Elfen Liner Notes : The Girl With The Power

by Rob Morris

JOURNAL OF A MOTHER

My dearest Kaede :

You do not know me, but I am your mother, Haruno. Whatever lies that animal tries to tell you, please understand that I have been his captive for many years, even longer than you yourself were. Men like this Kakuzawa try to rewrite reality itself with their money and power. We who fall under his thrall can never completely thwart him, only force him to work harder to achieve his goals, till the one day comes when even a schemer like him overreaches.

I know now I will not live to see this day, and I accept it, for in what I do I will make his life harder. He says he plans to tell you how I never stopped searching for you, and this is the truth. What he may choose not to tell you, for how it contradicts his always-grandiose dramatic narrative, is that while I searched for you far and wide, I did not do so wisely. Please understand, mine is a life that didn't lend itself to my becoming sharp or smart. I have only two real abilities : to bear babies like you and your brother, and to finally act once I know a situation will never change.

Like you, I never knew my own mother. The relatives who raised me, while not outright cruel, were also mostly indifferent to me beyond their basic responsibilities, and would not speak at all of where I came from. The only clue I ever got came when I was about eight. A British man, a scientist named Bernard Quatermass, came to Kamakura specifically to see me. He spoke of a worldwide event that had caused certain people to act strangely and attack others with a hidden power. In each area of the world, one person had been the center of this strangeness, drawing others to them. In his Britain, that person had been his own assistant. In Japan, that person had been my mother. I had been inside her womb when all this occurred. He found nothing odd about me, but I later learned odd things about him. His 'event' was loudly and forcefully denied by almost every other scientist, calling it all a 'cultish mass hysteria' brought on by Quatermass's own talk about 'horned Martian devils' affecting our early evolution. The old man himself died during another weird event in 1979, with some saying he died saving the world, and others saying he died a madman in a cage somewhere. The man I met was polite and reserved, and all I can say about his detractors is, they seemed a bit too much like a student body council in their uniformity of opinion. It was like they needed him to be wrong.

I wasn't one of those girls you read about with a posse of popular boys or girls hunting and stalking their every waking moment. Those sorts of girls, I envied. I was so far beneath notice, no one ever bothered to come out and say this to me. You might think a girl with no family and no friends would grow up lonely, and I did. When I met your father, I did whatever he wanted because he paid attention to me, even if only for brief periods, and not always in a nice way. Abuse or sex, I ate it up, because someone cared.

Knowing what I now do, and what you may sadly never know, I won't speak ill of him for what he did later. Yet I will pull no punches and say that he was little better than a gang member at times, yet not as effective in actually bringing money home. At least a criminal might steal enough to live on. Whatever he got, from whatever source, was gone often before I even knew it had existed. He became (after grousing) interested in you, though, until you actually arrived. Suddenly he feared losing the respect of his friends for having sired a 'freak'. For all his bluster, I think he was also beneath the notice of his so-called friends, unless he was buying.

**You know what this does to my standing? How people will look at me? Spartans exposed the weak babies. Kept the people strong.*

*You are not a Spartan. Kaede is a healthy baby, except for these horns. With love and patience, she will grow perhaps stronger than either of us. You would expose your own child to the elements for something she had no choice in?*

**I tolerate your weakness. Don't expect me to do so with this monster. I'm leaving until you have to choose between feeding her and feeding yourself.**

Beneath the floorboards, I kept canned goods wrapped in plastic bags, and other things preserved against his unreliability. But caring for a child alone is exhausting, and one day when I collapsed into bed, he must have checked on us. I cursed him for years, when I found what he had done, again not knowing all there was to know. Yet while I am sometimes very stupid, I did know my man well enough to see immediately that something was very wrong.

**Haruno-chan : I leave this note to tell you I have finally resolved our sorry situation. I will take this thing God has cursed us with and toss it over a convenient drop. Rather than hate me, you should thank me that now we can both go on and have normal children with other people. - Your Koji.**

There were several problems with the note. Koji did not believe in God. He made this clear every chance he got. The style of speech was not his, even when he was not agitated. He did not want to ever have children again, and I think if this were on his mind for me, he might have killed me rather than allow his 'territory' to be so defiled, even if he were leaving. But the biggest problem of all is, my husband could not write his own name. I believe someone sampled his hand-writing style from signed documents they obtained. Problem is, this was my own hand-writing, since I signed things for him. My own writing stared back at me, and I knew none of his associates had brains enough or interest in fooling me, and he did not have enough money or credibility to find someone to set it all up.

I vowed to find out what had truly happened to you, why someone set up a lie to hide the murder of a slightly odd girl incapable of making enemies. In my limited imagination, I never foresaw that the ones who did this saw you not as an enemy, but as a pre-destined messiah. That they were just as mistaken in this would prove no comfort to anyone.

Looking back, it's strange. For once, I did something not foolish, and I expected my strong habit of acting with clarity to carry the day. Perhaps the triumph of the steadfast searching mother is a story too often told, because in my logical action, I failed to see several now-obvious things.

*Please. All I wish to know is if my child was found and taken here. This orphan asylum is where a lost child would be brought, right?*

**Hmm. So why exactly did you abandon your child, and where did you dump them?**

*I did not abandon her. My husband did. I told him I would never allow this.*

**But it seems you did. Plus, you're saying it might not even have been your husband? Perhaps you just left them with a neighbor while out drinking, and they grew disgusted with you?**

*Someone took my child while I slept - from caring for them, not from drinking. As I said, my child was born with a minor deformity that would make it easy to identify her, and she is still just a baby.*

**Look. All I can do for you is to call the police, who will, presuming you're not one of those childless girls fantasizing about having a strange child, be forced to arrest you for abandoning your child and perhaps murdering your husband. Or, you could go away and I keep my mouth shut. Even if you ever had a child - and let's be honest about your looks, dearie - is all this grief worth it to find one little horned freak?**

Had my anger and my rage at this dismissive treatment not fed into my existing fear of being suspected of harming you, I would have demanded this hateful woman call the police, for I would have realized then what I only did later. I never once mentioned your horns.

What passed for my family often acted like I was a changeling, so help to aid your case was unthinkable. Koji's family felt I had ruined him somehow, and only their own questionable actions likely kept them from calling the police on me.

My next action wasted valuable time. But it may also have saved us all. I can't help but feel stupid on a primal level about this, though.

For three years, I traveled Japan, stopping at everyone my or your father's family had ever known of. Some were polite, but of no help save a shower and a meal. Most just slammed the door on me, but they likely knew as little of you as they did civility and hospitality. Ours were never large or connected families. But their indifference would not be the bottom of my poor story.

*For two years, I've worked for you. Done whatever task you asked, and done them well. You've even traded me around to other shopkeepers, when you lost a bet or owed money. All because you said you knew what happened to my daughter. Now I discover you were lying?*

**Was I lying? I know what happened to her. She had a dumb foolish whore for a mother. Heh! You probably misplaced her somewhere, you're so dumb. Is it somehow my fault you take people at their word in a world like this? You're just walking around asking to be used. Don't even think about sneaking away on me. You still owe for all the meals you've eaten here-or did you think they were included with your pay?**

I worked there without pay or food taken from that place until I nearly dropped, trying to negate a false debt he kept right on recalculating in his favor. Finally, my ability kicked in and I waited until he had me delivering a payment made to the local thugs for his card-playing addiction. I made the payment, and then kept going, since it was the farthest I'd ever been from his clutches.

From then on in, any variation on the phrase 'I Might Know Something' raised my red flags, for he had been right in one thing : I had been far too trusting. There are people out there who spotted how alone I was right from the start, and I made a habit of telling people who sat down with me while I ate to find somewhere else to sit. There was sympathy for a girl looking for her lost child, but there were also people able to fake that sympathy, and they were all exposed as the kind of cold thugs your poor stupid father only wished he could be.

As I reached the end of my rope, a small kindness from a complete stranger would be like a bright spot in what had become a bleak existence. One bit of brains I began to show was not even mentioning horns or oddities until I absolutely had to. A lot less slammed doors that way, though still very few opened ones. Junichiro-San needed a house-cleaner for the winter and spring, and he was for real. Strange to receive such good treatment from a man who had no connection to me at all.

**I am no menace, Haruno-San. The memory of my late wife is too fresh, even if I were that kind of fiend. Until we leave Hokkaido for my sister-in-law's place in Kamakura, you can stay here in the guest room. Oh! here are some who want to say good night to you as well.**

***Imouto and I wish you well in finding your lost baby, Haruno-San. I wrote about your quest to my girl cousin. She admires your determination, and says that all people should be as strong as you. Imouto wishes to give you a hug.***

****Can I play with the baby, when you find her, Haruno-San?****

*You and Kouta can both play with her, Kanae. You will be her special friends.*

One final happy surprise came when they paid for my train ticket back to Kamakura, where I at least knew enough people to not always scrape by, nearly homeless. Yet once there, I was reminded of how some can have it all, and not see this fact at all. Junichiro and his children chose not to go that summer, and so they missed seeing this disgraceful display.

**Mama, is Papa coming back soon?**

***Is that all you think about?***

**No. But I miss Papa, when he goes away.**

***That's you. You think your Papa went away just to punish you, and that he is coming back just for your reward. The world centers on you and only you. Don't you think I want your Papa back too?***

**Mayu is sorry for being so selfish, Mama. She will try to be better for Mama.**

These were the first words the little girl had uttered in over an hour of all of us sitting there, and the woman treated it like a supreme tantrum. I try to avoid judgment, but I took an instant and savage dislike to this woman. Then I considered my hypocrisy, I who let my child be taken from my arms.

By now, I had long since realized how the worker at the Child Welfare Center had misled and lied to me. I feared the worst - that my child had been sold to some kind of adoption service, or taken apart for research by some hideous lab. I realized anew that I was probably not smart enough to force her to tell me the truth. In fact, she might have powerful friends if she did in fact sell my child off - it likely wouldn't have been the first or the last time. So I would avoid trying to get the truth out of her lying hide - but work to gain the attention of those she dealt with. I no longer felt I could get you back, Kaede. But I wanted to die knowing what had happened to you. If these were yakuza, American military, our own people, or terrorists, who was I to be able to overcome them? But I could likely learn what I had to before joining you in death.

**Look, I told you a while back that we don't know anything. Do you want me to call the police?**

*As a matter of fact, I do. Let them see the evidence I've obtained about your corruption. We'll see who spends more time in jail, and I'll bet you take it worse. If you want this evidence back, meet me at this spot with money and papers on my child. I have copies in the hands of someone I can trust to bring them out, so let's not make any threats, okay?*

I was running a huge bluff, but I counted on this person being so corrupt she couldn't chance my telling the truth. At the seasonally closed shops on the boardwalk, we met and I played what little hand I had.

*Alright. I'll get your evidence from behind this sign, then you give me the money and tell me what happened to my child.*

**You turn your back on me? You meet in an area and at a time of day where no one is around? You must be really stupid.**

*Not so stupid. This bat I pulled out instead just broke your arm-and there go your teeth - ah - here come your secret employers stupid little me KNEW you would call. One to the face before they grab me, okay?*

I didn't know if I left that bitch alive, but they didn't. That startled me, I have to admit. If they were that uncaring about someone who kept loyal to them, maybe my end wouldn't be the quick affair I'd hoped for. Then again, if it weren't quick, I might still have a chance to learn about you, Kaede. This was when I first met him. The thugs must have been ordered not to hurt me, though I couldn't understand why at the time. But they also had a transport helicopter, which they loaded me into as they took me to an island. I was shackled, so leaving the chopper and hitting either its blades above or the surf below was not an option.

**You led us quite a merry chase, my dear. I was beginning to think we'd never find you. Stepping up and getting in the face of one of our employees was rather foolish, though.**

*I led you on no chase. I knew making that lying sack of shit nervous would cause you to come out and get me.*

**What? You fell off the radar after giving birth to the Anointed One. You had to know someone wanted to get you.**

*You think my Kaede is the messiah? You must be mad. I was wandering Japan, often foolishly, trying to find her after your worker misled me.*

**So this was a random path you took? Then that idiot girl paid finally for all her mistakes. She was supposed to dissuade you from pursuing your daughter at all. Also, I am not mad. Kaede is learning what monsters Humans really are at that orphanage. You cannot be permitted to interrupt this.**

*She is at the orphanage? Why would you allow a child to be kept there, when she has family that loves her?*

**Don't talk of love. I've heard that word before, and it sleeps in my ancestral memory. Humans are bastards, my dear. The sooner our girl learns this in its truest depth, the better. I would wager she is one major cruelty away from becoming the sort of leader her brothers and sisters will need to remake this sorry world.**

*She is not our girl. She is mine. My only child. She has no brothers or sisters.*

**Well, let's work on that part of the equation, shall we?**

My mind blanks whenever I try to think of the rape-the rapes that followed immediately after. What little I do remember is how his face seemed concentrated not on the act itself or even hurting me, but on a place beyond us. His happy place. How odd a thing for the rapist to leave the carnage of the crime in spirit. In his world, he was already a king, or so said the brag of this would be God.

I will say that his efforts, while obviously not aimed at my comfort, seemed also not concerned with directly causing me pain. The one time I felt like I might really have a heart attack, I learned that he stopped and sought doctors for me. My life, so meaningless to most, had some kind of value to this maniac, this Kakuzawa. All in all, I think I preferred indifference.

Some months afterward, my belly began to expand. I thought of you, Kaede. Ugly as my life had been and had certainly become, I would soon have another child. I looked forward to the agony, and the pushing. Once my captor had his desired result, the rape immediately stopped. Again, in a sick way, a pathetic nobody who actually desired me might have been preferable to this functional demon. He had never become bored with me. He had never had enough interest to be bored with me. For all the real emotion he put into the act, his thing might as well have been a poultry baster. I would not have wanted this for myself or for my worst enemy, but a torment of hell is somehow made all the worse by being wholly incomprehensible. Did he want an heir? A guard in charge of keeping my wanderings tight told me he had such an heir, a wastrel but still a true genius. Yet as long as I was pregnant, the beast who tormented me alternately with pain, loneliness and riddles also treated me a bit better. As I felt the time of my coming to term at hand, I was given an injection for no reason and fell asleep.

*My belly? Where is my child?*

**Our child is doing fine, my dear. He is merely being cleaned up. You delivered without incident. We have a healthy, strapping baby son.**

*But...but I wanted to deliver him through my own strength, my own love. I wanted to hear his first cries as he entered this world.*

**Oh, girl. You have my apologies. Somewhere along the way, I or someone in my employ must have given you the idea that any of this is truly about you. I will find out just what gave you this idea and I promise to never let it happen ever again. We can't allow you false hope - it could be just as damaging to your long-term health as the pains of childbirth.**

*Will you release me, now that you have the son that it seems was your only real desire?*

**Don't you love your child, as a woman usually does?**

*You have taken pains to remind me that I am almost not of concern in this matter. Yes, I love my child and wish to see him. I just assumed that we were to be separated.*

**The best favor to do yourself is to assume absolutely nothing. Who you are is of no concern. What you have in you is of massive concern.**

*I don't understand.*

**This once, I will bother to explain myself - by way of a history lesson. Have you ever heard of King Arthur The Second Of England?**

*No. I had studied English Kings in a book I did a report on. I don't recall a King Arthur outside of legend.*

**Hmm? Brighter than I thought, though that's no difficulty. Well, you never heard of Arthur The Second because there was no Arthur The Second. But there well might have been. Prince Arthur of Wales was the firstborn son of King Henry The Seventh. His father even took pains to marry him off to a powerful princess. Arthur's birth ended the dynastic wars in his land, and this final union of warring houses did for that island nation what the Shogunate on one end and the Mejii Restoration on the other extreme did for our nation - placed it on the path to Empire. One kink in the plan - Arthur died, his brother became Henry The Eighth, who ended up furthering the unification of Britain but almost singlehandedly caused the division of Europe for religious wars that persist in some fashion to this day. Some say Henry was an overachiever and later a tyrant in the way of trying to be as well-liked and well-admired as his older brother, once seen as nearly a messiah. So as to letting you go? No, child. Because one of the few valid lessons Humans have brought to this planet is this : Have An Heir, And Then A Spare. In our case, several spares. In fact, while I have the time to spare, let's set about making one...**

I still don't know if his boorish assaults hurt me as much as his insane aggrandizing and speech-making. Everything was destiny this, and destiny that. My destiny was to deal with this hideous thing. Helping in this was a beautiful thing. I was given my son, and I held him close. I loved him all the more for being yet another child taken from me while I slept, only to have this one given back.

I did not kid myself. I was still where I was, in the sorry position I was in, and nothing could change that. I think now that, had I been less accepting, I could have found a way out. Sorry as my lot had been throughout my life, betterment seemed just another taunt from a cosmic trickster.

I was let alone, not kept chained or held back in any way, within my confines. I cared for my son, and tried to block out everything else. In keeping with its father's grandiose nature, I was going to name the boy Adam, but he insisted on Cain. Cain, he said, was after all the survivor and the true ancestor of the species.

No woman has such control over her body as to deny pregnancy by will alone. There is no magic switch. But perhaps my despair, my ennui, my shock and disgust, and my efforts to overcome all of these at last placed too much stress on my body, and the assaults made no more children for this maniac. What he did next still managed to shock me.

*Movies? You are showing me movies? They aren't Mature, are they? I don't want the baby exposed to such trash.*

**You wrong me, my dear. I too only want the best for my son. Indeed, what better thing to show a baby than his Onee-Sama?**

*That girl with the cap - that pinkish-red hair-my Kaede? Who is that boy she is playing with? She looks so happy.*

**Isn't it wondrous, my dear? Our girl has found a boyfriend. He knows what lies beneath the cap. He knows, and he does not care. I think Kaede might even be in love.**

*Are they at the zoo? Oh, I always loved the big animals. Who is that boy?*

**His name is Kouta Kanbe. His mother, Hitomi was my second cousin. Her grandmother, Kana, was my aunt - an outcast for a condition of birth, but a formidable woman whose heritage shone through in other ways.**

*Do you control everything, then? You sent that boy to be her friend?*

**I control much, but I really don't need to. No, Kouta met her all on his own. Destiny does not bend to even my whim - not yet, anyway - but it does tend in my direction. Our families are pulled together by fate, my dear.**

*You seemed before to feel Kaede's misery in that orphanage molded her your way. Why permit her a boyfriend? Loyalty to family prevents you from seeing the boy over a waterway. or under a car's wheels?*

**If it served me. It does not, and I suspect our Kouta is not long for this world, in any event. You might wish to shield the baby's tender eyes.**

*That Room! Such carnage-are those body parts children?*

**They were. Not a group of well-liked children, either. The other wretches rejoiced to see them gone. Seems the ringleader fancied himself a modern Vito Corleone - an admirable ambition, but I think the Great Don would have sensed your daughter was not to be trifled with. I don't know what they did, but the method my people derived from interviews seems a simple one : confidence won, confidence betrayed, and reprisals no one saw coming.**

*You're saying Kaede did this? How? Does she walk around with a Human-sized blender to throw people into?*

**Temper your sarcasm. You can still bear children without fingers, if I so choose. No, Kaede is the blender. You want to know how she killed those brats? She stared at them. For the sake of some forgettable prank, they awoke the power of the modern world, and it moved to erase them. Look-see? The girl's head has a hole blown in it, made just before she was decapitated. The red in the classroom is mainly the obnoxious leader boy. Isn't it glorious?**

*It is not glorious. If this is the curse of her horns, then maybe Koji had the right idea. With such power, she can never live among others in peace. People are too apt to strike back at slights. Power like that would make all thoughts into actions, and our thoughts are often too dark for that. And why do you think she would kill that boy, if she loves him?*

**Young love? Why, it is the greatest guarantee of pain and rage and unthinking fury the world has ever devised. It doesn't matter what he does, why he does it, or how he approaches it. Young Kouta is a boy loved by a girl, and being a boy, he will misstep. Kaede will react as any girl might, amplified by her isolation and impatience for Human quirks. If Kouta does not meet his end then and there, he will have my further interest.**

*Who are you to play God with their lives and love?*

**Who better? And who says what I do is for play?**

For the first time, he removed what I had always guessed to be a toupee. What lay under I could not have guessed at. I asked the obvious, and in that always-dramatic way he has, he explained a bizarre history of what was supposedly another species alongside Humans, hunted unto near extinction by 'my kind'. He spoke of vast powers, which I suppose you truly have, and of how these were squandered by intermarriage with Humans.

I was never any damned good at biology, but I recall this much : For his story to be true, he should not be alive today to tell me this. If we were truly different species, none of his ancestors would have had the opportunity to dilute their bloodline - their offspring would have been sterile. Also, he needed me to have a son who was truly like you. I learned something else : He felt the child he had forced upon me would be, his name aside, the new Adam. Adam's father is God, and that is what he aimed towards. I asked if he only meant to be seen as the new God, or if he somehow thought he would truly become the supreme being.

**Who can say? Perhaps, if my spirit is believed to be so by enough of my progeny to come, I will truly make that final ascension.**

Perhaps all doors in my prison were shut tight. But now the jailer had given me the means to strike back in the only way I knew how. Also, I had seen your sweet face once again, Kaede. I resolved to one day truly rescue you from what you were becoming.

Yet what did I know? What could I do? I watched your baby brother grow, and began to delight as he learned how to speak and do all those delightful things a small child can. Where he came from, how he came to be, never left me even once. But he existed, and in a way, he was all I had of you. I still thought of how best to strike at my hubris-laden captor. Nothing came to me, until one day I met someone I should not have met at all. He entered the area kept aside for my holding, and it was only later I realized this was purely an accident.

**She won't stop crying!**

*Give her here. This child is a horned girl? There is more than one?*

**Yes. She is a good girl - but now she won't stop crying.**

*She's almost three, to look at her. Yet she has crying jags like these?*

**No. no. She is only just eighteen months. Like all Diclonius, Number Seven ages twice as fast as other children.**

*I-how horrible. Here-you hold her again, and remember-time passes more swiftly for her. If you do care for her. Your time away may seem longer as a result.*

**She-is merely another experiment.**

*People don't call experiments good girls.*

After this man, Kurama, stumbled in, I was confined to a small room for weeks. A new partition, erasing my holding area from all common view, was installed. All access codes were changed, and different systems of enabling access were placed on the area I was normally kept in and the rest of the facility. I got the sad impression that the door-access programmer whose keystroke mistake allowed Kurama to even meet me once did not live to see the day after the visit. I would swear it's as though Kakuzawa fears Kurama for some odd reason.

When questioned about it, I told what the cameras must have shown. That I calmed the little girl and he left. I hadn't needed to lie, but I had also grown good at it, like pretending I didn't know who Kouta was. Telling that posturing ass that I had known the boy before would have further fed his all-consuming sense of destiny. It was then I realized - his sense of destiny was something that could also consume him, if I played it right.

**What did you just say, girl?**

*I said, you may not become God. There is no way you can become God.*

**I only wish to be seen as God. To be called God by the generations I raise up by my actions.**

*That's not what you said to me before. But either way, whether you seek title or station, you may not become God.*

**Amuse me. Describe your theory, you of the many degrees in philosophy and theology.**

*I have none of that, but I have my knowledge, and I am sure of it.*

**And If I say that there likely is no God, and that I merely wish to hold a position in the eyes of the ignorant that is currently held by empty air?**

*Fate? Destiny? You have spoken at length of all these things, clocks that tick inevitably towards your ascension. You believe in those, you must allow for some manner of clock-maker. A random universe doesn't move in anyone's direction.*

**You fail to...**

*If God was merely an executive title, then you could easily be usurped by an heir, or a clever underling smart enough to give you what you want while lying low and plotting away. They could even reduce your role in this new Bible to the equivalent of one of Lucifer's minions, so obscure that learned scholars struggle to recall you without aid - if you get even that. I cannot believe this is what you want. Why would a man of wealth and taste settle for such?*

**Oh, I see you now. I may not become God because it is blasphemy, hubris, apostasy, pride, arrogance-am I close? Because I accept all those labels gladly, and with a regicidal song on my lips and in my heart.**

*You see flaws in how the universe currently operates. You see the abundant loopholes and badly written agreements between God and his creation. You see a clear path, while the one we now share looks murky, when it can be glimpsed at all. You have read all the answers the head office has been willing to yield up, and you not only reject them, in them you see the Big Man as vulnerable and replaceable. A no-confidence vote away from rejection by the board.*

**Go...on.**

*You see your spirit, armed with the worship you have engineered back on Earth, walking through the gates and being greeted by the Angels as their new leader, while the old one is cast out or disposed of. Enthroned in word, enthroned in deed, and set up with the knowledge of how you brought this about, so you can never be displaced as you displaced the old regime. For is not such knowledge an inherent aspect of being God? Well, is it or isn't it?*

**Of course it is! Omniscience and Omnipotence go hand in hand, to define the Supreme Being.**

*So in your view, God is no mere functionary. Once you make this final leap, you will have all that he does now, and what he has is all there is? Am I off? I wish to be accurate.*

**You...have spoken to my truest dream, encapsulated my every goal. How have you, of all people, done this?**

*But again, you will not become God, and you never could have. Because, by the terms you lay down, God already knows your plan, and has already beaten it back without even batting an eye. You cannot use God's own goods to beat him. His works are not a recipe book with which to cook up schemes. Or rather if they were, he is the head chef, the original eternal master chef. He knows not only secret ingredients, he knows the exact amounts to use and to never use. He can create the perfect meal from a thought, or go through the process of making it bit by bit. You and I and our son and my daughter are his creations, and so are the days of our lives. You fool! You can't over-write the storyteller. Even your most brilliant struggles to do so are all his thing.*

**Stop...you have to stop.**

*Either God is just a plum office title, or he is ineffable. Either this can be taken by anyone at all, or no one ever. Either your reign is less than a blink in the eye of cosmic history, or it never had a chance of being anything other than a goal you taunt yourself into madness with.*

**YOU HAVE TO STOOOOOOOOPPPPPPPP!**

*I, a mere bug, have stung a false God. The superior man is a sham. I laugh at the superior man.*

I knew the risks going in. I wanted the risk. I wanted the certainty that he would kill me, even through rape. The cameras meant that, if I so much as went to claw at my own wrist, I would be stopped. My only way out was for him or one of his guards to kill me. They never would, so his rage was my way out. But as he jumped me, and undid his trousers, he found that my words had weakened him in more ways than one. So disabled, I rolled him off me and went to lay down. I think I might have actually seen tears in his eyes as he ran out. It also occurred to me then. Maybe it wasn't my stress that kept me from again conceiving.

I spent nearly the next year completely alone. I think even the cameras were turned off or unattended. Meals were slid to me through a conveyor belt in a tube. The utensils were of a plastic that only stayed solid for a short time before becoming moldable. I eventually collected enough of these that I molded a passable bust of my daughter's head. Staring at it, I grew warm, smiled, and then burst into days of tears and sobs and moans. Just as the pain of my life at last caught up with me, I noted something in my comfortable cage. Could it possibly be?

I could have ended my life then, I suppose. But I couldn't truly be sure I was wholly unobserved. With nothing to do, I realized that if I went mad, it would serve that horrible man again. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction. What I found could easily have been a trap or a trick, but so bored was I that I ran with it. A metal door led to a closet, empty. The inside wasn't metal, but cheap plywood. Peeling that back, I found a rocky passage beyond. Was this possibly the result of a contractor or worker doing a cheap job? Again not caring, I followed an odd but familiar smell down the path, and there saw an old friend.

*It's the sun! The ocean! Fresh air!*

What will a hungry spirit that has given up on food do when it sees a steaming bowl of soup in front of it? I marveled as my eyes and throat adjusted. I purposefully broke myself away from this opening, too small for me to get through, too high above the ocean, and not something I wanted my captors to know of, again assuming it wasn't a trick. But I came back there every fourth day at dawn, till one day I noticed someone actually watching me. My kidnapper perhaps felt not as limp anymore, and sure enough, I saw him for the first time. Beside him was a small dog, who entered my area. Kakuzawa smiled, and said nothing as he walked away.

*Well, girl? Going to rip my throat out? Hey! You silly-don't lick so much! Ohhhh-I didn't mean it. Did they imprison you, too? We could be friends, you and I. Yes, I think we could.*

I named her Katsura, after a tragic girl in an old Gojira flick-the last of the Showa series, I think. She was unusually intelligent, and a billion questions and theories about why she had been given to me were put aside, as I now woke up at night with someone beside me. I grew to love her instantly, and vowed that if some fatal cruelty were to befall her as punishment against me, I would keep these good memories alive. Yet as I was to learn anew, planning against Kakuzawa's schemes is a fool's errand. He may not be God or The Devil, but he could destroy as well as any god of old.

**Do you think me cruel?**

*You are cruel. I am here, and I have not seen anyone not in your employ for many months. I have not seen my children or any member of my family in years. That you are cruel is beyond dispute.*

**I have given you the dog.**

*Probably only to kill her in front of me, and for all I know, her collar has a hidden camera in it.*

**That...is absurd. Paranoid. No matter. I will show you this very day that I am not cruel. We will venture out into this facility. There, we will meet members of my family, and yours as well. Plus some other familiar faces.**

I've never really been exceptionally bright. I needed no intellect at all to see that he was leading me into his revenge for our deflating talk. Nothing could erase the fact that I who was nothing so stung the man who thought himself everything.

This came very damned close.

***Onii-Chan? Is this the plum prize? I know you haven't been able to get a second bun in the oven. A treat for your favorite cousin?***

**My favorite cousin is a successful property manager. Tell me, little cousin - do you enjoy the lower half of your body? Would you like to wake up without it?**

***Onii-Chan is selfish and unfair to Cousin Caius.***

The-I can only call him walking beast-withdrew quickly, and smiled as he entered one of the numbered rooms. I can only recall that the girl inside screamed No, and that the smell of his black leather mixed with his sweat made me glad I hadn't eaten that morning.

Another numbered room was our next stop.

***Where is Papa?***

**Your Papa, Doctor Kurama, is testifying on the mainland, in the case of a dead girl who killed her bad Papa.**

***Number Seven will be good, then, so that Papa will return and praise her.***

*Child, why are you chained, naked against a wall?*

***Hey! Number Seven remembers you! You're a nice lady who gives good hugs. Number Seven stays here and has things fired at her head, because she loves Papa!***

**See, Haruno - how you helped the two of them to bond so closely?**

The child was smiling as she said this. This place was all she knew. The horror of her never knowing how many simple, wonderful things are in this world floored me. Her existence finally made me ask a question I would regret.

*How many horned girls are there? I had once thought Kaede was the only one. What happened?*

**Why, Kaede herself happened. In a way, all these girls are her daughters, and the nieces of our precious boy. You are a grandmother countless times over, my dear.**

*Don't talk nonsense. My Kaede is still a child, and from the looks of that movie you showed me, ages normally.*

**It is time I told you, for all the difference it makes. As Kaede wandered the province, two things happened. Men sired these new mutant girls, all after seeing Kaede briefly on the street, if they noted her at all. Men and women died of heart failure, brain bleeding - all manner of circulatory problems. The girls that were permitted to live past infancy, and who weren't brought here? At age three, they gained powers, such as my kind once held as its birthright. Invisible arms of force, will and energies unknown - and those whose families had not treated them with kindness? Remember that room at the orphanage, girl. Remember it always. Kaede is the first of this lovely dear new race. To this I say : Long Live The Queen.**

My horror only increased. My daughter was some kind of Plague Mary, placing other families in the kind of pain ours has known. The girls here? Experiments that are regularly threatened with bullets to the head if they try and escape or retaliate. Whatever I wanted for you, this was not it. Our sickening tour had only just begun.

***Think it through, Father. You're creating attack dogs to destroy the Humans. Dogs need a leash. What I'm doing can be this leash. A reminder of how the new gods on Earth can replace them as well. Funding this helps me and my assistant Shirakawa...***

**I thought her name was Arakawa.**

***Whatever. It will help us to have a button to push that doesn't end the world. The results will be worth it. Of course, if you just permitted me to exercise some special control on our recent acquisition, we could move our plans along the old-fashioned way.***

**There is to be only one God, my son. As it is right now. The old one made your ambitions a little too naked. The new one sits before you, and he watches both hands for trouble. You will be lucky to serve at my feet, or in my shadow, if you keep this game up. Have you visited your sister while you are here?**

***No, Father. I like to keep my breakfast inside my stomach. Oh-who's this? Authorized to listen in?***

**She is my guest. Haruno-Chan is the ultimate expert on Diclonius. No one knows the species as she does.**

***Really? No-not really. I know why she's here, Father. Can't you do any better? She's such a plain little thing.***

**She gives me what no other can.**

***Oh-a mouth-service girl? Well, she'd have to be. Well, Bye. Father - I need that funding. Haruno - I still just can't imagine it.***

*That man who just left - he is your eldest son?*

**What gave it away? Was it how many times he called me Father? That, girl, is the heir you spoke of displacing me. Do you now see him capable of displacing water effectively? But he is a bratty, disobedient boy. Always was. Let us meet my true favorite child - though sadly she lacks horns, she makes up for it in how precious she is to me - and to my plans.**

The hell I was in took on new meaning as we descended in what must be the deepest-reaching elevator in creation. The air itself grew hard to breathe, and I felt my skin crawl. Kakuzawa's daughter awaited us in a place that felt like death. I could not bring myself to stare at her for too long, before shrieking like a horror heroine. Was this the result of him supposedly loving his child?

***BY THE END OF THE DAY, YOU WILL MOURN AND GRIEVE SOMEONE YOU ONCE SPURNED.***

*Her voice echoes in my lungs, and through my stomach. What did you do to her?*

**Gave her the power of ultimate foresight. I took a child slow to learn her lessons and showed her how to learn all the pathways probability might take. For her, tomorrow is as uncertain as turning a working faucet to get water.**

***GREETINGS TO YOU, MOTHER OF MY BROTHER, AND MOTHER OF LUCY. TONIGHT, YOU WILL CHOOSE TO CUT OFF YOUR HAIR. YOU WILL CONSIDER SLASHING YOURSELF WITH THE SCISSORS AND GLASS MIRROR FATHER GIVES YOU, BUT THINK BETTER OF IT.***

*I did not choose to be your brother's mother, and I know no one named Lucy. I have no plans to cut off my hair. If given sharp things, I will use them to end my miserable existence faster than you can blink.*

**There is no point arguing with Anna, Haruno. I said to my son that there are no other gods-but before you is a goddess. Anna, will I achieve my goals?**

***FATHER WILL ONE DAY MAKE AN OFFER TO OUR KIND'S MESSIAH. ALL HIS SURVIVING CHILDREN WILL STAND BY HIM AS HE DOES.***

*That answer could mean anything. Anna-Chan - will your Father become God?*

**GIRL! Do not address the Oracle directly, in this sacred resting place. Anna, you do not have to answer.**

***I DO NOT FEAR HER PETTY GAMES, FATHER. HARUNO-SAN, I SEE MY FATHER EXULTANT AS PIECE AFTER PIECE FALLS NEATLY INTO PLACE. FATHER WILL BE IN A STATE WHERE HE WILL NOT NEED ANNA OR HER YOUNGER BROTHER BY YOU. THE ENTIRETY OF CREATION AS IT NOW STANDS WILL KNOW HIS MARK.***

I dared not ask any more, and I didn't need to. Anna really was an obedient child, whatever she looked like in that form - and I was told her body would only grow larger. I knew she was an obedient child, because her vague answers told it all. Anna was not lying, but giving carefully-crafted answers to a man I knew did not like things that contradicted his vision.

*You said I would meet with members of my family. So far, we have only met yours.*

**I keep my word. Let's go and see the first of two of your family members.**

Asking the devil to honor his word is a foolish thing, but since it was part of his plans anyway, what did I have to lose?

The unlucky, like myself, should learn never to say such things.

*Dear God! It's Koji!*

**Your husband, yes. Looking as good as ever, due to being frozen in a block of ice, inside this specialized chamber. Not that he ever looked all that good. Still, he will be in the bloodline of the new world, so he should be known of, at least to me. The Unknown Soldier Of Meggido Hill.**

*How did he die-how did you come by his body-and where is his right arm?*

**He died when I shot him, of course, and that is how we claimed his almost-worthless body. I say almost, because he was the father of the new Eve, and his incredible resistance to pain was something I wanted thrown in to a mix I have brewing-hence his arm. Is there anything else?**

*You shot him because he abandoned Kaede?*

**If he had abandoned her, I would have gladly let him live and produce whelps with another bitch to his heart's content. But he-don't laugh-changed his mind at the last minute. The father who so scorned her decided to bring her home and face your wrath if he had to. For now he loved his daughter. Imagine if I hadn't been watching him? This one uneducated fool could have ruined everything. When confronted with myself, my cousin and other armed men - he actually dared to fight back. I ask you-what choice did I have?**

*Koji-changed-for the better?*

**Well, even an amoeba has been known to evolve.**

I let him imagine that my tears were those of one shattered. But these were tears of joy. For if Koji, so thug-like and self-centered, could decide to even try and be a better man, I could find hope.

Hope can also be crushed. Mine was when I saw your brother again.

*What is that on his forehead?*

**Be fair, woman. I can't risk my true heir falling into the habit of scheming like his flawed older brother. This ensures he remains - manageable.**

This I dealt with as best I could. I had known he would keep the boy from me, and his life had begun to have a negative association with me, despite my best efforts. I prepared to give up on both my children to some degree, just to keep myself sane.

But before I could do this, one last piece of my spirit had to be stomped on by this bully. My quest would be completed. What I found made it all seem worthless.

****You can go in, Chief. But sir-the two-meter rule must be held universal, even to you.****

**So it's two meters, now? It was one and a half just last year. Oh, they grow up so quickly. She's a regular Son-Goku.**

*Is that a person bound up like that? Why are they surrounded by a metal cage?*

**Hello, Lucy. It is Minister Kakuzawa, come to check your progress. How are you doing?**

*Why is the floor shaking?*

**Because Lucy here is striking at it with her power. Lucy, will you say nothing at all to me?**

***I Will Kill You. I Will Kill You All. Is that enough? You know, Minister-San? I've heard you talking with Kurama. My intent is to torture him before I make him die. But when I hear your blather, twisting his words and your own for some kind of puzzle-game - you make me almost want to kill him then and there. Because dealing with you might be enough pain, even for him- and I hate him more than any of you.***

*Who is this person?*

**Who do you think she is, my dear? Who else do you think she can be? Go on. The cruel man is giving you the opportunity to introduce yourself.**

***Is this another shrink, come to analyze me, Kakuzawa? Did they ever find all the pieces of the last one?***

**Last chance, girl. Say Hello to Lucy. Tell her all about yourself.**

*Lucy? I am Haruno. I am-I am-I am your-*

***My what? My Friend? You don't want to be that. My friends don't prosper by me. But you don't have that worry, do you? No, you're not my friend. You are what they all are - another damn dirty ape. Not a real person at all. I'll tell you what, Haruno-San. They're not paying you enough. Because likely I will find a way to kill you here and now. In fact I'm looking forward to it. If it isn't today, then look forward to the day I find my way out of here. I can make you die in any number of ways. I can twist your head off like a corkscrew, or have your blood pressure pop it off like a cork. Say-what if I just tear off your limbs and leave you to bleed out? Well, none of that really matters. The manner of your death is the if. Your death itself is the when. So please, Haruno-san-ask me questions. Just don't ask about my mother. That was how the last one found herself multi-sected - and then multi-sected again. I wasn't kidding about them not finding all the parts. Well, Monkey-Girl? Come and talk with your killer, and learn how your lousy kind will inherit six feet of earth.***

I ran out of there sobbing. As the bastard had likely guessed, hearing your voice twisted into purest hate and rage sapped me of my will to speak, and perhaps my will to live. I hope you escape that darkness someday, but at that point, it seemed my quest to find my angel located the devil instead. Kakuzawa, for his part, wasn't done with causing me pain. This time, he was direct.

*What are you doing? Do you think I will conceive after seeing and hearing all that?*

**The way we will do it now - does not involve making babies.**

He did his worst, but his mental games made his attack pointless, for I was numb. Perhaps he knew how little I cared for myself at that point, for the day's final blow came as my dog was brought back to me. She was alive - and that is all that can be said for her.

*Katsura-oh what have they done to you?*

**Done? Again, you make me sound cruel. The little bitch was in heat. We stopped medically suppressing this - and gave her to the guard dogs. I think she likely enjoyed it - the first three times. By the fifteenth, it was clear they were actually hurting her.**

*You'd hurt a dog, just to teach me a lesson?*

**Your lesson was taught throughout the day. She is a medical experiment, with enhanced endurance and healing - and the speculated ability to produce whelps only of her own breed, rather than that of the father - or fathers. We put you to work caring for her, as a cost-saving measure. Nurse her back to health, so that when she delivers, we may dissect every last one. Establishing true, unmutated breeding will be another important step for the remaking of this corrupt world.**

*You made my daughter into a heartless monster!*

**No. The world did that. I merely collected the result. You birth messiahs, and she can shatter mountains. But mother and daughter both, you girls had from now on best remember who is the man with the power.**

*Whatever way you choose to hurt me, my devastated spirit still won't let my body conceive another child.*

**I believe you. Which is why I'm moving matters beyond the choice of either of our bodies.**

*Artificial insemination?*

**Nothing so cold and impersonal. As we speak, my scientists are working on a new generation of improved fertility drugs. They will be made utterly safe, both for us and for any potential offspring. If their work really bears fruit, you might rival your dog for just how many offspring you can produce. Our work will resume soon, Haruno. You will be the mother of the pantheon - of a whole Heavenly Host!**

Katsura did indeed begin to heal that same day, but she would never be as lively again. Before too long, she was to become a mother - and then her doom would follow. Mocking me, my captor had indeed left the scissors and mirror. I could try to hurt myself, but I was being watched and would likely be stopped - perhaps even restrained permanently. I could try and spare Katsura, but her trusting, loving eyes sapped my will to even make such an attempt. In despair, I thought to stab my makeshift bust of the daughter whose soul I feared was now dead. Even if I had, the whole thing had never really hardened, and the scissors would have just sank in.

I saw my only way out. Fulfilling the prophecy of Anna Kakuzawa, I cut off my hair until it was almost skull-short. In the days that followed, the first of the fertility drugs arrived, along with a sealable container for my - samples. Airtight and solidly built, I instead used the container and the pages they left me to fill out on how I felt for this journal. Written in here is my plan to leave this place the only way I can. Kaede, I hope you find happiness, and I wish I could see you again. But carrying any more children for that monster is not in me. So I will use the default structure of this dungeon to my advantage one last time.

I have always known I could get out of here by rushing past the guards, but I and likely they surely knew there was no point. Now there would be. My sealed journal - and poor Katsura - I dumped out that narrow opening too small for me. Whether a trick to taunt me or just an unusable hole left by a low-bid worker, it saw my words and my little love out. Katsura I saw trying to dog-paddle below, but the odds of her making it to safety are not good. She is free of them, and I will soon join her.

My plan now has to work. I will be shackled afterwards and probably left in birth stirrups if it doesn't.

**I just wonder who she is, and why she rates these meals.**

***Better not to ask. I do wonder why they're building that huge new containment chamber four levels down.***

**That's for Lucy. All I know is, she's supposed to be the worst of them. The Chief's son, the Professor? He recommended it. Once it's done, they'll transfer Lucy to the new super-secure chamber. I'd hate to pull the duty escorting her.**

**I hear tell there's this little cherub even worse than her-with like fifty of those arms, so powerful you can actually see-HEY! Moron! Stupid girl, where can you go?**

***The outer doors are sealed, and we're the only ones here-jeez, she ditched her clothes? I think she got around the corner...there!***

**ALERT! It's not her-it's one of the girls!**

***Headshot before she can use her vectors!***

EPILOGUE ONE

"Well, so near as we can tell, Chief, she used all her used moldable utensils to form a helmet of sorts, that she sprinkled her cut hair on. From the same stuff, she formed what looked like horns. Once she put that on and ditched her clothes, she looked enough like a Diclonius that we just reacted as per our training."

The second guard nodded.

"She really played us. We did find this note in her hands. It has your name at the top. What does it mean?"

Kakuzawa read it, fighting to keep his calm in front of mere underlings.

AN HEIR AND NO SPARES - THE GIRL WITH THE POWER

Kakuzawa raised his pistol and killed both guards. Even if he weren't enraged, they would have had to die, anyway, to keep the secret of who Haruno was.

"What it means is none of your concern."

Shaken by the loss of one of his pillars, Kakuzawa barely noticed as Kurama scheduled a visit by a Vice-Minister for five months hence, the very day Lucy was to be transferred.

The girl had beaten him. But he would defeat her and her mocking words in the end. After all, hadn't Anna predicted his inevitable victory? Yes, the foolish girl had served her purpose. Perhaps even her headless body could be harvested to serve him in death, her unique eggs still usable. He began to amuse himself by concocting the variant story he would tell Lucy, an altered history of her parents best suited to manipulate her. Perhaps make her believe she helped entrap her own mother somehow.

Yet Haruno's wilting words replayed, even in his most victorious moments, and even as his brain shut down for the final time, as the daughter completed the mother's work.

EPILOGUE TWO

Haruno had been wrong. Katsura had made it to shore in Kamakura, but had begun to give birth within a week after reaching it, perhaps accelerated by the experiments done on her. There was no food, no shelter, and perhaps many of her pups had been weakened by what had been forced on them. Before long, only one survived, and when Katsura herself passed, he was alone. As he watched, mother and siblings all washed out with the tide. Sad but confused, he began to walk down the beachfront, till he spotted someone wading in.

"Maybe this will clean me - or maybe I should just keep walking in till I drown. Like Mama said - who would even care?"

The pup barked, and this caught the attention of the girl in the waves. She quickly came to shore and stared at him.

"Hello. Oh - did someone abandon you, too? Would you like to be my friend?"

The pup's sadness was forgotten by the joy of this meeting. The girl would find that having this friend made some of her pain go away, till they found a good new home in a place called Maple House.

FINAL EPILOGUE

Once, the beach at Kamakura would have been ungodly crowded, even just after the summer was done. But the war had changed all that. No one knew this better than the man who watched his young daughter play with her best friends, two twin girls who were once his friend as well. The mystery of just how they came to be would be solved by a trip they all would undertake, a trip his wife and her mother were now arranging.

"Kouta-San!"

"Kouta-San!"

"Papa, look at what me, Kaede and Lucy found!"

The twins had the smile of their past lives, when she had smiled.

"It's a sealed container, Kouta-San."

"Does it have a secret pirate treasure?"

"Open it, Papa!"

Kouta saw the medical label still visible on it, and vowed to be careful if any used needles were inside. But that is not what he found.

"Haruno-San? Could it be the same woman?"

Yuka drove by at that point to collect them. The journal would be read in due time, and the twins' lit up to hear about a woman they had never known, but who had reached across death and life to make them aware of the power of a mother's love.