AN: In this story, I will use Japanese for "Dad" and "Daddy". When Kirara calls Kururu "Otou-san" it is Dad, and "Tou-chan" is Daddy. She just calls Aki "Mama" because she is that on the show too. Kururu calls Kirara "Kira-chi" when she's little, which is a pet name cuter even than "chan." (He calls his curry that in the anime too.)
I'm not a Japanese wannabe or anything, I just like to use the authentic names and honorifics when I can.
Keronians have deep, long memories. We can remember back to our first days in the tank. The first sound I remember is the tapping of keys on a keyboard. There was also a soft beeping. From day one, I was in my otou-san's laboratory. He was fascinated with me. I was like a new hobby to him, or an experiment. The first face I can recall was his, peering in at me. And there was his voice. Deep and calculating. Back then, it just sounded like noise, and I flopped around in the water, trying to swim. Sometimes I was even startled by that big yellow face.
Later on, I remember that face close to mine, studying me. I was out of the tank by then, and I held out my hand, grabbing for his face. I gripped some of the skin, and he pulled back with a high-pitched noise. I liked that noise. It made a "ku" sound, and I tried it out myself. I made a "ki" sound instead, which was followed by more of his enthusiastic "ku's". I didn't even know my name was Kirara back then.
There was also another face. Dark and warm. My mama. She wasn't always there like my otou-san was, but I would find out later that she wasn't a Keronian. She had other things to occupy herself with. But this yellow one, my otou-san, was always around. Even if he wasn't always by my side, he was where I could find him.
But Mama was the one who held me the most. She laughed a lot and kissed me. She was the one who took me to bed at night when Otou-san was working in the lab. She woke me out of my infantile nightmares. She was nourishment, while Otou-san was knowledge. I needed both of them to grow.
Not that my otou-san was incapable of nourishing. He just did it differently than Mama. I remember falling asleep in her arms, then waking up in his. In the dark, sleepy hours of the night, he would hold me. He made sounds. Quiet little sounds. Almost like singing. It never woke Mama. These sounds were just for me. It was like a spell. He wove it, and I listened. There seemed to be a meaning to this. It had a power in it. Similar to resonance, I would later find out. His bright teeth shone in the darkness and they shaped the words and noises that I came to understand. In the morning, it was just Mama again. The sun seeped through the curtains, and like puzzle pieces coming together, I knew. I understood things that had no meaning before.
Later on I learned that this was how he taught me. While the other tadpoles went off to school, I remained home. Mama asked me if I wanted to take a portal every day to Keron and learn with the rest of my race, but I shook my head. No one would understand. I was half Keronian, half Pekoponian. But that was just the beginning. No, I was learning in a different way. There were the words and the sounds, which otou-san called "channeling". And then there were the waves.
By the time I was old enough to crawl, I had learned quite a bit from the channeling, and it was time for the waves. I still don't know to this day if Mama knew my otou-san's teaching methods. It's probably better that way. Even though he was gentle and very patient, I would still go to bed early sometimes with my brain ready to explode. But he even had a solution for that. There is one night that I remember very clearly. I lay in my tiny bed, and even the soft beam of the night light felt like it was cutting through my eyes. I squeezed them shut, and tears leaked through. It hurt so bad that I made a keening sound, and that only made it worse. Then, my door opened. A warm, smooth hand was on my head. Even his touch made it feel better somehow. I blinked, looking at his face. The blue, electric light of my room danced on his lenses. His brow was furrowed. In his hand shone a small white tablet.
"Take this, Kira-chi." He said, softly. I was still so little, and I kept crying. He used the edge of the blanket to wipe my face, then nudged the tablet toward my teeth. While I chewed, I listened to him.
"I'll go easier on you tomorrow. I keep forgetting how young you still are. I thought you were ready. Ku, ku..." My headache was rapidly disappearing, and he leaned over me and very lightly, touched my forehead with his. As always, there was a sort of energy there, a life force. We spoke without words this way. For a moment, I almost felt bad that I'd gotten a headache. Like it was holding me back.
"I use them too," he said, almost reading my mind. He held another tablet. "Work pretty good, don't they. Ku, ku! All genius's get headaches, Kira-chi. Nothing to feel bad about." He turned for the door, and smiled over his shoulder.
"Go to sleep, now. There's more to learn tomorrow, and you better be ready. Ku, ku!" I answered back with my "ki, ki!" and when he closed the door I thought I heard a small crunching sound.
Eventually though, we found out that I wouldn't be the same as otou-san, hacking-wise anyway. My talents took a different direction. Instead of computer science, I was drawn towards genetics and biology. However, my otou-san was a wealth of data. This wasn't a particularly special area for him, but he had still made lengthy studies. He used a combination of channeling, waves, the internet and simple text books to teach me. Soon, he released me, to figure it out on my own. He had provided the tiny flower bud of information. It was up to me to help it grow.
Another thing I took interest in was music. It was as natural to me as breathing. I had grown up with "the waves" and it influenced my love for sounds and rhythm. Otou-san was pleased with this. He was a big music fan himself, enough to be in the DJ business. I learned how to be a disc jockey. This time he didn't use mental teaching as much as visuals. I watched and I learned. I learned about equalizers, bass and treble. How to speed things up, how to slow them down. How to manipulate sound waves and make them do what I wanted. I learned about amplification and also how to fade out. He taught me that sound was very powerful. You could change someone's mood, stir their emotions with the right balance of sounds. Every lever, switch and button was mine to command.
I didn't use music to hack like he did, but I learned to mix it with biology. Different cells grew and multiplied with certain kinds of sounds and music. I learned (on my own) how to fuse plants and animals together, and they consumed energy through a combo of food and light, but also with sound waves. I commanded them with different musical notes, set at various pitches. By the time I was one Pekoponian year old, I had learned all of this.
I had grown fast. I was only one year old, but that counted as six in Keronian years. According to otou-san, Keronian development wasn't so much in years as it was in stages. I had reached stage two. The "learning and comprehension" stage. This lasted a Keronian until they were a teenager, then they reached stage three. The "rebellious" stage. Part of me was almost looking forward to that.
One day, Otou-san summoned me to his lab. I thought it was kind of weird, since he usually only called me down there when he wanted a demonstration. About once a month, I went down to show him my progress with things. What I'd learned and what I was creating with it. By now, I was an intermediate hacker, a DJ and musician (I played instruments and even wrote some songs) a biologist and even a bit of a mechanic. I knew how to build and take apart little things, like remotes and such.
But I had already demonstrated a couple of weeks ago, so I wondered what else he wanted. Sure, I hung out with him in the lab quite a bit, and sometimes we even created things together. He only called me down there (via transmission) when it was important.
I stood by his chair while he finished up some programming. After he was done, he spun slowly around to face me. He had never made me nervous, but for some reason, I was now. I shuffled my feet and cleared my throat. He looked amused, and muttered something to himself. At the press of a button, a chair rose up from beneath me. I gave a small "ki" of surprise. Then I sat in silence, knowing his eyes were on me. He seemed to be trying to figure something out. Finally I couldn't stand it anymore.
"Tou-chan?" I blurted out. "Is...something wrong?"
"Ku, ku...No. I was just wondering something."
"Well, could you wonder it out loud? You're killin' me here." Instead of a reprimand, he laughed.
"Jumpy today, aren't we?"
"Ki..." I replied.
"Well. Now that you're a certain age, there are a few things I wanna know." I was silent for a couple of minutes.
"Okay...?" I blinked. He laughed again.
"No need to get nervous, Kira-chi." I nodded, the "carrots" on my glasses meeting his spirals.
"I just wonder what your goals are."
"Goals? I'm only..."
"Only the right age to have goals. Look at all you've already accomplished." He said this with a certain amount of pride that made me blush.
"You're useful now, and soon you can make your own money."
"You mean like...a job?"
"Sort of. I was thinking of something more organized."
"The military?"
"Ku, ku...Maybe. But you've never said anything about wanting to join." Now I was nervous again. The truth was, I didn't want to. Otou-san worked his butt off for a organization that took him for granted. They didn't even like him. And he didn't make his own money. Sure, the military paid him, but it didn't seem to be the same thing. They had shamelessly demoted him, and he wasn't even at his "full strength". It didn't seem to be the right move for me.
"What, should I do? DJ for dancing soldiers?" His eyebrow cocked up at this, annoyed.
"I was thinking more along the lines of science, Kirara. They could use your 'creatures'. You could make bio weapons."
"But...I never even grew up on Keron! Why should I care about their military?" Otou-san shifted in his seat, and I could tell he was getting impatient with me.
"You are still a Keronian." There was a long silence and he stared at me for awhile. His brow was still arched. I had to say something. He was driving me nuts with that passive stare.
"Why did you join the military, Otou-san?" He was silent for a moment, then he looked away from me, his eyes on something far away.
"For the wrong reasons..." He said, finally. His voice was soft.
"Really?" I was curious now. My otou never said he was wrong about anything before.
"I thought it would be the easiest way to make it to the top. I wanted to command others, flaunt my power. And it worked. For awhile. But...in the military, there is always someone above you. It is a giant totem pole. Oh, I made it far, but not far enough. They brought me down a few pegs. More than a few, actually. And I realized that being on top wasn't worth it."
"Really?" I said again. It wasn't like him to be so humbled.
"Well, of course! It's way too much work! KU, ku, ku!" He flung his head back and laughed, and I rolled my eyes under my glasses.
"Tou-chan...Ki, ki..." After awhile he stopped laughing and looked at me again.
"The point is, you've gotta figure out what you want to do with your abilities. Find your niche. Be useful. If you can't be useful, your brain doesn't get exercised. And it'll all be for nothing. So. Do you want to join the military?" I sat there, afraid to answer.
"I'm guessing that's a 'no'." I squirmed.
"I...I'm sorry...?" I ventured.
"KU! Don't be. I don't care. Just as long as you find something worthwhile to use your energy on." I nodded gratefully.
"I will, Tou-chan. Ki, ki..."
"Good. Maybe you can work for the Space CIA or something."
"I wonder...why do I have to work for anybody at all?"
"To make money, of course. Ku, ku!"
But I didn't want someone else setting my goals for me, or giving me orders. I wanted to be independent. And I would find a way.
A few months later, I started to develop a curiosity about intimate things. I wasn't sure what it all meant yet, but I discovered it on my way out of the bathroom one night. My parents had only been laughing in their room before, and now there were other noises. There was kissing, which I already knew about from TV. But I didn't know about the sighs and moaning. It almost sounded like they were in pain. And they said each other's names quite a bit. At this point, I opened the door a crack and peered through. I thought for sure that they would notice me, but they weren't paying attention to the door at all. There was a soft glow in the room, from a candle. They kept making the noises, only now they were louder. And they were moving. Mama was sitting on top of Otou-san, which was odd. But he really seemed to like it. She moved slowly, with a rhythm that reminded me of her in the kitchen for some reason. Chopping vegetables or kneading bread dough. It had the same relentless tempo to it. It also reminded me of music. Could they be dancing somehow? I was intrigued, and I watched until they settled down and started to fall asleep. I wasn't disturbed by any of this, like most tadpoles would be. It actually felt like I had discovered something new about my parents. I had never really thought about their love for each other before this. They weren't an intimate couple, at least not where people could see them. Sure, Mama would kiss Otou-san on the cheek and he'd blush and turn away, but it was nothing like this. They had been wrapped up in each other's bodies. So close. I didn't know anyone could get that close. I never knew Otou-san would want someone else's skin rubbed all over him like that. He didn't like to be touched. I realized that he really must love my mama. Or at least, he really loved it when she sat on him, anyway.