The Garden of Champions

It was hard to plan a vacation when you were the sole proprietor of the only kitchen on a distant space station. Still, Marumi managed. It was a simple matter of finding somebody else to run it for a while. She'd had doubts about letting Dr. Vollstrand take over Hasenrausch while she and C4N took a well deserved break, but figured that a week or so away from the kitchen might actually make the crew of the Farstation miss her all the more.

C4N was looking much better than he had when Kenichi first gave him to Marumi, but while his chassis was less scuffed, and her servos were quieter, his one eye still flickered. If he weren't a robot, it would have looked like a nervous tic. Marumi did her best to ignore it.

They rode on a commercial spaceliner, and while they didn't have the amenities of first class, they rode in comfort across the field of stars. The seats were large and cozy, and for once, it was nice to have somebody else make the food.

The spaceliner eventually docked with the station, and the two walked down into the bustling hub surrounded by other travelers. There were different species, and Marumi even thought she saw some of the recently liberated Nekoids. It was a small family, and it looked like they were having their first vacation as free people. It moved Marumi's heart to see the dad Nekoid, his fuzzy sideburns poking out under a bucket hat with ear-holes cut in the top, directing his wife and three kids through the chaos of the station, looking for their next flight to some place that was objectively better than any place they had ever been before.

Marumi looked at the signboard in the main hub, looking for the shuttle to the Garden of Champions. C4N found it first. He pointed a metallic finger in the direction they needed to go.

They found the gate for the shuttle. It was a small craft that had about a dozen seats. She and C4N took a pair of seats near the middle, and some other vacationers joined them. A stodgy looking man with glasses sat down nearby, a thick book with the title The Space Hunter Wars tucked under his arm. Once seated, he opened it up to a place somewhere in the middle, pulled out the bookmark that was there, tucked it behind his ear, and continued reading.

“You’re interested in the Space Hunter Wars?” Marumi asked.

He looked up from his book. “It’s very fascinating,” he said. “I know practically everything about it.” He went back to reading.

Marumi leaned back, not wanting to sound like she was bragging by indicating that she knew all of the space hunters. She looked out the window as the distant stars and nebulae decorated the backdrop of their short trip to the Garden.

The Garden of Champions was a large structure, domed with a rad-proof glass ceiling. As they drew closer, Marumi could see the trees and other plants growing within. While the outside of the station was a cold grey, almost white, the inside was a bustling rainbow of colors on a field of green. The shuttle docked and once the cabin pressure normalized to the Garden, the door slid open.

Marumi and C4N waited for the others to leave. Her stomach quivered. She didn’t realize she would feel nervous coming here. She took a breath before stepping through into the tunnel. Scenes of the battle were etched on the wall with a laser engraver. It was subtle, but if you paid attention as you walked, you could see the Space Hunter mechs and the star children battling in space while Asturoth watched in the distance.

Out through the tunnel, the sight made Marumi catch her breath. The place was full of plants. It smelled sweet, like the first days of spring, when the snow had finally melted, and the flowers were beginning to bloom. A family to one side was getting their picture taken with one of the new imprinted Star Children. She had heard some of the pilots on the station discussing it, but couldn’t quite believe it herself. While she had never seen a true Star Child in person, only having seen recordings, this one looked nothing like what she had seen. This one appeared to be softened, made more charismatic, more family friendly. It didn’t have the uncanny face and the nightmarish patterns on its tendrils, but rather had a more natural face, almost sweet and innocent with a tender smile, and the patterns were tame. They were sane.

When the family left, the man with the book approached the Star Child. Marumi and C4N stepped up beside him.

“I don’t see how they’re so scary,” he said, talking as if the Star Child were a display, and not a real, living creature. “The book describes them as monsters, but this one looks like a labrador.”

Marumi held her tongue, both to not sound like she knew everything (again, she hadn’t ever seen a real one in person), but also because she didn’t want to come off as bragging.

She and her robot went toward the statues in the center. She wanted to see how they looked.

The statues were arranged in several circles, with a large statue in the middle, slightly smaller statues around it, and life-sized statues throughout. In fact, Marumi had seen a few even when walking through the garden part. Each statue was there to represent someone who was instrumental in helping defeat the Star Children. She quickly picked up, after reading the plaques, that if the statue was bronze, it meant that the person depicted died in the battle, and if it was brass, it meant that the person was still alive (at least, alive to see the end of the battle).

Right in the center was a massive bronze statue of Kenichi, Under his foot was a small orb that looked like a parody of Asturoth, or at least like one of the noodle meatballs Marumi had made. She stared up at the statue. It looked just like him.

“I heard that he was specially trained by Admiral Katje with the sole intention of destroying Asturoth,” said a voice behind her. It was the man with the book.

She turned and looked at him. She wanted to say that he appeared one day in the station's trash compactor, and he had a Mechmote, and it was all more mysterious than that.

“Actually,” she heard C4N say. “He appeared in the station's trash compactor one day. This was before Admiral Katje had arrived at the station. He was unconscious, but held a Mechmote unlike one we had ever seen. His arrival was a miracle.”

The man looked at the robot. “You're saying you were there?” he said.

C4N nodded. “Yes. Kenichi saved my life.”

The man laughed. “You're an obsolete janitor-bot,” he said. “If you were on an official Far Station, you would have been decommissioned long ago.”

C4N nodded. “Yes,” he said again. “Kenichi saved my life.”

The man shook his head before walking off.

After taking a moment longer to look at the massive bronze statue of Kenichi, Marumi drifted to the second group of statues. There she saw the other Space Hunters: Rikku, Elana, Maka, Hollis, and even Bunny, all brass. Each was the spoke of a wheel around Kenichi. Nearby Rikku, she found a normal-sized bronze statue of a woman. The plaque said MARGUERITE “TEQUILA” SONNENAUFGANG with a description of how she fell during the battle with the Jack of Stars. Marumi took a moment to admire the statue. She had seen Marguerite a few times, mostly in the company of Rikku, but had never gotten to know her well. She looked back to the large statues of the Space Hunters. She hadn't gotten to know any of them well. Then her gaze went back to Kenichi. She felt a twinge of pain in her chest as she recalled how she had treated him poorly just before his final mission. She hoped that her final message had gotten to him.

She sighed and wandered through the garden some more, C4N plodding behind her. She saw other statues, including the one of Admiral Katje, and several of the pilots, some of whom she had only known their first names or callsigns. It was a shock, at times, to see a familiar face cast in bronze, never to laugh or smile or tell a wild story about the latest mission. Exhausted, mostly from the emotional overload, she sat down on a nearby bench. C4N stood beside her.

She leaned her head back, looking at the massive statue of Kenichi once more. She let out a slow breath. “It's hard to believe he's gone,” she said.

“That is true,” said the robot.

She looked over at C4N. “What do we do now? It's unlikely that the Far Station will continue to be in full operation. There's really no point in my being there.”

“I'm sure there are other opportunities for someone like you,” said the robot.

She shook her head, closing her eyes. Visions of Kenichi flashed before her mind's eye. She thought of him eating her Asturoth soup, and how much he had loved it. She could almost smell it.

No, she could smell it. She opened her eyes and looked over. There, along the side of the Garden, next to a gift shop, was a restaurant. People sat at tables, and some of them were eating the soup!

She got up from the bench and walked over to the restaurant. The cashier met her with a smile. “Can I have the soup?” she said, pointing to the menu. It was called VICTORY SOUP.

The cashier nodded. Then when she was about to say the price, stopped. “No charge,” she said.

“Really?”

“Really.”

Marumi stood back, a bit confused. Still, maybe there was a promotion going on, and she was the hundredth customer or something. She got the soup and took it to an open table where she sat and ate it.

It was good. Not as good as she had made it, but good nonetheless.

Then the man with the book returned. “I see you fell for the tourist food,” he scoffed. He sat down next to her, laying his book down on the table beside him. “There's no way a functioning military space station would have a chef with food that was that good,” he said. “But still, they play it off like they had one of the universe's greatest chefs there, just cooking food for the finest heroes of the galaxy.”

Marumi glowered. She had had enough of this man. She pushed the bowl gently away, dabbed her mouth with a napkin, and then she said, “You're absolutely right.” Setting the napkin down, she added, “I made it better.”

The man looked at her. Then he looked at something behind her. Then he lost most of his ability to say meaningful words.

Marumi looked behind her to see what had flustered the man so much. She almost lost most of her ability to say meaningful words as well.

Standing behind her was a beautiful brass statue of her, Marumi, holding a large bowl of Victory Soup. She looked back at the cashier. That must have been why she wasn't charged anything. She looked over at C4N and smiled. “I think I know what we'll do next,” she said.

“What is that, ma'am.”

She pointed to the restaurant. “We're going to improve their recipe.” She hoped Dr. Vollstrand could handle managing Hasenrausch a while longer.