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“[Oya?]”
“[Yes?]”
“[What if I were a clone?]”
Cat Silk pauses. Turns to their child. The five year old boy looks oddly upset, and feels like a pulsing storm. Clutching his homemade Tensai Kamen toy tighter than usual.
“[Did something happen?]” they ask. Tsukasa shakes his head, looking down.
Such a bright force of curiosity and hope isn’t supposed to feel so broken, and he’s only five.
(Many nights, Cat Silk lays awake and thinks about failure. About loss. About losing those they love or leaving them behind.
They think of the ways the Torachnid they know from earliest memories was much more like Tsukasa. Bright, always following The Stranger around.
They think of the one now who is always exhausted, always trying to hide it, forgetting the way Cat Silk can sense their emotions with ease.
They think…
They think of the loneliness and responsibility that caused this change.
They think, they know , that Kadoya Tsukasa is next in line for head of the family. They know just as well that this whole plan to change the world can so easily blow up in their faces.)
(Sometimes, Ishi asks if this is the right choice.
Cat Silk can never be entirely truthful.)
Cat Silk kneels down in front of Tsukasa. Tsukasa runs over and clings to their dress.
“[I got lost,]” he says. “[There was a man. He said he was a— a f-failed clone. Blind. So he was gonna get destroyed… but he remembered not being a clone.]”
Oh.
Oh, of course.
Cat Silk gently wraps their arms around Tsukasa.
“[S-So if I’m a clone,]” Tsukasa says. “[And I’m me, but I’m the clone. Will you make me go away?]”
It’s not even a question.
“[Never,]” Cat Silk says. “[I guess I would have twins, then. And Sayo would have a new big brother.]”
“[So I’d still be me?]” Tsukasa asks, and it feels like fate. It feels like destiny and weight, and Cat Silk always hates when Tsukasa goes near Ishi’s personal experiments, just a little, because he always comes back looking like he knows too much, and he’s scared of it all. Before he fades back to their sweet little boy.
(Ishi and Cat Silk both hail from lines that can warp reality in different ways.
Sometimes Cat Silk worries for what that means their children are capable of becoming. Heroes. Monsters. Losses.
Most of the time, truly, they do feel pride. But sometimes…
Sometimes Tsukasa looks almost as though there are stars in his eyes.)
“[Of course,]” Cat Silk says. “[Because Tsukasa is Tsukasa, and your Mama and Auncles and I are gonna give you this World.]”
“[I know,]” Tsukasa says. “[But I’m still… I dunno… I feel funny again.]”
Cat Silk kisses his head.
“[Well, do not,]” they say. “[And if this is a ploy to get a brother, young man, it will not work.]”
Tsukasa giggles, still clinging to them.
“[I’m okay with just Sayo,]” he says. “[I’m only five! One baby is enough!]”
Cat Silk shakes their head. He really is unfairly cute, isn’t he?
“[Alright then,]” they say. “[Now, what would you like for dinner?]”
“[Ice cream!]”
…Walked right into that one, didn’t they?
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
Ishi radiates heartache.
“Is something wrong, my love?” Cat Silk asks. Ishi nods, gently rocking a sleeping Sayo.
“Someone was doing genetic experiments under my nose,” she says. “I couldn’t save the elder — he was a clone, but a Japanese human clone, so his source and the scientists were killed for killing him just… just hours before I found out. The baby — like me. A mix of genetics… I just. She got put in the system. I tried to claim custody.”
Cat Silk puts a gentle hand on her shoulder.
The same story as Tsukasa. That hurts even more, knowing that lives were desecrated, and the ones Cat Silk loves, the ones who would jump to help if they could, were unable to do so in the.
“You did all you could,” they say.
“Is it enough?” Ishi asks. “I’m not — I’m not good at this long con plan that just, for now, keeps the system running.”
“We have no other choice,” Cat Silk says. “You are a good person.”
Ishi looks down.
“I don’t care what it takes,” she says. “I’ll fight until I can make a world that my children, that your family, that— that everyone deserves to live in.”
And Cat Silk?
Cat Silk believes her.