Tags: Canon Compliant, Post Canon, Fluff & Angst, Prose
Contrary to popular belief but Grace wasn’t dumb.
She wasn’t daft. She wasn’t oblivious. She wasn’t dumb.
She remembered every scrape on her knees that her elder sister kissed away the pain for. Stinging and raw, soothed by her lips. She remembered every good mark and every bad mark that she had ever gotten on her tests. She remembered how her heart fluttered in blissful validation when someone, an adult, finally saw her as her own person not just as Grace, Gloria’s dumb little sister.
But all those memories had collapsed in on themselves.
All because of a smile. Because Grace wanted to live on her own two feet, not just take orders and defend an order which was... which was destroying everything around it. So, she scrabbled, with tiger claws and archer’s arrows, towards that hope. No matter how childish. And in doing so, she earned some good graces again.
Because, as it turned out, there were some things about herself that she didn’t know. Not because she was dumb, daft, or oblivious but because she was Grace. In her own head as her own person.
Where Gloria was still looking, Grace was now leaping.
More than anything, Grace wanted to take that plunge back into good graces and other good favours. For what she had helped destroy, she wanted to rebuild. Whilst Gloria was still running the numbers from where she stood, tall, elegant, distant, all of those things and more even to her younger sister who had spent so long clinging to her side, Grace was running headlong towards a different tomorrow. A more fun tomorrow. Bright and smiley.
And more than willing to believe her, Asuka wanted to help because if there was one thing that she was good at it, was being bad at helping people run away from such things.
Trying to earn Asuka’s favour by helping out with these post war efforts, with helping out in the soup kitchens and trying her best with things that she wasn’t good at, admittedly, like construction and being nice without being the cruel sort of nice that she had learned to be underneath both her elder sister’s vision but the Professor’s as well. He handsomely rewarded those with the colour violet if he thought that they could be violent to his neatly planned ends and means.
But with Asuka, and beneath the vision of that Standard Duelist, the one which had been the bane of Gloria’s faction’s existence previously, it was a lot different.
Grace recalled Asuka as being unsmiling. A model student. She asked questions but she didn’t think critically about what she consumed. She wanted knowledge but she didn’t want to bite the hands that fed her that knowledge. With her prowess, she could have been amazing as a soldier were it not for her innate kindness.
But she’s lucky she had it, now.
Grace used to observe her from afar. Thinking about how she could potentially enter these inner circles but never doing so. Better the figurehead Queen of the Blue Dorm than anything more. But the main thing, Grace remembered, aside of Asuka’s student life was that she didn’t smile. And when she did, it was a hollow smile. All thin lips and concealed pretty teeth. Perhaps even forced, unamused because she was above it all but not so above it all that she was of higher importance.
But now, Grace observed, in the catastrophe that they were trying to reverse the damage of, she saw Asuka’s true smile. With laughing eyes and a genuine sincerity to it; plush lips and perfect teeth, too. It wasn’t distraught, in the way that Grace remembered.
So, it was like poetry in motion, Grace thought.
Her hands slowly interlocking with Asuka’s for the first time and feeling as though her hands were made to fit Asuka’s. It was a good feeling in her chest with her heart beating like an archaic, deerskin drum. Beaming unto Asuka who looked down on her fondly with those few centimetres that her height had over Grace’s. Her brown like pale honey eyes elusively thinking things that Grace may never know...
She had strayed from her elder sister’s side, coyly meandering towards Asuka like a kitten. A young woman just like Gloria: tall, elegant distant. The only difference was their mouths. Asuka smiled. She always had but now, it was so much brighter. And Gloria? Gloria didn’t smile. She still didn’t smile, actually and when she did was stern and unamused, just like Asuka from when Academia was still in place as a machination of evil rather than redemption or even plain schooling.
The gap between them slowly closed.
Yes, their mouths were very different, Grace thought. She sighed as Asuka kissed her. She had never been permitted or allowed feelings like this. It was strangely welcome and without substitute. Her elder sister had always kissed away the pain. But Asuka, magnificently, kissed happiness onto her yearning lips. Thinking only of her. Grace as her own person. Not one of two, and the more insignificant of them being, inconsequently, only minutes younger than her twin.
“Thank you...” Grace murmured as her heart swam with joy, knowing exactly how she would one day remember this moment, her first kiss with Asuka, years upon years later.
She knew that she would day reflect that someone saw her as intelligent and perceptive.
Grace kissed Asuka a little harder. Asuka may have initiated the kiss but she was stiff. Uncertain. And Grace was just that tiny bit more intuitive, bolder, biting her lips gently, licking them over and holding her hands like Asuka was the most important thing in the world to her. And simply melting into the gesture, allowing Grace to rob the fragrance of her never before been kissed breath and allowing her to rule this kiss with a pristine majesty that Asuka had never known before.
Named so because both Grace's surname Tyler can refer to inn keeping but also because she plays a more defensive deck [so like a goal keeper in sport, for example] and Asuka's English name refers to the defending as well [so like keeping others safe]
‘For future reference, never interrupt my ritual again.’ Asuka snapped.
Grace giggled; wary eyes like a predatory bird. ‘But in duels, my dear, Asuka, there are no second chances. But because I love you…. fiiiiiine.’
Grace removed her card from the spell zone and gestured to Asuka. They were lucky they were playing on boards rather than Duel Discs. ‘But only because I want to see this new Ritual Monster of yours in action. You said it had a crafty ability and a nice attack power. I’m going to need to see it for future reference.’
Asuka smiled. ‘Thank you, Grace.’
The once finished Duel had a turn redacted and it was like the clock had wound back superficially. Grace kicked her legs idly beneath the table; trying to instigate a game of footsies with her girlfriend but Asuka was wholly uninterested. Asuka played out the cards she had intended to use before Grace had rudely interrupted her with a Quick Play Spell Card.
Grace hummed to herself. ‘May I?’ she asked.
‘If you must.’ Asuka replied.
Grace picked up the card Asuka had summoned and looked over it. Her eyes widened playfully; more cat-like than avian, Asuka noted this time around.
‘My, my, if I hadn’t had played my spell card when I did, I almost definitely would have lost.’ Grace gasped.
‘Why thank you.’ Asuka replied; very certain of her abilities.
‘I’ll have to come up with some news tricks just in case I don’t get so lucky next time.’ Grace continued.
‘A-yup.’ Asuka nodded.
‘Buuuuuuut,’ Grace whined out the syllables.
‘But what?’ Asuka raised an eyebrow as she crossed her arms.
‘But this doesn’t count as an official win for you as this Duel was already won by me.’ Grace pointed out.
‘Look who’s being the sore loser now.’ Asuka teased.
We heard you wanted to translate your FAQ’s, engage even more with your customers and customize the SDK. We promised that we would do our very best to roll out these new features plus other major improvements. Well, we have been very busy doing exactly that! The last couple of weeks saw some major releases. In fact we shipped FAQ internationalizations, our very own push notification service, provided decomposition, localization and skinning options in the SDK plus a bunch of other improvements.
Internationalization: With internationalization you can now translate a FAQ to different languages. This feature will allow you to automatically show a translated version of the FAQ to your customer based on his device language setting. We also made sure that you can internationalize the system messages coming from the android and iOS SDK’s so that you can engage globally with your customers in their native language.
Push notification: Besides Urban Airship you can now use our very own push notification service. Push notifications are extremely helpful to engage with your customers. This feature will allow you send a push notification to your customer when you reply to their feedback from the Helpshift admin portal.
iPad support: The Helpshift iOS SDK can now be integrated into your iPad apps. With Helpshift now on your iPad you can learn more from your customer feedback and provide a native customer support experience.
SDK decomposition & SDK skinning: More power to the developers! We have decomposed the SDK in such a way that you can use a single FAQ, single section with FAQ’s , inbox and send feedback modules anywhere in your application. You can also customize various native elements and the typography so that your customer support experience matches the style guide of your application. These features will allow you to design a unique customer support experience in your application.
Expanded metadata support: If you ever felt that you don’t have enough information to debug your customer’s issue then this is the feature for you. This feature will allow you to get more custom data in a defined key-value pair format. This information will allow you to do an in-depth analysis of the problems your mobile customers face.
You can learn more about how to implement these features in the SDK from our documentation. We are always learning more about our customers and are continually building features to solve their problems. Do you have anything to tell us? Write in to [email protected] or post a comment below.
Oh, and if you are gaining customer success from what we are doing, make sure to spread the ❤
