LIBERI FATALIS: The Therianthrope Chronicles

by Eddie-E

A crossover between Ace Combat, Katmandu and another, surprise famous furry comic. A Japanese scientist during the onset of World War II in Europe devises a groundbreaking theory of evolution whose effects will resonate not only on Earth but also throughout the universe for centuries to come. Rated M for language and mature situations.

24. AKANE'S DAIRY (PART 2)

ACT XXIV: AKANE'S DIARY (PART 2)

Keep a diary, and someday it'll keep you.

Mae West

AUTHOR'S NOTE: From this point on, either Japanese or the corresponding language honorifics will be used when the language barrier plays an important role in the conversation between two characters who speak the same language, but when there is a third party or parties who do not understand it.

August 12th, AD 2299/11th day of the Dry Moon, 1748 (summer season), Akane's tent, 10:00 AM (late morning)

Sargeant First Class Akane Araki

Japanese Space Self-Defense Force, 1st Space Ranger Regiment, Osaka, Osaka Prefecture, Kansai Region

TOPIC: Personal Log (Part 2)

GOOOOOOOOOOOOD MORNING, VIETNAM!

...

...

...

Fuck, who am I lying to? Right now, I would rather be in Vietnam than in this galactic shithole spun out of Walt Disney's lustful imagination. And no offense to any Vietnamese who may be reading this. I have traveled to Vietnam many times in my life due to my work in the army and I can say, without a doubt, that country is many times better than the dump I am in.

Why am I saying all this?

I'll tell you why: My feline friends, Liska and Rial, had a crazy night of passion and lust that could be heard throughout all the fucking village.

Did I forget to mention that their teepee was at is only two teepees away from my tent?

And as I mentioned in the previous diary, try to imagine two cats having sex in the same way, and at the same time, try to imagine two humans having sex in the same loud way, and you can get an idea that I did not have a good night, to put it nicely.

I don't think I asked to listen a porn film all night, and that's pretty much what I had the misfortune to hear, and I'm surprised that, as far as I've heard, no one has complained about it. I imagine that they are not the only ones who have sex in a rowdy manner.

I think, as soon as I get out of this sleeping bag, the first thing I'm going to do is have a word with the two of them to tell them what I think of their noisy way of having sex.

But first, I'm going to listen to some music, and after I talk to Liska and Rial, I'm going to head for a nice dip in the river. I hope I don't have another day as yesterday, where I had to play shrink for my slave friend, and have to fight with her now idiot boyfriend.

Next, Akane Araki took out her data pad from her backpack, where she had several songs that she had previously downloaded on that device before boarding the Asuka a month ago. The first song she played was Up Around The Bend by the legendary American band Creedence Clearwater Revival, a song that was played during the Vietnam War era in the 20th century.

Akane quickly noticed that the song's lyrics, quite ironically, described the African-Japanese woman's situation perfectly in simple terms, and even described a situation where a ship (or in Akane's case, a spaceship) was sinking.

And the soldier couldn't help wryly remarking that the song seemed to foretell the day when a human would end up on an unknown planet, living among aliens.

-"Fuck, seems like even the guys from Creedence Clearwater Revival are mocking me from beyond the grave…"-

Not wanting to listen to a song that reminded her of her painful situation, Akane switched to another song, even though this time the song was by the same band. This time, the song was It Came Out of the Sky.

The black woman quickly realized that playing a song about an alien invasion was not a good idea...

-"OH, SHIT!"-

Akane cursed with all her might, and seeing that luck seemed to be up against her, she grabbed a spare change of clothes, and went out of her tent towards the river, in order to bathe.

-"Just hope I don't have another bad day like yesterday…"-

---

August 12th, AD 2299/11th day of the Dry Moon, 1748 (summer season), Outside Mother Sanna's tent, 10:35 AM (late morning)

Once Akane came out of her tent, the first thing she noticed upon leaving her makeshift home was that Liska, her slave friend, had woken up after that long night of passion and sex with Rial. Upon seeing her human friend, the girl waved at her effusively, while she was only wearing a towel covering her body.

Except Akane wasn't exactly in the mood for that kind of praise coming from the person who hadn't let her sleep to begin with…

-"Good morning, Akane!"-

The African-Japanese woman looked at her feline friend with a furious stare...

-"Good morning… for you, little girl!"-

Liska noticed that her friend Akane was not at her best because of the agressive reply she gave to her, and she innocently asked her reasons for her behavior.

-"Something wrong, Akane?"-

That question riled the human in a way she never imagined.

-"AND YOU STILL HAVE THE NERVE TO ASK ME THAT, YOU STUPID GIRL?"- Akane yelled at the ginger-furred girl. -"YOU AND YOUR MATE KEPT ME AWAKE THE WHOLE DAMN NIGHT WITH ALL YOUR GODDAMN MEOWING AND YELLING!"-

The young slave did not seem to understand the reason for the foreign woman's irritation...

-"Uh... I beg your pardon, Akane?"- Liska asked back to the African-Japanese soldier in a very surprised manner. -"I don't know what you are talking about..."-

-"ARE YOU DAMN DEAF OR WHAT?"- Akane angrily retorted at the feline alien girl, and then, she replied in Japanese, because there are no words in the local language for describing her rage. -"(一晩中お前ら二人のニャーニャーと鳴き声を聞いていた、 お前ら二人が最後に黙ってくれた時だけ眠れたんだ！) I was listening your meows, purrs, and screams from you two all the fucking night, and I only got to sleep when you two finally shut your fucking traps up!"-

Seeing her friend's furious face, the young slave could not help but apologize in Japanese for what happened that night, for she never imagined that her lewd behavior had caused trouble for her human friend that night.

-"(ごめんなさい、明音さん) I'm sorry, Akane-san."- Liska replied in a very timid way, while lowering her ears in shame. -"(夜に夢中になってしまったようです) I think I was carried away all night long."-

Moments later, a male voice, which sounded somewhat sleepy, was heard from inside the teepee...

-"MYAAAAWNNN! What the hell is all that fuss about?"-

And suddenly, Rial poked his head out of the teepee entrance, as he watched Liska arguing with Akane. Obviously, the presence of the human woman was not very pleasant for the young black-furred warrior at all, especially after that night, and above all, after all the nasty words Akane had said about him the day before.

-"Oh, it's you…"- Rial said with a very deadpan tone to the human woman.

Akane Araki, likewise, did not hesitate to answer him in the same way, except that she did it in Japanese…

-"(おはよう、ロミオくん。) Good morning, Romeo-kun."-

The female soldier responded in Japanese by using the honorific "-kun" in a derogatory manner toward the alien in Japanese. Rial, at least at that time, did not know a word of Japanese, but Liska, who did speak that language, did know the meaning of that honorific, and the context in which the African-Japanese woman had used it to insult her mate behind the language barrier, even if she didn't catch the "Romeo" part at first.

-"What the hell are you doing here, apart from speaking so loudly in your language, Akane?"-

-"The same thing I'm arguing about with your now new wife, bonehead: complaining about how you two idiots kept me awake with all your meowing and squealing during the whole damn night!"- Akane angrily said aloud to the young alien warrior.

Rial gave Akane a furious look upon hearing her criticism of his intimate activities that night, and responded in kind to the human.

-"That's not something you should care about, Akane."-

-"OH, YEAH?!"- The woman escalated the discussion. -"I'm surprised no one else in this damn village has come to complain about your hollering, considering I live two teepees away from this place!"-

Liska, who watched frozen as Akane and Rial heated up the argument, decided to intervene at once before the discussion became more intense.

-"Akane, please, could we discuss this some other time?"- The slave girl addressed to the human soldier. -"I don't think anyone feels like discussing this kind of thing out loud."-

Akane did not utter a word, partly out of respect for her friend, seeing that she was right, and partly to avoid attracting unnecessary attention to an issue meant to be private between all the parties involved.

-"Fine, as you say, sweetie, and I'm only doing this for your sake…"-

But before the discussion could go any deeper, the three characters heard another female voice coming from the right side of where they were standing, and it was too familiar for the three of them to ignore…

-"Well, it looks like you kids woke up in good spirits, didn't you?"- The voice said with very dry wit at the three young characters.

As they looked to where the voice was coming from, the two felines and the human realized who that voice was…

-"Mistress!"- Liska said.

-"Grandmother!"- Rial did the same.

-"(しもた! またあのアホババアかよ。) Oh shit! It's that stupid old hag again!"- Akane followed suit, but using vulgar Japanese.

Liska, for obvious reasons, was the one who started asking about the reasons why her mistress, Mother Sanna, was there, apart from saying hello to her, her grandson and Akane.

-"Do you want to talk to us, Mistress Sanna?"-

-"Not exactly."- The old woman put her sights to both her slave and Akane at the same time. -"I need to talk to Akane… alone."-

-"Akane, you said?"- Liska replied in a rather surprised tone, and then, she looked at her human friend. -"I think I understand the reason…"-

Akane looked at her friend, and she quickly understood why the old woman wanted to talk to the human, who looked at her sternly. It was evident that she wanted to have a serious talk with the African-Japanese woman in a personal way and did not want to be interrupted.

-"In that case, I'll leave you two alone, while I go to the stream to bathe."- The slave girl said at her mistress.

-"Hey, I'm going to the stream for a swim too!"- Akane said at Liska. -"In that case I'll catch up with you later as soon as I finish talking with your granny."-

-"Uh, me too."- Rial said at his now mate. -"But I need to get some clothes first."-

-"In that case, Akane and I will go somewhere else to talk alone."- Sanna said at her slave and her grandson. -"You two do what you have to do, and then I will talk to you in due course."-

-"Understood."- Liska replied, and then she addressed Akane. -"See you later, Akane!"-

-"Fine, see you soon, sweetie!"-

And so, Liska headed to the river, while the old woman and Akane went to Pyndan's teepee, where she slept that night, so they could talk alone.

But Rial, who was still in his home, could not help but make a sarcastic and worried crack when he saw that his grandmother and Akane were going to argue, knowing the latter's belligerent attitude.

-"I just hope grandmother and Akane don't end up killing each other."-

---

August 12th, AD 2299/11th day of the Dry Moon, 1748 (summer season), Pyndan's tent, 10:55 AM (late morning)

Both women entered Pyndan's teepee, and were about to talk privately. Akane was clearly peeved that she felt she was going to waste her time arguing with Mother Sanna, whom she had no sympathy for, but, due to her social standing in the tribe, she had no choice but to grudgingly listen to her.

-"Very well, granny, we are alone as you wanted."- Akane began the argument in a sardonic tone toward the old woman. -"What do you want from me?"-

Sanna wasted no time in responding to the human woman, but this time in a more confrontational vein.

-"First, let's make things clear, Miss Akane Araki."- The old feline lady retorted at the human soldier from Japan, while pointing her finger on Akane's chest. -"I'm not your granny to begin with. I ask that you call me by my name, as Mother Sanna, Sanna, or simply grandmother, like everyone else in this tribe, and I will not tolerate you addressing me in that tone, young lady!"-

Akane rolled her eyes, as she looked away, trying to play along with the old woman, while she replied with a somewhat contemptuous tone.

-"Yes, as you say…"-

-"Besides that, yesterday I was listening how you were arguing strongly against Liska and Rial, to the extent that you made my slave cry,"- Sanna continued her tirade against the black woman. -"do you have anything to say about it, Akane?"-

-"Well..."- Akane explained. -"what happened yesterday was that me and Liska were discussing several intimate things, and I think she didn't take them very well, although I clearly recognize that I went too far with her, to be blunt with myself, and if that made you uncomfortable, I'm very sorry."- Then, Akane sighed and continued with Sanna's grandson. -"And regarding Rial, I am not going to say what I think about your grandson, out of respect for you, but there are many things that I do not like about him, something that I also recognize, and I think you already know that."-

-"Yes, I understand, Akane."- The old woman retorted at the human. -"But what I don't like about you is that you are too confrontational with those who don't agree with you, and that's something that irritates me a lot about you since you've been in this village."-

-"Well, what can you do?"- The soldier shrugged her shoulders. -"I've always been this way since I was a kid. Besides, I don't like to sugarcoat my words just to please other people, even if I end up hurting them..."-

-"That's a very big problem about you, Akane."-

-"Yes, I know that."-

Both Sanna and Akane sighed at the same time, while crossing their arms and being silent for a few seconds...

-"Well, grandmother, do you have anything else to say to me?"-

-"I just ask you to be more friendly with other people, instead of trying to quarrel with them verbally."- Mother Sanna finished the discussion with this. -"I understand that life in this village might not be perfect for you, and that many things might seem uncomfortable for you to see or hear, considering that you are a foreigner, but I think it wouldn't hurt if you were more diplomatic instead of being so aggressive at times."-

-"Yes, I understand."- The human woman said with certain disdain. -"Anything else you want to add?"-

-"For the time being, no."- Sanna concluded the chat.

-"In that case, and if there's nothing else to add, grandmother, I'm heading to the stream for a swim."- Akane did the same, with a deadpan tone. -"I'll see you later."-

And as Akane was about to leave the teepee towards the river, Mother Sanna still had one last word to say to the human woman...

-"By the way, before you go, I need to tell you something else, Akane..."-

The human woman rolled her eyes again in annoyance, and looked at the old woman again.

-"What would it be, grandmother?"-

Sanna took some breath, and then…

-"(この部族でヒノワ語が話せるのはお前とリスカだけだと思うなら、お前は完全にちがうよ、荒木明音ちゃん) If you think you and Liska are the only people who can speak Hinowan in this tribe, you are completely wrong, Araki Akane-chan."-

-"WHAT?!"-

Akane was surprised to see that the old woman, whom even she had insulted behind her back in Japanese, could also speak her language, to her own dismay and horror, due to the implications that fell upon the human.

-"Since when did you know how to speak Japanese, grandmother?!"

The old woman went on with her answer, also in Japanese, as a way of indicating that she knew how to speak that language.

-"(お前とリスカがあたしの後ろでお前の言葉で話し続けていたので、あたしはすぐに二人共が話していたことの基本を覚えあった。) I learned to speak your language since you and Liska kept talking in your language behind my back, and I quickly learned the basics of what you two were talking about."- Mother Sanna sardonically replied in Akane's language. -"(おかげで、「ババア野郎」とか「アホババア」とか、ヒノワ語であたしを侮辱する癖があることがわかったし、パインダンとキャンプファイヤーで食事に誘われた時には孫を「クソ猫野郎」とまで呼んでいた。) Thanks to that, I could know that you have the habit of insulting me with offensive names in Hinowan, such as "stupid old hag", "old witch" and you even called my grandson "shitty cat" when he and Pyndan invited you to eat at their campfire."-

Akane began to sweat nervously as she saw that the elderly alien woman understood and spoke her language, and to make matters worse, Mother Sanna knew that she was being insulted in Japanese, which caused the African-Japanese woman to not know what to say in her own defense.

-"(さて、あたしを侮辱したことについて、何か言いたいことか、荒木明音ちゃん？) Well, do you have anything to say for yourself regarding all those insults to me, Araki Akane-chan?"-

The human woman did not know what to say, seeing that she was cornered by the old woman in front of all the incriminating evidence, and Akane could only manage to say the following, also in Japanese.

-"(くそ。) Shit."- Akane cursed. -"(認めます、私はあなたのことを陰でヒノワ語で下品なことを言ってしまいました。本当にすみませんでした... サンナお祖母様.) I admit it, I said some very vulgar things about you in Japanese behind your back. I am truly sorry... Mother Sanna."-

The old woman watched as Akane looked sorry for the things she had said about her in Japanese, using the language barrier to insult her, but not realizing that she also knew how to speak her language. Seeing the human visibly sorry, Mother Sanna decided to say the following, this time in her own language.

-"All right, I forgive you, but next time be more careful with that mouth of yours, Akane dear."- The old feline woman said, while putting her hands on the human woman's shoulders.

-"I guess you're going to punish me, aren't you?"-

-"You could say yes, but I have a better idea."-

Akane gulped, imagining the worst kind of punishment for herself...

-"What kind of… idea… do you have in mind, grandmother?"-

-"When you finish bathing, I want you to help Pyndan set up a new teepee for both Liska and Rial, instead of them having to sleep here."- Mother Sanna said at Akane about her "punishment". -"Of course, he can't do it all by himself, so a little help from someone as big as you wouldn't hurt."-

The African-Japanese woman breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that the "punishment" the old woman imposed on her was not as severe as it seemed. After all, putting together a teepee was a piece of cake for a Space Ranger like her, since it was part of her training when she joined the Japanese Space Self-Defense Force, so it wouldn't be complicated at all.

-"Understood."- Akane agreed with her punishment. -"It will be done as you say."-

-"Very well, you can go and take your bath now, Akane."-

So, Akane Araki grabbed her change of clothes and headed for the river, but not before saying something about it to the old alien woman.

-"Thank you, Mother Sanna... and I'm also sorry for all the crap I said about you in Japanese."-

-"Don't worry about it, just be careful next time, will you, Akane?"-

---

August 12th, AD 2299/11th day of the Dry Moon, 1748 (summer season), White River, 11:12 AM (late morning)

After that heated argument with Mother Sanna, Akane headed downstream to take a bath. The human woman was visibly upset to see that the old woman could also speak Japanese, which let her know that Akane was insulting her and her grandson Rial behind her back.

-"Shit, hell of a way to start the day."- Akane cursed to herself. -"First I have to endure a night-long concert of meows, purrs, and screams straight out of a cheap porn movie, and now Mother Sanna is punishing me for insulting her in Japanese, thinking she wouldn't even fucking understand that language..."-

Once on the riverbank, and after quickly making sure that no one was watching her, the African-Japanese woman quickly undressed.

-"But to be honest, it could have been worse. If I had ended up in some tribe with more violent ideas, possibly that old woman would have ordered me to be skinned alive, scalped, quartered, or even a Goemon Bath."-

Akane made reference to the Goemon Bath (Goemonburo in Japanese), the way the famous thief and ninja Goemon Ishikawa was executed by Hideyoshi Toyotomi, where the former was sentenced to death in a pot of boiling oil and cooked alive. Obviously, the human woman was only elaborating on a probable event that could have happened to her, but Akane knew she was lucky that at least she was among people much more rational than she expected from a seemingly primitive tribe.

-"Well, maybe if I take a bath for a while, it will help me forget about all these problems. The last thing I want to have to think about is the fact that I'm still stranded in this galactic shithole..."-

Once naked, Akane stepped into the river and began to bathe carefully; the human woman noticed how pleasant the river's water temperature was that day...

-"Hmmm..."- The human mused for herself. -"The water is very warm today for this time of day. I think I'll take my time..."-

After taking a long bath that took about an hour, Akane Araki came out of the river, and started to dress, but not before making sure that no one was peeping at her.

Once dressed, the African-Japanese woman headed back to the village to help Pyndan as she agreed with Mother Sanna as part of her punishment.

---

August 12th, AD 2299/11th day of the Dry Moon, 1748 (summer season), White River (outside), 12:12 PM (earlier afternoon)

As Akane headed back to the village, the human woman talked to herself about various things that were on her mind, and that to some extent depressed her, especially when she did not have another human she could talk to openly.

-"Fuck! Right now I wish Kaguya was with me to brighten my day with one of her witticisms."- Akane lamented aloud at her current situation, as she walked. -"Surely she'd say something like "Let's get the hell out of here!" or "What the fuck are we doing on a planet full of horny cats?" or some such crap."-

Afterwards, the human woman touched her head, and seeing that it was still wet, she sat down on a large rock in the middle of the path, next to some large bushes that gave her some privacy. Then, using a towel, she began to dry her long hair, which no longer had the dreadlocks she normally wore, for reasons she would explain moments later.

-"And if Kaguya would be here, she would surely go to the trouble of fixing me some nice dreadlocks for my hair, but I guess I have to settle for having it long and in a ponytail instead..."-

And while she was drying her hair, the human woman heard a very familiar female voice coming from the direction she had come from the river...

-"Hello, Akane, did you finish your bath?"-

The African-Japanese soldier realized who that voice was...

-"Oh, hi, Liska dear…"- Akane responded with some sarcasm. -"Or should I call you Juliet instead?"-

The blonde feline girl did not understand the literary allusion to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, just as Liska did not understand that Akane was using the epithet "Juliet" as an insult, although she quickly grasped what she meant by calling her that.

-"I have to assume that calling me "Juliet" must be some kind of tease, right?"-

-"You guessed it."- Akane confirmed her words in a bitter but playful tone. -"Don't think you're going to cheer me up after I had a night of listening to you meowing and purring non-stop, while Rial was busy putting an end to what was left of your virginity."-

The young slave girl did not find Akane's comment about her night of passion amusing, but she decided to ignore it to avoid unnecessarily arguing with her.

-"Well, I'm very sorry again, Akane."- The alien girl responded. -"I didn't imagine that my yelling would cause you so much discomfort…."

Seeing her friend's face, which looked visibly embarrassed, Akane preferred not to give the matter any more thought either, and she preferred to change the subject to something nicer.

-"It's all right, it's all right, you don't have to feel sorry for that."- The human also apologized. -"I think I also exaggerated a little in my ranting, since as you know, I'm not from around here, and I'm not of your species either, so I don't understand some… things about you guys, especially how you handle your intimacy…"-

-"But even so, I think I overdid it."-

-"Yes I understand you, but that's over now,"- Akane replied with a mischievous smile in her face -"and if you want to apologize to me, I could ask you a small favor."-

The slave was a little surprised to see that Akane only wished to ask for a favor in exchange for her forgiveness.

-"And what would that be, Akane?"-

-"Help me put my hair in a chonmage, please."-

Liska didn't know what a chonmage, a samurai ponytail, was, a fact Akane forgot to tell her.

-"Chonma-WHAT?"-

-"Ooops! I forgot to tell you what a chonmage is... sorry, giggle."- Afterwards, Akane explained how to make that hairstyle. -"I will explain it to you as you do it to me, it is not very complicated, by the way..."-

-"Understood."- Then, the slave girl put her hands on her hips. -"But I can't help but say that you are so strange at times..."-

-"Yeah, I know that, sweetie... but just help me with that, please?"-

As Liska helped Akane to tie her hair in a chonmage, the young slave asked the African-Japanese woman some additional questions about her hair, which was very different from the way she traditionally wore it since she had met her a month ago.

-"By the way, your hair looks very different than it has since I've known you, because it used to be curly, and now it's completely straight."-

-"You mean my dreadlocks?"- Akane responded about her previous hairstyle. -"I had to take them off, because it was very difficult to have my hair that way without specialized help and I don't think you or anyone else in this village could do it that way, so I preferred to leave it loose and use a chonmage instead."-

-"Personally, I liked your other hairstyle."-

-"Thanks."- The human said at her alien friend. -"Dreadlocks are a very common hairstyle in many people where I come from, although some consider that hairstyle as savage, backward or even dirty."-

-"I wouldn't consider it dirty, if you ask my opinion, Akane."-

-"Well, thanks for your comment, because other people where I come from did not like that style."-

While Liska was putting the finishing touches on Akane Araki's chonmage, she noticed that the human woman had what appeared to be a tattoo on her back, since she was only wearing a tank top, which allowed her to see that image. Without hesitation, the slave asked her about that tattoo.

-"By the way, what is that strange painting you have on your back?"-

-"Oh, I see, you mean... my tattoo?"-

-"Tattoo?"-

Akane was surprised to learn that her friend did not know what a tattoo was...

-"Don't you know what a tattoo is?"-

-"Uh... no, to be honest."-

Quickly, the soldier realized why her feline friend could not know what a tattoo was, because she did not consider that something so aggressive to bare skin could be possible in beings that only had fur to cover their skin.

-"Oh, I forgot you guys couldn't know such a thing..."- Then, Akane explained the meaning of a tattoo. -"A tattoo is a kind of paint that we, at least members of my species, paint inside our skins for various purposes. Some are ceremonial, some are tattooed in order to convey some kind of message, and some are tattooed, like me, to make some kind of symbolism."-

-"And in your case, what does the tattoo on your back mean?"-

Akane's tattoo was a drawing of an orange-red and deep red phoenix, which ascended into the sky, while its feathers fell to the ground to what appeared to be a bonfire. The soldier quickly explained the meaning of the picture and what it really meant to her personally.

-"The bird you see in my tattoo is called the phoenix, and it symbolizes rebirth. In the myths of the place where I was born, the phoenix is a fire bird that after dying, is always reborn from its ashes, and in my case, I have always been very interested in the myth of the phoenix, because it symbolizes that, no matter how many times I fall, I will always rise again, just as the phoenix reborns endlessly."-

-"I guess from what you've told me about your life, that tattoo must mean a lot to you."- Liska responded, after gazing on Akane's phoenix tattoo on her back.

-"And it is, dear."- The human replied. -"My life has been filled with many ups and downs, including losing my parents as a child, being teased because of the color of my skin, and the fact that at times, I have a hard time identifying with whom I really am…"-

Akane sighed a bit, and then she continued with her rant, while lowering her head…

-"And now look at me, by vagaries of fate I am in this place, without knowing exactly where I am, and surrounded by people who are very different from me in every way… who knows if one day I will be able to return home with my own people, and sometimes that is something that saddens me as you have no idea…"-

At that moment, the young slave put her hands on Akane's shoulders in order to comfort her after what she said...

-"I feel very sorry for you, Akane..."- Liska said with a very sad and melancholic tone in her voice. -"I know how it feels to not be able to go home, too. It's a truly horrible feeling..."-

-"Yeah, I know that..."- Akane then retorted at her alien friend. -"At least you have it easier than me, since your home is not far from here. Mine is in a place that would take many lives to reach."-

Then, Akane turned her head...

-"But thank you for your words, sweetie."-

-"You're welcome, Akane."- The slave responded. -"It's the least I can do for you."-

Afterwards, the African-Japanese woman made a mischievous expression on her face, and made a comment towards her friend...

-"By the way, Liska dear..."- Akane said with a sardonic smile. -"You know very well that I don't like to be touched without my permission."-

The young alien girl quickly pulled her hands off the human woman's back when she saw her apparent displeasure at being touched without her consent.

-"Oh! Sorry about that, Akane!"- Liska replied, very visibly ashamed. -"I forgot that you don't like to be touched."-

-"All right, no worries, but just tell me when you do it again, got it?"-

-"Understood."-

But in a sudden turn of events, both women heard what sounded like a female scream coming downstream from where they were standing.

-"HYAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"-

Liska and Akane tried to find out where that voice was coming from, seeing that for both girls, the scream they heard was too familiar to ignore. Moments later, they quickly identified whose voice it was...

-"Hey, did you hear that?"- The alien girl said first.

-"Yes!"- The female soldier was quick to reply. -"Does that voice belong to...?"

Both girl paused for a few seconds...

-"Kayce?"- The feline girl and the African-Japanese woman said at the same time.

With no more time to waste, both women ran down the river to see what had happened to Kebec's older sister, whose scream belong to...

---

August 12th, AD 2299/11th day of the Dry Moon, 1748 (summer season), White River, 12:45 PM (earlier afternoon)

When Liska and Akane reached the river as fast as they could, they realized that Kayce was still in the river, still naked, while she was standing in the middle of the stream, paralyzed with fear.

Once there, and not caring that the young dark-haired and dark-furred girl was still unclothed, they both asked her what had happened to make her scream like that..

-"Hey, Kayce, what's wrong?"- Akane asked her first.

-"Yes, we heard you screaming from the hill and that's why we went to see what had happened to you..."- Liska followed suit to her human friend.

Kayce quickly pointed her finger at something coming from the right side of where she was standing, to be more exact, towards the other side of the river. Her fear was such that she found it difficult to articulate what she was seeing.

-"A... A... A..."-

-"A what?"- Akane asked her loudly.

Quickly, the girl quickly answered what was terrifying her.

-"A DEAD BODY!"-

Akane Araki quickly looked at the place Kayce was pointing at, and the human realized that indeed, on the other bank of the river from where they were, there was a corpse, who seemed to have been there lifeless probably since last night.

But that was not the strangest or most terrifying thing the three women were witnessing, and it was the reason Kayce, who was also taking a bath in the river at the time, had begun to scream.

When the three women quickly looked at the corpse, they realized that lifeless body was not that of a local dweller of that unknown planet, but of a human being.

In view of that critical situation, Akane, who was a human, quickly crossed the river, and went to the other side to see the corpse of that human. Once there, the African-Japanese woman noticed several things when she saw that lifeless body.

The corpse was that of a man, approximately 18 to 25 years of age, of Asian appearance, and dressed in military uniform, which was tattered, though she could not determine if the damage to his clothes was because the man was several days unable to wear a spare change of clothes, or was a product of the wounds he suffered.

Given that she was the only human on that planet, it was more than evident that man was a Japanese crew member of the JS Asuka, the Japanese Space Self-Defense Force spaceship where she and her friend Kaguya were on their way to Earth, and which had been destroyed by drones a month ago.

Akane quickly followed the protocol to verify the identity of that person, and the first thing she did was to look at his neck, and quickly found his dog tag. Upon reading it, she quickly knew the identity of the dead human soldier:

Pvt. Keisuke Noguchi (野口圭介)

99912232323

JSSDF (日本宇宙自衛隊)

UNSF (国際連合宇宙軍)

1st Space Ranger Regiment (第一宇宙レンジャー連隊)

Shinto

As she read the late soldier's dog tag, Akane realized that the young man was a person she knew very well…

-"Keisuke Noguchi…"- The human was talking to herself in her own mind. -"He was a young recruit from Sapporo that I met on my way to New Haiti, and it was to be his first mission since enlisting in the JSSDF. He was very excited to see new worlds, and didn't seem to mind that his job was basically to be a glorified courier service worker..."-

When looking closely at Private Noguchi's body, Akane realized that the corpse had several wounds produced by stabbing weapons, in addition to several arrowheads that were still stuck in various parts of his body, mainly in his back, which meant that he had most likely bled to death.

All this indicated that poor soldier could have encountered on his way when he arrived on that planet either a hostile tribe or some kind of criminal force that attacked him in order to take away his belongings, or simply attacked him because he was not a feline like the inhabitants of that world.

But that also meant that someone else could have survived the destruction of the Asuka, and while Akane didn't expect that Kaguya could have been among the survivors, that meant that there could be more humans, besides her, who could still be in some region of that planet, waiting to be rescued, or to find another human survivor.

Still, Akane felt bad to see that the soldier had died in a rather brutal way, even if such an outcome could be expected for someone who did not have the same experience as she had, seeing that Private Noguchi did not expect to find himself in a situation where he had to fight for his own life in an unknown world.

-"What a horrible fucking way to go. You enlist in the Space Self-Defense Force in order to see new worlds outside of Earth, and you end up as cat food on a godforsaken planet…"-

Now, there was only one problem that Akane had to solve now: It was obvious that none of her alien friends had seen any other human besides Akane, and it was natural that they would start asking her questions about that dead soldier, his relationship with her, and above all, anything related to her origins, her real profession, something she had avoided discussing in depth with anyone in the village, and about her world, Earth.

-"Akane..."- Kayce asked her first, while still in the river. -"Do you know who that person was? He looks a lot like you..."-

The human soldier knew that she could not talk further, so the only thing she could do at that moment was to simply give evasive answers for the time being...

-"I don't know."- The African-Japanese woman gave a somewhat curt reply, while she did not take her eyes off the corpse of the Japanese soldier in front of her. -"The only thing I can say right now is that he is dead. It looks like someone or something killed him."-

Then, Akane stood up, after several minutes of kneeling down to check the corpse of the man named Keisuke Noguchi personally, and looked at Kayce and Liska with a serious and stern look immediately afterwards.

-"You two, I need you to go to the village and ask for help. This may be more serious than I thought."-

-"Do you think we are in danger, Akane?"- Liska asked to her human friend.

-"I don't know, but I prefer to discuss this with the chief and all the other warriors in the village, to avoid misunderstandings."- Akane replied. -"But I can't say more for now."-

-"Then we are leaving, Akane, and you be careful there."- The slave girl replied, while taking Kayce's hand. -"You get dressed first and you and I will return to the village."-

-"Understood…"- Kebec's elder sister replied, with some reticence. -"I just hope Akane knows what she's doing with that corpse."-

Once her two feline companions had returned to the village to seek help, Akane Araki knew that things had suddenly become complicated for her. Now, she had to give an explanation about the dead body of a human that had ended up in the village where she lived, and she knew that many difficult questions awaited her.

The human woman could only curse her luck to see that she now had two problems to solve: to explain who Keisuke Noguchi was, that soldier whose corpse was in front of her, and above all, to explain who she was, her origins and everything related to humans and Earth. Compared to the previous day, what she had in her hands that day made everything she had gone through pale in comparison.

-"Shit, I shouldn't have gotten out of bed today if I had known that I would find the corpse of another human being on the side of the village..."-

---

August 12th, AD 2299/11th day of the Dry Moon, 1748 (summer season), White River, 01:10 PM (earlier afternoon)

Minutes later, the vast majority of the village warriors, in addition to Akane, Mother Sanna, Liska, Kayce and her younger cousin-sister Kebec, had approached the place where Keisuke Noguchi's corpse lay beside the river.

Besides them, and for obvious reasons, there were also Chief Pownetkee and his Seneschal, who were looking carefully at the corpse of the human in front of them, while Akane was still checking the body to find any information that could be useful to determine what Noguchi was doing before he died and what could be the cause of his death, although everything indicated that he was killed by someone.

Needless to say, many of the people present at that macabre scene were surprised to see another human like Akane, although they were even more struck by how... different that dead human was from the woman of African origin.

-"That man looks a lot like Akane..."-

-"Yes... but his skin is lighter than hers, and besides, his hair is dark."-

After finishing inspecting the corpse of the Japanese soldier, Akane got up from the place where she was kneeling, while she took a sigh. The first person to inquire about the corpse was the Chief Pownetkee, who wanted to know more about that dead man…

-"What can you tell us about this man, Akane?"-

The human woman took a breath, and then she replied in a more earnest tone than usual.

-"I can only tell you that this person's name was Keisuke Noguchi... and nothing else."-

-"Nothing else?"- Rial, who was behind Akane, replied in a quite annoyed way. -"And why don't you want to tell us anything else, huh?"-

-"To be honest, I thought I was the only one of my own kind hanging around here, but now with this my situation has suddenly changed for me, and that's why I can't say anything else."-

-"And why?"- Liska added. -"Is there something dangerous about that person, Akane?"-

-"Not exactly."- Akane responded in a somewhat worried tone. -"I just don't want to put this tribe and you guys in danger if I tell you what I know. I can only say that, for the moment, I don't think he will cause any problems, apart from the matter of how we should bury him, of course."-

Obviously, Akane's answer was not to the liking of several people in the village, who thought that she was hiding something, something that many villagers made known to the human in the most blatant way possible.

-"And why don't you want to tell us anything, huh?"- One villager said aloud to the black woman. -"Could it be that dead person is hiding something dangerous, Akane? Or what if maybe he is cursed or something, and brings destruction to the whole village?"-

-"Of course not! Do you think I'm stupid enough to hide something like that from you?"- Akane yelled back. -"I can't say anything at the moment, because I don't want anything I might say could endanger the village if it is taken out of context, that's why."-

-"Out of context you say?"- Kebec, Kayce's younger cousin-sister, and the Highland tribe's most notorious bully, challenged the human woman. -"Could it be that you don't want to say anything because you don't know a damn thing about that corpse, other than that it's the same species as you?"-

-"Not to mention that his skin is lighter than yours."- Kayce added a racial remark about the ethnicity of the human corpse, since that body was from a Japanese person. compared with Akane, a woman born in Africa, but raised in Japan and also a Japanese citizen.

Akane, for more than obvious reasons, interpreted that crack about the late Keisuke Noguchi's skin color as a covert insult against her, which provoked the human woman to strike back in the most direct way possible.

-"Oh yeah? Then you should look yourself in the mirror first before making that kind of comments about people, missy!"-

-"What?"- Kayce replied angrily at Akane. -"What are you implying by that?"-

-"And you still have the nerve to ask, stupid girl?"- The human woman yelled back at the brown-furred alien feline girl. -"Especially after me and Liska heard your screams when you saw this corpse?"-

Kebec, being her younger sister, came to her sister's defense, and joined the arguments against Akane.

-"Hey, watch what you say to my sister, you brainless brute from whomever-knows-where!"- The white-furred girl yelled at the African-Japanese soldier. -"First you show up in this tribe, then a guy who looks like you ends up dead next to our village, and you still have the gall to not tell us anything?"-

-"I have my own damn reasons for not saying anything more about it, and I'm not gonna let anyone insult me like that, whether it's you or your stupid little airheaded sister!"-

-"WHAT DID YOU SAY?"-

Liska, who was standing next to Pyndan, facepalmed as she watched Akane arguing violently with Kebec and her sister, seeing how the argument had become more heated between these three women.

-"Gods, here we go again..."- The slave girl said in a worried tone about her human friend.

-"I agree with you with that..."- Pyndan followed suit.

But Mother Sanna, who was in front of the human woman, but behind Pvt. Noguchi's corpse, already had enough of listening to those three women verbally bickering with each other...

-"I've had enough of listening to you three girls!"- The old woman pointed her finger to Akane and the two sisters. -"I want you to end your dumb discussion RIGHT NOW!"-

Seeing the venerable old woman angry like that, the human soldier, Kebec and Kayce stopped arguing immediately. Akane, for her part, reluctantly obeyed the order.

-"sigh As you wish... but I don't being insulted that way..."-

There was a brief pause after that quarrel between Akane, Kebec and Kayce, before someone decided to continue with the subject of the corpse in front of them...

-"Still, we should do something with this person's corpse,"- Rial, who was watching the human corpse in a very careful way, addressed Chief Pownetkee. -"although to be honest, I'm worried that it might cause us some harm."-

-"Oh, come on, what trouble can he cause?"- Akane replied in annoyance as she could not believe that her alien friend would think that a human corpse could cause any further issue, even though she knew the felines had their reasons for suspecting that the body could be a risk for them. -"Don't tell me you expect Noguchi's corpse to rise from the dead and curse this whole tribe or whatnot?"-

-"Well, I don't want to be that person,"- Another warrior, named Kasil, who was Kebec's husband, talked to Akane. -"but I wouldn't want that corpse to be here for long. I have a bad feeling that worse things could happen if this body stays around here any longer."-

-"And what do you expect us to do with his body, huh?"- The human replied in even further annoyance, since she felt their superstitious beliefs were starting to irk her down. -"Cremate him? Give him a purification rite, or some specific religious ceremony? Drive a stake through his heart?"-

Obviously, the last suggestion, out from Dracula, was not something that those natives wanted to try, out of respect for that unknown corpse, something that Pyndan pointed out to Akane.

-"I don't think that last idea is very appropriate in this case, Akane, and I don't think it's even needed."-

-"Well, I'm willing to listen to any suggestions on how to dispose this body, as long as our chief and the Seneschal says otherwise, of course."-

Chief Pownetkee knelt down once again to look at Keisuke Noguchi's corpse, and after seeing it for a few seconds, he started smoking his pipe...

-"Do you have any ideas on how to take care of this person's body, Chief?"- Mother Sanna asked him.

-"The only thing we can do is to give this person a proper burial in accordance with our traditions, if Miss Akane does not object."- The old tribe chief said to all the people present in the place. -"From what she has told us about this person, he does not seem to be dangerous, and the least we can do for the person who in life was named Keisuke Noguchi is to ask the gods to have mercy on his soul in the afterlife. When the sun sets today, we will begin the funeral rites and bury him outside the village as respectfully as possible."-

Akane was relieved to know that Private Noguchi would be buried in the most befitting manner possible, when at the time she thought his corpse might have ended up being cremated or treated in some undignified way. Even if she could not take his body back to his home world and country of birth, Japan, knowing that those aliens were willing to bury a complete stranger of a species unknown to them spoke volumes about the mindset and rationality of those seemingly primitive beings.

And the human woman made her appreciation known in a remarkable way towards her feline hosts...

-"Thank you... thank you very much..."- Akane thanked the chief, with her voice almost cracking from a mix of happiness and also tears. -"I really didn't expect you guys to do this for him... and for me."-

-"There is no need to thank us, Akane Araki."- The Seneschal, who was quiet during the whole thing, finally speaked. -"We do this not only because it is necessary, but also because we know how important this person probably was to you."-

-"Thank you, sir."-

-"Well, now that this is finally decided,"- Pownetkee addressed to everyone. -"does anyone have anything else to say on this?"-

-"Well, I do have a question, sir."- Akane asked the old feline chief. -"How are we going to take the corpse to the village, or who is going to do it?"

-"I will ask some warriors to take Mr. Noguchi's body to a teepee that we have reserved for this type of situation, and there it will remain until nightfall, when we will perform the appropriate rites and bury it afterwards."-

-"Oh, I see."- The African-Japanese soldier replied. -"Thank you again, chief."-

-"Well, in that case, you are all dismissed."- The chief ordered to the rest of the members of his tribe, and then he addressed to Akane. -"And by the way, Miss Akane Araki..."-

The human woman was somewhat surprised that Chief Pownetkee wanted to talk to her straight away...

-"Yes, chief?"-

-"When you finish your duties, I need to talk to you privately in my teepee before the funeral rites begin."- The old man said to Akane. -"I hope there is no problem on your part, do you?"-

-"Of course not, chief."-

-"So, I'll see you later, I hope you have a nice day, Miss Araki."-

Immediately afterwards, Akane bowed to the chief in the most formal manner possible.

-"Thank you, sir."-

And just when she thought it was all over for her, a voice familiar to the human was heard behind her back...

-"Akane, I hope you didn't forget what you were supposed to do after your bath..."- Mother Sanna said at the soldier, whole pointing her finger to her.

The human woman couldn't help but make a sly grin when she heard that, knowing that she had to carry out the little "punishment" that the old woman had imposed on her for insulting her in Japanese behind her back.

-"Yes, grandmother…"- Akane retorted sarcastically. -"I have to help Pyndan to set up a new teepee for both Liska and Rial. Yeah, I have not forgotten that..."-

-"Good, I want that teepee ready by sundown today, understood?"-

-"Understood, Mother Sanna."- The black woman replied, while sighing a bit.

Immediately afterwards, Akane headed up the hill towards the village, visibly grumpy about the events that had transpired up to that point, and the fact that she felt that things seemed to be going from bad to worse for her.

As if she hadn't had enough of a bad night, she now had to deal with the corpse of a human soldier, one of the survivors of the destruction of the Asuka a month ago who was possibly killed by bandits or some unfriendly tribe that man named Keisuke Noguchi had the misfortune to meet on his way, and to top it all off, she now had to suffer a "punishment" for insulting the old woman in Japanese, assuming that she couldn't understand the language, when it turned out that she could.

Meanwhile, Liska, who was standing next to her mistress, couldn't help but chuckle a little at Akane behind her back, seeing her angry face, something that was noted by the latter.

-"I know what you're thinking, young lady."- Sanna said to her slave. -"Akane is not a bad girl, but someone needs to get that mouth of hers under control if she doesn't want to run into more serious problems later."-

-"Yes, I also agree with that, my mistress."-

-"And don't think you're so innocent either, dear."- The old woman then scolded the girl. -"I can see why you and Akane get along so well, because you and that woman have a big mouth, and the same thing I say about Akane goes for you too."-

-"But I didn't said anything ill about you in Japanese..."-

-"Yes, I know that, but you also have a habit of letting your emotions get the better of you and sometimes you act before thinking things through. Remember that well, if you don't want to have problems later."-

-"sigh undestood, my mistress."-

Then, the old woman put her hand on her slave's shoulder...

-"Well, we'd better go back to the village, and help me prepare the food."-

-"Understood."-

---

August 12th, AD 2299/11th day of the Dry Moon, 1748 (summer season), Liska and Rial's soon- to-be tent, 01:40 PM (earlier afternoon)

As part of the "punishment" she had to carry out for insulting Mother Sanna in Japanese, Akane Araki had to help Pyndan set up the teepee that would be Liska and Rial's home from now on.

What no one had told her, however, was that teepee was going to be larger than usual, as it was going to be one for a family of two, plus any additional members who might live there, such as children.

And while Akane had experience in setting up tents, teepees, and the like as part of her Space Ranger training, the fact that the place was going to be quite spacious was something she didn't expect, and therefore it was going to take her longer than usual to set up, even with extra help.

And the African-Japanese woman couldn't help but curse in Japanese about it, regardless of the fact that Pyndan was standing next to her, even considering that the latter didn't understand her language.

-"(くそ！なぜパインダンにティピーの組み立てを 手伝ってくれと頼まれたのか理解できた。 これはめちゃくちゃ大きくなりそうだね!) Shit! Now I understand why she asked me to help Pyndan to put this damn teepee together. This thing is gonna be really big!"-

-"I guess you said something obscene in your language, didn't you, Akane?"- Pyndan asked the human woman after hearing her Japanese swearing.

The human, who was in no mood to hear such comments about her, responded in the most wry tone she could muster to her feline friend.

-"How'd you guess, pretty BOY?"-

-"I could tell by the tone of your voice, Akane."- The young warrior responded with a smile in his face.

The soldier could not help but make a gesture of annoyance when she saw that her feline friend could infer that she was cursing in Japanese just by analyzing the tone of her voice, even without knowing the language itself.

Meanwhile, Akane began to assemble the teepee's frame, positioning the wooden branches in the right way, while both she and Pyndan were in charge of tying the branches with ropes to make sure that they would not move from place to place. It was a very heavy and difficult job for both of them, but especially for the human woman, who was not used to putting together teepees as big as the one she was working on at that moment.

And the human woman could not help but continue to curse in Japanese that the task had turned out to be more challenging for her than she had imagined.

-"(くそ！ うちの言ったことで！ うちを重荷にしてティピーを設置すると知っていたら、裏でサンナお祖母様を日本語で侮辱するなんてことはしなかっただろうな！) Shit, me and my big mouth! If I'd known they were gonna use me as a beast of burden to set up a goddamn teepee, I'd better not have dedicated myself to insulting grandmother in Japanese behind her back!"-

On the other hand, Pyndan seemed to have had enough of listening to the human curse in another language in front of him, and he decided to set the record straight with Akane, in the most diplomatic way possible for him.

-"Would you please stop cursing in your language for once, Akane?"- The white-furred young man addressed to the African-Japanese woman in an annoyed tone. -"Hearing you curse in "Japanese" or whatever that language you speak really gets on my nerves!"-

The human woman did not find it amusing to be told to shut up, especially when it was in her own language, given the implications, which Akane made known to Pyndan in the most conspicuous way possible.

-"Do you have a problem with my language, you pretty moron?"- Akane yelled at the feline alien. -"I say whatever I want in Japanese, and if that bothers you, then so be it!"-

And in a defiant tone, she decided to insult Pyndan in Japanese with the best insult she could come up with...

-"(分かったか、この糞垂れな白猫野郎か？) Am I getting through to you, you white-furred feline shithead?"-

The young feline warrior sighed and then, he facepalmed after hearing Akane's Japanese swearing, and he replied to her insult with a more polite tone.

-"You know something, Akane? You're so very childish."-

-"Childish?"- Akane replied quite offended by being called as such by her alien host in his own language. -"What the hell makes you think I'm childish to you?"-

-"Well…"- Pyndan summarized Akane's flaws in her face. -"To begin with, you throw a fit over anything that makes you uncomfortable, you always insult other people in another language behind their backs, and you are quite unsociable, to the extent that you rarely leave your teepee except to either take a bath or talk to Liska or grandmother, and you don't want to talk about yourself and where you come from..."-

Akane realized that her friend not only had many reasons to complain about the human woman's behavior, but that he was also right about almost everything he said about her, which caused the woman's face to turn into a very bitter expression.

-"You know I have my reasons for acting that way…"-

Both Akane and her alien friend had finished putting up the teepee frame, leaving it solid enough and secured to the soil to continue.

-"And as for not telling about where I come from and who I really am..."-

The African-Japanese woman began to sigh plaintively and with a certain tone of vexation...

-"Believe me, I would love to tell you guys all about me and where I come from, but for now, I can't say any more. I hope you understand, Pyndan dear..."-

Then, the aforementioned white-furred warrior talked to Akane in a more friendly tone, seeing that the human seemed to be more willing to talk to him in a more amiable way.

-"It has something to do with that person named Noguchi, right?"-

-"In a way, yes."-

-"And did you know him, Akane?"- Pyndan asked her. -"He was wearing the same clothes you always wear, including those weird symbols you wear on the shoulder pads of his clothes."-

It was obvious that the alien was alluding to the military emblems that identified him as a member of the Japanese Space Self-Defense Force's Space Rangers, and above all, Pyndan was talking about both the flag of the United Nations Space Force and the Hinomaru, the flag of Japan.

-"Well, I can only tell you that I knew Keisuke Noguchi when he was alive, but that's all I can say."- Akane responded, avoiding giving any further details about either the late Japanese soldier, the JSSDF, the UNSF, Japan or the Earth itself. -"The same goes with those "weird" symbols you're talking about."-

Once again, the young warrior sighed in annoyance when he saw that the human woman refused to give more details about that late soldier from Earth who ended up dead near the village.

-"Akane..."- Pyndan replied. -"I hope that someday you can tell us the truth about yourself and that man."-

-"Yeah, I know that..."-

Then, the human girl changed the subject.

-"And putting that aside for a moment, don't you think we should... you know... put the herndon leathers on the teepee right now?"-

-"Uh?"- The feline young man looked at the teepee. -"Oh, that's right, I have forgotten that! giggle"-

-"Then let's get started, shall we?"-

-"Understood."-

So, the human soldier from Japan and the feline warrior from that unknown planet worked together to put the cover on the new teepee, and then put the finishing touches to it. After several minutes of trying, due to the inherent weight of the herndon skin, both characters managed to finish assembling the place. For his part, Pyndan was proud to see that the new teepee had turned out much better than he had expected, thanks to the help of Akane, who had experience in building them due to her military training she received in Japan on Earth.

-"I must admit that this new teepee turned out better than I expected, right, Akane?"-

-"Well, you have me to thank for that, pretty boy, since I was the one who helped you,"- Akane Araki bragged on Pyndan's face. -"but I must admit that this teepee was harder to put together than the ones I've built from where I come from."-

-"Really?"- The feline asked. -"Why?"-

-"Does it seem obvious to you?"- Akane responded with an annoyed grin. -"I'm not used to assembling teepees as big as this one we set up together. At most, I've built teepees for one person, in this case for me."-

-"I see."-

Then, Pyndan talked to Akane about another topic he wanted to discuss with her...

-"Hey, Akane."-

-"What is it, do you want to ask me to do something else?"- The human responded at her alien host.

-"No, it's not about that"- He clarified. -"Can I ask you something more..."- Then he took a small breath. -"personal... you know... about you?"-

Akane paused briefly, and looked at her white-furred feline friend keenly at the question he asked about her.

-"As long as it's not something we've discussed before or about my background, I am fine with it."-

-"Well, I've always been curious to ask you this, Akane, I just hope you're not going to take it in any other way..."-

-"I see, I see, enough of the mystery and just get to the point, kitty!"- Akane responded visibly peeved to see that her friend was just dragging his feet.

-"Are you... you know... married?"- Pyndan responded timidly to the human woman.

Akane blushed with that question, for that was the last thing she expected to hear from the males in the village, let alone Pyndan and Rial, who had little interest in her, due to her personality, and the fact that she was a human.

But she quickly figured out that the question was simply a very innocent one about her, for the reasons that Pyndan would then explain to the African-Japanese soldier.

-"Married… you say?"-

-"Yes."-

Akane took a deep breath, and then she gave her answer to the question.

-"Well, I'm not technically married, but I do have a mate. I was thinking of marrying him when I go back to my place of origin..."-

-"Really?"- The feline asked the human soldier. -"May I ask what your mate's name is?"-

-"Satoru..."- Akane gave the name of her boyfriend in Japan. -"Satoru Okazaki."-

-"Satoru Okazaki. That's a very peculiar name, to be honest with you, Akane."- Pyndan responded with sheer curiosity and a smile in his face.

-"And can you tell me why you want to know my fiancé's name, huh?"- The woman asked her alien friend about such question on regard of her. -"Couldn't be that you like me, could you?"-

-"Of course not, Akane!"- The feline alien retorted at Akane's question. -"I was asking for this reason."-

Pyndan then pointed his finger towards Akane's ears, which caused amazement on the human woman, as she didn't understand what he meant by that.

-"What's wrong with my ears, Pyndan?"-

-"It's not your ears I'm talking about. I'm referring exactly to your earrings."-

Akane responded even more intrigued than she already was, especially when he was bringing up something as trivial as her earrings.

-"My... earrings?"-

-"Yes."-

-"What's so special about my earrings, huh?"- Akane asked the alien warrior. -"Is there a problem with them, or is it something offensive to your people?"-

-"No, it is not that."- The young man clarified her. -"In our culture, a woman wearing earrings means that she is married, hence the question."-

The human soldier quickly understood what Pyndan meant by that, and never imagined that something as simple as a pair of earrings had such a special meaning for the people of that planet. Hearing that, Akane brought her hands to her ears and touched her earrings for a few moments.

-"Boy, I didn't realize wearing these things meant a lot to you guys."-

-"In your case,"- Pyndan questioned her again. -"does wearing earrings have another meaning for you in the place where you come from, Akane?"-

-"Well, to be honest, it depends a lot on the place, but where I come from, wearing earrings has no special meaning. The women of my own species do wear them just to look pretty, and if you are interested to know, there are also many men who use them."-

The young white-furred feline was surprised to hear that, because he never imagined that there were also men who wore earrings, and Pyndan posed the following question to the human out of sheer curiosity.

-"Then I imagine that there must be many men in the place where you were born who are Two Spirits, from what you tell me, Akane."-

The human did not understand exactly what the young alien meant by that term, which caused Akane to question its meaning.

-"May I ask you what Two Spirits means, Pyndan dear?"-

-"It means that it is a man who dresses and acts like a woman."-

The human quickly understood what her feline friend meant by the term. Basically, Two Spirits was the word given to a transgender person, something she never imagined existed in a seemingly primitive world, for obvious reasons.

Seconds later, Akane remembered that she had heard that same term when she studied at the university in Osaka before joining the JSSDF, something that surprised her at the time, for she could not believe that those Native American-like beings would use the same term that their human counterparts also used to describe a person who was either homosexual or transgender.

She also recalled that, at least until the early 21st century, an LGBT Native American was also called by the term "Berdache", which was a term considered offensive, mainly because the word came from the French language and, in turn, from Persian, and in the case of French, the term basically meant anything from "passive homosexual" to even more demeaning words, hence that word fell into disuse from that time onwards.

But because the issue of homosexuality was not what the two characters were discussing, and to avoid misunderstandings, Akane decided not to ask any more questions about it.

-"Oh… I see…"- The human Space Ranger said with a worried tone. -"But I'd rather not talk about such things, just in case."-

-"I understand you, Akane."-

And after a few minutes of work, the new teepee was completely ready, except for some details that had to be fixed, something that caused pride in both characters, seeing how their effort had been rewarded beyond measure.

-"Well, pal, it looks like this new teepee is ready, and it looks better than we expected, don't you think?"- Akane addressed to Pyndan with a proudful smile in her face.

-"I suppose so, Akane."-

Next, the human looked in the direction of her tent, and then looked at the sun to find out the time of day, and then she asked her feline friend another question.

-"Well, it looks like my work here is done."- Then, Akane looked at Pyndan. -"Do you have anything else I can do for you that you need my help with?"-

-"No, I don't think I need your help anymore, I feel I can do the rest on my own."-

Then, Akane smiled and turned her back, heading for her makeshift home...

-"In that case, if you or your family don't need me anymore, I'll go back home. See you later!"-

-"I see you later, Akane, take care."-

And so, the human woman returned to her military tent, where she resided and where Akane was going to rest for a while after that exhausting day of helping Pyndan put up that new teepee.

Not to mention that she also needed to be alone to think about what happened to the dead human soldier she and her friends found next to the river...

---

August 12th, AD 2299/11th day of the Dry Moon, 1748 (summer season), Akane's tent, 02:10 PM (mid-afternoon)

Back home, the first thing Akane Araki did when she arrived was to throw herself into her sleeping bag, and then take off her boots, in order to try to rest.

The last hours of that day had been quite hard for the human woman from Japan, due to the combination of having had a bad night, and finding the dead body of Keisuke Noguchi, a human soldier member of the crew of the Asuka who had survived its destruction, but died at the hands of bandits or some hostile tribe on that unknown planet.

And if that wasn't enough, she was scolded and punished by Mother Sanna for having insulted her in Japanese behind her back, not knowing that the old woman also knew how to speak and understand that language, and as a result, she had to help Pyndan to put up a new teepee for Liska and Rial, which turned out to be bigger than she expected and therefore, the task was more exhausting for her, which caused the human to return to her tent in a very bad mood.

Once in her sleeping bag, Akane took out a tablet from her backpack, which she used to listen to music and watch movies. She hadn't used that device since she arrived on that planet, partly because Akane used to listen to music on her laptop, and partly because she wanted to avoid using too many electronic devices at the same time, and thus overloading the solar battery she used to power her tent.

But on that occasion, Akane did not have any device on at the time, so she could use her tablet without any guilt. After plugging the charger into the outlet she had on hand to connect her devices, the African-Japanese woman lay down peacefully on her bed and after turning on the tablet. Then, Akane saw the menu of the music app installed on that touch device, and she chose a song from the myriad available on her tablet.

The song she chose was "Kurenai", another classic song by X Japan. Obviously, she listened to it with her headphones on, of course.

As she listened to the song, Akane couldn't help but feel that the melancholic yet aggressive tone of the song somehow described the situation she was in at that moment: Trapped in an alien village in a world unknown to her, with all the people she held dear or loved either far away from her, on Earth, like her step-parents or her boyfriend, Satoru Okazaki, or they were all dead, like the captain of the Asuka and her also friend, Yoko Kurosawa, that dead soldier she found and met in person on that ship, Keisuke Noguchi, and lastly, her best friend from her high school days, Kaguya Hoshino.

Knowing that she would probably never return home caused Akane to begin to shed tears, and to begin to feel miserable. The fact that she could do nothing to save the lives of all those people, and that from now on she would have to spend the rest of her life living in a village full of anthropomorphic felines, several of them, like Rial or Kebec, who hated her, and others who ignored her completely, made her think that she had ended up in a place that was a thousand times worse than hell itself.

The irony of her situation is that, unlike Liska, she was a free woman, and she could leave the village whenever she felt like it.

Unfortunately, being free for Akane meant absolutely squat to that human woman. After all, where could she go? Surely she would end up somewhere worse than that village, fall victim to some unknown monster or end up like Keisuke Noguchi, dying at the hands of someone else.

-"Shit...SHIT... SHIT!"- Akane cursed in silence. -"I HATE THIS PLACE, I HATE THIS PLANET AND MOST OF ALL, I HATE MY DAMN LUCK!"-

Akane turned over face down and began to cry silently on her pillow, trying to relieve herself as she realized that life really screwed up for her, and she felt that things seemed to go from bad to worse for that human woman, the only one, apparently, to have survived the destruction of her spaceship.

But for her, having endured such an event was not any consolation, but rather a punishment, most probably for all the times she had made fun of people like Kaguya, and how her confrontational approach, far from helping her cope with the tragedy she was neck-deep in, only caused her more pain and suffering, and in those very moments, Akane felt that she too should have died that day on the Asuka, alongside Kaguya and the crew of that ship.

-"Kaguya, I'm really sorry... sob... I'm really sorry for treating you all the time like shit... sob... I always really appreciated your company... and right now... sob... is when I need you to be by my side the most..."-

But suddenly, and to Akane's surprise, things would take a very sudden turn, and she would receive the company of the last person who would expect her presence in her tent.

-"Eh? Someone is scratching my tent..."-

Then, she heard a female voice that, while familiar to her, she did not expect her presence in front of her home...

-"Hey, Akane, I need to talk with you, please."-

The human woman, who at that moment was depressed and in a bad mood, did not feel like talking to anyone in particular, and in other circumstances, she would have simply refused to talk to that woman. But at the same time, she knew that behaving in an antagonistic way, as Pyndan and Mother Sanna had warned her before, would not help her to make herself any better among the tribe's inhabitants, so she decided to put aside her reluctance and see what that person wanted to talk with Akane about.

-"(クソッ、今すぐ誰がうちに話しかけるんや？) Fuck, who the hell would want to talk to me right now?"- Akane cursed in Japanese, as she went to the door of her tent to receive the guest. -"Coming!"-

When Akane opened the door of her tent, she was in for quite a surprise when she saw the person standing in front of her makeshift home.

That person was Kayce.

When she saw that young feline maiden, and knowing that she was Kebec's older sister, Akane crossed her arms in disgust, thinking that the girl had come to her home possibly to quarrel with the human.

Strangely, that was not the case. In fact, Kayce looked visibly pained, and to a certain extent, frightened at the sight of Akane, who was several meters taller than her, and she did not utter a word when she saw the huge human woman in front of her, who was looking very unfriendly to her.

After a few seconds of silence, Akane was the first to say something.

-"Well, it's you…"-

Then, the African-Japanese soldier looked at Kayce, and then she asked her reasons for being in front of her tent.

-"If you came here just to pick a fight with me over what took place hours ago at the stream, you'd better save yourself the trouble and go back to your home before I say something I might regret later."-

-"No, I'm not here for that, Akane."- The brown-furred girl responded to the human woman in a somewhat timid fashion. -"I need to talk to you about something important, but I need it to be at your home in private. Would that be possible?"-

Akane was intrigued to see that the girl wanted to talk to her in private. In other circumstances, she would have made up some pretext to avoid talking to her, but on that occasion, she felt that Kayce was really sincere in wanting to talk to her in peace and with no intentions of seeking a quarrel with the human.

-"sigh... All right, we'll talk in private."- The African-Japanese woman responded haltingly, making sure that all this was not a plot by Kayce's younger sister to attack her later in some way or another. -"I presume you're coming alone, and your sister isn't behind all this, is she?"-

-"Of course not."- The feline girl reassured to her human host. -"In fact, I come alone, and my sister has nothing to do with this. I promise you."-

-"Well, in that case, you can come into my home. Just follow my instructions and don't touch anything inside without my permission, is that clear?"-

-"Understood."-

And so, both women entered Akane's tent without further ado.

Being the first time that Kayce entered the human woman's home, she was surprised by the amount of things inside that place, such as books, action figures, assembly models, Gunpla, manga, and other things that the alien had never seen in her life.

-"Wow, you have a lot of strange things in your home, Akane!"-

-"Heh, heh. That's right, I have a lot of things that I've been collecting throughout my life, and I don't leave my house without them, although I assume that much of what I have must be weird for you, right?"-

-"Well, yes."- Then, the girl pointed her finger to an robot-shaped assembly model Akane had at Kayce's right in a shelf. -"For example, what is that weird fetish-looking thing you have on that shelf?"-

Akane was visibly amused that her guest considered that assembly model, technically a Gunpla, as a fetish, as she did not have the context that such a figure had for the human in her own world, something Akane promptly explained in a friendly manner.

-"That's not a fetish. From where I come from we call it a Gunpla."-

-"Gunpla?"-

-"It is an acronym in one of the languages spoken in my place of origin that means Gundam Plastic Model, and that Gunpla is based on one of the machines that appears in a very popular story called Mobile Suit Gundam, which was written a long time ago, before you, me and all of us who live in this village were born."- Akane explained about that Gunpla and its origins. -"And that machine you see is called the RX-78-2 Gundam, which was used by the main protagonist of the story."

-"RX-78… what?!"- The feline girl responded quite puzzled, as she did not understand what Akane was referring to, since Kayce did not have the context of the giant robot genre, or mecha, to which the Gundam franchise belonged.

-"Well, just call it Gundam, for short. That's what everyone calls it in my place."-

-"Oh, I see."- Then, she turned her gaze to another figure, this time a human-shaped one, which Akane also had on the same shelf. -"And who is that... person dressed in red, with light skin, and with that strange thing that looks like a white potty on his head?"-

The human woman made a supreme attempt to avoid laughing at the comment about the helmet that figure was wearing, and being angry at Kayce's ignorance about confusing a helmet with a potty.

-"A white potty!?"- Akane said aloud, with sporting a devious smirk in her face towards her feline guest. -"That's not a potty, dammit, that's a helmet! And that character has a name, just so you know."-

-"And what is the name of that character, Akane?"-

-"Casval Zeon Deikun."- The human responded. -"Better known by his nom de guerre: Char Aznable."-

The alien had trouble pronouncing that name correctly, as the pseudo-French pronunciation of the villain's name was basically a tongue twister for her.

-"Shaa Azna-WHAT?"-

Akane facepalmed in annoyance, and couldn't help but laugh and feel annoyed at the same time for the girl who couldn't pronounce that name.

-"You know what, dear? Let's forget about this nonsense, and just cut to the chase."- The soldier replied. -"I don't think you came here to my teepee just to see my Gunpla."-

-"Oh, I see."- Kayce retorted back in an ashamed tone. -"Sorry about that, Akane."-

After that unnecessary intermission, Akane pointed out to her guest one of the cushions where the human and her guests normally sat to chat.

-"You can sit on that cushion, honey."-

-"Oh, thank you!"-

With both women seated on their respective cushions, Akane began the conversation by asking what was the reason for Kayce's presence in their home. The former was with her arms crossed, while the latter looked at Akane sheepishly, and with certain fear, due to the reputation that the human had in the Highland tribe of being a very unsociable and aggressive person.

-"Well, let's start with this: What brings you here to my home, Kayce dear?"- The African-Japanese soldier began the chat with a somewhat severe tone.

The feline girl swallowed saliva for a few moments, and it took her a few seconds to answer the question her human hostess asked her, due to the fear that foreigner inspired in her. Then, even with some fear, she answered the question Akane posed to her.

-"I just wanted to... apologize... for what I said about that dead person we found in the river and for comparing him negatively with you... Akane."-

The female soldier was surprised to see that Kayce was being sincere in apologizing to her, something she never expected she would ever do, at least considering what she knew about that girl and her relationship with her younger sister, Kebec, which Akane considered to be bullies of the worst kind.

But it was more than obvious that Kayce seemed to be genuinely sorry for what she had said about Akane hours ago, and she was willing to apologize with the human woman for using a racist insult towards her.

Obviously, Akane wanted to know how sincere that girl's desire to apologize was.

-"Very good, young lady."- Then, the human soldier asked her guest in a more inquisitory tone. -"Now I want to know one thing: Why did you decide to apologize so far?"-

Kayce was silent for a few seconds, and after thinking about the answer she was going to give Akane, she finally replied. The human woman quickly noticed that Kayce lowered her ears and she began to wag her tail from side to side, a sign that she was visibly nervous.

-"I've been thinking for all these hours, and..."-

The feline girl did a pause, something that annoyed Akane a bit.

-"And what?"-

The girl then continued, with a very nervous tone in her young voice.

-"...you were right in what you said about me having to look in the mirror when I made that comment about the color of that dead man's skin..."- Kayce timidly responded at the human. -"The truth is... if I had been in your place, I would have been angry too if someone had said the same thing about me in that way, since I have a similar color like you, Akane, and... I'm really sorry for saying such horrible thing about you..."-

Akane looked attentively at her guest, and she noticed that Kayce was truly sorry and willing to apologize for her racist remarks to her. The fact that the alien girl was visibly nervous and her normally haughty attitude had disappeared to give way to a somewhat more submissive self indicated that the young feline maiden wished to change things with Akane for the better.

-"Are you really sorry, little girl?"- Akane asked again, still unconvinced.

Kayce hesitated to respond, and then, she finally replied.

-"Yes... I'm really sorry for my words, Akane."-

The African-Japanese woman noticed that Kayce's eyes were visibly teary, indicating that the young woman was risking her dignity by apologizing to the human. But seeing that she was being sincere with her apology, Akane decided to do what for her was the most compassionate thing she could do...

-"Come here, little kitty..."-

-"What?"-

Without her expecting it, Kayce quickly received Akane Araki's warm and unexpected embrace, something she did not expect from that woman coming from a place unknown to her, and who belonged to a completely strange species as well, especially considering Akane's reputation of being a hot-tempered and aggressive woman.

Feeling Akane's embrace, she noticed that the human woman did not do it with the intention of attacking her or making her feel bad, but to reassure her, while Akane ran her hand over her head in order to make her feel good, something that relaxed her, and at the same time made her feel a little strange, but in a good way.

Akane, for her part, noticed that the young alien felt especially relaxed being by her side, as she purred placidly on Akane's chest and wagged her tail from side to side as a sign that she was pleased. This made the human woman also feel visually gratified to see how that young alien girl, despite being a civilized being, also shared the same behaviors as an Earth cat in the same circumstances, and she could not help but smile to see Kayce so peacefully blissful in her arms.

-"You know what, little girl?"- The black woman said with a very sweet smile in her face. -"You're so cute when you purr."-

-"Uhhh..."- The feline girl with brown fur responded, also with a smile in her muzzle. -"Thank you… Akane."-

-"And you know one other thing?"- Akane replied, still smiling at her -"You're actually not a bad person, to be fair."-

The alien girl did a brief pause, then, she responded as well.

-"Well... I guess I've never considered myself to be a bad person... but I do admit that I have a lot of flaws."-

Akane giggle a bit...

-"Good. Admitting that you are wrong is a good step in apologizing for your mistakes, dear."- The human woman explained to the feline girl. -"And it's good to know that, despite what I originally thought about you, you have your own personality, and not just be your little sister's... tail-kisser... uh... for using a term you could understand... Kayce dear."-

-"Tail-kisser?"- The girl asked to Akane with a weird smirk. -"What do you mean with that?"-

-"It means that you obey your younger sister's orders without question. It's a bit difficult to explain the original version of the term because..."- The human hesitated a bit in that last part. -"...it's a very vulgar word in my original language."-

-"May I know what it means in your original language?"-

-"Uh... I don't think you want to know. It's something very dirty."-

-"Oh, come on, Akane! I'm not a little kitten girl anymore!"- Kayce wanted to know the meaning of that term from the mouth of that human woman. -"I think I can know something as vulgar as that, right?"-

Akane sighed for a few moments, seeing the girl's interest in knowing that term, and with some reluctance, she decided to explain it to her.

-"Well, if you say so... I guess I have no problem telling you, but then don't complain to your sister or anyone else if you don't like what you're about to hear next."-

-"Understood."-

-"Very well, then get those ears up, because I'm going to tell you in a low voice to keep everyone from overhearing us."-

Akane approached Kayce again to tell her the meaning of the expression "tail-kisser" in something the young alien could understand. Once the human explained quietly in the feline girl's ear, the young maiden cringed as she heard what Akane really meant.

-"That's... really disgusting."-

The human soldier smiled deviously after seeing Kayce's face when she heard the true meaning of that word...

-"Well, I warned you. giggle"-

-"Yeah, but... I never imagined that your people use such... revolting terms to describe a subservient person."-

-"Heh, you are right about that..."- Akane explained. -"Let's just say that we have a very peculiar way of describing these kind of people... no offense to you, of course."-

-"I see."-

While Kayce was trying to get more comfortable on the cushion where she was sitting, the alien didn't notice that next to her was Akane's tablet, which was turned on because the latter was using the device to listen to music before she came to visit the human in her tent. When she accidentally put her hand on the tablet's touch screen, Kayce activated the device's music app, which caused a song to play from it.

That song was Ride the Fire, from the video game Guilty Gear Xrd.

-"HYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"-

The feline alien, who had never heard Heavy Metal in her life, nor did she have any concept of the kind of music Akane used to listen to, screamed in horror when she heard that music, as she didn't know where that music came from, which caused her fur to bristle likewise.

Akane, for her part, was also frightened, but for a different reason, since she had forgotten to turn off and hide that device that was unknown to the inhabitants of that planet, and now she thought she had found herself in even more serious trouble, since now she would have to explain the origin of that "dreadful" music.

-"(しもた！ ヘビーメタルの音楽を聴いていたことを、一体どう説明すればいいのだろう？) Shit! Now how the hell am I going to explain that I was listening to heavy metal music? "- The human cursed to herself in Japanese.

On the other hand, Kayce wanted to know the origin of the music that terrified her, especially when she heard the violent lyrics of the song, which were sung in English, a language she did not understand.

-"What the hell is that awful noise, Akane?!"-

Once Akane found her tablet, the first thing she did was turn off the music app, which calmed the alien. The human was truly nervous to see how her friend had been horrified to hear that music, because Akane had committed a serious faux pax by leaving her tablet within reach of that creature, and even more so now that she had to explain the music that Kayce had just heard and its context.

And having to explain what Heavy Metal was would not be an easy task for Akane Araki at all.

-"It's fine, it's fine, it's all over now."- Akane reassured the feline girl. -"I'm sorry if scared you with that, really..."-

-"But..."- Kayce asked, still scared. -"What was that terrible noise? ...and why was it coming from that strange plate next to me?"-

Akane knew that the most important thing now was to tell him the truth, now that she had heard that music. In other circumstances, the human would have invented some silly pretext to hide the origin of that music and would have tried something to justify what its meaning was.

But now that Kayce had listened to heavy metal music, Akane knew she could no longer do that. Maybe Kayce and those feline beings could be considered primitive, but not stupid to not ask any more actual questions, and the last thing Akane would have thought of doing was to treat them as if they were dumb, naive Native Americans out of a cheap cowboy movie.

-"Damn, guess I have no choice but to tell her the truth if I don't wanna get into a bigger shit than I'm already in."- Akane thought for herself in that critical moment.

After thinking for a few seconds, Akane finally responded, quite obviously sorry for what had happened.

-"What you just heard is called Heavy Metal music, and it's a style of music that we listen to where I come from."- The African-Japanese soldier explained in a calmed, but reserved, tone. -"I admit that for someone like you this music may sound very loud, or it may even sound scary, but it is very popular among very young people like me and you in my place of origin."-

-"Re-really?"- The feline girl asked with some doubt. -"Do you call that noise music?"-

Akane smiled mischievously, for she knew that in practice, many styles of heavy metal can sound very aggressive to many people who are not familiar with the subject; and Kayce was lucky that the song she had heard, Ride the Fire, was relatively tame by the standards of the genre. Maybe she would have had a worse opinion of that music if she had listened to Death Metal or something even more violent or aggressive, like classic bands with even more offensive lyrics, like Cannibal Corpse, Deicide, or the like.

Fortunately for both women, Akane was not a fan of such violent heavy metal genres.

-"Yes, for better or worse."- The human awkwardly admitted that fact about Heavy Metal music. -"And if you are interested to know, the song is called Ride the Fire, and it was sung by a singer named Naoki Hashimoto for a very popular story in my place of origin called Guilty Gear Xrd."-

For the alien girl, the name of that early 21th century video game was as much of an unpronounceable tongue twister as many of the things Akane had picked up from Earth.

-"Guilty Gear... EX-ZA...WHAT?"- Kayce tried unsuccessfully to pronounce the name of that video game in her language. -"And may I know what that story you mention was about, Akane, and what does that music have to do with it?"-

-"Well...uh..."- The human tried to remember, which was not easy, due to the complex plot of that game. -"Let's say that, in short, it's about a character, the hero of the story, who is transformed into a very powerful monster by his friend, together with his girlfriend, and then, the whole world is destroyed and... a lot of things happen along the way. To explain to you what the story is about would take me all day long."-

-"Oh, I see."- Then, the feline girl pointed her finger to Akane's tablet. -"And what is that plate where that music came from? Is it cursed or what?"-

The human smiled as she saw Kayce nervously pointing at her tablet, not knowing exactly what the device was. To the alien, that tablet seemed to be a cursed object, from which "terrifying" music from the deepest pits of hell was coming out.

-"Oh, you mean this?"- Akane showed the tablet to Kayce. -"We call this a tablet. It is a machine that is used to do different things, including listening to music just by touching some things on the screen of it, like this."-

To exemplify what she was saying, Akane again tapped the music app on her tablet in order to have a song play on it, but this time making sure it was a song of a genre less aggressive to Kayce's ears. This time, the song was HEART OF SWORD -Yoakemae-, the ending theme from the classic late 20th century anime series Rurouni Kenshin, performed by Takanori Nishikawa, aka TM Revolution.

The song, which was of the J-Pop genre, and was much calmer and more romantic in intonation than Ride the Fire, at first caused a bit of surprise and nervousness in the alien maiden, but upon hearing that the song did not sound aggressive and was pleasant to her ear, Kayce began to feel much more relaxed, and judging by the fact that she was no longer wagging her tail in stress, it all seemed that she was enjoying the song.

-"That song... is very nice..."- Then, the girl asked a question about that song. -"But what is that song saying, Akane? Is the singer invoking the gods or what?"-

The human woman of African origin smiled mischievously when she heard such an innocent question from her.

-"No. It is a romantic song."- Akane explained again about the origin of the song. -"It's a little difficult to explain, but this song is also from a very famous story from a long time ago."-

The relationship between story, in this case that anime's story, and music did not go unnoticed by the alien, something she let the human know.

-"Your people seem to relate music to some kind of story."-

-"Well, you could say so, dear."- The human woman pointed out. -"In this case, this song is related to a story of a warrior who had fought in a war, and after killing many people, he vowed not to kill anyone else. Obviously, many of his former enemies and other people who wanted to attack him tested his resolve to keep that oath. And needless to say, he fell in love and after many hardships, he finally married and had a son."-

-"That... sounds very interesting."- Then, Kayce did another question. -"And what is the name of the singer of that song, Akane?"-

-"Takanori Nishikawa, also known as TM Revolution."-

Again, the name of that Japanese singer and his stage name were equally unpronounceable to the alien.

-"Uh, I don't think I could pronounce that name even if I tried, Akane."-

-"Well... I can't blame you for that, darling. giggle"-

Before continuing to play music on her tablet, Akane gave Kayce her headphones, to prevent the music coming out of the tablet from attracting the attention of the rest of the villagers. The feline alien, who had never seen anything like that in her life, asked the function of that hearing device.

-"And what is this thing, Akane?"-

-"Oh, they are called headphones, and they are used to listening to music in private without disturbing other people. I always use them to keep the music on my tablet from attracting other people's attention."-

-"And... how do you use them?"-

-"Let me explain how they are used, dear."-

Akane put the earphones on Kayce, which were a classic earmuff-style headset, rather than the airpod type that many humans used in her world, which made it much easier for the soldier to put them on her new friend. Akane made sure to put them on in such a way that they would not hurt the alien's feline ears, and once she managed to put them on, the human explained to her what she was going to do next.

-"All right, now I'm going to play a random song on my tablet. Just so you don't freak out, I'm going to turn the music down. Is that all right with you?"-

-"Understood, but it's a little hard for me to listen to you with these things on my ears."-

-"Don't worry, that's normal at first."- Akane reassured to the feline maiden. -"Now, let me play you a song, and tell me what you think."-

Immediately afterwards, Akane Araki pressed the random music search button. The first song that came out of that device started with a melancholic piano solo, and then began with a piece of classical music, which made Kayce feel more relaxed, but at the same time, as the song progressed, and even without understanding a single word of the song, she could deduce that the lyrics were quite sad.

The song Kayce was listening to was Forever Love, the legendary and equally depressing ending theme song of the anime movie X/1999, and performed by the aforementioned visual kei group, X Japan.

Akane immediately noticed the song playing on her tablet, and knowing better than anyone, being a fan of the legendary X Japan band's songs, how incredibly depressing and sad that song was, and fearing that Kayce might feel bad listening to it, especially without understanding the context of the lyrics or the song itself, she decided to ask her friend before she misunderstood the song in another way.

-"Do you like... that song, sweetie?"-

The alien did not answer that question, as she was still listening to the song. When "Forever Love" finally ended, Akane noticed that Kayce was shedding tears after listening to that song.

It was more than evident that, even without understanding the lyrics in their original language, one did not need to understand Japanese or any language to know the original intention of the song's performer, and "Forever Love" has always been considered as one of the most depressing songs ever performed, considering that the song was heard at the end of the movie "X/1999" and that animated film's equally bleak climax.

Seeing her friend's tears, the human quickly asked the young feline maiden about her feelings upon hearing that tragic song.

-"Are you all right... Kayce dear?"-

-"sob I'm all right..."- The girl replied, still with tears in her eyes. -"That song is very beautiful... sob.., but at the same time... sob... it's the saddest song I've ever heard in my life... even if I can't understand what the singer is saying... I can know that he was very sad when he sang it... sob... I have never heard such a sad song before..."-

No longer holding back, Kayce burst into uncontrollable tears and fell into Akane's arms, while she cried into the human's chest. Akane, on her side, tried to comfort her, knowing how depressing that song was, and likewise, the African-Japanese woman also began to cry beside her, trying to share the pain of that young alien with that of the human.

-"sob... WHY... sob... WHY I AM CRYING, AKANE? WHHHHYYY? BWAAAAHHHHH!"-

The human ran her hand over the feline girl's head in order to comfort her as best she could, while she too cried at her side.

-"Easy, little kitty, easy... sob... everything will be fine... sob... it's over..."-

Both women were crying at the same time as they listened to that depressing song, while they hugged each other.

Akane was crying not only because of the song per se, but also as she reflected on how hard her life had been up to that point, having lost everything she held dear in her life: Kaguya, her friends, Satoru, her family, her place of origin, and the fact that she would most likely have to spend the rest of her life in an unknown world, surrounded by alien anthropomorphic beings that she still had trouble understanding, just as they also had trouble trying to fully grasp their human guest.

And if that wasn't depressing enough for the human to endure, the discovery of Keisuke Noguchi's corpse reminded Akane that she was the only human who had survived the destruction of the Asuka, while Noguchi had died at the hands of bandits or some unknown enemy force, such as a hostile tribe that he probably encountered when his escape pod landed on that planet, and that he possibly tried to escape from his assailants, causing him to fall into the river and die from his injuries or by drowning.

Kayce, on the other hand, was crying both because of the song and because of various feelings of guilt that she had stored up in her, which she would later explain.

Once both women stopped crying, Akane gave a tissue to her feline friend in order for her to wipe her tears and blow her nose.

-"Thank you... Akane."-

-"You're welcome, sweetie... sob"- Akane replied, still with tears in her eyes... -"You're going to need it to dry those tears..."-

As Kayce wiped away her tears, Akane decided to explain the backstory of the song they were both listening to at that moment.

-"That song is based on another very famous story where I come from. The song is called "Forever Love" and it was sung by a famous singer named Toshimitsu Deyama, and the original story was about a boy named Kamui, who is forced to take part in a war to save the world between two organizations: One wanted to save the world, and the other wanted to destroy it. One of his childhood friends, named Fuuma, was a member of the organization that wanted to destroy the world, along with his sister, named Kotori..."-

Akane was careful to avoid mentioning the name of the band Toshimitsu Deyama belonged to, X Japan, since the name of the band alone would have given a clue as to where Akane was from. Since Deyama was the vocalist, this was not a big problem in itself, considering that primitive culture had no concept of bands playing music for profit, and not for religious or historical obligations.

-"So, what happened next, Akane?"- The feline girl asked her human friend.

-"Well, there are several... ...versions... ... so to speak... of the story, but in general the plot runs this way: Fuuma joins the organization that wants to destroy the world, and in the middle of all the commotion and without warning, Fuuma murders his sister Kotori in order to obtain a sacred weapon that is inside her body. Obviously, Kamui swears revenge on Fuuma, and depending on the version of the story, either Fuuma ends up killing Kamui, Kamui kills Fuuma, or neither combination of events happens. In either case, their deaths are incredibly dramatic."-

Kayce was surprised at the incredibly violent undertone behind the song, although she didn't understand what the song had to do with the story of the manga and its animated adaptations themselves.

-"And what does all that story have to do with the song itself?"-

-"Well, that's where the good stuff starts. As I mentioned before, the song is romantic, and as you could deduce, the lyrics of the song are incredibly sad, as it basically tells about a person who loses the person they love, and may never see them again."-

Akane explained the meaning of the Japanese lyrics of "Forever Love" to Kayce, followed with a lenghty explanation about the song itself.

-"And if you have also noticed, the lyrics are very ambiguous as to who the song is referring to regarding the person to whom the singer, or failing that, the main character Kamui, is crying to. In this case it could be that Kamui is crying to Kotori, Fuuma, or both. And since a long time ago, there have been some interpretations of the song that the theme song sings mainly to Fuuma, and not exactly because of his death itself, if you know what I mean..."-

-"Humm..."- The alien girl did a mischevious smile in her muzzle. -"You mean that character named Kamui loved Fuuma?"-

-"giggle Right."- The human said, while sporting the same twisted smile her Native friend did. -"To be honest, the authors of the original story, who were women, were famous for writing stories that included same-sex romances."- Then, she added the following. -"And I don't think you want to know what they did in one of their wildest stories."-

Kayce's curiosity was piqued when she learned about the famous story Akane referred to about CLAMP, the artists who created X/1999.

-"And what kind of wild story did these women write, Akane?"-

-"Well, I just hope this doesn't gross you out when you hear it."-

-"Oh, come on, Akane, I'm a grown woman, and I don't think any of that stuff scares me anymore, so I guess I can listen to some racy stories from time to time!"-

-"Well, just don't say I didn't warn you."- Akane told Kayce before beginning to explain about that story.

-"I am all ears, Akane."-

-"Well, I'll be brief on this: let's say that two characters in one of their first stories, who were men... uh... had sex with each other and... they had a child."-

Kayce's mischievous face suddenly turned into one of complete disbelief as she heard the abridged (and not at all explicit) version of the famous scene from one of the doujinshis that CLAMP, in their early days, wrote in which the two aforementioned characters that Akane Araki described, in this case Jotaro Kujo and Noriaki Kakyoin from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, had sex and then a child, under even stranger circumstances, something that the human would later explain.

And Akane, while explaining this, cannot avoid thinking that she shared the same family name with the author of that legendary manga, Hirohiko Araki, due to the coincidental fact that she had to talk about that scene with Kayce.

-"Fuck, of all the things I had to discuss with another woman, it's about JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and Yaoi manga. As if I didn't have enough to share a last name with the author of that manga."- Akane pondered on herself, as she rolled her eyes in amusement.

Kayce, for her part, took a few moments to react to the answer Akane gave her, and then she responded, this time in a somewhat more serious tone.

-"Akane, tell me you're joking about the "having a child" part, aren't you?"-

-"Believe me, dear, I wish this could be a joke of mine, but I swear it's not."- Akane explained about that part to the very incredulous feline girl. -"And that's not the strangest part of the story."-

-"Really?"-

-"Right."- Then, the human explained the weird part of that doujinshi. -"The most bizarre part is that the other male character had that child by laying an egg."-

The brown-furred alien was visibly between a mixture of surprise, awe and creepiness, upon hearing that part of the story. The fact that two men had a child by means of an egg led her to think that Akane was possibly pulling a dirty trick on her, or taking advantage of her ignorance about human cultures, considering that she didn't understand the context of the story, let alone its visual allegory.

-"I don't even want to think about where that egg came from."- The feline girl responded with a disgusted expression in her eyes. -"You're sure you're not making fun of me, are you, Akane?"-

-"I told you, I know this sounds crazy or something out of the perverse mind of some woman with a lot of time on her hands, but I swear I'm not lying to you."- The African-Japanese soldier reassured her feline friend about part about the egg-laying part, while still smiling deviously on her. -"Although to be honest, that part was meant to be allegorical, and I don't think it was intended to be strictly literal... at least, I think... giggle"-

-"I see, but it's still kind of disgusting, if you ask me."- The alien explained her point of view about that story. -"The fact that a man lays an egg as if he were a bird is something... unusual... so to speak."-

-"I have to take it that you don't like same-sex relationships, I guess, judging by the expression of your face."- Akane asked to Kayce about her position regarding LGBT culture.

The feline maiden did a brief pause at that question, and then she asked Akane back on that awkward questioning on that issue. Akane quickly assumed that she had asked a question she should not have asked and quickly offered an apology to her guest.

-"Hey, if I said something that might have offended you, I apologize in advance, honey, it wasn't my intention to say something that would make you uncomfortable."-

-"No, it's all right, Akane, no problem, it's not something that offends me at all."- Kayce reassured her human host about her question she did. -"What happens is that I'm not used to being asked that kind of questions, and you're the first person to ask me about it. But it makes me uncomfortable to talk about such topics, if you ask me."-

-"So you don't like people who have same-sex relationships?"-

The maiden did a gesture of denial with her head, without saying anything else.

-"I see, and I guess I can't blame you for that."- Akane responded with a more serious expression than usual. -"And I don't intend to say anything more on the subject, out of respect for you."-

But the real reason why Akane did not wish to discuss the subject was because she had her reasons for discussing the subject, but as an alien in that tribe, the last thing she wanted to discuss was controversial topics such as homosexuality because Akane could not risk discussing her position on a subject that the alien possibly had her own established definition of that subject, and Akane, as a human, could not try to change her mind if she thought otherwise.

Throughout human history, rivers of blood were shed over personal issues such as a person's sexuality, and Akane Araki, as the only living representative of the human race, could not make the same mistakes that her forebears made in trying to impose their worldviews on those peoples that other humans considered inferior. While those felines might be primitive, they were not stupid, and she could not risk saying something that could get her into trouble that could lead to a bigger problem where she might even risk being executed, so she needed to be quiet and say no more about the matter, regardless of what the two women thought about something as intimate as homosexuality.

-"I understand you, Akane..."-

Then, Kayce did another question to Akane.

-"But changing the subject, there is one thing that seems very strange to me about what you are telling me about all these songs and the stories behind all of them."-

-"What do you find strange about the songs?"-

-"The first song I heard, and this song you showed me... are about very violent stories."- The alien girl explained her concerns about the crushing lyrics of many of the human songs. -"Where you come from, are all songs like that?"-

-"Of course not. We also have more traditional romantic songs and others that talk about more normal topics, and we also have religious songs, as your people also sometimes sing."- Afterwards, Akane did a brief pause, sighed, and then, she added the following. -"But there's one thing you could be right about, honey."-

-"On what, Akane?"-

-"Many of our stories and tales from the place where I was born are very violent. And that has an explanation."- The human woman explained why the lyrics of the songs from the Earth and its stories are so bellicose. -"Where I come from, we have had a lot of wars, where a lot of people have died. Because of this, a lot of our mythology has a very warmongering tone and that is reflected in our culture."-

The feline girl was very surprised, for she could not fathom thinking about a culture that revolved in continuous warfare, even if in Akane's world, Earth, no wars had been going on since the beginning of the 22nd century, especially since the end of World War III in the middle of the 21st century.

-"Your home must be... a very brutal place to live in."-

Akane smiled slyly, as when she saw her friend's face, she quickly noticed that Kayce thought that the Earth was still in the time of the last war and the years after it.

-"Well, technically that was a long time ago, and now things are calmer, but I can't deny that our culture is very warmongering, and much of this is due to the wars we have had in the past."-

But the human did not want to continue discussing the subject, as that would force her to give more unnecessary explanations, and it was delicate enough having to explain the context of some rock songs from her world without having to give more explanations about human culture.

-"And that's something I'd rather not ramble on about, my friend, if you know the reason..."-

Kayce knew that Akane did not like to discuss many things about where she was from, and she respectfully complied with her wish.

-"I understand, Akane."-

The African-Japanese soldier preferred to change the issue, and discuss another topic that was of interest to her.

-"Leaving me and my culture aside, I would like to ask you something that I would like to know, and I hope you will answer me honestly, sweetie."-

-"And what is it you wish to know, Akane?"-

Akane hesitated a little in her response, for she knew she could not afford for her to misunderstand the intent of her message. To this end, the human crossed her arms and adopted a more stern demeanor, in order to make Kayce understand that the topic they were about to discuss was a serious business for Akane.

-"Why do you and your younger sister like to pester Liska?"- Akane said with a severe tone in her voice. -"Did she do something to you two, or is it because she is a slave, and you girls find it easy to abuse someone weaker, huh?"-

-"Eh...what?"-

That awkward question made the young alien girl take a remarkable amount of time to answer, for she knew that she participated in harassing Akane's slave friend with impunity along with her younger sister Kebec. Seeing Akane look at her sternly, Kayce didn't knew how to respond to her.

-"Well... uh... you know..."- The feline girl looked at Akane somewhat in a stressed look.

Akane kept looking at her interlocutor and she crossed her arms as she watched Kayce have trouble admitting the obvious to the human woman.

-"All right, honey, do you have anything to say about this?"-

Seeing that she could not give any excuse that might please her hostess, the alien had no choice but to tell the truth...

-"sigh... I can't speak for my younger sister, but I can tell you the following, Akane."- The girl replied in a downcast fashion and closed her eyes in shame. -"From a young age, we have been taught that slaves have no rights and that we can do what we want with them. I have nothing against your friend, but I never imagined that what happened to her would affect you so much, and I think it has to do with the insult I said about the color of your skin, I guess."-

-"Yes. And I think I need to explain to you the context of my situation as to why I am so affected by everything that happens to Liska, so that you will understand my attitude towards the issue of slavery."-

-"And why is that?"- Kayce responded innocently to the human soldier. -"Were you also a slave?"-

Akane Araki knew that her friend did not mean to offend her with that question, as she knew nothing about the history of mankind and how people like her and her ancestors were victims of the scourge of slavery for centuries, so the soldier had to explain to her alien friend a bit about the subject, but without giving too many specifics.

-"No."- Akane bluntly retorted. -"But many of my ancestors and members of my racial group were once slaves at the hands of people similar to me, but with skin color lighter than mine."-

Then, the African-Japanese soldier fully explained a little about slavery between humans.

-"I can't give you many specific details, because, besides, the subject is very complicated, I don't want you to know much about me or my species, but I can tell you that millions of people like me were enslaved, and this has affected us so much that it is almost instinctive for us to criticize anything related to slavery or any kind of discrimination towards us, since, even though slavery and slaves no longer exist, there are still many people who treat people like me as if we were inferior just because of the color of our skin."-

Kayce could not imagine, let alone conceptualize, that someone like Akane or people like her could have been slaves. The fact that Akane was a very strong and brave woman, and that she was not afraid to speak her mind, no matter the consequences, made it hard for her to imagine someone like that black woman being a slave of someone else, without knowing the historical baggage that Akane carried under her shoulders and that any human would know beforehand just by looking at her, something that the feline alien had no idea in first place.

Even if she did understood the concept of skin color discrimination, in her case it revolved more around insults towards people with darker or lighter colors, but as far as she knew she had never heard of entire people being enslaved precisely because of something as banal, from her point of view, as the color of someone else's skin, or in her case, fur, was.

-"Don't take this the wrong way, Akane... but it's hard for me to think that someone like you... could be someone else's slave..."- The girl said with a somewhat surprised tone to her human host. -"Something very terrible must have happened for people like you to end up that way."-

-"As I mentioned before, it's a very long story and it would take a long time to explain the whole context, but it can be said that almost every culture where I come from has had some kind of stupid excuse to discriminate against people like me."-

-"But why, Akane?"- Kayce asked the human woman. -"Do you... people... race... or whatever you belong to were cursed by the gods, did something terrible, or what made other folk decide to enslave your fellow people?"-

Akane sighed and tried to think of a suitable answer to her alien friend's question, but this was all she could answer her.

-"Would you believe me if I told you that the answer is something related to all the above that you listed?"-

The feline maiden looked at the African-Japanese woman in complete disbelief at the answer she gave her.

-"What?"-

-"I know it is very difficult for you to believe this, but even for us it is very difficult to know where it all started."- The human explained, while also giving a twist on her own words. -"I can only say that some peoples were more fortunate than others, and that perhaps influenced them to develop ideas of superiority over other peoples, just as you guys enslave other people you consider inferior."-

-"Uh?"-

Kayce knew that the human had twisted the question in such a way that the respective answer had touched her to the core of her own being. Worst of all, she could not deny it without excusing herself and incurring Akane's wrath on the issue of slavery.

-"I guess... you're right, Akane..."- The girl said, as she looked at the ground in a depressed manner.

-"Now do you understand why this whole slavery thing infuriates me so much, little kitten?"-

The young girl was visibly reflective, looking down at the ground in shame as she had no words with which to respond to her human friend on the subject. Ka knew Akane was right, but him having to admit that what she and her people had been doing for years was something horrible in the human's eyes was tantamount to heresy, not to mention all the times she and her younger sister had harassed and insulted both Akane and Liska for their own perverse amusement.

But she understood that things could not go on like that permanently, and she sincerely wished to improve her relationship with Akane, not only because she was curious to know more about that foreigner from a world far away from her own, but also because she also knew that all that time she only followed the traditions that her tribe told her to follow, and at the same time, she was playing along with her younger sister, not caring that what they were both doing was really something negative for everyone involved, and she had to admit, that if she were in Akane's place, Kayce would not have liked in the least that someone would make fun of her skin color, or her fur in her case.

-"I'm really sorry... I'm really, REALLY sorry... Akane..."- Kayce apologized again to the human, this time with her voice cracking with the grief she felt at having to apologize to the woman. -"I'm really sorry for saying such horrible things about you, and for playing along with my sister's nonsense... please... forgive me, Akane..."-

Akane Araki, seeing that the young woman was sorry and ashamed for what she had done in the past, warmly embraced the feline girl as tenderly and kindly as possible, as a sign that she held no grudge against her.

-"Heh, heh, apology accepted, little girl."-

Akane said, as she hugged the young alien girl while she shed tears again on the human woman's chest. Akane, for her part, again patted Kayce's head in order to calm her down.

-"Now, now, honey, you don't have to cry anymore, I'm not mad at you any longer."- The African-Japanese woman said in a sweet and relatively gentler voice. -"I think we can be friends and have a better relationship from now on."-

Once Kayce calmed down and dried her tears, the young maiden looked at her human interlocutor once again.

-"So, you're not upset with me anymore, Akane?"-

-"Of course not!"- The human soldier replied with a smile in her face. -"I try not to be resentful and accept apologies from people who sincerely want to be sorry to me, and besides, as I mentioned before, you are not a bad person, just an ignorant girl who repeats what other people say, but I think you can be better person if you put your mind to it."-

In other circumstances, being called an "ignorant girl" would have angered Kayce if someone else had called her like that, but she was willing to ignore Akane's remark, for she knew the human was right. She had let her prejudices cloud her common sense and she was no longer willing to let the tense atmosphere between her, her younger sister and Akane that the three of them had been having since the foreigner had been living in the village for a month would continue any longer, at least as far as Kayce was concerned.

-"Heh... I guess you're right about that, Akane."-

Suddenly, while both women were still chatting, a male voice with a rather diffident ring was heard outside Akane's tent, something that caught the attention of the human, who was not expecting more visitors.

-"Excuse me, may we enter your teepee, Akane?"-

The African-Japanese soldier tried to recall whose voice it was, but no matter how hard she tried, the mental image of the person to whom the voice belonged did not come to her mind. The fact that she did not have much contact with many people within the tribe meant that Akane could not readily identify the voice.

-"I wonder who that could be?"- Akane wondered, as she went to welcome the people who were about to step into her home.

On the other hand, Kayce quickly recognized whose voice it was, because it was very well-known to her.

-"Hey Akane, that's actually my..."-

When the human went to open the entrance to her tent, Akane found another humanoid feline standing in front of her. From the color of his fur, she could quickly deduce that he was a Siamese, with long black hair tied in a bandana, orange eyes and was relatively tall, at least about Pyndan's height.

And next to the man was a little girl, who, unlike the man, had very light brown fur, light curly brown hair, eyes of the same color, dressed in a very pretty dress, and she had a doll with her. And she looked at the human in a somewhat frightened way, because she had never had the opportunity to meet Akane in person.

-"I think I've seen you before."- The soldier said with an inquisitory tone. -"Are you, by mere chance...?"-

-"Yes, my name is Kasil."- The Siamese-looking alien presented himself. -"I talked to you at the stream when we were dealing with the corpse of that man named Keisuke, remember?"-

Akane tried to recall and quickly remembered who he was. He was that warrior who had claimed that he did not want Keisuke Noguchi's corpse to remain near the tribe any longer, mainly because he was worried that it might cause harm.

-"Oh yeah, I know who you are, you're that idiot who was with me complaining that Noguchi's corpse might curse the village or something!"-

Obviously, Kasil was not happy about being called an idiot right under his nose, let alone in front of a girl standing next to him.

-"I'd rather you not call me that, much less in front of my niece, Akane."- The feline said, while crossing his arms as a way to show his annoyance to be called an idiot by the human soldier.

The human quickly noticed the presence of the girl who was on her uncle's left side and who was staring at the foreign woman with some fear, but without saying a word and without separating from the adult man. Seeing this, Akane decided it was better to act more responsibly, even if it was just to avoid using foul language in front of a child.

But before Akane Araki could say anything else, Kayce's voice could be heard behind her, trying to explain to her human host who these people were.

-"Akane, those two people are my older brother, Kasil, and my daughter, Meelia. Please let them in if it is possible for you."-

Seeing that they were part of Kayce's family, the human had no objection to letting them into her tent.

-"Oh, I see!"- Akane said with a somewhat forced smile in her face, since she didn't expected more guests in her tent. -"You two can go in all right, just be careful what you see in my home and please don't touch anything."-

-"Understood, Akane."-

So, Kayce's older brother and his daughter entered Akane's tent, while looking with some curiosity at everything inside the foreign woman's home, especially all the strange things that Ka also saw upon entering, such as the Gunpla, books and many of the devices that Akane used inside, such as her tablet, her laptop and her electric oven that she used to cook her food.

Akane, on the other hand, in order to prevent both of them from asking more questions and so that they would hasten to leave her home, together with Kayce, hurried them to sit in front of her on two other pillows next to the other guest.

-"Please sit on those two cushions, if you would be so kind."-

-"Thank you, Akane."-

Already all of Kayce's family present in front of Akane, the latter wanted to know why they were at her home, whereas the human did not expect more visits from anyone in particular that day, let alone from people like Kayce and her brother Kasil, whom Akane did not like very much at first.

-"All right, Kasil, what brings you to my home?"- Akane asked the Siamese-looking feline with a dry tone in her voice. -"I'm presuming you're looking for your younger sister, right?"-

Kasil took a few moments to answer, and with some degree of uneasiness, he responded to the black woman.

-"Well... you could say that yes, I was looking for my younger sister, and by the way I brought my niece and her daughter with me so that she would know where her mother was."-

Akane looked at the young alien warrior with some distrust, as she also knew that Kasil was Kebec's husband, which worried her that the reason he was in her home was so that the latter would learn anything that Kasil's wife could use against the human at any time.

-"Oh, I see..."- Akane responded, and then she proceeded with a stern warning on the feline man. -"I hope you're not here in my teepee so your wife can pester me more than she already does with me."-

-"No, of course not, Akane!"- Kasil responded with some surprise and annoyance at such insinuation. -"I'm just here to look for my sister. Nothing more and nothing less. I don't want to get involved in my wife's affairs with you."-

-"I hope so, and I would appreciate it if you would not talk with your wife about anything about my home. I don't want your wife to suspect anything more about me than she probably already does, and I don't want her to give me any more trouble. Are we clear on that, Kasil?"-

The warrior took a few seconds to answer when he saw the human woman's displeasure at his presence and her mistrust towards him, and then he timidly replied.

-"Un-understood... Miss Akane..."-

-"And please drop the "Miss" on me, Kasil."- Akane replied on him addressing the human on formal terms. -"I'm not your chief or anything like that. I'm just asking your wife to stop bugging me, that's all."-

-"Understood..."-

Seeing that Akane was visibly belittling her older brother, Kayce decided to speak up to the human, although this time in a more diplomatic and less confrontational approach than she had been accustomed to in the past towards Akane.

-"Hey, Akane, has anyone told you that you are very pushy in the way you talk to others?"- The alien feline girl said at the African-Japanese soldier.

Akane took a few seconds to answer, because she did not want her answer to be interpreted aggressively, and after some waiting, the human finally delivered her response, although in a more restrained way and closing her eyes as a sign of humility.

-"I'm going to be honest with you, dear..."- The human woman explained her reasons for her behavior. -"Where I come from, it's normal for us to be suspicious of people we don't know, especially if they are relatives of people we dislike... and that includes you and your older brother."-

-"And may I know why, Akane?"-

-"sigh... To give you an exact reason would be very complicated, but the closest answer I can give you is that I come from a society that has suffered an enormous amount of wars for a long time, and that has been under the yoke of abusive leaders, to such a degree that it has greatly influenced the way of thinking and acting of all people. In short, we have to be very careful about what we say and do, in order to avoid offending others, whether intentionally or unintentionally."- Akane have a somewhat resumed version of the social aspects from the Japanese culture. -"Likewise, we are taught to be wary of strangers, and there are a lot of rules, written and unwritten, about how we should behave with others."-

Kayce was speechless at the foreign woman's response to the society in which she lived. Since she could not grasp the notion of social harmony for which Japanese society is famous, she could only interpret everything as Akane saying that she came from a very oppressive society, when in fact it was quite the opposite, but obviously, even Akane, who had lived in that culture since childhood, was unable to accurately describe its traits without it being interpreted in a more negative way, as it was in this case.

-"No offense, Akane, but... I think the place you come from must be a very dreadful place to live..."- Kayce responded in a saddened way, without fully understanding the nuance about the culture of Japan.

-"So do I, to be honest."- Her brother Kasil followed her as well.

Akane, seeing that her words were being interpreted wrongly, and seeing that her two guests thought that Japan was like a branch of hell itself, could not help but smile mischievously, and replied in kind.

-"Folks, I feel you are getting the wrong idea about my place of origin. giggle"- Akane replied with a derisive grin in her face. -"My hometown is not a bad place to live. It's quite the opposite, although it can be monotonous at times once you get to know the whole place."-

Then, she added the following about both Japan and her hometown, Osaka.

-"But I must admit that there are many social rules in my culture that people like you folks may find strange, and that is something that even people born there have had to admit, for better or worse."-

-"What kind of rules do you mean, Akane, if it's not a problem for you to say so?"- Kasil asked the human woman.

-"Well, for example, to enter someone else's home, you have to take off your moccasins or sandals, so as not to dirty the place. Also, when eating with chopsticks, you should never put them in the bottom of the bowl, as it is considered both impolite and unlucky."-

-"And why is putting chopsticks in the bottom of a bowl considered bad luck in your culture?"- Kayce asked about that last tidbit regarding Japanese culture.

-"As I understand it, it is because the chopsticks resemble the funeral incense sticks that are usually placed in a bowl when someone passes away."-

The feline maiden pouted when she heard that, for obvious reasons.

-"Ughhh... Now I understand why..."-

Akane laughed a little when she saw the disgusted look on her new friend's face when she heard about the Japanese superstition of not putting chopsticks in the bottom of a bowl.

But Akane was in the mood to talk about something other than where she was from, so she decided to change the discussion.

-"Well, leaving aside my place of origin, since it's not something I want to talk about right now, I would like to know something else."-

-"Like what?"- Both Kasil and Kayce asked at the same time to the African-Japanese soldier.

-"The girl next to you is your daughter, isn't she, Kayce dear?"-

The alien girl looked at her daughter and confirmed her human host's question.

-"Oh, you mean Meelia?"- Pointed her finger toward the little kitten girl. -"Yes, she is my daughter."-

-"Oh, I see. She's very cute, if I may say so. giggle"- Akane smiled at the little girl so that she would want to talk with the human woman.

But the little alien girl, who had rarely seen Akane in person, and for obvious reasons had never seen a human, much less a dark-skinned person like her, avoided looking directly at the African-Japanese woman and hugged her mother in fear toward her hostess.

-"Mommy, that giant, furless woman scares me!"-

-"Now, calm down, she's not going to do you any harm, dear."- Kayce reassured to her daughter, while hugging her.

Akane Araki could not help but smile, even if it was somewhat forced, at the situation. Even if she tried not to make a big deal out of it, one thing that was a fact was that Akane, by the standards of that society, was a huge woman, who was about 1.85 meters tall.

If by the standards of Japan, her adopted homeland, she was a woman of considerable size, considering that the average Japanese is approximately 1.70 to 1.75 meters, for the feline inhabitants of that planet, she was a giant, since almost all the people she had met were approximately between 1.60 to 1.80, being people like Liska and Kayce among the people of medium height, while others, like Pyndan or Rial, were somewhat taller, but even so Akane surpassed in height all the people in the tribe without any exception.

The fact that Akane was a woman of African descent, where the average height ranged from her height to 2 meters, not to mention her overweight, did nothing to help the physical impression that any non-human person would have of her, without any understanding of the historical context of her situation.

-"I think your little girl is kind of scared of me, by what I'm seeing."- Akane said, looking a little embarrassed to see how the kitten girl seemed to be afraid of her.

-"It's the first time she's met you in person, Akane, so I think it's natural for her to be frightened of you."- Kasil said, after seeing how his niece did not want to draw close to the human woman.

Akane looked for a way for that little girl to not fear her, because she did not want to give the impression of being a violent or aggressive woman because she was a foreigner, and above all, because she was a human, and not to mention the fact that she was a black woman of African origin, with all the negative implications that entailed.

And that said, an idea came to the human woman's mind...

-"I have a little idea..."-

-"What kind of idea do you have in mind, Akane?"- Kayce, Meelia's mother, said to the human.

-"Just watch and see."-

Akane crossed her legs and kept her back straight, and set her sights on Meelia, so that the little girl would know that the human wanted to talk to her.

-"Hey, little sweetie girl, come here, I'm not going to do you any harm, I just want to talk to you..."-

The human, using the most motherly voice she could muster at that moment, talked to the little alien girl, in order to get her to trust her and come closer to Akane.

Meelia, on the other hand, was still afraid to walk up to the African-Japanese woman, as she did not know how she would react, and the fact that she was human prevented her from knowing her body language, since Akane had no tail, nor could she move her ears, which did not allow her to know her intentions at first glance, so the human had to use her voice, head, arms, and legs instead.

-"Hey, Akane is not going to do you any harm, she just wants to talk to you,"- Kayce reassured to her daughter about Akane and her intentions. -"why don't you go over to her and sit with her?"-

-"She's not going to hurt me?"- Meelia asked to her mother in a frightened way.

-"No, I assure you, she just wants to learn more about you."-

Seeing that her mother trusted the human, and despite her initial reluctance to approach the unusual-looking foreigner, Meelia decided to put aside her fear of Akane, and walked slowly towards her. As she stood in front of the, to her, very large black woman, Meelia timidly uttered a few words to Akane Araki.

-"You're not going to hurt me, ma'am?"- The little feline girl said to the human soldier.

Akane, who did not know if she should laugh because the girl called her ma'am, even though she was only 24 years old at the time, or feel offended, decided to ignore it and simply to concentrate on the fact that the little maiden should no longer be afraid of her.

-"No, I just want to talk to you, little girl."- Akane replied, with the sweetest voice she could use at that moment. Then she pointed her finger at her legs. -"You can sit on my lap if you want."-

Seeing that the human really wanted to talk to her and meant her no harm, the little alien girl, with some effort, climbed onto Akane's lap, and immediately afterwards, she asked her a question, which in other circumstances would have been somewhat offensive if a human had said it to her.

-"Why is your skin so dark, ma'am?"- Meelia asked Akane, with the normal innocence of a girl her age, without any negative or racist intentions towards the human woman, for she had never seen a hairless person, much less a dark-skinned, hairless person like Akane. -"Did you burn yourself?"-

Akane, for her part, rolled her eyes awkwardly, and knowing that girl had never seen anyone like her before, and that question was asked without any apparent ill will, she answered with a warm smile.

-"Uh... let's say I was born in a place where it's very hot, and that's why people like me have very dark skin, to better adapt to the sun."- Akane replied to that innocent question Meelia did to the African-Japanese woman. -"I think it's the same case as with your mommy and your uncle, because they also have dark coats in the same way that my skin is dark, honey."-

Kayce and Kasil both looked at Akane with some unease at the answer she offered to the child, although they knew that the human wanted to make her point by implying that she was not very different from Meelia's mother and uncle on such regard.

-"I guess you're quite right about that, Akane... sigh"- Kayce responded with a sardonic grin in her muzzle.

The girl then looked at Akane again, and then she asked the human another question...

-"May I touch you, ma'am?"-

The female soldier quickly grasped the girl's intention, and she only wanted to touch her to feel what she looked like physically, equally without discriminatory motives.

-"Of course, sweetie. You can touch me with no problems..."-

And so, though at first in a somewhat frightened manner, Meelia put her finger slowly on Akane's right cheek, in order to feel her physically. Seeing that her skin was very soft to the touch, the alien girl stopped being afraid of the human and quickly her fear transformed into joy.

-"Your skin is very smooth and very soft, Mrs. Akane."-

The African-Japanese woman responded with a very warm and cheerful smile to the little kitten girl.

-"Well, I wash my face almost every day, and that's why it's so smooth. Heh heh"-

Then, the girl, very happy to be next to that kind woman, asked Akane another question.

-"May I hug you, Mrs. Akane?"-

All the adults, including the aforementioned human, were surprised at Meelia's attitude towards the foreign woman, although her mother was somewhat concerned that her daughter was making Akane uncomfortable by making such a request.

-"Uh... I don't know if she'd want to do that..."- Kayce responded in an awkward way, trying to discourage her daughter from doing that.

Akane, on the other hand, had no problem with this, and she allowed it, albeit with one caveat.

-"Hey, sounds good to me. You can hug me anytime, little missy."- The female soldier replied, smiling to the little girl. -"But on one condition."-

-"And what would that be, ma'am?"- Meelia asked to Akane.

-"Please do not call me ma'am or Mrs. Akane, honey."- Akane responded playfully as she saw the girl calling her as if she were a woman much older than she really was. -"I'm about the same age as your mom and uncle, so I'm not as old as I look..."-

And so, the little girl hugged Akane affectionately, while she purred placidly in the human's arms, while she also enjoyed the company of that little alien girl.

-"You are SOO CUUTEEE, Meelia! Heh, heh!"- Akane smiled at the girl, while hugging her as well.

-"I love you too, Miss Akane!"- The girl said, with a big smile in her face, while being at Akane's lap and hugging and purring at her side.

On the other hand, and considering Akane's words about her age, Kayce and Kasil, Meelia's mother and uncle respectively, had no idea about Akane's age, since she had never told them about it, something that also, taking advantage of the opportunity, they decided to ask the human in a good way.

-"By the way, Akane."- Kasil asked. -"If you are not uncomfortable with this question, how old are you?"-

Akane, who was still hugging the girl, turned her head to pay attention to Kasil's question and answer it.

-"Oh, you mean my age?"- The human woman replied.

-"Yes, you never had told us your age, Akane."- Kayce followed suit to his older brother.

-Well... uh..."-

Although she normally had no objection to telling her age, Akane felt some unease in doing so at that moment, considering the people she was talking to and the concern that such intimate information as her age could be used against her at any time, especially by Kebec, Kayce's younger sister.

-"Just promise me you guys won't comment on this with Kebec, all right?"-

Both Kayce and Kasil nodded with their heads.

-"It's all right, Akane, I won't tell my sister, if you want to."- Kayce said.

-"Me too."- Her brother did the same.

-"Well..."- After taking a deep breath, Akane answered the question asked about her age, as she put Meelia on her lap again, which, by the way, was gazing cheerfully at the human. -"I'm twenty-four, if that's what you folks want to know."-

Both felines were surprised to hear her reply about her age, since Akane, very likely due to her weight, looked older than she really was.

-"TWENTY-FOUR?"- Kayce said something about the topic in a very shocked tone. -"I always thought you were much more mature!"-

-"Yeah, no offense, Akane, but I always thought you were over 30, from the looks of you."- Kasil also gave his opinion about Akane's age, also surprised to know that mature-looking human girl was still a young adult.

Akane could not help but make a snarky self-referential quip about her age, because at least she admitted that being overweight made her look older than she really was, coupled with her personality and experience, which made her look like a person who has had a lifetime of adventures, when for Akane just living on that alien planet was already an adventure for her to begin with, since she had never experienced anything like that in her life.

-"Yes, I know that, I have been told that many times in my life. I think I need to lose some weight to look younger, heh, heh!"- Akane laughed on herself.

Meanwhile, Akane glanced at the watch she had behind her back, and she noticed that she had already been talking for a long time, not to say that she was a little hungry, and she considered it suitable to put an end to the talk.

-"Hey, folks, I don't want to push you out of my home, but don't you three have other things to do?"-

In a happy coincidence, the stomachs of Akane, Meelia, Kayce and Kasil growled simultaneously, which meant that it was time for everyone to return to their homes to eat, and end the conversation, but not before bidding the human a proper farewell.

-"You're right, Akane, all this talk has already made me hungry."- Kayce said, while putting her hands on her belly.

-"Same for me, Kayce."- Kasil also did the same. -"I think I should go back to my teepee for a hot meal."-

Meelia, who was still on the human woman's lap, asked her mother in a somewhat wistful manner.

-"Are we going back home already, mommy?"

-"Yes, dear."-

-"sigh... I wanted to stay longer with Miss Akane..."-

-"I would like to too, but she has to eat too. You can come another day when she's not busy, dear."-

And so, Kayce and her family rose from their places and then proceeded to leave Akane's tent.

Once outside, she said goodbye to the human, this time in a more warm manner towards the foreigner, and acting more kindly, considering the pleasant impression she now had about Akane.

-"Thank you very much for taking the time to listen to me and my family, and I hope this settles any differences."- Kayce bowed slighty to Akane -"And I apologize again for my initial behavior towards you, Akane."-

-"You're welcome, my dear, and I hope we can talk more often when we can."- Akane did the same towards her guest. -"Just don't let that sourpuss sister of yours involve you in her affairs again, will you?"-

The maiden laughed mischievously at this, listening to the human's advice wholeheartedly.

-"giggle... I guess you are right."-

-"I also offer my apologies if I acted poorly in front of you, Akane."- Kasil, Kayce's older brother, also apologized to Akane as well.

-"No, I should be the one to apologize for what I did when we were down on the stream, as I was very nervous at that moment, and not in the mood to listen to criticism."- The human replied, apologizing to him as well.

-"I guess I realize that, Akane."-

-"Yeah, right."-

And lastly, Meelia also said goodbye to Akane...

-"May I come to your home to play with you, Miss Akane?"-

-"Yes, whenever you like, little one, you can come whenever you want,"- Akane replied at the girl, again with a smile. -"as long as your mommy doesn't object, of course."-

-"Very well, if there is nothing else to say, we will leave, Akane."- Kayce gave her last goodbye at the human.

-"All right, take care of yourselves and I'll see you later, folks!"-

But before the three guests left Akane's place for good, Akane wanted to have one last word with them...

-"Hey guys, before you go, I want to give you a little gift!"- The African-Japanese woman said, before Kayce and her family left the scene.

-"What's the matter, Akane?"- The feline maiden said at her human friend. -"Do you want to give us something?"-

-"Yes. Just wait a minute, please!"-

Akane returned to her tent quickly, and ten seconds later, she came out of her tent with three rice balls in her hands.

-"May I ask what are those strange balls you have in your hands, Akane?"- Kasil asked to Akane about the rice balls she had.

-"Oh, you mean this, Kasil?"- Akane said about the rice balls. -"These are rice balls, or as we call them in the language where I come from, onigiri. They are rice balls filled with sweet or savory fillings, and in this case, the three balls are filled with fish meat, so I don't think you will have any problem eating them. It is a very typical food of my country's cuisine, and I think you will love them."-

-"Oni... giri...?"- Kayce asked. -"That's a strange name."-

-"Yes, I know that."-

And so, Akane gave her guests one onigiri each. As they began to smell the aroma of that typical Japanese food, the three guests noticed that those rice balls had an unusual, yet delicious aroma that they had never tasted before, but which they began to appreciate immediately.

-"Mmmhh... I don't know what this is, but ... it smells delicious."- Kayce said, while smelling her onigiri. -"I will eat it when we are at home, Akane."-

-"Yes, it smells really good, mommy."- Meelia said as well, confirming her mother opinion about those Japanese rice balls.

-"Glad you loved it, folks. I hope you enjoy them!"- Akane said with a smile.

-"Well, in that case, we're off now. Thank you very much for your food, Akane!"- Kayce finally waved goodbye to Akane, whole moving straight to her home.

-"You are welcome, dear. See you later!"- Akane did the same.

-"See you later too, Miss Akane!"- Meelia also gave her goodbye to her new human friend.

And so, Kayce and her family finally returned home, leaving Akane Araki alone. The human was finally glad that her guests had left, but at the same time, she was glad to have been able to solve a problem, and to have made Kayce see her mistakes and apologize to Akane, and likewise, the human did the same with her new alien friend.

In the same way, Akane was able to understand that being kind to those who are different from her did not hurt her at all, and helped her to better integrate into the life of those humanoid beings. Akane understood that antagonizing those who disagreed with her was not going to help her make any friends, and it was best to try to talk to them and understand the reasons why there were disagreements between the two sides. Considering that she lived in a very different society from the human one, that was something Akane had to take into account if she wanted to continue living in that village with her new neighbors.

But before she could continue thinking about all that, the human of African origin had something else to settle first…

-"Well, now that these cats are gone, I need to eat something first."

And so, she decided to prepare a lunch to eat in the afternoon, which consisted of a bowl of hot ramen that she prepared with the MRE rations she still had on hand in her backpack. Even if it was simple and unoriginal, it was better than eating whatever food she had to eat from her feline hosts.

-"Mmmh... nothing better than pork ramen to eat in the afternoon after a long talk."-

Akane devoured the entire contents of her bowl of ramen greedily, and while the taste could have been better, she knew she had nothing better on hand, and had to make do with what she had available.

After that lunch, the human checked her watch to find out what time of day it was...

-"Well, it's four o'clock here. Seems like Kayce and her whole family really took up a lot of my time, but at least I think it really worth it."-

Suddenly, Akane immediately remembered that she had something to deal with on her own, and that she had to do it before the sun went down, which caused Akane to stand up from her cushion and immediately leave her tent.

-"HOLY SHIT! I forgot that I have to talk with Chief Pownetkee in private at his home before Noguchi is buried!"-

And quickly and without wasting another second of her time, Akane Araki made her way to the tribe chief's teepee to talk to him about what he wanted to discuss with the human before Private Noguchi received his final farewell.

---

August 12th, AD 2299/11th day of the Dry Moon, 1748 (summer season), Chief Pownetkee's tent, 04:10 PM (late afternoon)

After walking through the village for a while, Akane managed to find Chief Pownetkee's teepee. And luckily for her, he was outside his home, quietly smoking his pipe on a chair.

When he saw the human woman in front of him, the feline chief did not hesitate to greet the foreigner warmly.

-"Oh, hello, Akane!"- The tribe chief saluted the African-Japanese soldier with a warm smile on his face. -"I was wondering why you were taking so long to come to my home..."-

The human, for her part, was visibly embarrassed that it had taken her so long to come to him as they had agreed hours ago at the river, and at this, Akane bowed to him, as she would normally do in Japan in a similar situation.

-"I am very sorry for being so late in coming, sir, but I had uninvited guests at my home and I had to receive them, plus I had to eat something first!"- Akane excused herself to Chief Pownetkee, as she kept her head down during her bow. -"I hope you're not upset about that, chief!"-

For his part, the feline chief, who had rarely seen an oriental-style bow, stopped smoking his pipe at that moment, and without stopping smiling, he replied to the human.

-"Heh, heh, You don't have to apologize for it, Akane Araki. I think that's very understandable."-

-"It's good you understand that, sir."-

-"Yes, I know that, but, can I ask you something, Akane?"- Pownetkee asked the human soldier.

Akane, who was still bowing, looked into the eyes of her interlocutor at his question.

-"What would it be, sir?"-

-"Why do you bow your head like that before me?"-

Akane, seeing that the alien chief had never seen anyone bow as she was doing, did not delay to answer him in puzzlement.

-"Uh... what?"- Akane said. -"You mean... my bow, chief?"-

-"Yes."-

-"Well... uh..."- Akane responded in a somewhat embarrassed manner to the tribe chief's inquiry, while scratching her head after she returned to her original position. -"Where I come from it is expected that we do this with our elders or leaders when we do something wrong, sir."- Then, the black woman did another reply to his question in quick fashion. -"I hope I have not offended you by doing this..."-

-"No, on the contrary, Akane, I was just asking what was all that strange tradition you were doing, but I think I understand your intentions, and I thank you very much anyway."- The chief replied at the human, still smiling on her.

-"I'm glad you didn't take it the wrong way, sir."-

-"Well, leaving that aside, let's go inside my home and let's discuss about the funeral ceremony we are going to hold for Mr. Keisuke Noguchi, and for that, I need to talk to you, Akane."-

-"Yes, sir."-

Without further ado, Akane Araki and Chief Pownetkee entered the latter's teepee to privately discuss the funeral ceremony to be held in memory of the tragically deceased Pvt. Noguchi, whose body was found by Kayce when the latter was bathing in the river.

Once inside the chief's home, Akane noticed that the teepee was quite spacious inside, although at the same time, there were not many belongings inside, except for some tables, coat racks, and something that looked like two more beds at the back of the teepee entrance. The human, for some strange reason, felt a strange sense of loneliness upon entering the place, although out of politeness she avoided mentioning this to her host.

-"Sorry if my home may look a little messy, but I didn't have time to clean it properly."-

Pownetkee said to his human guest, while he apologized for the appearance of his teepee on the inside. Akane, on the other hand, saw nothing out of the ordinary, except that, due to the lack of many household items, the place seemed larger than it really was, compared to her tent, which was also large, but due to the large number of objects she put inside, including electronic devices, her home seemed less roomy than the tribe chief's teepee.

-"Don't worry, chief, my place is the same in that regard. giggle"-

Akane responded to her superior with a certain wry grin, seeing that, by his standards, his home looked untidy, when to the human, that teepee was cleaner and neater than any home she knew of on Earth, even in her home country of Japan.

-"Well, first of all, you can sit in that chair, Akane."- The feline chief pointed his finger on a chair in front of him. Then, he walked to another chair that was in front of the chair where Akane was to be. -"I'll sit here."-

-"Thank you, sir."-

Once both characters were seated in their respective places, Pownetkee began the conversation with his human female interlocutor.

-"Can I offer you something to drink, Akane?"- The feline man offered a drink to the African-Japanese woman. -"I have corn liquor if you like."-

-"Uh... no, thanks, chief."- The human politely refused. -"I ate my meal a short while ago, and I don't feel much like drinking alcohol right now."-

-"Oh, I see."- The chief said. -"Don't worry about that."-

But deep down, Akane had her reasons for not gulping any kind of drinks, alcoholic or otherwise, from her feline hosts.

-"No way in fucking hell am I going to drink shit from these cats and end up getting sick from something, or end up with a hangover that I don't know how long it's going to last if I don't know how much alcohol is in that liquor!"- The human said to herself in a hypocritical manner regarding the offer the tribe's chief made to her.

The chief glanced at Akane keenly, noticing that the human was standing quietly, and asked his guest a question.

-"Are you all right, Akane?"- Pownetkee asked the soldier. -"You look as if there is something bothering you."-

On seeing that the chief was asking her a question, Akane came to her senses, and she quickly tried to excuse herself, to prevent her alien host from realizing that she was thinking poorly about him behind his back.

-"Uh... WHAT?"- The human retorted in surprise -"No... It's nothing! I just became distracted for a few moments, that's all!"-

-"Oh, I see."- The feline chief said at the human woman. -"I was just asking."-

Akane sighed to herself that the chief didn't suspect anything unusual then.

-"Shit, that was close!"-

Leaving formalities aside, Chief Pownetkee began to discuss Keisuke Noguchi's burial with Akane, who, being of the same species as him, needed to know any details that would be useful when burying him.

-"Well, in that case, let's skip to the point, Miss Akane Araki."- The feline chief began the chat with the human soldier, while smoking his pipe again in front of his guest. -"Is there anything we need to know about burying your late friend, Mr. Keisuke Noguchi?"-

Akane remained silent for a few seconds, trying to think of her answer.

-"Uh..."- The African-Japanese woman hesitated a bit. -"Do you mean any specific type of ceremony that you guys might need to do before you bury him?"-

-"Exactly."-

-"Uh... well..."-

Akane knew that was a difficult question, let alone the answer. According to his dog tag that she found with his corpse, Keisuke Noguchi practiced the Shinto religion, but in view of the current situation, performing all the proper rites in a place with a culture similar to that of the Native Americans was going to be very difficult, and explaining those rites to the chief would be an even more complicated undertaking to describe, considering the context those Shinto rites had for many Japanese like Noguchi.

-"I think it would be very complicated to explain to you how to bury Noguchi with the proper rites, chief."-

-"Oh, really?"- The feline man replied quite surprised. -"And may I know why, Akane?"-

-"Well, you see, Noguchi practiced a religion that requires specific ceremonies, and I don't think they can be performed here, no offense to you and your people, sir."- Akane explained the issues about burying Noguchi with Shinto rites. -"Although to be honest, I doubt he would have cared much about how those rites were performed, as long as he was buried with dignity."-

-"Does that mean we can bury him using our own rites and traditions?"-

Akane paused again briefly to think about her answer, and after a few seconds, the human of African origin provided her response.

-"I guess he wouldn't have minded in the least. He wasn't particularly religious either, so how you bury him is completely unimportant."- Akane responded with a very warm tone at her feline host. -"In fact, I think it would have been a great honor for him to have people like you, despite being complete strangers to him, take the trouble to bury him as if he had been one of you."-

The chief was visibly surprised, and at the same time, moved, to learn that not only did Akane have no problem with Noguchi being buried by tribal rites, but also that in life it was very likely that the late human soldier would have considered it an honor to be buried in such a manner, and he let the human woman know that.

-"I really appreciate it... Akane Araki."- Pownetkee replied, his voice cracking with emotion. -"It's good to know that there are people like him who have no problem with something as... sensitive... as you know, as is his own way how he should be buried. That speaks highly of your friend... and hopefully his soul will rest in peace in the afterlife..."-

Akane, equally moved, replied in the same way.

-"I am very grateful to you and your people, sir. It is a great honor, both to me and to my late friend, that you do this."-

The chief, perhaps seeing that both were visibly moved by the feeling of having to bury someone like Keisuke Noguchi, who was an acquaintance of Akane's, chose to stray a little from the subject to something related to the late young Japanese soldier.

-"Well, funerals aside, I would like to know a few things about your friend whom we are going to bury; just out of curiosity, nothing else."-

Akane knew she had to be careful not to say anything that might lead that leader to conclude that both Akane Araki and the late Keisuke Noguchi were soldiers from another planet, and not simply strangers who ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that also included stating the reason why they both ended up on that unknown planet.

-"To be honest, Noguchi and I were just acquaintances, although he traveled with me when we were going to the place where I was originally before I came here."- The woman explained some information about that Japanese soldier. -"For reasons I have already stated before about myself and my place of origin, I can't say anything else about him, except that he was a relative novice when it came to exploration."-

-"So that means that you and Mr. Noguchi were explorers?"- The chief asked.

-"Well..."- Akane tried to think of a good excuse and answer to that question. -"Something like that... to put it in simple terms."-

-"And may I know why you and your... acquaintance... so to speak, ended up in these lands, Akane?"-

-"Ehh... well..."-

Akane tried to think of a way to both tell the truth and not give too many specifics about how her escape pod ended up on their planet, so she decided to be brief about it.

-"Let's just say that Noguchi and I parted ways for various unforeseen reasons, and I ended up in the desert, when I fell into that trap and lost consciousness."- The African-Japanese woman gave a condensed version of the events that led to her ending up in the Highland tribe, without explaining the Asuka, the ship she and Noguchi were in, or the drones that destroyed it.

-"Oh, I see."- Then, the chief turned to another matter related to both her and the late soldier from Japan, while still smoking his pipe in a stern way. -"And may I also know why you and your deceased friend are wearing the same clothes, and with the same symbols?"-

Akane, hearing that last part, began to gulp nervously. If there was one thing that was plain to see, it was that man, as primitive as he was, was far from being stupid or naive. He knew that Akane seemed to be hiding something from him, and all those inconvenient questions were meant to make Akane be forced to tell the truth at some point, so the human had to be cautious not to fall into his trap.

Unfortunately for the human, Chief Pownetkee seemed to grasp that Akane Araki and Keisuke Noguchi belonged to some military organization, in her case the Japanese Space Self-Defense Force, so Akane had to find a good explanation or risk finding herself in a situation where her freedom, or even her life, could be in danger.

-"Well... uh... there's an explanation for that, sir. We belong to an organization dedicated to exploring unknown places, and that's why we wore the same clothes."-

-"But from what we saw on your clothes when we found you, it looked like you were carrying several weapons, such as knives, and something that looked like diamond-shaped blades..."-

It was obvious that the village chief was referring specifically, in that last part, to the kunai she was carrying in her belt when she fell into that trap in the middle of the desert. That put the human in a great predicament, from which she had to find a way out.

-"Uh... all right... how can I explain this?..."- Akane replied, trying to hide her fluster. -"as you know, it's not very safe to wander around in the desert, so one has to keep weapons handy. You know... to defend oneself in case one is attacked by bandits, wild animals and such."-

The feline chief was not very impressed by Akane's words, as evidenced by the expression on his face and by the fact that he began to smoke in a more impulsive pace.

-"Akane, I don't intend to pressure you, but I want you to be honest with me. If I'm not mistaken, those diamond-shaped knives..."-

At that moment, Chief Pownetkee suddenly pulled out a kunai from his belt, which was one of the kunai Akane had in her belt when Rial and Pyndan found her unconscious in the herndon trap in the middle of the desert a month ago, and which either they, her grandmother or some member of the tribe had probably seized from her when they took her clothes that day. Seeing that kunai in the hands of the alien chief, Akane immediately gulped hard, for she knew that things could turn for the worse for her at any moment, with no way for her to excuse herself in any convincing way.

-"Holy shit! How did that cat got one of my kunai? I'm sure those two idiots took it from me when I was unconscious the day they found me in the desert!"- Akane thought quickly, knowing she needed to figure out how to escape from the quagmire she found herself in. -"If I don't find a way to explain myself, I'll probably end up as cat food right now!"-

-"...are named kunai in Hinowa, our Eastern neighbors from beyond the mountains."- The chief explained, while showing the kunai he was handling to Akane. -"I understand that these things are used both as work tools as well as weapons used primarily by the bushi, spies and the shadow warriors from that empire."-

Akane was intrigued to hear the first and third terms the tribe's chief was saying about the main typical users of a kunai. And considering what her friend Liska had told her yesterday about that empire, it was more than confirmed that Hinowa was based on or similar to Akane's adopted homeland, Japan, or at least, Sengoku-era Japan, judging by the technology she had seen on the planet where she was.

But that was the least of her worries, and for a very good reason...

-"Bushi? Shadow warrior?"- Akane analized in her mind about such words. -"Is he referring to samurai and ninja? If that's true, I'm in a very deep shit: Not only this planet has samurai and ninja like on Earth, but this cat thinks I'm a spy from that country called Hinowa. Oh, god, think... Akane... think of something to get out of this mess, for fuck's sake!"-

Akane quickly understood what the chief meant by those words, at least in context. Bushi was, in Japanese, a synonym for samurai, while it was obvious that shadow warrior referred precisely to a ninja or shinobi. If so, it was obvious that the human had to give a satisfactory explanation, or else she could end up imprisoned, or worse.

-"Do you have any explanation to give as to why you have a Hinowan weapon, Akane Araki?"- Pownetkee asked the human soldier, with a sudden stern tone. -"And I suppose your dead friend Keisuke might also have something to do with this, from what I'm seeing."-

When she saw the chief giving her a hard stare, Akane knew that she was boxed in, and that any excuse she could offer him would only sink her further, and could even make things worse.

It was at that moment that the human woman remembered the famous phrase used in the U.S. and Anglo-Saxon countries: "Honesty is the best policy". Even if she could not tell him the whole truth about her origins, the least she could do was to guarantee him that she and Noguchi were not spies, nor did she have any intention of harming anyone, much less working for a third party to attack her tribe, so she finally explained, with some fear and respect for the man, what she had to say about the matter.

-"I am very sorry that you think that me and my late friend Keisuke Noguchi are some kind of spies, but I can assure you, for all that is sacred to me, that neither I nor Noguchi had any intention of harming, spying for a third party, or doing anything detrimental to your people."-

Then, the tone of Akane's voice became lower and cracked, trying to admit the truth of things for her...

-"In fact, I don't know where the hell I am, sir!"- Akane explained her current situation, with tears in her eyes. -"This place is completely unknown to me, and neither I nor my partner Noguchi have ever been to a place like this tribe before. For the safety of your people, I cannot say much about myself or Noguchi, but I can tell you that I have no way of returning home even if I wanted to, for the method of transportation that brought me, Noguchi and all my kind was destroyed!"-

The tribe chief, seeing Akane shedding tears as she explained the dilemma she was in, and noticing that she believed that he and his people were planning to do her some harm, stopped smoking his pipe immediately, and looked at the human with some sympathy and concern, seeing how the stranger was crying, grief-stricken, in front of him. It was the first time in his life that a complete stranger had done such a thing before him.

-"Akane..."- Pownetkee said to the human woman.

Akane continued to cry in front of that man, knowing that things would probably go from bad to worse for her, not to say that she was trying to be honest about her current situation. Even if she wanted to, Akane would probably never be able to return to her world, and all the people she cared about who were on the Asuka, the spaceship that accidentally brought her to that unknown planet, were dead, so that also caused her a pain and suffering that was very hard for someone who normally tried to remain level-headed in the face of the circumstances.

But even for her, Akane knew that she had already reached an emotional limit that she could not overcome, and even more knowing that her life could possibly be in danger.

-"...sob... please, chief... sob... I will accept any punishment that you decide to inflict on me, if you wish it... sob..."

On the other hand, the feline chief, watching that human crying inconsolably before his eyes, tried to soothe her somehow before things went out of control for him.

-"Uh... Akane... please..."- The alien said in a very concerned tone. -"Stop crying... I think you misunderstood my words... eh... I mean you no harm... really..."-

The African-Japanese woman looked at Chief Pownetkee, still with tears in her eyes.

-"sob... really... sir?...sob"-

-"Of course..."- The alien feline chief reassured to Akane. -"I just wanted an explanation about some things from you... but I didn't expect you to take it in such a negative way..."-

And then, the man looked at Akane with a balance of earnestness and sympathy.

-"Besides... ehem..."- Pownetkee coughed a bit. -"...we are not that kind of people, if that is your idea about us. If I had been looking for a way to hurt you, I wouldn't have even bothered to talk to you first. Understand?"-

Seeing that he did not intend to harm or punish her, Akane quickly wiped away her tears, and she immediately tried to regain her self-control.

-"sob... Yes, sir."-

-"So please calm down, Akane Araki, you have my word that no harm will come to you, if you are honest with me, and from what I see, you are trying to speak the truth."-

The human replied, still somewhat tearful after she had vented in such a way to the alien chief.

-"Yes... sir."-

Immediately after, the tribe chief glanced at Akane's sorrowful face, and could not help but make a wry comment with a certain degree of irony in his voice.

-"You know something, Akane?"- Pownetkee said, while smoking from his pipe again. -"For someone who has a certain reputation in our tribe for being an aggressive person, you're actually quite sentimental at the same time."-

-"Yes..."- The human replied, still with a gloomy face painted on her. -"I already know that, chief..."-

Akane again hung her head in a downcast mood, something that caused the chief to really begin to worry about his guest's emotional state.

-"Hey, Akane, please... try to cheer up; what I said a few moments ago was just to know a few things about you, but I didn't intend to do you any harm, nor did I plan to accuse you of any wrongdoing..."-

But Akane was still visibly distressed, which caused the alien to facepalm in concern, seeing the human woman's sad expression in her face.

-"Gods, I think this is the first time I've ever made someone cry just by saying a few words in a deadly serious tone."- Chief Pownetkee complained to himself in a higher tone of voice. -"Now, what am I going to do with this girl?"-

But before he could continue looking for a way to reassure Akane, a childlike voice was heard from behind where the chief and the human soldier were, which was heard with a certain annoyed ring to it, possibly due to the commotion that was going on in the teepee.

-"MRAWWWW!"- The child's voice said in a loud tone. -"What's all that fuss, father?"-

When they both heard that voice, Akane Araki and Chief Pownetkee quickly paid attention to the person who pronounced those words. In the case of the human, In the case of the human, she quickly raised her head and looked at the person who had said this, as she thought that only the boss and she were the only people who were present in the teepee.

-"Looks like we woke up a certain someone with all our fuss, Akane. chuckle"-

Akane, for her part, tried to see carefully, noticeably amazed by the suddenness of the event, who was the person who called the tribe chief father.

-"Excuse me, chief, I must assume that he is your son, correct?"-

The feline man looked at the child behind him.

-"Oh, yes, you mean him?"- Pownetkee said with a smile. -"He is my son; haven't you seen him before, Akane?"-

The black woman shook her head on that question regarding the chief's son.

-"Er... to be honest, no. I had heard from Mother Sanna that you had a son, but I've never seen him since living here, sir."-

-"I think it's because he's either usually here at my teepee, or he's busy working in the cornfields, which is why you haven't physically met him."- The chief replied.

Looking at the boy, Akane noticed that he was quite a peculiar creature. He was a calico-type feline, his fur being a mixture of reddish, black and white tones, and his hair was also reddish, with a long vertical black zigzagging stripe in his hair, much like the horizontal tabby stripes of his father, who had blond hair, and having a black nose, unlike his father, whose nose was pink.

Since he was sleeping at the time, the only clothes he was wearing when he appeared before Akane were his pants, while he still looked visibly sleepy. In addition, and to conclude, he was the same age as Panka, Pyndan's younger sister.

-"You must be Mrs. Akane Araki, the foreigner who is living with us in this village, right?"- The boy asked the human woman about her.

Akane, who at that moment was somewhat wistful after blowing off steam with the child's father, looked at the creature with a mischievous smile, for she did not like the idea of being thought of as an older woman, quite possibly because of her weight.

-"First of all, let me clarify a few things about me, little boy."- The African-Japanese soldier replied with a mixture of a smile and some hidden amusement. -"First, I am a Miss, and I don't like to be called Mrs. And finally, I have 24 turns of the season, for your personal knowledge."-

Seeing the human's somewhat comical displeasure, the boy apologized for his mistake to her.

-"Oh, sorry about that... Miss Akane."-

Seeing the hilarity of that scene and seeing that Akane had suddenly smiled again for something as trivial as the woman's age, the boy's father could not help but burst out laughing.

-"Heh, heh heh! Looks like you smiled again, didn't you, Akane Araki?"-

The human was unable to avoid making a comical grin on her face at the question the tribe chief asked her.

-"Eh, I don't like being called a Mrs., chief."- The woman replied, still with an annoyed grin. -"I am not as old as I look."-

The chief then decided to change the issue to another, important one to him...

-"Well, and jokes about your age aside, let me then introduce you to my son, if I may."-

-"It would be an honor for me, sir."- The human replied, this time in a more humble, but cheerful tone.

Chief Pownetkee stood at his son's right side, and put his left hand on his shoulder, in order to introduce him properly to Akane, the human woman.

-"His name is Gareth Masha-ra-len."- The feline man presented his child to the soldier. -"He is my only son that I have, and I hope that you and Akane will get along well from now on."-

-"It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Akane Araki... from the Araki clan, I guess."- Gareth presented to himself.

Akane, in turn, bowed to the chief's child, mainly out of politeness, at least as she would normally do in very formal situations in Japan, her adopted homeland.

But unfortunately for Akane, due to her confused emotional state at the moment, and because she didn't know what else to say, she introduced herself to Gareth... in Japanese

-"(よろしくお願いします, ギャレス・マシャ・ラ・レン君。)" Nice to meet you, too, Gareth Masha-ra-len-kun."- Akane said in her language, while bowing to him.

Both the boy and his father looked awkwardly at the human, hearing those words in a language they did not know at the time. Gareth, politely, emphasized what Akane had said.

-"I am sorry Miss Akane, but I did not understand what you said."-

The African-Japanese woman, realizing that she had greeted the child in Japanese, raised her head, and upon seeing the disbelieving face of her feline guests, the human facepalmed in shame as she realized she had committed a tremendous faux pas in front of them.

-"Oh, CRAP!"- Akane cursed. -"I'm so sorry, kid! What I said in my language was nice to meet you, but I think I said it in my language!"-

Gareth, seeing that Akane was visibly embarrassed for having done such a stupid thing in front of him, the son of the tribe's chief, far from being bothered by that event, simply smiled playfully, and he did not seem to give much thought to Akane's blunder in front of him.

-"Don't worry about it, Miss Akane, it's not that big of a deal. It is also a pleasure to meet you better this time, heh, heh!."-

-"Oh, thank you, Gareth!"- The soldier from Japan replied, quite relieved that the boy didn't took that screw-up personally, through with an audible nervous giggle.

Gareth's father, on the other hand, seemed very amused to see how well the human and his son were getting along, and he couldn't help but smile at their mutual attitude towards each other.

-"It seems that you and my son have a lot in common, from what I'm seeing."- Chief Pownetkee said with a snarky smile in his muzzle toward the human woman.

-"Does it look like that to you, chief?"- Akane replied with some amusement to her superior.

-"Yes."- The chief retorted, still smiling to the human. -"I can see that you and Gareth have a similar sense of humor. Although you are somewhat more sentimental, from what I'm noticing likewise."-

-"Yes, you are right, sir, many people have already told me that back where I come from... heh, heh, heh..."- Akane snickered nervously at the chief's question to her about her somewhat ambivalent nature.

Afterwards, Akane looked at both Gareth and his father, and she raised another question that in another place might have been somewhat obvious.

-"By the way, and changing the subject a bit, Gareth,"- The human soldier asked with a smile at the feline calico boy. -"where is your mother, if I may ask?"-

Hearing that question, Gareth and his father exchanged sad looks, not knowing what answer to give her. Akane, seeing that they were both taking their time to answer her, quickly understood the reason, and noticed that she may have asked something she shouldn't have said.

-"Oh my, if I said something that made two uncomfortable, I'm really..."-

Chief Pownetkee interrupted Akane's apology in a sad tone...

-"Gareth's mother died two turns ago, due to a very serious illness that had no cure..."- The feline man said, this time with a regretful inflection in his voice.

Akane, hearing that, could only offer her sympathy, and also offer an apology if what she said made them both uneasy, especially when she saw Gareth also visibly sad...

-"I'm... I'm really sorry for you and your son's loss, chief..."- The human said also with a very sad tone to both father and son. -"I guess I shouldn't have said that, in all honesty..."-

The three characters remained silent, while Akane, for her part, did not know what else to say. She felt she had committed an unwise thing by asking such a thing, especially her knowing beforehand that she had never seen the chief with any woman near him in his home since she had arrived at the tribe a month ago, and to make that kind of private reference to someone who had only known him for a short time was perhaps a grave mistake that she could not apologize for in any way.

Akane quickly remembered that the chief was a widower, according to what Mother Sanna had told her weeks ago, and, perhaps because of her emotional state, the human woman did not think of that until she remembered it, to her personal embarrassment.

Fortunately for Akane, the chief did not seem to share her opinion.

-"It's all right, Akane, I understand that you didn't mean to offend anyone with that comment."- Chief Pownetkee put his hand on the human woman's shoulders again. -"It was an innocent question, after all. It was just... we both couldn't help remembering that time... that was all."-

The human woman breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing that.

-"I'm glad to hear that, sir."-

With Akane already apologizing to the man, the latter saw that it was better to change the topic of conversation, for everyone's sake.

-"Well, let's leave the sad things aside."- Then, the feline chief addressed the African-Japanese soldier in a more formal tone. -"Now that you know my son, and that you already told me about the way you want us to bury your friend, I guess there's nothing else you want to share with me, do you, Akane?"-

-"Uh,"- The human mumbled a bit. -"I would guess not, chief."-

Gareth, on the other hand, asked his father a question regarding Akane's late friend.

-"You mean Miss Akane's friend who was found dead near the stream, father?"-

-"That's right."- The father replied at his son about his question regarding Noguchi. -"According to Akane, his name was Keisuke Noguchi, and he was a dear friend of hers."-

The human made a clarification concerning her connection with the late Japanese soldier to Chief Pownetkee an his son.

-"Well, to be strictly technical, Noguchi was more of an acquaintance of mine, but I had been familiar with him for some time."-

-"Oh, really?"- Gareth, the son, asked.

-"Indeed."- Akane responded to the boy. -"But that doesn't mean that his death doesn't affect me, because he was a beginner in the exploration field, and his dream was always to explore the whole world..."-

Afterwards, Akane did a brief pause, and then, she resumed, this time with a more sorrowful voice...

-"Sad that Noguchi had to end his days that way..."-

Seeing that Akane was visibly distraught, the feline boy could not help but offer his heartfelt sympathy for the human woman as a result of Keisuke Noguchi's death.

-"I'm really sorry for your friend's death, Miss Akane..."- Gareth comforted Akane in the best way he could. -"I hope his soul rests in peace..."-

The Earth soldier from Japan smiled slightly, and she thanked him wholeheartedly for his gesture...

-"Thank you, Gareth..."- Akane replied. -"You are a very kind boy..."-

-"Heh, heh..."- The boy smiled after hearing Akane's compliments to him. -"you don't need to thank me, Miss..."-

With the tribe chief's son's words of encouragement, Akane proceeded to end the conversation at once and so return to her home.

-"Well... if there's nothing else to discuss, I'm going back to my teepee..."- Akane stood up, and after stretching a bit after being sitting for several minutes, she proceeded to walk out of the Chief Pownetkee's teepee. -"We'll see you and your son tonight for the funeral, chief."-

-"You too, Akane, take care of yourself and I'll see you at night."-

But before Akane could return home, and when she was only two steps away from the chief's teepee, the latter wanted to have a word with the human for one last time.

-"WAIT A SECOND, AKANE ARAKI!"-

The human suddenly turned around when she heard him, wanting to know the reason why the man wanted to talk to Akane once again.

-"What's wrong, chief?"- The African-Japanese woman asked in a puzzled way.

The chief walked up to Akane, as he lit his pipe again, and in a somewhat cheerful voice, he said a few words to the human soldier.

-"Before you return home, I would like to share with you some things that I would like you to know,"- The feline man said at the soldier from Japan, with a sardonic wry in his face. -"and I want you to heartily consider what I am about to say..."-

The human woman was somewhat intrigued by what Chief Pownetkee was about to say to her, believing it would be some kind of lecture.

-"I'm all ears, chief."- Akane replied at the alien leader.

The chief coughed a little, and after carefully planning what he was going to say to Akane Araki, the alien finally said the following...

-"(この村でヒノワ語を話せるのはあなただけではないから、もしお前がヒノワ語で他の人の悪口を言えると思っているのであれば、それはやめた給え、荒木明音くん。) You are not the only person in this village who can speak Hinowan here, so if you think you can speak ill of other people in your language, I advise you not to do so, Araki Akane-kun."-

-"WHAT?!"-

Akane was shocked to hear that the chief could also speak Japanese, leaving her, that man, Liska, and Mother Sanna as the only people in the village who could speak the human woman's language. That also implied that the man, of sympathetic appearance and to some extent innocent, was much more intelligent than he appeared, and was able to speak quite well a language as complex as Japanese, and which also indicated that he was a man that Akane should not belittle at any time, for her own personal misfortune.

-"Uh..."- The human asked in the local language nervously when she heard the chief speak in Japanese. -"Excuse me, chief, but... where did you learn to speak my language, if I may ask?"-

Pownetkee replied in Japanese, as a subtle way of saying that he was not a person that Akane should took for an idiot just because she thought she was the only person in the tribe who could speak Japanese, and she thought he didn't know that language, when it was just the opposite.

-"(あ、ヒノワ語のことか？) Oh, you mean Hinowan?"- The feline chief replied in a amused way to Akane in Japanese. -"(俺は人生で何度かヒノワを訪れており、そのおかげで現地の言葉を覚えたと言ってもいい。) Let's just say that I visited Hinowa a few times in my life, and because of that, I learned the local language."-

Akane, the human woman, replied as well in Japanese, in a humbled form.

-"(ああ、そうですか。) Oh, I see."- Afterwards, she congratulated him. -"(正直なところ、あなたのヒノワ語はかなりうまいですよ、村長) Your Hinowan is pretty good, to be honest, chief."-

-"(ありがとうよ、明音くん) Thanks for the compliment, Akane-kun."- The man responded again, still with a snarky smile in his muzzle.

Then, in a more trouble tone, Akane bowed her head again before the alien, and then, she offered an apology in Japanese.

-"(え～と。。。陰で悪口を言ったことについては、大変申し訳なく思っています。もう二度と起こらないでほしいです。) Well... about the bad things I said behind you and your people's back, I am very sorry, sir. I hope it won't happen again."- Akane apologized again.

The man looked at the human, and with a certain calmness, while smoking his pipe, he responded, this time in his native language.

-"You don't need to apologize like that, Akane. Just offering an apology is more than enough for me."-

The soldier replied, this time in a more relieved manner after she heard that.

-"Thank you, sir."-

-"The only thing I ask of you, Akane dear, is to be more understanding of our traditions and our lifestyle."- The chief then gave Akane a brief lecture to her. -"I understand that we may not be perfect, and that we have many faults, but insulting us behind our backs is not going to help you much to be appreciated in our village."-

Akane made a sheepish gesture, for she knew that he was right, and that her pushy attitude was already too controversial to be overlooked by the higher authorities of the tribe, including the chief himself, something he pointed out to the human in a kindly way. The human soldier, for her part, had no choice but to follow his words, and she again responded passively.

-"Yes, sir..."-

The chief, then, decided to give the human no more worries and let her go to her home with nothing more to add.

-"Well, if there's nothing more to say, you can go, Akane. See you in the evening."-

-"Oh...all right. See you later, Chief Pownetkee!"-

With these words, Akane went to her tent to rest. Meanwhile, the chief of the tribe was standing there, watching as the human walked somewhat crestfallen, seeing that she had received the worst humiliation she had suffered in a long time.

On the other hand, his son Gareth, who was behind his father silently watching what had happened between him and Akane, wanted to have a few words with his father.

-"Don't you think you were a bit harsh on Miss Akane, father?"-

The boy's father looked at him with a mischievous grin, and couldn't help but answer his question with some amusement.

-"Possibly... but I think someone needed to talk to that girl seriously, and straighten things out once and for all with her."-

-"But..."- Gareth said, when he saw the African-Japanese woman quite disturbed after talking with his father. -"I think this is the first time you've scared someone just by talking..."-

-"Well... to be honest, my dear son..."- Pownetkee said to the boy, while smoking cheerfully. -"I had never tried anything like this with anyone before. If things had gotten more aggressive, I would have resorted to harsher methods, but I didn't even need to do anything."-

And then, the father showed Gareth the kunai Pyndan and Rial took from Akane's clothes when she came to the village, and which he used to demand an explanation about her, Keisuke Noguchi and what the two of them were originally doing near the tribe, originally thinking that the two of them might be spies for the Hinowa Empire in the east.

-"I just showed her this kunai to ask her for an explanation of what she was doing for this region, and she suddenly started crying, thinking that I was planning to kill her or something."- The man explained to his son, while showing him the Japanese bladed weapon Akane previously had. -"At least I know she's not trying to do us any harm, that's more than evident..."-

-"Oh... I see."- The feline boy said, after seeing the blade.

As this was happening, both the chief and his son heard a male voice from the sides...

-"I take it you just finished talking to Ms. Akane Araki, did you not?"-

The tribe chief looked to his right, and quickly realized who that voice was.

"Oh, it's you."- Chief Pownetkee replied with a candid smile. -"And as to your question, indeed, I just finished talking to her..."-

Gareth courteously greeted the man who spoke to his father, for he was the Seneschal of the tribe.

-"Good afternoon, Seneschal."-

-"Oh, good afternoon for you, too, Gareth."- The tabby feline with brown hair replied as well in a polite fashion. -"I guess you just finished resting after working in the cornfield, right?"-

The boy was a bit hesitant to answer, because the reason why he was awake were quite different from the ones the Seneschal was expecting to.

-"Uh... well... to be honest, I got out of bed because..."-

Seeing that his son did not want to speak ill of Akane, his father responded for him.

-"...It was my fault; Akane and I were talking too loudly, and we woke Gareth up accidentally, that's why."-

-"Oh... I see."- The holy man replied.

Chief Pownetkee´s son breathed a sigh of relief that his father had spared him the humiliation of having to criticize the human woman in front of the Seneschal for getting him out of bed with her crying.

Meanwhile, and putting the whole issue with Akane in the background, the holy man wanted to talk about the funeral that was to take place that evening.

-"By the way, what did Akane say about burying her friend Keisuke Noguchi?"- The Seneschal asked to the chief. -"Did she specify any special way to celebrate the funeral rites we should do to that strange man?"-

-"No. In fact, she asked us to bury him in our own traditions."-

The feline holy man was surprised to learn that the human woman had no objection to Noguchi being buried with the local rites, instead of being buried with the rites of his culture, which in the case of the human of Japanese origin, would be those of the Shinto religion.

-"Are you sure, chief? Not to question you, sir, but I was simply concerned that we might offend Akane if we did something wrong at the funeral of her friend, who must have been very dear to her."-

The chief took out his pipe from his muzzle, sighed a bit, and then, he replied.

-"She said there would be no problem. In fact, she told me that her dead friend would have considered it a great honor to be buried by people like us, and I think the least we can do for her friend Noguchi is to pay him the same honors we would normally give to someone from our own tribe."-

-"I'm glad to hear that, chief."- The Seneschal replied, quite relieved to hear that Keisuke Noguchi would not require any kind of different rites for his funeral.

-"But..."- The chief went into another topic he wanted to discuss with the holy man. -"There's another thing that worries me about that Akane girl."-

-"What would it be, sir?"-

Chief Pownetkee looked at his son, and then he gave him an order in a kindly manner.

-"Gareth, could you let me and the seneschal talk alone for a few moments, please?"-

The feline boy promptly complied and went immediately to his teepee with nothing more to say.

-"Yes, father, as you wish."-

Now that the chief and the Seneschal were alone, without anyone to interrupt them both, the former shared with the latter some concerns he had about the human woman from Earth, Akane Araki.

-"Leaving aside what we have discussed several times about that girl's personality, Akane, for her part, has many secrets that she prefers not to reveal to us."- Pownetkee began the discussion about the African-Japanese soldier. -"And that is one of the things that worries me about her..."-

-"I take it that's all about her place of origin, her real job, and what kind of... being... she is exactly, isn't it, sir?"-

-"Hmmmm..."- The chief pondered a bit. -"You could say yes... though I fully understand the reasons why she prefers to keep her mouth shut about her origins."-

-"As I understand it, she is afraid that, if she says anything about her origins, or who she really is, it could alter the way we see her, could it?"-

-"That's right."-

The seneschal made a worried gesture when he saw that Akane, the mysterious woman from another world, preferred to keep secret anything related to her origins, which was beginning to cause some concern in him, the chief and, from what he had heard from several members of the tribe, in its inhabitants.

-"Do you think we should do something with her? I'm worried that she might someday do something that will cause a bigger problem for the whole tribe if we let her do what she wants."- The holy man went straight to the point in a blunt way toward his senior. -"I am especially discomforted that Miss Akane is criticizing our traditions, and the way several people in this tribe act, and if I must be honest with you, chief, I think the best thing to do is to tell her to leave."-

-"I don't think it is necessary..."- Pownetkee retorted in an equallly straight-foward fashion.

That answer from the chief was not completely to the Seneschal's favor, who demanded an explanation as to why Akane should not be subjected to more severe action.

-"May I know the reason why we should not do anything to control that female foreigner, chief?"-

The chief crossed his arms, and then, he looked in the direction where Akane had left, in order to hint at his reason for not taking a stand on the human woman.

-"Akane Araki is not a bad person, and I don't think she has any intention of causing us any trouble, much less doing any harm to our tribe."- The feline chief explained his rationale. -"In fact..."-

Then, he looked back at the place where Akane's tent was, and then, the chief heaved a sigh filled with a certain tone of pity.

-"...I would venture to say that Akane is more afraid of us than we should be of her..."-

The Seneschal found the notion that a woman like Akane, who was taller than anyone in the entire tribe, and who was above all, a woman apparently strong and powerful enough to subdue any warrior who might stand before her, would be afraid of them as incredibly ludicrous, something Chief Pownetkee noticed at once when he saw his face.

-"I assume you don't believe me, do you?"-

After a moment of silence, the holy man answered.

-"Well, I'd be lying if I said otherwise... Although I wonder what happened to make Miss Akane think that way."-

-"To be honest, all I did was show her this Hinowan kunai that she carried with her the day she was brought to the village."-

Then, the chief showed the kunai to the Seneschal as well, and the latter was surprised to see how he managed to make Akane cry by showing such a weapon.

-"I suppose you threatened Miss Akane with that blade from Hinowa... didn't you?"-

-"No."- The chief explained what happened between him and the human. -"I just showed her the kunai, as well as asked for an explanation about the weapon... and she burst into tears. I think the way how I told Akane caused her to believe that we were planning to kill her or something."-

-"That would explain why when I saw Akane when she was leaving your home, chief, she seemed to be very sad..."-

-"Well, apart from what happened..."- Chief Pownetkee continued with his explanation, while smoking again from his pipe. -"I warned her a bit by speaking to her in her language, so that she would understand that she can't insult others behind their backs."-

That last part amazed the Seneschal, who did not imagine that the chief would do such a thing.

-"It looks like all those trips to Hinowa did pay off for you, I see..."- The feline holy man said with a sardonic smile in his muzzle.

But the chief did not think much of the fact that he knew how to speak "Hinowan" (or in this case, Japanese).

-"Heh, I don't think it's such a big deal. Someone had to teach that girl a little "lesson", so to speak."-

-"Yeah, but still..."-

The Seneschal was still looking at where Akane, the human soldier from Earth, had gone, and suddenly, his voice became a little sorrowful, using a more plaintive ring to it.

-"...I feel that Akane is not happy being here..."-

Chief Pownetkee quickly agreed with the man on the subject of Akane, also with the same tone of pity for that human woman.

-"That is obvious. And I think the least we can do for her is to make Akane trust us, so that sooner or later she will tell us the truth about her and her origins..."-

And then, the chief looked at the sky, also with a sense of sadness, as he thought of the painful situation Akane was in, and how to help the human adjust to life within the tribe.

-"…And I feel that, sooner or later, she will have to tell us the truth... one way or another..."-

---

August 12th, AD 2299/11th day of the Dry Moon, 1748 (summer season), Near Akane's tent, 05:19 PM (late afternoon)

Akane Araki had walked to the entrance of her tent where she lived, in order, at least originally, to rest, after that long talk with the chief of the tribe, and with his son in a fortuitous way.

But for the hapless human woman, she felt little desire to shut herself up again in her home to seclude herself from what was going on around her.

In a way, she knew that what the chief had told her about her and her remarkable unlikeability with many people in the village who were not Liska or Mother Sanna was causing her a lot of trouble, something the chief brought to her attention during their talk.

And not to mention Akane's penchant for insulting others in Japanese, thinking that no one else in the tribe could speak her language, when it turned out that, in addition to Liska, both Sanna and the chief could also speak Japanese, much to her surprise and dismay.

But, instead of entering her tent, the African-Japanese soldier remained immobile just two steps away from the entrance of her home, looking at the tent rather vexed, as if something was making her quite uncomfortable.

-"Shit..."-

After taking a breath of fresh air, Akane looked back at her tent, and she began to mull over several things revolving around in her head, among them were the words of both Mother Sanna and Chief Pownetkee about her unsociability...

-"I need to take a walk to clear my mind... I can't just lock myself in my house and ignore everything going on around me..."-

And so, the human decided to walk north, instead of going into her tent and isolating herself as she normally did when there was something she didn't like, in order to help her clarify some things that were bothering her...

---

August 12th, AD 2299/11th day of the Dry Moon, 1748 (summer season), Outside village, 05:40 PM (late afternoon)

Akane walked through the village in order to go north, and look for a decent place where she could rest alone. Considering that she didn't quite know what the world outside the village was like, she had to be careful not to go too far in order to avoid getting into trouble, such as being attacked by wild animals or bandits.

As she continued walking, Akane passed by Mother Sanna's teepee, where she, along with her slave Liska, were preparing food for Keisuke Noguchi's funeral to be held that night. When the human walked past the old woman's home, the latter, seeing that Akane was heading towards the northern outskirts of the village, looking visibly unhappy and depressed, could not help but to call the foreigner's attention, mostly out of fear that something might happen to Akane if she wandered too far away from the community.

-"Can I ask where you are going, Akane dear?"- The old feline woman said to the black woman from Earth.

The female soldier, while still sorrowful and without much real desire to speak, only replied as follows in a deadpan tone.

-"I just want to go and rest outside this place... I don't plan to go very far..."-

As Akane walked out of the village, the young slave girl, who was at that moment chopping vegetables to prepare the soup to be served at the funeral, could not help noticing that her human friend was not in the mood to talk much, and that something was tormenting her.

-"Akane seems to be very sad, mistress."- Liska asked Mother Sanna about Akane's state of mind.

-"I can't blame her."- The old woman replied at her slave with a worried voice, -"One of her friends just died, and she must have a lot of mixed feelings about the whole tragedy..."-

Suddenly, the old woman's voice became somewhat slower and gloomy, as if she also felt sorry for the human woman's situation... and for other reasons as well.

-"...and I think I'm to blame for that too."-

Seeing that her mistress's face had turned to one of sadness, the young slave asked the old woman a question.

-"Are you all right, mistress?"-

-"I do fine, my dear. I was just thinking about some things..."-

Mother Sanna replied to Liska, while the former looked to the north, where Akane was heading at that moment, with relative regret.

-"...but it's best to leave Akane alone, so she can find some comfort for herself."-

The slave also looked to the north, and she too could not help but feel sad for her human friend and for the grief she was going through at such a tragic moment, especially for the pain of having lost a dear friend.

-"I guess you are right. I just hope Akane doesn't get into any trouble if she goes too far away from here..."-

Fortunately for both women, Akane decided to go to a place not too far from the village, in this case near a solitary willow tree that was close to the old woman's teepee, where both Mother Sanna and Liska could keep an eye on the human if necessary.

Once there, the African-Japanese woman sat down under the shade of that tree. And, as she brought her tablet with her, the human soldier started to listen to the music she had stored on her mobile gadget.

The first song she heard was Mukaikaze (Headwind) a melancholic ballad written in the 20th century by Japanese singer Hako Yamasaki, which was very popular in the 1970s and 1980s, although her fame declined in the 1990s, to the extent that she and her husband became homeless, although her career had a modest resurrection in the 2010s and 2020s thanks to the internet.

The lyrics of that song, coming from Yamasaki's powerful voice, spoke about the value of a person's life and how someone, no matter how hard the adversity, must keep on fighting and never give up.

A very fitting lyric for a singer whose career fell to the point of losing almost everything, but she kept fighting until the end.

But Yamasaki's next song, Hitori Uta (Lonely Song), really struck a chord with Akane for two reasons: The first was that the song was sung in Kansai-ben, the local Osaka dialect she spoke, and the second and more important was that the song perfectly reflected her emotional state in which she found herself.

And that emotional state was expressed in five English words.

-"I am such an idiot..."-

Akane felt that she was an idiot because, due to her bellicose attitude, she was antagonizing many of the people in the tribe, and she had been scolded by them for both Mother Sanna and the tribe chief himself, making her realize that they also understood the insults she was saying behind their backs in Japanese. To make matters worse, one of her subordinates who was with her when she was transferred to New Haiti, Keisuke Noguchi, had died, possibly attacked by bandits.

Not to mention the feeling she had that she hated almost everything about that tribe, and the realization that she might never be able to return to Earth, to say nothing of the death of the entire crew of the Asuka, including that of her best friend, Kaguya Hoshino.

All that caused Akane to break down in tears, seeing that her life had basically become a living hell, as she ended up in a place she despised, even in a hidden way, and from which she had no way to escape, and that all the people she loved were either dead, like Kaguya or Captain Kurosawa, or far away from her reach, like her step-parents and especially her fiancé, Satoru Okazaki.

On top of that, to make things even more painful for the African-Japanese woman, she felt the whole situation was her own fault.

-"sob... Satoru... sob... Kaguya... sob... Captain... mom... sob... dad... Noguchi... sob... everyone... please... forgive me... sob..."-

Tears ran down the face of that woman, who felt that the whole universe was coming upon her, and who did not stop crying...

-"It's all my fault... sob... it's all my damn fault... sob..."-

Meanwhile, at the village, Liska, who heard Akane's sobbing, when she saw her friend's suffering, tried at first to accompany the human woman and comfort her.

But before she could do anything, her mistress quickly stopped her by grabbing her arm and waving her head in denial, implying that the prudent thing to do was to leave Akane to suffer on her own.

-"It is best to leave Akane alone. Only she understands what's going on in her head, and you'll only make things worse."

-"But... Akane is..."-

-"I understand how you feel, my dear,"- The old feline woman interrupted her slave. -"but that girl needs to be alone for a while. And I don't think she wants to see us, far as I can tell."-

The young slave girl looked down at the floor in a depressed manner, knowing beforehand that her mistress was right, and it was best to just let Akane cry on her own alone, with no one else coming to feel sorry for her.

-"sigh... I understand... my mistress."-

But before both women could leave Akane alone to cry on her own, a scream of terror was heard many minutes later precisely from the willow tree where the human soldier had gone to rest alone.

-"KYAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"-

When the slave and her mistress turned to see what was going on, both women realized something was amiss with Akane...

And what was affecting the human woman was something quite... unexpected, to coin a more comprehensive way of putting it.

-"(来るな、このクソタレなトカゲ共め！) GET AWAY FROM ME, YOU STINKIN' LIZARDS!"- Akane yelled harder in her language.

To the surprise of many, Akane was surrounded by two lizards, which were taking turns licking the African-Japanese woman's face as if they were dogs. Both creatures appeared out of nowhere, while Akane was distracted listening to music on her tablet under the willow tree, ignoring the world around her, and trying to get some sleep.

Although it was not the first time Akane had faced such creatures since she arrived on that unknown planet, the fact that they appeared without warning while she was trying to concentrate on other things that were bothering her was causing Akane to react in a sudden and terrified way, not knowing what to do about the suddenness of the situation she found herself in.

Seeing that the human did not know how to deal with these creatures on her own, both Mother Sanna, with the help of Liska, her slave and also with the help of her grandson Rial and Pyndan, who happened to be near the old woman's home doing other chores, ran quickly to the willow tree where Akane was already, in order to help her.

-"Are you all right, Akane?"- The old Siamese lady talked to the human soldier, somewhat worried about her, through also with a snarky tone.

The Earth woman was not finding that self-evident question so amusing, at all.

-"Do I look all right to you?!"- Akane yelled back in the local language.

Meanwhile, Rial and Pyndan watched the scene with some perverse amusement, seeing how the seemingly tougher-than-nails Akane Araki was terrified by two creatures that were very common on their planet, and how that human woman seemed to react violently to normally harmless beings that had no intention of harming her.

In particular, Rial, who did not like Akane at all, could not help but say a snide remark about the funny situation in which the foreigner was involved.

-"Hey, Akane, you seem to appeal to lizards more than people, aren't you? HAH, HAH, HAH!"- The black-furred feline warrior laughed at the human woman's expense, while the lizards continued to lick the hapless Akane's face.

Obviously, Akane responded at the alien man in the most vulgar way possible... in Japanese, of course.

-"(くたばれよ！) GO FUCK YOURSELF!"-

Rial's grandmother, who understood Akane's language, reprimanded the human for using obscene language in her presence, even though at that time and place, she and her slave were the only people present there who understood the Hinowan (or in this case, Japanese) language.

-"Akane, stop using obscene language!"- The old lady said in her local language, even if no one else outside her, Akane, Liska, and Chief Pownetkee understood Japanese in the tribe at the time. -"Can't you see that children can hear you?"-

Akane, whose face the lizards kept licking affectionately, was in no mood to moderate her language, much less when creatures out of a dinosaur movie were playing with her, and she didn't fully understand what was going on. Not to mention the four aforementioned people who understood her language anyway...

-"(ヒノワ語で悪口を言っても、誰も気にしまへんよ、お祖母様！) Who the fuck cares if I swear in Hinowan, grandmother!"- Akane kept cursing in Japanese. -"(この臭いトカゲをうちの顔から離してくださいよ！) Please get these fuckin' stinkin' lizards out of my face!"-

In the meantime, Pyndan, who was watching the whole thing with amusement, decided to ask Liska, who was the other person who understood Japanese, about what Akane was saying.

-"Hey, Liska, you can speak Hinowan too; could you tell me what Akane is saying?"- The white-furred warrior asked the slave. -"From what I see, it seems to be something very vulgar in her language."-

-"Eh... well..."-

The slave did not know how to answer the question, and she was somewhat awkward about it, as the language Akane used was very vulgar and had no direct equivalent in the local language, where the strongest insult that existed was "damn!" or "crap!", at worst. Despite this, she made the best attempt to translate Akane's coarse language.

-"sigh... I don't think you're going to like hearing this, Pyndan..."-

-"And why not?... heh, heh..."- The young warrior asked. -"We are adults now; I don't think something like vulgar language can shock me, especially coming from her."-

-"Well, in that case I'll tell you. Just don't say I didn't warn you."-

-"I'm all ears, Liska."-

-"Well, in this case, what Akane said first to Rial..."- The ginger-furred tabby feline girl quietly said. -"was something equivalent to saying... go have sex with yourself."-

-"Oh... I see..."- The young warrior chuckled at hear the meaning of Go Fuck Yourself in his language. -"And what did Akane say next, huh?"-

-"That's kind of hard to explain. Akane speaks in a very strange accent that she calls Kansai-ben, and even I have trouble understanding her at all, especially when she is angry as she is now."-

-"Well... that would explain A LOT about her... heh, heh, heh!"-

Pyndan continued to laugh, but without asking for further explanation of what Akane said, partly out of respect for the slave, who was more than uncomfortable with having to translate the human woman's foul language.

Back with Akane, Mother Sanna and Rial, the old woman realized that complaining about Akane's vocabulary was futile at that moment, considering that no one else besides those present understood the African-Japanese soldier's language, and could only smile mischievously at the human, and afterwards, she turned to her grandson.

-"All right, Rial, please help Akane with those lizards, if you would."-

-"Right away, grandmother!"- The grandson followed his grandmother's orders.

Quickly, Rial managed to calm the lizards so that they stopped licking Akane's face and moved away from her. Once the dinosaurs were out of the human woman's reach, and she could see what was going on, Akane immediately recognized one of the creatures...

-"WHAT?!"- Akane yelled in the local language, while pointing her finger on one of the velocirraptor-like beings, the one with lighter and yellow-like skin. -"YOU AGAIN?!"-

Akane's feline friends, on the other hand, were intrigued to see how the human seemed to physically know one of these lizards, as for them it was the first time these two creatures had set foot in their village, something that Liska pointed out to her.

-"Hey, Akane, have you already seen that lizard before?"- The blonde slave asked the human soldier.

-"Do I know it, dear?"- Akane responded angrily, as she wiped off the lizard drool that was still on her face with a handkerchief she had in her pants pocket. -"OF COURSE I DO! That damn overgrown lizard was following me when I was walking through a forest a moon ago, and I was about to kill it if I hadn't scared it off first!"-

-"Even so, it is strange that animal followed you to this village just like that."- Rial asked Akane about the possible reasons why those lizards followed her all the way to the village. -"Possibly you did something that caused them to try to look for you, Akane."-

Faced with that possibility, the human woman tried to remember why that lizard and her other companion might have followed her to the village. She quickly figured out what could have been the cause.

-"Well, now that you mention it,"- Akane explained. -"when I was in that forest, that yellow lizard followed me to a waterfall, where I stared at it for a few moments. Seeing that the animal looked hungry, I fed it with an onigiri (rice balls), and it seemed to like it, and while the animal was distracted, I left the place as quickly as possible, so it wouldn't follow me anymore."-

At the human's response, Pyndan explained to her the reason the lizard likely followed Akane all the way to their village.

-"That would explain a lot, Akane; normally, riding lizards have a very good sense of smell, and can follow a person or anything that they like, sometimes even to the end of the world if necessary."-

Akane Araki quickly grasped what her alien friend was trying to imply with it, and it was something she definitely didn't like in the least...

-"Crap, don't tell me that creature..."-

The white-furred warrior nodded affirmatively with his head.

-"That's right. Those lizards seem to like you, and I think you should keep them as your steeds."-

The felines, except for Liska and Sanna, laughed somewhat jokingly at the African-Japanese woman and the situation she found herself in, as they found it amusing that Akane had been followed by two hungry lizards. On the other hand, the human did not find that funny in the slightest, as it meant that she had to keep two creatures on her own that she had no idea how to care for, and her alien hosts seemed to be mocking her misfortune, as if she didn't have any more problems to deal with.

All that dilemma Akane reduced it to a simple word in Japanese.

-"(しもた！) HOLY SHIT!"- And then, the human facepalmed...

Meanwhile, while still laughing at Akane, Pyndan asked Liska what Akane said in Japanese.

-"Did she said an insult in Hinowan, Liska? chuckle..."-

The slave girl explained, this time with an annoyed tone, the meaning of that curse.

-"If you want to know what she said, she said something akin to Holy Excrement, or something like that..."-

-"Oh, I see... heh, heh!"- Pyndan continued with his chuckling at Akane's expense.

But Akane, who had enough of being laughed at, criticized and satirized by various members of the Highland tribe, ran back to the village, visibly furious and unwilling to say anything more. That was the limit of her tolerance for all that mockery, and since she could not say anything against it that could affect her later, Akane left the place in silence.

On the other hand, Liska, Akane's slave friend, perhaps in an act of being kind to her, tried to ask a few words towards her.

-"Where are you going, Akane?"-

Akane gave the slave an angry look, as she felt that she too was partaking in all that affected her, and the human retorted angrily in Japanese, as there was no word in the local language that could translate what she was feeling then.

-"(羞恥心があれば、うちのことは放っておくし、彼氏や同じくアホなパインダンの戯言には参加しないだろう、リスカちゃん。今、お前が親切にしてくれるなら、その口を閉じて、うちに話しかけないでよ！ わかった？) If you had any shame, you'd leave me alone, and you wouldn't participate in the crap of your mate, and the equally idiotic Pyndan, Liska-chan. Now, if you'd be so kind, shut your damn mouth and don't talk to me! Got it?"-

And with nothing more to say, Akane left the scene, leaving a deeply depressed Liska unable to say anything else, as her human friend was angry with her.

On the other hand, Rial didn't seem to care much about Akane's plight, and even didn't hesitate to make another insulting crack about the human stranger at her expense.

-"I guess what Akane needs is to find a lover to choke some..."-

But before he could say anything else, his own grandmother pulled one of her grandson's ears furiously at the insult...

-"OUUUUCH! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING, GRANDMOTHER?!"-

-"AND YOU STILL ASK WHY, YOU IDIOT?"- Mother Sanna yelled at Rial loudly at his own ear. -"We'd better leave Akane alone for a while. She lost a friend to bandits, and your attitude isn't helping her at all! How would you feel if YOU were in her place, and you had lost a loved one, huh?"-

Rial, once he felt his left ear after his grandmother yanked it, and when he saw her angry face, he had no choice but to agree with her.

-"All right... I agree with you... but you didn't have to pull my ear so hard."-

Seeing the grandmother's anger, Pyndan opted not to say anything about the matter... except to make a joke towards his comrade-in-arms.

-"That's what you get for cracking dirty jokes at the wrong time, Rial..."-

-"Shut up, will you?"- The black-furred warrior retorted angrily at his cousin-brother.

The old woman opted to end the conversation and she walked back to the village, prompting her young ones, Liska included, to do the same.

-"We'd all better head back to the village before I say something I might regret later. Is that clear, kids?"-

-"Yes, grandmother..."- Rial, Pyndan and Liska responded in unison towards Sanna.

Meanwhile on the road, as the four returned to the village, Pyndan asked Rial about the lizards that followed Akane.

-"What are you going to do with those lizards, huh?"- The white-furred feline asked to his blood brother. -"Are you going to let them go, we'll keep them, wait for Akane to do something with them, or what?"-

Rial made an angry pout, as he was still vexed with the human, and he merely said the following.

-"I will possibly keep one of them; I don't think Akane can take care of two at the same time."- The warrior responded, closing his eyes at that answer. -"The rest is up to grandmother, and that cheap foreign whore."-

Pyndan didn't agree with Rial calling Akane in such a vulgar way, but he preferred not to call him out on it to avoid making things worse, now that she had returned to the village in anger. The only thing everyone could do was to leave the human alone before the funeral of her late friend, Pvt. Noguchi, so that she could relieve herself in solitude.

-"sigh... Whatever you say."-

On the other hand, Liska, the only friend Akane had in the village, did not say a single word the whole way back. She felt guilty for having participated, even indirectly, not to mention that she had no choice in the matter, being a slave, in the teasing that Akane received from Rial and Pyndan, at least by having to translate her foul Japanese speech into the local language, something evident by her being visibly depressed.

And she felt she had to do something about it before her relationship with Akane could be worsened by that incident.

---

August 12th, AD 2299/11th day of the Dry Moon, 1748 (summer season), Near Akane's tent, 06:34 PM (late afternoon)

Akane Araki, the human soldier who had ended up against her will on an unknown world, and who, as fate would have it, had become the first human being to encounter intelligent life on another planet, returned to her tent, sad and angry as she had never been in her entire life.

Within a month, the African-born human woman had suffered the worst things that could befall any person: She had lost all her friends and superiors who were on the Asuka with her, including her best friend from the university, Kaguya. In addition, she had ended up on a planet unknown to mankind, inhabited by what appeared to be feline-like humanoid beings living in a culture similar to that of the Native Americans centuries before the conquest of America, and as a result, she would surely not be able to return to Earth, which meant that she was doomed to live on that world for the rest of her life.

And if this were not enough, she had to endure the mockery and opprobrium of the many people who lived in the tribe where she had been hosted, even if her social status was better than she could have expected, in stark contrast to slaves like Liska, and not to mention the many other humiliations and situations she had to endure. On top of that, the finding of Keisuke Noguchi's corpse had suddenly become the last straw for Akane, seeing that she had become the only human living in that world, and confirming that no one else could have survived the destruction of the Asuka.

In the face of all this, the only thing the woman could do was to shut herself in her tent, and once she was alone in her impromptu fireplace, she began to cry in a heartbroken and abject way.

Unlike other times when she cried, Akane's crying was much more intense and louder than even before, to such a degree that all the villagers could hear the painful cries of that human woman, which began to worry many of the people of the tribe, who did not know exactly the reason why Akane was going through such a state.

And one of the people in the tribe who were mainly concerned about Akane was precisely Liska, the only friend Akane had at the time since she came to this world.

She felt guilty of the situation the human was going through, being forced to translate her foul language to Pyndan, having no choice in the matter because she was a slave. Akane saw that behavior as a betrayal against her, and now Akane was furious and sad both with Liska and everyone around her.

The young slave felt that she must do something to remedy that, and, taking advantage of the fact that she had nothing to do for her mistress at that moment, she walked to the tent where Akane lived, in order to apologize to her, even though she knew that Akane would probably not value her presence in the least.

But before she could make her presence known to the human, she suddenly felt a hand grab her right wrist, which seemed determined to prevent Liska from entering Akane's home.

Turning around to find out who it was, the slave realized that the person... was someone very familiar to her.

-"Mistress?"-

-"Shhhh..."-

Liska realized that it was her mistress, Mother Sanna, who was stopping her from entering Akane's home. The old woman, in a low but kind voice, explained the reason why she did not want her slave to visit the human, who was still crying at that moment.

-"You better leave Akane alone."- The old feline woman said. -"There's nothing you, me or anyone else in this tribe can do for her."-

-"But... Akane is crying because..."- The slave girl replied in a sad tone.

-"The best thing you can do is to talk to her after the funeral is over."- Sanna interrupted the girl -"Right now, Akane needs to get it off her chest, and all you're going to do is make things worse."-

Liska did not appreciate her mistress's response, but at the same time, she knew that the old woman was right, to her own regret, so the only thing she could do was to comply with her orders and leave Akane alone for the time being.

-"sigh... Understood... mistress."-

-"Besides..."- The old woman did a pause. -"it's better for Akane to vent to herself than with someone else, if you know what I mean, dear."-

What the old woman was referring to was that Akane could have tried to physically assault Liska if she tried to apologize to the human, considering her state of mind, something that the young slave quickly realized, to her surprise, and she did not doubt in agreeing with her mistress about that eventuality that she had not envisaged due to her own regrets towards Akane.

-"I guess you're right, mistress."- Liska replied in a depressed tone. -"I don't think I would like to see Akane furious."-

-"In that case, let's leave her alone, shall we? We'd better go home then."-

-"Understood."-

When both women agreed to leave Akane alone to let off steam, despite how loud her crying was, both Liska and Mother Sanna decided to walk back to their home, without saying anything else, in order to prevent Akane from noticing their presence near her place.

Meanwhile, Akane Araki kept crying non-stop, while the rest of the village could only listen to her grief-stricken wailing, unable to do anything about her.

---

August 12th, AD 2299/11th day of the Dry Moon, 1748 (summer season), Kayce's tent, 07:00 PM (dawn)

One of those people who were listening to Akane's crying was Kayce and her family, among them was her younger cousin-sister Kebec, and Kayce's daughter Meelia, who were all eating their meals at the time while Akane's wailing could be heard throughout the village.

-"I wonder what happened to Akane to have her cry like that..."- Kayce asked herself aloud, visibly worried about her human friend.

On the other hand, Kebec was not the least bit concerned about the Earth woman, and as she ate her soup placidly, she made no bones about her contempt for the foreigner.

-"Well... someone should take a knife, go into that obnoxious stranger's teepee, and slit her throat so she'll shut the hell up."-

The woman's sister was visibly disturbed by that incredibly tasteless comment about Akane, but, to avoid antagonizing her, Kayce preferred a little more diplomatic approach.

-"Hey, do you need to be so rude about something like that?"- The brown-furred girl complained. -"Akane must surely be crying over the death of her friend that I found in the stream in the morning."-

-"And since when do you care about that Akane woman, huh?"- Kebec retorted back at her cousin-sister.

The young girl, knowing that her sister would not like the answer she could give her about her relationship with Akane, chose not to give any more details on the matter.

-"That's none of your business, Kebec."- Kayce replied in an annoyed tone. -"At least I have some empathy, unlike a certain person I know."-

Kebec didn't like the tip-off she received from her older sister, but she preferred to avoid making the issue bigger, and she chose not to disagree with her hostess, even if she did make her displeasure known in this way.

-"Hrmmm... whatever you say..."-

Meanwhile, Meelia, Kayce's only daughter, who was also listening to the African-Japanese soldier's crying, was, like her mother, visibly saddened and worried to hear all that from the human woman, and she decided to ask her mother something on the matter.

-"What is wrong with Miss Akane, mother?"-

Her mother, who was still preparing some more soup for everyone in her household to eat, could only sigh sorrowfully, and she reciprocated to her daughter in the most sincere way possible.

-"I really... do not know, dear."-

-"Is something hurting her?"- The little kitten girl asked.

-"I can only tell you that Akane lost a very dear friend to her... That's all I can tell you."-

The girl said nothing more, and perhaps, out of concern for her new friend, she could only hug her doll that she always brought with her, while she mumbled something about Akane.

-"I hope she gets better..."-

Kayce, her mother, warmly embraced her daughter, trying to comfort her that she was also concerned about the human woman on her own terms, just as she was equally worried about Akane as well.

-"I hope so too, Meelia, I hope so too..."-

But on the other hand, Kebec, the younger sister-cousin, was busy eating her soup, while she would have preferred to see Akane out of the village or dead.

-"Humh... I don't know what everyone in this tribe sees in that Akane girl."- Kebec cursed at herself, while her other relatives were ignoring her. -"If it were up to me, I'd kick that whore out of here so she'd stop crying and leave us alone."-

There were many things Kayce could tolerate from her sister, but if there was one thing she would not tolerate from her, it was Kebec using vulgar language in front of her daughter, something she let her know right away in a firm and stern manner.

-"And could you please not use such foul language in front of my daughter?"- The young girl said in a visibly angry tone.

Seeing her older sister-cousin seriously angry, Kebec was taken aback by her attitude, but she decided to comply with her orders, even if they were not to her liking. After all, this was her home, and Kebec was only her guest, sister or not.

-"Well, fine, have it your way, right?"-

---

August 12th, AD 2299/11th day of the Dry Moon, 1748 (summer season), Outside village, 09:00 PM (night)

Once the sun set over the horizon and the night broke, the funeral ceremonies in honor of the late Japanese Space Self-Defense Force soldier, Private Keisuke Noguchi, began as soon as possible.

All members of the Highland tribe, including the slaves, were present at the ceremony, not forgetting Akane Araki, who was the young Japanese soldier's commanding officer and traveling companion.

As requested by Akane to the tribe chief, the funeral ceremonies were performed according to the local traditions, instead of the Earth ones, which in the case of the deceased soldier, would have been those of the Shinto religion to which he belonged during his lifetime.

Noguchi's body was lying on a wooden funeral bed, with various flowers and objects surrounding it in a dignified manner, just as Akane wished his body to be mourned, and also as Noguchi himself would have wished to be remembered at the moment of his last farewell.

An important noteworthy fact about how Noguchi's body was dressed was that he was dressed with a buckskin, which was the common clothing worn by many of the tribesmen. In this way, it was a way of showing that Keisuke Noguchi was now an honorary member of the Highland tribe, even if it was after his death.

Another thing to note about the clothes worn by the human soldier's body was their color. The color of the buckskin he was wearing was completely white. That color is considered to be the color of mourning and death in Japanese culture, which was the only reference to the culture and religion of the deceased man from Japan. This was also the only thing that Akane added to the local funeral traditions regarding the way Noguchi would be mourned.

With that said, all the villagers surrounded the body of the young human as they waited for the actual ceremony to begin.

Akane, being the late soldier's traveling partner, was technically the person who was the focus of the attention of all the members of the village, as she would be the one to say her last farewell to Noguchi.

On that night of mourning, the human woman, instead of the clothes she usually wore almost every day, which normally consisted of military camouflage pants, army boots, tank tops, and green or black fingerless gloves, she wore a long-sleeved blouse with a somewhat long skirt and women's shoes without heels, all in black.

Also, instead of having her hair in a Japanese chonmage-style ponytail, or wearing dreadlocks, she left her long hair completely straight.

All that dark clothing that Akane wore contrasted with the clothes of her feline friends and neighbors, who dressed in the same clothes they normally wore every day, with the only exceptions of Chief Pownetkee and the Seneschal, who would be the ones to lead the funeral ceremony, and who wore traditional clothes used for such events.

Among the people at Akane's side were Mother Sanna, her slave Liska, as well as Pyndan and her younger sister Panka, who could only see Akane while she was still near the body of her friend Noguchi, shedding tears for him. On the other hand, Rial, who did not sympathize with Akane at all, was behind his grandmother, just watching the ceremony, but trying to keep a prudent distance between him and the human, because he had nothing to say about the matter, and also because he did not want to say anything that could make her angry in that moment of pain for her.

At that moment, Liska, Mother Sanna's slave, and Akane's best friend, timidly approached the African-Japanese soldier in order to console her, and she took her left hand in order to make her feel that she also shared her grief for the death of her human friend, even though hours earlier the two had a heated row in which Akane insulted her by thinking that Liska was complicit in the taunts that Rial and Pyndan were making towards her by translating her vulgar language into the local tongue, when in fact the slave girl did not have much choice in the matter.

Akane, for her part, was not upset by her alien friend's show of affection, and without another word, the human also squeezed her hand, indicating that she appreciated Liska's act on her behalf.

-"I am very sorry about the death of your friend Keisuke, Akane."- The ginger-furred girl said to the African-Japanese woman, who was still sad.

Akane Araki, who was still staring at the body of the deceased Japanese Space Ranger, could only manage to say something to her slave friend, in a voice that was halfhearted and full of sorrow.

-"Thank you... sob... thank you very much..."-

Liska was not the only person who wanted to give Akane her sympathy for Pvt. Noguchi: Her mistress, Mother Sanna, also walked up to the human, and took her right hand, in order to also indicate her way of sharing her grief for the dead young human soldier.

-"On this night, we all feel your sorrow for your friend, Akane dear."-

The human, seeing that the old woman also sought to comfort her, had only words of gratitude for the alien, which she also said in a whispered manner.

-"Thank you... grandmother..."-

But there were other people in the tribe who did not share Akane's mourning for Noguchi: among them was Kebec, who only looked down on the whole ceremony towards the deceased human, for the fact that he was an unknown foreigner, and also because he was related to Akane, whom she despised in a very special way.

-"Oh, dear, I don't understand why the hell we are here mourning for an outsider we don't even know, dammit!"- The white-furred girl said with a very arrogant way aloud, not caring in the least about the whole ceremony -"He wasn't even from our own tribe, let alone a feline like us, for gods' sake!"-

Her older cousin-sister, Kayce, was at her side, but she preferred not to say anything about the whole, partly to avoid angering Kebec further, and partly out of respect for both Akane and the deceased human for whom the funeral ceremony was in his honor.

The latter did not seem to like that her sister seemed to be ignoring her, so she drew Kayce's attention to her.

-"Hey, are you listening to me, Kayce?"-

The coffee-furred girl did not seem to have paid attention to her sister, and when she looked at her, her look was one of annoyance, for it was more than evident that Kayce had no interest in playing along with her, much less at a moment like that funeral.

-"What's wrong? I didn't notice what you were saying."- The young girl said in a very wry tone to Kebec.

Kebec was not pleased with being ignored like that by her own sister, and she escalated the tone of the discussion as a result.

-"Were you not listening to me, or are you deaf, huh?!"-

Seeing that the ceremony in honor of Keisuke Noguchi was about to begin, and also because she did not want to listen to Kebec talking nonsense about the funeral, much less be criticized by her, Kayce made her position known in the strongest way she could do at that moment.

-"Would you PLEASE shut your mouth for a moment, would you?"- Kayce said in a very severe, angry tone to her young cousin-sister. -"The ceremony is about to begin, and I'm not in the mood to listen your ranting. We can talk about whatever you want to talk about in private, is that clear?"-

Seeing that Kayce was visibly upset, and that she did not intend to play along with her regarding both Akane and the deceased soldier, Kebec was visibly surprised like she was never before in her life, and she, afterwards, only managed to say something in a somewhat sheepishly manner, seeing her sister's displeasure.

-"All right... whatever you say..."-

And so, the funeral rite in honor of the late human soldier from Japan, Keisuke Noguchi, began as both Chief Pownetkee and his Seneschal said a few words about the human they were mourning that night, the chief being the first to speak.

-"We are all gathered here tonight to pay tribute to this young man who lost his life while exploring unknown places. The only thing we know about him is the name he bore in life: Keisuke Noguchi. He was the friend of our guest, Akane Araki, and, according to her wishes, and according to what she told us about her him, he wished in life that he would be mourned at the time of his death according to our traditions."-

Immediately after, the Seneschal stepped forward, close to Noguchi's body, and placed his gaze on Akane.

-"Akane Araki, being you the only person in this tribe who knew this man in life, do you have a few words to share with us about him?"-

The black woman strode two steps ahead, and confirmed her desire to speak.

-"Yes, sir."- Akane said, still with a sad tone.

Meanwhile, both Liska and Sanna, her friends, let go of Akane's hands, and they gave a few words of encouragement to her.

-"Good luck, Akane."- The old woman cheered the human.

-"Thank you..."-

-"Please, Akane, take heart."- Liska followed suit as well.

Akane sighed a bit...

-"Thank you... sweetie."-

The human woman from Japan stood on the left side of the funeral bed where the body of Keisuke Noguchi was being mourned by the entire tribe, and after a brief pause, Akane said a few words dedicated to the late soldier, who was her subordinate on the Asuka during her trip to New Haiti.

-"Noguchi... no... or rather I should call you by your name, Keisuke: You always had many dreams of seeing the world, and the reason you traveled with me was to leave your home and see new horizons. You were always a very optimistic boy, and for the short time I knew you, there was nothing you weren't afraid of..."

Then, Akane did another brief pause, and then she resumed her talk.

-"I don't understand what happened and the reasons why you ended up losing your life, but I could see that, whatever happened, I doubt very much that you died without putting up a fight first. In any case, may this ceremony serve to recognize your courage that you had in life, and that your death will not be forgotten, neither by me, nor by your family, nor by anyone in this tribe..."-

And suddenly, Akane said the following words in English, one of the languages Akane spoke, so that her words could only be "heard", so to speak metaphorically, by the human's late friend, and no one else, not even the people of the tribe who understood Japanese, would know what Akane was saying.

-"Private Keisuke Noguchi, born in Sapporo, Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan. A member of the Japanese Space Self-Defense Force, as I, Sergeant First Class Akane Araki of the 1st Space Ranger Regiment from Osaka, as your immediate superior, honor your sacrifice, and together with this tribe, I can say without a doubt..."-

Akane, immediately after, clenched her fists with a mixture of sadness and anger, as she then continued with her elegy to Noguchi.

-"...that if I ever find those responsible for your death, I swear, by all that is sacred to me, your murderers will pay for it with their lives, as they taste the steel of my sword."-

Then, Akane glanced at her alien friends and neighbors, and she politely bowed to them.

-"That's all."- Akane concluded her words, this time in the local language.

All the members of the tribe, especially Liska and Mother Sanna, who understood Japanese, had no idea of the last words Akane pronounced towards Noguchi, as she spoke in English, something that had left them bewildered for a short while. Pyndan, who was behind Liska at that moment, asked her about what the human said.

-"Hey, Liska, do you know what Akane just said before?"-

The slave nodded her head in denial.

-"No. She spoke in a language I don't know."-

-"It is possible that she said those words in an ancient language used at funerals, which is normal in other tribes and in other countries."- Sanna also gave her opinion about the origin of Akane's words, unaware that Akane was speaking in English, and that those words were just a way to disguise the fact that the human was speaking secret information without anyone else knowing its meaning.

Akane, for her part, returned to the place where Liska, Mother Sanna, Pyndan and her other friends and acquaintances were, still noticeably sorrowful. Liska decided to lift her spirits in some way, to make her feel that she and the others had her back after all.

-"Good job, Akane."-

The human thanked her friend for her words of encouragement in a simple way.

-"Thank you, dear."-

Mother Sanna, on the other hand, was somewhat curious to know what Akane had said in English during the last part of her elegy to Noguchi.

-"May I know what you said before you finished your words to him, Akane?"- The old woman asked the human soldier. -"I've never heard that language before in my life, and it's obviously not Hinowan."-

Akane, for obvious reasons, was not going to explain what she had said in English, so she was forced to lie to the old woman to avoid having to explain that she knew exactly what her late friend was really up to, as did Akane herself.

-"Well... let's say that I dedicated some very personal words to Noguchi, and the language in which I said them is a language that we used to communicate with other cultures where I come from."-

-"You mean, it's some kind of trade language?"- Pyndan asked as well to the human.

-"Mmmmm... you could say so."- Akane then said the following -"And that's all I'm going to say about it."-

Seeing that Akane would remain tight-lipped about what she said at the funeral, none of her friends wanted to delve any further into the matter.

Meanwhile, the Seneschal gave way to the last part of the funeral ceremony in honor of the deceased Japanese soldier, something he made known aloud to the entire tribe.

-"Now, let us all say our final farewell to this man, who in life was named Keisuke Noguchi, and pray that his soul reaches the heavens, and may he rest in peace."-

All the tribesmen approached Noguchi's body, and suddenly, they made a circle around the human's body. Then, they all held hands, as they all looked up to the sky. Akane also did the same, holding Liska's hand on her left side, and Sanna's one on her right side, and following the instructions of the old woman, the human also carefully performed the ceremony.

-"Finally, in keeping with our traditions, let us now say a final word to the gods, so they may grant Keisuke Noguchi's soul a place to rest in the afterlife."-

And so, all the inhabitants of the tribe, Akane included, prayed a funeral prayer aloud dedicated to the gods they worshiped, which was said in a solemn version of the local language, asking the gods to grant eternal rest to the soul of the late human soldier from Japan, Keisuke Noguchi. And so, everyone continued to pray in this manner, without stopping at any time, for the hour-long procession.

For Akane Araki, being able to pray next to those alien beings, even if she was not particularly religious to begin with, was somewhat comforting in a way, because it allowed her to feel that, despite everything, the other members of that tribe shared her pain, and, with certain exceptions, like Kebec's, for obvious reasons, many members of the tribe were willing to be with her through thick and thin.

And for that human woman, regardless of what she thought of her feline friends, that was what meant the most to her at that harsh point in her life.

---

August 12th, AD 2299/11th day of the Dry Moon, 1748 (summer season), Outside village, 10:30 PM (night)

Once the funeral ceremony was over, Keisuke Noguchi's body was taken to a place where it would be buried far away from the village. By tribal tradition, only the people who were going to bury Noguchi could go to the cemetery where that human body would be buried, although Akane knew exactly where it would be placed, in case his body would someday be taken to Earth in case she had to return to her world.

And so, all the members of the Highland tribe returned to their homes to rest, after that moving ceremony dedicated to the memory of that human who was Akane's comrade-in-arms in space during their trip to New Haiti, and when both were on their way back to Earth, as well as Kaguya, her friend from the university.

All of them... except for Akane.

In fact, Mother Sanna was the first to notice that Akane had not gone back to her tent, something that worried her greatly, considering the human woman's state of mind, for she did not know what Akane might be doing in such dire circumstances for that Earth soldier.

Looking to the north by pure chance, the old feline woman quickly realized where Akane was: she was sitting on a lonely rock, almost a quarter of a kilometer away from the village, quite possibly wanting to be alone for a few moments, with no one else listening to her.

Obviously, considering the time of day, and the possibility that she might be attacked by bandits or wild beasts, the old lady began to worry about the human girl in her own way.

And Liska, her slave and also Akane's friend, also noticed the same thing as well.

-"I think we should accompany Akane for a few moments. I wouldn't want anything to happen to her if we left her alone there on that rock."- The Siamese old lady said at her slave.

-"But..."- Liska responded in a concerned tone, not wanting to incur the wrath of her if Sanna and she were to disturb her in her grief. -"Do you think this could be a good idea, my mistress? She might want to be alone, after what happened to her friend."-

-"Yes, I know..."- The old lady said at Liska. -"But it should also be our way of telling her that we also share her sorrow, and that we will always be with her, in good and bad times, whenever she needs us."-

The slave girl sighed a bit.

-"I guess you are right."- Liska replied, still concerned on angering the human. -"Let's just hope she understands that."-

-"Yes, I hope so too."-

Thus, both women walked to where Akane was sitting, on that lonely rock, where the human soldier was already sitting with no one else by her side. As they drew closer to the rock, Mother Sanna and Liska realized that Akane was singing a relatively sad song in Japanese, which was only backed by the sound of the night wind that could be heard in that lonely place.

Although both women understood that language, they did not know the lyrics of the song that Akane sang in a depressed and somewhat broken voice. But for that woman from Japan, that song was a very well known tune for her, because it was a very famous melody from the beginning of the 21st century, at the end of the 2010s.

The name of that song was Baka Mitai (I've Been a Fool), from the game Ryu ga Gotoku (known as Yakuza outside Asia).

I've been a fool, and you've been childish

You fell down, you got hurt chasing sweeter dreams

Never could hide the truth in your eyes

That's how I knew that smile was a lie

I LOVE YOU is something you never say

Couldn't get it out, always just pulled away

So then why, please won't you tell me why

You could find the words to say goodbye

I'm such a mess, I'm lost, I'm no good at this

I'm in love, still in love, still in love with you

Hard as I try, I can't even drink this pain away

Memories of you, twisting my view, I've been a fool

After singing that song, Akane began to cry her eyes out...

-"I am such an idiot... sob... a fuckin' idiot..."- Akane cursed to herself in Japanese. -"This is my punishment for doin' a lot of really stupid things in my life... sob... and I think I'm gonna spend the rest of my life jammed up in this fuckin' place."-

But before the African-Japanese woman could continue lamenting her plight, she suddenly heard a beautiful female voice behind her, singing the same song in her own language.

馬鹿みたい、子供なのね 夢を追って傷ついて 嘘が下手なくせに、笑えない笑顔みせた

I love youも、ろくに言わない 口下手でほんまに不器用 なのになのにどうして サヨナラは言えたの

Immediately after, Akane Araki heard another female voice, this time an older one, singing the last verse of the song, also in Japanese:

だめだね、だめよ、だめなのよ あんたが、好きで好きすぎて どれだけ、強いお酒でも 歪まない思い出が、馬鹿みたい

Akane, looking south, realized that the people who were singing "Baka Mitai" with her were the last people she could imagine who could sing that song, considering the original context as a song from an old video game from the 21st century, and the fact that the video game character who originally sang that song, Kazuma Kiryu, sang it in the game in-universe in a karaoke scene.

-"Liska? Grandmother?"-

When Akane saw those two alien women, she could not mask her surprise that those two wanted to sing such an ancient song next to her human friend. Before Akane could say another word, Liska and her mistress approached Akane and sat down on the rock, each on one side of her, with Liska sitting on Akane's left side, and Mother Sanna on her right.

-"Akane..."- The young slave girl began the chat with her Earth friend. -"First of all, I want to tell you one thing..."-

The human soldier, still surprised to see that Liska could sing "Baka Mitai" with such a beautiful voice, only managed to say the following.

-"What do you want to say?"- Akane said with a somewhat somber tone.

The ginger-furred girl, lowering her head in shame, said the following, also with equally sad, ashamed voice.

-"I want to apologize if I may have offended you by translating your insults to Pyndan this afternoon."- Liska said to Akane in a very sorrow-filled tone. -"It was not my intention to participate at any time in the taunts he and Rial made towards you, but I hope you understand that it was my obligation when someone asks me to translate you."-

Akane remained silent for a few seconds, and after listening to her friend's explanation, the African-Japanese woman finally gave her answer.

-"I understand you, sweetie... I know it wasn't your fault..."- Akane replied at her slave friend. -"The blame is on me for blowing things out of proportion because, at that hour, I was very angry and sad at the same time, and I wasn't in the mood for jokes. Besides, I did wrong to insult you in my language..."-

Liska smiled at the human, apparently not making a big deal out of the incident where Akane called her names in Japanese in a vulgar manner.

-"Don't worry, Akane. I think I understand how you feel, and I also guess I'm more than used to your foul language..."-

Akane also smiled in a sly way, for at least she admitted that her vocabulary was not the cleanest one could say, at least when she spoke in Japanese.

-"Yeah, I know that, Liska-sweetie... heh, heh, heh!"-

The young slave girl was not the only person who wished to have a word with the human soldier, for Mother Sanna also wished to speak with Akane.

-"I also wish to apologize to you... Akane..."-

The African-Japanese woman (and Liska as well) were more than astonished to see that the old woman was willing to apologize to her, because she did not expect such attitude from a revered old woman like Mother Sanna, who appeared to be a person who was not willing to tolerate being insulted behind her back, but she was not going to apologize for her decisions, something that was not the case in that time.

-"But... but..."- Akane stuttered a bit after hearing her apologizing her. -"Why do you want to apologize to me, grandmother? I think you were right to criticize me for insulting you behind your back this morning, and for cursing in Hinowan in the afternoon."-

-"You are right, Akane."- The old Siamese-looking lady said at the human girl. -"I was right to call you out for insulting me in Hinowan behind my back, and for cursing in your language this afternoon..."-

Then, Sanna sighed a bit, and she continued.

-"...what was wrong was to humiliate you like that by speaking in Hinowan as well in also a rude way, especially when you were in such a fragile state of mind after the death of your friend Keisuke, and especially after doing it in front of everyone, especially today in the afternoon with the whole lizards' thing..."-

Akane did not know how to respond to this, and she preferred to let the old woman be the first to express her emotions to her.

-"I have a very strong explosive personality like you too, Akane dear, but I also know admit when I said something that could offend someone else, like you, and even more at the wrong time, so..."-

Sanna looked at Akane with a sad face...

-"Can you forgive this silly old woman for her off-color words, Akane?"-

The human looked at the older feline lady warmly, for she did not expect her to apologize in such a personal way to her, and quickly Akane said what she felt was the right thing to say to her.

-"Of course I forgive you, grandmother. I'm not that mean, you know."- Akane replied with a smile in her face. -"Besides, you were right, although I think things got messed up today because of the whole Noguchi thing, in addition to my own, maybe no one here was in a good mood after seeing a dead body coming from who-knows-where..."-

The old woman smiled back at Akane to see that the human did not hold a grudge against her for her rudely spoken Japanese words, and for criticizing Akane in front of everyone else for using foul language out loud in her language.

-"I see, Akane..."- Mother Sanna replied at the human soldier. -"Thank you for your kind words, young girl..."-

-"It's no a big deal, grandmother."- The human followed her back. -"Besides... nobody's perfect, you know."-

-"Heh, heh... I suppose you're right, Akane dear..."-

But before the conversation could continue, the three women saw a female-looking silhouette from the village walking towards them. Immediately after, Akane realized who that silhouette was, and she welcomed that person...

-"Hey, looks like we've got company..."- The human soldier said with a sly smile.

When Mother Sanna looked in the direction of the silhouette, she realized that person was also very well-known to her.

-"What are you doing here at this time of night, Kayce?"- The old lady asked at the young brown-furred girl, who walked to the place when Akane, Liska and Sanna were talking alone.

None of the three expected the visit of that young maiden, for they knew the relationship she had with Kebec, whom Liska personally hated, and whose feeling was also mutual among those girls.

The young slave girl, personally, looked at Kayce with distrust, believing that she would possibly come to mock or bully her, just as she and her cousin-sister had done since the day Liska became a slave a year ago.

But this time, the things turned out being quite different...

-"I want to talk with Akane, to offer my sympathy for the death of her friend..."- The young girl looked at the human woman with a quite sad and worried tone in her voice.

And then, she looked at the slave girl with the same face as well.

-"...and also to talk to Liska too..."-

The latter was surprised to hear that Kayce wanted to talk to her personally, and without any desire to attack her in any way, something she had never imagined in her, whom she considered to be of the same cloth as her sister.

Because of the above, Liska could not help but look at her with scorn and anger, for she could not forget all the taunts she and Kebec had made about her all that time, and she had her doubts whether Kayce really wanted to apologize, or just wanted to look for some reason to harass her more.

-"What do you want to talk to me about?"- The slave addressed Kayce with her arms crossed, and visibly angry with her, for she was suspicious of her sincerity. -"Have you really come to speak sincerely with me, or have you only come to pester me more?"-

The young girl dropped her head low in a sad and notoriously sorrowful way, and she responded to the slave's question in a voice that was faltering and full of grief...

-"...sob...sob...-"

Liska was surprised to see that Kayce, whom she considered as bad a bully as her younger cousin-sister, was shedding tears of regret for her...

-"Are... are you all right, Kayce?"- The young slave said at the brown-furred girl in a very concerned tone.

-"...sob... sob... the truth is..."-

The girl retorted back, with tender and sorrowful tears in her eyes...

-"I'm such an IDIOT! sob... sob... Please forgive me for saying all those horrible things about you, and for helping my sister to harass you! ...sob..."-

Kayce continued with her crying...

-"I came to realize... with Akane... sob... how wrong I was to bully you like that... and all the horrible things I've said and I done to you since you came into our tribe... I know you must be having a hard time here... and I... for being such a fool... sob... I kept pestering you just to play along with Kebec and not look bad to her..."-

-"Ka..Kayce..."-

Liska said that with a very surprised and worried look in her face, since she never expected that a bully like Kayce to try to make amends with her in such a very likely shameful way for her.

-"I realized how foolish I was... when I insulted Akane indirectly because of her skin color this morning when we were at the stream... not realizing that I also share her skin color... sob..."- The girl continued with her grief. -"And when I saw you and Akane together during Keisuke's funeral... I realized how much you and Akane care for each other... despite how different you are..."-

Immediately afterwards, the young tearful maiden looked at Akane thoroughly, but without stopping her weeping.

-"I was also listening to you crying this afternoon, Akane... sob... and I know that for you... just like Liska... it must be very painful for you to be here without being able to return to your home... and even more so when someone dear to you has died..."-

Akane took a deep breath, for she was somewhat embarrassed to hear that her crying had been heard throughout the village, even if in that case Kayce was more concerned about her human friend's suffering than the fact that she was crying so noticeably.

-"But another more important thing for me... sob... is that I don't want my daughter to end up being someone like me, a woman who likes to humiliate others... and that's something I've been meditating all this day..."-

Finally, Kayce focused her gaze again on Liska, this time unable to stop crying, while her voice became cracked and full of grief and regret.

-"That's why... sob... can you forgive me for all the stupid things I've done against you, Liska?"-

And with no more words to say, the young brown-furred girl broke into a heartbroken cry, feeling that she possibly did not deserve an apology from the young slave for all the harm she may have caused her.

Then, Liska, visibly moved by the apology of that girl she considered until that moment as a irremediable bully, stood up from her place next to Akane, and without thinking twice, she hugged Kayce fondly, trying to calm her down, and thus showing that she forgave her at the same time.

-"It's all right, Kayce... I forgive you... you don't have to cry anymore..."-

-"Re... really, Liska?"-

-"Yes"- The young slave reassured her. -"Besides, I think we are such a fools after all..."-

Hearing that peculiar answer, the young damsel tried to wipe away her tears, and tried to put on a faint smile, seeing that the slave was right: all those women felt they were fools in one way or another, and that was something that everyone admitted in one way or another.

-"Heh... I guess you are right..."-

Akane, on the other hand, decided to say something about the matter in her own way.

-"Hey, Kayce dear,"- The human woman addressed Kayce in a smile as well. -"Now that you've got that off your chest, wouldn't you like to spend some time with us here in this place?"-

The young villager looked at Akane, and for a few moments, she didn't know what to say about it...

-"Well... uh... I don't know..."-

-"Don't worry, we won't take up too much of your time."- Mother Sanna also joined the chat. -"We just want you to spend some time with us, understand?"-

Kayce timidly nodded with her head.

-"All right... if you say so..."-

And so, as Liska returned to her original place beside Akane, Kayce sat down on the rock where the human was lying beside her, leaving the three alien women sitting around the foreigner woman from another planet.

Thus, the four women looked carefully at the two moons that shone in the firmament of that unknown planet, something that did not cease to surprise the human, for coming from a planet like Earth, where there was only one moon, or the planet where she worked until a few months ago, New Haiti, which did not have a single moon, a fact she was quick to point out.

-"You know, girls,"- Akane commented at the alien felines. -"but where I come from it is not so easy to see a sky as beautiful as in this place."-

-"And why, Akane?"- Kayce asked at the human.

-"It's a bit difficult to explain, but where I come from, the sky is not very easy to see. Besides, my place of origin is very big, and beside that, one doesn't always have time to see the sky and enjoy it as we are doing right now."-

-"From the way you say it, I feel that your home of origin must be a very sad place."- The young girl responded when she noticed that Akane said those words in a somewhat plain, depressed tone.

-"Heh, heh!"- Akane giggled a bit. -"It's not that it's exactly a sad place, sweetie. More like it's a very boring place at times."-

-"What do you mean by "boring", Akane dear?- Mother Sanna asked as well.

-"Well..."- The human hesitated a bit while trying to describe her hometown, Osaka, in broad terms. -"it's a place I already know very well, and there's nothing that surprises or interests me anymore. That's why I became an explorer, in order to discover new places, and broaden my horizons a bit."-

-"And that's why you accidentally ended up here, Akane?"- Liska asked as well at the human Space Ranger.

-"Mmmmm..."- Akane mused a bit before responding to her friend. -"You could say so, to put it simply."-

-"I see."-

Then, Akane took another careful look at the sky, and with a more contemplative voice, she turned to her feline friends.

-"But changing the subject, I would like to thank all of you for caring about me, even though I am a complete stranger, and sometimes I can be very rude to you, despite your hospitality."- Akane said in a very humble way towards her friends. -"And even more for taking the trouble to organize a funeral for my friend Noguchi, even though you never knew him in life."-

Mother Sanna, being the eldest, addressed Akane in a very kind manner, explaining to her the reason for her tribe's attitude towards the human and her late friend.

-"Don't worry about that, Akane..."- The old woman said at the soldier with a smile in her face. -"We know that you are going through a terrible time, that surely you must be very scared of us, in the same way that we may also be a little scared of you because you are very different in many way..."-

-"Well... I'd be lying if I said no, grandmother... And I don't blame you either if you guys are afraid of me, because, to be honest, I am also very afraid of what might happen to me here..."- Akane explained her fears. -"I don't know your local traditions, and almost everything related to your species is completely foreign to me... and for the same reason, there are times when many of the things that happen in this tribe bother me, or even scare me like hell... And if my attitude bothers you, I apologize in advance for that."-

-"Thank you, Akane dear."- The old woman was happy to hear that Akane also admitted her shortcomings as a person in a sincere manner. -"Besides... our tribe considers the hospitality we offer to strangers like you as sacred, and I sincerely believe that you are not a bad person to deny you such hospitality."-

-"Really, Mother Sanna?"- Akane asked with a sly smile in her face. -"Especially after all the stupid things I've done lately?"-

-"Yes."- The old healer said in a proudful way, while closing her eyes. -"Your only problem is that you are very scared because you are in a different place, and that's why it's hard for you to accept our customs. If we were all in your place, I think we would act the same way you do in the same situation you are in now."-

The human had to fully admit that the old feline woman was completely in the right when she stated that Akane behaved in a very confrontational way because, for that woman coming from another world, all the traditions and customs of her feline hosts were completely alien from her point of view, and it was because of her that, for the aliens' point of view, Akane's behavior could be very strange or even annoying for them, even if they tried to adapt to the human's personality in the way it was possible for them to do so.

At those words, Akane was completely candid, and accepted the whole thing without further question.

-"I admit that this is all true. I am very sorry if my behavior has bothered all of you at times."-

Immediately afterwards, Liska, the slave, took Akane's left hand affectionately, and she said a few words to encourage her.

-"Don't worry Akane, we all make mistakes, all right?"-

The human looked at her friend, and she smiled in the sweetest possible way.

-"You're damn right, sweetie..."- Akane then giggle a bit.

-"Thank you, Akane..."- The slave returned the smile to her.

After all that, Kayce also wanted to talk about something she was curious about.

-"By the way, girls, I have a question. When I was on my way here, I noticed that you were singing a song in Akane's language."- The young maiden asked about that song in Japanese. -"May I know what song it was, if you don't mind telling me?"-

-"You mean, that song I, Liska and the grandmother where singing a few minutes ago?"-

-"Yes."-

-"Eh... well... uh... how to explain it to you..."- The human scratched her head.

Akane knew that explaining the context of a song like "Baka Mitai" was going to be very difficult, due to its origin coming from a game about the Japanese Yakuza, and more so considering its in-universe origins as a karaoke song. And that's without explaining what karaoke is all about in the first place.

-"Well, I'm going to be honest with you girls: The song is called "Baka Mitai" in my language, and it comes from a very old story from my homeland called "Ryu ga Gotoku."-

-"Baka Mitai? Ryu ga Gotoku?"- Liska asked, since she also knew Japanese, but she didn't understand the context of such words -"If my knowledge of Hinowan doesn't fail me, the song translates as "I'm Such a Fool" and the title of the story translates as "Like a Dragon", doesn't it?"-

-"That's right."- Akane confirmed. -"It's a little difficult to describe the story in simple terms, but here goes: It's about an ex-criminal, who, after being released from prison, gets involved in a lot of trouble with his former associates, conspiracies and various kinds of problems. The title of the story is named after the main character, named Kazuma, has the nickname "The Dragon of Dojima", because he has a tattoo of a dragon painted on his back, in the same way that I have a tattoo of a phoenix painted on mine."-

-"You mean the paint on your back?"- Kayce asked about Akane's phoenix tattoo she saw in the morning after finding Keisuke Noguchi's dead body.

-"Exactly, but I am not or was not a criminal like Kazuma. Mine is for a different reason, mind you."-

-"Oh, I see."- The brown-furred girl responded. -"Then, what is the meaning of that painting on your back, Akane?"-

-"Well, that tattoo has a very big meaning for me, but in brief terms, here it goes: What you see is a firebird or phoenix, which is a mythological being from one of the many mythologies of my place of origin, and represents death and rebirth."- The human pointed her tattoo. -"In few words, this paint means that no matter how many times I fall, I will always rise again, just as the phoenix is always reborn from its ashes."-

The alien girl looked at Akane's tattoo, and she couldn't help but make an additional remark about its meaning, considering the human host's personality.

-"Considering how you are, that paint really suits you..."- Kayce giggled a bit.

-"Thank you."-

-"And back to the subject of the song, may I know the meaning of the song that you and the rest were singing earlier?"-

-"Eh, well..."- Akane hesitated a bit. -"...basically... that song is a romantic song."-

-"A romantic song, you say?"- Kayce asked again.

-"Yeah."- Akane responded at her alien friend's question. -"It is about a person who is abandoned by their loved one, and starts drinking in order to forget that person, but to no avail."-

-"Hmmmm... sounds interesting."-

-"Do you like to sing it with us, to know what it's about?"-

Kayce was very surprised, as she did not expect Akane to ask her to sing that old song with her, Liska and Mother Sanna, and although she had no objection to do so, there was a small problem that she would explain next.

-"The only problem is that, although I know how to sing... is that I just don't know how to speak Hinowan."-

-"Don't worry, you just follow our voices, and leave the rest to us. Right, girls?"-

Then, Liska, the slave girl, looked at Kayce with a smile.

-"Yes. Besides, I've heard that you sing very well, right?"-

-"Well..."- The brown-furred maiden said with a timid tone. -"I can't deny that I can sing well, but... I think you sing better than me, to be honest."-

-"Oh..."- The slave girl retorted with an also timid reply at her. -"Thank you, Kayce... I never thought anyone would say that I sing better than anyone else."-

-"In that case,"- Mother Sanna interrupted both girls. -"why don't we sing all four to hear you, dear?"-

Akane, the human, also nodded her head at the old woman's idea.

-"I agree with you. When I heard you sing just a few moments ago, I didn't imagine you had such a beautiful voice, Liska-sweetie..."-

The young slave wagged her tail in nervousness, and she hesitated for a moment to respond.

-"Thank you, Akane... and you too, my mistress..."-

-"Well, in that case, it's settled."- Akane said aloud. -"Since I'm the one who knows the lyrics of the whole song, I'll start first, is that okay with you girls?"-

-"Hmmmmm... sounds good for me."- The old lady agreed with the soldier.

-"We also agree."- Both Liska and Kayce followed suit at the same time.

After a brief pause, Akane prepared to sing her part of the song.

-"In that case, I start first. Kayce, you just follow our voices and try to sing afterwards, all right?"-

-"Understood, Akane."-

And so, Akane started singing the song "Baka Mitai", beginning with the first verse.

I've been a fool, and you've been childish

You fell down, you got hurt chasing sweeter dreams

Never could hide the truth in your eyes

That's how I knew that smile was a lie

Then, Liska followed suit with the next verse in Japanese.

I LOVE YOU is something you never say

Couldn't get it out, always just pulled away

So then why, please won't you tell me why

You could find the words to say goodbye

And Mother Sanna continued with the rest of the song by herself.

I'm such a mess, I'm lost, I'm no good at this

I'm in love, still in love, still in love with you

Hard as I try, I can't even drink this pain away

Memories of you, twisting my view, I've been a fool

Afterwards, the human sang the other lyrics of the song that are not normally sung in the game's original karaoke.

I've been a fool; honestly, I've been such a fool Filled to the brim with faith in you

I play the part of the strong woman and bathe in the suffocating night air

Since I've been alone, three years have passed

Even the city streets have changed

But even so, even so, why is it I'm still left behind in the past?

Really, you're a no-good man, no good at all

My matching ring, I take it off Serves you right!

I'm relieved Yet naively I still wait—I've been a fool

Kayce, upon hearing the full lyrics of the song, knew that she had a very challenging task in singing a song in a language she did not know.

-"Akane, I don't know if I can sing that whole song on my own..."- The girl said in a somewhat worried voice.

The human, seeing that her feline friend was going to have a hard time singing that song in Japanese, could only smile warmly, fully understanding her situation.

-"In that case, just follow our voices as I said at the beginning."- Akane then explained why she understood her alien friend's struggles on singing that old song. -"I also struggled a lot when I learned to sing that song, because I didn't know how to speak Hinowan at that time, and "Baka Mitai" was the first one I learned to sing on my own, so I understand your problem, dear."-

-"You didn't know how to speak Hinowan at first, Akane?"- The alien feline girl asked the human soldier abut her original fluency on Japanese.

-"Yes..."-

But Akane didn't want to discuss that issue at that moment, as she just wanted to concentrate on singing that song for the time being.

-"...but that's a topic for another day. Now let's concentrate on singing that song, shall we?"-

-"Understood, Akane."-

And so, the four women sang at the same time the whole song in Japanese, all singing in unison without straying at any time.

馬鹿みたい、子供なのね 夢を追って傷ついて 嘘が下手なくせに、笑えない笑顔()みせた

I love youも、ろくに言わない 口下手でほんまに不器用 なのになのにどうして サヨナラは言えたの

だめだね、だめよ、だめなのよ あんたが、好きで好きすぎて どれだけ、強いお酒でも 歪まない思い出が、馬鹿みたい

-"Hey, Kayce, you're not bad at singing in Hinowan."- Liska said, congratulating her reformed new friend.

-"Oh... thank you."-

-"All right, girls, we're just need to finish this last part, so give it your last effort!"- Akane said quite excited, and with a smile on her face.

-"Understood!"-

馬鹿みたい 本当ばかね あんた信じるばかりで 強い女のふり 切なさの夜風浴びる

一人になって ３年が過ぎ 町並みさえも変わりました なのになのにどうして 未練だけ置き去り

ほんまに ろくな 男やない 揃いの指輪 はずします ざまあみろ せいせいするわ いい加減待ってても 馬鹿みたい

だめだね だめよ だめなのよ あんたが 好きで好きすぎて どれだけ 強いお酒でも 歪まない思い出が 馬鹿みたい

ほんまに ろくな 男やない 揃いの指輪 はずします ざまあみろ せいせいするわ なんなのよこの涙 馬鹿みたい

And so, Akane, Liska, Sanna and Kayce were singing happily under the light of the two moons that were crossing the firmament of that unknown planet, trying to find mutual consolation for their personal problems that each of them was suffering on their own.

But while singing that song, Akane Araki realized one thing: No matter if her new friends were not human, they also had the same feelings and emotions that a human also had, and they also shared the pain that Akane suffered in that tragic moment of her life, and therefore, they tried to help their new friend, regardless of the very different personality that Akane possessed... or the fact that Akane was a human being.

And this could be defined in only one way; no matter how different one might be, at the end of the day, they were all people, regardless of the differences in looks, culture... or even species.

Indeed, even at the end of singing "Baka Mitai", Mother Sanna stated in her own words the things that these four women had in common.

-"You know what, girls? I guess at the end of the day... we're all fools... just like that song says."-

Akane could not agree more with the old woman's statement.

-"You're right, grandmother..."- The human said, while watching the starry sky with her alien friends. -"no matter how different or similar we are... at the end of the day, we are all fools... in one way or another."-

And so, the four women, all different from each other, and coming from different backgrounds, and in Akane's case, from a different place and race, had one thing in common.

They were all fools.

END OF ACT XXIV