(no subject)
Name: Kristen
LJ: mouthofbrass
E-Mail: kristen[at]spectrumvoid.net
IM: MadMadPhineas
Character Name: Tomoe Hotaru / Sailor Saturn
Series: Sailor Moon (manga continuity)
Timeline: Act 33, when she goes through the space-time door
Canon Resource Link: Saturn | Hotaru | manga chapter summaries
Character Background:
Tomoe Hotaru was a pretty normal little kid with a crackpot scientist father who was shunned by the scientific community because of his research, until one day she and both of her parents were involved in a laboratory accident. Her mother died in the fire, and Hotaru was severely injured. In order to keep her alive, her father turned her into a cyborg using his ~*~forbidden research~*~ . However, he apparently needed a little extra help, because he makes a deal with the evil Pharaoh 90 to use his power (which coincidentally, turns Professor Tomoe into a malevolent being bent to his master’s will). As a result, he implanted his daughter with an egg given to him by the Death Busters, turning her into the host for Mistress 9, Pharaoh 90’s lackey.
Housing this evil entity causes Hotaru to grow up sickly and gives her frequent, debilitating and painful fits; the pain can only be eased by the Tioron Crystal, a power source similar to Sailor Chibi-Moon’s Ginzuishou crystal. She also had strange healing powers, and mood swings that manifest in sudden feats of physical strength (for instance, once when she is being picked on by some girls at her school, her eyes glow and she crushes a metal pencil box in her hand). The combination of these strange behaviors and her health issues make her something of an outcast at school, and she doesn’t really make any friends until she meets Chibi-Usa. Overall, Hotaru is quiet, delicate, expressionless, and precocious (in the author’s words). She doesn’t get along with her father’s research assistant (who is a Death Buster in disguise, so big surprise there), often telling her she’s too familiar with her father and is intruding on their family, and she seems distant from her father, whose interest in her is limited to the condition of her body.
When she does meet Chibi-Usa, it is while the latter is trespassing near Professor Tomoe’s labs. Hotaru is in the middle of a seizure/fit, but still has the presence of mind to tell Chibi-Usa that she needs to leave because she’s trespassing. The two are promptly attacked by a monster, which Sailor Moon and Chibi-Moon fight off, although in the process they reveal their identities to Hotaru.
Hotaru promises to keep her new knowledge secret, and afterward, on several occasions, Chibi-Usa comes to visit her at her home. They discover that Chibi-Usa’s Ginzuishou crystal eases Hotaru’s fits, but Hotaru’s reaction to seeing the crystal is kind of creepy (her voice gets all weird and she tries to snatch it away from Chibi-Usa before coming to her senses).
Later, when the Outer Senshi reveal that Hotaru is really Sailor Saturn and that they intend to kill her in order to keep her from awakening and destroying everything, Chibi-Usa goes to warn Hotaru. However, at that time, Mistress 9 awakens and takes over Hotaru’s body, and she steals Chibi-Usa’s crystal, effectively putting her into a death-like state. The Death Busters then proceed with their plans to awaken Pharaoh 90 by stealing the souls and therefore the energy of the sailor senshi.
Despite her body having been taken over by an evil...something...Hotaru’s spirit is still clearly existent somewhere inside Mistress 9 and she is aware of everything that is going on. She realizes that her father as he used to be no longer exists, and so she’s able to say goodbye to him and watch without sadness as the Sailor Senshi kill him. She also protects Chibi-Usa’s spirit and the Ginzuishou so that Mistress 9 can’t use their power and leave her physical body. She also protects the spirits of the Inner Senshi when Mistress 9 devours them for more power, and ultimately returns all of the senshi’s spirits to them before fading away as Mistress 9 escapes from her physical body.
It is shortly after this point that Sailor Saturn awakens, suggesting that Hotaru didn’t totally die, since the two are technically the same person. Saturn is the senshi of destruction and silence. She possesses so much destructive power that her awakening is feared by the Outer Senshi, although the use of her full powers results in her death. Which, really, is fine, since it destroys everything else too. Initially she is said only to awaken in order to destroy the world so that it can be reborn (as she did at the end of the Silver Millennium).
It is clear that she fully intends to play out her required role in this situation. She explains to the listening senshi that she was never intended to awaken, but because of the machinations of the Death Busters, her existence was artificially extended. She states with perfect assuredness and to the horror and despair of the watching senshi, that her awakening was fated due to events that happened long ago, and that now that she has awakened she has no choice but to “bring down this Silence Glaive”, thereby destroying everything in order to pave the way for a new world to be born.
Fortunately for the whole world, Sailor Moon shows up (she had disappeared just before Saturn’s awakening in an attempt to stop the growing monster), and tells Saturn that they’ll all be killed because of the approaching Tau Star System (yeah, it really doesn’t make much sense in the manga either). Saturn seems to change her mind about now being the time for destruction, but because it’s her fate to cause destruction, she knows that as long as she exists, she has no other choice. In order to spare the other senshi and the world, she tells Sailor Pluto to close the space-time door, thereby banishing the monster and her along with it from earth.
Instead of ending up who knows where in another galaxy, though, Saturn ends up in Wonderland.
A note: After this story arc, Hotaru is reborn as an infant who ages rapidly into a grade schooler over the course of six or so months in the care of the other Outer Senshi. At that point, Sailor Saturn awakens, but she is apparently not a bringer of destruction anymore, and she as an entity integrates with Hotaru so that she is a regular senshi like all the others.
This doesn’t seem to be the case with Saturn’s first appearance: she and Hotaru are separate people, and when Hotaru “dies” after saving everyone’s spirits from Mistress 9, Saturn is able to awaken. Since they would both be dead for sure after going through Pluto’s space-time door, the person who ends up in Wonderland is a Hotaru who now has to deal with the confusion of her dual identity. However, in keeping with the later manga arcs, the two would not be separate personalities or entities.
Abilites/Special Powers:
As Hotaru she can heal minor injuries.
As Sailor Saturn, she is equipped with a scythe-like weapon called the Silence Glaive. Additionally, she has a transformation phrase, and three attacks that she uses in the manga. The transformation phrase and two of the attacks are used after the point I’m pulling her from, but it can be assumed (due to the improvisational nature of the attacks used in the manga) that she was always capable of using these powers.
Transformation/attack phrases:
Saturn Crystal Power! Make Up!: The transformation phrase that allows her to transform from Hotaru into Sailor Saturn.
Death Reborn Revolution: A mostly physical attack that involves the use of her Silence Glaive.
Silence Wall: A defensive move that creates a protective barrier to deflects attacks
Silence Glaive Surprise: An attack that releases a thick fog, which is used to disorient enemies
Saturn’s final power is the destruction of the world. There is no attack phrase for this: all she has to do is swing her Silence Glaive down to touch the ground.
Third-Person Sample:
Hotaru woke with a start and stared up at the ceiling, fighting for breath. Flashes of her dream came back to her: a huge monster consuming her, a dark mass approaching in the sky, herself wielding a long-handled weapon, twirling it in her hands and bringing down the blade. And then everything went quiet. She shook her head, trying to dislodge the images from her mind, and her hair stuck to the sheen of sweat on her face.
It wasn’t until her breathing had returned to normal that she realized this wasn’t her room. The light streaming in from the window was too bright, replacing what should have been the dim light of shaded lamps. She sat up quickly in the bed that wasn’t hers, and stared around at a room that was just as foreign. The window was open, and the cold air filtering in made her shiver. She shifted to the edge of the bed to get up and close the window, and brought up a gloved hand to brush her hair from her face.
And froze, staring at the glove that extended up her arm to the elbow. Her chin snapped down and she took in the purple-blue and maroon sailor fuku she was wearing.
“It...it was real?”
Then it hadn’t been a dream. The transformation, the inescapable drive for cleansing destruction, the fighting, and finally...
She wrapped her arms around herself, unable to stop the shudders that wracked her body.
She had...died. She could still see the time-space door closing behind her, and the anguished expressions on the face of the other senshi. And then it had been so cold....
It took her several moments to calm down enough to think clearly. Waking up in this unfamiliar place--waking up at all, really--was as unexpected as transforming into another person had been. Now that she was aware of herself again, she could remember everything she had done and thought, and it all seemed totally alien to her. The things she had done... Yes, trying to destroy everything had been a compulsion she couldn’t resist, but she had been almost happy to do it. If what she had felt could be called happiness... It had been more like relief.
...This wasn’t what she had expected the afterlife to be like.
She stood up before the trembling could overcome her again and finally moved to close the window. She was surprised to see snow on the ground outside, and as she turned to survey the room, she saw a small electronic device on a table beside the bed. She picked it up, turning it over in her still gloved hands--she would need to figure out how to get back out of this form at some point. It was obviously some sort of communication device, though unlike any she had ever seen. It took her only a moment to turn it on and activate the audio function.
It took her considerably longer to find her voice, and when she finally did speak, her uncertainty at her current situation and anxiety at the one she had left behind made her voice shake.
“H-hello? Someone...please help me.”
First-Person Sample:
[The audio plays for several moments before Hotaru speaks in a shaking voice.]
H-hello? Could...someone please help me? I’m not sure where I am and... Is anyone there?
[She stops and takes a deep breath. When she speaks again, her voice is a bit stronger, though still uncertain.]
If this is what happens after you die... If anyone’s there, please tell me: is this heaven or hell?
LJ: mouthofbrass
E-Mail: kristen[at]spectrumvoid.net
IM: MadMadPhineas
Character Name: Tomoe Hotaru / Sailor Saturn
Series: Sailor Moon (manga continuity)
Timeline: Act 33, when she goes through the space-time door
Canon Resource Link: Saturn | Hotaru | manga chapter summaries
Character Background:
Tomoe Hotaru was a pretty normal little kid with a crackpot scientist father who was shunned by the scientific community because of his research, until one day she and both of her parents were involved in a laboratory accident. Her mother died in the fire, and Hotaru was severely injured. In order to keep her alive, her father turned her into a cyborg using his ~*~forbidden research~*~ . However, he apparently needed a little extra help, because he makes a deal with the evil Pharaoh 90 to use his power (which coincidentally, turns Professor Tomoe into a malevolent being bent to his master’s will). As a result, he implanted his daughter with an egg given to him by the Death Busters, turning her into the host for Mistress 9, Pharaoh 90’s lackey.
Housing this evil entity causes Hotaru to grow up sickly and gives her frequent, debilitating and painful fits; the pain can only be eased by the Tioron Crystal, a power source similar to Sailor Chibi-Moon’s Ginzuishou crystal. She also had strange healing powers, and mood swings that manifest in sudden feats of physical strength (for instance, once when she is being picked on by some girls at her school, her eyes glow and she crushes a metal pencil box in her hand). The combination of these strange behaviors and her health issues make her something of an outcast at school, and she doesn’t really make any friends until she meets Chibi-Usa. Overall, Hotaru is quiet, delicate, expressionless, and precocious (in the author’s words). She doesn’t get along with her father’s research assistant (who is a Death Buster in disguise, so big surprise there), often telling her she’s too familiar with her father and is intruding on their family, and she seems distant from her father, whose interest in her is limited to the condition of her body.
When she does meet Chibi-Usa, it is while the latter is trespassing near Professor Tomoe’s labs. Hotaru is in the middle of a seizure/fit, but still has the presence of mind to tell Chibi-Usa that she needs to leave because she’s trespassing. The two are promptly attacked by a monster, which Sailor Moon and Chibi-Moon fight off, although in the process they reveal their identities to Hotaru.
Hotaru promises to keep her new knowledge secret, and afterward, on several occasions, Chibi-Usa comes to visit her at her home. They discover that Chibi-Usa’s Ginzuishou crystal eases Hotaru’s fits, but Hotaru’s reaction to seeing the crystal is kind of creepy (her voice gets all weird and she tries to snatch it away from Chibi-Usa before coming to her senses).
Later, when the Outer Senshi reveal that Hotaru is really Sailor Saturn and that they intend to kill her in order to keep her from awakening and destroying everything, Chibi-Usa goes to warn Hotaru. However, at that time, Mistress 9 awakens and takes over Hotaru’s body, and she steals Chibi-Usa’s crystal, effectively putting her into a death-like state. The Death Busters then proceed with their plans to awaken Pharaoh 90 by stealing the souls and therefore the energy of the sailor senshi.
Despite her body having been taken over by an evil...something...Hotaru’s spirit is still clearly existent somewhere inside Mistress 9 and she is aware of everything that is going on. She realizes that her father as he used to be no longer exists, and so she’s able to say goodbye to him and watch without sadness as the Sailor Senshi kill him. She also protects Chibi-Usa’s spirit and the Ginzuishou so that Mistress 9 can’t use their power and leave her physical body. She also protects the spirits of the Inner Senshi when Mistress 9 devours them for more power, and ultimately returns all of the senshi’s spirits to them before fading away as Mistress 9 escapes from her physical body.
It is shortly after this point that Sailor Saturn awakens, suggesting that Hotaru didn’t totally die, since the two are technically the same person. Saturn is the senshi of destruction and silence. She possesses so much destructive power that her awakening is feared by the Outer Senshi, although the use of her full powers results in her death. Which, really, is fine, since it destroys everything else too. Initially she is said only to awaken in order to destroy the world so that it can be reborn (as she did at the end of the Silver Millennium).
It is clear that she fully intends to play out her required role in this situation. She explains to the listening senshi that she was never intended to awaken, but because of the machinations of the Death Busters, her existence was artificially extended. She states with perfect assuredness and to the horror and despair of the watching senshi, that her awakening was fated due to events that happened long ago, and that now that she has awakened she has no choice but to “bring down this Silence Glaive”, thereby destroying everything in order to pave the way for a new world to be born.
Fortunately for the whole world, Sailor Moon shows up (she had disappeared just before Saturn’s awakening in an attempt to stop the growing monster), and tells Saturn that they’ll all be killed because of the approaching Tau Star System (yeah, it really doesn’t make much sense in the manga either). Saturn seems to change her mind about now being the time for destruction, but because it’s her fate to cause destruction, she knows that as long as she exists, she has no other choice. In order to spare the other senshi and the world, she tells Sailor Pluto to close the space-time door, thereby banishing the monster and her along with it from earth.
Instead of ending up who knows where in another galaxy, though, Saturn ends up in Wonderland.
A note: After this story arc, Hotaru is reborn as an infant who ages rapidly into a grade schooler over the course of six or so months in the care of the other Outer Senshi. At that point, Sailor Saturn awakens, but she is apparently not a bringer of destruction anymore, and she as an entity integrates with Hotaru so that she is a regular senshi like all the others.
This doesn’t seem to be the case with Saturn’s first appearance: she and Hotaru are separate people, and when Hotaru “dies” after saving everyone’s spirits from Mistress 9, Saturn is able to awaken. Since they would both be dead for sure after going through Pluto’s space-time door, the person who ends up in Wonderland is a Hotaru who now has to deal with the confusion of her dual identity. However, in keeping with the later manga arcs, the two would not be separate personalities or entities.
Abilites/Special Powers:
As Hotaru she can heal minor injuries.
As Sailor Saturn, she is equipped with a scythe-like weapon called the Silence Glaive. Additionally, she has a transformation phrase, and three attacks that she uses in the manga. The transformation phrase and two of the attacks are used after the point I’m pulling her from, but it can be assumed (due to the improvisational nature of the attacks used in the manga) that she was always capable of using these powers.
Transformation/attack phrases:
Saturn’s final power is the destruction of the world. There is no attack phrase for this: all she has to do is swing her Silence Glaive down to touch the ground.
Third-Person Sample:
Hotaru woke with a start and stared up at the ceiling, fighting for breath. Flashes of her dream came back to her: a huge monster consuming her, a dark mass approaching in the sky, herself wielding a long-handled weapon, twirling it in her hands and bringing down the blade. And then everything went quiet. She shook her head, trying to dislodge the images from her mind, and her hair stuck to the sheen of sweat on her face.
It wasn’t until her breathing had returned to normal that she realized this wasn’t her room. The light streaming in from the window was too bright, replacing what should have been the dim light of shaded lamps. She sat up quickly in the bed that wasn’t hers, and stared around at a room that was just as foreign. The window was open, and the cold air filtering in made her shiver. She shifted to the edge of the bed to get up and close the window, and brought up a gloved hand to brush her hair from her face.
And froze, staring at the glove that extended up her arm to the elbow. Her chin snapped down and she took in the purple-blue and maroon sailor fuku she was wearing.
“It...it was real?”
Then it hadn’t been a dream. The transformation, the inescapable drive for cleansing destruction, the fighting, and finally...
She wrapped her arms around herself, unable to stop the shudders that wracked her body.
She had...died. She could still see the time-space door closing behind her, and the anguished expressions on the face of the other senshi. And then it had been so cold....
It took her several moments to calm down enough to think clearly. Waking up in this unfamiliar place--waking up at all, really--was as unexpected as transforming into another person had been. Now that she was aware of herself again, she could remember everything she had done and thought, and it all seemed totally alien to her. The things she had done... Yes, trying to destroy everything had been a compulsion she couldn’t resist, but she had been almost happy to do it. If what she had felt could be called happiness... It had been more like relief.
...This wasn’t what she had expected the afterlife to be like.
She stood up before the trembling could overcome her again and finally moved to close the window. She was surprised to see snow on the ground outside, and as she turned to survey the room, she saw a small electronic device on a table beside the bed. She picked it up, turning it over in her still gloved hands--she would need to figure out how to get back out of this form at some point. It was obviously some sort of communication device, though unlike any she had ever seen. It took her only a moment to turn it on and activate the audio function.
It took her considerably longer to find her voice, and when she finally did speak, her uncertainty at her current situation and anxiety at the one she had left behind made her voice shake.
“H-hello? Someone...please help me.”
First-Person Sample:
[The audio plays for several moments before Hotaru speaks in a shaking voice.]
H-hello? Could...someone please help me? I’m not sure where I am and... Is anyone there?
[She stops and takes a deep breath. When she speaks again, her voice is a bit stronger, though still uncertain.]
If this is what happens after you die... If anyone’s there, please tell me: is this heaven or hell?