Souichi Tomoe () [Germatoid ()]

History: Little is known about either the history or the personal life of the man known as Souichi Tomoe, save that he is a brilliant geneticist and inventor whose life has been marred by a series of personal tragedies. Widowed at a young age - his wife having died under circumstances which have yet to be revealed - he was left to care for his only daughter Hotaru alone while simultaneously juggling a busy and promising scientific career, though this hardly seemed to matter since the two of them were evidently quite close and loved one another very much. Their happy life together came to an abrupt end, however, when Hotaru was eight years old and in the company of her father at his workplace in the Genetic Engineering Laboratory in Tokyo, Japan as he was giving a presentation to several fellow scientists on the operation of a machine which employed special techniques in order to manipulate delicate DNA. As he was giving his lecture, Hotaru noticed that something strange was happening within the confines of the device, and he barely had time to react to her observation before a tremendous explosion tore through the control room of the laboratory, killing everyone who had been present to witness the experiment with the sole exception of Professor Tomoe himself.       
                In the aftermath of the blast, Professor Tomoe frantically tried to revive Hotaru to no avail - for if she was not already dead at that moment, she was very close to it - and let out an anguished cry of purest misery as he held his daughter's lifeless body in his arms. As if in response to his plea, he suddenly heard an unfamiliar voice ask if he wished to save the life of his daughter. Surprised, he gazed up and found himself face to face with a mysterious floating object which radiated black light - now known to have been the Daimon Egg of the first such known creature, Germatoid - who, while he did not identify himself, volunteered to save both Tomoe's life and that of his daughter under the condition that his terms be met. Desperate, halfway mad with grief, and not caring about what might happen to himself in the process, Professor Tomoe hastily agreed to the entity's unspoken demands, little suspecting the sinister true nature of the bargain he had just made, for Germatoid proceeded to take control of his body by entering it through his right eye and revive Hotaru by implanting within her the single-celled alien lifeform that would eventually come to be known as Mistress 9 seconds before a second explosion went off and ripped through the building while leaving both the Daimon's host and his daughter - in accordance with the deal that had been struck - completely unharmed.      
               While both Souichi and Hotaru Tomoe had survived their terrible ordeal, it would be unfair to say that either one of them lived given the nightmarish symbiotic relationship they were forced to endure as a result of the agreement that had been made. The professor lost most, if not all, of his free will as well as control over his own body in the process - becoming little more than a living shell for Germatoid, though he maintained at least partial awareness over both his actions and intentions but was unable to influence either one - with his possession necessitating the donning of a special pair of glasses with one obscured lens in order to mask the Daimon's point of entry. Approximately one year after his accident, he used his enormous wealth to establish the private school known as the Infinity Academy, with himself as principal, which quickly earned a prestigious reputation for its high academic standards. Little did anyone suspect, however, that this educational institution was merely serving as an elaborate front for a second and far less benign organization he had secretly formed in the interim known as the Death Busters, a group dedicated to achieving world domination by summoning the planet ravaging extraterrestrial entity Master Pharaoh 90 and purging the Earth of all life by triggering the apocalyptic cataclysm known as the Silence. In order to accomplish this rather daunting task, however, three general criteria first had to be met. First, it would be necessary to procure the immensely powerful magical artifact known as the Holy Grail which would only reveal itself once the three mystical objects collectively known as the Talismans were brought together. Second, Mistress 9 - the only individual capable of using the Holy Grail on the Death Busters' behalf - needed to be awakened in order to realize her full potential as the Messiah of Silence. Third, a machine needed to be constructed that could both harness and channel the massive energies of the Holy Grail in order to initiate the summoning process that would bring Master Pharaoh 90 to Earth.   
To aid in the realization of at least the first two of these steps - the development of the third having been left in the competant hands of Witches 5 member Viluy and the Infinity Academy Science Club - as well the establishment of an army of inhuman creatures that would most likely replace man as the dominant species on Earth in the new world order that follow if their endeavors proved successful, Professor Tomoe devoted the next two years' worth of his time and effort to perfecting the creation of an entire race of Daimons to aid in the Death Busters' operations, aided by his secretary and lab assistant Kaolinite, who apparently developed a liquid medium for raising such creatures that was at least partially responsible for the supernatural powers they gained in the fusion of the Daimon Eggs they hatched from with materials of terrestrial origin. Unfortunately, the long hours of research took their toll on his family life - such as it was - and while he did spend some time with Hotaru, she was frequently left to her own devices, growing up miserable and alone due to Kaolinite's overbearing nature and emotionlessness, her recurring chronic illness, and the Jekyll-and-Hyde split personality she suffered from due to the presence of Mistress 9, which cost her all of her friends. In spite of the sinister nature of his experiments, Professor Tomoe managed not to attract undue influence to either himself or the Death Busters as a whole, though it is believed that an early attempt of his to create a Daimon/Human hybrid may have inadvertantly resulted in Michiru Kaiou and Haruka Ten'ou being awakened as Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus, respectively, the two Outer Soldiers who would one day become his most persistant and unrelenting foes.   
               It should be mentioned at this point that the origin of the Daimon known as Germatoid has never been revealed. While the creature is commonly believed to have been the inadvertant creation of the disasterous original genetic engineering experiment of Professor Tomoe's, this explanation is inadequate when one takes into consideration the monster's intelligence and sentience, the ultimate purpose for its existence, and, most importantly, his connection to the extraterrestrial being Mistress 9 and her fusion with Hotaru Tomoe, whose role as Sailor Saturn - the Messiah of Silence and one of only two foreordained individuals capable of using the power of the Holy Grail - suggests that more than mere coincidence must be at work. In light of this information, it is more likely that Germatoid may have either originated on Mistress 9 and Master Pharaoh 90's homeworld in the Tau Ceti Star System - possibly sent to Earth through a breach in the space-time continuum inadvertantly created by the techniques employed in the original delicate DNA manipulation experiment - or that Pharaoh 90 may have somehow manipulated the aforementioned experimental conditions himself so that they would inevitably produce an agent who would pave the way for his arrival. Also, given the complex symbiotic relationship that existed between the two, it is practically impossible to assign individual personalty traits to Souichi Tomoe and Germatoid. The former, however, appears to have been more of a kindly, quiet, and lovingly devoted father while the latter was the stereotypically eccentric mad scientist, prone to fits of insane manical laughter, who enjoyed indulging in and exploring myriad different aspects  of the human condition surprisingly often for a lifeform whose ultimate purpose was to eliminate mankind altogether.   
                When Professor Tomoe perfected his technique for creating Daimon Eggs and decided that the time had finally arrived to locate and retrieve the three Talismans from the pure hearts of human beings, he entrusted each newly completed one to Kaolinite, who selected targets at her discretion and had the resulting Daimons extract the Heart Crystals of her chosen victims in order to determine whether or not it contained one of the objects the Death Busters were searching for. While initially quite tolerant of her failures and the destruction of his precious monsters, he became almost insanely incensed on one occasion due to the losses they were sustaining and the interference of the Sailor Soldiers in their operations, though she cooly reassured him that things would be different on the following occasion because she would be assuming a more active role from then on. Unfortunately, while Kaolinite was true to her word, her performance showed little improvement, and, following her unsuccessful implementation of his idea to use the knowledge that Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune were searching for the Talismans as they were to their advantage, the subject resurfaced once more when he expressed his doubts about the inherant effectiveness of the manner in which her searches for pure hearted individuals were conducted, though he mentioned this with misgivings and almost immediately apologized for the harshness of his words. What may well have caused him to drop the matter entirely, however, was the fact that she fared no better in her subsequent outing in spite of following his suggestion as to what the nature of the target for that occasion should be.   
                After receiving a call from Eudial informing him of Kaolinite's (near) fatal fall from the Tokyo Tower following a showdown with the Sailor Soldiers and Tuxedo Mask, Professor Tomoe somehow managed to recover her body from the accident site, and, through unknown means, either healed her or restored her to life - it is uncertain which - so that she eventually made a full recovery from her not insignificant injuries. Why exactly he chose to save her life may never be known, though reasons of intimate emotional attachment can immediately be ruled out - for as fond as the dominant personality Germatoid may have been of her, the idea of love was apparently a notion completely alien to him, as evidenced by his apparent obliviousness for her developing feelings towards him - but a belief that she might one day again prove useful to their cause seems to be the most feasible rationale for his actions. Regardless of his motives, he appointed Eudial as her successor, and, evidently impressed by a report she had sent him, adopted her proposals of "force-fusing" Daimon Eggs with a carefully selected and suitable object beforehand with the help of an ovenlike device so as to eliminate the element of random chance that had thus far come into play during the creation of such monsters and the second to have these Daimons serve as her bodyguards, thereby leaving her free to tend to the important business of extracting the Heart Crystals from her chosen human targets personally. It was also at about this time that Professor Tomoe began assuming more of an active role in the Death Busters' endeavors by making contributions to the victim selection process - alternating with Eudial and choosing individuals on a whim reflective of whatever activity he happened to be engaged in or aspect of Japanese or human culture in general he happened to be exploring at the time - though he may well have, in light of her many failures, eventually decided to replace her with Mimete anyway even if the latter had not decided to force the issue, so to speak, by successfully plotting to eliminate her fellow witch out of turn so that she would earn the position by default. Exactly why he chose to tolerate such dissension - the first of many such incidents - within the ranks of the Death Busters is unknown. One chilling hypothesis, however, may be that he kept the full truth behind the group's agenda for global conquest a secret from all and purposely chose to ally himself with inherantly treacherous yet dedicated individuals who would eliminate each other one by one, thus sparing him the trouble of having to do so himself later, for it seems rather unlikely that either Kaolinite or any of the Witches 5 - who were essentially all human themselves - would have so readily participated in or contributed to an endeavor that would have resulted not only in the extinction of their own species but quite possibly their own deaths as well.    
                Shortly after the appearance of the Holy Grail - which Professor Tomoe sensed before being informed of it by Mimete, though he mistakenly believed that Sailor Moon was not the Messiah due to the fact that she was not immediately able to utilize its full power - he was summoned to appear before Mistress 9, who instructed him to quickly obtain for her the perfect heart to ingest so that she might at long last awaken to full power as the Messiah of Silence. Correctly interpreting this rather obscurely phrased command as a directive to steal Heart Crystals from human beings, he complied by developing a special kind of Daimon designed to extract pure hearts from human beings that they would subsequently swallow and return to him with for conversion into the awakening energy she required in order to sate her hunger. Professor Tomoe then entrusted Mimete with the realization of this latest phase of the Death Busters' master plan, though he initially had at least some misgivings about her work ethics, and rightly so, since she seemed more preoccupied with being a professional otaku and okake than in doing her job, often using it as an excuse to pursue her hobbies. He also began displaying a more sociable side to his personality by encouraging the blossoming friendship between Hotaru and Chibi Usa, playing the odd game of Twister with the Witches 5, spending coffee breaks with Mimete and even attempting to show her how the ovenlike device he used to selectively fuse Daimon Eggs with inanimate objects functioned. However, Professor Tomoe did suffer a rather nasty shock on that last occasion when the Inner Soldiers literally appeared at his doorstep, though he quickly discovered that his fear of having somehow been found out was unwarranted as they had merely come in order to rescue Chibi Usa and Hotaru from the otherdimensional realm of U Ikasaman, a Daimon created through Mimete's haphazard and irresponsible experimentation. In spite of the fact that he had came to regard Mimete as a hard worker and evinced a greater cameraderie towards her than towards the other members of Witches 5 who preceeded and succeeded her, he eventually grew weary of her failures as well and thus decided to give Tellu a chance to both prove herself and earn a promotion, not even pausing to blink when the latter witch killed the former after the assignment he had originally given to her was wrongfully usurped.      
                The beginning of Tellu's tenure as an active member of the Death Busters marked the debut of two significant changes in the organization, the first one of these being in its modus operandi and overall strategy. Professor Tomoe gave Tellu as well as her successors greater freedom in choosing how they wished to procure the now large number of pure hearts required for Mistress 9 to establish herself - a sacrifice for quantity over quality having been made given the ever increasing urgency of the situation - by allowing them to pursue their own unique methods in light of the extremely poor track record of her predecessors in using Daimons. The other was convincing Kaolinite to return to active duty, him being of the opinion that her serving as his sacretary was a shameful waste of her talents. In spite of these modifications, success remained elusive for the Death Busters, for Tellu was accidentally killed in battle with the Sailor Soldiers during her very first mission while a similar fate befell Viluy, though, in the latter case, Professor Tomoe did manage to learn the secret identities of Sailor Mercury, Sailor Uranus, and Sailor Neptune and successfully spirited a dormant Mistress 9 to safety after the latter two made their way into her throne room in the underground laboratory of the Infinity Academy an attempt to assassinate her before she awoke as the Messiah of Silence.     
                When Hotaru's physical condition began deteriorating rapidly due to Mistress 9's unsated hunger, a concerned Professor Tomoe placed Cyprine and her twin Ptilol in charge of procuring the massive quantities of Heart Crystals that were needed for their purpose, though, in the end, it was not the witches - who were tricked into killing each other by the Sailor Soldiers - that succeeded in obtaining the required pure heart but Kaolinite, who abducted Sailor Chibi Moon as an offering to the Messiah of Silence. Once the Inner Soldiers, Sailor Uranus, and Sailor Neptune independantly managed to reach their new lair - their interference prevented by the presence of an impenetrable electric wall - Professor Tomoe initiated the sacrifical ceremony by summoning Kaolinite and rousing Mistress 9 from her slumber, who proceeded ti mercilesly rip Sailor Chibi Moon's Heart Crystal from her body and awaken to full power as the Messiah of Silence. Though he thanked Kaolinite for all her hard work, Professor Tomoe stood idly by and did nothing to prevent Mistress 9 from slaying her when the latter decided that her usefulness had come to an end. The two of them then departed together to prepare for the final step of their master plan in an enormous burst of energy so powerful that it not only collapsed the space around them but also completely destroyed the upper third of the Infinity Academy in a tremendous explosion.   
                After Professor Tomoe explained to Mistress 9 what was required of her in order to activate the Tausaikei - the machine that would use the power of the Holy Grail to summon Master Pharaoh 90 - and she, amidst his praise and adulation, had both established their headquarters through the formation of the Omega Zone as well as initiated the sequence of events through which she hoped to acquire the sacred cup from Sailor Moon, he was taken aback when she instructed him - or rather his alter ego Germatoid - to deal with the Outer Soldiers Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune, who had managed to penetrate their defenses thanks to the sacrifice of the third, Sailor Pluto. Confronting his adversaries in a chamber located in the deepest bowels of the Infinity Academy, Germatoid finally vacated the human host body he had occupied for so long and revealed to them his monstrous true form, but was blown to bits soon thereafter when Sailor Uranus scored a direct hit on him with her "World Shaking". Though reduced to chunks of yellow slush splattered all over the floor of the cavernous room, the Daimon's essence survived, and his physical remains entered and separately animated the several dozen white humanoid body suits lining the two walls, thereby forming an army of monsters that proceeded to attack the two Outer Soldiers. Proving more or less immune to their conventional attacks, the puppet creatures overwhelmed their two opponents by their sheer number and very nearly succeeded in killing them both. The tide of battle was turned, however, when Sailor Pluto's etherial voice caused her companions' Talismans to manifest themselves, a phenomenon which freed them from the monsters' clutches. With the combined power of their mystical artifacts holding their opponents at bay, Sailor Neptune used her Deep Aqua Mirror's ability to reveal hidden truths in order to single out the one master body suit which was controlling all the others and thus housed the Daimon's actual mind. Sailor Uranus then used her Space Sword to skewer Germatoid right through the eye, the destruction of his Daimon Egg causing all the remaining dolls he created to lose their animation and deflate.        
                Unbeknowst to the Outer Soldiers, Professor Tomoe had somehow managed to survive his possession and revived soon after the two of them had departed. Now in full control of his body and his mind once more, he managed to follow Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune in spite of his weakened condition. Even though his sudden and unexpected appearance temporarily prevented Sailor Moon from yielding the Holy Grail to her adversary to save the Outer Soldiers' lives, it very nearly got him killed when Mistress 9 - unmoved by his grief at the evil he had unintentionally inflicted upon his daughter and disgusted by the very touch of "Germatoid's pathetic container" - threw him across the room like a rag doll and nearly strangled him to death with her hair. Unfortunately, as if he had not already suffered enough, Professor Tomoe once again found himself playing the role of an unwitting pawn when she - taking advantage of a genuine internal struggle with Hotaru for dominance of their mutual body during which he was released from the grip of her snakelike tresses - tricked him into acquiring the Holy Grail from Sailor Moon by pretending to be his daughter and fostering in them the mistaken belief that she needed it in order to recover. However, the moment her eagerly clutching fingers grasped the sacred cup, a phenomenal burst of energy was released that sent both him and Sailor Moon half-flying, half-skidding across the room as Mistress 9 regained complete control over her host body, placed the artifact within the Tausaikei, and summoned Master Pharaoh 90.      
                Despite the considerable extent of his injuries, Professor Tomoe did everything within his power to try and rescue his daughter, even going so far as to help Sailor Moon shield Mistress 9 from an errant explosion of energy from the Tausaikei that threatened to consume her body. Though he suffered yet more physical abuse at the hands of the alien entity that had possessed Hotaru, his determination paid off in the end, for his loving presence in simply being there for her and his desire to return to the way things used to be, combined with Hotaru's own determination to save Chibi Usa, gave her the strength that she needed to fully reassert her own personality over that of Mistress 9 with a vengeance, though her own corrupted body was literally dissolved in the process. Then, along with the Sailor Soldiers, he managed to survive Master Pharaoh 90's arrival - which completely leveled what little of the Infinity Academy had survived up until this point - and also was witness to the alien entity's destruction when Hotaru assumed her rightful mantle as both Sailor Saturn and the true Messiah of Silence by sacrificing her own life to destroy him from within with the help of Sailor Moon, who combined the power of the remaining Sailor Soldiers with that of her own Heart Crystal and the Cosmic Heart Compact to assume her Super Sailor Moon form in the absence of the Holy Grail and dove into Master Pharaoh 90's fiery energy heart to try and rescue Saturn from oblivion. 
                Suffering from head trauma, a nervous breakdown, permanent partial amnesia, and a broken leg and arm, Professor Tomoe was submitted to the Oharaja Hospital located on the outskirts of the city of Tokyo in order to recover, and was left temporarily wheelchair bound due to the severity of his physical injuries. He was soon reunited with the newly reborn Hotaru Tomoe - reduced to the age of a newborn infant as a result of her sacrifice - thanks to Haruka Ten'ou and Michiru Kaiou , who, once they were certain the baby had been left in good hands, left to take care of some unfinished business with Sailor Moon as Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune before skipping town. Shortly after their visit, Souichi Tomoe, as luck would have it, encountered Chibi Usa in very much the same way that Hotaru initially had: by helping her to recover a hat that an errant gust of wind had blown off of her head. Something of a first encounter - at least for him, since he evidently did not remember her even though the opposite was not true - he took the opportunity to introduce Chibi Usa to his new baby girl, oblivious as to the deeper significance of the meeting between the two of them, though circumstance forced the onetime friends to part ways once more. 
                After making what by all appearances was a full recovery, Souichi Tomoe retired to a house located just outside of the city of Tokyo, Japan to raise his baby daughter. For several months, the two of them led rather uneventful lives until one day when Sailor Pluto suddenly reappeared in her human identity of Setsuna Meiou for the first time since her disappearance during the siege at the Infinity Academy to borrow Hotaru from him, as her power as Sailor saturn was required in order to avert a crisis which was causing a massive warp in the timeline. Restored to her true physical age and reunited with Chibi Usa during the course of her adventure against Queen Nepherinia, Hotaru and her father were then presumably reunited with one another, and, in light of the defeat of Sailor Galaxia and her Sailor Anima Mates, are once more living happily together once more, unhindered by the tragic events of their past. 

Height: Estimated at 6'2'' (188 cm); never accurately measured (as Souichi Tomoe); unknown (as Germatoid)     
Weight: Estimated at 156 lbs. (71 kg); never accurately weighed (as Souichi Tomoe); unknown (as Germatoid)     
Eyes: Violet (as Souichi Tomoe); yellow (as Germatoid)    
Hair: White (as Souichi Tomoe); none (as Germatoid)    
Skin: Yellow with brown spots (as Germatoid)        

Abilities: Professor Souichi Tomoe possessed no known supernatural powers. Though he was - by all appearances - a highly skilled genetic engineer, the extent to which his mind may or may not have been affected by either his possession or the massive physical and mental trauma he had to endure as a result of it remains unknown, as does exactly how much the science involved in the creation of Daimons and Daimon Eggs is directly attributable to his own human genius and how much of it was due to Germatoid's sinister influence. While Germatoid himself apparently also did not possess any supernatural powers - aside, perhaps, from certain heightened senses - while he inhabited Professor Tomoe's body, he could apparently survive being blown apart in his Daimon form and fragments of his physical substance were capable of animating at least several dozen inflatable humanoid body suits that could function independently, though all were still controlled by a single mind.    
Paraphernalia: Aside from the various chemicals, bunsen burners, glass beakers, filters, test tubes, metal stands, filters, microscopes, and other conventional laboratory equipment he employed in his experiments, Professor Tomoe frequently employed a specially modified range in order to purposely fuse Daimon Eggs with whatever generic object he placed in the ovenlike device alongside of it, with the resultant monster being either a bodyguard or a Heart Crystal extractor and swallower depending on the conditions. The newly created Daimon could then be mechanically packaged within either a medium sized white box or a small suitcase - other alternatives aside from these may have existed, though they were never seen - for convenient transport by whichever one of the Death Busters the creature had been entrusted to. He also made use of a series of posts that could generate a wall of purple electrical energy capable of delivering lethal shocks upon prolonged contact. The Daimon Germatoid employed a series of white humanoid body suits that could be independently animated when inhabited by his physical substance, at which time they would inflate afrom their normally flaccid state and assume humanoid dimensions. Extremely flexible, elastic, and capable of incredible contortions, they were also quite durable - having survived a direct hit from Sailor Neptune's "Deep Submerge", which inactivated yet did not destroy them - but could be disintegrated by the power of the Talismans of the Outer Soldiers.      

This entry first appeared on: June 10, 2000 
This entry was last modified on: December 10, 2000 

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