And I'm From Mars

Summary: Someone once told Nino that women are from Venus.

Disclaimer: All characters from mentioned belong to Hikaru Nakamura, from the anime Arakawa under the bridge. Certain information taken from wikipedia.

-o-

There was some truth in what Nino claimed; women are from venus, metaphorically speaking. The problem was that she was taking it way to literally.

"I really like this river, and the fish too." she randomly commented to Kou one day while they were fishing along the banks. Nino had very much prefered to dive in to aquire the prey but her lover insisted that they sat by the cat tails and made use of the fishing rods for once.

She had a faraway look in her eyes, "Water was a scarcity in Venus, I guess the temperature was too high there."

OF COURSE THE TEMPERATURE'S HIGH! The last time I checked on wikipedia, the surface temperature was over four hundred degree celcius..

"A-ahh... Too hot. I see." was the best reply Kou could come up with. "How was the environment like?"

"It was extremely dry.."

Nino san lived in a desert?

"and sandy, there were odd looking yellowish green plants with needles sticking out..." Nino gestured wildly in the air and proceeded to illustrate using a branch laying conveniently on the ground.

Yes, definitely a desert. Should I tell her that?

The wooden pencil stopped swiftly on it's tracks on the bank.

"Oh, I've forgotten how the plant looked like but I'll definitely remember if I return to Venus and see it again." The branch was left lying beside an incomplete picture of what was meant to be a cactus.

"So you see," Nino stretched out her hands and shielded her eyes as she squinted at the sun. "there was so little water in the atmosphere, with only 0.002% water vapour and approximately 96.5% carbon dioxide.."

She frowned. "No wonder it was so stuffy, there was no oxygen."

He nodded uncertainly.

It just had to come to this. Whenever Kou congratulated himself on landing himself such a sweet looking girl as a lover (albeit still on a superficial level), Nino had to mention all that venus crap or greet one of the randomly passing by under-the-bridge-occupants like he or she were the most normal and common person, easily found on the everyday streets.

For heavens sake, that military freak whose every feature all but roared feminity was cross dressing as a sister! Surely, that was a form of blesphemy!

Nino was not completely deprived of common sense. She wore a towel to protect her modesty at the make shift open air bath, knew how to survive under a bridge with a group of weird people, had a strangely above average understanding regarding Venus-

Wait a moment, the last point should not be categorised under common sense, it was knowledge. Nino must have learnt it somewhere, from an external source. You don't instintively know the percentage of each gas in the air just by breathing it in. Besides, it was impossible that Nino had ever taken a single breath of the venusian atmosphere; she would have most certainly dropped dead.

Still, back to the point Kou was thinking about- how could such a lovely girl, blond hair blue eyes and all, with excellent survival abilities and a charming personality, be so completely mistaken and clueless about the basic origin of her own life?

It was another matter if she assumed that the village chief or Hoshi came from Pluto, those guys had the appropraite outfits to justify and prove it many times over.

Kou realised that it was entirely up to him, the only sane individual among the villagers under the bridge, to educate and correct Nino's misconceptions. She was not from Venus, Hoshi was really just an extreme case of a fallen singer, the twins - forsaken kids, Sister a self deluded cross dresser, Stella a mental institution escapee, and so on.

And he himself was not much better; a respectable head of a wealthy company, but choosing to live by the banks of Arakawa with a bunch of weirdos.

He might as well be a Martian, for all Nino cared.

If so, there was a whole Earth between them. It seemed strangly romantic, even to Kou, that they each traveled and met half way on this foreign but beautiful planet. This wonderful place full of uncomprehensive occurences and people, ironically allowing their strange meeting to come to something.

"Hey Nino, did you know?"

Kou turned to the stoned girl staring intently into the water who then shifted her gaze to him.

To hell with sanity.

"I'm actually from Mars."

The surprise and smile that appeared on her face was dazzling, like a thousand brilliant suns.

-End-

Found this random one shot in my folder. Written 2 years ago I believe, hope you guys enjoyed reading it!