Disclaimer: I do not own anything.
Natsumi helped Giroro back to the fortress. His eyes still burned from the melted glass. He needed to see a doctor.
"You're back! They said you'd be back soon!" To their surprise, waiting for them was Keroro. His cheeks were bright and green, and he no longer had antenna or hairy hands. He looked normal.
Natsumi jumped back.
"H-how...?" Koyuki asked, confused. This must have been an illusion.
"I... I saw you die!" Momoka accused. Giroro just still moaned in pain, desperately needing to scrape melted glass out of his sockets.
"K-Keroro? Is that you?" he asked, though.
"In the flesh!" Keroro said proudly. "G-Giroro? You look way different than when I saw you last! Did you mutate even more?" Giroro was clearly a human now. "What happened?"
Giroro didn't answer. He was just so shocked to hear Keroro not just alive, but completely back to normal. Was it a hologram? An illusion?
"S-stupid frog... Do you remember us?" asked Natsumi.
"Yeah. Sure do," Keroro smiled. "Remember Fuyuki, too." Fuyuki waved in the background.
"He's real! We did tests!" He looked overjoyed to have his friend back. Even saying the words seemed to bring him almost to tears.
"Wh-what happened?" Momoka asked. "He... He definitely died!"
"Jumping off a cliff into water is not the same as dying," Keroro corrected. "I floated around for a bit and healed."
Saburo cleared his throat, ready to explain. "From the tests Paul and I did on him, most likely the water somehow soaked up the radiation and the mutations. His antenna fell off, and his hearing, seeing, and even taste and smell fully returned to him. His touch dramatically decreased, though."
"How did you survive in all that sea water?" Giroro asked. Usually, the frogs dried up.
"I saw the nonteruma. You know, those water people that live on Pekopon. They're dying out from the pollution the radiation caused, but not completely dead," Keroro confessed. "As they helped me survive, they told me this planet has an internal clock that's ticking. The core is dying since all the spirits left in the apocalypse. Everything is dying. Soon this planet will explode. They offered to heal me, and bring me my comrade's body if I devoted the rest of my life to trying to find a way to fix the core, and not let them all die. I agreed," Keroro told them.
"They unmutated me as well," he added. "Told me that Pekopon was born with six senses and that it might help to return those senses back to the planet. So I returned mine, hoping those spirits would come back."
Giroro flexed his hands. These people could unmutate them? He doubted they could give him back his eyes, but he would love to fully be who he was again.
"Your comrade's body...?" Momoka was confused by one subject matter in Keroro's speech. Keroro pointed to a tube with Tamama's floating, mutated body in it.
Momoka covered her mouth, disgusted.
"We're trying to fix him. Figure out what healed Keroro and implement it. He's dangerous the way he is, but we're keeping him alive," Fuyuki told her. Tamama looked like he had an oxygen mask on as he floated in water. An IV was in his arm for nutrition. "He was just barely alive when the Sarge brought him. What happened to him?"
"He fell off the cliff," Keroro told them.
"Kululu happened," Koyuki corrected. "He told us he killed Tamama."
"What? Kululu was the one at fault?" Keroro was shocked. "But... he's our platoon mate..." He was so confused.
"What did they mean, six senses?" Natsumi asked. "There's only five of you..."
"I know about the six sense!" Fuyuki raised his hand enthusiastically. Out of seemingly nowhere, he took out journals upon journals of paranormal research on the sixth sense. Then he started ranting about things nobody cared about.
"Okay, okay, sure, that's interesting," Natsumi lied as Giroro sat down to just wrap his head around Keroro being alive. "But nobody mutated into this sixth sense!"
At that moment, the cell phone of one of Momoka's guards, Yoshiokadaira, rang.
Everyone turned to him, their eyes wide. Cell phone communication was down. For no legitimate reason should his phone have rung.
He opened it to check it.
"I believe you are referring to me," a text message read.
After Giroro, Natsumi, Koyuki and Momoka had escaped Kululu, Angol Mois had tried to let Kululu calm down. After letting him go, he mostly just hissed and cried and spoke about how she wasn't gone, but also angrily told her that if she wasn't going to talk to him, to go away.
So she did, she left to check on Giroro and the rest. Seeing the door wide open to the Nishizawa fortress, for once she finally made it in to the place.
And as she looked around, she found something she had long since searched for. A cell phone! Pulling out her own cell phone, she tried to send a message to it.
And it had rung.
"What." Natsumi was the one to speak, "Who sent this?"
"Me!" The phone rang again with a text. "Angol Mois! I was exposed to a large amount of radiation, too!"
"What does it say?" Giroro asked. He couldn't read it. They read it aloud to him.
"But... how... How come we can't see Mois?" Keroro scratched his head. "I was wondering why we hadn't seen her with the Private."
"It's because he told us he ate her," Giroro reminded him.
"He did?" Keroro asked. He didn't remember that. Honestly, during his mutated months, most of his memories were just a blur of pretty constant but mind-blowing oral sex. And he really decided he shouldn't talk about that. With him being the sense of touch and Tamama the sense of taste... Well, it just sort of happened.
"You okay, Sarge? You're turning pink," Fuyuki noticed.
"I am? Oh... Jus,t um... coughing," Keroro lied. "Anyway, why can't we see her?"
"I'm on a different plane from you. The spirit plane. I'm not dead, but I'm not on your plane or Angol's plane. My body was vaporized in both of them from the radiation I took in," Mois explained over text.
"The spirit plane, huh?" Koyuki murmured. Hadn't Kululu and Keroro spoken about how the planet was having problems because all the spirits had left? Was Mois technically a spirit now?
Suddenly the phone started dimming. It finally powered off.
"What happened?" Natsumi asked.
"Oops... That was the last of the battery life," Yoshiokadaira laughed, awkwardly. They all glared at him.
"It's all right," Giroro told them. "If she's texting us, that means she might be here." He craned his neck. "I... I can hear her, at least some of the time. After I fish this glass out of my eye, how about I work with communicating with her?"
Natsumi nodded. "That would be great."
Paul got some doctors to help Giroro with his medical needs. And most of them dispersed to do their own thing since Giroro was the only one who could really contact Mois. His sense of hearing was compatible with her.
Keroro stayed in front of the tube holding Tamama, watching his comrade.
"Feeling bad?" Fuyuki asked, happy to have his friend back, but knowing that Keroro was worried.
"Yeah," Keroro admitted. "I don't know when he'll be better."
"Tamama was way different as a mutant. I mean... He wasn't the good sort of occult finding, he was more like scary," Fuyuki admitted.
Keroro shook his head. "It... It was all my fault that happened to him. He shouldn't have been left alone. I've tried to make it right for so many months... So many. But even now I've left him alone. I'm the one healed and with my friends. Not him."
Fuyuki pat Keroro on the shoulder. "I'm just glad to have you back," he told him. He could see Keroro was crying a little bit. Tamama hadn't gotten any better. His tongue still was long and so was his body, and his hands were still skeletal. Little bits of acid were stilloozing from his ears.
"I'm... I'm happy to be alive," said Keroro. "I would never not be happy to be alive. But I wish my whole platoon hadn't paid for my stupid choices to send Mois and Tamama to the grocery store."
"Do you feel bad for Mois, too?" Saburo asked, picking up on how Keroro seemed to mostly place the blame on himself for what happened to Tamama, and had mostly ignored the other person he had wronged in the same way.
Keroro looked up, awkwardly having forgotten about feeling guilty about her. "Of course! It's just that Mois wasn't the one who told me that it was my fault! Mois wasn't waiting every day for me to find her! Tamama was, though! And I didn't." He started crying.
"How do you know Mois wasn't? Her body was entirely obliterated," said Saburo.
"She hasn't made an effort to contact me at all in the past year. She has, however, managed to reach Giroro," said Keroro. "If she wanted to see me, she could have moved my hand to her hair or something. I could have felt her if my hand didn't go through."
"Maybe you were too busy with Tamama?" said Saburo.
Keroro thought. He had hoped Mois hadn't walked in on any of those... well... "I sure hope not." He winced. "But... I'm mostly more worried about Tamama, because he seems more vulnerable. He needs me more than Mois does at the moment. Mois probably was strong enough to deal with this on her own, but Tamama... He needs me." Keroro kept watching his platoon mate.
Saburo and Fuyuki sighed. There would be no reasoning with Keroro and telling him that it hadn't been his fault. In his mind, it always would be.
Tamama must have said some pretty horrifying things.
Natsumi held Giroro's hand and turned away as he had his sockets cleaned and purified.
"Do you want new fake eyes?" Paul asked.
"I think I just want a cool blindfold this time. It looks nicer than cold glass eyes, and it probably hurts less to burn off," Giroro said. "Actually, give me the eyes, too, so that I don't get dust trapped there."
Paul nodded.
"I'm sure your blindfold will look cool," Natsumi told him. She squeezed his hand, but wondered if, after Tamama was healed, he would get healed, too. If he did, they might lose their chance to talk to Mois. And that might prove to be an issue.
Momoka sat by Koyuki. She had something long overdue to tell her at the realization that Keroro and Tamama were alive.
"I wonder if Dororo is out there...Or if it's too late for him." Koyuki had never stopped thinking about Dororo, never forgotten him, despite how nobody seemed to give her news about him.
"He is," Momoka told her. "Out there, I mean." She grabbed her hands. "Koyuki... He's alive. I saw him. He begged me not to tell you, but you deserve to know the truth."
"Dororo's alive?" Koyuki was shocked. Momoka nodded.
"He's... He's very different-looking... And seems to be in constant distress, but he's alive. He's the one who's been giving you letters and presents, Koyuki," said Momoka.
Koyuki cried into her hands in happiness. She was so glad that her friend was alive.
Giroro walked into the room, hearing what Momoka was talking about. "You told her?" he asked.
Momoka nodded.
"Why won't he come see me?" Koyuki asked.
"Well for one thing, he's blind," said Giroro. "And another thing... Apparently Keronians who are mutated leak radiation. That's why I'm in a human form, because it's suppressed my radiation levels. Tamama's probably safe because, he's contained, but Dororo and Kululu are definitely dangers. He doesn't want to poison you," Giroro explained.
Koyuki cried some more.
"I have something to talk to you about, by the way," Giroro whispered to Momoka. Momoka stood up and left the crying Koyuki to Natsumi's hands.
"What is it?" Momoka asked.
"I want to find Dororo and talk to him again about the spirits. Get Mois's exact location. Ask for him to sniff her out," said Giroro. "I was talking to her a bit after the phone failed, but she hasn't spoken since. I think she might have left."
"What did she say?" Momoka asked curiously.
"It was about the planet's life. It seems what Kululu said about the spirits fueling the core was true. The planet's internal clock is dwindling. It'll explode itself soon. His fix about using machinery, however, according to Mois, won't work. It won't save us," he said.
Momoka's mouth opened a little in shock. "We'd better get Dororo, then."
Giroro nodded. "I'll reason with him. Don't worry," he promised. "He needs to know it's either death or helping us."
All right, I'm just going to clear something up about the senses. Based on how much senses you lose, the more powerful your main sense is. Since Tamama, Dororo, and Keroro could hear a little, their senses aren't as powerful as Giroro and Kululu's. (I had to let them hear for story purposes)
Also each of their senses could interact with Mois, except sight since she is on a different plane, or at least her image is. So sucks for Kululu.
Please review!