If you will practice being fictional for a while,
you will understand that fictional characters are
sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.
- Richard Bach
Christmastime was hard on Juna Ariyoshi that year, what with her second life being turned upside down with the demands imposed upon her by her family, her school, and her new duty as the Avatar of Time. Aside from trying to save her failing relationship with Tokio Ooshima, the raven-haired eighteen-year-old also had to perform the grim and confusing tasks given to her by the clandestine SEED organization. And as if that itself wasn't bad enough, she could no longer enjoy the Christmas goodies she once did. It was hard for a person to eat Kobe beef when she was at one with the cow it came from. It was impossible for her to drink palm civet coffee like her friend Katsunari Hoshinogawa did when her visions showed her how the mellow broth was produced.
Her situation had become so difficult to adjust to as to affect her duty as Avatar. In fact, she had flubbed her last Raaja-dealing mission. Oh, she destroyed the demon; unfortunately, she destroyed the Fuji immunosuppressant pharmaceutical factory it threatened along with it. She had faced terrible reprimands from Chris Hawken, her mentor, and Teresa Wong, head of SEED's Far Eastern division, not to mention little telepath Cindy Klein's more-than-usually-aggravating sniping. Chris had taken one penetrating look with his deep-blue eyes at her tired face and said through Cindy, "Take a break from this if you can, Juna. You're not doing any of us any good, and in the meantime, your absence will help us somewhat in training a new TI."
"Someone to replace me?" she had asked hopefully. Chris replied in the negative. The TI-5, a Russian boy named Arkady Klimov, would only be the Kobe area for a month or two. Then Juna would have to come back. She had seen him in action once, in his glowing icy-blue aura suit, his hair redly afire, wielding his strange crossed-bow-like weapon Pinaka--he was, like Juna, an archer--and was dolefully impressed at his obvious confidence, his polite and engaging manner, and his speed in dispatching their phantom enemies. But he slew the Raaja too, and thus was also the target of Chris' many cryptic diatribes.
So it was that when recent transplantee, old classmate and SEED trainee Katsunari Hoshinogawa invited her to come along on a post-Christmas trip to Tokyo, Juna readily accepted, thinking that the change of scenery would help to lift her spirits. She packed her bags, said goodbye to her mother and her sister Kaine, and left along with Ka-chan and her boyfriend Yuuki Goami and took up residence in Ka-chan's relative's apartment in Harajuku. Katsunari had jokingly asked a SEED crew chief if they could hitch a ride on one of SEED's JASDF-disguised CH-47Js, scheduled for maintenance at Iruma Air Base, and to her everlasting amazement the soldier had packed the three of them along and persuaded his pilot to drop them off at a helipad not far away from the apartment building. For that Juna was thankful: she had been dreading the trip across Tokyo's urban landscape, fearing something about it would set her waking nightmares off again. Instead it was just a short taxi ride to Katsunari's cousin's residence and the sanctuary of a guest room.
It had been three relatively quiet and trouble-free days since they arrived, and they were spending the early afternoon walking along in Yoyogi Park, looking curiously at the young girls dressed in Gothic style milling around in the area, talking quietly. They had heard about the phenomenon in Kobe, but this was the first time any of them had ever seen it in person. The cold weather didn't seem to faze the girls, who were surrounded by numerous photographers and onlookers ogling their bold fashion statements.
"Y'know," said Katsunari through the face mask she wore, her gold-rimmed eyeglasses sparkling in the sunlight, her Kansai-ben accent drawing a few stares from the people surrounding them, "that looks like fun. I wish I'd brought a few costumes along."
"It looks like fun, but it really isn't," said Juna. "I can hear their minds, Ka-chan. They're resentful, angry, and some are filled with utter hopelessness and emptiness."
"Well, I say they're just dissipated," said Yuuki in his bass voice. Fight-scarred, thick-framed and rough-featured, he had a protective arm around Katsunari, whom until recently he couldn't even hug, because her illness and convalescence had confined her to bed. "Compared to what you two have been through, their troubles are piddling ones."
"Nevertheless, Yuuki-kun," said Juna, "they are real. Don't make light of them; out of such seemingly small troubles do big ones grow."
Yuuki snorted. "Bah. Stick them in Afghanistan, or give them end-stage renal failure like KatKat here, and we'll see what they say afterward. They're building their own cages, that's what they're doing."
Katsunari pulled down her mask and looked up at the giant cuddling her. "Yuu-chan?"
"What?"
"Shut up. We already know that, better than you ever could. It's unkind of you to say what you've been saying. Even if you could say that to their faces, they'd never understand." An echo of remembered pain, of sleepless nights spent all alone retching and vomiting, of so-called 'friends' shying away from her because they couldn't come to terms with the disease that was slowly killing her, howled through Katsunari's mind. "They'll never understand."
Yuuki threw his free hand up. "Alright, alright, I'll say no more and go on thinking instead." He squeezed Katsunari tightly against him, and she responded by snuggling closer, the happiness evident on her cheekish, tanned face. The sight made Juna's heart ache. She had called up Tokio the day before they had left Kobe, hoping to persuade him to come with them, but he had intimated that he was going to be rather busy for the next couple of days. Probably with Sayuri, Juna thought with regret.
A sudden change in the air caused the Avatar host to shudder, and she put a hand on her Toki no Shizuku-decorated forehead and frowned, bending her neck, as if trying to relieve herself of a shoulder cramp.
"Hey, Ariyoshi, are you okay?" said Katsunari in concern. She had long learned to become sensitive to her friend's various gestures and facial expressions. They often heralded things to come.
"I'm fine. Felt something strange for a moment, but it's--"
Something flashed in the sky above them, and the trio looked up and squinted into the cloud-free, painfully bright blueness.
Yuuki shaded his eyes with a hand. "Hey, what's that?"
(Posted Fri, 11 Mar 2005 04:55)
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