Part 1: "Next on Geraldo: Mad Scientist's Daughters and Their Fascination With Black Leather!"

Disclaimer: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon is not mine. It's Naoko Takeuchi's, Koudansha's, TV Asahi's, Toei Douga's, and DIC's. The DeLorean is definitely not mine.

Foreword: Yeah, I messed around with Hotaru's age. Don't worry. All will be revealed in time. I hope. Apologies to Sean Gaffney, Jeff Hosmer, Chris Davies, Ben Oliver, and Ken Wolfe, all noted fanfic authors. About what, you'll find out later.

Hotaru Tomoe, age six, watched as her father tinkered with the weird-looking car. Souichi Tomoe's mane of white hair was smudged with black grease as it bobbed up and down with his head behind the hood of the car. Hotaru was not exactly a normal girl; she was, of course, the daughter of a Certified Mad Scientist (Patent Pending), but there were other reasons why Hotaru wasn't exactly made of the same mold as other girls. Maybe it was because she had an above-average IQ. Maybe because she had the potential capability to blow the world to friggin' bloody uncountable, irreparable bits that's the reason why we have to kill her now kill her blow her brains out kill kill kill now yess yess….

AHEM.

To get back to the point, maybe it was the way she managed to look like a member of the Japanese Goth underground, only chibified. Hey, a six-year-old who manages to look good in black leather is a rare find indeed, so stop sniggering. But, no, she wasn't wearing black leather today, except for her shoes. She does have a father, you know, and you know how fathers are about black leather. Especially shiny black leather.

(MY dad freaked when he saw me in shiny black leather, so I assume that Tomoe-sensei would freak, too.)

Though Tomoe-sensei does let her wear black leather, the shiny kind to boot, when she plays around with her friend, Key-chan, but that's another kettle of steak. Key-chan really does need a lot of friends, however, and if you dial 1-800-I-LOVE-KEY you'll get treated to a cute voice of a girl who speaks in third person and who wants to be your friend. Note that if you're eighteen or under you need your parent's permission, and of course it's a dollar sixty per minute or whatever that is in yen. And, no, it's not porn.

Really.

Buuut, as I said that's another kettle of prawns. Steak. Whatever.

No, today she was wearing an adorably cute little dress; you know, those dresses kids wear that make them so adorable and cute until they cry into your ear because they want an ice cream. But this particular dress was not in the usual colors, of course, of neon banana or something similar. It was black and lavender. When all things are said and done about how he parents Hotaru, let it not be said that Tomoe-sensei didn't have any color sense.

Poppa's very excited today, thought Hotaru, as she hugged her purple teddy bear, Pooky, closer. He must be ready to test the car, she thought as she looked from one end of the vehicle to another. Brushed steel instead of paint, gull-wing doors, and some weird looking additions to the back, rounded out what Hotaru called 'the car'. Of course, Hotaru, hadn't had the pleasure of seeing Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox running around in something similar, and didn't know that what was in front of her was a collector's item both for movie fans and car buffs. When she asked her father what it was, he called it a De-lore-ee-an. When she asked what that meant, the Professor laughed heartily and told her he'd explain when she was older.

Maybe it's something like that sex thing that her father also promised to explain when she was older, after much coughing and gagging, Hotaru contemplated while she hugged Pooky a little closer. The artificial fur was quite pleasant. Well, Dad did say the same thing when I saw those photographs of him and that woman that looked like her mom in the old family albums. Lots of shiny black leather in there. Whipped cream, too. Hotaru's rather innocent fantasies of black leather and whipped cream were interrupted by her father, when he slammed the hood shut with a laugh.

"I finally finished it!" The Professor said, as he went to a nearby toolbox and picked up a clean cloth and wet it in a nearby basin to clean his face. "Now all I need to do is to test it."

"Uh, Poppa, you've been working on the car for three years now. I've always wondered: what does it do?" Hotaru asked her father as he started to open the back part of the truck that he usually used to transport the DeLorean. Hotaru wished she knew where he got the truck, but back home there were still quite a few bags of that white powdery stuff she'd found in it.

"Simple," Hotaru's father said with a smile. "It travels through time. Now, Hotaru, get in the front. We're going to test-drive it at the racing track."

He laughed that weird laugh of his before launching on a tirade about how he was going to prove to everyone in the scientific community that he was not a crackpot and etcetera, etcetera, yackety-shmackety, blah-blah. Hotaru tuned that out, since she'd heard it all before. Being a daughter of a Certified Mad Scientist (Patent Pending) was a twenty-four hour job, and you get used to your father's idiosyncrasies or you have a nervous breakdown.

Hotaru went to the front of the truck, utterly convinced that no matter how nice her father was, he was totally nuts.

Setsuna Meiou, also known as Senshi Pluto, was playing cards on the little workstation she had beside the Gates of Time. It was a change from playing solitaire with a real deck of cards, and it was nice to finally play Gin Rummy after all these centuries. Though they did call it Maeyrlian's Folly back in the old days. And that was more like strip poker than anything else. She really didn't miss that particular aspect of the game, since back then she was probably the worst card player in the entire solar system.

(How a person with the capability to see the future of humanity could be a bad card player… Let's just say she'd kick my ass if she found out I told you.)

(She'll probably want to have my head on the stick for starting this story, but then that's another kettle of fish.)

(Hah. You thought I'd say eels or something weird, right?)

Anyway, after she soundly defeated the AI yet again, she felt a little something tugging at the back of her head. She looked around. No, the Smurfs weren't up to their old tricks. And she quite distinctly remembered getting medieval on their collective asses and squeezing them all into the consistency of toothpaste for what they did with her hair the last time. Setsuna was quite sensitive about her hair, and always tried to keep it always in perfect condition; and woe betide any who messed with her hair. She'd put that Wolfe fellow in quite a pickle when she found out about that little stunt he pulled — something involving tar, feathers, superglue, a septic tank, thirty meters of rope and a CD of Barry Manilow's greatest hits.

(A fate I would not wish to share with him, so I will wisely promise that no matter what amount of crap I put Setsuna-chan through, I will not touch that magnificent mane of viridian that she constantly dyes to keep the gray hairs from showing.)

(Oops, shouldn't have let that slip out. Anyway, on with the story.)

She closed her eyes and, concentrating her power, she had a premonition of a blinding headache.

(A premonition of a headache is quite something for the Guardian of Time, and, as Ben Oliver once wisely wrote in his story, Nuke 'Em Till They Glow!!!, it's one of the signs of the Apocalypse. Or maybe that was St. John in his Revelation.)

(Hell, both of them are fixated with mushrooms, so what's the difference?)

To return to the matter at hand… Eyes suddenly flashing open, Pluto took her staff from it's convenient holding place (a staff holder she jury-rigged to her workstation). Having to always hold it would have made her arm ache, since back in the Silver Millennium they didn't have any of those lightweight plastics, and consequently the Time Staff weighed something like a ton if you didn't have the proper training — Pluto winced at the thought of those boulders she had to carry — and even then, you'd still have to put it down once in awhile. Setsuna would have gladly traded in her Time Staff for a newer, lighter model, but no one builds a Time Staff nowadays except for Washuu, and you know how Washuu is, always putting in those really undocumented features that blow up in your face in the most inopportune moments.

Pluto was sure that someone was going to try traveling through time again. It was a good thing that she'd caught that Wells guy a while back; though she had to admit the people who were trying this were getting a lot sneakier and slipperier. That phone booth was especially slippery, but she'd get the idiot driving that one, too. She walked over to the side of the Time Gate, standing two feet away from the Gates of Time like she usually did and waited for the inevitable. And, as Agent Smith once said, she heard the sound of inevitability: the thrum of high-octane horsepower was coming towards the Gate at incredible speed.

Inevitability, however, did not look like what she expected. Being Guardian of Time does have disadvantages, and one of them is not knowing your personal future. Yeah, everyone thinks that Pluto knows everything that's going to happen, which she doesn't. She's just really good at faking things. So she didn't expect a DeLorean going way over the speed limit, speeding towards — and then through — the Gates of Time, leaving parallel tracks of fire in its wake.

Setsuna blinked.

Blink.

Blink.

Then she asked herself why she didn't just take her mother's advice and go into necromancy? Being a Queen of the Undead and all was better than this. At least then she could go around in black leather. Shiny black leather at that.

She sighed. No, she got this white spandex leotard with a short skirt. With a bow in the front. Serenity could have at least asked Versace to do the uniform designs, but no, Versace was thousands of years in the future and she couldn't do that. Besides, if she told that to Serenity, then she'd have to tell her about the other things. Sighing again, she went closer to inspect the Gates for any damage. Thank the kami she'd had the entire thing insured after she heard about that trial incident that Gaffney fellow started, and the mess that Hosmer and Davies caused. Being a Guardian of Time nowadays was starting to get really dangerous with all those authors running roughshod all over the place.

She neared the Gates when the grey streak of the intruding car passed by her again, leaving its trails of fire in its wake. But unlike earlier, this time, Pluto got a glimpse of what was inside it.

Pluto shook her head.

A small purple bear? She didn't know of a time period where small, intelligent, purple-hued bears managed to evolve.

Unless it was those Gummi Bears coming back for vengeance.

Professor Tomoe whooped in joy as the DeLorean reappeared in a flash of light. Hotaru blinked. Okay, so her father might not be nuts after all.

The car coasted to a stop before them as her father used the remote-control he rigged into the DeLorean. Hotaru was still quite angry with him for cannibalizing her remote-controlled Teddy Ruxpin doll, but hey, it was for science and Teddy was asking for it. Tomoe-sensei shuddered as he remembered the song coming from those furry lips. Besides, he did get Pooky for Hotaru. At least he was safe and didn't sing. He opened the gull-wing doors and pulled Pooky out, proudly presenting the lavender teddy bear to his daughter. His daughter snatched it from his hands and inspected the bear for any damage that it could have sustained, and hugged it cutely and looked up at him with a pout. Well, Tomoe-sensei didn't see the pout since his Shiny Glasses™ were shining again and you know what that means.

"There he is, Hotaru. The first successful passenger of the Tomoe Temporal Conveyance," he said with a wide grin, before he burst into another round of patented maniacal laughter. Let me rephrase that, she thought as she held Pooky tighter in her embrace, not totally nuts. Just a little.

Her father's laughter was halted when he noticed a van approaching from the distance. Face paling, he shooed his daughter into the car. "Hotaru, get in the DeLorean. Now."

"Why?" she asked, as she turned around to look at what he was afraid of. Someone was putting a very unfriendly-looking machinegun out from the window. Hotaru quickly got into the passenger side of the car, with a speed borne of constant practice. Being a daughter of a certified Mad Scientist™ gave you a bevy of skills that usually involved running away very fast from people who were out to get you — or to be more exact, out to get your father.

Damn Pakistanis, Tomoe-sensei thought as he went to the other side of the car and opened the gull-wing door and slipped in, steal a little high-grade plutonium and they get all pissed off. He started to rev the engine, and then noticed Hotaru wasn't belted in yet.

"Hotaru-chan, what did I tell you to do when you first get into a car?"

"Umm… dad… can we do this later…? We better go!" Hotaru responded as she heard the sound of a machinegun starting its little tune.

Rat-tatta-Ratata-tata. Kind of like Showtunes when you get down to it. Terrorists can be quite talented if they only put their mind to it.

"Not until you repeat what I told you, young lady."

Tomoe-sensei, being a Certified Mad Scientist (Patent Pending) and all, tended to get quite distracted when he focused on something. Hotaru looked at her father, one eyebrow trembling and both hands hugging Pooky so tightly that one of his button eyes seemed to bug out. She looks so much like her mother when she does that, Tomoe-sensei thought with a smile as bullets whined outside.

"Okay… okay, I'm fastening my seatbelt! JUST GO, DAD! GO!"

Tomoe-sensei's fatherly smile widened, and he ruffled Hotaru's hair a little as he shifted car into high gear. He was so lucky to have such a good girl for a daughter.

Pluto was examining the tracks left by the thing that had passed earlier. She had stamped out the little fires that were left behind, and was looking at the tiremarks with great interest when she once again heard the roar of the engine… The sound of inevitability.

Two glaring headlights filled her sight as she looked up.

(Can you say 'like a deer caught in front of headlights'?)

(Good. I knew you could.)

To be continued.

Webmaster: Larry F
Last revision: May 21, 2007