"Good evening," answered a smooth, deep masculine voice. "I'll assume since only a select few know of this number, that you know who I am. And just who might this be?" "My name's not really important, is it? Besides, I think I'd prefer our relationship to be fully anonymous. Makes it easier for both of us, wouldn't you say?" The voice on the line chuckled for a while at that one. Natsuki smiled. At least her initial information had been correct; whoever he was, he had a strange sense of humour. "I've looked all over the city for you," she continued. "I'd hope that you're as good as your reputation would have me believe, because I can just as easily take my business elsewhere." "I can get you absolutely anything," replied the voice. "But only a handful of people can get you this number. Which makes me wonder just how you got hold of me..." "A blind guess," lied Natsuki, grinning sardonically. The voice chuckled back at her. "A lady with a sense of humour. I admire that. So what can I do for you then, hm?" "There've been reports of strange animal sightings in Tokyo lately..." There was a moment of silence. That moment stretched, longer and longer, until Natsuki finally frowned and started tapping her fingers impatiently on the metal case in front of her. "Still there?" "I know who you are," said the voice somewhat briskly, "and what you want. Don't hang up, this is important." "Why should I trust you?" "You shouldn't. In fact...you shouldn't trust anyone. Even people you know. Take my word for it." Natsuki tried to laugh sarcastically but it didn't quite sound right. There was something strangely compelling in that tone of voice. "Awfully hypocritical of you, isn't that?" "Just be quiet and listen." Natsuki obeyed, though she was rapidly becoming more and more annoyed. Her foot tapped on the concrete impatiently as she leaned against the booth, gazing across the road at a small fast-food diner. "The Tokyo 6th District Public Bank isn't what it seems. These things you're looking for, you won't find them there. But you will find something else. Something even more important than...Orphans." Natsuki whirled round. "How do you...!" she began sharply, then pushed her voice down. "Who gave you that name? Are you with the First District?" The voice chuckled at her again. "I can get everything. Anything and everything there is to get. And a few unobtainable things too, if the price is right. Where I got the name is unimportant. And you might want to rethink your preconceptions of the First District." "Then what is?" hissed Natsuki impatiently. "Listen, and listen carefully. I'm going to hang up. You'll go across the road, talk to the waitress standing outside that diner, the one in the pink skirt. Act casual." Natsuki snorted, but remained quiet. "Mention the word "Kansai" to her and she'll give you a key." There was another pause, much shorter this time. Natsuki felt her impatience growing by the second, as was her innate curiosity. "At exactly twelve fifteen tomorrow night, the security system at the 6th District Public Bank will go offline. All the guards will be called away. Don't ask why, just be there. You'll have twenty minutes to get in and out...with your prize." "And that prize would be what, exactly?" "You'll find out," laughed the voice. "Just remember...act casual. They're watching you all the time." Natsuki frowned again. "What? What do you mean..." She hissed and slammed the phone back down when all she got back was a dial tone. "Jerk." She looked across the road at that run-down bomb shelter of a diner and sure enough, there were several beaten up wooden tables standing outside, like picnic benches. A young woman in a strange uniform was slowly polishing one of the tables with a wadded up cloth, a tin in her other hand. She was wearing a pink miniskirt that clearly didn't go with the rest of the outfit. Natsuki approached, cautiously, looking all around her for any sign of sinister goings-on. A black suited man was standing in front of one of the other payphones behind her now. An old lady was walking slowly down the street some distance away, her back towards the dark-haired woman. Nothing suspicious, though somehow that call had gotten her a little edgy all of a sudden. She kept looking behind her, expecting to see something bad rushing her way, but it never came. She stopped in front of the diner and looked up at the broken neon sign flashing above the door. As casually as she could manage, she sighed and turned to one side, hands on her hips. "Excuse me?" The waitress in the pink skirt stopped her polishing and stood up, turning round slowly and looking over her shoulder. "Hello?" "I'm sorry but...I think I'm a little lost." The young woman...no, she was closer to a girl, barely out of school yet. She smiled cheerfully at Natsuki and set her cleaning implements aside on the table. "I'd be happy to help, miss. Is there any place in particular you'd like to be going?" "I was looking for a garage. I'm running a little low right now." She gestured out behind her to where her bike stood parked up against the phone booth. The girl smiled at her even wider, her unnervingly red eyes sparkling, though something about the expression bothered Natsuki profoundly. "A very nice machine, if I may say so miss, looks expensive indeed." She nodded. "Well, I know there's a little place near here, it's just down the road." She pointed off in one direction. "There's a sign about a hundred metres down, it's huge, you can't miss it. If you take a left there and then follow the road round, you'll come straight to it." Natsuki nodded politely. "Thank you." "Not many people getting lost in this place any more. You must not be from here, hm?" "Kansai, actually," replied Natsuki, trying to hide a devious smirk. The waitress showed little reaction. "Well then, in that case..." She reached into one pocket and pulled out a set of keys, and a small folded piece of paper. "It's dangerous to go on alone around here. Take this." Natsuki looked at her a little oddly for a moment. "Erm...thank you." She took the offered items, stuffed them into one of the multitude of hidden pockets on the inside of her jacket and then turned away again. The waitress smiled even wider and went straight back to work, humming some nameless tune to herself. Once Natsuki was back on her bike and some way off into the distance, the waitress stopped again and stood straight. Her smile melted off like water running over a duck's back, revealing a blank emotionless expression underneath. Her eyes, though, were as bright and sparkling as before as she gathered a handful of breadcrumbs from the small plastic bag in her pocket and scattered them over a table. She smiled, the very tiniest of smiles. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- "Moko-chan?" Motoko pushed her glasses up her nose with the tip of one finger and leaned back into her chair a little more, away from the computer screen before her. She turned round to face the source of that familiar voice and found Shizuru standing right behind her, practically crowded over the chair. Her hand surreptitiously adjusted the top button of her blouse, and the older woman chuckled to herself with an impish grin. "Ma'am?" intoned the blonde in her usual borderline-derisive monotone voice, failing to appear anything except contemptuously bored. "You're not too busy right now, are you Moko-chan?" Motoko stared, the stare that was reserved for when her superior made some sort of blatant sexual allusion. It was unnervingly similar to the stare she gave practically everything Shizuru said. She pushed her glasses back up her nose with one finger and waited patiently, since there was no come-back that would put off Shizuru's rampant juvenile sense of humour. "I've got a little job for you, Moko-chan," the brunette woman explained cheerfully, her face lit up in a way that could only really mean that trouble was coming. She pointed towards the computer and continued, "I know you can get me the records for all the patients under my staff, past and present, for which I'm very grateful by the way. But I was wondering perhaps...could you get me the room records for D-twelve?" Motoko blinked, thoroughly confused, though her expression showed little change from the usual bored cynicism. "D-twelve? But that's Yasata-san's section, isn't it, up in the pharmacology department...?" "Well, yes..." Shizuru pouted; it was disgustingly effective, on anyone besides her secretary. "You see, there's just this little problem of the two men guarding room thirteen-forty-two. They've been there every time I've gone past and, the trouble is, nobody has ever mentioned them to me at all." "You're not the sector administrator y'know, ma'am," sighed Motoko. "Well it's still suspicious, considering that I asked Hajima-kun and he said that that room is listed as a temporary storage room for cleaning supplies." She chuckled again when Motoko's eyebrows shot straight up her forehead. "I knew that would get your curiosity going." The blonde coughed sharply. "It's none of your business, ma'am, and it's none of mine. You should just leave it up to Yasata-san to deal with." Shizuru cocked her head to one side ever so slightly, a curious expression on her face. "Hm? Where's your sense of adventure, Moko-chan?" she teased, poking the blonde's shoulder with a finger. "Besides, it is pretty suspicious, if you ask me. Suspicious things bother me, that's all." "I said you should drop it...ma'am." Motoko stared up at her for a moment quite intensely. The older woman felt some inexplicable tension in the air and took a hesitant step backward, carefully not showing her uneasiness on her face. "You're right, Motoko," she sighed at last, smiling reassuringly. "I'll ask Yasata again when I see him next, just to be sure. And that'll be that, eh?" The blonde turned back to her workstation and carried on with her duties in silence. That deep, pervading awkwardness hung in the air like a thick blanket, so Shizuru withdrew hastily back through the office door before suspicion overcame her and strode away down the corridor. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- It was a warm, sunny Friday evening in Tokyo's 12th District, just like every other Friday evening in summer. The air was still scorching hot outside and thick with moisture, and the sun was still startlingly high in the late afternoon sky. The sky was slowly turning from its usual pale blue to that deep fiery orange of sunset, and the clouds were gradually coagulating into a thick, uniform greyness high above the city, edged with highlights in gold and red and pink that made for quite the interesting visual pattern. The shadows were growing longer as the sun sank back behind the Tokyo downtown skyline and everything was slowly being swallowed by that strange haze of orange light that always suffused through Japanese summer evenings. The Jogousaki apartment building was every bit as dull and ugly as ever, just that plain grey brick-shaped lump of concrete that sat sandwiched between several alike concrete lumps. The very few front windows that faced out onto the main road were all dark, curtains or blinds left open and no signs of life therein, all bar one. One, on the corner of the third floor, was covered over by a rather weak looking set of horizontal blinds in the same drab grey as the building walls, through which leaked warm orange-yellow artificial light from within. Thankfully, the window was closed, though there were few neighbours who might actually think to complain of the noise had it been open. Natsuki tried her best to look casually disdainful, arms folded over her chest and an annoyed look on her face, her bottom lip pouting as it always did when she found herself in such uncomfortable quarters. "Just why, exactly, am I here again?" Mai looked across at her houseguest, or more like apartment-guest, and frowned. Or pouted. It was one of the two, or it was both, or it was somewhere between and neither. Mai certainly had a talent for complicated facial expressions. "Karaoke!" she declared a little more loudly than was absolutely necessary. She thrust one finger into the air imperiously and tossed her head back slightly, which only made her hair flutter about restlessly. "And to loosen that uptight attitude of yours a little. You need some Midori-chan style teaching from a disciple herself." "Alright, you don't have to shout," Natsuki bit back at her sharply. "I can hear fine, even with that damn noise." She thumbed over her shoulder at where Mikoto was busy watching some derogatory children's show or other on possibly the smallest portable television in existence, volume cranked right up to compensate for the terrible reception. Mai blushed slightly, though she had been that way for an hour or so now, and waved her hand dismissively. "Oh, shut up, you!" She sat back into her chair with a whump and adjusted the hem of her skirt, which had worked up a little too high with all her getting up and down and shuffling about and pointing and such. "You really shouldn't ever drink sake again. Ever." Mai pouted and crossed her arms again. "Really," insisted Natsuki, her nerves starting to fray. She wasn't one to talk, of course; she'd already downed half a bottle herself. That had been before Mikoto had investigated, however, and then Mai had vowed that alcohol would be banned from the apartment for good, or until further notice. Or an emergency. Natsuki shrugged. Not like it was her apartment or anything. "So," Mai repeated, poking the dark-haired girl in her shoulder. "You going first or me?" Natsuki tried to brush the finger away and missed just barely, which certainly made her hesitate a second or two. Perhaps she should take a taxi home after all, instead of riding. "You got me into this, so you go first," she insisted, shoving the slightly beaten-up handheld microphone towards the redhead. Mai snatched it from her hand with a precocious grin and stuck her chest out triumphantly. "Coward," she muttered. Natsuki twitched angrily. "What did you say?" Mai looked serenely innocent. "Nothing..." Meanwhile, Mikoto was working on getting that stupid microscopic television tuned in a little better, fiddling back and forth with several very small knobs until the picture looked anywhere approaching coherent. Having no expertise with electrical appliances, or appliances in general, she was having not quite the best time of it. Her searching for a comedy channel she had seen a mere second's glimpse of before had ultimately yielded very little more than a news segment and something regarding cooking. "...routine training exercise brings the United Nations' Pacific Third Fleet into close proximity with Chinese Territorial waters. The Chinese Republic government have made statements to the effect that any incursion will be seen as hostile action and that the Chinese military is prepared for retaliation. However, they have also promised the Chinese people, and the UN, that military action will be seen as an absolute last resort and that they will do everything they can to make sure this exercise remains peaceful. In local news, a large shipment of canned fish has been lost from the Russian cargo ship Sakhalin several kilometres off the coast of Shikoku. According to sources, a large hole was discovered in the side of the ship just above the watermark late last night and, upon further investigation, several tons of canned tuna were found to be inexplicably missing. Police say there are very few leads to go on ..." Mikoto blinked. "Cats," she said to herself, and then nodded. Yes, cats. Cats would steal tuna, even if it were canned. Her common sense refused to comment. "Or an Orphan." But she had felt nothing all night, or the previous day, or at all for almost a week since they had destroyed the last creature, so that probably wasn't it. "Maybe someone was just really hungry?" she mused idly to herself as she tried to change the channel. Behind her, Natsuki was singing, not very well though she didn't seem to care too much. Mai was watching and trying her best not to laugh as the blue-haired girl threw her free hand about expressively while she sang, clearly putting everything she had into it if not more. Her voice rose and fell with the tune and her tongue followed the brisk pace with ease, but singing was clearly not her forte. The song being in English did little to help the problem. She wore the same plain dark purple slacks she had worn when she had first arrived, though now her sweater was off and tied by its sleeves around her neck to flow back behind her like a cape. A sleeveless black blouse covered up most of her upper half, down to just above her midriff, leaving only a narrow gap between the hem and the waistband of her pants. Dark stocking-clad feet tapped against the wooden panel flooring as she sang along with the words on the screen. Mai pouted and turned her eye to the window instead. "Sexy..." she whined under her breath. "Maybe I should work out some more? Guys don't go for chubby girls these days..." Then Natsuki slipped on the polished wood flooring and fell right on top of her, and there was much commotion. Getting the athletic girl standing again took a little while thanks to the effect of alcohol on her equilibrium, but they managed without too much trouble. Natsuki missed almost a third of the next song, though she didn't seem to mind, and she threw herself straight into it with a vengeance. "She's so forceful, too," Mai pondered to no one in particular. Her eyes drifted about the room for a while as she listened to Natsuki's not-very-great singing, Mikoto still making a fuss in the background as she molested that poor portable television to death. The clock on the wall ticked away to itself quietly and the time rolled on as always. "I wonder if she has a boyfriend?" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Shizuru sneezed. "Now I know that wouldn't be Moko-chan, because she always says it to my face..." "Er, Director?" She shook her head. "No, sorry, please continue. Don't mind me." The doctor turned back to that young girl lying in bed, eyes shut, an intravenous tube in her left wrist, and carried on poking about her right hand with the pin. "She seems responsive enough to pain, so there's no nervous damage." He stepped back a short way and picked up the clipboard from where it sat on a table beside the bed. "She's got some strange reflexes though. And getting the IV was oddly difficult. Her skin seems to be...I don't know...tougher than normal." "Perhaps you've been on shift a little too long, Doctor," Shizuru offered in that soothingly cheerful voice of hers. "You go get some coffee and I'll make sure she gets a fresh drip once that one runs out." The man, somewhere in his early thirties and quite a striking visage under short-cropped brown hair, bowed his head respectfully and handed over a sheet of paper. "I think you'll need to run through the section nurse though. None of our regular bags have some of this stuff in." Shizuru took a quick glance over the list and blinked. "I may not be a doctor myself...but I must say some of these are fairly odd." "Her body's dehydrated so badly, but when I tested her blood there were...well...aluminium pockets. And a few other transition metals in there too, nothing too dangerous mind you. But in her bloodstream?" He sighed and shook his head. "She's not showing any of the normal signs of blood poisoning and they're in very small amounts, so we're assuming it's normal for her. Whatever that means." "Wait..." Shizuru tapped a finger against the X-ray picture hanging from the wall beside the bed, right over a strange dark blotch. "This is a micro-image of the blood vessel you took the sample from, isn't it?" "You're infallible, Fujino." "So what in the world is this...thing?" "As far as I can tell, it's something dense and hard, floating in her blood. The MRI should give us a better picture but, to be completely honest, I have no idea what they could be." "They?" Shizuru cocked an eyebrow. The doctor held up his hands. "You heard. There's dozens, maybe even hundreds of them. None in the samples I took, though, which is strange to say the very least." "Well, thank you Doctor. You go get your coffee, and make sure it's strong." "Yes ma'am," chuckled the man, and vanished through the open doorway. Shizuru paused, then, and looked back down at that enigmatic young girl in the bed. Her face was pale, but dark red patches had broken out in random places on her neck, arms, her chest, practically everywhere but her feet and back. Her feet themselves were blistered terribly, as were her fingers and the palms of her hands. Her bright orange hair was in total disarray, twisted and knotted and frizzy all over, as if she had had her head stuck in an oven. Her eyes shifted restlessly under their lids, and her narrow lips were constantly squeezing shut and splitting open again, mouthing out silent words in her dreams. Her body was thin, bony even, almost malnourished under that flimsy hospital sheet, and showing only the beginnings of puberty. By the look of her alone and her diminutive stature, she couldn't be more than a teenager at the most. Strangest of all was the piercing in her left ear; a small but ornate golden setting within which sat a perfectly rounded gemstone of shocking blue, glowing very gently under its own internal light. Shizuru sighed. "You certainly are a mysterious one, young lady. I hope you can explain yourself when you wake up..." Then she turned and left the room, closing the door behind her. The girl in the bed opened her lips again and spoke, her voice broken and weak. "Ni...na..." ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Several hours later, it was clear that Natsuki would not be going home by herself. Mai refused to let her ride home for fear of some accident, which the dark-haired girl protested quite adamantly, and Natsuki herself bluntly refused to leave her bike in the redhead's care. Both women were working one another to a state of aggravation, until Mikoto, already yawning constantly, keeled over on the table and promptly fell fast asleep. Mai blinked. "It must be really late if Mikoto's falling asleep like that..." She looked at the clock on the wall and groaned. "Well...I suppose you could sleep here, at least you'll be close to your precious bike that way." "Probably better than the motels around here at least," Natsuki retorted, crossing her arms over her chest. Mai poked her shoulder. "Give over, already. It's too late now to be fighting." "I guess you're right. I know I'm going to have a killer headache in the morning." "Ha!" Natsuki looked at the redhead with an indignant expression. "What?" "So you're not invincible after all!" "Quiet, you." Mai tossed her hands up. "Forget it! Let's just...get some sleep already." She switched the karaoke machine off, though it took her two attempts to hit the switch, and then stood up a little unsteadily. "You really can't hold your drink." "Oh, shut up. If I'd had a little more, I'd be fine. Too little or too much makes me dizzy." Natsuki sighed and shook her head as the other woman drifted across the room to where one wall was covered with several paper panels, like an old-fashioned Japanese house. She slid open a paper door and the light swept in, illuminating very little of a cavernous space behind the wall. "Wait...you sleep in your closet?" Mai looked over her shoulder with a shrug. "What about it? Only space I had for the bed, though it's more just a mattress than a bed." "Wouldn't a futon be easier?" replied Natsuki, walking up behind her. "Picky." Mai slithered inside and started stripping the sheets off the bed, which took quite some doing given the lack of space in her makeshift bedroom. The bed was, indeed, simply a thick mattress jammed in against the back wall, fitting neatly into one corner of the closet to leave space for a tiny wooden table on the opposite side. Mai was in the process of pulling a pale pink sheet out of its hiding place in a basket underneath the table when Natsuki noticed something odd. "Where...do you keep your clothes?" "At my girlfriend's house." Mai grinned at her out of the darkness. Natsuki felt her cheeks flushing despite her irritation. "You're unbearable. No, I mean...really. Where do you put your clothes if you're using the closet for sleeping in?" "See that hook in the ceiling?" Mai replied as she wrestled with the sheet. Natsuki turned round to stare up over her head and, lo and behold, a series of small wooden slot handles in a circular pattern set into the concrete above her head. What was stranger was that they each sat in the centre of a roughly wedge-shaped panel of wood, which together formed a thick ring with one wide gap left in the middle bare concrete. "What the heck?" "That's my closet." Natsuki stared at her. "You're kidding." "Nope. That up there, that's full of all my clothes. Had to fold them real tight to get everything in and I'm already running out of room." Natsuki stared up for quite a while, so long in fact that Mai finished her job with time to spare, before she deigned to speak again. "Who in the hell designed this place?" Mai shrugged. "Beats me. The bed's ready, by the way. Or did you want a shower first?" Natsuki snorted at her. "As if you could even fit one in this hamster-cage." Mai grinned. "Eh...actually, I usually use the local bath. It's so cramped in there I can't even turn around to wash my back. I'm a little worried about Mikoto though." "Hm?" The redhead gestured to where Mikoto lay sprawled across the table, snoring loudly. "I don't think she's been washed for days, weeks even maybe. And I don't know if she's ever even been to a public bath before. And of course, if I take her..." "You don't want people thinking she's your daughter, hm?" Natsuki chuckled. "You've certainly got that kind of figure." Mai put her hands on her hips. "You shut up, you...you...lanky little girl." "Who're you calling skinny?" "At least I've got something to show off," Mai teased, cupping her hands under her prodigious chest. "I don't know why you wear that suit, it just shows everyone how little you have to offer." "Well you seem to like it!" Natsuki clapped a hand over her mouth as her face turned red. Mai just laughed at her. "Deviant!" "Shut up! You started it!" "Another few comments like that and I may just decide I like you after all." The redhead stepped aside and gestured to the open closet door. "Your bed, ma'am." Natsuki turned her nose up and strode inside, sliding the door firmly shut behind herself. "You better not come in here while I'm asleep, you...pervert." "Go to sleep, damn it." Mai was still giggling as she folded out several thick towels onto the floor and then laid herself carefully down atop them, with one more to cover herself. It wasn't comfortable, but it would do none the less. "G'night Mikoto-chan." Mikoto grunted something unintelligible in reply. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mai woke up in another room. A strange room. A profoundly familiar room. Moonlight streamed in through the slits between horizontal blinds that hung across a single, wide window, almost as bright as day, casting a pale silver-blue hue over everything in sight. The bed beneath her was warm and inviting, if a little stiff. A second stood just an arm's length away to her left. There was a reassuring weight resting over her, draped across her stomach mostly, bare skin touching her flesh. She sat up, slowly, and looked down. "Where...am I?" "Mai..." The lump atop her shifted and looked up toward her, bright yellow eyes glittering in the dim light. "Mikoto?" The young girl shook her head with a soft and somewhat sinister smile that was most definitely uncharacteristic of Mikoto. She held one finger up to her lips. "Don't worry. It's just a dream." "Is this...am I remembering something? Something...from before?" "As I said, this is just a dream." Mai blinked. "Or a fantasy, maybe," finished Natsuki as she slowly crawled her way up Mai's body. "A fantasy you can't remember having. Or maybe you're just repressed?" "Maybe I'm insane..." A finger brushed her lips, and Mai knew it wasn't real, that strange ethereal feeling that drifted over her face. "Maybe I'm really just your subconscious, trying to tell you something." Mai blinked, and realised she was facing a mirror image of her own body, shockingly naked and highlighted nicely by the moonlight streaming in. "You imaged that kid first. Maybe you're feeling unloved? Maybe you want to start a family yourself, hm?" "Then...I'm just lonely?" "I'd say horny, myself," giggled the mysterious shape-changing figure. "The way you chased Tate around even while you denied him..." The image changed again into a tall, rather handsome young man with bright blonde hair that stood from his head in a ragged mess, much like Mikoto's. Most of his face was shadowed, but a lecherous smirk shone through. Mai paused. "...who?" Then everything went black. When she opened her eyes again some time later, things were profoundly different. The sky was red like blood, as was the sea. Dark, cold, and foreboding to an extreme. There was a most disturbing sound far too close for comfort, like scorching hot air blowing rhythmically through an endless cavern. It almost sounded like breathing. Somewhere in the distance, a female voice was screaming or laughing hysterically, or both, Mai couldn't be sure. "What..." Mai tried to turn her head, but her eyes were locked in one place, gazing out over the crimson ocean before her towards a small dark speck on the horizon. "Where is this? What's...going on?" "Welcome back again, Mai-chan," replied a voice that she instantly loathed for reasons that escaped her. "Nice to see you back so soon." "Who are you? Where are you?" "This is just a dream, Mai, remember?" A young boy with short blue hair appeared before her with a smile and a wave. He turned his back on her and looked straight out over the water himself, towards that dark shape that was rapidly growing larger and larger. "Then...you're not who I think you are," Mai reasoned to herself, though it didn't sound very convincing even to her. "I have to admire you, Mai-chan. You've faced some horrible things in the past." The boy turned again to face her, and grinned again. In the blink of an eye, Mai found her mother standing in his place before her very eyes. "What's coming next is even worse. You'll see." As the apparition walked away along the beach, Mai could only gasp in amazement. At last, she could make out what that dark blotch really was... ...a sight that filled her with terror. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mai woke with a start, thankfully not enough to roll her out of her makeshift bed and onto the hard floor below. It took her a moment to register the feeling of weight draped over her stomach, and then she sat up rather quickly indeed, arms flailing out to her sides. Mikoto yelped and rolled off her comfy nesting spot, then fell asleep again almost immediately. Mai was somehow not quite surprised. She stood up, slowly, carefully, and extricated her feet from the tangled mess of her improvised bedding one by one. The wooden floor was cool beneath her soles and the air was sharp. She tiptoed across to the kitchen with food in mind, but her stomach replied that it was quite full enough. Her head reeled slightly when the light in the refrigerator caught her off-guard and suddenly, a nice cool drink seemed like the most wonderful idea in the world. "Hangover," Mai grunted under her breath. "I so should have known better. Stupid sake." Then, suddenly, her dream came rushing back at her in vague, twisting images, rushing about her head like a whirlpool. Her knees faltered and her hand caught the counter as she toppled forwards, holding herself up just barely. Her head was spinning frantically for a moment before the room righted itself and everything drifted back to normal. "I should really cut back on the sake if I'm having dreams like that." With the brief relived tension of her dreams over and done with, that morning was one of much hilarity, and Mai took every opportunity she could find to say something sexually suggestive. She found, with some degree of satisfaction, that as the morning progressed Natsuki was becoming gradually less and less bothered by her bizarre sense of humour. The constant blushing tapered off to barely ever, and all she got back then derogatory grunts and the occasional smarmy remark. Natsuki was off to work, whatever that was, within far too short a time. Most of the socialising that Mai had been carefully planning all week was thrown back in the garbage when Natsuki's phone started ringing urgently for her attention. She had said that Shizuru wanted her for something, something rather important, and had left post haste. Mikoto still sat in her favourite chair, though, with her patented morning smile, slightly dopy but enthusiastic expression on her face as she gazed up at her would-be guardian busily carrying several plates across from the kitchen on a wooden serving tray. Her grin grew even wider when she saw what was for breakfast, but then it always did. "Mai's cooking is always the best!" protested Mikoto when the redhead had offered to take her somewhere a little more interesting for dinner that evening, just out of sheer boredom, and that had been only the start of a large and rather strange argument. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Meanwhile, at the Tokyo 12th District Hospital, Fujino Shizuru was in her office, as usual, roving through sheet after sheet of papers that most not acquainted with the medical profession would never be able to decipher. Her notebook sat on the desk, open, scanning slowly through endless pages of documents and charts and the like. "So, what's wrong with her anyway?" asked the navy blue haired young woman sitting neatly in the chair opposite her, one leg crossed over the other, her dark riding suit gleaming in the harsh artificial light in the room. Her helmet hung from a coat-hook near the door, along with her gloves. The older woman gave her a cautious look that said she would rather not be jumping to conclusions and sighed. "Well, at the moment, she's just extremely dehydrated. We're working on solving that right now." "It is summer you know. Couldn't she just be some dumb kid, wandered out, got lost, got heatstroke and collapsed or something?" Shizuru shook her head, very patiently. "She's just like the other one. They're both so dehydrated, but it's more than that. Her hair looks half-toasted and her eyes are so red and sore. When she woke up, she was holding her hand over her face and avoiding the lights. And her skin...just feels so dry and rough, and she's sunburnt all over. It's like she's been through a desert." Natsuki blinked. "So she's a foreigner?" The older woman shrugged slowly and turned to her computer again. "She's also running a high temperature. Her core temperature is well above normal. She should be suffering from hyperthermia by now but she shows no signs of internal damage, besides her being a little singed on the outside." "Well, as suspicious as that is, we can't really make any assumptions until we have a little more substantial evidence, don't you agree?" "Like her blood exams, you mean?" Shizuru slid a thin file across the desk and looked up at her companion with a very serious expression. "There's something profoundly not right about her blood in particular." Natsuki took the file, a little apprehensively, and peered inside. "What about it?" she asked, peeling out several sheets of paper and skimming over them. "It's full of very strange things. Like trace metals. Some of them alloys nobody has even seen before, too. And gas pockets, of all things." "Bubbles?" Natsuki looked as bemused as she sounded. "In her blood?" "Pockets," Shizuru reaffirmed, holding up one cautioning finger. "Things like Helium and Nitrogen bubbles, but stuck inside little capsules of something we can't identify. Whatever it is it's so thin we're having trouble seeing it properly." "Why is your job never ordinary?" Shizuru smiled. "You'd be bored if it were, though. Admit it." "You said she woke up earlier. What happened then?" "She was unintelligible. She speaks Japanese but it's no accent I've ever heard before. All I could make out was that she was yelling for her father..." "And you have no idea who that is, of course." "We've asked the local Police to check their missing persons' records for her, and if that doesn't work they've promised to take it to the national registry office. She might be a foreigner after all unless we can find her in the citizen lists." "And what about the other one?" "She's in the same condition, though she seems much weaker at the moment. She's been unconscious since we took her in, only woke up once. She has the same accent, or very close, though she was a little weak so it's hard to be sure." "What did she say?" "Just "Nina."" Natsuki frowned. "What's Nina? Or who..." There was a long, uncomfortable pause before Shizuru finally set her half-empty coffee cup down on the table, effectively breaking the silence with a sharp clatter. Natsuki flinched only very slightly. "So you're going again already, then?" Shizuru sighed. "Am I really that much of a bore?" "This has nothing to do with that," the dark-haired woman replied, failing to meet her gaze. "I'm caught up in something and I don't have time for distractions." "A distraction, am I?" Shizuru stood, without warning, and moved round to stand by Natsuki's side instead, leaning in against the younger woman until her lips were almost touching that thick, dark blue hair. "Perhaps I need to try a little harder to distract you, hm?" Natsuki pushed her away and moved towards the door, not looking back over her shoulder as she often did. "Don't talk like that now," she almost hissed. "This...this isn't the time..." "You're attracted to her." For a while, Natsuki didn't answer, her shoulders tense. Shizuru shrugged in defeat and shook her head, a rueful half-smile drifting across her lips. "I can't blame you," she teased. "Tokiha's a wonderfully...well-built young girl, after all." Natsuki tossed her hair as she turned and flashed the older woman an agitated look. "You'll let me know when Fuuka call up again, won't you?" With that, she turned away again... Shizuru reached out for her but she slipped through the doorway, and was gone. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Time passed in Tokyo as it did everywhere else, and soon it was drifting from afternoon into early evening. The sun was sinking gradually lower in the sky and clouds were gathering on the far edge of the city like an impending wave, ready to roll in at moment's notice once the sun had finally turned its back. Somewhere in a small bar in a none-too-desirable area of the city, the lighting was as bad as ever. The floor was still unwashed, the ceiling was still peeling, and there were still no customers. The bartender didn't seem to care either, as usual, and simply carried on cleaning glasses as he always did and leaning against the taps. Suddenly, a sharp beeping noise broke the silence. The bartender fished around frantically in his pockets for a moment and produced a small black oblong device not even as large as the palm of his own hand. He pressed a button with one thumb and held the thing up to his head. "Yes?" "The scenario is underway," said an unidentifiable male voice. There was a blip and the line was dead. The bartender sighed and slapped the device down on the bar-top with a heavy sigh. "Calling to let me know what I'm missing or something, eh? Asshole." "Shut your whining, Shinji," said a harsh female voice from somewhere in the shadows behind the booths. "You'll be working soon enough, don't worry. Though I don't know why you're looking forward to it, of all things." "Like you're not?" The shadowed lady in the corner grinned a most sinister grin. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- It was raining. Thin, light rain, but in such vast quantities that it utterly drenched everything. Natsuki growled. "Fucking fire alarm." She practically dove through the open office doorway and blasted hell out of an innocent water cooler that just happened to be right next to the Orphan she was hunting. In an office building, of all places. The creature evaded yet again, throwing out a deadly swarm of multi-coloured energy shards behind it as it fled. Natsuki barely had time to throw herself behind a wall to avoid being skewered in several unpleasant ways at once. The concrete surface flayed apart under the sudden onslaught like paper under a sand-blaster, but the wall held relatively firm all the same, providing temporary protection at least. When the noise finally died down out she leapt once more with her trigger fingers twitching spastically, sending blinding blue shots peppering across the floor and up the far wall as she tracked upwards after the silhouette of that elusive beast. Up it dove like a bird taking flight, straight through the flimsy plaster ceiling, a swirling cloud of white dust and debris churning up behind it to cover its escape. Natsuki was already rolling back to her feet towards the emergency stairwell, heart pounding in her chest, knuckles white as she squeezed tight around her twin weapons. She was on the roof in no time at all, dark night sweeping in past the artificial light that enveloped the rest of the building. That dark inhuman figure was already loping steadily away from the hole it had punched up through the roof and heading towards the edge, its broad bat-like arms flapping like wings. Again she fired, and missed. Troubling indeed, the thing seemed to have some sort of repulsive barrier that sent an otherwise well-aimed shot off course. She snapped away one pistol and a small black orb appeared in its place in her hand that, when thrown, yielded similarly unimpressive results, though it did blow a neat circular hole into the ledge around the roof edge. The thing leapt upward again, this time into open air, spreading its arms out wide. Natsuki ran to the edge to watch as it escaped, drifting lazily across to a nearby tower building and relative safety. She cursed, loudly. Then a screaming noise came rushing over her and a cluster of metallic shards rained down upon the concrete all around, forcing her back away from the ledge. The Orphan let off another cloud of thin green smoke, and from the swirling mass hurtled upward more of those thick, razor-sharp chunks, arcing up high and then dropping down on the distant office building. Natsuki was forced into a dodging frenzy, evading countless volleys of shards with little or no cover in sight, and no pause for her to return fire. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- High above the city, safely beyond visual range from the ground, though not so far as to infringe on Tokyo International's airspace, something much smaller than a plane was flying casually about. At first glance, it may have looked like no more than a very large bird, orange and red and yellow plumage like a winged ball of fire. Mai shifted her body weight over to one side and wheeled round in a wide sweeping turn, hair fluttering wildly in the wind. Her limbs outstretched to either side, her Element at her wrists projecting flaming wings around her arms to keep her in steady flight so far from the ground. "Can you see anything?" she yelled over the wind noise. Mikoto's legs squeezed a little tighter around her waist. Thankfully the girl was so skinny that she weighed practically nothing, though bony knees digging into Mai's hips was not exactly comfortable. "I see smoke," replied the young girl, pointing with one arm over towards a tall tower building deep in the Tokyo business district. "Green smoke." "Orphan," Mai affirmed. "Hang on tight." Mikoto folded herself up along the redhead's front and clung around Mai's neck with both arms as they angled down over towards the ground, banking hard. Mai craned her neck to one side and squinted hard in the direction that her diminutive young friend had indicated, but Mikoto's eyes were clearly much better than were her own. "Can you hit it from this distance?" Mikoto shook her head. "Drop me behind." "From this height, you're crazy!" Despite her obvious concern, the young girl was already climbing around Mai's mid-section to crouch atop the redhead's back like a cat ready to pounce. "It'll be fine. Just fly over it." Mai sighed heavily and pushed herself faster towards the tower. "I really hope you know what you're doing." Mikoto pointed with one finger. "Aim for the wire." Mai followed along her line of sight... The tower in question was another of those huge square parking towers that had been popping up so rampantly in Tokyo lately, taller even than the office buildings around it. From one corner of the roof up some several hundred metres ran an almost invisible steel cable, a tether for an advertising blimp that floated high above the city with all sorts of bright neon signs plastered across its surface. Mai growled. "You are crazy!" Nevertheless, she steered off towards the bobbing silver hulk at best speed, Mikoto clinging tightly to her back. Before she knew it, the weight on her back was shifting again as Mikoto stood up. "Closer!" Mai dove and swooped in like a hawk underneath the giant balloon, so close that Mikoto felt her hair standing on end as if reaching up towards the thing, static jumping between her fingers. As the cable passed by with a whoosh, she turned and leapt out, limbs out in a freefall position. The tip of her sword caught the cable first and yanked her violently in towards it. She barely had time to swing her feet round to the side, shifting her body into a spiralling course down around the cable, only her sword slicing through the steel to slow her descent in the slightest. It was more than a little tricky keeping track of her opponent while she was spinning round that cable, the ground rushing up towards her all the time. Her stomach was doing the most bizarre things and her whole body felt so light. Before too long, her feet met the cable instead of air and started pedalling away furiously, trying not to burn out her skin on the rough steel surface as she fell at some ungodly speed. Her sword came up and back over her head in both hands, ready to strike. The roof of the tower was barely ten metres below when she pushed off the cable with all the power in those deceptively skinny thighs and shot forth like a lance, a feral howl escaping her lips. The shadowed beast turned to face her as she descended like a bullet down atop it. Unfortunately, the first swipe of that unstoppable sword found some smoothly curved barrier that simply diverted the blade down to one side away from the creature. Tendrils of blackness rushed out at her. Mikoto danced on them, almost contemptuously, smacking every one with a good hard kick from one foot or the other, her excessive momentum pummelling her feet into the Orphan instead of burying her headfirst in the underlying concrete. Her arms swung back over her head for another strike but no opening presented itself, and those countless limbs never once let up. Her small, agile body was losing ground, bouncing back further and further with each strike she deflected. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Natsuki peered up over the pitifully short ledge she had huddled behind and blinked, several times in fact. The creature had stopped belching out those huge clouds of metal shrapnel and was now, apparently, busy thrashing some unidentified small object at close-range instead. Its back was to her, and its attention clearly elsewhere. She looked up. Something small and distant and vaguely orange glowed in the sky high overhead. Natsuki grinned. Then she snapped her fingers. "Wouldn't do not to take advantage of such a kindly presented opportunity, would it?" Her pistols disappeared in a flash and she grasped her fingers around a different weapon. At her command, the gun materialised in her hand with a sharp pop; all twelve inches of it, a long, cylindrical device much like any modern handgun, though distinctly different in certain ways, not the least of which the design. Natsuki levelled the thing towards that distant target and closed her eyes. Her mind exploded into colour behind her eyelids, that despicable thing in the centre. The image slowly crawled forward as she focused harder, her fingers squeezing tight on the false metal in her hands. She concentrated until she could see that familiar faint red glow on its back. Then she pulled the trigger, and held. The thing juddered in her hands but her aim stayed steady as it let out a long, low humming noise. Blue light whirled around the muzzle of the thing, growing brighter and stronger. When she finally let go, the whole thing bucked backwards in her hands with considerable force, and a shockingly blue bolt of energy leapt screaming from that wide barrel, streaking across the space between her and her distant enemy with frightening speed. Mikoto had just enough time to see something glaringly blue hurtling towards her...and then time slowed down. Suddenly, it was as if someone had dumped the whole world in treacle, all except for her brain. She panicked for a moment or two, but her common sense quickly caught up and reminded her of the impending doom. With a colossal effort, she turned on her toes and pushed with all her might against those frozen black tentacles, leaping up and away from the creature. Her body slipped through the invisible fluid resistance like a hot knife cutting through butter, in slow motion. It was definitely the strangest sensation. She tucked her head down into a roll, shoulder hitting the concrete roof first with some considerable force...and then everything was running again, faster than normal it seemed. She was thrown into a somersault by an explosion barely metres behind her that singed the skin of her feet, but besides that nothing seemed damaged. "That...was strange." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mai looked rather concerned, as well she should. Natsuki was blushing furiously and averting her gaze. Mikoto didn't seem to care, almost-naked and lounging haphazardly back against the metal railing with her sword resting beside her, her "most important parts" covered just barely by a flimsy little piece of white cloth Mai had bought somewhere nearby not minutes ago. Needless to say, she had flat out refused to wear the bra, for various reasons. "Just put it back on already!" Mai snapped at her, again. "No," insisted Mikoto, in a tone that suggested that that was all the argument she needed. It was beginning to look that way, too. Natsuki fumed, mostly to herself. "This is ridiculous. She's just a child. You really shouldn't be getting so worked up over it." "Oh, then you can dress her!" "That's not what I..." She trailed off. Mai pointed at her accusingly, grinning yet again. "Pervert!" "Shut up, damnit!" "Not like you haven't seen other girls naked before, right? I mean...you do bathe, don't you?" Natsuki sniffed and turned her back on them both again. Mai just looked pleased with herself, as usual. "But besides that...what are we going to do about it?" "Well, we could just stick a collar on her and take her home like this..." Mikoto blinked confusedly and looked up at the redhead. "You're disgusting." "It's a joke! Kami, you're so uptight sometimes, Kuga." "And anyway, I was talking about the Orphan!" Mai paused. "Oh...right. That hole." She looked across the roof to where a large part of the concrete had been seemingly evaporated into thin air, leaving a wide circular gap where the Orphan had once stood. "Just what the heck did you do to it anyway?" "It's dead. That's all that matters." Natsuki turned, arms crossed angrily over her chest, pouting as usual. "That and getting out of here before the police come and arrest us for property destruction. And public indecency!" she finished off, stabbing a finger accusatorily at the not-dressed teenage girl lounging nonchalantly nearby. Mai looked beside her at the half-nude young girl and sighed. "I think she looks nice, myself. Those really suit her, don't you think?" "Your fashion sense is going to get us all into trouble, Tokiha." "I'm just trying to think positively, unlike some people." Lilac eyes drifted slowly up and down Natsuki's body. "What...what is it?" she stammered, blushing again. "Stop looking at me like that." "Oh, relax, I already told you I don't swing that way." Mai shook her head slowly. "But you're roughly the same size, you two..." Natsuki grunted and turned her head. "Couldn't she just wear your clothes instead?" Mai grinned impishly. "Want me to walk home in my underwear, huh? Kinky." Natsuki just blushed some more and crossed her arms. Then she fiddled with the zipper on her suit to make sure it was securely fastened, just in case, and that made her even more self-conscious, and so it went. Mai was grinning like the proverbial cat all the while, of course, which only compounded the problem. "Just wondering if she'll fit into that suit of yours." "Absolutely not!" Mai held up her hands in a gesture of surrender. "Okay...never mind. I can just buy a beach towel from that store down the street and I'll take her home in that." She turned and walked towards the stairwell... "Wait," a hesitant voice behind her. She paused and turned on her heel, looking back with a curious expression. "I have...some spare clothes...in my bike." Natsuki ground one boot into the concrete awkwardly as she spoke, pouting loudly as ever and staring off in some other direction. "As long as I get them back..." Mai was about to say something when Natsuki looked down at her watch and frowned. "I should go now, anyway. There's somewhere I have to be later tonight." "Fujino-san, eh?" teased the redhead. For once, it didn't work. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yukino leaned back until her head touched the grass, and stared lazily up at the sky above. Her eyes stopped squinting with that darned screen out of sight at last. She felt all the muscles in her fingers tingling slightly from all the overworking they had done the past few hours, and wriggled them until the feeling of a cool breeze brushing her fingertips faded back in. For a moment, her eyelids were sliding shut under their own weight, unconsciousness threatening at the edge of her mind. "...and that stupid board of directors, I swear, they're trying to illuminate me." A familiar voice wrenched her out of her almost-sleep. She blinked it off with a quick yawn and then backtracked... "Just the other day-" "-Alienate, Haruka-chan," she corrected, patiently as ever. Haruka crossed her arms over her bountiful chest and pouted. "I know!" Then the mustard-haired woman leaned over her "personal assistant" and gave her a gentle tap on the nose with one perfectly shaped fingertip. "You know, I've always wondered...just how you always know what I mean. How do you do it anyway?" Yukino levelled her most alluring stare up at her partner, which was more really badly disguised adoration in effect, and her smile widened a little. "I know Haruka-chan better than you know yourself." Haruka blushed. It was like having something small and adorable giving her "the eye" only Yukino had it down to an art form. "Yukino...silly girl." They lapsed back into empty silence for a while, or rather Yukino relaxed back on the grass some more, half-awake while Haruka very quietly ranted on to herself about this and that and whatever. Somehow, the mere sound of that agitated voice was more than enough to keep the brunette drifting somewhere wonderfully relaxing right between consciousness and sleep. Suddenly, she sat up. One finger nudged her glasses back up her nose as she squinted at the screen in her lap, trying to focus. Checked the date... "What is it, Yukino? Did you forget something?" "Your birthday!" yelped the other girl. A look of shocked dismay swamped her face. "How...how could I forget...Haruka-chan's birthday! Oh, but it's just been such a busy week! We had that stupid meeting with the governor, and all those negotiations deals, and the shareholders' meeting..." An arm curled back around her shoulders and soon she found her head buried into her favourite pillow, only a thin cotton sheet keeping that sumptuous warmth from her cheeks. Her body started relaxing again all by itself and her arguments melted away. "My birthday isn't till the weekend, silly," Haruka purred as she stroked her fingers through the other woman's hair. "You've got plenty of time. And besides, that makes tomorrow our anniversary." She just couldn't keep from grinning hugely at the sight of a sparkling gold band wrapped around her middle finger, glinting as it peeked through fine auburn locks. "Our...anniversary...isn't it?" "So right now it's my turn, okay? You'll see, I'll get you back for what you did to me." Memories of lavender perfume and lilies and green silk drifted through her mind, and Yukino sighed deeply. She put her arms around her wife's mid-section and nuzzled into that inviting cleavage a little more, shamelessly one might say, even though they were out in public. For once, she didn't seem to care. "I guess I could just enjoy it a little more for now..." Before she could finish, the sound of Haruka's heartbeat all around and that melodic voice singing softly had lulled her to sleep.
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