A/N: I"m sure you're all wondering: Why the HELL Is she startin gup another fic NOW? Well, to answer you that, mi amigo(e)s, I would have to figure out away to get my brain to speak with meagain. All i'm gettin gright now are faxes from my muse, with no return adress; He's off vacationing somewhere in Thailand. :sigh: Meanwhile...Alright, to my readers who are (im)patiently waiting for me to finihs one of my other fics...:crickets chirp: Okay, never mind, I din;t think there were any of you anyways. So yeah. To meh first time readers::salutes: Greetings! You are about to be Converted, Subverted, Reverted and Rotated at a 90degree angle! On With the Fic!
SUTA--TO!
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Kinomoto Touya stared at the man standing before him. This man was short-ish, and cheerful, and was wearing glasses. He smelled like paper and ink and many, many students. Obviously a teacher. This man was offering him something he never would have expected: A Job. A steady, well-paying Job. Working for a respectable company. A Job.
Perhaps some history will shed light on this situation.
You see, Kinomoto Touya was a scientist. An astronomer. Well, that was his official occupation, but his true passion lay with the search for extraterrestrial life forms.
When he was young, his mother had died, leaving him, his sister, and their father to fend for themselves. As soon as he had graduated highschool, a year early, he had left his father's home to hack it out on his own. Currently he was living in a small appartment, just outside of Tokyo, doing consulting jobs for various scientific appliance companies and writing an astronomy column in the local paper. And while this was afairly respectable occupation, it wasn't what Touya wanted out of life. his greatest desire was to prove the existence of Extraterrestrials, without getting blown to bits, like in all those american sci-fi/horror movies. (1)
And this man had just come and made his dream possible.
This was how the first meeting went:
"Are you Kinomoto Touya?" The man asked, smiling cheerfully.
"H-hai," Touya rplied, slightly surprised at this man. He had just come out of no where, accosting Touya at his work, and was smiling as if this happened every day.
"Good! I have a proposition for you! Would you come with me please?" The obviously-a-teacher asked, still smiling.
"Uh, Sure...What's this about, anyways?"
"You have recently come to the attention of a group i am currenty working with, due to some of the papers you have written on the existence of, shall we say, aliens?"
"Uh-huh." They arrived at a rather nice car, parked just outside the front doors of VSMAstroTech Labs. (2) "And who are you?"
"That is, unfortunatley, unimportant at the moment, as I am only a messenger. GammaPlanet (3), the group I am representing, would like to offer you a position, studying a sample they have that they think may prove or disprove, forever, the theories you've stated in your essays."
Touya stared at this man, as they drove along, barely registering that they were being chauffered. "You don't seem like a scientist to me."
The other man laughed.
--
The other man, the obviously-a-teacher, Touya had learned that afternoon, was a Proffesor of AstroPhysics at Tokyo U. (4) His name was Tsukishiro Yukito. He was well known in the community, and Touya had read one or two of his works. He was surprised to find that the 'famous' Tsukishiro-san was as young as he. Tsukishiro-san had delighted in talking about some of his theories, the two young men bouncing theories off of each other, until they arrived at Touya's home. When it had been time for Touya to disembark from the vehicle, Tsukishiro-san had gotten out with him and walked him to the door.
"Will you be ready to come it tomorrow at 1000 hours, Kinomoto-san?" he asked, smiling as cheerfully as ever.
"Yeah, sure, i guess so. and You don't have to call me Kinomoto-san, it makes me feel old. I'm just Touya, okay?"
Tsukishiro-san grinned and nodded. "Then I am simply Yukito, not Tsukishiro-san, alright, Touya-san?"
Touya laughed, "Deal. I guess, I'll see you tomorrow, then?"
Yukito-san nodded. "I will be here to pick you up. Until then!"
And with that he waved and got back into the car.
--
That night, Touya sat on the small balcony, with his telescope, staring up at the stars. They had always given him a sense of scale; After all, there were so many of them, that there had to be life out there somewhere. Maybe not intelligent life, but life all the same. It made him feel...less alone. It was nights like these, clear and bright, when he wondered what his family was up to. He had hardly seen them since his leaving that day long ago. Sakura would have to be graduating by now. (5)
Sighing, he packed up the small telescope and headed back indoors. He had a feeling he would need to be well rested for tomorrow.
--
The next morning, at exactly 1000 hours, Yukito-san arrived with the same chauffer and the same car from the day before.
"Ohayo Gozaimasu, Touya-san!" He other man called, cheerfully. Touya had a sneaking suspicion that this silver haired man was never unhappy.
"'hayo Gozaimasu, Yukito-san." Despite his attempts to get do so, Touya had not slept very well. He got into the car beside Yukito-san, and was promptly out like a light, until the other man touched his should with a greeting of "We're Here." Touya grumbled a little, but got up, just the same.
They had arrived outside a large grey brick building, with a glass domed roof, and Touya had no idea where they were; He could think of no place in Tokyo that would house such a gargantuan building. "Woah," was the only thing he said.
"It is rather daunting the first time you get a look at it, isn't it?" Yukito-san asked as they headed up the walk to the entrance. "This is The Home Base of GammaPlanet. The top is, obviously, a telescope, and a rather impressive one at that. The director told me to bring you straight to her, as soon as we got you here, so that's where we'll be going first. Then, I'll give you the dime tour, alright?"
Touya shrugged, still too much in awe of this building to really hear what was being said to him. "Sounds cool." (6) As they entered the building, Touya couldn't help but look around, marvelling at erything he could see. There were several computer banks, mostly empty, save for a few people, and the roof was high, but not as high as the outside, leading him to his assumption that there was a second floor. he was acctually surprised at the number of people they saw. He would have expected a far greater number, espesially in a research group the size of GammaPlanet, which had centers all across the globe, from what he had heard. They came to a desk, where an animatron secretary was waiting for them .
"-Ohayo, Tsukishiro-san, and guest.-"
"Ohayo Sekretärin-san, This is Kinomoto Touya, the Director wanted to see him." (7)
"-Nice to meet you, Kinomoto-san. You know the protocol, Tsukishiro-san.-"
"Nice to meet you too, Sekretärin-san." Was all Touya had time to say before Yukito-san beconned him along. They soon came to a set of metal doors, inscibed with the Greek character Gamma inscribed over a planet, obviously the Earth. 'GammaPlanet,' Touya realized. 'Third planet...' He watched as Yukito placed his hand between two plate scanners, off to one side of the door. Suddenly, a mechanical voice said : "Welcome, Tsukishiro Yukito and Kinomoto Touya," and the doors opened.
What greeted Touya was something he had never expected to see.
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(1) - Me too, Touya-kun, me too...
(2) - VSM is the name of an acctual company, but they don't do AstroTech, They do MedTech. i'm not using their name with permision, i own it as much as I own the moon.
(3) - GammaPlanet does acctually exist. you're sitting on it right now. Unless you're floating in the air. Gamma is the third character in the Greek alphabet, and it's using that alphabet that we classify stars, by their brightness, Alpha being the brightest. I used it in a dfferent sense here, in that Earth is the Third planet in our solar system, therefore GammaPlanet, though they aren't teh entire planet, they're a scientific group, based on Earth. You'll understand that later. Please excuse my eccentrities. I am an avid amature stargazer who doesn't own a telescope.
(4) - The extent of my AstroPhysics knowledge is in translations of a few of Einstein's theorems, and some thigns I've sort of figured out for myslef, with the help of scientific journals. I'm only starting physics next year, so I won't be talking in any great detail about this.
(5) - In this fic, Sakura and Touya are only Four or five years apart, unlike the grade four-grade ten (?) difference in the Manga/anime. But, this is AU so I'm allowed!
(6) - I say this all the time. Some days, it's just the only thing that fits, you know? I know some of my friends don't get it, so I just use it that much more often around them.
(7) - Sekretärin is German for secretary. I couldn't fin out what it was in Japanese, since this computer doesn't support it, so I used german. Yeeey.
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Ending A/N: Welp, that's Chapter One. Or is it a prologue? Noit's chapterone alright. So/ How'd y'all like it? I warn you, there will probably be some TouyaxYukito in the Furtuer, and some SakuraxSayolan. I'm starting on the next chapter right away, becasue I already know what I'm doing with it. :munches on a cinamon bun: This was written from 21 or 2200 hours to 0807 hours,with a few hours of sleep in between 2400 hours and 0630 hours, Friday July 2905, to Saturday July 3005. Please review!