"Moving on"
Dr. Xadium (drxadium@DEATHTOSPAMgate.net)
April 19th, 2005
Naoko Takeuchi is hereby thanked for her involuntary contribution to this fanfic.
RATED PG-13
Author's note: This is the first in an open-ended series of vignettes that will feature all the Suburban Senshi. The first round will deal with the notion of family in some way.
"I'm so sick of this!" Hotaru exclaimed, balling up her fists for a moment before pointing to the 7-foot tall glass cylinder mounted in the side of her father's basement laboratory. Her delicate, slender index finger trembled with a barely-controlled rage as she pointed at the nude, floating body of yet another Kaolinite clone, slumbering peacefully in the viscous orange-tinted LCL medium that nourished it as it gestated.
"HMM?" her father asked, distracted as he typically was by the multitude of other miscellaneous projects he had going on in the lab, such as his automatic vivisection probes, artificially intelligent coffee stirrer and sentient evil hybrid genetic senshi conglomerate creature.
"Damn you!" Hotaru exclaimed, finally having had enough, bouncing her fists on the small of her father's back angrily in a gesture of impotent rage, before finally grabbing one of the vacant ergonomic workstation chairs near him and hefting it-- with great difficulty given her slight build-- and dashing it against the cloning chamber. As the chair bounced harmlessly off, coming to a rest with a loud report against the grimy concrete floor, Hotaru's features fell and she simply dropped to her knees, defeated and sobbing.
Her father looked at her for a moment, eyes obscured by the ever-present shine of his highly-polished glasses' lenses. His large crimson grin became smaller and smaller until it was merely a concerned line, vanishing against the darkness of his face. Pressing his middle finger against the bridge of his glasses, he pushed them up and knelt beside his daughter, putting his arms on her shoulders.
"Don't you touch me," Hotaru said weakly, but not moving to resist, either. "You disgrace the memory of my mother--- your wife-- every time you try to create one of those... one of those---" she spat out the words with an uncharacteristic venom-- "damned sluts."
Tomoe bit back the urge to slap his daughter. After a moment the uncharacteristic anger subsided, replaced by a leaden sadness. How could she know what she was saying? He had never bothered to tell her, for fear of her reaction. But now, he supposed, he had no other alternative. The long span of years since Hotaru's rebirth had made her strong in spirit and confident in her own beliefs. For that alone he was glad. The brash attitudes of dominating people like Haruka and Jedite had made her stronger, more resolute, not pushed her into her shell, as he had feared they might have done. She had come far enough along to challenge him directly, and for that alone she deserved the truth.
"HOTARU-CHAN," he began slowly, "IT'S TIME I EXPLAINED EVERYTHING TO YOU."
Hotaru turned to look into her father's shadowy face, tears brimming in her large violet eyes.
"WHEN THE ACCIDENT HAPPENED," Tomoe began, "I CUT A DEAL WITH PHARAOH 90 TO SAVE YOU."
"I know, Papa," Hotaru said in a small, quiet voice. She remembered the pain of being sustained by a daimon seed, the horror of her Senshi self being pinned by the malevolence of Mistress 9, being unable to break free, the sheer agony of being a walking cadaver sustained by a nanotechnological endoskeleton, of being a spirit encased in dead flesh unable to flee.
"YOUR MOTHER," Tomoe continued with a rasp, "WAS TOO FAR GONE, EVEN FOR THE UTILIZATION."
The Utilization was the means by which a Daimon Seed Pod infiltrated a host body and insinuated itself into it, creating (under ideal conditions) a human / alien Hybrid. Professor Tomoe / Germatoid and Mistress 9 had been the only two successful "utilizations", all the others had become atavistic Daimons.
Hotaru just watched her father, uncertain of where this was going.
"THERE WAS NOT EVEN ENOUGH LEFT OF HER BODY'S DNA TO GIVE ME ENOUGH DATA FOR A CLONE," Tomoe continued, all mirth gone from his voice. He clutched his daughter's hand and squeezed it, the pain of these memories clearly overwhelming him.
"I understand," Hotaru said, choking back a sob, "but why her?" She nodded to the cloning tube, doing her best not to look the sleeping red-headed bitch in the face.
"YOU, MY SWEET CHILD, ARE THE PRODUCT OF YOUR MOTHER AND MY LOVE," Tomoe continued. "BOTH OUR DNA STRANDS WOVE TOGETHER TO MAKE YOU."
Hotaru nodded dumbly, not seeing where this was going. Her father paused for a leaden moment, working up the nerve to say what he had to. What he must.
"SO I TOOK YOUR DNA AND ERASED THE PARTS OF IT THAT WERE MINE, FILLING IN THE GAPS WITH WHAT LITTLE I HAD LEFT OF YOUR MOTHER'S, IN THE HOPES OF RECREATING HER GENOME," Tomoe finally said, wanting so desperately to rush the words but knowing that his daughter deserved to hear every word clearly.
"My... god...." Hotaru choked, barely able to get out the words. Her head was spinning. She was awash in disbelief and confusion.
"BUT YOU WERE DEAD, SWEETIE. YOUR DNA WAS DEGRADED AS WELL-- PLUS IT WAS TAINTED BY THE UTILIZATION. WHEN I COMBINED THE TWO, I GOT... HER." Tomoe didn't need to point to the tank, the silent yet dominating third party to the intimate family discussion.
"That's why you were trying so hard to insinuate her into my life," Hotaru realized numbly, her mind seemingly disconnected from her body, which had lost all feeling. She could feel the warmth of her father's consoling touch on her shoulders, but it was clay-like, distant and heavy.
"AND I USED ALL THE ORIGINAL DNA OF YOUR MOTHER I HAD," Tomoe concluded, the unmistakable sound of grief clouding his words. "I COULDN'T TRY AGAIN--- THE BEST I COULD DO WAS TO TRY AND REFINE THE CLONE EACH TIME..."
Hotaru suddenly understood why it was that her father had done all the things he did. Reviving Kaolinite. Letting her be near him, having affection for her, even going so far as to use the legendary Dragonballs to give her life again. All these things, not because he wanted a dalliance with a red-headed whore... but because he was desperately, frantically, devotedly seeking out the one woman he had loved more than anything else in the world.
"I KNOW SO MUCH," Tomoe continued, crying openly now, tears streaming from behind his glasses, his crimson mouth twisted in a horrible sad parody of a crying face, "BUT I CAN'T DO THIS ONE THING... I CAN'T TURN BACK HER DEATH..." He slumped forward and embraced Hotaru, wrapping his arms around her in as much a consoling gesture as one seeking support. He cried and cried, sobs wracking his body for minutes.
Hotaru hugged back as best she could, the tears and the sobs overcoming her as well. Foe the next five minutes father and daughter sat on the ground in the darkened lab, hugging and crying, their sobs punctuating the ever-present hum of background machinery and fluorescent lights.
"Papa," Hotaru finally said with a sniffle, "I'm so sorry for the things I've said and done, the accusations I made... I--"
Tomoe put a finger to his daughter's lips and then ruffled her hair. "YOU DIDN'T KNOW." He stood as Hotaru began to stand as well.
"I know one thing, Papa," Hotaru said, her eyes narrowing in firm resolve, her gaze full of hard purpose. "I know that we-- you and I-- cannot live in the past any longer." He put her hands on a lever that read "LIFE SUPPORT TERMINATE."
Tomoe put his hand atop hers. For a moment Hotaru thought he was going to pull her hand off the lever, but instead he pressed down and helped her pull it down. "AGREED."
With a resounding THOCK, the lights in the cloning tube went dead, the LCL swooshed out, of the chamber, and biomechanical life-support monitors became silent. The clone fell forward, its hair mopping the inside wall of the glass tube as the body slid down, inert, lifeless.
"GOODBYE, KEIKO," Tomoe said under his breath, casting one last look at the Kaolinite clone before the built in cremator reduced the form to ashes in a blast of blinding light.
Together, father and daughter walked up the stairs and out of the basement lab into the light of day.