Note: I have nothing to do with Ronin Warriors and its characters except to be a fan who enjoys the series very much. This story is my extrapolation of the storylines as received in North America. I apologize if this story doesn't quite fit into the Japanese series.
Sai looked around happily, his eyes twinkling as he took in the site before him.
No matter what anyone said, he thought the All-Japan Aqua Park and Marine Sanctuary was amazing. True, it wasn't anywhere near total completion yet, but what was there was impressive.
The Aquapark, as everyone called it, was like large aquariums everywhere: although presenting itself as a commercial operation, its actual functions included research facilities, conservation efforts, and educational opportunities. That didn't stop it from being financially lucrative, though.
The Aquapark's biggest draw was--or would be, when it was completed--the huge artificially "natural" lagoon pool that would dominate fully half the park's area, and reach out a ways into the ocean itself. Like wildlife parks that let the animals run free while the visitors were "caged," the lagoon would have two underwater tubes running across its floor that would, in essence, put visitors into tanks while the aquatic wildlife swam freely.
Right now, though, the lagoon was just a deep quarry hidden from view.
Still, Sai wasn't upset. The Aquapark still had various "pools" to look into, like the stingray pool, the pinniped pool, the tidal pool, and--like so many other aquariums--the shark pool. There were others as well, and each would have its own draw.
Sai looked over his shoulder at his companions. "Well?" he demanded impatiently, "Aren't you two coming?"
Mia and Yuli laughed. "Relax, Sai!" Mia said. "We have all day here. Besides, we're supposed to meet my friend Suhi. He's going to give us a private tour of the park."
"Well, I just hope he hurries," Sai said, crossing his arms and pouting.
"Mia!"
They all turned to see a young man a little older than them jogging towards them. He immediately embraced Mia. "It's been a long time," the man said as he put her down.
Mia smiled at him. "Two years, at least," she said.
The man's smile fell. "I was sorry to hear about your grandfather," he said. "He was the best teacher I've ever had."
Mia's own smile faltered, but she visibly forced herself to recover. "He always had nothing but good things to say about you. He was surprised that you went into marine biology instead of cultural history."
The man grinned at her. "What can I say? I went on one submarine ride and I was hooked."
"Mia," Yuli said, tugging at her sleeve.
"Oh, I'm sorry!" she said, flushing. "Suhi, these are my friends, Sai and Yuli. Guys, this is Suhi."
"Pleased to meet you!" Yuli said, shaking Suhi's hand.
"Ditto," Sai said. He cocked his head to the side. "If you don't mind my asking, how did you get a nickname like 'Suhi'?"
Suhi laughed. "My name's actually Yasuhiro, but in grade school there were too many Hiros in my class. Akihiro, Masahiro, Kazuhiro, Takehiro. All of us were 'Hiro' at home, so each time a teacher called 'Hiro' a horde of us answered." He laughed again. "So I started telling everyone to stop calling me Hiro and start calling me Suhi."
Sai nodded in understanding. Although he hadn't suffered from that problem himself, he knew occasions when nearly ten Johns or twelve Marys answered to any one call. Suhi's solution to the problem was novel and, he imagined, highly effective.
"Well," Suhi said, hooking his arm through Mia's, "shall we start our tour?"
* * *
Yuli felt himself flushing yet again as they headed towards the main building at the Aquapark. There was really no reason why he should be flushing, he reasoned. After all, he wasn't doing anything wrong. But it was hard to avoid feeling uncomfortable with all the stares being aimed in his direction. But even that wasn't correct. People weren't staring at him.
They were staring at Sai.
They'd walked around the different pools on the Aquapark grounds, listening to Suhi's description of how they constructed and maintained the different environments. Some, like the tidal and crustacean pools, were relatively shallow with thick glass walls in place to allow visitors to look down through the surface ripples and the clearer view through the glass. Others, like the turtle and pinniped pools, had both shallow and deeper ends, with ramps and stairs down to lower levels to permit similar viewings. That was fine. What wasn't fine was the way all the animals reacted to Sai.
The five seals in the pinniped pool, had repeatedly nosed towards Sai, demanding to be scratched and petted, with the nursing female allowing, no, demanding that Sai carry her pup. The stingrays in their pool had come flocking towards them, floundering around so wildly that Yuli was sure they'd end up stinging each other in their haste to reach Sai. In fact, the only pool where nothing really exciting happened was in the shellfish pool, where all the mussels and clams remained firmly in place. On the other hand, the scallops and sea urchins had seemed to be inching towards them before they left.
It was embarassing, to say the least, to be walking with a living fish magnet.
Yuli sighed. It wasn't Sai's fault that fish found him so fascinating. He wore the Armor of the Torrent, after all. Yuli remembered what Ryo had told him about when he'd gone to awaken Sai way back in the beginning of their adventures. There had been hundreds of fish watching over Sai, protecting him with their lives against Sekhmet's toxic attack.
So of course these fish--and seals and turtles and crabs and lobsters and everything else--would feel the same way.
Yuli looked up as he felt the cool air of the building's darkened interior wash over him. It was refreshing, after a morning spent wandering around outside in the sun. He blinked a few times as he followed the others, urging his eyes to adjust to the dim illumination quickly. Once they did, he could really appreciate the displays around him.
Like aquariums everywhere, the Aquapark had its "private" tanks, where fish species could enjoy their solitude, or their safety, or in some cases both. A lionfish fluttered its poisonous spines regally as it swam alone through the branches of coral in its tank. Clown shrimp crawled along stacks of coral. Eels poked their heads out of miniature grottos, their snaky bodies hidden from sight.
Yuli breathed a sigh of relief as they strolled past tank after tank. If the fishes inside did follow Sai as he passed, it wasn't distinguishable from their normal behavior. No more embarassing stares!
"And here's our shark pool," Suhi said, slowing to a stop.
Yuli looked up. His jaw dropped.
He stared into a huge glass cavern, the edges to its panes artfully--and reassuringly--concealed in sturdy-looking concrete columns and walls. The glass, however, enclosed an area two generous stories tall and maybe twice that in length and width. A swimmer could get a good workout swimming laps in that tank...if the sharks didn't get him first.
Many species of shark and predatory fish swam silently past, seemingly paying no attention to the people staring at them. Yuli immediately spotted a hammerhead shark, then another, as they circled by. He watched as several large barracuda glided by, then blinked when what looked like a shaggy throw rug rose into view then sank back to the bottom.
He tugged at Suhi's sleeve. "What was that?" he asked.
Suhi looked down at him, then peered into the tank. "Oh, that was a wobbegong," he said, "an Australian shark." Suhi turned. "Come on," he said. "We'll go upstairs and I'll show you some of the behind-the-scenes stuff."
Yuli started after the others, then paused and turned back towards the tank. As he watched, a tiger shark snapped at one of the barracuda, which quickly darted away.
He shivered. He had a bad feeling about that tank. Still shaking, he turned and hurried after the others.
* * *
Sai looked around at fish tank after fish tank filled with various species of fish. Most seemed like common species found in Japanese waters.
"We do our research up here," Suhi was explaining. "Right now we have two long-term projects ongoing. The one I'm involved in is evaluating the current health of our corals. After all the attention on cleaning up our industries, it's time to see if we're succeeding or not."
"That's great," Mia said. "I remember seeing videos about how polluted our harbors were."
"Here," Suhi said, moving along a wall. "I'll show you how we test the health of a coral sample."
As they followed, Sai couldn't help noticing a large open pool. It was even harder to ignore the fins that knifed through the water now and again. "Isn't it dangerous to have the shark tank open like that?" Sai asked. "Someone working up here could accidentally fall in."
Suhi shook his head. "Actually, it's already partially closed." He pointed at a heavy looking grill beneath which swirled the pool's surface. "There are four sections to the cover, and each one retreats into the floor. The grid's only opened when we're feeding them. We do that in the morning long before we open and after we close." He laughed. "We wouldn't want to start a feeding frenzy while people are watching. It might make them sick."
Then he sighed. "We've been having trouble with one of the grid mechanisms, though. It gets stuck when it's open. That may be what happened." He pointed at the open area. "There's supposed to be a grill over that section there. You can see where it's supposed to interlock with the other grids." He knelt down beside a panel in the floor. "Here, I'll close it." He lifted the panel up and reached down to press something.
There was a loud crack. Suhi suddenly flew backwards. He plunged into the shark tank.
Mia screamed. "Sai, do something!" Yuli shouted.
Sai didn't hesitate. He dove into the pool.
The moment the water closed around him something inside him changed. He felt whole again. He felt alive as he never felt when he was up in the air. He might not have his armor on, but he was Sai of the Torrent once more.
He plunged deeper, swimming after Suhi's sinking form. For all that he'd dived in only a second after the other man, Suhi was sinking quickly. The shock had thrown him almost completely to the opposite side of the tank, and Sai hadn't been able to make a racing dive. Now he had to hurry before the sharks started investigating the disturbance in their pool. The sharks had darted away when the two of them had splashed in, but now they were circling closer.
To his relief, the sharks were as responsive to his aura as all other sea life was. The fish that had first approached him now surrounded him like an escort. More sharks drew near and joined his company. But there were others who had gone to investigate Suhi's still form, and they had not yet flocked to Sai's side. Now, one of the larger sharks--a wobbegong that looked to be at least six or seven feet long--was rising up from the tank's floor in what was to him unmistakably an attack run.
Sai stopped dead in the water and pointed at the frilled shark. His escort surged forward. They darted past and around the shark, driving it from its course. It lunged around, angered at the interference, but the other sharks were better designed for high-speed turns than the wobbegong with its wide, flat body.
Sai swam forward again, then caught Suhi around the waist. Gathering a funnel of water around him, he shot towards the surface, leaping out of the water and landing on his feet on the side of the pool.
Mia and Yuli hurried to them. "Is he all right?" Mia demanded.
"I don't know," Sai said. "The shock stunned him. He was unconscious and didn't hold his breath."
Mia nodded. She immediately started CPR. Yuli clung to Sai's hand, ignoring how damp he was becoming in the process.
Other Aquapark staff came running. They slowed when they saw Mia doing her best to revive Suhi. Everyone sighed with relief when Suhi's chest suddenly heaved and water flooded out of his mouth.
Sai knelt beside Mia. "Are you all right?" he asked Suhi.
"What happened?" Suhi rasped. Mia told him.
Suhi shook his head. "I owe you my life," he said to Sai. "Thanks."
"It was the most amazing thing," one of the staffers said. "It was like he told the sharks what to do. They didn't attack him or anything!"
Suhi stared at Sai, his eyebrow rising. "Really?" he drawled. "Hey, Sai, want a job?"
Sai blinked. "What? I don't understand."
A staffer laughed. "He just wants to have you around in case he falls in the tank again." There were a few chuckles, but they sounded forced and uncomfortable.
Suhi shook his head. "You have a way with sea animals, Sai," Suhi said. "I was watching. All the animals here seemed to really like you. I mean, Koyuki let you carry her pup! She won't even let the seal keepers touch Yukio."
There were gasps of surprise. "She did?" another staffer asked. "Hey, second the motion! If you want a job here, you've got it!"
Sai didn't know what to say, so Mia said it.
"He'll take it!"
* * *
"There is a problem, master."
"Oh?"
"The one who escaped...the one hospitalized and believed to be hallucinating...master, someone believes his stories!"
"What of it?" "Master?"
"So what if one person believes him when he talks about us. It is only one person."
"Master, what if he tells him about us?"
"He would have to find him first, and he is as unlikely to openly reveal himself as we are, yes?"
"Yes, master."
"On the other hand, one can never be too careful. Keep an eye on things. If there is any sign that our secret may be revealed and believed, take immediate action, but do not reveal the truth about us yourselves. Is that clear?"
"Yes, master!"
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