A/N: I do not own To Love-Ru, Black Cat, or Mayoi Neko Overrun.
Earth
Now
Among the crowded school halls there was a clamor surrounding the lockers, white jacketed teens that were prowling the late springtime grounds outside rushing inside as time slowly ticked down to the beginning of a brand new school day. Halls were a hustle and bustle of life as children wove around each other, books in hands, bags in others, nerds avoiding the jocks, the cool kids making fun of those they deemed dorks. Kids playing card games, narrowly avoided by that one girl who always walked by them, too anxious to approach the boys and admit she was a fan, while she talked with her girlfriends about the upcoming summer festival that would kick off summer break. Sports jocks were too focused on the upcoming game, absorbed in themselves and their ever expanding egos and competitive nature, as they brushed aside a blonde haired youth who merely fell against the nearest locker, after the brutish thugs that walked past her shoved her petite figure without even noticing her presence. Blue eyes filling with fury as she sat there on the ground, stunned and slowly beginning to simmer as they continued to obliviously walk away from her.
"Hey!" a commanding and somewhat harsh tone rang through the halls over the clamor, silencing most of the passerby's, as the boys recognized the voice of a brown haired, green eyed girl that stood in their way and kept them from getting to class, "I saw you guys shove Chise to the floor; apologize right now, you brutes!" With fury matching the simmering blonde who dusted herself off as she helped her up from the ground, an expecting brunette put her hands on her hips and defiantly stood up to three hefty gorillas in school uniforms.
One of them went to grab the girl and push her aside, but another stopped them and nodded over to another spot at the end of the hallway. At the end of the second year's hallway were a pair of third years, a purple haired hall monitor that was coldly watching the three to see what they would do to the pair of girls in their way, willing to report any misconduct, and a cool and laid back boy that the three knew could end their careers as their Senpai on the sports team.
With that the three ignore the complaints of the brown haired girl, mindlessly yapping away at them as they walked away, before the purple haired woman brushed past them with an air of confidence that caused them to move for her, when they wouldn't for the other girls.
"Fumino-san, I know it's hard to adjust to a new school, especially after how Umenomori Gakuen was closed after it lost its funding, but fighting Chise-kun's battles for her isn't going to help either of you make new friends," Haruna Sairenji scolds the girl a year younger than her, who visibly deflates at the mention of her previous school. Ever since the disaster with Rito and Deviluke's King Gid, among other unfortunate situations happening in the area of upper Sainan, the former school for the rich and famous was closed down after some unsuccessful business transactions. Much of the children of the rich and elite who had once attended the prestigious academy, once funded and named after the prominent Umenomori Family, were dispersed among other local school districts when the schools funding was cut and it had to shut its doors. While Shurufuku High was a bit out of the way, generally speaking, the overflow had forced parents and children alike to make sacrifices until another school could replace the now closed academy, or another investor intervened and supplied the school with money to open it back up.
Even the once rich Chise Umenomori was forced to make compromises, when the only school that could take her was Shurufuku. Fortunately another friend, whose family had to move away from Sainan after her father lost his job in a packaging plant that had been bought out by a toy company called Solstice Industries, Fumino Serizawa was accompanying her as a fellow refugee from the overflow of classrooms. Both had tried to get into Sainan High, where the rest of their other friends had gone, except one that had transferred to the nearby Masamune Gakuen, both had been rejected and separated from the close friendships they had when they had grown up going to the same schools, even if it was very brief.
Sairenji sighed, covering her hand as she looked over the two and shook her head. Sneaking past her was the silent form of her boyfriend, Ren Memoraze, as he laughed at his girlfriends expense.
"Come on sugarplum, give the girls a break; Butch and the Gang he runs with aren't exactly the friendliest bunch of transfers we got with the influx of new students," Ren states the obvious, looking back down the hallway at the lumbering kids retreating forms, "A bunch of rough necks and hooligans, but we're all on edge ever since all these kids from clashing neighborhoods have started showing up." She crosses her arms with a pout, looking up and away from him as he slides closer to her in order to steal a kiss on her cheek. "A lot of schools and empty plots of land are being bought up all around the market you know, it makes a lot of people tense when they have to shift their lives around to accommodate; kind like..." Ren states rolling his hand playfully as he grins at Sairenji, "...they were aliens coming to a new planet, or something like that." With a teasing smile, Sairenji bops him on the shoulder, before turning to the other two children who were gagging at the sickening display of over familiarity between the two.
"Alright, alright, I get it; now, you two better get to class, I heard there are some new teachers showing up today; the faculty had to expand some classes and get new teachers to accommodate the growth in students," Sairenji states, putting a hand on Fumino's shoulder, "You know, if you ever want to join us, we have friends and family in Sainan we haven't talked too in a while; maybe if you talk to your parents, you too Chise, we could spend a weekend at my sister's new apartment in lower Sainan." The blonde's eyes brighten into a shimmering sapphire, turning to Fumino, whose green eyes are just as jaded as her expectations of the promise being kept by the older girl. Haruna can see the hurt expression play across her face, almost overshadowing the slightest glimmer of hope she had first seen in the quirk of her lips, before she locked down her expression, at the same time blocking her extension of friendship to the younger girl.
"Okay, well, if you do want to take me up on that offer, let me know so I can inform my sister that she'd have guests for a couple of nights," Haruna continues to extend the olive branch to the embittered girl, and the bubbling blonde whose mood was brightened by the gesture, "Now,get along to class you two!" Turning away to walk back to their own set of classrooms, Sairenji takes a breath as her confidence deflates, Ren smoothly walking up next to her with his dazzling smile to comfort her, along with an encouraging squeeze of a hand hold.
"Good job, you've been trying to do so much for all these kids we've gotten into our school," Ren states as he feels Haruna squeeze back, "You've successfully defused yet another situation; what was it last: a food fight in the cafeteria, a quarrel in the library over a book, or was it that weirdo in the army coat that tried assaulting you after school, after he stalked you for over a week?" Haruna sighed, dramatically swooning into the Memorzean's strong arms, looking up to him as they stopped at a corner between the upper and lower classes,where they both knew no cameras or teachers were watching, nor kids were walking, so close to the beginning of classes. She quickly leaned up into his space and greedily took a kiss from him, much to his surprise as she pulled away quickly.
"Whoa, Sairenji, when did you become such a bold rebel?" he jokes, smiling as he puts one hand on her shoulder and the other behind her back and forcing her smaller frame against the wall as some nearby students began to wander to carelessly, "Don't ever let the morals officer know, or he might just have to punish you..." Leaning down to steal another kiss from her, before breaking off with the din of a shrill school bell, he pulls away from her and returns the bag he had slung over his shoulder to her. "See you after classes, sugarplum, at lunch like always," he states, as he waved while turning to go further down the hallway where his class was.
Haruna smiled in a daze, grabbing her bag and taking a whiff of it, she straightens herself up before going to step into her classroom, preparing to open the door.
The door opens before she can even do anything, and a well dressed man in a black two piece suit, and tinted glasses stands as if he was waiting for her at the doorway. He pulls a silver pocket watch from his coat, the chain clinking and swinging in the air as he flips the device open to observe the time. "Ah, the late Miss Haruna Sairenji, I presume?" he asks rhetorically, as he turns to walk back to his desk, "One would think that someone of the morals committee would know better than to snog ones fellow,oh so perilously close to their new teacher's classroom; one could seriously damage the dependability and credibility of the supposed star pupil of the classroom." Black haired and glasses reflecting her own embarrassed back to her, a teasing smile could be seen on the teachers face as she walked quickly and quietly to her own seat, amongst the snickers of her classmates. "Now, as I was stating to the class, the school faculty has needed to expand the roster of teachers, I am a newly certified teacher whose only hopes is to mold your young minds," He writes his name across the blackboard the school had provided the classroom, turning with a smile and lowering his glasses to reveal the laugh lined eyes expected of a middle aged man in a black turtleneck and khakis, "You'll find that I work best through experiments and hands on examples: for example did you know that in an island of the coast of Spain, an experiment regarding the effects of a newly discovered bacterium on plastic, that could be utilized in the disposal of the Pacific-Atlantic garbage patch?" He smiled, amongst a few coughs of unimpressed children,which caused him to slightly frown, as he didn't receive the applause he expected.
"Come on, children, this is the future of your world we're talking about here, wouldn't it be amazing if you didn't have to tell you children, or your grandchildren, that the oceans were once a clean and healthy place, full of life, instead of a toxic waste full of bleached coral reefs, poisonous waters, over fished waters devoid of the marine life you don't even realize is poisoned, even now?" the Professor stated, a sad look on his face as not a single person answered him, "Huh... well, did you know that on average, the rice you eat in your meals, as sides, or use in other various dishes, may no longer be coming from your local farmers, but start being shipped from overseas as Japan's rice crops continue to die off without things being changed, unless you, as the future leaders and citizens of this nation, make the technology and innovative ideas we need to make those changes." The lesson continued on, with the teacher going between differing topics that the previous teacher had left, and interjecting his own thoughts and provoking questions to get answers from the rest of the group. By the time the class was finished and ready for the sweet release of lunch, the bell chimed its sweet sound and freed them from the confines of that stuffy room and teacher.
"Oh, is that the bell already," the professor remarked as he watched the children get up to leave for the cafeteria lines and large grounds to enjoy the fresh spring air with their friends, "AH, Miss Sairenji, could I trouble you to stay after class; I won't keep you from your friends for very long, I assure you." As Haruna was already heading out the door, with the rest of the kids having left, and Ren standing just outside the door, she turns to him.
"Go grab my lunch for me from the cafeteria, I'll pay you pack, please!" She smiles and claps her hands together, sheepishly begging her boyfriend off, while she handled the teacher. Ren gives her a nod, giving a sharp look at the teacher, before returning to his smiling self and giving her a peck on her hand.
"I'll be back in ten minutes top with lunch; I'll try and grab your favorite too," Ren states, walking off to the cafeteria while Sairenji walks back into the room and closes the door behind him.
Turning back to where the teacher sat in a chair, taking some papers and grading them with a bright red pen as he sat, Haruna took a stance in front of him. "You wanted to see me, sir?" Haruna asks, a bit shy in front of the teacher who most of the girls spent the class admiring, "If it's about this morning, I have to profusely apologize, and assure you it will never happen again-" The black haired teacher belts out a laugh at the rambling Sairenji, his glasses reflecting her panic at his sudden outburst, until he removes his glasses to wipe them clean.
"No, no miss Sairenji, nothing of the sort like that, I'm afraid," the man states, folding closed the paper he was grading, capping the pen and looking up at her with his bright pink eyes shining with mischief, "You see, I actually just came from somewhere out of town when I happened across this job; you see I know a good friend of yours..." He puts his glasses away in a case, slipping it into his pocket as he gets up from his seat to take off his coat and hang it on a nearby coat rack. He unbuttons his shirt, much to Haruna's embarrassment, until she realizes that underneath the thin white shirt was actually a black turtleneck. "Ah, sorry for my unsightliness, but it was so stuffy keeping that over shirt and jacket on with the weather warming up," the man says, as he grabs another coat hanging on the other end of the rack, "I like to keep it cooler, I am a man of science after all, and I always prefer to handle experiments in my lab coat." He smooths out the wrinkles in his white lab coat, and smiles as he faces Haruna once more with confidence.
"As I was saying, you and I have a common link, I believe both yourself and the Memorzean Prince, know of one Rito Yuuki, the future King of Deviluke?" the teacher asks, as Haruna suddenly freezes at his casual familiarity with what are alien terms, "I am familiar with aliens, Miss Sairenji; I myself could be called something more than human, if my eyes don't give you a hint." He once again smiles as he levels his eyes with Haruna, though she catches a flash of something in his hands that he hides just behind him. "Let me introduce myself, as I wrote it one the blackboard earlier; my name is Kanzaki, Kanzaki Kousuke," he introduces himself to her while pulling out another pair of glasses from his lab coat, "But, you can call me by my preferred title: Doctor." He pulls out the thing he had hidden behind him earlier, and the silver flash of a muzzle and a deafening burst of sound is all she hears as she feels something bite into her shoulder with a sickening thud.
Haruna puts her hand to her shoulder, stunned by the suddenness of it all, and she feels something sharp poking up and out of her skin from where she was hit. Tacky blood on her fingertips as she pulls her hand away, Haruna tries to voice her questions to this enigmatic Doctor, only to feel a shock from the spike in her shoulder. "Apologies, dear miss, but I can't have my patient go all screaming and alerting every nearby student that something is wrong now, can I?" he states, pulling a couple of discs from his pockets, he walks towards Haruna, "I have to explore all my options, you see, Rito Yuuki has caused me quite a few headaches, so I thought I would cause him a bit of... pain, as well." He grabs her by the arms, as she tries to futility struggle against his strong grip, as he forces her to the ground. "The problem with you Humans, is that you don't understand how powerless you are, how much this world, this universe is out of your control," He manages to press one of the discs into her temple, a needle puncturing her skull like butter as her muted cries are cut off by the Doctor's hands, "If you think this pain is anything, you don't understand how much pain your world can bring if you manage to spread beyond the stars; if only you could understand how much pain your kind has brought this universe already..." Forcing the other node onto her opposite temple, the process complete, he let her go and pulled out yet another device from his seemingly large pockets, and began to mess with the piece of technology.
"Please, please don't..." Haruna begs, though the Doctor ignores it in favor of his device. Sending yet another shock through her body to quiet her again, she cries out and loses control of her bodily functions, falling into unconsciousness from the repeated controlled shock.
"Oh dear, I think I made a mess," the Doctor states, laughing as with a certain cruelness about him at her situation, "It's a good thing you didn't bite your tongue off, that would have been a mess I'd have to deal with then afterwards; oh well, I didn't come to experiment on your body after all." Tuning the device to interface with his handiwork, the discs begin to emanate a glow inside them, and the Doctor gets to work doing what he does best to his 'patients'.
Stopping outside the classroom, after running from one end of the school and back, he cursed the fact he couldn't get food faster. The school cracked down on lunchroom etiquette with all the influx of new mouths, to ensure everyone got food and didn't go without, he couldn't force his way to the front of the line and retrieve the food any faster than he had. Now twenty minutes wasted, he hoped Haruna was done talking to professor Kousuke, so he could enjoy his lunch with his girlfriend. Sitting next to the doorway, he goes to start digging into his food, when his eye catches the fact that the door is just slightly ajar enough that he wonders if Haruna was just waiting for him inside, or helping the teacher out somewhat. The man had given him the creeps when he had met eyes with him, and an itch in the back of his skull made him uneasy about leaving Haruna with the new teacher. But there were a lot of new faculty members, and a lot of new kids who gave him the same feelings, some of them for good reasons, others because he knew they were alien kids or other such he kept in check under the guise of becoming a morals officer. Haruna knew this too, and joined him in helping not only keeping peace with the other kids, but help encourage the new kids to step out of their comfort zones, like Chise and Fumino.
Deciding to get up and knock, to see if the teacher was there, or if Haruna was still waiting, he felt the door swing with his knock. Opening the door, he drops all of the food in his hands to the floor, ignoring it all in favor of being stricken by fear. Covering his mouth, stifling a scream as terror nestles in the back of his head, a cold sweat sweeping over him. "Haruna!" Ren finally screams out, feet no longer cemented to the floor as the panic in his voice escapes, "Sairenji, Sairenji, no, no!" He kneels down next to her body, ignoring the bodily fluids and sweat leaking from under her body, he sees the flush of heat rising in her body as a fever begins to wrack her body. Looking over her body, seeing a gaping wound in her shoulder where something had been in her body, but sticky, tacky blood pooling and scabbing over the spot, as the fever began to infect and spread in her body. Trying not to cry as he inspects the rest of the body, to see what is wrong, he finds to pinpricks in her temples, blood already scabbed over after whatever caused them was removed. He dare not shake her awake, in case whatever it was damaged her or impacted her brain in anyway, but he could gain a little hope in knowing she was still breathing, albeit shallowly, and that she was merely unconscious and unresponsive.
"What the hell are you doing?" a voice from the open doorway asked, as Ren looked up, "Get away from her, you freak!" Fumino was standing over spilled noodles and rice, which had broken free from the containers he had brought from the lunch room, Chise was standing just behind, peeking around the brown haired second year. "Die twice, you pervert!" with that exclamation, Fumino jumped as if to kick him in the head. Having none of that, Ren simply avoided her kick by sliding to the side, removing his jacket and focusing his attention on stanching the flow of blood from Haruna Sairenji's shoulder.
"Shut up, Fumino; Chise, get me my phone from my backpack, I need you to look up a certain number in my contacts," Ren states, as he tries to move without relieving the pressure he was applying, "Call 'Universal Healthcare'; Fumino, get your butt up from the floor and take over for me, so I can call for help from people who know what happened here." He's bluffing of course, but Fumino doesn't know that and moves in, applying pressure to Haruna's wound so Ren could grab the ringing phone from Chise.
"Hello?" an unsure voice answers from the other end, which Ren recognizes as Shizu, "This is the office of Doctor Ryouko Mikado, she's on vacation right now, but doctor Tearju Lunatique is more than qualified to handle.." Ren interrupts her, urgency in his voice hopefully getting through to her as he speaks quickly.
"Oshizu, I need you to shut up and listen, preferably I need you to get someone to pick me up at Shurufuku High," Ren states, "Haruna is bleeding out, we're managing it for now, but a couple of younger kids found me with her after I found her unconscious in her classroom where she was supposed to be with a new teacher." He barely pauses to look over at the other two kids to see how they were handling, before continuing. "She's unresponsive, but there is evidence she was attacked: a wound that looks like she was pierced is located on her left shoulder, and there are also two spots on her temples, one on opposite sides of each other that look like her skull was pierced," as he continues, he hears the scribbling of notes and a frantic call for Tearju Lunatique by the young assistant, "If you think it's safe to move her, I can get to the roof and use my remote recall on my ship, so we can get her stabilized quicker." The phone shifts, and Ren realizes that the younger girl was passing it off to Tearju.
"Ren, you say there are holes on either side of her temple, now this next part is VERY important; do they look like puncture marks, like they are oozing blood, or is it more like pinpricks?" Tearju asks, enunciating and remaining calm, despite Ren's hurriedness.
"No, they look like pinpricks."
"Good, good, that means they likely didn't want to rupture her arteries," Tearju responds, voice a little bit calmer, breathing a sigh of relief over the phone before continuing to ask him questions, "Now, check her pupils and tell me how large they appear, I want to see if she has a concussion, or is merely unconscious." Ren moves to the other side of Haruna, making sure Fumino kept pressure on her shoulder, as bleeding began to slowly stain his white jacket.
"Her eyes don't appear dilated, though they do seem a little glassy," Ren reports, gently releasing her eyelid after checking out both eyes, "Doc, do you think I'd be able to move her; we could get her in my ride and be there in twenty if I coax it." He hears Tearju sigh, rummaging around on her side before she comes back on the line.
"Yes, most of the notes Mikado made me memorize show she's just unconscious, but until we get her here, or until Mikado herself can really ascertain her condition, I believe you can bring her around," she states, before quickly adding something before Ren could hang up, "Ren- bring the other two with you, they're going to have to watch Sairenji while you pilot the ship!" Looking up towards both Chise and Fumino, he motions for Chise to come closer to where he and Fumino is, despite her flightiness around the door, either out of wariness or indecision. Hanging up and pocketing his phone, he grabs Chise and loops Haruna's good arm around her.
"Alright you two, try and keep pressure on the wound Fumino, but we need to move Haruna to somewhere I know that can handle this better than a normal hospital..." with that Ren grabbed Haruna's legs and brought them around his waist so he could try take the majority of the slack on himself, "We're going to the roof..."
Once on Shurufuku's roof, Ren had managed to lean Haruna against the rooftop entrance, with Chise switching out with Fumino to staunch the bleeding, and took out something from his bag and held it aloft. "Alright you two, this may seem a bit weird, but trust me on this," Ren stated, as he looked over the two, before a rush of engines was heard and air pressure blew across the rooftop and against the two girls, "This is going to be a bit strange, but I'll explain it all when we get to where we're going..." At that he clicked a button, and his spaceship went from being an invisible presence, to something out of a fifties alien Sci-Fi movie, with a classic flying saucer look. Both merely looked bug-eyed at the boy in front of them, as he smiled as the absurd craft landed on the roof behind him.
Meanwhile
Ten Minutes Earlier
"Welcome to the Stray Cat Patisserie, table for one?" a black haired teen asks as a man in a white lab coat walks into the room. He nods in response, and the plain clothed male waiter takes a menu and walks the customer over to a single table. "May I inform you, dear customer, of the specialty of the month: a vanilla cake with butter cream and chocolate 'paw prints' settled over the frosting; it was especially handmade today by our new baker," the waiter states with a smile, pointing to an example of such cake sitting in its glass display case, "It pairs well with Cafe Au lait, or an iced coffee if you would prefer."
The man takes a glance over the menu, then looks up and returns the mans smile with one of his own. "Cafe au lait is just fine, but I think I'll take a Strawberry Parfait, if it's as good as it sounds on your menu," the man replies, smile dissipating as the waiter takes his order and leaves.
Taking the time to look around the room, the man in the lab coat catches his face in the bakery shelving before he decides to grab the silver napkin dispenser and get a better look at his face. A hand glides up the right side of his face, where once and ugly and proud scar had sat, now skin just a bit paler than his own natural beige-tan was left, smooth as the day he was born yet the feeling had yet to return. Numb as was to that fact, as he brushed his hand against what was little more than a facade of his true self, the true loss he felt regarding his sense of self came from the change surrounding his ears. Instead of proud, large pointed ears that stuck out from his head to take all the wondrous sounds of the city in, they were little more than shaved down nubs, having been sculpted into the form of a human's earlobe, though tender and still aching form the surgery, at least they still had some sense of feeling through them.
"Your coffee, sir," a voice monotonously states, passing a small saucer in front of with a cup of dark brew on it, before placing an oversized parfait with a large spoon in front of him as well, "Please let me know if you need anyth-" Suddenly cutting off her words, Keize looked up from his seat to see the purple haired girl that was serving him stop at the sound of the door opening, the bell chiming causing him to focus on the door.
With a smile of recognition, he sees the familiar form of his teacher and waves him over. Glasses hiding his true emotions, a smile on his face as fake as the credentials he was using as a substitute teacher to get closer to his first target, the Doctor walked calmly towards where his subordinate sat. Pulling another chair out from a secondary table, he smiled at the transfixed waitress who had remained silent as he sat down.
"Could I get a coffee like my compatriot, miss?" the Doctor asked, crossing his hands together as he turned to face Keize as he sat down. The girl hasn't reacted, though the tufts of her pink hair that had once stood on end, seemed to have flattened ever since the bespectacled man had brushed past her, and she appeared to be slightly shaking at his presence, or so Keize noted. "Is something the matter, miss?" Kanzaki asked, smiling up at her, "It's my glasses, isn't it?" He goes to remove them and set them on the table, looking back up with closed, smiling eyes with an upturned brow. "Not so scary now, am I?" he states, as he reveals his pink irises, "A little unusual, but my albinism is an inherited trait of my family, you see." The girl simply nods, though she flinches when another hand grabs her from behind, and moves her to set a cup of coffee in front of the man in the turtleneck and lab coat.
"Thank you dear customer for waiting, and here is your coffee au lait," a black haired girl with a ponytail states, her cat styled uniform fitting against her body as she pushes her coworker back towards the kitchen and the man behind the counter, "Please enjoy, it's on the house." With a smile, she bows and moves back to the kitchen, which the others had already returned to.
"Was that your second target?" Keize asks, as he turns back to the Doctor, who merely takes a sip of his coffee in response.
"No, but she was someone who seemed to be familiar with my face," the Kanzaki replies, as he tilts his head back towards the front counter, "Perhaps I simply look like someone else she knows." Keize nods at that, as the Doctor takes another sip of his coffee, the younger scientist returns his spoon to his half eaten parfait and looks his compatriot in the eye.
"The other girl then, the one whom I've taken before when we threatened Mikado-senpai... I believe her name was Kokegawa," Keize states, crossing his hands and sighing, as Kanzaki stiffens before relaxing, as his counterpart continues speaking, "Honestly, if it wasn't for your handiwork and the fact I had my underlings capture her originally; I was instead, pleasantly surprised that she didn't recognize me." Keize laughed out loud, grabbing for another bite of his parfait and chuckling. "Great work, Doctor," Keize states, as he takes a bite of cream and strawberries, "Now that we know our target, it will be that much easier..." As the doors to the kitchen opened up again and the black haired waitress stepped forth from its depths, Keize raised his hand to flag her down.
"Yes, dear customer?" the girl, Kokegawa states as she steps forward to face the two of them, "Is there something I can do for you two?" Keize smiles up at her as she impatiently begins to tap her foot waiting.
"We'd like to get a check for my items, miss Kokegawa," Keize asks, as he holds up a money clip to give its contents to the girl, "Oops." Conveniently letting go of a large bill as he lifts it up to give it up, the girl reaching for the money hesitates a second as he does so.
"It's Kotegawa..." she states on impulse, before her one track mind realizes that the man's money clip has fallen, and she goes to help him pick it up. Taking it as the opportunity he was looking for, Keize smiles sinisterly as he takes the emptied billfold in his hand and splits a piece of it off in between his pointer and middle fingers. As Yui is reaching down for the crumpled bill, to give it back, he takes the piece of technology in his fingers and slaps it across her forehead, revealing a piece of exposed circuitry. Before she can even react, the piece is working its magic, sending out a pulse of electricity and receiving information from her parietal lobe, and sending her into an unconscious state as it does so. Collapsing to the floor with a heavy crash, Keize feigns helping her, while the Doctor actually stops her head from colliding with the floor, as the other black haired child and purple haired cat-girl rushes out from the kitchens and into the front.
"What happened?" the boy asks with a commanding voice, as he notices the Doctor with Yui in his hands, a hand brushing back her hair as he gently sets her down on the floor, "Kotegawa; what have you done to Yui?" Kanzaki is checking her pulse after clearing the hair from her side, and smiles as he feels a steady pulse from her unconscious form.
"It must have been overwork, possibly anemia; my compatriot dropped his billfold and she was going to pick it up," Kanzaki states, holding up the dropped bill in between his fingers, tucking it back in with the others between the money clip, "The poor dear just collapsed, I barely managed to keep her head from hitting the ground and getting a concussion, but I would suggest calling an ambulance and getting her some proper help." With that suggestion he moves away, handing the billfold back to Keize and walking over to the girl with purple hair, as the boy brushes past him to get to Yui. As he approaches the cat-eared hair girl, he takes one of her shaking hands into his own massive paw and settles some coins and bills into it, before closing her hand over them. Opening his closed eyes to stare the girl down with a fairly creepy smile, he leans in close to speak to the frightened girl so his compatriot and the others wouldn't hear him. "For the delicious meal, and a number to call for your friend..." he whispers, "Nozomi Kiriya..." Freezing as he says her name, he closes his smiling eyes and walks towards Keize, who is waiting by the door already.
Getting to the car they had parked nearby, Keize begins to drive off and away from the patisserie until they get a good distance away and he pulls over to park down a blind alley, driving a little further into it where no one would bother them or see them from the street.
"Did you manage to get the information secured, before that interfering dolt of a manager saw you?" Keize asks, as he turns to Kanzaki. The Doctor holds up the dropped billfold and slides it apart, revealing the piece of technology that they had used to record her brainwave patterns. "Not as nice, or precise as yours, of course," Keize states with a smile, taking the device from him and examining the circuits with pride, "But since our first target is the personality base, our second target is the emotional and moral basis; so it was more important to get a general scan of her malleable, hormonal-teenage brain."
Kanzaki watched as Keize opened up a secret compartment inside the car, revealing an array of buttons and gadgets, including one he slid the separated piece of the device into a slot among them.
"Her unfulfilled love towards Rito Yuuki having formed her basis for her understanding of the emotion, will make a fine match to that personality you procured from that Sairenji girl," Keize states, pulling the device from the slot, "Data uploaded, confirmation of targets one and two confirmed...oh, and we have just received confirmation of a data packet procured by our Solgam agent infiltrating the outer rim..." As the car received data from another source, a hologram of the third target's physical structure was recreated before their eyes as the information was uploaded to the car's hidden systems.
"The physical data of Princess Lala Satalin Deviluke," Kanzaki states, with a small smile growing on his lips as he sees everything come into place before him, "Yes, everything is coming together now, just nicely..." He watches as Keize closes the hidden panel, before motioning to the Doctor towards the storage compartment.
"If you would please, Doctor, this place appears to be secure as any for our departure," Keize explains, as he keeps pointing to the unopened glove box, "The warp/gate system, Doctor?" Opening the glove box, and finding a hidden button inside, Kanzaki quickly pushes it and the car quickly begins to shake.
The shimmering rainbow of a warp gate field being activated, surrounding the car in a curtain of multicolored light that seemed to wrap around the car and close around it. In a moment the dark alleyway was lit up in a flash and then nothing.
Unfortunately on the exact opposite side of the road, directly across from the blind alleyway, a man was sitting while drinking a quickly cooling cup of tea he had ordered. He had observed the car disappearing in a flash of rainbow light, after tracking the car from where it had left the patisserie, following the man driving the car holding his very own double.
Yes, another Kanzaki Kousuke sat there at a corner table of a simple Cafe, out of the way and just able to view the tail end of the car from its hiding spot within the alleyway. "So, it's true, he has come here," Doctor Kanzaki Kousuke noted with a smile, as he took a sip of his cooling beverage, "Finally, you make your move." Glasses obscuring his emotion as he stared down the alleyway, he contemplated his next moves and the ramifications of it, before finally deciding to head to a certain persons place of residence.
Universal Healthcare Clinic
Twenty Minutes Later
Or rather, Now
Tearju Lunatique was at her wits end, staring at the girl within the tank before her, shoulder wound already healing in the tank. Shizu was standing next to her, writing down the girls vitals after having removed the girls clothes to the wash, first to be processed for any information they had on them in any minute detail, then cleaned for the girl to wear when she was awakened and coherent. "This doesn't make any sense, Shizu-chan, and Mikado's notes aren't any more helpful than she is!" Tearju states, looking over the unconscious form of Haruna before her, "Nothing unusual, besides low alpha brainwaves, and low theta-gamma interaction, which is a bit worrisome..." Trying not to stress or show her fretfulness, she sighs and goes to inform the young prince of Memorize of his friends condition, when she walked into the waiting room to stumble upon yet another scene of havoc as when they had arrived with Haruna.
"Doctor!" Ren states, upon seeing the blondes entrance into the room, "We have someone else like Sairenji- it's Kokegawa!" Tearju's eyes actually widened at that, knowing the school's morals officer, Yui Kotegawa, had suddenly requested a day off of school through a medical note, to cover for someone who had gotten sick at the patisserie she worked at after school.
Pushing the gaggle of kids surrounding the girl away, she stood over the girl and checked her breathing and pulse, and was happily surprised to find that she didn't seem as worse off as Haruna. Turning to Shizu, who had followed her out after hearing a commotion, she had her help her bring Yui to another room like the one they had brought Haruna into. "Everyone, I know you are worried, but please, let me work," Tearju states as she steps out of the room, seeing a black haired boy and purple haired girl hesitate outside, while Shizu would prepare her for an examination, "Ren-dono, can you take these two out with the others, so I can examine Yui and make my prognosis?" Ren nods, having walked behind the other two to tap them on their shoulders and lead them back out to the waiting room. 'Oh, Mikado, where are you when I need that encyclopedic medical knowledge of yours?' Tearju stated with a bit of worry, hoping expect them to be back soon, 'I think I'm in too deep to figure out problems like this...'
Waiting Room
"I don't like this, this is too much of a coincidence," Fumino states, as she stalks across the small waiting room and between her friends and colleagues, "First it was a classmate of Chise and I, then it was a worker at Stray Cats?" She glances up at Takumi Tsuzuki, before quickly shifting between Nozomi Kiriya, and finally landing on Chise, ignoring the fact that she had seen Takumi and Nozomi holding each others hands. "Do you think this has something to do with the Umenomori, or Masamune fortunes, or enemies of some kind?" Fumino asks, turning to the group, "Something we missed, someone who doesn't like Stray Cats Patisserie?" At that Ren scoffs loud enough to draw the fours attention back towards him.
"I'm sorry, but the fact is you're overlooking a connection between these two that don't involve you, no offense," Ren states, as he looks up at the four from the chair he was sitting in, wringing his hands together, "No, no, gods no, this has nothing to do with you humans, that's just largely a coincidence." He stands up and runs his hands over his forehead and through his hair, sighing as he does so. "Rito, damn it all, what did you all bring us into?" he mutters loudly enough for the others to here, before turning his sight on the others with a discouraged face, "I'm sorry you all had to get mixed up in this, but this is larger than the money, or human enemies; I'm afraid we're facing people who would do nothing to hurt a certain friend of ours, and the people he knows and loves." He walks past them all to stand before the door that leads back into the Doctor's office, and stops at its edge.
"Leave, go home, forget about all of this," Ren continues, fists shaking by his side in anger as he keeps talking, "For you own good, and ours." He raises one hand towards the side of the doorway, and brings it down into the wall.
*Crunch*
Removing his hand from the crumbling indentation, bits of drywall, paint flecks and wood chips come away with his fist, as he ignores the pain from his unprovoked attack on the wall. "I can't ask you guys to do anything for us; you honestly can't do anything but go home and let my friends and I alert Sairenji's and Kotegawa's parents to their current status," he indicates, turning away from the door and looking back at them, "My friends will come soon, so just go home, stay safe... please." A defeated look crosses his face as his head slowly lowers while speaking to them, until he puts his head in his hands and begins to silently cry in frustration.
"Though I think you're right to ask the to go home, Ren, I think we'll have to wait for know, until they've been debriefed," a sudden voice from the entrance to the office waiting room speaks, as a gaggle of teens no older than Ren and the others, sporting Sainan High School uniforms walk in, "My name is Momo, Momo Belia Deviluke, and this is my sister, Nana Aster Deviluke," Mom introduces herself to the other four, besides Ren, with a smile, "We've informed the official channels that something has occurred; we should be hearing from the proper authorities soon, since this is by no means an ordinary kidnapping and assault." Momo goes to sit next to Ren and try and comfort and calm him down, leaving nana to face the other four now.
The pig-tailed pinkette stands by the front door and whistles to get the attention of the others. "Alright, listen up you four, I know this is odd, but can you tell us anything about the man who assaulted Yui, or anything about what happened at Shurufuku High with Sairenji?" she asks, frowning as she eyes over the four teens, noticing the cat eared looking girl somewhat hesitantly between the black haired boy and the brunette and blonde she doesn't know, her ear like tufts flattening back like she was a frightened animal, "Well, speak up!"
"The man who entered the patisserie, he came in alone and there wasn't anything stand-outish about him I really remember," Takumi states, looking at Nozomi, "Nozomi, you seemed to know something about that other man though, the one with pink eyes, who told us to come here?" Nana raises and eyebrow at that, her mouth curling upwards as she turns her predatory gaze upon the frightened girl, whose sudden change in disposition made her seem more like a mouse than a cat.
"N-n-not at a-all, I didn't know him after all, -Nya" Nozomi admits, her gaze to the floor as she couldn't meet Nana's harsh glare, "I- I thought he was my o-old teacher, -Nya; but his eyes- I don't remember them ever being pink, Nya." She feels a sudden weight on her head, her hair-tufts raise in alarm as she seemingly fluffs under the weight of Nana's hand, until the Devilukean girl gently pets her hair in a soothing repetition to soothe the scared girl down.
"It's alright, I understand he must have scared you, he must have reminded you of a tough time in your life if your reaction to some look-alike is this bad," Nana says as she continues to calmly pet Nozomi, "Trust me, I wouldn't ask you all this if it wasn't so vital, but is there a slight chance he could be your teacher; maybe he used something to hide his eyes, or draw attention away from them." Nana turns to Takumi and begins to speak to him, so as to let Nozomi finish calming down. "You said he told you to come here; it could very well be he's not from Earth, that he's an alien," Nana states while looking at him, "What about the other guy; I know you say he was unremarkable, but wasn't there some clue, something he did, or said, before Yui passed out?"
Takumi took a moment to think back, and his expression shone as he remembered something. "I thought it was weird, but I did notice before Nozomi took his order, and before that other guy came in, he was rubbing the left side of his face, like there was something wrong with it," he states, putting a hand over his eyes and force himself to concentrate, "I think- he seemed to grab the napkin dispenser and use it like a mirror, like he off handedly was observing himself for the first time." Nana sighed, trying to think of any way that could be valuable information, when she remembered something her father had told her sometime ago.
"The man, did he look scholarly, like he was some kind of scientist, or bookworm, rather than someone physically active?" she asks out of the blue, at which Takumi nodded in agreement, causing Nana to turn to her sister Momo, "Dad said a guy with pointed ears and a scar helped the Doctor escape, didn't he?" Momo's eyes widened at that implication, and she grabbed her D-dial from her pocket to open it up and search through it's contents.
"Here," Momo finally states, bringing up a holographic image from her device and putting it in front of the two, "Did the man look even remotely similar to this, taking the scar and ears out of account?" The image of a man who looked fairly similar to the one who visited their shop was being shown to them projected out of something that looked like a cell phone.
If it wasn't for the crazy day he was having, he'd be worried about all of the abnormalities of aliens being on earth,but the similarities of the man who possibly assaulted one of his workers to the man being shown on the alien wanted poster, made it easy to suspend his disbelief and awe.
"Yeah, yeah that's him," Takumi says, as Momo moves over to where Ren was standing with Chise and Fumino tending to his bleeding hand.
"And this man, is he the one too?" Momo asks, as she exchanges the picture for a similar one containing a different man and an even higher bounty on his head, "I need to know, was this the man you saw whom you believe assaulted Haruna Sairenji?"
Pink eyes, black hair, black turtleneck and white lab jacket cut off in the picture, but the man was unmistakably the teacher Ren had seen.
"Yes," Ren stated, as he carefully burned the image of the man who assaulted his girlfriend into his mind, "That man was no doubt Kanzaki Kousuke, the bastard whom..." He winced and hissed in pain as Chise dabbed a cotton swab of hydrogen peroxide over his bleeding wound, as Fumino quickly finished wrapping up the bandage afterwards.
"Good, that was what I was waiting to hear," a new voice states from the empty corner of the waiting room, a pen clicking and scribbling heard as eyes turn to the newcomer. Smiling from the once empty chair, the calm looking face of the woman sitting before the seven skittish teens,which gave a few of them quite shock. Eyes lidded as she looked over the three strangers and her brother and his girl friends, with a calm, authoritative demeanor that betrayed her normally excited and innocent nature as the most helpful person the world had ever knew: Otome Tsuzuki.
Dressed in a silver suit and pencil skirt, Otome Tsuzuki was the last person anyone who knew her would have described her as quiet, calm, or authoritative. And that was perhaps what caused Takumi, Nozomi, Fumino, and Chise to suddenly lose the mood of the room, as Nana, Momo, and Ren all tensed up at the woman's unexpected appearance where no one had even sensed the woman appear among them.
"Princess Momo Belia Deviluke, I am assistant deputy-director Otome Tsuzuki of the Joint Extraterrestrial Terrorism Taskforce; unfortunately my boss is still overseas, though I'm here to assure you that my higher ups sent me to handle this case without forcing the Deviluke government to step in," Otome states, leaning forward to smooth out her skirt with one hand as she stands, holding the clipboard she had seemingly been taking notes on with the other, and moving to stand before Momo with a smile and a handshake, "Let's talk without the children, yes?"
Meanwhile
Staring up the pathway of the house, the Doctor, Kanzaki Kousuke, sighed as he looked up at the house he was currently standing just outside of at where the street meets the fence line. Slowly walking up to the doorway, stepping over a hose and some discarded gardening implements left on the front lawn, he manages to reach the door and lifts his hand to knock. After a few seconds of silence, and a scuffle from the inside, the door swung open as the Doctor looked down at the girl who answered the door.
"Yes, can I help you?" Mikan Yuuki asks, as she answers the door, a small girl heard yelling in the background, "If you're here to sell something, I'm sorry but we're not.." As she begins to close the door, the Doctor puts his hand forward to stop her from closing it while leaning down to talk to her.
"Yes, you see I have business regarding the crown Princess of Deviluke and her fiance," he states, "May I come in?"
Yet Elsewhere
A bit before
Doctor Ryouko Mikado was currently residing within the equivalent of a mechanic's shops customer waiting room, though it could be called a fitting analogy, as she was getting her spaceship tuned and fuel refilled for her journey home. It had been a while since she had heard from her students, and she would have been nervous about that, except for the fact that one was a Devilukean Princess with an empire whose total dispersed wealth likely surpassed most mothers, even if they weren't considered one of the richest planets. And when the Ariesean woman whom had greeted them with armed guards walked in, Ryouko was sure that meant she was going to be escorted back to her ship as an apology for the mix up earlier.
"Arrest her, take her to interrogation cell block B," the woman, a manager named Clover if she recalled right, ordered two armed guards, who raised their weapons at her, "Doctor Ryouko Mikado, wanted for questioning and crimes linked to the terrorist organization Eden by at least a good seventeen different system-states, one of which is your own home planet." The humanoid sheep leans over towards Ryouko with a sneer on her face as the two men grab and secure her arms, locking them in place with stasis cuffs. "You are now charged with infiltration of our highly classified facility for data espionage, siphoning of highly-classified personal information, faking security scans so we couldn't detect a class-five threat onboard your ship," she states, as she roughly shoves her towards the exit with the two guards flanking her, "and as such information has come to light, we hereby are revoking your landing permits and seizing your vessel for leverage against your compatriots, until such time the proper authorities can be informed of your actions here and you are henceforth removed from this establishment." Being led away from the secure facility and knowing the kids were likely facing something as equally nuts, she hopped everything would turn out alright with a little bit of faith.
A/N: An unusual development?
Two Doctors, one sinister man? What does he want with Mikan?
Who or what is J.E.T.T., and why have the cast of Mayoi Neko Overrun, suddenly appeared?
Mikado arrested? Say it ain't so!
What will our heroes do, when they finally learn of all of this?
Don't forget to leave a review, a like, or favorite, and don't hesitate to ask questions!