A Human Heart
by K.Stonham
released 21st October 2006
"Why do you do it?" Ryuu's voice suddenly broke into Mirai's concentration, making his hands slip and tear the sheet of paper he'd been (mostly unsuccessfully, he admitted) trying to fold into a bunny rabbit under Konomi's tutelage.
"Do what?" Mirai asked absently, looking regretfully at the torn paper. As this was his fifth attempt, he was beginning to wonder if he was ever going to master origami.
"Protect the Earth," Ryuu replied, making Mirai look up. "Why, when it's not even your home planet."
"Because it's what we do, Ryuu-san," Mirai answered.
"'Because' isn't an answer," Ryuu pointed out, leaning forward.
"Why do you fight to protect the Earth, Ryuu-san?" Mirai asked, turning the question back on his teammate. Maybe he could redirect the conversation.
"Because it's my home and I live here," Ryuu replied. "Why do you?"
So much for that hope. Mirai looked back at the torn pink paper in his hands and thought of history, of things gone wrong, of chances lost forever. He set the destroyed rabbit down on his workstation and decided that perhaps he wasn't meant to pursue origami at all.
"Once," he said quietly, looking at the surface of his monitor, "Ultra were very much like humans. We had bodies that weren't that dissimilar, and a planet where we were the dominant species. Like you, we loved and hated, tilled the soil and fought wars, were born and grew old and died. We were fortunate as a species; we came into our own very early in our world's development and had much, much longer to find our place and philosophies than humans have had yet. We grew, and made peace with one another. We explored our world and those nearby. Eventually, we turned inward to explore ourselves and the next stage of our... evolution, I guess you'd call it. We started leaving our bodies of flesh and journeying to the deep stars as pure energy. One by one, we transformed and went away, our minds filled with the future and possibilities."
He took a deep breath. As a child, he'd been horrified by the next section of his people's history, but it had never affected him as deeply then as it did now. Hiroto's reflection looked back at him from out of the monitor.
"One, though, turned to look behind, to see his mother star, where his wife and child still remained. And he saw to his horror an invasion descending upon that world, destroying all that was good and all that was loved, draining it of its life and its light. He called to the others, and they returned greater in the forms they'd abandoned. But we'd too long forgotten the way of war, absorbed in art and science, and many, many were slain in the battle. None of those who had not yet transformed survived. Our beloved star, our people, our children... all were gone because we were not there and we could not defend them. Those who survived made a pact: never again." He looked up at Ryuu, feeling as much as hearing the weight of the silence that had descended upon the operations room. So like the silence of his homeworld, long since spun away from its dying star, its life supported by the Plasma Spark that replaced its sun.... Having no sun, the sky of the World of Light was always black and filled with stars, so different from the blue sky of the young and vibrant Earth. "It's become our badge of honor, the way we live, the way we are. We go to the stars, to worlds like Earth, to defend those who can't defend themselves. We... don't always win," he had to admit, thinking of Tsurugi and his failure and his pain. "But if we can protect other worlds, even just one, long enough that the inhabitants become able to defend themselves against the monsters, then our dead will not have died in vain."
Ryuu's expression was unreadable. "So when we can defeat the monsters ourselves, you'll just leave?"
Mirai nodded. "Ryuu-san, when that happens, you'll no longer need me, or any of us," he explained, smiling slightly at the comforting thought.
"What will you do then?" George inquired.
Mirai shrugged. "Go to the next world that needs an Ultra to defend it."
"No," George refuted, crossing his arms and shaking his head. "What will you do when there are no more planets that need protection? What will your people do?"
"I...." Mirai blinked, considering. The possibility that someday his people's fight might end had never occurred to him before. He looked at his hands and wondered what they would do if they weren't to be weapons.
"If your ancestors were supposed to be scientists and artists, you could try that," Marina suggested.
"Me?" Mirai asked. He shook his head. "I don't know what I'd do," he said, picking up his rabbit again. He stroked one finger along the edge of what was supposed to have been an ear. "I'm no good at things like that."
* Ryuu paused outside of the dojo room, hearing the thumping of two feet landing solidly on the mats. He slid open the door curiously and saw to his surprise Mirai whirling into a series of connected kicks, his expression still and concentrated in a way that seemed unusual... until you considered that he was Ultraman and not just the bubbly young man who had brought five strangers together to form a new GUYS crew.
Mirai broke off, though, turning toward the open door. "Ryuu-san?" he asked, not even breathing heavily. "Ah, you wanted the room?" His smile was friendly and open.
Ryuu stepped into the dojo, sliding the door closed behind himself. "I'd like to watch, if you don't mind," he said, though his original intent had been to practice himself.
Mirai gave a little shrug and nodded. "Sure!" he said. Ryuu knelt on the corner of the mat, watching as Mirai closed his eyes and returned to center.
When he opened them again and struck, beginning a different kata, all Ryuu could think was He's fast! Mirai nearly blurred from step to step, moving with a speed that wasn't inhuman so much as a sign of mastery. Front kick flowed to block flowed to chest strike flowed to side kick without a pause.
Why isn't he this fast as Ultraman? Ryuu wondered, watching. He'd never seen Mirai practice before, not like this, not his true fighting style, and he knew why. If I had seen this, I would have known.
Memories of his sparring sessions with Mirai now held a kind of irony. He'd thought Mirai was clumsy, the way his hands and feet and body hadn't wanted to go where they were supposed to for the forms Ryuu had been trying to teach him. Mirai had ended up on the mat time and time again, failing to block even the most basic strikes. He wondered now if what he'd been trying to teach Mirai might have confused his fighting style and resulted in a few of Moebius' injuries.
The size difference, Ryuu realized suddenly as Mirai flipped backwards, as though out of the way of a tentacle strike. He's slower as Moebius because he's so much more massive. Inertia's greater. Or, perhaps, he thought with a wry sense of acknowledgement, it wasn't that Mirai was slower as Moebius, it was that Moebius was faster as Mirai.
Still, something inside of him clung to the name Mirai. To who he'd thought his friend was. To the cute enthusiastic kid who loved curry and books and sightseeing and most of all making new friends.
Mirai finished the form with a move that was pure Ultraman: crossed arms that weren't a block at all, but an energy strike.
Mirai wasn't cute at all, Ryuu thought, mentally assessing how his own martial arts skills would stand up to his friend's. Even if Mirai didn't use his powers, Ryuu knew he'd be eating mat within five moves.
Mirai was terrifying.
* Marina wondered yet again how something that was completely obvious to everyone else could be completely invisible to the individuals in question as she glanced at Mirai and Ryuu, both of their heads bent over a topographical map. Ryuu indicated with a pencil locations where a natural thermal updraft would affect the handling of the GunPhoenix, while Mirai mutely nodded and studied, fascinated. George, passing by, caught Marina's glance and rolled his eyes. She smiled just slightly in agreement and pondered upping her bet in the team pool as to when either of the fools would realize what they were to one another.
She was still slightly surprised, and vaguely worried, that it had been George who'd broached the subject, raising the question with a drawled "Think they're sleeping together yet?" after Ryuu had left the operations room one morning, Mirai tagging along after him like the enthusiastic puppy they'd all named him.
She thought shock had crossed all of their faces, except perhaps the captain's. George had blinked in surprise and leaned forward, his arms crossing on the surface of his desk. "I can't be the only one who sees it, can I?" he asked.
"N-no," Konomi had said nervously. "I mean, if Ryuu-san and Mirai-kun are together, I'm happy for them, but...."
"You shouldn't put it so bluntly, George-san," Teppei chided.
Marina had just crossed her arms and leaned back, looking at him.
George rolled his eyes. "Do you really want to know what I've seen go on in locker rooms?" he asked her.
"No," Marina retorted, then dug in her jacket pocket and pulled out her wallet. "Five thousand yen says they're not together yet and don't get together until the end of the year at the soonest," she said, throwing her money on the central console.
George blinked at her. Then a slow grin spread across his face. "All right, senorita. Fifty thousand says they're already together and just hiding it from the rest of us."
"I'm in," Teppei said. "I say they're not together yet but will be before the end of the year."
"Me too!" Konomi said, digging for her coin purse. "They're, um...."
George, still grinning, looked over at the Sakomizu. "Care to join in, Capitan?"
Smiling slightly, the captain shook his head in the negative.
"Oh, then you have to hold the stakes!" Konomi declared, putting her money into the kitty as well. "I claim White Day of next year."
* The airborne monster was harder than most to fight. It had been such a very long time since he'd run any three-dimensional katas that Moebius was slow to remember the tactics. Equally difficult was translating from a graphed map to a green valley with rust-edged rock ridges which areas would have the thermal upthrust.
He reached inside himself for that memory of height and depth and tactics, teachings for deep space battles, ones which weren't as emphasized due to their rarity. Gravity almost always bound an enemy, and that was an overriding factor. But now, with flight a factor again....
Moebius wove around the thermals, skimming their very edges tighter and tighter, playing a game of catch me. The monster roared and sped after him. Timing, timing, it was all in the timing of its wingbeats and when to dive into a thermal, how much of flight to let go in compensation, to twist to face upwards for an energy attack, to dive out again before hitting the ground.
Now!
He went straight into the thermal, letting gravity hold him again, twisting as he fell, lashing out with an energy blast thrown from either hand. They swooped around one another in mid-air and struck home on the monster, who was confused by the sudden updraft and why Moebius was falling while it wasn't--
--except suddenly he wasn't anymore as a tentacle shrieked around his left arm, stopping his plummet with a sickening snap and he fell away again as his arm pulled free, insensate and hanging useless at his side.
The pain swamped him for an instant and had he the luxury of being human he might have blacked out. But he wasn't human, and Moebius focused on one thought: You will not win.
As his chest gem blinked ever brighter a red, he shakily called back flight, battling the currents of the air, and pulled one arm into position with the other.
Earth... is defended, he thought, summoning power, focusing it, and letting it tear free. And perhaps his judgment was off, because he pulled far more out of himself than he'd intended, and with a last cry the monster exploded into white-hot sparks.
Swallowing back pain, Moebius let himself go free into that other form, smaller, easier to maintain. Unfortunately, the pain went with him.
* When they found Mirai--tracking him by his comm unit, which he didn't seem inclined to answer--it was worse than they'd expected. He was leaned back against the bole of a pine as Ryuu half-slid down the hill, and didn't move as they approached him.
"Mirai?" Ryuu asked, coming closer.
"Ryuu-san...?" Mirai's question was vague, his eyes glazed. His face was abnormally pale. One arm clutched the other.
Ultraman had taken damage, Ryuu thought absently. Not that he hadn't been hurt other times, but it had never seemed to translate from form to form before. "Let's see," he commanded brusquely, kneeling down next to his teammate. He peeled Mirai's hand away from where it grasped his upper left arm, and gently touched the area.
Mirai gave a cry and wrenched away.
Marina, on his other side, touched her fingers to Mirai's forehead. "Mirai-kun," she said. "Mirai-kun." His eyes focused on her. "You're going to have to let us take your jacket off. We need to see how bad it is."
Mirai nodded, biting his lower lip. His breath came shallow and rapid as she helped him ease the jacket off his right arm and around his back. Ryuu helped carefully pull it free from his left arm. Mirai was sweating and nearly white by the time they finished, but hadn't uttered another sound.
"Madre de Dios," George swore quietly. Mirai's shirt sleeve was soaked in blood and it wasn't hard to see the cause: white bone tore free and proud of the skin.
"We need a hospital," Ryuu said quickly. General first aid he could do, but this was beyond him.
"No," Mirai grated. Startled, Ryuu looked at him. Mirai's eyes bore into his, and just like that Ryuu understood. Of course Mirai couldn't go to a hospital.
"The infirmary..." Marina tried.
Mirai shook his head. "I can't," he said, and there was pleading in his tone as well. "Concussions are one thing, they're uncertain...."
"You heal too fast, don't you, amigo?" George said, kneeling down on the mat of pine needles in front of Mirai. "That and it's a rather showy injury."
Mirai nodded. "Too fast to be one of you."
Guilt culled low in Ryuu's stomach but he strove not to show it. Instead he pulled out his comm unit. "Teppei. What do you know about compound fractures?"
* Arm wrapped tightly in all the gauze their two emergency kits had contained, braced against a fairly straight set of sticks George had found and stripped of their bark, Mirai sat subdued in the co-pilot's seat of the GunSpeeder. His jacket was draped across him for warmth because, alien or not, Ryuu didn't trust that Mirai wouldn't succumb to shock.
About halfway back to the Phoenix Nest, he turned off the comm momentarily. Mirai's breathing had evened out some, but it wasn't in the deep rhythms of sleep.
"Mirai," Ryuu said.
"Ryuu-san?" Mirai asked quietly.
Ryuu thought about his words for once. "You're not different. You bled as red as any of the rest of us."
"This is only a borrowed form, Ryuu-san," Mirai replied. He sounded tired and depressed. Ryuu hoped it was only the pain talking. Mirai had refused painkillers too. "I'm not one of you."
"Like hell," Ryuu grated.
"Do you know whose face this is?" Mirai asked.
"No." Ryuu had the feeling he wouldn't like the answer.
"Hiroto Ban," Mirai said quietly, and Ryuu knew he'd been right. He didn't like the answer, and he liked it even less as Mirai continued, "He was the first human I'd ever seen, and I couldn't save him."
So they both had their guilt complexes, then. "So you live for him?"
Mirai was silent for a long minute. "No," he said eventually. "I live for myself."
Ryuu could respect that. "I can't hear the way Marina does," he said quietly. "I can't see the way George does. I don't have Konomi's heart or Teppei's mind. And I definitely don't have the captain's spine. It doesn't mean we're not all the same. It doesn't mean you're not the same as us."
He heard it as Mirai's breath caught. And then the other man laughed quietly. "I'd forgotten that... forgotten why we love Earth so," he mumbled. "Did you know, Ryuu-san, that the heart of a human and the heart of an Ultra aren't that different?"
"I'm not surprised," Ryuu said, and turned the comm back on.
If when they reached the Phoenix Nest he thought Mirai had been crying, he didn't say anything.
* The sunshine wasn't any brighter on the roof of the Phoenix Nest than it would be on the outside grounds, but Mirai preferred the run up the stairs to the more secluded location. He also liked the way the cement radiated the day's heat all around him. He closed his eyes and soaked up the warmth, the solar energy humming all around him to those with the senses to perceive it. There were so very few others on Earth who could. Maybe Marina might be able to hear it, he thought, if she ever sat very still and listened. But it wasn't hearing exactly, he admitted to himself, it was energy-sense, which humans hadn't developed yet.
Behind him the door to the roof opened. Mirai felt like one of the fat, lazy cats around the complex that he and Konomi fed on the sly, too indolent to turn around and see who it was. Besides, he already knew, smiling, that it was Teppei who'd joined him.
Teppei came over and sat down next to him, not blocking the sunlight. "How's your arm?" he asked, nodding at where it was still cradled in a white sling.
"Better, I think," Mirai answered, wiggling his fingers a little. That didn't hurt though the location of the break still ached literally bone-deep. But he could only pour so much energy into healing even this form before the natural processes refused to go any faster. Another day, maybe two, and he'd be fine. Three and no one would be able to tell he'd ever been hurt.
Teppei sighed. "I can't believe how fast you heal. If only we could...."
Mirai shook his head. "It's not technology, Teppei-san, it's evolution. Humans will get there eventually."
"It won't be fast enough," Teppei rejoined. "Not with people dying from cancer, leukemia... all these things we can't treat yet." He sighed again.
Aside from the Ultra Mother, Mirai had never met a healer among his people. They so seldom needed it; once the body of battle was released, it was a simple matter to repair the injuries in a smaller form. Teppei, though, was a healer born, even if he'd subverted his path to remain in GUYS for as long as he was needed.
"Thank you," Mirai said, "for giving everyone instructions on how to fix my arm." That had been the most excruciating experience he'd ever had, George bracing his shoulder while Ryuu pulled on his arm, the bone disappearing back into his body and being aligned within.... If he had the choice, he'd never want to repeat it.
"I'm just sorry I couldn't be there to help," Teppei replied. "Those x-rays, though...." They'd snuck into the infirmary as soon as Mirai was back and the doctors could be misdirected, and taken images of the inside of his arm to confirm that the bones were indeed aligned correctly. By the time they'd finished, the puncture in Mirai's skin had already knitted itself cleanly closed and gone to bruise colors.
"It's energy," Mirai said, feeling he owed some kind of explanation. "Our natural form, as Ultra, is energy. We can only shape so much energy into mass for battle. It's why we have that time limit. Smaller shapes, like this," he said, gesturing at himself, "don't take nearly as much. So we can direct the rest to healing injuries in our adopted forms."
Teppei whistled admiringly. "If only we humans could do that...."
"You will, someday," Mirai said confidently. Then he hesitated, before saying "I think humans are getting much closer."
Teppei blinked. "What do you mean?"
Mirai organized his thoughts. "From what my Ultra brothers said about their times on Earth... humans with special abilities used to be rare."
"Special abilities?" Teppei questioned.
"Things like Marina-san's hearing, and George-san's sight," Mirai clarified. "I think... I could be wrong, but it's certainly possible... I think humans are on the verge of the next stage of your evolution."
Teppei's face took on a wondering cast. "You think George-san and Marina-san are part of the next stage of human evolution?" he asked excitedly.
Mirai looked at him, at Teppei's enthusiasm for the idea, and smiled. "Wouldn't it be wonderful," he said softly, "if humans and Ultra could someday stand side by side in the stars?" If somehow he could have here and there, his homeworld and his friends on Earth, simultaneously?
Teppei looked up, at the blue sky, the refraction of sunlight around the curvature of the Earth that hid the stars. "Among the stars," he breathed in wonder. "That would be wonderful," he agreed. He looked at Mirai and smiled. "But that's still a long way off for us," he said, a realist at heart with a rueful shake of his head. "Still, as a dream...."
"As a dream," Mirai agreed.
* Mirai staggered half under the weight of Ryuu as he guided his swaying friend down the hall to his room. Maybe the drinking tonight hadn't been the best idea, he thought, even though it hadn't been his idea anyway. They'd defeated a triple threat of monsters and everyone had been in the mood to celebrate, so off they'd gone to a local eatery which knew their team by now and had reserved the back room for them, for talking and laughter and stories and food and too much sake.
It wasn't that Mirai didn't like sake, didn't find the smooth burning taste of it pleasant or the way it warmed him from the inside out nice, it was that somehow it had turned into a three-way drinking contest again between George and Marina and Ryuu. Even Konomi and Teppei had been slightly drunk, giggling and leaning on one another to get to their quarters, by the time they'd all left. Marina and George had been loudly singing songs to which they couldn't remember the lyrics as they all hiked back uphill to the Phoenix Nest, while Mirai quietly helped Ryuu, not understanding again the effect alcohol had on real humans and why they seemed to like it. Especially not when he knew that the next morning George would be in a foul mood, Marina would be sharing a bottle of aspirin with Konomi and Teppei, and Ryuu would just be sulking all day.
Captain Sakomizu, Mirai admitted, didn't seem affected by sake at all. At the first drinking party he'd been at, the captain had quietly drunk all of them under the table and not shown any sign of inebriation or discomfort. Mirai had followed his example, thinking it was a normal human behavior. He'd only realized it wasn't later, when almost all of the rest of Crew GUYS had remarked on his "high tolerance" to alcohol, that he'd realized his mistake. He'd been more circumspect the following times, limiting his intake and imitating Teppei and Konomi's moderate drunkenness.
Now that they knew he was Ultraman, though, there didn't seem to be a point to pretending anymore. He couldn't get drunk any more than they could fly. And while that was a difference between them, it didn't have to be a fatal separation. And he enjoyed the food and conversation and, yes, the sake as well at their group dinners. He just didn't understand why humans in general and his friends in particular felt the need to make themselves sick on what was an optional beverage.
"We're almost there, Ryuu-san," he reported cheerfully. "Just a little further."
"I know where my room is, Mirai," Ryuu said grumpily, just a little louder than he normally spoke.
"I'll make sure you have some water and aspirin before you go to sleep," Mirai continued. "That way you won't feel as bad in the morning, Teppei-san says."
"Teppei, what does Teppei know?" Ryuu demanded. "I don't see you taking him back to his room."
"Teppei-san didn't drink as much as you did," Mirai countered reasonably.
"And you don't get drunk at all," Ryuu groused. "And you were really bad at pretending to, you know."
"I was?" That was a surprise. Mirai thought he'd managed to be a convincing drunk.
"Normal people have hangovers the next morning," Ryuu pointed out. "You never did."
Mirai grimaced. It was true, that was something he'd forgotten.
"Lousy morning person," Ryuu grumbled. "All cheerful and 'Good morning, Ryuu-san' and 'Have some coffee, Ryuu-san, it'll help,' what do you know?"
"I'm sorry," Mirai apologized. Three more steps and, ah, they were there. "Do you have your key?"
"Yes, I have it," Ryuu retorted. He fished in one pocket and held it out, dangling, as if to prove it.
"Thank you, Ryuu-san," Mirai said with a smile and took the key, unlocking Ryuu's door. He helped Ryuu in, dropping the key on the table near the door as they both toed off their shoes to enter. And then it was a swaying stumbling dance to deposit Ryuu on his bed. Ryuu sat up straight, a certain rigidness in his posture that Mirai had come to associate with Earth military, watching as Mirai found a cup, filled it with water at the sink, and located one of the packets of aspirin he knew Ryuu kept in his first-aid kit. He returned and set these things down on Ryuu's bedside table. "There," Mirai said. "Good night, Ryuu-san. Sleep well. I'll see you in the morning."
"Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning," Ryuu responded.
Mirai blinked.
"It's from a movie," Ryuu told him.
"Ah." Someday, Mirai swore, he was going to master Earth culture.
"I'll show it to you sometime," Ryuu said. "Fighting, disguises, giants, evil geniuses, true love...." His expression changed slightly on that last word and he looked down at the floor, laughed softly. "Like that happens."
"Ryuu-san?" Mirai asked, confused.
Ryuu looked back up at him, something stark in his eyes. "Do your kind believe in love?" he asked.
"Yes," Mirai replied instantly. "As much as humans do."
"Ha." Ryuu looked back down at the floor. "That's something, at least...."
When Mirai left, he stood outside Ryuu's closed door for a moment, hand on the paneling. Somehow he felt more confused than he had been when he went in.
* Ryuu closed his eyes and took a deep breath, centering the form in his mind. He opened his eyes again and touched ink to the white paper, darkness following the clean strokes of the brush held neatly perpendicular to the sheet. Around the curve of one stroke, flowing neatly into the next, the essence of meaning imbued into each minimalist move, his hand and eye moved, expressing the word in his mind as clearly as he could.
It was in its own way another kata, a discipline and a form. This one, though, had less to do with war and more to do with sensibility.
He finished the word and set the pen down. "Jin," he muttered quietly, looking at the result. Forbearance.
He looked over at Mirai's work as the other set down his brush, and winced.
"What the hell is that?" Ryuu demanded.
"Gi," Mirai replied proudly. Justice. They'd decided, or rather Ryuu had, on the Confucian virtues for a set for this lesson.
Mirai's calligraphy looked like a tanuki set loose with a paintbrush.
"Is your handwriting this bad too?" Ryuu demanded, snatching up Mirai's paper and staring at it in horror. "How can you call this writing?" He looked up to see Mirai's crestfallen expression. "You do have writing on your planet, don't you?"
"Of course we do," Mirai defended himself. "It's just different."
Maybe Mirai's shoddy writing was due to a lack of familiarity with Japanese, Ryuu thought. He picked up Mirai's brush and held it out to him. "Show me."
Mirai blinked at the brush, then shook his head. He closed his eyes. Ryuu slowly put the brush back down, sensing stillness and centering in Mirai's form.
Mirai opened his eyes and began tracing in mid-air with his index finger. Where he drew, a sparkling line of green fire remained behind, curves and swoops and straight lines. Mirai's eyes were fast on his work, the smallest of smiles on his lips.
* Mirai spelled out his own name in his own language, careful as ever but swift with the work. There were so many more variables in the Ultra tongue than there were in Japanese. The angle of this line denoted his rank, the depth of that curvature his immaturity, and oh how he'd wanted to change that line and write his name differently when he was younger, but hadn't, knowing that changing it would only prove how immature he was. There, his kin and ties were named, and here, his skills and power level. He closed the word with his personal signature, the infinity symbol that was his name, and smiled to see it properly written. He looked up at Ryuu. "This is Ultra script."
Ryuu was looking at the glowing character in fascination. "What is it?"
"My name," Mirai admitted.
"Looks kind of like Arabic," Ryuu said, his head a little tilted to one side as he examined it.
Mirai had a thought, and swept his hand across the word. It dissolved into nothing, and he began again.
This was a word he'd never written before, and discovering it was exhilarating. The height of one line spoke of Ryuu's rashness, but that was balanced by the deep curl that spoke of his loyalty. His passion was demonstrated in a trio of swift cross strokes; his lack of blood family in an empty space where kin ties should have been named. His humanity was covered under power level, and his heart... the stroke with a double curl at either end wrote itself out before Mirai knew it. He sealed the word again, and blinked, looking at it.
That last stroke... lover, and beloved?
He wondered who Ryuu was in love with, and if he knew it was returned.
"What's that?" Ryuu asked.
"Your name," Mirai answered, looking up and meeting Ryuu's eyes.
Ryuu looked thunderstruck.
Mirai smiled and captured the word against the flat of his palm. He swept it over to the writing implements Ryuu had set out, and pressed it against a sheet of paper. It flared, then sank in, precise dark lines burned into the paper. He examined the set, then picked it up and handed it to Ryuu. "So you'll always know who you are," he said.
Ryuu still looked a bit stunned as he accepted the sheet, his eyes going over his name in a language he couldn't read.
And Mirai wondered again about that last stroke.
* Mirai lay awake in his bed, arms crossed behind his head, eyes closed.
Ryuu's name hovered before him in his mind's eye and he examined it more closely. There were certain similarities to his own, he saw now. There was the bold angle on the third stroke that said they were both warriors. In the section that described their hearts, he read a love of the Earth and its people. They both had their share of pride, too, and they shared the acute v-dip that spoke of their knowledge of sorrow, loss. The curve on their characters that spoke of them to outsiders, though, was deeper on his name than on Ryuu's; he tried to translate it into Japanese and ended up with the difference between "pure-hearted" and "good-hearted." But where Ryuu's name also spoke of his forthrightness, Mirai's was muddled. This he accepted; having lied about who he was to his human friends, he knew he could no longer claim truth as part of his being.
He still wondered about that last character on Ryuu's name, though. It was obviously the most recent development, given its place in his name. Mirai didn't think it was Marina or Konomi that Ryuu loved, nor any of the female engineers or medics he knew. Was it someone outside of GUYS, then? He supposed Ryuu must know some people who were. He just couldn't think of who they might be. The straightness of the main line had been precise, though; it certainly wasn't that Ryuu loved someone forbidden or unattainable. Mirai half-breathed a laugh at that thought. No, the double curl had been reciprocal; whoever it was clearly loved Ryuu in return. He half-pondered writing the rest of his friends' names just to be sure if it was any of them, but decided that felt like it would be too much like spying.
* "Mirai-kun!" Konomi bounced to her feet as soon as he entered the operations room the next morning, clapping her hands together. "Ryuu-san showed us how you wrote his name in your language. Can you write mine too?"
Mirai blinked, and looked at Ryuu. "You showed them?" he asked dumbly. For some reason he hadn't thought Ryuu would.
"It's only my name," Ryuu said defensively.
"It's not just a name!" Mirai replied. "We don't have just names in our writing. It's a description."
"What?" Ryuu asked, looking down at the sheet he held in his hands. He looked back at Mirai, half a glare in his eyes. "What did you write about me?"
Mirai sighed, sitting down at his workstation and fishing paper and a ballpoint pen out of the drawer beneath it. He began writing Ryuu's name again, going slower with the implement than he had writing it in energy. He talked as he drew, conscious of his teammates gathering around him to watch. "This says you're a living adult, educated in laws and morals and free to make your own choices," he began, drawing a vertical line that slightly slanted toward the right. "The relative length indicates your stage of life; the angle your degree of education in these things. The cross-flourish at the top means you're male, in a bi-gendered species. The closed circle at the bottom indicates your choice toward justice, law, and the right of things...."
"There's all that in one line?" George demanded.
"Amazing," Teppei agreed.
"It's all relative," Mirai explained, beginning the second character. "The angle and depth of the line tells just as much as whether it's a circle, a stroke, or a bar...."
"If you have to be so precise in Ultra writing, then how come your Japanese handwriting is so bad?" Ryuu demanded.
Mirai's pen slowed, but did not quite stop. "The meaning is different," he explained, paying more attention than he really needed to to a tight swirl. "Ultra script is more intuitive to write and less rigid. What's described is what we see, what we feel to be... not just a linguistic marker of object, subject, noun, or verb. Japanese is harder."
"Ultra names are power, aren't they?" Marina asked suddenly. "They're not like with us, where they're something given by parents or a nickname from friends. They're a description of what you are."
Mirai nodded, finishing the second character of Ryuu's name and looking up at him. "Do you want me to continue, Ryuu-san?" he asked softly.
Ryuu glared at him. "There's nothing in me I'm afraid for anyone to see," he declared.
Mirai wondered about that, but turned back to the paper. "This is your inclination toward problem-solving, with an indication of mechanical aptitude, which flows into an outward attitude of brusqueness...."
* Mirai finished Konomi's name and carefully wrote just her given name next to it in phonetic katakana letters. He'd ended up having to explain that there were no sounds associated with words in the Ultra language. Telepathy, after all, didn't need sound to communicate. When he'd first arrived on Earth it had been hard, dealing with the human spoken language, trying to form the words correctly in the medium of sound, which had been utterly alien to him. He thought he'd gotten better at it in the intervening months. Teppei, of course, had asked if that didn't mean he was telepathic and could he read anyone's thoughts. And Mirai was, but he couldn't, and that led to a discussion of the way telepathy worked and how most humans hadn't developed those senses yet. Mirai did admit to a certain familiarity with the way each of their minds "felt," though, which as Moebius enabled him to pick out shouted instructions across a great distance. It was that same sense which enabled him to write each of their names in his own language.
"Thank you, Mirai-kun!" Konomi beamed as he walked over to her desk and handed the paper to her. "Oh, it's so pretty, like art. Is it okay if I frame it?"
"Sure," Mirai replied, nodding, pleased at the thought. If he couldn't write Japanese neatly enough to please Ryuu, at least his writing in his own language was acceptable. Not that any of his friends could read the meanings embedded in each of their names.
"Call it modern art, senorita, and no one will know the difference," George advised from across the room.
Konomi stuck her tongue out at him. "It is art," she declared. "It's much more beautiful than my name in Japanese."
"If it's a beautiful name, it's because you're a beautiful person, Konomi-san," Mirai remarked cheerfully, and went back to his own desk, where he could finally get to his work after finishing the last of the six sets of names.
* George knew he'd lost the betting pool. The way Mirai had been so blithe when he talked about Ryuu being in love, and the half-anguished look Ryuu had tried to hide as soon as it had crossed his face.... Mirai was utterly clueless.
He dribbled the soccer ball up the field and back down to where Mirai waited at the goal. Even before Mirai's real identity had been revealed, he'd asked the kid to practice with him, reasoning that Mirai had come closer than anyone ever had to stopping his shooting star kick. Now, though, there was a certain pride involved in the activity. If he could get a shot past Ultraman, past Mirai not holding himself back, then nothing could stop him. The fact that he hadn't managed it once yet wasn't a concern.
The fact that Mirai was an idiot was. Ryuu wasn't an idiot, which meant that Ryuu was hurting. But while George was all in favor of amor, he wasn't sure if he should say anything. For one, it meant that he'd be affecting the results of the betting pool, and la bella senorita would skin him if she ever found out. For another, he wasn't sure that Ryuu didn't deserve to be miserable if the man didn't have the cojones to speak up.
Then again... Mirai was an alien. Who knew if the Ultra even could love the way humans did? Maybe Ryuu was right to be hesitant.
George shrugged off these concerns like water from a duck's back and grounded himself as he pounded closer to the goal, centering, drawing power from the sense of here and now, and gathering it into one fierce move, a kick that turned the ball to energy and fire, a force that only Ultraman could stop.
And someday, he swore to himself as Mirai blocked the shot yet again, he was going to get past even that limitation.
* The cockpit was a shambles and the rest of the GunWinger wasn't looking much better. Ryuu was tempted to kick something in frustration, but he knew he was lucky to have walked away from the crash. "Any landing," he sighed, taking his helmet off and running a hand through his hair. It was, he discovered to his disgust, wet with sweat. Well, it wasn't like it had been an easy sortie, he decided. The damn monster had been a hydra, two new heads sprouting every time they or Ultraman had managed to chop one off. Teppei's analysis had finally indicated its weak points were on the soles of its feet, and hadn't that been a bitch, getting the thing to rear up so they could shoot at them.
"Ryuu-san?" Mirai called, crashing through the brush. He stopped as soon as he came clear, though, and just stared at the GunWinger. "What did you do?"
"Crashed. Obviously," Ryuu returned sarcastically. "What about you? You okay?" Mirai had disappeared out of the copilot's seat halfway into the fight, changing to Moebius when it became evident they weren't going to be able to defeat the monster by human means alone.
"I'm fine," Mirai replied, walking closer, still staring at the wreckage. "Araiso-san's going to be furious at us."
"Let him be," Ryuu replied grumpily. "Give him something to do." He pulled out his flame-painted comm unit to check the time again. "They'll be here to pick us up in about a half hour," he told his teammate. "Guess we just wait."
The grey sky rumbled, and the clouds opened up as it began to pour.
"Great," Ryuu grumbled. "Let's find some shelter!" He ran for it, Mirai on his heels.
"Ryuu-san, wait!" Mirai called, but Ryuu'd found the cliff face and jogged along it, hoping for a cave or an overhang or something.
"Wait!" Mirai said again, a hand catching on his shoulder. Ryuu turned to ask if he saw shelter, only to see a glimmering blue light spread upward and outward from Mirai's raised hand. The rain pattered on it like a roof, not even throwing off sparks where it touched. Ryuu curiously reached a gloved hand up to touch the barrier. It gave slightly, elastic, returning to its original shape as he moved his hand away. He looked at Mirai, who was grinning. "I can keep the rain off us," Mirai said.
"Hmm." That was handy. He considered Mirai. "Maybe I'll keep you after all."
"What? Keep me?" But Ryuu was already moving again. "Ryuu-san!"
"Come on, let's find someplace to sit this out until everyone shows up," Ryuu said, trusting Mirai to follow after him and keep that shield over their heads.
In the end he found a boulder not too far from the downed plane and they scrambled up to the top, avoiding the mud the rest of the area was becoming. Ryuu settled his helmet into the hollow of his crossed legs and pulled his gloves off, tucking them inside. He unzipped his jacket and fished in one of the inner pockets, pulling out a pair of energy bars. "Here."
Mirai took the bar and opened its packaging. They sat eating for a while. It was nice, Ryuu decided. No one else around, the rain falling all around them but not on them....
He didn't know why he always felt so at ease with Mirai, but Ryuu wasn't stupid enough to try to fool himself into not knowing what he felt. Maybe, he thought, it felt like Mirai filled up the raw places inside him because they were so different from one another. Cynic to optimist, yang to yin, blue dragon to red phoenix, he thought, making a play on his name and Moebius' color and the base where they both lived. Ryuu was solid, human, while Mirai was a ray of light in more ways than one.
Not, he admitted, that Mirai wasn't a first-class idiot sometimes, naive in ways that were painful to contemplate and usually made Ryuu long to deck him. But he hadn't yet, holding himself back because something about Mirai whispered to him about faith and hope. Things were just right somehow, clicking into place in a way they never had before Mirai.
"Ryuu-san, look!" Mirai whispered excitedly, pointing toward the edge of the clearing. A doe picked her way daintily forward, cautious and graceful.
"Stay still and don't scare her," Ryuu advised, leaning back a little as he watched.
Mirai was rapt, watching the local wildlife from their vantage point. Ryuu wondered if Earth's animals really were that different from what he was used to, or if maybe there weren't any animals on Mirai's homeworld? He frowned, trying to figure out if evolutionarily that would even work. But, no, Mirai had called the Ultra "the dominant species." That meant there had to be others.
"Earth is such a wonderful planet," Mirai said softly as the doe vanished into the growth on the other side of the clearing. He practically glowed from within. "Humans really are lucky."
"Doesn't always look that way from here," Ryuu replied.
"Really? Why not?"
Ryuu thought about all the things that were wrong with the world. Things that, he realized, Mirai was sheltered from, living in the Phoenix Nest, working toward his single purpose. "We make war on one another sometimes. There's poverty, crime, environmental damage. Natural disasters, too."
Mirai nodded solemnly. "Yeah. I guess it's hard all over the universe," he said, looking away.
Ryuu blinked. He wasn't used to Mirai being serious. "My father used to say that we're born into pain and it's our job to make it better," he offered.
Mirai looked surprised. "You never talk about your family, Ryuu-san."
"You never talk about yours either," Ryuu pointed out defensively. It was true, though, he usually didn't. The loss was an old one, but the pain still deep. "Though in your case, I can understand why. Say one thing and Teppei spends the whole rest of the day coming up with questions...."
Mirai laughed a little and nodded.
"My dad...." Ryuu looked up at Mirai's little rain shield and thought back. "My dad was an engineer. He's the one who taught me to love mechanics. He was killed in a car crash when I was eleven. Mom had already been gone for years by then...."
He talked on about old memories, remembering things he'd almost forgotten, Mirai listening attentively as the fresh rain pattered down all around them, for what seemed like hours, until the whine of hover engines indicated their ride back to the Phoenix Nest had arrived.
* Once upon a time, Marina would have said Mirai was the strangest member of Crew GUYS. Well, she granted, he wasn't any less strange now than he'd been before, but knowing he was an alien made it all make a good deal more sense. She'd revised her estimates after finding that out and decided that Teppei was the strangest, monster-otaku that he was. Now, though, leaning against the doorframe of Mirai's room and seeing that he had a neat Teppei-like lineup of Ultraman figures on one of his shelves, she was tempted to reaward first place to Mirai. Why on Earth would Ultraman collect toys of the other Ultramen? And the last one, she saw, was a Moebius figure. There had to be something deeply disturbing about having a toy of yourself, she thought.
Mirai turned back to her, the racing magazine he'd borrowed in hand. "Here you are... Marina-san?" He followed her gaze.
"Should I blame Teppei-san for that?" she inquired, nodding at his bookshelf.
Mirai looked puzzled. "He did take me to the collectibles store with him...."
Marina pushed off the doorframe and walked further into the room, examining the figures. "It just seems a little weird, you having an Ultraman toy collection," she said.
"Why?" Mirai had followed her. "They're my brothers."
"Reminds you of home, hmm?" Marina touched a finger to the base of one, the original Ultraman. The one who'd first come to Earth to save it from the monsters. He'd been before her time, but she'd seen replayed television footage of his battles. She wondered suddenly if somewhere in the computer archives of GUYS they had all the Ultraman battle footage ever shot. She should ask Teppei; he'd probably know.
"Reminds me of why I'm here," Mirai admitted. "Of who I have to live up to." She glanced over at him, saw that he held the Moebius toy gently in one hand. His eyes were unreadable for a moment, then he set the figurine back on the shelf, turning it until it faced forward again. She wondered if the toymakers had a different model for his Brave mode. Probably, she thought; they did live in a capitalist society. She noticed that Mirai kept a careful space between Moebius and the Ultraman next to him, 80.
"Who's supposed to be here?" she asked, tapping the blank spot.
"Hikari," Mirai answered. "They only had one, and I thought Ryuu-san would appreciate it more."
"You bought Ryuu an Ultraman Hikari toy," Marina said incredulously.
"Teppei-san bought Konomi-san a Miklas plushie," Mirai replied, looking bewildered.
"That's--" Marina caught herself on the words "entirely different," because it wasn't, not really. "--sweet," she finished instead. And it was sweet; Mirai was like that. "What did Ryuu do with it, do you know?"
"It's in his room, on his desk," Mirai answered easily.
"Really," Marina said speculatively. Maybe Mirai wasn't as clueless as they all thought? But, no, this was Mirai, who really didn't have much in the way of knowing how things went romantically on Earth. And, really, she preferred his approach to the idiot Spaniard's. She turned and smiled, picking her magazine back up off the corner of the desk where Mirai had set it down. "Thank you for letting me have this back," she said, waving the magazine.
"Thank you for letting me borrow it," he answered. "Marina-san, would it be okay if I went riding with you sometime?"
Marina raised both eyebrows, surprised.
"You seem to like it so much, it must be fun," Mirai explained.
Ah. That made sense, in a Mirai-ish way. Hers was about the last of all their hobbies that he hadn't tried. "Sure," Marina said. "Maybe Saturday, if there are no monsters?" It would be interesting to see how Mirai handled a bike.
"Saturday," he promised with a grin.
* "Senors and senorita~s," George sang out, carrying a large serving dish into the room and laying it on the table, "dinner is served~!"
"It smells good," Konomi said, then blinked as she saw the contents of the dish. "Um...."
Around the table glances were being exchanged as George served each plate with a mixture of rice and spices and seafood.
"You do know that rice is supposed to be white, don't you?" Marina asked.
"It is?" Mirai asked.
"It's paella, a Spanish dish," George returned with a smile that was more like a smirk. "Try it before deciding you don't like it."
"It does smell good," Konomi said again, slightly more dubious now, poking at the vaguely red-brown rice set before her. "I suppose it can't hurt to try."
"If we die of food poisoning, it'll be your fault," Ryuu warned George, pointing at him with the fork that had replaced the expected chopsticks.
Mirai was the first to take a bite. His face lit up. "It's good!"
"What do you know?" Ryuu groused. "You've never met an Earth food you didn't like."
"Yes I have," Mirai replied promptly. "Natto."
"Natto?" Marina asked as Konomi took a tentative taste of George's culinary creation. The flavors were strange, very different from Japanese food, but... not bad, she decided. "Who introduced you to natto?"
"Ryuu-san."
Teppei choked on laughter. "You eat natto?" he asked Ryuu. "The food with the devil's own taste?"
"It's a man's food," Ryuu retorted. "The flavor can only be handled by those with the strength to stomach it."
"Ah, amigo, you're going about it the wrong way," George said chummily, draping an arm across Ryuu's shoulders. "The way to the heart is through the stomach, and amor is never a burned fields campaign."
* Mirai froze for just a heartbeat while Captain Sakomizu remarked cheerily, "Well, if it's war the quickest way to the heart is actually between the second and third rib, but I don't think that's the case here."
"The heart's actually not connected to the stomach," Teppei said thoughtfully, fork halfway to his mouth. "Unless you're willing to wait for the nutrients to go through the liver and intestines to be digested first."
"Ugh, we're eating," Marina said, throwing her napkin at Teppei, who half dodged it. "No medical talk at dinner!"
Mirai carefully didn't meet Ryuu's eyes as he took another bite of the paella, buying time to re-orient himself, and then a sip of the white wine George had poured around the table to accompany the Spanish dish. It was all good, but he suddenly couldn't taste it anymore, being seized with a desire to flee, to run away, to not have to face this situation....
He faked a laugh and rejoined the conversation, pretending nothing had happened, nothing had changed.
* The night breeze touched Mirai's face as he sat on a set of outside steps, one of the concrete pathways that led all over the grounds of the Phoenix Nest. His face was turned up to the sky, where the stars shone, each a sun of their own, many of them supporting other worlds, other lives, vistas he couldn't even imagine. And on some of them, too, there must surely be others looking up at the sky at this exact same moment.
Footsteps sounded softly behind him, a familiar presence coming closer. "May I join you?" Captain Sakomizu asked gently.
"Yes," Mirai said, nodding.
The captain sat down next to him and was silent for a few minutes, admiring the clear night sky as well. "You were quiet at dinner tonight," he said eventually. It wasn't a probe so much as an invitation to talk, should Mirai want it.
He thought about it and decided he did want to. The captain had known what he was from the very beginning, helped him fit in as best he could in human society, turned suspicion aside whenever he'd slipped up and been too blatantly different. And at the core of things, Mirai was different. His friends thought they'd accepted that, but he suspected Captain Sakomizu might be the only one who really understood what it meant.
"When humans love," he asked, "it's not forever, is it?"
"Ah," the captain said, "it's about that." He leaned forward, chin resting on his fingers. "Sometimes no," he admitted. "But sometimes yes. It depends on the person, and the love." His eyes were distant and a small smile hovered at his lips.
"Have you had one of those kinds of loves, Captain?" Mirai asked quietly.
Sakomizu tilted his head to look at him. "I have been so fortunate, yes," he admitted.
"We--Ultra--don't love any other way," Mirai said, looking off into the distance. "Sometimes it takes an entire lifetime to find that one person, and you don't dare let yourself fall... let yourself hope... because if it's not the right person, then you'll never get another chance. Some never take the risk."
The captain was quiet. "It's different for humans," he said eventually. "We don't have any guarantees. Even in the best relationships, we have to work at it all the time." He gave a wry smile. "Without telepathy, it's just not possible to understand another person perfectly."
"Even if I did let myself love," Mirai said, looking at his hands, clasped inside one another, "I'd have to leave eventually. We don't ever stay on one planet forever."
"They say where there's a will, there's a way," Sakomizu said contemplatively. "There surely must be some way for him to accompany you, if that's so."
"I couldn't do that," Mirai whispered, head bowed. "I couldn't take him away from the planet he loves, his friends, his work...."
"Don't you think that choice should be his?" Sakomizu's voice was light and steady in the night air. "If anything should happen, it would be a choice for both of you, not just one. That's part of what love is. Partnership."
Mirai was quiet for a minute, eyes tightly closed to keep the tangle of his feelings from leaking out, betraying him. "Do I even have any right," he asked finally, "when we're not even the same species? I'm an Ultra, and he's... human...." His voice died away on a whisper.
The captain was silent for a long minute, then gently patted Mirai on one shoulder. "I'm afraid that's a question only you can answer for yourself, Mirai-kun. Moebius," he said.
After Sakomizu went back inside the compound, Mirai just sat on the steps for a while longer, trying to get himself under control. When he finally opened his eyes, they felt wet, but no tears had fallen. He looked at his hands, at Hiroto's hands. At the shape he'd taken on in memory of the one he hadn't been able to save. At the body worn in his honor, giving him a sort of way to live on.
To Mirai's senses they looked very little like the hands of a human. Oh, the shape was the same, the arrangement of molecules and the bonds of electromagnetic force nearly identical, but the energy present? It looked nothing like a human's. Beneath the flesh, he was made up purely of that energy. He wore a human shape by choice, by preference, for the sake of convenience, but it wasn't him; it was no more the essence of what he was than his battle form. Humans were made of a similar kind of energy, but for them it was still tangled up in flesh and matter, bound to those rules rather than their master. Their light was murky, netted, dark, while the light of an Ultra shone free to those who could see such things.
Ryuu couldn't.
No matter how his energy, his self, shaped itself, reaching across distance to touch Mirai's sometimes, Ryuu was still bound to the flesh within which he had been engendered. He saw with sight alone, knowing little more of what Mirai was than Hiroto's shape and Moebius'. How could Ryuu love him, not even understanding what Mirai was?
"Hey," a voice broke into Mirai's thoughts, startling him, "you're glowing."
Mirai looked at his hands again with just human sight as Ryuu sat down next to him, and saw that he was. He pulled the energy back in again, returning to full human solidity, rueful at the slip.
"You okay?" Ryuu asked without a preamble. He was looking up at the stars when Mirai looked sideways at him. "Lots of stars," he said, voice almost wistful. "I suppose you've been to your share of them."
"No." Mirai shook his head. "Just the World of Light and here."
Ryuu looked surprised. "Only two?"
Mirai shrugged, half-abashed at his lack of experience. "Earth is my first assignment," he admitted.
Ryuu's eyes were wide, but he only said "That explains why you screwed up so badly that first battle."
Mirai nodded, wincing, wishing the memory wasn't so clear. Wishing he'd done better. Wishing he'd been worthy of his charge.
If wishes came true, dead stars would still shine, as the saying went among his people.
"Remind me to tell you sometime about my first day on the job," Ryuu said. Then he hesitated. "Then again, don't."
"You can't have screwed up as much as I did, Ryuu-san," Mirai protested.
"To scale, probably worse," Ryuu replied. "I'm not so tall."
What Ryuu thought he could have done that was worse than letting an entire city ward get destroyed, Mirai didn't know. He wanted to ask--no. He reined that yearning in. He couldn't want. Until he decided, he wouldn't want. Even if Ryuu's name did have him tangled in it-- Even if he no longer had any doubt that both of those double swirls referred to him--
You have not yet found your important thing. Have you? a remembered voice questioned him from months before.
My important thing, Mirai repeated to himself. Ryuu-san? he wondered, surprised.
Somehow, the thought shocked still all of the turmoil inside him, laid it to rest.
But he's human and I'm not. We're too different, Mirai thought incredulously, testing that quiet. It held fast.
His breath caught. His important thing... his important person....
He looked sidelong at Ryuu, who leaned back, looking up at the sky.
Slowly, certainty and peace bloomed in Mirai, a delicate white flower with roots deeper and stronger than the universe.
It wouldn't be easy; they were very different. It certainly wouldn't be like the pairings of the rest of his kind, probably more like those of humans than Ultra, but....
It could work, Mirai knew, and the knowledge flowed through him, sweeping away doubt, hurt, resistance....
"What?" Ryuu demanded, suddenly looking at him.
Mirai shook his head and began writing his own name again, glimmering letters in mid-air. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, the curve of his immaturity was a little less than it had been. The rest was all the same, though, except for the last character. The staff with the double curl at either end flowed easily, naturally, into the script before he sealed the word.
"Your name, right?" Ryuu asked, looking at it. Mirai nodded. "It's different from before, though. This part--" His voice died away as he looked at the new character, the one Mirai had described to them all in his name. The one that dealt with matters of the heart. "Mirai...."
"Our names change when we realize the change in ourselves, Ryuu-san," Mirai said quietly.
* Ryuu knew the power of wishes. They didn't bring back a mother lost to cancer. They didn't bring back a father killed in a traffic accident. They didn't get you out of the state care system, win you friends, catch the eye of Takamichi Hinako, who he'd loved desperately from across the classroom all three years of high school, or have any effect on reality. He knew this in a rock-solid way, and had long ago given up wishes.
So when the one he hadn't even tried to wish--the one he'd wanted more than he'd wanted anything since the day he'd been taken from his classroom and told his father wouldn't be coming home again--came true, he didn't know why.
Beautiful aliens with effervescent smiles and a heart big and brave enough to defend Earth against anything that attacked it just didn't come along and fall in love with people like him. They didn't look down the evolutionary ladder and fall for someone a rung or two below. It would be like falling for a chimpanzee, Ryuu had reasoned. It wasn't done, not even by idiots like Mirai. So when he'd realized his own feelings, he'd been careful not to show them. You didn't fall in love with the sun, or expect to hold the moon in your hands, and if you were such a fool, the gods struck you down.
Ryuu had tried to dissuade himself, reasoning that he was pretty sure he was heterosexual, and Mirai was clearly male. His hindbrain had come up with the devil's advocate's argument that since Mirai was an alien, it didn't really count. He'd responded with what he'd read in Mirai's name, the wavering bar that said Mirai was male, of a bi-gendered species, the same as him. In telling Ryuu what the Ultra script said in Ryuu's name, Mirai had perhaps unwittingly taught Ryuu how to read his own as well. But the argument hadn't seemed to make a difference, and now Mirai's name hovered before Ryuu in luminous green fire again, the same character appended to it that had ended his own.
"Why?" Ryuu asked numbly.
"Why what?" Mirai asked in return.
"Why love someone who's not even like you," Ryuu replied, not knowing what to think, what to say. He should be happy. Why did he feel, then, like this was just a mistake on Mirai's part, that he was going to realize that at some inevitable point, and that the resulting fallout would tear apart whatever in Ryuu still hoped?
Mirai hesitated. "When I was little," he said finally, "and learning not to use concepts like 'love' so lightly, I was told that it's never a what someone loves, but a who." His expression was still but his eyes were earnest. "Falling for someone who isn't an Ultra isn't common, but it's not unheard of, either."
"Can't control who you love either, huh?" Ryuu asked.
Mirai shook his head. "We can, somewhat... if we couldn't, we would all be fairly miserable. For us, once is for always."
The implication sunk in slowly. "Mirai...." Then Ryuu got to his feet and glared down at his teammate. "What the hell are you doing, wasting that on me?" he demanded.
Mirai stood too and glared back. "It's not wasted, Ryuu-san! You're what I was sent here to find...." His voice trailed off. Ryuu waited. "My important thing," Mirai said quietly. "The person who completes me." His eyes flickered down briefly, then he looked back up, and there was something firm in his glance. "Will you trust me, Ryuu-san?" he asked, holding out a hand.
Ryuu thought about the question honestly for a second. He trusted Mirai with his life; that wasn't even in doubt. And he trusted Mirai with his own life, mostly; not to pull some stupid stunt or get himself killed crossing the street, though there'd been one call, when they'd all found out who Mirai was, that had been closer than Ryuu ever wanted to come again. And though there was a difference between a life and a soul, try as he might Ryuu couldn't think of anyone in whose hands he'd rather place his.
"Yeah," he said, and set his hand in Mirai's.
Mirai smiled, and abruptly the hairs on the back of Ryuu's neck stood up as something touched him, not physically but in some indefinable place that he'd never noticed before. Something vast and fiery, with quicksilver energy melting the ice around him, warming Ryuu where he hadn't even known he was cold. "Mirai...?
"Trust me," Mirai repeated, still smiling. "Close your eyes, Ryuu-san. Feel."
Slowly, Ryuu obeyed.
The warmth around him--where?, it wasn't physical--touched him gently, sparkling bubbles of amusement and deep currents of happiness brushing against Ryuu. A densely woven cat's cradle of impressions welled to the forefront: friend/admired person/protector/protected/loved person, and Ryuu let it in, a pearl in sake, realizing that somehow it was a sense of himself, a name parsed into emotion: Ryuu-san? And beneath those emotions he could feel all the descriptives that Mirai had named him in Ultra script.
Mirai? he wondered.
As if that had been the opening of a door, the warmth all around him rushed into Ryuu. Somewhere far away he fell to his knees with a choked gasp, Mirai with him, still holding his hand.
I'm sorry, I didn't know that would hurt you-- Mirai apologized anxiously, backing away, images still more in concepts than in words, but clear to understand, meaning ringing in Ryuu's mind.
Ryuu opened his eyes. Mirai was looking at him anxiously, as though he'd somehow inadverdently damaged Ryuu. "What the hell did you do?" Ryuu demanded, not wanting to shout, but needing to know. He could still feel Mirai inside his head somehow, hesitant but there.
* Carefully, Mirai moved back, pulling the energy that was his self away from that which was Ryuu's until they barely touched. Too much, he realized. Not now... maybe not ever. But where he should have felt a sense of loss at what he'd never be able to share with Ryuu, instead he found a certainty that Ryuu was worth it. "Something I shouldn't have," he said aloud. "I'm sorry. I won't do it again." But as he tried to pull entirely away, he found he couldn't.
"What the hell are you doing?" Ryuu asked again. "I can feel it, Mirai."
Threads of Ryuu's energy had interwoven themselves with Mirai, and woven him into Ryuu at the same time. It wasn't the complicated complex interlacing of selves that Mirai had seen among Ultra; in comparison it was little more than a child tugging at the hem of a garment, begging don't go. But it was enough to catch Mirai's breath in wonder. That Ryuu, who was bound so firmly to flesh and body and matter, could do such a thing....
"I wanted to show you," Mirai said, standing. Ryuu got up as well. "What we are. What I am."
"I thought you said humans didn't have those senses yet," Ryuu said suspiciously.
"I said most," Mirai reminded him, and tugged just a little at the energy bond.
Ryuu's eyes narrowed. "Don't do that," he snapped.
Mirai smiled a little. "You're the one who's not exactly letting me go, Ryuu-san," he pointed out.
"You..." Ryuu growled, with the intonation that said he wanted to wipe the smile off Mirai's face.
Gently, deliberately, Mirai let himself flow up against the edges of Ryuu's energy again.
* Whatever the hell Mirai was doing now, playing with psychic energy fields or whatever, Ryuu admitted, it felt nice. Warm. Like sitting back-to-back with someone and knowing you could trust them, that they'd be there no matter what happened.
That Mirai would be there no matter what happened....
"I'm not letting you go?" he asked to confirm. Mirai nodded. "Hmpf. Guess you're stuck with me, then. Are you done sulking out here?"
"I wasn't sulking," Mirai protested.
"Sitting outside, all alone, brooding in the dark. Right."
"I wasn't!"
"I was going to ask if you wanted to watch a movie, but since you're busy...."
"Ryuu-san!"
Ryuu just smiled. "So. Movie?" he asked.
"Godzilla?" Mirai asked.
"What is with you and Godzilla movies?" Ryuu demanded.
"I think Moebius could beat him."
Ryuu wasn't sure if that was a sign of Mirai developing a sense of humor or not. "It's fiction. There're people in rubber suits playing the monsters."
"So?"
"We're not watching Godzilla anyway. Marina and Konomi voted for The Princess Bride, and made eyes at George and Teppei."
"The one you said had swordfights?"
"Yes."
"Then let's go!"
* Two Days Later
"Wow, Teppei-san, your monster collection has grown so many! Where did you get the money?"
Four voices broke into simultaneous coughs and mumbles while Captain Sakomizu merely smiled indulgently and sipped at his coffee.
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Author's Schism
While I've been generally fond of Ultraman since I saw a cartoon version as a child and the Australian version as a teen, it took my dear friend Sionna (who wrote "Splintered Secrets") and our dear friend Melinda (all hail she, the provider of translations!) to drag me, not quite kicking and screaming, fully into Ultra fandom with Ultraman: Moebius. As I write this, the three of us eagerly await the airing of episode 29 (one hour and counting...) in Japan, which we are fairly sure will invalidate both Splintered Secrets and A Human Heart. However, we're also agreed that Ryuu/Mirai (or Mirai/Ryuu if one goes by yaoi convention, as Mirai in either form is taller than Ryuu...) is a "practically canon!" pairing. "Practically canon!" pairings seem to be common in the tokusatsu shows we like, for some reason....
A Human Heart originally started as my ponderings for what Mirai's hobbies might be, mutating along the way into why Ultra do what they do for Earth, and what they are, as well as omake scenes for Sionna's story. Sionna and I ended up writing our stories at the same time, sending one another whatever we'd written that day, and somehow they mutated, grew closer. Things which appear "first" in her story like the restaurant, I invented, and things which appear in mine like the rain shield, got written because she wanted them. Then there's the Miklas plushie, which got written for Melinda.... And so this ended up as a strange kind of cowriting between the three of us, feedbacking and prompting one another on. It's been a fun few weeks.
There are, of course, several references in this story. They range from Doctor Who (the Christmas special that introduced the Tenth Doctor being the source of the line "Earth... is defended") to Shadow of the Colossus (monsters with vulnerable points on the soles of their feet) to Samurai Troopers (the virtues Ryuu and Mirai were writing... I tweaked the translation of "jin" from "benevolence" to a more putting-up-with-Mirai feeling, and, incidentally, if the two of them had Confucian virtues, they're writing one another's) to, of course, The Princess Bride. And in that spirit, as a close, "They rode to freedom. And as dawn arose,
WestleyRyuu andButtercupMirai knew they were safe. A wave of love swept over them. And as they reached for each other--"