"Ominous!"
The members of the Moroboshi family jolted on hearing that cracking voice, they shrieking out before their eyes locked on the diminutive Buddhist monk and the very attractive Shinto shrine miko sitting at the living room table. "Cherry! Sakura!" Kinshou spat out on seeing them. "What are you doing here?!"
In answer, Cherry held out an earthen cup. "Do you have any tea?"
Tariko groaned as she snapped her fingers. In a flash of light, Cherry disappeared. Seeing that, Sakura yelped, and then she spun on the evil demon that presently looked like Moroboshi Ataru after he had been cursed by the legendary training grounds of Jusenkyou. "WHAT DID YOU JUST DO?!"
"I disintegrated him," Tariko sweetly answered.
Face-fault! "Nee-chan . . . " Ataru said as he gazed on his sister.
"Oh, relax, Nii-chan! I just teleported him to Ioo-jima!"
He took that in, and then he nodded. "Ah, I understand."
Sakura looked up in shock, and then she whipped out an o-fuda to slap on Tariko's forehead. "DEMON, BEGONE!" she barked out.
The o-fuda made contact -- and in a flash of light, it vanished! "EH?!" Sakura gasped as she found herself staring in shock at Tariko's forehead.
"Sorry," Tariko said with a smile. One that didn't go to her eyes, both Ataru and Kinshou were quick to notice. "Not a demon."
"Where did the o-fuda go?" Ataru asked.
Tariko canted her head as an inhuman scream then echoed through the streets of Tomobiki. Everyone looked out the window to see a wildly screaming Shiowatari Nagisa race down the street, Sakura's o-fuda presently stuck on his forehead. "Considering that Ryuu-chan's already got enough problems trying to deal with the way her baka oyaji raised her, keeping him under control's the best thing to do," Tariko then added before she headed upstairs. "I'll look in on Shinobu-chan, Nii-chan, Okaa-san."
"Hai," Ataru and Kinshou said.
Sakura watched her go, and then she leaned up to Ataru. "What is going on here?!" she demanded. "Who or WHAT is that?!" She pointed upstairs.
Ataru breathed out. "A necessary sacrifice, Sakura-sensei."
One detailed explanation later . . .
"And you willingly did this to yourself?!"
"Of course," Ataru said before he sipped a new cup of tea Kinshou had made. Sakura had a shell-shocked look on her face. "Much that I do love and care for Lum, I was not going to tolerate her act of ecological terrorism, to say anything of her threat to mind-wipe everyone of their memories of her and her friends from beyond Earth. Regardless of her feelings for me, she had no right to threaten everyone else with her little temper-tantrum."
Sakura stared at him, and then she slapped her hand on the table. "All you had to do was publicly admit that you love her, Moroboshi!"
"And what would THAT have done, Sensei?" Ataru calmly asked in return. "Lum's obsession with me, while amusing at times, was also grossly restrictive. I'm only seventeen. By Earth standards, I'm way too young to be married. Look at Otou-san and Okaa-san for Fate's sake! They married when Okaa-san discovered she was pregnant with me, which forced her out of college and -- thanks to the grossly restrictive standards Japanese society forces on expectant mothers -- destroyed what hopes and dreams she might have had for her future. Even worse, Otou-san was forced to become a salaryman to support us both. He had his dreams and hopes as well. What happened to them when I was born?" An eyebrow arched. "Well?"
Sakura blinked as she took that in, and then she seemed to deflate. "You really believe that, don't you?" she then asked.
"I've ALWAYS believed that, Sensei," Ataru admitted. "Granted, until I faced the Crystal and became Rake, I never truly knew how to explain my feelings beyond all my boorish attempts at getting dates from whatever beautiful women have crossed my path. Even women who were married and even engaged to be married such as yourself!" He indicated her before he shook his head. "But the truth of what I believe in is evident in what's happening around us, Sensei. I can't deny that. I won't deny it, either. And now I've met someone who believes very much the same thing as I do. What's better, he's working to do something to change it! Why shouldn't I support someone like him?"
"This . . . Destructo-sensei, you mean?" Sakura asked. "The fellow who shouted that word last night . . . " -- here, she tried to pronounce that planet's name using her native phonetic structure -- " . . . 'Iziiba' -- that made Lum and all her friends panic like they did? Just before Tariko sent them home?"
"The same."
The miko took that in, and then she breathed out, "That pathway will lead to disaster for you, Moroboshi. And your 'friend.'"
"It might," he conceded. "Fate is something no being can control, Sensei. And I don't believe in meddling kami or gods like you and Shinobu-san do, so whatever religious counter-arguments you or your uncle might muster against this will not move me. Each and every sentient being is the ultimate master of his or her destiny; THAT is the one truth of Yiziba." He then gave her an accepting shrug as he added, "And if people in town try to rise up against us because they were made to do so by misinformed public opinion, Nee-chan and I will simply leave and return to Yiziba. Never to return to Tomobiki again."
Before Sakura could counter that, a hand grabbed her by the collar of her kimono shirt. Before she could react, she found herself face-to-face with a VERY angry Moroboshi Kinshou. "You WON'T do THAT, will you?" Ataru's mother demanded in an icy voice that brooked no defiance.
Sakura sputtered; she knew who was the true master of this particular household. "N-n-no . . .!"
"Good," Kinshou then said with a smile as she let the miko go.
"Is that what you believe?"
"Eh?" Tariko perked on hearing Shinobu's question, and then she looked to the doorway of her shared bedroom with Ataru, where his former girlfriend was currently standing. "Did you say something, Shinobu-chan?"
Shinobu nodded in the direction of the living room. "What Ataru-kun just told Sakura-sensei? Is that really what you believe?"
Tariko gazed at her for a moment, and then she nodded. She had overheard what Ataru had just told Sakura, too. "Hai."
Shinobu took a moment to absorb that, and then she sighed. "I can see why Lum was so scared of your kind."
"They don't have to be if they only took a moment to sit back and thought about it," Tariko admitted. "Problem with people like them is that they allow their leaders to lead them around like mindless sheep without giving them a chance to really go out and learn things so they could make an informed choice about themselves and their lives. That's what earns societies like Lum's the title 'same' from any self-respecting Yizibajohei. At least 'norms' such as most of the people on Earth have the potential to evolve mentally and socially into something better. In many places, it's already happening." She took a deep breath as she gazed outside. "Personally, if you ask me, there's no way the power of Destructo could have ever been gifted to someone from Lum's planet."
"But when that man came to fight you . . .?"
Tariko then shrugged. "That's the price that has to be paid for ultimate freedom in the long term, Shinobu-chan. Sometimes, you get heels who like the idea of forcing themselves on other beings. Don't worry about it, though. You rarely ever encounter some world-conquering dictator on our planet. And if anyone like that ever does come up, he or she either gets put down by a coalition of faces or they get stabbed in the back by their own henchmen."
Shinobu gazed at her for a moment, and then she asked, "Are you a face?"
"Most of the time," the woman called Infinity answered with a light smile. "Sometimes I have to be neutral -- in the middle, so to speak. Usually whenever something happens that threatens all sides on Yiziba."
Ataru's former girlfriend took a moment to consider that. She then gazed once more at her new friend. "Did the Onis ever try to invade Yiziba?"
"Once," Tariko admitted. "It was in the time of my nineteenth incarnation. I was a boy." She smirked. "When the Onis came and threatened invasion unless we did a tag match with them, I was the one who altered their computers to ensure someone with flying abilities was chosen as our 'champion.'" The smile faded as she added, "You have to admit, when those sames mentioned they were going to conquer our planet and turn us into slaves, it didn't impress any of us. So I made the computer select the person who was Rampage at the time. When the tag race began, it only took him five seconds to make the tag." A snap of the fingers, this time doing nothing to anything around them. "Too bad, so sad."
Shinobu grinned. "Did they ever find out?"
"No, they didn't. Matter of fact, we didn't give them much of a chance to think about it. Especially after the guy leading the invasion got pissed at the fact that we beat him at his stupid tag game so easily. When he threatened to invade anyway . . . " A laugh escaped her. "Well, that was one fight scene to remember! Not just on his ship, but back on Uru, too."
Shinobu's jaw dropped. "You attacked their planet?"
"Oh, yes. We wrecked the place, too. It took them years to recover from it." Tariko then hummed as she considered something. "Matter of fact, I think they had a revolution or two in the wake of that."
Both girls then laughed. "Well, given how arrogant -- and how naive, too! -- I've seen Lum act at times, that's not so surprising," Shinobu then admitted before she gazed curiously at Tariko. "Is their any race your people can't beat, even if you all united together?"
"Haven't encountered them yet," Tariko admitted. "There're the real powerhouse races like the Jurai and the natives of Apokolips, people who could give us a real run for their money if they really pushed it. However, there are many ways to do a fight scene. Take what happened with Jurai, for example."
"What happened?"
"One of the members of a cadet branch of their Imperial Family came to visit Yiziba one day. He encountered a native girl -- Water Nymph -- and they began a relationship. But when his relatives came and literally kidnapped him so he could be dragged into a marriage he didn't want, she got in contact with a nasty heel named Herbicide. He went out and unleashed an ebony mason-based poison that nearly wiped out all the Imperial Trees, entities bestowed on them by their supreme deities to give them long life and metahuman powers. It would have destroyed the very heart of their empire hadn't my fourth incarnation banished the poison with an Infinite Wave and saved them all." A smirk. "Emperor Azusa was so grateful at what I did, he allowed his relative to migrate back to Yiziba to be with his girlfriend." She hummed. "He eventually became the first Stargazer after being presented to the Crystal."
Shinobu nodded. "So what about Apokolips? I've heard of Darkseid; he's that alien monster Superman-san sometimes fights."
"Yeah, he is that. He tried to seize the Great Crystal of Power itself."
A gasp. "What happened?!"
"Well, it's hard to steal a crystal the size of a small planet, Shinobu-chan; it actually forms the core of Yiziba, with branches of crystal that extend through the magma into the crust, where we can make contact with it."
Shinobu's eyes began to spiral. "Really . . . "
"Would you want Lum to come back?"
Ataru perked on hearing Sakura's question, and then he sighed. Before he could answer, though . . .
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(Posted Sun, 07 Oct 2007 17:25)
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