"MIKO! MIKO COME BACK!" But she was gone. Rodney could only watch and stare as Miko vanished into the night like a shadow without a light. He spun around, slamming his fist into the truck and roaring at himself. "IDIOT! You knew bet'r than te tell her!" He banged his head against the trucks body, not noticing the gps display on the trucks dashboard flicker, the pastel colored road map momentarily replaced by a radar like display, tracking a pink blip quickly moving away. Bulkhead struggled; He wanted to close his vehicle modes doors, start the engine and take off after Miko. But if he did that and left Miko's Uncle Rodney standing watching his rented truck drive off by itself there went his cover.
'Slag it,' he thought, 'Miko need you now more than ever. This ain't the time to get cold struts. Now put it in gear and roll your aft ou.' Just then he felt a hand grab his passenger side door, then his driver side door as Rodney climbed back in.
'Scrap,' He muttered, just as Rodney realized Miko had run off with the truck's keys.
She knew she should go back, stop and turn around. But all she could do was hold the tears back with shut eyes and keep pumping her legs faster. And she kept running until she couldn't hear the feet behind her anymore, and kept running. And running, and running, until finally a root did what a loved ones cries could not.
"OOF!" She grunted as her foot stopped and her momentum carried her forward and down. Her chest smacked into the dry ground knocking the breath from her lungs. She tried to push herself up, propping one elbow under herself then another. But when she placed her left palm on the earth, the dirt gave way under it, and Miko's world started to spin as she herself tumbled end over end through the green and dirt. The memory of her first bicycle accident flashing to the front of her mind, Miko covered her face with her arms only for them to be assaulted and torn at by the underbrush. A rock bashed against her thigh, and her forehead struck a root. None of these stopped her rolling tumble, only changed her course, until she came to rest with a hard hollow thud as the side of her unprotected chest slammed into a tree trunk. Again the wind was forced out of her, but this time she didn't get up, just lay there on her back and started up at the slivers of sky not obscured by the trees.
Miko had always had great night vision, and even with the pain clawing up over her skin and through her bones she could still pick out every single leaf on the trees overhead. Every leaf, every branch...but no stars. Only dark cloud smudged sky.
"Miko! Miko come on or you'll miss it!" The living ball of nine year old energy did not need to be told twice, leaping up from her seat and leaving the table far behind, even as her grandfather called after her in japanese to come back and finish her turn in their game of mahjong. She darted through the house, skidding and drifting around corners, forcing her grandmother to dodge, flattening herself against the wall as the little girl dashed for the outside. Then she reached the door and ran through it, right into her mothers waiting arms. Mika scooped her daughter up, spun her around then wrapped her in a hug as warm as the summer night around them.
"Look Miko," her mother said setting her daughters feet back on the ground and kneeling beside her as she pointed up toward the sky. Miko followed her mothers finger, and saw the sky filled with hundreds upon thousands of tiny lights. Then, one of those pin pricks streaked across the sky, then another, and another, all followed by brilliant glowing tails.
"Shooting stars!" She cried, awed by the heavenly spectacle. She felt another hand on her other shoulder, a different kind of gentle from her mothers grasp, but to Miko it was no less reassuring.
"Thats right Miko," her father said in his reverberating voice, then looked upwards as well. "You can't see them from Tokyo." She yawned, and her head lolled into her mothers chest. She felt her mothers hands on her head, running through her long black hair, then her fingers rubbing her cheek. Her farther smiled and laughed, his eyes never leaving his wife as she dotted on their daughter, nor from Miko as the girl kept her eyes locked on the heavens.
"Mommy, Daddy?" She said sleepily in japanese. "Can we stay at Grandma and Grandpa's house forever?" Her mother smiled widely, teeth shining against the night as her husband laughed, a sound that was low and soft that seemed to carry from their gardens all the way across the lakes shimmering glassy surface, through the tree's and up the sides of Mount Nantai and Mount Takayama before vanishing in the heavens.
Miko didn't bother to brush or blink away the tears. More were on the way.
"But it wasn't even my fault!" Miko shot back and up, but her Fathers glare never wavered from the thirteen year olds eyes.
"One wrong cannot be made right with another Miko," Her father scolded with a hard tone. "That girl had done nothing to provoke you. She was minding her own business."
"She was giving Akira a swirly!" Miko fired back just sharply, her fathers defiant fire shining in her eyes. "She and Eri pick on her everyday!"
"And now the teachers know of her aggressions," her father finished cutting his daughter off. "It is their duty to punish the students that break the rules, Not yours."
"She got what she deserved," Miko huffed crossing her arms. Her father scoffed, doing the same.
"Did she? Tell me Miko, how does a wet head and lack of breath compare to a broken arm?" Miko said nothing, suddenly very interested in the carpet pattern on the living room floor. "You cannot simply go around hurting people you think are doing wrong by someone you don't even know, or one day, you will hurt the wrong person!"
"She still had it coming!" Miko defended, pouting.
"All right," her father said darkly, "if that is your mind about it, you can forget about that field trip!"
"But Daaaad!" Miko whined, "The whole schools going!"
"It seems that will no longer be the case," He said flatly. "Not unless you write Asuka an apology letter."
"ITS NOT FAIR!" She yelled, surprisingly loud for a girl her size, "You never let me do what I want to do! You just keep me locked up in here! Like some animal in a cage!"
"You know that isn't true! We let you walk across town, with your friends every day for your music lessons."
"Piano lessons!" Miko shot back, "I don't even like the piano!"
"Well you are certainly not going back to that karate school." Miko just scoffed.
"Yeah, specially after you put the instructor in the Hospital!"
"That was completely different! That little insect got what he deserv."
"So did Asuka!"
"That's it! Go to your room right now, YOU'RE GROUNDED!"
"I HATE YOU!" She stormed off, running through the apartment, slamming the door to her room closed and buried her face in her bed pillow. She didn't stop crying until Her mother brought her dinner later that evening. She told Miko she had talked to her father, and while she still had to write the letter if she wanted to go on the trip, she wasn't grounded.
"Sometimes," Her mother said cradling her daughters head agaisnt her chest like she used to do when Miko was little. "People get angry and so caught up in the moment they forget to say what they really mean. Miko you know your father loves you, he's only trying to do what he thinks is best for you."
But even today Miko knew she had meant every word of it. That was when the rift had started to grow between her and her father, and it had only gotten wider when she transferred to Jasper High. If it hadn't been for her Mother Miko might not have even talked to her father during the school year, and when she came home for summer break, it was her Mom that tricked father and daughter into forgetting about their problems and having fun while they could.
That didn't stop Miko from calling Raf or Ratchet for a quick ground-bridge back to Jasper when her parents were out, which had become more and more often as time went by. Now that she thought about it, Miko remembered her parents had been spending a lot of time away from home that summer, the same year she'd been named an honorary Wrecker.
"She, she'd been sick fer a long time, but she didn't want you to worry..."
Why hadn't her mom told her she was sick? Why did she keep it a secret from her until ...
It was no use, Miko couldn't stop the streams running down her face to the earth. Her Mom was gone, gone forever. She would never kiss and hug her goodnight again, never laugh with her while they ate lunch at Sushi Saito and watched the people at the embassy. She would never see her smile again when she showed her her new pictures of Jack and Raf and all the places she had visited. She'd never hear her tell her, "I love you," ever again. Miko closed her eyes and realized she was sobbing.
Never again.
She hadn't even gotten a chance to say goodbye.
"ITS NOT FAIR!" She roared, slamming her fist into the damp earth, hot angry stinging tears flowing freely. "You should have told me! Why?! Why did you keep THIS of all things a secret?!" Her vision was starting to blur, but she still heard the familiar clicking and whirring clear as day. "Bulkhead?" She called, lifting herself slowly upright, her upper body seeming to weigh tons. "Hello?" She asked between sniffles. The forest was quiet, asleep and resting. Miko raised her right hand over her eyes to improve her vision, but everything was pitch black around her.
Everything except her hand.
"What the?" She gasped, holding her hand before her face. Her skin on her forearm had split apart like a car's sunroof, coming out then back, exposing a mass of shining deep purple metal streaked with glowing pink circuits that she could only assume was her hand, now looking more like the business end of a double barrel shotgun. He turned the metallic mass over looking at her, "arm" from all angles, and she actually caught herself laughing a little, but it was a hollow and terrified sound.
"This isn't happening," he mumbled to herself, but no matter how she tried she couldn't shake the feeling that she had seen this before. A long, long time ago.
"Mommy Mommy!" She ran up to her mother, who had just come home from work.
"Oof, hello Miko," her Mom said as the energetic three year old's hug-tackle winded her.
"Come on!" Miko cheered, positively elated. Her Mom just had to see what she had found out!
"Slow down," Her mother called even as Miko raced back into the apartments tiny living room. "What is it?"
"I wanna show you something!" She smiled, adjusting the range carefully. Her Mother looked surprised when she came into the living room and saw her daughters set up.
"Miko.." She started, "Why are the cooking pots on top of the couch?"
"So I can see them better!" She smiled excitedly, standing across the room from the range. "Now watch me hit them!" She raised her arm, open palm aimed at the pots with her tongue stuck out and one eye closed, concentrating as hard as she could.
"Oh," her mother cooed probably thinking she was playing pretend again, "okay, let me get something from." Suddenly Miko's arm unfolded in a flurry of clicks and whirs, firing two glowing pink blasts right through the largest pot.
"YES!" She cheered, throwing her arms up in victory, right arm still transformed and turned to her mother with big proud eyes. "Did you see that Mommy?" Miko couldn't have felt better, she had finally learned to do something all by herself! But her mother just stood there, speechless.
"But, ... they told me it was a dream," She said, looking at her hand. Dream or not, there was no denying the fact that the blaster from her dream and her hands current form were one and the same. Come to think of it, how in the world did she get it to...
BaOW!
"IEE!" She yelped when her gun arm suddenly fired a shot into the air. She watched the glowing pink round arc up through and over the trees, before detonating like a roman candle, sparking and lighting up the sky just as it fizzled out. Miko started after it, when a blinking light on her arm caught her eye. The red light was fro ma meter of some kind with a tiny red bar flashing as if warning her. Without warning her arm returned to its normal appearance, metal parts shifting and folding in as her skin slide back into place. Holding it close to her face, Miko realized she could now see thin lines tracing along the joints of her hand and wrist, kind a like the armor on Bulkheads hand.
That's when it clicked. She shifting pieces, the glowing lines, the sound her arm had made. It hadn't shifted. It Transformed!
"Oh-ho man," Miko said holding her head, not knowing whether to once again breakdown in tears, freak out or start running around screaming at the top of her lungs how cool this was. Miko suddenly realized she didn't feel very cool at the moment, and her world tipped slightly. Shaking off the dizzy spell, she looked around through heavy eye lids for some sign of civilization. Then, squinting her eyes, she saw something in the distance, like two pillars holding up two more. She put her shaky feet under her, and walked toward the shape, past trees and bamboos as her feet meshed into the soft mosses and brushed past ferns.
Slowly, the shapes became more defined. It was a torii, a wooden gate placed at the entrance of shinto shrines. Miko vaguely remembered they were supposed to mark a shift, but between what she didn't know. She knew she was tired, and that there was a stone path leading up the hill just beyond the torii. So she started walking, footfalls echoing through the forest around her, but between the increasing nausea and exhaustion she was too out of it to register anything but the path in front of her.
She didn't hear the soft clink of three hooked metal claws on stone as another being stepped onto the path behind her.