"Adrift in Time"; or "Clock Like a Pirate Day"
================================================
2:10PM, March 15, 2003
Urayasa, Chiba, Japan
A group of seven young women stood in line for one of Magical Land's great attractions, Pirates of the South Pacific. It was a beautiful day to celebrate their recent graduation from high school, with the warmth of spring bursting just in time for this outing.
They were similar to many other groups of recent graduates wandering around the theme park, with a small exception: the twintailed child prodigy Chiyo Mihama, only age 13, still stood out from her elders. However, she was steadily catching up in height to the rest of her cohort, her growth spurt having finally kicked in.
Given that Tomo Takino had just taken Chiyo and Kaori Aida on a maximum-speed teacup ride, both of them were hanging on Sakaki -- partially for balance, but by now mostly for protection from Tomo.
So it was, that Chiyo missed Osaka's fateful question, "Do you think they use real magic at Magical Land?"
Koyomi Mizuhara, a bespectacled brunette beauty, explained, "I thought that it was just magineering."
"Oh, I get it." Tomo riffed, "Like if technology is so advanced, it's like the same as magic. So they just put them together!"
"Right, because it's so similar now, they combined magic with engineering to make all of the rides."
"I see! That explains why this place is so much fun!"
Osaka added, "Wow, you know so much, Yomi."
"I'm pretty sure they're just messing with us," noted Kagura, a girl with short cropped hair and an athletic build. "Magineering is not even a real word."
Yomi pulled a book out of her purse, and flipped to the relevant page of the guide book on the park, "See, it's right here in black and white." Sure enough the page she displayed was emblazoned with the Japanese text "Magical Land: The Magineering that Makes It Happen".
"No way!"
The queue moved forward, which gave Yomi a convenient excuse to close her book before anyone looked too closely at it. Actually, traffic for this attraction was pretty light today.
When they got to the water line, Sakaki asked the operator, "Excuse me. Can we all ride together in the same boat?"
The operator, barely older than Sakaki herself, looked up at the tall, serious, raven-haired woman with trepidation. "I think you can have your own boat. No need to worry." Yeah, no need to cause a problem with this scary onee-san.
As the next boat rolled through the shallow water, the graduates all loaded into the barge, and pulled down the safety bars. As the watertight cart started moving, Tomo pointed forward. "Full speed ahead!"
"That operator was really nice wasn't she?" Chiyo declared.
Sakaki agreed, "Yes, very pleasant."
Just before the boat turned the corner, Sakaki caught a glimpse of "Chiyo's father", a large orange cat-like creature (she was still not sure if he was really a cat), waving to everyone as they entered the ride. Strange, she thought; this was the first time she had seen him outside of a dream. Did he work as a mascot character? She said, "Your father…"
"Yes?"
The voiceover boomed in archaic Japanese, "Abandon all hope, all ye who enter!" The boat had just started to descend to the lower level of the ride, and then, the artificial grotto was filled with a blinding light. Sakaki instinctively grabbed Chiyo-chan to keep her safe.
A small wave sloshed into the boat, soaking Tomo and Kagura. A high-pitched groan of tearing metal filled the room -- and then the grotto itself was gone.
The coruscating light shone in all the colors at once, as if the craft and its occupants were surrounded by the aurora. Whether they were falling or weightless, it's impossible to say; still they were held firmly in the boat by its mechanical arms. Which is not to say that everyone aboard was not holding on for dear life.
After about a minute, the boat materialized three meters above a placid ocean surface; after hovering in midair for a second the sphere of light around the boat evaporated. Gravity quickly did the work to bring the boat to sea, rocking the craft side-to-side, but fortunately not swamping the boat.
Osaka gave a hearty Kansai, "What the heck!"
Yomi chimed in with her own, "What the heck."
Tomo immediately reached for the emergency release for the mechanical arms locking the passengers in. "I've always wanted to pull that switch."
"Huh, they really do use magic. Who'd'a thought?" Osaka stated. There was nothing else she could have concluded, staring up at an azure sky filled with towering cumulus, the air at least 10 degrees warmer than a few minutes ago. An island with tropical vegetation lay a half-mile away, proving in no uncertain terms that they were no longer in Tokyo.
"Is everyone okay?" Kaorin asked. She then started calling roll for her friends. It turned out that the class president role had become pretty ingrained for her, despite only doing it for her senior year. Just last year, she would have been a nervous wreck from whatever had just happened to them, but just the act of doing a duty helped to calm her down.
As it was, Chiyo looked to be on the verge of tears, but Sakaki was already calming her down. Fortunately, every member of the crew was hale and hearty -- and more than a bit shaken.
Bailing water out of their boat with their hands became the next business. The good news is that the boat was designed to survive a fall, and thus was entirely undamaged. The bad news was that the boat was designed to run on wheels in a track, and had no way propel itself through a real sea.
"I have no idea what happened to us, but we need to get to that island," declared Yomi.
"Aye aye, captain," Tomo saluted. "But we have no oars to row with. Maybe Kagura can get out and push us."
"Eh?" Kagura yelped.
"Belay that, seaman. See if we can find some sort of board on here we can use."
Tomo offered, "Osaka is flat as a board, maybe we can use her, captain."
"You're as flat as a board too, Tomo," Osaka accused. "You'll have to be the other oar!"
"Oh no, I've said too much!"
Sakaki stood up and kicked apart a couple of the seats; it wasn't long before they had improvised a couple of oars out of the plywood. Even with calm seas and favorable winds, it was slow going. Tomo's burst of energy lasted just under a minute, which left most of the rowing work to Kagura and Sakaki.
After about twenty minutes under the baking sun, Sakaki saw a large boat speeding to her location. She immediately stood up and started waving, and everyone else joined her.
Kaori yelled, "Stop rocking the boat, Tomo! She's not designed for the real ocean!"
"But holy freaking crap, we're going to meet real pirates! Sail the seven seas!" Tomo reasoned.
Yomi observed, "Uh, there's no sails on that ship, so no pirates."
"I bet it's a ship of modern pirates. Ahoy mateys!!!"
"I bet this is a ship of a modern idiot."
The PT-boat had spotted the theme park attraction's boat a few minutes before, and was already on a course to pick up its new passengers. After five more minutes, the gray gunboat pulled up alongside, 80 feet long if it was an inch. Curiously, the boat had no markings or flag, as if it were trying to be inconspicuous on purpose. Still, a rescue was a rescue.
Three men got came out on deck to help. They were a motley crew to be sure: a blond man in a Hawaiian shirt, a brawny bald black man in a flak jacket, and what looked like an authentic Japanese salaryman.
"Ahoy there! Looks like you could use some help," called the black man.
"No, we're just out for a three-hour tour," Tomo called back in perfect English.
"Heh. OK, tie these lines to the boat, and we'll send down the rope ladder." As they tied the ropes to the boat's safety bars, he asked, "What the heck kind of boat is that?"
"A pirate ride boat," answered Kagura with a smile.
"Pirates of the Caribbean? You gotta be shitting me. Damn job gets weirder every day."
"Now Dutch, be polite with our guests, or I'll send you below to hide with Miss Sunshine."
"Fair enough."
Inside her cabin aboard the Black Lagoon, a woman cleaning her pistols sneezed.
As the salaryman helped everyone climb aboard, he said, "We apologize for the delay in finding you. My name is Rokuro Okajima, but you can call me Rock. This is Benny, and Dutch. Welcome aboard the Black Lagoon -- and welcome to the year 2016."
12:37 PM, Tuesday, September 26, 2016
Aboard the Black Lagoon
South China Sea
The seven young women sat on long green bench seats along the grey metal walls. Sakaki, Chiyo, and Osaka on one side of the room; Yomi, Kaori, and Kagura on the other; and Tomo perched herself atop a wooden crate. The cargo hold of a WWII era PT-boat wasn't built for comfort, but they made do for now.
Their group sulking came to an end when Rock reentered the cabin. Under the fluorescent lights, Rock could see that every single one of them looked to be Japanese in origin, but there was something different about them. Something about their eyes seemed just a little bit bigger than normal.
"Well, ladies, after a little chat with the home office, it sounds like everything is being taken care of. Ladies, let's to get you resettled into a new home. I'd like to find you find a place that will make you feel at home, probably as close as we can to where you came from. What kind of place would you like, city or country?"
The girl on the crate stood up and announced, "Yeah, it's gotta be the beach! We all come from a super-nice beach resort town."
Yomi grabbed her hand from behind, whispering, "Tomo, what are you up to?"
"Just play along," Tomo whispered back. "It's going to be amazing!"
Tomo went back to addressing the room. "Yeah, Kagura over here goes swimming every day in the ocean. Don't you want to go swimming in the ocean, every day again Kagura?"
"Oh... Oh yes! Definitely swimming!" Kagura finally picked up on her cue, "Yeah, a beach resort town, definitely!" Her story would have been more believable with a deeper swimmer's tan, but was a bit too early in the year for that.
The girl with straight hair and large eyes looked pensive in the back. "Wait, was that where we were from?" Osaka wondered softly, to no one in particular.
Yomi glanced over to Sakaki, to see if she wanted to put a stop to the lie. But Sakaki simply looked serious, a mien she often wore when lost in thought. Chiyo looked confused, and Osaka looked typically confused. Kaorin looked flustered at this unexpected scheme, which to be honest was typical for her too.
Well, Yomi thought, a beach house does sound pretty nice, especially if someone else is paying. And a resort town was likely to have some good gourmet food. "That's right Okajima-san! Can you find us a charming little beach town? It would make us feel right at home. Oh! And maybe one with a university nearby?"
Rock could see through their ploy, of course. But he had to admire Tomo, negotiating from a position of weakness. He'd do the same. It hadn't been so long ago that he had been willing to cast his former life away for one on the sea. But these girls couldn't live as he would, not by a long shot.
"I'm afraid I don't have anything in Japan right now, it's very popular for some reason." He started flipping through a stack of papers, until he came across the one he was looking for. "Great, there's still space in this property. How'd you all like to be housed in Venice Beach, California? It's near Los Angeles."
Tomo exclaimed "Umi getto!" with a fist raised in the air.
"Sounds good to me," Yomi replied to the man. "Chiyo, you were planning on going to university in America this year anyway. You wouldn't mind if we joined in, would you?"
"Oh, um, no, I mean yes. I suppose UCLA is a very good school, and I wouldn't have to be alone... OK, let's do it."
Rock was a little surprised that the youngest child in the room, an orange-haired girl who looked to have just begun puberty, planned on attending UCLA. But, well, these Arrivals are all special in their own way -- himself included -- so he decided there was really nothing to be surprised about.
Omake:
A gray PT-boat pulled up along side the boat. Suddenly Yukari-sensei appeared on the deck of the boat. "What are you morons doing on an amusement park boat in the ocean?"
"Oh no!" Tomo cried! "It's the Teacher from the Black Lagoon!"
================================================
2:10PM, March 15, 2003
Urayasa, Chiba, Japan
A group of seven young women stood in line for one of Magical Land's great attractions, Pirates of the South Pacific. It was a beautiful day to celebrate their recent graduation from high school, with the warmth of spring bursting just in time for this outing.
They were similar to many other groups of recent graduates wandering around the theme park, with a small exception: the twintailed child prodigy Chiyo Mihama, only age 13, still stood out from her elders. However, she was steadily catching up in height to the rest of her cohort, her growth spurt having finally kicked in.
Given that Tomo Takino had just taken Chiyo and Kaori Aida on a maximum-speed teacup ride, both of them were hanging on Sakaki -- partially for balance, but by now mostly for protection from Tomo.
So it was, that Chiyo missed Osaka's fateful question, "Do you think they use real magic at Magical Land?"
Koyomi Mizuhara, a bespectacled brunette beauty, explained, "I thought that it was just magineering."
"Oh, I get it." Tomo riffed, "Like if technology is so advanced, it's like the same as magic. So they just put them together!"
"Right, because it's so similar now, they combined magic with engineering to make all of the rides."
"I see! That explains why this place is so much fun!"
Osaka added, "Wow, you know so much, Yomi."
"I'm pretty sure they're just messing with us," noted Kagura, a girl with short cropped hair and an athletic build. "Magineering is not even a real word."
Yomi pulled a book out of her purse, and flipped to the relevant page of the guide book on the park, "See, it's right here in black and white." Sure enough the page she displayed was emblazoned with the Japanese text "Magical Land: The Magineering that Makes It Happen".
"No way!"
The queue moved forward, which gave Yomi a convenient excuse to close her book before anyone looked too closely at it. Actually, traffic for this attraction was pretty light today.
When they got to the water line, Sakaki asked the operator, "Excuse me. Can we all ride together in the same boat?"
The operator, barely older than Sakaki herself, looked up at the tall, serious, raven-haired woman with trepidation. "I think you can have your own boat. No need to worry." Yeah, no need to cause a problem with this scary onee-san.
As the next boat rolled through the shallow water, the graduates all loaded into the barge, and pulled down the safety bars. As the watertight cart started moving, Tomo pointed forward. "Full speed ahead!"
"That operator was really nice wasn't she?" Chiyo declared.
Sakaki agreed, "Yes, very pleasant."
Just before the boat turned the corner, Sakaki caught a glimpse of "Chiyo's father", a large orange cat-like creature (she was still not sure if he was really a cat), waving to everyone as they entered the ride. Strange, she thought; this was the first time she had seen him outside of a dream. Did he work as a mascot character? She said, "Your father…"
"Yes?"
The voiceover boomed in archaic Japanese, "Abandon all hope, all ye who enter!" The boat had just started to descend to the lower level of the ride, and then, the artificial grotto was filled with a blinding light. Sakaki instinctively grabbed Chiyo-chan to keep her safe.
A small wave sloshed into the boat, soaking Tomo and Kagura. A high-pitched groan of tearing metal filled the room -- and then the grotto itself was gone.
The coruscating light shone in all the colors at once, as if the craft and its occupants were surrounded by the aurora. Whether they were falling or weightless, it's impossible to say; still they were held firmly in the boat by its mechanical arms. Which is not to say that everyone aboard was not holding on for dear life.
After about a minute, the boat materialized three meters above a placid ocean surface; after hovering in midair for a second the sphere of light around the boat evaporated. Gravity quickly did the work to bring the boat to sea, rocking the craft side-to-side, but fortunately not swamping the boat.
Osaka gave a hearty Kansai, "What the heck!"
Yomi chimed in with her own, "What the heck."
Tomo immediately reached for the emergency release for the mechanical arms locking the passengers in. "I've always wanted to pull that switch."
"Huh, they really do use magic. Who'd'a thought?" Osaka stated. There was nothing else she could have concluded, staring up at an azure sky filled with towering cumulus, the air at least 10 degrees warmer than a few minutes ago. An island with tropical vegetation lay a half-mile away, proving in no uncertain terms that they were no longer in Tokyo.
"Is everyone okay?" Kaorin asked. She then started calling roll for her friends. It turned out that the class president role had become pretty ingrained for her, despite only doing it for her senior year. Just last year, she would have been a nervous wreck from whatever had just happened to them, but just the act of doing a duty helped to calm her down.
As it was, Chiyo looked to be on the verge of tears, but Sakaki was already calming her down. Fortunately, every member of the crew was hale and hearty -- and more than a bit shaken.
Bailing water out of their boat with their hands became the next business. The good news is that the boat was designed to survive a fall, and thus was entirely undamaged. The bad news was that the boat was designed to run on wheels in a track, and had no way propel itself through a real sea.
"I have no idea what happened to us, but we need to get to that island," declared Yomi.
"Aye aye, captain," Tomo saluted. "But we have no oars to row with. Maybe Kagura can get out and push us."
"Eh?" Kagura yelped.
"Belay that, seaman. See if we can find some sort of board on here we can use."
Tomo offered, "Osaka is flat as a board, maybe we can use her, captain."
"You're as flat as a board too, Tomo," Osaka accused. "You'll have to be the other oar!"
"Oh no, I've said too much!"
Sakaki stood up and kicked apart a couple of the seats; it wasn't long before they had improvised a couple of oars out of the plywood. Even with calm seas and favorable winds, it was slow going. Tomo's burst of energy lasted just under a minute, which left most of the rowing work to Kagura and Sakaki.
After about twenty minutes under the baking sun, Sakaki saw a large boat speeding to her location. She immediately stood up and started waving, and everyone else joined her.
Kaori yelled, "Stop rocking the boat, Tomo! She's not designed for the real ocean!"
"But holy freaking crap, we're going to meet real pirates! Sail the seven seas!" Tomo reasoned.
Yomi observed, "Uh, there's no sails on that ship, so no pirates."
"I bet it's a ship of modern pirates. Ahoy mateys!!!"
"I bet this is a ship of a modern idiot."
The PT-boat had spotted the theme park attraction's boat a few minutes before, and was already on a course to pick up its new passengers. After five more minutes, the gray gunboat pulled up alongside, 80 feet long if it was an inch. Curiously, the boat had no markings or flag, as if it were trying to be inconspicuous on purpose. Still, a rescue was a rescue.
Three men got came out on deck to help. They were a motley crew to be sure: a blond man in a Hawaiian shirt, a brawny bald black man in a flak jacket, and what looked like an authentic Japanese salaryman.
"Ahoy there! Looks like you could use some help," called the black man.
"No, we're just out for a three-hour tour," Tomo called back in perfect English.
"Heh. OK, tie these lines to the boat, and we'll send down the rope ladder." As they tied the ropes to the boat's safety bars, he asked, "What the heck kind of boat is that?"
"A pirate ride boat," answered Kagura with a smile.
"Pirates of the Caribbean? You gotta be shitting me. Damn job gets weirder every day."
"Now Dutch, be polite with our guests, or I'll send you below to hide with Miss Sunshine."
"Fair enough."
Inside her cabin aboard the Black Lagoon, a woman cleaning her pistols sneezed.
As the salaryman helped everyone climb aboard, he said, "We apologize for the delay in finding you. My name is Rokuro Okajima, but you can call me Rock. This is Benny, and Dutch. Welcome aboard the Black Lagoon -- and welcome to the year 2016."
12:37 PM, Tuesday, September 26, 2016
Aboard the Black Lagoon
South China Sea
The seven young women sat on long green bench seats along the grey metal walls. Sakaki, Chiyo, and Osaka on one side of the room; Yomi, Kaori, and Kagura on the other; and Tomo perched herself atop a wooden crate. The cargo hold of a WWII era PT-boat wasn't built for comfort, but they made do for now.
Their group sulking came to an end when Rock reentered the cabin. Under the fluorescent lights, Rock could see that every single one of them looked to be Japanese in origin, but there was something different about them. Something about their eyes seemed just a little bit bigger than normal.
"Well, ladies, after a little chat with the home office, it sounds like everything is being taken care of. Ladies, let's to get you resettled into a new home. I'd like to find you find a place that will make you feel at home, probably as close as we can to where you came from. What kind of place would you like, city or country?"
The girl on the crate stood up and announced, "Yeah, it's gotta be the beach! We all come from a super-nice beach resort town."
Yomi grabbed her hand from behind, whispering, "Tomo, what are you up to?"
"Just play along," Tomo whispered back. "It's going to be amazing!"
Tomo went back to addressing the room. "Yeah, Kagura over here goes swimming every day in the ocean. Don't you want to go swimming in the ocean, every day again Kagura?"
"Oh... Oh yes! Definitely swimming!" Kagura finally picked up on her cue, "Yeah, a beach resort town, definitely!" Her story would have been more believable with a deeper swimmer's tan, but was a bit too early in the year for that.
The girl with straight hair and large eyes looked pensive in the back. "Wait, was that where we were from?" Osaka wondered softly, to no one in particular.
Yomi glanced over to Sakaki, to see if she wanted to put a stop to the lie. But Sakaki simply looked serious, a mien she often wore when lost in thought. Chiyo looked confused, and Osaka looked typically confused. Kaorin looked flustered at this unexpected scheme, which to be honest was typical for her too.
Well, Yomi thought, a beach house does sound pretty nice, especially if someone else is paying. And a resort town was likely to have some good gourmet food. "That's right Okajima-san! Can you find us a charming little beach town? It would make us feel right at home. Oh! And maybe one with a university nearby?"
Rock could see through their ploy, of course. But he had to admire Tomo, negotiating from a position of weakness. He'd do the same. It hadn't been so long ago that he had been willing to cast his former life away for one on the sea. But these girls couldn't live as he would, not by a long shot.
"I'm afraid I don't have anything in Japan right now, it's very popular for some reason." He started flipping through a stack of papers, until he came across the one he was looking for. "Great, there's still space in this property. How'd you all like to be housed in Venice Beach, California? It's near Los Angeles."
Tomo exclaimed "Umi getto!" with a fist raised in the air.
"Sounds good to me," Yomi replied to the man. "Chiyo, you were planning on going to university in America this year anyway. You wouldn't mind if we joined in, would you?"
"Oh, um, no, I mean yes. I suppose UCLA is a very good school, and I wouldn't have to be alone... OK, let's do it."
Rock was a little surprised that the youngest child in the room, an orange-haired girl who looked to have just begun puberty, planned on attending UCLA. But, well, these Arrivals are all special in their own way -- himself included -- so he decided there was really nothing to be surprised about.
Omake:
A gray PT-boat pulled up along side the boat. Suddenly Yukari-sensei appeared on the deck of the boat. "What are you morons doing on an amusement park boat in the ocean?"
"Oh no!" Tomo cried! "It's the Teacher from the Black Lagoon!"
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto