Title: Firefly
Chapter 2/?
Author: La Fortuna
Rating: PG-13
July 06, 2001
Disclaimer: SM does not belong to me.
But the story dies. Try to take it, and
-d-i-e- an agonizing death. -_-
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Hotaru didn't remember anything that
happened for two years after the accident.
Her mind was clouded, and the string of
pictures of that time period that she did
somehow recall was all blurred. The people
and objects that did appear in those images
were unrecognizable. Whatever had happened
in the laboratory was not something that
she could remember; the following events
of the explosion were things she could
not describe.
Professor Tomoe had not been inside the
laboratory like his wife had expected;
he had not died been at the accident site
and had not perished with the rest of his
colleagues. His wife, however, never
received the opportunity to voice those
loving words to her husband, and she died,
crushed and mangled by the fallen cement
blocks of the building. How, then, did
Hotaru survive when she had been cradled
by the arms of her mother at the time of
the explosion? A miracle, her father
explained to her with teary eyes and a
soothing rub on the back. He had arrived
at the scene immediately before the
firefighters and found his daughter near
her mother's body, all bloodied and broken.
Barely breathing.
But I should have died, Hotaru constantly
thought to herself, when she learned her
father's explanation when she was six years
old. Her injuries had been fatal, she was
sure of that, despite the apparent memory
lapse she suffered. Broken bones, surely,
but she must have suffered more than that.
The lost of too much blood for a girl her
age and size ... her heart had probably
stopped beating. Brain dead, for all
intents and purposes. She wasn't supposed
to be on this earth, she knew, and Hotaru
would continue thinking that for the next
seven years.
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Nevertheless, the young girl who knew she
shouldn't have survived did so, if for the
sole reason that her father made a pact -
one her father never intended for her to
find out about. In order to make sure she
wouldn't die then and there at the
explosion site, Hotaru's father had sold
himself to demonical creatures, and with
that, the body of his daughter. It was his
daughter's body that became the host to a
parasite, an entity whose soul was
blackened. The entity would fester within
the recesses of its hosts mind for the
next several years to come, waiting for
the moment its pharaoh would call for its
assistance. But for now, it would gather
strength, seeping whatever energy it could
tax from this young body. An energy, this
entity was actually surprised to discover,
that far exceeded whatever it should have
expected from the normal human being.
Hotaru's body, unused to this foreign
alien within, had at first tried to create
antibodies to combat the unfamiliar
presence, but the entity slowly and
steadily shut down its hosts immune
systems, knowing the host's father would
make sure his daughter wouldn't die no
matter what. Over the years, the body,
meant to die instantaneously alongside
the mother whose womb had nurtured it,
failed continuously in its function.
Hotaru's father, overwrought and
desperate for his only child, resorted to
his science to keep her alive.
Machinery.
Complex structures of silicone chips,
steel, wire, and plastic.
Beginning at the age of four, parts of her
body had been steadily replaced by
artificial devices: a steady, beating
machine for her heart; two compartments
for her lungs; a digestive tract to replace
her intestines - useless really, since
Hotaru now depended on that Lorenzo's oil
her father provided for energy; fingers to
take over the decrepit ones; legs to
function in place of the ones whose
muscles had atrophied. Only the eyes
remained, so deep in color that they looked
lavender, the tongue, and Hotaru's brain,
the control center for her actions. The
eyes preserved so that they could still see
with the vision of a human being instead of
a cyborg; the tongue so that the child
could still taste the richness of the foods
the body no longer needed; the brain so
that she could still think and maintain
the essence of what was Hotaru.
Yet, no matter how hard Professor Tomoe tried
to make Hotaru appear and feel normal and
healthy, the attempts failed, partially
because the carrier could never convince
herself that what had happened was meant to
be, that she was destined to live, that a
body could recuperate time and time again
despite that modern physicians deemed it
impossible.
Hotaru was frail then in appearance,
as fragile as a firefly.
Since the accident, her father had persuaded
her to live out the life of any other child
her age. Go to school! Eat that ice cream!
Go play hopscotch, her father would exclaim.
Just don't go swimming for fear that
something will go wrong, don't extend
yourself too much because things might short-
circuit, don't say too much about the
accident, make sure you return in time for
me to provide you with the nutrients you
need!
Every little freedom that was permitted to
her was set back by some kind of warning.
Two steps forward, two steps back. Progress
was never truly made.
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Hotaru did go to elementary school and junior
high, and she did it the only way that her
father felt possible - the best way, through
the prestigious Mugen Gakuen school network.
Her father, a well-known and established
professor in the nation of Japan and the
entire Asian continent, had easily paved a
passageway for her to travel into the campus
of the Mugen Gakuen elites.
Mugen Gakuen Academy, the school for the
children of Fortune 500 CEOs, for the
brilliant virtuosos at the violins and the
pianos, for the mastermind geniuses who
excelled at what they did - a place where
power politics and social conventions
thrived in full force, just as much as it
did in the government offices of Tokyo and
the ancient palace gardens of Kyoto. Hotaru
arrived at the elementary school in the
third grade at age seven. It was a year
after the cloud had lifted from her
memories, enough time for the outward
appearance of her artificial epidermis to
acquire the semblance of real skin.
It was, her father thought, enough time
for the child to get used to using her
synthetic limbs.
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