@bladesbounties replied to your post “[pm] That was weird strange fun! Maybe next time...”:
[pm] I've given the egg a nice place in my home. Then you an have a chicken burger. Or is that also an issue for you? But you can eat whatever. [...] Please, I'm not going to die because of eggs. My ears are fine. The tinnitus is mostly gone. [del: Quick healing, remem] Are you [...] more relaxed? [del: You seemed like super stressed]
[pm] I recommend sheathing it in something. That egg is a potential hazard.
It is not an issue. Did Jade insist that you I would not want the same thing to happen again, though. I don't doubt your resilience-- I took note of that interesting burn scar-- but that was more than most people could take. And you led me out of And it could reoccur. I don't know. My mouth had been closed. I'm almost cer Would you die for burgers Do not answer that, actu
More relaxed as opposed to what? I do not perform "leisure".
TIMING: April 13th
LOCATION: WR Hospital & Seven Peaks
PARTIES: Nova (@punchalot) & Daiyu (@bladesbounties)
SUMMARY: Following her scrape with Paddington, Nova gets medical attention. Lacking the funds to get home, she calls Daiyu.
Nova spent the last of her wrinkled, mud-spotted cash on a phone charger, which she jammed into the wall of the hospital lounge, waiting for the cracked screen to glimmer to life. She winced at her own reflection. There was a point of injury in which things could only be described in childish abstract terms: her face looked like someone had taken a cheese grater to it; the various bandages and wrappings on her body were puffy like marshmallows; her bruises were watercolor splotches on her skin. The longer she looked at herself, the more unreal it seemed. If not for the constant throbbing, she’d think it was all make-up. Her wounds weren’t that bad, which was a cushioning way of saying nothing was broken.
Her phone jumped to life with a shrill ping—in the seconds it took for her to tap on her notifications, she imagined a great flood of everything she was missing out on: plans, texts, funny images, dates (which she wouldn’t accept, but liked having). And while she was at it, imagining her life to be greater than it was, why not Ellen Ripley realizing that, despite being completely fictional, she was in love with Nova—and also a million dollars plopped down into her bank, tax-free? There was a Happy 29th Birthday! from Gmail of all places, and nothing else. Maybe it wasn’t so bad tech companies had all her information, at least they could offer her perfunctory birthday wishes. It was a childish thing, anyway; expecting the balloons, candles, and cake. Real adults counted on Google Calendar to remember that they’d been born.
Whatever. It was fine. She wasn’t all that happy about it, anyway. She barely cared. It was all just a day. She could spend another one in the hospital, alone.
Nova picked at her wristband. She needed to get home—which was to say, she needed to get back to her crumpled lump of a van. She wanted a shower, to feel the hot spray down her sore muscles, the pressure pelting her tingling skin—she didn’t even own a fucking shower. The last of her money was plugged into the wall right now and she didn’t need to open up her banking app to understand the state of her finances. Thoughts of her impending medical bill coiled inside her stomach and Nova bent over to find she couldn’t move her elbow without being shocked by pain. She needed an uber, or a cab—she couldn’t even afford a coffee right now. So, she needed to call someone.
But, burned into the front of her skull, was the image of her father’s gaunt face and wrung-out body. She wrinkled her nose, as if the whiskey and plaque reek of his wheezing breath was here. She swallowed just as her memory of her father creaked down to his knees, hands clasped. No daughter should ever have to see her father beg. What Nova needed was someone who wouldn’t ask and, hopefully, wouldn’t care. Someone who was up at this hour, someone with a car, someone who liked her enough to show up but not enough to scream about the state she was in. What she needed was right there, alphabetically sorted under near the top of her contacts.
She tapped Daiyu’s name.
“C’mon. C’mon.” What would she do if Daiyu didn’t answer? Cry? Cry, probably. The call clicked. “Hey!” Nova’s voice cracked. “So sorry to call you in the middle of the night. I have a bit of a—Well, I was wondering if you could—I need…” Nova sighed. “Could you pick me up from the hospital?” There was something a little embarrassing about asking, like a kid wanting to know if mommy would come pick them up from a party that was getting a little too loud. “It’s just, y’know, don’t want to pay an uber.” Nova laughed nervously. “It’s no big deal if not.” She was talking so fast, she hadn’t let Daiyu get a word in. “It’s just, y’know, I can walk even. Don’t even know why I called.” Nova limped out of her seat, biting her split lip so she didn’t scream at the pain of putting her foot down. She grabbed the crutch and tucked it under her arm, leaning on it.
—
Daiyu could not sleep. For all the ways she had trained herself to fall asleep under and all circumstances (on some hunts, you never knew when your next sleep would be after all), she seemed to have forgotten all the methods. Being in her bedroom made it so that she had no view of her front door, and being in her living room kept her from keeping all her windows in the bedroom in check. Sleeping soundly when she was thinking of all the ways someone might enter the place she called home was a no-go, a lost cause. She kept thinking of Talia on her living room floor and how close she had gotten to finishing her off. How if she had succeeded, she might have slept more soundly. (Or how she might not have, considering the people who might stand at her door in stead.)
So she had set up shop on her couch. She’d installed new safety guards. She watched the screen of her television flicker with a rerun of a television show she’d seen three times over. She had her hands dug in Nugget’s fur. The taste of Red Bull stuck to her palate, sticky and sugary. On her lap laid a notebook with a messy overview of her finances, an attempt to figure out how many bounties she had to go after to make ends meet. Cheeto dust stuck to one of the pages.
When her phone rang, her body jolted in a way that she could only permit in the sanctity of her own home. Not that there was much left of that sanctity now, but even so, she was alone and unwitnessed, and so it should be accepted for now. Nova’s name blinked up at her, her eyebrows creased. Even though the other had officially branded their scrappy agreement as ‘friendship’, she didn’t expect a late night phone call from the other. Her mind hitched on a few worst-case scenarios, all of which had to do with Nova being part of a grand conspiracy against her.
Daiyu picked up and her mind hitched again, this time on its selfishness. Nova sounded different from her usual self. Reading emotions wasn’t her strongest asset, but the crack in her voice could not go unnoticed. Words fell into her ear like a waterfall, Nova’s words clattering against her auricle. She muted her television halfway through the story and was somewhat caught up by the end.
“Jesus,” she muttered. Swiftly, her mind flicked to her time in the hospital, and how unwilling she had been to have someone help or visit her. The memory was then discarded, that event more than one and a half year ago now and so no longer relevant, if it ever had been. “You sound like shit.” She wondered what had attacked Nova. A vampire, perhaps, or some kind of beast. Probably a worm, knowing her luck with the creatures. She looked down at Nugget, who was looking up at her with a questioning look on his face. She wasn’t sure why she was looking at her dog as if he would have the answer to what to do, because deep down she knew. Deep down, Daiyu would like to help her friend, but somehow she was prone to making that seem more convoluted than it was. This could be a trap, she was aware of that, but she did not want to be the person who ditched their friend at a hospital because she was seeing danger in every corner. She cleared her throat and got up. “Stay put. I’ll come.”
—
“I don’t sound like shit,” Nova warbled, sniffling. She was getting to the blubbery stage of crying—all limp and liquid. She braced herself for the inevitable denial—in Daiyu’s silence, was the truth Nova was so certain of. Daiyu would say “no”, and within that “no” all of Nova’s fears would be confirmed and in that confirmation, some allaying of burdensome hope. Uncertainty was an unwelcome house guest in her life; maybe a psychologist would tell her this was a childhood wound, some old needs that fell on deaf ears and so she’d pressed into her body a stone that said no one could ever help her, and that no one ever wanted to. Her stomach was gnawed at until Daiyu’s voice rumbled through her phone: “Stay put. I’ll come.”
If Nova wasn’t already crying, she would’ve started. She hung up and lunged—and winced—for a tissue. She wiped her face. Uncertainty clawed at her—the worries were doubled, tripled, so many more ways Daiyu could hate her—but at least she didn’t have to shamble around alone at night. She did, though, hobble out of the hospital. She wanted to scream—“I have a friend! Look everyone! I have a friend who cares!”—but she worried the crying would start up again. With her crutch clicking against the ground, she walked through the parking lot and towards the street. She didn’t want to make Daiyu have to pull inside—it seemed bothersome. She definitely didn’t want to make Daiyu pay for parking—hospitals were tiny robberies at every corner. She was pretty sure they’d charge her for the disposable scrubs she was in, but she wasn’t the one that claimed her clothes were a biohazard. She was a paper sheet crinkling and grimacing with every step. By the time she got to the curb, she felt worse than she did in the lounge.
She waved at Daiyu’s Dodge Ram. Smiling was important, she had to smile. She had to look OK, despite the bandages, the limping, the bruises, the stitches, the throbbing pain squeezing every inch of her body and the exhaustion which perched on top of her like a vulture made of lead. Nova hobbled to Daiyu’s passenger side when the car slowed. “Uber for Nova?” She asked, smiling, opening the door. “Kidding. Please don’t charge me for this.” She stared at the seat. The thing about trucks was that they were really off the ground—it wasn’t a seat so much as it was a mountain. But she was OK, she was fine, nothing had happened to her—nothing more than any of her usual scrapes! She whimpered as she threw herself into the seat, tears prickling the edges of her eyes. “I got it!” she said. “Thanks for doing this, Daiyu. I owe you…” She winced, adjusting herself. “I owe you a… burger. Or like, seven.” She smiled as wide as she could, her fresh stitches straining, her tight and sore skin screaming at her.
—
She was glad that Nova cut the call, that she did not want Daiyu to hang onto the line as she drove over as some poor source of comfort. Not that she would have agreed with something like that, but if she had been the one to end the call when the other still needed something from her, she would have felt that pathetic guilt that came with being a shit friend. She did not want to be a shit friend right now, even if she was not sure how to be a good one. Moving from her couch to put on her shoes the moment the phone ended was probably a good first step, as were the ones that followed. Getting a few (sort of) clean and comfortable clothes for Nova, throwing some food and a juice in a bag, and then getting into her car.
The drive was swift, the roads mostly empty at this hour. Intending to pay the stupid parking fee and go get Nova from wherever in the hospital she was holed up, Daiyu almost missed the other standing at the edge of the street. All the subconscious preparation she had done to return to the place she’d stayed in after Cass had attacked her was for naught and she was glad of it. She did not want to smell the bleach, hear the squeaky linoleum or be confronted with the bright, white lights of the hospital once more. Pumping the breaks, she squinted at Nova, who waved at her with a smile that looked pathetic. The only thing that would have made the whole display worse, was if she was holding one of those ‘Get Better!’ balloons.
As she wondered if she should get out and open the door for Nova, the other was already hobbling over. Daiyu felt useless behind her wheel, watching Nova quip and joke in a way she recognized from her own behavior. Being on the receiving end was making it all seem quite desperate. “First ride’s free,” she offered in response, trying to ignore her ability to reflect on herself and Nova. She had no need for metaphorical mirrors. Or actual ones, for that matter. She just took in the other’s injuries quietly and tried not to think about all the ways most of her friends tended to get hurt, but how she was mostly okay with it, as it came with their territory. But Nova wasn’t a hunter, who periodically got hurt. She was… just Nova. She felt discomfort crawl at the base of her neck as Nova got into her car, seemingly struggling with every inch she moved. “Don’t … no need. What happened?” She looked her up and down. “You … in trouble?” She reached for the bag in her backseat. It was an old take out bag, the logo blasted on the front of the plastic bag. “I got … juice. And dunno, some protein bar situation. Whatever. And clothes.” She frowned even deeper. “Those hospital gowns get itchy.”
—
Nova held the bag in her hand, the plastic rustling. Her fingers over the handle trembled and thinking it was the weight, she set it down in her lap. Her hands, laid on her thighs, continued to shake. She couldn’t make herself smile. Slowly, she opened the bag; as Daiyu had said, there was a bottle of juice and a protein bar laid on top of some extra clothes. She hadn’t asked for any of it. Nova swallowed. Oh no, Daiyu was being nice to her. She’d worried this might happen: with the being friends thing, and the asking her to come pick her up thing—which was itself nice. It wasn’t that she’d disliked Daiyu before—she liked Daiyu, but the affection was untested and therefore, preferable. She could like people up and down and up as long as it was inside her head. When it came time—inevitible—to drop them or be dropped by them, her pain was insular and therefore, safe. She didn’t want to put it outside herself, to have it live on her skin, in the air, inside another person.
She looked at Daiyu, lit by the streetlamps and the moon: this woman she had expected nothing from; not in a personal way, but in the way she expected very little from anyone. People were always good, she just never expected them to be good to her—as though she didn’t count as a person. She was sorry for thinking Daiyu would show up, ask no questions, and drop her off in the middle of the woods without any of that messy, inevitable human reality of care. She wanted to explain she didn’t mean anything by it—not that Daiyu was even privy to her thoughts—just that, when it came to herself, she didn’t think she’d be cared for a juice, protein bar, and spare clothes amount. Every act of kindness, no matter how plain, was a mountain to her and she never knew where to put them. Kindness was terrifying. Because she wanted it, because she needed it, because she didn’t deserve it—and she knew, out of all the people in the world, it was dramatic of her to think she didn’t deserve so much as a bottle of juice. Even her sadness wasn’t deserved. She was sorry, always very sorry.
She didn’t have the strength to confess her desire to be human—to subject herself to the complexities of life. These things could exist outside of herself, distant. The inside of her was for the familiar pains, which had been her friends for a long time. Cowardice took many forms, Nova would know: point to any spot in her life, and she’d been practicing at least one version of it. So, anyway, back to the mitigation. It wasn’t lying exactly, just distracting herself—think not of the juice!
OK, so, there was Daiyu, and Daiyu had some questions—gross!—but a little endearing? The stilted way Daiyu was asking after her was, unfortunately, very cute. It reminded Nova of awkward, grumpy old men. Daiyu seemed to be one step away from patting her on the shoulder and telling her to hang in there, sport. Nova snorted—the more she thought about it, the more adorable it seemed to her. And so, she thought about it. She pictured Daiyu in an old-man-certified newsboy cap—rocking aggressively on her chair, threatening to beat the local kids up—and laughed. Which hurt, but it was preferable to crying, which the plastic bag was whispering to her to do. She resisted the urge to pinch Daiyu’s cheeks.
“I love random protein bar, how did you know?” she asked. “Is it a little expired? I only like them when they’re dubious.” She leaned down into the bag, which smelled of takeout food still, and laughed harder. She hoped the smell would seep into the clothes and make her burger scented. She took the protein bar out. “This expires in… 2045?” She scoffed. “Well, now I’m concerned about whatever chemicals are in here.” OK, good. This was totally normal; Daiyu wouldn’t suspect a thing. The overly-dramatic, drain-circling, tar pit of her mind was invisible! As it should be. No one look. Get this internal monologue out of here. “Oh, right.” She cleared her throat. “Yeah, actually, massive trouble. The guinea pigs are after me; apparently you can’t just”—Nova lifted her fingers in the air, and curled them into air quotes—”’take all the hay’. They’ve sent the whole herd, Daiyu. I need to go into guinea pig-witness protection.”
Knocking her head back against the car seat—Ow—she grinned. “Thank you for the stuff,” she said, unable to even name the items in the bag—thinking about the juice made her voice wobble. “And if you want to know, it was the usual: it’s Wicked’s Rest. I’m not in trouble. Can’t even spell trouble. T-R-O-O-B-E-L? See.” Perfect execution! Ten out to ten. “Can you take me to Seven Peaks? Just the road going up into the mountains—y’know the road. You’ll see some skid-marks and a tree kinda knocked over. Just drop me there!” So OK, so alright, so doing-just-fine. Look! See!
—
She was not used to being the one people called for this kind of help. Sure, Daiyu was the speed-dial contact when you had a monster problem, or when you needed a beast culled. Eve had called her to help her clean that horrifying torture scene, but she had not expected any emotional or caring support from her. Was this like this? Had Nova called her because she could be expected to drive and deliver, with little strings attached? She had no mothering instinct, no intentions to coddle the other. She would not be offering her couch (unless it was really necessary) or stroking Nova’s hair as she told her whatever had happened. But even so, this was something she was doing for free, and even that was a touch out of character. A favor, with nothing expected in return. She preferred it that way. Owing favors made her skin itch, after all.
Nova was digging through her poorly packed bag of little things. A crinkly thing, that smelled of deep fried food and too much salt. A shitty attempt at trying to help, really, and for a moment she felt embarrassed as she watched Nova took stock of what she’d brought. Someone like Jade would have done it more properly, she was sure of it. Even so, Nova was chattering on as if she was trying to fill the empty space in the car with floating words and Daiyu was glad for it. She gripped the steering wheel and laughed with little passion.
“I bought them to prepare for the oncoming apocalypse. I’ll never starve,” she pointed out dryly, glad that the part of her that liked to have quippy conversations always seemed to remain alive and kicking. Daiyu looked at the rest of the bag, wishing she’d dug an old tote from under her bed in stead and had sniffed the armpits of the t-shirt properly to make sure it didn’t smell like her in a bad way. Whether there was a good way for something to smell like her, she deeply doubted, but she could only spend so much energy on self-pitying.
Fiddling with the gear stick, she grit her teeth through Nova’s vague explanation. Without being able to seemingly control her mind, she thought of her time in the hospital after Cass. The amount of stories she’d come up with to explain away what had caused the scars was still piling up. Fireworks, explosions, sticking her arms in the deep fryer… she didn’t even know which one she’d told Nova. What she did know was that evading the truth by saying something stupid was the easiest way to try and get onto a new topic. Daiyu remembered too, the cab ride home she’d taken, the way she had sat in the back of that stranger’s car and had silently begged him to ask what had happened to her, even if she knew she’d react with vitriol.
The main struggle now was whether she should honor Nova’s attempt at evasion or press. Daiyu wasn’t the person you called for hair-stroking, shoulder-rubbing or tear-wiping, she knew that. She let out a breath. “Those bitches are real vindictive. I lost fifty bucks to them last year,” she said, deciding to let Nova keep her facade up. She did not know what she would do with whatever the real truth was. And she understood, most of all, the need for these kinds of pretense. But there was something she had to add. “If you ever need someone to beat up those guinea pigs, just give a shout. Witness protection sounds shit.”
She put the car in first gear, looking over at Nova. “Just drop you in the … woods?” She did start the car, ready to make a U-turn to go back where she came. “Nova …” She was not the person to extend this kind of help. “You sure?”
—
It was easy for Nova to like people; everyone always had something to like about them. She could pass hours happily watching people from afar, loving them for how human they were—not herself, hypocrisy was a survival mechanism—and she often had. Once again, she found herself charmed by Daiyu—not for anything Daiyu was actively trying to do, but probably because Daiyu wasn’t trying to do anything at all. This woman beat her up regularly, shamelessly squeezed out Nova’s pennies for greasy burgers, and had managed to scrounge up a protein bar for her. What wasn’t there to like? She smiled. She didn’t know how to say she appreciated it; or that she wished that they could sail over the awkward new-friends lump into the zone of slightly-closer-friends. Probably you didn’t just force things like that. Nova sometimes thought of making friends like latching onto the skin, and ballooning with their blood. She couldn’t stop thinking about herself in parasitic terms.
If she were a better person, she’d talk to no one, lock herself up and never go outside. She wanted to crack into Daiyu… and then do what? Make the woman like her just so she could ruin it later? What was she supposed to do with the gnashing desire to be liked and the need to be hated? Nova stared into the bag again. If she were a better person, she wouldn’t be here. She pulled the shirt from the bag and held it in her fist—it was so soft. How did you thank someone for this? How could you make words mean what was being felt on the inside? She curled into the shirt, trying not to look like she was hugging it. She felt a lot younger than her twenty-eight years—shit, it was twenty-nine now. Thanks, Gmail, for reminding her. She glanced at the clock; it was well into the thirteenth by now; her birthday had come and gone.
She had no claims to the day.
“Did you lose the money gambling or from theft? ‘Cause if it's the former, you’re narratively compelled to gamble with them again to win it back,” Nova said. “Double or nothing; gambler’s rules.” She didn’t know what the fuck she was saying, honestly. It had the sounds and shape of something vaguely normal(ish, for Nova) and it slotted into the air with the assurance that you could forget that she said it. A brushing word breeze to be nodded at and given, if so inclined, a polite chuckle (but not a laugh, it wasn’t laugh-worthy). She leaned down and tried to look like she wasn’t smelling the shirt. It smelled like Daiyu and a bag of fries, which was a scent Nova associated with Daiyu anyway—couldn’t so much as drive past a McDonald’s without thinking about what the woman was doing. To know someone was to allow the environment to be colored by them. Well, Nova was OK with that, but Daiyu didn’t need to know that she thought about her every time she looked at a slab of ground beef.
“I’m sure,” she said, looking at the shirt instead of the woman it belonged to. A shirt couldn’t make any expressions she didn’t want to see. “Drop me off at the woods, I can walk from there. Or hobble, I guess.” She hoped Daiyu wouldn’t do anything stupid like offer her a place to stay. Except, also, she hoped Daiyu would. Even if she’d just decline anyway. Still, still…
She waited for the car to start moving before she dared to stop sniffing the shirt. Anyway, she was getting to that point of sniffing where her nose was getting acclimatized to the smell—needed to cleanse the nostrils before she went back in for another sniff. Did the sweatpants smell different? She’d have to investigate in the privacy of her crumpled van. She looked at Daiyu. Or… not. This was probably weird. She cleared her throat, turning her head away. Just say something normal, you dolt. “Have you ever killed anything before?” Nova asked, her voice tempered by embarrassment. “I mean…” She swallowed. “Y’know, like a… deer. Or…bird. Or—I dunno—maybe a bear?” She tensed, holding on to the shirt tighter. Her heart hammered up into her throat. Stop talking, stop talking, stop— “Like a talking bear? Or anything like that?”
—
Though Daiyu knew better than to underestimate small rodent foes, she did seriously doubt that Nova had ended up in the hospital due to some guinea pigs. Her mind went to the ones that she’d gambled with, the way they had smoked and shown a human aptitude for bluffing their way to victory, but they were still small. Nova wasn’t some (completely) defenseless human either, anyway. Even if Daiyu constantly beat her in their fights, she had to admit that Nova wa a skilled fighter. She had good technique, and what she lacked in supernatural strength should not pose an issue against guinea pigs. But she let the lie for what it was.
“Gambling,” she admitted, the embarrassment of the memory still strong even in the face of a hurt friend. Suddenly, she was glad that Nova had asked for that explicit definition, all those weeks ago. That there was no need for her to now wonder if this made them friends, or if Nova was just asking her from some sense of opportunism. Daiyu was also struck with the realization that she had not yet made a possible connection to Talia. This was a poor trap, if even one. “I’m shit at poker. At least I knew when to stop. So don’t even tempt me to try and win it back, because I will try and … man, I can’t start owing a debt to guinea pigs. Look at what they’ve done to you.”
She looked over at Nova, watching her nose hover close to her shirt. Daiyu was certain then, that this was an unwashed shirt. That the sleeves smelled like armpits, maybe even pheromones. She grit her teeth and tried to act casual, not wanting to admit that she was incapable of being on top of her laundry as well as able to lure animals with strange, mostly stinky scents. One was an uncomfortable fact, but the other was one of those big hunter truths she had to keep hidden. After all, if she was to reveal to Nova what she was, she had to confess that she’d been on a never ending winning streak due to her nature, not her skill. Not that she really needed the upper hand over the other right now.
“Hobble where?” She did not know where Nova lived, because she had not asked. Asking that meant having the question returned, and Daiyu did not want to tell her where she lived. Her house was no longer as much a sanctuary as it had once been, but it was still her place, and she felt hesitant to share it. “I can drive in the woods. I’ve done it. It’s … the park rangers can get fucked, ya know?” Especially one in particular.
Driving was a welcome distraction. The motions of shifting gear, of pressing the gas pedal just right so that she was speeding just enough to get by … it all kept her body in motion while her mind wondered what she ought to do. But then Nova asked that question, and suddenly handling the steering wheel and gas was not enough. “Huh-what?” She snapped her jaws shut, waiting for her to be done. A talking bear, she said. Daiyu reached up to one of her temples, rubbing it for a short moment before gripping the steering wheel again. “You encountered a talking bear?” She shot a quick look over and stopped speeding. Maybe taking their time with this drive was better. “Was that what …” She cleared her throat, shook her head. She had accepted the guinea pig lie. “What a question to ask, Jesus.”
—
Nova laughed, and was so grateful, she wanted to cry. “That was funny,” she said with a voice touched by water. Usually when people found something funny, they didn’t point it out like it was the best thing they’d heard. Careful, she was starting to sound not OK. Nova pressed into Daiyu’s shirt, holding it tighter to chest, raising it to her face. She wished it wasn’t so cold, but the heat from her own body was an adequate replacement for something almost human enough. Careful, she was starting to act like there was something wrong with her; like she had desires, and needs, and things she couldn’t ask for.
If she didn’t watch her words, Daiyu would catch on. “You know, just like… a hut,” she said, thinking of her van crunched up against a pine tree. “It’s a secret hut. You get it, y’know. You get it.” If she pleaded enough for Daiyu to understand her, maybe she would. “You get it. I can’t show you. Don’t drive in the forest. Just leave me on the road.” Careful. Careful. She could hear herself in her own ringing ears; the smoothed over mumbling turn of her voice, the unconvincing assertions about something that didn’t sound right. Nova was terrible at convincing people that the smoke was not a fire and the flames were not a fire and the charred remains of the body were something else, if only you’d give her a moment to think of what. Some people were very skilled at it; she’d met them. But she wasn’t like them. She didn’t like lying, she just did it all the time—that was different. Honesty was a guillotine, and she needed to cushion everything with excuses. It had to be OK, it had to be that there was a hut, it had to be that the trees were too dense to drive through anyway, it had to be no one’s fault. “It’s bad for the vegetation, anyway. I think.” She didn’t know. “There’s a lot of trees. You can’t.”
She watched Daiyu’s reaction over the curled mound of Daiyu’s shirt in her hands. It wasn’t exactly the surprise of someone sharing a foreign concept; she looked annoyed, not confused. Nova didn’t want to tip-toe around the supernatural stuff; in a town like Wicked’s Rest, it got exhausting very quickly. Nova nodded. “Yeah. Not… I don’t think it was a bugbear. Those just… those just look like normal bears, right? This was…” She lifted her hand and spread two fingers, mimicking the pronged double heads of the—of the—of the— “It had…” Of the— “It was…” Of the— “It…”
Nova turned her head. She could hear it: she was not OK. “Sorry. Yeah. No. I was just thinking out loud.” She watched the town blur out of Daiyu’s window and then looked at her friend—they were friends, right?—again. “Have you? Is it… hard? To kill an animal. It kinda… It could…” She turned her head away, squeezing Daiyu’s shirt. “Nevermind.” She didn’t want to kill it anyway—she wanted to help—but the curiosity settled inside. She’d killed spawns before, and at least a few creatures—and though she hated it, she’d smushed a lot of spiders in her life and swatted dozens of flies and mosquitos, and what about all the animals she ate—wasn’t it all the same? She’d never thought about it much before. But that thing…
—
Any other day, Daiyu might have pointed out that it was rude to laugh at her suffering and have acted offended. But tonight she did not, letting Nova have her amusement about her losing her money to a bunch of small rodents. It was objectively funny, but subjectively it had cost her fifty bucks and her pride, which was a hefty prize to pay for some laughs. She just wished it had happened to someone else, but the only other person she knew who had gambled against the guinea pigs had walked away with a ton of profit. “Did you know,” she said, indulging Nova, “That you can also bet in carrots? I’ll do that next time.”
She did get it. She did not quite get what Nova’s house looked like, but she understood the ‘secret’ part of it. It had not been that long ago that someone had broken the sanctity of her own home. Her address was something she kept close to her chest, closer now that she’d been made to use the emergency weapons strapped against her furniture. But Nova wasn’t a hunter (and if she was, she was a really shit one), and she could not imagine what kind of risks she was wary of as she evaded sharing her address. But Daiyu understood the need for privacy, and that that wasn’t necessarily tied to hunter-brand paranoia. She nodded, then voiced her understanding, “Yeah, sure I get it. You think you can manage the terrain, though?” She frowned a little, trying to navigate the new social structure she and Nova were constructing. “Don’t want you to get my clothes dirty.” That might work — to make this seem like a selfish ploy, rather than her being worried about Nova slipping and falling and not getting up in the woods. She glanced over at her, taking stock of the injuries once more. “If you’re worried about the trees, I can walk you up.” Why she was trying to fight her on this in a manner she never fought (subtly, with some mild prodding), she didn’t know.
Her foot let go of the gas pedal when Nova said the word bugbear. She pressed down it again after they’d lost some speed, not wanting to reveal her surprise any more. The frown was back on her face, eyebrows creasing in confusion. Nova knew about bugbears, which made her label of ‘normal, unsuspecting human’ make place for a ‘????’ label. “You know about bugbears?” Obviously she did. And so did Daiyu. She took a left turn, not looking properly as she did. It was all fine, though, so far. “I mean — yeah, normal looking bears, but they can make stuff appear. Like illusions. So they can be anything.” Manipulative assholes, she often thought them. Fear was an instinct with a function, but in front of a bugbear it had none at all. In front of a bugbear it was just a knife pointed at your own stomach. She looked at Nova, mimicking something and sounding afraid. She swallowed a comment that this fear was useless. “It had antlers?”
Nova was not just an ignorant human any more, but that did not mean Daiyu wanted to tell her about all the blood clinging to her hands. She felt the car go faster as she grew more tense, her foot using the gas pedal as an emotion regulator. “I’ve killed something before, yes.” She wondered if Nova knew about hunters, if she knew about bugbears. The fact that she knew the actual name of them, and not just that supernatural bears existed did make her wonder how extensive her knowledge was. “It’s … not worth thinking about the hardness of it.” A beat. They had been constructing a social structure where they danced around the elephant in the room, but Daiyu attempted to point it out again anyhow. “What happened?”
—
Daiyu was nice. Daiyu was so nice. Daiyu was maybe the nicest person Nova had ever met. Every laugh pulled from her was watery, but she was grateful for the ability to laugh—the opportunity—that Daiyu’s little jokes were the funniest, nicest things she’d ever heard. The burdensome weight of her life, both the burden to herself and the expelled burden she pressed onto others, (Maybe you should learn to help yourself, did you ever think about that?) was something whose question of existence was, to Nova, so certain, that even for one moment, to feel lighter, was a kindness so profound that she couldn’t put words into its shape. Maybe it wasn’t actually the nicest thing anyone had ever done for her, but it felt like it. She’d watched worry for her transmute into anger, blame and sadness before it ever trickled back down to being worry for her. And here was someone trying to make her feel better. When was the last time that had happened? God, maybe Daiyu wasn’t even trying. Nova had about as much luck deciphering this woman’s motives as she did beating her in a fight. Did it matter? What Nova felt was thankful. What Nova wanted was the permission to find things funny. It mattered to know she wasn’t being blamed for her reckless condition of life—even if it was all her fault. If, for just a moment, she could feel less guilt, why would she want anything else? And so, the best she could do to articulate it was to snort. “Carrots,” she repeated, wanting to cry.
Oh, and now Daiyu was doing that thing where you make a selfless offer seem self-motivated. That was the sort of thing you did to people who couldn’t accept any help—Nova had to do it to Granny all the time. Wait, did that mean she was the person who couldn’t accept help? But she was inside another person’s truck, wasn’t she? And she had to draw the lines somewhere or else she’d be asking Daiyu to carry her around and give her a million dollars—asking for help was a slippery slope. Not that she wanted a million dollars from Daiyu in particular, but who knew. She smiled and shook her head passionately—which hurt immensely, like her brain was loose in her head, sloshing around. “I can manage,” she said, but it sounded a little slurred so she quickly added: “I used to be a manager.” Which wasn’t even true. She grabbed the handle of her crutch, which had been leaning on the dashboard, and pulled it to her. “Me and Mr. Crutch go way back. Like… old lovers.” She wrinkled her nose. “Or old friends. I don’t know why I went with lovers. I’m not—I’m not attracted to the…” She looked at the crutch. “Well…” She laughed. Could you be unwell if you were laughing? Didn’t think so! The Joker was excluded from reasoning. “I’m alright. Need the walk alone to get to know Mr. Crutch. I’m seeing him in a new light. Don’t want to turn you into a third wheel.” And if you said you needed it, who could argue?
Nova felt like wiping her hands. Job done: Daiyu successfully convinced of okayness. All in a day’s work of—Oh shit. The bugbear thing. “Yeah, well, I mean… I was born here. So.” She laughed nervously. She only knew what one was because of the parts of Granny’s notes she’d decoded. But now she had to wonder what Daiyu was, that she knew what a bugbear was. Probably a werewolf or something; she had that ruggedness about her. Except that Daiyu didn’t just know about it by name, she knew about its powers. Maybe Daiyu was a bugbear? She shook her head. “No, not antlers. It was…” No. She wasn’t going to think about it. She shrugged. In case Daiyu didn’t see, she shrugged again.
Then there was the rest of it—why did she ask? Why couldn’t she have just shut up for once? (Stupid.) “Killed something before,” she repeated. Most people in Wicked’s Rest seemed to have. If you killed a spider, that was killing something, right? Something Daiyu had said—that was so important. A thing! What was eating meat anyway? Note to self: look into vegetarianism… except the dairy industry wasn’t much better about the treatment of animals. Note to self: look into veganism… God, but she loved cheese. Note to self: stop talking to self. (You like your own voice too much for that.) I do not like my—OK. Moving on. “Hardness,” she repeated. (OK, maybe say something for yourself, you miserable–) “Ha, like penis,” she said. That was funny, right? What were they talking about? “Except it kinda…” (Stop.) “It is. Worth thinking about. It’s the part that tells you that you care, right? That it’s hard. It's one of the only parts worth thinking about.” Nova swallowed. “Sorry, I didn’t—“
“What happened?”
Nova’s skin turned to ice. Her features fell. She brought Daiyu’s shirt up to her mouth and wadded it up in her hand, holding it roughly to her face. Parts of her brain scrambled to think of a lie; hazy, rolling thoughts clambering over each other, mixing to new thoughts, dissolving to static. She lifted her face up. “It had skin,” she said flatly. “It had…two heads. One was…” Her voice started to crack. “It wasn’t a bugbear. It wasn’t an illusion. It had a stomach like a bowling ball and it…” Her hands started to tremble. “It had skin. With little hairs. And pores. And…” She started to cry. She dropped her face back into the shirt and sobbed. She screamed at herself to stop, but the more she tried to, and the more she reminded herself of how evil crying in front of someone was, the harder she wept. She needed to give Daiyu enough information so the woman could tell her what she wanted to know: that it was just a monster, like any other monster. That in catalogue of monsters in this horrible, disgusting, terrible town, it was just one out of dozens. It was normal, for how abnormal it was. She needed to believe it.
But it was inside her Granny’s basement, and had been, judging by the state of that room, for over a decade. Nova had seen dozens of monsters she couldn’t name. And that one…
Nova’s skin prickled with ice. She bent into the shirt and wailed. “I’m an alchemist,” she managed between heaving gasps. And that was as far as her mind was willing to travel.
—
Nova was laughing and repeating the word carrots as if there was something about the humor of them that might fix her. Daiyu could feel the desperation in the air, the wanting to laugh rather than cry or riot. She grit her teeth in the face of its ugliness but said nothing more on the gambling and ridiculousness of it. Escapism was something she understood in certain contexts, but she did not know how to give Nova the right kinds of things to keep her distracted and laughing. She was not even sure if she wanted to. There was something unnerving about the way Nova laughed, the way she kept talking in endless circles as if filling the space in the car with words would somehow make Daiyu ignore the great, hurt elephant in the room.
“You’re gonna fall,” she stated bluntly, and she failed to keep the unspoken ‘not that I care’ part of her statement. She did not want Nova to fall. Maybe it was ironic, considering all the ways she’d handed the other’s ass to her while sparring with her, but Daiyu was very much disliking seeing the other hurt and grasping at straws. The fact that she was one of those straws did not go unnoticed either. “You’re gonna fall on your ass and that crutch is not going to be doing you any fucking good.” The words held both sharpness and softness, living on the knife’s edge of Daiyu’s complicated relationship with compassion. She decided she would just go out with Nova. There was no way the other was going to be able to stop her, even without all the injuries. With them, she was as threatening as a fallen, broken bird. If Daiyu lacked the verbal skills to convince her to let her come with her, she’d just use her physical prowess.
She looked over at Nova, an eyebrow raised. “Plenty people who were born here don’t know shit,” she pointed out. Nova continued being evasive about the nature of what had done this to her and Daiyu wondered what kind of horror it must have been. Had she been hurt before? If she had grown up here, perhaps she had had encounters of this nature earlier. “So it’s, whatever. Fine if you don’t know. I can …” Help? Was that what she was going to say? She wasn’t sure if she should finish that sentence, because she was not sure if she was capable of such a thing. Not in a way that mattered.
And besides, Nova was making it starkly clear that there was a fundamental difference between them. She was talking about caring in the face of murder. Daiyu figured that it made little difference if you cared or didn’t. The person you murdered would still end up dead, and what the fuck could the dead do with sentimentals? Her thoughts went into a direction similar to her arguments with Henri, when they had argued over a corpse that had died at his hands. A woman whose death had paid for part of her rent, who was just as dead as she would have been had Daiyu not taken the money. Caring just made things complicated. But Nova wasn’t a hunter, and as far as she knew, not a killer either. Maybe it was worth caring about a death if only one had happened at ones hands, but when ones hands were as red and ruined as Daiyu’s? It was a death certificate to start caring. It wasn’t a nuance she could explain without baring herself. Without a confession that would tear open the world between them.
“Yeah. You didn’t,” she said shortly. “You don’t.” Her own sentences remained unfinished, her desire to talk about death and murder close to zero. Sub-zero, possibly. This was why Daiyu usually didn’t befriend humans. Normal people who had grown up with some growing pains and some struggle, but who had not been made to look creatures in the eye as they killed them as kids. Who had not learned how to file away the weight of death before high school. Even now, she found herself envying Nova. Even if she was hurt. Even if she had seen something real bad. The envy burned in her throat, making her want to spit out something about having the luxury to care and how that had been taken from her a long time ago. But she swallowed the metaphorical bile and pressed down on the gas pedal in stead.
The stripes in the middle of the road passed by her and her gaze was pulled to that in stead of Nova. Nova, who was displaying such weakness and humanity that it made Daiyu uncomfortable, because it wasn’t supposed to be this easy to cry. (As if it had been easy for Nova to get to such a point.) The description was vague and nothing she could work with. Two heads, a pot belly, in possession of skin. She racked her brain but found nothing that matched the description. “Probably some weird fucking local thing,” she muttered, mostly to herself. She eventually gave a glance sideways, feeling a new kind of envy now. It was similar to the one she held for Fries, her squonk — the ease with which Nova cried (which could not be called ease at all, but still seemed like it to her) was something she could not recognize within herself.
No conclusion came, no determining factors that would help Daiyu identify the thing that had hurt Nova. She needed to know, she realized. Because she wasn’t really sure how to help Nova right now, with all the crying and limping, but she knew how to hunt something. How to hurt something for hurting someone she cared about. She noted all the details that Nova had offered and tried to think — but was soon interrupted.
The ‘???’ label she had applied to Nova just moments ago was replaced. She was a spellcaster. An alchemist, to be precise, who she dealt with from time to time when it came to potion ingredients. Daiyu released the gas once more, looking at Nova. She swallowed another mouth of envy. “I’m a ranger,” she offered in return. She wasn’t sure why, just as she wasn’t sure why the other had brought up her own identity. Not much made sense by now.
—
Nova had always been impressed by movies where single tears rolled down pretty, movie-star faces: everyone cried beautifully. Especially in the older movies; that lack of color called for more attention on the lighting, and all of that light caught on wetness inside an actress’s eyes. She could still see it: Joan Crawford standing in her furs in Mildred Pierce, watching her daughter sob and beg, droplets of water poised at the edges of her own eyes threatening to spill down her stone face. They sparkled as she held the phone up to her ear, warring between calling the police and protecting her daughter. Nova cried, but it wasn’t crying like that. She wailed and sucked in air, heaving it into her starving lungs, over her trembling lips. The bag nature of her lungs—squeezing and expanding, squeezing and expanding—made her body feel like a collection of things; no miracles inside a human, just machinery, a little chemistry. She was snotty and her wailing drew out like coughs—she had the shirt half-stuffed into her mouth and she still couldn’t stop the sound.
By the time she felt calm enough to look at Daiyu, she felt too gross to do it. She probably shouldn’t have wiped her face on the shirt, but it was in her hands already, and she liked the way it felt. Now she’d ruined the thing she was supposed to wear, streaked it with human emotional waste. “Ranger,” she repeated. “So when you say you’ve killed things you mean…” She swallowed. Probably things just like that… bear. Paddington, she thought to call it. Sniffling, she looked at Daiyu. Rangers and alchemists were like butchers and chefs; they brought in the raw materials, Nova turned those materials into workable goods, in theory (her potioncraft left much to be desired). The ethics did concern her, but not so much that she was tracking down rangers to ask how they got their basilisk venoms—mostly, she avoided buying what she could just get herself. She had the urge to pick a fight with Daiyu, roiling with imagined crimes; burn another bridge, she always did. If her horse was high enough, the smoke wouldn’t touch her.
She sniffled. “Look, Daiyu just…” She bit her lip. Then, sighing, she uncorked. Might as well, she thought, they’d talk in circles otherwise. “I don’t have a house in the woods,” she said. “I live in my van. I crashed it. It’s inside the trees. Well, not inside-inside…” She chewed on her lip. “Just drop me off. Just forget about it, OK? I…” Nova watched the road, her belly tightened and she took that to mean they were close. “The thing I saw… I…” She swallowed sand, she swallowed ocean, she swallowed air and nothing. Her body fought her; her stomach kicked, her brain punched, her muscles choked. Her eyes threatened her with crying again. Nova pushed through; if she didn’t say it at least once, it might live inside her forever. In a meek, quivering voice, she offered, “I think it was human.” She leaned back into her seat. “Not like a bugbear. I think…” Nova looked at Daiyu. “You know, alchemy is… I mean, of course you know. You get all sorts of shit for us. We can do anything; we rearrange the world. You’ve seen it, right? I could take a rock and merge it with your truck.” Once more at the road, those lines of white smearing past them. There were the silvery guardrails: her saviors. “I guess it’s not that big of a stretch to do it to someone’s body. It’s similar enough—what’s inside the skin, inside a tree, inside a rock. We’re just different arrangements of the same notes.” Nova closed her eyes. “Isn’t that why we have to care? Because if you think about it, there’s no reason to be a good person. It’s easy to trample over everything. Easy to just… point your crossbow at something and stick it between the…” She opened her eyes. “No offense.”
Nova leaned forward, pointing. “There,” she said. “Right there. Just drop me off.” Don’t think too hard. Wasn’t that easier?
—
As Nova wept, Daiyu stared at the road ahead. The action of crying in any way was a weakness, a display of emotion that was simply inexcusable. She imagined that Fries was in the car with her instead, as she had grown to tolerate his tears even if she found them still quite frustrating. A crying human was harder to deal with. A crying friend, even harder. She did not know how to deal with it without making her judgement clear, how to offer what friends in movies and TV shows offered when someone was upset. She did not want to comically pet the other’s head and say there there like some demented fool, so she opted for silence. The quiet made all the gross noises that Nova made all the louder. The heaving, the snot, the choking. Daiyu wanted to clamp her ears shut. She wanted to tell her to stop being a Squonkbaby. She wanted to stop the car and get out so Nova could calm down. She wanted to be a better friend.
Eventually it stopped. Like a storm ended, there was only the drops of water trickling through the leaves left. She felt her grip on the steering wheel slacken, only to increase the hold when Nova started on the Ranger subject. “Beasts,” she confirmed. It was a large umbrella term that did not even cover everything she had killed. Some might not categorize shifters under there. And then there were the fae, the undead, the worms. So many worms. Never humans, though. Daiyu wondered if that made a difference to Nova, or if she thought everyone equal in that sense. At least she wasn’t a vegan — that helped in some departments. Even so, she should not have to explain herself, should she? She did what she had to. She did the only thing she knew how to do. And somewhere, at the end of the balance sheet, she hopefully spared some lives.
At least Nova circled back to her, to the depressing truth she’d been dancing around. Daiyu was gripping the steering wheel even tighter now. If trying to explain the nuances of hunting to a human was complicated, dealing with someone revealing ugly truths about their life was even harder. “That’s cool,” she mumbled, “Living in a van. When it’s not crashed.” She wanted to make the easy choice here and let Nova return to her crashed van and sleep on what was possibility a huge risk. But she also still had that previous want – the wanting to be a better friend one – that weighed on her. She let it go for now as Nova told her what she’d been up against. Eyebrows creased, and she moved one hand from the steering wheel to fiddle with the string of her hoodie. “Jesus.” A beat. She had seen some alchemy. Not a whole lot. She had wondered about the weaponry potentials of it, but had mostly just tried to make a buck of spellcasters and leave them to their weird wizardry as they left her to her hunting. “So it was like a fucking hybrid of … human and other things? Jesus.”
Daiyu stopped her car. She let her hands drop from the steering wheel. She let Nova’s words run through her as she looked at the wreck ahead of them. “Way I see it, there’s no such thing as a good person. Just people pretending and trying. We’re lucky most of ‘em don’t have claws or … alchemy or crossbows. That’s all that separates us, sometimes. But it’s not fucking easy.” Sometimes it was. Sometimes there was nothing as easy as taking aim and letting a bolt fly and killing a creature.
She looked over at Nova. “You’re fucking confusing. Telling me to care, then telling me to drop you off at a car wreck after you spent a good fucking time sobbing in my car.” Daiyu took a deep breath. “You can’t — that’s not how this works. I care about some shit.” Unspoken was the like you of it all. She put her car in reverse. “I can drop you off at a motel. Pay for your room. Figure I owe you after all the burgers, right? Biological advantage.” She knew that was a piss-poor offer. She should invite Nova to her house. To make her some tea even. Offer her more than the crinkly bag of clothes and snacks. She looked ahead at the wrecked car, then pulled her car around and started to drive off somewhat slowly.
—
When had anyone called her van living cool? She knew there was nothing wrong with it in theory—she’d never say anything to anyone else living in their cars—but the reality of it made her feel like she’d shattered someone’s expensive vase and was waiting for them to pull up the rug to find where she’d hidden the shards. She’d like a house, if she could afford one. She’d like to be the sort of person who could stomach roommates, being looked at in her routines. She’d like to not be herself, really. Nova stared down into the bag. “Thanks,” she mumbled. At least she didn’t think Daiyu was saying it just to flatter her; she couldn’t imagine Daiyu saying anything just to flatter anyone. Not like her; she had that sticky human quality that boarded between friendly and manipulative. “Yeah,” she said, “fucking hybrid. Abomination. Whatever you want to call it.” Beasts, Daiyu had said—she’d save them both from picking apart whatever the fuck that meant; the umbrella was way too big.
The car stopped. Nova reached for the door handle, rehearsing her exit-speech of appropriate friendly gratitude. Thanks for the ride! You’re cool, Daiyu! Weirdly I now hope we never see each other again—it’s me, not you. Yeah, right, like she’d ever let loose that level of honesty. Admitting to Paddington was bad enough. The wreck of Nova’s car was a shimmering white star; metal compacted to a shape that implied nothing of its previous vehicular nature. Daiyu’s words made her tense and then she went on, and Nova’s raised shoulders drooped. She laughed, softly, lowering her gaze to the shirt. She’d really ruined the thing with her snot, but on the underside, where it was clean of her, she rubbed her fingers over the worn fabric. “I want you to care, just not about…” She stopped; it was too dramatic of a sentiment to finish.
Daiyu started to drive off, and Nova didn’t have the energy to argue. “Sure,” she said. “OK.” In her heroic fantasy, she was jumping out of the truck and nobly accepting her wrinkled van. Looking at Daiyu, she resisted the urge to reach across the console to hug her. “There are good people,” she said, leaving unspoken the like you that she was thinking. “The way I see it,” Nova started, “the trying is what makes someone good. I think what separates us is how much you want to pretend; not the claws or the… other pointy things.” She stuffed the snot-shirt back into the bag and pulled out the juice, feeling her throat burning after all the wailing—feeling herself wanting to wail again at Daiyu’s plan. When had anyone ever done something so nice for her? The shape of thank you was stuck in her throat, and washed down by fruit-sugars. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “About the… thinking you wouldn’t care or…” Nova bit her lip and closed the juice, stuffing it down. “Your, uh, hair…” She gestured. “It looks… cute,” she said—which was not to flatter Daiyu, but probably didn’t mean much coming from the person who thought the xenomorph puppet was the cutest thing she’d ever seen. She liked uneven edges, messy results, imperfect attempts—it was cute to her because it was so obviously a terrible fucking haircut. It made Daiyu look like she’d been rejected from the 90s boyband factory. Did she do it herself? Was it one of those bad breakup haircuts? But it was easier to compliment the hair than it was to apologize. “It’s—um. It’s…” She stopped. “Biological advantage?”
If there was one thing that could be said about Nova’s deduction skills, it was that sometimes her gears turned a little slowly. “You—!” She jumped up, the seatbelt holding her back. “The hunter healing! The strength! You—!” She fell back into her seat and laughed. “Fuck you! You’re such an asshole—I can’t—and all that time I spent complimenting you on how strong you are!” She laughed harder, shaking her head; hard to think she’d been sobbing like a baby moments ago. (If there was one that could be said about Nova’s ability to bounce back from any occasion, it was that she’d give a spring a run for its money).
“How much of a putz did I sound like when I kept asking you for your recovery tricks?” she asked, grinning. “Gee, I think I deserve one of those fancy motel rooms for this. It’s the only way to make it up to me: I want the best parking lot view.” She leaned back, staring at the sky through Daiyu’s windshield. “When I’m better, we should spar properly. I’ll use my magic and you can… Well, I guess you were already using your superpowers, huh?” Once more, looking at Daiyu, she smiled. “Asshole,” she said, the word taking the texture of fonder compliments; she might’ve stopped herself from calling Daiyu a good person, but for the way she called her an asshole, there wasn’t a difference in the syllables. What could she say? She liked it because it made Daiyu a bit of a jerk; slimy alien puppets bursting from chests.
Daiyu seemed so much more human to Nova then, and in seeming that way, she shone. “It is cute,” she reiterated.
—
Nova did not start arguing her. She did not do what Daiyu would consider, should the roles be reversed: throw open the car door and let herself fall out of the car. Injuries worsening be damned, she would not stand for practically being kidnapped for comfort. Especially not in such a frail friendship, when the air was charged with talks of goodness and whether she had killed things. But Nova just remained seated, saying sure, okay, and Daiyu was relieved to not have to argue for once. Usually she would take the verbal scarring, but right now she was tired and frustrated, and just wanted to drop Nova off somewhere that wasn’t wrapped around a tree. Unless it was in a cute architectural way, she supposed.
Goodness was a concept she had long ago stopped believing in. It must have been when she was in her early twenties and had attempted to turn her back on a life of destruction. When she had not found any other way to live life. Sure, there were people who weren’t as bad as others, but goodness? There was no such thing in the circles she ran in. The argument that some normal humans were good lost much traction too, considering all the atrocities committed on a daily basis.
So perhaps there was some stock in what Nova was saying. If people were bad by default, then trying mattered. But Daiyu found trying painful and uncomfortable. It was too confrontational. She did not try to be good, just as she tried not to be bad. She had forgone a hunter’s code, in stead opting to hunt for the highest prize to outsource hard decisions. She prioritized people she cared about, even if that list was short. She tried not to make her hunts suffer too much before snuffing them out (though failed aplenty, that werewolf she shot recently burning on her mind). There was no goodness there, no attempt at it. Most of it was pure selfishness. “Trying doesn’t matter,” she muttered, “If the result at the finish line is the same. Or if the past is riddled with …” Bodies, crimes, guilt.
Nova then apologized. Daiyu’s grip on the steering wheel tightened once more. “No need to be,” she muttered, “It’s probably a fair assumption.” She knew she wasn’t the one to call in an emotional crisis. Maybe the one you called for a distraction (see: podcasting) or a violent solution. Even now, she wasn’t reaching out to Nova. She wasn’t inviting her to her home, where she could take proper care of her and ensure she would not run herself into more trouble due to some kind of pride or stubbornness. She hadn’t even bothered to make sure the shirt she got her was clean. Not that it mattered much; it was all snotty now. Speaking of, “I’ll bring you a change of clothes. From your van?” It would be unwise to let Nova run around in her crinkling hospital gown at a motel. People would get the wrong idea.
Her car was driving at normal speed now that she was sure that Nova wasn’t going to throw herself out of it. And then came the relief of hearing her laugh. Sure, admitting that she had been winning by cheating was an embarrassing thing (but a truth that Nova would surely uncover at some point, now that she knew she was a hunter), but it offered the levity they needed again. The guinea pigs wouldn’t do any more. Daiyu started laughing too, snorting as she watched Nova move up and down her seat with laughter.
“You know, I know I should be sorry, but fuck, I just really love to win,” she confessed. Unsaid went the ways she had never won with her siblings and how that had probably given her a tendency towards cheating and playing dirty. “I guess the jig is up. I will have no more free burgers.” She jut out her lip, before offering Nova a grin. “I’ll get you the very best room. No bullet holes or jizz stains. And — yes. I wanna see your magic fighting.”
Daiyu was called an asshole often. It was probably because she was one. But when Nova said it, she heard a kind of fondness in it. Despite all the squeezing the steering wheel, all the ways she was falling short in the friendship department and the outing of her own lies, she felt something terrifying — a deepening of their friendship. One of those points of no return, like when she had entrusted Jade with her dog or had saved Emilio from the bies. One of those she was still happy about, the other stung like a chronic bee sting. She swallowed, tried to move past the lodge in her throat without choking on it. She moved forward to her console, hitting play on her music. Turning the knob, she lowered the volume from the deafening level it had been at before. Not loud enough to make it so that she and Nova would no longer talk, but loud enough to be something in the background as she drove Nova to the best thing she could offer. It did not feel like enough, but she figured if the other truly believed in what she stood for, it was at the very least an attempt at goodness.
[pm] You're like a medic then? And down to steal cars? We should have met sooner.
[pm] Basically, yeah. I'm a doctor who gets bored easily. And legally speaking, I was more of an accessory than anything else. Do you think a jury would take into account my music choices as a passenger princess?
I couldn't agree more, actually. I had my doubts about the lot of supernatural animal control, but you were a fun bunch. Should we plan round 2?
TIMING: current
LOCATION: a latte to love
PARTIES: @bountyhaunter & @endlessevenings
SUMMARY: daiyu is the unfortunate recipient of mahuika's desire to chill. the two actually get along!
CONTENT: passing mention of infidelity
It was the middle of the day. A Latte to Love (which, stupid and ridiculously cheesy name, right?) was far busier than she would’ve wanted. Mahuika had half a mind to make people decide to leave, but she was trying to turn over a new leaf, or something (she wasn’t). However, her gaze zero-ed in on a woman sitting by herself. At a small table, probably chosen because she didn’t want anybody else around.
Luckily, Mahuika didn’t really choose to pay attention to things that didn’t fit with her vibe.
So once she’d gotten her extra-hot-extra-chocolate-mocha, she wandered over, dragged her fingers across the chair opposite the woman. “Can I sit?” She raised an eyebrow. “There’s nowhere else to go. Please?”
—
Her earbuds were slotted perfectly in her ears, music pumping through them as Daiyu scrolled through her phone. She was here to be productive and take stock of her financial situation, but it wasn’t working out. Not even while sitting in a coffeeshop filled with people tapping away on their little stupid laptops. No, she’d not even opened her notebook and calculator app. She was just tapping away on Reddit, arguing with a stranger about something she hadn’t been passionate about up until fifteen minutes ago. So it went.
Even her drink (a caramel frozen latte) was abandoned in favor of the fight, so when she spotted someone’s fingers on the chair across from her and saw her mouth move she was pulled from her thoughts.
Daiyu pulled out one of her airpods, caught the last of what she was saying. She pulled her legs (which she’d stretched out under the table) up and nodded. “Yeah, sure, go ahead.” She’d prefer to say no, but she was a little taken by surprise. She considered plopping the earbud back in. “They gotta add more seating spaces here, it’s always so fucking busy.”
—
“You’re the best.” Mahuika grinned before sitting down. “It’s way too busy, right? I mean I can’t speak from tons of experience, I sometimes just get coffee to go, but you’d think a place with this much success and this complete lack of space would give thought to expand, right?” She was just talking to talk at this point, but she had a good voice and her opinions were at least relatively well curated, so her talking was good, and the woman across the table from her was bound to be grateful for her company, even if her face didn’t show it quite yet.
She tapped her nails against the coffee cup. The sound was satisfying, and it gave her time to think about what to say next (not that she was really in doubt of what to say, but it was good to give that illusion, and to be prepared for if she ever was in doubt).
“You come here often?” It sounded like a line, but that wasn’t something Mahuika was interested in right now. “I’m Mahuika.” She stuck her hand across the table in at least some level of excessive enthusiasm and an attempt to hold an aura of welcoming vibes or something. “Also do you want like, a muffin or something to eat? Least I can do, since you’ve been so nice as to let me take over some of your personal space. I heard the banana-blueberry ones are to die for. Not literally, of course.” A stifled and seemingly awkward giggle escaped her lips. “I was feeling hungry, so I was gonna maybe get some sort of tempeh sandwich anyhow, and I’d be totes down to get something for you, too!”
—
Daiyu hadn’t the foggiest idea about when or how a business should expand. Her brother and sister had gotten the entrepreneurial gene, but it had fully skipped over her. She didn’t mind it much, there were other shortcomings that were worse. “Yeah, absolutely,” she said, with feigned confidence, as she’d always back up whatever she’d said even if it was completely nonsensical. “So many people, ridiculous.”
The sound of the other’s nails on the coffee cup went right against the beat of her music and she wasn’t sure whether she should take the other out or put them both in again. She should just go back to getting take out in her car. But then there were her finances …
She pulled out her airpod, as it seemed the other was in a chatty mood. Daiyu took the extended hand, shook it. “Daiyu.” Mahuika seemed nice, if not a little eager and it wasn’t like she hated people — it was just that she wasn’t particularly good at talking to them without starting something. But luckily the other spoke her love language. Food. “Oh, I won’t refuse a free muffin,” she said shamelessly. “I’ll take that one, yeah. Sounds healthy. Got a bunch of fruit and stuff.” She sunk back in her chair a little, put her phone down. “It really is the least you could do.”
—
“It really is!” Not that Mahuika had half an idea about how to run a business, nor did she have any intention of ever running one, but it felt good to say things with confidence. It could make them true, and even if they weren’t, she sounded competent and that was good enough for her. Or at least good enough of a start. Not good enough in the long run, but being at the start didn’t necessitate being in the long run, so she was chill with that.
“Awesome, swell, cool.” She wanted to slap herself across the face for how she sounded. “The sugar must already be getting to me, I’ll go and get your muffin and my sandwich all lickety split. Be right back!” She set the business card of some lady who’d been staying at Bearcliff and who had told Mahuika to contact her if she ever wanted to talk about other jobs (bleh, gag – the lady was in HR or something too, which double yikes), but it would do well to make sure that nobody messed with her mocha. Not that she thought Daiyu would, but other people? You could never be too sure.
In almost no time, she had made her way back over, muffin on a plate in one hand, sandwich in the other. “God, I was totally starving. Famished, you know?” She took a big bite of her sandwich, marveling at how good it actually was before she focused back on the other woman. “So what do you do for work? I work at the Bearcliff Motel. Not like, way exciting or whatever, but it does the job, and sometimes I get tips, so that’s… chill.” Mahuika shook her head. “Plus, it gives me time to read and learn on my own clock.”
—
Daiyu was never sure if she hated or loved busy places. She liked the sounds of other people, but sometimes it all seemed to drill into her head aggressively, leaving her defenseless against all the stimuli. Right now, as the other passed through positive words as if searching for the right one, she found herself amused. Sometimes humans could be so endearing, right? It made her feel like watching a toddler jump in puddles, drenching the clothes of them and their parent alike as they both laughed. Observing the pretty simplicity of life without partaking.
“See you soon,” she said, curling her lips into a grin as she fiddled with her airpod case, clicking it open and shut, open and shut. The conversations of others droned in her ears and she tried to block it out as she waited, not wanting to know about Lucy’s ex or Jonathan’s new job. This was part of why it so often felt like she was more observer than partaker — her heightened senses weren’t made for hanging in bars, but rather for tracking in the woods. Still, she grinned as the other sat down again. “Awesome. And yeah, I get you, I feel like there’s a void in my stomach that’s never filled.”
Daiyu picked at her muffin, taking a piece off and stuffing it in her mouth. Mahuika asked her about her job and she wanted to slam her head on the table. “Oh, cool, what do you do? Clean rooms and shit or deal with the people at the front desk?” She couldn’t imagine a worse job at the moment. “What’re you learning about?” This also seemed like a horrible thing. To read during work. Double punishment. “I’m a food critic,” she said, taking a demonstrative bite. It wasn’t a lie. She was very critical about food. She just wasn’t paid for it. “Not working now, though! But this muffin def gets a good rating from me regardless. Anyway, work’s work. Work sucks. What do you do beside work?”
—
She had to be doing something right, considering the other woman was smiling. So, score one for her, Mahuika supposed. Not that she was keeping score of how successful she was at life (except that she totally was), but there was often something satisfying about being able to get people to act just as she wanted them without whipping out her magic. It meant she had power all her own, just like her parents had said. Though thinking about her parents nearly immediately soured her mood, and so she pushed those thoughts away. She could stew in her thoughts later, back in her apartment, when she was alone, but right now that would totally destroy the vibe.
“Same. I’m just always so hungry.” Which was half true, but it was the right thing to say, and Mahuika could always eat. Something something filling a void that she couldn’t fill otherwise. Which couldn’t be true, right? She was plenty full of everything. (Including, perhaps, herself, but that wasn’t a rabbit hole she was going to follow anytime soon!)
“I do both actually. Front desk and also clean rooms. It’s … well, it’s boring, but it’s something, and not that I’m one to follow gossip or rumors, but I do get to know a whole lot of things just because of where I work, which is kinda rad.” Mahuika grinned. “I’m reading about Physics. It’s my favorite subject, but I figure I might go and try one of those Emily Henry novels sometime. See what all the hype on TikTok is about.” What did she do besides work? “Oh! I like going clubbing sometimes. Also for hikes, because, like, nature, you know? I only moved here back in like July,” (never mind that she’d lived outside the town most of her life), “so even though it’s been a while, I guess I’m still looking for what the cool stuff to do is. What do you do?”
—
The muffin was really good and Daiyu bit off another bite, this one larger. She chewed as she talked, “Sometimes I do get stuffed, of course, when I get a full meal but even then I always know I’m just gonna get hungry again. Not the worst, though, considering there’s so much banger food out there.” She chased her muffin with a sip of coffee.
“Yeah, well it sure is something. What kinda things do you hear? Get a lot of criminal activity? Affairs?” She’d slept in her fair share of motels over the years and seen some funny stuff — things that could be disturbing to others, too. “Oh, cool. I don’t really read a lot, to be honest, don’t have the attention span for it.” And she was bad at reading, but that was an easy to omit fact. “Physics is like … about gravity and shit, right? Well I know about that.” She grinned, a little dopey. “Hikes are great, I love those too. Just get out in nature, stretch your legs and all. Perfect. Clubs are …” She grimaced. “Loud. But you do you.” Daiyu pulled her notebook to her, deposited it in her bag. “I’ve only been here a few months myself, first time in town. Figuring stuff out as well. But yeah, I like to hike. Watch movies. I like my dog.”
—
“There really is. People limit themselves way too much with what foods they eat, but it’s a relief to see that you aren’t one of those people.” Was it possible that she was actually just getting along with someone, even without trying too hard. There was a sort of magic in food (though not actual magic, and the people who claimed as such were idiots) and maybe that was bringing the two of them together in conversation. Mahuika took another bite of her sandwich and quickly chased it with her drink.
“Yes – to both of those, actually. But sometimes also people who’re like, running away. Which I get, if you have a shit situation at home, running away can be the best option.” Or even if your life seemed picture perfect but your family were a bunch of lame cowards, but Mahuika wasn’t exactly about to say that. Not to mention she hadn’t really run away. Not far, at least. If her family wanted to, they could find her. But she didn’t want them to, and so far her wish had come true. “So valid, not everyone can have the attention span for it, but I guess I just was bored a lot as a kid and books were always there, so…” she trailed off, lost in thought for a brief moment before she shook her head and returned to the conversation at hand. “It is about gravity and shit. I just think it’s a fascinating science, and I like finding answers and making stuff make sense,” (which was true, at least in a way) “nature is the best. Also something you can always count on. I mean, weather and shit can be unpredictable, but I’m betting you get what I’m saying. Clubs are loud.” Which was part of why she liked them. That and drunk people usually didn’t question what they were doing. “Movies are good. I have a cat and a rat. I like them. They’re good company.”
—
“Yeah, like I get having comfort foods, but you’ve gotta try new stuff and be experimental. Life’s bland without good food!” She plopped another bite of the muffin into her mouth. Daiyu wasn’t the best at non-confrontational conversations, as she hadn’t had many of those in her life, but there were a few safe topics. Food, dogs and shitty movies. The weather, maybe, at times. “How’s the sandwich?”
The subject of people allegedly having families they wanted to run away from was something Daiyu really didn’t feel like addressing. Wasn’t that how she ended up in motels? Why she was in this town? Putting miles and miles between herself and her family in an attempt of separation. Not that she was running away, though — a deep buried part of her was afraid of what would happen should she try to sever ties definitively. Her father’s hands were like claws holding onto all that was his already.
“That’s not really fun gossip, though. Guess that’s nice that you offer a place, though. Should give discounts.” She stuffed her mouth again so that she didn’t have to say anything more (not that eating was a deterrent from talking usually). “Ah, shit yeah, I get that. I mean, I did ‘read’ as a kid.” Daiyu used physical air quotes. “As in, I liked to look at the pictures in the books we had.” But she’d always taken to the violence best, not the study. In a way it made her a good hunter. “Oh, valid. I just don’t try to question things I don’t get, you know? It works.” She sat back a little, splitting her muffin into little bitesize pieces. “Yeah, it’s always there. Nature, I mean. Consistent like that. No opening hours or whatever.” She let out a laugh. “A cat and a rat? And the cat doesn’t eat the rat, like Tom and Jerry? I mean, that’s a mouse, but still. That’s awesome. What’re they called?”
—
“I agree. Life’ll be all boring if you don’t try new stuff!” She nodded. “The sandwich is great. It’s perfectly flavored and the bread isn’t even like, stale or dry or whatever? Which is amazing.” So maybe Mahuika was, once again, falling back in her habits of being too cheery, but at least this time she was far more tempered with it all, and the woman didn’t seem to mind, and so she kept going.
“Oh yeah, that’s not fun gossip.” Mahuika made a face. She might’ve not always been even close to the nicest of people, but even she knew that taking joy in someone else’s bad situation (when you didn’t cause it, that was) was a bit over-the-top movie-villain cruel. So she didn’t take joy. Not usually. Rarely. And if she did, she didn’t do so outwardly. Because that was lame and also could just get her into trouble and she very much didn’t want to get into trouble. “Pictures are like, super cool, so I get that. Plus, there’s that saying that a picture’s worth some huge number of words, so you’re just like, way more efficient or like more advanced than the rest of us, maybe?”
“Yes, a cat and a rat, and no, they don’t.” The rat was her familiar, so maybe the cat just got that? Not that Mahuika was going to explain that to the stranger. “They’re called Cat and Rat. Except Cat’s the rat and Rat’s the cat. I just wanted to be quirky or whatever when I named them, I guess?” She shrugged. “What’s your dog's name? We should also totally chill again when we’re not getting crowded out by college students, yeah?”
—
She took a mental note that the sandwiches at a Latte to Love were good rather than asking for a bite, which she was admittedly very tempted to do. “Absolutely. Hate dry bread, though, yikes. So good to know the sandwiches here slap.” Daiyu was glad with her muffin, though, as it had a nice kind of stickiness and was hitting a sweet spot – literally.
“I’ll want to know all about the hot goss, though,” she said, “Maybe not here.” She was still bothered by Jonathan going on about his job. She longed for her airpods. She clicked the case open and shut again. She nodded fervently, “Abso-fucking-lutely. I’m pretty much just a genius because I just look at pictures and don’t read books, you’re absolutely right.” It was a fun line of thinking, anyway.
Daiyu thought a cat and a rat being called Rat and Cat respectively was the height of comedy and so she laughed. “That’s fucking amazing. I love that. You weren’t being quirky, you were being hilarious. And the way they’re friends, that’s amazing too.” She pulled up her phone, showed her background. “This is Nugget. He’s the best. Clever as hell, and fast as a whip.” She stuck the last bit of her muffin into her mouth. Jonathan was still buzzing in her ear. A head ache was setting on. She didn’t want to grow agitated when things were going pretty well, so she said, “Find me online, yeah? I need to get to a work thing but we should keep this ball rolling.” She grabbed the wrapper and balled it up. “Gonna tell them allll about this muffin. Tasted great! Appreciate ya.” She gave a salute, grabbed her coffee and bag and got up. “Great meeting you.” She did mean it. Sometimes it was nice to not sit alone.
TIMING: Current-ish
LOCATION: Netherville!
PARTIES: Regan and Daiyu
SUMMARY: Daiyu and Regan spend some quality social bondage with each other, heading to a burger joint after Shatterspace, where even the burger expert gets surprised.
The scream room at ShatterSpace was not built for something like Regan. She had nearly destroyed it, and not in the permissible way she had paid for. Their soundproofing was woefully unprepared—she’d only screamed for a few minutes before every employee was banging on the walls with tears in their eyes, and the other customers fled from the business without changing from their coveralls. So Regan had stopped screaming, and they refunded her to get her to leave, and the bribe was topped off with a shining top score trophy shaped like a baseball bat (rather uninspired… she would have preferred a femur). Regan never turned down an award or trophy. Most importantly, she usurped Daiyu’s place.
Screaming aside, the “rage room” had felt like a tomb (derogatory) and the tunnels of Netherville that passed as streets only felt like a slightly larger one. Regan never liked coming down here; every sound was amplified, and there were few places to flee to should danger occur. A fire could wipe the neighborhood out. Also, it would only be a matter of time before those who lived here were going to die of some pulmonary fungus if the town’s creatures didn’t get to them first.
Regan carried the trophy one-handed like an actual bat as she and Daiyu went in search of burgers (which were Daiyu’s bones, Regan reminded herself). It hadn’t been a smart idea, spending more time with someone who meant so much to Jade, and especially not with sensitive-eared, human-believing Daiyu. She would likely connect the dots between the screaming today and the noise she’d heard at the Clutch, but Regan was increasingly confident in her ability to explain it away. Most people believed her screaming moose story (it was very believable). She would double down if necessary.
“You really do that all the time?” Regan ran a hand through her hair, neatening it. Every part of her felt scrambled; the echoing of their steps through the street-cave was thick and congealed in her ears. Next time, she was going back to screaming in the woods. In some way, it was reassuring that Jade didn’t care for these “rage rooms” either. Though maybe it would open a door between Daiyu and herself… “I’m sure Jade will be impressed by my first place achievement. Enough to allow me to come hunt with her, perhaps?” She eyed Daiyu sideways, expecting more of an opinion than an answer on Jade’s behalf.
“Where did you say this burger place was? I have never been. It may surprise you to learn I have been inside most stores and businesses in this town.” Regan’s hand found where her name pin usually rested on her breast while working. Her turtleneck was nude today; she was a nobody. “For death scenes.”
—
The rage room had welcomed Daiyu like a home might, she imagined. She had felt something relax in her shoulders. Rick had given her a bright smile at her appearance, which not many people did upon seeing her. She’d changed into the coveralls, pulled back her hair and put on the stupid yet necessary glasses and wished Regan all the luck. They had paid for a normal timeslot, and she had intended to make the most of it. But it had only lasted a few moments.
Regan had opted for a screaming room and screamed she had. Daiyu new loud sounds. They came from guns and cars and speakers. They came from beasts, too, and humans at times. But this kind of volume? She had been unprepared for. Clasping her ears, she’d ran outside of her room along with plenty of others, feeling disoriented from the ringing in her ears and overwhelmed from the sound. A part of her had connected this scream to the one that had rang out at the egg place, but at that point she had not been at capacity to think things like this over. She had been at capacity to be outraged that Regan was given a trophy and she was not, which was totally unfair considering the way she had been top of the scoreboard plenty of times.
Stomping through Netherville, she tried to be graceful about this. But grace was a trait that had skipped all the generations in her family, and especially her. She was a sore loser. She was frustrated that she hadn’t been able to smash a television. She was hungry, too, but that was hardly new. Her ears were ringing, still. She did not understand where Regan held the space in her chest to make such loud noise.
“Yep,” she said. Regan mentioned her first place achievement and Daiyu wanted to punch a cave wall. “It is a healthy coping mechanism. I have … anger … in me.” She did not say anger issues. It wasn’t an issue, most of the time. “And it helps with that. Besides, something cool about the lack of consequences.” Which lack? There were consequences, like being upset over losing. “Yes, she’ll be super impressed. I don’t think screaming that loud means you can come on a hunt, though. By the way, do you have weird lungs?”
She turned a corner, nodded forward. “It’s just up ahead. Guess most things here are pretty new, considering the whole neighborhood is. In a way.” Netherville was weird, but not entirely intolerable. Daiyu looked at Regan for a moment, then shrugged. “Makes sense. Do lots of people die in shops, then? What’s the most common place?” She figured it was the woods, but she was probably biased. “I looked. They have vegetarian and chicken options.”
—
Regan wasn’t sure how breaking things transferred internal anger out of the brain. She supposed that was catharsis. It was not something banshees required… or maybe the frequent screaming had a similar effect, like good nutrition keeping deficiency at bay. “Is your anger external now, then? You’re stomping a lot.” She raised a brow at Daiyu, but the question was serious. “If it still plagues your brain, then I don’t understand the purpose of the destruction.” Unlike the screaming, which was at least a more literal pressure valve. And Jade’s slaying, which was her own way of protecting the sanctity of death. Regan was still undecided on the… hunting Daiyu had described herself engaging in.
She followed Daiyu down the street, taking in the shops that had all been built within the span of a year. It was better not to look up. When she looked up, she saw the top of the cave looming too close. How many bones would a scream shatter? How many stalactites would fall? “I think it should qualify me. All I would have to do is stay out of the way, yes? I’m not asking to destroy the same things as Jade.” She and Jade both knew Regan also wouldn’t stay on the sidelines if something swiped its claws too close to Jade. Sometimes Regan was even tempted to offer a promise, but it was too easy to imagine herself thrashing against those vines and thorns. “Hey, what did you—” Weird lungs? How dare she? “My lungs are among my finest qualities. Impressive capacity, excellent volume, no doubt a stunning pink.” Jade agreed. They had discussed the presumed appearance of each other’s lungs more times than Regan could count.
“This is the place, right?” Despite the newness of the neighborhood, the door to The Bunderground was dark and greasy when Regan pushed it open. She frowned at her hand, wishing she’d worn gloves, but held the door for Daiyu. And, oh, death! Daiyu was willing to engage her in death-related bondage. This was good. When they were painting the eggs (before Regan screamed everything to pieces), that was some of their most successful intercourse.
It was dark inside—though no more than aboveground pubs—but Regan’s trophy retained its eye-catching shine. At least, she assumed it was eye-catching, because Daiyu’s eyes kept catching on it. And Daiyu was still stomping. Perhaps that was simply her gait and Regan had failed to notice prior. It also smelled like animal fat inside, and not the rotting kind (unfortunately). Regan slid into one of the booths because no one stopped them from seating themselves.
“The bodies!” Regan set her trophy down with a clunk and smacked her palms against the table. Daiyu seemed attentive. “The shops are quite deadly in town, and what they sell is mostly irrelevant. The majority of the bodies we find are Downtown—Amity Road is a hotbed for death, but they’re distributed throughout. Locals, tourists… and there’s the woods, of course. You probably read about a new body found there every week.” Her enthusiasm drained slightly at her next thought. “Many were missing persons, sometimes for weeks or months. Those are some of my favorite cases to resolve, but they’re often only bones by the time we recover them.” Her fingers curled against the table, nails scraping the wood. “And recently, someone is moving them. At times removing them. I do not mean a perpetrator. Most of the time these deaths are accidental in manner, not even homicides.” How many times had a decedent honored Regan with the last moments of their life, only for her to have found them nowhere near where they died, their clothes changed or hands cleaned? Dozens of times now. “I will find who is responsible and they are going to answer for the pain they’ve caused the living and disrespect they’ve inflicted upon the dead.” She huffed and crossed her arms, freeing the table. If there really was something to catharsis, she probably needed more of it.
She soon distracted her hands with one of the trifold menus tucked between the condiments (mostly mayonnaise) and napkin holder. “I see the chicken, but how does this work? Your burgers. I want to be respectful.” Her finger traced down a very long list of options. “Do you try them all? We might be here for a while. And as a doctor, I must advise you against getting this… cave moss burger?” She flipped the menu toward Daiyu. There was an image of it. Even the bun was greenish (a nice color to be sure, but not one indicative of health).
—
Daiyu whipped her head to the side to look at Regan, indignation painting every inch of her face. Where did she get off, pointing out how obviously pissed off she was? Regan had not seemed like the type to rub someone’s face in it when they lost, but maybe she was. A sore winner, which was really the worst kind of winner for her (a sore loser) to be around. “You cut short the destruction, remember?” There was a bite to her voice and she stared down at the way she was walking. “The stomping is because of my boots. They are meant to be stomped in. Duh.”
She was getting really tired of humans butting their heads in where they weren’t needed. That included Madison, who was a hunter on a biological technicality but not in many other significant ways. Daiyu didn’t understand why these people wanted to be involved in the murder and carnage. And while culling spawns in a cemetery had its fun sides, she didn’t think Regan should be there. Not that it should be her battle, circus or monkey, though. “I still think you can be a getaway driver at most. Those are very important. A speedy getaway is one of the best things you can have. And I thought lungs were purple. I bet you can hold your breath for a fucking long time.”
The question whether the Bunderground was the place seemed rhetorical, so Daiyu did not give it a proper reply. She felt some excitement enter her system though, mixing with her anger and frustration with Regan. A new burger place was always enough to lift her mood at least a little, and she was glad that the two of them had decided to make this a two-part activity. The egg-painting would definitely have been improved by a secondary location (with fried food and sugary drinks).
Regan put down the trophy with such a definitive clunk that Daiyu could only glower at her. She really was a pathetic, sore loser, rubbing her face in the trophy. She could be more subtle about it or put it in a bag, but no, she just kept pulling her attention to the trophy by letting the light shine on it, by making sounds with it. She ground her teeth as Regan started speaking excitedly, gaze moving slowly from the trophy to the other as she tried to follow the conversation. “Bodies in the woods,” she repeated with a drawl, thinking of the ones she’d come across. Humans half devoured by beasts and shifters. Campers, hikers, boy scouts. She hated the last category most. As Regan spoke of someone moving bodies, her interest piqued a little. Daiyu knew people who moved bodies. She moved them, from time to time, but more often called Eve to do it for her. “Damn… so weird, that someone’s moving the bodies. Got any clue as to why?” She did not understand Regan. If she worked with the dead, she had to see how many died from strange causes, right? And yet the concept of a werewolf was completely outrageous to her. “Especially if they’re accidental as you say. Many of those here, huh?”
She frowned at Regan. “No,” she shook her head. “Would love to be able to try ‘em all, but I tend to just go for a beef burger and review it. Sometimes two, if I got a big hunger.” Her frown deepened. “Gross. I won’t be getting that. These fucking restaurants, trying to improve on what is already a perfectly good meal. Adding all these strange ingredients. Go into fine dining, you know? Anyway, I also tend to get a milkshake, a coke and some fries. Maybe some sides too.” She grabbed a menu for herself. “I love chicken nuggets. Named my dog after them, you know. Damn, fried root vegetables … do they just mean potatoes?”
—
“No cave moss burger, then.” Regan would have relaxed slightly if she knew how. This was good, because Regan wasn’t sure her oath would allow her to sit there watching Daiyu consume it. Even though Regan wasn’t completely sure what ‘normal’ was when it came to burgers, Daiyu was experienced in this field. Which, it shouldn’t have been surprising that Daiyu named her animal after chicken nuggets. Humans had the tendency to do that—name things after what they care about. Jade was not subtle about her own auricular naming conventions, and Jade’s parents had one of their own. “Then we should get sides. Um, yes, probably potatoes. I don’t think carrots are typically served with burgers, but it’s been many years since I’ve been somewhere like this as a consumer. Things change.” In just a decade, the blink of an eye for banshees; she didn’t want to think about how much more change she’d see, even if inconsequential. “I would have a milkshake if you’re getting one. And if that’s what most people would do in this situation.”
When the waitress came to take their order, Regan let Daiyu take the reins—again, this was her area of expertise. Her morgue. Maybe those boots would stomp around less if Daiyu got to exercise some of that skill (probably not; she had anger in her). Besides, Regan was only half paying attention to the woman or the menu, the waitress’s question about a special glazing right off her. Was that all Daiyu thought Regan could be, too? A getaway driver? When the waitress left them again, Regan shook her head, still stuck on that very specific point.
“I need to be more than the getaway driver. I want—she won’t even allow me to do that, anyway. And we have these dots, now. The—here, I’ll show you.” Regan pulled out her phone and opened the Jade app (it had a real name that Regan didn’t bother to remember). She turned the cracked screen toward Daiyu so she could see the Jade Dot zooming around, currently a nice bile-esque chartreuse. “She has a dot for me, too. I keep requesting a square instead, but—right. She thinks I will drop the subject now that I can see where she is. And it is reassuring. It does help. But I can’t just sit at home and not know if she’ll be returning in one piece. Or… or knowing she will not be returning at all, but being unable to be there.” Daiyu, Regan knew, did not seem to possess any interest in romantic relationships. She probably never had to navigate these irreconcilable waters. Either her outside perspective would be valuable, or she wouldn’t understand the problem at all. Not that Regan was especially willing to listen to certain perspectives (only the agreeable ones).
She could hold her lungs for a long time. Longer than it took a person to drown. It felt like that was all she did these days, even when not trying to force down a scream. “I’d know. If she were going to die, or were dying, I would know. Just like I know when the bodies have been moved—some náire trying to conceal evidence. Not that the cadavers can move by themselves when dead. So when there is any indication of a secondary scene, one can assume—”
Several plates were practically dropped in front of them on the table, burgers and fries steaming, fatty smell making Regan’s eyes go wide. The waitress then set four bottles of mayonnaise on the table in case the ones by the menus were not sufficient. Were they supposed to coat the entire meal in mayo? Then, finally, the milkshakes. Regan was more interested in that than any of the food. “This is a—I did not realize the portions are so generous. Will you be able to eat all of this? Right, I was saying—when there is evidence that a body has been moved—”
One of the burgers started dragging itself to the edge of the plate, leaving a shiny trail of greasy fluid streaking across the plastic.
—
Daiyu ordered with practised ease, suddenly not as socially inept as she usually was. She was good at the repetitive stuff, at attempting to be normal if only because there was a good reason for it. With Regan, it wasn’t like she wasn’t trying, though it seemed somewhat easier to talk to her than with most, even if the other was wildly confusing. Still, she seemed to have the same bluntness that Daiyu possessed, and for that she liked talking to the other. Once the waitress had written down the rather impressive order. Two milkshakes, two cherry cokes, burgers, sides, extra sauce. She had quite the appetite, even if her rage room activities had been cut short. Moreover, she was excited to share food with Regan. That was one of her main ways of bonding. It certainly surpassed egg painting and losing at the rage room.
As they waited for the food, Regan showed her a tracker app that she and Jade had. Daiyu frowned at the concept of it, feeling something crawl between her shoulder blades. The thought of someone knowing where she was at all times felt too much like how she’d felt at home. She supposed that for Jade and Regan it felt like some form of control in a town that liked to send people to an early grave. She figured it was the best Jade could do besides dragging Regan into a world of hunting. And while killing vampires was a somewhat cleaner job than killing shifters and beasts, it was still not something for the average person to be partaking in. Not that Regan was average.
“Guess it’s frustrating if you’re not used to it,” she offered, hoping that came off sympathetic, “But that’s … our baseline. For hunters, you know. Any time you say goodbye to another one it might be the last time. Sucks, but it’s realistic. Guess that’s the case for every person, anyway. Especially in this town, with all that seems to be going on. But this tracker stuff is good. It’ll …” She swallowed the rest of her words, which wanted to point out that it would make it easier to find Jade, should something go awry. “She’s good at what she does, Regan. Getting out with only an arm injury during that … blackout shit, whatever it was, that’s good.”
The food was a welcomed distraction. Daiyu didn’t know how other hunters did it: get involved with those that weren’t hunters. The fear of losing people was present with friendships too, but a partnership like Regan’s and Jade’s? That was tough to navigate when one half was battling a lethal duty. She reached for a few fries and shoved them in her mouth, letting the salt carry her over into easier territory. “The mayo portions are definitely outta this world but —”
She stopped, the nugget she’d been transporting to her mouth frozen in mid-air. A burger was starting to move, seemingly trying to topple itself off the edge of the plate it was on. Daiyu snatched it after dropping the nugget, holding it in front of her face. It seemed to not like being held. “That’s not normal,” she said, cocking her head to look at Regan. “That is … that’s not normal.” She nodded at her banana milkshake, which was leaking.
—
Daiyu was probably trying to make her feel better. Normally, Regan favored bluntness; her next of kin deserved better than euphemisms and feel-good lies. In this case, though, Regan had to suppress a flinch as Daiyu tackled the topic of Jade’s lifespan—of any active hunter’s lifespan. Regan and Jade were bone partners. Regan would love Jade in death just as she’d loved her in life. Almost every conversation had some mention of death, and it was often one or both of their own deaths. Increasingly, it seemed that Jade was teasing her bones in an effort to cheer Regan up; Regan could read the intent: we’ll be together for eternity, you won’t lose me so quickly, think of my bones in the ground and let’s have sex. It never worked. Mostly, it left her wondering if she had done something wrong in how she discussed death with Jade. Not everything beautiful was joyous.
Regan didn’t want to even think about losing Jade. “Losing”. That was a euphemism, wasn’t it? Regan glanced down at the vanilla milkshake that’d been set in front of her. Probably only failed banshees drank milkshakes. She took a sip. (It was decent, which was what a failure would think.) “Being good at doing something deadly is still doing something deadly. Not that—she is good. I know she is. And I know that her being out there saves lives. That selflessness and bravery are two of the things I love about her. But maybe I want to be selfish about something.” She’d sampled the milkshake; her banshee reputation was already in dire straits. That comment surely sent it to the ED. “She’d stop. If I asked her.” Regan wouldn’t.
The burger was approaching the edge of the table. It paused instead of continuing off and falling, and Regan couldn’t help but wonder if it was some creature using those sesame seeds as ocelli. “So is it—is it alive? Also your milkshake—did I do that?” Had she managed to crack the glass? When—how? That kept happening. Daiyu had spared her from needing to ask if this was normal burger behavior… they didn’t normally have behavior. Regan raised an arm and tried to flag the waitress, but no one saw and the burger was becoming more active if anything. “What do we do what do we do what do we…” Her eyes fell on the trophy.
Wasn’t this the perfect opportunity to prove to Daiyu—a hunter—that she could handle herself in a pinch? It would definitely get back to Jade. Possibly from both of them. Regan grabbed the trophy and braced it in front of her, the metal cold against her fingers. This was not a normal animal. Probably not one at all. It was abnormal and likely malignant. But she couldn’t bring herself to start slamming the trophy down on the burger; she stood there, staring and gripping it. If the burger was somehow alive and harmless, she didn’t want—she saw the trail of ketchup tracked across the table. The alley, the wall. The spattered stains of Pubik’s blood she’d tried to wash out of her shirt five times before opting to throw the sweater out entirely. The trophy fell from her fingers and made a loud clang as it hit the floor, narrowly missing a foot. And the burger leaped.
—
Daiyu found that a startling thought — that Regan might ask Jade to stop hunting and that she would. She figured every hunter had considered it, stepping out of the life they had been told was their destiny, fate or duty. To turn their back on the violence that had been imposed on them and live a life of attempted normalcy. She had tried it, almost a decade ago now, but she had not managed. But she was not Jade, and she had not had someone like Regan in her life. She grappled with it for a moment and identified that the feeling that was coursing through her was envy. Jade could stop. She would probably find a way to give life meaning. To make due. To keep herself afloat.
“And would you? Ask her?” She felt something acidic rise to her lips and she hated how she could not just be happy that Jade had this. A life raft for a life without hunting. How she had managed to have something steady with someone who was not a hunter, which was probably a key ingredient for walking away from this life. Daiyu no longer thought about giving up on hunting as an option, but she resented that it was one for Jade. She resented that she selfishly did not want Jade to step away from it, because that might mean she’d abandon her too.
A sip from the milkshake or a bite of a nugget would help right about now, but Daiyu saw no opportunity to take a bit or sip from anything. The food was acting weird. “Unless you’re a … dairy witch of some weird shit, no you did not do that.” She dropped the burger, which had been struggling in her grasp and watched as it continued to move. She racked her brain for knowledge on beasts that infested food or some strange parasitic thing that could explain this, but came up empty. Magic, stupid fucking magic, that was probably the answer. She continued to watch the milkshake fizz over and the burger drag itself around as Regan was stressing out, mildly confused and somewhat intrigued.
All in all, it was harmless. Strange, considering the magical state of the town, but not hurting anyone. Except for her appetite, of course, which was going to wind up making her grouchy, but for now she was mostly intrigued. Daiyu looked up when Regan started moving, watching her hold up the trophy like a weapon. Eyebrows creased and she would have been amused was it not for the expression on Regan’s face. She leaned back in her seat, ready to witness what would happen to their potentially possessed food when the trophy slammed down, but nothing happened. Not to the food, at least. The trophy fell down, the burger jumped off the table and Daiyu just stared at Regan for a moment. “Oh …. kay.” She rubbed at her forehead, had her attention snatched to the milkshake which had tossed itself on its side. “Hey Regan, you good? No need to … hey, you ever dined and dashed? Or well, just dashed, we haven’t dined.” She had no idea what the other’s issue was, but she didn’t feel like this was conductive to their relationship. She got out of the boot, bend down to grab the trophy. For a moment she hesitated, before snatching the burger as well. Extending the former object, she looked up at Regan. “Maybe we skip this one.”
—
Regan understood enough about Jade’s background and childhood to be able to extrapolate what some of Daiyu’s might have been like—the expectations she could have been raised with and the sense of duty scarring her anatomy. Jade hadn’t even realized quitting was an option, couldn’t fathom it. It was possible Daiyu didn’t either. Even now that Jade’s duty was more malleable, Jade was still some kind of lost without being able to slay. Regan had seen it. She understood duty and what asking to forgo it did to a person, or a thing. But who liked the idea of their loved one throwing themselves into danger on a nightly basis, however mundane or… not? Regan’s duty did not attempt to kill her (there was no reason to bring up the Dullahan, moving along); comparisons fell flat in that regard.
“No, I would not ask her. It is no more a mere occupation than my duty. But if…” There were circumstances Regan could imagine, ones that had already once come close to breaking them. “There is a line, and on one side there are beating hearts, and my dead. On the other, her… what she hunts. I would not ask her to stop, but if that line is crossed, I believe the decision has already been made. Then there is only one outcome.” She swallowed, eyes brushing away. Brushing Pubik away, too, though the stench of pickles lived inside her nose now. “Jade knows this. There is no need for further discussion.” She turned her attention back on Daiyu. “Why do you ask?” She doubted Daiyu would admit to what Regan suspected—that some part of her wanted to be asked to stop. A demand, more like. Regan understood. There were times, both in Saol Eile and even here, where she’d picture a pair of hands wrapped around her wrists, the blade falling from her grip. And Regan had been her own victim; Daiyu’s blade was turned outward.
The milkshake was bursting now, popping like an egg (which was something that did apparently pop around the two of them), leaking foamy sugar across the table, washing away the trail of ketchup. Regan’s attention was pointed down. The burger slugged across the floor like a slower version of one of those round vacuums, except instead of cleaning, it was dropping sesame seeds and onions all over the place. Her brain offered multiple lies: mice were carrying it away; animatronics; there’s a really strong breeze in here, underground, isn’t there? Her heart wasn’t in it (metaphorically; her heart never actually strayed from her abdominal cavity). So a burger was moving across the floor, and she did not know how or why, and it was currently trying to compress itself through an AC vent. (Jade would have enjoyed watching a video; she still had a soft spot for that compression phenomena.) The trophy had rolled slightly away from the booth, its bat shape curving its trajectory.
“What?” Regan blinked, feeling Daiyu’s eyes burn over her. Daiyu was waiting for some kind of reply. “Oh, yes, I’m… the trophy slipped. It’s fine. I’m fine. Not that—I am not clumsy, mind you. I am very good with most any tool placed in my hands. My hands are widely praised, or they would be if my decedents could talk, and, well, Jade’s praise is of a different—but the burger, I suppose I was, um, surprised. That’s all.” She studied the empty space on the other side of her rather than Daiyu, but Pubik’s facsimile was absent—he was only harassing her inside her head today, but perhaps that was always the case anyway (Regan remained unconvinced of other possibilities). “Are you referring to the Doordash? Jade delivers for them,” she said blankly. “I should go pay. For the—oh, that’s what you meant by…” Daiyu reappeared at Regan’s side with a squirming burger in one hand and the trophy—now covered in grease—in the other. Regan accepted it, but it was hard to look away from the burger. “Thank you. Are you, um, keeping that?”
Regan spared one glance back toward the table, where all of the bleeding smears of condiments had been drenched away in milkshake. She was not sure which mess was worse. She knew what ugliness was there before the shake had destroyed the evidence. Regan forced her eyes away, back on Daiyu. Her grip on the trophy tightened, though she wasn’t sure she deserved to take home a prize for her destruction anymore. “Yes, let’s leave. But we are paying for that. And if it bites you, I am taking you to urgent care for post-exposure prophylaxis.”
TIMING: Current
LOCATION: The Clutch (off-hours?)
PARTIES: Regan, Daiyu, egg
SUMMARY: It's Jade's dream come true: her girlfriend and her best friend are spending time together! Regan and Daiyu are off to paint some eggs. Who will be first to crack?
The most normal activities in Wicked’s Rest. Regan had plugged those words into several search engines and, at the top of the list—every time—was The Clutch. Painting eggs was a celebrated pastime of humans, she was learning. It didn’t used to be the case, as far as Regan could remember, but things changed. Things really changed. It wasn’t ideal. Eggs were more fragile than glass, more fragile than flesh. Sometimes she’d blink and see Pubik’s viscera coating her hands before it vanished to nothingness as quickly as it appeared. Sometimes she’d hear him. Always, she’d think of him.
Regan had immediately recused herself from the investigation in Pubik’s death, from the autopsy, but now her work leave was coming to an end, and Jade’s suggestions to leave the house were growing more insistent. At the very least, Regan needed to do something, just for a day, even just an hour, that she could wave around as an attempt at normalcy. Maybe she would feel it, too, for a few seconds. And how long had Jade wanted her to meet Daiyu? Regan’s own disappointment was deep and torrential, but the way Jade looked at her was unchanged. So she would do this for Jade. And as with Eve, Regan was most attentive to the need for a positive first impression. It had never felt more like a lie.
Regan’s stomach clamped sideways as she stepped into the egg-shaped door in the egg-shaped building. Despite being—again—a celebrated pastime of humans, The Clutch was rather empty at this hour. The rack of sunny side up egg-shaped aprons was mostly full. She could hear every lyric of what was presumably music. Would it hinder Daiyu’s enjoyment of the eggs? Regan hoped not. For her, it knocked loose a shaky breath of relief.
How Jade and Daiyu met was a question Regan wasn’t sure she wanted to ask. Daiyu being a hunter was a distinct possibility, but Jade never would have encouraged this had she thought there to be any threat between the two of them. Maybe Jade should have been worried about Daiyu. Regan turned away at that thought, facing the entrance, but she couldn’t escape the Daiyu of it. Daiyu just walked in. The deep breath Regan inhaled almost hurt.
It released, and that almost hurt, too. “Hello.” Regan looked at Daiyu. Short stature, strong hands suggestive of manual work, sharp brown eyes that admitted nothing and seemed to be studying her back. “Regan. You have probably figured this out, unless I’m incorrect about your identity. I anticipate painting these eggs with you. Do you know if we must paint all of them, or only a selection?” Close enough to I’m excited, wasn’t it? “We could sit near the exit. They also indicated a particular room’s availability.” Closed door. Eggs and eggs staring down at them from shelves and shelves.
—
The concept of a 'best friend' was something foreign to Daiyu. That was something people did in movies and books. A past time for humans who had enough time and emotional space to rank their friendships, as if there was any sort of point in that. Of course, she wanted to be someone's best friend, not even because she'd never been one, but because the term itself would indicate some kind of victory. Being the best was really all she always tended to want, after all.
But still, that was a fancy she did not bother herself with. She thought it juvenile, not recognizing that her reluctance to even think about her connections in such terms was juvenile in and of itself. For a fitting example: she was able to call Jade her friend, but to think of her as her best friend? That was very much dangerous ground. There was a very big chance that Jade did not return that feeling, after all. That she was just another friend in a large pool. And knowing how sociable and easy to get along with Jade was, that was probably still true.
Besides, Jade was kind of one of Daiyu's only friends. Could you even call someone your best friend when the pool was that small? It was kind of a shitty title to bestow upon someone when the competition was that little.
So no, Jade wasn't her best friend. But she was the person in town Daiyu had called when she'd been in the hospital for an elongated time and who she would call again, should it ever happen again. She was the person she probably felt most comfortable with in town. And it was because of that (and not because Jade was her best friend, because she wasn't, because Daiyu didn't have best friends), that she had to meet her bone partner.
The fact that she tolerated that term said a lot in regards to their level of friendship too.
Meeting a new person at a place called the 'clutch' where people participated in egg-painting was also foreign to her. Daiyu met new people all the time. Usually through bounties or word of mouth, in shady alleys, a bar or an underground market. She didn't meet people to meet them. But well, exceptions could be made. And besides, the egg place was a topic of interest. Some rangers at the 3 daggers had talked about it, and she wondered if she could potentially pawn off some of the eggs she came across on her hunts here.
She walked in, grimacing at the egginess of the place. She understood that businesses sometimes needed a theme to set themselves apart, but come on. There was something like too many eggs. And there had been a time where she'd held down a Gaston-like diet, buffing up through eggs.
Besides the eggs, there was Regan. Hair the same color as egg-white, almost. Speaking in a way that heavily contrasted Jade. “Daiyu,” she offered in response, wondering if they had to do the whole hand-shaking business. “Dunno, but I intend to only paint a few. One, maybe. I'm not a very good —” What was she doing? Revealing her weaknesses on a first meeting? “I'm not very good at painting fast, but a great artist.” Good save. “I'm good sitting anywhere.” Why hadn’t she suggested meeting over burgers? Why the fuck was she here? Possible business venture, she reminded herself. Regan was one as well. “Is the other room less eggy?”
—
Less eggy? Daiyu wanted to be somewhere less eggy? Regan had severely miscalculated. Did Daiyu want to leave, or was she simply daunted by her surroundings? Regan wasn’t sure. But The Clutch, which had once seemed like a safe bet, now felt like the great black expanse of a tar pit, suctioning both of them in—no escape. She wasn’t sure if admitting to a mistake was worse than potentially making a second one, but in this case, no explanation Regan could give would sound normal. She knew it as excuses piled upon her tongue. Despite living here for years now, she had only the most rudimentary understanding of human leisure activities, and based on the online reviews, eggs were ‘popular’ and she was beginning to think that brunch with Eve hadn’t gone as well as she’d intended, so she wasn’t going to attempt a second brunch, and…
“Right, ah…” Regan looked over her shoulder, half-expecting to see the source of the Voice. She saw only eggs and the empty room partitioned by a doorway. “Less eggs. I understand. It can be difficult to focus when surrounded by all of these eggs. They sit there like they stare and wait to hatch or break. Do they make you nervous?” Her own sluggish heart was beating a little faster. Daiyu still wanted to be here, right? “We should select our eggs first. I believe that’s the process.” And based on what Daiyu said, it sounded like the expectation was that they should be painting multiple eggs. Regan was unprepared.
She approached one of the shelves and appraised the selection. Some eggs could fit in her palm like those one might cook with; others required both hands. There were glossy eggs and matte eggs, beige eggs and purple eggs and black and white eggs. Some had a noticeable taper and others were completely spherical, requiring small, wooden supports like the insides of an egg crate. By what criteria should eggs be judged? At least at the clam festival, she was given a rubric. She couldn’t decide which egg was right for her. Meanwhile, she’d spotted several that looked suitable for Daiyu. Regan’s heart was rapping faster against her sternum. “Perhaps… we could select eggs for each other?” Despite Regan’s eagerness to please, choosing an egg for Daiyu felt safer than choosing one for herself. The latter was a statement, a proclamation, this egg represents me. No eggs here were covered in blood.
She lifted the egg she’d spotted for Daiyu, holding it up to the light. The eggshell was a pale orange, but what had stood out to Regan was the severity of its taper. The narrower end of the egg was almost sharp. Egg in her hands, she also felt a warmth inside it. Regan was about to hand it to Daiyu.
“Bring me here because I’m a vegan?”
She stopped and stared at Daiyu, her whole body awash and tingling with dread. She should have asked. And Daiyu probably recycled, unlike—not right now. “You’re a vegan?” She pulled the egg closer to herself. “My apologies. I thought—you had mentioned burgers before, not that individuals cannot change their dietary habits, though in reality, few do, but if these eggs offend you, we can go somewhere else. Perhaps search for dead moose. There are some bountiful woods nearby.”
—
Daiyu didn't hate eggs, that was an important thing to note. She loved them in many shapes and forms. They made a great burger add-on, a nice breakfast and were even good trail snacks when boiled hard. She just thought eggs made for shitty decor. One little painting or decoration of eggs, sure, she could get behind that. But this was overkill. This was madness. This was too much yellow and white. Daiyu crinkled her nose briefly, distantly aware that she was no interior designer herself, but then remembering that she at least didn’t have a theme like this going on in her house. Hers was more distinguished: mismatched furniture, empty wrappers and dog toys. Oh, and a massive trophy.
“It’s not the — no, they don’t make me nervous!” That was a ridiculous notion. There was no bone in her body that was intimidated by eggs. The very idea made her want to laugh, but laughing at Regan was probably a poor way to go about this all. For a moment her mind tried to imagine why eggs could make her nervous and the image her siblings stomping on a nest full of eggs rose to her mind. Half-formed lamia babies had clung to their boots, as well as her own. Her dad’s voice echoing in the distance. The memory felt foreign, not her own. She decided it was silly to even think of it — it wasn’t like she felt anything about that, anyhow.
She squared her shoulders, staring at the eggs. “Yes, we should pick an egg. Logical, I guess.” She followed Regan, taking in all the various spherical shapes. A lot of these definitely weren’t normal bird or reptile eggs. In a distant part of her gut, she felt something pull, which was a sign that some of these eggs were of the shifter or beastly variety — good. No need to stomp on eggs if you could sell them.
Daiyu wasn’t sure what egg would be good for painting on. That wasn’t the kind of thing she’d done growing up when it came to eggs, that much should be clear by now. She wanted something that would be easy — the bigger the better, probably, and smooth. Even if she was a poor artist, she had to do a good job. She didn’t want Jade’s bone partner (gag) to think poorly of her. As Regan came with a suggestion, she creased her brows, before nodding excitedly. “Yes! That would be great!” She immediately looked at the more textured eggs. If this was a competition – and it wasn’t, but it could be, so it was – this was where she could sabotage her opposition. But … Regan was Jade’s girlfriend. She considered all the weirdly shaped, textured eggs. Wanted to pick a hairy one, in part because she was curious. This was hard, she decided. She had to win, but she also had to win Regan’s favor.
She started to reach for an egg that seemed to ooze something when Regan spoke up. She turned around, as if poked in the side. “What? No? Where did you get that idea? I’m like, a vegan’s worst nightmare. I’d not be caught dead being vegan.” She looked genuinely offended, though the expression faded as Regan offered an alternative. “Huh, what the fuck? No, let’s not. Eggs don’t offend me — I just think this place has way too many eggy decorations, like helloooo, we get it! This is an egg-themed location!” She gestured at the egg-aprons. No way she was wearing that. “Ridiculous. But no, a dead moose? I prefer them alive.” She eyed the egg in Regan’s hand. It looked awesome, which made her feel bad on top of confused. She’d been trying to figure out a way to sabotage the other without being obvious, and Regan had picked a really cool, sharp egg for her. “Uh, I do like bountiful woods though — is that my egg?”
—
Daiyu was decidedly not a vegan. But Richard Pubik had been a vegan, and Regan had been thinking about him. It was guilt and projection, and that was all. “I must have heard you wrong,” Regan said simply, which felt true enough. “In any case, I’m pleased to hear the eggs don’t make you nervous.” They made Regan nervous, her throat thick and yolky. “Your moose preferences, however, show flawed judgement. But I’m willing to look past it.” Daiyu was close enough with Jade that it felt less like a crime. And, also, Regan was trying to compromise more. It was true that the banshees—fae in general—were peddlers of deals, but those were never for the purpose of being fair. Regan, meanwhile, was becoming an excellent compromiser.
“Is it your egg? Do you accept it as such? I cannot answer that.” If Daiyu didn’t feel that egg was right (by whatever unscientific, arbitrary metric people used when referring to ‘listening to their gut’), then Regan could select a different one. There was also an oblong egg covered in fur that seemed to match Daiyu’s hair color. Such coordination appealed to humans, didn’t it?
Regan nodded toward the egg Daiyu had been about to touch before—or at least, it looked like she’d had her sights on it. Some brownish, viscous substance was rolling down the smooth sides of that egg. Its shell glistened with strange mucus like fresh glaze over a cake. “Is this the one for me?”
As soon as she asked, the drooling egg rolled from the shelf… and on to the floor with a crrrrk that hung in the empty room. More of that brown fluid pooled out across a carpet that had seen better days. A sulfurous smell wafted up from the jagged pieces of shell. The tip of Regan’s boot ended up in the puddle. When she lifted her foot, she could feel the stickiness of the fluid pulling at her. “I didn’t—I don’t know why it fell.” That couldn’t have been her, right? There was no scream, no strange sharpness to her voice. And it cracked because it hit the floor—she couldn’t have made it roll. “I swear it! It wasn’t me.” Regan insisted, as any perfectly innocent (of only this) human would emphasize. “I looked at it, and something made it roll, and—it was probably the air conditioning, or a bug. Yes, a small bug. All the egg needed was a small push, you know. The bug would not need to completely displace it. Or a mouse. Even easier for a mouse.” Regan, unsuspiciously, chose another egg entirely at random. She reached for one that was eye-level; it was a jaundiced yellow and had a scale-like pattern across its shell. “This one is the superior egg, anyway. I am ready to do crafts.”
—
She found Jade weird, for all her bubbliness and extroversion, but Daiyu was very quick to realize that she was the normal one in this relationship. She blinked slowly at the proclamation that her moose preferences (alive moose, by the way) were wrong. “Nothing makes me nervous,” she said, which was decidedly untrue. This made her nervous, deep down. This social interaction that she was doing for her not-best-friend Jade. “Why do you prefer moose dead, then? Do you have some kinda beef with ‘em?”
She nodded with decisiveness. “Yep. That’s my egg. That egg just screams my name.” She took it from Regan, balancing her fingertip on the sharp but to estimate how sharp it was. Daiyu had no idea what kind of animal laid eggs like this, whether it was even a reptile or bird. But she liked it, she decided.
Anticipating to defend herself for having chosen such a poor, oozing egg for Regan, she squared her shoulders. But she didn’t have to, the egg saving her from having to explain her considerations and motives as it fell. Immediately the stink hit her in the face like something physical, sulfur and rotten eggs slapping her twice on each cheek. Her heightened senses were helpful when in the woods, and sometimes even in ‘normal human’ situations, but in this one it was downright horrible. Her eyes teared up.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” she cursed, cutting right through Regan’s insistence that she hadn’t done that to the egg. Daiyu pulled up her T-shirt with her free hand, covering her nose and mouth. “What — I don’t care how it fell, round things fall all the time, it’s a stupid egg.” She stared at the mess it had made for a moment before backing up, trying not to gag and show signs of weakness. “It’s rotten, so maybe — you know, it doesn’t fucking matter, let’s go to the other room, I don’t — God, that’s horrible.” She gagged, stalking away to the door she supposed led to the more private room. The mess wasn’t even considered as she did: Daiyu had no intention to clean it. She too was ready to craft.
—
That egg just screams my name…
Did Daiyu know? No, no—Jade didn’t tell people without asking, and Regan was sure, very sure, that she was being an utterly convincing human right now. At least since she’d walked through those egg-shaped doors. She was about to say that, actually, that egg was a little too quiet if anything (shamefully, they all were), but then an opportunity dangled in her mind—something pinched and gleaming from between forceps, mocking her pitiful indecision.
“It was, wasn’t it?” Regan said, aiming for smooth and casual. “Should any further screaming occur, I believe we have our prime suspect.” She looked down at that sharp egg, just in case Daiyu was unclear to which egg she referred. She cradled her own jaundiced egg in her palms, grateful for its thick shell. Not that it, too, wouldn’t break if the worst happened. Daiyu seemed more concerned with her gagging than anything else. She was really affected by the egg smell, wasn’t she? Some people didn’t do well with certain smells—Regan knew that better than anyone; she always had a waste bin handy for first-time autopsy observers and tried not to be offended when an unplanned gastric emptying occurred.
She hesitated to turn away from the putrid mess, eyes already scoping out where there might be closets with cleaning supplies, but Daiyu had retreated from the stench. And there was no one else here. Maybe it would give the employees something to do.
Inside the room, there were shelves of even more eggs. But importantly, there was also a paint-spattered table and an impressive amount of different paints (at least 12 colors, which was 10 more colors than what Regan had in her wardrobe). Regan walked by the paint station, assessing. There were other materials—like a huge tub labeled ‘PRIMER’. “This must be self-serve,” she said, reaching out slowly to touch the bristles of a paintbrush to her fingertip. “I’ve been inquiring about art elsewhere, because it seems like something that—it’s a common hobby, I’ve heard. But my experiences have been limited. I wouldn’t know where to start.” She looked at Daiyu and waited, feeling that clawing humiliation of failure, even failure born of inexperience. “Not that I couldn’t—I mean, we obviously must begin with the primer.” Regan refused to let an inflected right escape her mouth, turning it into a withering question. “Primum. It means first. As in primum non nocere. So, it must come first.”
Regan got busy. She found the primer scoop (it was one of those fish nets used in home aquariums, which seemed poorly thought out given all of the holes). She glopped a generous amount into a can before returning to her obedient egg, waiting for her on the table. Not rolling, not broken. Yet.
“Are you prepared?” She asked Daiyu. “I will just be a moment.” With more care than she’d ever shown her bare hands, Regan gently worked her engagement ring from her finger and placed it by her side on the table where it wouldn’t get dirty. She doubted Jade ever took her ring off. It was difficult not to feel… something bend unpleasantly inside her. But her work necessitated it come off in the autopsy suite, and she wasn’t about to keep it free of decomposing human viscera only for it to be covered in primer.
What now? Paint brushes. On the egg. Yes. She worked with great concentration, but something seemed missing. Regan identified what it was. “I am going to make small talk.” She studied Daiyu’s response to the announcement. No attempt to stymie. “I’ve observed the weather today, as we arrived. Several clouds, a pleasant 56 degrees, and trees are finally turning bare.” Her eyes flicked to Daiyu’s hands, and the egg. “And you hold that like a blade.”
—
Painting or other creative endeavors were like strangers to Daiyu. It wasn’t something that her family had ever thought worth anyone’s time, and so perhaps it was good that she didn’t seem to have a creative bone in her body. There were plenty of things that had set her apart from her siblings and father already — at least there was no hidden artist inside her, as well. It was because of this that she could barely remember how long it’d been since she’d actually sat down and painted.
It must have been back in high school, where these kinds of things were mandatory. There certainly hadn’t been any egg painting involved, though. She assumed Regan would hold some more knowledge, which disgruntled her but also would make this seem a little less like an absolute disaster. She did intent to make the prettiest egg, though. Meeting your friend’s partner was a bit of a stand-off after all. At least, it was to her.
With the smell mostly gone, she focused on the paints and brushes. Regan was talking, revealing that she wasn’t much of an artist herself. Daiyu swallowed a comment about why she had invited her here then. They could have gone for burgers! Moose watching! Smashing things at Shatterspace! She moved over, grabbing a few brushes. She opted for the larger ones, figuring that getting her egg to change color would be a step in the right direction. “Same for me. Limited experience. Maybe eggs aren’t the best place to start. Seems paper is easier to deal with, hm? But — we’re here now. And I got a cool egg.” She did really like how sharp it was.
It wasn’t all that obvious to her that they should start with the primer, but Daiyu wasn’t going to argue with someone who spoke Latin and thus sounded much smarter than her. “Cool. Sounds about right.” She went looking around the room for anything she could show off, filling her hands with different colors of paint before finding an instrument that took her a moment to place. She dropped her paints, letting them clatter onto the ground for her to pick up in a moment, and held up two egg holders triumphantly. “Look-ie here! These can hold our eggs.”
She put both of them on the table, returning to her discarded paints to pick them up and scatter them onto the table as well. Daiyu watched Regan take off her ring for a moment, looking down at her own bare hands with a shrug. At least she’d taken the effort to get the grime out from under her nails. She put her egg in her holder, then started with the primer with the biggest brush she’d found. Though she attempted to be concentrated, she was dripping stuff onto the table. It mattered little, she figured. The surface was a mess of stains anyway.
She looked up as Regan spoke, “Oh-kay,” she said, dumbfounded. “Yeah, I like the weather today. It’s nice and crisp. Fall’s a good season. One of the best.” Winter was tough, but she liked it because of it. Summer was distracting and too humid, most of the time. She looked down at her hands. “No I don’t.” It came out defensively. “I hold it like I hold anything. Not just blades. Why would you even say that? You’ve never seen me hold a blade.”
—
“There aren’t many ways to hold one. Sure, the angle can differ—which affects the angle of any stab wounds—but gripping the instrument? It is not a creative field. But then, what do I know of creativity?” Regan dipped her brush in the primer with the precision of a scalpel, but when she withdrew it, there was nothing to cut. Just an egg on which to dab cautious paint. The primer was a nice off-white; maybe there was no need for a second coat to add color. She kept her eyes on the egg as she spoke. “I don’t think I need to see you hold a blade. You would hold it just like that, so I feel as though I’ve already witnessed it.” She regretted the subconscious choice of word once it’d left her mouth: witness. There were plenty of things people did with blades that weren’t committing homicide. And plenty of homicides requiring no blade at all. She should know.
She really should—
Her ring went flying off the table. Regan jumped, lungs vibrating but clenched tight. Even Daiyu looked surprised—neither of them had jostled anything. “What—?” It landed somewhere across the room, silent as it fell and rolled on the carpet. Regan’s eyes tracked it, her body not far behind. The ring didn’t try to escape from her when she made a grab, squeezing it inside her fist. Her breath caught up with her. Slowly, she paced her lungs, her throat, killing the churn inside her before it thrashed to a storm. There was no one here who would prompt a death scream; she was not so pathetic she couldn’t still control the tamer sort. She wasn’t.
For a second, she just stood there, ring back in her grip, eyes scanning the room like she’d discover a fan that blew it off the table. There was nothing. Cold fingers speared the back of her neck, the chill rolling down her limbs. She couldn’t explain what had just happened. “I must have… maybe my elbow…” She shook her head, and walked back toward Daiyu and the waiting eggs, her steps uncertain. She slipped the ring back on her finger, chancing some paint instead of a repeat of what just happened. “We should, um, hold on tight to the paint cans. The table might be uneven.” It didn’t look it.
—
She stared at Regan for a moment, incredulous. “For your information, I don’t stab that much. Slice, cut, sure. But not stab.” Sinking a knife into an animal's guts over and over again just didn’t really tend to serve her purposes, most of the time. She used knives for incisions and to drain beasts. To sever body parts. But fatal wounds? They were often delivered by bullet or bolt. Maybe she was saying too much, but Regan’s (bone) partner was a slayer who had to stab most of her prey to cull them. Though Daiyu hadn’t intended to explain that she was a hunter too, she’d certainly spilled something now. She was kind of curious about the fall out, all things considered. “But cool, I’ll just stick to the brush then.”
And she tried to focus on the brush and the primer and the strangeness about what she figured was a mundane activity for mundane people. But as she tried, Regan’s ring flew off the table. She was quick enough to look to watch it fly through through the room and come down. Regan was pretty much flying past it. Daiyu was more incredulous than she’d been at the woman’s observations before, looking at her standing there with the ring in her hand.
It hadn’t been her elbow, nor was it the uneven table, that much she could gander. What it could be… something invisible, some weird wind fuckery or hell, even egg magic. Daiyu wasn’t ruling any of those options out. She dropped her brush and waved her hands over the empty space above the table, trying to figure out of there was some invisible creature messing with them. “Something in the air, I bet,” she said, looking at Regan and shrugging. Unsolved mysteries did not bother her that much, especially when they were harmless. A ring moving on its own accord – that was an option too, of course, that the ring was cursed or possessed – wasn’t too much of a threat to her. Yet. “No damages?”
—
Regan was seated again, her ring firm on her finger, everything where it was supposed to be. That piercing chill behind her, creeping from her shoulders to her neck, was only sweat and evaporation cooling. Now, back to the eggs and conversational intercourse. “I appreciate the difference between stabbing and other incised wounds that might be made with a sharp instrument.” She didn’t fault Daiyu for making that correction about her blade habits. Regan’s eyes flicked to Daiyu’s hands. “However, my point stands.” Regardless of Daiyu’s… hobbies, it was kind of her to be concerned for the ring. Regan shielded her ring finger with her other hand. “No damages.”
She started applying a second coat of primer. It was necessary, the primer. There was no decision to be had, and no reason the egg needed to be splashed and disguised in paint. She needed to return to her small talk—that had been what she committed to. Regan neatly set her primer brush to her side on a rag, her fingers moving like delicate forceps. Daiyu had already started painting, and the ease to which she made her selections and executed them made Regan’s attention crease with something like envy. Or admiration. Were they different? “You know Jade well. What do you have in common to develop such a social bond?” She watched Daiyu with interest. “Do you engage in anything together?”
“So that’s where Jade goes at night—they’re definitely banging.” A whistle filled Regan’s ears. And his voice, the Voice, her conscience. “Now it all makes sense. She gets it on with this hottie, then during the day she rolls around in that doctor salary. Still think your diploma is as fake as everything else about—”
Regan jerked to her feet. “Enough!” She hissed. Her egg, with its primer-heavy shell, cracked open and oozed across the table. She heard a nasal, honking laugh. Regan tried to force her breathing back under control, slow it and squash it. The other eggs were unharmed, but coming here was possibly the worst idea she’d ever had. She blamed the online reviews. They promised human things like friendship and creativity. She was not yet an expert, but when she turned to Daiyu, that—that didn’t look like friendship on her face. “The, uh, bug,” Regan tried, “from before. I should clean this up. It’s only egg. There’s… there was a lot of liquid in this one, wasn’t there?”
—
Regan was weird, by human standards. Daiyu wasn't one to often judge people for their strangeness, used to being the weirdest one in the room when surrounded by 'normal' humans, but it was unmistakable. The obsession with death that Jade had hinted at and Regan had confirmed when she'd gone on about dead mooses. Maybe she had to be a weird human, to be with a slayer. Maybe that was the only way a relationship like that could work. (She still didn't get how Jade managed, and part of her envied that.) “Sure, your point stands. I hold knives.” She offered a smile. “Good!”
She was slathering her egg with the colors she knew best: greens. Maybe she could put the woods surrounding her house on the thing, in an abstract way. Trees and sky, moss and rocks. Daiyu didn't have an artist's mind and could not recall many images in detail, but this she could manage. It all was looking a little muddy, though. Like rain had streaked the forest. She looked up, knife dangling in the air, dripping moss-green on her beautiful, sharp egg. She figured talking about the qutrub Jade and her killed during their first meeting was a solid idea. “Food,” she said simply. It wasn't a lie. “She knows all the best restaurants in town, and I'm a connoisseur. She also has good movie taste. And she likes my dog.” That was the most simple way she could say that Jade had been the only person she'd trusted with Nugget, back in her moment of need.
She looked at her arms for a moment, the skin that looked similar to nets that held oranges in some places. She hated the memory, but she was glad for how sturdy the skin had grown over the past year and some months.
Then Regan ripped her from the rare moment of reminiscence. Her voice, though a hiss, ripped through it. Daiyu stared at her, offended. Had Regan noticed the way she had thought about a dark moment in her life? Did she want to cull the sadness – because that was what it was – sharply the way other people in her life would have? She looked at the broken egg. “Sure, yeah, lotsa goop. The fuck you mean, enough?”
—
Regan had failed. But Daiyu was more successful with her egg—at least one of them was going to emerge with the mission accomplished. The choice of greens was pleasant enough; sort of a decomposing bile melancholy to it. How was Daiyu capable of simply choosing and executing like that? Jade, too, acted on impulse (something that seemed safe enough where creativity was concerned, but not much else). Where did it come from? There was no organ in which human expression was stored, but if there was, something microscopic and overlooked for centuries, Regan knew she must have lacked it in her own anatomy.
This relationship between Jade and Daiyu sounded healthy, or at least not ill. But Regan had plenty of experiences with selective truth, lies of omission, anything that would prevent gastric pain. This felt like that. Look here, at the pointer. Not there. Don’t move the slide. “She does know them all, doesn’t she? Many deliveries.” Restaurants, restaurants… what else could Regan say about restaurants? The answer came to her throbbing and obvious as appendicitis. “Are you aware of ‘brunch’? There are brunch restaurants now.” And… the dog. That was good. Jade had a dog to interact with through Daiyu, possibly reducing her intention to purchase her own dog. Or was it only increasing the fever? “She likes dogs. You’re kind to allow her to…” What did normal people do with dogs? “...spend time in the presence of your animal. And pet it. If she does that.”
All Regan could find to clean up the broken egg was half a roll of paper towel. She pressed it over the fluid with her fingertips, and it bled red-brown through the paper. Sulfur was once again sharp in her nose, but she had known more offensive smells. Pseudomonas, late-stage sepsis, and bowel pathologies were as familiar as the friends she never had (so, more familiar?) Two broken eggs now. Had she expected any differently?
Right. ‘Enough’. That had broken her egg. Which meant she’d—”Nothing! I only—do you do dinner? With Jade?” Her voice was still too high, and this time it didn’t feel like her lungs or botched training were to blame. It wasn’t a fair question, not really. Her confidence in Jade was unshakeable. Never had she once suspected infidelity. If anything, Regan was the one who was unfaithful, given how she licked yogurt lids… according to Jade. It was— “Nevermind. You do not need to answer that.”
“Oh yeah. Look at her. Those two eat out all the time.”
Regan’s knuckles cracked. She hadn’t realized she had her fists on the paper towel now. She had stopped actively trying to sop up the egg a while ago. “I am a doctor. Have I mentioned that? In case you have any doubt. I am skilled with my hands.” A piece of eggshell fractured underneath her fist, heard but not seen.
—
Small talk wasn’t exactly Daiyu’s forte either, but she was mildly amused by Regan’s attempts at it. And though she usually was pretty good at yapping about everything and nothing all at once, she was struggling to come up with things to say — she just didn’t really know what she could talk about with Regan. Considering the hunter and human of it all. Considering how weird she was, too.
Her nose was crinkling at the scent, sulfur making her eyes tear up once more. She hated her senses for this. She had no use for it here, among eggs and the girlfriend (fine, bone partner) of her not-best friend. She was trying to do well at social interaction and building up a friendship with someone who mattered to Jade. In stead her senses were overwhelmed and she wondered what exactly the egg had housed. There was no way that was just a bad egg, after all. Daiyu pulled up her shirt, covering her nose and mouth.
“Yeah, brunch is for people who breakfast too late,” she said, voice muffled through the fabric. “I don’t see why they’d combine meals. I dig having three. If not more. I’m a big eater, you know? Got an active lifestyle, it requires both lunch and breakfast.” Never mind that her breakfast sometimes just entailed a green juice and energy drink. She just thought brunch was stupid. Sulfur was stupider, though. “Nugget loves her. That’s my dog. He respects her, even. Listens to her. Which speaks to her character.” There weren’t many people who Nugget listened to, but considering Jade had dogsat him while Daiyu had laid in the hospital last year, she was part of his pack now. And hers, she supposed.
She was frowning at Regan from over her T-shirt, her own scent mingling with the sulfur. It was a horrible mix. It wasn’t like she had a particularly nice odor, anyway. “We do a lot of food, that includes dinner. Just not brunch.”
Regan seemed to be grasping at straws. Daiyu wasn’t sure why she was wigging out, but she definitely knew she didn’t have the tools in house to make this conversation return to normal. What was a normal conversation anyway? She returned to her egg, trying to paint with her vision somewhat obscured by the red fabric of her shirt. “You hadn’t, but that’s cool. A dead person doctor right?” She wondered if she’d ever dealt with one of the bodies that had died at her hands. Daiyu pushed the thought away. “Wanna get a new egg or?”
—
Just like before, Daiyu flinched away from the malodorous broken egg. She hadn’t struck Regan as someone who might require a waste bin to vomit mid-way through an autopsy observation, but the sensitivity of one’s nose was immutable for some. Regan had known doctors who went pale at the sight of an ordinary, clean corpse—no incision necessary. She finished soaking up all the soggy refuse and crumpled the paper towel into the trash. “It has been disposed of,” Regan said, probably unnecessarily, but Daiyu really did look miserable with the collar of her shirt pulled up and tented over her nose. Also, that would have been much easier had Daiyu worn a turtleneck.
So brunch was the meal of failures. That reframed it for Regan. It made sense. “I see. Then brunch is the punishment for poor sleep hygiene.” She tapped her chin with a finger, which was somehow coated in both primer and egg mucus. “I have to say I approve of your approach, then, with your routine of three meals. You have a healthy consumption. Food, not tuberculosis.” Eve, however, needed reexamination. “I’ve never known anyone who could dislike Jade, at least not for long. She wins over everyone. Everyone who matters.” Let the flies feast upon Jade’s parents. “Even the animals… she is good with live animals. I’m not.” And Jade really, desperately wanted one of those elongated canines, with their abbreviated limbs and invasive muzzles and sensitive ears.
She stared at the empty space in front of her, the table of nothing. Daiyu continued to paint with more dedication than she probably realized. “Correct. I am a forensic pathologist.” It was good, Regan had found, to say it aloud sometimes, and remind herself. “No, I believe I’m done with eggs. I don’t actually like them very much.” She glanced around like the rows of eggs might take umbrage with her comment. “I didn’t actually… I thought you would enjoy the eggs. I found this location on the internet.” It was probably best she did not specify the search criteria.
There was a wind. A real one. Not one Regan invented as part of a rambling stream of excuses when her lack of discipline resulted in destruction. She felt its icy breath on her skin, but the chill seemed to fall beneath Daiyu’s notice. Regan turned toward the breeze.
“You’re done already?” The Voice teased. “Aw, c’mon. Go get another egg, Gerard Gay. I was really looking forward to making it crack.” It whistled some notes Regan would never identify. “I’m sure I’ll think of something.”
Regan felt the cold seep deeper. She stood abruptly, eyes pinned to Daiyu. Chair scuffing the floor like an announcement. Of what? What was about to happen? What could she—but when Daiyu drew her brush out from her paint and glazed it over her egg for the dozenth time, an identical stroke of what should have been an identical color, it bled over the egg.
—
“The stench remains,” she argued back, not at all happy that she was so obviously bothered by something as pathetic as a bad smell. Sulfur, though, was one of those things people were just not meant to tolerate. Her ranger senses made it so that it was overwhelming her very senses. It was a good way to render that instinct useless, though she doubted that that was what Regan was trying to do. Maybe the Clutch would — there was definitely something shifty and shiftery about the place. Daiyu got up, checking the windows for opening up.
Regan’s conclusion wasn’t in line with her own philosophies, but that was more because she didn’t have good sleep hygiene. How could she? Sometimes her hunts took over a day. Sometimes she slept for twelve hours without waking. “My relationship with food is awesome, yeah. Do you like burgers?” That could be a good thing, if Regan liked burgers. That way, maybe they could just hang out at the Driftwood Diner next time. There, the briny air was overwhelming too, but she didn’t mind it as much. She managed to push a window open and returned to her seat.
At the praise of Jade, she could only agree. She had never met someone like Jade. A hunter who made friendship look like a walk in the park, who was not only just someone who was easy to get along with on a surface level but someone Daiyu respected and trusted. The latter was a weighty thing for her to give away. “Jade is wonderful.” She frowned at Regan’s statement. “You should try meeting Nugget. He’s polite.” And if there was a reason for him to dislike Regan, then she figured it would be a grounded one.
‘Forensic pathologist’ meant little to her. She just knew that Regan looked at dead people to figure out why they died. “Must be an interesting job in this town,” she said dryly. She was getting ready to give her opinion on eggs and painting them. Her opinions on eggs as food remained unaffected, but she had certainly grown wary of big eggs with sulfurous contents. Painting the egg? It was kind of … fun, she realized. At least it was something nice to do absentmindedly. But as she was getting ready to divulge her very important conclusions while putting on another layer of paint.
Where she intended to put a dark, mossy green, red dripped in stead. She stared as it dripped down the egg, akin to blood. Or maybe that was just because her reference for red, dripping liquids was solely blood. “What the fuck?” She dropped her paintbrush and stuck her finger in the red, bringing it to her nose to smell. “Well, it’s not blood.” She looked up. “This place has to be haunted or something. Spirits of broken eggs, unhatched babies? Something like that? What the fuck.”
—
It clicked in her mind like an old knee: burgers were Daiyu’s bones. Not literally, of course—they were cattle meat, Regan knew that—but Daiyu circled back to the topic so frequently, here and all over the internet, that it must have been as precious to her as an astragalus in Regan’s arms. Regan would show interest. This was a relationship that mattered to Jade, and human approval always sugared Regan’s veins. “I do not eat burgers. The consistency of the meat reminds me of human flesh. If you would like to show me your burgers, though, I am receptive. We may plan an excursion.” There. Despite the Voice, despite the ring incident and the cracked eggs, Regan could still salvage this.
Or she thought she could, until the paint. Regan watched the red drizzle down Daiyu’s egg. Not the bright, firm spray of arterial blood or the dark congealment of a clot, but it did look like blood. Seeing it coating Daiyu’s finger made Regan compulsively lean forward, hands empty and ready to triage. There was no injury, though. Nothing she could seal off. She, too, stuck her finger in the paint and brought it up to her nose in examination. “Agreed. No iron. And the viscosity is wrong. It is paint, or… otherwise synthetic.” But it was strange and convincing enough that both of them were compelled to check. And how interesting Daiyu hadn’t hesitated.
“Not haunted, but possibly ‘or something’. Chemical reactions can cause color changes. Maybe something mixed with the—”
“Ha, didya hear that? She figured it out before you did. I should’ve known the blood wouldn’t bug you though. You’ve got too much on your hands to care.” More of that whistling.
“Stop it. I know you are not an unhatched egg baby,” Regan snapped at the empty air. She spun around, trying to locate the directionality. It was like it kept moving. “I mean—Daiyu, obviously you are not an unhatched…” And there, following the course of the sound, eggs rolled. Wobbled. Fell. Cracked open. They were pushed off the shelves, or blown off, or… one crack after another. Oh, screadaíl. Was she doing that? How? She hadn’t even—Regan clamped her teeth shut. What sound had escaped her before? And the eggs kept breaking, but she was silent, locked down tight, and it made no sense, so now her lungs seized with pressure. The room filled with the stink, which she already knew would make Daiyu miserable. But that was Daiyu’s nose. If that vibration pushing up her throat grew more violent, Daiyu’s bigger concern would be her ears.
“You’re really just breaking everything. Keep it together cadaver-gnawer. She already thinks you get your Happy Meals with human-burgers. Break her ugly little egg, and she might really stay away. Maybe she’ll fall into Jade’s arms to talk all about your little—”
Regan’s back made contact with one of the tall shelves, rows and rows of eggs looking down at her, a judging audience. They were vibrating. Everything was vibrating. She was reminded, again, of just how terrible of an idea this had been—bringing a banshee into a place full of eggs.
Several eggs fell near Daiyu, might’ve hit her. And Regan thumped against the shelves. Behind her, a tidal wave of fracturing eggs. Hundreds. She thought she’d kept her mouth shut, she had been so sure, didn’t think she had failed, so why—how—her resolve shattered. Regan’s lips cracked open, free of her fingers, and the egg-shaped building with the egg-shaped door and the inconsistently-shaped-eggs cracked with her.
—
Baffled once more by the words coming out of Regan’s mouth, Daiyu tried to come up with a fitting answer. Eventually she said, “We can try and find a place that also offers veggie burgers. Maybe tofu reminds you … of cardboard.” That might be preferable for Regan. She didn’t know if she was a vegetarian, but she kind of preferred not knowing. Daiyu had a low opinion of vegetarians.
At least Regan was also sniffing the paint to check if it was blood. It wasn’t really the kind of reaction she expected from normal humans, which was why she was glad Regan was doing it too. Because she didn’t want to come off as an abnormal human, even though she was aware she was one. “Chemical reactions?” She wasn’t sure what to make of that. “Like color changing paint? While that seems cool, my brush is still green and this is —”
Regan was snapping weird things again. Daiyu stared at her, not even sure if she should be offended. For a moment, she wondered how conversations between Jade and Regan went. She wanted a transcription of one, to hear all the ridiculousness that went on between the two of them. As she tried to keep up with the conversation and that fantasy, she was rudely faced with more cracking eggs. “Fucking hell!” Her voice was loud, and she jumped up from her chair. The stench that had plagued her before when one egg had cracked was nothing compared to the rank smell that was filling the room now.
Sometimes, her pragmatism got her in trouble. Today, she figured that wasn’t the case. Eggs were falling and cracking, and Daiyu was not going to be held responsible for the destruction, nor deal with the fall out. Some of the eggs did not reveal only liquid — some had hatchlings, both avian and reptilian. She did not bend down to check them out. She’d sensed them already. Why get caught on her shock now?
So as eggs started raining down, she jumped into action. At first, instincts demanded she get herself out of the smelling, horrible place, away from the destruction of falling eggs — but then she remembered she was not alone, and that even though Regan was a puzzling and strange person, she did not want her to be hurt. An egg fell onto her head, cracking open on her skull and leaking goo down her neck into her shirt. She wiped her face clear to keep her sight and got ready to pull Regan out of the place.
But then she screamed. Where her nose had been overwhelmed before, it were now her ears that had to deal with a sensory overload. Clamping her hands over her ears she stared at Regan for a moment, surprised at the sound she’d created – and wondering why she was so scared – before ceasing all thought. She rushed over, grabbed Regan’s hand and pulled her through the doors they’d entered before, out the building and onto the street.
Stumbling out, Daiyu let a large breath of air and pushed out the eloquent words: “What. The fuck just happened.”
—
Regan threw herself backwards—spine smacking shelves. She could see it: Daiyu’s flesh, blown to scraps. Daiyu’s blood, a spray. Daiyu’s organs, foam. “No—!” Regan screeched and tried to whip her arm away, but Daiyu was faster, and the shock of Daiyu’s grip snapped her mouth shut. The eggs were still breaking, hurtling down and shattering. Yolk on her pants, her shoulder. But how—she wasn’t screaming anymore, hardly had, and still—her lungs were vibrating hard, fighting her jaws, but she put one foot in front of the other.
She stepped over a pinkish glob of embryonic tissue. Her foot slipped, something wet. Daiyu stalled, leading her. And right in front of them, a thin, eggshell section of the ceiling crashed down and tossed shards at their ankles. Regan’s mouth opened and then she bit her tongue hard against the sound that almost poured out of her. She sealed the scream off with her free hand, her fingers thrumming. Just focus on Daiyu and her unexpected sangfroid. Not the broken lights, not the million eggs, not the pieces of the ceiling dangling over them, ready to break.
More eggs tumbled and seemed to launch themselves at them as Daiyu pulled Regan through the main room now. The exit was in sight. The egg-shaped door, its glass completely shattered. Exposed. Regan didn’t dare say anything. More careful steps. An egg hit her by a kidney and Daiyu’s hair was glossy and thick with yolk.
She heard the enormous breath Daiyu took when they pushed out the doors. Regan stumbled away from her, one hand still over her mouth. Her lungs were hungering for fresh air, but she allowed them only her nose. Inside, through the broken windows, Regan could see eggs still being tossed around. Plaster and paint were thick in the air. Why was it still—she wasn’t screaming, so why was that still happening?
What happened?
There was Daiyu’s question. Regan froze. Slowly, she lifted her hand from her mouth. No sound, no scream. No answer, either, because what had happened? How much of that had even been her?
“I… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—but this is unimportant right now. Your hearing.” Regan took a couple of cautious steps closer and tilted her head, eyes immediately surveying Daiyu’s ears. No external bleeding—just yoke. Her hands didn’t dare touch or hover. “Any ringing? Vertigo?” Regan’s ears were fine, but her own speech still sounded strange to her. Needful. Quivering for a corner. What excellent condition she had left Jade’s friend in. “Or... or nausea? Do you taste blood? I would like for you to take a few steps, when you catch your breath. Your balance may be impaired.” She hesitated. Yes, this called for it. “Please.”
She looked at Daiyu now, not just her ear. Covered in egg and paint, scowling from sulfur all day, unsteady. Hurt, possibly. “And I’m sorry,” Regan added again, quietly, hidden on her lips. Maybe Daiyu wouldn’t hear it.
“ ‘Your balance may be impaired’,” the Voice mocked, “That’s a cold way of saying you might’ve blown out her ear drums. I thought I was special.”
An egg shot out of a window and slapped Regan in the stomach. Sharp. Firm. “Ow, what—” She winced. A future contusion. The egg didn’t break. It hit the ground, sharp side down, and—wait, sharp side? And it was green. Daiyu’s egg had stabbed her. Regan stepped away from it before she broke that one, too. “Well, it appears your egg made it out. I cannot explain how.” If Daiyu found that suspicious, Regan wasn’t sure she could dispel it. But she truly couldn’t explain how that happened. Think, think. She wobbled and walked over to the sign: THE CLUTCH. Neon egg. She braced herself on one of its poles.
What happened?
How could she answer when she didn’t understand, either? All she could latch on to was self-incrimination, and perhaps that was just. Regan took a breath long enough to carry several lies. “The building’s foundations are unsound. Some subtle vibration, causing the eggs to all crack at once. I have seen it before. The contents are poorly constructed, and then when some small, external force is applied, it all crumbles. Shatters. That is all.” Her stomach ripped with pain, and it wasn’t only from the sharp egg.
Behind them, another piece of the building’s exterior fractured and fell dozens of feet to the ground with a loud, brittle snap. Regan flinched but turned away. How were her words still breaking things? Regan pressed a hand to her sticky forehead, eyes wide. Everything was tight. Collapsing.
Daiyu was not an idiot. She might not have been the rigorous, academic sort that Regan more often gravitated towards, but anyone close to Jade possessed intelligence, and Daiyu’s social aptitude indicated a mind as sharp as her egg. She also knew about things that Regan refused to give name to. It was an assumption, but a fairly safe one (if anything could be called safe right now). Most people would have left sooner. And there was that strange online mention of ‘werewolves’. The egg blade. The speed at which she’d just acted. Most damningly, though, was the closeness to Jade. Regan’s picture was growing more complete. Not her own, but Daiyu’s.
“Yeah, that’s right. Keep lying. I love seeing you fall flat on your face. You almost leveled this place to the ground, Hack Canary! Who do you think Jade would’ve been more upset to find under the wreckage?”
“Would you shut up, already?” Regan growled at the air, no longer caring about how it came off. “I’m trying to work, here. I’m trying to fix this. To diagnose.” As if it could be fixed! She had already committed the unforgivable. Her social disgrace escalated into lethal danger; she could have killed someone. Again. Jade’s friend. This had all gone terribly, and she could only blame herself. “I am speaking to myself,” Regan semi-answered the question that had been on Daiyu’s face all day, and it didn’t even feel like a lie. “It is a medical technique. All pathologists do it.” That was also, strangely, more or less true.
Regan continued scanning Daiyu for signs of injury. Signs that she had hurt Daiyu. She looked down to Daiyu’s hand, which only moments ago had gripped her hard. “You dragged me out of there.” It was reckless. Daiyu had no idea how reckless. “You shouldn’t have. I should have been taking care of you.” Regan felt a little firmer on her feet now, stabilized by the post.
But Daiyu’s question still went ignored. Regan had almost killed her, and she didn’t understand how that happened. The eggs were breaking before she made any noise, she was nearly certain. But memory was so fallible… so her history served as the best evidence. It sentenced her.
“You have egg in your hair. And…” Not what she needed to say. Regan tried some honesty. “I don’t—I don’t actually know what happened.”
—
Adrenaline made way for a ringing sound in her ears and a dazedness that came after. Daiyu preferred the heat of the moment, always would — but why had there even been a heat of the moment on this day? This was supposed to be a normal meeting between two normal people who went to do a normal activity. Of course, they had failed on all fronts before the heat had arrived, but this? This was not what was supposed to have happened.
It was a good thing that she could handle a bit of unexpectedness. The way she’d been raised, she was made to expect the worst. Daiyu rolled with the punches because she expected the punches, except she didn’t quite anticipate those punches being egg-shaped. So even if her mind was struggling to comprehend the absolute mess of the situation and what had caused the destruction, she wasn’t too perturbed. She was just trying to remain cool.
“Ringing, yeah,” she said, looking over at Regan. Regan did not look like she tended to roll with the punches. She had the kind of face that looked like it had probably never met a fist to it. Daiyu had a face that said punches were the least of her troubles but definitely some of her troubles, she thought. “But … fine.” She was a bit dizzy, but that was probably because the egg that had cracked open on her head. Nausea? Sure, but that was also because of the eggs. She didn’t often feel the urge to take a shower, but she really wanted one right about now.
Her eyebrows creased. The mystery of the egg-shaped building that continued to fall apart was strange, but stranger was Regan. Her apology was quiet and unneeded. Daiyu hated apologies, especially when they seemed like a waste of breath and words. And right now, there was no need for apologies. Regan seemed to be trying to answer her question, which Daiyu wasn’t looking for — why would she know what just happened? This was just more Wicked’s Rest bullshit that would remain inexplicable, and Daiyu was fine with that. And yet, she wondered. Why would she apologize and try to rationalize unless she had something to do with it?
For the first time she wondered if Regan might be something more than just a very peculiar human woman.
She moved over to grab her egg. If Regan had anything to do with it, this made no sense. It wasn’t like she was inside throwing eggs. Or was she part of some kind of conspiracy here? Had she some kind of grief against the clutch that she’d decided to solve like this? Daiyu could respect vandalism like that. Or maybe she was plagued by bouts of aggression that she could not control, or intrusive thoughts that pushed her towards certain questionable acts. She’d seen a lot of that in her peers at The 3 Daggers. But Regan wasn’t a hunter.
“Dude, you’re super confusing right now. But yay for my egg. I’ll be stealing it.” The Clutch probably needed their money more than ever now, but Daiyu found she deserved a free egg after being pelted with them. She held it to her stomach, sharp side up and continued to try and pick apart Regan. She’d never been very good at reading people, though, so her conclusion kept getting stuck on ‘confusing maybe-human woman’. That conclusion only gained weight as Regan spoke to herself in that rude tone. She wasn’t entirely convinced that she wasn’t talking to Daiyu, but went with the ludicrous tale anyway. Arguing might be second nature to her, but she didn’t want to get into it now. “Sure. Maybe you should speak to yourself nicer.” An ironic thing, coming from Daiyu. She was aware that she lacked skill in the self-help department.
She was quiet for a moment. “No. There’s no … should have or shouldn’t have. I dragged you out, that’s that.” She didn’t want the responsibility of saving people, nor did she want to put that responsibility on someone else. Daiyu had done what instinct demanded and why instinct had not made her safe only herself was something she couldn’t begin to worry about, either. “Don’t worry about it.”
The words reverberated for a moment. I should have been taking care of you. That was maybe the oddest thing Regan had said all day. Sure, there had been the scream and the strange talking to herself, as well as her observation of how Daiyu had held her brush. But that? That was absurd. On a Daiyu-level (because no one needed to take care of her), but also on a general, larger level. People should not feel that responsible for others — it was just a recipe for disaster.
She released her egg with one hand to touch her head. It was sticky. “This might put me off eggs.” She grimaced. “And … I don’t expect you to know. I was just asking the fucking universe. What a joke.” Daiyu’s grimace turned into something more of a grin. She was ready to roll with this punch. “Well. This sure was an adventure.” She cleared her throat, then remembered Regan’s punchless face. “You okay?”
—
Regan glanced at the sharp, green egg in Daiyu’s hands. Its shell was shiny with egg mucus, like it had stabbed (murdered?) another egg at some point; it might have, but pretty much every surface within sight was glossy and wet. She needed a shower. Wash the evidence off before Jade saw, before Jade touched her.
“That egg is yours by right now, in my view. I would not call it theft.” Nor could she fault Daiyu either way. Technically, neither of them paid for their egg painting today to begin with, and—well, no one was running out of the building, so it might have been empty with no one to ring them up. Which begged more questions.
Didn’t matter. She needed to clear up Daiyu’s confusion. Regan shook her head. “There was a should have. I bear responsibility. As a physician, I mean,” she both added and omitted. And yet Daiyu had dragged her out of a half-collapsing building while she couldn’t do anything other than try to cram a scream further down her throat to the point of obstructive asphyxiation. She didn’t understand how Daiyu was not scrutinizing this more—perhaps Regan’s assumption had been wrong, and Daiyu did not engage in the same nocturnal activities as Jade. (Slaying. She meant slaying.) Or Daiyu was just waiting, plotting.
“I don’t think I will be eating eggs for the foreseeable future, either.” She lifted a boot and saw the smeared, eggy fluid matting down the grass underneath. “I would not blame you for your distaste.” Regan had to wonder how far that distaste extended. The answer—because she knew—clanged hollow inside her chest.
She huffed too sharply and separated from the pole, pulling herself up straight. This felt like getting off easy (just like—). Not for long, probably. Daiyu was going to report to Jade that Regan had nearly killed her. Daiyu would question Jade’s judgement. Then Jade was going to have to make a choice, and Regan hated all outcomes, because either way, Jade would look at her the way she should have the moment she returned home with Richard Pubik’s pulverized organs stuck between her fingers like paste.
…Why was Daiyu asking about her wellbeing? Had Regan missed something? Regan had at the very least ruined Daiyu’s day, if not her week or longer. None of this had been remotely close to the normal activity she had been desperate for. “I… Fine,” Regan finally said, throat rough. “I’m fine. I hope… I hope today does not affect your relationship with Jade.”
“Oh relax, Eggwhite, those two will be just fine. You and Jade, on the other hand? I’d start crawling.”
Regan looked to her right, where the taunt had come from. Then back to Daiyu. The Voice was correct—there was no version of this story that made Regan seem safe. Certainly not the truth. “I must be going now. There’s, um, the dead.” One last glance at the green blade of an egg, at Daiyu. Both were sharp, straight-edged, intact; everything Regan’s egg had not been. Everything Regan was not.
“Take care of your egg,” Regan said, the broken windows of her car in sight, “Jade would like that it did not crack under pressure.”
