Disclaimer: I do not own anything.
Yay...More flashbacks. At least Natsumi and Tamama are kind of at the same page as Fuyuki and Angol Mois now.
Thank you for all the nice reviews!
In the morning, Natsumi yawned and looked down at Tamama's sleeping face. The poor guy had cried himself to sleep.
She couldn't blame him. He had lived a tough life. And who knew how long he had been manning this revolution all by himself.
Losing the stupid frog must have taken such a toll on him. It looked like it had been a while since he saw a good friend and ally, too... Natsumi noted.
She was glad she had found Tamama. Maybe they could stop this messed up world together.
"Natchi? You're still in my room?" Tamama rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and looked up at her. It had been twelve years, but he still looked exactly like a tadpole, and Natsumi couldn't help but pity him.
"Yeah. You were crying a lot last night, so I stuck by you until you went to sleep," she said to him.
"Sorry," Tamama apologized. "It's just... thinking about Mr. Sergeant's death always makes me sad..."
Natsumi nodded. "It's all right. I understand."
Tamama left it at that.
"So... I've been thinking, Tamama..." Natsumi trailed off, stuffing some bread into her mouth for breakfast. "Why don't we talk to Fuyuki? Maybe he'll be open to listening to me because I'm his sister. Maybe there's a way to get him to stop... I mean, it's worth a shot, right? He probably missed me as much as he misses the stupid frog, after all."
Tamama thought for a moment, but quickly shook his head. "That wouldn't work," he replied glumly. "Although it's a nice sentiment, Fukki has some big plans for this Harvest. He wouldn't just give that up because his sister's come back to him."
"But... it's worth a shot. And what big plans do you mean?" Natsumi asked.
"He's demanding more sacrifices than ever. More... blood. I think the total number this year estimated to be killed is at least a million," Tamama told her. "And that'll be just one of the days. I've heard rumors... just shreds of them, thanks to my revolution, that this Harvest might last a whole week!"
Natsumi covered her mouth. "Th-that's... horrible," Natsumi shuddered. "Why would Fuyuki want that many people dead?"
She didn't understand. Why would he do something like this?
"It's... It's for Mr. Sergeant," Tamama said quietly. Natsumi listened closer. Tamama shuddered a little bit as she drew closer to listen to his story. "I don't know how Fukki did it, but for some reason, sacrificing people can bring Mr. Sergeant's body back to life... I think he's trying to find a way to make it permanent, and that's why it gets bigger and bigger each year." Tamama's voice was a low hush.
Natsumi's eyebrows raised in surprise. Fuyuki could do that? She had always been surprised by how surprisingly truthful some of Fuyuki's knowledge of the occult was, but blood sacrifices being something that he took seriously, and even when they seemed to be working, just seemed surreal.
About as surreal as the rest of the world, she reminded herself.
"So... the stupid frog comes back to life every year?" Natsumi was confused. In a way, at least Fuyuki was doing something good, even if it shouldn't be something that he sacrificed people for. "I'm a little bit confused, Tamama... admittedly. Aren't you in love with him? Why would you be fighting against Fuyuki if he's trying to resurrect the stupid frog?" Natsumi asked with honest curiosity. Was there something more she wasn't seeing? It didn't make sense that Tamama was leading the revolution against Fuyuki, if Fuyuki was doing everything for Keroro's sake.
"It's because Mr. Sergeant isn't Mr. Sergeant during the Harvest. The Mr. Sergeant who died sacrificed himself for his platoon... The Mr. Sergeant in the Harvest... Well, all I can say is if you ever have the misfortune of meeting him, you'll know why he isn't truly Mr. Sergeant. And you'll know why I oppose it so much," Tamama hissed, thinking back to the Keroro he had seen a few times during the Harvest. It wasn't Keroro at all.
It was just a monster using his body as a husk. The body that should have been laid to rest twelve years ago.
And Tamama hated the thing that disrespected Keroro's memory in such a way to possess his dead body and then claim he stood for Keroro's beliefs.
The Harvest wasn't resurrecting Keroro at all. No, it was resurrecting a demon in Keroro's skin.
It was just an average field mission. That was what he kept telling himself.
It'll be easy. Just in and out. I just need to figure out why that woman is doing this Harvest thing, Tamama had told himself eight years ago. The Harvest was on its third year, and Tamama... Well, he had just recently started the revolution.
His new members didn't seem to respect him much due to his young-looking face. They also seemed to be under the impression that he had started the revolution, not because people were dying right and left under this terrible Harvest thing, but because he hated someone in Government and had a personal vendetta against her.
Sadly, this was partially true. He knew Fuyuki and Angol Mois were responsible for the Harvest, but he had originally started the revolution just to oppose that woman and make her suffer. She shouldn't have had that much power and have been doing those terrible atrocities.
Sadly, because of his personal vendetta against Mois, the newer members had put him up to a mission to gather information on why the Harvest was taking place and what the higher-ups gained from it to prove that he was fully devoted to the mission. As the leader, Tamama had to take it.
He grumbled as he moved and wiggled in the upper ventilation system of Fuyuki's fortress. He had managed to sneak in to the lower levels, the basement, to figure out what was up and what Fuyuki was planning.
Listening closely, Tamama realized that nobody was in the basement yet, and dropped down to the floor to look into the rooms. Most of them were boring, with papers littered places with plans he wasn't smart enough to pick up or look through, but the third room had a sight that made Tamama nearly lose his lunch.
"M-Mr... Sergeant!" Tamama cried out, seeing a tube filled with liquid that had Keroro's body floating in it, perfectly preserved.
Keroro was still clearly dead, but all Tamama could think of was how he hadn't been laid to rest with honor and instead been put in a tube, like some sort of trophy. He put his hand up against the glass and cried, seeing his lost love.
"You shouldn't be like this... It's spitting on your memory..." He hadn't expected to see Keroro there at all. He still mourned him everyday, but he assumed that he had at least had a proper burial. Apparently he hadn't.
"We have enough blood to start it now. Let's awaken him." Fuyuki's voice broke up Tamama's sorrowful reunion with his lost love. Panicking, Tamama hid away behind a box to watch with horror as Fuyuki and Mois walked into the room.
What do they want to do with Mr. Sergeant? At that time, Tamama had never witnessed Keroro during a Harvest.
"We have blood for you, Uncle. You can rise again! And then, maybe you'll be able to stay a little while longer and find your proper soul." Mois smiled kindly at the tube.
Fuyuki pressed a button to drain out the fluids, letting Keroro's dead body fall to the bottom. The glass went down as he pressed another button.
"Carry him into the pentagram, I'll try to feed him the blood," Fuyuki ordered Mois. Mois nodded, and with great care and love, carried Keroro and put him gently in a pentagram.
Fuyuki tried to pour a glass of blood that resembled wine into Keroro's mouth. But Keroro would not swallow. He was dead.
"He only likes it fresh, I see," Fuyuki nodded. "Mois, bring in the girl."
Angol Mois left the room briefly, and came back dragging a woman in her early twenties.
"Please! Please don't do this! I have money, I can help you..." She begged, but her begging was not heard by Angol Mois.
Mois strapped her down onto a table and hollow needles hooked themselves into her skin. "You could say, time to squish?"
Fuyuki looked away for a moment as Mois dropped the other end of the table onto the woman, and the woman let out one final scream. Her blood leaked out onto the floor and into several cups Fuyuki had placed.
"Fresh enough?" Mois asked, having little regard to her now blood-covered body. Fuyuki looked like he might gag, still not having quite a stomach for this sort of stuff.
"Feed it to him," he ordered. "I'll say the ancient words."
Mois nodded, as Fuyuki produced a book and read ancient scripture in a low and monotonous voice.
To Tamama's surprise, Keroro did, in fact, swallow the blood, and his tongue even seemed to flicker and move. Was that just my imagination? he wondered.
"Rise! Rise, Sergeant Keroro. Come back from the world of the undead and rule this one instead!" Fuyuki ordered.
The room seemed to go cold, as the lights grew brighter and brighter from the lightbulbs above Tamama, as if they had lit on fire.
Keroro's body shined with a firey light, and he rose, as if strings were attached to his body. Unnaturally, he got up as if he was hovering. As if he was fainting in reverse.
When he opened his eyes, they weren't black and friendly anymore, they were red. There was no dumb smile on his face, just an evil expression. One that a murderer would have. And for the first time in Tamama's life, he felt afraid of him.
"Uncle! Uncle! You're back!" Mois smiled and threw her arms around Keroro in a hug, to greet him. Keroro punched her in the face, throwing her across the room with strength that seemed to be even stronger than Natsumi's.
Mois's body broke the wall.
"He's delicate, Mois, remember?" Fuyuki reminded, as Mois whimpered a bit. "He's not used to being alive again, and he's still under the control of the demonic energy."
"I know... It's not Uncle's fault..." Mois covered one half of her face with her hand, trying to continue to face Keroro as if he was a drug and she had to be looking at him.
"So... Sarge... How does everything feel to be alive again?" Fuyuki asked. "I'm assuming everything's still not completely 100% you, right?"
"I need more," Keroro breathed out at first quietly, but then he repeated it in a more desperate fashion. "I NEED MORE!" His voice sounded like a bad horror movie's serial killer who had altered their voice so their identity could be masked.
"More souls? Or more blood?" Fuyuki asked. "Don't worry, we've prepared a fine selection of both for you tonight. Eat as much as you want, Sarge."
"Lovely," Keroro smiled. "It'll be fun to tear those little Pekoponians apart. To finally crush this miserable planet."
Fuyuki didn't seem to shudder from Keroro's out-of-characterness. He seemed used to it.
"Eat as many people as you want, then. Anything to get you back to the way you were," Fuyuki told him.
Keroro complied by snapping the table off of the remains of the woman, and eating the rest of her straight in front of Tamama.
"Let's begin, then. I need to harvest my supper, and get some fun while I'm at it," Keroro decided.
And the three of them - Keroro, Angol Mois and Fuyuki - left the room, leaving Tamama to his horror at the new Keroro and what he had witnessed.
"The day I first saw the new demon Mr. Sergeant, I realized truly he wasn't Mr. Sergeant. He enjoyed tearing people limb from limb, even... eating them. He was downright evil, and the Harvest to him is just a way to amuse himself," Tamama told Natsumi. "I realized the day that I saw him that I would do whatever I could to stop Mr. Sergeant's body being used that way, and the true purpose the revolution existed to me was to save my lost love. I would not let that... thing use Mr. Sergeant." Tamama caught Natsumi up to his story of the first time he had seen Keroro.
Natsumi just seemed horrified that the stupid frog could be like that. "What has Fuyuki done, bringing that monster into the world?"
Tamama shook his head. He didn't really know.
"I don't know how Giroro, Dororo and Kululu could have allowed this..." Natsumi shook her head. "I mean, they all cared about the stupid frog in their own way too, just like you did. Well, not exactly in the same way you did... But why aren't they working with you to stop this?"
"I don't know. It's been years since I've seen or heard anything from Dororo and Giroro. As I told you before, after Mr. Sergeant died, we all sort of split up," Tamama told her.
Natsumi knew. I can't believe Giroro would just leave things this way. The stupid frog was his friend, too! She was really worried about him now. Fuyuki wouldn't kill him, too, right?
"I do, however, know that Kululu wouldn't stop it at all." Tamama sat up against chair, annoyed. "He's actually aiding Fukki and that woman's efforts to resurrect Mr. Sergeant."
"What...?" Natsumi was shocked. Kululu did seem like the type to look out for only himself, but doing something so outright evil... Even Kululu had to have his limits, right?
And wanting to resurrect Keroro seemed a little weird for him. Sure, he might have missed him a little bit, but Kululu wasn't the type to go over-the-top about his death like Mois had.
"How do you know?" Natsumi asked.
"Because he's the one who helped me escape Fukki's fortress during my infiltration of it," Tamama shared.
"Tell me more," Natsumi firmly requested. And so Tamama launched into yet another tale.
He was running, running to where he didn't know where. He had to get out of the fortress before Fuyuki, or worst of all Keroro, caught him.
He had the information he needed now. Although he regretted it.
He didn't look where he was going and just ran.
"Oof!" Tamama ran straight into Kululu, who was walking around a corner with a laptop in his hands. Both of them fell over.
Tamama rubbed his head and looked up to see Kululu. Terror immediately gripped his heart. He hadn't seen Kululu in a long time, but he had heard rumors that he was now working for Mois and did anything, no matter how cruel, she ordered.
"What are you doing here? Ku, ku, ku. Come to get a front row seat at the Harvest?" Kululu asked mockingly.
Tamama shook his head. "I don't want to see it. It's terrible."
"So... you already saw what they've been doing." Kululu paused, getting up. He offered a hand to help Tamama up. Tamama reluctantly took it.
"Please... let me go. Don't turn me in. I know you're going to get me killed, but I'm ready to defend myself if need be. Even if it means fighting an old platoon mate." Tamama got in a stance, ready to fight.
Kululu waved his hand. "Nah, I ain't gonna turn you in. Despite what you believe, I don't want my old platoon dead."
Tamama was a little shocked. "Will you tell them I was here, then?"
"No." Kululu slowly shook his head. He knew the grimness of the situation. He knew the revolution was opposing the Harvest and that they were prime targets for Fuyuki's hit list. "Want me to show you the best way to sneak out without them knowing? There's a back passage that would make you miss the Captain and company."
Tamama gratefully nodded, and let Kululu lead him to the passage, surprised that Kululu was helping him. Trusting him didn't seem to be doing anything negative yet, too.
He's... being a pretty nice guy. At least at the moment, he is, Tamama realized. He hadn't killed him, at least.
"So... what are your goals? I'm assuming to stop the Harvest, because you oppose 'that woman' or something?" Kululu asked, curious as to why Tamama had left Momoka's mansion and started the revolution.
"No. That's not it." Tamama shook his head. "Well, admittedly that was it, at first..."
"Ku. Knew it. I had this bet going with Fuyuki, and I knew I was right." Kululu laughed. "Ku, ku, ku. Just need to prove it to him now without ratting you out..."
"But it isn't any more!" Tamama piped up. "I... I want to free Mr. Sergeant from his suffering, how his body and soul can never be laid to rest and are eternally chained to this land. I want to free him." Tamama held his hand close to his heart. Now that he had a truly noble purpose and was fighting for someone else, he knew he could do anything.
Kululu stopped for a moment, playing with some keys before turning a lock on the passage he was leading Tamama to. "I'm afraid we're enemies, then. Ku, ku, ku. Because my goal directly conflicts with your goal."
Tamama looked up, shocked. Just when he had thought Kululu was a nice guy, too! "Wh-what is your goal?" he asked.
"It requires that he comes back to life. So our goals do not mix. Simple as that. Ku, ku, ku," Kululu told him.
"Do... Do you even think he can come back? That monster I saw wasn't Mr. Sergeant. You and I both know that. So... is there even a chance the real one can come back?"
Kululu was silent for a moment. "I don't know. But I suppose I have to hope. Ku! Fuyuki would laugh if he heard that. His optimism seems to have been rubbing off on me. Darn." Kululu laughed at himself. "Anyway, about time you go, before you're caught. Don't return or else I'll really have to turn you in. Ku, ku, ku!" Kululu shut the passage door behind Tamama.
And he let him go free.
"I don't know what Kululu's true motivations are, or his goals, but I suspect Kululu cared for Mr. Sergeant too, in his own way," Tamama told Natsumi. "Surprisingly, this universal conquest business has brought a surprisingly good side to him." He paused. "Although you can't tell that in public. Usually he acts just like that woman's right hand man."
Natsumi nodded. At least that covered some mysteries concerning Kululu. But the mystery of Giroro and Dororo's whereabouts still remained at large.
"That's it." She stood up. "I know Giroro and Dororo wouldn't just let this happen. They'd want to help free the stupid frog too, just like you. So let's find them, and then maybe this revolution can get somewhere."
"You want to bring back the Keroro Platoon?" Tamama asked, his eyes widening. He smiled. He could use with a reunion of his former platoon members. And he knew they might fight with him, too.
"This revolution will be in great hands with all of us together," Natsumi declared. "Let's bring back the platoon. And then we'll knock some sense into my dumb brother's head!"
"Yeah!" Tamama agreed enthusiastically. It was an idea, a step in the right direction. He knew Natsumi would help him out.
Natsumi smiled. She could use her partner to help her out, and she would be quite happy to see Giroro again.
The only question was where the heck he was.
But the mission had been formed. Just like Fuyuki and Angol Mois, Natsumi and Tamama would reunite the Keroro platoon.
"To the platoon!" Tamama declared.
"To the platoon," Natsumi agreed.
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