AT LAST! After such a long hiatus, Chapter 4 is done! DONE AND OVER WITH! And don't worry...Chapter 5 is coming soon as well. And it'll be the FINAL chapter, so you know what that means?!...NO MORE WAITING! CHEERS!
Silence filled the room as the Natsumi clone and Giroro stood each other down once again. Natsumi's twisted smile had dissipated into a face of absolute shock, her mouth open wide and the pupils of her eyes shivering with sadness. The rest of the Hinatas just stood quietly, just as surprised as she was. They honestly hadn't expected for Giroro to return, let alone be willing to face his worst fear like he was now doing. This had come as a complete surprise to everyone, even Giroro, as Natsumi's excited scream suddenly ended the cold silence that filled the underground base.
"G-GIRORO!" she shouted as she dropped the ax to the floor. "It's you, my love! You came back for me, didn't you!? I knew you still loved me, I JUST KNEW-!"
"I told you earlier, I'll never love you! You mean nothing to me," Giroro cut in. "I didn't come back for you. I came back for my platoon, and for the Hinatas. I don't care if I have to kill you all over again, but I won't let anyone bring them harm."
Keroro could feel tears of joy begin to form in his eyes at Giroro's words. "Giroro...I knew you still cared!" he screamed to his Corporal, Giroro refusing to reply to his call.
"But...what about everything we've been through? All the times that you saved me from harm? Doesn't any of that mean anything to you? Don't tell me you've already forgotten that it was you who put me out of my misery in the first place! That it was you who was willing to kill me simply out of love! Didn't that one act mean anything to you!?"
"Enough talk! It's time to end this!" Giroro yelled, setting his sack down on his hovercraft and preparing his battle stance. Natsumi, now weld up in tears, slowly reached down to her feet and picked up the blood stained ax once again.
"Fine. Maybe fighting me again after so long...WILL FINALLY REMIND YOU OF JUST HOW MUCH YOU CARE!" she screamed before running full force toward the red Keronian, her ax pulled up and ready to be swung down at Giroro's head.
With a swift jump to the side, Giroro easily avoided her clearly unplanned attack. Using this time to his advantage, Giroro jumped forward and kicked the clone in the side of the head before she got the chance to properly lift up her ax. While Natsumi was busy stumbling to the side after the blow to the head, her weapon flailing uncontrollably through the air, Giroro immediately ran for the base's supply closet, typed in the correct code, and watched as the steal doors quickly slid open. Running inside and grabbing the closest thing he could find the least bit useful, he ran back outside with a twenty yard rope coiled around his left arm as he held one of the rope's ends in his right hand. Running straight for Natsumi, he began running in a circular motion around her stumbling legs and watched as the rope wrapped itself around her ankles, throwing her all the more off balance. Eventually, her entire body came crashing to the hard ground; Giroro continuing to wrap the rope around her struggling body. After finishing the job, Giroro tugged forcefully on the edge of the rope and quickly turned her over and tied a sharp knot behind her back, trapping her and rendering her limbs useless.
Giroro watched as the Natsumi clone struggled to break free from her tight prison. He watched as she stretched her fingers outward to try and reach the handle of the ax that was just barely out of reach. Walking over and around her bobbing head, Giroro forcefully placed his left foot down on the ax, kicking it away. Natsumi, after letting out a few muffled growls of anger, immediately broke into a screeching cry.
"H-How could you?!" her voice choked as she screamed. Giroro looked back down at her in return, straight into her tear filled eyes. "I thought you loved me! I KNOW YOU LOVE ME! You're just...angry! YEAH! That's all! You're upset because of the Stupid frog and his friends weighing you down for so many years! Well don't worry, Giroro! If you just untie me, we can leave this place forever! We can go somewhere far away where it will be just the two of us! I promise, Giroro! I PROMISE!"
"Kululu...," Giroro turned to the yellow scientist in the middle of the clone's cries of nonsense. "Is there any way for you to just deactivate her, or do I have to kill it manually?"
"Sorry to disappoint you, Giroro. But she's practically indestructible. I knew that you would be going back to the war once you left Pekopon, so I rebuilt her skin and flesh to be unaffected by pretty much anything. I didn't want you to have to going through losing her twice if she was shot at by the enemy or kidnapped or something. It would take quite the amount of force to destroy her. But I suppose I can take her back to my lab and undo what I did, then kill her myself. Unless you want to do it?" he said in return, causing the clone to immediately shake madly out of control, slightly loosening the unreachable knot behind her back.
"NO! NOO! PLEASE, GIRORO! I LOVE YOU! PLEASE DON'T LET ME DIE AGAIN!"
Clenching his fist as tight as he could, he quickly turned around and punched the Natsumi clone directly in the jaw, causing several teeth to fall out along with a small splatter of blood to escape with it. The now completely unconscious clone than hit her head on the concrete ground with a loud 'thud' as Giroro brought his anger down a few pegs after letting most of his bottled up emotions out in such an effective way. After a few seconds of pure silence, everyone slowly walked out of there hiding spots and out into the scene in front of them. Aki, Dororo and Momoka ran to help Fuyuki while Kululu, Tamama and Keroro approached Giroro.
"Giroro-senpai. You...," Tamama attempted to speak up before Keroro lifted his palm in front of his Private's face, silencing him.
The weather was still cold and rainy. The grey clouds continued to cover the entire sum of the sky. A full ten minutes passed before the ambulance finally made it to the Hinata residents. Police forces surrounded the household as Fuyuki was lifted into the ambulance van while laying in a medical stretcher, Momoka choosing to stay by his side constantly until the van doors were slammed shut. Aki stayed by the front porch, talking with the police about what had happened, making up her own small interpretation about what had happened to try and cover up the truth. The four Keronians all stood in the front yard with their anti-barriers on, watching as Fuyuki was driven away by the paramedics and the police began searching the house.
Tamama chose to stay beside Momoka as Dororo just stood in silence while on top of the ceiling of the house. Keroro and Giroro sat side by side, leaning against the wall and choosing not to speak with each other. Keroro kept his mouth shut for as long as he could before eventually growing the urge to ask his Coporal the agonizing question that had been laying on his mind for several minutes now.
"So...why DID you come back? You said earlier that you came back to protect us from harm, but you didn't know about the Natsumi clone going insane and going after us until you showed up? So why did you really come back?" Keroro asked.
Giroro turned his head away from his Sargent, his usual annoyed huffing sound no where to be heard. "Fine. You want the truth? If you're insinuating that I was lying earlier, than you'd be wrong. You guys are my family. I'm not going to let anything hurt my family. I did come back to keep you guys from being hurt, but not from that clone," Giroro explained.
"I have done nothing but act like a pathetic downer this past year. I've been keeling over Natsumi's death ever since it happened, and you guys never said anything. You put up with me for all that time. I knew that me leaving so suddenly would do nothing but hurt you guys. It would make it look like I was ungrateful for everything that you've done for me. And if you want the honest truth, I actually was pretty ungrateful. Otherwise, I would never have left in the first place. But as I was sitting on that train, I eventually realized that I couldn't let that happen. I couldn't let my family be hurt by me anymore. Even if I had gone through with it and had my memory erased when I got back to Keron, that would just make me more of a bastard."
Keroro had stopped listening to Giroro's speech as one small sentence that he had said during his monologue instantly distracted him the second he heard it, echoing in his mind. That Giroro had been suffering all this time, and that they had 'never said anything'. It was then that Keroro began to remember what Fuyuki had said to him just an hour or so ago.
"YOU COULD HAVE DONE ANYTHING TO HELP HIM! IF YOU HAD JUST BEEN THERE FOR HIM! IF YOU HAD AT LEAST SHOWN A SIGN THAT YOU STILL CARED ABOUT HIM, MAYBE HE WOULDN'T HAVE LEFT! YOU WERE HIS LIFE LONG FRIEND! IMAGINE ALL THE TIMES HE'S SAVED YOUR LIFE, EVEN WHEN HE DIDN'T HAVE TO! AND THE ONE TIME HE ACTUALLY NEEDED YOU TO BE THERE FOR HIM, YOU IGNORED HIM LIKE THE SELFISH BASTARD YOU ARE!"
Keroro cleared his throat. Fuyuki was right. It was all his fault that Giroro had suffered for so long. Keroro instantly felt sick, knowing that for all of this time, Giroro had been blaming himself for everything. A small part of Keroro knew that it was already too late to make amends, but another part of him concluded that it still did not hurt to try.
Keroro leaned over and placed his hand on Giroro's shoulder. Giroro was barely caught off guard by this gesture and turned to Keroro with a blank expression. "Listen, Giroro. I'm sorry...about not being there for you." Keroro soothingly said, this time surprising Giroro greatly.
"I should have helped you during all of this. Instead of being there when you needed me, I chose to leave you be and let you try to figure everything out by yourself. But what I did only ended in me causing you more pain. This is my fault, so for my sake...for OUR sake, as a family...don't take this out on yourself anymore. Take it out on me."
Giroro listened to Keroro's words scarcely before slapping his hand off of his shoulder and turning away once again. "I don't need your pity. It was only because I wasn't strong enough to get over it myself that I put you all in this danger. Getting over the death of someone you care about takes time. You know this and I know this. I had all the time I could ever think of to get over it and move on, but instead, I chose to wallow in it for months on end and let all of you be dragged down with me."
Then, as he spoke his next few words, Keroro's tone turned unnaturally serious. It was a tone of voice that Giroro had only heard one other time. That one, life-changing day when he stood up to the red Corporal and told him strictly to stop what he was doing before he killed someone in an act of rage. It was the very day that Natsumi died. The only day that Giroro could remember his Sargent actually acting like a leader.
"You didn't drag anyone down with you. You never hurt any of us! You never COULD hurt any of us! The only one that you have been hurting is yourself! Think back to Natsumi-dono's death. Didn't she say anything to you before she died? Didn't she tell you anything about being strong and learning to move on after she was gone?"
A dreadful flashback suddenly took place in Giroro's mind. He remembered her pain filled eyes and her whisper of a voice. He heard their final conversation for the second time in his head word for word.
"Natsumi! I don't want to lose you! I would regret it the rest of my life! I would never get you out of my mind. I couldn't live with myself."
"Come on. You're a warrior, aren't you? The strongest warrior I know. You can take on anything. Yes, it will hurt at first, but you'll get past me. As long as you remember everything we've done together."
"She did say something like that, didn't she?" Keroro guessed correctly. "She said that she wanted you to learn to move on with your life. She wanted you to be happy. Her last few moments of life itself, and she still only wanted your happiness. So will you fulfill her dying wish? You are her guardian, aren't you?"
Giroro thought deeply about what Keroro was saying. He was her guardian. He always has been and always will be. Even after death, Giroro has done nothing but think about her every damn second of the day. But is that what she wanted? Giroro knew the answer was no.
A chair suddenly levitated out from under the ground in front of the two frogs, catching their complete attention. A horribly injured Kululu sat lopsided inside, his glasses broken and both of his legs twisted in opposite directions. Keroro jumped fearfully back at the sight as Giroro ran forwards, immediately thinking that the worst had happened.
"Kululu! What happened to you!?" Giroro shouted at the beaten yellow Keronian, who gave a soar laugh in return before cutting directly to the chase.
"Ku...ku...ku," his laughed suddenly turning into a painful cough. "The clone got away."
"WHAT!?" Giroro jumped back in shock.
"Hey, have you heard back from the new recruits yet?" Giroro heard one of the policemen ask his partner, referring to the men who had gone inside and searched the house just minutes earlier. Giroro's heart sank.
"Not yet. I better call 'em," he replied, turning his two-way radio on and attempting to communicate with his fellow officers. Getting no response from them after several attempts, he quickly sent three more men inside to check up on them. Giroro instantly double checked to make sure that his anti-barrier was on and chased after them.
"Giroro! WAIT! Don't go after her again! She'll kill you! GIRORO!" Keroro screamed to the Corporal before watching helplessly as he ran into the house behind the three officers, the front door shutting behind him.
Sorry if that ending was a bit rushed. I'm tired. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed. See you all at the final chapter ;)