FLCL Fan Fiction ❯ The Blue Vespa ❯ The First ( Chapter 4 )

Naota stretched and rose from bed. Tane had already fixed breakfast and was outside giving her Vespa a once-over. He got up and walked out onto his balcony. She was dressed in yellow and blue striped overalls with nothing beneath but her unmentionables. The sun had already risen and poked its way through the trees, a soft spring breeze ruffled their hair.
"Tane!"
"Hai, Naota-san?"
"How does your Vespa run?"
"Like my sister's! Only not as fast!" She turned to face him and motioned for him to come down and check it out. He walked down the stairs and met her outside, slightly thrown off by her apparel. One of the straps on the overalls had slid down her shoulder, revealing her white sports bra. Tane had to keep reminding him that her face was on her shoulders, not her chest.
"Naota-san, I have some grocery shopping to do, will you come and help me?"
"....um..."
"Naota-san!"
"...."
"Takkun!" In her frustration, Tane shouted at him, her voice sounding like Haruko. They were both shocked. She turned away and hastily made her way back to her scooter. Naota couldn't believe that Tane was so ashamed of her sister. He stood there, still a bit stunned, until Canti came over a nudged him. The robot wanted Naota to take the dry laundry in while he hung the wet clothes on the line. Snatching the excuse to go back inside, the boy rushed in and put the clothes away. Tane, why are you ashamed of Haruko?
"Why?" Naota jumped "Don't kid yourself, I know that your thinking that."
Tane sat beside him on his bed. Her face was serious, a serious that he had once seen in himself.
"Well, why are you so ashamed of her?"
"Did she not tell you what she has done in order to find this.. um... demon-pirate-king she's looking for?"
"..."
"Ruined civilizations that had developed centuries ahead of Earth, blown up entire galaxies, killed off species." Tears seemed to form in Tane's eyes "And all this falls back on me, because I'm younger and everyone thinks that I'm going to grow up to be like her. So I'm following her left and right to correct what she's done and to avoid being deemed her very shadow, a partner in crime."
"You want nothing to do with her?"
"Absolutely nothing!" Hearing those words come out of her mouth reminded Noata of his brother. How he, too, at one time did not want to be like him. It was a while back, but it seemed so close when Tane spat about Haruko "what good can come from being that reckless, anyways?"
"Your sister... she did a lot to this city." Tane cringed "She brought some life to it, woke it up. Before Haruko came, Mabase was boring, sensible. It's like that now, but when she was here-"
"Everything made no sense, things came from nowhere, went nowhere." She snorted and foldly her arms across her chest.
"Tane, your sister was really cool." This was the straw that broke the camels back.
"Cool!?!? Killing off species, years of technological advancement destroyed, all in the name of some weird demon thing!?!?!" She shook her head as she talked, the square on her choker jingling viciously, "That is cool? I bet you expect me to down something like that, huh?"
"You don't have to jump on me!" Naota rose to his feet "I just wanted you to see the side of your sister that changed my life, the side I fell in love with!"
"Fell in love with?" she had an incredulous look on her face as she too stood to be in his line of vision, "My psycho sister!?!? You loved her!? How!"
"Because she showed me a side of life that I had never seen! I side of life that you'll probably never see because you hide behind logic and everything that is reasonable!"
"Maybe I like being there!"
"But you don't know what you like until you tried everything!"
"I don't want to!"
"Than why are being so judgemental of Haruko? You've never seen the world through her eyes, you've never seen the world I saw when I knew her. That world was everything I needed."
"..." Naota could see Tane aching inside, her fists clenched as she collapsed to the ground. He kneeled down to help her up, when a sudden burst of energy knocked him back. Canti was on his balcony railing, looking out towards Medical Mechanica. He threw his window paneling open as Canti pointed to something. A sepentine creature was pulling itself out of the hand next to Medical Mechanica, it was the source of the energy bursts. Canti opened up for its pilot. Naota turned and called out to Tane, "If you can hear me, please stay here!"
Naota jumped into Canti, the humanoid robot turned red and rocketed into the air. Inside Naota's room, Tane pulled herself onto all fours. Her hair had become a lighter shade of pink. She coug-... hacked up blood, doubling over on her knees. She looked out the window, everything had become a dark red, but she could clearly see a robot heading towards a hand on the hill and the monster residing on the hill and the blood that would be shed. Slowly, she turned to look in a mirror behind her. She gasped as her visioned cleared to show something that made her heart split in half.
.
.
.
.
.
.
She was looking directly at her sister.....

What woke the monsters in the hand? Did Tane do it? Can she do it?