Shattered Skies: The Morning Lights

CHAPTER 56: Look Down

Chapter 56: Look Down

-VERTEX ONE: 15.556984-

Professor Tomoe's Lab

Three Kilometers Underground

Azabu-Juuban, Minato Ward, Tokyo

The whirlwind of emotions shifting through Professor Souichi Tomoe's visible eye evaporated like morning dew. Now, what feelings lay beneath his stony stare, if there were any at all, were a mystery. His expression was now cold... not in the way that ice is cold, but in the way that a wall is cold, everyone and everything in sight subjected to the same impersonal apathy. It suited the lab's pristine surfaces, its fluorescent lights that glared harsh and white but provided no warmth, and its sterile, antiseptic, too-clean smell, which reminded Hotaru Tomoe, Sailor Saturn, of the many hospital rooms she had spent time in."You've grown," Professor Tomoe said to his daughter, scanning her up and down. "And you seem in optimal health. If this is what the life of a Sailor Senshi has done for you, I can't say I'm not pleased in that regard, at least."

"Papa..." Saturn fought back a sob. Here before her, alive again, was the father she had not seen in over five years. Returning like this, though, imprisoning her and Chibi-Moon in order to do heaven knew what to them, was far worse than never seeing him again at all. Her own emotions were a war of opposites, not helped in the least by the memories of two conflicting timelines with two very different versions of him. One Souichi Tomoe was a decent man and an innocent victim of the Daimon, but the other... wasn't. "I-I'm sorry, but..." She loathed the question, but couldn't stand to leave it unasked. "Which... which Papa am I talking to right now?" She honestly couldn't tell, and that admission sickened her.

Tomoe remained silent.

"Yeah," said Chibi-Usa Tsukino, Sailor Chibi-Moon, with pitch-black sarcasm. Her own feelings toward the professor were clear as day. "For that matter, is it Professor Tomoe, or do you prefer to be called Germatoid?"

For an instant, something very much like hatred flashed across Tomoe's face. "Germatoid is dead," he said, and then it was gone, buried beneath the mask of neutrality. "I am no more or less than Souichi Tomoe. My body possesses no cybernetics. No implanted Daimon eggs, pods, or tissue. No Dead End technology or augmentation of any kind. I am purely human, as I always should have been. As for which Souichi Tomoe I am: the answer is both. And neither."

"I-I don't understand," said Saturn. Her mind spun like a dervish. Him being controlled or possessed again, that she could handle. Not this. "Please, don't tell me that you—"

"Joined Dead End of my own volition? Yes," said Tomoe, placid as the surface of a lake. "No one is controlling me. No one is manipulating me. I was given free will and free rein to operate here as I pleased. I asked only for one thing: when and if you appeared, Hotaru, I asked that you be brought to me safe and unharmed. Regretfully, Tellu chose to ignore my orders." He pressed against the bridge of his glasses with one finger. As before, like a tide flowing in, venom washed over his tone as he spoke. For reasons Saturn couldn't fathom, he turned his bitter glare to the wall on their left, which was nothing but blank, flat bedrock. "Had the Time Reaper not interfered, I would have made her pay dearly for that. I can only assume that Joker summoned it on my behalf, without bothering to consult me first." The tide receded. By the time he faced them again, he was emotionless once more. "But Joker doesn't matter. What matters is that you're here. That's all that matters."

"I—" Words kept getting lost on the way to Saturn's lips. How could this be? How could she begin to process that the person willingly helping Dead End wasn't the monster that wore her father's face, not the one that stole his body, but the genuine Souichi Tomoe? The Souichi Tomoe from before the tragedy, before the nightmares, before the death, the kind father whom she loved from memories long ago, the father whom she thought lost forever? "But why... why would Joker revive you as yourself and not as Germatoid?"