THE SECOND STRING
Chapter 10: "Reality Is Overrated"
A neo-Sailor Moon fanfic
By Bill K.
"Has their condition changed at all?"
Luna was on her computer in the cats' ready room, speaking with the deputy head doctor of the palace infirmary. Artemis and Diana watched from their stations.
"No, Luna," the doctor replied. "They're in no physical danger at the moment, and we do detect brainwave activity, so they aren't completely gone. But they haven't responded to any treatment we've attempted. The King and Queen and their Senshi are all still comatose."
"I see," Luna sighed, trying and failing to conceal the emotion in her voice. "Please keep me informed if there is a change in their condition, Doctor. And please forgive my pestering you for updates."
"Call any time," he replied and signed off. Luna emitted another sigh.
"Times like this I wish my calling was medicine and not engineering," Artemis said softly.
"And still no word from Saturn and the Amazons," Diana added. "I do wish I knew how they were progressing."
"We must keep faith, Diana," Luna said resolutely. "They're battle-tested and they were trained by the best. Whatever adversity they're facing, they will come through it victoriously. We must believe that."
"Yes, of course, Mother," Diana answered. "But I prefer facts to faith."
The environmental control computer announced a surprising visitor. Artemis passed him through and the cats found Yutaka standing awkwardly in the room.
"She, um, they're not back yet?" Yutaka asked, the sturdy young man intimidated as he always seemed to be around the Senshi or the Royal Family.
"I assume you are referring to Sailor Saturn and the Asteroid Senshi?" Luna inquired. Yutaka anxiously nodded. "No, they're still on mission. Was there something we could help you with?"
"No," Yutaka murmured glumly. "I just - - well, I wanted to tell Hotaru good-bye."
"You're leaving?" Diana asked, surprised by this news.
"Yeah," Yutaka sighed. "I signed on with Yoshioka today. I start next week. So that means if I want my own place, I have to move out of the palace. I've already got a place lined up. I'm starting to pack, but I wanted to see Hotaru first."
"Who told you that you must move out of the palace?" Diana demanded.
"It's been a palace rule for centuries, Diana," Luna told her. "Only palace staff and their dependents may reside in the palace, other than the Senshi and the Royal Family, of course. Otherwise the palace would be overrun with people. Why, I could tell you stories from the early twenty-first . . ."
"Yes, Mother, I'm certain that you can," Diana scowled. "Yutaka, why not just live with your parents?"
"Dad offered to let me stay," Yutaka shrugged. "But I'm grown. I need to be out on my own. I don't want to burden them. And if Hotaru and I are going to, well . . . I need to be on my own."
"Seems like your pride speaking, to me," Diana said.
"Yutaka did not request your opinion, Diana," Luna fussed. Diana scowled at her.
"Why doesn't Hotaru get her own quarters and you just live with her?" asked Artemis.
"Can," Yutaka asked, puzzled, "can she do that?"
"She's old enough," shrugged the white cat. "And as her co-habitant, you would qualify as a dependent of palace personnel."
"Artemis, they'd have to be married first!" Luna gasped.
"It doesn't say anything in the rules about that," Artemis replied.
"I hardly think those rules were invented to promote lascivious behavior," Luna shot back with one of her patented withering glares.
"Mother!" gasped Diana. "That's such twentieth century thinking! I happen to think Dad has come up with a perfectly wonderful solution!" She turned to Yutaka and smiled. "So perhaps you could delay your move until Hotaru returns and you and she have had a chance to discuss it?"
"Yeah," he nodded. Then a big smile broke out on his face. "Yeah! I'll do it! Thank you!" He started for the door, but stopped and turned back to them. "Do you think you could let me know when she comes back?"
"The moment she arrives," Diana beamed. Yutaka exited. Diana, pleased with herself, glanced at her mother. Luna was, as usual when she didn't get her way, doing a slow burn. "Oh, Mother! It's the perfect solution!"
"Whatever happened to good old fashioned morality?" muttered the black cat.
Artemis conspicuously returned to looking at his computer monitor.
Hotaru recognized the memory. She was walking home from elementary school. And she was wearing the navy blue skirt, white short-sleeve blouse with the blue and white cuffs, black patent leather shoes and the white beret that had been the uniform she wore until fifth grade. Her backpack weighed heavily on her, so it must have been loaded with books and homework. Everything seemed normal. She even had the bruise on her upper arm where Tomiko-Chan had punched her in the girl's restroom.
But it was wrong. She didn't know how, but the whole scene was wrong.
Turning a corner, Hotaru approached a cinder block building shielded in metal. She recognized it instantly. It was the lab where her father worked. Every day after school, Hotaru would always show up at the lab and try to drag him away from his work. It was such a ritual that the security guard at the gate recognized her and smiled.
"Good evening, Hotaru-Chan," the guard said pleasantly. "How are you doing in school?"
"Very well, thank you," Hotaru replied, then looked at the guard.
He was the same guard that always greeted her when she picked up her father. But he was dead, wasn't he? Hadn't he been killed in the lab explosion? She looked away from him to the lab. It wasn't destroyed. But it had been destroyed in the explosion. Then she asked herself 'what explosion'? Had there been an explosion? Was she wrong?
Entering the lab, Hotaru walked down the cold, antiseptic corridor to where she knew her father was working. All the while, thoughts nagged at her. Her father was dead, too. This building no longer existed. Yet here she was. How could she be there if there had been an explosion? Hotaru reached the door, opened it cautiously and peered in. If her father was in the middle of an experiment, she would have to wait.
"Come on in, Hotaru-Chan!" called a male voice.
Hotaru entered. Her father, Professor Souichi Tomoe, was standing there at his computer, smiling at her. She felt an overwhelming surge of emotion at seeing him. And at the same time, for some reason, she couldn't help feeling that it was wrong. Tomoe came around from the desk and spread his arms and Hotaru's emotions took over. She ran over and hugged him. Her face only came up to his stomach, a familiar experience that she never thought she'd experience again.
And why would she think that?
"Is it time for us to go home already?" Tomoe asked, slightly teasing but clearly awash in paternal feelings.
"Yes, Papa. You work too hard," Hotaru told him. And she hoped that he wouldn't come up with an excuse to stay. She didn't like this lab. She didn't understand what exactly her father was working on, but she didn't trust it.
"She's right about that," a woman's voice said. Hotaru turned and found a strange woman behind her, wearing the same type of lab coat her father wore. She didn't know the woman: a slim, tall woman with mounds of black hair piled on her head and eyes that seemed to stare. She wore a red blouse and a tight black skirt. Hotaru didn't recognize her.
Or did she?
"Don't you remember me, Hotaru-Chan?" the woman asked curiously. "I'm your father's new lab assistant, Badiane." She knelt down to Hotaru's level. "I see you've got a bruise on your arm. Are the kids at school picking on you again?"
"Hotaru?" her father inquired when she didn't answer.
"Yes, Papa," Hotaru reluctantly admitted.
Tomoe sank to one knee and pulled Hotaru against him. Hotaru realized that having his arms tucked around her was something she had missed for a long, long time.
"I'm sorry," he said, emotion coloring his words. "There's so much ignorance in the world. Why do the innocent have to suffer for it?" Hotaru put her arms around her father in reply.
Then she felt Badiane stroking her hair. She looked up at the woman and saw sympathy.
"If you need to talk about it, Hotaru-Chan," she said, "feel free to talk to me about it. I may not have all the answers, but I do have a soft shoulder. Any time; I want us to be friends, Hotaru-Chan."
Hotaru buried her face in her father's shoulder. It was wrong. It was all wrong.
Jun looked around. It was their encampment in the Amazon jungle. Everything was the same.
"How did we get here?" Jun wondered out loud.
"We boosted that hovercar, remember," Ves replied. Jun turned and saw Ves emerging from the bush. She had several Tambaqui on a line, so she had been fishing. "You OK?"
"Weren't we in a black area of space?" Jun asked. Ves stared.
"Don't go nutty on me," Ves shot back. "It's bad enough I have to put up with the others. I need you to help run this camp." She called out - - loudly. "Hey, Priss, get out here! I got dinner!"
Emerging from the shack was Cere. Her hair was unkempt. Her clothing was dull and unwashed. Her face was unmade. And she was not happy.
"I am NOT dressing those disgusting fish!" Cere declared just as loudly.
"That was the deal!" rumbled Ves. "I catch dinner. You dress dinner. Jun cooks dinner. Get dressing!"
"Forget it! I'd rather starve!" huffed Cere.
"Would you rather I bust you in the mouth?" Ves snarled.
"God, WHY did I leave the orphanage!" Cere railed at the heavens. "And I can't even go back! You two had to wreck the hover car!"
"I told you that capibara came out of nowhere!" Jun fumed. "It wasn't my fault!"
"What about dinner?" Ves rumbled. Cere was about to respond when the door to the shack opened. Out stepped another of the refugees from Tanto Quatro Pi.
"I'll do it," the girl said, smoothing back her thick shoulder-length black hair. "Only please stop fighting. We're in this situation together and we can make a go of it together, but we all have to do our part and respect each other's feelings."
"Thanks, Badiane," Cere sighed. "Look, you two have to understand - - this is still new to me. I thought Quatro Pi was a culture shock. This is different from anything I've ever experienced! I'm trying to adapt! I'm trying!"
"Yeah, I hear you, Cerese," Jun replied. "It's sort of like when I first arrived in civilization. Father Melendez needed a lot of patience with me. We appreciate that you try to do the dishes and mend our clothes."
"I have to haul the water," grumbled Ves.
"After that fish snapped at me?" Cere gasped. "I am not going near that river! Between that and the alligators . . .!"
"They're not alligators, they're caiman," Ves frowned.
"And I don't care!" Cere snapped back. "Thank you for preparing the fish, Badiane. I'll go collect some greens for the side dishes."
"Careful you don't get eaten," Jun called after her. Cere waved dismissively. "Maybe this was a mistake."
"We can always head into one of the cities," Ves suggested as she handed the fish to Badiane. "I can be up to speed on the local action in two weeks tops."
"Well, I'll follow you all wherever you go," Badiane said. "But we're out of the reach of others here. We're kind of safe - - if you overlook the caiman and the anacondas."
"I'm all right here," Ves shrugged. "It's kind of nice, not having some 'authority' giving you a hard time. The only rule out here is survive. I've been living with that rule all my life."
"Hey," Jun said suddenly. "Where's Palla-Palla?"
"She didn't go wandering off again, did she?" Ves asked, growing concerned. "I already told her twice that the animals in that jungle ain't pets!"
"She's in the shack," Badiane told them. "I think she's still sleeping. I hope nothing is wrong."
"Maybe she's still having trouble adapting," Jun suggested. "She still gets upset when it's time for her show and she can't watch it. I'll go check on her."
"I'll come, too," Ves volunteered.
"So will I," Badiane added.
"How about I just go," Jun told them. "I don't want her to think we're ganging up on her. You know how she is when she's anxious. Badiane, prepare the fish and Vanessa, get a fire started in the pit."
Jun headed for the shack while the others went about their assignments. She peered inside. Palla-Palla was in the far bunk, which was little more than the back seat of the hover car cannibalized into a bed. Palla-Palla was laying on the bunk, curled up into a protective position. But she wasn't sleeping.
"Palla-Palla?" Jun ventured, sitting down next to her fellow orphan. "Are you all right?"
"Palla-Palla is scared," the girl replied timidly.
"Of what? Did one of the jungle snakes frighten you?"
"No," Palla-Palla said softly.
"Well, what are you scared of?" Jun asked. "Vanessa and I will go chase whatever it is off. You know we're both looking out for you, right?"
Palla-Palla nodded. "But Palla-Palla isn't afraid of a thing. She's afraid of this."
"The shack?"
"No! This!" and Palla-Palla waved her hand all over. "This isn't right!"
"Palla-Palla," Jun sighed. "We had to leave the orphanage or Vanessa would have been taken by the juvenile authorities . . ."
"No!" wailed Palla-Palla. "None this is right! The jungle! The shack! We're not supposed to be here!"
"You're not making any sense," Jun said, struggling to understand.
Then Ves and Badiane opened the door and stood in the doorway. Both were clearly concerned.
"What's the problem?" Ves asked.
"Palla-Palla is saying that we're not supposed to be here," Jun answered.
"Hey, Stupid, you know I had to lam out of Quatro Pi or get busted," Ves spoke up. "If you want to go back to the city . . ."
"No, Ves-Ves! It's not right!" cried Palla-Palla. "We're not supposed to be here! Please believe Palla-Palla!" She locked onto Badiane and pointed. "And she's not supposed to be here! She's supposed to be Miss Hotaru-Ma'am!"
"Palla-Palla, how can you say that? After everything we've all been through?" gasped Badiane. She came over to Palla-Palla and Jun, but Palla-Palla cringed away from her. "It's me! Badiane! I'm not going to hurt you! I'm your friend! And I'll always be your friend!"
"No, you're the bad hole! And you're not Palla-Palla's friend!"
Badiane felt Ves's hand on her arm. She looked over to the teen.
"Come on. Let's go. You're upsetting her," Ves said.
"But I just want to help her see that I'm her friend," Badiane insisted.
"Let Jun and Cerese try to talk to her. Maybe they can help her," Ves stood firm.
"I just want to be her friend," Badiane did as well.
"Look, don't give me no lip," Ves said, her temper rising. "Palla-Palla's upset, so you go!"
Badiane glanced at Palla-Palla cringing on the bunk. Then she gave up and allowed Ves to escort her outside. There they met Cere.
"What's going on in there?" Cere asked.
"Palla-Palla's got some crazy idea that we're not supposed to be here and that Badiane is supposed to be somebody called Hotaru or something," Ves informed her. "She ain't making no sense, but she's all worked up over it. Talk to her, Priss. Use that fancy education you got to calm her down."
"All right," sighed Cere. She handed a pouch of vegetation to Badiane. "Put this with the fish, please." And she went inside.
"What do you suppose it's all about," Badiane wondered out loud.
"I don't know," Ves scowled. Then she glanced at Badiane. "Exactly when did you show up at Quatro Pi?"
"I was there when you got there," Badiane replied. "I remember the day the government van came and the police hauled you in."
"Funny," Ves frowned, eyeing Badiane the entire time. "I'm trying to remember a specific time I met you or talked with you. And I can't."
"You were too busy giving the nuns a hard time and trying to figure a way to bust out to notice me," Badiane replied. "And I wasn't going to seek you out. You gave off the wrong vibes back then."
"Uh huh."
"I was with Jun and Cerese and Palla-Palla. Then Palla-Palla had her 'accident'. That's how we met."
Ves stared at her, trying to determine whether to believe her short-term memories or her distant ones. Finally she turned away.
"Let's get this fish cooked," she grunted.
Continued in Chapter 11