FLCL Fan Fiction ❯ Emotions and Monsters ❯ Interlude ( Chapter 3 )

And now . . . I still don't own FLCL. That won't stop me from dreaming, however.

As the chapter title suggests, this is an interlude. A short little bit to help familiarize everyone with how I consider Naota to have changed and grown up in the four years between the series and this story.

Many thanks to those of you who have reviewed, and especially those who pointed out my need to explain some parts of my character development. You know who you are.

Just hearing Haruko's voice sent my mind back in time. In an instant, I began to remember all of the past four years, the pains and the triumphs.

Six months after the alien woman left, the Medical Meccanica building was rebuilt overnight. And by rebuilt, I mean that the whole iron-shaped thing was set straight, and the steam started to flow again. Robot monsters began appearing about once a month and, since they weren't coming out of me, I had to fight them and figure out how they were being made. That investigation took over a year.

A year after Haruko left, my father finally decided that he had had enough. Grandpa and I, however, knew that it wasn't the stresses of life that stressed him out. It was the fact that after finding someone that he thought was a perfect woman, she left him. My brother, in America, wrote to Dad and told him that he had no problem with Dad moving in with him.

When Dad left, I never got the chance to move into his room. Within the week, my two best friends and their families had left, and Eri's parents were making arrangements to go. I don't know from where, but she got the idea that she could rent a room from us, and work in the bakery to pay her way. Grandpa was more than eager to agree, since Kanchi still hadn't learned to make descent bread, and so she broke the news to her parents.

Of course, she didn't mention that it was my house she was renting from. Her father agreed to let her move out as long as she wrote to them every week, and made sure to call them once a month.

The four of us, Kanchi, Grandpa, Eri, and I, all settled into something of a routine. During the weekdays, Eri and I went to school while Kanchi worked the bakery with Grandpa, then Eri and I worked the bakery in the afternoons. All four of us worked on Sunday, and the store was closed Saturdays.

Grandpa hired a helper because of what I learned in my investigation into Medical Meccanica. I found out that somehow people were being infected by some kind of robot building virus. What I couldn't learn was how but, because I didn't know how I had to be able to leave the bakery at a moment's notice. Grandpa said that he understood (since, after all, one of the first robots managed to tear the front off of the store while fighting me) and put an ad out in the paper for help wanted. The man who was hired answered to the name of Jordan Randal; he made no attempt to hide the fact that he had recently moved here from Omaha, Nebraska in the US, and never showed an interest in talking about himself. That suited me just fine. I never had an interest in talking about myself either, and I definitely didn't want to hear about anyone else.

I guess I've always been a serious person. Having to fight robots on my own, without anyone to coach me, forced me to do a lot of growing up. People have always told me that I'm too serious, but I guess that in my current line of work, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Thankfully, in the years after Haruko left I didn't hear anything from Commander Amarao or Kitsurubami. They were one interference in my life that I didn't need. I could just see them come in and try to control me and my fighting the robots for the sake of "damage control," or something like that.

And so, without any support other than that from Eri, Grandpa, and Kanchi, I have tried to fight the good fight. And now the one who started it all is back.