![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Stuff, things, fic
Well, I've watched some new anime this evening, and worked on some fics. Death Note scares me, but then I've never understood how it could not scare someone. I think it's possibly the best manga adaptation I've seen in a long time. Watched the first episode of a dating sim anime called "Otome wa Boku (Oneesama) ni Koishiteru" and promptly tossed it in the trashcan. Also watched the first episode of the musical instrument reverse-harem anime "La Corda d'Oro Primo Passo" and didn't toss it in the trash. Am currently downloading Perfect Girl Evolution to see if it's as personally amusing to me in anime form as it is in manga form ("The Wallflower").
For those who have watched Princess Tutu... early to mid second season, who would you call as uke: Fakir or Mytho? Yes, I've started in again on writing "Princess Tatu." It's distinctly odd to have yuri easier to write than yaoi.
And I've also poked again at the Ultraman Moebius fic I've been working on as a response to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hoshikage's unfinished Shattered Secrets. This is spoilery as hell both for her fic and for canon, while at the same time slightly speculatory toward unexplained matters in the latter, so don't read if you don't want that. It's also still kinda rough and equally kinda unfinished.
“Why do you do it?” Ryu’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,” Ryu replied, making Mirai look up. “Why, when it’s not even your home planet.”
“Because it’s what we do, Ryu-san,” Mirai answered quietly.
“’Because’ isn’t an answer,” Ryu pointed out, leaning forward.
“Why do you fight to protect the Earth, Ryu-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,” Ryu 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 to 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 Ryu, 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 Land 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.”
Ryu’s expression was unreadable. “So when we can defeat the monsters ourselves, you’ll just leave?”
Mirai nodded. “Ryu-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."
*
Ryu 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. "Ryu-san?" he asked, not even breathing heavily. "Ah, you wanted the room?" His smile was friendly and open.
Ryu 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. Ryu 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 Ryu 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?/ Ryu 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 Ryu 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,/ Ryu 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, overenthusiastic kid who loved curry and managed to drag unwilling strangers into forming a coherent, working team that defended the Earth.
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, Ryu thought, mentally assessing how his own martial arts skills would stand up to his friend's. Even if Mirai didn't use his powers, Ryu knew he'd be eating mat within three 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 Ryu, both of their heads bent over a topographical map. Ryu indicated with a pencil locations where a natural thermal updraft would affect the handling of the Gun Phoenix, 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 vaugely worried, that it had been George who'd broached the subject, raising the question with a drawled "Think they're sleeping together yet?" after Ryu had left the office 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 back 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 Ryu-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 which areas would have the thermal upthrust to a green valley with rust-edged rock ridges.
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 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, 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 free 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 Ryu half-slid down the hill, and didn't move as they approached him.
"Mirai?" Ryu asked, coming closer.
"Ryu-san...?" Mirai's question was vague, his eyes glazed. His face was abnormally pale. One arm clutched the other.
Ultraman had taken damage, Ryu thought absently. Not that he hadn't before, but it had never translated 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, gently touched 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. Ryu helped carefully pull it free from his right arm. Mirai was sweating and nearly white by the time they finished, but hadn't uttered another sound.
"Madre de Dios," George said 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," Ryu said quickly. General first aid he could do, but compound fractures were beyond him.
"No," Mirai grated. Startled, Ryu looked at him. Mirai's eyes bore into his, and just like that Ryu 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 was a rather showy injury."
Mirai nodded. "Too fast to be one of you."
Guilt culled in Ryu'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 braced against a fairly straight set of sticks George had found and stripped of their bark, wrapped tightly in all the gauze their two emergency kits had contained, Mirai sat subdued in the co-pilot's seat of the Gun Speeder, his jacket draped across himself for warmth because Ryu didn't trust, alien or not, that Mirai wouldn't succumb to shock.
About halfway back to the Phoenix Next, he turned off his comm momentarily. Mirai's breathing had evened out some, but it wasn't in the deep rhythms of sleep.
"Mirai," Ryu said.
"Ryu-san?" Mirai asked quietly.
Ryu 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, Ryu-san," Mirai replied. He sounded tired and depressed. Ryu hoped it was only the pain talking. Mirai had refused painkillers too. "I'm not one of you."
"Like hell," Ryu grated.
"Do you know whose face this is?" Mirai asked.
"No." Ryu had the feeling he wouldn't like the answer.
"Hiroto Ban," Mirai said quietly, and Ryu 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."
Ryu 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, Ryu-san, that the heart of a human and the heart of an ultra aren't that different?"
"I'm not surprised," Ryu 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.
For those who have watched Princess Tutu... early to mid second season, who would you call as uke: Fakir or Mytho? Yes, I've started in again on writing "Princess Tatu." It's distinctly odd to have yuri easier to write than yaoi.
And I've also poked again at the Ultraman Moebius fic I've been working on as a response to
hoshikage's unfinished Shattered Secrets. This is spoilery as hell both for her fic and for canon, while at the same time slightly speculatory toward unexplained matters in the latter, so don't read if you don't want that. It's also still kinda rough and equally kinda unfinished.“Why do you do it?” Ryu’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,” Ryu replied, making Mirai look up. “Why, when it’s not even your home planet.”
“Because it’s what we do, Ryu-san,” Mirai answered quietly.
“’Because’ isn’t an answer,” Ryu pointed out, leaning forward.
“Why do you fight to protect the Earth, Ryu-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,” Ryu 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 to 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 Ryu, 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 Land 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.”
Ryu’s expression was unreadable. “So when we can defeat the monsters ourselves, you’ll just leave?”
Mirai nodded. “Ryu-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."
Ryu 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. "Ryu-san?" he asked, not even breathing heavily. "Ah, you wanted the room?" His smile was friendly and open.
Ryu 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. Ryu 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 Ryu 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?/ Ryu 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 Ryu 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,/ Ryu 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, overenthusiastic kid who loved curry and managed to drag unwilling strangers into forming a coherent, working team that defended the Earth.
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, Ryu thought, mentally assessing how his own martial arts skills would stand up to his friend's. Even if Mirai didn't use his powers, Ryu knew he'd be eating mat within three 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 Ryu, both of their heads bent over a topographical map. Ryu indicated with a pencil locations where a natural thermal updraft would affect the handling of the Gun Phoenix, 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 vaugely worried, that it had been George who'd broached the subject, raising the question with a drawled "Think they're sleeping together yet?" after Ryu had left the office 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 back 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 Ryu-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 which areas would have the thermal upthrust to a green valley with rust-edged rock ridges.
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 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, 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 free 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 Ryu half-slid down the hill, and didn't move as they approached him.
"Mirai?" Ryu asked, coming closer.
"Ryu-san...?" Mirai's question was vague, his eyes glazed. His face was abnormally pale. One arm clutched the other.
Ultraman had taken damage, Ryu thought absently. Not that he hadn't before, but it had never translated 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, gently touched 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. Ryu helped carefully pull it free from his right arm. Mirai was sweating and nearly white by the time they finished, but hadn't uttered another sound.
"Madre de Dios," George said 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," Ryu said quickly. General first aid he could do, but compound fractures were beyond him.
"No," Mirai grated. Startled, Ryu looked at him. Mirai's eyes bore into his, and just like that Ryu 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 was a rather showy injury."
Mirai nodded. "Too fast to be one of you."
Guilt culled in Ryu'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 braced against a fairly straight set of sticks George had found and stripped of their bark, wrapped tightly in all the gauze their two emergency kits had contained, Mirai sat subdued in the co-pilot's seat of the Gun Speeder, his jacket draped across himself for warmth because Ryu didn't trust, alien or not, that Mirai wouldn't succumb to shock.
About halfway back to the Phoenix Next, he turned off his comm momentarily. Mirai's breathing had evened out some, but it wasn't in the deep rhythms of sleep.
"Mirai," Ryu said.
"Ryu-san?" Mirai asked quietly.
Ryu 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, Ryu-san," Mirai replied. He sounded tired and depressed. Ryu hoped it was only the pain talking. Mirai had refused painkillers too. "I'm not one of you."
"Like hell," Ryu grated.
"Do you know whose face this is?" Mirai asked.
"No." Ryu had the feeling he wouldn't like the answer.
"Hiroto Ban," Mirai said quietly, and Ryu 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."
Ryu 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, Ryu-san, that the heart of a human and the heart of an ultra aren't that different?"
"I'm not surprised," Ryu 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.