TRPTCH
Lefteye
Part Two

Four months after the loss of Raharu and Cosmic Vespa #BII-P!, the Bureau of Interstellar Immigration's starship returned to the Fraternity's home planet, GX. What this meant for Agent Amarao was that his suspension was over, and he would be free to carry out whatever pending obligations he had back at headquarters. This was contrary to what he'd expected: a trial, with nine old men in black robes prepared to ship his ass to the furthest, crummiest outpost in the Galaxy. Instead, he walked off the ship with little fanfare.
His eyebrows twitched. Something, he thought, was up.

The following day, he made his way to the large, shiny, Gehry-esque building that served as Interstellar Immigration's headquarters, ready to settle in to a boring desk job until the next intergalactic mission came up. First, he thought, he would do the proper thing and file a report on the Barnard incident; secondly, he would--
Amarao stopped dead in his tracks. In the sunny plaza that lay before HQ, a girl, whose short gray hair was lightly flecked with random streaks of lavender and pink, caught his attention. She wore a smart-looking blue jacket, pale blue tie, checkered skirt, navy designer socks, and an odd metal bracelet with a single chain link hanging off of it. Standing in the middle of a crowd of men and women, she fended off their various admiration with the utmost politeness and elegance. She looked in Amarao's direction; her hazel eyes conveying a supreme intelligence... and perhaps something else. Yet it was not the eyes, but rather, the shape of the eyes that first tipped him off. He ran up to her, shouting, "Raharu!"
"Raharu?" she asked, quizzically. "I'm afraid you have me mistaken for someone else. My name is Ruhara. Ruhara Harukoru. And you are...?"
"Agent Amarao of the Bureau of Interstellar Immigration, remember?" he answered. "Listen--"
"Interstellar Immigration, did you say?" Ruhara interrupted. "What a coincidence! I work for Interstellar Immigration too!"
"What? That's not possible! You must have just started out, that is unless you--"
"Started out?" Ruhara huffed. "I've been with this agency for five months now!"
"Five months?!" Amarao exclaimed. "But that would mean you started at the Bureau the same time as Raharu did!"
"Who's this 'Raharu' you keep talking about?"
"Nobody! Listen, just... forget it, okay? I've gotta go. Maybe we'll run into each other again sometime." Amarao trudged away from "Ruhara", musing over their exchange. He remembered the rumors about the Raharu clones and wondered if this girl was one of them. He shook his head, knowing that this wasn't possible. She was just too different. It wasn't only the eyes and the hair, but her personality as well. Maybe it was just some really odd coincidence.
Then, a certain image came into his brain and he realized that he should have paid more attention at the time. When she said that last statement, she smirked. This "Ruhara" was indeed more than meets the eye; she was a deceptive con, all right...
"Amarao!"
He looked to his right. Hideaki stood there, beside one of the lion cub statues that flanked the entrance to the building. The agent gritted his teeth, and his eyebrows shivered, if such a thing were possible. This pretentious asshole was the absolute last person he wanted to see right now.
"You starting back at work today?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"Doing anything afterwards?"
"No. Why?"
"You should come over to my house for dinner. There's something I need to discuss with you, but it can't be done here at work."
"Huh. Why not?"
"It has to do with that incident... you know the one I mean."
Amarao glared at Hideaki. Not this shit again. "Right. So, dinner."
"Yes. Here's my address," Hideaki said, scribbling something on the back of a business card. "My house is in the Yukinon district... not too far from here. It's a ten minute walk from Soichiro Station, so you should have no problems in getting there."
Amarao took the card from Hideaki. He looked at the address and nodded. "Right. What time?"
"How about six-thirty?"
"Sounds good to me."
"Oh, and don't worry about bringing anything."
Wasn't going to. Worry, I mean. Nor bring anything, I mean. "Okay."
"See you then." Hideaki bowed very slightly and walked inside the building. Still his usual cold self, Amarao thought, though he did seem a little more relaxed today. How peculiar...

Amarao arrived at Hideaki's house at around a quarter past six and knocked on the door. His day had been disappointingly uneventful. There'd been tons of paperwork to go through, but it was all busy work... useless beaurocratic drivel that needed to be filled out in triplicate, and quadruplicate, and quintuplicate and... whatever came after quintuplicate. Spending his day at the local arcade in front of a busted Skee-ball machine would have been more productive.
The door swung open and Hideaki answered, wearing an apron decorated with a picture of a chick and the words "Piyo Piyo" written above. His face bore his typical deadpan expression.
"Come in. Dinner will be ready in about half an hour."
Amarao followed Hideaki inside, slipping out of his shoes in the entranceway. After a brief tour of the house, Hideaki told Amarao that he had to get back to his cooking, and promptly disappeared into the kitchen.
Not knowing what else to do, Amarao wandered into the living room. He examined the bookshelves, which were filled with numerous volumes on genetic engineering and other areas of science. However, what Amarao found most peculiar were the nonscientific books and magazines mixed in with these staid tomes: back issues of Replicant Works, FRUiTS, and Tokion; a doujinshi catalog from the previous year's Comic Market; thick Phaidon art and design books; numerous gashapon figurines.
"Find anything interesting?"
He looked up to see a lanky man around his age standing idly in the door frame; his dark, mischievous eyes watching Amarao from underneath a mass of limp blond hair. The man bowed his head in greeting. "My apologies for interrupting your train of thought. I'm Kazuya, Hideaki's lab assistant. But please, call me Hideaki."
"No, you may not call him Hideaki!" Hideaki called from the kitchen.
"Ohhh, why not, Hideaki?" Kazuya whined, rubbing his chest saucily. "You're never any fun! I wanna be Hideaki too!"
Hideaki didn't answer.
"So! Anyway," Kazuya said as he turned his attention back to Amarao. "Kazuya." He held out his hand for Amarao to shake, which the latter did, not without hesitation.
"Hey, what's up with you? I don't bite, you know." Kazuya lowered his voice by an octave. "At least, not unless I feel like it."
With a wink to Amarao, Kazuya plucked a rose from the vase on the coffee table and slipped the stem between his teeth. Then, like some manic lambada dancer, he pranced out of the living room, toward the kitchen. It took the dumbstruck Amarao at least a minute before he was able to regain gravitational control over his lower jaw.
"Who the fuck was that?!"

Roughly half an hour later, dinner was served. Amarao found himself sitting across from Hideaki and Kazuya, his back to the doorway, and an empty plate to his right. Fast asleep on the chair set in front of this plate was a strange animal that appeared to be half-penguin and half-dog, which Kazuya explained was Penpero, a housepet. In between bites of Hideaki's surprisingly excellent rigatoni, Amarao asked him who the extra place setting was for.
As the scientist began to answer, a voice called out from the front entranceway, "I'm ho-ome!" Amarao recognized it immediately and twisted his body around that his line of vision went from zero to 180 degrees in less than four seconds. The so-called "Ruhara" was standing there, taking her shoes off. She walked into the dining room, where she carefully removed the sleeping Penpero and sat down in its place.
"You're just in time," Hideaki said.
"Hey, you didn't tell me we were having guests over!" Ruhara replied as she spooned some pasta onto her plate. "I kind of expected to see Kazuyin, but..."
Hideaki pointed a fork at his other guest. "You remember him, don't you?"
"Of course! Agent Amarao of the Bureau of Interstellar Immigration, the poorly-endowed son-of-a-bitch," she said in her bright, intelligent tone; inflected in such a way as to accentuate its falseness.
Amarao, who had been silent ever since her entrance, suddenly felt compelled to blurt out, "Wha? Poorly-endowed?!"
"By the way, if you couldn't tell, I do remember you. I just couldn't admit it at the time."
"So you are Raharu!"
Ruhara shrugged. "If you like."
"How did you--"
"On the yellow Vespa, of course."
"When did you--"
"Not long before you did."
"What happened to--"
"The Pirate King?" Ruhara smiled cryptically.
"Yeah."
"Can't tell you."
Polishing off the last of her meal, Ruhara rose from her seat, then bent down to pick up Penpero-- still fast asleep-- from off the floor. She told the others that she'll be in her room for a little while, and will join them again for dessert.
Amarao watched her disappear down the hallway, then turned back to the table in time to catch Hideaki and Kazuya exchanging quick glances to each other. He glared at the two scientists suspiciously. "What do you guys know about this whole incident?"
Hideaki leaned back, chin up, so that his glasses caught the light in that disturbing, all-encompassing manner. "As you know, many of the Fraternity's starships have tried to create their own versions of our Ayanami Ray-fused young woman here. What they fail to understand is the reasoning behind her creation. I swear, such misinterpretations have been the death of me."
"So then... why was Ruha-- I mean, Raharu, created?"
Kazuya smiled brightly, his eyes twinkling with the essence of romance. "She is a vessel, one yearning to be filled with all that the universe can offer her, eventually to discover her true, whole, self."
Hideaki added, "That is all we can tell you... for now."
What Kazuya and Hideaki had told Amarao had, in his mind, amounted to very little. Weren't all young women-- nay, all human beings-- empty vessels to be filled, be it with love, friendship, hopes, dreams, or numerous other intangibles? This explanation of theirs was all too... poetic...
And there were few things Amarao hated more than poetry.

At work the following day, Amarao found himself being invited to-- and subsequently attending-- a demonstration of the latest technological wonder to come out of Fraternity Labs. It was a new form of teleportation, as the email announcing the lecture boldly declared; one that was unlike any that had ever been invented before. Previous technologies were simply too unstable, usually resulting in matter being scrambled into unrecognizable forms; but now, Fraternity Labs claimed to have solved this problem once and for all. Amarao, being mildly interested, decided to check it out.
"Hi everyone, and welcome to the Fraternity Labs demonstration hall!" said a middle-aged man on stage as Amarao took his seat. All around him were dweeby-looking guys and girls, all wearing white lab coats, pocket protectors, and glasses. Then, one of them waved at him. To his surprise, he saw that it was Ruhara. She was in a dweeb outfit like all the others, but it was, in an odd way, elegantly dweeby. Amarao waved back, and Ruhara, apparently pleased by this reaction, turned her attention to the two men up on the stage.
"Allow me to introduce myself," the middle-aged man said, casually removing his microphone from its stand. "I'm Paul and this is my research partner Jimmy."
Jimmy, a tall black man with a huge 'fro, held up his hand in greeting and nodded.
"Now I'm sure you all are intrigued to find out what we here at F.L. have to show you. Is it true, you may be thinking, that F.L. has come up with a way to teleport materials-- even living materials-- without running the risk of mutation? To that question, the answer is a resounding 'yes!'"
Amarao found himself entertained by the informal nature of the speaker. Perhaps this thing wasn't going to be as boring as he thought.
Then, Paul pumped his fist in the air and shouted, "Ladies and gentlemen of the Stellar Police Fraternity, are you ready to ROCK?!"
This shout-out was met with rabid enthusiasm by the scientists in the audience, and they all rose from their seats and streamed toward the stage while the curtains behind Paul and Jimmy were drawn, revealing a veritable menagerie of machines mixed in with an assortment of electric guitars, basses, lawnmowers, and weed whackers.
"This," Paul said, indicating a black guitar which Jimmy had picked up, "is a 1964 L-Series Fender Stratocaster."
"Pre-CBS-Fender corporate buyout," Jimmy added.
"Not a common guitar by any means," Paul continued. "But what's really unusual about this Strat is the hardware we've added on. Jimmy, show 'em the back of the soundboard."
The research partner did as he was told, and a jumbled mix of murmurs spread through the crowd. Amarao, caught in the thick mass of dweebery, squinted to get a better look. Mounted on the back of the guitar was what appeared to be some sort of ripcord. He raised one of his immaculate eyebrows in curiosity.
As Paul and Jimmy described the customized Strat's features in lengthy, technological detail, Amarao tried to pick up on what the hell they were talking about, but found himself failing miserably. Something about the vibration of a ripcord motor combined with certain string tunings on an unplugged electric guitar or bass creating a distortion in the fabric of physical space, using a condensed form of energy known as N.O. Though Amarao thought the combination of guitars and garden tools was a bit weird, he was not about to dismiss this technology altogether. Fraternity Labs were, after all, the same division who made Italian scooters suitable vehicles for interstellar travel. Thus, he politely nodded and mm-hmmed along with the crowd of dorks.
After the science lesson, Paul asked for volunteers from the audience to help him demonstrate this teleportation system. Among the clamoring nerds chanting "ooh ooh ooh" like a zooful of monkeys, Amarao happened to spot Ruhara hesitatingly raise her hand.
"Yes, you!" Paul said, pointing directly at her. "Our esteemed colleague Ruhara! Come on down! You're the next contestant on... oh, never mind."
As Amarao wondered what Paul meant by "esteemed colleague", Ruhara moved through the sweating, drooling masses as elegantly as she could, doing her best to ignore the teeming nerd flesh staring at her on either side. She took the stage, where Jimmy handed her a customized blue Rickenbacker bass.
"Now, I need another volunteer!" Paul announced. "Who wants to join this lovely young lady up here on stage?"
As the monkeys began their jibber-jabber once more, Amarao calmly raised his hand and held it there. Paul turned to Ruhara, apparently asking her to pick out a second volunteer. Guitar strap nestled on her shoulder and around her back, Ruhara gripped the neck of the bass in her right hand and pointed out to the crowd like a rock star. "I choose you, Amarao!"
"Chu--?" Amarao stuttered. "O-- okay."
He made his way to the stage. When he got there, instead of handing him an instrument, Jimmy directed him to a folding chair set up in the middle of the stage and asked him to sit down. Paul walked over to him and explained the procedure to the crowd.
"Now, if you all remember correctly, first the N.O. portal has to be activated by the Callosial Pick." He held up a thin, triangular wafer for everyone in the room to see. "The Pick has to be administered orally. And since the biological carrier of the portal must also be in a highly emotional state in order for the teleportation to work, I must ask Miss Ruhara to transfer the pick to our other volunteer by means of a kiss."
A collective gasp ran through the pimply-faced room. Amarao folded his arms across his chest and grinned. This was going to be better than he thought. Glancing over at Ruhara, he could see that her cheeks had flushed a slight pink, but otherwise, she remained calm.
As Paul walked over to Ruhara and handed her the Pick, Amarao turned his attention back to the audience, which was doubtless salivating in jealousy over his good fortune. He pitied these fools, really; if only they had eyebrows that looked half as good as his, then they might have been picked by Ruhara instead.
Ruhara slipped the Pick into her mouth and walked over to Amarao, stopping directly in front of him. She regarded him thoughtfully, hand on her chin, eyes examining every part of him. Then, after setting the Rickenbacker on the floor, she clamped his hands on his shoulders and straddled his legs, slowly easing her way up to his pelvis, where he began to stir. His pulse quickened even more as her supple breasts pressed up against his chest, and she took his head-- the one on his shoulders, that is-- in her hands. She pinched her eyes shut and dove for his lips, pushing the Callosial Pick into his mouth with her tongue.
After an extended minute-long liplock, Ruhara promptly dismounted, picked up the Rickenbacker by the neck, and turned to Paul. "I'm done. Shall I proceed with the activation?"
Paul nodded and looked over at Amarao, who was sitting languidly, a satisfied grin on his face. "Absolutely." Turning back to the audience, Paul said, "Now to activate the portal, Ruhara here will smack the head of our other volunteer with the body of her bass guitar.
"What?!" Amarao yelled.
"It'll only hurt for a second," Paul told him, trying to sound reassuring. The corners of Ruhara's mouth twitched upwards as he said this.
"That's not the point!" Amarao protested. "This is crazy! I know this technology is supposed to be revolutionary and all, but--"
BWAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNG!
Amarao found himself sailing out of his chair to the cold linoleum of the stage. Through his blurred vision, he could make out the form of Ruhara staring down at him, holding the neck of the bass like a major-league slugger who'd just hit a pop-fly to center field. As he struggled to keep his eyes open, he heard Paul say, "Now that the portal has been activated, we will attempt to pull a wild pelican from the GX National Zoo out of this man's head."
"I certainly hope this works," Ruhara told Paul. Amarao flinched. Why would she care?
Then, all of a sudden, a sharp pain hit the front of his skull, like the worst sinus headache he'd ever had in his life. Ruhara leaned over Amarao, staring at his forehead.
"I apologize for dragging you into this, Amarao, but I believe your head just might be perfect for… certain practical applications of this technology."
"Ow!-- W-- what do you mean? And how do these guys know you?"
"I worked part-time on this project."
"While working full-time at Intersellar Immigration?-- ow!-- You overachiever! I'm impressed!"
"Hmm," Ruhara replied as she placed her hand over Amarao's forehead and pulled something out. As the pain subsided, he heard the tinny screech of a bird.
He heard Ruhara sigh, as if to herself; "It's too small. And I have a feeling it's just not going to get any bigger. Poorly-endowed in more ways than one…"
Amarao struggled to sit up, and saw Ruhara kneeling off to one side, holding a tiny pelican, no larger than a standard incandescent lightbulb, in the palms of her hand. Paul and Jimmy were looking down at the bird from over her shoulders.
"Oh well," Paul sighed. "I guess it doesn't work with just anyone."
Though Amarao was slightly insulted by this, he kept his cool, well aware of the totally uncool crowd before them.
Paul stumbled away from the others and picked up the microphone once more. "Well, uhh... as you can see, our research has been coming along... rather well. Our target wasn't mutated, as promised... he's just a little... small." The once-amped nerds began to file out of the room, murmuring their disappointment. "Hey everyone! Where're you all going? Come back! Damn it!"
As Paul and Jimmy ran out of the room in a vain attempt to get their audience back, Amarao felt a soft, feminine hand touch his forehead.
"Are you all right?"
Turning his head slightly, he saw a concerned Ruhara still kneeling beside him, holding onto the miniaturized pelican.
"Yes... just a little disoriented, that's all."
"Oh. Well, anyway, I just wanted to apologize for that."
"Heh, it's no problem," Amarao answered as he struggled to stand. "You were just following instructions, after all."
"Still, it must have come as a shock to you."
He dusted himself off and escorted Ruhara toward the exit. "It sure did. I didn't think your swing was that good. You should play baseball."
Ruhara gave him a blank expression. "I was talking about the kiss..."
"Huh?"
Now that they were outside, she stared up at the sky, which was completely covered in thick, gray clouds. The single chain link on her bracelet rattled slightly in the wind. "Anyway, I have a lot of things to do this afternoon. I'll see you tomorrow?"
"S-- sure."
Ruhara bowed slightly, then ran off into the large park that sat in the middle of the Fraternity's complex of buildings. Amarao shook his head, then started off back toward the main Interstellar Immigration building. On his way there, he passed by a pair of tall mecha with large hands and the Medical Mechanica logo imprinted on their chest plates. He turned back to stare at them in disbelief, finding that other passersby were doing the same. What was Medical Mechanica doing here, on this world? Even as he reassured himself that it was probably due to some minor diplomatic dispute, his subconscious told him differently, and he felt a hard pit form in his stomach and remain there, even after the two mecha had completely disappeared from his field of vision.


Completed May 2004 | Copyright 2004, Reeve.