As we have lost a few posts how about a challenge to enliven the boards a bit. Write a drabble, short story or poem each line of which must have at least one smilie about a team member losing something. Over to you.........

Set some time during episode 54, "Gatchaman burns with rage". Lost I've met more than enough people, over the years, who misuse that word, "lost". They find out I was orphaned, and they say things like, "I'm so sorry that you lost your parents, that must have been terrible". It's as tactless as that line from that old play. How did it go? Something like "To lose one parent is unlucky, to lose both is just carelessness". Yeah, those are not the exact words but I hope you see what I mean. I didn't lose them. They were stolen from me. They were murdered in front of my eyes. I wonder, now, what I would have been like if that had never happened. My parents raised me to know how to fight, to look after myself. Would I have felt strongly enough about Galactor to want to fight it? I don't know. Since we became Gatchaman, I have assumed I will die fighting Galactor. If I don't wind up dead, then I don't know what I'll do with the rest of my life afterwards. I've had no reason to think about it. But if my parents were still alive, I wouldn't want to be doing what I'm doing now. I'm sure of that. Yeah, I'd hate Galactor for attacking people. But it wouldn't be so personal. Call me selfish, but I wouldn't hate them so much for killing thousands of strangers. I'd want them stopped and destroyed, but I don't think I'd want to personally hunt them down and destroy them myself. Has it made me more selfish than I would have been? Ken, Jun and Jinpei are also orphans. But their families died differently. Ken's father vanished when he was 8, and his mother died a few years later. Not that he "lost" them either, but his mother died quiely with painkillers to make her passing more comfortable, and he didn't have to watch his father crash and burn. Jun barely remembers her mother, Jinpei doesn't remember his parents at all, and neither knows how they died. Perhaps, for them, the word "lost" fits better, or maybe the implications of that word just hurt them less. I don't usually have any reason to question myself about this. It's not something I like to think about. But, a few days ago, Ken's father turned out not to be dead after all. Not even a long lost stranger. He just didn't bother to tell anyone who he was. And then Ken had to watch him climb into the rocket Galactor had built to fix the Van Allen belt, and then carry on watching as the rocket exploded with his father piloting it. And I had to watch Ken. When we're facing down a Galactor mecha, Ken is the one who thinks about the situation we find ourselves in, because he knows we have to try to win. If we die winning the battle, then we still win the war as long as we hurt Galactor badly enough that someone else has a chance of finishing them off. If we die and fail, then what chance will the rest of the world have of beating Galactor? If he sees that we can only lose, then we don't fight. It's hard to watch what Galactor gets up to while he and Nambu are thinking up a plan. Waiting around like that makes me feel helpless, and I hate that. But we have to try to win rather than just try to fight. When his father died, Ken just wanted to fight, to hurt, to damage any little part of Galactor. Not to win. He couldn't detach himself from his anger and think straight. He got us trapped, in a situation where we all looked sure to lose. And I know that rage. Where all you want is to hurt something or someone and you can't think of anything else because the thing you really want is gone forever. Like either something else explodes or you do. That's why Ken and I fight. Because I feel that rage and I don't care if I win or lose, and he knows we have to win. I don't want to feel like that. But it's part of me. Maybe I couldn't fight Galactor without it. Maybe if we ever beat Galactor I'll stop. Maybe I've felt like that so long that I won't be able to stop. I don't want Ken to feel like that. It's ugly to watch how the hurt has affected him. Nobody needs a mirror like that. I don't know how he can stop. But he has to. Otherwise, we're all lost.

Missing the smilies of the challenge, but otherwise a nice one Meridian!

*donates smilie*

D'oh! I completely missed that part. Even on rereading it there, I missed the bit about it needing a smilie on every line. Um, ? ? ? Ooh, this one Allow me to distract you with this one

Was a great story even though the smilies were MIA!!!