For some reason Ryuuji had been a little surprised when he received the invitation from Hizashi. He didn't know why he bothered. It didn't seem too likely that, since he was on Mars anyway, Hizashi would leave well enough alone. So it was with a sense of submitting to the inevitable that Ryuuji accepted the invitation to play tour guide around Mars on his next day off.

On the appointed day he waited at the restaurant he had designated as a meeting point. It was a popular spot, in the middle of a trendy shopping arcade that also featured a transparent roof. It was located higher up the Arandas crater wall and offered an excellent panoramic view of both the settlement as well as an open view of the sky. It seemed a logical place both to meet and to start the tour. Besides, they would need lunch before embarking on a day of seeing the sights and Ryuuji's favorite Thai place was here. He might as well get a nice meal out of the deal.

He was sitting at that restaurant, enjoying the view when Hizashi joined him. As Hizashi ordered Ryuuji studied how he looked now. The being in front of him "felt" the same way as Hoshino Kidou, the human form that Aihara Ryuu had first met so many centuries ago. But that was where the resemblance ended. Now he was tall and lithe, with hair cropped close to his head but extended out to a tail running down the back of his neck. A light dusting of fur covered the backs of his hands and his neck, reaching up his cheekbones to give him a kind of sideburns. His eyes were slanted like a cat's, complete with cat-slit pupils and his head was topped by a pair of cat ears that rotated as Hizashi's attention flitted here and there.

"You know, if you wanted me to stop calling you 'Kitten' looking like that is exactly the wrong way to do it," Ryuuji commented.

Hizashi grinned, revealing a mouth full of teeth that would have been right at home in any of the larger predatory felines. "Hey, I figured nothing was going to get you to stop, so I might as well run with it. Call it a variation on a theme. This is what they look like on the last planet I was on. I figured you would get a kick out of it, so I switched back to this form."

Ryuuji snorted. "Don't you ever change? Or do you exist just to aggravate me?"

"Gotta play to my strengths, yeah?"

Ryuuji laughed, and wondered for a moment why he had been avoiding this. It felt good to banter with Kitten. It had been far too long... He stopped. No. That had been another life.

"So, what's the plan, Captain?"

Ryuuji frowned. "Don't call me that."

"Why not? You still call me 'Kitten'."

"That's different."

"Why? Because I accept that part of my life while you won't accept that part of yours?"

Ryuuji winced. He really should have known better than to poke Kitten. He had never been particularly good at tact. It seemed the intervening years had only made him more inclined to speak his mind. And all things considered it wasn't like Ryuuji could try pulling the whole "I'm older than you and deserve some respect here" thing.

Hizashi sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. "Look, I'm sorry. I probably shouldn't have said that. Really, I'm not here to bother you about your problems. I just want to hang out and catch up with an old friend. I wouldn't even have brought it up, except you started it," he added defensively.

"Mirai put you up to this, didn't he?" Ryuuji asked, numbly. He didn't know why he thought he could just have a quiet day off without being haunted by the past. Particularly not when he was spending the day taking that past on a tour through his present world.

Hizashi shook his head. He said breezily, "Nope, I didn't ask him. He'd just tell me no, and to leave you alone. Then I'd have to go to all the hassle of ignoring him. I figure you're old enough to make up your own mind on whether you want to go out with a friend or not."

"You think I'm being stupid, don't you?"

"Um..." Ryuuji could see Hizashi searching for the right words. He eventually settled for, "Well, yeah. Though I figure you're old enough to be stupid too, if you really want."

"What's so stupid about wanting to live my own life now? I'm not Ryuu. I'm a different person with a different life. Why can't you respect that?"

"Of course you're a different person."

"You people can't just waltz in here and pick up like nothing has changed."

"I'm not saying nothing has. Everything changes."

"Will you quit agreeing with me?" Ryuuji demanded, annoyed.

"No," Hizashi replied pleasantly. "Why would I want to stop agreeing with you when you're actually talking sense for once? Really, if there's anything I can do to encourage more of that...?"

Ryuuji gave an annoyed sigh and threw his hands up in the air. "You're hopeless."

Hizashi shook his head. "No, never hopeless. You taught me that, you and all these other humans." He waved his hand, a sweeping gesture that included not just the people around them but the settlement as a whole. They sat in silence for a minute. Ryuuji picked at his food and tried to regain his composure. He knew he was being an idiot, going off on Kitten like that. It was just that... Oh, the whole situation was just so irritating! He had so much pent-up frustration that he just couldn't take out on Mirai -- he still had enough sense and decency to spare him that, he didn't deserve to get the wrong end of all of Ryuuji's confusion. And then Kitten walked in and was just so... Kitten.

Hizashi sighed, and leaned forward. "Look, for what it's worth, I think you're looking at this all the wrong way. You keep insisting that you and Ryuu are two different people. You're not. I see this. Moebius sees this. You don't, and that's why it's a problem."

"But we are two different people," Ryuuji protested stubbornly. "Take, oh, languages, for example. He was no good at them. I know seven of them. Not the same."

Hizashi shook his head. "Haven't you ever had something that at one point in your life you couldn't stand, but then later you went back and tried it again and found that it wasn't so bad after all? It's just like that. You've changed. Of course you've changed. Even in your same lifetime you humans change. It's what you do, and it's part of what we love so much about you -- that ability to change and change and change again. We change too, but so slowly that it's sometimes hard to notice, and not without help from the outside pointing out that change is possible." He leaned back and studied Ryuuji for a moment. "Let's try this from another direction... If you went and lived somewhere else for a while -- say you went and lived on Earth for ten years or something -- when you came back, would you still be the same person?"

Ryuuji thought about this. "Yes," he replied slowly. "Only, some things would be different. I mean, it's ten years in a different place. Some things would change. So I would still be me, only I would also be a different me."

Hizashi looked encouraged by this reply. "But you would still be you, right?" Ryuuji nodded slowly. "So then let's say you meet up with your friends from your old life, from before you left. Some things would be the same because you're all still the same people and you still have all that shared history from when you were all living together. But at the same time you've been gone for all that time too. You've lived out a different life from them -- and they from you, for that matter. So when you talk with them some things are just like they always were. But some things, they'll be different. You've done different things, seen and experienced stuff that they haven't -- and the same goes for them, too. So when you talk, sometimes you just don't understand each other any more. But you're still all friends, right?"

Ryuuji could see where this was leading. "So you're saying that being dead for three hundred years really doesn't make any difference to who I am?"

Hizashi shook his head. "There you go, off the wrong way again. Why do you keep doing that? No. Of course being gone for three hundred years makes a difference. But it doesn't make you a different person. You are still you, whether you are called Ryuuji or Ryuu or Fred or whatever. And just because you aren't currently the person you had been doesn't mean that the person you were doesn't -- and shouldn't -- affect who you are now. After all, who you were ten years ago affects who you are now. Why shouldn't who you were three hundred years ago matter just as much?"

"I'm not supposed to remember who I was three hundred years ago," Ryuuji pointed out. "Humans don't do it that way."

"But you do remember. And so it has value. You'll only make yourself miserable trying to deny it. And I'm really tired of seeing you miserable."

Ryuuji looked startled at that last part. He knew his behavior had been making Mirai unhappy. But it hadn't really occured to him that it would have any effect on Hizashi as well. It was not like they shared a mind-link or anything.

"What, you're surprised?" Hizashi shook his head in disbelief. "I give up, you're right. You really are different. Even at his most stubborn Ryuu wasn't this dim. Then again, I suppose he didn't have to put up with what you're dealing with, so it's not really a fair comparison. Of course I care that you're tearing yourself apart. How could I not? You're my friend and my mentor. A mere three hundred years and a minor face lift isn't going to change that."

Ryuuji shifted uncomfortably. He knew that Mirai wasn't going to let go of their past connection. It hadn't occured to him that anyone else from his previous life would also not let him go. He thought with some regret that either he would have to start dealing soon, or he would have to run very, very far away. He had a bad feeling that otherwise he would have all of Mirai's brothers coming to give him a talking to. And given Mirai's family, Ryuuji wasn't sure that he could run far enough away to avoid them. Dealing was starting to look like the only option available to him.

Ryuuji wasn't sure if he was letting what he was thinking leak, but Hizashi grinned and continued with, "I think once word gets around you'll be seeing more faces from the past. I'm sure a lot of folks will want to drop by and say hi. You're practically family, after all, whether you like it or not. And you know how serious we all are about family."

Ryuuji considered this. The part of him that protested this invasion of his current life was horrified at the thought. But deep down inside, Ryuuji realized that he wasn't all that unhappy with the idea. Hizashi and Mirai weren't the only Ultras he had been close to, and it would be nice to catch up with some of the others. It had, after all, been a very long time. He sighed and shook his head. "All right. I'll think about what you said. Just... understand this is all a little hard for me, huh? Up until recently I was trying to convince myself that it was all just a dream."

Hizashi nodded, accepting the statement while he replied with, "How did that work for you?"

Ryuuji made a face. "Brat."

Hizashi looked pleased, like he had just won a point. "You know it!" He grinned.

"It seems wrong, you giving me advice for once."

"Hey, turnabout's fair play." Hizashi sat silent for a moment, then said, "I'm kind of in between assignments at the moment. If you don't mind, I'd like to stick around for a while? I haven't seen Moebius for a long time, and... I really would like to catch up with you. I've missed you, all these years. And..." he hesitated. "I think... if you need a shoulder to gnaw on, maybe you could gnaw on mine? I think I would be a lot less hurt than Moebius would. You need someone to talk to about all this besides him. Please, let me do this for you both?"

Ryuuji reflected that it was awfully churlish for him to continue being angry at the situation when he was getting love and support of the kind that Mirai and Hizashi were giving him. Mirai was easy for him to discount, since they were so bound together. As backwards as that was. But Hizashi... Hizashi wasn't tied to him, and didn't have to care. He was purely doing it out of a sense of friendship and caring that was hard to ignore. Or discount as a dream. Maybe it was about time for him to stop being angry at all the problems his link with Mirai had caused growing up and start looking at the benefits that came from it. He was sure that it was well past time he started trying to deal, rather than just being overwhelmed by it all.

"All right," he agreed. "But on two conditions."

Hizashi sat up straight. He tried to look attentive and cooperative, but the effect was kind of spoiled by looking mostly like a predatory feline. He carried an air like he was intently watching some critter he was about to pounce on. Ryuuji found the effect highly comical, but he kept a straight face as he said, "First: try not to get into too much trouble. And second? Don't say 'please' again. It really doesn't fit you, and I don't want to watch you choke the next time you try it."

Hizashi looked chagrined. "I'm trying. Really, I am."

"Ah, and then he hands me a straight line like that. You, Cat-Boy, have always been trying!"

Hizashi threw his hands up in the air. "No love, I'm telling you. Right, so what about that sightseeing tour? Since I'm sticking around I want to see more of where I'm going to be living."

"What, you really want a tour? I thought that was just a ploy to get me alone?"

Hizashi shook his head. "Don't go there, boss. You have no idea what Moebius would do if I tried. Come to think of it, I have no idea either -- and I really don't want to find out!" They shared a laugh at the joke. Hizashi was silent for a moment, then added seriously, "Thank you."

Ryuuji was baffled at the change. "For what? The tour? No problem."

Hizashi shook his head. "For coming back. You've given him hope back, and he's had none of that for so very long. Even as unhappy as you both are right now, he's still happier than I've seen him any time since Ryuu died. Please have many good years together before you break his heart again."

Ryuuji looked down at his plate. "I hope to," he said quietly. "I really, really hope to." After a moment he added "Besides, I thought I told you to stop saying that. You keep saying 'please' all the time and I won't believe you're the real Kitten."