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Tellu ( )
[Ruru Teruno ( )]
[tellurite (tellurium
oxide): a mineral, white to yellow in color, which crystallizes in the
orthorhombic system as slender prismatic crystals; "Teruno Ruru"
- or, more correctly said, "teru no ruru" - translates from the
Japanese as approximately "Stopper of Sunshine"] (original
series) Real name: Ruru Teruno Occupation: Student, masqueraded as a flower shop saleswoman (as Ruru Teruno); scientist, plant geneticist, genetic engineer, member of the Witches Five, member of the Death Busters (as Tellu) (In the manga, she was also in charge of the Infinity Academy's botanical garden and served as a physical education instructor at the school.) Identity: The general populace of Earth is unaware that Ruru Teruno used the alias of Tellu or that she was secretly a member of the Witches Five and the Death Busters Legal status: Unknown, presumably Citizen of Japan with no known criminal record, still a minor Other aliases: None Place of birth: Unrevealed, presumably Tokyo, Japan Marital status: Unknown, presumed single Known relatives: None Group affiliation: Witches Five, Death Busters Base of operations: Originally the Infinity Academy, later Flower Shop Flower Terun, a flower store located in the Juubangai district of Tokyo, Japan First appearance: Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon S Episode 103 Final appearance: Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon S Episode 121 History: The past of the young woman known as Tellu remains shrouded in mystery. Aside from the fact that her real name appears to have been Ruru Teruno and that she was a student at the Infinity Academy, no details have ever been revealed about her private life, neither who she really is nor where she really comes from, not even how she came to be associated with the evil organization known as the Death Busters or what her motives were for joining them in their sinister quest to purge the Earth of all life by summoning Master Pharaoh 90 and triggering the apocalyptic cataclysm known as the Silence. A member of a quintet of young female scientists and sorceresses collectively known as the Witches Five, the cold hearted, vindictive, and ruthless Tellu was initially shown her way around the laboratory and taught how to perform her job by the group's senior member Eudial. She eventually became a proficient botanical geneticist and genetic engineer in her own right, which is unsurprising considering her natural affinity and evident fondness for plants in general. While it remains uncertain exactly how long Tellu served under the employ of the Death Busters before being summoned to active duty, she - at least as far as is known - did little to directly advance her position in the organization, despite her ever-growing contempt for Eudial following her numerous failures in attempting to locate and retrieve the three mystical objects collectively known as the Talismans and evident disappointment at Mimete being chosen as the former's successor, and instead spent her time performing experiments, conducting independant research, attending the occasional lecture by Professor Tomoe, and playing the odd game of Twister with her fellow witches. :) Tellu's first major role - or at least what was supposed to have been her first major role - came after Professor Tomoe summoned her to a private meeting in his laboratory, where he asked her to acquire the Heart Crystal of famous physicist Sergei Ajimov who was to give a lecture at the Infinity Academy in the near future, having decided to provide the young witch with an opportunity to prove herself and the possibility of increasing her rank in light of Mimete's several unsuccessful missions, though he bore no real onus against the latter and actually considered her a hard worker. Shortly after returning to her own laboratory, Tellu received a phone call from Mimete, who, having overheard the aforementioned conversation thanks to a hidden bug she had planted, used a voice modifier to impersonate Professor Tomoe with the intention of tricking her fellow witch into believing that her mission had been called off so that she could redeem herself by successfully performing the task herself. Suspicious of "Professor Tomoe's" demeanor on the telephone, Tellu decided to investigate the matter further by secretly observing the actions of her compatriot and quickly discovered that her belief that someone had attempted to play her for a fool was correct. After Mimete used the Witches' Electric Warp to vastly augment her powers in the hopes of defeating the Sailor Soldiers after the destruction of the Daimon U Pasokon and her failure to obtain Sergei Ajimov's Heart Crystal, Tellu emerged from her hiding place in the shadows, and, after offering some false praise and chiding her for having stolen what was originally her assignment, reminded her of exactly why the device's inventor, Eudial, had never used it herself: if ever someone disconnected the machine from its power source while it was in use, then anyone inside it would vanish forever, never to return. Despite's Mimete's desperate apologies and pleas to the contrary, the vindictive Tellu, before the horrified eyes of all those present, consigned Mimete to oblivion without a moment's hestitation by yanking the device's plug of the electrical outlet and promptly vanished into thin air. With all the practicality and efficiency of a veteran scientist - a quality reminiscent of her predecessor once removed Eudial - Tellu wrote a detailed report for Professor Tomoe outlining her self-conceived strategy of using plants to remove and collect Heart Crystals from human beings, an idea which he was quick to embrace in light of the Death Busters' abysmal track record with Daimons and Mistress 9's growing and evermore insatiable hunger for massive quantities of pure hearts. Her plan approved, the young witch disguised herself as a saleswoman and opened a flower store known as Flower Shop Flower Terun and held a massive opening day sale during which she sold Teruruns - genetically engineered, self-sustaining species of flower of her own creation - at a phenomenally reduced price. Little did any of her bargian-seeking customers suspect that the plants they had purchased would do anything but "bring good fortune" as their name ironically suggested, but would instead automatically extract their owner's Heart Crystals upon blossoming a short time later, yielding a large number of pure hearts that Tellu would then collect and return to Professor Tomoe with so that they could be converted into the energy required in order to feed and awaken the Messiah of Silence. A few days later, having decided that the groundwork of her plan had been adequately laid out, Tellu decided to set it into motion and abruptly sealed off the entire store from the outside world and, by inducing premature blooming in the Teruruns, managed to deprive all the customers who had the misfortune of being present at the time of their Heart Crystals. Shortly after completing her macabre collection, she was confronted by Sailor Moon, Sailor Chibi Moon, and Sailor Pluto, who had managed to uncover her scheme thanks to a heathy dose of suspicion on the part of the Outer Soldier in her human identity of Setsuna Meiou and a free Terurun the witch had given to Hotaru Tomoe who, not suspecting its sinister true nature, had presented it to Chibi Usa as a gift and thus falsely implicated herself as an active accomplice in Tellu's plot as a result. Enraged at Sailor Chibi Moon's insolence in insulting and accusing her of making a suspect out of Hotaru, Tellu grew positively livid when her adversaries escaped her attempt to steal their Heart Crystals and when her attack was successfully countered by, of all things, the "Pink Sugar Heart Attack". Intent on eliminating the diminutive Sailor-Soldier-in-training, she was foiled in her second attempt to do so after Sailor Pluto acted as a human shield by interposing herself between the young witch and her would-be victim. Tellu might have ended up electrocuting the Outer Soldier with her tentacular, vinelike projections had it not been for the unexpected and always timely intervention of Tuxedo Mask, who both freed Sailor Pluto and gave Sailor Moon the opportunity she needed to transform into Super Sailor Moon and destroy all the Teruruns in the store with the power of her "Rainbow Moon Heart Ache". Now exteremely angry, Tellu injected her last surviving Terurun with a strange purple fluid which caused it to mutate into a hideous monstrosity known as a Hyper Terurun - a plant creature that would instinctively react only when in the presence pure hearts and which would detonate upon having extracted that of whatever unfortunate soul happened to fall into its clutches - in an attempt to hold them at bay while she made her escape. Unfortunately, her parting boast proved to be her undoing, for Tuxedo Mask destroyed the black star-shaped band Tellu had indirectly implied as being the receptacle for the Heart Crystals she had stolen with one of his roses. The suddenly large number of free pure hearts in the immediate vicinity and her proximity to the Hyper Terurun proved to be a lethal combination, for it caused the plant creature to orient and focus its attention on her instead of on her adversaries. Suddenly caught in a life or death struggle with her own diabolical creation, Tellu desperately attempted to free herself by using her powers to electrocute the plant, but ended up being killed in a phenomenal explosion when the mutant plant self-destructed seconds later with the young witch still firmly in its tentacular clutches. As a final irony, Tellu dropped an Infinity Academy student notebook at some point during her battle with the Sailor Soldiers and her own Hyper Terurun that was later found by Sailor Moon, thereby betraying not only her actual human identity to her adversaries but also confirming their long held suspicions that the private school was the Death Busters' secret headquarters. Height: Estimated at 5'5'' (165 cm); never accurately measured
Abilities: Aside from being an expert botanical
geneticist and an extremely gifted genetic engineer, taking into account
both her apparently young age and the comparatively primitive level of
the field in current mainstream science, Tellu maintained a certain degree
of control over the Terurun plants she created - at least enough to cause
them to attack and extract the Heart Crystals of others instead of coming
after her - though, unfortunately, she had no such control over her Hyper
Terurun. She also possessed the ability to teleport and could cause tentacular,
vinelike projections to grow out of the fishnet pattern of her costume
in the vicinity of her wrists that could rapidly increase in length and
which, upon having wrapped themselves around their intended target, would
conduct massive amounts of green energy that could electrocuting human
beings into unconsciousness and was probably capable of inducing far more
serious injuries over a prolonged period of time. Japanese Voice Actress:
Chieko Honda This entry first appeared on: March 29,
1998 |
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