The Green Ashikabi

(It should go without saying that I don't own any of the following characters or likenesses thereof, but just in case you is real dumb, I don't. There, I said it.)

Ten years of hiding, skulking about the shadows and then when found an explosion of violence and rage so fierce it would inevitably scar the very earth upon which he struggled. Ten years of trying to make a better life for himself and for others. Ten years of attempting to fill the vast emptiness of his regret with something he could be proud of.

Ten years of strife until one of his many enemies finally found a way to be rid of him forever.

The mocking smile was delivered with precision from between perfect red lips framed by golden locks and a green tiara, then the ground under him lit up with an intensity equivalent to staring at the sun on a bright summer day. Burning his eyes shut, he barely notices the sensation when he falls through the floor and blacks out.

Waking up with a pounding headache and no idea where he lay was sadly not too unusual for him. Feeling otherwise comfortable when it happened was something new though. Without opening his eyes he can tell that the room is dim, and the bed comfortable but firm. The smell of clean linen and ammonia based cleaning supplies are both faint in the air, and there is a constant rustling of movement and soft conversation from somewhere nearby. It feels like a hospital.

Which means it feels like bad news. Getting to his feet he looks around for his clothing, but the office supply box at the foot of the bed that contains his belongings is filled with essentially burn damaged rags and a wallet. As he is looking through the wallet to see if anything is missing, the door to the room opens and a young Asian woman walks in, wearing the scrubs that mark her clearly as a medical professional of some sort. She startles when she sees him, the hair that had made it out from under her tight cap swaying as she jerks upright and grabs the door. Yammering at him in Japanese spoken at the breakneck speeds of an auctioneer she dashes forward to hold him up. Treating him as though she expects him to collapse at any second and trying to guide him back to the bed while calling out toward the door for assistance.

He tries to proclaim himself healthy using what little Japanese he knows but the woman is having none of it, though she does switch to broken but understandable English when he starts talking to her.

"You need lay down, you unwell. Doc be soon to see you, lay down now."

Not quite certain how to respond to her obvious concern without giving away far more than he was willing to at this time, he lets himself be led back to the bed and lays upon it. She spends a few minutes reattaching some sticky monitor pads to his arm and chest that he had torn off when he got up, and then moves about in the room checking his blood pressure, his monitors, and then repacking the rags at the end of the bed into the box with a slight smirk that seems to ask 'Where were you going to go wearing these scraps anyway, Hmmm?'

When the doctor arrives a few minutes later he is an older gentleman in a white coat, carrying a clipboard with a stethoscope draped around his neck. His salt and pepper hair and stubble indicate some advanced age, yet the open smile on his face would lead one to believe that his years in medicine had not yet hardened him.

Apparently having heard either the nurse or her patient speaking, he walks in the room speaking very good, if still accented, English. "So, you are awake! So good to see! Now we just need to know who you are and who gets the bill for your care these past weeks."

As he drops that bombshell, the doctor checks the monitors and lays a clipboard and pen down on the bed. Looking at the paperwork by his side, it looks like they had done a complete workup on him at some point, and then having decided that he was in reasonable health if unresponsive and comatose, they had chosen to keep him here for observation at least until the authorities had managed to got a positive ID on him or he awoke.

"Weeks? Pardon, Doctor, but how long was I out? I mean, I feel fine. While we are at it, where am I anyway?"

"I am sorry, my name is Dr. Okakita, and you are?"

"Bruce. Now what was this you said about weeks?"

"Well, Bruce. Let us see here. You were brought in after having been found out in the countryside in late September, so that would be a little over eight weeks. Frankly, I am amazed you lasted that long on minimal life support. With nobody to authorize the treatment we were unfortunately limited as to what we were allowed to do for you. You really should start carrying a contact card in your wallet for next of kin and such, especially if you are going to choose to not carry identification. As for where you are, this is a private hospital in Tokyo. We took you in after the local public facilities were planning to stop treatment, as a favor to local law enforcement which had wanted to know more about your circumstances."

Eight weeks? Eight weeks he was out? That makes him think. Since the accident so long ago the idea that he could be unconscious for that long seems laughable. The Tokyo thing is even more ridiculous. Last he remembered he was in New York eating questionable sushi with Stark and turning down another offer of full time employment. Then there was a bomb. The anger. Now, well. Whatever this is.

The doctor is giving a slight chuckle as he finishes checking his monitors. "If it makes you feel any better about the eight weeks you lost in our care, I can tell you that your being here gave a young woman eight more weeks to live. You have a very rare blood type Mr. Bruce, and we borrowed a bit to help a patient in critical condition a few hours ago. It is too bad that she likely won't make it to see next summers cherry blossoms even with your help, but even still I call it a minor miracle that we had a donor here when she went critical and we had to operate."

His blood goes still as his heart skips a beat. "You gave somebody a transfusion of my blood? Mine? Oh god no." He starts getting back up again, tearing off the monitors. "I need to see her now, and I need clothes to do it. Can you help me?"

"There is no problem, Bruce. We have checked you for literally everything over the last few weeks trying to determine what was keeping you unconscious. Other than the likely concussion causing you to not wake up you are possibly the healthiest person in the city. In fact, we double checked for any kind of illness indicators twice because to find somebody over the age of six months that has seemingly had no illnesses was too difficult to believe. If you want to object on legal grounds under consent laws, you can do that. But since you would have died without our care I have faith that a jury would.."

"I am NOT healthy, and now neither is she. Can you get me some clothes or am I just going to use a sheet?"

"Calm yourself Bruce, we can get you some scrubs in a few minutes. She is also in long term care, so she is just up the hall. We can be there in a few minutes."

Yes. Calm. Need to be calm. Deep breaths. In with the good air, out with the bad air. The doctor calls out to the nurses station to get some clothes for the patient, and in a few minutes Bruce is putting on lime green pants with an elastic band over a pair of boxers that seem to be covered in Pokemon. Baby blue slipper socks and a bright orange scrub style shirt to finish his now absurd style. With that the doctor has an orderly come in with a wheelchair, as while Bruce seems to be getting around OK, he explains that for liability reasons the policy in the ward is that until removed from long term care no patients are allowed to have the opportunity to hurt themselves. Grumbling a bit about the need for haste, Bruce gets in the chair. A few minutes later they pull up to the young woman's room, one "Chiho Hidaka."

Getting out of the chair in direct opposition to what he has been told, Bruce stands and glances briefly at the chart on the door then enters the room. The lights are dim. It isn't terribly late, but it is the third week in November. As such the sun has gone down, and the blinds are drawn. In the darkness Bruce can see the young woman. She looks young. She would probably still be in high school if she wasn't terminal. Her monitor is still going, and according to it she has a strong pulse. A very strong pulse.

Bruce is a physicist. That is where he took his profession, that is where he made his mistake. In more than one way it has made him what he is today. But it isn't the only doctorate he has. Listing everything he has formal training in would take hours, and the hobbies he has had to take up in the last ten years would take even longer. But in that mess of knowledge is an understanding of medicine that makes him possibly one of the top fifty minds on the planet as a general practitioner and within a narrow field, a very narrow field... The only guy to go to.

He knows how to read these instruments. He knew how to read the chart on the door before he came in. He knows that hundred pound little girls that have been sick and dying for years and have just recently undergone exploratory surgery to remove some form of necrosis caused by a combination of illness and an allergic reaction to a new medication should not result in a heart that is beating with the power of a pile driver and the speed of a jackhammer. He knows that under normal circumstances the woman would have looked over when the door opened as she is obviously awake, her bed in a very slightly raised position and her eyes wide open. He knows that only a few hours out of surgery, she should still be asleep from the drugs they would have used to knock her out. But even if all that were not the case, the look of fear as she stares at the far wall and silently mouths a scream would have been a good indicator that something was wrong, and the way her hands were gripping the steel bed rails and slowly crushing them was definitely the clincher. Damn it. Damn it all to hell.

The doctor seeing this rushes into the room and goes to flip the lights on, but Bruce grabs his hand and in a desperate whisper says "No! Don't, don't startle her. Move slowly and carefully. Stay out of reach. You don't yet understand how bad this could be. Send somebody for a radiation detector. There should be one in radiology for testing the equipment. Go, I need to know how bad the exposure is."

The doctor pales. "Radiation? What radiation? What kind of radiation could do that?"

"The worst kind, doc. Now go get it. I am going to try to calm her down."

With that the doctor leaves the room and the ever pragmatic orderly shuts the door to peer in through the window.

Bruce slowly moves toward the bed, making soft comforting sounds as he does. The girl doesn't move her head but he sees that her eyes have started to track him. He tries to stumble through an explanation in Japanese.

"Pain will pass. Temporary. Stay calm. Pain will pass. Doctors made mistake, but pain will pass. Calm. Be calm."

The poor girl whimpers and then, mercifully, passes out. Her heart rate slows to nearly nothing, then picks back up to something approaching normal after a minute.

Bruce pulls a stool up next to her bed, pries her right hand off of the bed rail and shakes his head in despair at the deep dents she has left in it, puts his fingers on her wrist for her pulse, and looks out the window into the black. The clock is now running. Somewhere, somebody is talking about this. Sooner or later that talk is going to reach the wrong ears. He had to get out of here, and now he had to get her out of here as well. Soon. But he had a little time. As the minutes slip by waiting for the doctor to return he finds his eyelids drooping. It had been a hell of a day already, and he has been awake for less than an hour when he nods off.

He wakes up when her hand moves. Cracking his eyes open, he sees her trying to remove her hand from his grasp without waking him up. He releases her and says "Sorry, Miss. I must have fallen asleep checking your pulse."

"I assumed as much. Who are you? I have been here a long time and thought I knew all of the staff here. Please use English, I think my English is better than your Japanese." She looks nervous, but not outright afraid. Bruce figures that she has probably had to see more than her fair share of specialists. For a girl this young to have to deal with it being normal to have strange men where she sleeps is fairly heartbreaking for him.

"Well, Miss, that is kind of a long story. I will give you the short answer. I am another patient from about fifty feet up the hall. Name is Bruce. They tell me I was unconscious for something like two months and just woke up tonight sometime. The problem is that they didn't have a chance to ask me before they used me as a blood donor for your surgery earlier, or I could have told them that it was a bad idea."

"Why, Bruce-san? Am I now infected with something new? Do I have the AIDS?" She looks resigned, as though she isn't quite sure what more the world could throw at her.

"Umm.. No. No disease. I have a... Lets call it a toxin, in my blood. The good news is that barring complications with the toxin itself, there is a reasonable chance that you will start feeling better soon if you haven't already. There isn't much in the viral or bacterial world that can survive this toxin. The bad news is that the complications you can run into can be, well, rather severe."

"What complications are those?"

Bruce hangs his head and starts listing off the most likely candidates. "Well, umm... The most likely candidates are going to be severe mood swings, hemophilia, toxic shock, a sickness brought about by the nature of the toxin itself as it is radioactive, organ necrosis and failure, nerve damage, an incredibly high chance for cancerous growths, internal bleeding, severe muscle spasms that hit with enough force to cause the brittle bones that it can also form to actually break, and of course if it wasn't already obvious, death." As she turns even more pale at the thought of all of this he leans in close and looks her in the eyes, giving him his first look into the green within green eyes she now has, even the whites being slightly tinted with only the pupil itself unchanged. Then he whispers "But since you survived the first few hours, that isn't likely how your case is going to go. Be calm. Focus on staying calm. Can you do that?" Her eyes wide, she nods. "I will try, Bruce-san."

"OK. I want you to stay calm, and look at your bed rails." Her look of shock is almost funny as she slowly puts her hands back down on the rails and finds that the imprint exactly fits her hands.

"This Toxin will manifest differently in anyone who survives the initial exposure. So I can't tell for sure yet what all it is doing to you. But I am betting that you are strong enough to walk out of here and honestly, we both need to leave before somebody in a position to make our lives miserable over this gets wind of it."

"But, my treatments. I need them to live, don't I?" Bruce slowly shakes his head. "There is no normal treatment for your disease. All the things I saw on your chart were dealing with symptoms. But regardless I think you will find that barring complications with the toxin, staying healthy in a conventional sense won't be an issue for you anymore. I am going to put up the privacy screen, can you get dressed?"

She seems to be at a loss for words, then as she goes to get up she instead lifts herself off the bed with arm strength alone, by holding the rails. Then with a tenuous smile, straightening her body while pushing away from the bed until the sheet falls over her hands and she appears to be hovering over it.

"You know, I think maybe I can."

Bruce puts up the privacy screen for her and then goes to the door to look out the glass in it. He sees what he feared. A rather severe looking man on either side of the door and two more across the hall. At least the two across the hall seem to be armed with pistols of some kind, their shoulder holsters obvious to anybody that knows what to look for. Probably waiting for somebody else to show up. One of them nods his way and motions down the hall to somebody that Bruce cannot see. Damn it. Locking the door and then shoving a chair under the handle will buy a minute or two.

"Chiho, there are people with guns watching the door. I don't think they are here to sell us girl scout cookies, so this might be a rougher ride than I thought"

The rustling of cloth from the other side of the privacy screen stops. "Do you think they would hurt us, Bruce-san?"

"I think they would try, and I don't think it would be a good idea to find out if they would succeed." Glancing out the window, he says "We are only on the second floor. That is doable. Are you dressed yet?"

At this point someone is trying the door handle and seconds later he can hear the jingle of keys from the hallway.

"Yes, Bruce-san. I am dressed. What is "Doable?"

Bruce slides the window open and pushes the privacy screen aside, seeing Chiho in a white and pink ruffled dress, and sliding on a baby blue puffy coat over it from the box at the foot of her bed. She grabs her purse and phone, tosses the charger in a pocket, and looks at him expectantly tapping the toes of her her right tennis shoe covered feet against the floor.

"Now, I jump out the window and you jump right after me as soon as my feet hit the ground. Can you do that?"

She looks a little dubious, but says "Yes?"

"Good." And with that, he goes to the window, climbs out, lowers himself as far as possible, and drops the last eight feet or so, rolling on the grass and getting back up immediately. "Now Jump!"

She almost doesn't. Bruce-san seems like a nice man, and he was right that she feels better, stronger, than she has ever before. But it is still difficult to completely forget years and years of doing what the doctors say and staying under their care. In fact, had it not been for a strange man bellowing at her to stop and the sound of breaking glass. Then followed by a fateful gunshot that tried to bury itself in her shoulder, causing her to jump in fear and away from the sound... she might not have. But she did.

Bruce caught her easily enough, she weighed almost nothing and the drop was a mere ten feet. The force does knock him down to a knee but he gets back up, throws her over a shoulder, and runs into the night as though the hounds of hell were barking at his heels.

His slipper socks sliding on the occasional patch of frost.

A few hours later after Chiho had used some debit card to buy them a couple of backpacks and changes of clothes from a late night department store, they made a quick trip to a public bath and spent a lot of time trying to get her used to her new strength. While she may or may not develop further, getting a handle on how to reign in extra power for somebody that is used to having to strain mightily to do even little things is a bit of a priority. Once these important tasks are done they find a little hole in the wall overnight cafe and finally have a chance to sit down and talk a bit over a fast food meal of some kind of noodle bowl in an almost completely deserted place. Chiho is having a hard time understanding why the bullet she had taken in the shoulder as she made her jump had flattened itself against the shoulder blade and then been pushed out by the healing tissues. She was being rather stubborn about getting a straight answer. The truly unfortunate thing being that he doesn't know what kind of answers he can give. Japan is a bit off the beaten path for the super hero jet set, but he has spent the last half hour going through a newspaper page by page While eating and trying to stall this very conversation, and to see absolutely nothing in it at all that sounds like it might wear a cape and tights on the weekends is really making him wonder if that psycho bitch just knocked him out and shipped him to Japan, or if she had some kind of more permanent solution. It wouldn't be the first time he had been forced to deal with alternate dimensional garbage. Just potentially the most recent.

"Yes, Bruce-san. But why? Why are my eyes this color? Why did the bullet squish and the wound close? These things are not normal, so why? Why did this happen to me?"

"I told you, it was in the blood transfusion. It is effecting you different than me, but if it doesn't kill you outright it usually does something crazy with you. In you it seems to be ratcheting up your strength and ability to recover from damage, mostly. Some durability gain. I will need to see you a few times over the next couple of weeks just to be on hand in case any kind of bad side effects show up, but considering the shape you were in before I think we can call this a win overall. Just don't ever go to a doctor again if you can help it. That is always where the trouble starts."

"It effects Bruce-san differently? What does it do to Bruce-san?"

Bruce shakes his head. "If I get angry, or hurt, or scared. If anything happens to make my adrenaline pump or my heart rate get above a certain point I change. Into..." He smiles slightly, though a tad pained. "An enormous green rage monster. Call it a Demon, or an Oni if you like. I lose most of my control, and things tend to get broken. All the things tend to get broken. I try to be pretty hands off and inconspicuous when I can so it doesn't happen."

Bruce glances out the window. Old habits, keeping an eye on his surroundings is just one of the many nervous tics he has picked up since that gamma bomb fiasco made him into a freak. Nobody of note, though there is a young girl out there across the street that is sitting against the side of a building, shivering with cold despite sitting directly under what looks to be a dryer vent. Dirty darkish blond hair unkempt, her clothing filthy and stained with blood in places. She stares in the window of the noodle place and Bruce could swear that he can see the drool forming on her gaunt cheeks.

"Hey, Chiho? Do you think that we could get a noodle bowl to go? I don't think that girl over there has had a break in a while and it would probably make her day. I will pay you back when I get something going on."

"Bruce-san, there can be no debts between us. You gave me back my life. For that I will be forever grateful. Even more, the card I am using is the one that contains the last bits of my trust fund, a fund I only still have because Bruce-san got me out of the hospital before it had all been depleted. As far as I can see, the money on it belongs to Bruce-san."

"Don't be silly. I didn't give you anything except a good chance that you will spend the rest of your life running away from people in lab coats."

"Maybe, Bruce-san. But I will be running, and that makes it better than yesterday!"

"Let me know in a year if you still feel that way kiddo. So, do you have any family you can stay with? I heard you on your phone in the dressing room." He holds his hands up, palms out. "I wasn't trying to listen in or anything, but I heard you talking and wanted to know if that meant you had somewhere to go. If we can get you there, I can stop by in a day or two and check on you. No pressure."

She looks a little nervous, but responds "Yes, I have my friend Uzume. She would take me in. But I don't know if she would want you to know where we would be."

"That's fair. But before I hand you off to her, we should set a place to meet in a few days that has the potential of a little privacy for an hour so I can check and make sure you are doing alright. If that is OK."

"Of course, Bruce-san. That would be very appreciated. Why don't you go get your friend in the cold while I make another call, and we can invite them in here to eat, since we are paying for food they may as well eat in the warmth of the restaurant."

"You know, Chiho, that is actually a really good idea. I will be right back."

Bruce walks toward the door shaking his head and indulging in a quick grin. The girl might not have a wicked bone in her body, but she was picking up the cloak and dagger quick enough. Getting him out of the way during her phone call was actually fairly encouraging. She might even survive what he had, albeit unintentionally, allowed to befall her. A quick jog across the street and he looks down on the poor girl in sympathy. She slowly looks up at him, unmoving other than her eyes and a slight tilt of her head. The steam from the dryer vent both warming and moistening her back, a circumstance that will no doubt cause her problems later. He opens his mouth, silently thanking the fates at the sheer number of trade shows he had been asked to attend in Japan. His Japanese isn't good, but he knows enough to be understood. Thankfully, most Japanese understand quite a bit of English. Between the two, being understood hasn't been too much of a problem so far. "So, hi there. My friend and I in the restaurant were wondering if you would like some food. Maybe get out of the cold for awhile and have a bite. Does that sound good?"

She looks up at him. This girl who might be as young as sixteen, certainly no older than eighteen, and sees a man who is obviously approaching forty. It doesn't seem to particularly matter to her as she stands up, shaking in the cold, and says "Number 95, Kuno. Thank you for your kindness."

"Yeah,I am Bruce. Follow me uh.. Kuno, and we will get you warmed up with some food in you." Bruce reaches out a hand to her, and when she holds out her own he takes it and starts leading her back across the street. "So, none of my business I suppose, but are you OK? I mean, do you have some place to stay? We could poke around for a woman's shelter or something on the wi-fi while we eat, it is way to cold to be out here all the time."

Kuno is a little confused. Happy for the warmth, the kindness, and the food. But confused. She feels like she is somehow missing something. She was told when she left the laboratories, before her stupid credit card had been stolen, before she spent all those nights sleeping on the streets and getting scratched up due to both where she was sleeping and her own lamentable clumsiness, she was told then that she would know her soul mate because he would be handsome, and kind. That she would love him. That she would stay with him forever, and together they would both be stronger then they could possibly be alone.

This older gentleman with the graying hair and average build, this man that could easily be old enough to be her father and barely even speaks the local language, is the first person who has been kind to her in the three months she has been lost in the city looking for that soul mate. Despite herself, she even feels good about this. When she reaches out her cold hand and puts it into his the warmth it brings is overwhelming. Because his hands seem to be impervious to the cold, she can practically see heat waves coming off of his exposed skin as though somehow the cold is afraid to get to close to him for fear of what he might do to it. Also though, the little hole in her soul that each day has been getting cut deeper and bloodier as she slowly started to give into despair that she would ever find her Ashikabi, her soul mate of the plan, has filled in. It has filled in to overflowing and she is already starting to look at him with new eyes. Seeing experience rather than age. A life of toil and hard work rather than just the rough hands that come with it. Someone compassionate and willing to be there for her. But at the same time, someone already trying to abdicate the life she now wanted with him to some faceless entity that would give her a place to sleep. So it was with a quizzical glance up at his unshaven face that she Responds, "Kuno has nowhere, Bruce-san."

She then follows him into the diner and the man behind the counter adds her meal to the tab, taking just a moment to slop it into a bowl and hand it over with a set of chopsticks. Then they walk over to the booth, and she climbs in first, next to the window. Bruce places her tray in front of her and sits down next to her.

"Chiho, this is Kuno. Kuno, Chiho." He looks at Chiho's phone. "Were you able to get in touch with anyone?"

"Yes, Bruce-san. She will be here soon, and we will talk about where to meet later then. Kuno, hmm? Why were you sitting out in the cold?"

Kuno sees this young woman this with unnaturally green eyes and makes a mistake that, really, anyone could make.

"Kuno is still looking, Chiho-san. Is Bruce-san your Ashikabi? What number are you? Kuno is 95." She then waits for an answer, still eating noodles like she hasn't eaten in weeks.

Chiho blushes and starts shaking her head, looking like she is getting ready to say something more but Bruce beats her to it, looking confused.

"If Ashikabi is another word for father, then no. We are just friends."

Kuno stops in mid slurp and her eyes shift over to him, opened wide as though she has just made a social blunder of some epic magnitude.

Chiho is starting to get a feeling about this and looks quite pointedly at Kuno, than jabs a finger at Bruce with one eyebrow raised. Kuno blushes and looks down, but her pinkie finger from the hand that is on the table moves the inch it would take to rest lightly against Bruce's arm, and the look of contentment that spreads through her, the way the stress in her shoulders seems to fade as she dips into the noodle bowl with her chopsticks again really tells Chiho all she needs to know. She looks at Bruce and shakes her head in wonder at the degree of complexity this will add to the equation.

"Bruce-san? Maybe it would be best if you and Kuno-san were to walk with Uzume and I for awhile when she gets here. She will need to explain some things I think."

Bruce is no fool, he understands what a finger point plus and eyebrow raise on one girl and a blush on the other means. He makes an effort to tactfully redirect what he is guessing some kind of attempt to secure a sugar daddy before it can get rolling. "So, Chiho, can we use your phone to try to find a shelter for Kuno while we are here?" He turns to Kuno. "I won't ask why you are on the street, since it is none of my business. But I would hate to see you get hurt out there while you are patching up whatever went wrong to put you there. Seems the least I can do is try to get you someplace safe before I need to go home."

Kuno has gone from lightly touching him with a finger to holding his pinkie tightly in her hand as though by force of will alone she could make him understand her need, and that this need is fueled by something more than material or even carnal desires. "Home, Bruce-san? Where is home?"

Bruce sighs. It isn't something that happens to him much anymore. Being on the wrong side of his thirties and moving around a lot he rarely has to deal with the direct results of being a decent human being. But it isn't the first time it has happened either. If you kick somebody long enough, they will either become a broken wreck of a human being or latch onto the first person that makes them feel something besides pain with the emotional strength of some kind of leech and Stockholm victim hybrid. It is sad, but really, hanging around with him is just exactly the last thing the poor girl needs.

"Well, back in the United States, of course. I don't sound like a local, do I?" He tries to chuckle to maybe drop the tension level but the look of abject horror on Kuno's face makes him stop.

Chiho tries to interject here as Kuno is looking like she is swinging right past desperation avenue and straight up drastic measures boulevard. "We can look into this later, Bruce-san, can we not just be pleasant for now? Please?"

Getting the distinct impression that there is a lot more going on here than he is currently aware of, he responds: "Yeah, sure. We can talk about it later if you like." He makes it a point to pull his hand away from Kuno and motions her to finish eating. "If you are going to be coming with us you had best eat up. Whoever Uzume is, she may not have time to wait around for you."

Hearing this, Kuno practically inhales what is left in her bowl, then leans into Bruce's side to feel him close while she waits. The warmth and contentment of merely being close to him drains most of the worries she had been stacking up away, and between that and the full belly it is only a few minutes before the tell tale sounds of the gentlest snores are heard. When she starts to slump forward, Bruce brings an arm around her and holds her to him so she doesn't smack her head against the table.

Chiho is looking at the scene oddly, her head cocked over a bit and a slightly satisfied smirk on her lips. "I think it will be a good thing, Bruce-san. Maybe for both of you."

He is about to respond when the door to the diner slams open and an athletic looking woman in her low to mid twenties staggers in, brown hair that may have once been cutely clamped in a band on the side of her head has been thrown into complete disarray and her light, windbreaker style white coat unzipped showing a bright pink shirt with a yellow star on it. "Chiho!"

"Over here Uzume-san!" Chiho scrambles to get out of the booth they were sitting in using the coat rack as a handhold, and Bruce winces slightly as she accidentally snaps the metal bracket off in doing so with a crunching sound of wood being destroyed and the whine of metal being overstressed. She glances at the bracket in her hand and the coats on the floor, but her smile never wavers, she launches herself at her Uzume and latches onto her neck for a hug that lasts seemingly forever.

When it does finally end, Uzume still holds her up, and they have their foreheads together, staring into each others eyes. Chiho composing herself, and Uzume finally feeling the shock of what she is seeing, and even feeling. "But, how Chiho? I saw you just two nights ago, and you were so sick you nearly died, how can this be? What... what happened to your eyes?"

"Bruce-san. Bruce-san donated the blood that saved me. But it made my eyes green."

Oh, no. Bruce starts to get up to go straighten things out. They need to be not thinking about him saving anybody. He has been on this train before too. Helping out here and there, sure. But saving people is for individuals that can stay in one spot long enough to follow through and do it right, and he is most definitely not that guy.

He does get preempted though by Kuno, who was awoken when the coat rack broke but waited to see what would happen. When Bruce starts to get up though, she panics. "Bruce-san!"

When he turns to see what she wants, a ghost of irritation starting to crawl across his face, she is kneeling on the bench, her face level with his, and she kisses him. Not a sloppy kiss. Not a kiss you would be afraid to tell your mother about. A quick, almost terrified peck on the lips, as though she was so scared he would abandon her that she needed to just once, feel his lips to verify they were real.

She stiffens on the bench, her eyes going wide as she screams through the kiss in pain, with a glow behind her slowly spreading out into the most delicate of golden gossamer wings, that are ravaged with angry green tears. The wings stay for nearly a minute while Bruce falls on the floor in his haste to get away from her, finally ending up against the far wall peering at her through half closed eyes with his right hand checking the pulse of his left wrist. Kuno's eyes begin to roll back as she kneels on the bench, and the wings seem to slowly repair themselves, though the spots that were once torn through are now glowing a neon green to go with the bright amber that the rest is. Her body thrown into shadow from the wings on her back, a warring gold and green. When her eyes start to roll forward and he can see they have turned a green like Chiho's, he goes from startled to astonished. When she then falls toward the end of the bench either dead or unconscious he catches her and holds her against his chest, her head finding the nook between his head and shoulder, and only then do the wings fade away. Her breath tickling his ear the only sign of life she gives.

By some kind of unspoken agreement they all seem to decide that whatever this was, discussing it here is a terrible idea. Chiho pays the bill and and extra bit to cover the damage she did to the booth, while Bruce pulls the bulky coat off, quite a trick while holding a comatose girl, and wraps it around her. Uzume is giving him a lot of space, though she doesn't look scared or even shocked at what happened. Merely disturbed. Like watching a movie for a thousand times, and then once watching an alternate ending. It may be good, it may be bad. But it is most definitely different, and different is disturbing. The man behind the counter takes their money happily enough, but he makes appeals to his ancestors as they walk out the door to please protect him and his humble noodle hut from all these unnatural goings on.

Uzume finally says something to Bruce when they are about two blocks from the noodle hut, heading generally north east. "So, Papa-san, I take it you like them young, yes?" She giggles at his look of horror and Chiho slaps her shoulder looking scandalized in the extreme.

"You be nice to Bruce-san! He is a good man and he needs your help, not to be tormented!"

"Umm, yeah. Help. Help would be good if it can explain what just happened in there. I have never seen a reaction like that to me. Nothing even remotely like it, actually."

Uzume gives him an odd look. "Reactions are closer to what happened to my Chiho, then?"

Bruce looks away, face falling to a grimace but says: "Actually, the most common result of a transfusion of my blood is a fairly quick death, with a few notable exceptions. I have a toxin in me that most people react poorly to. A best case scenario would probably be what happened to Chiho, though I will need to give her checkups for a few weeks to make sure nothing bad is happening. But the wings thing? That's a new one on me."

Uzume seems to accept that, though her look says that she will have more questions later. "Well, Papa-san, brace yourself because this is going to be a bit of a shock..."

"She's an alien, isn't she?" Bruce asks, cutting her off.

Uzume stumbles. "How in the hell did you know that?!"

Bruce stops, closes his eyes, and looks at the sky. "Because I have heard the phrase, "Brace yourself because this is going to be a shock" when applies to people before. So what is she? Asgardian? Skrull?"

Uzume Shrugs. "Sekirei, same as me. Chiho is my Ashikabi, and you, Papa-san, are now hers. What's a Skrull?"

"No, no sidetracking. What is an Ashikabi, and how the hell do I get the set of steak knives instead?"

Uzume stops. "She really didn't tell you anything, did she?"

"I heard these two chuckle heads using the word, but the way they were using it I thought she was looking for a sugar daddy or something. So, no. Assume nothing has been explained to me and take it from the top please."

"Okay then. Well, the basics of what you need to know is that Sekirei are an alien race that crash landed on earth like a billion years ago or something, and at some point much more recently the company MBI got a hold of the wreck and brought all one hundred and eight of us out of stasis. The fun bits are two fold. First, Sekirei are driven to find and bond with a soul mate, and when they do, its for life. Sorry you had to find out this way, but that girl has winged herself with you and if you die, she will die. If you turn her away, she will most likely go into a terminal depression and find a way to end it. Sorry to be blunt about this, but if I flower it up and you leave her and she dies, I don't want to field any guilt over it. So you get the facts. It isn't just a one way bond though, and supposedly it can't be a bad bond unless it was forced by the Ashikabi. I guess you could say all Sekirei are at least a little bit psychic, because when we feel ourselves reacting hard to an Ashikabi, and I think it is safe to say that she did, it is a coupling that can work out. It is sad that she didn't explain it properly first, but you should know that the little tart loves you now. She can't help it, it got encoded in her genes when you swapped spit. So, you know. Try not to be too much of a jerk. Also, try to be careful with her, I have never heard of a Sekirei that had her eyes turn green and fall unconscious when she got winged before. So... there might be something actually wrong with her."

Bruce looks up sharply at the word "genes" and cuts her off as soon as there is a break in speech. "Wait, genes? She used my DNA for this? Not like, a psychic hotline or something?"

"Yuppers, Papa-san. Genes. The second thing you need to know is that the guy that runs MBI is a nutball in the extreme and has decided that the best way to deal with a peaceful race of love hungry super humans is to force us to fight each other until only one is left. That is why all the exits to the city are locked down. They know what we all look like and wont let Sekirei or their Ashikabi leave this meat grinder he has set up. So, welcome aboard. Good luck, I guess."

They walk in silence for awhile. Bruce running this all around in his head like it is some kind of puzzle. Frankly, it is sounding like the guy that runs MBI should have watched the movie "War Games" as a child, because as near as he can tell the only way for this species of poor aliens to win is if they don't play. Of course, if you can't leave, and anybody is playing, then everybody is playing. Also, if this girl used DNA to do this to herself, well. The possibilities are endless but most of them are really, really bad. Then something occurs to him. "So, does that make us enemies or something?"

Uzume looks at him with gratitude and says, "Well, we might have been. But you gave me my Chiho, and you gave her life back to her. I won't say we could never be at odds, but we would have to be the last two, and we would have not been able to find a way to stop this crap first."

"Fair enough. So where are we going? I should really give Kuno and Chiho a physical soon. We need to know if there are going to be any further complications."

"Well, we are going to Izumo Inn. That is where I am staying and there are at least a couple of rooms available. The least I can do is cover the cost of your room for a couple of months. Call it your doctors fee. But since the landlady is probably asleep, and isn't a big fan of surprises." Then her voice drops to a respectful but still highly annoyed grumble "Also can't keep her noodle out of other peoples romances." Her voice then returns to normal. "I was thinking we might just stop by a hotel in the area for the evening and stop by the Izumo Inn tomorrow morning."

Bruce looks up at her. "It has to be two in the morning, what hotel not conjoined with an airport is going to allow check in at this time?"

Uzume giggles and hugs Chiho closer as she speeds up a bit. "The best kind ever, hurry up!"

About ten blocks later Bruce is standing in front of a single story, twenty five room hotel that charges by the hour and uses as its sign a neon amalgamation of a pulsing heart shape in rainbow colors.

"No, Uzume, really? I am old enough to be her father. This is not, not cool.

"Are you sure Papa-san? I mean, she is a cute little thing."

"Yes. Yes I am sure. Is there anywhere else?"

"Well, actually, now that you mention it, no. No there isn't. But honestly, even if there was, we would still be coming here. People have all kinds of kinks, and so the lighting in these rooms is unbelievable. Should be good for your health inspection on these two.

"Really? That's why you brought us here?" Bruce is almost looking as though he may be approving in spite of himself.

"Well, no. I brought us here for the vibrating bed, but the whole better light thing sounded good, so I decided to roll with it for a minute."

There is the sound of a slap to his right and then he hears Uzume giggle and Chiho say "No, Uzume-san, not in public!"

A few minutes later and she is handing Bruce a room key that adjoins her own, and tells him Chiho will be there for visual inspection when they wake up. Taking the key in one hand and still holding Kuno in the other, he enters the room and lays her out on the bed. At least the room is warm enough to not need to worry about getting her under covers. He sits down on the only chair in the room, located where the phone hangs on the wall. He glances over at Kuno. She is still breathing fine. Her gentle snores are heard throughout the room. If she doesn't wake up soon though, he is going to have to look her over anyway to find out what is wrong.

About then there is a frantic pounding on the door between the rooms. Bruce gets up and unlocks his side and the door immediately opens to a nearly naked and frantic Chiho who just says: "Bruce-san, please help I broke my Uzume!

Four hours later and Bruce still hasn't slept. Uzume and Kuno are laid out next to each other on the bed in his room, and he had Chiho strip them down to their small clothes with Chiho alternating between fretting over the both of them and laying down next to Uzume and crying on her. The problem is that aside from the eyes, they look fine. Breathing is normal. Pulse is good. This tattoo thing on their backs of a bird and a yin and yang symbol that Chiho claims is very important is still there. He is about to see if he can somehow run down some smelling salts when Kuno finally stirs. Her eyes flutter open, the pale green of the surround, and the dark green of the iris surrounding the still black dot of the pupil. She immediately sits up, paying no heed whatsoever to her state of dress and as soon as she sees Bruce launches herself at him. Hugging him tight while he takes a step back from the force of the hit.

Kuno is crying. Great sobs wracking her small frame as she stammers. "So angry. So afraid. So much pressure all the time. So careful. So much despair. So alone. So very alone. Kuno can hear your heart and it cries so hard all the time. Kuno is sorry. So sorry, Bruce-san. So Sorry. Please forgive for not finding Bruce-san sooner. For not helping sooner. Please forgive Kuno."

Not quite sure what to do, Bruce sits back down in the chair by the phone, holding the tiny girl who probably isn't quite five feet tall and weighs less than eighty pounds on his lap as she once again buries her head in his shoulder and cries while he tries to make soothing sounds. Eventually, Kuno calms down and stops crying, but doesn't seem to be motivated to move off of his lap.

Bruce decides that before life has a chance to throw him another curve ball, there is one thing he should probably get out of the way now if he is going to actually be responsible for this alien.

"Kuno?"

"Yes, Bruce-san?"

"I need you to promise me something. I need you to promise me something and never go against it unless I tell you circumstances have changed."

"Yes, Bruce-san. Kuno will promise."

"You know how Chiho and you have green eyes?"

"They are green now?"

"Yes. Yes they are. And if you ever see me turning that color, green. If you ever see me turning green you are to run away. Come to wherever we are staying, or if I turn green there, go to the diner where we met. I will be there for you eventually, but if I am green You have to leave. Can you do that for me?"

"Ashikabi-san, Kuno is your Sekirei, Kuno needs to protect you. How can Kuno protect you if run away? How can Kuno help you if she isn't there?"

"Kuno, it is obvious that you have some kind of mental rapport with me now. Do you know why I am angry, scared, alone, all those things?"

"Kuno does not. Images. Flashes of pain that don't make sense. But mostly just sorrowful and angry feelings lurking around a bottomless well of regret."

"Kuno, If I am green I don't need help, or protection. If I am green I am a locomotive out of control and I am on a track that is going to lead to more and more regret. I don't want you to be part of that regret. Do you understand?"

Her eyes are a little wide, but she says "Yes, Bruce-san. Kuno will promise to run away if you are green." Her eyes narrow. "But she will not promise how far, and she will not say how long, and if Kuno can help, she will."

Deciding that was probably the best he was going to get out of the little alien, he pats her on the back softly while her breathing becomes very regular again. When he looks up he can see that Uzume has woken up and that her and Chiho are embracing on the bed, though Uzume is looking at him with obvious curiosity

Frankly, he kinda hopes she can stay curious on this one forever. But he is doubtful. In a city full of death matching aliens it seems probable that his luck will run out sometime.

Ok, that seems like a reasonable stopping point for chapter one. I understand that it is written with an expectation that people will have some knowledge of the source material, that was a deliberate choice as I wanted to be able to mention things like "Skrulls" without having to explain them. If you truly do get lost, then I apologize. Not enough to go back and fix it, but you are welcome to some small measure of my sympathy. If you like what is here, be sure to let me know! will take a stab at chapter two when either I see a lot of interest or I get bored. Whichever comes first.