hotaru

JUST MAYBE, COULD I

Content Warnings

Parental death (not hers, though)

Backstory

As one would expect, local heroism had humble beginnings.

Hotaru's father wasn't in the picture for very long - a busy man, apparently, but most of their communication was and still is through video chat anyway, so her mom did most of the raising her part beyond her dad's financial support.

And that's fine! Her mother raised her to be a kind young child, and so as a child she was essentially popular with everyone! However, she skipped out on things like soccer and play-fights even if acting like super sentai and taking down villains was right up her alley, instead hanging with the girls and playing family! Particularly Junna, who was a playful, cheerful girl with a distinct laugh, and until she had to move away for her parents' work she was Hotaru's best friend. (Besides Lucky. Baby boy. Oh, and her (half-)sister Makoto!)

Of course, now that the closest person to her wasn't in the picture, she had less confidence in approaching people even if she was already familiar with some, although with Junna's example alone (..not that she talked to her much lately, but she assumed that she was just busy) and her Mom and Mako's encouragement and a better understanding of who she was she'd bounced back fairly quickly!

In fact, as she'd progressed into middle school, she made many close friends!

Mika and Shou were the first, and neither of them were in class with her so she'd only stumbled upon them beyond passing glances when she spotted Mika looking for him at the park; apparently they'd gotten into a fight and then Shou disappeared some hours later, so Hotaru listened to how she was really feeling when she'd pitched in to help, then split off to cover ground only to find another kid who'd run off from home to think over an argument with his sister — to say the least, she brought them back to each other, and kind of just chilled there as they did all the talking.

And thus she had friends! So they got to hear her wonderful ideas, like the idea of ketchup with doritos or to start helping around the town more actively than they already do with Hotaru being Hotaru and already doing that in her spare time and the Yamaguchis helping their parents with the greengrocer's shop— wait, what do you mean they also have to model it after Super Sentai? Are they really going to fight crime at 13? Not really, Mika would hope not, but Shou thinks "lol cool" so the idea kind of sets off as the Urawara Helping Hands! (disclaimer: not a real town). Although, being as young as they are, their hero names aren't quite consistent yet (I mean, cherries and apples are both red! Why not just go for jewels if citrine and citrus sound similar? It's all a very impulsive idea, anyway.)

Though, for her second year of middle school, her free time for that was sort of cut down — to say the least, Hotaru had a lot of trouble grappling with school subjects and there were things not even her mother could help with that everyone else in her family had essentially forgotten by now, and so just for her to be able to catch up she went to cram school kind of far from home! The teaching style there helped her focus a lot more, and on top of that she made a friend, Taiki! ...More like she'd only interacted with him before and after class, with him being a third year, but although he was put off by her high energy at first they eventually became good friends :]

On the other end, she met her girlfriend around this time, too! It was through a Halloween costume party when Hotaru told Amaris she liked her costume (not that Amaris was dressed up beyond how she tends to, being, you know, goth), and although Ruru had fallen for her pretty hard (more like she just thought aha preby girl and only actually fell for her later) she'd never found it in her to tell Amaris until the next Halloween over… in a similar manner, to which Amaris finally realized why Ruru made her heart flutter too and accepted! (Ruru cried a lot.)

And, lastly, in Hotaru's third year of middle school, Finch joined the Helping Hands! They'd met the others when Shou had stumbled upon them clinging to a tree for dear life due to having climbed it before realizing the groynd was gonna look dummy far from up high, and when Mika trying to reason with them didn't work the other two just hoisted Hotaru up as per Shou's suggestion and got them down (they all toppled over, but hey, at least they succeeded). Thus, being kind of lost because he'd just moved here, Finch understandably stuck with the three, and Ruru eventually thought that if he was willing to tag along wherever they go for their Helping Hand Duties then he could just become an official member of their group-squad-whatever and he seemed happy about it!

First is... what probably brought outside attention to her and the Helping Hands in the first place, even though it didn't even happen in Urawara.

If anything, it all started when she'd accompanied Taiki one afternoon after they met up to hang out and he needed to buy groceries before he went back home. However, she'd noticed someone acting just a little too suspiciously… so she followed for a little, and as it turns out she was stealing something! It wasn't even something worth trailing, in hindsight, but something in her stirred and so she'd trailed to catch her…

But, upon asking why, Hotaru found out that the other person, Aya, was sort of stealing out of necessity, simply because she didn't really have enough on her anyway. And so Hotaru figured, well, why not just pay for those herself since she can?

However, in essentially bolting after Aya without telling the person she was with and then not dropping the situation at that, even though she'd gone back to pay for Aya's groceries on her own there were enough people who saw her to know Ruru never stole them in the first place and thus Aya got handed over to the police… and petty theft is taken surprisingly heavily in Japan, so through a couple of subsequent published interviews she had to do on that incident she found out she got yoted off to jail and that is perhaps the one thing Ruru hasn’t been able to move past yet.Taiki had talked to her about it the day of, given that she was silent literally the whole way back, but… It's not like she really felt better about it. No matter how many times people tried to reassure her she didn't, like, actually hand the damn woman over to the cops, or how much she tried to channel that into something positive as per Mako's advice by helping disadvantaged people beyond Urawara through donations and volunteer work and the like - which was a great idea, actually, it’s just a shame it took guilt for her to take that next step - it just… Well. Stuck with her.

So, when her first year of highschool actually rolled around, and she’d spotted a familiar name and a (somehow) familiar face in class, she didn’t quite have it in her to reach out.

It’s not like Junna forgot her, even if she looked a lot different from the last time they’d seen each other - after all, red and orange eyes are kind of hard to not notice in a crowd - and it’s not like Hotaru could forget her pretty green hair or how she always stood out in a crowd (...though now it was more so the height) either even though she seemed so… sad nowadays.

...Would she be able to help with that?

She’d asked herself night after night after night, but it’s not like she could ever know to figure that out if she never reached out in the first place, right? And she tried every day, at least said hi, made small talk over lunch when she could, even got Mika to help out, but neither of them got much of a reaction out of her beyond just being polite, so… maybe she wasn't cut out for this if she couldn't even help her friend out, she'd started to think, until her mom let her know over the dinner table one night that she'd had a good chat with Junna's father over the phone.

...It was a little hard to stomach, really, with how Mrs. Nakano felt kind of like a second mom to her with what she remembered of her, but… how was Junna handling it without her mom?

As mama put it, she kinda needed a friend right now, and… maybe she could do that much, right?

(...No, she was doing that much already.)

So the very next day, Hotaru decided to invite her over for a change — they were still, after all, childhood friends, so it'd make sense for her to reach out and ask her to hang out, right? Just the two of them! And while Junna seemed genuinely surprised about it, she'd at least nodded her head when Hotaru gave suggestions on when to meet up, so she considered it progress. And it was a lovely evening! They had dinner together, watched a movie together, studied a little together, and… only after they both went to bed did it start to get a little heavy, when Hotaru finally gathered the courage to say her condolences.

And… then to apologize for reminding her after all the fun they had, and to give her a hug when Junna told her it was fine.

They talked through the night, then, about Junna's mom and then Hotaru's own heroics when she'd figured she might as well ask how Ruru was doing. Cried a lot, too, even if it wasn't really their own pain or grief or guilt to begin with, but even if they weren't the first people to hear everything it was kind of like a weight had been lifted from them both (until they had to get through the next day with about five hours of sleep, anyway, but it was worth it).

Inevitably, Junna was roped into becoming one of the Helping Hands too — it wasn't clear when it went from "Ruru inviting her to hang out with her other friends" to "Ruru inviting her to volunteer somewhere with her other friends" to "Volunteering somewhere with her friends," but she'd started smiling more as time passed and as long as she was happy then Hotaru was happy too!

(...And it was nice to know she could help her friend after all.)

(That's what being a hero's all about, right?)

MANAGE TO FIGHT ALL THE SUFFERING

Fate

(...But, sometimes, helping friends out isn't all that easy.)

It started out with the Monokitsunes' new motive, a rather upfront "if you don't want to starve to death, kill somebody", with Snugglemuffins - a robotic dog-thing from last motive's chase - forcing them to undergo daily runs instead of a daily meal.

Coincidentally, or perhaps because of that, someone died before a day had even passed—Jisoo Yi, a girl she'd hardly talked to, but was nice to people and helped them out even though most times she'd seen her she could barely stand upright. (And both Camille and Neve were distraught too, even if they'd expressed it differently.)

Supposedly, when nobody was looking, Snugglemuffins had actually gotten to someone for not running fast enough, and so Belle Arin showed up to their second morning run in their maw, practically fried by the thing. She'd only ever talked to Belle after her brother died, watching her brother Kaden's own murderer lecture her for worrying more about what she would do without him and not what he went through, and watching Circus and Solène tell her that obviously Anastasia was wrong when Belle began to doubt herself. (She didn't think any of them were a hundred percent right, but she did at least want to help Belle even if not in lieu of Kaden.)

And that made two people. Two people she could have saved in some way, if she'd just paid attention or she'd just… acted sooner.

So, the idea of playing along came to mind, as she recovered from their second daily run. If the Kitsunes wanted blood, she'd sacrifice herself, as long as it meant everyone else would be able to eat again—even whoever wasn't dead was worn down by the motive at this point, and it honestly hurt to watch.

At least, that was what she'd been hoping for, but she was faced with two realizations that night; one, that she didn't have it in her to take care of things by herself, and two, that the kits probably wouldn't accept that as a murder, leaving two other people to finish the job had she actually gone through with it.

...After all, if it was that simple, Neve would have gone through with it by now—or so she said, and hearing that was arguably scarier than telling her what she was thinking.

They'd tried to think of something, any other way things could go where nobody else would have to die because she was tired of it all, but... with no other openings, all Neve could suggest was - with a heavy heart - that they do this together, given that they both had the same idea. And, faced with that ultimatum, she'd agreed under one condition—that Hotaru would be the one to kill her, because even if she was going to do something far from heroic she'd at least wanted to spare Neve from the pain of killing her and a grisly execution.

Hotaru made it quick, at least. A gunshot to the head, after both of them took the time to prepare themselves and delay the inevitable. That, and she at least had it in her to reposition her so she'd look a little more dignified in death, topping it off with a bouquet of purple hyacinths in now neatly folded hands, before the realization that she'd never go home properly set in.

(She let go of all her red clothes that night — there was no point in trying to be a hero from then on.)

The trial was quick, at least, even if a little scary — Fiji and Ren caught on quick, so they'd helped her convince Camille and Circus that it was her.

(Actually letting go, on the other hand - having to say nothing when Camille asked her not to leave as they were sitting by Neve, getting a hug from her and Roteki and even Gucci after her confession, even just facing her own death…)

(...She had to, though. Why else would she have done this all, if not to get caught in the act?)

Of course, as the failed hero that she was, she left destruction in her wake even in her execution. Miniature cars and buildings and likely even people crushed underneath her, before she was ultimately turned to ashes by the beam of a mecha.

("Thank you for being such good sports! We just need you to wait in your rooms while the mastermind gets things ready, and you can all go home to reward your efforts!")

Relationships

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Related character

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AND TAKE BACK THEIR FUTURE?

• First of all, check out her playlist!
• Heavily inspired by Kasumi Toyama and Chiaki Morisawa, as well as Momoe Soga! It's... super noticeable.
• From the fictitious town of Urawara, Shizuoka.
• Nerfed by astigmatism, but she usually wears contacts as opposed to glasses.
• Her favorite time of the week is Sunday morning.
• Either wants to become a teacher or lawyer when she grows up. (Will almost certainly not become a lawyer.)
• Her biggest secret is that she used to have a crush on her friend Mika at some point. That's... that's it.