ZKC - Colliding Universes

The hospital room continued to shudder for several seconds along with the entirety of the building; several personnel came running into the room only to find themselves tossed 'out' of the room.

If Sakura could talk, she'd more than likely be saying somethimg, but all she was doing was shaking her head. This went on for a few two minutes before one of the guards realized what was going on, and pulled out a controller that engaged the limiter.

With the limiter now on, Sakura's ESPer powers ceased and the shaking of the building stopped, the Sakura fell back into her pillow; sweating profusely as she stared up at the ceiling. She looked over at the nurses and doctors, whom were all getting up off the ground and trying to figure out what had happened.

Sakaki rubbed the back of his head for a moment, before telling a nurse to help Sakura out.

It was at this point that Toshio entered the room, Tango on his shoulder. He noticed the girl, awake and no longer out of control, and gave a relieved sigh. He approached the bed and started to speak, before recalling that she couldn't hear him. he hesitated for a time, before he remembered how they'd communicated before.

Clumsily but sufficiently, he began to sign to Sakura, hoping she had the presence of mind to understand.

~Sakura-chan, you are awake. I was worried. Do you recognize me? Do you remember anything?~

At first, Sakura didn't recognize the boy in front of him. It took her a minute, perhaps two, for her brain to click and realize who it was. Tears welled up in her eyes as a smile appeared on her face, and although she was hurting physically right now from the overuse of her powers, that didn't seem to stop her from springing out of her bed and knocking Toshiro the ground.

In doing so she knocked the IV holder onto her bed, causing the needle in her arm to be yanked out. She didn't feel the pain right now though, possibly due to other painful things going on with her body, all she did was bury her head into Toshiro's chest and cry.

The doctors and nurses clearly didn't like this, though Toshiro hugged his younger sibling back...after recovering from being flung to the ground. The kitten wisely leapt down before the tackle, unscathed, and demonstrating a unique awareness of its surroundings. Toshiro didn't think she'd have been well enough to so much as move just yet. He knew she wouldn't understand his speech easily, so he just let her continue the embrace as long as she desired or until the doctors and nurses broke it up.

The nurses looked at one another, slightly confused as to what to do; while one of the doctors was going to help remove Sakura from Toshiro but didn't do it when he saw Sakaki made a 'no' gesture with the head.

The young girl cried for a good five minutes, until she began to settle down, and looked into the boys eyes. Her face was an absolute mess now.

"Toshiro," Sakaki said and placed a hand on the boys shoulder. "Think you can help put Sakura back in her bed please?" he asked, knowing that the boy might have better luck communicating with her than they would.

He looked to Sakaki, and gave a nod of understanding. He looked to his little sister, smiling softly, before breaking the hug and beginning to sign.

"You were hurt, it is too soon to be moving around. I will help you back into bed. Nice to see you again. Tango came back too, somehow. Seems she is an esper of some kind." Toshiro gently moved Sakura back to the bed, making sure she wouldn't hurt herself on the IV needle my moving it. Tango would leap up onto the bed with Sakura and lie against her, starting to purr sufficiently for Sakura to feel the vibration...

Sakura gave a weary nod, she wasn't feeling that well phsycially or mentally and didn't struggle when Toshiro picked her up and placed her back on her bed. A nurse walked over and repositioned the girls IV line, which she had successfully pulled out although not completely, the nurse did have to find a new location for it but that wasn't much of an issue.

The feeling of a purr by Tango caused Sakura to look at the kitten and place her hand on its tummy, where she began to pet it. Within a few short moments the girl was back in dreamland once more.

Sakaki sighed and walked over to the girls bed. "Hopefully either by tonight or tomorrow she'll be better," he said to Toshiro.

He listened to Sakaki, and gave a nod...thinking deeply a he watched her sleep. No words came, and he made no move to depart. Fujiko, meanwhile, had verified the happenings, yawned, and was headed back off to sleep...

--------------

Vigilantism was a constant threat, and held varying degrees of harm. Something out there, however, was causing something more fearful than merely taking vengeance. Advanced hacking attempts were logged, and people who had previously been involved in the gambling scheme only to escape were turning up missing. Members of the Normal People, guilty politicians, Espers which supported the effort...they were turning up either beaten or simply vanishing. Those who remained were those minimally responsible, and had no memory of what happened. Any winnings they'd gleaned were gone...while the accounts of the missing were wiped out unless they had dependents.

It was thorough, swift, and retaliation was difficult lest the politicians be exposed...

Several hours later...

A few hours had passed, it was already approuching night when Sakura opened her eyes again for the second time that day. She stared up at the white washed ceiling, a color she wasn't to fond of due to being in hospitals a lot in the past and this only reminded her of where she currently was.

She shifted onto her side and starred out of a window and into the evening sky. It was a darkening little by little, and this made her relax a bit, she enjoyed the night more than the day.

Her body, however, was still hurting - she could feel it in her muscles, her bones... her nerves fired everytime she tried to move; she had to wonder if it was because of all of the fighting she had been doing all these years.

Various memories shifted through her mind, she could remember things that happened yet made no sense to her. She was a child now, not an adult like she could've sworn she once was, she remembered everything - from being kidnapped, to being forced to fight to save her life, all the way up to the last fight and then her memory get foggy; she doesn't remember a thing afterwhich.

What happened.... she struggled to bring her hand up to her forehead, finding that to be just as problomatic as it was to turn onto her side.

Toshiro, meanwhile, had gotten some sleep and built some devices...but needed extra parts. He needed to go shopping. Maybe even grab some money from his stashes or bank accounts, and check the local shops for a gift for Sakura. After some time, he went looking for Minamoto...since he had effectively been leashed. He finally found Minamoto in his office...

"...Minamoto-san? I need to get some electronics, and look for a gift for Sakura-chan. For this, I need to go out into town, but for some reason, they say I'm not allowed to leave the building without a handler like you or some government babysitter. Can you come with me then, and can the Children watch Tango-chan?"

Minamoto had been hard at work when he noticed Toshiro step into his office and begin asking him to go out; it caught the man off guard that he wanted to go out and buy a few things. "Electronics?" he asked with a curious expression and leaned back in his chair. "I guess your building something huh?" he smiled and got up from his seat.

"I'm sure Kaoru and the others wouldn't mind keeping an eye on Tango, although last I saw, the kitten was in the hospital wing with Sakura," he grabbed some items off his desk and put them into a briefcase. "My car is outside, shall we?" he asked.

"Well, if Sakura is already with Tango and the doctors don't mind, that should be alright..." He said, following the researcher. He...remembered things that had no reason to be in his mind, only the larger cluster of collected abilities and his practical knowledge being the proof it wasn't some coma-induced dream. Among those memories were positive opinions of this man, including from his wards.

"Yes, I'm fairly good with building things. Being able to teleport carefully means that I needn't even use solder, and can make professional-looking prototypes and cases. A lot of the things I've made are missing though, for some reason..." Memories of the motorcycle and the CECCM came to mind...

"I'm sure Sakaki and the others wouldn't mind, animals are very good for the healing process and having them around can often be helpful," Minamoto said as they walked over to the elevator to take it down to the main lobby.

He glanced at Toshiro, he wondered if the boy was suffering from some form of memory loss if he couldn't remember things. Although, the way the boy was speaking, you wouldn't think of him being a nine year old.

"How are you feeling right now?" he asked as the elevator descended to the lobby.

Toshiro realized that Minamoto may be either concerned, suspicious, or both. Thus, he chose to tell a half truth and worded his response carefully. Of course, this served to further break the illusion of a nine year old consciousness being in play.

"Either because of the coma or the removal of the fragments, I did suffer from some...discontinuity of memory. Certain memories weren't in sequence. Thankfully, I've been able to access and timestamp those memories with psychometry, and my brain has been steadily putting the pieces back in their proper places...it's like finding the pages removed from the binding of a book and all jumbled up, but putting them back in order in the binding by using a psychometric Table of Contents. Combine that with my advanced healing factor, and I'm doing far better than when I first woke up."

This was indeed what he was actually doing, but he omitted the fact that his brain was developing two equally realistic yet mutually exclusive sets of memories...and had amassed a combined 27 years of data to sift through rather than the expected 9.

Minamoto looked a little surprised at the boys response, it was certainly not somethign he'd expected. As the elevator arrived on the lobby, Minamoto gave the girls at the receptions desk a curt smile before walking outside and over to his car.

"What about your sister?" he asked him. "There isn't much information on what happened to her, even the local authorities don't have much except a missing children's case," he asked while getting into his car.

Blues got in as well, into the passenger's seat...it was a nice car. He buckled up, and was ready to go. Minamoto may notice that his foot was pushing against where the brake would be, out of habit...

"Because I concealed as much of her data as possible. The lot of you very nearly turned me into a drooling vegetable in a hospital bed, or put me in an early grave. I wasn't about to let her fall into BABEL's hands...but I failed to protect her when she needed it most." He said, rather irritated still.

Whenever Minamoto started driving, minute adjustment of hands and pressure delivered by the feet would indicate that Toshiro was used to starting and stopping a vehicle on his own rather than simply riding one and trusting someone else to drive.

Minamoto watched this, whenever he didn't need to keep his eyes firmly on the road. "You appear to have driven before..." he said while putting his eyes back on the road, but then decided to change the subject. "It's not good to assume that the actions of a group of people reflect on the entirety of the organization they work for."

"Whomever those scientists were, were not working in the best interests of BABEL," Minamoto said, stopping the car at a light and leaning back against his seat while he waited for it to change. "If it were possible to find them, or at least those who had supported them, we could stop this from happening again..."

HQs, Hospital Wing

Sakura was awake and well, she sat up in her bed and was reading a book that one of the nurses had brought over to her. The nurse seemed rather surprised, it was a common assumption amongst most people that the deaf weren't very intelligent.

For Sakura, she was already proving just how wrong that assumption was. A young girl who should've only just gotten out of preschool, yet was reading a book traditionally read by those either in high-school or college. It was staggering to say the least, and Sakaki found himself wondering if the girls parents - if she had any that is - had taken a lot of time to educate her in her early life and if she had strieved to improve herself. He knew that there were naturally protagies out there, children whom were much smarter than their age dictated, perhaps Sakura was one of them... perhaps even Toshiro was one too when he thought about it, given how the boy talks.

For Sakura, the girl wasn't that lucky, or at least she wouldn't have been had she strangely not had memories that made no sense. They were still being collected and put into their places, but the more time passed the more those memories asserted themselves, but that still didn't help her 'truly' understand what was going on.

She had memories of herself as a teenager, a girl who lived in a post-apocalytic land, a destroyed Tokyo and a rather ruined world. All of it made no sense, espically when she glanced out the window and saw just how peaceful and... right... this world appeared. Where the memories just something being created by her subconcious perhaps due to all of the abuse and hardship she had endured these psat four-five years? Or, could these memories be real... could my powers somehow tapped into a future of some sort? A parelle universe maybe? the young child shook her head, a nurse noticing and looking over.

"You ok?" she asked, forgetting for that brief moment that Sakura couldn't hear her, but the young girl 'did' hear her, or rather, 'felt' the words through her powers.

With a smile, Sakura nodded her head and returned to her book, flipping a page while a purr box sat sleeping in her lap.

"...Yes, I've driven before. I've cobbled together an old junkyard clunker before for when I needed to go a good distance without powers. I'll need to make another though. The old one is gone." He said, telling another half-truth, since he'd made a number of vehicles over the years...

"As for BABEL's trustworthiness...we'll see. You can't know everything that happens in there. At least you seem to honestly think it was inexcusable though...can we stop at the ATM? I need to withdraw some money."


Tango, meanwhile, purred in Sakura's lap content and happy...seemingly blissful, but aware of her surroundings.

Minamoto glanced down at Toshiro for a moment, a bit disturbed perhaps that this kid knew how to drive a vehicle at his young age but then, as he thought about it; wondered if that was truly something to be surprised about given how there was undoubtably other things in this world he didn't know about.

He looked ahead of the light, noticing an ATM near a convience store. "There's one," spoke the adult as he waited for the light to change and, when it did, he drove over into that stores parking lot and parked in front of the ATM.

The man put the car in park and looked over at the boy before getting out of the vehicle, he didn't go with him to the ATM, as he felt that perhaps that might make him feel rather uncomfortable; given his weary-ness toward BABEL.

HQs

Sakura stretched her arms wide and let out a tiny yawn, relaxing a bit in her bed. Sakaki walked into the room to check her vitals, noticing a slight increase in heart rate and her blood pressure had also gone 'down' a bit.

The doctor had a few meds injected into her, to help normalize her blood pressure and settle her heart down a bit. Her ears perked a bit as she listened to the nurses talk amongst one another, but her mind was focused more on the outside...

The youth was thankful, and got out of the car. He went to the ATM with his card, put it in, and accessed his secret account. He was momentarily stunned by what he saw...a balance of over 1.2 billion yen. The vast majority of this money had been put into the account while he was at BABEL. The youth was honestly floored.

For the moment, unable to learn much more at the moment, he withdrew 60,000 yen (~$600), as three heads popped up, peering out the rear-side window they'd stowed away in and started whispering.

Shiho: "I wonder if I should get his pin number..."
Kaoru: "Why cant we access our paychecks directly until we're older?"
Aoi: "Because you used to spend your allowance on dirty magazines and anatomically correct dolls, Kaoru-chan."
Kaoru: "..."