm them down and prevent certain stuff from
happening. That'll be your job when you take my place.
Quite a few of the extremist leaders happen to be Main Characters
and Main Characters are created from Creochi energy which is why
you're in the capital. I studied Creochi energy before I
officially became the Magia."
Kousei tossed her
half-eaten piece of meat in the trash can; a tactic that Yogenchi
approved of. It seemed as though the Magia succeeded in
ridding Kousei of that foul mood. The consuming of body parts
was the most likely explanation as to why Kento has a bottomless pit
for a stomach and Kousei never had a problem with eating enough food
until she ate her first piece of flesh.
"Things are
becoming incredibly intense between the cultists and the extremists
and the Realm, believe it or not, hovers over the brink of
war. It was like that one time in the past, but I managed to
cool off the young hotheads and the danger went by unnoticed.
They won't be cooled off now since the Messiah himself decided to
take an active role in the matter."
"What does the
Messiah want with Date Seiji?" Kousei wondered. She was
familiar with the saying "A new Magia for every era" which meant
something significant would happen on her way to reaching her
Great-grandmother's status. The era of Cultists and Extremists
seemed to be Yogenchi's era and she wanted to know what was going
on.
"Study what's in
your science book and then, I will tell you. That way, you'll
understand it better when I do tell you what's
happening."
"Why should I when
you're here to explain it to me yourself?"
"Because I don't
feel like it. Now be a good girl and read. I have far
more important things to do than to place you back where you belong
which is in the capital, so don't run away again."
Ryo, Kento, Sai,
and Rowen were playing their own little version of poker.
Instead of gambling for money, they were gambling to see who would
stay and clean out the portal. The first one out would be the
one to stay while the others returned to their respective
homes. Kento had an excellent advantage, having played the
game many times before with his family. Rowen was a strategic
genius. Ryo had a decent knowledge of the game and a good hand
of cards; so did Sai.
"Do you ever
wonder what our Creators are like?" Rowen asked his
friends.
"Nope. That
stuff's too deep for me," said Kento.
"Our Creators are
our Creators," Ryo said simply, wanting to stick to the game, not
get into a discussion. "They're all-powerful. They can
suspend the rules again if they want to."
That depiction of
the Creators still hung heavily in Rowen's mind. "Why do they
choose to dub us so strangely? They changed the way we speak
and they changed the meanings of our kanji and jins. Why do
they do that?"
"I have no idea,"
Ryo admitted. "There's nothing we can do about it
though."
"We aren't going
to be dubbed anymore," said Kento. "The last dub and
suspension of the rules on us ended four years ago."
Sai, who had been
wondering whether to play a big card or low card, finally finished
his turn and said to Rowen, "You don't need a religion. You
need a girlfriend." |
