Disclaimer: Chikyuu Shoujo Arjuna © 2001 ARJUNA PROJECT/ Sotsu Agency/ TV Tokyo. Shin Kimagure Orange Road © Matsumoto Izumi/ Terada Kenji/ Shueisha. Not intended for commercial gain or to challenge the status of these copyrights.
Author's Note: I mean no disrespect to those who lost their loved ones during the earthquake/tsunamis that hit South/Southeast Asia during the last days of 2004. The quote below is intended to remind them that this life is not the only one there is—scant comfort though that may be right now.
BODIES
A Shin Kimagure Orange Road/Earth Girl Arjuna Crossover
The
mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and
tragedy.
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the
Master calls a butterfly.
-Richard Bach
Bodies. There were bodies everywhere.
The Japanese cameraman stepped gingerly across the torn, muddy ground. He and two of his friends were the only living souls around so far. Over the tiny Thai fishing village hung the silence of death.
When their broadcasting company received the first inklings of the disaster, it had promptly sent the three of them into the area, tearing him away from what was supposed to be a cozy Christmas celebration for him and his family. Their de facto leader Satoshi Sakamoto had bribed and bullied their way north of Phuket, and now they had somehow ended up here, ahead of the international aid teams, ahead of the Thai military, ahead of pretty much everyone else.
"Where's Junko?" Satoshi asked, also testing his footing as they made their way across the deserted road.
"I don't know," replied the cameraman. His mind was focused on the dead people littering the area like so much human garbage.
"Hey, Higashi!" his companion yelled. "Where are you?"
There came a faint reply over the eerily still air. "Over here, boss. Take a look at this."
They plodded over to a collapsed house, where Junko Higashi stood gazing at something in its front porch, horror and pity written clearly on his mobile, expressive face.
They saw a pair of bodies, what looked to be a mother and daughter pair, sprawled in the porch, their mahogany skin dark and shriveled, sightless eyes staring upwards into the sky, open mouths even now attracting flies and other insects. But even death itself could not part the embrace they held each other in.
The cameraman, moved by the sight, raised his SLR to take a picture, then changed his mind and slowly lowered it again, to hang by its straps against his neck.
"What's the matter, Kasuga?" his journalist friend asked. "We didn't go all the way here to sightsee, you know."
"Che," the cameraman replied. "Sightsee. What a nice word, Satoshi. You didn't tell me we'd be traipsing through Dante's Inferno." His nose wrinkled at the sweet-gagging smell of decaying flesh.
"Take the picture, my friend. Let us make our work a memorial to them."
The cameraman reluctantly complied. He saw the devastation all around him, and thought thankfully that his family was safe at home.
They roamed around that hellish graveyard for an hour more, then retreated to where they had been dropped off previously by the ride they had bummed from a local.
"I can't believe there was no one left alive there," Higashi said as they headed back through the sticky, sucking mud. The youngest among them, he was having a hard time coping with all the dead bodies and the violent, meaningless deaths those innocent people had experienced.
"Yeah," said the cameraman said. "That was even worse than the places in Bosnia I visited."
"Don't you think we should say a prayer for them before we leave?" Satoshi asked.
As one, the trio turned around and stood silently in the middle of the road for a minute or two, then resumed their journey.
"What a shitty way to end the year," Sakamoto remarked.
"Yeah. Akemashite omedetou," Higashi said, grimacing at his own tasteless joke.
Two hours later they were able to hitch a ride on a passing farmer's cart. The grief-stricken old man who drove it took them back to the larger town they had started out from, a place where help was starting to trickle in, sparse though it was for the time being.
As his friends went to find accommodations for them, the cameraman found himself wandering the hot, muggy streets. Even here, the bodies were still present. He watched as one group of local citizens piled plastic body bags heavy with human deadweight on top of one another like yellow cordwood. Around them, onlookers watched, their reactions ranging from dumbfounded shock to tearful wailing.
He took a picture of the scene, then went away. He was sure he'd see more of the same as the day wore on.
He passed by an aid station, a rudimentary affair set in what had been the local health clinic. There was little the people manning it could do: their supplies, never plentiful in the first place, had long since been depleted.
One of the people inside the station caught his eye. She was young, at that point in her life between being a teenager and a young adult, attending to a crying child whose clothes showed more than they concealed. She was dressed in a gray windbreaker and loose faded jeans. Her clean, shining black hair, sloe eyes and pale skin attracted him like a beacon.
Entering the place, the cameraman saw her look his way. There was a strange little blue mark in the middle of her forehead. He sawadeed, then nodded tentatively.
Just then a young man with unruly blonde hair and wearing a white polo and blue jeans emerged from the interior of the clinic and spoke to the girl. The cameraman heard their conversation.
"Kansai-ben?" he blurted out. "Are you from Japan?"
The girl turned to him with surprise on her face. "Why, yes we are," she replied in Japanese.
The cameraman bowed. "I'm Kasuga Kyousuke."
"My name is Ariyoshi Juna," said the girl. "This is my friend Ooshima Tokio."
She set the child she had been looking after on the floor, and it ran off into the musty depths of the clinic, calling for its mother.
"What brings the two of you here?"
"We were on vacation," replied the young man. "After the flooding, we made our way here, then stayed to help any way we could."
"I've just been up-country," said the cameraman. "I saw a whole village wiped out. There was no one left alive there."
The young man nodded. "I've seen enough dead people to fill my nightmares for the rest of my life. This is worse than the Great Hanshin Earthquake."
"Oh?"
"Yeah, I should know, we were both there," said the young man. "We're from Kobe," he added by way of explanation.
The girl with them suddenly put a hand to her forehead and swayed a little. The young man quickly put his arms around her shoulders.
"Juna, are you alright?"
"They're everywhere now, Tokio," the cameraman heard her mumble, "everywhere."
"What do you mean?" asked Kasuga.
Tokio looked at him and shook his head. "She's been working herself too hard." Turning to the girl, he said, "Come on, Juna, you've got to rest."
"No, I can manage," he insisted as she pulled herself away from him. She stumbled against Kasuga, her palms pushing against his chest. "Sorry…"
The cameraman watched her as she looked up at him and seemed to shudder.
"You're… you're not normal," she quickly stated as she withdrew from him, standing upright once more.
Kasuga raised his eyebrows in surprise. "What are you talking about?"
"Please don't mind her," Tokio apologized. "She's just tired."
Abruptly the girl snapped her head up and ran out the front entrance, causing some people, including Kasuga, to look curiously at her retreating form.
The young man sighed and said, "Excuse us, please." Then he dashed after the fleeing figure.
Shaking his head, the cameraman stepped back outside, in time to see the pair disappear around a corner.
What on earth drove a pair of teenagers into this godforsaken place? he thought.
------oOo------
"Juna!" Tokio hissed, pulling her to him savagely, preventing her from running away down the narrow, dirty alleyway.
She breathed hard against his chest, eyes still wide, still seeing the visions that were by now an everyday part of her life.
"Death, Tokio," she gasped. "All around us."
He put worried arms around her. "It's alright, Juna. Calm down."
She stared back out the alleyway. There, on the street still littered here and there with bodies, she saw her nemeses hovering over the dead, gently waving like obscene crimson grave markers caught in an underwater current.
Unable to stand it anymore, she shouted and pushed Tokio away. An unseen wind seemed spring up from nowhere, to blow about her and ruffle her clothes. The irregular mark on her forehead blazed with a white light, and her hair stood up in a v-shape, as if it were a living thing.
She held her open right hand out in front of her, and a long golden bow materialized in it. An arrow with an unusually large three-pronged blade and a small jewel at its tip appeared in the other, and she nocked it and aimed it at one of the monstrosities bending over one of the bodies of the dead. Then, with an angry yell, she let it fly.
Kyousuke Kasuga stepped in front of the alleyway in time to see her loose the projectile. Reflexively, he cringed, and the arrow came to a stop in mid-air inches from his face. He could see the young man standing to one side of the alley as the arrow dropped to the ground.
"Hey! Watch it!" he said, eyeing the young woman, who now had a very different look about her, not the least of which was her gravity-defying hairdo. And the weapon in her hand.
"How did you do that?" the young man asked, awe on his face.
"Do what?" the cameraman asked innocently.
"Stop the arrow," said Tokio. "Don't play the fool with me."
"I told you he's… not normal," the young lady said slowly. As the cameraman watched, the bow in her hands winked out of existence.
"Look who's talking," he retorted. "Mind if I ask you what this is all about?"
By way of an answer the girl looked at him oddly, then sagged and fainted, at the end of her strength.
"Juna!" her companion shouted, startled, quickly catching her in his arms as she fell. Her hair turned back into its normal shape.
Kasuga was about to take a step forward to help them when a voice from down the street called his name. He turned to see Higashi running towards him.
"We found a place to stay," his younger colleague told him. "Come on."
Kasuga looked at the unconscious girl cradled in the boy's arms. "Does it have a bed?"
"Well, hell, of course it does. Lots of 'em."
"Great." He extended a hand to the young man. "Come on, let's take your friend to a place where she can rest."
------oOo------
"And that's my story," concluded the girl, sitting upright in the hard bed, a blanket over her legs, her arms wrapped around her knees.
"Interesting." Kasuga stood up from the low cabinet he had been sitting on. The three of them were all alone in a newly-cleaned and dried motel room. The previous inhabitants—well, most of them were probably being stacked outside now, he thought with sadness. "Alright, to keep my promise to you, I'll tell you my secret."
He frowned, and the camera sitting on the squat wooden table by the bedside rose into the air and flew into his waiting hands.
"I have psychic powers," he declared. "But that's just between us, okay?"
Juna Ariyoshi, the current possessor of the Drop of Time—the blue stone embedded in her forehead—nodded solemnly.
"This isn't fair," griped Tokio Ooshima, her companion and on-and-off love interest. He was leaning against one of the windowsills, the sunlight reflecting off his dyed hair and making his red sunglasses glow a deep crimson. "How come you guys get cool powers and I don't? Just kidding, Juna, lighten up," he quickly added, seeing the annoyed look she gave him.
"When I was your age, my powers got me into a lot of trouble," remarked Kyousuke Kasuga. "It got so bad I sometimes wished I didn't have them."
"Well, that's easy for you to say, Kasuga-sensei, you've got them in the first place," countered Tokio Ooshima. "What about us ordinary folk?" His brow knitted as he looked at the girl on the bed. "Then again, I don't think I'd want the responsibility that goes with them."
Juna reached over for the bottled water at the bedside table and took a careful sip. Satisfied it was safe—safe having quite a different meaning where she was concerned—she greedily drank more, finishing two-thirds of its contents before she put it back.
"Do your parents know where you are?" asked the photographer.
"Yeah, we managed to call them on the first day and told them we were sticking around a while longer," said Tokio. "They weren't happy about it."
"Of course they weren't," said Kasuga, a father himself to a beautiful little girl, with another child currently on the way. "If I were them I'd order you home. In fact, I could take you home right now if you wanted to. Of course, I'd have to do some explaining to my colleagues…"
"What, can you fly too?" asked Juna.
"No, I—"
There was a series of quick knocks on the door. It opened to reveal Satoshi Sakamoto, standing there looking impatiently at his fellow media man.
"Hey, Kasuga, come on, we've got work to do."
The cameraman nodded. "Well, see you later, I've got to go." He bowed perfunctorily and left.
After the door had closed, Juna said, "How odd. I never thought we'd meet people like him. I thought SEED had a monopoly on people with extrasensory powers."
Tokio sat down beside her. "Looks like we were wrong. Why don't you get some sleep? I'll stay here until you are."
Juna nodded and lay back on the bed, at peace with the world for the present, and closed her eyes. Tokio pulled out a ciggie from his pants pocket, lit it with his ever-present lighter, and stood guard over her, watching as her breathing slowed and her countenance took on the softness of slumber. Then he pulled the thin blanket over her sleeping form and left for the aid station.
------oOo------
The two journalists and one cameraman stood apart as they watched a mob of people surround a newly-arrived Army M35 laden with supplies.
"Too few and too far in between," Satoshi observed. In all his years of covering hotspots around the globe, he had come to the opinion that arriving help would always be so immediately following any disaster, no matter where in the world it occurred.
"Sure seems like it," allowed Higashi. "Those poor souls."
Kasuga was silent, his mind back with the two young Japanese he had just met. They were doing what they could to help; how about him? The thought made him want to shrink in shame.
He shook his head. I'm here to cover the news, he told himself, not become part of it. But he knew down inside that such a stand would last only as long as an opportunity to help presented itself.
He turned to Satoshi. "Have you dispatched anything yet?"
"No, the satellite doesn't come within range until after two hours. How about you, Junko? Any luck?"
"Not much." What little phone access he could scrounge up was pretty bad.
They split up and roamed the streets of town, interviewing people, taking photos, lending a hand where they could. Then they returned to the motel so they could work on their articles and attempt to transmit them and Kasuga's digital photos when the commsat came within hailing distance.
Kasuga knocked at the door of the room he had left the two teenagers in. There being no answer, he cracked it open and peered inside. The girl was all alone, apparently asleep.
He put his camera bag and backpack down quietly on the dining table and fished out his slippers, a towel and his toiletries. He had helped carry rice sacks from a cargo carrier, and the effort had left him sweaty and dirty. He had previously checked out the bathroom and noted that it had plastic drums full of water for bathing.
As he was about to enter the bathroom, he heard a voice call out from behind him. "Hello."
He turned around. "Hi. Sleep okay?"
The girl, who was sitting up in bed, nodded and rubbed her eyes. "How long have I been sleeping?"
"I don't know, I just arrived. I'd say around three, maybe four hours."
She looked around. "Where's Tokio?"
"Oh, Ooshima-kun? I haven't seen him."
"Hmm. Maybe he's at the aid station again. Thanks." She fell back against the pillow.
Kasuga went into the bathroom and took a bath. However primitive the facilities were right now, he wasn't complaining; he had been denied even this simple luxury when he went to Bosnia to prove to himself that he could be just as successful in his endeavors as his then-girlfriend Madoka Ayukawa was in hers. By the time he had emerged, feeling somewhat revitalized, Juna Ariyoshi was gone.
Some minutes later, after he had dressed, he found her standing outside the decrepit edifice, looking at the silent buildings, a faraway look in her eyes.
"Hey," he said coaxingly. "How are you?"
"Hmm? Oh, Kasuga-sensei. I'm fine."
"You don't look like it."
Juna looked at him with a somber expression. "No, you're right, I'm not." She sighed and looked away. "I used to hate humanity for what it was doing to the planet. Now… I realize we're just as much at the mercy of our environment as it is at our hands. We're not the masters of our world, no matter how much we try to prove it to ourselves."
Kasuga gazed at her, this girl who was forced to grow up faster than she should, leaving her childhood behind like a tattered present unopened. "In cases like this, I'd have to agree with you."
She continued staring. "Gods, how ugly it all is," he heard her whisper.
He raised an eyebrow. "Why do you say that?"
"I… see many things, Kasuga-sensei, beyond what other people can see. Right now, I see the spirits of people still around us. I hear their cries for help, their lamentation. I know their final moments. And most of all, I see… them."
The photographer shivered. Thank God Madoka's not here, he thought. His wife still disliked the merest mention of ghosts. "Them?"
Juna shook her head. "I can't describe them. You'd have to see for yourself."
"Maybe I can do that. Will you let me?"
The girl nodded. "If you're brave enough to try."
Kasuga extended a hand. "Give me your hand," he instructed her.
Juna hesitantly did so.
"Now open your eyes, and open your mind. Let me see what you're seeing," said the cameraman, closing his own and taking a deep breath, as a swimmer would before taking a plunge into icy-cold water.
After a second or two, he stiffened. "Holy shit!" he exclaimed, his eyes still shut but seeing all too clearly what Juna saw. "What are those?"
"They're Raaja," the girl replied, as matter-of-factly as one would when quoting a weather report from TV. "What I told you about before. I… I'm supposed to purify them, since they mean danger is coming. But there are so many of them here—" she looked around, and Kasuga could see in his mind that she was unfortunately right "—that I don't think I could wipe them out even if I wanted to."
The cameraman let go of her hand. He had had enough of the hellish sight. "What do they mean?"
"Death," said Juna. "Disease, I guess, unless the people can get this place cleaned up, and those bodies buried."
"And services restored, and supplies sent in," added Kasuga. He looked down at her with renewed respect in his eyes. "How do you live, seeing stuff like that everyday?"
"One day at a time, Kasuga-sensei. One day at a time." The alter ego of the Avatar of Time straightened and walked away without another word, heading for the aid station.
------oOo------
"No, dear. I told you, I'm okay. There's no need to worry about me." A long pause. "Yes, I know it's been two days now. Yes, I'm coming home soon. Yes. Yes. I promise. And in case I don't return in time for New Year, don't forget the pine tree. Yes. I promise, dear. Love you too. Bye."
Kasuga breathed a noisy sigh of relief. "Women," he muttered, putting the satellite phone down. "They get on your case, they never get off it."
The duo of Tokio and Juna, seated on the bed in the small motel room, looked at him with amusement in their eyes.
"Well, she does have a point, sensei," said Juna. "You really should have called her earlier."
"Yeah," said Tokio. "I can't believe an esper like you could be so henpecked."
"Henpecked?" Juna said, looking at him, bristling. "You call that henpecked? She had a right to be worried, you know."
"Okay, okay, I agree with you." Tokio sighed. Looking the camerman's way, he said, "I guess I know what you mean, sensei."
Juna sniffed haughtily. "Men."
Two days had passed since they had met each other. More aid was coming into the town, and an army battalion and an International Red Cross contingent had set up shop to help in the distribution of food and medicine, keep the peace, and assist in giving care to the weakened survivors of the catastrophe.
Kasuga had taken a shine to the pair for their pluck and courage in remaining in the area. The day before, a helicopter had arrived to pick Higashi up, but when Saakamoto had extended them the offer of riding it back to civilization, they simply smiled and refused to get on board.
"Now that help is here, I can relax a little," Juna had told him earlier that day. "But there are still things to be done, and I still have to keep an eye on the Raaja."
"Ariyoshi-san," Kasuga had ventured then, "you can't save everyone, you know."
She, in response, had given him a decidedly unfriendly stare. "I can try, can't I?"
That was the end of that; he dared not bring up the subject anymore.
Now it was early in the morning, and the tropical air was just beginning to heat up. Kasuga had just called home using the company satellite phone, and as expected, his dear wife gave him a hefty piece of her mind for not calling sooner. He tried to sell her the excuse that there was no way he could have called earlier, but she wasn't buying it—and she was right.
It's unfair, he mused. She's not an esper, but she always manages to read my mind. Perhaps I should just find a better lie to use the next time.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," warned Juna, smiling at him.
Kasuga looked at the coltish girl, startled. "What the—how'd you know what I was thinking?"
"I can hear your thoughts," she answered. "If I concentrate. And I can even see them taking form."
"Oh, really?" The cameraman blinked and imagined what it must have been like for her at the aid station, surrounded by all those desperate people.
He caught her gaze. There was a solemn look on her face, and she nodded once, slowly.
Kyousuke started to shield himself from her. All that training with his mind-reading cousin Kazuya was going to come in handy now, he thought.
"Your wife must be someone special," noted Juna.
Kasuga nodded. "Naturally."
"How long have you been married?" asked Tokio, blowing on the bowl of rice gruel in his hands. He made it himself, especially for Juna. Over the past couple of years he had turned into something of a caretaker for her. "If you don't mind my asking."
"Eight years. How about your parents?"
"Mine are separated," replied Juna.
"Oh, I don't know, about twenty or so," said Tokio.
Inwardly, Kasuga winced. It seemed to be the current trend, however: lots of families breaking up. But he couldn't see that happening with him and Madoka; he was going to make damned sure of it.
"Well, duty calls," he said, picking up the satellite phone. "I'll see you two later. Don't get into trouble. And mind your manners."
"Haaai, otou-san," said Tokio in a long-suffering tone. Juna smiled and waved as he left.
"Sheesh," Tokio groused as he offered the bowl he was holding to her. "The guy's starting to sound just like my father."
"I think he's pretty sweet," said Juna as she took the bowl. Taking a taste of its contents, she paused and started to eat. After she finished its contents, she put it down on the table.
"Thanks, Tokio."
"For what?"
"The food. And sticking around."
"Hey, it's nothing, don't mention it." His cheerful demeanor suddenly turned somber. "I might say the same of you."
"Oh, Tokio." She felt his concern. "I'm not going anywhere." Resurrected once already in exchange for being a guardian of the earth, Juna was essentially living on borrowed time. "That's a promise."
------oOo------
"Kasuga-sensei!"
The two journalists, who had been quietly resting in their small, muggy, dimly-lit room, stood up, startled by the door suddenly being flung open.
"Ooshima-kun, what's wrong?"
"Have you seen Juna?"
"What does it look like, boy?" snapped Satoshi Sakamoto. "We were minding our own business until you came barging in."
Kasuga gestured for his fellow to sit back down. "I'll take care of this," he said quietly. The elder man did so, grumbling, his bed's springs creaking.
Going outside, Kasuga shut the door behind him. "She isn't in your room?"
Tokio shook his head. "I thought she had gone to the aid station, but she wasn't there. Then I thought she was taking a walk, until I realized she'd never do such a thing in a place like this."
"Hmm. Do you have any idea where she could have gone?"
"No."
Kasuga led the two of them to the street outside. The blackness of the still-recovering town turned out to be a godsend, in this case.
"Look!" Tokio pointed with a finger at something in the sky, a good distance away.
The photographer nodded. "I see it. Are you sure it's her?"
"Yeah! They don't make planes with pink lights! That's got to be her! Juna!" cried Tokio in frustration. "How are we going to catch her now?"
"Don't worry about that." Kasuga looked around at the darkness. "Hold on to me."
"What?"
"I said hold on to me. No time to explain. Just close your eyes!"
Tokio did so, and suddenly felt like he was falling.
One middle-aged photojournalist and one college-level teenager disappeared from the streets of the town into the humid air of the tropical night.
------oOo------
They reappeared in the real world, and promptly fell into what Kasuga guessed was a small, muddy stream.
Tokio, his concern for Juna making him quickly recover from his shock at finding himself instantly in the middle of nowhere, wiped his jeans. "Where are we? What happened?"
"I tried to follow Ariyoshi-kun," said the cameraman, trying to inspect his shoes in the darkness.
A thunderclap made them jump out of their skin, and a momentary glow to the west lit up the sky.
"You found her," was all Tokio could say.
They waded quickly out of the water and headed for the place where the flash had come from. A small point of light hung low in the sky, moving quickly and irregularly.
"There she is," Tokio said, panting.
"What is she doing?"
"Fighting, it looks like."
"What?"
"The Raaja. It's what she has to do."
Pausing, Kasuga said, "It's no use. We'll never reach her in time. Hold on to me."
This time, Tokio didn't ask him to repeat what he said.
They popped back into reality and found themselves standing in the middle of a dimly-lit four-way road junction.
Tokio was about to say something when the sound of screeching brakes filled the air. He looked back in time to see a small truck brake to a halt behind him, its headlights shining, its bumper a foot away from his knees.
He swallowed. "Uh, sensei? Next time set us down somewhere safer, please?"
"Sorry." The photographer accosted the driver of the vehicle. Tokio followed, moving out of the way of the vehicle. The moment he had done so, however, the truck driver stepped on the gas and hightailed it down the road. The road, Tokio noted, going away from the where they had seen the flash of light.
"How come he didn't stay and help us?" he complained.
"He must have had his reasons. Fear, I think, was chief among them." Kasuga looked thoughtfully at the brake lights of the retreating vehicle.
"Coward."
"Don't be so quick to judge, Ooshima-kun. Fear makes people do irrational things." He gestured towards the sky. "How did your girlfriend act when she first received her powers?"
Tokio frowned. "She's not my… well, you're right. She frequently freaked out at first. She kept harping on the evils that man was doing to the world, the harmfulness of the chemicals we use to grow our food, that sort of stuff. It got so our relationship was strained for a while… but she seems to handle it better nowadays." He fell silent, and Kasuga could sense that he wasn't going to talk about it any more. "What did the driver say?"
"It's a petrochemical storage tank," reported the photographer. "It's been damaged by the flooding, and he told me he thinks it's going to blow."
They debated briefly on what to do, then decided to follow the direct course of action and ran down the road the truck had come from. There were several more thunderclaps, and the thought crossed Kasuga's mind that he finally knew what it meant to run 'to the sound of the guns.'
------oOo------
"That's Ariyoshi-kun?"
The incredulous statement came from the cameraman as he and Tokio crouched under a rak tree. They were watching a glowing pink humanoid hovering in the air, wielding a bow in her hands. A translucent ribbon entwined itself around her, and her hair was a bright gold vee on her head.
"Yeah," said Tokio with a mixture of pride and worry. "And if you think she looks strange now, you haven't seen her when she gets really mad."
An orange ball of energy zipped past the flying figure, which dodged it handily and fired a shot from her weapon in return.
Kasuga flinched. "What was that?" Nothing could be seen in the darkness except the looming bulk of the round storage tank, about half a kilometer away, lit up by a few floodlights surrounding it.
"It must be a Raaja," said Tokio. "Something's probably happening at the storage facility."
There was an explosion, and the two saw a bright fireball erupt at the base of the structure. The figure overhead cried out and flew towards it, unleashing more arrows as she went.
"Let's follow her," said Kasuga, waiting for his companion to hold on to him so he could teleport them.
"Uh, thanks, Kasuga-sensei," said Tokio, knowing what he intended but not wanting to participate in it any more. "I think I'll walk."
"Fine. Stay sharp." In the blink of an eye the man was gone. Tokio sighed and resorted to his own two legs to get to the petrochemical facility, running as fast as he could down the road.
------oOo------
Arjuna was having a hard time. There were so many Raaja, and they were all clustered together underneath the storage tank, forcing her to select her shots with care for fear of damaging the building or setting its contents alight.
"Ariyoshi-kun!" came a distant voice, and she looked down to see the cameraman standing in the middle of a tree-lined road leading to the facility. In her altered state, however, she saw him with other sight, and was glad.
"Noble warrior," she said, her voice echoing in the night sky, "I need your help."
At first Kasuga thought she was talking to someone else. But her attention was fixed full on him.
"I don't—" he began, then was cut off by a powerful blast from near the tank. He saw the being start, then begin dodging balls of energy again.
Another explosion ripped through the night, and Kasuga saw a piece of debris the size of a small car leap into the air towards Ariyoshi.
"Look out!" he yelled. She didn't appear to hear him, as busy as she was with dodging Raaja fire.
In the second or two that was left to him to act, Kasuga reached out with his mind and willed the chunk of metal to another course. It worked, startling her as the steel debris sailed past mere feet from her body. She flipped back reflexively and looked down at him.
"Watch yourself!"
She nodded and flew off, darting through the air like a fish through water.
Some more pieces of debris flew through the sky as the explosions grew more frequent. In Kasuga's eyes, the way they all seemed headed in the general direction of the fulgent figure was highly suspicious. Whatever the mundane or otherworldly reason was for such behavior, he did his best to parry them, deflecting them from Ariyoshi's path with his telekinetic power.
Tokio Ooshima appeared at his elbow, panting. "Sensei, this is starting to look like a mighty uncomfortable place to be in right now."
"I can't leave," grunted Kasuga, staring at the glowing pink figure. "I'm helping Ariyoshi-kun."
Tokio wondered what he meant by that, until he saw several pieces of flying machinery bounce off an invisible barrier in front of Arjuna while she was distracted, looking elsewhere for a mark to shoot at with her bow Gandiva.
He pointed upward. "Are you doing that?" he asked in amazement. The cameraman nodded. "Then I'm eternally grateful, sensei." Tokio looked at him in gratitude. For you protecting my precious Juna.
Arjuna saw the debris ricocheting away from her. She looked down and called, "My thanks, valiant kshatriya," her voice punctuated by another terrific blast.
"What did she say?"
"I don't know," replied the cameraman. "I think she called me an old fart."
"No, that's not… look out!"
Tokio yanked the preoccupied man roughly to him, and a red-hot piece of asbestos piping the length of a man's leg thudded heavily on the spot where Kasuga had been standing.
He looked at it gravely. "Thanks, Ooshima-kun." For a moment his mind drifted back to his wife and daughter. He was getting too old for stuff like this. He wished he were back in Tokyo snoring the night away beside Madoka, even if it meant she was going to plant another pillow over his face to cut down on his noise.
Another fusillade of energy balls flew through the air, and they, afraid of being hit, ran behind a nearby tree for cover.
"Sensei?" Tokio shouted over the noise of the battle.
"What?"
"Happy New Year." The teenager grinned weakly.
"Hah. Very funny, Ooshima-kun."
"Tokio! Kasuga-san!" The voice cut through the night sky, and the two looked up to see Arjuna pointing back the way they had come.
"Get out of here!" she said. "The fuel tank's going to explode! I'm going to try and contain the blast! Hurry!"
Kasuga nodded. "Well?" he said, turning to his younger companion. "Come on, Ooshima-kun!"
"Just a minute. Juna!"
Arjuna looked down, and Tokio's eyes met hers across the intervening distance in one last glance of trust and friendship. And love.
"Take care!"
"I will, Tokio. Now go!"
Without further ado Kasuga placed a hand on the young man's shoulder, and the two vanished into thin air.
Arjuna watched them disappear, then turned to face the petrochemical installation. Her expanded senses told her it was about ready to cook off. She had a vision of the destruction it would cause, and her mind railed at her to go, to save herself, to get out of the way of the impending blast.
Closing her eyes, Arjuna began weaving a shield of energy around the now-flaming storage tank. Precious seconds ticked away as it shimmered into existence, looking like a translucent overturned bowl covering the facility. Halfway through the process, however, the fire finally reached the fuel, and the tank exploded.
------oOo------
Kyousuke Kasuga watched as the night sky in the distance lit up with a sustained roar.
Tokio Ooshima could only stare in disbelief at the mushroom cloud that slowly rose into the night sky. He prayed to whatever god that might be listening that his friend was alright.
------oOo------
Juna felt a hand support her head, then place something soft under it, whispering her name as it did so. She slowly opened her eyes.
"Tokio?" she murmured questioningly, squinting as she adjusted to the late-morning light streaming in through the open windows.
Her blond-haired suitor smiled in relief. He was standing over her. "Hi. How do you feel?"
She looked around. She was back in the motel room, and the cramped, dingy place never looked better.
"Uh… fine, I guess. But I've got this pounding headache…" She tried to sit up, but decided the better of it when her head began to swim. "What happened?"
"You don't remember?"
"No."
"The fuel tank blew up. We waited for you to return, then when you didn't, we went looking for you. It took us all night to find you. You were hanging up in a tree." Tokio told her how Kasuga-sensei had pulled her unconscious body out of the foliage of a particularly tall soak, where it had been tossed by the blast. It was a wonder she was still alive, the elder man had said, and without so much as a broken bone to boot.
Juna laid back on the bed. "That was probably the Toki no Shizuku's doing," she said. "I really can't remember anything. But Tokio… did I stop people from getting hurt?"
"I don't know. I've…been here all this time." He sighed in exasperation. "I don't want to sound like a whiner, but you're going to make me grow old with worry."
"Sorry." Juna returned to her silence, brooding over whether she had been successful at what she had set out to do.
After around half an hour the cameraman came to the room and reported what he had seen and found out after nosing around. The tank was burning, and would probably continue to do so for a day or two. Its noxious contents had been flung out over much of the surrounding countryside and the remainder of the structure was still racked with periodic explosions. A contingent of firefighters was already at hand, however, and would probably have everything under control by tomorrow morning.
Juna's heart fell as she imagined the fate of all the creatures that would no doubt be affected by the catastrophe. Burned insects. Suffocated fish. Dead deer. Poisoned people. More Raaja. As if they hadn't had enough misery to deal with.
"Well, what do you know?" she mumbled bitterly to herself. "I've managed to add to the body count in this place. Some help I am."
"Don't be so hard on yourself," the photographer consoled her. "At least no people were hurt by the explosion. At least, not from what I've heard. I think we can attribute that to you…or that pink glowing person."
"They're one and the same, sensei," clarified Tokio.
Kasuga nodded. "By the way, you two, I'm going home tomorrow with my friend. I strongly suggest you do the same. There are enough relief people here so that your presence is no longer required."
Tokio sat himself on the bed beside Juna and gently tapped her shoulder. "What do you say, Juna? Do you want to go home?"
She was silent for a few seconds, reading Tokio's emotions through his voice and touch. He wanted to, and the depressed part of her agreed. She spent a moment weighing that and what the photographer had said against the alternative. In truth, what could she do now? The aid workers were far better equipped and trained to handle this than she and Tokio were. She nodded. "Okay. I guess you're right, Kasuga-sensei."
"Well, look…" the photographer said hesitantly, "you can come with us if you want to. At least, up to the airport."
The girl looked up from the bed and a smile appeared on her lips for the briefest second. "That's very kind of you, sensei. I guess we'll accept, but you don't need to worry about us."
"Well, with the way you seem to go after trouble… we have to stick together, us Japanese." Kasuga smiled. "Though I admit Ooshima-kun's doing perfectly well looking after you…"
Tokio had the grace to blush, smiling ruefully to cover his embarrassment. "That's not true," he said. "I came here for a vacation…"
"And not to baby-sit Ariyoshi-kun?" Kasuga challenged him, raising an eyebrow, having fun at the young man's expense.
"Well…"
Juna and Kasuga laughed. The latter then stood up. "I'm leaving in the morning. If you intend to come with us, be ready by then."
"We will," affirmed Tokio. The cameraman left.
Tokio turned to figure on the bed. "Well? I hope you're happy," he said, sounding miffed.
"Eh? What did I do?"
"Embarrassing me like that…"
"That wasn't me! That was Kasuga-sensei!"
"Huh." Tokio's face turned unusually thoughtful. "You know, he'd make you a good partner."
"What do you mean?"
"He saved your hide several times last night." Tokio told her how the esper had used his power to keep her safe.
Juna smiled. "See? I told you he was a sweet man, doing that for someone he'd just met."
"Heh. If I had those powers of his, I would've done the same thing."
"Oh, Tokio," Juna laughed. "Don't tell me you're jealous of him."
"I'm not! I'm jealous of his powers!"
"Well, he doesn't have this power of yours," Juna said mysteriously.
"What power?"
"Come here." Tokio leaned closer to her. "This power." She put her arms around his neck and kissed him full on the lips. Tokio froze for a few shocked seconds, and started to kiss her back. As he did, however, she put her lips for a moment against his ear and whispered.
"The power to make me feel good." She pulled him down onto her body, feeling the comforting security of his weight on her.
They lay there on the bed, a little oasis of life and love amidst the death and misery that surrounded them. Though they could not master all the tides of all the world, they could direct their own lives and passions, and now seemed a perfect time to do so.
THE END