Sorry Brain is not functioning too busy thinking about how after the Blue takes over nonoka the very first thing she thinks about mitsuko is that her name is beautiful. lol
Fandom: Arcaea
Characters: Nonoka, Mitsuko
Relationships: Mitsuko/Nonoka
Rating: G
Word Count: 1629
Mirror Link: AO3
Original Post Date: 6/10/2025
Notes:
An alternate ending to Extant Anima where I cranked the yearning up a ton. But it still has the horrors. Somewhat. This fic has some extra formatting on AO3 that won't translate to Tumblr.
~~~
A howling whirlwind of blue surrounded Mitsuko, her Coda having fallen silent minutes ago. Navigating her Husk through the pillars of what seemed to be azure light made manifest as she aimed for the massive throne woven of the colour felt almost like navigating through the debris fields left behind by humanity's many conflicts. In the dead silence, she dodged strange appendages of blue that reared out of the darkness of space.
At the centre of the chaos was Nonoka, sat comfortably in her Husk, blue bleeding freely from it and surging to smother the glittering stars and galaxies, to snuff out life without a second thought, like her hands had already done thousands of times before a mass of blue had clawed its way out of her mortal shell. How ironic that the only reason Mitsuko had been ordered to engage was that the death wasn't targeted. A weapon that was under nobody's control needed to be put down.
As she raced to engage her, Nonoka only giggled, her single visible eye containing nothing but glee. She manoeuvred her Husk with the masterful grace that the Royals Commune had come to expect from their best Runner. Yet she did nothing but dodge Mitsuko's attacks, lightly grazing Mitsuko's Husk with laughably weak retaliations. All the while, tiny wisps of blue curled and tapped playfully at the glass of her cockpit.
Nonoka was messing with her - she could have torn through her like paper in seconds, like she had done to countless enemy soldiers over the years that had been far more experienced than her, a mere Info Class soldier. She hadn't taken advantage of any of the rookie mistakes Mitsuko had made due to her trembling hands as she was met with the most horrifying sight of her life, worse even than the piles upon piles of bodies she had come across in her short lifetime, her fear echoing in her own ears.
Just like all the times they had clashed in the practice room, she was toying with her prey. And like always, it infuriated her, even as she couldn't tear her gaze away. Nonoka had always been impossible to look away from on the battlefield, quick as lightning and possessing the ferocity of thunder, packaged into a lithe dance that drew attention away from even the cosmos. Now, though, the sight of her in motion was undeniably beautiful, a cloak of blue flaring behind her with each twist and turn. Nausea groaned in her stomach and goosebumps raised across her skin, but she wanted to stare at Nonoka forever.
There was a familiar emotion stirring within her, the same fluttering she felt in her stomach whenever Nonoka got close in the dorms, wrapping her arms around her and resting her chin on her shoulder. An emotion she couldn't afford to focus on - one she should have never felt in the first place. She had hated Nonoka when the Runner first joined them. A born genius that had all the makings of an ace Runner, having transferred from the prestigious Academy by choice. She had likely never known anything but a cushy life, and didn't even comprehend the horror of what her hands wrought. An entire world above Mitsuko, an unwanted orphan who had been offered like a sacrifice from a trampled-over commune, who could only make the best of the opportunity that had been "gifted" to her. Nonoka had everything she had always coveted and yet would never have. But Nonoka had refused to leave her alone, constantly jogging after her to join her for meals, for training, for briefings, no matter how much she sped up to leave her behind. Until somehow she had wormed her way into Mitsuko's heart.
She had committed the cardinal sin of an expendable child soldier. There was no space in her life for affection or joy like all the other normal children, who slept in warm beds with parents who protected them from the monsters under the bed, who would never watch bloodied children beg for their lives. She existed to protect those children from the nightmares she experienced every week.
Love was a distraction. That had been drilled into her head from the very beginning. She would never be anything more than a soldier. She shouldn't want to hold Nonoka's hand, to stroke her hair as she fell asleep after a long movie marathon night, to listen to her ramble on about the beautiful blue light only she could see. She shouldn't have promised her she'd do her best to help Nonoka find it.
Love was wrong. She was wrong, and that was why she was weak.
Look at where that weakness had led her; had led them all. To ruin.
Spotting an opening, she lunged forward with a desperate cry, weapon raised to run her closest friend through. She could only pray for a quick, clean blow that wouldn't make Nonoka suffer.
Doing this was the right thing. It was protecting not just the Royals Commune, but all the people who still survived in this cold, cruel universe. It would ensure everyone would continue to live another day, waking up to see the cold nebular bodies that comprised the entirety of their world, dirt and soil being bygones of a lost time. There would at least be that hollow joy to cling onto once Nonoka was gone from her life.
"Why do you always look so far into the distance, towards something I cannot see? Don't go where I can't follow!" How many times had she wanted to grab her hand and plead with her? Not to leave, to a better place that she would never know.
"You idiot, Nonoka," she whispered, tears falling from beneath closed eyelids as she expected to feel the resistance of metal giving way.
There was only silence, in the middle of dead space.
Her eyes snapped open when she found that her Husk was no longer responding to her controls. Nonoka was nowhere to be seen. Her Coda, which had been sitting dead atop the dashboard, had now begun to glow an eerie blue, bathing her face in light. The small amount of wisps had become in an instant like a veritable storm, slamming repeatedly against the glass and forcing cracks to form. Breath coming faster and faster, she attempted to reach for the eject button, willing to risk the cold void of space, but found that her limbs were frozen.
And from the cracking stars, Nonoka descended, a vengeful angel with writhing wings of blue. The mad grin that had danced on her lips before had been wiped clean, leaving a gentle smile on her face as she reached for Mitsuko in her Husk.
A cry burst from her as her cockpit exploded into a rain of glass from the weight of the horde of blue. Nonoka was no longer holding back; that much was clear. Mitsuko had only seen blurry footage - anyone who had gotten too close to Nonoka had not returned to tell the tale. She had never borne the full brunt of Nonoka's presence, overwhelming all else with pure terror, screaming full force in her eardrums.
Nonoka's wings grew larger and larger, wrapping around her like a large cocoon whose walls undulated, shielding her from the perils of space and filling her vision with an ocean of blue. Mitsuko continued to struggle even as she knew it was futile, the terror pressing deeper and strangling her heart.
Nonoka shushed her with a finger to her lips, the blue-tipped digit moving up to press against her forehead.
a field of flowers
the warmth of the sun
the soft embrace of
blue
blue
blue
blue
blue
Her body trembled, tears slipping from her unseeing eyes. Images flashed in her mind only to be replaced by another just as quickly, thoughts slipping away from her like water. The blue was everywhere. It was everything. Her entire world, her entire being. Cloyingly warm, it wriggled further into her mind - even if she wanted to flinch away from it, there was only it to cling to. All there was to do was sink further and further into its embrace.
Where was she? It felt like she was someplace entirely out of this world, gazing upon the beauty that Nonoka had always gushed about. Places she had only ever read about in novels that Nonoka had passed to her, relics of a time that humanity insisted on racing away from. Nonoka could turn the words on those pages into reality with nothing more than a snap of her fingers. She was a butterfly who had never been fated to be chained to this mortal realm, and she had made the world her chrysalis. And with her metamorphosis, so too would all things in this world achieve rebirth.
This was wrong. A small part of her continued to protest, wanting her to curl into a ball and disappear. She sobbed, reaching out blindly for a familiar hand to anchor her.
"I have you." Fingers threaded through hers, Mitsuko's vision focusing as the voice of the one she loved reached her ear. Nonoka came into view, tucking a stray strand of blue hair behind her ear. The touch was heartbreakingly tender, and she leaned into it, eyelids fluttering shut. "I hear your wish. It'll be okay, Mitsuko." Nonoka's voice lulled over her, calming her heart to a steady tempo.
Like this, with Nonoka draped over her, she could imagine that they were back in their dormitories, having stumbled there after a mission, utterly exhausted. She could believe that everything would be alright.
"We'll be together forever," Nonoka whispered, granting her wish and forever sealing her fate with the gentle brush of her lips against her forehead.
