The Next Goal

The noise coming from the floor below woke me up, I looked around and found that I was in an empty room, next to me I could see that the futon where Tamamo had been sleeping was also empty now, but later the noise from below told me where she was.

"No, wait, don't add water to the hot oil!"

"It caught fire help!!"
"Help!"

"Put the lid on the pot that will put out the fire!"

It was my mother and Tamamo, it seemed they were trying to cook something, the place was no doubt busy. It seemed like I had traveled back in time to when I was younger and I was preparing to go to school again. My mother preparing breakfast, my father getting prepared for work, and my younger brother trying to watch his favorite TV show. Memories of a time when my life was simpler. But even though I didn't want to get up and stay here doing nothing, I had to because I was starving, so I walked down the stairs and into the dining room.

"Good morning!" I said.

From the kitchen door I could see Tama's head peeking out.

"Darling!"
"I'm almost done making breakfast"
"Give me a moment and I'll be ready to serve"

"Wait, Tamamo, making the fire bigger won't make it ready any sooner!"
"You have to wait!" I could also hear my mother talking in the kitchen.

"You don't have a problem, do you?"
"Do you know how a modern kitchen works?" I asked.

"Calm down," my mother replied.
"I'm teaching her how to do it."
"It's necessary for someone to cook in a couple."
"And Tama asked me early on if I could teach her."
"She was so moved by her determination that she may have brought me to the light that she knew nothing about the modern world."
"But I think she's getting better now with her third try."

"Third?"

"Besides, if I teach her to cook well and serve customers, I could ask her to work in the coffee shop!"
"Very well!"
"It's ready to serve!"

Both Tama and my mother came out of the kitchen with a plate and a couple of cups of coffee and a cup of hot chocolate. When they put it on the table, I could finally see what they were up to. They were just sandwiches, about three of them well made, another three, well, let's just say you could tell at a glance which ones Tama made. But no matter that I had to eat the two she made, I was happy for the food.

"It's quite simple, but really tasty!"
"You were right."
"Trying food like this again is better with the family!"

"You're crying?" asked Tamamo.

"And how can I not?"
"Maybe this is very easy"
"But to be back in a place I can call home"
"With homemade food"
"With my family!
"It's the only thing I've wanted all this time"
"The only thing I've endured for so long

"Come here!"
"At times like this, the best thing is a hug!" my wife replied.

She approached me and did just that, hugging me and holding me for a moment. Then my mother came back to speak.

"It would be even better if we could meet others".
"With Maria for example"
"But we'll talk about that later"
"We have things to do first," my mother said with a serious face.
"..."
"Right now I imagine you two don't have any kind of identification."
"And that is a big problem in such a modern time as this."
"Just yesterday I made a few calls and coordinated everything to get them.
"But first we have to agree on some dates."

"What time did you call them and why did someone answer you?"
"You never waste time, do you?" I said.

"Time is always vital in my work"
"It is a work habit to try to do everything as quickly as possible."
"Since there is hardly any time for anything, you have to be quick in everything."
"I never waste time like others who just went to bed and slept with her wife without doing anything even though he had a room all to herself."

"You were trying to keep an eye on us!"
"But what the hell is wrong with you?"

"It was my fault!" Tama spoke next.
"I was waiting for her to get used to being a girl first and then to continue our relationship"
"Please forgive me!"

"Aren't we wasting that valuable time right now?"
"And you, don't play her game!" I replied.

"Family always comes first," my mother began to speak passionately.
"Family first, work later!"
"Family must always be given as much time as possible!"
"A company can always fire you and that's the end of it".
"A family will be with you whether you want it or not, always, they are the only ones who will be by your side no matter what".
"Now back to the main issue of your identification.
"Since they will be from your documents, it would be best if you decide what to put.
"First it would be to decide which would be your country of origin"

"I have no problem with having the same," I replied.
"Since it is so inefficient with technology, it will be quite easy to do".

"I prefer to say that I am from here: Japan"
"Since I am a deity of this place, it would be very rare that I would have to add another place to my identification.

"I think this will be a little difficult, but I can talk to someone who owes me a favor."
"The following would be your names"
"I think that's the most important part, because if we do it more and they don't react naturally, they could catch us."
"Also, I will continue to call you Cesar, a name so masculine with these, mountains, it would be a little strange."

"I have a feeling of déjà vu about this."

"I want to have my original name."
"I already promised not to pretend to be another identity for people close to me.
"I just want to be myself and be called by my real name, Tamamo-no-mae"

"Tamamo-no-mae, I think it's pretty straightforward"
"How about just Tamamo?"

"OK!"

"Okay then, what about you Cesar?"

"Well, before, when I had to do this for the first time, I had to pretend to be someone else, I used the name Elise, so I can't think of a better name for something like this."

"The first time?"
"Do you mean you still haven't told me everything that happened to you?"

"Well, I only told half the story, I didn't want you to go crazy with so many new things at the same time".

"With good reason, it seemed strange to me that you took it very calmly even though you were in a girl's body," Tama said.
"That would also explain why you knew how to put on those fancy clothes and how to take care of your hair.
"But what the hell happened?"

"A very long story, we better get on with the data of the documents for now."

"Okay, we'll save that for another day," my mother continued.
"Let's talk about the last name."

"Can't we use our last name again?" I asked.

"Although I would like to"
"It's not a good idea"
"They could easily find out and use it against us"
"We also need to have different last names for later"

"Then I can't think of anything"

"How about Valkyria!"
"When I first saw you, that was what I wanted to call you"
"So how about using that name in the project here!"
"Isn't it pretty?"

"Was that name your fault?"

"I think it looks great next to your name!"
"That's a very good idea!"
"I'm going to put this here!"

"It's a tradition that the wife bears the surname of her husband"
"So I want the same!" The goddess spoke again in her usual cheerful tone.

"It is quite difficult for someone from Japan to have such a Western surname.
"It is very easy to tell that something is wrong"
"..."
"Unless we make the marriage papers official!"
"I'll pass them off as a married couple abroad!"
"That will make it easier to legalize it, despite the age you seem to be"

"So this was your plan all along!"

"Your opinion no longer matters since you brought this girl here!"
"This is my house and my rules"
"No matter how many times you say it, you are already married, right?"
"There's no difference, it's just another document, it's no big deal"

"It's okay."
"I accept my responsibility"

I said before that it could cause some kind of fight with my mother that could not end well for me. Well, probably with just one word from her she could end me socially, financially, legally, and morally as well. Now, I have no idea how much power she has with the governments of the world, but if there is one thing I know for sure, it is that my mother is not a liar. I learned the hard way when I was young that if she says something, it is probably true. At least when it comes to family, I have no idea what she does in her job.

"Then it's just the last part."
"I need a photo of you for the papers."
"But legally, you cannot wear anything on your head."
"And since those ears are part of you, I don't think we can skip that."

"And you can't edit the photos so they don't show?"

"Since those fox ears are part of you, we can't do that."
"If the police arrest you for any reason and see that they are real, they will immediately notice the fake documents.

...

"So what if we pass it off as forced medical causes?"
"Like medical reasons!" My mother suggested.

"And how would you do that?"

"How about we say you worked as a model for a while"
"But one day some stupid assistant put some kind of special glue on your ears."
"And they can only be removed with such a risky operation that we decided it was better to leave them."
"So in the end we also retired from the business and now we are looking for a normal life".
"It's a very good idea!"
"Quite silly, but effective!"
"In the same way, I can enter all the data into the system by going through a data update"
"And in the same way there would be no problem if they ask about his ears!"

Mental note for myself,  I was today years old when I realized that for my mother lying is as natural as breathing while working.

"I think it will also include the tails in that, I do not want to hide it and also Darling can not hide it anyway," once Tama always with her usual question out of place.

"She's right"
"I don't think it's easy to hide tails like that."
"I'll hide them too," my mother accepted.

"Don't you think that's a bit out of place?"

"Not at all, we're actually going to need it. "
"There is a reason I am going to all this trouble to make these fake documents right now."
"It's about Maria" My mother changed the way she spoke, now it's about something really serious."
"Right now I'm trying to get her back to us."

"What?"
"WHAT HAPPENED TO HER?"

"Let me explain first"

The explanation took a long time because there were a lot of things that happened while I was locked in a capsule on the U.S.S. Essex aircraft carrier. But the more she told me, the more angry she became about what had happened. I was the same, because I realized that meeting her was going to take more time and work than I thought.

It seems that shortly after the news of my death, my mother left her work for a moment because she wanted to bring Maria to my funeral to be together one last time. Then she understood that if I had been in the war and she had been, Maria would have been left alone here in Japan since our middle brother was still in the United States. So she immediately came to look for her, but it was when she went to the hospital that the real nightmare began. Maria had been released almost a year before my death. When my mother knew this, she felt even more guilty because she saw that I had died trying to pay for her treatment, when in fact she no longer needed it, and that if I had known this, I would have withdrawn from the war and avoided my death. While my mother was looking for more information about what had happened to my sister, the I.S.C. also began to appear and try to stop her from looking for my sister, and since the hospital belonged to them, it was clear that they must have known something, but did not want to say it. And because of their influence and power, not even my mother could get them to confess what they were doing. It was around this time that she was assigned to the project that was using me. She thought she could use me to force them to tell the truth, but the more she saw what was happening, she decided it was better to end it. And just before the war ended in the Battle of Vienna, an old friend of my mother's, someone who now had a job as a police chief in Tokyo, told her that he had seen her daughter here. So, seeing that it would be a job that would take time, she prepared everything, the house and the coffee shop. When the war ended and I ran away, she left everything else behind because she no longer had anything to do with the I.S.C. and could devote herself to finding Maria. The High Command apparently needed her so much that they gave her permission to come here as long as she could work for them part-time. So my mother decided to accept in order to have the strength she needs to continue the search for Maria.

"About three weeks ago I managed to find Maria," my mother was still talking.
"I managed to track Maria to a school near here.-"
"The head of the police investigation, Inspector Yamamoto, was the one who told me personally."
"I don't know what she is doing there, and it seems that she has a false identity as well."
"All I know is that she goes there every day and that they transport her in a car."
"I certainly think it could be some kind of deception."
"Well, maybe the I.S.C. is trying to do this to keep me quiet about what they might be doing or how they are acting, and also to increase their power as a corporation".
"I had the intention of posing as a substitute teacher and being able to talk to her to bring her back, even if it was dangerous for me to show myself in that place.
"I'm willing to do whatever it takes to bring her back."

"You don't have to do this!"
"This is clearly a trap!" I begged my mother.

"But then it turns out that very strange girls appear in my coffee shop, and one of them claims to be my son."
"And they seem like angels who come to rescue me just when all seems lost."
"I will not hide anything."
"I need your help to get Maria back.-"
"If I pretend to be a teacher, it will be quite easy to discover me."
"My appearance is well known at the I.S.C. and Maria can easily recognize me.-"
" Now, if a completely unknown girl appears, it is impossible for the I.S.C. to know for whom she works."
"Besides, no one would know who she is, since there is only a false identity".
"And I could talk to Maria inside without attracting attention."
"Not even she would somehow know that it was actually someone from her family."
"I'm not going to play innocent either."
"Since you have years of experience as a soldier, I take it for granted that you know how to kill if necessary, how to get out of complicated situations, and it seems that you are also good at making impossible escapes".
"So you would be an even better choice than me."
"So what do you say?"
"Do you think you can help me rescue your sister?"

Something inside me was seething with anger. If I had known about this on the day I arrived, the city would probably be in flames by now. I would have made sure of that myself. The I.S.C. seemed to have laughed in our faces and destroyed my family a long time ago without us even realizing it. I wanted to make them pay in blood. But that would only make things worse, and what my mother is planning is much better than what I could do alone. I don't care what happens, I think we'll meet again, and I'll do it even if I have to destroy the whole city.

"Do you really think I have to answer?"
"It would be better if you already prepare another room for Maria in the house."

"Very well, then I will also do the papers so that you can enter the same class where she is".

"I want to go too!!"
"I want to help Darling in any way I can!"
"Besides, I think it's a good idea to catch up with this world," Tama was also excited.

"Are you sure?"
"This could be quite dangerous!"

"If Tama wants to participate, then let her."
"She knows how to fight very well and I trust her, and if anything happens, I will defend her as well"
"Even if we are two, it will be much easier to find out what is happening with Maria."

"All right, I'll do what I can today."
"I'm going to be pretty busy with this and installing the new oven for the coffee shop.
"The best thing for you to do today is to take care of getting the furniture for your room."
"I'm going to leave you some money and you take care of getting the furniture today."

"And while you are doing that"
"Cesar, please get a nice wedding ring for Tamamo!"
"It should be the most important thing you get!"

"I will do what I can"

After changing and getting ready to go out and my mother to continue with her work. We went around to get everything we needed to live. From a computer to two dog hair brushes. I don't know what was more embarrassing when the clerks saw us and asked if it was for us, or when Tama said yes. Walking around the city with Tamamo was really fun, having to explain everything to her or how she was impressed by almost everything of the modern age.