1 Chapter 19 – So, Is That Me?
***
"Look, Haruka!" Michiru stood up and pointed to the computer screen glowing before her. "I found exactly five Tomoes in Ireland!"
Haruka left off all attempts to appear her cool, collected self. She bounded off the chair she was sitting in, causing it to tip over, and ran to the computer Michiru had been tapping into for two and a half hours. She squinted at the screen, a slow smile spreading over her face as she read the five entries, written Western-style with the surnames last.
She lifted Michiru off the chair and sat the woman in her lap in order to gain closer access to the computer screen – a development that Michiru was not completely unhappy with. "Three of them are boys," Haruka said, scrolling down. "The other two are girls and are going to be pretty easy to work with...Darcy Tomoe and Keiko Tomoe."
"Keiko," Michiru whispered softly, blue eyes glistening with tears. "That was Hotaru's mother's name."
"We've got to look at them both, Michiru," Haruka said, turning to her lover. "It's essential to us discovering who she is...there could be thousands of Tomoes worldwide. These are only two of them. We've got to look at all the possibilities." She smiled at Michiru, placing her hands on Michiru's shoulders. "But we're one step closer."
***
Ami peered at the red liquid in the small glass vial she held in her hands. This paternity test wasn't coming out quite right. She had found a way to test O type blood correctly and confirmed the test with blood samples of O daughters and fathers, including Ieyasu and Megami. She'd finally altered the formula enough so it could do A types and O types alike. She'd tested that with Ieyasu and Megami again, as well as Emi and Sadayoshi, who both had type A blood. Now she had to find a way to switch to B type blood. From there she could refine her formula to work for type AB blood – which was difficult, but it was the blood type that Aiyana possessed.
Crossing from blood type to blood type was also difficult, but she'd finally derived the formula for going from A to O. She'd tested it on Endymion and Lady Selenity, and it'd come out positive – bingo. Unfortunately, when she went back to test her previous results, Ieyasu and Megami were coming out negative and Emi and Mitsuru were positive. She groaned and redid the tests, thankful that the Senshi's children all had blood samples stored in the hospital for future emergencies. With a little more work, her A to O and same-type paternity tests had stayed the same.
"Let's see what happens if we add the little orange vial." Painstakingly, Ami dripped precisely four drops of the orange liquid resting on the table top. Using one of the glass stirs that rested on the table, she gently stirred the mixture, causing it to turn a darker shade of red. "Now to add this to the test."
She opened the top of the machine – it was a DNA match-up, but she had managed to make a few small modifications to the machine that would change it into a paternity test and could easily be undone. Noting her formula down carefully before she added the contents of the small vial to her machine, she blessed science shortly and pressed the formula into the machine, along with Mitsuru's type B blood and Nanami's type O. Walking over to the feedback printer, she pulled the sheet of paper out. The computer had been configured to feed her back results as a paternity test using KECHEX commands that had originally made it a DNA match-up.
B = 596959, O = 199070
Subject Mtsrx20%Nnm
Formula match-up 678546LG76TY
Blood match-up 20%paternity
...test results positive
Ami closed her eyes and let up a prayer of thankfulness to the kami. Only one more blood type to add to the formula, and she was that much closer to discovering the truth behind Aiyana's parentage.
***
His kiss was all but unexpected: she'd been wanting him to come in her room all day and surprise her with one. Or, to be frank, *not* surprise her – it couldn't really be a surprise if she was expecting and wishing for him to kiss her. When he walked in the room she was jittery with excitement, and she relaxed when he finally did press his lips against hers, brushing her bangs away from her forehead. She felt so happy that she actually kissed him back.
He pulled away and laughed. "You were supposed to be asleep! How are you supposed to fool me by making movement?" His laugh sounded a little nervous, and when Aiyana opened her eyes, his face was red with embarrassment.
Before he had left the last time, Aiyana had noted that he was avoiding touching her, besides when she was asleep – or mostly when she was asleep, with a few times being when he thought she was asleep. Then would be the time he'd hold her in his arms, gently rocking her, or would stare at her, stroking her hair away from her face. Finally she'd grown fed up with it and had "awakened," shyly asking if he could be as affectionate when she was awake.
That was two days ago. Yesterday he'd been off and Ami had been swamped; she spent a lonely day in the hospital room by herself, but Ami had been in the room long enough to assure Aiyana that Masaya would be on-duty the next day and would most likely sneak a few minutes to get inside the hospital room and say hello to Aiyana. And there he was, in the flesh before her.
She smiled the broadest she had ever smiled as he sat down besides her on the bed. "What's new?"
Best of all, she didn't even have to discuss with Masaya all the prodding Ami, Michiru, and Haruka were doing with her life. All the investigating, searching, and discovering were to be kept between the four of them. Any news of discovery was to be kept strictly –
"Khalidah-san? Are you awake? Open up if you are, hurry!" The voice on the other end was urgent, but Aiyana could still tell it was Haruka. She wanted to kick the Amazon in the face for ruining the few moments of peace she had with Masaya. "I've got some really important news and it can't wait!"
"Tenoh-san?" Masaya said questioningly, turning to Aiyana.
She rose off the bed, but Masaya placed a hand on her shoulder, causing her to sit back down. He got up and answered the door himself. Haruka and Michiru practically tumbled in, losing their usually dignified air, but quickly tried to save face as they stood back up. Michiru had a bunch of folders clutched in her hands.
Haruka's eyes warily shifted to Masaya. "Caught you at a bad time?"
Aiyana didn't even give Haruka the pleasure of answering her. She merely stared at her for a few moments, then resettled back on the bed – she'd pulled herself into a standing position when Masaya had opened the door. "What are you here for?"
Michiru interceded, always the peacemaker. "Sorry if this really isn't a good time or whatever. But we found something important that we thought you'd like to see."
***
Masaya's mouth was open in disbelief. His arm was placed possessively around Aiyana's shoulder. She wasn't in hysterics or sobbing uncontrollably, but silent tears were running down her cheeks.
Ami had been retrieved from the laboratory by Masaya – no one else could get her, and he'd blackmailed the three women. He'd promised to get her only if they promised to tell him every word of what had transpired between the two Outer Senshi, the doctor, and the patient during the last few weeks. Aiyana had appeared crestfallen, but she dubiously agreed to the deal.
Now Ami, Haruka, and Michiru had taken turns telling the story to Masaya. His stares alternated between them collectively and Aiyana. She was crying again, and damn, but he was pretty sure those tears were because of him again.
"Can I ask one question?"
"No."
Masaya snapped his mouth shut and sat back. Their suspicions of King Endymion were outrageous. The man was like an uncle to him, and he couldn't stand hearing the things Haruka and Michiru suspected him of. But how had they gotten Ami to go along with this? He'd turned to face her, looked into her eyes, and found the answer there. She hadn't wanted to believe it either. But it was glaring her in the eye, and she had always worked on rational thinking and proof. She'd prove that King Endymion was innocent, or she'd prove that she and her Senshi sisters had been naïve for all these years.
"We found two short files in the Irish computers at the archives of females with the last name Tomoe," Haruka said. "Almost got caught as we printed the information on the location of the names in the archives. Had to run out really fast. But we came back a few hours later and went into the T room of the Irish archive.
"The first girl, Darcy Tomoe, was only a year shy of the requirements for Aiyana – she'd be sixteen now instead of seventeen. The birthday didn't fit, but we conceded that it might have been changed for purposes unknown. However, when we got to her file, we realized that it couldn't possibly have been Aiyana unless she'd undergone some massive changes."
"What do you mean by that?" Aiyana said, sounding offended.
"She was born with bright red hair, four ready-made freckles on her nose, and she has two undeniably Irish parents with names not even remotely near what Hotaru and Endymion would have chosen to hide themselves." Haruka waved the folder. "The pictures are all here, if you want to confirm."
"So what about the other one?" asked Masaya, curious now. They wouldn't be laying the bait like this if there was no plausibility in the other file.
Haruka clamped her mouth shut and allowed Michiru to take over.
"The baby girl's name is Keiko Tomoe," she said, staring down at the sheet of paper. "Keiko was Hotaru's mother's name, in case you want to know. The certificate has her birthday listed as January fifteenth, but the timestamp doesn't match and here in Tokyo, it'd officially be January fifteenth by the time she was born. In Ireland, however, it was still January fourteenth." Michiru kept reading. "Beautiful baby girl. Seven pounds, six ounces, a little bit of curly dark hair indeterminable of color on her head and the most intense blue eyes you've ever seen.
"The nurse that filled this out seemed to have a knack for detail. She mentioned that the eyes were very reminiscent of the baby's father's." Michiru paused a little, choosing to skip down over the rest of the stats. "Fingerprints are here...hospital bracelet after a few months...birth mother and father listed here: Hotaru Tomoe and Darien Shields."
"Darien Shields?" Masaya burst into uncontrollable laughter. "What kind of a name is that?"
"A fairly Westernized one," said Haruka. "However, the fact still stands that Hotaru refused to change her name on this document and is, indeed, the daughter of a child named Keiko Tomoe."
"And I guess a bit of male arrogance keyed in here as well," Michiru said, smirking a little. "The king couldn't help proving his wit with his chosen name. With a little research, I discovered 'Darien Shields' means 'the king who protects.'"
Aiyana stared back at Michiru with the calm of someone who had just been read her breakfast menu. She slowly cocked an eyebrow over one of those intense blue eyes.
"So, is that me?"
"Very likely, except for one glaringly large problem."
"What's that?"
"This baby is way, way too old."
"What?!" Ami exclaimed.
"As in, predating the Cold Sleep. Unless there was some superhuman way those Alpha people reconstructed you to be immortal, we've got a really big identification problem on our hands."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------
AN: You know where to send 'em. Comments? Questions? Flames? (especially the latter ^_^) Me pyromaniac. *fires up the blowtorch* -- julymoonbunny@hotmail.com
I couldn't help it. I really like Mamoru's dub name. It's sort of sexy. Besides, you don't believe that he would just give his real name out like that, do you? Even if the local Irish peoples didn't know it, he could bet his WIFE and her FRIENDS did. *shrugs*
Why he picked something so obvious was behind me, but remember my friends, it's only obvious to you and I and the other people who have seen both the dub and the original. Or the dub. Original peoples are probably lost. By the way, that's really what his name means. It's probably closer to "wealthy one who protects" or something like that, but close enough.
*comes back* Oh YEAH! I just remembered. All that gobbledygook that came from Ami's computer? Pure bs. I made it up off the top of my head and it means absolutely nothing. I don't know UNIX from rat's ass and I'm pretty sure none of that was a valid UNIX command. Maybe I should name it something else.
*revises*
I LURVE Chex. Almost as much as Cookie Crisp. The 'ke' part was just nifty.
***
"Look, Haruka!" Michiru stood up and pointed to the computer screen glowing before her. "I found exactly five Tomoes in Ireland!"
Haruka left off all attempts to appear her cool, collected self. She bounded off the chair she was sitting in, causing it to tip over, and ran to the computer Michiru had been tapping into for two and a half hours. She squinted at the screen, a slow smile spreading over her face as she read the five entries, written Western-style with the surnames last.
She lifted Michiru off the chair and sat the woman in her lap in order to gain closer access to the computer screen – a development that Michiru was not completely unhappy with. "Three of them are boys," Haruka said, scrolling down. "The other two are girls and are going to be pretty easy to work with...Darcy Tomoe and Keiko Tomoe."
"Keiko," Michiru whispered softly, blue eyes glistening with tears. "That was Hotaru's mother's name."
"We've got to look at them both, Michiru," Haruka said, turning to her lover. "It's essential to us discovering who she is...there could be thousands of Tomoes worldwide. These are only two of them. We've got to look at all the possibilities." She smiled at Michiru, placing her hands on Michiru's shoulders. "But we're one step closer."
***
Ami peered at the red liquid in the small glass vial she held in her hands. This paternity test wasn't coming out quite right. She had found a way to test O type blood correctly and confirmed the test with blood samples of O daughters and fathers, including Ieyasu and Megami. She'd finally altered the formula enough so it could do A types and O types alike. She'd tested that with Ieyasu and Megami again, as well as Emi and Sadayoshi, who both had type A blood. Now she had to find a way to switch to B type blood. From there she could refine her formula to work for type AB blood – which was difficult, but it was the blood type that Aiyana possessed.
Crossing from blood type to blood type was also difficult, but she'd finally derived the formula for going from A to O. She'd tested it on Endymion and Lady Selenity, and it'd come out positive – bingo. Unfortunately, when she went back to test her previous results, Ieyasu and Megami were coming out negative and Emi and Mitsuru were positive. She groaned and redid the tests, thankful that the Senshi's children all had blood samples stored in the hospital for future emergencies. With a little more work, her A to O and same-type paternity tests had stayed the same.
"Let's see what happens if we add the little orange vial." Painstakingly, Ami dripped precisely four drops of the orange liquid resting on the table top. Using one of the glass stirs that rested on the table, she gently stirred the mixture, causing it to turn a darker shade of red. "Now to add this to the test."
She opened the top of the machine – it was a DNA match-up, but she had managed to make a few small modifications to the machine that would change it into a paternity test and could easily be undone. Noting her formula down carefully before she added the contents of the small vial to her machine, she blessed science shortly and pressed the formula into the machine, along with Mitsuru's type B blood and Nanami's type O. Walking over to the feedback printer, she pulled the sheet of paper out. The computer had been configured to feed her back results as a paternity test using KECHEX commands that had originally made it a DNA match-up.
B = 596959, O = 199070
Subject Mtsrx20%Nnm
Formula match-up 678546LG76TY
Blood match-up 20%paternity
...test results positive
Ami closed her eyes and let up a prayer of thankfulness to the kami. Only one more blood type to add to the formula, and she was that much closer to discovering the truth behind Aiyana's parentage.
***
His kiss was all but unexpected: she'd been wanting him to come in her room all day and surprise her with one. Or, to be frank, *not* surprise her – it couldn't really be a surprise if she was expecting and wishing for him to kiss her. When he walked in the room she was jittery with excitement, and she relaxed when he finally did press his lips against hers, brushing her bangs away from her forehead. She felt so happy that she actually kissed him back.
He pulled away and laughed. "You were supposed to be asleep! How are you supposed to fool me by making movement?" His laugh sounded a little nervous, and when Aiyana opened her eyes, his face was red with embarrassment.
Before he had left the last time, Aiyana had noted that he was avoiding touching her, besides when she was asleep – or mostly when she was asleep, with a few times being when he thought she was asleep. Then would be the time he'd hold her in his arms, gently rocking her, or would stare at her, stroking her hair away from her face. Finally she'd grown fed up with it and had "awakened," shyly asking if he could be as affectionate when she was awake.
That was two days ago. Yesterday he'd been off and Ami had been swamped; she spent a lonely day in the hospital room by herself, but Ami had been in the room long enough to assure Aiyana that Masaya would be on-duty the next day and would most likely sneak a few minutes to get inside the hospital room and say hello to Aiyana. And there he was, in the flesh before her.
She smiled the broadest she had ever smiled as he sat down besides her on the bed. "What's new?"
Best of all, she didn't even have to discuss with Masaya all the prodding Ami, Michiru, and Haruka were doing with her life. All the investigating, searching, and discovering were to be kept between the four of them. Any news of discovery was to be kept strictly –
"Khalidah-san? Are you awake? Open up if you are, hurry!" The voice on the other end was urgent, but Aiyana could still tell it was Haruka. She wanted to kick the Amazon in the face for ruining the few moments of peace she had with Masaya. "I've got some really important news and it can't wait!"
"Tenoh-san?" Masaya said questioningly, turning to Aiyana.
She rose off the bed, but Masaya placed a hand on her shoulder, causing her to sit back down. He got up and answered the door himself. Haruka and Michiru practically tumbled in, losing their usually dignified air, but quickly tried to save face as they stood back up. Michiru had a bunch of folders clutched in her hands.
Haruka's eyes warily shifted to Masaya. "Caught you at a bad time?"
Aiyana didn't even give Haruka the pleasure of answering her. She merely stared at her for a few moments, then resettled back on the bed – she'd pulled herself into a standing position when Masaya had opened the door. "What are you here for?"
Michiru interceded, always the peacemaker. "Sorry if this really isn't a good time or whatever. But we found something important that we thought you'd like to see."
***
Masaya's mouth was open in disbelief. His arm was placed possessively around Aiyana's shoulder. She wasn't in hysterics or sobbing uncontrollably, but silent tears were running down her cheeks.
Ami had been retrieved from the laboratory by Masaya – no one else could get her, and he'd blackmailed the three women. He'd promised to get her only if they promised to tell him every word of what had transpired between the two Outer Senshi, the doctor, and the patient during the last few weeks. Aiyana had appeared crestfallen, but she dubiously agreed to the deal.
Now Ami, Haruka, and Michiru had taken turns telling the story to Masaya. His stares alternated between them collectively and Aiyana. She was crying again, and damn, but he was pretty sure those tears were because of him again.
"Can I ask one question?"
"No."
Masaya snapped his mouth shut and sat back. Their suspicions of King Endymion were outrageous. The man was like an uncle to him, and he couldn't stand hearing the things Haruka and Michiru suspected him of. But how had they gotten Ami to go along with this? He'd turned to face her, looked into her eyes, and found the answer there. She hadn't wanted to believe it either. But it was glaring her in the eye, and she had always worked on rational thinking and proof. She'd prove that King Endymion was innocent, or she'd prove that she and her Senshi sisters had been naïve for all these years.
"We found two short files in the Irish computers at the archives of females with the last name Tomoe," Haruka said. "Almost got caught as we printed the information on the location of the names in the archives. Had to run out really fast. But we came back a few hours later and went into the T room of the Irish archive.
"The first girl, Darcy Tomoe, was only a year shy of the requirements for Aiyana – she'd be sixteen now instead of seventeen. The birthday didn't fit, but we conceded that it might have been changed for purposes unknown. However, when we got to her file, we realized that it couldn't possibly have been Aiyana unless she'd undergone some massive changes."
"What do you mean by that?" Aiyana said, sounding offended.
"She was born with bright red hair, four ready-made freckles on her nose, and she has two undeniably Irish parents with names not even remotely near what Hotaru and Endymion would have chosen to hide themselves." Haruka waved the folder. "The pictures are all here, if you want to confirm."
"So what about the other one?" asked Masaya, curious now. They wouldn't be laying the bait like this if there was no plausibility in the other file.
Haruka clamped her mouth shut and allowed Michiru to take over.
"The baby girl's name is Keiko Tomoe," she said, staring down at the sheet of paper. "Keiko was Hotaru's mother's name, in case you want to know. The certificate has her birthday listed as January fifteenth, but the timestamp doesn't match and here in Tokyo, it'd officially be January fifteenth by the time she was born. In Ireland, however, it was still January fourteenth." Michiru kept reading. "Beautiful baby girl. Seven pounds, six ounces, a little bit of curly dark hair indeterminable of color on her head and the most intense blue eyes you've ever seen.
"The nurse that filled this out seemed to have a knack for detail. She mentioned that the eyes were very reminiscent of the baby's father's." Michiru paused a little, choosing to skip down over the rest of the stats. "Fingerprints are here...hospital bracelet after a few months...birth mother and father listed here: Hotaru Tomoe and Darien Shields."
"Darien Shields?" Masaya burst into uncontrollable laughter. "What kind of a name is that?"
"A fairly Westernized one," said Haruka. "However, the fact still stands that Hotaru refused to change her name on this document and is, indeed, the daughter of a child named Keiko Tomoe."
"And I guess a bit of male arrogance keyed in here as well," Michiru said, smirking a little. "The king couldn't help proving his wit with his chosen name. With a little research, I discovered 'Darien Shields' means 'the king who protects.'"
Aiyana stared back at Michiru with the calm of someone who had just been read her breakfast menu. She slowly cocked an eyebrow over one of those intense blue eyes.
"So, is that me?"
"Very likely, except for one glaringly large problem."
"What's that?"
"This baby is way, way too old."
"What?!" Ami exclaimed.
"As in, predating the Cold Sleep. Unless there was some superhuman way those Alpha people reconstructed you to be immortal, we've got a really big identification problem on our hands."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------
AN: You know where to send 'em. Comments? Questions? Flames? (especially the latter ^_^) Me pyromaniac. *fires up the blowtorch* -- julymoonbunny@hotmail.com
I couldn't help it. I really like Mamoru's dub name. It's sort of sexy. Besides, you don't believe that he would just give his real name out like that, do you? Even if the local Irish peoples didn't know it, he could bet his WIFE and her FRIENDS did. *shrugs*
Why he picked something so obvious was behind me, but remember my friends, it's only obvious to you and I and the other people who have seen both the dub and the original. Or the dub. Original peoples are probably lost. By the way, that's really what his name means. It's probably closer to "wealthy one who protects" or something like that, but close enough.
*comes back* Oh YEAH! I just remembered. All that gobbledygook that came from Ami's computer? Pure bs. I made it up off the top of my head and it means absolutely nothing. I don't know UNIX from rat's ass and I'm pretty sure none of that was a valid UNIX command. Maybe I should name it something else.
*revises*
I LURVE Chex. Almost as much as Cookie Crisp. The 'ke' part was just nifty.