Medabots Fan Fiction ❯ Medabots: Impossible ❯ Life Goes On ( Chapter 8 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
Medabots Impossible

Chapter 8: Life Goes On

By: Lord Archive

The characters found in this story do not belong to me, but to NAS/Kodansha, TV Tokyo.

Many of the characters of Medabots were made as stereotypes. Karen in particular was made to be the 'ideal Japanese girl:' cute, enjoys cooking and cleaning, subservient to others and cannot say 'no.' As such, the first scene is really more of a statement on the 'ideal Japanese girl' than Karen.

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Previously on Medabots: Impossible Arika discovered she was pregnant with Ikki's child, but has yet to make any decisions regarding the baby. The Rubber Robos are on the move, fighting robattles for medals and then ransoming the medals back to the owner. Hiroshi is working his way up the ranks though street robattles after telling his so-called manager, Megumi, to get out of his life.

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Kouji let out a small, satisfied smile as he gazed out of the window of his bedroom. "This has been an excellent day. Sumilidon's repairs were completed and we got to deal with that atrocity. The execution of the battle was flawless. The stupid squid didn't have a chance."

"Do you mean Kraken or the Rubber Robo, Squidguts?" Karen asked him.

Kouji smirked. "Both. Kraken may have power and reach, but he has little in way of speed or intelligence. Same could be said of his meda-fighter. The fat slob has no notion of tactics."

"You should try playing against him in chess. He's quite good," Karen informed. "Maybe I should give him some advice about applying his chess strategies to robattles when I see him at the National Chess Tournament next week."

A large bead of sweat formed on Kouji's head. "Ah, right. How was your qualifier today?"

Karen sighed. "He kept staring at me until he was disqualified for taking too much time."

Kouji scowled slightly. "You are far too beautiful for your own good."

Karen blushed. "If you say so."

"Oh, I know so. You are an angelic vision that few can ever stand against. And you are my one true love." Kouji smirked as he turned and stared possessively at the girl covered only by his bed sheets. "I wonder what Ikki would think if he knew that we were lovers. That not only had I beaten him in making love to a girl first, that it was with you."

Karen sighed, though not with contentment as he likely thought. She was entirely too kind and she knew it. She was well aware that Ikki had made love to a girl long before he had. In fact he was one of the last people she knew to have lost their virginity. Kouji wasn't even the first guy she had sex with. She wasn't exactly proud of that, but those poor guys were so desperate and lonely. They had just wanted some comfort and she was able to provide it for just a little while. Then there was the time she joined Ikki and Arika on one of their sessions and found out the pair was far too kinky for her own tastes. She couldn't correct Kouji's assumption since it would hurt him, and that was something she never wanted to do.

Karen gazed at the one boy she had slept with multiple times. While she generally loved everyone, her feelings for him were stronger than most. Being his girlfriend did come with the perk that she had the excuse of having a boyfriend when someone wanted some company.

Karen closed her eyes and settled in to sleep. She smiled sweetly with thoughts of motherhood on her mind and a dream of Kouji as the father.

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Arika carried an empty trashcan and leaned heavily against Ikki as he helped her to her seat. She gave a long yawn, dropping the can next to her feet and then folding her arms on her desk and rested her head on them.

"Are really okay being back at school?" Ikki asked.

"I'm not contagious. And I'd rather be here than at home," Arika retorted.

Zuru suddenly began to pray.

"Why anyone would chose school over being anywhere else, I'll never know," Ikki griped. "If you start feeling worse, I'm taking you home."

"Fine. Fine," Arika mumbled.

The school bell rang and all the students quickly ran to their seats.

"Welcome back, Amazake. I hope you've kept up with your homework." The teacher loomed over the girl.

Arika tiredly looked up at him. She then ruffled through her school bag and produced a stack of papers. "Here you go, sir."

"Thank you, Amazake." The teacher snatched the homework from her. "Now perhaps you can explain why there's an empty trashcan with you?"

"All my doctor is sure about is that I'm not sick from a virus or bacteria, but from something wrong with my body. As such, I'm not contagious and able to go to school. I'll be absent Monday to see if I have diabetes," Arika explained with a yawn finishing her statement.

The teacher frowned. "So saying 'get better' won't mean much."

Arika shook her head. "It's more needing to know what to take in order to not be as ill."

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It didn't escape Hiroshi that Megumi had continued to watch him robattle even after he told her off. This time, she wasn't trying to hide herself, rather she was doing what she could to cheer for him. He wasn't sure if he should buy what the Rubber Robo had said about her, that she was using him for her own gain. However, he could not accept her rigging his fights. That had been cheap and dirty. Even if he was now second only to Tak at the elementary school in rank in robattles.

Having already officially lost to Tak in a previous robattle, Hiroshi was left hunting for robattles on the streets and at other schools. This unfortunately left him in the situation of knowing very little of his opponents, and that led to the possibility of having mismatches like the ones Megumi had set up. Just like this match came to an end in only seconds.

"Having fun picking on the weak?" a teenage boy growled out.

"Not at all? Are you any better?" Hiroshi sneered.

"You'll find Rebuilt to be far stronger than him!" the teenager boosted.

Hiroshi had never heard of a medabot by that name. He shrugged. "Bring it on."

Mr. Referee, already on hand from Hiroshi's last match, began to go onto his spiel about the rules, but he was largely ignored.

Two more teenage boys appeared and announced with the first one. "Prepare to be crushed under the weight of Team Rebuilt!"

Megumi gasped as the teenagers each materialized a medabot in front of them. "Can they do that?" she asked Mr. Referee.

"Team battles are legal," Mr. Referee told her with regret.

Hiroshi didn't mind the odds in front of him. Winning against a team boosted your points more than winning against a single opponent would. Not to mention that Team Rebuilt lived up to their name as each medabot was made up from many different parts. Only the leader's medabot looked like any real thought was put into the parts used. The others had issues of conflicting pieces would hamper abilities and slow them down.

"Flank right," Hiroshi ordered at the start of battle.

Sir Lancabot followed his order, running towards the opponent's left side. The secondary medabots were ill suited from an attack coming from that side and had to fully turn their entire body to do anything. With a simple one word command, Sir Lancabot changed directions and surged toward the opposing lead medabot. He took a hit from a wrist cannon, but his lance found its mark, skewering the leader's medabot and knocking him out of the fight.

With the lance stuck into the opponent's medabot, Sir Lancabot had to forgo his primary weapon as the other two moved to attack him. "Run between them," was whispered into his command, and he immediately did so. Just after passing his remaining opponents, he heard a pair of explosions. He turned around and shook his head as the flunkies of team Rebuilt took themselves out of the match.

"That was pathetic!" Hiroshi and the leader cried out.

"Sorry, boss," was all the other two teenagers could say.

"Beaten by an elementary school kid. You have made a mockery of our school!" the leader spat.

"You were beaten too!" one of the teenagers argued.

The leader didn't give him any reply. He turned toward Hiroshi. "We'll beat you next year."

"First, learn how to actually build a medabot. Those things were already falling apart. Yours looked like it could fight; the other two aren't half as useful as the lowest made medabot on the market. Don't put parts on it that hinder movements. Second, learn teamwork. With three medabots, you should be able to cover your weaknesses, not heighten them," Hiroshi advised mockingly.

One of the teenagers wrote down what Hiroshi said, further angering the leader. "Let's get out of here."

Megumi unsteadily walked up to Hiroshi. "Congratulations. I... Ah, well... That was amazing."

"You're not trying to set me up on another match, are you?" Hiroshi shot at her.

Megumi shook her head fiercely. "Not at all. I'll never arrange another one or call myself your manager ever again."

"Do you really mean that?" Hiroshi asked skeptically.

Megumi clenched her fists over her heart. "I do. I'm not going to say I really understand this robattle stuff. I just wanted you to win. And I had figured the best way for that was to give you easy opponents."

"The higher the ranking, the more it can increase your points if you win and it also decreases your points lost if you lose," Hiroshi explained harshly.

"Huh?" Megumi blinked.

Hiroshi folded his arms. "Losing to Tak barely dented my score. If I had lost to Higashi, my score would suck ass. Just as beating Higashi did little to boost my ranking, but if I had beat Tak I'd be number one ranked at the elementary school."

Megumi looked confused. "So fighting higher level opponents is to your advantage?"

"YES!" Hiroshi shouted. "That's what I kept trying to tell you before."

Megumi hung her head in shame. "I'm sorry. I just never wanted to see you lose and be so heartbroken as you were after the Rubber Robo beat you."

"They took Lancabot's body. The very thing that gives my medabot the ability to act. It was as if they took my best friend away. Of course I'd be upset after that!" Hiroshi waved his arms around.

"I see." Megumi bowed to him. "Please allow me to watch your robattles."

Hiroshi smirked. "You never had to ask for that."

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Arika snuck into the computer lab. With school long since over, there were few left in the building. Enough, though, that if the history was checked on where the user had been, that no one should be able to pin it on her. And if they did somehow know she had been the one to do the search, she'd claim it was for research for the school newspaper.

Using a generic login, Arika accessed the search engine and hunted for abortion clinics in her area. She was rather surprised at the number that turned up. Apparently ending pregnancies was good business. She proceeded to check into a few locations.

Arika's dismay grew as the locations that had web sites for her to access didn't offer much information on abortion or costs. She found a couple, but the price was a bit much for her to handle alone at the moment.

"Oh, shit." Arika didn't like what one web site had to say in regards to performing abortion. A minor needed to be in the company of a parent or the father of the baby in order to have the procedure done. Her father wasn't really available to ask, her mother would absolutely freak, she didn't want to hurt Ikki if she chose this route, and involving another guy would increase the risk of Ikki or her parents learning about it all and might cause people to think she was cheating on her lover.

Arika sat back in the chair, rubbing her forehead. What was she going to do? She would have to tell somebody at some point. But who? Who could she tell that would hurt the least?

Shaking her head, Arika went back to her original thought. If the test for diabetes came up positive, she would have to get the abortion. Even Ikki would understand that compounding underage to poor blood sugar levels would make a pregnancy far too risky. It would make the decision so much easier. If she didn't have diabetes, Arika didn't know what she would do.

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"This doesn't bode well for Ikki. It sounds like Arika wants the abortion. At least it looks like Hiroshi and Megumi are back together." Metabee folded his arms. "And where the hell am I? This is a Medabots fict, and all I get is the narration? This sucks!"

Author's Notes:

I am very sorry for the delays this series has seen. In large part, the problem that came up with this is in further researching abortion in Japan I found Arika's reaction to her pregnancy is actually atypical. Japanese belief system is firmly etched that a soul doesn't enter the baby until birth, as such abortion only delays pregnancy not ends it. The soul that would've been the baby would either return when the mother is ready to have a baby or find a different mother. As such, Arika should've just gone straight to Ikki and told him she wants to delay having his child and be done with it. I'm working to adjust the remainder of the series to better fit reality. In all likelihood I'll be referring to Arika as being a Christian as the beliefs are different than Shinto and Buddhism in regards to pregnancy.