Chapter 6 - Alana in Disguise

"Well, another idea in the dumper," the Captain sighed, holding Baby Shiiko on her lap.

Hikaru looked steadily at the aquamarine-haired toddler, the wheels in his head turning.

"No way, no how, Hicky," her mother fired back, pointing her finger at a location somewhere between his eyes as if she was drawing a bead on him. "Don't even think about it."

"Are you all right, Dollface?" he said. "I really shouldn't have used the speakerphone."

"Of course I am. That nasty old bat."

"Well, she got pretty hateful. I was just wondering."

"Frankly, Hicky, it depresses me that I've waited for a mother - well, a mother-in-law, at any rate - since I was twelve years old, and the only one I'm ever going to have is one who hates my sweet babies and wishes that I was dead."

"I'm sorry, Ayshalita. I really am. I wish I could change her for you."

The Captain stewed for a moment. "Besides, I DID fry that karaoke bar, dead on target too. FWAAAAP! Bull's eye!" She punched the air, in memoriam. Shiiko giggled and clapped her little hands.

Hikaru covered his face with both hands and slumped further into his favorite lounge chair. Good thing I bribed those police reports right out of existence, he thought to himself. "It doesn't matter. We're happy together, Ayshalita, and that's all that counts. We don't need her approval."

"No. Only her money."

Silence.

"Did you talk to Alana?"

"I did."

"And?"

"I think she'd like very much to get to know another grandparent. My mother was killed when I was a kid, and my father only showed up a few months ago. Your dad has passed on. Poor soul," she mused. "He must have suffered a long time."

"He did at that."

"So that leaves Lady Macbeth as the only possibility, as unpleasant as that may be."

"Who?"

"Oh never mind, sweetie. Some play I saw on Tauka Banesh once."

"So, will she do it?"

"She will, to please us. However, she's heard stories about your mother."

"Are you sure you want to subject one of your children to my mother's nastiness?"

The Captain laughed. "Don't worry about it, Hicky. If she ticks off one of my girls, she'll find herself on the business end of a titanium standard-issue rocket launcher."

Neither of them said anything for a few minutes. Shiiko Rubia Napolipolita-Daitokuji fell asleep against her mother's chest, her little thumb in her mouth.

"- 'Into the Valley of Death rode the six hundred -" Hikaru murmured.

"Say what?"

"Never mind, Dollface. Some poem I read once. Call her in."

Hikaru looked into Alana's sweet heart-shaped face. I can't do this, he thought.

"I want to help you, Daddy," she said quietly, putting her hand on his. "I really do. I'm just a little - afraid." Alana looked at both her parents, her slanted green eyes glistening with unshed tears. "I'm afraid she won't like me. I'm afraid she'll make fun of me, and tell me to leave. And I don't want to cry in front of her."

Daitokuji sighed. "Forget it, Alalita. It was a bad idea."

Alana knew that Biko was at least tolerated by her stony-hearted grandmother. "Maybe I wouldn't be so afraid if Earth Sis went with me."

"Now, that's an idea. Can you ask her, Hicky?"

"Eeep," the billionaire replied.

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"You have GOT to be kidding, Father!" Biko shrieked, stamping her foot. "I told you I didn't care beans about whether Captain Weirdo gets to build another stupid spaceship. And dragging along one of her brats to Grandmother's house would be a disaster."

"No, it wouldn't," her father replied, knowing full well that he had absolutely no leverage at all.

"Father, you seriously need to go back into therapy."

"The two of you could spend some real quality time with her. You know, get to know each other! She could go with you as - well, a friend or something."

"A friend? Good God! That would have to be one heck of an acting job on my part, Father, and it would cost a lot more dough than you've ever dreamed of!"

Hikaru rolled his eyes and sighed at his daughter's histrionics. "Your grandmother doesn't have to know who she is - at least at first."

She looked at him as if he had lobsters crawling out of his ears. "You mean, disguise one of them? Oh, come on, Father! You can't polish poop!"

"BEEEEEEEEEKOOOOOHHHHHHHH!" the Captain shrieked.

While she prepared to snatch her stepdaughter baldheaded, the terror-struck Hikaru cackled wildly, hoping to defuse what might well become the Third World War. "We had Alana in mind. We want her to at least get through the front door, so to speak. And she can't unless you go with her."

Biko rolled her eyes. "Oh, please. Her tilted eyes are fine. But the kid's got hair that sticks up like a rooster-comb in front, and hangs practically to her knees. And that color. Green! How are you going to disguise that?"

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"Let's just press it down on top, like this," Princess C-ko said, smooshing down the top of Alana's head. "Oooo! Look! It's just so pouffy that it pops right back up, doesn't it?"

"Yes, Your Highness," the girl replied in her low voice. "It's what you Terrans call cowlicks, I think."

"Hee hee hee," the little blonde laughed. "That is such a funny word. And you don't have to call me Your Highness, you know."

"But it wouldn't seem fitting not to," Alana said. "We are your subjects, after all." The other Cygnettes gazed at C-ko adoringly. They loved their Lost Princess.

"Whoops, there it goes again! It just keeps popping up like crazy! Biko, you'll take Alana to see your grannie, won't you?" C-ko chirped, looking at her old school chum.

"Uh - well - sure! If it would make you happy, C-ko! You know I'd do anything for you - "

The Cygnettes looked at each other and pretended to stick their fingers down their respective throats.

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It took another hour, but the end result was well worth it. Alana stood before her family and her Princess, with a dark rinse on her hair and dressed in a school uniform.

"I do like the braid down the back," Atina said, her head cocked.

"She looks like a Terran, Ma," Arisa said.

"That's the point, baby. Biko! Are you ready to go?"

The heiress glared at her stepmother, who stood holding her little half-sister Shiiko. "Father had better come through with his offer to buy me a metal fabrication company," she growled.

"I'm sure he will, sweetie."

"Don't call me that."

The Captain sighed. Shiiko spit up on her.

"Nice shot, alien spawn!" Biko laughed.

"You wanna see a nice shot, Beeks?" Alana snarled, shoving her fist at her stepsister's nose.

"Back off, you idiot, or I won't go at all."

Alana looked at her mother, who nodded. She picked up her jacket and headed for the door. "We who are about to die salute you," she said, giving her mom the Cygnan tiger-claw salute.

"Don't tempt me," Biko muttered.

"STOP it, girls."

"Bye, Alalita," called the Cygnettes as they stood at the Mansion's huge double-doors. "If the old kakamatandula gives you any trouble, just show her your flying crescent kick!"

"Don't you dare," their mother hissed.

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The two girls sat in the back of HIKI-1, their father's personal limousine, as it made its way out of Graviton City. "Oh Great Mother," Alana gasped. "We forgot to make up a name and a background for me!"

"That's easy," B-ko replied. "You can go to the middle school, like you do in real life."

"Where am I from?"

B-ko turned and scrutinized her stepsister. "Well, you sort of look Japanese, but you don't know enough about our culture yet to pull it off. For all I know, Grandmother will ask you to recite the dynasties for the past five hundred years."

"Oh, no!" the girl gasped. "Really?" Alana could easily recite the rulers of the Lepton Kingdom of Alpha Cygni from Viv'l the Silly to Queen Zazen'lda, but she knew very little about Terran monarchies.

"Look, kid. We're going to mean nothing more to her than trained monkeys. We're going to be there purely for her amusement. We have to act proper at all times, in all ways. And - most important of all - we have to be very, very careful not to make her mad."

The alien girl sighed.

"According to Father, she barely agreed to see me at all. I recorded that phone conversation my father had with her the other day, you know." Biko actually shuddered. "The woman probably brushes her teeth with sulfuric acid."

"I see the way it is," Alana said, resigned.

"She's still furious at my father for marrying your mother and adopting you alien brats."

"Hey, Beekers. If we're supposed to be friends, you have to quit calling me names."

"Stop calling me Beekers, you Cygnan drip."

Angered, Alana briefly lost herself in a revenge fantasy about putting a matinkas - a small carnivorous Leptonian mammal - in Snotty Earth Sis's bed once again. That'd teach her a thing or two.

B-ko looked at her and sighed. "Oh, I suppose I can call a truce for a few days. Anyway, Grandmother's not exactly the warm and cuddly type. She won't slobber all over you and hug you to death, like your mother does."

"HEY."

"Oh, all right. Wait. You speak some English, don't you?"

The eleven-year-old nodded. Cygnans loved linguistics, and many of them spoke several languages. Alana herself spoke Japanese, English, Leptonian, and Anatolian.

"I wish I could do a better job at it myself, but I had Ayumi Sensei for a teacher." Biko hummed to herself, deep in concentration. "Well, you can't be Japanese, we've already decided that. She won't give a rolling donut about your native tongue, and nobody in this solar system's ever heard of Anatolia."

"It's the planet where my grandfather is from. And actually, my English is pretty good."

"Could we say you're from Australia?"

"My Princess has a koala backpack from there that somebody named Eddie gave her."

"I don't think that constitutes an adequate basis for pretending you're Australian, kid. What about Great Britain?"

"Everything I know about them is from Daddy's record collection. The Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Chad and Jeremy, Herman's Hermits, Petula Clark - I wanna hold your ha-a-a-a-and, Twist and Shout, I'm 'Enery the Eighth, I am; 'Enery the Eighth I am I am; I got married ta the widow next door, she's been married seven times bee-fore - "

"Will you shut your yapper?" her stepsister shrieked, slapping her hand over the alien's mouth. "I didn't think anyone on this planet could sing any worse than your mother, but apparently I was wrong."

"Mwuuuuffff," the Cygnette responded.

"Spouting off the lyrics to old rock songs would be just dandy if we lived half a century ago, Alana, which we don't."

The girls sat in silence for a few moments, mutually contemplating Hikaru's obsession with rock and roll music.

"Elvis!" said Alana, snapping her fingers. "Elvis Presley! Wasn't he King of America, or something?"

Biko laughed out loud. "You dimbulb! The Americans have presidents, you know. They just called Elvis 'the King'. The king of rock and roll, although if I have to hear my father play those scratchy LP records one more time I'm going to ralph."

"King Elvis," Alana mused. "I always thought that white jumpsuit with the glitter on it was his imperial uniform, or something. You know, the one Daddy has?"

"Thanks for reminding me, you little geek." Biko looked at her, shuddering. Her father sometimes decked himself out in one of The King's stage costumes from the early 1970's. "Well, then how about pretending to be from the USA? My grandmother knows very little about America. Unfortunately, most of what I know myself comes from movies and comic books. We were supposed to study American History last year, but-"

" - Ayumi Sensei was your teacher," Alana finished. "Did you say comic books?" She loved manga, especially that series about her own family, written and drawn by that Terran with the dark glasses like her own mama wore.

"Okay, then," B-ko said, now possessed of a brainstorm. "How's this? Your name will be - Martha Kent. That's from the Superman series. I think it's the name of his Earth mom."

"I get named after an old lady?"

"Oh, just relax, kid. Grandmother won't have a clue. And you can be from Smallville."

"Which planet is that?"

"It's a TOWN, you moron."

"HEY."

"I think it might be in Iowa or Kansas or Nebraska or somewhere like that."

"I went to Nebraska last month!" Alana said, enthused.

"Oh yeah - Father bought Offutt Air Force Base for you, didn't he? Big flipping deal. I myself own Lajes Field AFB on Terciera, Azores. I got that last Christmas."

"Your point?"

"Okay, then, Nebraska it is. However, understand that Omaha is a big city. Smallville is not. We're talking the boonies here."

"The what?"

"Rural areas. You know. Small-town America. One main street containing a post office, a drug store, a grocery store, the town hall, the library, the police station, and a bank. One stop-light, smack dab in the middle. And if you blink twice while driving through it, you'll miss it completely."

"Oh. I see."

Biko rubbed her hands together. "It's agreed, then. You're Martha Kent from Smallville, Nebraska, USA. You moved here - ummm - because you're an orphan and some rich relative shipped you over to Japan for a REAL education."

Alana rolled her eyes.

Still worried, the Cygnette looked out the smoked window as the limo sped down the highway toward the small village outside Graviton City. She knew that B-ko's grandmother - who was hers too, she supposed - owned practically everything and everyone in it. She looked up at the big billowy cumulus clouds which towered high in the sky. They were starting to turn dark at the bottom.

"Biko. I hope it doesn't rain."

"Definitely. Don't let your hair get wet. That stuff will come right out if it does."

The girl gingerly patted the top and sides of her head, not used to flat Terran hairdos. "Promise to help me out here, Biko. Remember. No factory for you if Ma and Daddy don't get the funding for the second generation Athena."

"I don't need reminding of what the stakes are, you little freakazoid. And anyway, I thought my father named it Magnolia."

"No, he didn't. My mother named it Athena."

Biko's voice dropped as she fixed the girl with her steely gaze. "I heard it was MAGNOLIA."

"I don't think so. It's ATHENA."

"IT'S MAGNOLIA, YOU CRETIN!" the blue-headed heiress shrieked, shaking her fists.

"HEY!"

"We're nearly there, Miss," the driver announced. His timing was perfect.

"Wait a minute," Alana hissed. "We're not through here. Am I supposed to be related to this Super-Man or Kent or whatever his name is?"

"Of course not, you halfwit. He's make-believe."

"HEY."

"Sorry."

The limousine cleared the guard station and proceeded up the winding driveway - more than half a kilometer in length - that led to Mitsuko Daitokuji's Mansion.

Biko sighed and turned to her stepsister. "Oh. There's one more thing."

The girl looked at her, fearing the worst. "What's that?"

"She doesn't know you're coming."