"Hey, same! Wake up!"
A moan escaped the sleeping girl currently on the bunk bed.
"WAKE UP, SAME!"
A fist sharply bashed her on the back of the head, causing Lum to yelp in shock as her eyes snapped open, she look around. "TCHA! THAT HURT!" she screamed as her body began to spark with her bio-lightning . . .
. . . and then it fizzled out like she never had it in the first place.
"Oh, too bad," the nine year-old boy, currently dressed in a beige-brown jumpsuit with a skull-and-crossbones insignia on his chest, lamented with a mock-worried look on his face. "The poor same gots herself a boo-boo! Oh, too bad!"
Lum blinked. "'Same' . . .?" she repeated, and then she froze as the colour began to drain from her skin. "No . . .!" she croaked out as wide-eyed fear crossed her face.
"Same" was the term they used to identify people such as Onis, Neptunians or other sentient races who possessed a particular paranormal trait in common; the Oni ability to fly, for example. It was -- this, she got from a crazy scientist introduced to her by her father years ago who actually liked to study them in detail -- also used as an insult to identify those cultures and societies whom they felt could not evolve themselves into better societies.
To one of them, "norms" -- most people from Earth, for example -- were more respectable than "sames" because norms had the potential to evolve.
"Sames," in their eyes, did not.
Gulping, she tried to shift herself away from the boy in front of her -- only to find an unyielding bulkhead behind her. Wildly looking around, she found herself in the cabin aboard a starship of some sort; there was a portal nearby that was showing a warp-distorted star field beyond. And on not seeing any sort of objects that would identify this ship as Oni -- nothing tiger-striped in sight -- a sinking feeling overcame her as she realised she was on one of their ships.
But . . .!
Seeing her reaction, Cadaverine tried not to laugh. "You sames are so alike!" he said with a shake of his head, the disgust he felt towards Lum quite apparent in every word he spoke. "Thinking your stupid tech's gonna help you keep control over everything else in the Universe. We've known about that pathetic 'blockade' around our home system for half a saga! If they wanna waste their time staying out there and doing nothing, hey! Be our guests! We've got loads of ways of going to wherever we want and you've got no way to stop us! So get used to it!"
Lum gulped. "Wh-what d-do y-you w-want w-with me . . .?" she eeped.
"Other than possibly making you breathe vacuum for threatening a planet's bio-sphere because your so-called 'mate' wouldn't give in to your trying to keep him down?" A snort. "Not much! You're bait so we can get what we want, same. So sit back and relax; we'll be over Earth in a short time!"
With that, he turned to leave. "Earth?!" Lum then yelped, surprise overtaking her paranoia for a second. "Why are we going to Earth?!"
Cadaverine smirked as he looked back at her. "What do you think happened in the last act you were involved in on Earth before Infinity banished you sames' collective asses back to Uru? How do you think your so-called 'mate' was able to arrange that?" A dramatic pause, and then he answered his own question, "He became one of us, same. Your so-called 'mate's' no longer a Terran norm. He's Rake. He's one of us. And he got a sister along the way when he became Rake. She's Infinity. And she's the one who sent you sames back to where you belonged." His smile turned vile. "Think about that, same."
With that, he walked through the doorway of the cabin, it closing and locking behind him. Lum was frozen still, her mind about to crash as that information threatened to overload her mind. Darling's . . .? One of them? she mused before it just became too much for her, and then she passed out.
"She's fainted again. What a wimp!" Accretor stated with a snort before she sipped her calorie drink. "And the norms of Earth didn't think of kicking their butts back to Uru when they made them play their stupid 'tag race?'"
"They're not a united culture, Accry," Dynamo noted. The youngest of the group at only six seasons, she had the ability to absorb and disperse any form of projected energy within a set range around her. Unfortunately -- due to the fact that she, in all her thirty-three prior incarnations, never got the chance to learn how to properly use her abilities before she wound up overloading her body and frying her insides to a crisp -- her power was also a curse. The average life expectancy of a Dynamo was usually fifteen seasons.
It was the same with the others of the Young Guns.
"Probably couldn't organize their faces enough to get rid of them like they've done before," Dynamo then added.
"No wonder those sames on Uru targeted them," Hypersonic noted with a sneer. He was the oldest of the group at eleven seasons. He also had the ability to race himself at speeds that would rival the various Earth faces that called themselves the Flash. But, like some incarnations of the Flash, Hypersonic couldn't keep moving at such speeds without burning out all his energy stores. Unlike those versions of the Flash, though, Hypersonic couldn't depend on eating mass quantities of food to replenish that energy. Much less use the body's natural healing processes to repair all the wear and tear moving so fast did to him.
"Well, they sure won't do that anymore, not with Infinity there," Tzaraath mused, a smirk crossing her face. At seven seasons old, she had the ability -- in fact, the necessity! -- to infect, by touch, any living being with a flesh-eating virus similar to what Terrans would call "leprosy" and most non-Terrans in the local galaxy ruefully knew of as Hifuto Syndrome. And like her present companions, Tzaraath never learned throughout her various lives how to properly master that power; her life expectancy was even less than that of Dynamo's.
"Will she allow us to use the Doll House, though?" Cimasa asked. The ten season-old Latin-looking boy had the ability to virtually reshape anything he touched through a combination of telekinesis and psychokinesis. Like his brother and sister Young Guns, his survival chances past adolescence were next to nil; he had to make use of those powers frequently if he didn't want the energy that drove them to start turning his own body into something else, thus killing him.
"She should," Cadaverine answered. "She has the same memories and feelings Rake has concerning that same. And if we threatened to dunk that same into the Crystal -- thus, in effect, 'killing' her -- and if she begs Infinity and Rake to save her, they'll probably give in." The necromancer then shrugged. "'Sides, we're not demanding much from her. Just proper adult bodies we can have so we could at least once enjoy lives as adults instead of dying as adolescents or worse!"
The others nodded. Accretor then perked on hearing a computer chime. Standing up, the power-booster -- she could augment another's energy projection abilities -- walked over to the pilot station to gaze on the readouts. She then looked up as the warp field around their ship faded, revealing Earth. "We're here," she said as she gazed on her fellows. "I'll start scanning for Infinity now."
"Make it quick," Cadaverine ordered.
"Right!"
So now that Lum's back over Earth . . .
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(Posted Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:37)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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