U:M Elseways fic, part one
Oct. 22nd, 2006 10:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sakon76Well, this afternoon I spent translating (having been talked into the Ultraman Moebius translation project by/with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sandpanther) and this evening I spent writing an "Elseways" story for episodes 21-22 of the same. Based on the question "what would have happened if when they did that rescue mission things had gone differently?"
On another world, in another time, creatures lumbered across the landscape, snarling at the warping in their dark sky.
The cargo hold of a space freighter lay, alien to this world, on the top of a cliff.
It was waiting.
So were they.
*
"The Ultra Zone?" Mirai questioned Assistant Inspector General Misaki.
"Yes," she replied, looking around the operations room. "GUYS Spacey has detected an Ultra Zone forming a hundred thousand miles out from Earth."
"The Ultra Zone is--" Aide Toriyama began pompously, standing up.
"It's a warp in space that has been investigated a lot in relation to the monsters," Teppei overrode him. Ryuu hid a smile as Teppei continued raptly, "Modern scientists have theories, but no clear conclusions about it."
"In any case, it being a hundred thousand miles out means it's in GUYS Spacey's jurisdiction, right?" Ryuu asked.
"Yeah," George agreed. "It's not someplace we from GUYS Japan get to go."
"We have received a transmission from the Ultra Zone," Misaki said, and typed a few keys at the captain's terminal. A staticky recording played.
Only a few words were audible: "...is... ship... rescue... evacuate... ...ter Arandas...."
"Did they say the Arandas?" Toriyama asked.
"I remember," Teppei said. "It was a space freighter returning from Mars to Earth about
six months ago that met with disaster. It was a Japanese freighter."
"And this is coming from inside the Ultra Zone?" Marina asked.
"We have to go rescue them!" Mirai burst out, drawing eyes. "Right away!" he demanded.
George clapped a hand on Mirai's shoulder. "Calm down, amigo," he said. "It happened half a year ago."
"And this voice is clearly a recording," Secretary Aide Maru agreed.
"If you look at it calmly, the risk is too great," Teppei agreed as well.
"We have to go!" Mirai protested. "There're definitely... definitely survivors."
"The head office has instructed me to ask that Crew GUYS Japan go and investigate," Misaki said.
"I'm think Mirai-kun's right," Konomi said slowly.
"Konomi-san!" Mirai said, seemingly grateful to have someone on his side.
"That's right," Marina agreed. "If we don't go... we might as well throw away the name of GUYS," she said, her hand on the GUYS badge on her jacket.
"True," Ryuu admitted. "Captain?" he asked, turning toward Sakomizu.
The Captain smiled. "I'll pilot the GunBooster."
"Ca-captain Sakomizu," Toriyama protested, "you don't need to go yourself--"
"The Ultra Zone is in another dimension," the captain replied reasonably. "We don't know what might happen."
"Please let me go too," Teppei said, stepping forward. "I may never get another chance to see the Ultra Zone with my own eyes."
"I... I'll stay behind," George said. "Don't worry about things here."
Ryuu smirked. "What is it with you?" he harrassed his teammate. "It's not just the ocean, you can't take space either?"
"No, it's just... space has laws of its own," George hedged, "and I don't have those laws in my head."
"So he says again," Marina agreed with Ryuu.
The captain smiled. "GUYS!" he said, snapping them all to attention. "Sortie, go!"
"G.I.G.!" they replied as one.
*
As the GunPhoenix ran through its launch sequence, the words Sakomizu had pulled him aside to say ran through Mirai's head. "Mirai," he'd said, not ungently, knowing things about Mirai that very, very few others did, "you may see things that are difficult to bear."
And Mirai had nodded slightly. "I know," he'd replied, accepting what the might find. But he hoped... he hoped....
He hoped that that tragedy might still be reversable, that there might still be someone there to save.
*
As they cruised through the depths of space, Teppei kept an eye on the instruments and their readings. "Ninety-nine thousand kilometers," he reported eventually. "We're almost there."
"Really?" Ryuu asked from the seat in front of him, looking around. "I don't see anything."
Teppei didn't see it either, but "It's reading on the sensors," he reported, more willing to trust the sensors than either of their eyesights.
"I'm picking up the emergency beacon," Marina agreed from her own cockpit. "I hope there really are survivors."
"There will be!" Mirai said over the comm. "There have to be. That's why we brought along the extra GunSpeeder."
The entrance to the Ultra Zone quickly came into view, a glowing ring of warped space. "We're entering the Ultra Zone," Teppei reported over the comm, more for the benefit of the rest of the Crew, back at the Phoenix Nest, than the five of them in the GunPhoenixStriker. Then he gritted his teeth against the vibrations that shuddered through the hull as they encountered turbulence in the dimensional warp.
"What is this?" Ryuu asked. "What the hell's happening?"
"I don't know!" Teppei reported. "We've fallen into a rift in space. The instruments aren't reading right for anything more than forty thousand meters off," he lamented as the ship spun, seemingly out of control.
"Ryuu!" the Captain said. "Use this as a learning experience--don't drop speed!"
Slowly the spinning stopped and the GunPhoenixStriker leveled out, coming into calm black space again. Teppei breathed a sigh of relief and looked up from his intrument panel, which was still going wonky.
And opened his eyes wide in wonder. "That's Seabulls!" he said, staring in awe at one of the giant transparent monsters floating in space. "The ghost monster from 3SP's reports!"
"Hey. Hey, monster professor," Ryuu said, directing Teppei's attention over to the left, where another pair of monsters floated in space.
"It's Insectus!" Teppei identified them excitedly.
"This is..." the captain's voice came over the comm.
"The monster graveyard!" Teppei crowed. "The Ultra Zone connects with the legendary monster graveyard!"
*
"What did he say?" George asked, back on Earth. "The signal's really scattered, so I can't understand it...."
"This is... space... zone... monster graveyard... 3SP..." Teppei's voice came, broken up by static.
"Monster...?" Konomi asked.
"...Graveyard?" George finished for her, curious as to what Teppei was talking about.
"There've been rumors since way back," Maru said, taking Lim-Eleking from Konomi's grasp, "about a resting place for the monsters who were banished into space."
"That's stupid," Toriyama argued, taking the little monster from him. "There's no way something like this thing gets reborn. You just get erased," he told the monster, shaking it. It jumped out of his grasp with a trill and vanished near the ceiling.
*
"This is no time for a party!" Marina said. "There's the emergency beacon!"
"What?" Ryuu asked. "What's the distance and location?"
"How should I know?" she demanded. "The instruments are out."
"There's something at eight o'clock," Mirai reported from behind her.
"Huh?" Marina twisted her head to look, but saw nothing."
"I can faintly feel a gravitational field," Mirai said.
Marina had just enough time to wonder about that before the captain said "Let's go check it out. Ryuu!"
"G.I.G.," their team leader responded, and the ship banked to the left.
A few moments later he spoke up again. "Hey, look at that."
"It's a small planet," Teppei said. "There's even something like that here." Marina looked and found that it rather reminded her of one of George's soccer balls.
"The signal's coming right from it!" she said, elated to have gotten a fix on the beacon.
"Well, we seem to've gotten lucky," Ryuu remarked as he guided them down.
*
The instrument panel lit back up almost as soon as the GunPhoenixStriker touched down on the planetoid's surface. "Systems are back online," Teppei reported. "The atmospheric pressure at the surface is 16, dense oxygen... it's a lot like Earth. I read no poisonous gases or harmful bacteria."
"Pretty impressive for an itty-bitty planet like this," Ryuu said from the front seat.
"Yeah, like a bear waiting to trap its prey," Teppei said, suspicious of anything that so perfectly matched human needs in a place like this.
"A bear?" Marina demanded over the comm.
"What is it, Marina?" Ryuu teased her.
"It's nothing," she said nervously. "Shall we go?"
They ended up taking three of the GunSpeeder units while the Captain remained with the GunPhoenixStriker to back them up in case anything happened. "Everyone, keep your minds on the job," he instructed as they headed out.
"G.I.G.!" they all responded.
*
The territory near the downed Arandas had been too rough and uneven for them to land the main ship near there, but it was only a few minutes until the bulk of the freighter came into view. They'd been provided with the blueprints and locking codes, so it was an easy matter to find the hatch and gain access to the container. "This ship met with disaster on the way from Mars to Earth, right?" Ryuu asked as they made their way forward to the control room.
"It was bringing back Spacium mined on Mars," Teppei informed him, gun in one hand and flashlight in the other. "Captain Ban was the project leader, a famous planetary geologist who has been gathering information on Mars the longest."
"But he made it back to Earth, didn't he?" Ryuu asked, remembering something about that.
"When the disaster happened one of the crewmembers sacrified himself to cut the cabin free," Teppei explained. "Because of that the rest of the crew made it back to Earth."
"He was a brave guy," Ryuu commented.
"He was Ban Hiroto," Mirai said. "Captain Ban's only son."
*
When they reached the control room it was as dark as the rest of the ship, but not as silent: the distress signal they'd heard played on, repeated endlessly. "It's an automatically transmitted distress call," Ryuu said. Marina felt her heart sink.
"I guess there's no way there could have been survivors," Teppei said, and she could hear her disappointment in his voice too.
"But I don't see a body," Mirai argued. "It's still possible...."
Marina blinked and listened more closely to the recording. "This voice..." she said, and looked at Mirai. The voice on the recording sounded identical to his. But that wasn't possible, was it?
Mirai stepped forward on the other side of the console and knelt down, picking something up off the ground. She looked over his shoulder and saw that it was an old-fashioned pocket watch.
"It must have stopped half a year ago, when the disaster happened," Teppei said, taking it from Mirai. He turned it around, flashlight shining on the back to reveal an inscription. "It says Ban Hiroto!" As he stood fully the chain caught on a switch on the control panel, bringing up a video recording. The four of them clustered around the monitor, watching.
"Hiroto! Hiroto!" a man on the screen who she guessed was Captain Ban said as one of his crewmembers ran out the door of the ship's main cabin.
"This is..." Ryuu murmured.
"A video recording from when the disaster happened," Teppei replied, eyes fast on the screen.
"Don't, Hiroto!" the captain said. "Come back!"
"The cable's been cut," Hiroto's voice replied over the comm, and she could still swear it was Mirai's, but that was still impossible. "The only way to save everyone is... for someone to separate it from here." He sounded resolute. Very young, and resolute.
"Then I'll do it," his father pleaded. "That is the ship captain's job."
"No!" his son replied. "The captain's job is to get everyone safely to Earth."
"Are you willing to die without ever setting foot on Earth?" Captain Ban demanded.
"Earth is just a planet that I have never seen," Hiroto replied. He sounded calm, at peace with his choice. "More importantly, make sure to take Mother back with you."
"Hiroto!" the captain said, and the screen shook as if from an impact. Or a separation. "Hiroto!" the captain cried. "Hiroto! HIROTO!"
A sudden noise from the door to the bridge broke their concentration from the screen as it went black.
Marina shrieked at the looming shadow there, her mind and Teppei's words and the creepiness of this whole place combining to form one thought in her mind: BEAR! Everyone else raised their guns.
"Who are you?" the shadow asked, and her breath caught. That was Mirai's voice....
She looked at Mirai as his eyes widened and he holstered his gun instantly, stepping forward, pushing past Teppei and Ryuu, who lowered their guns more slowly.
"Ban... Hiroto-san?" Mirai asked.
"Yes..." A sudden catch of breath. "Why do you--" A silence. "You," the other person breathed reverently.
"I'm sorry I took so long," Mirai apologized, and Marina's brain finally caught up with the rest of her and she shone her flashlight on the wall near them so that they were both illuminated.
And things stopped making sense again as soon as she did so, because Ban Hiroto and Hibino Mirai didn't just sound the same, they could have been twins.
sandpanther) and this evening I spent writing an "Elseways" story for episodes 21-22 of the same. Based on the question "what would have happened if when they did that rescue mission things had gone differently?"On another world, in another time, creatures lumbered across the landscape, snarling at the warping in their dark sky.
The cargo hold of a space freighter lay, alien to this world, on the top of a cliff.
It was waiting.
So were they.
"The Ultra Zone?" Mirai questioned Assistant Inspector General Misaki.
"Yes," she replied, looking around the operations room. "GUYS Spacey has detected an Ultra Zone forming a hundred thousand miles out from Earth."
"The Ultra Zone is--" Aide Toriyama began pompously, standing up.
"It's a warp in space that has been investigated a lot in relation to the monsters," Teppei overrode him. Ryuu hid a smile as Teppei continued raptly, "Modern scientists have theories, but no clear conclusions about it."
"In any case, it being a hundred thousand miles out means it's in GUYS Spacey's jurisdiction, right?" Ryuu asked.
"Yeah," George agreed. "It's not someplace we from GUYS Japan get to go."
"We have received a transmission from the Ultra Zone," Misaki said, and typed a few keys at the captain's terminal. A staticky recording played.
Only a few words were audible: "...is... ship... rescue... evacuate... ...ter Arandas...."
"Did they say the Arandas?" Toriyama asked.
"I remember," Teppei said. "It was a space freighter returning from Mars to Earth about
six months ago that met with disaster. It was a Japanese freighter."
"And this is coming from inside the Ultra Zone?" Marina asked.
"We have to go rescue them!" Mirai burst out, drawing eyes. "Right away!" he demanded.
George clapped a hand on Mirai's shoulder. "Calm down, amigo," he said. "It happened half a year ago."
"And this voice is clearly a recording," Secretary Aide Maru agreed.
"If you look at it calmly, the risk is too great," Teppei agreed as well.
"We have to go!" Mirai protested. "There're definitely... definitely survivors."
"The head office has instructed me to ask that Crew GUYS Japan go and investigate," Misaki said.
"I'm think Mirai-kun's right," Konomi said slowly.
"Konomi-san!" Mirai said, seemingly grateful to have someone on his side.
"That's right," Marina agreed. "If we don't go... we might as well throw away the name of GUYS," she said, her hand on the GUYS badge on her jacket.
"True," Ryuu admitted. "Captain?" he asked, turning toward Sakomizu.
The Captain smiled. "I'll pilot the GunBooster."
"Ca-captain Sakomizu," Toriyama protested, "you don't need to go yourself--"
"The Ultra Zone is in another dimension," the captain replied reasonably. "We don't know what might happen."
"Please let me go too," Teppei said, stepping forward. "I may never get another chance to see the Ultra Zone with my own eyes."
"I... I'll stay behind," George said. "Don't worry about things here."
Ryuu smirked. "What is it with you?" he harrassed his teammate. "It's not just the ocean, you can't take space either?"
"No, it's just... space has laws of its own," George hedged, "and I don't have those laws in my head."
"So he says again," Marina agreed with Ryuu.
The captain smiled. "GUYS!" he said, snapping them all to attention. "Sortie, go!"
"G.I.G.!" they replied as one.
As the GunPhoenix ran through its launch sequence, the words Sakomizu had pulled him aside to say ran through Mirai's head. "Mirai," he'd said, not ungently, knowing things about Mirai that very, very few others did, "you may see things that are difficult to bear."
And Mirai had nodded slightly. "I know," he'd replied, accepting what the might find. But he hoped... he hoped....
He hoped that that tragedy might still be reversable, that there might still be someone there to save.
As they cruised through the depths of space, Teppei kept an eye on the instruments and their readings. "Ninety-nine thousand kilometers," he reported eventually. "We're almost there."
"Really?" Ryuu asked from the seat in front of him, looking around. "I don't see anything."
Teppei didn't see it either, but "It's reading on the sensors," he reported, more willing to trust the sensors than either of their eyesights.
"I'm picking up the emergency beacon," Marina agreed from her own cockpit. "I hope there really are survivors."
"There will be!" Mirai said over the comm. "There have to be. That's why we brought along the extra GunSpeeder."
The entrance to the Ultra Zone quickly came into view, a glowing ring of warped space. "We're entering the Ultra Zone," Teppei reported over the comm, more for the benefit of the rest of the Crew, back at the Phoenix Nest, than the five of them in the GunPhoenixStriker. Then he gritted his teeth against the vibrations that shuddered through the hull as they encountered turbulence in the dimensional warp.
"What is this?" Ryuu asked. "What the hell's happening?"
"I don't know!" Teppei reported. "We've fallen into a rift in space. The instruments aren't reading right for anything more than forty thousand meters off," he lamented as the ship spun, seemingly out of control.
"Ryuu!" the Captain said. "Use this as a learning experience--don't drop speed!"
Slowly the spinning stopped and the GunPhoenixStriker leveled out, coming into calm black space again. Teppei breathed a sigh of relief and looked up from his intrument panel, which was still going wonky.
And opened his eyes wide in wonder. "That's Seabulls!" he said, staring in awe at one of the giant transparent monsters floating in space. "The ghost monster from 3SP's reports!"
"Hey. Hey, monster professor," Ryuu said, directing Teppei's attention over to the left, where another pair of monsters floated in space.
"It's Insectus!" Teppei identified them excitedly.
"This is..." the captain's voice came over the comm.
"The monster graveyard!" Teppei crowed. "The Ultra Zone connects with the legendary monster graveyard!"
"What did he say?" George asked, back on Earth. "The signal's really scattered, so I can't understand it...."
"This is... space... zone... monster graveyard... 3SP..." Teppei's voice came, broken up by static.
"Monster...?" Konomi asked.
"...Graveyard?" George finished for her, curious as to what Teppei was talking about.
"There've been rumors since way back," Maru said, taking Lim-Eleking from Konomi's grasp, "about a resting place for the monsters who were banished into space."
"That's stupid," Toriyama argued, taking the little monster from him. "There's no way something like this thing gets reborn. You just get erased," he told the monster, shaking it. It jumped out of his grasp with a trill and vanished near the ceiling.
"This is no time for a party!" Marina said. "There's the emergency beacon!"
"What?" Ryuu asked. "What's the distance and location?"
"How should I know?" she demanded. "The instruments are out."
"There's something at eight o'clock," Mirai reported from behind her.
"Huh?" Marina twisted her head to look, but saw nothing."
"I can faintly feel a gravitational field," Mirai said.
Marina had just enough time to wonder about that before the captain said "Let's go check it out. Ryuu!"
"G.I.G.," their team leader responded, and the ship banked to the left.
A few moments later he spoke up again. "Hey, look at that."
"It's a small planet," Teppei said. "There's even something like that here." Marina looked and found that it rather reminded her of one of George's soccer balls.
"The signal's coming right from it!" she said, elated to have gotten a fix on the beacon.
"Well, we seem to've gotten lucky," Ryuu remarked as he guided them down.
The instrument panel lit back up almost as soon as the GunPhoenixStriker touched down on the planetoid's surface. "Systems are back online," Teppei reported. "The atmospheric pressure at the surface is 16, dense oxygen... it's a lot like Earth. I read no poisonous gases or harmful bacteria."
"Pretty impressive for an itty-bitty planet like this," Ryuu said from the front seat.
"Yeah, like a bear waiting to trap its prey," Teppei said, suspicious of anything that so perfectly matched human needs in a place like this.
"A bear?" Marina demanded over the comm.
"What is it, Marina?" Ryuu teased her.
"It's nothing," she said nervously. "Shall we go?"
They ended up taking three of the GunSpeeder units while the Captain remained with the GunPhoenixStriker to back them up in case anything happened. "Everyone, keep your minds on the job," he instructed as they headed out.
"G.I.G.!" they all responded.
The territory near the downed Arandas had been too rough and uneven for them to land the main ship near there, but it was only a few minutes until the bulk of the freighter came into view. They'd been provided with the blueprints and locking codes, so it was an easy matter to find the hatch and gain access to the container. "This ship met with disaster on the way from Mars to Earth, right?" Ryuu asked as they made their way forward to the control room.
"It was bringing back Spacium mined on Mars," Teppei informed him, gun in one hand and flashlight in the other. "Captain Ban was the project leader, a famous planetary geologist who has been gathering information on Mars the longest."
"But he made it back to Earth, didn't he?" Ryuu asked, remembering something about that.
"When the disaster happened one of the crewmembers sacrified himself to cut the cabin free," Teppei explained. "Because of that the rest of the crew made it back to Earth."
"He was a brave guy," Ryuu commented.
"He was Ban Hiroto," Mirai said. "Captain Ban's only son."
When they reached the control room it was as dark as the rest of the ship, but not as silent: the distress signal they'd heard played on, repeated endlessly. "It's an automatically transmitted distress call," Ryuu said. Marina felt her heart sink.
"I guess there's no way there could have been survivors," Teppei said, and she could hear her disappointment in his voice too.
"But I don't see a body," Mirai argued. "It's still possible...."
Marina blinked and listened more closely to the recording. "This voice..." she said, and looked at Mirai. The voice on the recording sounded identical to his. But that wasn't possible, was it?
Mirai stepped forward on the other side of the console and knelt down, picking something up off the ground. She looked over his shoulder and saw that it was an old-fashioned pocket watch.
"It must have stopped half a year ago, when the disaster happened," Teppei said, taking it from Mirai. He turned it around, flashlight shining on the back to reveal an inscription. "It says Ban Hiroto!" As he stood fully the chain caught on a switch on the control panel, bringing up a video recording. The four of them clustered around the monitor, watching.
"Hiroto! Hiroto!" a man on the screen who she guessed was Captain Ban said as one of his crewmembers ran out the door of the ship's main cabin.
"This is..." Ryuu murmured.
"A video recording from when the disaster happened," Teppei replied, eyes fast on the screen.
"Don't, Hiroto!" the captain said. "Come back!"
"The cable's been cut," Hiroto's voice replied over the comm, and she could still swear it was Mirai's, but that was still impossible. "The only way to save everyone is... for someone to separate it from here." He sounded resolute. Very young, and resolute.
"Then I'll do it," his father pleaded. "That is the ship captain's job."
"No!" his son replied. "The captain's job is to get everyone safely to Earth."
"Are you willing to die without ever setting foot on Earth?" Captain Ban demanded.
"Earth is just a planet that I have never seen," Hiroto replied. He sounded calm, at peace with his choice. "More importantly, make sure to take Mother back with you."
"Hiroto!" the captain said, and the screen shook as if from an impact. Or a separation. "Hiroto!" the captain cried. "Hiroto! HIROTO!"
A sudden noise from the door to the bridge broke their concentration from the screen as it went black.
Marina shrieked at the looming shadow there, her mind and Teppei's words and the creepiness of this whole place combining to form one thought in her mind: BEAR! Everyone else raised their guns.
"Who are you?" the shadow asked, and her breath caught. That was Mirai's voice....
She looked at Mirai as his eyes widened and he holstered his gun instantly, stepping forward, pushing past Teppei and Ryuu, who lowered their guns more slowly.
"Ban... Hiroto-san?" Mirai asked.
"Yes..." A sudden catch of breath. "Why do you--" A silence. "You," the other person breathed reverently.
"I'm sorry I took so long," Mirai apologized, and Marina's brain finally caught up with the rest of her and she shone her flashlight on the wall near them so that they were both illuminated.
And things stopped making sense again as soon as she did so, because Ban Hiroto and Hibino Mirai didn't just sound the same, they could have been twins.
