Chapter Ten - It's Enough To Make Kings And Grandmas...
1978
Awa Urashima heard a noise, and hoped it was Haruka up and about.
"What is that?"
A portal opened above him, and a figure wearing what vaguely looked like a slim line version of an astronaut's suit emerged.
"Awa-you are needed. Will you accompany me?"
The figure removed its helmet.
"Please? It's really important."
Awa rubbed his eyes and shook his head.
"My granddaughter is ill. I must stay with her-especially this night."
The intruder offered words of comfort.
"She'll be okay. I can guarantee it. But she also needs you to be somewhere that-you normally can't be."
Awa asked the newcomer to explain themselves, and they did.
"You'll have me back to this exact moment?"
"You have my word."
Awa left for the second most fantastic journey of his very interesting lifetime.
2002
PERSONAL JOURNAL, HINATA URASHIMA, AGE 155
I was so furious with him, I couldn't see past myself. How was it I had become the hard-nosed banisher?
My beloved boy restored me to life. What he unleashed in doing so would have been far worse had it been my life sacrificed to the would-be masters of the Red Gate. But none of that mattered to me. In the end, I am my father's daughter, prone to excesses in the name of order. Yet even in that, I am a filthy liar. I sent my Kei-Kun away because, while I always profess to want my wanderings to cease, I love life and its little pursuits more than anyone could imagine. Anyone -including myself.
I decided to seek answers from of all people, a psychiatrist. I hid my agenda, as I always have and likely always will, in this case by tagging along at Alice-Chan's request as she and Arlo-Kun settled the sorry matters that arose between them. Arlo was never a disobedient boy-he was as devoted a boy as my Kei-Kun. Alice was never a beating parent, making excuses and blaming her child for what she did. But underneath his quiet acceptance, his anger was growing and so was his self-loathing, fearing he was driving her to this. Shinobu was going with them in these final sessions, in part to be near Arlo while keeping to their mutual promise to wait on that private thing a young couple wants.
Yet what she still truly wants most of all is Keitaro. Our sweet Shin-chan has grown in mind, body, soul and in every measure any parent could want or hope for. But I see it in her eyes, as I see it in all my daughters' eyes. She would, at his word, lay back on the futon or run off with him wherever he asked to go. They all would. Because they all still want him to be theirs alone. Even the woman who will be his wife wants that, because Naru knows that, while he will never stray (though I have heard the girls half-joke about a lewd onsen 'festival' when he turns thirty) his heart is not a one-woman place, and his attendance to their sisters speaks of a love only slightly lesser than he has given to her. I adore my Naru-chan. But I cannot help but feel this is fit punishment for her past treatment of him. Not merely the hits and strikes, mind you. When one takes her strength and his durability into account, at least some of that is just what couples do in testing each other. No, her true punishment is for the crime of causing their love to nearly die in the desert of her pride and goal-driven blindness. This is not a crime I am wholly unfamiliar with.
So she will continue to be confused by her man's harem of the soul. In this, she is hardly unique.
Arlo had made as much of a confession to Shinobu as their own nerves would allow. But now he made a confession of a wholly different sort.
"I mean, he is a nice guy, and I admire his determination. I admire-his restraint-towards Shinobu-chan. I don't know that it is a restraint I could truly emulate."
Alice could not resist the opening her son had left.
"In fact, we know for a fact that you couldn't emulate such restraint."
The young man blushed, and his young woman blushed with him.
"Mother! Anyway, I like and respect Kei-San. But-apologies, Shin-chan-I just can't figure out how it is this skinny clumsy guy who seems to gather supreme embarrassment of ecchi proportions like weeds in an untended garden also manages to hold the attention and even the love of some frankly incredible women."
Shinobu smiled. The compliment to her and her sisters was not unappreciated. But her advice would tend a bit harsh.
"My advice, Arlo-Kun? Stop trying to figure it out. I did, and as a result I simply loved him from the start. This enabled me to keep my head while the others tore themselves-and him-apart. As for all the ecchi incidents? They really weren't."
The psychiatrist took this moment to interrupt.
"I've been-I've been trying to improve my-my Japanese. But this term ecchi seems a bit of a catch-all. How-exactly do you define it in this instance?"
Shinobu stopped and thought.
"His face has fallen into all our chests. He's seen us all stark naked at the worst possible times, and we have seen him. His grasp while falling seems pre-set to grab at our clothes and expose us in public situations. The other girls often responded to this by administering beatings that were almost carnal in nature themselves-sometimes causing ever more embarrassing and untoward situations. Kitsune-I mean Mitsu-rubbed up against him and tried to get money. She never got all that much, but she kept right on rubbing. I respond by cooking for him a lot."
Doctor Robert Hartley was professional enough to not let Shinobu's beauty and charm overwhelm him. But not noticing her at all was simply not in him.
"That would-that would be a good-a good situational definition of ecchi."
Shinobu tried for an explanation that would satisfy the doctor and the one who wanted to be her man, with some added restraint thrown in for the presence of Alice and Hinata.
"Did you ever sort-of know someone, and remember them fondly, and wished and wondered about if they'd been able to stick around? What would have been if life hadn't taken them off, the way it seems to do to most people? When I first met Sempai, he hurt me horribly by lying to me about entering Todai. But he apologized profusely, and every time I hinted that maybe he didn't mean to lie, he corrected me and said a lie was a lie, and that he would have to earn our forgiveness. Still later Auntie Haruka told me that his lying was partly prompted by her own wrong assumption and our own refusal to let him speak. Even when I mentioned this to him, Sempai still insisted that it was his choice to lie after a certain point."
She smiled.
"Even before the first time he tried to run away, I knew he would be a part of our lives for good. No Super-Punch, no sturdy bokken, no jump-kicks-well, and no frying pan used in treacherous despair would deter him. I loved him for that alone. Each turn of events only made me love him in all new ways."
Arlo tried to joke a bit, being both touched and a bit put off.
"Does he have a sister?"
Hinata answered this.
"Yes, but my granddaughter is clinically insane."
Doctor Hartley took offense at this.
"That's-that's kind of a harsh judgment to pass around. People um-like myself, like to be the judge of that kind of-kind of thing."
Hinata offered Hartley a one-minute history of Kanako Konno Urashima. He nodded.
"I-I think she may be beyond the help of most clinics. Still not the worst I've heard."
Arlo was annoyed at the interruption, but Hartley's words intrigued him.
"Well, who was the worst?"
Hartley fudged a bit.
"Can't divulge names. But-she was a samurai who was really devoted to her sword."
Shinobu shook her head.
"We know a samurai like that, Doctor."
"No, no-Miss Maehara. Not-like this."
The group all wanted to know what Alice asked.
"How devoted are we talking?"
Hartley realized he had broken a huge rule, but there was now no way out but through.
"Alright. In this case, before her family intervened, she was so devoted to her sword-"
All winced at his words.
"-wedding invitations were being printed."
Arlo resumed his end of the session.
"That-that is devotion. I guess what I want to know from Shinobu-Chan is : will I ever occupy a similar space in her heart, or am I a last-minute fill-in for a man she can never have?"
Shinobu shook her head.
"I can't answer that, Arlo-Kun. Because I don't know the answer myself. Sempai seems to look at me in a fatherly way, nowadays. But in my feelings for him, I am not a proper daughter."
Arlo took this in.
"Shin-chan-I need time to make my choice, based on what you've said. Will you accept and respect it, when I'm done?"
That he didn't storm out or insult what Shinobu saw as her dithering moved him up in her eyes.
"Of course. I will wait for you-and for your words on this matter."
Arlo turned to look for other answers, and for this he spoke in a borderline respectful way to the woman who gave him life.
"Mother-will I always remind you of the man who abused your innocence and your love? I accept that if it must be. But I would really like it to not be that way at all."
Alice had not been 'traditional' for many years now. Even for that, she was still much more open in the privacy of the group sessions.
"It isn't merely your father I see in your face. It's also that of my own father, the free-living radical who suddenly became a fundamentalist. Of late, the one I have seen too much in you is myself. Unable to please a parent who is too harsh, only able to be noticed when something miniscule is off, and therefore excoriated for it. I have wanted to praise you. You deserve and have earned praise."
The young man still did not look pleased.
"The blows I can take-I think they've made me tougher. But this praise you say I have coming? Why wasn't it mixed in with these slaps and punches? I knew the praise was perhaps hiding behind all the glares, scrapes and admonishments. But at times, it was far too well hidden."
Her own pain at maybe losing Arlo aside, Shinobu chimed in.
"I've wondered about that too, Alice-San. The night we met, you praised your son to me. But Arlo-Kun seemed shocked when I told him of this."
Hinata placed a hand on the shoulder of a woman many decades her junior (even if her true age had been closer to what most thought it was) and offered support.
"It is time, Alice. You need no longer carry this alone."
The strong woman, whom Haruka and Emi Kashigawa saw as second only to Hinata, was showing signs of barely kept back tears.
"Shin-Chan, my relationship with Arlo's father was far more like yours with Kei-Kun, up to a certain point, than I have led you to believe. He was not 'cool'. He was all but disregarded by my former Onee-Chan as a fool and a weakling. But I loved him always, and praised him endlessly. This raised his confidence."
Shinobu caught some of the rest.
"Which, of course, made her see him in a new light. She took him seriously, and suddenly you were out."
Shinobu bit down for a moment.
"My sempai took in my praise, and what comfort I could give. His confidence did grow. But I don't think Sempai Naru ever dismissed him totally. And he always tempered his growth with knowledge of how far he had to go. It sounds like Arlo's father let it go to his head."
Alice continued.
"He had her, but he would always run back to me when her harsh words - and she knew words the way Naru-Chan knows a right cross - would wound him. Then his ego would inflate ever further, to the point where I thought only the surrender of my innocence would let me keep him at all. My poor gamble on this cost me everything, till all I had left was Arlo. I treasured him, but I also feared him. For wouldn't he have to leave me as well, one day?"
At a nod from Alice, Hinata let loose with possibly the harshest truth either young person had heard up to this point.
"Alice did not move into the Sou merely to have a place to stay. Her father had offered a small home well away from his own. But there, she would have no one to safeguard her and her baby."
Arlo felt the truth, but it hurt too much to really think of it.
"Safeguard us from what? Was my father trying to kill me, to hide his shame?"
Alice looked down, and forced herself to look her son in the eyes as she confessed the worst of it.
"No. To him we were easily forgotten. But I considered killing you, and I moved to the Sou so I could be watched. These feelings passed. I gained my sanity back. The first restaurant, and then the restaurants that followed, were my way of keeping myself so busy and you so vital to me that these feelings would never return. They never did-that is to say, the worst of them never did."
Arlo had too long felt like a pawn, as regarded the events that brought him into the world. But it was a position he accepted. He loved his mother, and a lot more often than other children faced with battering, knew full well she loved him. To Alice's credit, not once did she even utter or consider contemptible phrases like 'Look What You Made Me Do'. But nor did the hitting ever stop, whatever his behavior. Arlo even recalled a period in his early teens when he had an attitude he felt deserved some discipline, yet there was no change in the amount of times Alice would strike and repent. Angel or no, Arlo had to accept it would simply happen.
"So it wasn't enough to blame me for a face I never chose? You wanted to kill me as well?"
But Arlo was now past accepting the unacceptable.
"You're not a bad person, and I do love you, Mother. But why am I to be stuck in your head as the product of your unjust ruin? Please don't tell me that I'm not, because, Doctor's visits or no, we keep coming back to this point. You apologize, and I accept with the hope that things will get better. But things were never better, were they?"
He now turned on a girl he had rapidly grown to love, and while his words were carefully chosen, his tone was one that would have gotten him a beating from every current resident of the Hinata-Sou.
"You want Sempai Kei to dump Sempai Naru. You want him to abandon his high morals and take you like you once offered. The night we met, you blasted him like a spoiled brat. You've made it clear who you want, Maehara-San. It isn't me, and yes, it hurts just as much on this end as it must have for you. Except I realize that no amount of holding on is going to change your mind. I also know why Kei chose Naru. Better a direct bombardment of sublimation-based fists than a sweet affection that never knows where it is going!"
That Arlo chose then to bolt was no surprise. But Hinata made an attempt to stop him nevertheless.
"Arlo, remember that this session is meant to expose such wounds as you now feel, so that they may be cleansed. Isn't it best that you see this through, and have done with these pains?"
Arlo bowed to her.
"Grandma-Dono, you have been a light and a comfort my entire life. Now, I am also told, you saved my life when I was helpless. I honor you, and praise you to Heaven. But do not tell me these wounds will heal, and these pains done away with. Next week, during a stressful shift at our place in sight of Fuji, Mother will grow angry over potatoes delivered late and not fully peeled in time for the lunch rush. Tomorrow, Shinobu and Kei will find that fog or steam caused them to miss each other entering the onsen at the same time, and both will exchange blushes that both will deny to my face. And I will be struck for a late delivery that I played no part in. And I will not see that blush fade, even as we kiss goodnight. These pains are not done with. For I merely adjust and accept, and they stay largely the same. Because Kei and Shin are, some history and background aside, the same person. But I am different now."
He stormed out, and this time no words would call him back. Hinata saw Alice look down, and saw Shinobu blank. Alice seemed to be stirring, so Hinata chose the one she thought was worse off.
"Shinobu-Chan, it is alright to cry if you must. We will all understand."
Shinobu did wipe her eyes-and then her mouth. She stood up.
"Many thanks, Grandma. But I choose not to cry. Instead, I choose the example of my Sempai, my Onee-Chan, my friend Naru Narusegawa."
Alice looked up in horror. Possible hypocrisy went out the door in the face of protecting the one she loved.
"Shin-Chan, if you hit him, I swear..."
Shinobu smiled.
"No, Alice-San. You see, my man has fled me in panic, anger and fear. I am obligated to run after him, no matter how far it takes me."
A determined Shinobu left, and Hartley broke his silence.
"You know, as bad as that got, I think we may be talking breakthrough here. But-but Alice? I think, before you talk to your son again, you should make a mental list of what you do and don't expect of him. Because leaving things vague has apparently lost its appeal for Arlo."
Hinata took it one step further.
"I have new respect for this psychiatry. Perhaps an outsider is sometimes needed in these things. But I will raise the wager on Doctor Hartley's advice, Alice-Chan. You must also ask you what you wish and expect of yourself. For too long have you operated as though your family's betrayal was only made yesterday, and it is no longer yesterday. A deep assessment is indeed in order."
Despite their age difference and the debt Alice owed this woman, Hinata had long made it clear she regarded the entrepreneur as nearly a peer, so deeply did she respect Alice's accomplishments. But now that peerage would prove a difficult matter for Hinata.
"What of you then, Urashima-San? I have shown that I am fragile in the matter of showing my love to my son. But you, who I have always looked to for strength, are now a weakling in the matter of your grandson. He brought you back from the dead, Hina! But all you can do for this miracle is show him the back of your hand. I am sorry that your father cursed you-and yes, I knew-some of your 'stories' of Japan's past seemed suspect for me. You have endured, and sometimes even when you were tired of life. You ask me to task myself, and I tell you : Stop preparing for death and instead hug the stuffings out of a grandson you owe many debts besides that to. Whatever you are planning now, stop playing the Great Demon and just be a Grandma to a boy who may now need to hear how good he is even more than my Arlo."
Alice excused herself, and a tired Hartley tried to wrap up.
"Mrs. Urashima, I'm glad you came, but I think this session is done. Well-well done."
Hinata tried to obfuscate some statements Alice made.
"Doctor, about Alice's upset rantings about death and curses, I would consider that the source was a badly upset woman."
Hartley chopped her gentle lie off at the knees.
"My-my mentor in this field was a man named Sidney Freedman. But he was born Soolaimon-Ben-Moshe in Roman-occupied Judea about the time Caesar was stabbed. When his wife and stepdaughters were killed by four barbarian immortals called The Horsemen, briefly in the service of Herod, he was killed and became Immortal. He-he blamed the child they were searching for that night. You-you might have heard of this child. They celebrate his birthday in late December. After a life wide and varied, Sidney was killed by Hunters of his kind in 1994. I know all this because I once sat in for Sidney at the anniversary reunion of the army unit he oversaw in the Korean War-the MASH 4077th. By the by-Hawkeye says hi-and still looks like he's thirty-five."
Hinata smiled.
"It is, it seems, a very small world."
She got up, looking a bit less diminutive for her verve.
"It is, it seems, time to make my world larger once again."
PERSONAL JOURNAL
So much is coming together now. Kaolla Su has learned responsibility without losing her wild loving edge. Mitsune now finds as much thrill in doing her new job as she does in emptying bottles. Motoko loves two men, one she has accepted will not be hers, and one she wishes to find out about. Mutsumi is chastised by her inability to be intimate with those she loves, so much so that she fails to see this is merely nerves. But even in her upset, I see growth, that one so perfect in my eyes can aspire to more. Shinobu is simply becoming even more wondrous. I wish I had spare grandsons for them all, but I doubt this would turn them from Kei.
Blessed Naru no longer needs to beat the man she once saw as weak, and no longer needs to trip over herself outrunning the weak little child she once was.
Alice was right, and little Sarah was right - except I have no plan, no great scheme. Once more, I was prepared to die, and once more, I was thwarted, and once more, I turned on one I love for making me live again.
Foolish old woman, to love life so much, and keep one eye on the grave, like it was some comfortable bed. Life is the comfort, and what lies after it may be a comfort if one has earned such, but death is no end unto itself.
There is only one way to make things right between me and my Kei-Kun. The problem is, it also involves making peace with another, less forgiving sort.
I have always prided myself on keeping in contact with everyone I have ever met, however ancillary, and aiding both them and myself when I have need of them. I will do so now.
Hinata picked up her cell-phone.
"Go there and aid the one I send. No masks will be needed."
She hung up and dialed another number.
"This is Hinata Urashima. Yes. Do you wish to be forgiven your antics? Then follow my instructions precisely, and be thorough in the job I set you to. My granddaughter will aid you. Huh? Will she? Well, since you are both obviously insane, there is that chance. Ask her."
Hinata texted the instructions, and then went for a leisurely stroll through bustling Tokyo.
"I feel-Haruka, is today your day?"
But a woman who wandered only needed to find a certain grave for now, so she took her children of all types out of her thoughts.
Across town, two people stuck in an elevator were at odds.
"Do I have to do this?"
"Yes! I need a pillow."
Kei removed and balled up his trousers, placing them behind Haruka's head as she tried to lay back.
"Are you all right, Auntie?"
She smacked him.
"No, I'm not alright. I'm ten months big, going on eleven, I'm having contractions, and we're stuck without medical aid. So don't expect me to be nice, Keitaro."
Her glare was withering, but then withered itself.
"If, on the other hand, nephew, you wanna be nice to me, I won't hold it against you."
Kei sat down, accidental immodesty concerns not present for a woman who once changed his diapers.
"Could this be a false labor?"
It wasn't a dumb question, so Haruka calmed a bit.
"I don't know. What I do know is, I was so worried about Grandma, I let concern about this pregnancy go. Whatever this is, we can't even let anyone know we're stuck. Cell-phones are blocked by all the metal in this elevator, and the cheapskates who run this shopping center let the elevator phone go into disrepair."
Keitaro thought of something.
"Maybe we can still place a call. What if there were someone both I and the baby have a connection with?"
Kei placed his hand on Haruka's stomach. Rather than roar at him, she let him grasp at whatever straw he was about.
"Trying to put me on simmer, there? Kei, this had better work."
At Tokyo University, one student felt her hair-bangs vibrate. She turned to the student-teacher who was her love and rival in love.
"Naru? Kei and Auntie need us. It's the baby. It's coming!"
Naru nodded and snarked at this.
"Well, she's only been pregnant for..."
Naru, who was very very good at math, now did some on Haruka's pregnancy and her eyes went as wide as when she peeped on Mutsumi's brother in the onsen.
"Oh, Auntie! The one thing that is a woman's province beyond dispute, and you have to be a bigger fool than your nephew about it!"
The two women made for the shopping mall, leaving voice mails for a warrior and a princess - but not a Warrior Princess. There have been too many crossovers in this story as it is.
Motoko realized now that the months of lessons had truly paid off. At the re-opening (after months of intense diplomatic wrangling and not some few bribes – or 'grants' as the paperwork called them) of the Molmolian Embassy, its Duchess, Princess, King and new Queen stood as the young Princess outlined reforms that were vast and deep for the island kingdom.
"We will no longer kidnap the nationals of, nor we will violate the airspace of, other sovereign nations!"
Like was said, these were reforms new to the island nation. Others were to follow.
"Also, our special services agents will learn to place the lives of all in their charge, and not stick guns in people's faces while wearing slasher smiles. While the units will remain in their current formation, from now on, Men will said to belong to The Kei Corps, and Women, to the Toko Corps, to honor those who taught me about honor and responsibility. However, the men will not stammer while they fall into the bodies of, and disrobe the women in Buster Keaton-esque slapstick; Nor will the women live in denial of the men proclaiming their hatred, when really they want some but have deep-seeded Freudian issues that prevent their speaking of this."
Motoko now wished her Urashima were there. Being stripped and exposed on that level was preferable, somehow. Someone familiar sat down next to her.
"Mitsu? How did you get across the city so fast?"
Mitsu Konno watched Su continue to speak in a manner that induced both awe and shock. Mostly shock.
"Suffice it to say, I'm getting better and faster at my chores as I master my powers. Powers such as teleportation, which got me here."
Motoko smiled inside. Only Mitsu could use the powers of the gods to become both more and less responsible at the exact same time.
"I thought teleportation pulled an Urashima on you, so to speak."
Mitsu winced when Su promised to reconsider the 'ancient and sacred Molmolian goal of fundamentally remaking the world' if the world around them stopped being so corrupt and noisy. For some reason, all the college students cheered the last part. They were holding manga compilations.
"Sigh! Go Nagai fans, figures. Well, as to my clothes-ditching, that still happens. But now, I carry a set of clothes bundled up in my arms. Kanako suggested using my senses to scout out a place where I could put them on in privacy. Seems to work. I move fast, so all anyone gets is a glimpse of underwear, if that. I'm trying to work on porting into my clothes, but they never go on right."
Motoko groaned as Su promised to find a cure for 'Cankers', as they often annoyed her as well. A Molmolian agent corrected her on the disease in question, to which the nonplussed Princess merely replied : Oh, That Too!
"So you are talking to Kanako now?"
Mitsu fought back an image of her, Kanako and Motoko 'ganging up' on Keitaro in the onsen, while a bound-up Naru watched and raged. She just didn't fight against it too hard.
"Well, she's either my sister or the sister of the man I call Bro, so peace is probably a good idea. Plus, now that Kei made his choice, I get her bitterness somewhat. I guess I always thought there'd be enough time to tell him I was serious. That it wasn't just me getting off on boob-rubbing the nervous nerd."
"But you did. Just as I was sparring with him the moment he walked in, having shown Shinobu his King Keitaro-err, his manhood."
Mitsu stared.
"You know Shinobu said he was not all there, that way, right?"
Motoko shrugged.
"Shinobu lied to protect him from our wrath. She had no sense of -specialized size- at that time. He is not like Mutsumi's brothers, to be sure, but is, to parse out Naru's infuriatingly vague descriptions, merely average."
Mitsu laughed, both at that statement and at Su's half-hearted apology for the 1943 kidnappings of Emperor Hirohito and President Roosevelt, in a Molmolian attempt to force peace in that part of the world.
"Average, schmaverage. I want proof, and I want a series of test-drives. I want a bab-"
Her snark cut off by the rising of her own feelings, Mitsu seemed to be on the verge of shaking apart. The clouds stirred, and the rains began, ending the ceremony. Kaolla and Amalla Su, King Lambda Lu, and Nyamo all piled into Mecha-Sama Platinum and grabbed up their friends. Su activated the flying vehicle's force-field and dried off Mitsu's hair.
"Thanks, Mitsu. I was running out of promises to make."
Mitsu saw the image of herself and Kei smiling over a newborn bundle of joy fade, as it always did, taking a piece of her with it as it went.
"Politicians never run out of those, Su-hey, my phone."
Answering it, Mitsu directed the Princess.
"Auntie is just about to give birth—Naru says to make for the hospital nearest Escalade Mall."
Su made the course change.
"Why that hospital?"
Su's question was casually answered by Motoko.
"Auntie and Urashima are trapped in an elevator, at which time the baby chose to begin labor."
All looked at her, and Mitsu shrugged.
"What can I say? I may not have won Keitaro Urashima, but I know him. Plus all three involved are Urashima by blood. Drama must be involved. Likely humiliating, mostly accidental nudity as well. Damn Auntie's luck!"
Nyamo whispered to Su.
"Is it me, or has she revised her opinion on Keitaro since last we all met?"
Su smiled.
"She's just more honest about it now. It was either that or face heart medication and buttermilk."
Nyamo darted her eyes about and then whispered.
"Are we still on for Kei's thirtieth birthday?"
Su activated a very localized sound dampener, and still whispered.
"Never talk about that with any other guys around—and I haven't gotten the others to agree to you yet."
Lambda Lu saw the grin on his Queen's face.
"You two-you aren't planning a shopping spree, are you?"
Nyamo shrugged.
"My King knows his queen and his sister all too well, I fear."
She whispered back to Kaolla Su.
"You said I could body-switch with Shinobu that night?"
Su cut off the dangerous conversation.
"Working on the tech. I tried it out on those two friends of Keitaro's, but I can't tell them apart, anyway, so we'll have to see. Now shushie, or I kick your tushie!"
As a hurt-looking Nyamo sat back down, Su rolled her eyes.
"Immigrants."
Not too far away, the man who was the focal point of much of their lives struggled with a choice that was no choice at all.
"Your—your pants?"
Haruka nodded.
"Panties too, Kei. Now get them off me. I'm set to go at any time, and I can't get ready without help. Oh—and I'll need that shirt of yours, cause your jeans are leaving a crease in my head."
Four years of coping with his 'harem' had made Keitaro Urashima a tougher man. Gone was the nerve-ridden mass of jelly that would snag Motoko's robe-flap, and instead of calming down and leaving, just kept blindly pulling while her rage increased. No more was the guy trading increasing shades of red blushing with Shinobu. The woman who once pounded him to paste on a regular basis now took a pounding of a different sort from him.
"EEEEP! Auntie, I can't do it!"
Or at least, he had been gone.
"I can't remove your clothes! Let's wait for some help, okay?"
Haruka offered the natural counters to his trepidation.
"You've seen me naked, you ninny! You saw me in Molmol, and you spied on me in the onsen. Hell, except for size, we were still bathing together when my boobs first came in. There may not be a woman in this world you haven't stripped or walked in on. Is it delivering this baby has you ready to explode?"
He calmed for a moment.
"No. Naru and I took a course from some EMT's, after September 11th. We both know the whole procedure."
This brief calm frustrated Haruka all the more.
"Then what is the hassle about? I don't need the wimp you were—I need the man you've become. NOW GET MY CLOTHES OFF, NEPHEW! Blouse and bra, too—I'm sweating in positively ungodly ways."
As said, the calm was brief indeed.
"Noooo! It's different just seeing you that way. I can't be the one that makes you naked. Auntie, don't you get it? We've all but confessed to each other. You're the one that made me realize we could have been."
"But you did undress Motoko."
"I haven't known Motoko for longer than I've been able to think. You and my mother were my first images of beauty. That's too deep in the software for me to just shake out."
Kei had expected a 'these-are-the-facts' answer, one which would have made him overcome his out-of-place nerves. That was not what he got.
"AT LONG LAST, YOU STINKING CRYBABY, SCREW YOU! I DON'T HAVE ANY MORE TIME TO WIPE YOUR BEHIND, KEITARO. YOU DROVE AWAY YOUR PARENTS, AND YOU DROVE AWAY GRANDMA. I AM ALMOST ALL YOU HAVE LEFT, TILL THE DAY NARU WISES UP AND SEES YOUR NEW SPINE WAS INFLATABLE AFTER ALL!"
She had been ready to further rant against the hurt look on his face, but this was replaced by something she had never seen her relative direct against her.
"Fine. First, the blouse and bra."
That look was one of pure rage. This look, which had rapidly replaced a hormonal/loving one, shocked her out of her own tantrum.
"Kei-"
"Not—another—freaking—word. Or I will let that immortal baby kick around inside your immortal insides, and see how high your pain threshold is."
While it was immediately clear to Haruka the line she had crossed (her condition aside), it was only as Kei ripped her blouse off and simply pulled her bra over her head that Haruka realized the worst of it. To Kei, this had to seem the second time that year that a female relation had trashed him for no good reason.
"Hey, a little rough, don't you think?"
"I said SHUT UP!"
A different set of nerves was in play. Ironically, the hurt she had never meant to deliver had hit him harder than every last snark or aside she had said during all their times together. But as he raised her legs to remove the rest of her clothes, it seemed like he was trying to talk himself down. A slight mischievous grin came over him, just enough so that Haruka covered her chest without realizing it.
"Alright, Auntie, let's get these pants off you and make a baby together!"
Her belt and zipper were already undone, and her panties moved with the pants, so it was a quick motion. But both Urashimas had forgotten a fundamental fact. As a general rule for the family, and specifically with Kei, their luck was abominable. This was evidenced directly when the elevator doors finally opened. Naru and Mutsumi were at the front of a gathered crowd, all of whom seemed to have cameras at the ready. Cameras that were aimed at the incredibly vulnerable Haruka Urashima. To drive in the final nail, pain caused Haruka to surge forward, scream and bite down. While she was thankful no flesh of any kind was felt when she bit down, the cloth that was in her mouth completed the day's ruin.
"I just tore off Kei's shorts, didn't I?"
The cameras now jumped between the very naked Urashimas, till Kei stamped his foot down.
"Damn you, are you all perverts? This woman is delivering and needs immediate medical attention. You get it for her NOW, or I will hunt you all down like dogs!"
Naru was shocked to not see her man a stammering mess (which she would have easily forgiven under these bizarre circumstances) and seconded him in a major way to overcome this shock.
"There's a perfectly innocent explanation for this folks-I-have no idea what it could possibly be, but I know these people, and there's no way they would let their Auntie/Nephew fetish go this far on purpose…"
Mutsumi leaned in.
"Not really helping, Naru. You get in front of Auntie, and I'll get in front of Kei."
They did this, to block the crazed picture-seekers, but a problem came up as Mutsumi stood in front of Kei with her skirted back to him. Her eyes went wide as she backed up a little too far.
"Kei?"
"Sorry, Mutsu."
So Naru and Mutsumi quickly switched places, which gave the camera-frenzy another opportunity. Su and company arrived, and her tech magic had the nude properly clothed. The mess was beyond even Mitsu's ability to snark over. One outraged busybody stopped Motoko.
"Did you see that disgrace?"
Motoko nodded.
"I know-I could have been a part of that, if I'd gone with them today. Damn the luck twice again!"
King Lambda Lu was taken aback.
"Here I thought Japan was such a dull place. Do these shows occur often?"
Mitsu finally found some snark.
"Only where Kei's involved. Once he's in, some female somewhere is going to get naked. Just today it wasn't us."
Motoko shook her head.
"That's right, Mitsu—rub it in."
Su commented while setting up her Sama for transporting Haruka.
"Toko is getting weird."
But active hormones or no, old habits die hard. Motoko addressed the crowd.
"You will destroy those photos."
The response was predictable.
"No way, witch!"
"Double Platinum!"
"Super-Viral!"
"Fetish Nirvana!"
Motoko smiled. This would help her work out her tension.
"I see. You have chosen to mistake my statement of fact for a request."
She withdrew her sword.
"As the saying goes, it's not the sword that I really want to wield…"
Naru withered as Motoko cast a loving glance at Kei.
"…but one makes do. You should see my cousin. She almost married her sword."
Said sword made silicon mincemeat out of cameras, cell phones, and the like in a heartbeat.
"You must understand. The images on those devices are the province of my fantasies, not yours."
The harried group departed for the hospital, where Seta and Sarah awaited. Though feeling the contractions, Haruka stopped the attendants..
"I have to speak to my nephew!"
"Auntie, we can settle all that later. Neither of us meant what we said."
She shook her head.
"Not a chance. It has to be now—because you have to know, Kei-"
Once, there was a little girl massively insecure in her looks. That girl now returned.
"—Go To Hell, you pervert. You really do get off on exposing girls, don't you? Some of those photos had to survive, and I will be totally exposed to the world within hours. Forget being an uncle. I don't want you anywhere near my baby, or my family. I—will never forgive you."
"But you told me to take your clothes off-I didn't want to!"
"Yeah—and you sure timed it down to the worst possible second, didn't you?"
Haruka was led off to delivery. But her nephew raced in front of the stretcher. If Haruka had heat vision, Kei would have been burning.
"I have not one word more to say to you."
Kei grasped the rails surrounding her on the stretcher.
"Well, I have one for you."
He did not want to say it, but wounded pride and anger took hold, and brought a word that Kei had not let enter his head, even during the worst of his tenure at the Sou. If his mouth had not been so dry, he would have spit it out.
"Bitch."
So tense was the situation, had Haruka not been about to deliver, she would have gladly leapt up and tested the family immortality. Kei would have welcomed that test.
Outside of each other's sights, both began to cry their eyes out, as though in mourning. The ones they loved best of all held them close while they did.
In the background, a small figure shook her head.
"Hina—what have you started?"
Grandma wished her plans were the masterpieces everyone credited her for. Because to help her grandchildren, she would need one. None came immediately to mind. When a hint of one emerged, she looked for someone neither combatant would ever dare yell at, aside from herself.
"So where is Shinobu?"
To answer Hina's question was to first ask where Arlo Guthrie was. In front of Harashina's Department Store, he uttered a name.
"Arlo Harashina. Or would it even have been Arlo?"
He walked in, realizing as he had very early on that this man would never have given him his name, would never have married his mother when doing so would have ended his chances of running the store his wife's mother's father left him by default.
"I'm here to see your senior manager."
The clerk looked very suspicious, this despite Arlo being well-dressed and groomed.
"That simply doesn't happen without an appointment, and I can guarantee that you don't have one."
Arlo had known that this would not be easy, and so had come ready with a plan to bypass this sort of obstacle.
"He was friends with my mother and her father when he went to Todai. My mother's family name is Guthrie. I merely wish to pass on her wishes to him. Then I will leave."
He reasoned that it wasn't a complete lie, though his mother's wishes were likely among the things Harashina did not want.
"Wait here. Don't move, or touch anything."
Since Arlo wanted nothing of this man save a face to face meeting, he did just that. But as an older man in uniform and five much younger men in the same security uniforms joined him, he knew that his behavior was not needed as an excuse for his biological father to move against him.
"You have a lot of nerve coming here. What does she want?"
It was as bad as Arlo feared. The twenty-plus years that separated them could not even disguise who they were to each other, at least in body.
"My mother wants nothing of you, and nothing that is yours. Nor do I. Just by letting me meet you this once, you have given me all I could want of you. I now know all I need to know. I've never come in here before, and I would like to never do so again. She doesn't know I'm here, and would likely be angry with me for even coming in your door."
If there was anything left of the charm that had convinced a young girl named Alice to take leave of her common sense, Harashina no longer displayed even a little of it.
"You honestly expect me to buy that nonsense? I've had your names and pictures on a watchlist since the day you were born. I've had people conducting surveillance of you both."
"And yet you seem to not know us at all. Harashina-San, our business is done forever. Now, let me go, because you have no cause to hold me."
A slap came across his face, but Arlo reasoned that he'd felt worse from a tougher, far more worthy parent.
"Don't sass me boy. You owe me life."
*He is nothing like Sempai-Kei, who respected and loved my Shinobu enough to keep his hands off of her. No wonder Mother can't stand to look at me now.*
"Is that the life you urged a scared young girl to end before it got started? Sir-why didn't you just tell your clerk that you didn't want to see me, and that I should leave? I wasn't going to raise a fuss. Why do you live in such fear of a man who walked in the door and tried to say hello?"
Arlo thought again of the man he'd been bitter about, and some of his questions about Keitaro Urashima were answered. Better an accidental over-apologizing pervert, thought Arlo, then a deliberate, unrepentant one.
"I have an arrangement with the police about shoplifters I catch. If I say that you are a shoplifter, and have you taken to the back areas-will that convince your bitch of a mother to keep under whatever rock-"
If he had been admiring Kei the prior moment, Arlo chose to emulate Kei's fiancée in the next. Harashina hit the floor from one solid punch to the jaw.
"Please call my mother a bitch once again, sir. I wish to bring her your head."
Before the enraged, important (and self-important) man could yell for Arlo to be dragged off, a new player emerged.
"Harashina-San! I demand that you honor your agreement with me! I will not be put off!"
A young woman now set out to prove how much she was over Keitaro Urashima.
"Who is this?"
The pushy clerk from before had no luck trying to grab Shinobu.
"Harashina-San, we couldn't stop her."
Shinobu's face showed no fear, and in fact even showed rage.
"Look, Manager-San. When you hired me last year, you said that giving up my innocence to you would have me in the big leagues. Well, I'm through waiting. My attorney is on standby, and he knows I came here, so don't bother with these thugs. Shall we make the other girls like me bold with accusations, or do we settle this here and now?"
The guards began to murmur.
"Not again."
"Does Manager ever have his pants zipped up?"
"Well, apparently not. Not when they're underage."
"The Missus ever finds out, she'll chop..."
The older guard barked and silenced them. Harashina gulped.
"What do you want? How-how much?"
Shinobu suddenly gained a thoughtful look.
"No money. See, I know you'd renege on anything that took yen out of your pocket. No-all I want is a guarantee of positive reviews every year. Some great, some glowing, and all issues resolved before promotions come round."
She looked at Arlo.
"Oh-and let this little nothing here go."
Harashina shrugged.
"What has he got to do with this?"
Shinobu chuckled.
"I heard you getting hot and bothered over whatever it is he did. You want to rip him to pieces - and I want to deny you something you want. See, you might pull out on our deal. This fool's fate is my guarantee that I win out on something. It's how I do business."
Harashina was by then so flustered, he waved them off.
"Wait-what department do you work in?"
Shinobu used her strange ability to summon a piece of metal. She swung the skillet like a gunslinger.
"Cookware."
She pointed a stunned Arlo towards the exit.
"Umm-honey? You DO know how to use a door, right?"
The two walked out, and it was hours before a very weak man realized he had never gotten the girl's name. It was days later he realized he had never gotten anything from the girl at all.
Well away from a place they and their circle would strive to avoid, the two embraced.
"My mother may be Alice, but Baby, YOU are the greatest! How did you pull that off?"
Shinobu kissed him and then giggled.
"I figured an arrogant slime like that must spend so much time covering up his affairs, he couldn't keep names or faces straight. I just pretended to be as greedy as him, and he fell for all of it."
She shook her head.
"Arlo, why did you go to see him, when you knew he might be like that?"
He breathed in. She had called him Arlo-no title, no nickname, no honorific. By some standards, she had all but declared their engagement.
"Shinobu-"
Seeing her light up at a similar effort on his part helped him keep on.
"I had to know for certain. To finally understand the pain he put my mother through. To know that she once wanted to kill me-that knocked me out. Before I saw her again, I had to see what she had fled. A twisted old fool who cheats endlessly on a wife he's obviously terrified of. Both of them hurt my mother. They deserve each other. I can stop hating myself, because I know I'm nothing like him."
Shinobu was still smiling, but moved to chide the boy she increasingly saw as hers, though Kei would never entirely leave her heart.
"Why would you need to prove such a thing? What could create a desire to show that you were not anything like that lecherous bully?"
Another had sought out Arlo the moment he had bolted from Hartley's office. Unlike Shinobu, she had been less certain she wanted to find him. If not for this, she would have located him in a heartbeat, for she had known him before he had the face that had earned her undeserved wrath.
"I created it, Shin-Chan, and that is my real crime against my son, more than any slap or scrape. I created his need to prove who he wasn't, rather than living as who he is. But that changes now."
Alice's aspect had always been that of a joyful woman fighting off the look of a dour one. But the joy had clearly taken hold, and the dour had taken leave.
"Mother, you cut your hair-and you dyed it. Why?"
Perhaps thankfully, Arlo would never mistake his mother for his girlfriend, though only twenty years separated the two, and Alice's active life kept her in good shape. But for the first time, Arlo could see traces of the kawaii ingénue his amoral father had seduced and abandoned, and also for the first time, he almost sympathized with the old man's hormones-almost.
"I've let stress rule me-rule us-for too long, kiddo. I'm not letting it destroy me anymore. I've turned over a new leaf, and I'm selling the restaurants-all of them."
Shinobu couldn't believe this any more than Arlo.
"But Alice-San? What will you do for money?"
The day would come when Shinobu would take her boy from her, and give back a few more in return. For then and there, the girl who chose a sempai of low worth merely hugged the one who chose a sempai of great worth.
"We have money, Shin-Chan. I've saved relentlessly and moved cautiously on new openings for better than fifteen years. The sales will bring even more. Hell, I'm worth more than that bum whose only good action was to give me my wonderful son. Both he and I will never want, so long as we're not foolish or extravagant. My aim was to emulate Hinata-Dono in having enough wealth to retire on. My mistake was in forgetting that even she went too far in that pursuit."
Shinobu completed a thought she had been having for months. She had theorized that, at one time, Arlo's father had perhaps been as worthy as her beloved Kei. Following that logic, she frustratingly realized that it may well have been his weak-kneed choice to oblige the young and foolish Alice that made him the wretch he was today.
*So Kei and I could never have been, without waiting till I was at least of age-and knowing my family plus my sisters at the Sou, probably well past that to boot? Oh, Sempai-Arlo is right about me. I am pathetic. Do I have to give you up entirely, just to find my own happiness? Because, for what now seems so very long, you have been all my happiness.*
"Mother, you can't retire-I think the stress of doing nothing would kill us both."
Alice really looked like a different person. She hadn't treated herself to anything resembling a makeover since becoming a mother, and then launching on the path of her successes and her sorrows.
"I won't be doing nothing. I don't know what I'll be doing, but it won't be nothing. As to you-I'm going to ask Hinata to let you run the Sou's Tea Room. That should give you and my anxious-for-it counterpart something to do-besides each other, that is."
The two younger folk blushed mightily at Alice's innuendo, precisely as she intended. But now Arlo seemed to be holding back tears.
"What will I do without you?"
Alice grabbed the boy who had come to her when she was still only a girl and held him close.
"You will have to learn. I need time to exorcise my demons, Arlo. I want no more part of your pain. I will come back-when I have at last grown up. And when I do grow up-I want to be just like you."
If there was a time to say certain things, it was then, and Arlo did not waste the opportunity.
"You were not part of my pain. The only pain I felt was from thinking I displeased you-that maybe you hated me."
Alice gently swatted his right cheek with two fingers.
"I hated the foolish choice I made and I hated those who selectively punished me for it. The precious consequence of my choice is something I have always loved, even when my vision was blurred by the shattering of a young girl's dreams."
She then turned to the one who is ultimately always a mother's true rival, and if she is lucky, her true heir as well.
"Haruka-Chan told me a lot about how you dealt with your emotions for Keitaro. Shin-chan, can you at least promise me my son will receive better?"
Shinobu always felt awkward about this. Somehow, in her own mind, the two hits she gave her Sempai were somehow worse than all the other ladies. In fact, he only held the slightest of grudges for the one blow she struck from behind during the madness in Molmol. Given all the other madness, even that he would have to be reminded of to speak about, and up against the tender love the two held and always would for each other, this was nothing at all.
But Shinobu being Shinobu, she took Alice's words doubly seriously.
"I admire Sempai Naru's determination and beauty, her intelligence and drive - but her methods of courtship-not so much."
"I will require one other promise-"
This one was whispered, and right next to Shinobu's ear. She blushed, then agreed. Arlo was given a pair of firm looks that told him what he already knew - not to ask. He did however check his cell-phone, informing him of the impending delivery of Haruka's baby.
"You two keep all the secrets you want. I mean, you will anyway, right? But we need to get to the hospital, to see the birth of Hinata-Dono's first great-grandchild!"
With many though hardly all wounds salved and acknowledged, the trio made for the hospital listed in Naru's text message.
But behind them, from around a corner, the older security guard watched, waited, and then tailed them all the way to their destination.
Once at the hospital, Shinobu did something once unthinkable for her.
"No, Grandma, I will not do it."
Hinata had crafted one of her fabled plans to reunite her fractured family. But it had hinged not only on the family's universal love for Shinobu, but also her unquestioned obedience, thought until then to be a given.
"But Shin-Chan? Am I not Grandma?"
The older woman was invoking something sacred, as well as a love nearly as strong as Shinobu held for her grandson. But Shinobu would not obey, yet nor was she being disobedient.
"You are more my grandmother than my father's own mother-at least the one I knew. For you, I would walk into the gates of Hell. But not even for you will I trick my sempai."
Hina began to dearly wish she had stayed and toured the New Jersey Shore that September day, when everything went so very wrong. Since then, she had witnessed an unspeakable event, scorned her loving grandson, alienated her twice-again daughter, and now saw the mildest, and once the meekest of her extended clan tell an elder to shove her schemes. Politely, of course.
"Suppose this trick is for his own good? I have pushed him away, Shin-Chan, and now he and Haruka have done so to each other in turn. Will you not aid me?"
Shinobu looked to her young man, who shook his head.
"Hey, she's practically my Grandma, too. I'll hold your hand and stand by you, but I'll do it nervously."
Shinobu briefly made the odd realization that this notion of kinship to Hinata almost made the lovebirds cousins. While it certainly wasn't by blood, and not even legal in any sense, it both thrilled and threw her off, if only a bit. It seemed that the home she loved so much would provide her with two great loves. But the owner of that home wasn't done with her just yet.
"Will you refuse me if I make this request my will in this matter instead?"
Shinobu had to end this before they all got hurt, and she moved to do so.
"I will ask you not to make it an order, Grandma. I would never refuse you no matter what, if a matter like this is also your will. But-instead of a trick, why not simply hash matters out as adults? Both your grandchildren are that, even if they're upset with each other right now. And-I think maybe-forgive me-you owe my Sempai an apology. He risked so much to prevent you from leaving us. It was out of devotion, not willfulness, that he rescued you from your fate."
Hina hesitated, smiled lightly, and cupped Shinobu's right cheek, marveling at the small wonder.
*Kei-Kun? How did you resist claiming so tender a love as hers? I must have raised my children far better than I realized. I am glad for you and Naru, but if it had been you and Shin, I might even have allowed a wedding at sixteen. She is a lioness for you.*
"I suppose the time has come for me to face the music and dance. But it's alright, I've always liked dancing."
Shinobu had known the precise balance between obedience to an elder and asserting herself, knowledge she nowadays often displayed (when her nerves weren't overriding her common sense). But Alice, who felt newly freed of her old burdens, tended to forget this still. Her experiences and toughness almost made her a peer in Hina's eyes, but the decades were still there, and still needed to be heeded.
"Well, Hina-Chan. Perhaps you could stop dancing in circles and go to see your children before you become a great-great grandmother!"
The snark was not vicious, but it was a bit out of line, and Hina spotted someone behind Alice, Arlo and Shinobu that enabled her to tweak her kohai-in-shop keeping's nose.
"Alice-Chan, I will promise to go and see my family immediately on one condition - if the opportunity should ever arise to reconcile with yours, will you seize on it just as quickly?"
Had Alice not been so high on her new insights and outlook, she would have surely noticed that she was walking into a trap.
"Since we both know the likelihood of that, why not? Yes, I promise to not pass up the opportunity you mentioned, nor similar ones to ride on a comet's tail."
Hina pointed behind the group.
"Then would you like to swing on a star-or would you rather be an ass?"
The trio-and future in-laws-turned and saw the older security officer from the store where Arlo had confirmed the worthlessness of his biological father. Shinobu looked a bit concerned, and Arlo looked a bit like he wanted the potential confrontation that seemed likely. But Alice looked shocked, and ready to bolt out of the hospital. For she knew the man who had tailed them all too well. Yet it was not with the greatest of affection that she finally identified him with a single word.
"Father?!"
The four stood silent for long enough to let Hina duck out and approach Haruka's hospital room.
Gathering both her courage and information, she listened outside of it as Naru found herself in the perhaps-karmic position of peacemaker between two who would not listen to reason.
"You know - it might be an idea for you two to reconcile before the nurses finish cleaning up the baby."
Haruka had delivered almost instantly upon reaching the hospital. But other things would not be so instantaneous.
"Oh, Yes. Let me reconcile with the pervert who just put me on every otaku's splashed-on computer screen for the rest of this century."
Haruka felt a little of the young girl who enjoyed holding her cousin/nephew urge her to dial it way back, and Keitaro felt the same of a little boy who worshipped his very pretty Auntie. But a pair of grumpy, confused adults were in charge, and slap-back seemed the order of the day.
"Well, why don't I try and be an obedient nephew, try to talk sense into a woman on the verge of hysteria, and maintain respect and love for someone who thinks my real name is 'Baka', who responds to compliments with fury-OH WAIT, I DID, didn't I?"
Naru paid back a small but noteworthy portion of her debt to the man she loved in that moment. Staring into his rage-etched face, incapable of calming down or being calmed down, indeed incapable of listening, she thanked God for the miracle of their love surviving her own stupidity, while quickly demanding another such miracle.
"O-kay. Here's the way we're doing this."
She shoved her man in front of the hospital bed, and turned his head to face that of his first love. She crunched the bed's railing in one hand to show Haruka she meant business, and she at least looked directly at Keitaro. Naru smiled, and turned her back on the two.
"The way you two fancy each other, you should already be doing weird things by the time I turn around...NOOOOOOO!"
The two were strangling each other-which was in theory utterly pointless, as neither really needed air any longer, nor could their neck or throat muscles give out. But they kept on all the same, and Naru at last pushed them apart.
"NOT-at all what I meant! Now calm..."
Each threw a punch at the other, and again Naru meant to block the blows. She succeeded, but unfortunately, she did so with her head. The force of the blows sent her face-first into the wall, where she left a perfect impression. She managed to utter a few words before falling out of her Naru-dent and then fainting.
"So-this is what that feels like-"
A man who meant to be her husband and a woman who had often acted as her mother scooped her up and into the bed, feeling only a little ashamed of their hurtful anger. One managed the first civility.
"Can I ask how the baby is doing?"
One was not so willing.
"She's still naked from being born. You'll have to wait to strip her."
Kei got right up in her face. His respect for (and fear of) women had started with his Aunt. The limits of his patience, it seemed, also ended up there.
"And how long before she turns on me like a viper?"
Haruka folded her arms.
"All the times I pleaded with you to man up, and it takes disrespecting me to make it happen?"
Kei's glare seemed fit to melt his glasses.
"Disrespect? I've obeyed every wish you've ever asked of me. As to manning up, one light slap from that lovely girl on the bed instantly made me more of a man than a million of your disdainful shrugs."
Naru caught every word; getting up to respond to it was another story.
*Wow. Immortal or not, how Kei got up again after every blow makes me respect him makes me love him all the more-and despite this, I will kill him for hitting me. Auntie, I'll wait until the baby is in college. THEN I'll kill her-oooooh-if I can ever get up again. Owww-I feel like Mutsumi's entire family fell on me, chest-first.*
Haruka cried out.
"OTAKU!"
Kei crossed the line twice.
"CHRISTMAS CAKE!"
That the otaku had a fiancée, and the Christmas Cake a husband, never entered into an equation with equal fury on both sides. Haruka slapped Kei. He grabbed her hands and was ready to spit.
"I have had enough-of you!"
Kei slapped Haruka. She was now set to claw at him.
"You don't slap your Auntie!"
They went on exchanging slaps, till Kei stopped in horror.
"You're bleeding!"
The blood was flowing, and wounds that normally closed as they opened were doing anything but that.
"Don't be an idiot-I don't bleed for but a few seconds-any more than you do, but...you are."
The bathroom mirror showed the story, which a rousing Naru confirmed.
"Figures. Same blood. You're not proof against each other. Heh-also-you two act so stupid around each other, when there are times you're so focused its scary. Don't you get it? You two are only amazing-when you're on the same side."
Tough love was the order of the day, and a reforming violent girl was not holding back in either part of that phrase. She looked at her man, on who it was slowly dawning that he had struck a woman capable of making him regret his immortality.
"Kei. My Love. Forget respect. Forget obedience. Hasn't this past year taught you that Auntie's orders can't be trusted when her emotions get the better of her? Mind you, that doesn't happen so often, but if not her hysterical amnesia, what about the fact that she took so long to decide to marry the only man she's ever loved-or at least the one that wouldn't have her locked up for nepotistic incest? Auntie is pretty, Auntie is strong, Auntie is sharp-but when it comes to emotions, she's actually a bigger idiot than you. You at least have the sense to shake apart when you're overwhelmed. She just bludgeons on straight ahead, full-steam, no questions asked. But you've actually changed-somewhat. Stop worshiping her so much that you obey an incredibly stupid order like stripping her. I joke about a fetish, but the truth is, you wimp, you can't imagine saying no to her. Normally, that's sweet. But now it's put you at each other's throats."
Before Haruka could fire back in any way shape or form, Naru was on her like Su on a banana.
"Auntie, you are my third mother, and the one I've dealt with the most. Despite my studious good-girl fixation, you had to kick my ass as often as Mitsune's, and I thank you for it. I could tell that one time you wanted to pound me for a slam-session I had on Kei, but you left me with a word to the wise. I followed Kei in calling you Auntie, not because I saw an old woman or any sort of 'Cake'-God I hate that crap. But because an Auntie is a pure loving thing, and you love so much, you felt compelled to make your disdain into your whole public personality. Yeah, you're not lovey-dovey-except when it makes me wince-but you are not the queen of rolling eyes and shrugs that you try and make yourself out to be. And somewhere in putting on that front, you let yourself think that you could Haruka yourself through even a potentially terrifying experience like bringing forward a new life."
Haruka was still their elder, and challenged the girl she helped raise.
"Proof that I was as stupid as you claim. Proof, kid-not declarations and amateur insight!"
Naru folded her arms and smiled. She pointed back at Kei.
"You ordered the Cosmic Emperor of Embarrassing Women to undress you in a venue where your privacy could not only NOT be guaranteed, but in fact, was already almost guaranteed to be compromised. You told a man whose hands have a magnetic grip built into them for panties, bras and bikinis to make you naked in an elevator for to deliver a baby you have to know he would have fainted at the first sign of the head coming out. You claim to know your nephew. Tell me, would you leave Su in an electronics surplus store? Old School Kitsune near a vintage liquor cabinet? Your Husband near an antiques district?"
Haruka would never entirely change, so her challenge to Naru's logic kept right on.
"Well-shouldn't he know me? Shouldn't he be man enough at his age to tell Auntie 'No' and mean it?"
Naru fought off a chuckle.
"You would have killed him, and as you just demonstrated, you're one of the only ones who can! Auntie, in case you haven't noticed, even Grandma euphemizes heavily when she disagrees with you and wants you to do something else. You're a holy terror, Lady."
Haruka sighed, at least nearer to giving up the fight.
"I'm a holy terror whose goodies are now on permanent public display. They'll all see me."
Kei was fighting a bit harder to stand down, but it was still a near thing.
"A bunch of lonely geeks will see what I always have-that my Aunt is very pretty..."
Haruka's hand lashed out, almost against her conscious will, but Kei grabbed it short of his face. He grimaced.
"Is that what this is all about? Again? AGAIN?!"
Naru caught on, having faced this down herself.
"You still think you're this ugly duckling? My God, Woman. You've got the face, the boobs, the butt-a commanding presence-and we still have to revisit this sorry corner of your world? Auntie, the sisters of the Sou are all hotties, and you are the eldest and the hottest of these. From the flat to the air-cushioned, we make men shake apart - especially our brother, who happens to be my man. He thinks you're hot, so don't you insult my man by saying you're not. Don't you dare say our Auntie isn't beautiful."
Haruka finally looked at her nephew.
"What about saying that Auntie is a Bitch?"
Kei finally had begun to look like himself again. Naru found herself valuing every shake, every hesitation and every blush as he attempted his trademark goofy smile.
"You called me a perverted monster."
Haruka shook her head.
"Every woman you now call sister-even Shinobu-has called you that."
Kei's retort was gentle, but no less firm.
"Even Grandma has called you a-that word."
Naru's words on the limits of their immortality kicked in once more. On a verbal level as well, these early friends and somewhat-crushes were the only ones who could hurt each other. The only fight that was now on was the one to hold back the tears. Keitaro lost this, of course. Haruka opened her arms.
"C'mere, ya damned little crybaby-and let this big crybaby hug the stuffings out of you."
She did, and he did, and only when holding her own newborn child would Haruka feel anything this tender on that day. Kei then began to choke from lack of air.
"Auntie, I can't breathe-"
Between her grip and his face too near her chest, his air was indeed limited. She smiled.
"You still got Auntie's goodies on the Net. You still have to be punished."
She released him.
"So you will perform a song for Auntie-just like when you were a little boy-got me?"
Kei's face sank.
"No, Auntie! Anything but that!"
"Uh-Uh. Exactly that. Accept my terms, and all is forgiven and forgotten."
Kei sighed, and Naru saw the same look he'd gotten when he'd been forced to cross-dress for a play. Since she herself had been the one to force him, she felt another of her guilt twinges.
"Hey, does this have to happen? You're both sorry-and you stripped him as well."
Kei held up a hand.
"Honey-I will do this for Auntie. I will sing her song. And May God Help Us All."
Naru winced.
"Oh God! It's not "I Love Mister Piccolo" is it?"
Haruka rolled her eyes.
"Hey! Even I'm not that vengeful. And yet-it will be memorable. I will set up the venue, nephew. Your word of honor to be there? One crybaby to another?"
Kei nodded, and inside, he was happy. He would not have to face life without his oldest friend.
"One little crybaby to one big one, Auntie."
A cue had been met, and one who was through listening made her entrance.
"Could I be so bold as to suggest that you add to that mix forgiveness for a crybaby who is both smaller than Kei yet bigger than Ruka at the same time?"
Grandma's timing was of course, perfect, and she was welcomed with open arms. Yet after strong embraces, words were still needed, even in a seeming ocean of them.
"We three need to speak of many things. But before all that comes-where is my great-grandchild? This old woman needs to see a new baby-one whose crying is more legitimate than ours."
Naru looked at the hospital room's doorway.
"Uhhh-they were cleaning it up, and then Seta and Sarah were supposed to bring it in here."
Sarah had been sent with her father to keep him focused. But Naru, once more very good with math, saw how much time had passed while the family feud was settled. She whipped out her cell-phone.
"Motoko? Tell Su to locate Sarah ASAP! Just-just tell her to invent something then. Why? Because I think something is really, really wrong!"
PERSONAL JOURNAL, HINATA URASHIMA, AGE 155
It seems that, even if we begin to abandon ego, turbulent times are still able to be with us with all of no notice. But as I await my baby's baby's baby, I have at last taken the baby step to heal the harsh wound I struck upon my wonderful grandson.
But oddly, I feel as though something even more wondrous awaits me. A presence I've not felt in decades. I am tempted to say that this is impossible, but to say that in the world we know would be even more foolish than I have been in these last months.
In the parking garage basement, a glowing pod emerged with two passengers - a young woman with bleached purple streaks in her hair and an older man who was supposed to be long dead.
"I should not have come with you-my granddaughter needs me."
The young woman shook her head.
"I told you. Your granddaughter will be fine. It's your great-granddaughter who needs your help right now."
Awa Urashima shrugged.
"So where is my great-granddaughter?"
Noriyasu Seta and Sarah McDougal came running around the corner, a precious bundle in Seta's arms. For once, the goofball was completely serious.
"Help Us!"
"They're after my little sister!"
Indeed, seven figures in armor, of varying heights and builds, were bounding after them. Seta got an inspiration.
"Sarah! Pull down an artifact and clobber them with it!"
"Dad! That's not a superpower-it's more like a sublimation for how I like Kei, expressed in some weird psychic thing Su tried to explain to me while we watched the Flintstones. Did you know Su thinks Bamm-Bamm was really from that universe's version of Krypt-"
The armored figures were firing on them, so Sarah tried anyway.
"Uhh-I can't do it unless it's in misguided affection!"
The time-traveling stranger put her hand on Sarah's forehead.
"Sarah-do it for your little sister. Your affections for her are mixed with jealousy. That should be enough."
Sarah rolled her eyes at the interloper.
"How do you know?"
The woman winked.
"Because you told me."
Sarah grinned a mile wide, felt huge confidence, and did what was asked and needed of her.
"Eat some of Uncle Hank's boulder, you jerks!"
Indeed, a rounded boulder that had once chased Old Hank down the halls of an ancient temple now blocked the armored intruders. Sarah looked at the newcomer.
"Dad! She's-"
Seta hushed his adopted heart.
"Please, Sarah-even I figured that one out. Young lady-why are you here-and who is this man with you? He seems oddly familiar."
From another entrance, the sisters and brother of the Hinata-Sou joined their friends and family. Keitaro breathed when he saw the baby was sleeping and safe.
"Seta-get upstairs-your wife and Grandma are getting worried."
For once there was no need to push Seta into action. He wanted to be with the woman he loved, and he wanted his children away from this battle-front. He was who he was, and would be again, but the goofball managed to pull one out without even glancing at the hieroglyphics for the Order Of The Ancient Destroyer near the hospital's snack lounge.
Back in the basement, before Awa and the visitor could be questioned, the boulder began to move. Motoko gestured.
"Urashima-ready yourself!"
All of them did just that, and saw the boulder splinter apart from one armored figure's movement- a movement backed by sword and bokken. Motoko almost swallowed her tongue.
"Those katas-impossible?"
Above them, floating gun emplacements were taken out by Su's focused mini-EMP blaster, but the girl who could navigate a football field full of banana peels almost fell over as she checked the guns.
"I didn't build that-but I must have?"
Mitsu's opponent kept stealing things from her. Mutsumi's kept falling on her, never missing.
Shinobu was covering her ears as sonics pummeled her mercilessly.
"That one has got a set of lungs on her-wait is she crying to make that happen?"
Naru's opponent was clear on the other side of the room from her.
"Heh-sorry. I'm not getting up close and you can't hit me from way over-"
The opponent's fist seemed to travel the distance like their arm was stretching, and yet it didn't. Naru was as stunned by strained physics as she was by the punch. Kei seized a bazooka Su tossed his way and opened fire on his pursuer.
"LEAVE MY FAMILY ALONE!"
The shell caught the attacker full-on. He went crashing through the ceiling, flying so far into the sky, he could no longer be seen. He came back down to Earth, crashing through the garage once again. The opponent then staggered to his feet. Kei's eyes went wide.
"No Way! No one could have survived that except Auntie and-"
Kei made the connection, but he hoped he was wrong.
"Su-get their helmets off!"
Excited to have her Kei direct her, Kaolla Su obliged.
"Gotcha, Onii-Chan!"
Rocket powered claws raced around the attackers, doing exactly what Keitaro Urashima had asked.
At least, what the Keitaro Urashima they all knew had asked. The one now facing them, at the side of six girls they all also thought they knew, was another story. Mitsu said the obvious, but in this case the obvious was what needed to be said.
"That's us-they're-they're us!"
Mutsumi immediately saw that the presence of the others was wrong on more than one level. Kei looked more lanky, even more geeky. Naru's smile seemed less warm somehow, and she always looked ready to strike. Shinobu looked somehow more fragile. Mutsumi's own counterpart looked like the airhead she'd always taken jokes about being. Su looked enough the same, yet even more furtive, and one of her teeth looked like a single fang over her lower lip. Rather than being features on her face, Mitsu's bangs and mouth almost looked like they were her face-and her tomboy aspect seemed more tom and boy both, her figure aside. Motoko, whose counterpart seemed almost more sultry and sharp-looking, questioned Mutsumi while keeping an eye on the intruders.
"Are you seeing anything odd about them-besides their presence?"
Mutsumi almost had a non-anemic fainting spell, but caught herself.
"Yes. Their movements are hard to take in. They seem so-so-"
Kei chimed in.
"So-what, Mutsumi?"
Mutsumi found the word she was looking for, just as the alt-group once more began their attack.
"So-animated."
Next Chapter : A Little Less Conversation...