Subject: [One Hour Challenge][Gunbuster][sad] 12,000 Years
From: OtakuLoki@aol.com
Date: 6/23/1997, 5:59 AM
To: fanfic@fanfic.com

Gunbuster: 12,000 years


	Noriko was in her room again.  It looked just like the room she had had
assigned to her about the Excelion.   It even had her anime collection.
 Pirceless relics, taken out of the cryogenic storage they had been in, were
strewn across her room.  The haphazard condition of the exhibits was part of
what made it seem so like the home she had left behind.  She hated it.  
	The only thing that kept her from trying to burn it all was that she knew
she was being monitored.  It was for her own good.  And it turned her
stomach.
	Nothing was too good for one of the two heros who saved humanity.  Even this
prison, carefully hidden from the outside world and anything that might
disturb her already fragile hold on sanity.  

	Lt. Colonel Ohta watched on the monitors as her sister paced her room, like
a wolf penned in a too small cage, wearing a rut in the dirt.  Her heart went
out to Noriko, and she wished she could give her what she so desperately
craved.  Not only was murder frowned upon in this new world, but they would
only bring her back.  Again.  
	Hearing Noriko mutter about using her Firetripper manga to start another
blaze, Kazumi shuddered.  She, unlike Noriko, knew that the last suicide
attempt had been successful.  Noriko's body had looked like a withered mummy,
much as the crew of Apollo One had millenia before.  Kazumi had wracked her
body with tears, feeling more alone than she had at Coach's death.  And then
the next day she had stood in horror as she watched the veterinary crew bring
Noriko back to her room.  She had asked why they had cloned her sister, and
they smiled, and as best they could, told her that no, this WAS Noriko. Not a
clone.  
	No that too, would have been kinder.  Instead they used a <mumblescreee> to
regenerate her flesh and her memories from core tissue unaffected by the
blaze.  And so, this Noriko was the one who had worshipped her, and whom she
had come to love more than life itself. And she was just as miserable as she
had ever been here.  Kazumi wanted to weep.  The only thing that kept her
from doing that was the certain knowledge that if she were to show any sign
of the bewilderment that Noriko had succumbed to, she too would be in a
specially designed zoo exhibit.  What she feared the most was that they might
supply her with a Coach, as easily as they had supplied Noriko with her
anime.  
	That terror was all that kept her from relaxing into the same trap that had
Noriko.  That and her memories.
	Unlike Noriko, she had had a respite from the war.  She had had a husband
whom she loved and job she did well.  Dealing with the ordinary people.  The
ones she had saved.  She knew that any sacrifice to keep that alive would be
worth it. And she had had it for herself.  Noriko only had a love, lost in
the night, and battle companions dead beside her.  
	And coming here.  When they had first seen the lights of earth showing them
the way home.  They had been too joyful to think of the implications.  They
placed no signifigance on a single character placed backwards.  
	After they landed, the parties were there.  But there were others.  The
historians.  The Anthropologists.  The ecologists.  The veterinarians,
desperate for their intestinal flora, complaining that they had no lice.  The
military historians.  The politicians.  The lunatic fringe, claiming that
these two must be sacrificed for the guilt of humanity in destroying the
galaxy.  The Dominant of the Church of Ohta, looking for her to be his Holy
promised bride.  The Least Servant of the Church of the Apocalypse, who only
wanted to thank them again for their sacrifice.  And others.  Too numerous to
count.  The peoples of the colony worlds of Kazumi and Noriko had their
offers of extridicition refused.  Before Kazumi and Noriko knew that they had
done anything of the sort.  
	And all this they got through translators speaking Japanese as people in her
time would speak Hittite.  Actually that was unfair.  The Hittite tongue had
been dead only 3000 years at the time of the battles she and Noriko had
fought.  It would be closer to say that they were speaking Indo-European.
 The translations had gotten better, but it was the feel of a dead language
even to Noriko.  But those first hectic, joyful days, nothing had made sense.
 But of course that is when there were asked to make the decisions that would
affect their lives the most. 
	And so here they were. Stuck on a world they had saved.  One that knew only
faint memories of war.  And one that recognized it's debt to them.  And still
all they could be were historical exhibits, lab animals in all but name.  
	The worst part for Kazumi was that she was glad Noriko had gone mad.  She
was the only one of all these people who could read her sister.  And so she
now had something useful to do.  God help her.  


	Okay.  That's all I can do on this.  It was meant to be a one hour story.
 But it had a bit of prethought go into it.  And I could only torture them
for half an hour before I felt I had shown enough.  But the sad part is...  I
don't expect things to have been really any better for Noriko and Kazumi than
I show here.  This is the best I can imagine them getting.  12000 years is
about three times the breadth of recorded history.  And they had no training
that would be useful in any way that the new society could identify.  I guess
that's why I don't like Gunbuster as much as I wish I could. <shrug> Anyhow..
That's about 34 minutes of writing.  With no editing other than the as in
progress that I usually do anyways.  
 	I hope you enjoy.  


                               -Mike (the OtakuLoki)