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Do Not Forget Him
Prologue
High above her, a battle between two steel giants ensued as a cook-slash-Aestivalis pilot faced off with the chairman of Nergal. The fight had lasted for what seemed like ages, but now Akito Tenkawa, the Mars-born pilot, had started boson jumping around Nagare Akatsuki's blue-and-black Aestivalis like a grasshopper on speed, making the older man practically defenseless against his attacks.
Even though the fight was winding up to a close, the woman cast an anxious glance at the duel. Akito would have to hurry if he wanted to meet the young girl before the schedule set by the ancient Martians decided their time was over. As the ruins around them rumbled again in time with the Jovian forces boson jumping in from the chulip that had crashed there only a short while ago, a bright cyan glow had begun to surface from underneath the girl's skin in symmetric, circuitry-like patterns.
In a few seconds, the glitter slowly ebbed away until all of it had vanished. The five-year-old girl, Ai, smiled at the older woman and sat down on her lap. The woman, whom her colleagues and acquaintances called Inez Fressange, flicked the girl's left pigtail with her hand.
And so, as the two mecha pilots were descending the chasm, stopping only to breach through the protective barriers, the two below them talked, separated by two decades of experiences and memories. They shared trust enough to open to each other; the girl had not yet shed her childish naiveté, the older trusting her past self implicitly, as little as she might reliably recall.
The pause in the fight was only an intermission, as the fight between Terran and Jovian forces continued. The Jovian reinforcements arriving via the chulip once more set the immense complex in motion, and began to prepare the child for another trip through time and space. Once more the glitter had begun permeating her body, the glow becoming ever stronger.
The blond knelt before the girl and took her hands in her own, trying to soothe the girl. It was an impressive display of her control on her emotions that she didn't lose her own calm right there and then. Or even before that moment. Ever since the Jovian arthropod had taken over the Yamato module's computer she had had to admit even to herself that there was more to her than her work as a scientist.
"Do not forget his name! Do not forget Akito! " she pleadingly told the girl that was soon to disappear before her eyes. The time was running out; there was so much she wanted to tell her, to tell which mistakes to avoid in life.
"You smell just like Mommy," she had said. No, Inez Fressange was no Mommy, not with her cold and cynical exterior she had to show for everyone, even those closest to her. And the insides matched the surface. She had first buried herself in her studies, then research, searching for any answers where she could find them. When the Jovians attacked Mars, her steadfastness had made her the de facto leader of the survivors. Even the year she lived underground with the rest of the survivors had hardly affected her all that much or opened her locked-down emotions.
Now, watching herself as a child was like looking at old photos; wondering what had happened to her since those times. What had happened to the hopes and dreams she once had? Had she turned out the way she wanted to? What else could Ai have become?
Then, an epiphany struck her. "Keep walking away from the sun," she told Ai and squeezed her hands even tighter. "Walk away from the sun!" Once more, tears fell down her cheeks. Tears she had not shed when Captain Misumaru had effectively sentenced the surviving Martian colonists to instant death.
Until all of the sudden, the girl was gone. Only the bitter shell of the woman remained, frustrated that Akito had missed the window her past self had been there. She wiped the tears that had not yet fallen from her eyes with a quick swipe alongside the rest and settled down to wait for Akito to land.
It was onto this scenery that Ai materialized. She took a step backwards and turned on her heels, taking a look in the midday sun shining in the north. Not recognizing where on Mars she was, she hugged herself. No matter where she looked, all she saw was red rock and sand.
The nice lady... Auntie was gone, and her hero... Akito... wasn't there either. She sat down on the rock, wondering what she should do now. Her doll that she had named Kasumi after her frilly white hair wasn't there either.
But Auntie had told her what to do. Not to forget Big Brother... and the sun... walk away from the sun?
She stood up straight on the boulder, taking up a stance she had seen in Sunday morning magical girl shows. She was not going to fail her Auntie!
But even the firmest resolutions can crack and crumble... and without the ambition to drive one forward, the solitude of the wasteland can bring down even the peppiest of girls with enough time. And even with appropriate stubbornness, some things just are not to be.
Only the population centre of Utopia Colony and various other facilities strewn across Mars had air- and spaceports, and if the facilities were not too far from such positions, transferring the goods by land was cheaper. That day, Minoru Fujita was driving a truck loaded with foodstuff to a local terraforming research station. Forgettable heavy metal music blared from the driver's cabin's surround sound system, and Minoru was tapping the dashboard with his free hand in sync with the drums, the other hand with the IFS resting on the control node.
This was now his what, fifteenth time doing a supply run to the research station. It sure felt like it was the fiftieth time already, as the horizon hardly changed at any point on this 100km long stretch. Then again, things surely could be worse... he might be the one who actually had to work at the research post, situated practically in the middle of nowhere.
Bored nearly out of his mind, he let his gaze lazily drift from one side to another. Just the same old reddish rocks and sand everywhere his eye could see. He had been told there were nanobots in the soil and the atmosphere constantly making the place more Earth-like, but they sure weren't working fast enough for him. Those whitecoats would just paint fancy pictures of what the place might be like in a few centuries or so, but he was living here now and not even one century from today.
He was already halfway fallen for his usual mental tirade of how useless the scientists were when he noticed something that didn't belong into the landscape; something that first looked like a bundle of tattered cloth. As he got closer and the truck passed the girl, the form had clarified to that of a young girl fallen into a heap.
With a short string of expletives, he stepped on the brake and stopped his truck fifty metres away from the girl. He opened the driver's cabin door next, letting the music sound out in the desert.
"Hey! Are you okay?" he called as he stepped down and began walking towards the girl. He got no reaction as only the wind caused her clothes and some loose strands of hair to flap.
The girl was lying on her side, facing away from him. When he reached her, he knelt in front of her and lifted the light brown bangs from her face.
This time he didn't cut his string of expletives until a full minute had passed. The parched skin, sunken eyes and the cracked lips the girl had told him of severe dehydration. He knew she couldn't have been here for more than a day or two, or at least not without extra water.
He let his hand run through his hair in frustration. What was he going to do with the girl? He was still rather close to the colony, but his car radio had broken down a while back and after installing the new sound system he hadn't had the money for a new one, so he couldn't just call the emergency hot line.
On the other hand, he hardly had a choice in the first place. He slid his arms under the girl's light frame, stood up and carried her into the cabin with him. As he set her down on the seat beside him, the loud music from the speakers made the practically unconscious girl curl up tighter. With a quick swipe of hand the music was turned off.
The truck's engine sputtered before it settled back down into the usual low rumble. The petty whitecoats at the research post would just have to wait for their food a while longer; they could use a diet with their fat stomachs anyway.
Five minutes before the truck had driven into the lot, blocking entrance so that a taxi couldn't find a way out of there. Minoru ignored the honks and yells he got as he stepped out of the cabin and pulled the girl into his arms.
An middle-aged nurse, Eiko, was the first one to see Minoru and Ai approaching the ER. She signaled a resident doctor and quickly strode to Minoru.
"Goodness gracious, what has happened to this child?" Eiko wondered as the doctor arrived and took Ai from Minoru.
"Beats me. Found 'er out in the desert, maybe 20 kilometres north of border."
As Ai was being taken care of, Eiko was trying to find out from Minoru anything about the girl and write out the information down on her PDA. Considering the circumstances, her task was impossible.
"D'ya have any more questions for me? I mean, I gotta earn my own living, too."
"The police will probably want to interview later on, so I'll have to take your contact information as well. And are you absolutely sure you have no idea who she is?"
"No clue, never seen her before."
Eiko closed the lid on her PDA. No idea who the child might be, no idea of possible allergies, no nothing. Even the quick DNA scan failed to reveal her identity. It was a rare occasion indeed that a person couldn't be found in the databases. Maybe when the girl got better she might tell more. Until then, someone would just have to go through the missing person reports. Silently she wondered the surprise of having the need to use such old-fashioned methods in this time and age.
She entered the children's ward, where the dehydrated girl that was brought in to the ER a few hours ago was lying in a bed. The doctor had inserted a cannula into a vein in her arm. The tube was now used to rehydrate her with lactated Ringer's solution. The IV drip would continue for a good while now. After the dehydration-induced lethargy was gone, they could see if she suffered any brain damage in the process.
Her dirty clothes had been changed to a plain hospital gown, which was hardly warm enough to sleep in without covers. She walked up to her bed and pulled the bed covers over her, doing her best not to touch the drip or the cannula. When she was nearly finished tucking her in, the dehydrated girl mumbled something the nurse couldn't understand. But it did sound like a name... Akiko? Akito? The nurse cocked her head and let her breath out in a soft sigh. She didn't know what the life of the young girl had been like before, but unless they found her parents, she wouldn't have to end up wandering in the vast desert plains again in the future.
To be honest, I don't have the whole plot sketched out in any great detail yet. Also, the future chapters will be longer than this prologue. Suggestions how to revise the story are welcome if you find it necessary, as are suggestions for how the plot should evolve (I'm not saying I'll be following them in favour of my own plans, mind you).
Like the prologue, the future chapters will, it seems, be previewed on Fukufics dot com forums. I wouldn't mind having more involved prereaders and people to discuss the plot with, though... so far thanks go to Light02 and Kei.