New Orleans
"Ugh!"
Sato Kiko leaned
forward and retched as her body rematerialised in the
back room of 'Hey, Pizza!'. It was just after
midnight and the yellow-garbed member of Roboman had
just returned, with her two allies, from the other
side of the Atlantic Ocean.
"I hate that!
I really do!" she cried loudly. "Next time
we take the Lightning Jet!"
A few feet behind
her, the red-garbed Nagura Ikku smiled.
"Yeah," he
agreed. "Sei, we've got to work on these
landings."
There was no reply.
"Sei...?"
Ikku glanced around
the room. There was no sign of the third Roboman, and
nowhere for him to hide. He pushed through the
plastic doors separating the living area at the rear
of the store from the kitchen and peered around the
deserted restaurant - Sei was not there, either.
"Kiko...!"
he called out. "Sei didn't make it back."
"Oh!"
The voice that
called back was not that of Sato Kiko - it was Cog,
the two-inch tall robot companion of the Robomen.
Despite her size, Cog's voice was always loud and
clear, and Ikku had no trouble hearing and
understanding her.
He returned to the
back room and found the tiny robot perched beside a
computer on a desk along the wall to his left. Cog
was pacing back and forth in what Ikku would suspect
- if he saw a human behaving the same way - was
concern.
"Cog?"
Kiko asked. "Are you okay?"
Cog shook her head.
"I'm worried
about Sei!"
"Me too,"
Ikku said. "He was with us when we left London -
he had to be. He needs to touch us to teleport
us."
Kiko frowned.
"How could he
have been separated from us?" she wondered. She
pressed a sequence of buttons into the bulky Alert
Bracer attached to her left wrist, but received only
static through the device's speaker. "Wherever
he is, his Alert Bracer isn't working."
Cog jumped. To Ikku
and Kiko, the movement was barely noticeable - she
moved only an inch off the surface of the desk.
"Oh no!"
she cried.
"What is
it?" Ikku asked.
"I can detect
any of Doctor Nagura's technology - but I can't
detect Sei!"
Ikku frowned.
"So wherever he
is, he hasn't henshined, or used his Robo
Rifle or Vertex Shield." Kiko said. "Maybe
he's hurt!"
"Y-yes!"
Cog replied.
"If Sei was
separated from us after he teleported us out of
London, wouldn't raido energy have appeared
wherever he ended up?" Kiko asked the tiny
robot.
Cog nodded.
"Yes!" Cog
answered.
"Then maybe my
Alert Bracer can detect it," Kiko suggested.
"I'm going to go search for him."
Ikku nodded.
"I'll see what
I can do from here," he said. Kiko nodded,
turned, and left the store. When Ikku heard the glass
doors at the front of the store close behind Kiko, he
directed his attention back to Cog.
"Cog..."
he began.
"Yes,
Ikku?"
"You said you
couldn't detect Sei. What did you
mean?"
The small robot
smiled, but at her the gesture was entirely
imperceptible.
"I meant he
hasn't used any of Doctor Nagura's technology!"
Ikku frowned again.
"Are you
sure?" he asked.
Cog nodded.
"Yes!"
"Okay..."
Ikku glanced around the room and let out a long, slow
yawn. "Is there anything I can do while Kiko
searches with her Alert Bracer?"
Cog shrugged.
"Then I'm going
to get some sleep!"
He allowed his body
to slump onto the old couch in the centre of the room
and immediately fell fast asleep.
The Amazon
Sei lay on his back
beneath a large tree. His body did not move at all;
he did not twitch as mosquitoes swarmed over his
bare, exposed skin, biting him and flying away a
moment later. The squawking of birds, the guttural
growl of other beasts nearby did not cause his eyes
to open or his body to stir in any way.
A passerby - if such
a thing existed in the heart of the jungle - could be
forgiven for thinking that Sei was no longer alive.
His left arm was
bent at an awkward angle and his Alert Bracer, still
dangling from the strap attached to his wrist, had
been snapped in two and static streamed through the
shattered speaker.
Finally, as the sun
began to make its way over the horizon, Sei's eyes
opened and he slowly sat upright. For a moment, he
seemed bewildered; he stared intently at his
surroundings, so intently that it seemed he not only
did not recognise where he was, but also
what he was looking at.
He reached into a
small slit cut into the right leg of his robosuit -
it did not surprise him to find that the pocket
contained no Eternity Shards; he imagined that anyone
able to separate him from his teammates would not
want him to simply teleport back to them.
Several more moments
passed and Sei stood and began to walk. He remained
oblivious to the swarming insects and the sounds made
by the other creatures he passed and although he
walked quickly and with obvious determination, he had
no idea where he was going. What he did know
was that he had no interest in the elements of nature
surrounding him.
Until, after only a
handful of hours, Sei came across a hovel buried deep
in the jungle. It had been constructed by placing
four sharp branches in the ground. Large green leaves
had been weaved together to form a thin roof, but the
structure possessed no walls. It was, however, occupied.
In the centre of the
dwelling, beneath the green roof, stood a single man.
His was naked, with his back turned to Sei, and with
the exception of the short black hair on his head his
body was a uniform bright red. As Sei watched, the
man extended his arms out to his sides and allowed
the ever-present mosquitoes to swarm over him; he
endured their feeding for several minutes and,
satisfied, the insects left as quickly as they had
come.
The man's attitude
to the insects' attack surprised Sei - but what
surprised him even more was that, as the mosquitoes
departed, the large white bite marks quickly faded,
leaving only smooth red skin.
Sei slowly
approached the man, and when he was only a few feet
away he called out: "Hello?"
The man turned, but
as his eyes fell on Sei he stumbled back. His back
brushed against one of the flimsy support branches of
his dwelling and the entire structure shook but did
not fall.
"H-hi?"
the man replied. "What are you doing here?"
Sei stared at the
man. There was something familiar about his
appearance, but he could not quite put his finger on
it. The man, on the other hand, was entirely aware of
the similarities in their appearance - their almost
perfectly-symmetrical faces and short black hair, the
length of each strand precisely the same as all
others, were identical.
"I was
separated from two friends of mine," Sei said.
"Where am I?"
"You're in the
Amazon jungle," the red-skinned man replied.
"Your friends didn't come here with you, did
they?"
Sei suddenly
realised he was not sure. He had no idea if Ikku and
Kiko had also been drawn to the jungle or if, as he
hoped, they had arrived safely back in New Orleans.
He shook his head.
"I need to
travel to the United States," he said.
"Where is the nearest city?"
"Hey, slow
down!" the man said. "The nearest city is
thousands of miles from here! If you want to get to
the United States, there's only one way to do it. My
name's Jinsei, by the way."
Sei nodded.
"I am
Sei." He paused, then realised Jinsei was not
going to speak. "How can I return to
the United States?"
The corners of
Jinsei's lips curled into a sneer. That action alone
did not disturb Sei; when Jinsei turned his eyes to
the sky, however, Sei could not help but turn to see
what he was looking at. Before he could move to
defend himself, a mosquito slightly larger than Sei
himself descended from the sky and pierced the centre
of Sei's chest with its thick, two-foot long
proboscis.
The mosquito quickly
pulled its head back at the long appendage slid
smoothly from the hole it had made in Sei's body. Sei
fell - first to his knees, and then face-first into
the moist, muddy ground - and did not get up.
"The only way
you're getting back to the United States, little
Roboman," Jinsei said, smiling, "is in a
thousand broken mechanical pieces."
He lifted his left
foot off the ground and drove it hard into the back
of Sei's unmoving head, burying his face further in
the thick mud, then looked at the mosquito.
"See, Murray?
That's what they get for killing your brother
Curtis."
The giant mosquito
let out a number of high-pitced squeaks and Jinsei
glanced down at Sei's still form once again.
"You're right,
Murray - maybe I can use him. After all, I
built him!"
