CHAPTER 2: The Daitokuji Zaibatsu
My twins, Aysha now thought dreamily. Two for the price of one. My poor Hikaru was so exhausted after their birth! As if he'd delivered them himself!
She now shook her head, baffled as always by the mysteries of the masculine mind.
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As children, Azia and Aria's sole goal in life was to make nuisances of themselves. They routinely disassembled every mechanical and electrical device the Mansion held (including the security system, which brought her former starship comrade and present-day chief of corporate security Dee to tears) just to see how it worked. Later, their interest in physiography and geology outweighed their compulsion to dismember communications devices, electric blanket controls, and grandfather clocks.
After graduating from the Graviton City High School for Girls, the twins had lived with members of the Ausean Tribe, who lived on the Grape Cluster Islands in the Homeworld's Southern Ocean. The twins wanted to pursue the ongoing scientific research of Mt. Zitu, the Auseans' holy mountain.
Usually reserved for a Tadispuk or Rite of Passage for Cygnan girls, a hike to its summit was quite dangerous and not everybody made it back home. Due to its elevation, the top of the mountain was covered a year-round cap of snow despite its proximity to the Cygnan equator. The mountain had called to the two half-Terran girls because three weather systems swirled around its summit, often creating spectacularly bad weather conditions.
Aysha now recalled sending both girls to a place in the United States called "Mt. Washington New Hampshire", or something like that. She learned only later, while enjoying her girls' excited prattling about their scientific adventures, that she had sent them to the site of this world's worst weather. Winds of over 230 miles per hour had been recorded on its summit over a hundred years ago, and more Terrans had died climbing Mt. Washington than Mt. Everest. Azi and Ari's serious study of Mt. Zitu had been a foregone conclusion.
She had so enjoyed watching her mischievous girls grow into young women fascinated by the interaction among wind, water, and stone! A day hadn't passed since their leave-taking that their mother didn't miss them.
Sixteen-year-old Athenia had been her last daughter. She had so impressed the adults around her with her obvious intelligence that after the expected battery of tests had been run, she had been officially declared a genius.
It became obvious to her parents that the curriculum offered by the Graviton City High School for Girls failed to offer their daughter sufficient challenge (Athenia frequently ended up tutoring her tutors), so they encouraged her to apply for early admission to Harvard University, once again in the United States. That esteemed fountain of knowledge accepted her into their freshman class without hesitation.
Athenia had found the academics boring, but enjoyed the Harvard Square anime shops and the many stores that sold goddess jewelry. The managers of these establishments were always delighted to wait on this handsome half-alien, half-Japanese girl. She had unlimited spending money, after all!
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This left the former Captain Napolipolita to contemplate the miracle she and Hikaru called their only son.
Kir Azenath of the House of Napolipolita (known as Hikiri in Graviton City) was his daddy's eye-apple. He was a fourteen-year-old student at the city's private high school for boys and was doing well enough.
At age ten, he had thrilled his mother by telling her of his desire to learn the warrior arts; however - because he was a male - she hadn't known what to do with him. She certainly couldn't send him to the Homeworld or to Themyscira Island.
Ultimately, it had been the boy's half-sister Alana who saved the day, securing training opportunities for him in the Thessalonikan Space Command under the tutelage of her father, Commander Atola. During his parents' occasional visits to see him, his mother always took pains to ensure that she and Atola never occupied the same room at the same time. Kir had thought this strange, but thought it best not to inquire.
Not that I would go for that kakamatandis (an untranslatable Cygnan swear) his mother now mused. I just didn't want to see Hikaru's blood pressure go up any higher than it already was!
In addition to his vast family, Kir grew up with other loving souls around him, educating and protecting him. Two prominent and esteemed Cygnans, Queen Zazen'lda and Kollok-Matram (Chief Council-Mother) Sempra Vigilantia, had learned about the boy's tremendous future as a Cygnan hero from Earth's Delphic Oracle. In particular, Sempra Vigilantia – whom his mother called The Revenger - had spent her life safeguarding Kir and his entire family as her moral obligation to the All-Highest One.
Vigilantia also saw to it that Kir's training was both complete and thorough. To hone Hikiri's psychic and spiritual gifts, both Queen and Revenger had delivered him over to trusted members of the Nasamonian Tribe during the summer of his twelfth year. It was there he learned to listen to the spirit within, and to travel the cosmos with his mind rather than his body. His father had actually cried when Hikiri had left for the Homeworld to acquire these skills. This had deeply touched his mother's heart, and that knowledge had made the boy happy.
He'd heard that when his parents had first met, they had been like slowly circling animals preparing to fight. Both had coveted what the other possessed, and mutual trust was light-years away. At age 8, Kir had been shocked to learn at school that his father had actually shot down his mother's ship. Not that this had been any secret in Graviton City! After all, the litigation that followed the incident had dragged on for nearly ten years. However, this was not a topic of discussion in the Mansion, and Hikiri knew better than to ask. It was just as well, because there were portions of that story that his parents preferred to keep under wraps.
He'd learned only in his early teen years that his mother had given up completely after her ship was irretrievably damaged. Played out and heartbroken over the loss of her family, she had attempted slow suicide with alcohol. It was true that her old friend Dee had tried to protect her, but no power on Earth can keep a drink away from an alcoholic who wants to drink.
It had both shocked and hurt Hikiri that many Gravitonians had actually found his mother's illness funny. It certainly didn't sound like fun to him.
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Bit by bit, Hikiri had pieced together the intriguing story of his parents' courtship. His oldest sister Biko had gone to his daddy with the information that Napolipolita had been not only a pilot but also a navigator and engineer. She hadn't done so out of the goodness of her heart, of course. Biko hadn't cared a fig about Napolipolita or any of those other space amazons, for that matter. She did it only because C-ko had asked her to.
Hikiri had also learned that his daddy had gone to his future mama with a business proposition. Upon her acceptance, he had tossed her into a treatment center, promising her that if she could build his company a light-speed vehicle he would ensure that she would see her girls again. Happily, her sobriety had stuck, although it was tremendously hard work for her.
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Since the death of Biko's mother nearly two decades before, Hikaru Daitokuji had considered women mere distractions from his primary purpose in life - namely, making as much money as possible in as short a period of time as possible, and damn the ethics.
At first, Daitokuji had watched her transformation with only the bottom line in mind. To everyone's astonishment (including his own), he began to feel something more for the fallen alien warrior he'd hurt so badly. He had found himself inventing excuses to visit his Department of Strategic Planning, just to see her.
The cessation of drinking had brought back Aysha's old "can-do" attitude. It had delighted Daitokuji to visit his top-secret construction hangar one day only to find the Cygnan crawling out from under her pet project with tools in hand, her expensive beige suit dusted with carbon and her wealth of long shaggy hair haphazardly tied back with a length of black coaxial cable. What she had said to him that day was destined to become one of his fondest memories.
"I have a joke for you, Daitokuji," she had said.
She had never told him a joke before. And why should she? There was little in her life back then to make her laugh.
Intrigued yet hesitant, he asked her what it was.
"Do you know how porcupines make love?"
Surprised, Hikaru shook his head.
"Very carefully," she had replied, shoving him out of her way on her way to the exit.
The punch she'd simultaneously delivered to his left shoulder had nearly knocked him over. It had taken a full month for the bruise to disappear.
"Damn," he had whispered in an awestruck voice as he had brushed the carbon powder from his Italian-cut suit.
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Kir's parents had been very much like porcupines, once upon a time. To the astonishment, ridicule, and general disapproval of the world, they had fallen in love, married, and had all those children who'd now grown up and left home. Slowly, their respective rough edges had softened, and now the alien soldier and the Terran industrialist looked forward to growing old together.
"How do you feel about moving to Tahiti?" Daitokuji had asked her, several months before.
"How do you feel like moving to the Outer Rim?" she had fired back.
"Ha-ha! She's so funny!"
Napolipolita had grown thoughtful. "Old man, don't you dare die before me."
"Since you're twelve years younger than I am, that may not be a promise I can keep."
"While I'm on the subject, giving up sex could be hazardous to your health!"
"Why? Will I have a heart attack from lack of exercise?"
"No. I will kill you."
"Ha-ha! She's so funny!"
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In spite of their jokes around the subject, Aysha worried about her husband's health. She had embarked on a quest to make sure her elderly husband took his vitamins and medicine, worked out, ran laps, and visited his physician, chiropractor, and dietician.
She had even suggested he make an appointment to see her old nemesis Dr. Stellamaris at the Junko Daitokuji Memorial Hospital, but it was there that he drew the line.
"Do I look Cygnan to you?" he had asked her.