It's taken me a good while, mostly in the pursuit of quality... as opposed
to following the example of a game company who shall remain nameless -
*ahem*cough*Midway*cough*cough* - and rushing for the sake of getting
product out the proverbial door. Now witness the first fruits of this labor.
Besides, I figure you all are due something different in any case.
----
[formatting note: _text_ is emphasized; {text} is inside a thought bubble]
Certain Cornet
File One
#include <std_disc.h>
With the things essential to his residence in Tokyo - lodging, food,
utilities - taken care of, and nothing even remotely related to work
demanding his attention, Chance found himself at loose ends. Combined with
the fact of the day turning out as nicely as the weather people had
predicted, it provided for him reason sufficient to explore his new
neighborhood. This he did on foot, looking no different from any of the
many people out and about on their own affairs.
All things considered, he'd surmised twenty minutes after leaving his
rented apartment, this particular suburb wasn't a bad one to call home. A
quarter-hour or so after that, and he was standing outside of a bookstore.
It was a small one, a mom-and-pop kind of establishment in all likelihood,
and he might have walked right on by except for two things. First, it
claimed a large import selection, which meant that it might have those
Timothy Zahn novels he hadn't been able to find while in Montana; and
second, he wasn't certain that he'd pass the store again on the way back.
So he went in.
He had stopped at the magazine rack, novels in hand, to skim the current
issue of Time when it happened. Obliged to take a step back to avoid
someone moving hurriedly down the passage, he ended up backing into
somebody else... a young woman, he saw on turning around, with green hair
mostly gathered into two thick tails kept intact by small ribbons near
their ends and which had been brought over her shoulders to lie on her chest.
A young woman he had, he realized with sudden clarity, seen before, but no
answers came immediately to mind regarding when and where, or who she was.
Mio Kisaragi had trouble, at first, believing her eyes. He looked just as
she remembered, right down to the short purple hair - which apparently
still defied any and all attempts to neaten it - and those silver eyes
which were so difficult to read. But... was he really who she thought he
was, as opposed to a figment of a daydream, or someone possessing a
remarkably coincidental resemblance? She blinked a couple of times - no
daydream, he was still there.
"Sorry about that. Are you okay?"
No listener could be faulted for guessing that he'd been born and raised
in Japan; faint accent aside, his command of the language was that good.
"Uh, yes," she managed to get out. But it wasn't his voice that put her
doubts to rest. It was his eyes - more specifically, the fact that their
focus seemed to be sweeping up and down her body, as if he was appraising
her... or trying to associate her face and form to a memory...
{It is you, isn't it? Please... please remember me...}
His eyes looked her over again...
"I..."
...then, almost imperceptibly, widened, only for a moment....
"...remember."
Time, which had seemed to stop, flowed again; a hundred possibilities for
the future spilled into her mind. She wanted to sing for joy, to say
something, anything, but couldn't quite gather the breath; to close the
short distance seperating them and hug him, but that impulse was lost amid
all the other sensations and thoughts before it could properly form.
"You're the exchange student," Chance elaborated, certain of his guess.
"September '93 through June '94."
"You do remember me, Chance." He could almost hear the joy in those
words... and did one of her eyes - they were green, matching her hair
perfectly - have a tear forming in it? "I..."
A tiny part of him was wondering exactly why this woman not only
remembered his name, but seemed so... happy that he in turn could pick her
out of all the people and events that touched his life. No answer was
forthcoming, so he instead asked her a simpler question.
"Mio Kisaragi."
"It's a lovely name, I'm sure." That seemed an... appropriate? thing to say.
"Thank you..." A pause - three seconds' worth. Four. Five. Then, "It's
been... nine months; what've you been doing?"
"I guess you could say I'm a company man." No need to complicate things
with details. "They had a position waiting for me when I graduated, with
my choice of postings. I'd always wanted to visit this part of the world."
"Oh." Mio was genuinely impressed - for a company to have a position
waiting for a high school graduate meant that they'd seen in that person
something they liked. Her parents would see that as a good thing, she was
certain...
In that moment she happened to catch a glimpse of a clock - 12:38. "I...
I have to go."
{Of course...} "School?" Mio nodded. "Mind if I walk with you?" {Where
did that come from?} Another question without an answer - but, again, it
had seemed a natural enough offer to make.
"Not at all." She smiled. {Perhaps my wish will come true after all,}
she thought as they left the store.
The woman behind the counter watched them go, a wistful expression to her
features. Mio was such a sweet girl, really. {And it looked as if she'd
finally found somebody. Good for her.} Tempering her happiness for one of
her more regular customers, however, were the memories dredged up by that
indicator of a possible future: memories of a loving husband-to-be lost too
soon, a police officer whose luck had finally proven insufficient in a
warehouse more than five years ago, mere days before he had planned to
propose.
She wiped a tear from one eye. Taking one more brief look outside the
window, she hoped things would turn out better for Mio and her new friend,
whoever he was.
-
References such as the CIA World Factbook were quite handy if you wanted
an overview of a country and where it stood in the world scene. A visit to
the library or any of several websites would suffice to give you the
once-over about that country's history and culture. That was all well and
good; it gave context to what one learned from firsthand experience... or
from talking with someone who lived there.
Especially, Chance mused, if the someone you were listening to seemed to
be in something of a blissful half-daze.
"You're just in time for Hanami," Mio was saying. "That's when the cherry
blossoms come into bloom - there are whole parks full of them. The sight
is just beautiful..."
"It is, I'm sure."
"...and I was thinking maybe we can go sometime," she finished, looking up
with an expression that managed without words to add 'please say yes!'
With the diminishing influx of students, it was understandable that she
missed it the first time she happened to glance towards the gates, but she
didn't the next time. Sure enough, there was Mio... and someone,
definitely a man, wearing grey, half-concealed by the wall. Shiori
Fijisaki might've guessed him to be another student, but they'd be walking
in were that so; besides, someone that tall would certainly have stood out
in her memory.
At that point in time the man nodded, and Mio headed for the main
building, looking... happy, Shiori realized almost at once, perhaps
blissfully so. It was something she'd be sure to ask about later, but for
now she made her own way to class. But not before taking one last look.
He - {Who is he?} - was gone.
On its surface the afternoon's happenings seemed simple enough. Except,
Chance knew, it wasn't that straightfoward. Quite aside from the way Mio
had reacted - it had seemed a bit much, given that they'd been barely
acquainted when she had been in his part of the world - there was the
matter of how he had handled the situation, for which he believed he had a
'why'.
{Why? I want to get to know her better.} Mio came across as a shy,
intelligent young woman, and the beauty she did have seemed to take its cue
from that temprament. {Right. Now _why_ is that?}
The answer was almost as much a surprise as the fact of its coming almost
at once, not fragmented, but fully formed. He found her attractive... and
likable. And that brought up the next question: likable in what way?
{Only one way to find out, now is there?} he asked himself, chasing the
last of his sandwich down with a mouthful of juice. And he was pretty sure
he could handle it, and that made the whole thing okay by him.
-
Saki Nijino had heard the whispers, of course. Without much else in the
way of such things, it was understandable that her friend's mystery
'admiree' had become the natural focus of the proverbial grapevine. Like
most of the girls, she was curious as to what he was like; yet perhaps
unlike most, her curiousity was tinged with a bit of worry. Quite aside
from relative frailty that might or might not be a result of her meatless
diet, Mio's worldview had a distinctly rose-colored tint. And while she at
times admired her friend's somewhat idealistic outlook, Saki sometimes
worried that it might one day put Mio in over her head.
Was this one of those times? she asked herself, only paying half-attention
to the soccer practice she otherwise enjoyed watching. Was Mio walking the
garden path, unaware of what lay ahead?
{Maybe I'm worrying too much.} She sighed; just then, movement caught her
eye. A shooting star, bright enough to be visible even in daylight. {I
hope so.} A hand gently shook her shoulder, drawing her attention from the
descending object.
"Hey, Miss Manager."
Saki almost jumped out of her seat at the contact, and the voice, before
realizing who it was. "Goh?"
"Are you okay?"
"Y... yes. I was just thinking about something."
In spite of the design traits necessitated by the near-absence of gravity,
any air force officer would nonetheless be able to identify the room as a
C3I center, with its staff of operators keeping vigil on their
surroundings. At the moment, the duty officer was not in her chair;
rather, she was floating at an operator's shoulder.
"Based on its composition, I think the thing'll land in one piece," the
latter was saying, "but it's really small, so unless it smacks a small town
or something, there won't be too much of a mess. What's peculiar" - he
brought up a new window on his screen, using it to flip through several
stills of the meteor - "are these gas bursts. They are short, localized...
almost as if..."
"As if it's course-correcting."
"Yes, ma'am. I've confirmed these twice already."
The duty officer looked at the main situation display. The meteor's track
was depicted as a bright red line with a data block keeping pace with the
blinking diamond that represented the falling object; another data block
contained projected landfall coordinates. "Is anybody else eyeballing this?"
"Doubtful. So far not a peep from the Troika, or SAC/NORAD. And if an
indie got wind of this, they aren't talking, either."
"I see." She adjusted her headset, ignoring for the moment the
unaccountable chill she suddenly felt. "Captain to the bridge. Comm, send
signal to Rosslyn: 'Black Light'..." Her fingers flew over the console's
keyboard for a few moments. "Include this data."
----
And thus is the board set, and the players' introductions begun.
-Arthur Edwards
White Knight of the Order of Mihoshi Enthusiasts
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Towers/7210/index.html