Fic: A Summer's Day
Aug. 19th, 2003 10:39 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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tutufansThis fic was written for a blind crossover challenge. Two series were pulled blindly out of a hat and those of us who took the challenge had to write a fic of at least one thousand words crossing them over.
The two series pulled out were Princess Tutu and Captain Future. I hope youfind the results enjoyable.
A Summer's Day
by Raye Johnsen
raye_j@yahoo.com
*****
'Captain Future' and all properties pertaining thereto are copyright to the late Edmond Hamilton and all rights belong to his estate. 'Princess Tutu' is copyright the TUTU Project. In other words, none of these people are me.
Author's Note: Those who are familiar with the TV series of 'Captain Future' will recognise that some of the names used here are *slightly* different to the names in the TV series. This is because I am using the names from the original pulp novels.
Also: this fiction takes place after the end of 'Princess Tutu', and contains some spoilers for the circumstances of the end of that series. You Have Been Warned.
*****
'Once upon a time....'
Fakir knew, as he wrote the words, that they were misleading. They implied a fairytale or a legend, something that had happened hundred of years before. He only wished the implication were the truth; that would mean that what had happened had happened to someone else. It was a familiar reaction that anything his great-grandfather set in motion induced.
He wasn't the only one Drosselmeyer had that effect on. Ahiru forgave, but did not - could not - forget her days as his pawn. Fakir knew he would never achieve that serenity; his heart would have to be satisfied that he had wrenched control of his life and Ahiru's from Drosselmeyer's hands and taken them into his own.
Fakir watched the ink flow onto the paper from his quill-nib, a black line twisting sinuously into cursive script, sealing reality into his mould. He drew in a harsh breath, seeking control, as he carefully wrote. In her nest-basket on the edge of the hearth, Ahiru stirred Fakir held his breath, but the little duck resettled into sleep with no more than a sleepy quack.
This cursed gift that he and his great-grandfather shared, to remould reality to their whim, with no more than a quill and ink, was so easy to misuse. It had stripped Drosselmeyer of his sanity, until everything in the world was no more than a toy to amuse himself with. Fakir was determined not to lose himself as his ancestor had. But sometimes it was so tempting....
He had given Ahiru the ability to assume her human form at will, and while she spent quite a lot of time as the red-haired girl Fakir had first met, she enjoyed life as a duck and often spent time in that form. Tonight was not unusual, and Fakir felt some of her peace slide over him as he watched her sleep and began to pen the story of the day.
*****
It had begun as Drosselmeyer watched several worlds through his wheels within the gears behind the world.
Beside him, Uzura watched. "What are you doing-zura?" she asked.
"I'm looking for something amusing," Drosselmeyer told her. He had not spent much time around his own children as toddlers, so he found Uzura's incessant questioning unusual. He had become very expert, very quickly, in giving short, empty answers.
Uzura looked with him, and watched a number of rather interesting things....
.... a boy who looked a bit older than Fakir followed some thugs, got fed some medicine, and suddenly became Uzura's age. He didn't let that stop him, though, and kept trying to catch the bad men and get some medicine that would fix him....
.... a girl, writing music, nearly got run over by a horseless carriage, being driven by a minstrel. He picked up her songs, decided he liked them and her, and asked her to accept him as her suitor and write songs for him. She agreed - but his enemies and his admirers both saw her as a threat and started to attack her....
.... a girl was walking by a beautiful building with a boy she liked when she was struck by a beam of bright light, and from that time on changed into a catgirl to rescue animals possessed by demons....
.... yes, there were lots of things to look at.
"This looks promising," Drosselmeyer said thoughtfully, as he watched another gear.
"What does-zura?" Uzura demanded.
"This."
"Tell me-zura!"
"Here, this one. This man is a warrior, sworn to fight for truth, justice and freedom. He is accompanied by his father's ally and two puppets, much like your original really, who were created by his father. *Not* like your original, so don't get any ideas. They fight against evil in general and the man's father's ex-partner in particular."
Drosselmeyer regarded the image for a few moments more and added, "How... innocent."
"Sounds strange-zura!" Uzura commented.
"How is it strange?" Drosselmeyer asked curiously.
Uzura shrugged. "They don't even know what they're fighting-zura."
Drosselmeyer smirked. "But, little Uzura... that's what's going to make playing with them *fun*."
*****
Curtis Newton, also known as Captain Future, would be the first to admit he didn't always know what was going on. However, he would be the last to admit to trying to find out. This was because when he realised he didn't know something, he'd head off to find out about it and not hang around talking.
Right now, though, he'd give a lot not to have that particular impulse.
"And so, I said...."
He'd also give a lot not to have an android that no longer had a love life.
Otho had been created in the image of a man, and so every so often, a young lady would mistake him for one and behave accordingly. Due to their lifestyle, each time Otho had been forced to choose between life on the /Comet/ with the rest of the company, or life with a lady on-planet. He invariably obeyed his programming and stayed with the /Comet/, but whenever he chose to give up his love life for his adventuring, he would spend several days after the fact agonizing over the choice.
It was getting to the point where Captain Future was seriously considering breaking into his friend's circuitry and reprogramming his AI to be incapable of emotions at all. Either that or setting him up with an appropriate female spacer. Joan would probably know of some....
Space Constable JoanRandal chose that moment to enter the small rec lounge where Captain Future and Otho were talking. She had been assigned by her superior officers in the Space Police to deal with an infestation of pirates in the asteroid belt, and when she had found Captain Future there also, for the same reason, it only made sense to park her small ship in his cargo bay and join forces with him. The /Comet/ was a larger ship than her own... but as she sometimes joked that she could park her little shuttle in her wardrobe, that wasn't hard.
"Hello," she greeted them. "What's wrong?"
Otho sighed. "I am fine. I'll be on the bridge if you need me. We shouldn't leave Grag in charge of the ship too long; there's no telling what that robot will do."
"Don't be mean," Joan chided him, but Otho had left the room and gave no indication that he'd heard her before the door hissed shut behind him.
"Can you tell me what happened?" Joan asked Captain Future.
He leaned back and shrugged. "Otho is sad because he had to leave a friend behind when we left the mining colony."
"*Oh*," Joan said knowingly. "Still, he shouldn't be upset. It's not like he can't ever see his friend again."
Captain Future sighed. "That's true, but still, in our line of work, it's not always wise to stay in contact with old friends."
Joan shrugged. "I've never regretted it," she said quietly, sitting down next to him on the bench. He didn't move, but was hyper-aware of the way she was sitting near him, her weight pressing down on the cushioned seat and changing the way his body was balanced on it.
They sat there in silence, simply enjoying each other's company, when the walls of the ship seemed to flicker, and the alarm klaxon went off.
"What?!" Joan demanded, but Captain Future was already racing for the bridge.
They both burst onto the bridge. "Report, Grag!" Captain Future ordered.
The grey metal robot glanced over at Otho, and if it could have, one might imagine it smirked. "Otho came onto the bridge and attempted to distract me by making disparaging remarks. They failed, of course, but then an anomaly appeared before us in hyperspace. I attempted to analyse it, but before I could determine more than the fact that it was temporal but also had translocational properties, we had entered it."
"In English," Otho added, "the tinhead just said that we flew into a wormhole in time and space."
"But the Galactic Survey just mapped this area," Joan said blankly. "I downloaded the updated starcharts into your navigational computers when I came on board."
"Nevertheless, we have passed through an uncharted wormhole," Grag stated. His pet moondog, Eek, poked his pink fluffy head up over his shoulder and yipped for emphasis.
A sudden lurch rocked the ship. Joan cried out as she grabbed Otho's chair to steady herself. Captain Future hung onto the console beside him, and Oog fell from Otho's lap to the floor. Every proximity alarm on the bridge suddenly went off.
"That was a comet!" Otho announced. "What? *Halley's* Comet?"
"*Halley's* Comet?" Joan demanded. "But Halley's Comet isn't due for another fifteen years!"
"It *was* a *temporal* wormhole," Captain Future commented. "But we have bigger things to worry about. Everyone strap in; it looks like we're going to crash!"
*****
It had been a day like many other days in Fakir's recent life, and it was not getting easier with time, as he grumbled to Ahiru. Transferring from the dance school to the writing section had cost him the year's worth of credit, but that was a small price to pay to be away from all the bad memories.
Ahiru sometimes teased him by saying she thought he might enjoy writing more than ballet, which he still did as a hobby. Fakir never dignified that with a reply.
Still, Fakir was one of the most handsome boys in the school (since Mythos had left to take up that position in the German Royal Ballet Company, many felt he was *the* most handsome) and the change of direction had made him that much more alluring and mysterious to the girls of the school, especially as he had no visible girlfriend, and was devoted to his pet duck.
Straight after school, he had headed for 'their' lake, where she swam and fished and did duck things all day, while he was in school, and spent his lunch hour and free periods on the pier, doing his homework and writing. Taking a circuitous route to throw off pursuit, he had spent the first ten minutes ranting about how he had received three love-letters that day and he was really, really tired of telling the girls to just *go away*.
Ahiru had danced for him to cheer him up. As he always enjoyed watching her dance - he was continually amazed at how well Monsieur Catt had managed to teach her the basics, and how much skill had bled over from her time as Princess Tutu - it had worked, and he was now feeling rather mellow.
The mood was unfortunately wrecked when a giant metal dart fell out of the sky and crashed into the lake.
*****
"So what are you doing-zura?"
"I don't know - my grandson needs a bit of stirring up, don't you think?"
"I like Mr. Fakir-zura! Let me see-zura!"
*****
"Head for that lake!"
"Are there any civilians around?"
"I don't think so... but I don't think we can avoid attracting attention!"
"Will you all be quiet and let me pilot?!"
Grag aimed for the lake and managed to make a near-textbook landing. They had managed to land without any pieces falling off the ship and without injuring any bystanders, but it was a near thing. Two in particular - a boy and a girl that had suddenly seemed to appear out of nowhere - were dangerously close.
After the landing, nobody spoke for a minute. Everyone was too busy picking themselves up off the floor.
"Instruments read that the /Comet/ sustained no further damage in the landing," Otho said quietly.
"But where are we?"
Grag checked the instruments. "From the nitrogen-oxygen proportions in the atmosphere and the gravitational index... it's Earth. We're on Earth."
Joan looked at the viewscreen, at the small walled town, the green hills and the clear water of the lake. "But *when* are we?"
"I don't know. There's almost no pollution in the area, so it's almost certainly pre-industrial."
"Or there is no industry in the area," Grag added, unable to resist a snipe at Otho.
"That's no good," Captain Future replied. "How can we repair the /Comet/ with no industry to refine the metals for parts?"
"Captain," Simon said quietly, in an 'I can't believe this' tone, "I believe that we have bigger problems."
All the group looked up at the screen, which showed a group of schoolchildren in old-fashioned uniforms.
Some of them weren't human.
"Okay, maybe this isn't Earth," Grag conceded.
*****
Fakir sat up and looked around. Ahiru had returned to human form and was sprawled across his lap; the yellow dress that she was always wearing when she became human was torn and dirty, indicating she'd transformed before the blast. The dart, which had turned out to be a *lot* bigger than he expected, was lying all the way across the lake, but the force of its landing had still blown the pier into matchsticks and he and Ahiru into the forest.
"Uh..." Ahiru said, coming around. "Oh, Fakir, are you all right?"
Only Ahiru could say that and mean it with a great big bump on her own head. "Yes," he said briskly. "You have a lump on your head. You shouldn't have jumped in front of me. Silly."
"Now I know you're all right," she said, smiling.
He looked down his nose at her. "Silly," he said again, but didn't move. Ahiru closed her eyes and rested against his chest.
This peaceful scene was interrupted by a classmate running by. "Did you see that meteorite! Whoa!" he yelled as he hurried towards the lake. Neither Fakir nor Ahiru recognized him.
This was at least partly because he was an alligator.
"Drosselmeyer," they chorused.
*****
"Why are you making the people into animals again-zura?"
"Because it's fun, little Uzura."
*****
Staggering towards the lake, Ahiru felt as if everything in her world had just been uprooted and dumped out - again. It wasn't fair, really. She was just a little duck! She just did her best to try to make everything work out. But in the end... in the end it was always someone else who did it. It was Mythos who had faced the raven it was Fakir who had ensured their success. She just felt so useless sometimes.
And now it looked like it was all starting again. Still, she had to do what she could.
For his part, Fakir was seething. What was Drosselmeyer playing at? Hadn't Ahiru and himself been through *enough* yet? What was this latest game?
First, they'd go to the lake, and work out what exactly was going on. Then he'd pull out parchment and quill - if they were still in his pocket - and restore the world to some sort of normalcy. And fix up their mutual bumps too, while he was at it.
*****
Captain Future stepped out of the /Comet/, and decided to try an old staple. "I come in peace and mean you no harm."
"Oh, he's *cute*," floated out of the crowd. It was perhaps unfortunate that Joan stepped out of the ship at this point. She blushed and glared at him.
"And he's married!"
Now Captain Future's face was aflame.
Grag came out of the /Comet/.
"And it's a MONSTER! AIEEEE!!"
All three stared as the pack of children ran off.
Otho came out, cradling Oog. "Hello every - what happened?"
"Apparently nobody here has seen a robot before," Joan said sympathetically.
"Is that what he is?" a voice asked. The group jumped and turned around to see two youngsters watching them.
"You're the two who were on the pier!" Otho exclaimed.
"What's a robot?" the redheaded girl asked.
"It's a man made of metal," the older boy told her. "However, they're not supposed to be real." He regarded Grag with a jaundiced eye, as if Grag's existence were a terrible mistake and it were all the robot's fault.
*****
"No, no, no!" Drosselmeyer cried as Fakir moved towards the spacefarers. "*You're* not supposed to be here!"
"You sent them there-zura," Uzura commented.
"Child, you are not helpful."
"So-zura?"
*****
"I think," Fakir said, moving towards the group, "that you're here by accident, right?"
"Yes," Captain Future said. "There was an uncharted wormhole."
Fakir felt his face twist into a scowl and then deliberately smoothed it out again. /Whatever a 'wormhole' is, I see Drosselmeyer's hand in this. It's so obvious./ "I see. I can assist you in leaving."
Otho frowned. "Why, don't you want us here?" His tone was joking, but Grag and Captain Future both stiffened on his words.
Ahiru was the one who answered. "To tell the truth, it is more that we don't want to meet the one who brought you here. I'm sorry, but you are not meant to be here, and as long as you are, it means Drosselmeyer is around."
"We can help you defeat this Drosselmeyer!" Captain Future proclaimed.
"He's my great-grandfather, and he's dead," Fakir said flatly.
"Then he can't be the one who brought us here! That's not logical!" Grag exclaimed.
Fakir sighed. "It's Drosselmeyer," he said. "Please, allow me to demonstrate." He pulled a quill and a piece of parchment out of his pocket. Fishing out a bottle of ink and dipping the quill in it, he said, "Madam, you are wearing a set of red pyjamas, aren't you?"
"It's a shipsuit, not pyjamas!" Joan said indignantly. "And yes, it's red!"
The boy wrote something on the paper, frowned, and then blew on the ink. "Are you sure they're not blue?"
"Blue? Of course it's not... blue...." Joan's voice trailed off as she looked down to see that her modest shipsuit had somehow suddenly changed colour.
"You can call it magic," the boy said into the sudden silence. "You can call it... I don't know... an ability to manipulate the world on a cellular level, if you like. The point is that I can do it, and so can Drosselmeyer. And that's how you got here." He looked up at them. "And it's how I'll send you home. If you like."
*****
'The hillside is deserted of all but the visitors, Princess Tutu and her knight. The takeoff goes without a hitch, and the Princess and the knight watch and wave goodbye as the starship sails away, through the rainbow ring that will carry it back to its proper place and time.'
Fakir carefully screwed the top back onto the ink-bottle, shook his quill free of the last droplets of ink, and blew on the last glistening line to dry it on the page. Satisfied that the writing would not blur into illegibility before it could take effect, he folded the sheet of paper and shoved all three pieces into his pocket. The successful return of the /Comet/ thus assured, he joined the small group on the grass of the hill.
Inside the ship, Simon was running last-minute checks, while Ahiru and Joan were exchanging a friendly farewell on the grass outside the boarding doors. Ahiru had stated that she and Joan had more in common than first appeared, and Fakir had affected not to notice the pointed glance she threw his way. He had *nothing* in common with that futuristic lunk.
Captain Future was standing a little apart from the group on the grass.
"Well," Fakir said, walking up to the man.
"Well," Captain Future said, eying the boy as he came up beside him.
Captain Future felt very odd about Fakir. On the one hand, he could see that Fakir wasn't an evil person. On the other, the sheer power of his pen was terrifying, and he couldn't help but see Fakir as a threat. It was the first time he had come across such a sharp dichotomy between two rights, and he felt stretched on the two points. It would be a relief to return home to space.
For himself, Fakir had no such dilemma. He was too used to needing to make quick decisions and to defending his right to live to have much patience with someone who was divided over the issue. To Fakir, Captain Future was entirely too naive for his own good and to survive in the world. It would be a relief to return him to his own, more innocent world.
Each looked at the other, searching for something to say, and each realised there was nothing. More than worlds and time separated the two of them one had stood in light too long to understand the shadows, while the other had dwelt in twilight too long to forgive the light’s incomprehension.
Finally, Fakir said, "Have a safe journey," and held out his hand.
"Thank you," Captain Future said, and shook his hand.
Both men jumped and turned to the ladies, as Joan exclaimed "No!" and Ahiru nodded.
"Uh-oh," Fakir muttered.
"Quack!" Ahiru announced cheerfully, and Captain Future felt the world lurch around him as the red-headed girl shimmered and then suddenly seemed to collapse in on herself.
"Oh, Ahiru," Fakir muttered.
He walked over to the yellow Muscovy duckling standing in front of Joan. "Quack!" she announced cheerfully, as Fakir tenderly picked her up and cradled her against his chest.
"She... she really is..." Joan stuttered.
"A duck, yes," Fakir sighed. He looked at the two future dwellers. "It's a long story, but basically, a mad storyteller used her to further a plot in one of his stories, and I rescued her. Pretty much. Well, she rescued herself and everyone else first it was only fair." He shrugged.
Joan and Captain Future looked at each other. "I think it's time for us to go," Joan said shakily. "Goodbye, Fakir, Ahiru."
"Goodbye," Fakir said gravely.
"QUACK!" Ahiru added cheerfully.
Joan looked as though she was about to say something, stopped, and then climbed aboard the /Comet/, with Captain Future beside her.
Fakir held Ahiru against him as the hatch sealed itself shut. His hair and clothes blew in the wind as the /Comet/ lifted off, and rose up into the air. It flew up, up, and then suddenly a ring of rainbow light opened up in front of it.
There was a sudden /pop!/, and Fakir was holding the human Ahiru once more, her back against his chest and his chin resting on top of her head. She covered his clasped hands with her own and they both watched as the /Comet/ flew through the temporal gate, sparkling in the sun as it left them behind, taking its crew home.
"And they all lived happily ever after," Fakir said softly into Ahiru's ear, his tone making it a promise.
*****
Back in the 21st Century at last, Captain Future breathed a long sigh and relaxed back into his comfortable command chair. The galaxy was back to normal, the laws of physics once more applied, and reality no longer twisted under a teenager's pen.
Joan wandered over to his seat. "Hey, Curtis," she said quietly. "It's nice to be back home, isn't it?"
"It is," he replied, and then suddenly looked over at her. "Home?" Joan had a nice apartment in San Frangeles, he knew. She liked the /Comet/ well enough, but neither of them had ever called it 'home'. And she'd called him 'Curtis'....
"Well, yes," she replied. "I know four hundred years in the past isn't that far, and Germany isn't a bad place, but still, we've advanced so much!" Perching on the arm of the chair, she leaned her head on his shoulder and sighed. "In a way though, I'm a little sad. It would have been nice to invite Ahiru and Fakir to the wedding. Are you all right, Dear?"
"Fine, fine," he said, in a strangled voice. "The wedding, you said?"
Joan gave him a sidelong glance. "Are you having second thoughts? It's okay if you are, I am too - I mean, I *do* love you and all, but marriage *is* a big step and-"
But she got no further, because Captain Future decided to cut her off with a kiss.
"I am *not*," he announced, "having second thoughts. It's just that, well, Fakir and I didn't get along. He and I were just too different." /And that boy was just too powerful for anyone's good,/ he thought. /Although he *did* use his power for good. And this is a nice idea - I wonder when he decided Joan and I were engaged?/
Joan smiled. "I can understand that," she said cheerfully. "He *was* very reserved, wasn't he? But I didn't come here for that. I came to ask you to put the ship on autopilot and come to the garden with me. The waterlilies Ahiru gave us are just beginning to bloom, and they're so beautiful."
"All right," Captain Future said, and pressed the button to activate the autopilot. Joan had led him off the bridge and into the corridor before her words sank in.
/A garden on the /Comet/? Fakir, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY SHIP?!?/
*****
Drosselmeyer and Uzura watched the story play out, their eyes bright.
Finally, as events drew to a close, Drosselmeyer turned to Uzura. "Well, that wasn't nearly as dramatic as I'd hoped."
"I liked it-zura!" Uzura replied.
"Yes, well, *you* are an inexperienced child." Drosselmeyer turned. "I shall go find another story to amuse myself with."
"Wait for me-zura!"
*****
Author's Notes:
1. From the level of technology shown within the town, the fashions worn by the characters when they're not dancing, rehearsing or in school, and the fact that all the written texts and materials in the context of the show are written in German, I have privately decided that 'Princess Tutu' occurs in Germany in the late 1700s. As much, that is, as a town where every aspect of life is being controlled by a mad storyteller *can* be said to be at a given point in time or place.
2. The stories Uzura inspected before she and Drosselmeyer decided to meddle with 'Captain Future' are: 'Detective Conan', 'Kaikan Phrase', and 'Tokyo Mew Mew'.
All criticism is welcome.
The two series pulled out were Princess Tutu and Captain Future. I hope youfind the results enjoyable.
A Summer's Day
by Raye Johnsen
raye_j@yahoo.com
*****
'Captain Future' and all properties pertaining thereto are copyright to the late Edmond Hamilton and all rights belong to his estate. 'Princess Tutu' is copyright the TUTU Project. In other words, none of these people are me.
Author's Note: Those who are familiar with the TV series of 'Captain Future' will recognise that some of the names used here are *slightly* different to the names in the TV series. This is because I am using the names from the original pulp novels.
Also: this fiction takes place after the end of 'Princess Tutu', and contains some spoilers for the circumstances of the end of that series. You Have Been Warned.
*****
'Once upon a time....'
Fakir knew, as he wrote the words, that they were misleading. They implied a fairytale or a legend, something that had happened hundred of years before. He only wished the implication were the truth; that would mean that what had happened had happened to someone else. It was a familiar reaction that anything his great-grandfather set in motion induced.
He wasn't the only one Drosselmeyer had that effect on. Ahiru forgave, but did not - could not - forget her days as his pawn. Fakir knew he would never achieve that serenity; his heart would have to be satisfied that he had wrenched control of his life and Ahiru's from Drosselmeyer's hands and taken them into his own.
Fakir watched the ink flow onto the paper from his quill-nib, a black line twisting sinuously into cursive script, sealing reality into his mould. He drew in a harsh breath, seeking control, as he carefully wrote. In her nest-basket on the edge of the hearth, Ahiru stirred Fakir held his breath, but the little duck resettled into sleep with no more than a sleepy quack.
This cursed gift that he and his great-grandfather shared, to remould reality to their whim, with no more than a quill and ink, was so easy to misuse. It had stripped Drosselmeyer of his sanity, until everything in the world was no more than a toy to amuse himself with. Fakir was determined not to lose himself as his ancestor had. But sometimes it was so tempting....
He had given Ahiru the ability to assume her human form at will, and while she spent quite a lot of time as the red-haired girl Fakir had first met, she enjoyed life as a duck and often spent time in that form. Tonight was not unusual, and Fakir felt some of her peace slide over him as he watched her sleep and began to pen the story of the day.
*****
It had begun as Drosselmeyer watched several worlds through his wheels within the gears behind the world.
Beside him, Uzura watched. "What are you doing-zura?" she asked.
"I'm looking for something amusing," Drosselmeyer told her. He had not spent much time around his own children as toddlers, so he found Uzura's incessant questioning unusual. He had become very expert, very quickly, in giving short, empty answers.
Uzura looked with him, and watched a number of rather interesting things....
.... a boy who looked a bit older than Fakir followed some thugs, got fed some medicine, and suddenly became Uzura's age. He didn't let that stop him, though, and kept trying to catch the bad men and get some medicine that would fix him....
.... a girl, writing music, nearly got run over by a horseless carriage, being driven by a minstrel. He picked up her songs, decided he liked them and her, and asked her to accept him as her suitor and write songs for him. She agreed - but his enemies and his admirers both saw her as a threat and started to attack her....
.... a girl was walking by a beautiful building with a boy she liked when she was struck by a beam of bright light, and from that time on changed into a catgirl to rescue animals possessed by demons....
.... yes, there were lots of things to look at.
"This looks promising," Drosselmeyer said thoughtfully, as he watched another gear.
"What does-zura?" Uzura demanded.
"This."
"Tell me-zura!"
"Here, this one. This man is a warrior, sworn to fight for truth, justice and freedom. He is accompanied by his father's ally and two puppets, much like your original really, who were created by his father. *Not* like your original, so don't get any ideas. They fight against evil in general and the man's father's ex-partner in particular."
Drosselmeyer regarded the image for a few moments more and added, "How... innocent."
"Sounds strange-zura!" Uzura commented.
"How is it strange?" Drosselmeyer asked curiously.
Uzura shrugged. "They don't even know what they're fighting-zura."
Drosselmeyer smirked. "But, little Uzura... that's what's going to make playing with them *fun*."
*****
Curtis Newton, also known as Captain Future, would be the first to admit he didn't always know what was going on. However, he would be the last to admit to trying to find out. This was because when he realised he didn't know something, he'd head off to find out about it and not hang around talking.
Right now, though, he'd give a lot not to have that particular impulse.
"And so, I said...."
He'd also give a lot not to have an android that no longer had a love life.
Otho had been created in the image of a man, and so every so often, a young lady would mistake him for one and behave accordingly. Due to their lifestyle, each time Otho had been forced to choose between life on the /Comet/ with the rest of the company, or life with a lady on-planet. He invariably obeyed his programming and stayed with the /Comet/, but whenever he chose to give up his love life for his adventuring, he would spend several days after the fact agonizing over the choice.
It was getting to the point where Captain Future was seriously considering breaking into his friend's circuitry and reprogramming his AI to be incapable of emotions at all. Either that or setting him up with an appropriate female spacer. Joan would probably know of some....
Space Constable JoanRandal chose that moment to enter the small rec lounge where Captain Future and Otho were talking. She had been assigned by her superior officers in the Space Police to deal with an infestation of pirates in the asteroid belt, and when she had found Captain Future there also, for the same reason, it only made sense to park her small ship in his cargo bay and join forces with him. The /Comet/ was a larger ship than her own... but as she sometimes joked that she could park her little shuttle in her wardrobe, that wasn't hard.
"Hello," she greeted them. "What's wrong?"
Otho sighed. "I am fine. I'll be on the bridge if you need me. We shouldn't leave Grag in charge of the ship too long; there's no telling what that robot will do."
"Don't be mean," Joan chided him, but Otho had left the room and gave no indication that he'd heard her before the door hissed shut behind him.
"Can you tell me what happened?" Joan asked Captain Future.
He leaned back and shrugged. "Otho is sad because he had to leave a friend behind when we left the mining colony."
"*Oh*," Joan said knowingly. "Still, he shouldn't be upset. It's not like he can't ever see his friend again."
Captain Future sighed. "That's true, but still, in our line of work, it's not always wise to stay in contact with old friends."
Joan shrugged. "I've never regretted it," she said quietly, sitting down next to him on the bench. He didn't move, but was hyper-aware of the way she was sitting near him, her weight pressing down on the cushioned seat and changing the way his body was balanced on it.
They sat there in silence, simply enjoying each other's company, when the walls of the ship seemed to flicker, and the alarm klaxon went off.
"What?!" Joan demanded, but Captain Future was already racing for the bridge.
They both burst onto the bridge. "Report, Grag!" Captain Future ordered.
The grey metal robot glanced over at Otho, and if it could have, one might imagine it smirked. "Otho came onto the bridge and attempted to distract me by making disparaging remarks. They failed, of course, but then an anomaly appeared before us in hyperspace. I attempted to analyse it, but before I could determine more than the fact that it was temporal but also had translocational properties, we had entered it."
"In English," Otho added, "the tinhead just said that we flew into a wormhole in time and space."
"But the Galactic Survey just mapped this area," Joan said blankly. "I downloaded the updated starcharts into your navigational computers when I came on board."
"Nevertheless, we have passed through an uncharted wormhole," Grag stated. His pet moondog, Eek, poked his pink fluffy head up over his shoulder and yipped for emphasis.
A sudden lurch rocked the ship. Joan cried out as she grabbed Otho's chair to steady herself. Captain Future hung onto the console beside him, and Oog fell from Otho's lap to the floor. Every proximity alarm on the bridge suddenly went off.
"That was a comet!" Otho announced. "What? *Halley's* Comet?"
"*Halley's* Comet?" Joan demanded. "But Halley's Comet isn't due for another fifteen years!"
"It *was* a *temporal* wormhole," Captain Future commented. "But we have bigger things to worry about. Everyone strap in; it looks like we're going to crash!"
*****
It had been a day like many other days in Fakir's recent life, and it was not getting easier with time, as he grumbled to Ahiru. Transferring from the dance school to the writing section had cost him the year's worth of credit, but that was a small price to pay to be away from all the bad memories.
Ahiru sometimes teased him by saying she thought he might enjoy writing more than ballet, which he still did as a hobby. Fakir never dignified that with a reply.
Still, Fakir was one of the most handsome boys in the school (since Mythos had left to take up that position in the German Royal Ballet Company, many felt he was *the* most handsome) and the change of direction had made him that much more alluring and mysterious to the girls of the school, especially as he had no visible girlfriend, and was devoted to his pet duck.
Straight after school, he had headed for 'their' lake, where she swam and fished and did duck things all day, while he was in school, and spent his lunch hour and free periods on the pier, doing his homework and writing. Taking a circuitous route to throw off pursuit, he had spent the first ten minutes ranting about how he had received three love-letters that day and he was really, really tired of telling the girls to just *go away*.
Ahiru had danced for him to cheer him up. As he always enjoyed watching her dance - he was continually amazed at how well Monsieur Catt had managed to teach her the basics, and how much skill had bled over from her time as Princess Tutu - it had worked, and he was now feeling rather mellow.
The mood was unfortunately wrecked when a giant metal dart fell out of the sky and crashed into the lake.
*****
"So what are you doing-zura?"
"I don't know - my grandson needs a bit of stirring up, don't you think?"
"I like Mr. Fakir-zura! Let me see-zura!"
*****
"Head for that lake!"
"Are there any civilians around?"
"I don't think so... but I don't think we can avoid attracting attention!"
"Will you all be quiet and let me pilot?!"
Grag aimed for the lake and managed to make a near-textbook landing. They had managed to land without any pieces falling off the ship and without injuring any bystanders, but it was a near thing. Two in particular - a boy and a girl that had suddenly seemed to appear out of nowhere - were dangerously close.
After the landing, nobody spoke for a minute. Everyone was too busy picking themselves up off the floor.
"Instruments read that the /Comet/ sustained no further damage in the landing," Otho said quietly.
"But where are we?"
Grag checked the instruments. "From the nitrogen-oxygen proportions in the atmosphere and the gravitational index... it's Earth. We're on Earth."
Joan looked at the viewscreen, at the small walled town, the green hills and the clear water of the lake. "But *when* are we?"
"I don't know. There's almost no pollution in the area, so it's almost certainly pre-industrial."
"Or there is no industry in the area," Grag added, unable to resist a snipe at Otho.
"That's no good," Captain Future replied. "How can we repair the /Comet/ with no industry to refine the metals for parts?"
"Captain," Simon said quietly, in an 'I can't believe this' tone, "I believe that we have bigger problems."
All the group looked up at the screen, which showed a group of schoolchildren in old-fashioned uniforms.
Some of them weren't human.
"Okay, maybe this isn't Earth," Grag conceded.
*****
Fakir sat up and looked around. Ahiru had returned to human form and was sprawled across his lap; the yellow dress that she was always wearing when she became human was torn and dirty, indicating she'd transformed before the blast. The dart, which had turned out to be a *lot* bigger than he expected, was lying all the way across the lake, but the force of its landing had still blown the pier into matchsticks and he and Ahiru into the forest.
"Uh..." Ahiru said, coming around. "Oh, Fakir, are you all right?"
Only Ahiru could say that and mean it with a great big bump on her own head. "Yes," he said briskly. "You have a lump on your head. You shouldn't have jumped in front of me. Silly."
"Now I know you're all right," she said, smiling.
He looked down his nose at her. "Silly," he said again, but didn't move. Ahiru closed her eyes and rested against his chest.
This peaceful scene was interrupted by a classmate running by. "Did you see that meteorite! Whoa!" he yelled as he hurried towards the lake. Neither Fakir nor Ahiru recognized him.
This was at least partly because he was an alligator.
"Drosselmeyer," they chorused.
*****
"Why are you making the people into animals again-zura?"
"Because it's fun, little Uzura."
*****
Staggering towards the lake, Ahiru felt as if everything in her world had just been uprooted and dumped out - again. It wasn't fair, really. She was just a little duck! She just did her best to try to make everything work out. But in the end... in the end it was always someone else who did it. It was Mythos who had faced the raven it was Fakir who had ensured their success. She just felt so useless sometimes.
And now it looked like it was all starting again. Still, she had to do what she could.
For his part, Fakir was seething. What was Drosselmeyer playing at? Hadn't Ahiru and himself been through *enough* yet? What was this latest game?
First, they'd go to the lake, and work out what exactly was going on. Then he'd pull out parchment and quill - if they were still in his pocket - and restore the world to some sort of normalcy. And fix up their mutual bumps too, while he was at it.
*****
Captain Future stepped out of the /Comet/, and decided to try an old staple. "I come in peace and mean you no harm."
"Oh, he's *cute*," floated out of the crowd. It was perhaps unfortunate that Joan stepped out of the ship at this point. She blushed and glared at him.
"And he's married!"
Now Captain Future's face was aflame.
Grag came out of the /Comet/.
"And it's a MONSTER! AIEEEE!!"
All three stared as the pack of children ran off.
Otho came out, cradling Oog. "Hello every - what happened?"
"Apparently nobody here has seen a robot before," Joan said sympathetically.
"Is that what he is?" a voice asked. The group jumped and turned around to see two youngsters watching them.
"You're the two who were on the pier!" Otho exclaimed.
"What's a robot?" the redheaded girl asked.
"It's a man made of metal," the older boy told her. "However, they're not supposed to be real." He regarded Grag with a jaundiced eye, as if Grag's existence were a terrible mistake and it were all the robot's fault.
*****
"No, no, no!" Drosselmeyer cried as Fakir moved towards the spacefarers. "*You're* not supposed to be here!"
"You sent them there-zura," Uzura commented.
"Child, you are not helpful."
"So-zura?"
*****
"I think," Fakir said, moving towards the group, "that you're here by accident, right?"
"Yes," Captain Future said. "There was an uncharted wormhole."
Fakir felt his face twist into a scowl and then deliberately smoothed it out again. /Whatever a 'wormhole' is, I see Drosselmeyer's hand in this. It's so obvious./ "I see. I can assist you in leaving."
Otho frowned. "Why, don't you want us here?" His tone was joking, but Grag and Captain Future both stiffened on his words.
Ahiru was the one who answered. "To tell the truth, it is more that we don't want to meet the one who brought you here. I'm sorry, but you are not meant to be here, and as long as you are, it means Drosselmeyer is around."
"We can help you defeat this Drosselmeyer!" Captain Future proclaimed.
"He's my great-grandfather, and he's dead," Fakir said flatly.
"Then he can't be the one who brought us here! That's not logical!" Grag exclaimed.
Fakir sighed. "It's Drosselmeyer," he said. "Please, allow me to demonstrate." He pulled a quill and a piece of parchment out of his pocket. Fishing out a bottle of ink and dipping the quill in it, he said, "Madam, you are wearing a set of red pyjamas, aren't you?"
"It's a shipsuit, not pyjamas!" Joan said indignantly. "And yes, it's red!"
The boy wrote something on the paper, frowned, and then blew on the ink. "Are you sure they're not blue?"
"Blue? Of course it's not... blue...." Joan's voice trailed off as she looked down to see that her modest shipsuit had somehow suddenly changed colour.
"You can call it magic," the boy said into the sudden silence. "You can call it... I don't know... an ability to manipulate the world on a cellular level, if you like. The point is that I can do it, and so can Drosselmeyer. And that's how you got here." He looked up at them. "And it's how I'll send you home. If you like."
*****
'The hillside is deserted of all but the visitors, Princess Tutu and her knight. The takeoff goes without a hitch, and the Princess and the knight watch and wave goodbye as the starship sails away, through the rainbow ring that will carry it back to its proper place and time.'
Fakir carefully screwed the top back onto the ink-bottle, shook his quill free of the last droplets of ink, and blew on the last glistening line to dry it on the page. Satisfied that the writing would not blur into illegibility before it could take effect, he folded the sheet of paper and shoved all three pieces into his pocket. The successful return of the /Comet/ thus assured, he joined the small group on the grass of the hill.
Inside the ship, Simon was running last-minute checks, while Ahiru and Joan were exchanging a friendly farewell on the grass outside the boarding doors. Ahiru had stated that she and Joan had more in common than first appeared, and Fakir had affected not to notice the pointed glance she threw his way. He had *nothing* in common with that futuristic lunk.
Captain Future was standing a little apart from the group on the grass.
"Well," Fakir said, walking up to the man.
"Well," Captain Future said, eying the boy as he came up beside him.
Captain Future felt very odd about Fakir. On the one hand, he could see that Fakir wasn't an evil person. On the other, the sheer power of his pen was terrifying, and he couldn't help but see Fakir as a threat. It was the first time he had come across such a sharp dichotomy between two rights, and he felt stretched on the two points. It would be a relief to return home to space.
For himself, Fakir had no such dilemma. He was too used to needing to make quick decisions and to defending his right to live to have much patience with someone who was divided over the issue. To Fakir, Captain Future was entirely too naive for his own good and to survive in the world. It would be a relief to return him to his own, more innocent world.
Each looked at the other, searching for something to say, and each realised there was nothing. More than worlds and time separated the two of them one had stood in light too long to understand the shadows, while the other had dwelt in twilight too long to forgive the light’s incomprehension.
Finally, Fakir said, "Have a safe journey," and held out his hand.
"Thank you," Captain Future said, and shook his hand.
Both men jumped and turned to the ladies, as Joan exclaimed "No!" and Ahiru nodded.
"Uh-oh," Fakir muttered.
"Quack!" Ahiru announced cheerfully, and Captain Future felt the world lurch around him as the red-headed girl shimmered and then suddenly seemed to collapse in on herself.
"Oh, Ahiru," Fakir muttered.
He walked over to the yellow Muscovy duckling standing in front of Joan. "Quack!" she announced cheerfully, as Fakir tenderly picked her up and cradled her against his chest.
"She... she really is..." Joan stuttered.
"A duck, yes," Fakir sighed. He looked at the two future dwellers. "It's a long story, but basically, a mad storyteller used her to further a plot in one of his stories, and I rescued her. Pretty much. Well, she rescued herself and everyone else first it was only fair." He shrugged.
Joan and Captain Future looked at each other. "I think it's time for us to go," Joan said shakily. "Goodbye, Fakir, Ahiru."
"Goodbye," Fakir said gravely.
"QUACK!" Ahiru added cheerfully.
Joan looked as though she was about to say something, stopped, and then climbed aboard the /Comet/, with Captain Future beside her.
Fakir held Ahiru against him as the hatch sealed itself shut. His hair and clothes blew in the wind as the /Comet/ lifted off, and rose up into the air. It flew up, up, and then suddenly a ring of rainbow light opened up in front of it.
There was a sudden /pop!/, and Fakir was holding the human Ahiru once more, her back against his chest and his chin resting on top of her head. She covered his clasped hands with her own and they both watched as the /Comet/ flew through the temporal gate, sparkling in the sun as it left them behind, taking its crew home.
"And they all lived happily ever after," Fakir said softly into Ahiru's ear, his tone making it a promise.
*****
Back in the 21st Century at last, Captain Future breathed a long sigh and relaxed back into his comfortable command chair. The galaxy was back to normal, the laws of physics once more applied, and reality no longer twisted under a teenager's pen.
Joan wandered over to his seat. "Hey, Curtis," she said quietly. "It's nice to be back home, isn't it?"
"It is," he replied, and then suddenly looked over at her. "Home?" Joan had a nice apartment in San Frangeles, he knew. She liked the /Comet/ well enough, but neither of them had ever called it 'home'. And she'd called him 'Curtis'....
"Well, yes," she replied. "I know four hundred years in the past isn't that far, and Germany isn't a bad place, but still, we've advanced so much!" Perching on the arm of the chair, she leaned her head on his shoulder and sighed. "In a way though, I'm a little sad. It would have been nice to invite Ahiru and Fakir to the wedding. Are you all right, Dear?"
"Fine, fine," he said, in a strangled voice. "The wedding, you said?"
Joan gave him a sidelong glance. "Are you having second thoughts? It's okay if you are, I am too - I mean, I *do* love you and all, but marriage *is* a big step and-"
But she got no further, because Captain Future decided to cut her off with a kiss.
"I am *not*," he announced, "having second thoughts. It's just that, well, Fakir and I didn't get along. He and I were just too different." /And that boy was just too powerful for anyone's good,/ he thought. /Although he *did* use his power for good. And this is a nice idea - I wonder when he decided Joan and I were engaged?/
Joan smiled. "I can understand that," she said cheerfully. "He *was* very reserved, wasn't he? But I didn't come here for that. I came to ask you to put the ship on autopilot and come to the garden with me. The waterlilies Ahiru gave us are just beginning to bloom, and they're so beautiful."
"All right," Captain Future said, and pressed the button to activate the autopilot. Joan had led him off the bridge and into the corridor before her words sank in.
/A garden on the /Comet/? Fakir, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY SHIP?!?/
*****
Drosselmeyer and Uzura watched the story play out, their eyes bright.
Finally, as events drew to a close, Drosselmeyer turned to Uzura. "Well, that wasn't nearly as dramatic as I'd hoped."
"I liked it-zura!" Uzura replied.
"Yes, well, *you* are an inexperienced child." Drosselmeyer turned. "I shall go find another story to amuse myself with."
"Wait for me-zura!"
*****
Author's Notes:
1. From the level of technology shown within the town, the fashions worn by the characters when they're not dancing, rehearsing or in school, and the fact that all the written texts and materials in the context of the show are written in German, I have privately decided that 'Princess Tutu' occurs in Germany in the late 1700s. As much, that is, as a town where every aspect of life is being controlled by a mad storyteller *can* be said to be at a given point in time or place.
2. The stories Uzura inspected before she and Drosselmeyer decided to meddle with 'Captain Future' are: 'Detective Conan', 'Kaikan Phrase', and 'Tokyo Mew Mew'.
All criticism is welcome.
