Beyond the Sea
Somewhere beyond the sea
My love's waiting for me,
My lover stands on golden sands,
And watches the ships that go sailing.
Somewhere beyond the sea
She's there watching for me,
If I could fly like birds on high
Then straight to her arms I'd go sailing.
It's far beyond a star,
It's near beyond the moon.
And beyond a doubt
My heart will lead me there soon.
We'll meet beyond the shore,
We'll kiss just as before,
Happy we'll be beyond the sea,
And never again I'll go sailing.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Nichol leaned back in the tub, and let out a long sigh as the hot
water eased the ache in his overworked muscles. The sigh came from
deep in his stomach.
"Yeah," agreed Roger, seated a few feet away.
They had just spent the last several hours laboring over the Cha
Cha Maru's hydrojets, under Mikail's almost tyrannical gaze. "I
don't get it," Nichol muttered. "We avoided the whole navy on
those jets, and now, after we went on a short little hunt, he goes
ballistic about repair and maintenance? Too weird."
Roger shrugged.
"But you're right, buddy. You're absolutely right. This is the
perfect way to kick back."
There was a long silence.
"Well, that and peeping on Tita," Nichol amended.
Roger gave the helmsman a look. "You're really hung up on her."
"Of course I am!" Nichol responded. "She's beautiful, kind,
gentle, courageous, vulnerable, sweet, honest --"
"-- unattainable --"
"-- talented, intel-- what?"
Roger momentarily considered cluing him in on what every member of
the crew except Nichol had long since figured out, then decided he
didn't want to deal with the shattering that would ensue. "Never
mind."
"For as long as I've known her, I've known that someday, someday
she will realize how much I care about her, and someday, someday
--"
Roger let out a sigh of his own, and stared up at the glass
ceiling of the ship's onsen.
"-- she and I will become --"
"Uh ... Nichol."
"-- one. What?"
"Do you know the meaning of the phrase, 'Turnabout is fair play?'"
"Uh ... yeah, it has something to do with people doing to you what
you've done to them."
"Okay. Look up, slowly."
Nichol looked up.
Mei waved, and through her diving suit's mask, mouthed the words,
"Nice butt."
Nichol wondered how in the world the water had gotten so hot so
quickly. Goodness, his skin was as red as a tomato.
That was his last thought before he fainted from embarassment.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mei was still chuckling over Nichol's reaction a few hours later
as she sipped her coffee in the ship's mess.
"I'm glad someone's enjoying themselves," Balboa said sourly as he
came in, carrying a large bag of groceries. "Those two idiots were
almost enthusiastic about carrying down the new parts to Mikail
and getting press ganged into installing them, rather than helping
me bring the groceries up here to where you are."
"I was only trying to reinforce the point Tita kept making
whenever she electrified the window," Mei replied in her own
defense.
Balboa snorted.
"Speaking of whom," Mei continued, the amusement slowly fading
from her voice, "did you happen to spy her while you were in
town?"
"No," Balboa replied shortly, stuffing some tomatoes in the
cooler. "I didn't see her."
"That's not what I asked."
"Mei, believe it or not, but shopping did take a much higher
priority today than trying to catch a glimpse of our beloved
captain on her vacation."
"Balboa, I just want to be sure that we're all giving Tita her
space. It's the first time she's been free to see Elysse and vice
versa in more than two months. Don't you remember what it was like
to be young and --"
"No," replied Balboa, refilling the salt dispenser. "But in any
event, I didn't look for her, and I didn't see her. Happy?"
Mei sighed.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"So where is she?" Balboa groused. "We're supposed to ship out at
dawn!" He stood with Mikail, leaning on the rail, staring at the
sky where the first hints of the sun were just beginning to
appear.
"She'll be here," Mikail said bluntly.
"Maybe I should have tried to spy on her after all. There wasn't
any answer at her usual hotel ..."
"Ah yes. Piss off the ship's doctor before you set off on a long
voyage. Very wise plan," Mikail replied, nodding sagely.
"`Give her her space,'" Balboa snorted. "The problem with that
girl is that she's got too much space, and --"
The faint sound of a motor could be heard approaching the dock to
which the Cha Cha Maru was moored.
"You were saying?" Mikail commented, a faint smile on his face.
"She has finally started to show a little responsibility and --"
"HOIS' DA MAINSIL!"
The two men stared down at their seventeen-year old Captain, who
had weavingly stepped out of her carcycle, and now stood on the
deck unsteadily, smiling a vacant smile.
"BADDEN DOWN DA MIZ ... MIZU ... WHATEVER THE HELL DAT THING IS!"
"I'll handle her, you park the carcycle," Mikail said with a
fatalistic expression.
"Sure," Balboa replied, not sounding at all smug.
"HEY!!! MIKY! BALBY! 'SGreat to see ya!" Tita enthused as they
approached her.
Mikail silently tapped a certain spot in between Tita's eyebrows.
"Sleep," he said.
"Okay," she replied happily, and collapsed. Mikail caught her
before she hit the ground.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Oh, dear," Mei muttered as Mikail carried Tita's limp form into
the infirmirary. "I'll get the alcohol catalyzer ready."
"Right," Mikail replied as he set the captain on one of the
tables. "But no hangover remedy."
Mei blinked. "Why not?"
"She has to learn that these things have consequences. Pain is a
very good teacher, sometimes," Mikail answered, his face set.
"All right," Mei sighed. "But so help me, Mikail, if you do
anything to compound her suffering tomorrow --"
"Right, right," Mikail said, backing out of the room slowly.
A few moments later, the "medicine" was ready. Mei loaded the
hypospray, and jetted it Tita's system. Over the next minute, the
rate at which Tita's body metabolised the alcohol flowing through
her blood sped up several thousandfold. The alchohol broke down
into its chemical components at blistering speed.
Which meant that a few moments later, Tita woke up with a hangover
and immensely hungry.
She opened her eyes a crack, and let out a cry of immense agony.
"Turn it off!"
Mei quietly dropped the lights in the sickbay down to minimal
levels.
"And stop makin' so much noise ... ooogh."
"I'm sorry, Tita," Mei whispered.
"Mei?" Tita asked, a note of fear in her voice.
"Yes?"
"Did I have a wreck? Is that why I feel like I've got third degree
burns all over my body?"
"No, Tita. You're wearing your skeinsuit." Hyperaesthesia was
never fun to watch.
"Oh." There was a long pause. "Oh, geez."
"Hungry?"
Tita made a vague gesture that looked like a nod.
A few minutes later, having started her off with orange juice and
worked up to a dish of porridge, Mei felt confident enough to
start asking questions about it. "How much do you remember of
what happened?"
Tita chewed silently. "Too much," she finally sighed. "I met
Elysse where we planned to meet ... street where we met for the
first time." She smiled, but it was a sad smile. "Everything was
going great. We went shopping together, we saw a movie, we went
walking through a park ... and then ..."
Mei's desire to give Tita her privacy warred with her concern over
her actions for a moment. Concern won out, as it usually did. "And
then what?"
"And then we went back to her place," Tita replied simply. "It was
nice."
Mei coloured slightly. "You don't have to tell me about that if
you don't --"
"THE HOTEL ROOM WAS NICE," Tita growled.
"Oh."
"She can really afford to stay in some fancy places, what with her
job with the government," Tita continued. "So she got out the
wine. It was nice wine, I guess. And we were drinking, and
talking, and she asked me about the job, and ..." She let out a
long shuddering sigh. "... and I, in the grand Tita tradition,
babble about how we've got those big contracts now. How even
though we're the best Pet Shop Hunters on Yietta we're still gonna
be out to sea for over two months."
"And she tells me about how her job is going. How perfecting the
gravity belts is gonna be taking up all her time. How it's
probably gonna be another year before she gets as much time off as
she's getting now."
Tita swallowed. "And of course, I'm an idiot, so I ask her to
throw it all away and come with us.
"And we had a fight." Tita drew in a deep breath. "She told me
that I cared more about the sea and the ship and the crew and
everything else than I did about her. And I told her that if she
really did care about me as much as I did about her, she'd come
with me and oh god what've I done?"
She finally began to cry.
This time, Mei didn't have to debate with herself. She held the
sobbing teenager to her, rocking her gently and cooing softly. A
few moments later, when she was coherent again, Tita muttered,
"She said that the sea was stealing me away from her. She's right.
She's completely right. I love her, and the sea is trying to keep
us apart --"
"Sh. She's not completely right. You might as well say that her
work is stealing her away from you."
"But --"
"Shh. The two of you are going to have to work together to get
this relationship to work, Tita. Anyone can rescue a princess ...
it takes effort to make a life after the rescuing is done."
"But how am I supposed to work with her if she can't find time to
see me?" Tita protested. "How'm I supposed to make a life with her
if she's not there?"
Mei met her gaze evenly. "If she's not there, Tita, if she can't
make time to be with someone she loves ... then it was never
really love to begin with. Just infatuation. And you'll know that
it's time to move on."
That made her cry a little more. Mei held her as she did.
Eventually, Tita felt in control of herself enough to stand and
walk to the door. "Thanks, Mei," she murmured.
"Tita. There's still a few hours before we ship out. You could
call her, and ..." Mei trailed off as she saw her captain slowly
shaking her head.
"They're too fresh," she said. "Uncovering them now ... it'll just
hurt more. Besides," Tita continued with cheer Mei knew had to be
false, "I gotta go take a leak!"
And she dashed off.
Mei was a doctor. She knew very well that it was much more painful
to re-open old wounds than fresh ones.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
At dawn, the Pet Shop Hunter "Cha Cha Maru" set out on her newest
voyage, without any fanfare or exclamation, but with her captain
in the center seat.
A single figure stood on the dock, watching the ship sail away on
the ocean of gas, gazing after it until it vanished against the
horizon.
And then, as the wives and lovers of sailors had for millenia,
Elysse turned away to go on with her life.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Author's Notes
Plastic Little has gotten a bad rap, in my opinion. Yes, there's
nudity, but I don't find it any worse than the onsen scenes in
Tenchi Muyo or El Hazard. Yes, the climax is almost Trekian in its
technobabble deus ex machina, but then so are most anime
technological solutions.
And in any case, neither factor had anything to do with why I
enjoyed it. I enjoyed it because it's a nice, unpretentious,
subtle love story whose "inamorata" happened to be both female.
While I can enjoy an angst-filled journey of self- discovery as
much as the next person, I truly enjoy stories that dare to say
that it's not such a big deal -- that gay people don't just sit
around thinking and talking about what it means to be gay, that
they don't really act any differently from straight people when it
comes to how they feel and act toward the people they love.
Because isn't that kind of the point? That "the love that dares
not speak its name" is love first and foremost?
Plastic Little, 01/25/97
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