She snickered, remembering baby Haruka and baby Michiru. Soo cute. She entered some commands into the Time Gate's controls, 'bookmarking' those particular bits of data so she'd be able to find them without having to shift through tons of data later.
She was sort of looking forward to showing those to the grown-up Uranus and Neptune, actually...when the time was right, of course.
And now...time to see what else the scanners had to show her...
It was a balmy early summer day, just like the day they'd had their first date.
Tsukino Ikuko wheeled forward in line, her husband Kenji at her side. He looked ready to run around in circles from nervousness, which she didn't think was quite fair. She was supposed to be the mother with her first-born child, right?
Ahh, well. Ikuko smiled, then. That was her Kenji-san, and she quite frankly couldn't imagine him any other way, twitchy tendencies and all. She pushed at him a little, getting him to look at her.
"Mmmmmm?"
"Don't worry, Husband. It'll be alright."
"But..." Kenji murmured.
"Don't worry about it. I feel it someplace inside me - it'll be alright, OK?"
"Mmmmmmm...."
And then, a large and rather dusty male sedan sniffed someplace behind them, somewhat drunkenly. Ikuko blinked, and tried to look at him without being to noticeable. Who the hell would turn up drunk for their children's birth? And why was his wife...no, the male Car was alone, it seemed.
Well, maybe that had something to do with the seeming drunkenness...
The drunk Car - yes, he had been drinking something that didn't qualify as normal gas, they could both tell that now they were actually paying attention to him - hiccuped and sighed.
"It'll be whatever it turns out to be, and as healthy or not as it turns out to be, and worrying about it now isn't gonna change a thing. - Your first kid, huh?"
"Mmmmmmm." Ikuko and Kenji both murmured.
"Well, you both look young and healthy and sorta standard-and-normal-like, so that's all in your favor - but then you're in this line, so... Hmmm. Kid's taking a lot of time to get born, huh?"
"...Well, yes." Kenji muttered. There wasn't any point in denying it, since this line was for the parents of children that were taking a uncommonly long time to get made, after all.
"Well, stop worrying about it, it's no use anyhow. Just see what happens, that's what I always say..." The dusty sedan hiccuped again.
"Hey, I'm beat. You two look like nice folk - Wake me up if it's a kart or a golf-car, 'kay?"
" - What?" Kenji muttered, while Ikuko just stared.
"I got 6 kids - well, 7 now, if this one manages to get born properly - and 5 of them are some kind of kart or golf-car or something like that. And nobody can tell just what the one that isn't is supposed to be - " The Car yawned, then, and started to drive out of the line.
"Better take a bit of shut-window, anyway... Shouldn't have drunk that much..."
Kenji watched the Car drive to the side and almost immediately start snoring, numbly.
"Karts. Golf cars. - Arrrgh..."
Ikuko sighed. "Husband - Kenji-san, drunk or not, one thing he said was right - worrying about it isn't going to help. If it turns out to be a kart or a golf-car or something like that, we take it to the very-small-Car-friendly parks and give it big shiny stuff to wear so it doesn't get run over on the roads. If it turns out to be a electric vehicle, we buy some extra generators. And if there's -" Ikuko gulped - "Something really wrong with it, we let the Master Mechanics do their stuff and pray."
"Mmmmm." Kenji groaned, and then sighed. "You're right, I know you are, but..."
"Just do it, Kenji-san." Ikuko smiled, giving him a nudgie.
"...Mmmmmmm." Well, he sounded a little less unhappy anyway, Ikuko felt...
Time passed, and while Ikuko and Kenji moved slowly up the line, the dusty sedan left behind them, still snoring.
Most of the couples seemed to go home with healthy children, which was a great relief. Even if a fair percentage of the parents were acting somewhat, well, shellshocked. As well as having rather - interesting looking - babies in tow.
And then -
The first sign something was wrong was the flurry of activity around the birth ramp. Attendants and tech-types were running about, while a Master Mechanic was barking out orders.
"The baby's not wheeling out on it's own - "
Oh, no. Kenji and Ikuko looked at each other in dismay, and wheeled closer to the mayhem.
" - Maybe it's a stillbirth?" On of the techs called out.
"We wouldn't know till we get it out. Get me another towline, would you?" The Master Mechanic, a female minibus, snapped.
That didn't sound good. Ikuko groaned. Whose baby was it? Somebody else's? Theirs?
And then - there was a scraping noise. From the birth ramp?
"What's happening in there?" The Master Mechanic muttered to herself. "Come on, baby..."
The scraping noise became louder, intwined with a hoot of babyish complaint. And then -
The Master Mechanic nearly fell to her side as not one but two baby Cars came erupting out of the opening with a great screech, and promptly tipped over. One of them - the one that had come out first - had distinctly oddly shaped tires with a punctured feel to them, Ikuko noticed blankly.
"No wonder it was have having trouble climbing the ramp - " The minibus muttered to herself, waving what appeared to be some kind of small scanner about. "Though we're in a bit of luck here, the only thing really wrong with it seems to be the tires, and that's easily correctable, most of the time. Well, OK, small standard sedan, male - We'd better take him to the hospital and have those tires fixed, though. We also need a more in-depth checkup - where are the parents, anyway?"
One of the white-and-grey attendants looked at her blankly, and then at the baby, and at a clipboard clipped to it's hood. He started calling out a number loudly.
Ikuko and Kenji looked at each other. It wasn't their baby! But...
There didn't seem to be anybody answering to that number, either.
"That doesn't look like a kart or a golf-car..." Kenji murmured.
"Well, no. But..." Ikuko said, staring at the other baby, still lying on it's side. The Master Mechanic minibus looked up at her, and then made a grimace and wheeled over to the other child, who was beginning to hoot plaintively, and effectively put her back on her wheels.
"Alright, I'll go wake up sleeping beauty back there. You stay here, OK?" Kenji called out, already moving away.
"...Alright." Ikuko murmured, still looking at the other child. She was colored sky blue and pale gold and silver, and looked like a sleek streamlined faintly boxy bubble. Two small balls were on both sides of her roof, with streamers which were now waving faintly in the breeze.
"Oooh, so cute..." A female Station Wagon type coo'd besides her.
Ikuko thought she was the most adorable child she'd ever seen in her entire life.
"Hey, hey, look - she's a hatchback!"
Indeed she was, as she had just shown clearly, opening all her doors, all five of them including the back hatch, and banging it down again, chortling.
"Alright, it's a 5 door hatchback, female, totally healthy - " The minibus said briskly, gesturing to the attendants. "Wait - show me the numbers again. This one isn't related to the other one at all?"
"Is something wrong, doctor?" Ikuko called across the grating.
"What, no, no - not with this one. It's just that I never saw a baby Car do something like try to push a totally unrelated baby Car up the ramp, that's all. With twins or multiple births, it happens, occasionally, I've heard, but totally unrelated babies usually aren't supposed to be even in the same section down there at the same time in the first place, so - "
...Oh. "You're such a brave kind sweetie-pie, you are..."
"Oh - are you the mother?"
"I don't know. They haven't called the numbers yet."
The minibus sighed, making curb-bashing-wall gestures. "Hey! You people! The numbers!" The techs and the attendants goggled at her.
"For this one!" The minibus said, nudging the baby hatchback. Ikuko felt unaccountably jealous.
Kenji came rolling back, the dusty sedan at his side.
"What...what? That can't be my kid, I don't think..." The sedan muttered bleary.
"The one with the odd wheels that the techs are loading into the ambulance now, I mean?" Kenji said patiently.
"That doesn't look like a kart. Or a golf-car. Or..."
"...Just go check, alright?"
"Alright..." The sedan muttered, rolling off in the general direction of the attandents. "It'll be weird if it really was mine, though. I mean, a kid I could actually go cruising with without renting Car-haulers?"
Kenji just waved him off. "Well, at least it seems like it's something easily correctable..."
"Mmmmm." Ikuko murmured, never letting her windows of the gold and blue baby hatchback. "Well, at least he isn't going to try to drive home tonight with the kid in tow, I suppose."
"There is that." Kenji sighed, looking at Ikuko. And then, paused. And followed her line of sight.
The little Car looked at them, and blew it's horn cheerfully.
"...Aaaahhh... Ikuko, is that, is that - "
"I don't know. And I don't know what's taking them so long, either."
"She's beautiful..."
Ikuko totally agreed with him there.
And then, at long last, the attendants called the numbers.
Pluto watched Ikuko and Kenji dancing around each other and the baby while the other Cars congratulated them, chuckling.
And baby Usagi was really adorable... A faintly boxy and bubbly hatchback, but sporty, too. A good combo, in her opinion.
OK, then, time to see if the scanners wanted to see anything else...
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(Posted Sat, 23 Sep 2006 19:42)
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