Like Father, Life Daughter: Omakes

Disclaimer: I do not own SVTFOE or any of its elements.


Chapter 06: Mother's Day

In the middle of a family living room, on a bright and sunny Californian day, a pair of blades cleaved through reality, leaving behind an orange swirling vortex just shy of the coffee table and barely missing the fireplace. A pair of red boots made their way out of the portal as it closed behind them, their wearer looking around the room for a specific daughter of hers.

Hekapoo had just come from scouring through a good chunk of the multiverse, searching for the leak for the Magic High Commission, and at the moment, she was looking forwards to a nice hot lava bath at her castle and some peace and quiet. However, instead of her forge, she was currently standing in the middle of the Diaz family home.

Seraph had been especially adamant about spending the day together, this day on Earth, for some reason Hekapoo had no clue towards. Though her visits to the house had started to become slightly more and more frequent in the recent past, apparently today was supposed to more important than all of the rest, one day that her little girl just had to spend the entirety of with her.

Although she loved her daughter very much and was interested to find out what was just so special about this Earth date, reasons had just piled up to try and keep her away today. A case of someone abusing a pair of scissors she had made because they had partied too hard and got the wrong drinks, having to stock up on materials for her forge, and the Commission had taken up a large chunk of her day, almost making her forget about everything else except getting some relaxation, but thankfully, she managed to remember to keep her promise to Seraph before the day was up.

Hekapoo took a few steps, her footsteps muffled by the thick carpet under her boots. Normally, whenever she showed up, the house would have been full of life with at least one person around to hear her entrance, but nobody greeted her this time. Not even Seraph.

"Hello? Anyone here?" she called out, hoping for a response. "Seraph? I'm here!"

However, the one she did receive was the smell of something burning, which was soon followed by the sound of a fire alarm going off upstairs. Following the smoky smell and ignoring the blaring of the alarm, Hekapoo raced her way to find Seraph in the Diaz kitchen surrounded by a large amount and variety of foods, with quality ranging from 'horribly undercooked' to 'pure charcoal,' and an almost completely ruined kitchen. In the middle of the mess was Seraph herself, covered in ash and the remains of burnt food with a fire extinguisher in her hand and an extra-smoked apron tied around her waist.

"Uh...surprise?" she said slowly, a strained smile stretching under Seraph's tired eyes.

"Seraph, are you okay?!" Hekapoo quickly grabbed a napkin and started to wipe what could be generously called fried eggs from Seraph's face.

Her daughter only let out a disappointed and disheartened sigh. "Yeah, I'm fine. I managed to put out the fire before the house burned down."

Hekapoo looked at the scene of cooking carnage around her and the faint impressions of smoke in the ceiling. All she could do was blink. "Sweetie, what happened?"

"Well, I was trying to cook something, but…" Seraph glanced in the direction of the piles of ruined pots and dishes, "it didn't quite...work out that well."

Hekapoo blinked. "Why are you trying to cook? And where's everyone?"

Seraph let out another sigh. "Abuelo and dad took grandma out to brunch."

That sentence just puzzled Hekapoo. "Brunch? I think Marco mentioned that once. That's, like, a mix of breakfast and lunch, right?" Seraph simply nodded at her, to which Hekapoo quirked her eyebrows. "So, what? Do they put eggs in burgers or something?"

"Actually, they do do that here and it's quite yummy, though it can get a bit messy sometim-wait," Seraph stopped herself, shaking her head. "That's not why I...This was supposed to be a special meal for you. It's…Today's Mother's Day, mom."

Hekapoo quirked her eyebrow. "Mother's Day? What's that?"

"It's an Earth holiday mom, it's meant to celebrate, well, moms. You're supposed to do something nice for your mom and spend the day with them. Dad invited me to go with them to grandma's brunch, but I wanted to spend the whole day with you." At that, Hekapoo's heart turned to mush, full of adoration for her daughter. "I even tried to make you a nice meal, but..." Seraph pouted and looked downwards.

Hekapoo softly chuckled before planting a kiss on her daughter's forehead. "That's very thoughtful of you." She leaned down, caressing Seraph's cheek with her hand. "You do remember you don't know how to cook yet, right?"

Seraph held out an open book, its pages freshly stained with ingredients and ash. "I thought I could just follow the recipe, but then it got all confusing with the broiling and the sautéing thing and the stuff."

"Yeah, cooking is more of an art than a science," Hekapoo said, her finger on her chin in remembrance of her first times cooking. "Even I took some time to get good at it the first time I tried."

Seraph smiled for a moment, but then looked down and rubbed her elbow morosely. "I really messed things up, didn't I. I ruined the kitchen and I couldn't even cook anything properly for you, mom. Sorry about all this."

"Sorry? Sorry about what? We get to spend the day together, isn't that the point?"

Seraph looked up at her mother, a small and hopeful grin forming on her face.

"Okay, let's clean this place up first," Hekapoo told her. "Then we'll see what's still left in the fridge and we can make something together. "

"Really? But I'm supposed to make something for you. It's supposed to be a gift!"

"Well, I get to spend the day with you and that's all I need. If you really want to give me something, then help me make something we can both share."

Thankfully, Hekapoo knew some magic for the stains and smell of smoke lingering on the walls from her times in her forge, and her pyrokinesis definitely helped with getting rid of all the ruined dishes of food, though she hoped the Diazes wouldn't notice the 'cleaned up' stove, oven, and fire alarm upstairs. At least the delivery guys had the same models of equipment on hand, thank goodness, but that blaring had started to get on her nerves after a while.

Now, Hekapoo and Seraph were looking through the fridge and pantry for something to cook. It had been a few tiring hours since Hekapoo had arrived from her exhausting work, but here with her daughter, she barely felt tired at all.

"You know," Hekapoo began while squeezing an avocado to test its ripeness, "for a long time, I didn't know how to cook either. I mean, I don't really need to eat or anything so I never really bothered to learn back then. I just ate whenever I wanted to just because, and if I happened to want something to eat then I could just go out and get something. But if you asked me to actually cook something from scratch? Heh, now that was a recipe for disaster!" Hekapoo laughed at some far off memory in mirth, remember her own epically terrible attempts at cooking. Though Seraph had only ruined part of her kitchen, Hekapoo would have been lucky just to have one at the end of things.

Seraph listened in rapt attention as she absentmindedly picked up a loaf of bread and some garlic cloves. "So how did you learn to cook?"

"Well, your dad actually taught me how to make my first real dish and a couple of cooking techniques as well." Hekapoo started chopping some vegetables with a knife, the cuts smooth and quick. Meanwhile, Seraph tried the same next to her, though her cuts were much slower and not as even. "And then, when I had you, I started to taking cooking classes, as I was not just going to order takeout every single day. Luckily for me, I had some time to learn; baby food comes in jars and doesn't take much to prepare, and clones are pretty helpful for being in more than one place at a time."

As they slid the chopped pieces into a boiling pot on the stove, Hekapoo's mind wandered back to the past. "The day you were born was one of the scariest days of my life. When I got to the hospital, I was in complete pain everywhere. I didn't even realize that I was pregnant with you until the doctors told me!"

Hekapoo set down her empty board and knife and exhaled softly. "I didn't even have time to think about the whole situation before I had you. You were this tiny little thing with messy red hair and blinking gold eyes, and you had such a strong little grip with those tiny fingers." She paused in the middle of setting up plates on the table, and Seraph couldn't find anything to say.

"I remember the first thought I had back then. I made this. I made you. I made this amazing living thing in my arms, and I was responsible for this life. I was this baby's whole world right now, and it was scary and wonderful all at the same time." Hekapoo turned to look Seraph in the eye, her face soft and smiling. "At that point I realized something. Something incredible."

"What?" Seraph found herself asking, blinking owlishly at her mother. "What did you find out?"

Hekapoo gave a kind and loving smile as she wrapped her arms around her daughter. "I realized that I loved you. That no matter how scary things got, I would always love you. That I would always love you, no matter what."

Seraph's heart surged with emotion as she reciprocated the hug. "I love you too, mom."

They stood there for what seemed to be a silent eternity, arms around one another and their love for each other almost palpable in the air. Nothing could possibly interrupt this moment. Nothing, that is, except the ding of a timer. Hekapoo and Seraph broke their hug, joyful tears welling up in their eyes, then they laughed together.

"Looks like the food's done."

It wasn't exactly a gourmet five-star meal, but that didn't matter to the mother and daughter pair. It was something they had made together, and that was all they cared about. They spent the meal talking about Seraph's progress at school and the new friends she had made as well as some of the craziness that Hekapoo had to deal with earlier. Who knew that popcorn machines could be used like that?

Afterwards, when they were out of topics and food and the day was starting to get late, Hekapoo got the idea to end the day with taking Seraph somewhere special in the multiverse. She had shown Seraph places with waterfalls made of diamonds, seas that slept with rivers that dreamed, and people made of smoke in cities made of songs before, but now she wanted to bring Seraph to a special event that would be happening soon, one that Seraph had never seen yet.

This event was the Kagero 'Celestial Lights,' a phenomenon that only occurred once every few millennia where several traveling clusters of sentient meteors would meet and collide with each other. These collisions would knock off and transfer gathered materials and information between the clusters, with some taking in said materials to grow and learn, and others using them to give birth to a new generation of meteors to travel the multiverse, eventually repeating the process far in the future. It was a sight to behold, and every instance was completely and utterly unique.

Hekapoo had taken Seraph to the Kagero star system; specifically, to a distant and lush planet called Fons. Fons was a planet full of forests and lakes, and the atmosphere was just perfect for viewing the celestial occurrence. Lying under a night-filled sky on the ground, the grass beneath them smelling like apples, the meteor storm had erupted above their heads. The sky danced with lights, awash in purples, greens, brilliant yellows, and colors Seraph swore didn't exist.

It was to these wondrous lights that Seraph had fallen asleep, and so Hekapoo, not wanting to wake her up, carried her back home and tucked her into bed. Placing Seraph's dragon plush next to her, Hekapoo watched as Seraph slowly reached out and cuddled it. Gently, Hekapoo kissed her daughter on the forehead and went to create a portal back home, but a hand sneaked out of the covers and caught hers.

"Thank you, mom," Seraph sleepily whispered. "Happy Mother's Day."

Hekapoo smiled. "Thank you, Seraph. Good night, I love you."

And with that, reality was cleaved open and closed as sleep finally took Seraph. That night, she dreamt of the times she shared with her mother and of the days they'd spend together in the future, all with a pleasant grin on her face.


Author's Notes: Okay, so I actually posted this omake in LFLD a year ago but it should have its own chapter in the omakes. Plus its mother's day so here you go.