Akihabara was usually an all day sort of affair, but Kaname wasn't interested in waiting for sunday to keep her promise. Besides, she was in Japan on her own responsibility, and she'd already talked to Eija's mother about the possibility of being out late so she was fine.
One night out late couldn't be too bad.
And of course, she doubted if Sousuke slept more than five hours a night anyway.
There was another benefit to going out to Akihabara today, and that was that the crowds were going to be a little bit thinner without so many students coming in from out of the area.
"So what is in Akihabara?" Eija asked. "You said something about cute overload."
"It's where you go to get anime, manga, memorabilia, stuffed animals, ice cream, software, games and anything else you could possibly imagine," Kaname said.
"I did a circuit of the location recently," Sousuke said. "As she said, it appears to be a bazaar of sorts specializing in first and second-hand electronics and various figurines and fictional supplements. There are plenty of materials on hand to aid in the production of any of a number of surveillance or ex..."
And at that point the harisen came down on his head lightly.
"Anyway, regardless of what Sergeant Nutjob says," Kaname noted. "It's a place to go relax, shop and have fun."
"I do not think we should relax," Sousuke noted. "There are large crowds that could easily hide a number of..."
Down came the harisen again.
Eija kept her own thoughts on large crowds of people silent, Kaname was obviously psyched up about this and while she might be used to tolerate the soldiers commentary and attitudes, the pale, dark-haired girl didn't know how she'd take questions about this from the person she'd set it up for.
"Look, nothing happens in Akihabara," Kaname said. "It's a safe place full of fun stuff to do. We'll only be there two or three hours before it starts shutting down, but I figured you two would need to build up slowly rather than just tossing you into the deep end."
When the train came to a stop at the neighborhood in question, the three teens stopped off along with a small horde of other students and a few college-aged and older people. All coming for electronic components, software and otaku merchandise.
For once, Kaname found getting through the crowds to be easy as she led Sousuke and Eija through the streets, picking along to find her favorite hidden away stores away from the expensive name brand-name stores on the main street.
The first sign of success, such as it was, came from Sousuke rather than Eija.
He stopped over a large display featuring a hex-grid map and several plastic figurines depicting mecha and vehicle and troop formations.
"What's this?" he asked curiously. "I don't recognize any of these mecha designations."
The shopkeeper looked over and nodded.
"It's an American war simulation game," the man said. "Future wars after we've moved into space and colonized other planets. I believe its called Battletech."
"Interesting," Sousuke said, gears whirling as he considered the uses for simulating battle strategies and circumstances in his free time.
"If you're interested in simulating real Arm Slave combat," the shopkeeper noted. "We do have some Mecha and Mercenaries sets, that's a collectible miniature game that is based off real-world Mecha specs, at least what is public. We even sell a customization kit for altering the figures."
Across the way, Eija was looking at a store that was a little bit off the beaten track, appealing more to the yoga and meditative crowd, but Kaname supposed that included the dark-haired girl.
She was currently looking at the collected bansai trees and miniature zen gardens somewhat longingly.
"Need something?" Kaname asked.
"My room's feng shui is too active," she said. "I need something to soothe it down a little, I'm thinking the bansai sakura, but its just so expensive, and there's the indoor herb garden kit."
"Hey, didn't you say something about painting too, when you introduced yourself?" Kaname asked.
Eija's eyes were glittering a few minutes later as Kaname showed her the art supply shop with its endless shelves of supplies for the painting and sketching requirements of all sorts of artists from oils and waters to calligraphy kits and material for Western comic artists and mangaka.
****
Kaname was smug as they walked back to the train station.
Behind her, Eija was carrying an easel along with a giant-sized sketch pad and a bag with a small collection of paints she needed refilled apparently. Even Sousuke had purchased a copy of the Battletech game and several assorted packets of the "Mecha and Mercenaries" game.
He was currently looking at the customization kit, which was a set of glue and basic paints with small brushes.
"That'll be very hard to accurately put all the details down to customize these figures," Eija said. "Do you paint much?"
"No," Sousuke said. "However, it is primarily important to be able to identify the pieces for the purpose of the simulation. Though I'm not certain about these rules...some of the success and failure methods seem rather arbitrary. Rolling a die to determine hit or miss?"
"Kaname and I can help you with the customization then," the Satomi said turning to the blue-haired girl. "Didn't you do some sculpting for art?"
"That plaster bust?" Kaname said. "Yeah, but that's a little bit different from adding pieces to these game pieces. Still, sounds like a fun relatively normal thing to be doing. Though it's going to make me look like I'm in Kazama's peer group."
"Now, all I have to do is find figures to represent the two of you, Miss Chidori and Miss Satomi," Sousuke noted idly, unknowingly drawing blushes from the two girls. "And of course Miss Satomi's brother and sister."
"Oh, figures of us for tactical reasons," Kaname thought in disappointment.
Their considerations of the day's activities were cut short by the sound of screeching breaks and crashing metal.
Ahead of them, a driver had bent down to pick up a dropped cell phone and ended up slamming straight into a small delivery truck, causing both vehicles to crumple and block traffic in four directions and causing two other vehicles to plow into the first two.
Sousuke's first reaction was to look about the crowd for a sign of anyone watching them in an untoward manner. Eija's reaction was to leave her purchases leaning against the food vendor's cart and moving towards the wreck, obviously intending to help.
"Miss Satomi, that could be dangerous," Sousuke protested.
"Hey, wait," Kaname said before setting her own small bag of stuffed animals and manga aside and looking at the vendor. "Can you watch these for us?"
"That's no problem," the vendor said.
"Miss Chidori," Sousuke said, setting his own bags and following the two girls. "The vehicles could be dangerous."
"I know," Kaname said. "But we can't just stand here."
"Let's get them away from the accident," Eija noted as she started to grab a jammed door and try to bend it open.
"No, no," another voice said. "The weak point is over here, bend it this way."
Sousuke turned cautiously to see a short young man, maybe seven years his senior, with unkempt black hair giving instructions on what to do. Quickly he determined the young man was just there to help and moved to follow his instructions on another door as Eija pried hers open.
Kaname stood back and watched as the dark-haired girl, weaker than her siblings, but still very strong, went at the cars like a pair of living jaws of life under the young man's advice. Sousuke meanwhile was vigorously instructing other onlookers to back away from the accident while identifying others who could help.
Bitterly Kaname wondered how she could help.
"Can you help me carry the injured away?" a gentle voice asked Kaname from her side.
The blue-haired girl turned to look and see a young woman with a soothing look on her face and hair that could have been brown or silver or grey depending on how the light was hitting it.
"Sure, I can do that," Kaname said.
Between the five of them, and others on site helping, the victums that could walk themselves were freed and the unconscious quickly carried away.
Then it was a matter of first aid and emergency care.
Eija was looking over each of the injured carefully when the mechanic's girlfriend noticed her and moved close in, drawing Sousuke's attention.
"You're a death seer?" she asked quietly, waiting as Eija nodded reluctantly. "Then please tell me who needs aid first, I'll attend to them."
The short young mechanic watched as Sousuke took notice of the quiet conference.
"Oh, don't worry," he said. "Being around Bell is probably the safest place to be."
Reluctantly, Sousuke nodded. His own instincts and feelings told him the same thing for whatever reason, but his habits were resisting that.
Eija watched with something akin to amazement as the long-haired woman worked her magic subtly making it seem like first aid and good luck on the part of the injured party. Of course, she had none of the problems in magical healing that Eija did.
But the thing that impressed her the most was that the only trace of death on the woman was that of death witnessed a long time ago. She had neither caused death, nor was death waiting for her.
She was immortal.
Soon the accident victims were all well tended and mostly commenting about their excellent look to escape with only a few scrapes and bruises each. The official emergency crews were coming on site as the five main rescuers stood off to the side talking to each other.
"I'm Keiichi Morisato," the young man said, introducing himself.
"And I'm Belldandy," his ageless girlfriend said in a gentle tone as she bowed.
"I'm Kaname Chidori," Kaname returned politely.
"Eija Satomi," the dark-haired girl said as Kaname gestured toward her.
"And the sour one is Sousuke Sagara," Kaname said, as Sousuke nodded along with her.
"Thank you ever so much for acting as you did," Belldandy said.
"Ah, it was nothing," Kaname said.
"But it would have been a mess without you guys there," Keiichi said.
"It was very heroic," Belldandy noted.
"Really, Belldandy-sama," Eija said respectfully. "There wasn't much else to do."
"Indeed," Sousuke agreed. "The situation called for swift handling, and most of us seem trained to handle it. You're a mechanic of some sort?"
"Engineer," Keiichi said. "I used to head the Nekomi Tech Motor Club before I finished my graduate studies. Do you do life-guard work in the summers? Your first aid training is much better than mine."
Sousuke thought about that phrase for a moment.
"I guard lives full-time," he said by way of agreement.
"It is good to meet people who make such use of their skills in this world," Belldandy said. "So much of this world forces people to watch out only for themselves, it is pleasant to see people that step out to help others."
"Yeah, good to see there's something to do other than fight," Kaname noted teasingly.
"In any case," Belldandy said, smiling at Kaname's statement in a way that made the girl feel a bit ashamed at giving her friends a jibe in this situation. "Feel free to visit us anytime you want. We live at the Tariki Hongan Temple in Nekomi."
"You mentioned that you were from Nekomi," Sousuke said. "What are you doing here?"
"We needed a component for a personal project," Keiichi said with a laugh. "It's an obscure component you can't find easily, heard someone here had one today."
"I see," Sousuke noted.
"Well, it's getting late," Kaname said. "We should be going, but we'll be sure to stop by some time."
"That'll be lovely," Belldandy said. "My sisters would love to meet you, I think."
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(Posted Sun, 28 Jun 2009 22:11)
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