Mcmolly

Heiseina: Memories Long Forgotten

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Mio had been ready to consider this a pleasant, successful interaction. She didn’t get many of those, and while she had never had a conversation with Haruhi end poorly, a part of her was always ready for the possibility. She took the same extra care with the farm girl that she did with Tsubasa and master Tetsu, but it wasn’t beyond her to screw up and cost herself the rare, semi-frequent conversation.

Was she making just that mistake now? It was impossible to tell—she couldn’t remember the last time someone had insisted on her company. The idea seemed almost absurd. People liked Haruhi, had she grown tired of that? A few days publicly hanging around together would surely sour the village’s opinion of her. And maybe whoever Fuyucchi was, just by proxy.

Was it charity? Naiveté? Neither were fair, and a decade spent in this place had taught her to expect the worst of both in the best of circumstances.

“Uhm…”

But what if it was kindness? Was she going to turn that away?

“I’m sorry,” she said, not for her own sake. If it was kindness, then she couldn’t bring herself to inflict those consequences on Haruhi, even at the cost of upsetting her. “Things…break, during the festival. Someone has to stay here to fix them.”

Was that enough? Mio wasn’t stranger to disappointing people, but this felt differently bad. Perhaps that was proof Haruhi was being genuine.

So, a bit hastily she added: “I would like to hear about the fun, though. Tsubasa and master Tetsu always have good stories after. I’m sure you will, too.”

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Interactions: Haruhi @Lemons

Amygdala Circuit

Roaki sat back, looking Quinnlash up and down. She was still mopey as shit, and she was clearly trying to keep herself in check, but Roaki knew the signs. Anger, confusion, grief, she could tell when someone was about to crack, and doing absolutely everything they could to hold themselves together. In her experience, that never lasted long, even in people who were emotionally stable. Quinnlash was not. Quinnlash was emotionally two seconds away from combusting, always.

Normally, Roaki would have found this annoying as fuck, but this time not so much. It was still pathetic, but she’d come to expect that from her, and anyway, it wasn’t like she wasn’t right there herself too. But it seemed obvious Quinnlash trusted this doctor, for some reason. She knew what it was like realizing for the first time what a mistake that was.

“Yeah,” she sighed. “I remember the first time someone tried to kill me. One of my older brothers snuck rat poison into my dinner. Made me spill my guts out, but I lived. Then he tried to knife me. Gets easier, you’ll get used to it.”

Ideas came to her, old and exciting. She snapped her fingers, a devious grin spreading across her face. “Y’know I bet you got all sorts of nasty shit onboard here. We could get real creative with the revenge.”

Amygdala Circuit

“Bullshit, no way. You should be, like, soup by now.”

But she didn’t offer much resistance otherwise. I mean, what was there to argue over? Roaki thought of herself as a realist, and the reality was staring her in the face, out of Quinnlash’s face. If she wasn’t shot—and yeah, sure, she’d probably have remembered if she was—then that meant it had to be modium. Or something that looked like modium. After all, if it was real, Roaki had just touched it. Shouldn’t her finger have been bursting with steel tumors?

So, she reached in and touched it again. Still nothing happened. She was almost disappointed.

“Weird…” she muttered, inspecting her own finger, squeezing and poking down her hand in search of anything amiss. “Should be super dead. And my hand should be gone. Maybe it’s not really modium? Has that freak doctor seen it yet?”

It didn’t make sense. Roaki knew modium, what it looked like, felt like, and most importantly, what it did. The little nugget ticked two out of three boxes, but she’d never encountered anything that didn’t just fill out all of them. Why wasn’t it killing her? She still didn’t believe Quinnlash’s story about growing up drinking the stuff, but how else did you end up with modium in your head if it wasn’t put there?

Amygdala Circuit

“What the fuck do you mean ‘what’s in my eye’? Your eye, dipshit. Unless you mean—” She turned from the screen, noticing that Quinn did in fact mean the other one. Frankly, that made even less sense. “Nothing,” she said, exasperated. “A hole.”

But Quinn didn’t relent. She had that same stupid, desperate, worried look on her face that seemed bolted on six days out of the week. It baffled her, honestly. How could someone go from mulching a handful of Modir to sniveling in bed in the span of, what, an hour? Maybe? Roaki wasn’t entirely sure what day it was, to be fair. Either way, unless she wanted Quinn to spray snot and anxiety all over her sheets, there wasn’t much choice but to play along.

“Fine,” she said, hopping over to where Quinn sat up. She leaned close, balancing herself so she could stay upright, but she still wasn’t tall enough. So she bent Quinn forward, not gentle but not like an enemy. “Don’t move. And don’t sneeze. That’s different from moving.”

Threat satisfactorily conveyed, Roaki hunched and guided an exploratory finger into Quinn’s eye socket. She wasn’t as slow or careful as Quinn had been, but this also wasn’t her first foray into wound-probing. Several of her own modium scars had begun as craters in the flesh, some quite shallow, others bone-deep. It had sated some grim curiosity in her to poke at them, but they were always fresh and the pain was prohibitory to her fun. Quinn’s eye-wound was old, and likely healed beyond sensation.

She tapped lightly around at the scarred flesh, and when Quinn didn’t immediately shriek in agony, she took that as the green light to continue. It ought to have been more exciting, like digging her fingers into the flesh of another Savior. She could feel that in her memory, in the phantom sensations that often lingered when she disconnected. Wet pulp in her hands, screams for mercy in her ears. This was…not that. It was dry, silent, clinical. Boring.

Then it wasn’t.

“Wie bitte…?” she mumbled. She didn’t know much Helburkan, not compared to a scholar, but she’d heard a few phases from the doctors who had operated on her. They stuck.

Her finger had hit something hard, sharp, like bone only there ought not to have been any bone there. It was cold, too, just barely. Like…metal.

“Did you get shot in the face? Did I miss you getting shot in the face? You’d have told me if that was happening, right? Don’t move—uh, keep not moving.” Roaki snatched a small handheld light from her bedstand and, leveling herself again, shined it inside.

Sure enough, she saw metal. A tiny bit, smaller than a fingernail, and buried in the tissue. She tapped it, and as she did, Quinn would feel that same, distinct sensation. No pain, but for a moment, until it faded, she would be entirely aware of something there.

“That…” she mumbled. “That’s weird. That…it looks like modium. But…but you’d be dead if that was modium. Your brain’d be a metal flower right now, even if you just got it. Oi, deadgirl, when’d you lose this?”

Amygdala Circuit

“Well then stop shooting it! That thing is fuckin’ huge and solid you could bash someone to absolute paste with it! Just sweep’em in the leg and—” she mimed smashing something, and even with her reduced self, her enthusiasm still made the bed shake. The girl was absolutely wired. “Oh wait! This part though!”

Snatching a tiny remote off the sheets, Roaki fast-forwarded through the footage. She paused briefly when the meteor that was Firebrand slammed into the ground, scoffed, then clicked through again until it came to the desk of some new station. It was hard to tell which—though the lack of flashing bars and scrolling texts decrying Quinnlash as the living end meant it likely wasn’t Euseran. One of the casters was midsentence, saying something about communications between Savior Corps, but Roaki pushed forward with an impatient groan.

“Ugh, all the channels, talk talk talk, like anyone gives a fuck what they think. No one’s got just the footage. Where—there!”

It stopped right as Ablaze confronted the last Modir, slamming her cannon into its chest before blasting it apart. Roaki threw her arm up, remote flying to the carpet, and gave what might have been her approximation of the sound it would have made. Surprisingly, not that far off. Inside Quinn that alien satisfaction and pride lingered.

“That! That’s fine” she said, rewinding to show it again. “Where you hit it and then blew it up, that’s good! Close! I know they don’t talk, but I bet they scream real good. Monster fucks.”

The footage went on to go over the Casobani pilots. Two familiar Saviors popped up, and Roaki grinned. She’d done a number on them back at the duel, and was a little disappointed they’d regenerated already. The last of the survivors, Foudre and its pilot, a woman named Camille, flashed by.

“Was supposed to fight her, y’know. Best duelist in Casoban I guess. CSC didn’t think I was worth it, decided to throw the other two at me.” Roaki giggled, soft and menacing. “Bet they regret that. And now the whole stupid country owes their asses to you.”

Amygdala Circuit

The dorm wasn’t silent. As she drew closer to Roaki’s room she could hear noises, muffled voices talking excitedly about…something. Right at the door, her a tingle spread across her brain—as it always did when they got close to Roaki, some lingering apprehension, a protective wariness forced upon her. Then, among the muffled voices, she heard someone unfamiliar say ‘Quinnlash Loughvein’, followed by a bouncing, like someone hopping up and down on a mattress.

Then she knocked and the sound cut out. Something tumbled to the floor and there was a sharp “Oof!” from inside. Thumping and scrambling, something impacted the door and then it was flung open.

Roaki looked up at her from the ground, leaning on her arm, dressed in a sterile white shirt and black pants tied off at the knees. She looked…well, it was hard for someone with so much modium scarring to look healthy. But she was washed, and though she was still almost bone-pale, she no longer looked as shockingly malnourished as she had in the ward. Her hair fluffed out around her like a pile of down. Silver eyes peered up at her, wide.

“Oi! Deadgirl!” she shouted, as though they weren’t mere feet apart. She whirled, drag-hopping along the floor back to her bed, which had been lowered to the ground despite her protests. A small screen in the wall played muted footage of Ablaze squaring off against the first two Modir.

Roaki pulled herself onto the mattress and pointed as the first was destroyed. “You shot the fuckin’ missiles!” She said, in a weird flux between question and very loud statement. The footage played until the third Modir burst through the smoke and put Ablaze on the defensive. “Hey! But! This part! With the—”

Ablaze kicked out at the Modir, first to the spearman’s shin, then the bladed one’s arm. Roaki mirrored both, flailing the empty pantleg that was actually filled to the knee.

“With the kicking! That’s good! None of the lameass cannon shit! You get in there and you—” She threw out another kick, twisting herself on the bed and flinging out a haymaker with her one arm. “That’s good! That's how it’s done!”

Heiseina: Memories Long Forgotten

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The beauty and curse of living in such a small, tightly-knit community was that everyone knew everyone, and hardly anyone got away with anything, especially skipping out on payments. Of course, that wasn’t to say there was any unpleasantness about it; the reality was much simpler—people took their business on faith. Why hold someone’s feet over the fire for forgetting their purse, when you could be safely sure they’d get you what you were owed right away, or at least the next time they saw you. Mio couldn’t recall the last time there’d been any serious disputes over something like that, and certainly not at the smithy.

This wasn’t the first time Haruhi had downpaid with faith, and she always delivered, often with edible insurance. In her experience it was always well worth the trade, and Mio wondered if she pulled them from her own plot, unaided with Signs.

She would have been happy to take down a small estimate to clear with master Tetsu—chipping off a bit to account for the leeks and such—and leave it at that. But Haruhi mentioned the festival and, despite that she was literally sweating, she shivered.

“Ah, no…” she said. “I won’t be.”

It had been almost ten years since she had. She spent them at the forge, mostly, since her home was too close to the woods to be comfortable on nights meant to venerate the kami. Besides, a time for the celebration of new beginnings, of mending broken relations—she was ashamed to admit it made her just a bit bitter, which was healthy for no one. And who wanted someone like her lumbering around, blocking the spectacles? No, she’d do better here, quietly handling whatever orders came in. With so much going on, something was bound to need fixing.

Speaking of.

She resisted the urge to smile. People seemed to like that even less than when she looked them in the eyes, and she didn’t want to make Haruhi uncomfortable.

“It was a simple fix. I could speak to master Tetsu but I suspect he’ll waive it,” she said, changing the topic. “We’ll be square when the leeks come in. Is that alright?”

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Interactions: Haruhi @Lemons

Amygdala Circuit

“‘Course not,” Besca hummed quietly, draping her arms back over Quinn with the rest of what she quickly realized was dwindling energy. That surprised her, and left her just a little bit disappointed with herself; used to be she could truck through a whole week of terrible shit without more than three packs of cigarettes and a gallons of coffee. They weren’t even a few hours out of this mess and already she wanted a nap.

But, well, everyone wanted things. She wasn’t fresh off fighting a handful of Modir.

For now, she’d just have to imagine the coffee. Peeling herself off of Quinn, she ran a hand through the girl’s hair and gave her a smile. “Look, hun, right now isn’t the time to be hard on yourself. You haven’t earned anything like that. What you have earned is rest, and believe me when I tell you that you need to take that whenever you can.

“So here’s what we’re gonna do. Deelie and I will sort all this out for now. I want you to go back to the dorms, and I want you to turn the news off. If anyone calls that isn’t me, you don’t pick up, you’re not available for anything but downtime right now. You’re gonna lie on the couch, or on your bed, and you’re not gonna think about whether or not you messed something up. Instead you’re gonna think about the fact that you just beat a whole lotta monsters, and came home. You’re gonna think about how you get to wake up tomorrow, and you’re gonna wake up the next day too. Hey, okay?”

She planted a small kiss on top of Quinn’s head, then nodded to the door. “Go out that way, should be quieter. Anyone comes up to you, you ignore them—you tell’em Commander Darroh gave you orders. Deelie’s gonna do one more call with me, then I’m sending her down too.”

“Besca—”

“That’s an order too. No buts from either of you.”

Heiseina: Memories Long Forgotten

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Years spent alone, meditating, learning how to block out all external agitators so that she could focus on the internal ones, had leant Mio the ability to wrestle even great duress into stillness. In the work of a few moments, her heart was steady, her breathing was even, and her hand clutched the hammer in a white-knuckle grip but, well, it wasn’t shaking. Little steps.

The downside to such intense focus was fairly obvious. She had somehow managed to miss one of the loudest presences in the valley until it was quite literally tapping her on the shoulder. It was only due to so many years of intense discipline that she did not jump like a startled cat, or shriek like she was eleven years old. Instead, with a small jolt, she released the deathly grip on her hammer and turned around.

Her little corner was smoggy and dark, and what firelight reached her did not lend her a gentle appearance. She was a hulking shadow smeared with soot and sweat, and she would not have held it against Akiyama Haruhi if she turned tail and ran away.

Instead, the girl thrust out the broken blade of a farming tool and smiled like she couldn’t see her.

“I hit it on a rock!”

Mio took the hoe from her gently, inspecting it up close. Snapped at the socket, and not a clean break either. The thing was utterly mangled.

“So you did,” she agreed.

Most people weren’t happy when they needed something fixed, which, frankly, made them easier to deal with; she couldn’t ruin someone’s day if it was already ruined. Haruhi, however, seemed incapable of bad moods, and if she hadn’t always been that way, Mio would have suspected she was playing some kind of Keiko-level joke on her. Instead she was just confused, and it made accepting the girl’s genuine nature difficult. She kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, and the longer it took, the further it had to fall.

Realizing she was staring, Mio cleared her throat and turned back to her table. She tried not to make eye-contact often—people told her it made them uncomfortable. Even if she didn’t quite trust Haruhi’s kindness, she didn’t want to repay it by being unsettling.

“Well, lets see,” she said, sifting through the small stack of craft and repair orders she’d yet to get to. Those, combined with helping out with whatever Tsubasa was working on, would probably see this delayed to the evening.

Ah, but, this was different, wasn’t it? This wasn’t a busted doorknob or a cracked spare axle. The Akiyamas were farmers, their tools helped keep the village fed. Haruhi especially would need hers, considering her bizarre aversion to Signs. Putting something like this off would be…well, it would be irresponsible.

With a nod she said, “Just one moment,” and cleared a space on the table, before setting the hoe down. After Mending so much that morning, she had planned to handle the rest of the day’s orders by hand, but, with the break being how it was, she wasn’t confident in a slap-fix, and without magic she might have just recommended the girl buy a new tool altogether. What else were Signs for?

So, she took the snapped blade and shaft in one hand, closing her fingers around them so that they appeared as a single unbroken piece. With her other hand she made the familiar Mending Sign, and under her breath she muttered its words. A faint glow, not unlike the waking stokes of the forge, emanated from her palm, seeping deeply into the metal. She kept her focus, tried not to think about the girl who had taught her this Sign being so close by, and squeezed her hand tight around the tool. Jagged metal poked her skin, but she’d been a blacksmith for almost ten years, it would take more than that to draw blood from her hands.

Eventually she let go, and allowed herself a small smile at her work. Small, and brief, and gone when she turned back to Haruhi and held out the tool with both hands and a bow, now perfectly whole.

“I believe this will do,” she said, eyes still downturned. Part of her was tempted to ask she be more careful in the future, but not only did the idea of advising others horrify her, this hadn’t been a terribly difficult task. Besides, a little break from the monotony now and then didn’t hurt.

Instead she said, “Thank you,” which felt somehow worse and more awkward. Thank her for what? “For…the work,” she finished. Yes, much better now.

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Interactions: Haruhi @Lemons

Heiseina: Memories Long Forgotten

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It was still dark when Mio stepped out of the house, small box in hand. She had been quiet, surreptitious, so as not to wake her parents, but as she shut the door behind her, she realized she was not alone on the porch.

Her father sat in an old chair, pipe between his lips. The frayed awning cast him in shadows, but when he puffed, the tiny flare of embers showed his eyes. They were tired, and unkind, and looked away before the scant light vanished. He didn’t hide from her like her mother did; sometimes he would even put himself in her way, like now, as if to prove that he was not afraid of his own daughter. She hoped he was convinced.

“Good morning,” she said, like he was still asleep and she was still trying not to wake him.

“What is that?” he asked, gesturing to the little box she held.

“An offering.”

He puffed again, the glint saw his eyes downcast. “Why?”

The solemnity in his tone was biting. Sometimes, when he was feeling particularly brave, he could wind himself saying things he knew would hurt her—it wasn’t a very difficult task. Today though, all he did was say what was on her own mind, and it was enough. Why, indeed.

She set the box down on the porch and left for town without saying goodbye.

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The smithy smelled like booze, and looked like how she imagined the Crane’s Roost did after a busy night. Master Tetsu must have gone a little deeper into the bottle than usual, or perhaps he was just particularly happy about something. Either way, it wasn’t the first time, or the worst.

Mio picked a cup off the ground, shook it, sniffed it, and reeled from strong stench of the sake left over. She tossed its contents into the forge, and the fire drank it gratefully. She shrugged her coat off and got to work while budding warmth spread throughout the room. It wasn’t unusual for her to be this early, cleaning the shop and prepping the forge before Tsubasa and—if sobriety was in season—master Tetsu arrived.

When it was done, and the smithy smelled more like fire than spirit, she turned her attention to the tasks of the day. The forge was usually very communal, nothing segregated or cordoned off to any of them. Even still, Mio tended to work in the back, out of sight. It was stuffier and the soot clung to her more readily, but, it was for the best.

An assortment of items lay on the table, some large as farm tools, some small as door hinges, all broken in some fashion or another. Layovers from the previous days—things seemed to break so much more often this time of year. She’d Mend as many as she could before Tsubasa arrived, so he could focus on the real work. There was no shame in repairs of course, in fact, she found a sort of calmness in putting things back together, but Tsubasa was such a helpful sort and she knew if he saw a pile like this he’d throw himself at it with her, then he wouldn’t get to spend nearly as much time making things. He was quite good at that.

So she worked diligently until the sun was up, and when Tsubasa did finally arrive, the broken things were, for the most part, now fixed things. He got to work almost immediately. It was nice having him in; he worked right up front with the forge, in the open air, and passersby seemed happy for it. He was popular, and no one thought twice about entrusting him with their orders. She smiled whenever she heard him talking to someone—the conversations were always pleasant and if she closed her eyes, she could imagine she was part of them.

Today, of course, was different.

“You lookin' for someone, pretty boy?”

Mio reflexively began counting down from ten. She shirked into the dusty darkness as she heard Keiko hop onto the table, and said a silent prayer to the kami that she’d gone unnoticed. Then, because the kami were evidently insulted that she’d reached out, they were soon joined by Takamori’s niece, Fumiko. Perhaps the village master himself would make an appearance, and she’d finally find the resolve to throw herself into the forge.

She didn’t understand most of what they said, ears clogged with the sounds of the fire, mind an anxious haze. However, she did catch that Tsubasa was being beckoned away. Guiltily, she was relieved—so long as he took the girls with him. She had no place being anywhere near the Takamori family, and Keiko made her feel spiritually unwell.

No one was likely to bring by any new orders with only Mio there, but, on the bright side, at least that meant Tsubasa wouldn’t be missing anything. She saw the work he’d left by the forge, maybe she could help him out with that while he was gone.