Title: Goodwill Mission
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Spoilers for EOS.
Summary: The four travelers come to a strange world indeed - one never meant for human life.

Author's Note: This was written for bottan/konnichipuu's birthday, and also for her adorable fanart: "Mission to Mars" (http: slash slash konnichipuu dot deviantart dot com slash gallery slash # slash d38v2zx )

Some details are altered or not present, but it's the thought that counts, right?

Although he never would have admitted it under torture, Kurogane was secretly impressed by the pinpoint accuracy of Mokona's interdimensional landings. In the early days he had never missed an opportunity to curse and grump about being dropped - sometimes literally - into uncomfortable situations, until the exchange of complaints and protestations had become a comfortable ritual.

When he had set out on this journey he had only ever known one world, and only a small corner of it at that. The years of journeying had far broadened his understanding of the many types of worlds out there - many cultures, many times, many terrains. The universe out there was ninety percent lethal to humans and ten percent safe, and Mokona's unerring ability to guide them into a safe landing - while still maintaining reasonable proximity to their goal - was nothing short of, well, magical. If she dropped them in the water, there'd be a boat passing by; if she dropped them in an arctic wasteland, they would be close enough to shelter.

And so when they came out the other end of the glowing distorted tunnel into total blackness - hemmed on all sides, as he found when he tried to move, by walls and clutter - Kurogane kept his reaction to a quick vent of temper. "Damn it! Who turned out the lights in here?"

"Syaoran-kun, stay close," he heard Fai's voice from nearby, and felt the wizard's slender hand close about his upper arm. "We don't want to get separated in the dark."

"There's nowhere to go, anyway," Kurogane muttered resentfully, shuffling his feet in an effort to clear some space for his family. Something toppled over with a loud, cascading clatter, and Kurogane cringed; they could not have announced their presence more thoroughly.

"We need a light," Syaoran's voice said from a few feet away. "Mokona, can you give me that torch?"

A few moments of shuffling and a disturbing "phut!' sound resolved into a flash of light, almost blinding in the dimness, and Syaoran's wavering face in the torch beam. He turned the beam quickly on each of his companions, assuring their safety, then began to aim it around the dark, enclosed space they'd found themselves in.

It was hard to make out much. The small space was packed with equipment - some of it obvious, like chairs stacked and folded on top of each other, and some of it completely incomprehensible, like the tall poles capped with glass globes that swallowed Syaoran's light without reflecting. Much of it was covered with paper, or plastic, or some other substance he couldn't identify. What of the walls was visible behind the clutter was a featureless, matte black. It reminded Kurogane of nothing so much as a storage shed, except that there didn't appear to be a way out.

"Where's the damn door?" Kurogane muttered as Syaoran played the flashlight beam over the walls. "Either that or this is the smallest world you ever brought us to, cream puff."

"There's more to this world than this," Mokona said indignantly. "Mokona's sure! You just have to find the way."

With much stumbling and barked shins, they made their way over to the walls and began feeling along them. The door, when they finally found it, was the same matte black as the rest of the wall, and had no handle or knob. Syaoran examined it carefully under the light of the torch, then muttered under his breath and pushed at one spot; the door recessed in its frame and then slid open, giving way to a dark corridor beyond.

"Well, that's progress at least," Kurogane said.

As they stepped into the hallway running left and right, lights began to come up in rows along the ceiling. That combined with the array of junk in the storeroom gave Kurogane his cue; this was another "technology" world, like Piffle and Antodes had been. "Where are we?" he asked.

It was a mostly rhetorical question and all three of them knew it. Even if they could have asked a local the answer would have been largely meaningless to them, lacking any other references to places they'd been to before. And every new country they came to, in whatever language, boiled down to the same answer: we are the people, this is the world.

So it surprised all three of them when a disembodied voice answered: "This location is the scientific data collection outpost facility designated NGC 2355, latitude gamma-north-kappa-west point one five five, planet designation Auriga-IV, Medusa sector."

The travelers looked at each other. "Who said that?" Syaoran asked.

There was no response. Fai took a few steps down the corridor, looking around. It was a fairly small hallway; room for two people to pass if they didn't mind the crowding, but the three of them could not have walked abreast, and there was certainly no room for anyone to hide. "Where are you?" Fai tried instead. "Are you here?"

"This operational unit is assigned to facility designated NGC 2355."

"I get it, it's a computer," Kurogane said knowingly. The flat tones and repetitive phrasing didn't sound at all human, but Kurogane had seen it in his dealings with computers on other worlds. He'd never met a computer that talked before, but he couldn't see any reason why it shouldn't.

"Sounds like it," Fai said cheerily. "Is there anyone else here?"

"There are currently no project personnel in residence at the data collection output facility at this time."

The three travelers looked at each other, then shrugged. "Well, it means less awkward questions for us this way," Kurogane said.

"Excuse me," Syaoran raised his voice, glancing around the corridor as though uncertain where he should address his question. "Um, is it all right for us to stay here? We're not part of any scientific research team; we're just travelers passing through. Is there a place we can stay for the night and food we can eat?"

The lights in the corridor dimmed for a moment, then brightened. When the computer voice returned, it had a richer timbre, less flat and disjointed than before.

"This facility, as with all extrasolar outpost buildings, is programmed to run the Mekbuda protocols in absence of any overriding security alerts," the voice said. "These protocols were written in response to the survey Mekbuda expedition disaster of 4077, where over a hundred team members tragically perished due to an error in the computer's security programs. Under the Mekbuda program, by default, all humanoids shall be granted access to shelter, oxygen, food, medical supplies, water, and environmental survival supplies in times of need.

"However, access to sensitive data files or valuable equipment shall be restricted until proper authorization is provided," the voice added as an afterthought. "State your request for any items on the approved list, and the guide panels will direct you to the appropriate section of this facility."

"Wow," Syaoran said when the voice fell silent again. "Uh, thank you. That's really kind of you. Um, we ate before we came here, and we don't need any medical attention right now… but we're tired, so if you could show us a place where we can sleep?"

After a moment, a sequence of small floor panels in the hallway to the right began to light up with a golden glow. "I guess we go that way," Fai said cheerfully.

"Yay!" Mokona cried, bouncing out of Syaoran's hands to lead the way. "Follow the yellow brick road!"

The yellow lights led them through a maze of narrow, sterile corridors; Kurogane noticed the complete absence of windows or doors leading outside, and wondered if they were underground. The round dormitory-style room they found was furnished with a dozen cots, obviously intended to house more people than them, and a niche in the wall yielded running water above a shelf and a cabinet of plastic packages below. The food stored within wasn't going to win any culinary prizes, Kurogane decided, but he'd certainly eaten worse.

They sat up for a while talking, speculating as to the nature of their current world. The 'computer' voice would only respond to a direct query, and then only if their question used a format or keywords it liked. None of them really had the background necessary to know what questions to ask, so getting information out of the computer was largely fruitless.

After a while, the topic drifted into a more general reminiscence of worlds they had passed through before. They had visited so many different worlds - both together with the princess and now, after leaving Clow - that some patterns were becoming obvious. They could only leave the current world and move on to the next when they'd accomplished something that needed to be done. What that something was, even Mokona didn't know; but it seemed to have something to do with either leaving or discovering an imprint in their current world, some memory to tie them back to the original Syaoran and Sakura they had known.

In time tiredness overtook them; they could push their bodies for longer if they needed to, but right now there seemed to be no point. They readied themselves for bed - Syaoran and Mokona in one bunk, and Kurogane and Fai pushing another pair together for their own use. In such close quarters there was no question of doing anything too intimate, but they reveled in the close contact all the same.

Morning came and shed some light on their situation at last; for the first time, gray daylight illuminated the clear panels set into the dome-shaped ceiling overhead. They wandered over to the windows that spilled a view to the world outside, and stared in astonishment out over the visage of an alien landscape.

As the day brightened, the grey sky turned to blue, but with an odd iridescent green tinge. The rocky ground that sloped away from the building was pinkish red in hue. A few hundred meters on a groundcover appeared that looked, from this distance and vantage, like fine rippling purple hairs over the rock. A little further on the ground dropped into a rocky ravine; in the distance on the far side, the ground rose again, this time covered by thick foliage that appeared grey.

There was no sign anywhere outside of any other buildings, roads, or any kind of human habitation; just the rocks and plants that were unlike anything they'd ever seen before.

As the day brightened, each of the travelers went to occupy themselves in their own way. They'd learned by long experience that while the length of the stay in any given world was different, it also wasn't arbitrary or random; nothing would happen if they just waited around without doing anything. Something had to happen before they could pass on to the next world, and while they didn't always know what that something was going to be, they would usually stumble upon it just by following their own instincts.

Syaoran managed to locate a pile of printed file folders, and sat in the little auditorium with his nose buried in the print. Fai wandered the narrow, hard-shelled corridors to see which of the rooms they could access. Not many, he discovered; apart from the general living quarters, most of the rooms were sealed and locked and the computer would refuse to open the doors.

Kurogane himself spent most of the day in the storage room where they had first made their landing, looking through the equipment to see if any of it would be valuable or useful for the next world. Fai and Syaoran tended to come over all doubtful when it came to taking things without their owner's permission, but Kurogane had no such qualms; it wouldn't be in storage here if it were badly needed elsewhere, and anything that could help his family survive in prosper was not something he intended to overlook.

As the hours progressed, the travelers wandered one by one back into the central atrium, having exhausted the limits of this sealed facility. Whatever they needed to do, it was increasingly apparent, it wasn't inside.

"I'd really like to get outside and explore," Syaoran said, looking longingly out the sealed plastic windows. "The logbooks don't explain everything - there's so much they assume anyone reading should already know. But they discuss some sort of phenomenon that happens, when the clouds open up and sunlight hits the ground cover directly. They're trying to learn more about it - I'd really like to see it first hand."

His voice was wistful, and Kurogane sat by him on the bed and shrugged. "So why don't we?" he said. "Not much to do around here, that's for sure."

"Can we go outside?" Syaoran asked, addressing the unseen presence of the computer.

"Please clarify," was the computer's maddening response; they'd heard it far too many times last night.

"Computer," Fai said. Of all of them, he was usually the best able to get a useful response from the thing. "Is it safe to leave the facility, and are we permitted to do so?"

"Permission is not restricted," the computer replied. "Regarding safety: atmosphere of Auriga-IV has terra-normal pressure, but oxy-nitrogen mix is not at sufficient concentration to sustain human respiration."

"What'd it say?" Kurogane demanded irritably.

"I think it means we can't breathe the air here," Syaoran replied. "That must be why Mokona put us down inside."

"Computer, is there any way to compensate for the insufficient atmosphere?" Fai asked.

"This facility is equipped with standard atmospheric environmental suits," the computer said. "The Mekbuda protocol specifies that this equipment cannot be withheld; however, the suits contain only four hours of oxygen at normal rates of exertion. You will not be able to reach another sealed outpost within that timeframe." There was a distinct note of disapproval in its flat tones.

"That's fine!" Fai exclaimed brightly. "We just want to go outside and have a look around. Can you show us where those suits are?"

In response, another line of floor panels - blue this time - began to light up from the doorway on outward. They took the time for another meal - and to refresh their supply of water - before they followed.

The 'environmental suits,' as the computer had named them, were found in a narrow locker room with dozens of others. There was enough variation in size that they were able to find ones that fit all of them, although Kurogane could tell as soon as he sealed his up that the restrictive tightness around the arms and the tightness in his groin were going to drive him crazy before long.

Once encased in the suit - and after a lengthy process of the computer insisting that the seals weren't tight and instructing them how to do them over properly - the computer finally consented to unlock the outer doors and let them outside. Mokona cheerfully declared that she didn't need such things, and bounded out ahead of them seeming none the worse the wear for the "insufficient oxy-whatever" air outside.

It was strange stepping onto the soil of an alien planet - in some ways, all the planets they visited were alien, worlds that never even knew each other's existence. But this was different. Most of the worlds they traveled through were different versions of the same homeworld, the cradle of humanity that spun out hundreds of variations on the same societies, the same landmasses and countries, the same people.

This world, though - this world was far away from the cozy home planet they all knew, orbiting a foreign sun. This world had never been meant for human beings, and Kurogane couldn't help but feel unwelcome here.

If Syaoran or Fai shared his sentiments, they didn't show it; they walked over the spongy, knotted material of the groundcover with an easy stride, swinging their packs and talking easily. Their 'environmental suits' supposedly each had built-in radios; although Kurogane hadn't figured how to turn his on, he could still hear and understand the other two clearly. He suspected Mokona's interference again.

"Here," Syaoran called out excitedly, dashing ahead down a gentle slope in the terrain. The groundcover was changing; the knotted, spongy material around the survey base was giving way to steeper slashes of bare stone, then long level patches of waving knee-high vegetation. Kurogane supposed you could call them flowers, although they weren't like any he'd ever seen; they were a rusty rose-color all over, and leaves and petals alike had a striped, almost shredded quality to them.

Syaoran had climbed up a low ridge that crested above the - meadow, why not - and was crouched on it, looking out over the low misted valley. "This is where the log books said they saw the phenomenon," he called to the other three. "They mentioned this funny lavender mist that's always here, and when the clouds break up and the sun shines through, you'll see it."

"See what?" Kurogane growled, hiking the last of the distance to stand next to the ridge and stare into the low valley. The too-small boots were pinching his feet rather painfully, and although he would never admit to the discomfort, he wasn't really looking forward to hiking over uneven ground for several more hours.

"We'll know in a moment, Kuro-grump," Fai said lightly, and raised a hand to shield the faceplate of his helmet as he looked up towards the sky. "The wind is changing."

What had appeared, that morning, to be the blue-green haze of sky now turned out to be the underside of a solid bank of clouds. As the wind shifted and picked up strength, tall columns of clouds began to shift and break apart, letting through glimpses of brilliant pure blue sky and shafts of white sunlight tinted faintly with violet. No sun of Earth was this, Kurogane realized, and the thought made him feel oddly anxious and homesick.

Fai breathed out a reverent oath in his own language, and Kurogane tore his eyes away from the sun to follow his gaze. Showing now through the break in the clouds was the clear, distinct arc of a gigantic orb hanging in the sky. Tinted blue by distance, it hung so low and momentous that it almost seemed close enough to reach out and touch - and yet the far edges of it faded behind the endless blue of the sky.

"Look!" Syaoran cried out, and it took a moment for the adults to realize that he wasn't staring at the sky. When the sun struck the lavender mist its quality changed; although it didn't thin or disappear, it suddenly took on a new depth, and what had appeared to be a shallow, empty valley now was revealed as a canyon, its sides pocked with regular dark intervals.

"Is that -" Kurogane began, not entirely sure what he was looking at.

"A city?" Fai finished for him. "I don't know, Kuro-pon, but it certainly looks like one, doesn't it?"

The same stiff wind that had broken the clouds rippled the knee-high waves of flowers, and like bubbles rising up through liquids, small figures were beginning to show themselves from the valley floor. Kurogane's thoughts flashed to ancient legends of his homeland; kodama, the childlike forest spirits that appeared only in full moonlight. At least in the legends, the forest spirits were benign or at least harmless; but were these?

The tallest came only up to Fai's knee, with a set of gently waving feelers - reminiscent of the shredded grasses, waving in the wind - and solid, shining black eyes. It was hard to distinguish the details of their forms; except for their eyes, they were a pale shining color all over that the light seemed to filter through, lending them the color of whatever was behind them.

"Not just a phenomenon," Syaoran burst out excitedly. "A whole new species! A kind of life that isn't like any other we've ever seen - they're not just new kinds of animals - they're real aliens!"

"Now, Syaoran," Fai said in a laughing tone. "That isn't polite; after all, it's their homeworld and we're only guests. You could say that we're the aliens here!"

"Forget what to call them; what do they want?" Kurogane snapped, unnerved and uneasy. He didn't have Ginryuu with him, and although the beings were small and fragile-seeming, there were a lot of them. He twisted and turned in every direction, trying to keep them all in his sights.

"Probably just to look at us," Syaoran answered in distraction, fumbling fascinated in his carrysack for his notebook and a pen to write with. "We're strangers, after all."

"It's all right Kuro-pon, we come in peace!" Fai assured him.

"It's great that we do, but do they?" Kurogane growled. The sheer number of the beings made him uneasy; aliens or not, were they intelligent like people or were they like animals? And either way, what if they suddenly turned hostile?

"Mokona likes them!" their little guide declared in shrill tones, bouncing happily through the 'flowers.' "They're just the right size!"

"Let's not just stand around - as good guests, we should bring housewarming gifts!" Fai enthused. He reached into his own pack and pulled out a small, plastic bag; Kurogane vaguely recognized it from a grocery several worlds ago. It was full of cheap, colorful candy; little more than sugar spun into tiny caltrops. A couple of them spilled to the ground as he tore the package open, and a group of them clustered around his legs as he held the package low.

"What are you doing? Don't feed them crap!" Kurogane said in outrage. "What if it's toxic to them? You're going to poison a whole new lifeform!"

"Relax, Kuro-killjoy, I'm sure it's fine," Fai said calmly. "If it were toxic to them they wouldn't try to eat it at all."

The plastic bag had disappeared into the crowd of the tiny beings; after a few moments of shuffling, one larger alien emerged from the bunch and approached Fai. With an air of solemnity, he extended one of the rust-colored flowers.

"Thank you!" the magician exclaimed with delight; he reached down and scooped up the little creature, flower and all, and twirled them around while he laughed.

"What are you doing? Are you trying to piss them off?" Kurogane roared, but Fai ignored him.

"Amazing," Syaoran breathed, scribbling furiously in his notebook. "They understand giving and receiving gifts…"

"Don't take stuff from them, either!" Kurogane fumed. A scratching sound made him look down; a cluster of the small beings had gathered around his legs, looking up at him expectantly. "Get away from me; I don't have anything for you!" he snarled, shaking his legs free and backing into clear space. The aliens stared at him, their black eyes shiny; then they turned to look at each other, and all at once decided that Kurogane was not worth talking to.

Next, they turned their attention on Syaoran, who was jolted out of his reverent recording by their expectant gazes. "Oh, u-uh, you want a present?" he stuttered, and he almost dropped his notebook as he fumbled around in his carrysack. He brought out a small, round, yellow-colored object.

"Here," he said quietly, extending it downwards towards the aliens. "I brought this with me from my homeworld… from Clow. It's a special kind of fruit that I would always eat with the person who was very special to me. I hope it will be special to you, too."

A pair of them solemnly took the fruit from him, and regarded it among themselves. They made clicking noises that were barely audible inside the environmental suits; it was impossible to tell whether it was some kind of language or not. Then, in a sudden motion, one of them opened a wide black mouth and swallowed the fruit in a single gulp.

The group of aliens flew into a frenzy of movement; Syaoran watched with his mouth hung open in dismay, unsure if he'd made a terrible mistake. The one who'd swallowed the fruit dove downwards and disappeared into the ground, and half a dozen others piled onto the same spot.

Kurogane strode forward and grabbed Syaoran's shoulder, pulling him back a little ways and stepping in front of him. His eyes intent on the ground where the aliens had disappeared, he didn't have to look to see Fai coming to stand by his side; all teasing gone, the mage formed the other half of the wall in front of the kid.

The red-colored ground bulged upwards, dark clumps of it running down the side like drops of liquid. Something seemed to be pushing out of the ground; Kurogane reached for the sword that wasn't there, then dropped his hand to his side as he realized what it was. It was a tree.

Before their eyes the dark grey-brown trunk of the tree, so unlike any of the vegetation native to this planet, thrust upwards and began sprouting a profusion of branches and twigs. It got to be about five feet tall before the upwards growth slowed, twigs rustling and filling out in the open space. Then all at once it stopped growing, and green leaves unfurled from every twig, bursting into a profusion of bloom. At last, small green globes of fruit nudged their way between the leaves, swelling to the size of a small fist before they turned gold.

One of the alien heads popped from the top of the tree; he chirped and clicked, taking one of the yellow fruits in his arms and holding it out to the travelers.

At that moment three things happened. First was that the shifting winds blew the hazy green clouds back over the sun, and the valley - and the aliens - suddenly wavered and became insubstantial. They were still there, but they became suddenly hard to see. The second was that a warning tone and light began to play in each of their helmets, flashing the alert that their air was getting low and they must return to the base immediately. And at the same time, Mokona's earring began to glow.

"It's time to go back, it seems," Fai said in a soft, almost apologetic voice.

"But - there's still so much I want to know!" Syaoran said, shooting an appealing look over at the tree.

"Look, we don't have a choice about the air," Kurogane told him gruffly. "We've got to get back to the shelter or we'll be in trouble. Besides, we can't exactly take these suits with us to the next world."

"But we'll have to leave right after!" Syaoran cried. "It's not fair."

"Mokona is sorry," Mokona said in a subdued voice, looking up from Fai's arms where she clutched the ragged alien flower. "But Mokona can't help it! When the earring glows, we have to go to the next world!"

"Whatever it is we've come to do, it looks like we've done it," Fai told him gently, placing a hand on his shoulder and squeezing gently. "And there will always be more things to see, in whatever world we come to next."

Syaoran dropped his head and nodded, throat too tight to speak.

The travelers turned and began hiking back towards the survey base, the light of Mokona's earring going with them. Behind them, the light of an alien world played over a strange scene; flitting, semi-substantial beings played in the branches of an apple tree, gulping to swallow the fruits in their mouths and diving into the ground.

~end.