The Space Botany Club is a relatively new club that only started up a few months ago. It only became active however, when Natsumi returned from a lengthy sick leave from school, rumoured to have contracted some unusual illness that left her extremely weakenned for several months.
he club has finally established its official headquarters in a smaller classroom that once functionned as a laboratory. Now, it consists of a small lab bench and two microscopes in one corner, a tiny portable greenhouse at the back that is currently full of only a handful of native earth plants, two old computers, and numerous newspaper clippings regarding space rocks, aliens, and rumours of a certain space plant that dot the corner surrounding a small table and ratty looking sofa.
Now that she has returned, the club has seen a bit more activity. Eika, the extremely intelligent and rather nerdy class president pours eagerly over a microscope, peering at a piece of recently acquired space rock, while her little sister Eiko watches cartoons on tv. Natsumi meanwhile, pours over the newspapers, scouring them for any signs of the rumoured space plant that she had overheard Kazuo and Daisuke discussing at a certain cafe the other day..
Signed up, but Naru hadn't managed to get to those headquarters in a while. She lingers in the doorway of the classroom, her school bag in her hands, watching the activity in the ex-laboratory, that really is almost a laboratory all over again. "Um." She ventures, suddenly taken with a flicker of shy from the older student as she lingers there. "Hi?"
Eiko doesnt seem to hear the girl at the door, so intent on her cartoon that she is, giggling madly at something funny on tv. Eika, similarly, is deep in thought, pouring over her space rock, murmuring out loud. "Ooh, ooh! What is this? Alien spacedust? Trace amounts of high levels space elements..Ooh..Ooh!" she continues to murmur aloud to herself, completely missing the other girl.
It's only Natsumi who hears her, and with a grumble and a glare at the others, she finally climbs to her feet, stepping towards the door. "Yeah? Whaddaya want?!" glancing over her shoulder at Eika, she grumbles, "Geez, Eika! This is your job to greet new members! I only signed on to do the research! Ugh!!"
Glancing back at Naru, she smirks, "Heh, what is it? Didja get lost? Or do you have something useful to add to our club?"
Naru Osaka takes a half step back as she gets the oh so friendly greeting of 'whaddaya want?!' and she ers softly. "I'd hoped to check out the club?" She offers, glancing around Natsumi into the room as a whole. "So nope. Not lost, came here on purpose." She ers softly, giving a little quirk of her head. "Not knowing much about the club, makes it hard to answer what I can add to it, doesn't it?"
Eika finally pauses long enough from her space rock to glance towards the door. "Oh...Oh! We have a visitor! Natsumi, please invite her in!" she quickly rises to her feet, adjusting her glasses as she walks towards the door and bows politely to Naru.
"Greetings! thank you for checking us out! Can I get you some tea? My name is Eika Ginzumati, and this is Natsumi Ginga! So sorry about Natsumi, she can be a bit abrasive, til you get to know her a little better! Natsumi, please offer her a seat and tell her about our club! I'll go make some tea..This is so great!" she seems excited. Seems this little club hasnt had many members beyond the three of them..
As Eika enthusiastically runs off to prepare that tea, Natsumi sighs and rolls her eyes. But there's a very good reason why she's here, putting up with all this stuff. "Ugh. Fine, pleast have a seat at the sofa. What do you want to know? We just study space rocks and plants, looking for signs of alien plant life. So far we've been pretty unsuccessful, except that recently, I've found rumours of a new, unknown, wild plant species having been discovered..It could even be alien!"
She actually seems excited at that prospect.
"Er." Naru offers and then smiles to Eika as the member with the social jumps in. "Hi! I'm Naru Oksaka." She introduces herself and moves a little further into the room as she's invited.
"Well. I'm an artist, actually. Which sounds like an odd fit with rocks and plants, save that I rather enjoy drawing both. Plants more than rocks, but the idea of new plants to draw inspiration from sounded really interesting." She admits, perhaps just a touch shyly.
"Truly? An alien plant?" Naru doesn't sound skeptical, she sounds interested. "What does it look like? Is that what Eika was looking at?"
Natsumi frowns as she grabs the paper from the table, sitting down at the sofa. "Well. It's just a rumour so far. One or two people have spotted small plants falling down from the sky, and just seeming to take up root wherever they land. No one's really submitted a photograph yet, but one person did draw a rough sketch of it. Usually it seems these plants quickly disappeared again before they could manage to grab a sample.."
She points to a plant that might look somewhat familiar to Naru, if she's ever encountered one of Fiore's plants. "Hey, if you can draw, maybe you can come with us on or next trip to hunt for one of these elusive alien plants!" pipes up Eika, although Natsumi just rolls her eyes.
"Seriously? Is that all you're good for? Drawing plants? Dont you have any scientific background at all? Or any experience with alien life? Now that would be useful!" Natsumi sighs, rubbing her eyes. She looks pretty tired. So does Eika for some reason, although she's a lot more cheerful than Natsumi.
"Well then, if you wanna prove yourself, you'd better help us find a specimen. We've been unsuccessful so far, because they literrally seem to just fall from the sky..But next time we'll be ready with our binoculars. Ain't no space plant gonna get by us next time!"
Natsumi seems determined to grab herself a space plant.
"Plants falling from the sky?" Naru repeats and then hunhs softly, accepting that premise rather than just dismissing it out of hand. "I haven't seen any, no, but I haven't been looking either." She admits and reaches for the sketch to look at it closer. "Sure! I'd be glad to come with you on a hunt, and draw a better copy than this. I mean, if they /are/ space plants, they might not gather very well." She points out pragmatically.
"Sorry." She offers to Natsumi. "No experience with alien life that I know of, I mean.. wouldn't aliens try and blend in such that you wouldnt know? Try and /act/ like normal people? Or .. er.. plants?"
"Yeah..Falling from the sky, or so the rumours say. But of course, that's silly, right? There could be many reasons why they might seem to 'fall from the sky'..Like they were uprooted and blown about by the wind. Even so, we're gonna get to the bottom of this! I know we'll find ourselves a real alien plant!" and then maybe, Natsumi can put her plan into phase 2..
Eika smiles at Naru's optimism. "Thank you so much! I was going to come, but I'm gonna be pretty busy trying to find evidence of life within these meteroite pieces we recovered from a site a few weeks ago..I really appreciate you're offering to check that out. We've decided to maybe wait til the weekend for thet expedition.."
Natsumi sighs, "Really? I have to babysit her? Ugh.." She does smirk at Naru's comment however, looking amused. "Hmmm, I suppose they would, wouldn't they? At least humanoid aliens would. But plants dont tend to move or change as quickly as humans now, or do they? Guess we'll find out soon, hopefully!"
"Spores perhaps?" Naru ofers on the notion of 'falling from the sky', thoughtful. "Or well, lots of plants send little bits of themselves off on the wind. Maple keys, and flower petals, so it's not so weird, it's how plants reproduce after all." She might not be a biology major, but she's clearly stayed away in class.
At the mention of 'babysitting' there's a wry little twist of Naru's lips. "Well. I can go out looking without you, cover twice as much area that way, but two sets of eyes are better than one if they're hard to find, you know."
Naru smiles to Eika and nods. "Is.. is there likely to be much plant life in a meterorite?"
"Eh..?" Natsumi arches a brow when Naru makes some very practical suggestions, "Oh, I guess you're not totally useless. I guess those are all possibilities too. But since this is a species that has never before been seen, and it doesn't seem to have multiplied or taken root or grown like a normal species, there's still a chance that it could be alien.."
Then Naru suggests that she go out alone, and that warrants an annoyed glare from Natsumi, "Seriously? New kid, this is my deal, if I let you go, it's cuz I'm doing you a favor! So dont even think about it!" she sighs, "But, it'd be easier to cover more ground if we both go together, so we dont cross over the same area..I guess there's no way around it.."
She sighs as she considers Naru's other question, "Heh, it really depends on the properties of the plant. People like to assume that all plants need the same thing: Water and sunlight and heat to survive. But try to be creative. Maybe some space plants can withstand the vacuum of space, or extreme temperatures. It's not too unrealistic to imagine that they could survive on space rocks if we consider how adapable they can be..Right?"
"Not having taken root probably makes it more likely to be alien, really. At the very least, not Japanese." Naru points out with a soft mmm and a nod. "Utterly worthy of study, really."
There's a little nod as her suggestion of going alone is shot down and she tries not to smile as Natsumi now protests that they shall need to stick together. "I would appreciate it, I mean, I don't entirely know what I'm looking for, other than the one sketch." She listens attentively and then nods. "Space plants could survive on anything, really. You're right."