Son of Mine
Masaki Murakami – rebel Proto-Zoalord,
investigative reporter, and all-around thorn in the side of the
Chronos Corporation – looked around for the small,
well-camouflaged tent that he had set up sometime earlier.
Hidden inside that flimsy-looking little scrap of canvas was his
one and only weakness: his six-year-old son Kenji Murakami.
Kenji’s mother, Masaki’s wife, had been killed in the
firebombing of the Murakami household just after Chronos had
made him into a Proto-Zoalord and he had gone on the run.
If those bastards at Chronos ever
found out that I still had any living relatives…
Masaki didn’t finish that thought. He did
not
want to think about what Chronos would do if they ever found out
about Kenji; his prior experiences with them were enough to
convince Masaki that he needed to take precautions. A lot of
them.
If anything the disaster in the forest,
when the Guyver I – Sho Fukamachi – had been forced to kill his
own father in order to prevent the elder Fukamachi from killing
him, had driven home the fact that Kenji would never be safe if
Chronos found out about him.
So he took Kenji with him wherever he
went, hiding his son in any out-of-the-way place that could be
found. When Masaki went in to the city, Kenji was always hidden
in his car, since Masaki rarely stayed in one place for very
long. But now, now that he had met up with the Guyvers and could
count on their help and protection, maybe it was time to
introduce Kenji to them. Kenji had never mentioned it, but
Masaki could see in his son’s eyes how lonely the boy was
becoming.
I know why that is, of course,
Masaki sighed, remembering again just how this entire mess had
come about.
The house had been burning, and Masaki
had been forced to transform into his Proto-Zoalord form to
survive the heat and flames as he searched for the only two
people who had mattered to him in those desperate moments. He
had found Kenji, huddled on his bed. Kenji had been unconscious,
either from the heat or from sheer terror, and at the time
Masaki had been thankful for that. He had still been in his
strange and utterly inhuman Proto-Zoalord form, and he hadn’t
wanted to find out how Kenji would have reacted to his
appearance.
Masaki had picked his son up in the
gentlest manner possible, not wanting to jostle the boy and risk
having him awaken. Getting out of the house had proved to be
harder than getting in, though, and in the end Masaki had been
forced to blast his way out. To this day, he still had no idea
how Kenji had managed to sleep through the noise of the blast
and the falling wood, plaster and metal.
Finally coming up to the tent
where his son was hidden, Masaki ducked through the thick bushes
that further obscured Kenji’s hiding place from anyone who might
take the time to look for it. Before even setting off on his
search, Masaki had taken great pains to ensure that no one was
following him. And, even after all of that, Masaki had
still
taken an elaborate, extremely circuitous route to get to the
tent.
Some people might call it paranoia, but
some people had never been forced to deal with Chronos.
Unzipping the front of the tent, Masaki spoke softly into the
quiet of the forest.
"Kenji? Kenji, hey, are you awake yet?"
Kenji’s head poked out of the open tent
flap.
"Dad? Dad!" the younger Murakami
smiled up at his dad, happy to see a familiar face after all the
time he had spent alone. This camping stuff was fun, but Kenji
had
been starting to miss his dad.
Masaki smiled back as his son, ruffling
the floppy blue-black hair that Kenji had inherited from him. "I
brought you some more food, in case you get hungry. But try not
to eat it all at once."
Looking around at the few items that he
had managed to scrounge for Kenji to amuse himself with, Masaki
sighed. It had been relatively easy to buy things for his son
when he had been out alone on the road, with no one to know that
he hadn’t actually been eating the food or reading the books
that he was buying. And, even if they had wondered sometimes, no
one had ever commented on it.
Ducking his way half into the smallish
tent, Masaki felt his son snuggle into his arms. Wrapping Kenji
in a long-overdue hug, Masaki felt once again that things were
as right as they could be with his life. Even with Chronos and
their seemingly endless army of Zoanoids after him, these stolen
moments with his son let Masaki feel some semblance of calm.
They also made him more determined than ever to bring Chronos
down, to not have to hide his son and deny him all semblance of
a normal life.
To not have to be afraid that someday,
some Zoanoid would stumble on Kenji’s tent. They, if they ever
came, would have to wonder why he looked so much like a man who
was known to be an enemy of Chronos. And they weren’t above
kidnapping, either. As he held Kenji tighter, Masaki prayed to
any deity that was listening that something like that would
never, ever happen.
But, even with all the risks he was
taking every time he made this kind of trip, even with all the
precautions he made himself take, Masaki still found that it was
worth it just to see his son again. After a minute, Masaki
pulled back. Cupping Kenji’s chin, Masaki took a second to just
look at his son. This was the kind of thing he fought for, lived
for.
"I brought you some more water, too."
"Thanks, dad. I was starting to run out
by now," Kenji smiled up at his father as he said this.
"How have you been doing lately?" Masaki
asked, again feeling guilty for the fact that Kenji had to live
like this. It was yet another reason that Chronos had to be
destroyed.
"Good. Really good. I’ve been reading a
lot like you said, but those history books you got me are kind
of boring."
"Yes, I know." Like his son, Masaki had
no great love for history. "But I want you to keep at them. How
about your math work?"
"I’ve moved on to multiplication now,"
Kenji said, and looked proud of himself for his accomplishment.
"Great," Masaki smiled. "How’s your
English work coming?"
Kenji sighed, rolling his eyes. "I
wish I didn’t have to do it. Please dad, say I don’t have to do
it anymore? Please?"
Masaki chuckled, then tried to
look stern. Tried,
because his son was currently looking at him with the most
comically exaggerated hopeful look the elder Murakami had seen
yet. Masaki couldn’t help himself, he started to laugh and after
a few seconds or so, Kenji had joined him. It felt good, Masaki
thought, he didn’t laugh like this nearly enough. Of course,
there just weren’t a lot of things for him to laugh about
normally.
Once the both of them had calmed down,
though Kenji was still chuckling a bit, Masaki took a deep
breath and tried to regain his composure. The effect was
somewhat spoiled by the fact that Kenji was once again giving
him that same look. Masaki shook his head, biting back the urge
to start laughing again.
"I’m sorry, Kenji-chan. You can give me
that look all you want, but you’ll still have to do your English
work," Masaki grinned, mussing up Kenji’s hair again.
Kenji pouted, and Masaki just gave his
son a sidelong smile. Kenji was really cute when he was trying
to get out of something, Masaki had to admit. "Now, are you
going to tell me how far you’ve gotten, or am I going to have to
quiz you on it?"
"No," Kenji made a face. "I’m doing
pretty well on it, I just really, really hate it." Kenji pouted
again.
Masaki sighed, then he chuckled softly.
"Okay, okay, point taken. Now, how do you like the other books I
got you?"
"I like those a lot," Kenji smiled. "But
some of them are kind of hard to understand sometimes. I really
like the sci-fi ones, it sounds so fun to live out on another
planet, or to go flying off in a spaceship whenever you want to.
I wish I could do that."
"Yeah, sometimes I wish I could,
too," Masaki muttered. It
would make things a lot
simpler with his life, but he knew that he could never leave.
Not until Chronos had been destroyed.
Another of Masaki’s precautions was
limiting the amount of time he spent with his son. It wasn’t
something he liked doing, but Masaki knew that it had to be
done. He sighed, knowing that Kenji would protest again, and
then he would have to explain himself to his son yet another
time, and watch as Kenji’s dark blue-green eyes clouded over
with the sadness and dull acceptance that Masaki had come to
hate so much.
He sighed. "Kenji, you do know I can’t
stay for very long, right?"
"Yeah dad, I know," Kenji said, lowering
his head sadly. "But, you’ll come back soon this time, right?"
Masaki had long ago made it his policy
never to lie to his son. Lying never made anything better, and
most times it just made things worse. It was better not to make
promises than to break them. "You know I can’t do that. I’m too
well known to Chronos, and if they ever decided to follow me
back here-"
"I know, I know," Kenji said, nodding
sadly. "Chronos would take me away from you, and we’d never get
to see each other again. I know all that, Dad,"
"Good. Then you know why I have to
stay away," Masaki sighed, lowering his eyes. "I don’t
want
it to be like this Kenji, believe me I don’t, but until the
Chronos Corporation is completely destroyed, you’re just going
to have to stay out here."
"I will, I promise. I’ll be strong for
you, Dad."
"Be strong for yourself, Kenji," Masaki
advised. "I’ll be strong for myself, and I’ll come back as soon
as I can. I promise."
"All right, Dad. I hope I’ll see you
again soon," Kenji said, putting on a brave face for his
father’s sake, if not his own.
Masaki nodded, just once, before turning
and crawling out of the small tent. This was always the hardest
time of his trips to see his son: having to leave him behind and
hope that whatever luck that had kept Chronos from finding him
up till now would hold out for a little while longer. Zipping up
the tent, Masaki turned and walked away. It was hard, and it was
emotionally exhausting, but Masaki wasn’t sure that there were
any viable alternatives right now.
Walking with no real direction, except
‘away from Kenji’s tent’, Masaki circled slowly and carefully
back to the cabin where he, the Guyvers, Guyver I’s friends, and
Agito Makashima’s civilian allies were staying for the moment.
Masaki knew that a time would come when all of them would have
to move on again, since Chronos was bound to figure out where
their new base of operations was by the simple expedient of
watching where they went when they left a battle.
When he was too far from the tent
to feel safe about turning back, Masaki remembered that he had
wanted to bring up the subject of taking Kenji with him, to
possibly stay with the Guyvers and so be under their protection.
Masaki sighed, there were times that he almost wished that he
could mentally multitask as efficiently as a real Zoalord. Not
many of them, but there were
times.
Not looking back, since he could always
return to Kenji’s tent later on, Masaki made his way to the
temporary home of the few people who actively fought against the
Chronos Corporation. Though, if he had known the character of
the events that would transpire later this day, nothing would
have kept him away from his son. Not even an army of Hyper
Zoanoids.