Fourteen-year-old Haru Yoshioka paused on her way home to read a poster advertising a new sort of toy. Battle dolls for a game called 'Angelic Layer'. Haru wasn't generally one to go in for new fads, but there was just something about the idea that made her stop and wonder. Haru crouched down to read the fine print at the bottom of the poster, the fine print that most people didn't bother with, because the 'important' details were always big and bold and caught your attention.
Haru smiled. "All royalties and profits from the sales of battle dolls and all Angelic Layer affiliated merchandise will go towards funding research into robotic, prosthetic limbs," she read softly to herself, and nodded.
In that case, she was more than willing to do a little impulse-spending. With a smile on her face, Haru headed into the shop. After all, she'd decided to take the long way home today to see if there was anything she'd want to buy with the pocket money she'd been saving, and she honestly couldn't think of anything better to spend her money on.
Her mother might say she should have been looking at dresses rather than dolls, but Haru was still a little bit of a tomboy, even if she was starting to grow out of it. She wasn't likely to spend money on dresses any time soon. Skirts maybe – she had to wear a skirt as part of her uniform, and they were comfortable. But not dresses.
"Can I help you, young miss?" asked one of the floor staff with a friendly smile.
"Ah, I'm interested in playing Angelic Layer," Haru answered. "But I'm not sure what I'll need for that, or where it is."
The woman smiled. "I know right where everything you'll need for that is," she promised, and offered to guide Haru through the shop to the correct section among all the shelves, as well as help her carry everything she'd need to buy back to the counter.
"Arigato," Haru said softly.
"Here we go," the shop attendant said once they'd reached the right section.
Haru picked out an Angel Egg from among all the hundreds of others that were on the shelves, and let the shop assistant pick a programming platform for her. After that, Haru looked at what else she would need for making her angel look the way she wanted it to. She only had a vague idea at the moment, but as she looked at the different things available, the idea slowly became clearer and clearer.
~oOo~
"Haru? What took you so long coming home today?" Naoko asked her daughter when she finally came through the front door – then she stuck her head through the door of the living room and out into the hallway and was able to actually see her daughter.
Haru smiled back at her mother as she carefully toed her shoes off, her arms laden down with bags.
"You've been shopping I see," Naoko said fondly. "That's unusual for you Haru."
"Tadaima," Haru answered with a blush.
"Okaeri nasai," Naoko replied with a smile and a tender look at her daughter. "Now come in and show me what you bought."
Haru laughed and obliged. "I wanted to spend my pocket money," she explained to her mother shyly, "so I took the long way home from school. I saw a poster for this new thing where the profits go towards medical research."
Naoko chuckled sadly. "That's my baby girl," she said, pride in her voice as she wrapped Haru up in a hug. Just two years ago they'd lost Haru's father to a Suzumebachi bite. He was actually violently allergic to their poison, and they were generally regarded as fairly deadly to people who weren't allergic. They hadn't gotten him to a hospital in time for the anti-venom to do any good, and that was that.
"According to the instructions, I've got to open the egg in the bath," Haru said when she was finally released from her mother's embrace – not that she'd minded being hugged, but she didn't like it when her mother was sad.
"Well then you go run yourself a bath, and I'll look through the rest, okay?" Naoko suggested.
Haru nodded and rifled through the bags until she found the egg that had the angel doll inside.
"That's a very pretty thing," Naoko said softly. "I think we should keep it, rather than throw it away like normal packaging."
Haru nodded in agreement. The plastic egg with the wings on the sides was pretty, and she liked the idea of doing something with it rather than just throwing it away.
"Off with you, and don't use all of the bubble mixture just because I'm not supervising you," Naoko instructed fondly as she shooed her daughter off with one hand and reached for another of the shopping bags with her other.
Haru giggled and dashed off.
"'Angelic Layer', huh?" Naoko mused aloud as she picked up one of the boxes. She set it down again so that she could clear the table, and then started laying out her daughter's purchases. There was a good amount of fabric in there, a number of tiny buttons, there was even a tiny pair of white gloves and some small brown shoes. There was also a large box that had what looked like a computer in it.
Naoko opened the box, found the instruction book, and set it all up for Haru. She wanted to watch at the very least. Naoko chuckled to herself. Maybe she'd even get a doll for herself. Maybe.
Haru returned, clean and dressed in her pyjamas, with the blue doll in one hand and the now empty egg tucked into the elbow of her other arm.
"Do you have an idea of what you want your doll to look like?" Naoko asked her daughter.
Haru nodded, a beaming smile on her face. "I'm going to need help though," she said hopefully. "I want him to have a head like a cat, and a tail too!"
"A cat?" Naoko repeated.
Haru nodded.
"Like the kitten that told you life was tough?" Naoko asked softly.
Haru's smile slipped a little, but she nodded again. Her mother was quite fond of that story, especially since her father had left them. "But I want him to be a ginger, with bright green eyes," she said firmly. "The kitten was white with blue eyes."
Naoko hummed in thought and picked up the yellow-orange, slightly fluffy fabric that was among her daughter's purchases. "Alright, I'll make the ears and tail for him. From the instruction book, you decide what his face looks like when you have him in this," Naoko said and lightly tapped the golden column of light where the angel would go while Haru did the programming.
"I can make the ears and tail," Haru insisted. "But I want him to have a suit, and I'm not good enough at sewing yet to make a proper suit."
Naoko chuckled. "So he's going to be a gentleman, is he?" she asked.
Haru nodded firmly. "Just like Papa was."
"Alright," Naoko allowed. "Before we make clothes for him though, he's got to be programmed. It's a very clever little thing, you even decide how tall your angel will be with this," she said, and tapped the computer.
Haru nodded her understanding and quickly set to making the ears and tail of her angel, and then attached them before slipping the doll into place.
Naoko rested her chin on her daughter's shoulder so that she had a good view of the process.
"I don't want him to be small," Haru decided as she considered the options on the screen. "But being too big is bad as well. I want him to be tall, but not heavy, and I want him to be fast as well as strong. There's no point in being strong if you're too slow to hit your opponent."
"What about this?" Naoko asked, and reached around her daughter to point to a statistic that Haru hadn't noticed. "If he's a cat, then he should be flexible as well, right?"
Haru nodded, an upped the flexibility rating. "He should be graceful too, but that's something that will come with practice."
Naoko smiled at her daughter as she continued to make decisions about her new doll until finally there was only one thing left to do.
"A name," Haru said softly, and looked from the screen over to her doll. He was a lovely ginger colour all over, and his eyes shone bright green over the muzzle she'd been able to convince the programme to give him. She'd attach whiskers herself soon enough. "I think he should be some sort of lord."
"A count?" Naoko suggested with a sly smirk.
Haru shook her head. "That's vampires," she said, discarding the suggestion, though there was a smile on her face as well.
"A duke?" Naoko offered.
Haru looked at her doll thoughtfully for a while, then shook her head. "He could be," she agreed, "but it doesn't feel like him."
Naoko chuckled at that. "Earl? Lord? Prince? Baron?"
"Yes!" Haru declared. "That last one! Baron! That's his name," she decided, and typed it in. "He's a nobleman, but not so high up that he doesn't have time for the troubles of his people."
With that done, the Baron opened his incredibly green eyes, smiled slightly, and then fell forward out of the creation platform, completely complete.
Haru caught him, and hugged him tight.
Naoko kissed Haru's hair, and silently prayed to the kami that her daughter might some day meet a real guy who was as good as Haru had decided her new doll was. Not too soon of course, Haru was still her baby, but some day.
"Alright you, bed time. You leave the Baron out here with me, and I'll make him a suit fit for his station from the other fabric," Naoko offered.
"Arigato, Mama," Haru said with a grateful smile. "He -" she cut herself off to yawn. "He should have a top hat," she said. "And a tail-coat."
Naoko chuckled, promised to make the requested items, and shooed her daughter off to bed.
~oOo~
When Haru came down for breakfast the next morning, the Baron was there, curled up on a cushion in the bottom half of his egg, dressed in a set of silky blue pyjamas, with his very fine suit hanging over a clothes horse made from glued-together toothpicks. The tiny pair of brown shoes were at the base and a top hat hung from the top, with trousers, a shirt, a vest, the tail-coat, a bow-tie, and the gloves Haru had bought all carefully laid out and kept safe from having breakfast spilled on them by the top part of the egg, which was set over the whole lot next to the Baron.
"Good morning Haru," Naoko greeted with a slightly sleepy yawn.
"Good morning Mama," Haru answered, and hugged her mother tightly. "And thank you."
"You're welcome. I had some extra fabric left over from one of my quilting projects, so I thought I might as well make some other things for the Baron as well."
"Thank you Mama," Haru said again. "What's for breakfast?"
"Pancakes," Naoko answered with a smile.
"Oh! Goody goody goody! Oh I can hardly wait!" Haru exclaimed happily.
Naoko laughed. "All things in their proper time, love. Remember, timing is everything," she said.
"Everything?" Haru asked, confused as she sat down at the table.
"That's right," Naoko agreed. "Take cooking for example. If you take it off the heat too soon, then it isn't cooked enough. Too late and it burns. Another example of where timing is important is when you're talking to people. If you speak too soon, you can look foolish. If you wait too long, then you might have missed your opportunity to say anything at all."
"And in music everybody has to be in time together," Haru said with a solemn nod, like she was getting the idea.
Naoko nodded. "That's right," she said with a proud smile of her own. "And if you're dancing, then you have to be in time as well. You should move in time with the music, and in time with your dance partner, so you don't step on his toes. Timing will be important when you start fighting with the Baron too," Naoko added as she brought the finished pancakes over to the table.
"Huh?" Haru asked, confused.
"Well, if you don't time your strike right, then you'll miss," Naoko explained simply. "And if you miss, then your opponent might have an opening to strike you."
"Oh," Haru said softly, and looked over at where Baron was still curled up in his pyjamas on the corner of the table. "We'll practice timing every day," she promised him.
Naoko smiled at her daughter. "I suppose that means you'll be home a bit later from now on?"
Haru nodded. "I'll rent a layer to practice every day!" she insisted.
Naoko chuckled. "You don't need to do that to practice your timing. You can do it by just putting on some music and manipulating the Baron in time with it. It won't be quite the same, but it will save you the money that renting a layer every day would cost," she suggested.
Haru beamed. "Thank you Mama!"
"Now eat your breakfast. You're dressed, but the Baron still has to get dressed before he can go to school with you, and you'll also need to brush your teeth before you go," Naoko instructed.
"Hai!"
~oOo~
Once her daughter had left for school, Naoko went out to do a little shopping. They were out of eggs and running low on flour, but that wasn't all that she bought. Naoko wandered over to the Angelic Layer section and looked through the fabric that was available for making clothes for the dolls. When she'd been sewing for the Baron the previous night, she'd noticed that the fabric Haru had bought for his clothes was subtly different to the other fabrics she'd handled when she was sewing.
"A gentleman should have more than just one suit," Naoko said softly to herself, and pulled down sleeve after sleeve of wrapped fabric. She picked out some different shoes as well. It all wasn't too expensive. Angelic Layer was marketed so that the children who would want to play it would be able to afford all the extras fairly easily. It was the egg itself and the programming platform that were the expensive parts. Naoko winced to herself when she saw the prices there, but Haru had already paid for them, so there was no helping that.
Naoko also bought a few DVDs while she was out and about. A couple of ballets, a movie of the stage production Riverdance, a DVD on how to ballroom dance, and a couple that taught different styles of dancing and fighting for fitness. She also bought a copy of the Broadway production of Cats, which would be good for Haru to get ideas of how her new doll might move in a feline manner when she set him on the layer.
Besides, it was a good musical.
And, just maybe, she'd also get Haru interested in dancing herself, and she'd be able to get her into a dress. Naoko chuckled at the thought, knowing it was wishful thinking. But, Haru was a teenager, and she knew when she'd been that age that she'd tried reinventing herself every year – and wishes did come true, now and then.