Disclaimer: Characters belong to TV-Asahi and Toei.

Note: Written for Nu Hiep for the 2007 Yuletide Challenge, who specified Any/Any, and so got Kagami.

En Paco, Flugas
by Estirose
c 2007

Kagami watched the two Zecters play. It was actually quite a sight to see, the two mechanical insect-type beings fly around. He hadn't thought he'd ever see them again, not after they'd flown off soon after the final battle, to wherever Zecters went when they weren't needed. Kagami had always thought that was a lab somewhere. He wasn't too sure now. Maybe now it was the ruins of a lab.

Of course, he had no clue what the Zecters' energy sources were. Maybe partly solar, though probably not completely, not with the power they went through. Maybe it was nuclear power, though he hoped not; he hoped to have kids someday. Maybe it didn't matter.

Maybe it was a good thing this whole thing was over, and he was just a police officer helping kids cross the street. It was something he liked doing, and much less dangerous than fighting the Worm. He didn't have to worry about anything happening when he went to the Bistro La Salle, no calls from ZECT. ZECT didn't even exist anymore, thankfully.

The Worm did, but only the Natives that had agreed to live on as humans, or those humans transformed by accident or on purpose during those last few days. There shouldn't have been any transformed, but Tadokoro-san had confirmed a few that his kind had taken under their collective wing and taught to cherish both their human heritage and their new forms.

There would be no repeats of Negishi, not with Tadokoro-san and the others keeping a watch. Nobody wanted a war between humans and the Native Worm. Even though the world knew about Worms (and, as things had come out, ZECT and the Zecters), everybody kept the peace. It was like the War to keep the other Worms had never happened.

Admittedly, he saw his friends and coworkers mostly when they met up weekly at the Bistro La Salle, where Hiyori worked. Her secret, the fact that she was a Native Worm, was closely guarded by her friends, as it should be. Even with Tendou frequently away, everybody would protect her. Because that's what friends did.

Jiiya and Misaki would keep Tsurugi's spirit alive, Gon and Daisuke would stay close friends, and everything would go on in the world. His relationship with his father had gotten better ever since the dissolution of ZECT. He even understood, more or less, why his father had acted the way he had, though he still wasn't reconciled to all of it.

He wasn't completely reconciled to the fact that he'd been born to fight a war, never told what he was being prepared to do, never given a hint of the importance of his life in the whole scheme of things. He should have never had TheBee; that, his father said, had been in error, a glitch in TheBee's programming. And it had caused Gattack to beat Kagami up the first time, not recognizing him as its Chosen One.

Maybe it had been a good thing that he hadn't known about that when Gattack had attacked him. It would have been more of a shock being rejected that way. Of course, if he'd known that Gattack wouldn't recognize him, he wouldn't have accepted TheBee. Or if he was chosen, he wouldn't have allowed himself to become TheBee's Chosen One at all.

But he had become the Chosen One for both of them, if briefly. He'd saved the world, along with Tendou. He might never have beat Tendou, but at least he had become his own person. More than the Chosen One for Gattack, the life his father had planned for him.

The life his father had only half-hoped he'd survive, given the overwhelming odds.

He'd beaten them, at least. Become himself, not dependent on his father or Tendou or anybody else. Become a police officer. Was happy.

Gattack broke off from Kabuto Zecter, doing a dance of joy around his head. He was still apparently its Chosen One, as far as it was concerned. Would probably be for the rest of his life. It didn't bother him.

He laughed as the two Zecters flew off. Yes, he liked his life. He liked his post. He outlived the war. And he was Kagami Arata.

-end