The Tomoe family had gathered in their dining room, slowly eating the food that was before them.
However, their thoughts were not on the delicious meal, but more on what had happened two hours beforehand.
Flashback...
“I’m here!” called out the cheerful little girl, holding a picnic basket, as she entered her parents lab.
“Hotaru?” blinked Souichi, as he turned from his station. “What are you doing here?”
Hotaru continued to smile, as she started out using what a letter had suggested, having been on her dresser when she woke. “You and Mama promised to take me for a picnic today to make up for leaving me all alone for the last four days.”
“F-f-f-four days!” stammered Keiko.
Hotaru nodded. “Well ... that and we need to go shopping; we’ve only got ramen left in the house.”
The two parents gulped loudly as the fell back into their seats, each one not truly wanting to believe that they had been ignoring and had abandoned their daughter for so long.
“But don’t worry,” she said, adding the final nail in their coffins of guilt, “I had just enough left in my piggy bank to get us some food for the picnic.”
The two continued to remain pale as their recent inattentiveness hit them full force.
“Keiko?”
“Yes, Souichi?”
“We’re finishing this thing before lunch, and we aren’t coming back for a few weeks.”
“I agree,” said the woman. “Dear,” she started, turning to Hotaru, “give us a few minutes to run the experiment, and then you’ll have us for a long time.” I can’t believe I ignored my own daughter like that! What sort of parent am I?
Nodding, Hotaru took the center seat between her parents as she watched them conduct their experiment.
It was her position that had saved all of them from death.
Present...
Souichi still shivered at what he had witnessed. Their experiment exploding, sending shrapnel and poisonous gas about the lab. They would have been dead had not some ... force field that was centered around his daughter, sprung to life.
Then some weird ... thing ... seemed to appear from what he could only describe as a tear in reality, demanding freedom. Only it didn’t stay long, as his daughter seemed to transform into some weird ... fuku, with a bladed staff weapon in her hands. She used an attack called ‘Silence Glaive Surprise’, which seemed to rip into the creature and seal the rip.
“Hotaru?”
The young girl turned to her mother. “Yes?”
“How long have you been a magic girl?” she asked, only able to grasp that that had to be what her daughter had become.
“Since last night,” said Hotaru. “A boy came to me and said I had the power in me to make the world a safer place, as well as be a hero to my parents.”
Souichi paled. “He knew that was going to happen and sent you,” he growled out.
“He had to, Papa,” she said. “He knew he wouldn’t be able to stop it like I could, and he wouldn’t be able to get close enough to stop you from bringing it here.”
“He could have warned us!”
“And we would have ignored him,” sadly said Keiko. “We would have seen him as some sort of crackpot, and done the experiment, probably had Hotaru outside the room, and been killed by either that thing or the explosion.”
“Correct.”
The three quickly turned to a shadowy figure sitting in an open window.
“Sempai!” happily called out Hotaru, standing up. “I did it, I became a hero!” she shouted with glee.
Ranma nodded. “If Hotaru’s power was not awakened, then history would have shown that Keiko Tomoe would have died this day. Her daughter would have joined her, had not a seriously injured and grieving father made a deal for himself to be possessed by the evil you saw, so that his daughter would live.
“What he didn’t and couldn’t know was that she was returned to life by the sealing of that thing’s second-in-command, within her, so that it would be reborn as an instrument to the death of all life on this world.”
“Why didn’t you kill it?” yelled Souichi.
“Why did you ignore your child?” Ranma shot back, taking much of the fury out of the man’s anger. “She suffered here alone, wondering if she was truly loved. And when I give her a purpose and a chance for happiness, only then do you seem to care about her safety. How hypocritical of you.”
The man merely slumped into his chair, pale and saddened by what he heard.
“Sempai?” asked Hotaru, wondering why they all weren’t getting along.
“Hotaru has a destiny that is beyond debate,” he continued softly, looking at her with ... sadness. “She is a reborn warrior with a pure soul, a chance at happiness, and a future that will require her to fight for those around her, even if they do deserve a slow and painful death. You can bitch and moan that such a destiny is hers, or you can be a true parent, offer your support, and help her achieve her destiny. That choice is yours.”
He smiled towards Hotaru once more. “Enjoy your returned family, Hotaru. Be at the Hikawa Shrine at four o’clock this afternoon so that you can meet Sailor Moon, Mars, and Mercury. Oh, and give them this,” he finished, tossing her a small book. “I wrote down what I could about the enemy that you deterred from making a beach-head on Earth. But they will return, and I figured you would like to be ready.”
“Why are you helping her, helping us?” asked Keiko.
“Returning a favor, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, felt like it; take your pick, all are true in their own way.”
“So ... so we aren’t friends, Sempai?” asked a saddened Hotaru.
Ranma struggled to keep his face neutral, even if his insides felt incredible pain at seeing Hotaru suffering like that. “Mine is a life where I cannot afford friends, Hotaru. For now, I walk a lonely path, until I am certain where it will lead me. It is nothing against you, so do not take it as such, nor is it because you are Sailor Saturn. I am merely at this point what outside forces have made. I have responsibilities to carry out and a people to care for. Such things as friends are weaknesses I cannot afford at this point.”
With that, Ranma faded away before he would break down at seeing Hotaru’s sad face.
“He does care, dear,” said Keiko, comforting her daughter quickly, as the little girl broke into tears. “If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have helped you at the level he did. I think he believes he is either protecting us, or himself, by acting the way he does.”
Hotaru nodded, even as the tears continued.
Ranma stood watching the scene before the Gates of Time.
“I am still so weak,” he muttered, waving his hands as the Gates flashed scenes from the previous realities.
The cocky martial artist taunting ‘P-chan’ ... the scarred kid studying college level books, the same scarred kid studying magic texts, separating fact from fiction ... it continued on, looking over the myriad of realities that Pluto had created when she tried to deal with him.
“Why was she concerned about me being with them or near them?” he wondered, as he searched some more. It was relatively easy to come across scenes where he interacted with the Senshi. “I find it odd that she would be so concerned I would betray them. Could she have really been that driven to form her supposed perfect world that she would do all of this?”
Ranma shook his head. He had other issues for now to worry about.
Operation: Get-em-boys was under way. A stray comment would send the drifter rocker to the shrine months ahead of time, perhaps even enough to deal with Rei. He already had several options for getting Ami’s boyfriend interested in her ahead of schedule. Minako was still a month away from coming over with her parents, so she wasn’t an issue. Makoto had her old Sempai—if she ever remembered what he looked like. Though it should be easy enough to find one guy who could appreciate her. He did have quite a few who wouldn’t be intimidated with her, if he decided to involve a few of his former associates from the Nerima timeline. The two Outers were in love with each other, and he would need to deal with them one way or another before Pluto escaped her little cage.
Then he came to Usagi and Mamoru. He had to admit that if he revealed who Prince Endymion and Princess Serenity were early on, it would get them together. But it also could put a crimp into his own plans. After all, it would allow them a very good chance to succeed with reclaiming what they had lost.
But the differences between past and present lives was taking a toll. From what he had seen, Mamoru could only show himself as a cocky and arrogant cheerleader in this life, and only when under his Kamen form.
He had to admit he was quite tempted to try and woo Usagi for his own. It would take very little to get himself in her school and become her boyfriend. All it required was an ear to listen to her ... and a very deep purse to buy her those treats she loved.
Of course, he remembered those very same treats from his memories of being the gender cursed martial artist. So he knew how lovely and addictive they were.
But did he really want to play that angle? Sure, it would only be lightly different than how Mamoru was playing things now, but still... And then when Pluto did get out, she would no doubt try and reveal his identity to the former Moon Princess.
Sighing, he teleported back to his throne room to wait for the latest reports. He had much to think about.
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(Posted Sun, 10 Dec 2006 02:47)
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