The Five Quotes Of Hotaru Tomoe
Something I wrote for K8tj17 for a Discord Secret Santa featuring Hotaru Tomoe. Posted today for her birthday. Hope everyone enjoys :)
Spongebob Squarepants
She supposed it was like something she’d heard off an episode of Spongebob Squarepants. “It all started when I was born.”
What started, they would probably ask.
Trouble, Hotaru would reply.
But then, that was a bit of an exaggeration.
In reality, it happened more around the time she was eight years old. She remembered the TV had been playing that night, giving a storm warning about severe unseasonal weather heading towards the Sankakusu District.
She’d paid it no mind at the time.
But considering how a bolt of lightning had struck their building and caused enough feedback to start a fire and cut all power to their part of the building, it probably would behoove anyone, young or old, to pay better attention.
She should have died that day. Burns all over her body, smoke in her lungs, they had to peel her mother’s body off of her (she could still remember the sound of it).
The pain had been excruciating. She’d wanted to just expire right there.
But the love of a father is a rather… restorative thing.
She remembered awakening to phantom pain and the confusion at seeing her arms and legs replaced with a mesh of metal and flesh that stung at the connections. She couldn’t recall screaming, but if she had to guess, that was the moment the trouble all started.
Macbeth
She hated it. The silent looks, expressions ranging from “that poor girl” to “I’m just glad I’m not in her class”
Hotaru Tomoe had never really had the chance to make friends in her life before her accident. And afterward it just seemed to much a hassle. Especially when her father’s new “business partners” seemed to keep his attention far more than any practical or family pursuit.
Six women. Beautiful, mysterious, each one a member of the Mugen Academy staff or student body, where she attended.
But still, no matter how high the accolades, no matter her questions, the only time the illustrious Professor Tomoe seemed to give her attention was when her “condition” somehow worsened to give her trouble.
And that wasn’t even counting the…
She didn’t have a name for them.
Her chronic pain had become so bad that her father had opted to try alternative medicine. Namely exposing her to something called the “Tairon Crystal.”
And those treatments were the start of those… nameless image sequences.
Nightmares? Too vivid and linear.
Repressed memories? Too surreal to be anything she experienced in this life.
Visions? Not clear enough to be called as such.
And those moments where the sight of a woman that could have been her mother staring back at her, arrogant and cruel, shook her awake at night with a dull ache inside her ribcage, she’d look at her hand and legs and wonder just what did her own father do to her.
What did he put in her?
Fillet of a fenny snake? Eye of newt and toe of frog? Wool of bat and tongue of dog? Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting? Lizard's leg and howlet's wing? Finger of birth-strangled babe?
Then she’d push it down and buy another lamp to add to her already extensive collection.
But still, there existed the fear of the mystery surrounding her treatment.
By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.
The Bhagavad-Gita
She probably should have seen it coming when her body became the vessel of a veritable Anti-Christ.
For what must have been a minute (she couldn’t tell; nobody really timed transformation, have they?), Hotaru endured the most excruciating pain she could imagine. Bones lengthening and cracking, sockets popping out and back into joint, and voices, too many voices, ringing in her head. They rang almost metallic in her ears, a chorus of otherworldly chants, welcoming the arrival of their eternal master, Pharaoh 90.
It was in that moment, buried in the recesses of the mind of something like Mistress 9, finally released after all those years of alienation and worry that Hotaru felt it.
Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds
Her purpose, as host of Mistress 9, had been to lay waste to the world and ready it for the rule of the Tau Star System's denizens.
End of story.
But the end of one story is sometimes the start of another.
Frankenstein
She’d been sewn up as a patchwork of her former self. Hotaru had known this for years. In fact, Hotaru couldn’t remember a time from before she had her pain or her cyborg arms and legs.
But the release of Mistress 9 unlocked something else. A flood of images much like the visions from her darker half.
Visions of ancient castles with spires reaching into star-filled skies, of long dresses, of a kingdom that seemed to be mythology come to life.
And her.
She stood in the center of all of it, strong, formidable, wielding a glaive of continent shattering power.
And she would use it. She saw this “Silver Millennium” (the name just felt so right for it) rise on the surface of the moon and fall to the influence of Metallia’s war with earth. All from her home in Titan Castle.
She, princess of the ringed planet.
Senshi of death.
Sailor Saturn.
These weren’t vague images like the ones she received from housing Mistress 9, these were 100% crisp memories of a past life. She was sure of it.
As sure as she felt that the end of Pharaoh 90 was near.
That the end of her own troubles was near.
And nothing on earth could stop it.
Not the worries or fears she’d held onto her whole life or even in the previous one.
Beware, she thought, for I am fearless and therefore powerful
The Upanishads
From delusion lead me to truth
Sailor Moon. She owed a lot to her, Hotaru supposed. And to Chibiusa.
The latter had been her first friend, seeing her as more than just a burden. She’d listened to her interests and her wants and hadn’t shown a hint of disgust at her appearance or complained of her condition.
The former had swayed Sailor Saturn to stay her hand, to choose mercy over extinction and give the people of earth another chance.
And they’d both planted a seed in her mind; the doubt of the thought “only my father will ever understand me.”
From darkness lead me to light
Maybe with the power of the silver crystal, they could resurrect her father, give him a new lease on life. But maybe not yet.
Hotaru knew now just how exhaustive her father’s influence had been. She had another family now. People who wouldn’t need to learn to not view everything and everyone as a science experiment.
From death lead me to immortality.
And now, she could have the childhood she’d lost and so much more. She could make friends her own age, enjoy daydreams and make memories. And so much more.
Let there be peace everywhere
And even now, as she walked up the aisle towards the rest of her life, Hotaru could only wonder what she could even say about this life of her’s.
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