06-20-2016—Resonance has been revived!

New readers: Welcome aboard!

Returning readers: Every chapter has been polished and improved for a more enjoyable story overall, worth a re-read. Chapter-combining means the new 11 has the contents of the old 12, and it continues where the old 12 left off with new content!

Everyone: This story will be finished.

When Mois caught the space flea's signal on radar late one night, the Keroro Platoon dropped everything and left to intercept. No time for excuses, notes, or goodbyes.

A single flea could reduce a planet to hollow ruins. Alien races had enacted measures to deal with them centuries ago, and invader coalitions forged treaties to protect the less-advanced worlds. Military recon teams could be tasked with defending the place they were sent to conquer, or risk having nothing left to invade.

Deflecting the flea's trajectory from the safety of their underground base wasn't an option for the platoon, as lasers and missiles glanced off its dense body plating. Even Mois couldn't Armageddon it into star stuff—the Angols themselves had created space fleas to destroy worlds they found to be unworthy. But the creatures proved impossible to control, and still plagued the ever-expanding universe millennia after that mistake.

While drifting through space, however, the flea entered a state of hibernation. This gave the platoon time to snare it in their ship's electronic net before it could enter Earth's orbit. They set a course for the Andromeda Galaxy, and carried the flea safely away from human civilization.

"Well, that was easy." Keroro leaned back in his commander's seat, arms behind his head and feet propped on the console before him. "I bet we'll have this all wrapped up before Master Fuyuki and Miss Natsumi wake up tomorrow morning."

"But we can't 'wrap up' anything until we reach the disposal point," Giroro said, standing near Keroro with his arms crossed. "And would it kill you to take this a little more seriously?"

"I know, I know!" Keroro rolled his eyes and sighed with more drama than any other platoon's commander. "I sat through the same lectures as everyone else to learn about the stupid things. Dealing with 'em is just so boring."

Tamama peered around the back of his chair from his position at the front of the bridge. "You've done flea extermination before, Sarge?"

Keroro slumped lower in his seat with a pout. "Not really, but anyone can tell you it's about as exciting as watching paint peel. Why can't they be good and explode like everything else?"

"Brute force is useless against something created for destruction itself," said Dororo. "In this case, wiser measures must be taken."

Keroro and Giroro noticed the lance corporal standing with them for the first time since leaving Earth, while Tamama stared with zero comprehension.

"He means we get to take it out back and shoot it. With hyper-corrosive acid." Kururu kept his eyes on the navigation holo-screen on the right side of the bridge. The spiraling arms of the Milky Way receded into the lower corner as Andromeda drew up to meet them. "But we have to drag it someplace uninhabited first, and that takes more time than the actual act of killing it in its sleep."

Keroro grimaced. "Yeesh, way to make us sound like murderers."

Kururu shrugged, arms showing from either side of his chair. "Space-PETA we ain't."

"Nevertheless, it's our duty as an advanced race to protect Pekopon from disaster," Dororo said.

"Or keep it ripe for invasion. Whatever helps you sleep at night." The holo-screen masked the reflection of Kururu's smirk in the window.

"We're keeping Fukki and Nacchi and everyone safe, too," Tamama said, then added with a bright smile, "We're gonna be their heroes!" But behind that cheery countenance, spiteful thoughts simmered. While that bimbo gets to stay home and be worthless.

"But I have enough chores as it is," Keroro moaned.

Giroro turned to Keroro. "It's not like you had anything better to do." He curled his lip, showing his fangs. "Like a certain other mission."

"Your face has nothing better to do, gun nut!" Keroro jumped up in his chair and brandished his pointer finger. "You're not about to miss the street date on the newest Gunpla!"

Giroro clenched his fists and reached Keroro in two strides. Dororo moved to intercept an inevitable scuffle, while Tamama opened the compartment below his control panel to grab the popcorn he'd stashed in advance.

"Navigator speaking." Kururu interrupted the proceedings with a fair imitation of a commercial airline pilot. "Now approaching the target site, Planet XV-Kas, population zero. Making contact in... oh that's not good."

Keroro knit his brow. "Kururu?" The entire ship jolted, and he squawked, gripping one of his chair arms with both hands. "What's going on?!"

Kururu's laughter was a little fast. "Looks like our bundle of joy woke up."

Keroro bolted up from a hard surface. He slowly peered around, wide eyes sweeping a barren landscape.

Then he spat, wondering when he'd gotten so much dust in his mouth. He pawed at the reddish-brown rock around him—nothing but hard-packed grit mixed with some gravel.

"Guys?" He got to his feet. "Anybody out there?"

A universally flat horizon overcast with rust-colored clouds punctuated the silence. Keroro lifted a hand to the rank insignia on his hat; whatever those clouds contained couldn't be healthy, he decided.

He gave the symbol a little tweak with his fingertips, and nothing happened.

"Anti-barrier's broken? I better find cover." He scanned the naked red expanse in all directions. Dust shifted in the breeze to cover nothing. "And where'd everyone go, anyway?"

With no landmarks to guide him, he started walking. The wind blew a dust cloud against him, and he stopped to shield his eyes.

He continued on with his mind working. For no discernible reason, the space flea had awoken, and torn the ship apart. Things were blank after that, but so far he saw no hull fragments and no flea. And somehow, he'd landed on the planet's surface without the slightest injury.

No bodies around, either.

He stumbled, regained his balance with a hard stamp, and balled his hands into fists.

"Of course they're alive! Don't be stupid!" The increased force of his footsteps left tiny plumes of dust in his wake. "That's why you're looking for them. And you call yourself a commander!"

A deep rumble cut Keroro's one-man conversation short, and he stared at the darkening clouds. With all the dust clinging to his skin, he hadn't noticed the change in humidity. He didn't want to deal with alien rain in the absence of his anti-barrier's environmental protection, marginal as it was. Judging from the lack of visible life, the precipitation was acidic, or worse.

Keroro stood on tiptoe; he peered in one direction, then another, scuffing the dust with hasty turns. Nothing but flat red rock in every direction.

Something cold clenched inside him, and worked its way past his throat.

"Heeey!" he yelled. "Giroro! Kururu! Tamama! Dororo! Somebody answer me!"

A shotgun bang of thunder made him jump. He sat down hard, heart pounding, breathing heavy.

"Maybe they can't hear me." His eyes stung. "They couldn't have landed that far away." He stared at the ground, wind blowing his hat's stained earflaps around his face. "Yeah, that's it. That makes sense."

He stayed like that for a moment, then gazed skyward.

"But if they don't hear this..."

Tamama dodged around pillars of weathered rock and creaking dead trees. He'd woken up less than an hour ago, suspended upside-down by his seatbelt in his ejected chair, lodged between two tall boulders. After righting himself and waiting for the extra blood to drain from his head, he'd jogged away to search for the others.

He'd activated his anti-barrier after seeing the odd-colored storm clouds. Its temporary life-support wasn't absolute protection against whatever chemicals the planet's rain consisted of, but until he could find cover, he had to take what he could get.

"I hope the others aren't too far. 'Specially Sarge." He leaped a wide crevice without breaking his pace. "This place is way creepy, though. Is the whole planet this empty?"

Thunder boomed. Just as he considered going back to use the crevice as shelter, something else echoed across the scenery.

Gero gero gero gero...

Tamama stopped, eyes wide and jaw slack. Then he clasped his hands to his chest and squealed, "Sarge!" He took off, crushing smaller rocks into dust under his feet. "Hold on, Sargey! Your cute and lovely Tamama is coming to save you!"

Following the sergeant's resonance, Tamama tore across the plain, his search for shelter forgotten.

Then the ground dropped out from under him. The plain ended in a cliff.

His scream quickly receded from the edge as the rain began to fall.

A fat raindrop, shot through with rust, pelted right through the top of Keroro's hat.

He quit resonating with a squeak, and sprang up. "No! The acid rain's gonna melt me!" Drops pockmarked the ground at lazy intervals as he ran in circles. When the downpour began in earnest, he doubled his speed. "Gero! What a world, what a wor—"

He stopped in mid-scamper, and stared at his hands. The rain cut dark rivulets through the dust on his skin, and did nothing else.

"Oh, it's just dirty." He jabbed a finger at the clouds. "Don't scare me like that!"

Lightning struck the ground ten feet away.

"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry!" He sprinted across the flatland, kicking up a wave of brick-colored mud behind him. That is, until the edge of the plateau rushed out from under him so fast, he didn't realize what had happened until he was hovering in midair over a deep canyon.

Then he looked down, allowing logic and gravity to gang up on him.

He screamed and flailed at the air rushing past with two grasping hands, then something slammed into his middle. After a moment of high-speed flight, Keroro found himself feet-first on solid ground.

"Commander! Are you all right?"

Keroro's vision took turns spinning halfway in either direction. When he tried to face the voice, he lost his balance and fell on his back.

Worried and familiar blue eyes moved into Keroro's line of sight above him.

Keroro sprang up and hugged his rescuer. "Dororo!"

Dororo stumbled back a step, arms coming up to catch the sudden embrace out of reflex. But when Keroro took a sobbing breath and clung to him harder, Dororo gently reciprocated.

He waited while Keroro got himself together. "I'm glad you're all right."

After a long moment, Keroro released his childhood friend, and stepped back for a quick appraisal. Dororo was just as dirty and rained-on as he was, but appeared unhurt, and no worse for the wear. "Looks like you made it out in one piece."

Dororo nodded. "I hope we can say the same for the others."

"You mean you haven't seen anyone else around yet?"

"I'm afraid not." Dororo peered down the length of the narrow, high-walled canyon. "I can sense two of them, however. Kururu and Tamama are somewhere in that direction, though they're too far to pinpoint."

"Awright then!" Keroro spun on one heel, ignoring whatever Dororo was still saying, and started walking that way with jaunty, leader-like steps. "Then we'll go find Giroro too, right? I tell ya, if he's any farther out than those two, I'm gonna give him the business!"

"Commander, I still haven't—"

"Or what if he's way off in the opposite direction? I swear, if I have to walk all over this stupid planet—"

"Wait." Dororo stalled Keroro with a hand on his shoulder. Keroro turned with a complaint ready, but kept silent when Dororo caught his gaze. "I don't know where Giroro is."

Keroro's irritation slid off his face. "What? Can't you sense his presence or something? How far away is he?"

"I have no idea." Dororo let his hand drop. "If it's not just a matter of distance, then something may have happened to him."

Keroro's expression tensed, then he scoffed. "No way! This is the guerrilla war survival fanboy we're talking about. One little crash-landing's not gonna do him in." His gero-gero-gero struck the canyon walls, and he kept walking, arms folded behind his head.

"I hope you're right." Dororo kept pace beside him. "There's a shelter just a short walk from here; we can sleep there for tonight. It even has a small storage of food and water."

Keroro turned on Dororo, hat flaps whirling. "You landed next to food?! I woke up in the middle of nowhere! Couldn't even find any ship scraps around. It... it was weird." He faced forward again, staring at the ground as he walked. "No sign of anyone."

A few moments of quiet travel, until Dororo spoke. "I was surprised to find such a structure. XV-Kas is supposed to be a long-dead planet."

Keroro hummed in thought. "Yeah, it was the closest disposal area Kururu could find. Or maybe it's not really...?"

Dororo shook his head. "Aside from us, it's absolutely barren." He peered into the darkening sky. The narrow passage mitigated the rain coming into the canyon. "Space fleas are only attracted to worlds with thriving civilizations. That food storage is merely a remnant."

Keroro kicked a pebble down the path. "So why'd it wake up and ruin our day?"

"Maybe it's drawn to traces of past civilization."

Keroro grumbled. "But that's cheating."

Moist footsteps and rain dripping down the canyon walls filled the lapse in conversation.

Then Keroro groaned. "I'm starving! How much longer 'til we get there?"

"Not long at all." Dororo pointed ahead. "In fact, as soon as we come out of the canyon, you should see—"

"Is it that?" Keroro stood on tiptoe, peering at a dull grey dome poking up from behind one of the lower canyon walls. At Dororo's nod, Keroro jumped and punched the air. "Yahoo! Food, food, food for me!" He dashed for the building at top speed.

Tamama opened his eyes to a dull roar coming from between his ears, and a tapping noise far louder to him than anyone else. His vision started out hazy, which didn't stop him from recognizing the figure sitting just a few feet away. Unwilling to deal, he snapped his eyes shut.

"Cut the act, I know you're awake."

Tamama groaned. Of all the platoon members to reunite with first, it had to be him.

"You couldn't have hit your head that hard, if you're already conscious." That infernal tapping never ceased. "But you might as well use this chance to relax. We're not leavin' here anytime soon."

A solitary laptop screen illuminated Tamama's redstone surroundings. The cave made for close quarters with its other occupant, typing away on the keyboard.

"What do you mean, Kururu?" Tamama sat up in stages to keep his headache from spiking. "Don't we hafta find Sarge and the others?" He pointed at the scuffed laptop on the floor. "Can't you track 'em?"

"Do you think we'd be separated if I could?" When Kururu's response was met with a blank stare, he huffed and gestured at the screen. "Come see for yourself."

Tamama wasn't up to standing quite yet, but Kururu was only a few Keronian body lengths away, seated against the opposite wall. The private shuffled over on his hands and knees, and Kururu turned the laptop toward him. Tamama squinted against the screen's glare—his headache wasn't making it easy to look at—until the contours of a terrain map came into view. It was mostly elevated areas with a more distinct line snaking through it, as if carved by a river.

He wasn't sure why it should have been familiar. "Hey Kururu, where are we?"

Kururu pointed at the right side of the screen. "We're sittin' on the northern edge of block B-6. The map function only works in a limited area right now, but that's not the issue here." He sat back against the wall and crossed his arms. "It's showing zero life signs, ours included."

Tamama leaned away from the screen, bracing his hands on the floor behind him and staring at his knees. "So we can't just go looking." He couldn't remember anything between waking up between two boulders and somehow ending up in a cave with Kururu. The blank spot hurt like a scab the more he picked at it, but at the same time, he didn't want to leave it alone.

"Not that it makes much of a difference." Kururu's low voice broke through the private's ruminations. "That damn flea tore the ship to pieces, so restoring life sign detection's probably more trouble than it's worth."

A pit formed inside Tamama that paled his black skin. Kururu turned the laptop back toward him and started typing again.

Tamama's voice came out small. "Can't we send an SOS?"

Kururu chuckled, high notes bouncing off the too-close walls. "The laptop's the one useful thing I found after landing on this shithole masquerading as a planet. But the connectivity hardware's busted, because we can't have nice things." He started a new line of code with a hard tap on the Enter key. "I'm surprised it still works at all, but the tracking system can't be the only thing that went out. Who the hell knows what else got corrupted."

Tamama didn't want to process Kururu's words anymore. The reality that no help was coming—from the Keron Army, random passing ships, or even Momoka—was dark enough. But the thought of the others dying in the crash, the possibility that his sergeant didn't survive—

He couldn't be dead. Not when Tamama's desire to find him was still so strong.

But what if I'm just in denial? Tamama blinked rapidly at the ground; he didn't want to cry in front of Kururu. How am I supposed to know what's right?

Then a new question dispersed the mental gloom. "Hey Kururu, where'd you end up when we crashed?"

The typing stopped for a split second. "Kind of a walk to the west of here. But you're not gonna find anything useful, if that's what you were thinking."

"There's gotta be something," Tamama said, and carefully got to his feet. He wasn't struck with dizziness upon standing, though his head still hurt. "I'm gonna go see what I can salvage."

"Don't waste your time," Kururu muttered at the wall after Tamama had already left the cave.