The white lab coat tore violently at the seams as the man in the coat burst through the material, mutating and distorting into a horrible and gruesome form, "The master's awakening has finally begun! This place will be your graveyard! You will be my first victims! I am Gelmatoid!" His face transformed into a blacked dripping flesh, and as an ominous black star appeared on his forehead, long sharp spines sprouted from the crown on his head.

Super Sailor Moon stepped back, and took a defensive stance, “A monster!” Sailor Uranus clutched her Space Sword tightly.

A ghoulish voice rumbled to their ears in reply, “I am more than a monster! I am a super human! A genetic cross of human and alien, more powerful than ever before! Now you will die!”

Narrowly escaping his blast, Super Sailor Moon began to summon her incantation to attack. Wait! She suddenly thought, then cried out, “That was Hotaru’s father only a few moments ago! We can’t kill him!”

Sailor Uranus leapt in front of her and at the monster, “You’re foolish to think that! He is the enemy now! And he will die at my hands! Space Sword Blaster!” Uranus launched herself at Gelmatoid, but the monster easily knocked the attack and Sailor Uranus viciously away.

“Sailor Uranus!” Super Sailor Moon clutched her scepter, determination ran across her face. “Rainbow Moon Heartache!” The white light seeped into Gelmatoid and began to tear him apart. The monster screeched sadistically as his body was slashed into oblivion.

Somewhere, a soft voice called, “Papa,” it whispered, “my sweet father that was so wonderful when mother died... the father that saved me... he was no longer my father. Goodbye, Papa...”

Professor Tomoe opened his eyes slowly to hazy whiteness. His head was pounding and he could not move. It felt like his whole body had been through some brutally strenuous labor: ever muscle, every joint throbbed with intense ache. Somehow, he could sense he was not alone; he desperately tried to lift himself up, and with a struggle, he managed to lift himself on his elbows even though his body reeled in revolt. Through the mist he could see a form, a small figure, curled around itself. “Hotaru,” he whispered.

Moving through the mist, painfully, slowly, he worked his way towards the form. It seemed the closer he got to it, the futher it moved away, always out of reach, always just out of sight. He called to it, he strained towards it, but fell again to the floor.

In a flash of light, a vision passed before his eyes: a woman, thin and dark, with solidly gazing eyes, cold and placid. Her hand gripped tightly around a weapon, a glaive, the bringer of annihilation. She smiled to him.

“Hotaru,” he uttered in agony, “I’m sorry, Hotaru - so sorry.” He rolled onto his back and his chest rose and fell in gasping, desperate breaths. Weak, pale hands dug at nothingness as he tried to keep from loosing consciousness. His chest felt tight and trodden, as if it were holding a great weight; it was holding his sadness, his guilt, and his fate. Shutting his eyelids tightly, he felt hot, wet tears on his stiff, cold face. He still felt alive.

Again, he lifted himself up on his elbows, rolled over, and worked his way towards the image in the haze. Though his body faltered, his eyes did not; they never lost sight of the figure, they never forgot who it was.

He had forgotten her in the past, he knew. He had forgotten her, his wife, his life’s purpose. He had let himself be blinded by circumstance and had fallen into darkness, and now he was paying for it with his life. But he couldn’t leave just yet, not without seeing her face one more time.

He searched his memory for the moment that he had lost control. He couldn’t place it, but at some point he had fallen astray, and some point he had gotten this idea, this insane idea... when did it happen?

“When did it happen?” he cried out, dragging his numbing body through the mist, “When did I lose you, Hotaru? When did we loose each other?” His breathless sobs fell through his clenched teeth, his mind coiled with questions unanswered. He remembered the explosion in the lab, the body of his wife charred and black, with a scream of death burnt onto her skinless face. Her corpse he found wrapped protectively around their child, and she was alive. She was breathing, and if he did not act, he would lose her too. But he could save her, with all that he had learned, with all the research he had done after being banned from the mainstream scientific community, he could use his powers of science to sustain her, make her live again. He would show them all.

He would save her.

“I did what I could, Hotaru! I did what I thought was best,” he finally succumbed to his exhaustion, dropping his tear streaked face to the floor, “for both of us...” He reached towards the shadow in the fog, his finger tips tracing her form, so small and fragile - he only wanted to hold her once more, to protect her as he could not before, as he did not when he should have. As he suffered in shame, the image continued to fade into the distance, away, away from him.

“Don’t leave me here,” he gasped, dropping his arm, and arching his back with one last attempt to rise, “Don’t...” he chocked on his tears - he coughed blood, “don’t leave me alone... to die. Alone! I left you alone!” His eyes closed, the universe pitched and whirled; he lost track of sound, space; he lost his grasp on reality, and as he slipped into darkness he begged for forgiveness, begged for another chance, a chance to start over, to begin again.

As a heavy sigh escaped from his tormented soul, his body relaxed. The scientist lay alone in death, in sorrow, and eternal torment, forever kept from that which he could never truly save.