heyaa so i noticed most of your songs before 2016 are reuploads since your old channel was deleted.... can u tell me which songs have u made before Ephemera? make it a list in order of publishing pls thank u
Most of my songs pre-2015 can be found with release dates and so on on my bandcamp. I think (and this is a vague answer because I didn't necessarily delete the CHANNEL so much as I made a new channel to post my originals on to keep them away from UTAU covers and the like (only to then post covers and animatics on my channel so that went well LOL) and so I don't remember all my release dates due to my notoriously bad memory) that the songs that came before Ephemeral were, in what I BELIEVE is the correct chronological order (including UTAU originals, which are not good please understand that). Bolded ones are ones with videos.:
White-Walled Sanctuary (ft. Halt Tanner English CVVC)
Tick Tock (ft. Daatura)
Kou Bou, Kou Bo (ft. Shigeru茂)
Adam (ft. Oliver)*
GODdess of glutTONS (ft. Oliver, Prima, Tonio)
Tick Tock ~music box version~ (ft. Sweet ANN)
Inauspicious Radio Hosts Broadcast Through White Noise (ft. Big AL, Tonio)
And I think that's everything pre-2016? Looking at my channel and bandcamp, that is. I might have missed a thing or two but that's on me for not keeping better records and also not having the computer that initially had all my music files and DAW and the like active. It's old and I've been having issues getting it up and running--hence the lack of new music lmao--and, as I said, my memory is NOT GOOD so I can't really verify the veracity of any of my statements here. This is, at best, a rough estimate of chronological release.
Anything marked with * means that I have a video for it, but not the original one. It is either not the initial version of the song (as in the case of Adam being a remaster I made) or not the original language (I redid arrow-ace to be in spanish and wholly using Clara for the current video on my channel).
There is more music I've made. I have an entire additional album on my bandcamp that is strictly just fansongs for the Transcendence AU that never had videos made for it on my youtube channel due to the collaborative nature of the project and I THINK there might be another song or two on my soundcloud but I have long forgotten both the login and the name of that one so you might have to go hunting. Sorry in advance.
I would like to know what you're using this list for though. It's rare for someone to reach out to me about my music on my tumblr and I actually am pretty intrigued.
Art of Apollo Justice (a disabled man) by a disabled artist! I shrimply think being in a bombing should have Effects(tm) on a man. Also Perception is migraine hell.
(Phoenix is the only AA character that has immunity to chronic disability beam and even then sometimes I give him necklace consumption related GI issues)
Disordered eating is not necessarily an eating disorder. You have the former, not the latter. Either way: even if you did have an eating disorder you wouldn't be a bad person. Talking about this shit is always going to be hard because of how personal it is
[deep breath out]
Your environment and childhood shaped your relationship with food and you have never gotten over the anxiety. In fact: its gotten worse in places because you have no safety net
[deep breath in]
You forget to eat until you overindulge and then you feel bad because money. This cycle will continue. You are hungry
[deep breath out]
You have cheat sheets for when you have no money for food. Little things like peanut butter and only one meal a day and maybe praying you don't pass out at work because you work a physical labor position
[deep breath in]
Throwing away food is not a moral failing. It is a thing that happens. It is okay
[deep breath out]
You do not have to cry about the concept of tossing out a box of popsicles because the flavor actually sucks ass and you can't eat the thing you did not need but paid for anyway because its hot and you wanted a treat even if you opted for cheaper treat
[deep breath in]
You don't need to cook for seven people any more but you also can continue to meal prep
[deep breath out]
The popsicles were a treat, not a necessity. Its fine. Its fine. Its fine
[deep breath in]
You don't have to cry about this. You're stressed about the 4th and sleep and the heat and work and a dozen other things and this is the last straw. Its okay if you do cry though
being aro and touch averse and also touch starved is so mean tbef like what do you mean that i want to have people hold me gently and yet the thought of someone putting their hands on my skin even with my permission makes me fucking want to claw my skin off? rude :/
when you want to play your video games but dont have the energy for it its like who wants to be my proxy that does the gameplay while i watch and make every decision in the game from the comfort of my bed
The rest of the Special Defense Unit erupts into cacophonous disbelief, the roaring clamoring masses sending a violent spike of pain up Eito's spine, making his eyes water. Still, he can't help but feel some measure of self-satisfaction at how poorly this has fallen to pieces. All his hard work has paid off, even with the mess that was the Commander pretending to be Moko.
Admittedly, when it turned to smile at him, melting face so similar to the monsters he's normally used to seeing that it was almost comforting, he nearly broke. It addressed him by name, called him out, and nobody even realized that it wasn't lying.
After all: he had helped it. Multiple times. He had explicitly gone out of his way to (subtly) assist it in information gathering and the like. In fact, it wouldn't have gotten anywhere had it not been for Eito. And it acknowledged that. Explicitly.
Not that any of those soft-hearted idiots noticed or cared. They were too upset about the death of their friend and the arduous battle they'd just been a part of to scrutinize the words of an admitted liar and fake for the crumbs of truth that lay beneath the myriad of falsehoods.
The prisoner escaping, however, is frankly a work of art. A difficult thing to engineer and a wondrous thing to see happen. Especially since he has such an easy and willing scapegoat lining up to place his head on the chopping block without any idea that he's the one who set the guillotine at the ready.
"What the fuck do you mean it's gone?!" Kurara's shrill shrieking does very little to help Eito's headache but this time he doesn't need to hide his flinch. Everyone else also quails beneath her verbal assault, the volume too much for a bunch of teenagers who had just woken up some time after midday. "Did what little slime you call a brain finally expire and drift out of your gaping asshole of a mouth sometime last night? You had one job and you cocked it up so colossally that you lost an entire prisoner?!"
"Oosuzuki—" Takumi starts but she doesn't let him have a word in edgewise.
"No. You don't get to 'Oosuzuki' me, Sumino." The vitriol she puts on his surname is acidic. Paint thinner poured on bare skin, it itches. "This fucking single-celled organism has, time and time again, expressed sympathy for the enemy and now it's fucking missing. I'm not gonna let him get away with any piteous whining or excuses because how the fuck could it have escaped if he hadn't let it out?"
(The lock parts beneath the bolt-cutters like a sandwich beneath a butter knife. The metal pinches, folds, and snaps, the whole thing clattering to the ground, muted by the dirt and grass. The prisoner looks at him with its wide, sad eyes and he just places its mask on the ground in front of the cage and backs away, finger pressed over his lips. Don't tell, he says with his eyes. Just take it and run.)
"Actually," Nozomi calls out from where she's standing—closer to the cage than most, away from the crowd—pointing at the remnants of the lock on the ground, "considering the state of the lock, I highly doubt Shouma had anything to do with this."
At the edge of his vision, Shouma stiffens, his piteous face twisting into a complex and terse expression. Ah. So he had helped it escape. Wonderful.
"That doesn't mean shit!" Kurara, however, is unmoved. Stubborn as always, she is laser-focused on blaming Shouma for the prisoner's escape.
It's Yugamu's agreement that actually surprises Eito. "He could have destroyed the lock after the fact to hide his involvement." Ah. Right. He was an assassin. Of course an assassin would think about how to dress a crime scene to disguise the truth. Something Eito is going to have to watch out for.
At least the twins aren't around. For all that she doesn't participate in conversation, Kako has proven herself to be a keen eye and sharp mind and her brother Ima is as canny as Eito himself—and just as distrustful. Actually...where are they?
"Even if he had cut the lock after the fact, who's to say the prisoner wouldn't just attack him and take him hostage to escape?" Gaku actually contributes something clever to the discussion. "It couldn't have gotten far without knowing anything and it definitely knows jack-all unless Ginzaki lied about telling it sensitive information."
"I would never—!"
"What, it puts a gun to his head and manages to communicate its wants and needs?" Kurara scoffs. "That's as likely as Kyoshika having a coherent thought. It's way more likely that smeghead here just let his little johnson do the thinking, unlocked its cage, walked it to the front door, slapped it on the ass farewell, and then covered his tracks because he's a chickenshit coward."
"Oosuzuki!" Oh. Now Tsubasa sounds mad. Interesting. "You don't have to personally attack Ginzaki like that."
"Besides, I'm not smart enough to—"
"You don't have to be some genius criminal mastermind to break a lock and walk a whole person out the front fucking door while everyone is sleeping, idiot."
"I actually think it might have been the Undying Flames Invader." The reserve corps blink at Takumi in confusion—Nozomi included before something seems to occur to her—as he offers his explanation. "I mean, think about it: the Invader always shows up before something awful happens. Sirei going missing, our food being destroyed, and now this."
"What the fuck are you babbling about Sumino?"
"Undying Flames Invader?" Unlike Kurara's derisive irritation, Yugamu sounds delighted that Takumi has once again pulled some nonsense out of nowhere. He squints in amusement, mouth a cut out slit of ravenous hunger as he tilts his thin body towards Takumi as if he wants to lunge at him and swallow him whole.
"There's this...boy made of Undying Flames that sometimes shows up?" Even as he explains himself, Takumi sounds unsure. Not a good look for their so-called 'leader', this timidity and uncertainty. "And I think that maybe it's an Invader of some sort or another."
"He's talked about it before," Tsubasa offers as an explanation to a very confused looking Kyoshika.
"And nobody's seen it but him." Gaku grumbles, effectively disarming Takumi's alternative culprit. "Prolly isn't even real."
"Even if it is real," Nozomi chimes in, "didn't it lead you to the Defense Room, allowing you to catch M— the Commander in the act? I doubt that if it helped then, that it would then turn around and sabotage other parts of the Academy."
"What, can weird hallucinations of boys on fire not be complex, three-dimensional beings capable of as much good as ill?" Everyone takes a moment to stare at Darumi, who had been notably missing up to this point. She stares back at them, wide magenta eyes unblinking accusations in their general direction. "Maybe it wants to cause problems but won't stand for outside forces acting on what it considers its prey?"
"Wasn't Mo— the fake seen in the Courtyard during its period of free reign?" Eito quickly pivots the conversation away from Darumi's absolutely baffling inanity, properly stumbling on talking about the Commander like Nozomi would.
That did the trick. Kurara turns her masked head to face Shouma again, the smaller boy wilting under her glare. "It was, wasn't it. I bet it asked you a lot about how the cages work as well as the prisoner, didn't it Ginzaki?"
Shouma actually tries to defend himself this time. "Sh— it did, yes. And - and I talked about things but that's because I thought that—"
"The key can't be duplicated, remember?" Nozomi swoops in to his rescue.
"And, even if it had tried to strong-arm Shouma, it certainly wouldn't have gotten anywhere. Commander or no, he is a veritable fortress. Taking the key by force would be a fool's errand at best and it didn't seem the type to know how to properly lift anything so securely squirreled away in his underpants."
At Yugamu's purring admission, Shouma flushes pale and then a rose pink, the soft color most present across his ears and cheeks where the sun has dusted his skin with earthy freckles, cherubic in design and artistic in imperfection. "H-how did—"
"Never underestimate my ability to get into crevasses and holes of any shape or size without notice." The double-entendre isn't lost on anyone. The whole of the Special Defense Unit's faces scrunch up in varying degrees of disgust, concern, consternation, or mild irritation. Darumi, the outlier, just snickers.
"So, what, we sit around here bickerin' while the prisoner gets farther n' farther away?" Takemaru chooses now to try and reign things in.
"We don't even know if it left the Academy grounds." Keep them busy. Buy it time to distance itself.
"Also, has anyone seen Kako or Ima?" As if he just gained spatial awareness and the ability to count heads, Takumi asks after the twins' wellbeing.
Kurara rolls her head, masked expression one of revulsion and frustration. "Fuck all this. I'm going to see if it's hiding in the school somewhere."
"Not a bad idea. I'll come with." Yugamu saunters off with her, gently wiggling his fingers at Shouma as he does so. Shouma shrinks down on himself, breaking line of sight to stare at the lock on the Courtyard floor.
"If we're splitting up so it's easier for us to get got, then why don't I go looking for our wayward babies?" Darumi snickers as she bends her back in a cracking arc. "That's a death flag if there ever was one. They're both so small and alone." Giggling to herself, she slips away.
Takemaru snorts and rubs at the back of his head. "Yeah, uh, I dunno' how good I'm gonna' be at tryin' to figure out what happened with the prisoner but I can go huntin' for it. I'll...uh...yeah..." And he's gone.
"If everyone is splitting up, I think someone should check out the Defense Room," Nozomi looks at the way out of the Courtyard, worrying at her sleeve.
"I'll come with you, Aotsuki." Tsubasa jumps to not be alone. Her wan pallor a dead giveaway as to her ulterior motive, nausea curling its fingers around her throat and applying its usual continuous pressure. "We can't all be by ourselves!" Her thin laugh belies her nerves.
"Omokage and Oosuzuki went together," Takumi points out as they leave, the door closing behind them. He slumps, shoulders caving under the weight of being the leader of this band of buffoons. "Right."
"Screw all this." Gaku sniffs, irritable. "If I get stabbed by the prisoner, I'm gonna haunt you. Mark my words!"
"Wouldn't the Revive-o-Matic just bring you back?" Eito asks, projecting a Nozomi-like guileless innocence to his tone.
Gaku bristles and inflates with frustration, face turning a brilliant flush. He sputters, "W-well— shut up!" Then he flees without a second thought, obviously incapable of anything more than a piteous lack of a retort.
Kyoshika, like Kurara, has intense words regarding the missing prisoner. "If I see the blackguard, I shall slice it in twain without a moment's thought." Her usually placid face twists and contorts, revealing the demon laying in wait beneath her skin. Fury, frustration, anger in an animalistic way. Truly her true colors. It almost brings a smile to Eito's lips.
He keeps them pressed tight in concern, eyes hooded with worry, brows furrowing to express his confusion. "Kyoshika—" He gives her space to leave with his words, starting her name too late to keep her here but selling the illusion of wanting her to stay.
Then it's just him, Takumi, and Shouma. Or, no, Shouma has already slipped away in the confusion, his small size and determination to sell himself as nothing making him impossible to track. Just Takumi and Eito remain in the Courtyard.
Eito casts his blurring gaze down at the lock on the ground, trying to see if his footprints remain in the lush grass and wet dirt or if the passage of time hid his involvement. The pathway is undisturbed. Even the prisoner managed to get away without so much as a single clue as to its whereabouts.
Has it truly escaped or did it get waylaid by one of the many wandering insects crawling about this hive of horrors and humanity?
"—ji? Kirifuji?!" He startles, turns to face Takumi, suddenly aware 'his' name is being called. Had he been so lost in thought that he had forgotten where he was? Who he was with? "Are you going to be okay? You look...tired."
(Nozomi's bed calls to him, a siren's song of comfort and concern but first— evidence. Washing until his skin is a lobster red, scrubbing himself raw to make sure the scent of his machinations don't linger longer than the overpowering stench of her gardenia and vanilla body products, lavender hair wispily curling around his face. His eyes look hollow, caving in his borrowed face as if he might collapse inward, an implosion that would take everyone out with him. Full of steam and exhaustion, his borrowed lungs hitch and struggle to fill with the proper amount of oxygen, nose running rivulets down the back of his choking throat. He coughs so hard he almost blacks out and curses Nozomi's pathetic weaknesses. Her lungs, her heart, her hemoanima, her limbs, her head, her eyes, every inch of her is pathetic and he's trapped.)
(Just like the prisoner had been.)
"Apparently allergies are a whole thing. I'm just a little congested and fuzzy. I already grabbed some antihistamines and cough suppressants but they're taking a bit to kick in and they make me drowsy." It's dismissive and a weak excuse.
Takumi doesn't notice how flimsy his answer is. Or, almost as likely, he doesn't care. So long as 'Nozomi' is okay—talking to him, not avoiding him—then he doesn't give a damn. "Oh...sorry about that."
"It's not like we knew what we were facing when we were conscripted." Truth. Weather, the sky, dying, it all was a horrid surprise. Just not...this aspect of his exhaustion. "And with the Tokyo Residential Complex as climate controlled as it is, people don't usually suffer from allergies quite this badly. Turns out that I'm one of the unlucky ones." He laughs, self-effacing and demure. Defensive. Deflective.
"Do you need anything?" For you to shut up and leave; chase a lead that goes nowhere and gets you nothing.
"No. Thank you, though."
"Then..." A look that Eito can only assume is bashful or shy crosses Takumi's face. Flushing gently, picking at a barely-healed scab on his cheek, he gives Eito a sheepish grin that indicates what he's about to ask of him is selfish and childish. Eito swallows his disgust and forces his borrowed face to express confusion and attentiveness. "...would you mind coming with me? While I go looking for the prisoner?"
"Feeling lonely?" Nozomi would tease him, wouldn't she? She has a bit of a mischievous streak, sharper than anyone expects, like the sting of a citrus fruit.
"What?!" His face turns the same shade as his hair, the dark speckles on the bridge of his nose and curve of his cheeks standing out in stark contrast to the genuine embarrassment Eito has managed to elicit in Takumi. His voice pitches and cracks as he tries to double back and clarify his intent. "N-no, uh, I mean, yeah, a little, but—"
"Then it's a good thing I don't want to be alone right now." Eito swallows his pride and gives Takumi his best approximation of a cheeky grin. "Shall we?" Takumi nods, squeaking slightly, and they head out.
Out of everyone at Last Defense Academy, Takumi is the most frustrating when it comes to how many times he's foiled Eito's plans. If he noticed how odd the Commander pretending to be Moko had been without ever once having met the real Moko, if he managed to survive being bludgeoned on the back of the head and left for dead for several days out in the ruins, if he managed to find Eito and later Sirei's remains, then he easily could find something that might point to Eito's own current sabotage of their mission and he can't have that.
So he'll swallow his pride and revulsion with one gulp. He'll choke down every last instinct that says to stab the boy the moment his back is turned and still his hand. All for a better laid trap, a more thorough lie.
All he has to do is throw him off the scent by using his affection and obsession with Nozomi to color his findings in whatever false hues Eito desires.
All he has to do is tolerate standing next to him for a little bit longer.
The two of them immediately run into Takemaru the second they step outside of the Courtyard. The larger boy is pacing a hole in the floor, craggy face screwed in a thoughtful scowl. Takumi stiffens at first glance, then relaxes. It seems like he hasn't quite unlearned his knee-jerk reaction to Takemaru's stern face and aggressive tone.
"Yakushiji!" Takumi flags him down and he stops his pacing, golden eyes locking on to them like they're his prey. "Got a second?"
"Got nothin' but time." The gripe feels more like a grumbling complaint but Takumi takes it like a firm punch across the teeth, flinching at how forcefully Takemaru talks. "What's up?"
"I just wanted to know if you had any clue or idea where or what the prisoner could have gotten to? Anything at all?"
Takemaru's face pinches harder. Eito can almost see the smoke belching from his ears as he overclocks his single braincell. "Not really? Sorry, man."
"No need to apologize." Takumi waves off his muttered apology with grace. "I think everyone is a little rattled right now."
"Mostly I'm worried about the twins. Like Amemiya said: they're missin' and we don't know where the prisoner went. Who knows what could've happened between last night n' now? What if it took one of 'em hostage or attacked 'em and ate their hemoanima or—"
"Wouldn't it still have to be on the school grounds if it did that?" Takumi points out, cutting off his stress-induced wind up to what obviously was going to be an aggressive explosion of anger and violence. "Sure, that's not ideal but—"
"Sumino, they're kids." The way Takemaru stresses the word—the odd desperation, like the Tsukumo twins being a few years younger than the rest of the Special Defense Unit makes their being in harm's way any worse than the rest—makes Eito's lip almost curl with the hypocrisy of it all. "Even if the prisoner didn't leave after doin' that, they still shouldn't—"
"Have you checked the Garage?" Takemaru stiffens at Eito's innocent question, eyes widening in glacial recognition and understanding. "That would be a good way to figure out if the prisoner has left or not."
"Shit, you're right! Thanks Kirifuji!" Without another thought, he tears down the hallway and turns the corner, heading for the first floor and the Garage. Eito presses his mouth closed so he doesn't accidentally smile.
That had been remarkably easy.
(He isn't as versed in mechanics as Tsubasa or Takemaru or Kurara might be but even he can easily make the bus a useless lump of metal and parts, leaving behind sloppy evidence of the sabotage. Brake line and tires torn up with a survival knife that he leaves tossed in a corner. Gasoline siphoned and disposed of down a drain, a glimmering pearlescent trail left behind to paint a picture for whatever idiot found it. Spark plugs removed and tossed into the compactor. The fire extinguishers on the bus punctured, foam coating the doors and floor, hardening into a brittle shell that speaks of violence.)
(All-in-all, the vehicle is completely worthless. The spark plugs won't be a difficult fix for someone of Tsubasa's caliber—loathe as he is to give any of the humans here any modicum of credit—especially if she ropes Kurara into helping her. There are spare tires all over the Garage so it's a stopgap at best. The brake line is dangerous, but something Tsubasa knows how to repair without much issue or effort. It's the fire extinguishers and the gasoline that will likely be the thing that causes the most grief but the compounding mass of problems will keep one or two of the Special Defense Unit busy for quite some time.)
(Making sure he doesn't reek of gasoline or motor oil when he goes to bed is the hardest part of the whole affair. His borrowed senses have been duller than usual as of late and, as such, he's never really sure how well he's managed to mask whatever scents he finds repulsive. He just hopes the overpowering scent of gardenia and vanilla is enough to cover his sins.)
"Speaking of the Garage..." Takumi muses, watching after where Takemaru went.
"Shouldn't we check upstairs before the ground floor?" Eito quickly redirects. Takumi blinks at him.
"Huh? Why?"
"Well we know Yakushiji just went down and it's a fair assumption one or more of the others are also downstairs. If they see the prisoner, it's not as though it can escape without alerting them or us by passing through the Wall of Fire. Upstairs also has the Defense Room. Maybe it went there? Like Aotsuki said?" Does he sound desperate? Is this a natural way to distract him? He can't really tell.
Regardless of his apprehension, Takumi buys it, nodding. "Fair point. Let's do a lap of this floor first though. See if Yakushiji missed anything."
"Sounds good to me!"
The second floor is mostly empty of any patrolling members of the Special Defense Unit. Like chickens with their heads cut off or an agitated ant farm, they scuttle about aimlessly and without any kind of direction, seeking comfort and reassurance in their daily vices. And, while some of them seem to move with purpose, it is unsurprising that very few linger on the same floor that they had been keeping their wayward prisoner.
If it escaped and hadn't quite fled, who's to say it wasn't lying in wait to take them hostage? So the cowards flee to their respective hovels and hidey-holes and poor, worn Takumi has to chase them down for their counsel.
Which is why it doesn't surprise Eito when they find Yugamu in the Bio Lab, the only other person remaining on the second floor.
"I thought you were with Oosuzuki?" Takumi looks at the spread of chemicals and other such fluids and powders on the table in front of their resident assassin, nose wrinkling in barely-contained discomfort. "What happened there?"
"Did Kurara storm off?" That's a question Nozomi would ask, isn't it? Simple, sweet, to ask after her friend. Not accusatory but not unkind either, a bland nothingness to her intent. "She looked pretty..."
"Steamed?" Yugamu snickers, blue eye an azure crescent beneath his spidery fringe. "Yeah, she gave me the third degree and stomped out, a real stewed tomato." Takumi stifles a laugh with a cough, poorly hiding it. Yugamu, meanwhile, continues on as if nothing had happened. "So while she cools off...wherever she is, I figured I'd look into something bothering me."
"Oh?" Eito steels himself and closes the distance between them, peering over his shoulder to look at whatever had his attention. The notes are scribbled Yugamu's spidery scrawl—almost illegible even if you did know the type of medical and chemical jargon he was likely using—and scattered all over the table as if he was looking for something instead of into something. Still... "Blood?" A small vial of crimson liquid capped with a dark rubber stopper rolls gently beneath his finger as he pokes at it, raising an eyebrow as he casts a look askance at Yugamu, who slyly grins back.
"Never let it be said that I'm not resourceful, hm?"
"When have we ever insinuated that?" Takumi's muttered retort elicits a tittering giggle from Yugamu. Eito, too, laughs to blend in, a snorting thing stifled with a fist and a gentle turn of the head.
"Takumi, you wound me." Yugamu purrs, closing the distance between the two and leaning against him. "Next time, use your sword."
Takumi, likely as fed up with Yugamu's lascivious intent, shoves him off of him and rolls his eyes. "I already said no."
"But what if I asked nicely?"
"Omokage."
Yugamu just smiles as he slinks back to the table. "To answer your unasked question: I have seen neither hide nor hair of the prisoner. Rest assured that you'll know if and when I spot it. Alright?"
"Thanks Omokage."
"Any time!" The way he waves them off, spindly fingers wiggling like a spider enticing prey, sends a shiver up Eito's spine but he stifles it. Instead, he waves back, a gentle farewell from one friend to another.
They turn the corner and head upwards to the third floor, second floor completely empty of anyone of note.
"Where do you suppose Oosuzuki went?" Takumi broaches the subject with the grace of a bull in a china shop, shattering decorum with blunt naivete. Eito smooths over a wince with a shrug.
"Outside? She and Omokage must have made a loop of the second floor and then parted ways when he pushed to go to the Bio Lab. She likely wanted to keep looking over the school campus with a fine-toothed comb and took offense to his...lackadaisical approach to such a serious moment. Kurara's...headstrong like that." Stubborn. Bitchy. Impossible. Headstrong is a kindness that Kurara doesn't deserve but it is one that Nozomi would give her.
Takumi glances out a window. There's nobody in immediate view; no sounds past the usual sinking and groaning of the rotting establishment bemoaning its pathetic and accursed existence and idiotic host. Silence—or as much silence as they ever get—broken by their outdoor shoes clattering and squeaking against the tile floor. "Hm."
As Takumi pushes open the Defense Room's hallway door, the sound of Nozomi's voice becomes clearer, her tone a pitch-perfect imitation of his own when he's trying to assuage the monsters he's surrounded by, thin and brittle. Forced.
Nobody but him would notice.
A smile plays on his lips.
"—more like the existence of such an Invader brings about its own issues."
"I know that," Tsubasa points out, her patience wearing thin, "but you didn't see it either, did you?"
"No," Nozomi admits, "but I'm also not willing to dismiss it wholecloth just because only one person has ever seen its existence."
"Any luck?" Takumi chooses—in a move so tactful that Eito wonders if he's somehow evolved somewhat as a base organism—to not address their topic of conversation, choosing to simply ask the same sort of thing they've wondered of everyone else thus far.
Tsubasa startles and hiccups, hand pressing against her lips. When she manages an answer, choking down her surprise, it's with a shake of her head. "Nothing. The Undying Flames here look undisturbed."
"It was a good idea," Eito notes, making prolonged eye-contact with Nozomi, "coming back here. If the prisoner and the fake Moko were colluding then it might have come to try and break in, same as the fake did." Takumi nods in assent, making a soft noise to show he agrees.
Nozomi's shoulders raise as she breaks line of sight to look anywhere else but at someone. "It was," she agrees, "but there's no indication that anyone has been up here since last night. No scorch marks, no visible attempts at forcing open the door, and no proof that the prisoner ever came up here."
Takumi deflates. "It was a good idea?" The rise at the end of his statement—his piteous inability to have opinions that aren't someone else's on full display—makes his echoing reassurance fall flat.
Tsubasa seems to think so, her face pinching in frustration. "Yeah, well, at least we checked. And didn't the fake Moko use a fire extinguisher to douse itself when it caught on fire? Who's to say that the prisoner didn't manage to make it past the Wall of Fire and out into the ruins?"
"We haven't checked the Entrance Hall to see if either of the extinguishers is missing yet but Yakushiji is checking out the Garage to see if the bus is missing."
She gasps. "Not Busco de Gama III!" Without another word, Tsubasa tears out of the room past Eito and Takumi and it's just them and Nozomi left in the awkward crackling silence of Undying Flames.
"I have never seen her haul ass like that before." Nozomi stifles an amused laugh at Takumi's blunt quote-unquote-joke, snorting into a gloved fist. And, as he turns his attention to her, she doesn't draw away as sharply as she did before. In fact, she barely flinches. "Uh...Aotsuki?"
"Hm?" She's meeting his eyes. Looking at him. Discontent curls wretched digits into Eito's guts, twisting and knotting up something within him that makes his mouth taste...bitter.
"I wanted to apologize again. For, uh, dying like that."
"Taking a death blow for me, you mean?" Right. In yesterday's battle Takumi had thrown himself into the way of one of the Commander's attacks and it had killed him.
Eito wonders what that had been like; to watch something that you hated with all of your very being take damage for you. Die for you. Nozomi was, while capable of great anger and viciousness—she yelled at him, face screwed in genuine fury, accurate in her assessment and yet unwilling to see the truth of things for the rose-tinted blindfold wrapped around her head—incredibly naïve. Childishly so.
Even if she doesn't like someone, she doesn't want them dead. Seeing them die hurts her. It's obvious every time someone falls in combat that she hates the concept of death, let alone the practice of it, and the way that their combat stylings have cheapened it to a tool for better damage output is likely harrowing.
"I already said why I did it!"
She's never died before, not really, so she's still terrified of death. She doesn't know how useful it really is.
So she naïvely hates death and foolishly blames herself when she can't stop it and piteously fights against entropy and exsanguination in equal measures, wearing herself to dust and bone.
Or she did. Now it's Eito's job to keep everyone topped up and her job to cull the enemy to thin slivers of deli meat.
"And I already told you why you won't be doing it again."
But Takumi had died for her? He had walked on the battlefield with them, fresh out of the Revive-o-Matic, but Eito had assumed he had just died doing something foolish. Not...
"I make no promises."
Well, sacrificing himself for 'Eito' of all people was foolish. Idiotic. It's not like it mattered. Nozomi wasn't in her own body. Death didn't have its sting. So why—
"Then perhaps if I were to do the same—"
The shy way she looks at him—looks at him!—is filled with admiration. She appreciates what he did and condemns it in the same way she condemns all of the violence of war.
"No!"
It makes his face look young and unguarded. Kind. Happy.
"Not so fun, is it?"
Eito grits his borrowed teeth and swallows this nameless lump in his throat.
"I don't think I ever thanked you two for holding back the Commander last night, did I?" If he sounds terse, so be it. His face might be less expressive but his voice carries tone well enough.
Takumi and Nozomi both look at him, eyebrows thrown up in surprise. In the end, Nozomi is the one who answers him. "You don't need to thank us. We should be thanking you. After all: you're the one who went and got everyone to help, weren't you?" She stares at him, eyes asking, Why? What had you awake that late? Surely it can't have been what you said.
He bares his teeth in an insincere smile. "It was the right thing to do. What else was I supposed to do when I woke up to hear fighting going on outside? Besides: I'm a light sleeper and, like I said, I hadn't eaten so I was already out of bed getting something into my system." A lie, of course, but neither of them could check him on it. The same lie he had sold them during the fight.
(The Commander is making its move. Eito can hear it opening its bedroom door and walking as quietly as it can manage in Moko's bulky form, footfalls gentle plodding instead of thundering strikes. He smiles as he listens to the sound of nightfall, imagining how wonderful it will be to finally watch the Last Defense Academy burn.)
(Moments later, Takumi's door slams open and he scrambles after something, shouting something that Eito can't quite make out from inside of Nozomi's room. Then, oddly enough, another door opens and closes, footsteps chasing after Takumi.)
(Who—?)
(Eito slips out of Nozomi's room and follows them as quietly as he can manage, arriving just in time to hear the Commander shrieking in agony. Then the sound of shattering glass and a heavy thud. A metallic pop and the sound of foam. Takumi and his unidentified partner's hurried footsteps as they run to the War Room to retrieve their Infusers.)
(It had failed to breach the Defense Room. Now that it was made, it was going to fight Takumi and whoever else was with him.)
(Not ideal but...he can work with this.)
(From the roof, clutching the railing to get a better vantage point, Eito finally manages to make out who it is that had been helping Takumi this whole time: Nozomi. Standing upright, scythe clenched in gloved hands, fighting against goopy imitation Invaders and a fake Moko that is melting into an indigo-black smear on the battlefield, tendrils whipping and writhing as glowing crimson eyeballs bubble to the surface of its decomposing skin.)
(Hm.)
(He gives them a few more minutes of combat while he weighs his options. On the one hand: if he lets them fight until they've exhausted themselves, the Shield Generator destroyed and the perimeter breached by a true and naked threat, then that's their fault. On the other: Darumi is prone to keeping odd hours, Yugamu is a rather nocturnal beast, and the twins oftentimes wander the halls when everyone else is asleep, so if anyone else sees them and knows he was awake but did nothing to help...)
(Better to sell the lie than get a momentary burst of satisfaction in seeing the whole Last Defense Academy fall. Besides, he never once promised the Commander any aid in its attempt past feeding it information. Plausible deniability and all.)
(He can't wait to see how much 'Moko's' lies will hurt them.)
"It still deserves to be said. As many times as it takes." Takumi agrees. "If it had been me and Aotsuki for the entire fight, we probably wouldn't be here. The Commander would have broken through our defenses and it would have been all over. So thanks, Kirifuji."
Eito just inclines his head. "Any time." A not-quite acceptance of the compliment and a not-quite hint of amusement in his voice.
A tense lull falls over the three of them, Nozomi shifting almost imperceptibly back and forth where she stands, the nervous movement a very un-Eito act of hers. He shoots her a dry look but her eyes are on Takumi.
Her eyes are on Takumi.
Not him.
What had happened that—
"Kirifuji and I are going to go check out the other floors. You're welcome to come along!" The hopeful lilt to his statement—not quite a request, not quite a command, something like the verbal equivalent of a hand extended in acceptance—strikes Eito across the face.
Nozomi musters a perfect smile and shakes her head. "Thank you for the offer but I think I'd like to look over the Defense Room and War Room a bit longer. Good luck in your search."
"Thanks."
With that, they circle once around the third floor, a yawning silence devouring the space between them. Takumi seems oblivious to the slight souring of Eito's mood—mostly by design—but even he picks up on the frost forming in their wake eventually as they move to check the Rec Room, pausing with his hand on the door.
"Are you okay?"
Eito blinks at him, evoking the guileless and pathetic way Nozomi often stares at everyone—disarming and watery, a small animal or sick child—his head throbbing with every bat of his eyelashes. "What do you mean?"
"You just were— you got very...weird when Aotsuki and I started talking about the fight last night. I just—" Hand still on the door, door still closed, Takumi wrinkles his nose and focuses the full force of his burning blue eyes on Eito. His skin prickles, sunburnt beneath his attention. "Worry."
Grabbing the first lie to bubble to the surface of his swamp-like thoughts, Eito just shakes his head—immediately regretting it as heavy dizziness makes the world rock like a shaken bottle. "It's less about the fight and more about..." Pause for effect. Gnaw on his lip. Cast his eyes down, looking through delicate lashes as if he doesn't want to make eye-contact. (He doesn't.) Sell the bridge and real-estate in one breath. "Moko is dead."
The way Takumi exhales says more than any words could. A sharp release, like a corked champagne, pop and hiss. "...I'm sorry."
"It's not like you killed her personally!" But imagine if he had? If Eito could make it look like Takumi knew about the second campus but chose to leave them alone intentionally, a scapegoat for their everyday normality? How delicious would that be? "I just...hadn't had much time to process it and everything—"
Takumi eats the way he chokes up like a starving animal handed rotting scraps. Cutting off his words with false horror and grief, Eito plays with his braid and doesn't look up from the floor.
And that's all it takes. He pushes the door to the Rec Room open without another word.
On the other side, Gaku is very obviously not looking for the prisoner. In fact, he's so obvious about it that he jumps in surprise and shrieks like a stuck pig. "Sumino! Kirifuji!"
"Maruko." Takumi's voice—once gentle and soft for poor, distraught 'Nozomi'—is low and stern for their layabout companion. "Having fun?"
"Like it matters what I do!" He throws his arms up, huffing like it's their fault he's incapable of doing anything of value. "Between the backup squad on the warpath, Kawana and Yakushiji combing the mechanical aspects of every damn thing, and you two doing a full run of this place, what use am I? Might as well at least try and entertain myself while everyone else is running around with their heads missing looking for someone who's probably long gone."
"You think it escaped fully?" Eito prods. Gaku can be insightful in places but oftentimes his nature leads him to jump to hasty conclusions. If Eito did his job properly, then he likely thinks that Shouma is the culprit and it's better if Takumi is infected with that thought earlier than later.
As easily as herding sheep, Gaku snorts and rolls his eyes, giving Eito exactly what he wants. "Well duh? I mean, Ginzaki obviously sprung it out late last night. Only a fucking moron would still be here and I don't think any of the Commanders are morons."
"How...astute." If his reply is too dry, too unkind, nobody comments. Gaku is too busy complaining to deflect blame from his lazy inaction and Takumi is too busy laser focusing on what Gaku just said.
"Last night?"
"What other time would it have had a chance to escape?" Gaku looks at Takumi like he's an idiot. "We had this huge blowout argument about killing it after the fight and you know how much Ginzaki had a thing for it. So we all head off to bed, exhausted as hell, and he goes to let it out while everyone's out like a light. Perfect crime." Before Takumi can reply, an obvious argument forming based on the way his brow creases and his mouth opens, Gaku barrels on with one more piece of evidence. "Plus literally nobody was awake before midday. That's hours of time for it to put distance between us and itself. Perfect crime." The repetition of the thought does nothing for the mood, only making Takumi grimace as if Gaku had just called him an idiot. Which was, unintentional or not, the insinuation.
"You sound like you have it all figured out." Takumi settles on saying. He doesn't sound convinced but he doesn't sound unconvinced. A tenuous middle ground, a tightrope that Eito might have to push him off.
"If I was gonna do a treason or whatever, that's how I'd do it."
"I think that's the first time I've ever heard you say anything clever." Gaku squawks at Takumi's sharp comment.
Eito decides to intervene before this drags on too long. "Have you had any luck finding anything while 'searching', Maruko?"
His ruby eyes flick to Eito, nose wrinkling as if he's trying to start a fire with his two braincells. Eito can practically see the smoke. "I mean, no? Why would it go up? And Aotsuki and Kawana both had the Defense Room covered, plus we would have heard if it used the launching system in the War Room, right? So I gave up."
"Paragon of laborers everywhere," Takumi dryly remarks. Gaku just sniffs.
"I'm paid commission per head removed, not for hunting down one missing Commander that we should've offed forever ago. Don't blame me just coz the loud majority said it was too banging to suck dry."
Could you be any more crude? "Thank you. We'll leave you be, right Sumino?" Eito turns his gaze to Takumi, trying to imply that he wants to leave and not talk to Gaku any longer than necessary.
Takumi just sighs and turns to leave. "Keep an eye out for the twins, okay?"
"Wasn't Amemiya looking for them?"
"The more eyes the better." And, as a sly afterthought and parting shot, "And you are their favorite punching bag."
"Gee, thanks Sumino. 'Preciate the kind words, bro."
"Any time!" With a wave of his hand, they both leave the Rec Room and turn the corner towards the stairs. Takumi deflates, sighing heavily. "Fucking Maruko..."
"He isn't wrong?" Diplomacy feels like pulling teeth but it isn't without its merits. Gaku's insinuation that Shouma is the culprit—an insinuation that has already been spoken into existence and taken root in the field of everyone's minds—does further his goals. Using his nature to water that concept is best. "Late last night or early this morning is the only time that the prisoner could have escaped and, for all that I don't want to think ill of Ginzaki, it isn't difficult to connect the dots and realize he's the most likely suspect."
"It just feels too...clean." Their footsteps echo up and down the stairwell, a cavernous call of the void. Every step sends a wave of pressure throbbing into Eito's skull. "Y'know?"
He does. "No?" It's an unintentional side-effect of when and how he was staging the prison break. "What do you mean?"
"Ginzaki is a good guy." Hardly praise from Takumi, who sees the best in everyone, even people like Gaku and Ima. "And he didn't like us having a prisoner but he also wouldn't set it free because it would endanger everyone. He would probably rather hold the line so nobody could kill it instead of causing a scene like this. And the panic on his face when he came to tell us felt too...real."
Of course it felt real. He hadn't known it had escaped but he had planned, in part, to let it go. But that's neither here nor there.
"He could be a better actor than we know?"
That thought bounces clean off of Takumi, clattering to the stairs below. "I...don't think so."
Eito chooses to concede then and there, unwilling to force the issue. He presses open the door to the roof and blinks away pain as his eyes adjust to the sudden bright light of the midday sun. Then they both step out of the doorway and stand beneath the vast, blue sky.
A cool breeze brushes against their skin, stealing away heat that Eito hadn't realized was there. He breathes—in and out—and appreciates nature for a brief moment. It never gets old, never gets any less awe-inspiring.
He thinks about what the world looked like before World Death - before humanity ravaged it and stripped it of everything that made it beautiful. He wonders what a world without humans will look like. He imagines city ruins overgrown by nature taking over the things left behind by the monsters that assumed they had control.
A flash of teal flickers between two of the prefab housing units, catching Takumi's attention. "Amemiya?!" He takes off and, moment of peace interrupted, Eito follows at a soft jog, borrowed lungs protesting at the sudden exertion, head throbbing with every footfall.
Darumi is standing between Kako and Ima's rooms, painted face pointed up at the rooves of the prefabs, nose wrinkling as if she's contemplating taking a can opener and peeling them open to see if either twin is home. When Takumi calls her name again, she spins around on her toes and grins at them, all teeth and mirth. "Takkers! Nozie!"
The nickname washes over Takumi but Eito reels. What? His confusion is ignored as Takumi replies, "Any luck?"
Darumi crosses her arms over her chest and makes a buzzer sound with her mouth. "Nope! Was hoping they were still napping off last night's rumpus but no dice. Been banging on Kako's door for ever and neither her nor siscon supreme has come out to tell me to fuck off so I think they're probably dead or being held hostage or something."
"Amemiya." Takumi's exasperation is understandable. Even on better days—days where everyone has slept properly and eaten and aren't scrambling to find a missing prisoner of war—her inane babbling is headache-inducing and nonsensical and her lack of care is almost always infuriating. "C'mon now."
"What?" She blinks huge, magenta eyes at him as if she's done nothing wrong. "I'm right, aren't I?"
"You don't have to put that into the world!"
"Kotodama?" Darumi snickers. "If I could speak things into existence, I would've died a long time ago. Don't you worry 'bout that!" She idly rubs at her bandaged wrists beneath her sleeves. "Truth bullets aside: you two love birds make any headway to finding our missing milf?"
"Milf?" Takumi mutters under his breath.
Eito chooses to actually answer her, ignoring the 'love bird' insinuation that makes his stomach writhe. "It's not on the second or third floors but we were planning on going to the ground floor after we checked up with you. Plus the roof has a good view of the Wall of Fire and some of the surrounding area so it wasn't a bad idea to try and get a bird's-eye look at things."
"Ohh!" Darumi nods, her waterfall of hair waving like ribbons in the wind. "Yeah, I get that. Great spot for looking down on everyone and everything."
"You didn't see them on the campus either, did you? You should be able to see from up here."
"Gonna level with you, Takkers: I did not think about that." Darumi cackles, the most insincere sound to ever come out of her metal-studded mouth, and squints at Takumi with bitter amusement. "No thoughts, head empty. You're welcome to give it a scan though! Mi techo es tu techo. And, if you jump, I'll follow soon after 'coz you're just so cool!"
The three of them do a quick lap of the perimeter, scanning for any sign of either of the Tsukumos or the prisoner. Eventually—paradoxically both sooner and later than Eito would like—Takumi calls for them to cease their futile search. He looks not discontent but somewhat ruffled and put-off, a pinching about his mouth that indicates a type of impatience that Eito has never seen him express before. Worry, yes, but not raw irritation in the vein of the impatient terseness that settles about his shoulders like a shroud.
Darumi, meanwhile, wears her smile like she wears her makeup: a mask of clownish disinterest and distance. Eito can see the weeping wound of her heart and notes the pain lurking just beneath the barest bandages for later. Her mental health has always been in question—manic pixie dream girl she is not, save for the 'manic' aspect—but a few moments face-to-face with the way everyone else sees her and it becomes almost comically obvious how much practice it takes to smile that wide.
(Mommy and daddy bare their fangs in gentle grimaces and say that this is for his own good so he pretends that he isn't scared. The leering-smiling-snarling-starving monsters called doctors and nurses loom over his bed and their needle-fingers and scalpel teeth and suture hair brush against his skin and he screams and screams and screams—)
(It does him no good to show fear and disgust. They just wrap him up in straightjackets and tie him down and sedate him, shove him into MRIs and take scans and cuts and samples and tests, wondering at the medical marvel that is his so-called 'broken' recognition of Other. So he crafts a mask with bloody fingers and shaking hands and sobbing voice—grinning Thalia lacing socks up his ankle to protect his feet from the bloody glass that pulls seafoam from his veins—and becomes a placid, kind, and loveable child. Perfectly sane. 'Fixed'. Happy. Weak, yes, but not ill in the same way anymore.)
(Before they release him, he plants a few timed explosive charges along the boiler of the hospital that had kept him in its 'care' for so long and delights in the satisfaction of ridding the world of a den of beasts as the whole thing goes up in flames. Beneath his gentle and genteel façade, he bares his teeth at the monsters who tormented him like an ape, a warning. It's the humans who are wrong.)
(His mask never slips if he can help it and yet Nozomi—)
A dancing clown, sure, but truly a tragic one. Pagliacci performing in front of a mirror for an audience of none.
"Keep an eye out please." Since Takumi is too lost in his own thoughts to delegate, Eito steps in to voice their obligatory request.
Does Darumi recognize something kindred in him? Is it something akin to the warping allure of a funhouse mirror that catches her gaze? Regardless, she does eventually answer him with a wink and a grin that doesn't go deeper than the painted-on teeth that force an asymmetrical rictus grin for her intended audience. "Okie-dokie! You'll be the first to know the second the Darumi Security System sees so much as a hint of shady shit from my perch up here on the ramparts!"
"Just...don't notify us by taking a swan dive off the roof?" Takumi's exasperated addition—the first thing he's said in many moments, the concept more than enough to pull him from his labyrinthine thoughts—is somewhat fond.
The pout she gives is comically overexaggerated and hardly sincere. "Boo! No fun! What better warning is there that shit's fucked than watching someone's body pass you by on its one-way trip to the ground? Bo-ring!"
"Revive-o-Matic or not, I don't want to see you hurt yourself." His sincerity is suffocating.
Darumi seems to feel the same way, her face screwing up as she gags. "Ew. Sappy. Gross."
"Amemiya."
"Fine! Fine...I'll yell using my human mouth and maybe the PA system and won't do some untethered bungee jumping." She crosses her arms and huffs. "Killjoy."
"Thank you."
The stairwell carries sound well. Even before they manage to make their way to the ground floor, both Takumi and Eito—whose head feels stuffed with cotton—can hear Kyoshika chattering with her sword about something that has her in a tizzy. "—would slice it in twain the moment I see it, yes, but should we not exercise some measure of restraint? No? I mean, yes, 'tis a foul Invader and all Invaders are the enemy but Shouma-dono did express some measure of affection for it and who are we to—" A pause, as though her sword has cut off her thought with some comment of its own, then a scandalized gasp. "Holy Jumonji Sword! How dare you even insinuate—!"
She's standing in the hallway by the Gym, holding her sword up as she speaks to it. Takumi, nonplussed by this scene, just tilts his head. "Hey Magadori. See anything?"
Kyoshika startles, silvery eyes wide with surprise, her mouth forming a perfect O. "Ah! Takumi-dono, Nozomi-dono! Despite our patrol, I have yet to see hide nor hair of the vile reprobate. Any news from the other floors?"
Takumi shakes his head. "Nah. Not even the Defense Room and, while Amemiya is keeping watch on the roof, we didn't see anyone outside from up there. Yakushiji and Kawana both said they were going to check out the Garage though; have they come by?"
Kyoshika nods firmly, one stern shake of her head. Her ponytail carries the motion, a cascading wave of rich jet that brushes against her gaudy cape as though it was dusting it off. "Takemaru-dono and Tsubasa-dono both came tearing down the hallway as though pursued by curses, faces pale and drawn. I haven't seen them since but if the prisoner had been in the Garage—" it wasn't "—I would be the first to hear their call to action."
"And you haven't seen anything?" Eito presses.
"Not so much as a single clue to its egress or hiding place." Kyoshika frowns, guileless face twisting and baking itself into stern fired fury, protective and idiotic. A blade with a blind master, monster among monsters.
Something about her directionless devotion makes his jaw ache.
"Well keep doing what you're doing," Takumi dismisses, "and try to not get over-eager, okay? If you see something, find someone and raise the alarm."
"But my Specialist Skill—"
"Doesn't make you better than a Commander in a one-on-one fight where you don't have your Infuser and it can transform."
She blinks, reeling. Then she turns her wide eyes to Eito, silt and clay grey searching for answers in her friend's face. Eito pulls and twists his borrowed facial muscles into something he hopes resembles gentle love and affection, fog of war coating his skull and obfuscating his ability to accurately assess if he's managed to accurately portray the lie he wants to sell her. "Please don't make me mourn another friend." Don't be another Moko, he meant to say, but it comes out jagged. He tamps down on the desire to flinch and try to apologize for his faux pas, laying in the bed he's made.
The parts of him that want to perfectly play Nozomi are swaddled in heavy clouds, thick and syrupy, impossible to swim through. Her stupid body is fighting him, her stupid brain clenching a fist around his thoughts and refusing him any exit from between crushing fingers.
Kyoshika looks as if Eito struck her, panic and hurt settling in place alongside a kind of understanding, as if his cruel statement had enlightened her to 'Nozomi's' thoughts on the matter. She nods, firm, and places a hand on the hilt of her sword. "Of course. I won't make you worry. I'll be safe."
"Thanks Kyoshika," the words spill from his lips like river glass, tumbled edges worn smooth and inoffensive. "Sorry."
"No need to apologize! I forgot myself and needed your help to remember the dangers we face. You and Takumi-dono both reminded me of that fact and I'm grateful that you care so much."
She's so naïve it hurts. It hurts.
Before anyone else can say another word, she turns on the ball of her foot and dashes down the hallway, arms held behind her at an odd angle. Takumi watches her go with a weird twist to his lips, eyes squinting. "Is she...Naruto running?"
Eito stares at him, brows pinching. "Yes?"
He just snorts and shakes his head, fond and amused. "Of course...shall we?" He gestures down the hallway after Kyoshika. Eito nods and they continue their futile work.
The Cafeteria is empty, of course, as are the bathrooms, but they do find Shouma staring out the window of the first floor classroom that Eito had 'confronted' the fake Moko in. How...interesting.
He flinches at the sound of the door opening, turning his wide, wet eyes to them as they enter. "O-oh. Sumino. Kirifuji."
Did he do anything with the prisoner? Did he help it? Did he snap and actually take my 'advice'? Eito fights against his strange exhaustion to try and read Shouma's expression as anything but fear and guilt. Nothing. It comes up like an error message, thoughts curling question marks and apologies.
He clenches his fist so hard color leeches from his knuckles and tries to keep his face blank.
"What'cha doing?" Takumi manages to sound surprisingly calm and laid back for someone who has found the person suspected of a prison break idling in a classroom doing nothing.
"Oh, uh, I'm...this classroom has a good view of - of outside." Shouma tilts his head at the window. "I was trying to see if she - if the prisoner was out there or not."
"Darumi is on the roof and she hasn't seen anything," Takumi points out.
Shouma deflates. "Oh..."
Something shifts in Takumi's shoulders, his expression wrenching slightly. "But good on you for trying?" Is he trying to convince himself?
"...thanks..."
The way that silent eats away at any momentum they had is agonizing. It's a slime, a viscous thing that oozes and taints anything it touches, leaving behind this residue that makes all of them unlikely to touch anything it's come in contact with. Toxic and hated—like Shouma says he is—soon the room is permeated with the essence of awkward frustration.
Eventually Eito breaks it. "Did you see anything, Ginzaki?"
Shouma squeaks, startling so hard that it surprises Takumi in turn. "Huh?"
"You were keeping an eye out for the prisoner, weren't you?" Does he recognize the double meaning of what he's asking? Can he recognize the intent behind the word 'for'? "Did you see anything? Even if you think it's nothing of value, it might be helpful."
Shouma pauses to deliberate. Maybe he's pretending to think. Maybe it's genuine. Either way, he takes his time, slow as a turtle as he turns his small head this way and that, humming in quiet contemplation. Then he speaks up.
"Last night, before everyone went to bed, I saw Kako and Ima huddled together on the roof, by the stairs. I don't know what they were talking about—not that it's any of my business or anything, being a pile of filth and all—but maybe that...?" What a tantalizing bit of bait.
Eito gleefully adds dangling lures and jingling keys to the fishing hook. "Do you think they might have planned to release the prisoner to consume it themselves? Ima did agree with Kurara regarding killing it and you know how protective he can be."
"He's been trying!" Takumi protests.
"But if given the chance, wouldn't he be the type of person to take the opportunity to make his sister stronger? Not himself, of course, but still..." He trails off, gentle, non-accusatory, nothing anyone could pin but...
Plausible deniability.
"We'll just have to ask them when we find them." Not if. Hopeful, are we? "Anyway...thanks for the chat, Ginzaki. Keep keeping an eye out, okay? And if you see something, Magadori is pacing a trough in the hallway so just shout as loud as you can and she'll come running."
The way Shouma's eyes widen—the whites of his eyes making it even easier to draw dog comparisons with how it makes him look frightened beyond belief and ready to snap at whatever comes closest to him—seems to slip Takumi's notice entirely. Not Eito's. He's been watching Shouma the whole time, carefully observing him for any indication of guilt.
The wretched thing is steeped in it and yet Takumi remains as blind as ever. Truly an idiot king.
"And I don't think we ever thanked you for taking care of the prisoner like you did." It's like filtering silt and sludge through his teeth. Disgusting. Wretched. Necessary. "Not everyone was comfortable with keeping a prisoner in the first place, as you well know, and the fact that you were so caring means that, for all that it was a prisoner, it wasn't mistreated. You did a noble thing, Ginzaki."
His wide eyes meet Eito's. He can see the glimmering of tears beyond just his normal dewy shimmer, twinkling indicators that Eito has prodded a sore spot with little-to-no care for his feelings on the matter. Good. Be guilty. Feel shame. Let it eat away at your insides. That way, when I need to throw you to the wolves, they'll get food poisoning from all the shit I feed them and you won't struggle or protest.
"...I don't deserve such kindness..."
"Nonsense," the dismissal tastes sweet as ambrosia, "of course you do." After all, you've done so much to help me. Why wouldn't I thank you?
He worries at the hem of his shirt, wrenching it into a bunch and then unclenching, fixing his gaze at a spot on the floor and saying nothing else. Cute.
Takumi chooses to leave at this point, holding the door open for Eito, who ducks his head in silent thanks. As they put distance between them and the classroom, Eito chooses to speak up again, prodding at a block in the tenuous tower that must be wobbling within Takumi's mind. "Do you think Ginzaki did it now?"
Takumi's expression is unreadable but the way his shoulders square up and his breath hitches is indication enough, even as he chooses to lie. "My answer hasn't changed."
"Oh?"
"I trust Ginzaki—and not just because I've spent a lot of time with him either. He's a good guy, if a little...passive, and I don't think he would ever do anything that would put the rest of us in danger." His reasoning is...naïve at best. Optimistic? Foolish, regardless. Like he's trying to convince himself. "Sure, he had a soft spot for the prisoner, but I don't think he's capable of betrayal like that. I want to believe none of my friends are."
"Friends? Are you that close with everyone, Sumino?" He affects a teasing lilt to his tone, trying to overpower the derision he wants to apply at Takumi's insinuation that he's friends with Eito. "Didn't we just establish that you and I are mere comrades right now?"
Crimson flashes across his ears and cheeks as he turns his head away from Eito. "I mean— that is...I—"
"I'm teasing." If the conversation doesn't progress then what purpose is there in having it? Stalling out on petty potshots hardly does anyone any good. "Your faith in others is...admirable." The unspoken clause hangs in the air like a brick.
"But?" He speaks it into being with little care, like always.
Eito steels himself and turns to make eye-contact with Takumi. Nozomi's violet eyes meeting his sapphire ones, unyielding and unbroken. Firm. "Everyone is capable of betrayal, even so-called 'good people', and especially your friends."
"Speaking from experience?" Takumi probes.
(Eito nuzzles into mommy's side. Her rumbling purrs are soothing as always. She cards her long claws through his hair, humming some tune that he can barely remember. He falls asleep within minutes, snuggled up against one of the only monsters in the world that wouldn't ever hurt him.)
(He wakes up in a hospital, mommy looking at him like he's a bug. Daddy too; his snout pulling back in disgust as he turns some of his reptilian eyes to watch Eito. They're talking with other monsters, scary monsters. Eito begins to cry and call out for them.)
(Mommy kneels down and says that he's sick, that the monsters here are going to help him get better. That she loves him so so much and that he has to be brave for her, okay? He nods and promises and does as he's told because his mommy and daddy are scarier than anything in this hospital, than any monster ever. They can protect him from the other monsters. And they said they love him, so he can be good if they ask.)
(They don't come back. They never truly loved him. It's a horrible lesson, but one he had to learn young. Otherwise, how else could he have understood his purpose? So, in a way, he should thank them.)
(Their deaths are personal and cooked with love. Rat poison in their food and antifreeze in their coffee. Nobody bothers to blame their bereaved son. His tears are those of joy.)
"You could say that." He won't elaborate and Takumi won't press. He has at least that much tact.
The Garage is a mess; more than when Eito left it this morning. Tsubasa and Takemaru have torn the place apart and are furiously looking at the undercarriage of the bus to try and fix some of the damage Eito did to it.
"What—?!"
Before Takumi can get the rest of the thought out, Tsubasa slides herself from under the bus and shoots upright, face splattered with motor oil and grease. "Sumino! Look at what they did to my poor baby!"
Takumi squints, trying to understand what the issue is and only manages to see one thing. "The fire extinguishers are ruptured!"
"That ain't all!" Takemaru adds, brandishing a spanner at him. "Damn thing cut the brake line, siphoned the gas, and slashed the tires. Prolly to keep us from followin' it."
"Huh?" Even Takumi, whose knowledge of vehicles has to be average at best, recognizes how bad that is. "Can you fix it?"
Tsubasa's filthy face twists and pinches. "Of course I can!"
"An' I'm helpin'!"
"But some of this is...a little beyond my understanding and we don't have all the materials we need." The kicker.
"What all's missing?"
"The tires and the brake line are the easy part. Plus, while the prisoner tore out a couple spark plugs, that's an easy fix too. The big issue is the gas and the fire extinguishers." She looks at the mess of foam and metal, sweat painting streaks across her jaw and down her throat. "Doesn't look like it did anything to the tank or fuel line, just siphoned the gas clean out and dumped it down the drain. It's just that...we don't have any additional gasoline, so someone would have to go scavenge up a tank's worth and then some."
Takemaru stares daggers at the drain in the floor. Eito manages to keep his expression perfectly still, worried and confused. Looks like the evidence he planted did the job.
"And the fire extinguishers?" Takumi doesn't waste a second, which Tsubasa seems to appreciate.
"That's...the really hard part. They're kinda weird and the stuff that puts out the Undying Flames isn't anything I've seen before, so it'll probably take me a couple of days and that's even assuming I have help."
"Unfortunately, I ain't the right type of person for that kinda' work." Takemaru admits.
"Maybe you could ask Kurara or Omokage?" Eito offers. "Omokage works mostly with biology but he could help if it came to chemical composition, and Kurara is gifted in mechanics and bomb-making so maybe there's an overlap?" Keep them busy. Away from other parts of the school, so Eito can do whatever he wants without two-thirds of the reserve corps scrutinizing his every action.
"That's a great idea." Tsubasa sounds genuinely relieved. Despite how agitated she seems, somehow the anger has kept her nausea at bay, because she hasn't heaved once this conversation. Also it might have something to do with the possibility of splattering her own face with vomit while looking at the underside of the bus. "I'll ask when the manhunt is over."
"Speaking of—"
"Nuthin'." Takemaru doesn't even let Takumi finish. "Aside from the sabotage—which could've been the fake Moko and not just the prisoner—doesn't look like anythin' else happened in here."
"Which is weird but maybe the prisoner or the Commander just wanted to keep us from pursuing them?" An astute guess from Tsubasa. Exactly what he wants them to assume.
"Maybe?" Eito hums in fake thought. "But why go to such lengths to destroy so much of the bus? Are they worried that we could find something with the bus that we couldn't on foot, or..."
Takumi snaps the laced meat like a good little dog. "The fire extinguishers!"
"What?" But he doesn't answer Takemaru, tearing out of the Garage like a man possessed.
Eito gives Takemaru and Tsubasa a thin, apologetic smile. "Sorry. Thanks for the info. Good luck!" Then he follows Takumi's path to the Entrance Hall, barely quashing his grin at the look of abject horror on his face.
The sole remaining fire extinguisher is busted open, foam coating the charging port and floor with a crusty residue as it spills out of a jagged puncture mark in the canister.
"Goddammit!" Eito's eyebrows shoot up in surprise. In as long as they've known each other, Takumi has never really swore with such vitriol. Sure, he's told people to 'shut the fuck up' or 'piss off' or called any number of the Special Defense Unit 'shits' or 'fuckers' with some measure of fondness, but he's never really gotten so mad he looked fit to throttle whoever was responsible. Not even when the food was destroyed and everyone was pointing fingers at Gaku, despite the wage slave's insistence he practiced safe grill usage because otherwise he would have lost one of his myriad jobs.
So to hear him so genuinely unhinged and furious is...
"We missed it by a hair." Takumi turns to look at him, eyes narrowed in confusion so Eito explains. "The foam is still here instead of fully dissolved. That means that it hasn't been that long since it broke the extinguisher and escaped."
"It fucked up the bus and then the remaining way out so we couldn't follow!" He bares his teeth at the busted extinguisher, fury casting him in brilliant crimson flames. "And we just missed it?!"
Eito makes a sympathetic noise, "You can't beat yourself up about this, Sumino. The battle last night took a lot out of everyone and you did die."
"But I'm the one who said we should put a pin in dealing with the prisoner. If I hadn't—"
"We can play the blame game all day but it won't find the prisoner any faster." Wallow later, when other people can point fingers at you. "Maybe we should regroup?"
"Regroup and what?" Both of them turn to see who's speaking to them and both of them are surprised to see Ima and Kako stepping in from outside. Ima squints derisively and repeats himself, "Regroup and what, Sumino-senpai?"
"Where the hell have you two been?!" As harsh as his tone is, the relief he feels is as audible as his frustration. "We've been looking everywhere for you!"
"Sorry?" Ima doesn't sound very sorry.
Kako elbows him in the ribs and bows to Takumi in apology. "Sorry, Takumi-senpai. Br— Ima and I wanted to camp last so we slept outside. We didn't mean to worry anyone, did we?" Her sharp question is accompanied by another jab to Ima's ribs.
He yelps, then sighs through his nose. Bowing like his sister, Ima agrees, "Not in the slightest. We just missed sleeping outdoors is all."
"Do you have any idea—"
"They probably don't." Eito cuts him off. "So why don't we fill them in? Maybe they saw something?"
"Oh?" Hunger glitters in the twins' pink eyes, Ima's mouth curling into a sickle blade grin. "Something happened then?"
Takumi collects his thoughts and takes a breath. "Last night—"
"Or this morning!"
"—or this morning," he grimaces at Eito, who pretends as though he was only helping instead of keying him up, "the prisoner was let free. Everyone's looking for it but, between the cut lock on the cage, the bus being really broken, and the missing and busted fire extinguisher, we have no clue when or how it got out or how far away it is."
Kako shares some kind of loaded glance at her brother then wanders off to look at the broken fire extinguisher, prodding at the punctured part with an inquisitive and bare hand. If she isn't careful, she might cut herself and Ima would likely lose his cool. Wouldn't that be something?
Meanwhile, Ima fixes Takumi and Eito both with a flattened frown, half-lidded eyes watching intently from beneath thick lashes. "Obviously Ginzaki-senpai did it."
"I don't know about that..."
"Really?" He sneers. "The timid thing has done nothing but humanize and champion the prisoner since the moment we saw its face and you think he's blameless in all this?"
Eito steps in to play devil's advocate. "The lock on the cage was cut though. Considering Ginzaki had the key, wouldn't it make zero sense for him to cut the cage open?"
"Covering his tracks?" Behind them, Kako continues to investigate the fire extinguisher, sharp eyes combing over every little detail. Why couldn't either of them have been taken hostage or killed as the prisoner escaped? They fancy themselves detectives and a determined and delusional idiot with some modicum of intelligence is worse than the rest of them stumbling about being led by the nose. "That's what I would do."
"Omokage said the same thing." Takumi admits.
"And Omokage-senpai is a professional killer, isn't he?" The smug way Ima speaks makes it difficult for Eito to not lash out but he's got years of practice biting his tongue and biding his time. This little brat will get what's coming to it soon enough. "I rest my case."
"Regardless of personal thoughts on the matter," Takumi pivots, steel in his voice cutting against both Ima and Eito with his refusal to entertain this line of thinking any longer, "we should let the others know you're okay and maybe regroup to exchange information and figure out the way forward."
"And let the prisoner get even further away?"
That actually manages to upset Takumi. He fixes Ima with a stern glare, shoulders stiff as he admonishes him. "How would we chase it? The only fire extinguisher that isn't broken is the one the prisoner took with it when it escaped. We physically cannot leave. So unless you know some secret passage in the school that nobody else has discovered that will deposit you outside the Wall of Fire, we are shit out of luck for now. We can do nothing but wait."
His scolding catches Kako's attention, her wide, downturned eyes fixed on Takumi as he shouts at her brother. She doesn't come to his defense, but she doesn't speak up on Takumi's behalf either. She just watches. Absorbs her surroundings like a sponge.
Her attentiveness makes her dangerous. More than anyone else in this school save Yugamu. Maybe Eito should pivot his attention from Takumi and the Special Defense Unit writ large and instead focus on eliminating the dangerous elements first. Then he can herd the rest of the cats into a box and close the lid on them without so much as an afterthought.
Ima doesn't fight back, aware he's beaten and at least putting on a good show of humility. "Fine," he sighs, waving a hand dismissively about, "let's gather up the masses and debrief I suppose."
"And apologize to everyone for worrying them." Kako asserts, firm.
"And that too."
The four of them make their way to the War Room and Takumi pages the whole school to gather at their location. Eventually, Takemaru and Tsubasa the last to filter in, everyone arrives and Takumi begins to debrief them on what they'd learned about the fire extinguishers. One by one, everyone else chimes in with whatever information they'd gleaned from their investigations—or lack thereof, in Gaku and Kyoshika's case—but the majority of the Special Defense Unit all seem to have reached the same conclusion: that the prisoner is long gone and trying to chase after it right now is futile.
"I mean, we don't even have functioning fire extinguishers!" Gaku's shitfit is, for once, actually useful in furthering the conversation. "The hell are we supposed to do without them?"
"I'm working on it," Tsubasa snaps back. "But I can't fix them and the bus at the same time, especially considering that we would need to scavenge some of the parts from the ruins outside the Wall of Fire."
"Sorry I won't be much help in that regard," Yugamu says with a smile, "but my specialty isn't in fire retardant fluids so much as the fluids commonl found in a human body."
"And I'm going to be too busy helping out the pervert with something he pitched." Kurara sniffs, angling her head towards Yugamu. "So my time is booked."
"Kurara—" Eito puts on a good show of trying to argue Tsubasa's case for her, but is cut off.
By Kako of all people. "I could help!"
"Huh?"
"I might not be as good as Yugamu-senpai or Kurara-senpai when it comes to their respective fields, but I know a good amount about chemistry and like to think I'm a pretty deft hand." She stares at Tsubasa, wide eyes begging for acceptance from the older girl.
Ima champions her like always. "One time, my dearest sister managed to recreate an epoxy cement using only items we scavenged from the dump! She's very good at being resourceful."
Kako shoots him a sidelong glance, furrowed brows indicating her displeasure at being talked up again, but doubles down. "Even if I can't help with the chemical aspect, I'm actually pretty good with machines. Not cars or anything, and certainly not as good as you Tsubasa-senpai, but I am good." And, as an addendum, "Plus neither I nor my brother helped with the search earlier so it's only right we have to pull a little extra weight around here to make up for it." Ima glares at her this time, obviously unhappy with her volunteering him for work when he'd much rather laze about.
At that, Tsubasa folds like a bad poker hand. "Okay. Thank you for offering to help. I'd be more than grateful to have you."
"I'll keep workin' on the parts of the bus that are easily fixable," Takemaru offers. "I ain't half as good as Kawana is but I can change a tire and replace a spark plug like the best of 'em."
"Omokage and Oosuzuki are working on...something, Kako and Kawana are going to try and repair the fire extinguishers so we can get back to scavenging for supplies, Yakushiji is going to fix the bus...anyone else?" Takumi ticks down his fingers one at a time, making a mental note of who's doing what so he can do his duty as leader and keep a close eye on their progress.
"Since my dear sister has so kindly volunteered us to work in excess to make up for missing the hullabaloo," Ima drawls, torn up by the prospect, "I suppose I can try and comb the school from top to bottom with a more...discerning eye. I can, after all, get into smaller spaces than some of the people here."
"That's...true enough." Even Nozomi doesn't seem to have a ready counter for his backhanded insult. "Would you like someone to help?"
"No, but thank you for offering Aotsuki-senpai." Ima's sharp grin feels, as it often does, like a razor being dragged down Eito's neck. "If I have any problems, you'll be the one I go to first. Is that fair?"
Nozomi nods as the room falls into a heavy silence once more.
What else is there to say? What can he do to put a finger on the scale? The thoughts slip through his fingers like syrup, like the rays of a sunset across the horizon, painting his fingers in muddy hues.
"And nobody saw anything, right?" A chorus of denial. Takumi sighs. "Then...I guess that's all we can do for now. Let's just...rest up and get back at it tomorrow. Hopefully it hasn't gotten to a base or something."
"One can only hope."
—
"Can you hold the light a little more steady Kako?"
"Mmhmm!"
Eito watches as the two girls poke and prod at the slowly-disassembled fire extinguisher, faces scrunched in intense concentration. Kako is holding a powerful penlight on a portion of the insides while Tsubasa works at pulling it even further apart with thin and delicate tools. Behind them, grunting with the effort, Takemaru is removing lugnut after lugnut to change out the torn up tires on the bus. As soon as he manages to get one off—the heavy thing making an awful racket when it lands, sending violent pain lancing through Eito's head and spine, drawing sharp tension in his neck and shoulders—he stops to pant and suck down some water before examining the wheel, axel, and wheel well to make sure nothing there is too busted up.
The Garage winds up being a symphony of progress and noise, even as Eito's very being despises the atmosphere caused by their devotion to their respective causes.
Better them than Kurara and Yugamu, frankly. He's less likely to slip up if he's around any of the main campus corps. So he pretends to worry after their health and brings them food—on Gaku's recommendation, of all people.
Though...watching Tsubasa house a burger with one hand while poking at the fire extinguisher's delicate innards with the other makes him slightly reconsider his assessment of the boy's motivation. Even moreso because he managed to whip up a fairly close approximation of the twins' usual horrible food abominations in the form of another burger for Kako to munch on while she continued to hold the light steady. Even Takemaru liked the katsudon sandwich Gaku had suggested, practically inhaling it.
"I...think I might see the thing that connects to the port that refills and repressurizes the thing," Tsubasa mutters.
Kako lights up. "Oh?"
"It's really delicate though so I don't know if I can actually get it working as-is. Might have to gut the thing and build the canister from scratch around the internals." What a pity...he had been hoping that they would be completely unsalvageable. Alas...
"S'somethin'," Takemaru offers as consolatory support. He rolls one of the spare tires to the bus and aligns where it should go, frowning as he pats down his pockets to find the lugnuts.
"They're in the hubcap, off to the side." Eito's voice comes out crackly and pathetic. His throat clenches around air and he grits his teeth.
"Oh! Thanks Kirifuji!" Takemaru snags a pair in his fist and begins to put the tire on, checking to make sure he's rotated them properly so the wear doesn't compound.
"Of course. Any time." It's not as if he has anything better to do. And besides...better to keep an eye on their progress than try and make any moves just yet. The prisoner is still out there. He has plenty of time.
The sour mood that permeates the Last Defense Academy is a balm on his oddly warm skin. Ima has yet to find anything of any value that someone else hadn't already noticed, Yugamu and Kurara are wholly isolating in the Bio Lab and have even locked the door, the Garage crew haven't made significant progress on repairs, Shouma has been skulking about like a kicked dog and even the idiots have taken notice and started to assume he's responsible for the prisoner's escape, and anyone not helping with anything else is just bedrotting or pacing their enclosures with the energy of a neurotic animal. Nobody is happy with anything or anyone, and everyone is tense and wound up. All it will take now is the right spark in the right place and the whole powder keg of a school will blow sky high. He just has to have patience.
He just has to be patient.
(His head and body hurt so bad that it's getting difficult to be patient. Snappish and agitated, he has to bite his tongue more than usual. Nozomi's health issues are making a nuisance of themselves and, for not the first time since they switched bodies, he wishes he was himself again. At least then he could claim his illness is acting up and hide in his room like Nozomi has been. But he has to play at being kind, helpful Nozomi and so he has to withstand every pound of pressure crushing his skull to bits. Every breath he takes hurts and he feels the same type of exhaustion as when he had hiked through the ruins with Takumi looking for antipyretics. Still, he soldiers on. He can't falter now. Just a little bit longer and maybe—)
(It'll all be worth it.)
—
The room swims and pulses, pain coating every inch of his borrowed body and mind. Breathing is a chestful of glass, his skin feels too-warm and too-cold at once, tremors wrack his extremities, but he cannot give this weakness an inch or it will take a mile.
"So far Ima hasn't found anything of note, but that doesn't mean a thing in the long run because of like...I don't know, time?"
He can barely tell who's talking to him. He knows it's Takumi because Takumi is the only one with this much free time who would deign to give Nozomi the time of day, let alone this much attention, but the red blur in his peripheral vision is hardly anything to go off of.
He makes a weak noise indicating he's listening as he fights the nauseating sensation that the hallway they're in is tilting at odd angles. Every step he takes sends a throbbing pain through his body, pulsing waves through his already faltering vision that cause everything to swell and contract and wobble, bloom lighting making the edges soft.
"Thankfully, the Garage crew is making headway; or, I dunno, apparently Yakushiji is done with his work and Kawana and Kako are making a not-insubstantial amount of progress. That's good!"
The hallway rocks back and forth. Every word said to him is simultaneously muffled and too loud, sharp nails being driven into the meat of his skull, pressing against his eyeballs by way of his tear ducts and slamming into his throat by way of his ears. He wants to throw up. He wants to cry.
He can't do either of those things.
"Kirifuji?"
The hallway pitches, sending him reeling against a wall. No, not the wall, the floor?
"Are you okay?"
Say something. Say something. Say something! Anything! Open your mouth and say something to dissuade him from getting close and touching you. If he touches you, you are going to combust and take the school with you. If he touches you, your skin will peel away like the flakes on a butterfly wing and he will take your ability to flee with him. If he touches you, you will throw up.
Eito opens his mouth—
Eito opens his bleary eyes to the fuzzy sight of the ceiling of Nozomi's room. He is...horizontal. The surface beneath him rolls, rocking subtly with every beat of his pathetic borrowed heart. His eyes feel like they're boiling out of their sockets and his throat feels like someone forced steel wool down it and then ripped it free, like a bad attempt at ripping off a vending machine. He moves to sit up but his arms shake too much to be of any use and his abdominal muscles refuse to listen to reason, triggering a violent wave of nausea instead of properly helping him upright.
A pained wheeze passes through cracking lips. It's pathetic. He feels pathetic. He feels small again, weak and useless and surrounded by monsters on all sides.
(Mommy hums a song, her horrible roar rumbling through his feverish bones. She combs his hair away from his sweat-slicked skin with her claws, careful to not draw blood. She gently spoons porridge into his mouth and tells him he's so brave.)
(He can almost remember the song, his skin as flush as it was back then, his heart as ineffective, his lungs struggling as hard. The words are right there, on the tip of his blistering tongue. What are they? What are they? What—?)
"What?" The word falls from his mouth, almost inaudible. Still, the door to Nozomi's room swings open and a wobbly, weeping Kyoshika tears in.
"Nozomi-dono!!!!" Eito can't help but flinch at the noise. It hurts. "You're alright!"
"Shut the fuck up Kyoshika; can't you see your incessant screeching is giving her a headache?" Behind the grey and red and black mess of Kyoshika is a green and black smear that must be Kurara, based on the shrieking.
"Apologies, but you must understand how worried we were when you collapsed. Had Takumi-dono not been walking at your side, you would have lain there for some time, possibly with some kind of grievous head injury, and who knows when anyone would have come across your prone form and taken proper care of you."
"H....uh....?" Trying to talk feels like puncturing a sheet of bubble wrap with just his fingers. Laborious, pointless, and strenuous. "Wh...?"
"You're sick, idiot." The sharp way Kurara admonishes him is undercut by the naked worry in her voice. "You're running a pretty nasty fever and, while Sumino was yapping your damn ear off, you collapsed. He caught you," an audible sneer, lip curling at the thought of Takumi laying hands on 'Nozomi', even if to help her, "and you've been out ever since. We were considering an IV because you weren't conscious enough to drink fluids but now that you're up—"
Something is pressed into his face. It pokes his nose, metallic smell layered over something sweet and gentle. Eito automatically opens his mouth and wraps his lips around what apparently is a straw, taking a small sip of what tastes like some kind of electrolyte replenishing fluid. It's barely flavored, the gentle taste of mint mixing with the sweetener used to make it more palatable, the slightly-thick fluid coating his raw throat with some measure of relief. When he pulls away from the straw, whoever is holding the cup takes it back and sets it on the nightstand next to Nozomi's bed.
Even that noise, as gentle as it is, makes him flinch as pain plucks his nervous system.
"Wanna explain how it got this bad?" Kurara sounds...angry. Maybe concerned as well. It's hard to think around the fog and clouds and pain and heat.
"I..." What? "H..." Words fail him.
"You have a fucking fever—good thing we got those antipyretics—but it looks like it's been a several day affair, judging by how sweaty your fucking room is." Kurara sniffs.
"Yugamu-dono offered to give you a thorough examination but Kurara-dono vehemently denied him." Kyoshika, in a stunning display of having more than one braincell to spark a thought, lowers her volume to more of an echoing mumble. It still scrapes at the inside of Eito's skull, but it feels less like being assaulted by a jackhammer and more like someone scrubbing his brainpan out too vigorously.
Kurara, on the other hand, lapses as she snaps back, "I wasn't going to let that pervert near Nozomi with the way he was eyeing her!"
Wasn't Yugamu their pervert? Didn't she like Yugamu more than the other guys? Or was that just a misunderstanding on his part?
"He simply wished to better assess her health."
"And I said no! No boys allowed!" Eito recoils from the auditory assault and, against all odds, Kurara notices. "Right...your head probably hurts."
"I believe she took the antipyretic with her drink when she last woke. Perhaps we should administer another dose and some painkillers?"
"...congratulations Kyoshika. You have managed to surprise me by having a cognizant thought."
"Thank you, Kurara-dono."
Kyoshika stands up and there's a rattling noise. It sounds like pills. Eito's heart picks up, a horrified scream.
(The doctors and nurses hand him a small cup. "Take these." It's not a suggestion. He swallows, mouth filling with the awful secretions they leave behind on everything they touch, the taste of feces and urine and gastrointestinal fluids coating his mouth and throat and nose. Hours later he feels himself distant from his body - watches it slump against the wall of his so-called 'room' as the medicine they forced him to consume swiftly putting him to sleep.)
(He wakes up covered in excretions and claw marks and pinpricks, wobbly and disoriented. He shrieks at the sight of them. They inject him with something to calm him down.)
(If he refuses to take the pills, they don't let him.)
"I..." His traitorous brain and borrowed vocal cords don't want to comply. He screws his face up in frustrated concentration and tries again. "What is...that?"
"Huh?" Kyoshika pauses, bottles in her hand. "The pills?" Eito gives a soft nod, the world rocking with even that movement. "This one is the miraculous Ibuprofen while the other is its cousin, the talented Paracetamol." Over the counter painkillers and fever reducers. Likely the same ones that were synthesized from the materials they found on their excursion. His pulse slows, the panic seeping out. Even if he can't see the labels, Kyoshika is far too stupid to lie to him about something like that—and Kurara would call her out on her bullshit so quickly that it would make their heads spin.
He's being childish. He's being a foolish little child, terrified of taking his medicine.
The child safety lids click like mirthless and cruel laughter as Kyoshika struggles to open them. After a few minutes of irritated grunts and impotent clicking, Kurara snatches the bottles from her and opens them with a single twist. "Stupid."
"Do they consider me a child? Is that why these wretched safety lids refuse to allow me entry?"
Passing the bottles back to Kyoshika, Kurara's only response is a low, muttered, "God you're dumb."
Kyoshika gently pours two of each pill into her palm and, cupping them carefully, offers them to Eito. "Will you be able to take them? Or should we ask Yugamu-dono to make a powder version for easier ingestion."
The idea of consuming a powder makes his skin crawl. He manages to nod and Kyoshika tips her hand so the pills enter his mouth. Then she brings the straw back to his lips and he swallows a gulp of the drink and the pills in one go.
The astringent bitterness of melted pill lingers in his mouth, marrying itself to the aftertaste of mint and some indescribable sweetness. He must be frowning because Kurara leans over him, her blurred mask grimacing. "If you have trouble swallowing, tell us."
"...fine." He isn't fine. Every part of him, down to the marrow of his bones, aches. Burns. Shakes with tremors he can't control. Breathing feels like his trachea is full of fiberglass. Swallowing feels like his diaphragm is full of steel wool. Blinking is a laborious act that only reminds his steaming eyeballs of how unbearably hot they are resting in the pressure cooker that is his skull. His heartbeat distorts his vision. The entire world is moving like a ship in a storm, rolling and pitching hither and thither to, causing his empty stomach to clench and threaten to turn itself inside out.
"Glad to hear it!" The fact that Kurara buys his bullshit is...
It's something. Something bitter and sweet and foolish and—
"...can I ask a...favor?" Trying to talk is like trying to shove a square peg through a round hole. Every word fights him. Every thought is an uphill battle. He feels miserable.
"Anything."
"I had...a question for Aotsuki."
That gets an immediate reaction from his self-appointed caretakers. Kyoshika makes some kind of noise like a punctured balloon, squeaking at a pitch that genuinely causes Eito physical pain. Kurara, on the other hand, scoffs.
"Yeah? You wanna talk to the paper-pale pervert? Sumino's right hand fuckboy?"
What is she on about? "We were...discussing something." Not untrue. A good lie starts with a kernel of truth. "And...I want to...be useful right now."
"You're sick," Kurara emphasizes. "You don't have to be 'useful'. You don't have to be jack or shit! Do you have a death wish?!"
"But isn't it just like Nozomi-dono to selflessly attempt to aid us in the war effort while indisposed? It's not as though she will be doing any strenuous activity; simply speaking to Eito-dono." Kyoshika counters.
"No fucking boys allowed. Didn't we tell the idiot-in-charge that already?" Kurara refuses to budge.
Eito decides that he's going to have to take a blow to talk to Nozomi while under effective house-arrest-slash-bedrest. "You don't have...to worry about Aotsuki. He doesn't...like women."
The blurry mess that is Kyoshika sits upright and gasps. "He is into men?"
That's not what I said.
Taking his silence as confirmation, Kyoshika turns to Kurara. "If he is not into women, if he does in fact prefer men, then is it not okay to allow him into Nozomi-dono's room while she is ill? We can still remain posted outside in case we hear anything untoward but—"
"You think just because mister glass bones and paper skin doesn't prefer girls it's okay for him to be around Nozomi?" The vitriol that Kurara can summon at will is astounding.
In response, Eito replies—stuttering, slowly, haltingly, "I...trust him and I trust...you two to keep me safe." Now he genuinely needs to vomit. It's becoming harder and harder to keep the mask in place. He just needs to see if Nozomi knows why her body is falling apart like this. "Please?"
In the mess of colors that is Nozomi's room, the whole place slowly solidifying as time passes and his borrowed body futilely tries to get better, Kurara crosses her arms and thinks with all of her. Kyoshika is turned to face her, likely making a pleading expression, and eventually she cracks. "Fine. But if he puts one bleached toe out of line I'm going to skin him and use him for a rug, got it?"
"Tell him...that."
"I will." Standing up, Kurara offers one last parting statement as she moves to leave Nozomi's room. "Get better soon, okay? I...we can't afford to lose you."
("Please don't make me mourn another friend." Words spoken with aim to hurt but surely they all feel the stinging loss of Moko. It's almost poetic to know that, with a bit of bad luck and a fever, they could lose someone else. If only it wasn't him...)
"I'll do my best."
Kyoshika follows soon after Kurara and Eito is alone again. His world is pain and heat and cotton and—
The next coherent thought he has is heralded by the door to his room opening again. Gently, far more carefully than either Kyoshika or Kurata had, someone steps in. A fuzzy-edged patch of bright white.
"Aotsuki?" It doesn't hurt as much to speak. The pills are doing their job.
Nozomi sits down at his bedside, coming into focus with proximity. She turns to the drink on the nightstand and then back to Eito. "Do you want a sip?" She doesn't want to touch the cup. It must be coated with foul residue.
Too bad.
"Please." She lifts the cup so that he can grab the straw in his mouth. As he takes a long draught of the drink, she waffles for a moment.
Then she speaks. "I don't think they'll listen in."
Eito swallows and pulls away from the straw, not even bothering to fake a smile. "We should still be quiet as we can. The walls have ears."
Nozomi nods and sets the drink down. And, with an unusual lack of tact, asks, "Why does Kyoshika think you're gay?"
"Kurara and Kyoshika are being very...overprotective since I'm unwell. I needed to speak with you and the only way to get them to...back off was to assure them that 'Eito' is not into girls." Again: a not-untrue statement. Eito personally finds the concept of romance with humans of any gender disgusting beyond all reproach. But, if the misunderstanding means that neither Kurara nor Kyoshika believe that Nozomi and Eito speaking with each other at-length is anything untoward then that's a thing that happens. It's not as if he actually gives a rat's ass what the Special Defense Unit thinks of him, even if he was the one in his body. "If this spreads beyond them, so be it."
"And you're...fine with that?" She sounds more unsure than he does. Does she think being sick has clouded his judgement that much?
"I'm the one who brought it up. It's not incorrect either."
Understanding what he didn't say aloud, Nozomi nods. "...yeah..."
The elephant in the room demands to be addressed. Its trumpeting makes Eito's head throb with dulled pain and he can hardly bear it a moment longer. "You look remarkably...calm for someone whose body is bedridden."
"I—" While he can't see too well, the way her voice pitches and cracks is more than enough indication that she's taken aback by how direct he's being. "That is..."
"If there's something I should know about how your body...works, then tell me. Surely it can't get worse." Silence. "Can it?" More silence.
When Nozomi speaks again, it's with the tone of a child caught in a lie and being scolded. It's rife with shame and embarrassment, panic and horror in equal measure. "It shouldn't. Or, rather, I don't know for sure."
"So this is something you were aware of?" There's no point in hiding his nature at this point. Why bother struggling to hold a mask of pleasant politeness when everything about him aches and screams in agony? If she knew - if she was aware that this was a thing her body might do and she withheld that information from him because of some inane bullshit reason then—
"I just...wasn't sure how to approach...telling you." Chastised, Nozomi's voice falls and she looks down at her hands as she picks at the seam of one of the gloves. "How do I even begin to inform you about...this?"
"From the beginning?" Is she being purposefully obtuse or just stupid? He knows she can be sharp and vicious, he's seen it before, and yet now she chooses to fall back on the humble, pathetic, oh-so-sweet mask she puts on to make herself more agreeable? It makes his blood boil. "Considering the state I'm in."
She sighs. Inhales. Exhales again. Then she begins to speak, even and careful. "My mother was a researcher for Kamakura Hospital back in the Tokyo Residential Complex." That alone makes his blood freeze solid in his veins, his skin crawling a deep and primal horror. What? "And her primary research was into what we call hemoanima. It's a type of hemocyte that has unique properties unlike anything anyone had seen before; it could solidify itself, it seemed to possess a will of its own and moved relatively independent of any other hemocyte, and despite it appearing like an erythrocyte, it actually had a structure closer to that of a thrombocyte or leukocyte than your standard red blood cell. They—my mom and her team—called it 'cryptoglobin', meaning a secret heme- containing globular protein, and started looking into how to properly infuse a human test subject with cryptoglobin, as the animal testing phase was a rousing failure. Every subject wound up exsanguinated, the cryptoglobin being wholly rejected by the host and taking all of the host's blood with it as it forcibly ejected itself from any porous membrane it could."
The only word Eito can find for how he feels—past all the pain and the fog and the sticky illness—is disgust. He knows humanity better than anyone and they still manage to find new ways to disappoint him at every turn. To take a substance that is killing test subjects—animals, things humans consider 'lesser'—and choose to move to human testing is...abhorrent. Vile. And if the pit opening in his stomach is any indication, what Nozomi is saying will only get worse as she reveals more and more of what her mother did.
"The reason they chose to do human testing is because, while the cryptoglobin was seemingly rejected from any animal host, it seemed to interact well enough with human blood introduced to samples. Unlike animal blood—which was tested in a similar manner to assure it wasn't just a fluke of not introducing the cryptoglobin to a living host—the cryptoglobin quickly mimicked the shape and properties of all the hemocytes found in the human bloodstream, the only indication of its existence being the unusual lack of antigen and rhesus factor markers on the cells, despite the lack of rejection from the immune system." The way she talks, clinical and overly detailed, feels as though she's reciting medical papers she's read. It's like watching someone give a report for school. It's like listening to someone read their will. "The only major issue was consenting subjects. The research was top-secret and finding people willing to allow Kamakura to inject them with some kind of foreign or unusual cells that might cause total exsanguination was a...stumbling block for her research. Eventually she turned to prisons but even then..."
"What does this have to do with why I feel like I'm dying?" Nozomi flinches like he slapped her. He doesn't even pretend to pity her.
"Test subjects over a certain age seemed to struggle with the transfusion. They developed a myriad of symptoms that match the same type of illness that indicates rejection of a blood or organ donation mismatch, down to eventual death. Despite cryptoglobin otherwise being completely compatible with the human body, it was causing complications. Eventually, even the prisons started refusing any requests for subjects, stating the inhuman nature of the experiments." And if the penal system found something to be inhuman, it must have had a body count worth worrying over. "Not that I knew that at the time. All I knew is that my mom's research was her life and it was going badly. So I volunteered."
Oh.
Oh.
"I was...seven? Or so? I can't really remember." Nozomi picks at the seam of a glove, eyes downcast. "I remember being worried because my mom was really struggling. She wasn't home a lot and when she was, she was working. She loved me! But she was...she was just busy. It was important, even if she couldn't tell me why."
Is she trying to convince me or herself?
"My mom explained how it worked and what was going to happen. The doctors that she worked with were going to monitor my vitals with a bunch of machines while they introduced a small amount of cryptoglobin into my system—an amount they calculated wouldn't be lethal based on the longest-surviving adult subject's transfusion and adjusting for my age and size. I would be given no anesthesia because of the possible complications due to my age and size but it wouldn't hurt. I would feel a prick and maybe warmth where they injected me and that would be that. Then they would keep an eye on me for twenty-four hours to monitor my state and record any data they could. Then I would be released from the hospital and kept under observation for another seventy-two hours to assure the transfusion took." She pauses to think, something that looks like a wistful smile passing across her face. "I wanted to make my mom proud. She was raising me all by herself after my dad died and...if I could help her then—"
"You wanted to be helpful so you climbed on the sacrificial altar of science for your mother?" Derision crawls up and out of his throat, demanding attention. "And she let you?!"
"...she apologized. I remember she held my hand and kept saying 'I'm sorry' over and over and over again but she didn't need to. I chose to do it. I said I would. I just..."
"Oh she apologized, did she? Then the fact that she allowed her seven year old daughter to undertake an experimental procedure that had killed adults three times her age is forgiven!"
"It's not like that!" The sharp reprimand sends a spike of agony through his head and into his jaw but she doesn't stop with just that denial. Instead, she continues on, delusional love for her mother overwriting her higher cognitive functions. "My mom loved me! And I loved her. It was because I loved her that I agreed, not because I—"
"Regardless of your or her emotions and intent, you cannot deny that what happened to you constitutes medical abuse." And, because his mouth refuses to do as he demands and he is thinking through a haze he's barely able to comprehend, something else slips free. "And if anyone would know about medical abuse, it would be me!"
She doesn't have an answer for him.
For a brief, soothing moment, the room is consumed by silence. It drowns them in gentle waves of cool nothingness. And then Nozomi speaks again, her calm collected.
"Out of the hundreds of test subjects involved in the cryptoglobin transfusion experiment, I am the sole survivor. My mom posited it was because of my age; that, because I hadn't finished growing and developing, the cryptoglobin could better assimilate to my body and my body spent less time trying to fight it off. And then she discovered what the rejection symptoms actually were and reconsidered her initial hypothesis as to my survival." How generous, for this woman to admit she was wrong. "Cryptoglobin has one additional unique feature that is only ever really present when a subject is undergoing rejection symptoms: it is cannibalistic. When rejecting the host, the cells devour any and all hemocytes before ejecting themselves from the host, hence the exsanguination through any viable porous membranes. But the sudden consumption of the host's own hemocytes can be halted if additional cryptoglobin is introduced, either intravenously or by oral ingestion. Then the cryptoglobin focuses its aggression on the newer cryptoglobin and the body can recover." That sounds an awful lot like how the Special Defense Unit consumes a Commander or any other hemoanima-powered being, their blood being absorbed into them through the Infuser, the remainder washing over them in a geyser of crimson fluid. "The rejection isn't the host's body rejecting the cryptoglobin but the cryptoglobin rejecting the host's body. It ravages them on the way out and, while usually lethal if left unchecked, my mom found a solution that kept me alive."
"I assume introduction of more cryptoglobin?" Does she hear the derision? Can she tell how much every second of this explanation makes him blindingly angry and torrentially nauseated all at once? Or is she blind and deaf or willfully ignorant to anything that doesn't match her rose-tinted view of everything and everyone around her?
She nods. "So long as I took in additional cryptoglobin every year or so, I was actually relatively free of any symptoms past the chronic effects of the transfusion." Like her weak lungs, weak heart, and low body temperature. "But I think that, due to how even the Artificial Class Armor and Artificial Class Weapon I use sometimes use my blood to bolster their effects—in addition to the fact that blood loss exacerbates the rate at which the rejection symptoms can arrive—that window is smaller now than it's ever been due to the constant combat I've been a part of."
And yet—
"That's not all, is it?" He won't let her back away now. After holding this so close to her chest for so long—especially considering he's the one that has to suffer—she isn't withholding anything else from him. He won't let her. "You said you're the only successful and surviving subject but there are thirteen people who have hemoanima—fifteen if you count Moko and Hiruko. Either you're lying or you're different from the rest of us. Which is it?"
Hypocritical as it might be; his secrets don't have any physical effect on Nozomi, nor do they threaten her life past his eventual purge of humanity writ-large, and thus he is allowed to keep them.
As an answer, Nozomi continues on as if she's picking up where she left off. "Some years after I successfully acclimated to the cryptoglobin transfusion—as much as I was ever going to—my mother's research was suddenly shut down. Someone else somewhere else in Kamakura had managed a breakthrough and they didn't need faulty, half-baked work like hers. And so she ended her life, leaving me a note explaining everything as well as the location of a lot of her unpublished scientific papers on the procedure, on cryptoglobin, and other related things. I studied and learned and snuck into Kamakura because I wanted to see what research had ended my mother's life and—"
Your mother ended her own life.
The cyanide cynicism dies on his lips, replaced with a strange ache that twists his mouth into a grimace. "You found us. In those pods Shouma mentioned, I assume?" The way she had reacted then, paler than usual, eyes wide when Shouma brought up Kamakura by name and then described everyone in pods makes sense. If she hadn't been a 'finished product' for Kamakura then no wonder she had worried about Shouma discussing who all he remembered being there.
She nods. "I didn't know much about what was going on but I had heard some of the scientists and staff discussing something about a reclamation project and a war. About how you—those with cryptoglobin—were meant to defend the Earth and fight for all of humanity and I just..."
"Volunteered." While the rest of us were conscripted.
"Wanted to prove that my mother's research wasn't worthless. That it had produced results. That she didn't deserve to be axed the way she was and that— that she—"
What a petty excuse. All for a woman who had allowed her to volunteer for a lethal procedure and then killed herself the second things fell apart? And she has the gall to claim that her mother was a good woman? That she was a good mother?
(The glassy eyes of mommy watch him, slow breaths a quiet indicator of how far she's fallen. Her muzzle curls, teeth bared as she slurs out a single question, "Why?")
(He pauses, looks over to where daddy is struggling to stand upright, his large scaled head slamming against the wall again and again as if he's incapable of understanding what 'upright' even is, and looks back at her. Gives her his sweetest smile. Bares his teeth in chimp-like agitation. "This is for your own good. It's going to 'fix' you.")
(Her eyes widen, recognition cutting through the ataxia and pain with surgical precision. She tries to speak again, blood flowing from a small cut inside her mouth from where she bit herself. When she manages to fight her body enough to wrest control, her words are laborious and soaked in alcoholic-scented regret. "We didn't mean...")
("It doesn't matter what you meant." He cuts her off without a second thought. How dare she try and peddle love to him now after all those years spent in an institution that peeled him to ribbons and stitched him back together with needle fingers and suture hair? "What matters is that it will all be over soon. You've got so much of that in your system that even I'm surprised you lasted so long." Daddy falls again and doesn't get up, head wound weeping massive amounts of blood as he lies prone and dying. "Humans really are wretched cockroach-like things.")
(Something like hurt crosses her face. She opens her maw to spew more lies and coughs. A violent spurt of chunky vomit splatters the floor she's laying on and begins to mix with her blood, coating her fur and hair with the abhorrent cocktail of refuse.)
("I'll come get you soon," he hisses. "Don't worry. Just be good and it will all be alright." The irony is lost on neither of them.)
(And as soon as he's sure both of them are well and truly dead, he calls the police and, weeping as though this is the worst day of his life, sells them every pound of shit he squeezed out of the corpses that used to be his parents.)
When Eito speaks again, it's far more measured than he expected to be able to muster. His words, said through clenched teeth and bitter agony, come out curt and clipped. Maybe that's the only way he can talk with the amount of pain he's in: like he's firing sniper rounds through ballistic gel. "So I assume your solution for my current predicament is to ingest more cryptoglobin?"
"That would be the best option." She tilts her head in admission. "But I don't know if it's feasible."
"What do you mean?"
"All of our cryptoglobin consumption comes from Commanders and, with the rejection symptoms as pronounced as they are, I don't think you'll be capable of combat, let alone waiting for an attack on the school."
"So, what, I—and by extension, your body—am completely out of luck? I just have to lie down and take it?" His lip curls in a snarl.
She flinches and draws back. "That's not it—"
"We cannot tell anyone else that we've switched, remember?"
"If you would allow for Omokage to—"
"I have already said that he is going nowhere near my body!"
"He could synthesize a supplement that might actually help."
"How?" Nozomi blinks at Eito in surprise. "You would have to explain cryptoglobin to him and then you would have to explain why you—Eito—know about my—Nozomi's—past in such vivid detail when she was completely unwilling to divulge such information to her trusted friends before it became a genuine problem! Considering all of those factors, it seems like we don't have much of a choice, do we?"
"What else can we do?" Desperation soaks her every action, her words dripping in the same kind of horror and fear that led her to volunteer again and again for atrocities that should not have been an option. "I don't know how else to help aside from letting you drink from someone in the school and that also—"
In—shaky achey lungs struggling to take in anything, let alone enough—and out—but it's fine because she's listening to him again. It's better if she just...listens to him. "I am going to tell Takumi." Before she can protest, he cuts her off. "He is the one person in this makeshift militia that has any sway over what the group does. Assuming that Tsubasa and Kako get the fire extinguishers fixed and the bus is refueled, taking a long trip to try and find an Invader base with a Commander in it to raid will be a possible and better option than waiting. Like you said: you're the only surviving test subject because you dealt with these rejection symptoms as they appeared. If your body can tolerate a little more waiting, then I'm certain Takumi will do anything for your wellbeing."
Something strange crosses her face then. Not quite disgust, not quite a flush of embarrassment or delight, but something muddled, a mix of a myriad of emotions that blur into a messy, indistinguishable brown sludge. Her brows furrow, her mouth pursing, but her eyes seem clear of any anger or horror. She doesn't hate the way Takumi treats her but she doesn't like it.
"How would we even get Sumino in here to meet with you? Sure, he's worried about you - Nozomi, but that doesn't mean that Kurara and Kyoshika will just let him in." She isn't fighting him on this.
"If he's determined enough, he'll find a way. And, because Eito is his very best friend," the revulsion is nakedly plain in his delivery but he can't be bothered to care, "he's likely to seek my—that is, your—aid. Give him a nudge."
"But—"
"This isn't me asking, Nozomi." Does she fail to understand the severity of it all? Is she being willfully ignorant of the circumstances in the same way that she refuses to see the writing on the wall with regards to her mother? "This is a fact. I am going to tell Takumi about the rejection symptoms. You only get to choose how much you participate in saving your own life." A necessary cruelty.
She doesn't argue any more after that. Instead, she offers him one last sip of the drink on the nightstand and stands up to leave as soon as he's done.
"For what it's worth," he calls out as she makes her way to the door, "I don't plan on telling him everything. Just the broad strokes. Those aren't my secrets to share, after all."
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you before now." He believes her. She's simple like that sometimes. "But I wasn't sure how to explain the rejection symptoms without the...everything else."
"I'll manage." Because if Takumi knew about the experiments writ-large, he might start getting ideas, and they can't have that. "And I understand. I don't think I would have been able to talk about it either." He doesn't talk about the hospital past mentions of being hospitalized. He doesn't say why he was there or how long. He doesn't mention anything about the doctors and nurses and his parents. Nobody asks. It's just polite, after all, to ignore the unsaid.
She nods and leaves his room, closing the door quietly behind her.
His head falls back on his pillow and the weight of his exhaustion slams into him, smothering him in the darkness of sleep.
His dream that night goes as such:
The hospital's large—a yawning hellmouth that devours any that enters it—and he is small. Pale walls shimmer like a flashbang, antiseptic stench choking. He feels like a preserved corpse walking, stiff limbs ambulating him towards an early grave as he walks the myriad labyrinthine halls in search of his minotaur. Left, left, left, left, left, hand tracing the wall as he turns, unsure of if he can even escape but trying nonetheless. His heart beats rabbit kicks against his sternum. His breathing is shallow and small.
He is so very young.
As he rounds a turn, he sees someone else. A little girl—his age, but her thin fragility and pale skin and hair make her seem smaller and younger, as if this place has leeched her time away—sitting on a stiff hospital chair with her hands folded over her bandaged abdomen. Track marks dot her arms, some of them covered by matte plasters decorated with colorful mockeries of cuteness, and every so often she winces and curls in on herself.
It's the girl who speaks first, not Eito—shock at seeing someone else living in this monumental mausoleum stealing away any pith or wit he might have summoned—and her voice sounds as fragile as she looks. "I didn't know anyone else was here. Sorry if I'm in your chair."
Revulsion skitters spider legs up his spine. "What? No!" The idea that he would attach any part of himself to this abhorrent place is beyond the pale.
The girl doesn't react to his sharp attitude. She just tilts her chin down, long lashes obscuring her lavender eyes as they search for meaning in the hideous void of a hospital.
"What are you doing here?" He has enough tact to not bring up her visible wounds and bandages. He isn't so socially inept just yet—how else would he lie to the monstrous nurses and doctors that prowl the halls like stalking predators, assuaging any of their fears and casting away the scent of sickness to hide better among the infirm? "I've never seen you here before."
(It's a lie of a sort, not that he knows it in that moment. The type of lie that can only exist in a dream: a lie of internal omission. A lie of forgetting. He knows her almost as well as he knows himself. He sees her in the mirror every morning as of late, wearing her name and mannerisms like armor as he parades around in a monster's skin.)
"My mom works here." So she's that type of monster. "I'm waiting on her to be finished. She said she won't be long."
"Your mother?" He plays at interest. He doesn't really care. She's nothing but a tumbleweed, a dust bunny drifting from beneath the chaise lounge of the psychiatric ward to roll in and out of view with every agonizing wail of the terminally ill and broken. When this place goes up in flames, she will disappear before the rest, heat flashing sharp and igniting all she is to naught but ash and a memory.
"She's an important scientist." The girl sounds proud around her pain, like her mother's occupation reflects on her as a person. "And I'm helping."
"It's hurting you." Maybe he just wants to start something. Maybe he just is happy to talk to someone his own age—someone that doesn't have power over him. Either way, he doesn't curb his tongue, choosing to be as blunt and sharp as he desires. What kind of idiot takes pain and doesn't cry? Is she broken too? Is she like him?
Perhaps—
"It's okay." He fights the sneer that curls at his lips as she rebuffs him, pulling her knees against her chest and hugging them tight. The pressure must help somewhat. "Mommy says the pain is temporary. I can be a big girl. I can bear it for a little longer."
"How much longer?"
She fixes him with a blank, sad gaze and smiles without mirth. "Until she sees results."
"So she bleeds you dry, cuts you open, and it's okay because she's your mother?!" Feline, his own mommy's shadow looms behind him, snout curled in a snarl as daddy's shadow lurks at his feet. Reptilian claws drag down his back and flay skin from his shoulders at the same time that needle-like spines are shoved into his chest. Sleeping hurts from any angle, glass shards in his brain making fractal nightmares cast kaleidoscopic heat-haze illusions on the stark walls of his thoughts. He hates it here. He hates that this girl seems to be fine—or is deluding herself into believing she is, eating bullshit out of the hands of the wretched thing drinking her dry. "That's stupid!"
"Is it?" She looks at him—through him to his mommy's shadow and his daddy's shadow in the pit he leaves in his wake—without any judgement. Just blank curiosity.
"If it hurts you, hurt it back!" He isn't sure why he's so adamant about this but it's like talking to a mirror, an echo. "Kill anything that causes you pain. I'll help."
"Why?"
"Because—"
"What if I say no?"
Irritation rakes razor blades across his dry skin. "Why would you say no?"
"It's my mommy. She loves me." She hugs her legs tighter. The bandage on her abdomen blooms crimson, poppy petals opening slowly, spider lily tendrils waving in the breeze of her breath. "She says that's why she hurts me. It'll be over soon and then—"
"She's a liar! They're all liars!" Maybe he's not as good at playing pretend as he would like.
It's a good thing this isn't a doctor or nurse or minotaur in the maze, her ariadne eyes watching him with the disinterest of a bored god observing as termites build inexplicable monuments to a madness only they seem to understand. If he had been like this around any of the monsters haunting the hospital halls, he would surely be sedated and tossed into a padded cell or strapped to a bed again, screaming himself hoarse and unconscious until he can play pretend good enough to be let out again.
"When you look at me," the girl asks instead of answering his questions, "what do you see?"
His nose wrinkles in confusion. "What?"
She tilts her head, a strand of silver drifting puppet strings across her cheeks, and repeats herself. "When you look at me, what do you see? What am I to you?"
What?
Eito stops and looks at her—really looks at her—and tries to understand what she's asking of him. It's a feat with all his anger burning the edges of his vision, a ticking timer to an explosion boiling in the base of his body, but he observes and tries to understand what's being asked of him.
Lilac eyes sunken into a thin skull, not a drop of light or hope in them. Silver hair, stringy and unwashed, draping down a hunched back. Prominent wristbones peeking through washed out skin, trimmed nails clutching at track-riddled arms as if self-soothing for comfort. A hospital gown underneath a heavy bandage wrapping her abdomen, blood oozing in the shape of pain and trauma. Thin slippers barely dangling from tiny feet pulled to rest on the lip of the chair.
A piteous pathetic reflection.
"You look scared and alone." He didn't mean to say that but the words spill from his lips like bile.
Something resembling amusement lights the shores of her face, glittering lighthouse in her eyes. Mirth—or cruelty—bubbles out and she smiles. "I could say the same of you."
"What—" Before he can ask for clarification, a surgical saw enters his abdomen like a jagged spire of burning hot metal. His lungs collapse and deflate, trachea choking around a gush of blood. He coughs, cinnabar buckshot speckling her face, and looks down at where their wounds meet like macabre lips. "What?"
She presses her forehead to his. It's cold against his burning skin. "It's going to be okay."
"...what?!" How can it be okay? He's dying!
"Mommy will make it better." Claws curl into his hair, combing out mats of blood and rot with little care or grace. "Just trust us, okay?"
He opens his mouth—
—and wakes up coughing so hard he almost throws up, his weak borrowed lungs clenching around the memory of pain.
As his pulse settles, the dream fading into gentle mist with every weak beat of Nozomi's failing heart, something occurs to him.
Despite the monsters that roamed the halls of his dream, despite the shadows of his parents' hideous forms hiding in his own wake, Nozomi had looked exactly the way she does when he looks in the mirror every morning.
She had looked perfectly personable. Inhumanly and uncannily like himself.
Okay, real talk now. People love to tag male characters in posts about women, but this post is gonna take this seriously. Is there actually a canonically male character you believe is a trans woman? Or at least has made into a trans woman for a fanart or a fanfic? Excluding the ones canonically implied.
Sound off in the tags! Link to the fanart or fic if available. Do it. Give me the girls. Make more women.
It's surprising how much 'Moko' being up and about has thrown the whole Special Defense Unit into disarray. Even though he had been the one to wheedle and cajole it into acting, he hadn't expected how actually good at its job the Commander pretending to be Moko would be at blending in and not drawing attention. Or...mostly not drawing attention.
Nozomi noticed something was off and, judging by the way that Darumi and Ima tend to stay as far away from it as possible, there's a non-zero possibility one of them also might be suspicious of their newly-awakened 'ally'. Although...in Ima's case it's less about 'Moko' and more about his sister paying attention to anyone that isn't him, so Darumi might be the only concern.
But none of that matters because he's going to politely inform 'Moko' that it's been made and needs to move the timetable up by a couple days.
(The way Nozomi had managed to hold back her emotions until they were alone was admirable. Judging by the way her borrowed face had wrenched into conflicted agony, brows knitting as his eyes watered with unshed tears of frustration, she had been holding back for quite some time. But until they were away from prying eyes, she kept herself wholly composed, a picture-perfect Eito. She could be taught. What a wonderful thing to figure out in time for her to try and lie to him.)
"Moko?"
'Moko' turns her head down so it's looking at Eito, blue eyes bright and full of false joy. "Yeah babe?"
He returns the gesture with a smile that's equally as fake. "Do you mind if I talk to you later? Alone?"
"Huh?" The Commander tilts its head and pouts as it frowns. "Sure? What's the matter though?"
"Oh, it's nothing big or anything I just..." Eito trails off and gently plays with the end of his braid like he's trying to soothe himself. "I had a couple questions and they were kind of personal so I didn't want to do it in front of everybody." He wrings the hem of his skirt, mimicking nervousness in a way that he hopes comes off as 'Nozomi' to everyone who sees it. The fabric bunches in his grip, wrinkling, and he quickly lets go and smooths it down to play at hiding his anxiety.
"That's sweet of you." Is it? In his eyes, it seems more like cornering someone and putting them in a room with only one exit, blocking the way out. Something closer to a trap than a kindness, but that's more Eito's opinion than not. "Where do you wanna meet?"
"The classroom on the first floor." And then, to clarify, "By the bathrooms."
'Moko' nods, her pigtails flopping with the motion. "No prob! See you after breakfast?"
"Thanks." Eito makes sure to almost whisper the word, forcing as little air out of his borrowed lungs as he can to make himself sound as piteous as possible. Then he goes to get food.
From across the Cafeteria, sitting between a despondent Darumi and a sullen Ima, Nozomi makes eye-contact with Eito over the rim of her glasses and clears her mouth of whatever plain food she's determined she's capable of keeping down today. Did she agree? She mouths, trying to communicate a more complex thought with only her expression.
Eito nods and she relaxes, focusing back on her meal with as much vigor as she can muster. He, meanwhile, scans the Cafeteria for Shouma. He should be done feeding the prisoner by now.
Shouma never shows up. Maybe he took what Eito had said to heart. Maybe he was too conflicted to come back and spend time with everyone after what they'd said the day prior. Either way...
It nearly brings a smile to Eito's borrowed face.
—
The classroom feels like a poorly constructed pitfall trap. The singular door yawns, a hungry maw, and Eito keeps his back to the digital blackboard while he waits for 'Moko' to arrive. And, eventually, for Nozomi to press her ear to the door just to satisfy her own curiosity.
His breathing catches in a weird way, a flush of pain spidering across his shoulders and down his spine as he coughs into a fist. Do they not dust in here? Or is it just that this body in particular is especially weak to particulates?
By the time the door opens and 'Moko' walks in his coughing has long stopped, though his eyes still water a bit. He offers 'Moko' a wan smile and a raspy greeting. "Thanks for coming."
"No prob!" It sidles up to the window, glancing out at the side yard and the Wall of Fire and the endless sky. "So what's up babe? You doing okay? You look kinda rough."
"I just inhaled something," Eito brushes off its fake concern with an equally fake gentle smile. "Don't worry too much about me."
'Moko' narrows its eyes in suspicion but the wide smile it wears never leaves its face. "If you say so."
"So, I had a couple questions and concerns and I didn't want to...interrogate you in front of everyone because you seem like you're still settling in." For once, Eito is grateful to Nozomi's poor health because the coughing fit he had earlier has taken most of his strength. He sounds appropriately piteous and distraught. He doesn't even have to try that hard to affect his voice with breathlessness, his borrowed lungs already on the back foot. "And I'm sorry if this feels like an attack or anything but I just— I'm so worried about you."
'Moko' doesn't say anything. It just stands there, enormous arms folded in imitation of carved guardians of temples from ages long past, watching Eito as he frets and worries and babbles.
"You've - you've been so off recently? I know what happened to you must be traumatic and you probably don't want to talk about it all that much, but you keep avoiding the topic any time anyone brings it up and - and maybe if it's just you and me you might feel safer just...explaining what happened when you were captured?"
"I already said I forgot." An unusual terseness crept into its voice, a piece of rebar holding the weight of every word being said. "Don't you believe me?"
"I do but—"
"Then why are you interrogating me like this?" Oh. It was already on the defensive. All it had taken was 'Nozomi' to just start actively confronting it for it to try and pull the ripcord. How close were Moko and Nozomi for it to feel this threatened?
"I'm not! I only— you deserve a chance to explain what happened without a whole audience who might not let you talk before jumping down your throat." Eito allows his eyes to water, blinking furiously as he stammers around the same points Nozomi had made the day before. "I'm not the only one worried for you either! Kurara and Omokage both—"
"Do you hate me or something?"
"What? No!"
'Moko's' eyes water and her lip wobbles. Even so, her posture is still defensive and imposing. Despite the fact that Eito is closest to the door, he feels trapped with a predator. Nozomi's weak heart races, pulling what little heat she produces from every extremity, leaving her cold as ice as it hammers rabbit feet against his ribs. "You're being so mean, Nozomi! I thought you were my friend but—"
Ah. "I am your friend!" The desperation he fakes feels like he's lashing himself to a lifeboat with barbed wire. It bites into his hands and yanks him forward as 'Moko' responds in kind.
"Then why are you attacking me?"
"I - I said I wasn't trying to attack you! I just wanted—"
"You just want information on the Invaders! You're not happy I came back or anything coz you got to be the peacekeeper for a bit with me gone. Now that you're not important, you want any info I have coz at least then you can do something!" Cruel.
Eito wonders if Nozomi is cut by this accusation. If, as she listens in with her ear pressed to the door, she's struck by every word as though she was being physically assaulted.
He forces a look of shock on Nozomi's unexpressive face, affecting the horror he assumes she must feel as her so-called 'best friend' lashes out at her. "Moko—!" His borrowed voice pitches, plaintive, and cracks like brittle ice. Shards stick in his throat. "That's not what I'm saying. If you would just let me explain myself—" He accents the words like he's throwing darts, carefully making sure it infers intent from words that mean fundamentally nothing at their core.
It rises to the occasion, firing back with as much force—if not more. "You lost that chance when you took me back here to corner me. Some friend you are." Perfect closing line. Eito lets the fight visibly leave his body, keeping the pitiful and broken expression on his face as it shoves past him to leave. "Don't talk to me again now that I know what your loyalty and 'friendship' are worth."
"Moko—!" He plays at Nozomi's clinginess, giving her plenty of time to flee if she is listening at the door. It's all in vain, however, as 'Moko' just throws the door open and stomps out into the first floor hallway, leaving Eito behind to flood the silence in crocodile tears.
It couldn't have gone better if he had scripted the interaction himself. Whether or not the Commander acts on its nature and simply gives up the ruse or moves its plans forward, it will not only avoid 'Nozomi', but will also likely spread word of their 'little talk' among the second campus corps and that will cause even more problems.
The less connections Nozomi has, the more she'll need Eito and the less likely she is to slip up or seek outside help. She'll become more reliant on him and pull further away from everyone else to fill the void. All Eito has to do is act all contrite and apologetic, kowtowing to her as he begs for forgiveness he doesn't actually care about, knowing her nature means she won't hold it against him unless she knew the truth.
And she won't know the truth. He's taken great steps so that she will never know what he's actually doing. She's human, after all.
That would defeat the whole point.
(Eito pursues Shouma with the single-minded determination of a predator pursuing its prey. It isn't too difficult to figure where the little rat would go if upset and, sure enough, he's sitting on the bench in the Courtyard, staring off into the middle distance.)
("Ginzaki?" Eito calls out. He makes sure he sounds appropriately apologetic, deferential enough to someone 'Nozomi' considers stronger than her, injecting the right amount of pity and concern into his borrowed voice.)
(Shouma startles, jumping in place a little, and turns his wet, wide eyes to look at Eito. "O-oh...Kirifuji. Hello. Sorry you were forced to chase after a disgusting lump like me. You don't have to talk to me if you don't want to. I won't tell." His voice trails off as he continues talking, volume receding like the tide until the bleached bones of his pathetic, miserable nature is laid bare.)
(Eito is grateful that Nozomi's face is so unexpressive because he might have actually had a bit of a hard time suppressing a derisive sneer at the boy's self-deprecation. As it stands, he just shakes his head and gives him a gentle smile. "Not at all. I actually chose to come after you." He moves to sit next to Shouma, gently folding his legs so he is sitting effeminately enough to pass as Nozomi if anyone were to see him from the outside. A prickle of anxious revulsion crawls across his skin as Shouma purposefully scoots further away from him, for his sake. "Kurara was out of line.")
("N-no, she wasn't." His denial is soft, pathetic, easily smothered. "If the prisoner was to fight, we don't have a guarantee that she will fight for us or won't stab us in the back or run away the second she can.")
("She was out of line," Eito repeats, firmer. "And it wasn't just her.")
(The way Shouma looks at him—like he's an angel that's come down with some kind of incomprehensibly holy message that he isn't half as reprehensible as he claims to be—is nauseating. His wide, brown eyes glitter with unshed tears, rich loam and soft peat a deep, dark color. "What? That— are you sure? You're agreeing with me?")
(Eito tilts his head, purses his lips, and puts on a show of thinking. It's all a farce; he knew what he was going to say and how he was going to say it long before he even found Shouma. "I...don't like keeping a prisoner." He says it like it's a secret between the two of them—as if he hasn't already sold the same bridge to Nozomi and Takumi both—low and quiet, conspiratorial. "I think it's demeaning how we treat her, refuse to call her a person. It's...awful. But the alternatives are equally as awful, aren't they?")
(Shouma nods, his hair bouncing as he shakes like a dog. "They want to kill her," he croaks out around his fear and anxiety, "and I don't have the right to refuse or complain but...")
("You have as much a say as the rest of us. Just because you don't believe in yourself doesn't make you lesser when it comes to conversations like this - conversations about our survival and the war effort." It's sickening how he eats up every sugar-coated lie that Eito comes up with, lapping the dregs from his fingers like a starving animal. "Moreso since you have the key to her cage.")
(The Invader pretending to be Moko is capable of understanding their speech but the prisoner isn't. What's the difference? Is it the subterfuge? Or perhaps part of that Commander's specific powers that allows it to comprehend them. Either way, Eito doesn't care if the prisoner can understand them or not because he wants it to escape. It's better in the long run for him.)
("But—" Shouma cuts himself off, a pathetic whimper of a complaint. Then he opens his mouth and starts over after gathering his singular brain cell and squeezing it dry of any critical thinking. "I can't just let her out. They'll kill her.")
("True," Eito agrees, "and it would be incredibly obvious that you were the one at fault." That makes him flinch and curl in on himself, trying to appear small. "But that doesn't mean that you should write it off entirely.")
(That piques his interest. "O-oh?" He perks up, leans closer—not close enough that he could or would touch Eito, but closer—giving Eito his whole attention. "What do you mean? If you don't mind me asking...")
(Eito smiles at Shouma. Tilts his head. Pretends like this isn't him subtly nudging Shouma towards insubordination and outright treason. "I mean, right now everyone isn't focused on her. She's a background element. But you heard what they think of her and how close she is to being killed and absorbed at all times." He nods so Eito continues on, emboldened. "If their focus changes, she's not safe. In fact: if they deem her a threat, they will kill her. They might even let Omokage look at her insides to find out what makes Commanders work differently than other Invaders. Desecrate her corpse—assuming there's much of a corpse in the first place. Consider the fact that you—and you alone—hold the key to her cage as your last resort if it looks like things are going poorly.")
("What?!" Maybe he's pushing too hard. Back up. Try again. Soften the blow. Shouma looks genuinely horrified.)
("As a last resort," he repeats, "consider freeing her and smuggling her off of the Academy grounds. She surrendered and hasn't been hostile since. I doubt she'll bother attacking you and you're the one person who has been actively caring for her this whole time. Just..." He trails off, pretending like this is him mulling over his thoughts. Selling the lie. "As a last resort. The final resort if the rest of the Special Defense Unit decides she doesn't get to live any longer. Because she certainly doesn't deserve to die a dog's death. She doesn't deserve to die like a thing instead of a person. Nobody deserves that.")
(Shouma falls silent. The artificial nature noises of the Courtyard are white noise, cutting away at the core of Eito as he waits for a response. Then the boy speaks up, voice stern for perhaps the first time in his pathetic life. "As a last resort...maybe." In the end he can't even be firm about his resolve.)
(Ah, well.)
(Eito smiles at Shouma, showing that he's listening and is proud of him for thinking it over. Pretends that he doesn't want to just slam the wretched little thing's skull into the bars of the cage until it splatters and cracks like watermelon on a beach. "Something to think about." He concedes.)
(He also very pointedly does not look at the prisoner.)
(He can tell it's looking at them, its wide, wet, too-human eyes absorbing all it can while it waits for a death that looms over the horizon. He doesn't need to see it to feel its inquisitive and terrified gaze.)
(He can almost see it reflected in Shouma's own wet, wide eyes.)
As Eito makes his way back to Nozomi's room, putting on a good show of pretending he's hiding how upset he really is—layers of deceit, a trick he's rather adept at after years of lying to monsters whose expressions and nature were foreign and alien to him—he thinks about what the Commander could have planned for them. Considering where it had spent the past few days: surely nothing good.
('Moko' stands outside the Entrance Hall door, looking at the fire extinguishers with a pensive expression on its mimicked mouth. When Eito comes up behind it and leans forward, feigning the kind of schoolgirl cuteness he knows that both 'Moko' and Nozomi like to play at, it turns like it planned to snap his head off his neck, only relaxing when it recognizes him as not a threat.)
("Almost DDTed you babe! Gotta warn a girl before you sneak up on Mojiro Moko, the Apocalyptic Maiden of Destruction!" Its posturing reminds Eito of Gaku, oddly enough. A cruel insult, even in passing.)
("Sorry! Sorry..." Eito laughs lightly, standing upright and craning his neck so he can look at the extinguishers. "Did you have any questions? I know you've been pretty...out of it for a while and I've had more than enough time to get used to the layout and people here." Fish for information, he says with his eyes, in the space between his words.)
("I mean...if you're offering?" It's so easy to manipulate it's almost laughable. After all: it's easy to scam a scammer if they think they're the one holding the rod instead of the baited hook. The Commander pretending to be Moko puffs its cheeks and frowns at the door. "I just still don't get how these work!")
(It's a good thing he was the one it was asking and not any of the others. That was about as subtle as a metal pipe to the skull. "Well," he says, stepping around it to get closer to the extinguishers, "they're like these backpacks filled with a special chemical that can put out the Undying Flames for a brief moment—long enough to pass through once. There's a hose stored in the base and they get refilled and re-pressurized when they're docked so that they're always operating at one-hundred-percent efficiency." He gestures to the docking station.)
('Moko' nods. "I bet if you clobbered somebody with this it'd knock them clean out!" An unsubtle statement for anyone who knew what was really going on.)
(Eito just laughs again. "Maybe? I'd be more worried about puncturing the canister and ruining the entire mechanism. We don't really have any spares and, aside from some paper-mâché mock ones in the Gift-o-Matic, they're pretty much the only way we have in and out of the Academy aside from the bus from our school.")
("Bus?" Right. It's unlikely that the real Moko knew or cared about the bus.)
("Second-to-Last Defense Academy had a bus for our eventual migration to the main campus. We were...always supposed to come here, but it was up to our commanding officers' discretion as to when that was going to happen." And, despite knowing Sirei as little as he did, he can assume it wouldn't have been until someone at the second campus died and they needed to evacuate or lose the entire reserve corps. "Tsubasa has been maintaining it as of late. Named it and everything.")
("That's adorable!" 'Moko' coos and claps its hands in faux delight. "Maybe I should ask her for a tour!")
("You should! I think you two would get along swimmingly!" Tsubasa is a pushover with a weak stomach and self-esteem issues that mean that if you so much as insinuate you are interested in her hobbies without judgement she'll jump to the occasion to talk your ear off. "She has a very similar energy to you.")
("You replaced me?" 'Moko' gasps theatrically, pressing a large hand to its chest. "How dare!")
("I was missing my Moko," saying that makes Eito want to gag, "and she was the closest substitute for your energy and smiles.")
('Moko' lets out a squeal of delight and picks Eito up in a back-crushing hug. Something pops into place and a pain he hadn't realized was plaguing him eases up. "Awww. I wuv you too!")
And that had only been what Eito had seen. According to Kyoshika: it spent the day that Eito and Takumi were recovering from their extra-long expedition in the Cafeteria, likely trying to figure out if it could sabotage their food stores or the Ration-o-Matic. Good luck. They've been touchy about that since he burned their initial food stock.
Yugamu said that the day after that—while Eito was groggy and struggling with Nozomi's body not taking well to the overly long sleep he'd just had—'Moko' had been in the Courtyard, chatting with Shouma about the prisoner with interest. He apparently had talked to it in depth about what he knew about the Invaders based on what he had gleaned from the prisoner.
Kurara said that the day before Eito had spoken to 'Moko' in the Entrance Hall, she had talked to it outside the Defense Room about the Undying Flames and whatever was inside the Defense Room. Apparently—and this only wasn't news to him because he had asked Nozomi for differences between their two schools so he didn't slip up—the Second-to-Last Defense Academy didn't have anything in their Defense Room, only a steel door that led to nothing. The two of them speculated as to what could be behind the door 'for hours', or so Kurara said.
That paints an interesting picture of what kind of information it had been fishing for and—now that it likely is worried it's been made—the direction its sabotage will take.
Food, egress, the prisoner, and the very thing they're meant to protect. There's a non-zero chance that the Commander pretending to be Moko will take a fire extinguisher up to the Defense Room and try and break in using force.
Whether or not it succeeds hardly matters to Eito. All that matters is that this throws everything into confusion and chaos.
He doesn't care who wins so long as humanity loses.
Hand on the doorknob to Nozomi's room, he cranes his ears to see if he can hear anything from his own room. He didn't see Nozomi on the way up to the roof but that hardly means anything. Her senses have been dull and fuzzy as of late, a perpetual ache clouding everything in ways that make him irritable.
Even as foggy and plugged as his borrowed senses are, he can still hear his own voice stifling sobs. So she had been listening in. Good...
Tomorrow—assuming she doesn't pull herself together to come see him today—he'll go talk to her about what happened. For now...he's going to play at being too upset to leave his room. Hopefully that's enough to sell the illusion while he thinks about what he can do to help the Commander in its mission. Maybe he can throw a spanner or two in the works.
Only time will tell.
He can't wait to see what it does. He just hopes it doesn't disappoint him.
—
Nozomi stuffs a gloved fist in her mouth to keep anyone from being able to hear how loud she's sobbing.
(She knows she shouldn't be doing this. It's stupid, a breach of the tenuous trust built between herself and Aotsuki, but she needs to hear it for herself. She needs to hear Moko's story. She needs to—)
Selfish. Stupid. Idiot.
How could she ever doubt her friend like that? How could she repay the kindness Moko had shown her—the way that she had stood up for her right to fight when it was revealed her hemoanima was weaker than everyone else's—with such blatant distrust and disrespect? What kind of friend is she?
(She leans against the wall in the boy's bathroom, pressing her ear against the tile to eavesdrop, the sound vibrating sharply and carrying with muddled clarity. Aotsuki's words are less distinct than Moko's but she can make out him bringing up the concerns she had pointed out, hoarse for some reason.)
(She can also hear the moment it starts to go wrong.)
Moko has only ever been kind and helpful. Even though Nozomi had only ever been a burden to her and the other members of the second campus, she never once was harsh or cruel.
And Nozomi repaid that kindness and loyalty with distrust and an attack on her character.
(If she had been in the hallway when Moko stormed out of the classroom, she would have been caught then and there. It might have even been poetic justice, all things considered, to be done in by her friend after being so cruel to her. But she isn't in the hallway and so she doesn't get caught. She just does her best to not openly weep as she slips out of the bathroom and makes her way up to Aotsuki's room.)
(Why would Aotsuki be crying? Why would Aotsuki be running away from Moko? Why would Aotsuki be so upset by a falling out between two people from the Second-to-Last Defense Academy?)
(He wouldn't, so she can't be.)
(She swallows her sorrow and soldiers on, just like she always does.)
All she has to do is pull herself together. Get up off the floor, dust off Aotsuki's pants, and go to see him to discuss what he learned. She just has to get up.
Get up.
Get up!
(The last thing she ever said to her mother was, "You care more about your research than you love me!" She never got to apologize. She never got to say she didn't mean it.)
(What if the same thing happens with Moko? What if she's right and Nozomi is a bad friend, a jealous girl who just hates that she can't be the center of attention? What if, in the next battle, Moko is consumed by one of the Commanders and the last thing 'she' ever said to her was accusing her of withholding information?)
In. Hold. Out.
Her stomach clenches and protests. Vomit threatens to push its way out past her pursed lips. She fights it with all of her.
Then she gets up. Washes Aotsuki's face. Cleans Aotsuki's glasses. Pulls on Aotsuki's gloves.
Leaves Aotsuki's room.
The stench of the Special Defense Unit assaults her nose. The ground is littered with remainders of their comings and goings, chunks of flesh or ash or slime or rot or shards of porcelain criss-crossing each other, leaving a pattern of everyday paths behind in their wake. Everyone's rooms are marked by how Aotsuki's eyes see them—some worse than others.
(Nozomi purposefully takes a wide berth around Sumino's room. Ashy residue reaches up to try and grasp at her, needy things demanding her attention. She steps on them, grinding them beneath the heel of Aotsuki's shoe. The charcoal streak smears and sticks, a desperate bid for her to remember that she is a commodity.)
Aotsuki, or rather, her room is marked with clumps of blood-splattered vaseline-like slimy residue wherever her hands have touched. The doorknob is covered in the stuff, dried into a clumping crust of mucus and blood. Gritting her teeth, Nozomi schools Aotsuki's face into pleasant neutrality and knocks.
Aotsuki answers within seconds. There are pink streaks on his cheeks, watery splotches indicating that he somehow managed to force himself to cry. She...isn't sure how to feel about that. "Oh. Aotsuki..." She isn't sure she's ever heard herself sound that...irritated before. Despite it being her voice—albeit bubbly and fluid-choked, whispered around a mouthful of glass and pain—his delivery still somehow feels very Aotsuki.
Or maybe she's just never allowed herself to sound like this, even if she felt it.
"Sorry for the interruption but you said you wanted to talk?" A pretense, should anyone else be paying attention. Or snooping. "Is this a bad time? I can come back."
Aotsuki plays along. "No, no, it's fine. I was just about to come talk to you in your room." He smiles, thin and pained, and tilts his head. "Come in."
"Thank you." Nozomi ducks her head as she enters her room. Behind her, Aotsuki closes the door and drags his mass to her bed, sitting down.
Neither of them say anything for a while.
Eventually, Aotsuki breaks the silence by clearing his bloody throat, a gush of fluids spewing out of a hole in his trachea and splattering Nozomi with crimson droplets. She flinches but quickly smothers the discomfort—a reaction he seems to like because he gives her the first genuine smile she's seen him wear all day. "So about Moko—"
"How did it go?" Stumbling over her tongue, Nozomi cuts him off before he can finish his statement. When he silently admonishes her with a look, she shrinks back and mumbles an apology.
"Poorly." The word feels like a slap to the face. Like a targeted attack. Nozomi doesn't flinch but she does have to bite her lip to keep it from wobbling. "Moko took my attempt at talking to her as an attack on her character and said some inflammatory things about 'me' in return." Like Nozomi didn't already know that.
"Oh." What else can she say?
Aotsuki's mouth twists into something ugly and frustrated. She must be making some kind of expression that he doesn't like, her borrowed face pinching and pulling into a naked expression of sorrow, even though she already knew what had happened. "I could barely get a word in," he continues, "and perhaps it's because she became very defensive very quickly, but I think it would be best if we let this blow over for a day or two and then I go and apologize."
"For what?" A hot ball of frustration presses against her throat, the words snapping whipcrack as they leave her mouth. "I - you did nothing wrong."
"Isn't one supposed to apologize when one accidentally insults or hurts one's friend's feelings?" Aotsuki tilts his head almost mockingly. Blood dribbles and mixes with the various other fluids that seep from his broken body as he does so, thick globs fighting gravity as they're pulled ever downward. He bats his eyelashes at her, a disarming gesture that just makes her skin crawl and the irritation boiling in her ribs reach a fever pitch. "After all: even if 'Nozomi' was in the wrong, she would bend over backwards to try and mend the rift between her and her friends, wouldn't she?"
"Is that what you really think of me?" She isn't sure why she reacts the way she does. Maybe what he said is just the straw that broke the camel's back. Maybe she's just tired of pretending to be a good girl. Maybe she's just too worn down by everything to play at being the perfect, agreeable Nozomi. Regardless of the cause, she lashes out at Aotsuki, funnels all her frustrations and anger at him. He blinks, reels a little as she starts shouting, like the noise itself hurts. "That I'm some kind of pleasant pushover who won't stick to her guns?"
The gentle smile that Aotsuki gives her is infuriating. Patronizing. She wants to slap it off his borrowed face, even if it means touching a monster with even a gloved hand. "Of course not."
He's lying.
It's a subtle thing, Aotsuki's tell. Maybe it's not the only one. Maybe Nozomi is reaching, but she's spent enough time with Aotsuki to understand the difference between when he's being genuinely kind and when he's being facetious. His voice gets this tone to it—hidden beneath blood and mucus and other things flooding punctured lungs, bubbling through a choked and leaking diaphragm—that sounds poisonously sweet. He becomes deferentially polite in ways he usually isn't—not that he isn't polite, just that he isn't deferential—and bows his head to whoever he's talking to, ceding the advantage to them.
When he denies her, his tone is saccharine and his words are so polite that it feels as though he's clawing his fingers down her face. Her cheeks flush with indignation and fury that she's trying her best to keep a lid on.
"I'm not stupid, you know." Aotsuki raises his eyebrows as she barrels on. "I knew going in that confronting Moko about this was probably going to end badly, but I gave it thought. I didn't just rush in and insist that you corner her and demand answers."
"I never said you did."
"But you can't deny that her way of reacting feels wrong. Defensive. Like something that I figured out is right - like she's actually hiding something and doesn't want anyone to know."
"I never said that."
"You might as well have." She's a terrible person. She's a terrible friend. She doesn't care one whit. She doesn't care that she's now towering over Aotsuki, the scene painting her in aggressive colors. She doesn't care that anyone walking by would see Aotsuki overpowering Nozomi, shouting in an uncharacteristic way. She just doesn't fucking care. "You're just as dismissive as the rest of them."
That gets a reaction out of him. A bubbling spray of liquids spurt from his neck as he works his jaw, glass crunching and crinkling as it falls out of his gums and down his chest. "I am not being dismissive of your concerns. Didn't I go and talk to Moko? Didn't I do as you asked, even though you only have your gut instinct as proof anything is unusual? Didn't I choose to help?"
"Because we have no other choice! Because if you hadn't, I would have gone to talk to Moko myself, consequences be damned, and the results would have been the same, if not worse."
"Would you have gone to see her as Eito?" Aotsuki tilts his head and, for a moment, Nozomi sees red. Her chest burns with too much heat and her hands clench around a scythe that isn't there.
Her jaw aches. "There you go again! You think that if you word everything pleasantly, neutral and seemingly unaccusing, that nobody will notice that you're being rude. I'm not stupid, Aotsuki, and I'm certainly not blind."
He doesn't speak after that so she continues, the hemoanima in her veins screaming for her to run run run fight fight fight kill!
(There's a boy in her class. She doesn't remember his name. It doesn't matter anyway. They're both maybe five years old and they're playing. He says something to her about her hair and her eyes. It's mean. She yells at him. He calls her a bitch.)
(She doesn't know where he learned that word at that age. It doesn't matter, of course, but in retrospect it says something about his home life if he, at the age of five, knows that the word bitch is reserved for women being stubborn or mean to him. All that she knows is that, when he calls her that, she loses her temper.)
(When they pull her off the boy he's crying. She's got a fistful of his hair and a mouthful of his blood and she probably looks like a little hellion. She writhes in the teacher's grasp but eventually calms down. Shame replaces the anger. Her parents are called. Only her daddy shows up because her mom is busy at work.)
(Nobody at school wants to be near her after that. She transfers soon after. Her daddy has to drive to work now. The car crash follows.)
(It's all her fault.)
"If you didn't spend so much time dismissing my opinions and my concerns, maybe we could actually get something done. Sure, our plan at the moment is to wait it out, but I was not wrong when I suggested we look for help from Omokage because this is so far out of either of our purviews that we are going to need a second or third opinion." She takes a breath, sharp and ragged. Aotsuki remains silent and dumbfounded. He's never seen her like this. Nobody has. She's worked really hard to never be like this in front of anyone but the mirror. It's just too much. She can't— "But you have it in your head that you're right no matter what and that I won't notice when you're belittling me or putting me down by using kind words and soft criticism. I'm not stupid, I know the risks, but it's been several weeks at this point. We can't just keep sitting here, hoping things will get better. Nothing changes if we don't put in the effort!"
("Nozomi—" She sounds tired. She always sounds tired or disinterested or distant, but today she sounds especially tired.)
(It makes things worse. It always makes things worse when she says her name like that, each syllable laden with parental disappointment. "No! I'm sick of it. Why aren't you ever home? It's not fair!" It's never been fair. She isn't sure why today she's been pushed over the edge but—)
("It's not that I don't want to be home—")
("Could've fooled me!")
("—but my research is currently under extreme scrutiny. Kamakura higher-ups are putting me under an immense amount of pressure and I cannot afford to waste even a single second on unnecessary—")
("So your daughter is unnecessary?" It hurts. It hurts it hurts it hurts! The words cascade, pour from her mouth like a busted spigot. "I'm unnecessary?!")
("That's not what I meant." She sounds upset. Beneath the disinterested exhaustion, her words have this edge of irritated frustration. Her apathy just coats everything in a layer of gray and obfuscates it from the world.)
("Then what did you mean?!" This must be what doctors used to call 'hysteria'. The woman's disease. Shrieking and clawing and not backing down. She suffers from chronic hysteria, it seems. Not that she gives a damn. "You care more about your research than you love me!" The door rattles in its frame as she slams it on the way out. Her weak heart hammers sorrow through her veins, the anger overpowering it until it's too late to take it back.)
(She'll just apologize when she gets home. Hope her mother is home when she is or stay awake until she gets back from Kamakura and have food ready for her as an apology.)
(She hopes her mother will forgive her.)
(She never gets that chance.)
(She comes home to a corpse and a note.)
"I'm not wrong. I'm not crazy. Something is wrong with Moko and if you're going to be like - like this, then I'm going to deal with it on my own."
As the flood of anger recedes, it leaves shame in its wake. Muddy and bog-like, sucking fingers anchor her in place as she hears her pulse hammer against her spine, echoing in the halls of her ears like the precursor to an avalanche. She stares at Atosuki, waits for him to do anything, say anything, as the storm abates.
When he does speak, it's halting and quiet in a way that Aotsuki never is. "I—" he stops and starts over. "Nozomi, I'm sorry. I never intended to devalue your opinion or make you feel as though I was dismissing you. I—"
The door rattles in its frame as she flees.
Coward.
Coward coward coward.
You just blow up at him and the second he apologizes you're back there again. Coward.
Aotsuki is not your mother.
Neither is Moko.
Nobody is. She's already dead.
She locks the door to Aotsuki's room and sits down on the floor again, back pressed against the door as she does her best to try and contain herself.
Why are you like this? Why can't you just be good?
Someone is going to die because you're a selfish, wretched bitch. Because you can't grin and bear it. Because you're full of wrath and envy and a million billion other sins and you make it everyone else's problem.
And it will be all your fault.
—
Nozomi jolts awake at the sound of Sumino shouting, which sends a sympathetic flare of hemoanima shrieking through her veins. On the other side of the door to Aotsuki's room, she can barely make out Sumino's panicked shouts.
What is he doing?
Then the sound of him throwing his door open and it rattling as it closes. Panicked breathing. The sound of the door leading to the stairs slamming shut behind him.
Fear grips at her and yanks her strings, forces her to move. What could have frightened him - upset him so badly that he's tearing down the stairs at such a late hour?
She's in the stairwell before she can so much as think.
Maybe she's a busybody who can't keep her nose out of everyone else's business. Maybe she's just trying to look for any proof that she's worth anything more than the food she consumes and the space she takes up. Maybe she just needs a distraction. Regardless of the truth, she chases down the shadowy, ashy trail that Sumino leaves in his wake and finds herself at the Defense Room door.
She freezes.
In the Second-to-Last Defense Academy, the Defense Room was empty. It was, after all, a decoy and thus didn't have anything worth protecting. But here, in the actual academy, there is something. Barred by a wall of Undying Flames and a set of large metal double doors, protected by a veritable army of superpowered immortal children, there is something there.
And between her and whatever is in the Defense Room is Sumino and who—or what—ever drew his attention.
She cracks the door open and listens, guilt drowned out by insatiable curiosity and the deep-seated sense that something is wrong. The same sense that has been screaming at her about Moko's behavior this whole time.
"What are you doing?" Sumino sounds confused. There's an edge to his words that feels like grabbing a barely-too-hot piece of wood and tossing it further into a bonfire. A sharp, lingering lash of pain and itching. "It's late."
"So sorry but I'm not feeling too good. You mind if I just powder my nose? You'll have to leave first." Nozomi physically recoils from the door.
That was...
Was that Moko?
It sounded somewhat like Moko—the same way that any of the other monsters sound somewhat like her companions beneath the distortion of Aotsuki's disorder—but also it sounded wrong. Moko had never sounded like anything other than herself the whole time she'd been back. So why—?!
"This is the Defense Room though? I know that Second-to-Last Defense Academy had nothing in theirs, but this isn't a place you can just hang out in. It's important." Sumino's voice cracks and snaps with confusion. "There's a bathroom down the hall and - and you look really really bad. Maybe we should go wake up Omokage or Kirifuji and have either of them take a look at you because I'm worried that—"
"Take your hands off of me!" The noise that comes from Moko's mouth is inhuman—even by Aotsuki's warped standards. It sounds closer to the babbling and shrieking that Invaders make than human words. Sumino yelps and Nozomi can hear him stumble and fall.
She acts without thinking.
"Takumi!" Calling him by his given name feels weird but she's gotten better about speaking like Aotsuki—for all that she doesn't really speak much with anyone if she can help it. But that's not the issue. The issue is Sumino sitting flat on the floor, body curled in a way that makes Nozomi think he must have fallen down, and the fact that Moko's head is twisted a full hundred and eighty degrees around.
Frozen in place, it's all Nozomi can do to just watch as Moko sneers and twitches. "Another peeping Tom? Boys are just awful!" She laughs—the sound phlegmy and choked—and turns her torso to match her head. "And ganging up on me?"
"Aotsuki! Something's off!" Nozomi shoots a look at Sumino as he surges upwards and his edges solidify. "She looks wrong."
Looks? Nozomi squints at Moko but there doesn't seem to be anything different than usual. Unless...
"You can see it too?"
"You're so mean, talking about me like I'm not even here!" Moko whines around the sound of something monstrous. "I might just have to pop your heads off your necks for your attitude."
"Moko—" Before Nozomi can say anything else, Moko roars and rushes at her and Sumino. A burst of Undying Flame lashes out from the miniature wall protecting the Defense Room, striking Moko. Violet flames ignite her body and she begins shrieking, pivoting on her heel and throwing herself out of the window, shattering the glass as she goes. The sound of her body impacting the ground shakes Nozomi free of her paralysis.
"What—?"
"We don't have time to think." Sumino grabs her by the (bare) wrist and drags her out of the Defense Room and towards the War Room. "Let's grab our Infusers just in case."
"In case of what?!" Don't think about the feeling of ash and burnt human flesh on your skin. Don't think about the heat of his hand burning against your wrist, scarring you. Don't think about him lunging forward and calling you Karua. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. "Takumi, what's going on?! Why was Moko—?"
"There's this Invader made of Undying Flame," he explains as they dash down the hall, "and it usually shows up when something bad happens, like Shizuhara going missing. I saw it tonight and it was heading to the Defense Room. So was Mojiro and..." And? "Something was also wrong with her. She was acting...off. Considering what Kirifuji talked with her about today—"
"What?" Had he been listening in too? A sudden indignant frustration lances through the fear and revulsion, taking up every bit of her attention.
"I know, I know, but it looked serious and I was also wondering why Mojiro hadn't talked about what happened and kept deflecting. I should probably apologize to her when this is over..."
"You should." Nozomi tears her wrist free of his grip and scrubs and scratches at where charcoal streaks stick to raised burns. "But not now." Now they have to get their Infusers and head to the quad to see what became of Moko.
"But Mojiro was like...melting! And she was all shadowy and weird?" Was she? Wait.
"It was...weird. Do you think the Invaders did something to her? Some kind of experiment that was intended to turn her into an Invader or something?"
Sumino passes her Atosuki's Infuser and nods. "Maybe she's dying and needs to bring them information or something so that they'll give her the antidote. She seemed pretty in a hurry. Said something about running out of time."
Their transformations are over too fast, the comfort of the blood cocoon a brief respite. Standing in their Class Armor, the two of them land in the quad with their unfed weapons a dull grey in their clenched fists.
Standing across from them like some kind of invading force is Moko. The Undying Flames that had engulfed her were extinguished, the exploded ruins of one of the extinguishers from the Entrance Hall cast aside at her feet. She keeps jittering and twitching, dripping indigo goop on the ground in eyeball-laden puddles.
"Please, Mojiro, explain yourself! We just want to help!"
"You attacked me!" She whines. Keens. Gurgles. "You attacked me!" Her intonation is exactly the same as before. Her inflection is exactly the same as before. "You attacked me!" She sounds like a skipping record.
"Moko—" Nozomi starts then stops, a wave of horrible nausea and panic tearing up her throat, sour and sharp and acidic. She pauses, shifts her grip on her - Aotsuki's scythe, not quite feeding it just yet, but preparing for the worst. "What were you doing in the Defense Room?"
"You're so mean!" Moko's constant seizing reminds Nozomi of some of the test subjects who volunteered for the cryptoglobin infusions, the blood-like substance fighting their systems with a fury defiant, jerking them about like broken puppets. The way her head keeps clicking to positions like some kind of busted automaton sends chills up her spine. "You two and Nozomi are so so so so mean to me! What did I even do?"
"We just want you to explain yourself." Sumino's hissing voice is stern, firm. Nozomi's hand drifts to her wrist, the burn healed by her transformation, her skin itching at the phantom sensation of fire hidden behind the usual ash on the wind tone he has. "We don't want to fight."
"It's not a fight you'll win. After all: I'm Mojiro Moko, the Apocalyptic Maiden of Destruction!" She bares her skeletal teeth in a weak imitation of a smile, indigo slime oozing out from between them as she continues to convulse. "I'm Mojiro Moko. I'm Mojiro Moko. I'm Mojiro Moko. I'm Mojiro Moko. I'm Mojiro Moko. I'm—"
Like a broken record, like a scratched disk, she keeps skipping over the same statement again and again. And yet, as her mouth seems to catch on the concept of being Moko, her body isn't as stuck. Her skin ripples and bubbles, tendrils poking out of the surface, her normal clothes giving way to her Class Armor. She grips her heavy flail in her hands and turns her wild, red gaze to Sumino and Nozomi both.
"Shit," Sumino switches his grip on his sword, the blade flaring to life as the razors on the hilt draw fresh blood from his palms. "Sorry Aotsuki, but I don't think we can talk our way out of this one." He sounds scared. He sounds sick.
Nozomi wonders what Sumino is seeing. She can't tell what is and isn't Aotsuki's cognitive disorder but, judging by what Sumino had said earlier, Moko must be undergoing some kind of horrific physical transformation. As it stands, she shifts her grip on her scythe and lets it drink deep from her too-full veins, coloring the blade a rich red.
Moko flings her hands out and indigo ooze splatters the ground, rising up in awful mockeries of Invader footsoldiers. Sumino hisses in concern but Nozomi doesn't focus on that. She can't focus on that. She keeps her eyes solely on Moko and her enormous weapon and strange behavior.
"Don't be too mad, okay?" She roars. "Don't be too mad when I break you."
"Do you think you can thin out the fodder?" Sumino's eyes shift so that all dozen of them are looking directly at Nozomi—although it isn't too much of a stretch to assume he's keeping a pair on Moko.
Nozomi nods her head. Then, realizing it's probably hard to see in the dark, verbally replies, "Of course. I'll keep them busy while you handle Moko."
Sumino's body splits with toothy smiles, sharp and hungry. When contrasted with the familiar-yet-unfamiliar horror of Moko, his monstrosity is comforting. Something in Nozomi's chest settles and stills, calming as she watches Sumino launch himself forward to engage with Moko herself.
Despite it all, despite her reservations, there's something about Sumino that makes him magnetic and charismatic. Whether or not he knows it, he is a good leader—or, rather, he has the qualities of a good leader. Maybe that's why everyone deferred to him so quickly.
As Sumino clashes with Moko, Nozomi whips her scythe around and cleaves a bunch of the Invaders in half. Instead of the usual spray of blood and paint-colored viscera, they just dissolve back into the same indigo-colored ooze that coats Moko.
"The Invaders aren't real!" It might be redundant but better safe than sorry.
Moko's large flail crashes against Sumino's sword and he grunts with the weight of it. "I think Mojiro is making them!"
A fair assumption. Nozomi sends her blood through the earth, skewering more of the Invaders. She dances forward, scythe twirling like an extension of herself—and, as full of her blood as it is, it might as well be. Each time her weapon takes hungry chomps of an enemy, she finds a dissatisfaction brewing in her gut when they dissolve into nothing instead of coating the blade with blood and gore.
Sumino dodges one of Moko's attacks and strikes a deft blow against her, his sword tearing into her ribs. She whines and grips at the wound, indigo oozing between fingers that look less and less human as time passes. "Ow! Why are you doing this? Mean! Mean mean mean mean mean!!!" Where the indigo ooze spews and makes contact with the dirt, more of those fake Invaders pop up, quickly swarming Sumino.
"Takumi!" Nozomi flings herself forward and cuts them down before they can hurt him, her scythe catching Moko in the process.
Moko shrieks in pain. The noise is ear-splitting and shrill, an aharmonic layered tone that grabs the innermost part of her cochlea and tears it out with little care or finesse. Nozomi flinches as she turns to face her, face dripping and deforming. "I thought we were cool, Eito! What did I even do to you? Aren't I cute? Aren't I cute? I'm Mojiro Moko, the Apocalyptic Maiden of Destruction!"
Nozomi locks up. Her body refuses to move. She just...freezes as she stands face-to-face with something that might or might not be Moko. All the horrors she's endured to this point are nothing in the face of this and, for all that Aotsuki's body is infinitely healthier, her mind is still weak and pathetic.
Even when it's a life-or-death situation, she can't bring herself to hurt her friend.
Even when it's obvious that this thing isn't Moko, she still finds excuses to do nothing.
Even when she's going to get hurt so badly she might die, she doesn't have the resolve to hurt someone else.
Selfish selfish selfish.
Selfish brat.
"Look out!" Nozomi feels a warm spray coat her face. Sees red droplets bead on her eyelashes and coat her glasses. Locks eyes with Sumino as he sinks to his knees, blood trickling from somewhere in his shadowy body as Moko yanks her weapon back into her hands and begins to swing it again, building momentum for a second strike.
The edges of his form stiffen, harden. He looks up at Nozomi with two human eyes and smiles with one human mouth as the ash and shadows coating him begin to flake away. His unfocused gaze is locked on Nozomi, one human hand reaching out to touch her as if he needs to make sure she's real and unharmed. Red hair is revealed by the fistful, curling around the bill of the cap part of Sumino's Class Armor as parts of it are matted with blood and shadowy ooze. For the briefest of moments, the monster that had been Sumino dissolves and in its place is the dying boy who had looked at her like he could finally breathe properly the first time he saw her. He smiles at her like he did that day. His relief gives way to the cold emptiness of death and he slumps to the ground in a puddle of his own blood and shadow, the ash and embers covering him up again.
A drone gathers his corpse and ferries him to the Revive-o-Matic but that hardly matters to Nozomi.
She can't move, locked in place by the horror of watching someone take what was obviously a death blow for her. She can't breathe, Aotsuki's lungs suddenly as weak as her own crippled ones. Her hands are shaking, her pulse screams. She's clutching her scythe so hard that blood is dribbling to her feet, muddy marbles rolling to meet the mass of what used to be Sumino.
He had looked human. Looked up at her with relief and care. Taken a blow for her because she had been distracted and pathetic.
Sumino had died for her.
"That's what you get for being rude." Nozomi turns her attention to the thing that had been pretending to be her friend. For the first time in a long time she lets herself feel angry. Angry that she was tricked. Angry that this thing wore Moko's face to do so. Angry that it killed Sumino. Angry that she was so weak that he took a blow for her.
Fury funnels fire through her veins and she bares her teeth in a vicious snarl. "How dare you!"
"Huh?" The thing pretending to be Moko takes a surprised step back.
"How dare you wear her face! How dare you pretend to be her! Give Moko back!" And with that she leaps forward, ignoring all of the fabricated Invaders, hooks her scythe into the fake Moko's throat, and pulls. A spray of indigo fluid explodes out of the thing's torn-open neck and it shrieks in pain but Nozomi refuses to give it an inch.
It didn't let Sumino catch his breath.
The thing pretending to be Moko yanks at the chain of its weapon and tries to build enough momentum to strike back at Nozomi but she strikes the ground with the snathe of her weapon and uses the bloody spires to catch the chain, piercing the fake's ribs with the same move. Instead it pivots and turns to try and grapple Nozomi, going to wrap its large arms around her waist. In a stroke of luck, her scythe is positioned just so—mid-swing, the blow intended to cut up and into its chest—that the fake slices its arm off at the elbow instead of managing to grab her. It howls and pulls back but Nozomi doesn't give it so much as a modicum of quarter.
"No you don't." She lunges forward, hooking her scythe around its neck and wrenches, properly beheading it. A geyser of black-blue ichor rains down as the thing pretending to be Moko lays there, unmoving. "Get up. I know you're not done." Because this kind of durability and cunning means that this has to be a Commander and felling a Commander is never easy.
"You're so mean!" The whining reply bubbles from the stump of its neck. In a spray of indigo fluids, it reforms its head and rolls its neck. "What did I even do to you?"
"Killed Sumino, impersonated Moko, and lied to everyone here, to start with." Nozomi adjusts her grip on her scythe, the itching feeling of combat crawling up her spine. She wants to kill it, to tear it into tiny little pieces. She wants to leap, close the distance between them and tear its head off with her bare hands. She wants to beat answers out of it. She wants it to suffer.
Ima is right. You always have to watch out for the quiet ones, after all. They're never half as kind as they pretend to be.
Nozomi isn't very nice.
The overwhelming stench of the Special Defense Unit halts her fury in its place. Nozomi turns to look behind her as, one after another, the rest of the Special Defense Unit land in the quad and stare at Nozomi and the thing pretending to be Moko with unadulterated horror.
Oh. They saw that. They saw 'Aotsuki' act like that. They might have even heard her call Sumino by his family name. Her grip slackens slightly.
Kurara steps forward, rotten face contorting into fury that resonates with Nozomi's own anger. "What the hell are you? What did you do with Moko?"
"Hm?" The Commander tilts its head, smiles with Moko's mouth, and pouts just like Moko would. "What do you mean, babe? I'm Mojiro Moko, the Apocalyptic Maiden of Destruction!"
"No you aren't," Kyoshika cuts in, oddly sharp. Or, no, not oddly. Nozomi remembers the way they all felt when they saw the mind controlling Commander that had taken Moko and how everyone—even the usually happy-go-lucky Kyoshika—had jumped at the chance to slaughter it just to find out where Moko was. Just like herself, Kyoshika is capable of great fury and violence. She shouldn't forget that. "Where have you hidden Moko-dono, blackguard?!"
It looks between everyone gathered on the foremost front and sighs. "So so so so so so mean. I'm gonna break out at this rate." Then it runs a finger along the underside of its arms and a waterfall of that same indigo fluid pours free. From the puddles beneath it rise indigo-tinted, shadowy copies of everyone, their red eyes and skeletal teeth visually tying them to the Commander that made them. Half of them scatter to one of the other fronts and, as the lights inside Last Defense Academy flash, actual Invaders swarm the base. "This isn't cute at all."
"Fuck." Kurara stares at the Commander wearing Moko's face and stomps her foot. It's obviously an understatement. "Where's our glorious leader?"
Nozomi blinks, confused, but quickly realizes she's being asked a question. "He took a blow for me. I don't know how much longer he has until—"
"I'm here." Despite what she had seen as he died, Sumino was back to looking like he always did through Atosuki's eyes. Still, the revulsion she used to feel has lessened, her fear and disgust giving way to something akin to admiration. "Second campus stay here with me and Aotsuki. The rest cover the other front. Don't let them break through."
A chorus of agreement echoes out as they split and Nozomi turns to look back at the Commander who had replaced Moko. As if it had been politely waiting for them to sort their shit out—almost like it was observing them as much as they observed it, learning their strategy bit-by-bit—it tilts its head and laughs. The sound sends anger creeping up Nozomi's spine.
Then the fight begins anew.
"How did you even know this was happening?" A little more cautious than before, Sumino joins Nozomi in clearing out the smaller Invaders so that their heavy-hitters can take shots at the clones the Commander had made.
Kurara slams down one of her turrets and throws up fences, creating an excellent choke-point. "Nozomi was raising a stink."
Nozomi turns to try and catch a glimpse at Aotsuki to understand what drove him to do that but she's thwarted when the copy of Kyoshika tries to cut her down. Instead she focuses on pushing it back and stepping closer to Sumino in case the copies also share their Specialist Skills.
Aotsuki, thankfully, volunteers the information himself. "I got up for a bit of food—since I had skipped dinner—and heard the commotion in the Defense Room. By the time everyone had suited up, you were mid-fight." He fires a paralytic at Kako's double and follows it with one into Ima's double's chest as well.
"Why didn't you assume that we were just attacking Moko for no good reason?" Nozomi doesn't stop herself from asking. She can feel Atosuki's sharp eyes on the back of her neck but she ignores it, choosing to cut down Ima's double before it can recover from the paralytic.
"Because you are our friends." The earnest way Kyoshika replies almost makes Nozomi cry.
Sumino does choke out a wet-sounding laugh.
"Besides," Omokage slithers into the fray and splatters the mass of Invaders and duplicates in an acrid liquid, "it's not as if we could ever mistake that thing for our beloved Moko."
Not for the first time, Nozomi wonders what the rest of them are seeing. Is it the same mess of teeth and eyes and tentacles and indigo ooze that she does? Or is it something worse?
"What?" The fake Moko whines, turning its too-wide gaping eyes to Aotsuki as it does so. "Yugamu! That's so mean!"
"Is that all you're capable of saying?" Omokage is unbothered. He whips his myriad of arms out in a tornado of blades and poison, culling the herd and riddling the Commander with dozens of small wounds that drip with toxins. "No wonder Nozomi figured you out. For a spy, your disguise is only skin-deep."
"Not even that." Kurara spits as she erects a barrier tower within her slowly-growing fortress.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You sneak into our school wearing the face of our beloved Moko." Omokage moves as though he's made of liquid, his arms wrapping around and piercing through the Lesser Invaders as though they're nothing. "You can only parrot things so anyone looking too close can see beneath the façade. Nozomi recognized what was going on and confronted you and you panicked. If you'd kept a level head then maybe Eito wouldn't have removed it."
Oh. So they had seen that. Nozomi swallows heavily but continues to aid Sumino in cutting down the army so the others can air their grievances. If she doesn't react, they can't find it suspicious.
"I didn't want to believe that something was wrong but—" Aotsuki chokes on his words, tears coming to his eyes. Again, Nozomi finds herself envious of his ability to so easily fake emotions but, in the same vein, she understands how and why he is the way he is in that regard.
"And, what, that's enough to justify hurting me? Killing me?" The words coming out of the Commander's mouth sound broken now. Chopped and stitched together from other thoughts and phrases. Almost unnatural. "Some friends you are."
"Don't you dare say things like that with her mouth!" The way that Aotsuki pivots from sadness to fury, stitching the two false emotions together, is an art. "You aren't Moko. You don't get to wear her face and say things with her voice and expect to - to just get away with it!" The others from Second-to-Last Defense Academy rally with his anger.
Kyoshika turns to cheer in agreement and chokes as a paralytic ampoule impacts her and steals movement from her body. The replicated Nozomi cocks her gun after the fact but it's actually the fake Yugamu that takes advantage of the opening, surrounding her with Lesser Invaders to box her in so she can't use Special Bushido to its fullest potential and driving its stretchy limbs into her chest. A bright burst of crimson sprays across the battlefield and, despite Aotsuki moving to answer the carnage as best as he's able—car crash slug body catching on detritus and corpses, being caught up by other Invaders demanding his attention, taking dangerous blows despite the fact that Kurara's barrier tower is holding strong and deflecting some of the damage—he's not going to be able to reach her.
Nozomi, too, tries to fight her way to Kyoshika, hemorrhaging just to thin the Invaders out but it isn't enough. She knows—years of medical knowledge and weeks of being the group's combat medic screaming the bitter truth at her—that Kyoshika isn't going to be able to recover from this, even if she isn't slaughtered by the enemy. It's kinder for her to just—
"Shall we show them our might, Holy Jumonji Sword?!" Her metallic voice rings out across the battlefield—and likely through the comms, the other front having been relatively quiet save for a few direct orders regarding how to properly repel the Invaders or which of the fakes to prioritize—with the same delight that she exhibits when she faces off against a powerful foe. Truly she's the most alive when she's wielding her swords and fighting enemies she considers to be truly evil.
A flash of sword slices, haphazard and bright, a mix of hemoanima crimson and the purpling shadow that coats the Holy Jumonji Sword when worn in tandem with her Class Weapon shining from so far away. It's blinding. And then, when many of the Invaders and some of the fakes surrounding her have fallen—the fake Moko's severed arm weaving itself back together from tentacles made of shadows—she turns to look at her friends, shoulders broad and strong, and collapses into a bloody heap of metal and cloth.
Nozomi bites down on her tears as a drone retrieves her friend's body for recovery. Bottles them up and plugs the neck with cloth, storing the volatile cocktails on the shelves of her ribcage. This isn't the first time that she's seen her friends kill themselves to deal the enemy a heavy blow but it never gets any easier. Even if their death bolsters everyone's combative strength, fosters in them a unified hatred to direct at the enemy, it hurts. Someone has died. Oftentimes on purpose. They shouldn't ever get used to that and yet—
Sumino's sword flares bright with a fire that is as blinding as the sun. Kurara's shovel crackles with explosive energy. Omokage's daggers drip with more venom than before, crimson with his hemoanima. Even Aotsuki has overclocked her weapon, the gun glowing an irradiated green as it takes her weak blood in dribbles to boost the firing strength to something more lethal.
Nozomi shifts her grip on his scythe and lets it take more than before, the blade crackling with crimson lightning. Turn the grief into anger. Turn the anger into something constructive. Don't just fall to pieces. Everyone is counting on you.
Remember who you are and what your job is.
Nozomi cuts into some Invaders, tearing open their skin in ways their regenerative abilities won't be able to seal without time, and moves from group to group, leaving a path in her wake for Omokage to use to his advantage. He gleefully slaughters the remnants, Special Biology synergizing with the open wounds to properly poison and strike at the injuries of the Invaders she leaves behind. The two of them make quick work of many of the actual Invader forces while Sumino continues to strike down the fakes and engage with the Commander, keeping her attention away from the shield generator. Speaking of...
"If you so much as set one grubby foot closer to my school, I'll jam my weapon up whatever weird excuse for an alien asshole you have and use your corpse to bludgeon your friends to death!" It sounds as though Kurara has defensive measures taken care of. The reassuring sound of her turrets mowing Invaders down while she strikes others with her shovel, stunning them with concussive force, is a comforting backdrop to the chaos of everything else.
"On your left!" Aotsuki firing his gun and the sound of something being turned into meaty pulp.
At least they're both keeping their word. Aotsuki is taking his job as healer as seriously as she wanted him to and she's...reveling as a front-line fighter.
"I can't believe I ever considered any of you my friends!" The fake Moko whines as Omokage sprays the area around it with his potent toxins. "You're all awful. Just awful! I think I deserve better."
"Shut up." Any and all mirth leaves Omokage's voice the second he begins to engage with the fake. Like Nozomi—like all of those who came from Second-to-Last Defense Academy, their camaraderie forged with bonds of backbreaking hugs and threats of spine-severing piledrivers—he has no patience for this thing that had used their goodwill and abused their love for their friend to hurt them. Very little seems to bother him usually—she remembers him talking once about how his family raised him to have little-to-no attachments and, as such, he drifted through most of his life until An Event, wherein he found something worth tying himself to—but he had become incredibly attached to Moko. They all had. So any joy he might feel from fighting, any of the perverse delight he gets from cutting things open and bathing in their fluids and viscera, is buried under mountains of simmering, cold, professional rage.
The fake Moko tilts its head like an owl. A full ninety degree twist, cracking sound included, its bulging eye rolling as it grits its skeletal teeth in a poor imitation of a smile. "Huh? What?"
"Honestly, this is such a let-down. If I was going to kill Moko, I wanted it to be the real one and with enthusiastic consent. She would have given it to me, if I had asked when I had the chance." He sighs, hissing sibilance clattering mandibles as his forked tongue pokes out to taste the air. "I suppose I'll settle for cutting you open just to see how you function, but it won't be the same. All you make me feel is disgust." The word is fired out of his mandibles like a poisoned dart. His normally relaxed and languid posture is oddly whipcrack, tense and tight like a coiled spring.
"Don't turn your back on me just yet!" Sumino lunges, his sword piercing through the fake's side and searing the shadowy wound closed with brilliant hemoanima flames.
The fake Moko whips her weapon about in a circle above her head, the shrieking of it sounding like the cries of damned souls, splattering shadowy ooze on the ground to summon more footsoldiers. Omokage quickly slithers backwards and lashes out, stretchy arms tearing through the simulacra as though they were made of tissue paper. Nozomi, too, does her job by continuing to draw a number of the real Invaders away from the Commander. Their numbers were dropping exponentially but it was hardly enough when the Commander could summon them at will and when they kept pouring in through the Wall of Fire.
Omokage clicks his mandibles in irritation and pulls a vial from deep within his kimono. Nozomi's heart catches as she recognizes the deep crimson color of the fluid within. "I think I'd be best served doing this, don't you Takumi?"
Sumino seems to also understand what he's doing because he lurches like he wants to stop him. But he doesn't stop him. He just nods, a gentle acceptance of Omokage's wishes. "Make it count."
"If that's what our leader wants." Omokage almost croons as he knocks back the poison in one sharp gulp, shattering the vial on the ground next to him. Uncorking a vial of his most potent toxin, he coats the enemies surrounding the Commander and laughs, a breathy cackle that quickly is overtaken with the bubbling sound of blood flooding every orifice at once. "I never get tired of this. I'm going to take as many of you with me as I can, alright? Let's dance a waltz all the way to the gates of hell, shall we?" And then, in a spray of blood that almost paints the nighttime sky with a rainbow as the moon's light illuminates his final stand, Omokage explodes in a sea urchin starburst of blood as his myriad limbs shred anything within his reach into a pâté of gore. A myriad of wounds ooze with venom on the Commander, its breathing taking a shaky tilt as it barely manages to withstand Omokage's explosive last stand.
As a drone comes to gather up his remains, Kurara finally snaps. "Boost me." The sound of Aotsuki firing his gun is followed by the cracking of skulls and meaty destruction of enemies between her and her prey.
Kurara, astride her shovel, power-boosting drug shoved in the mouth-hole of her rotting mask, tears across the battlefield like a woman possessed. And, Nozomi realizes, she probably is.
This has been a harrowing battle for everyone from Second-to-Last Defense Academy. To see their missing friend again—someone they care about and love—only to discover that it's a foul trick of the enemy meant to dishearten them and gather information is a step beyond the pale. Omokage's sudden cold shift, Kyoshika's bloodlust, Kurara's directed fury, and even Nozomi's own emotional instability are all because that had been their friend and the Invaders had taken her, used her, hurt her, and then had the gall to lie about her return. No wonder none of them are surviving this fight. If Nozomi was in her own body and if she could make use of the Revive-o-Matic herself, she, too, would throw herself at this disgusting fake until giblets of her body littered the battlefield and the enemy was nothing more than a crimson smear on the ground.
But she isn't herself. Her body can't handle dying like everyone else can.
She can only watch as her friends throw themselves at this Commander one after the other, supporting them by clearing the way.
After all: she already beheaded the damnable thing. She's had her turn. In the same way that Sumino is graciously not touching the Commander so that everyone who has a personal stake in this fight can air their grievances, she is stepping back so that her friends can exact their revenge.
"You liar!" The word is accompanied by a strike of Kurara's shovel, the weapon impacting the Commander's head and caving in a section of its skull. Its eyeball splits into a soap-bubble foam of eyeballs, rolling in the caved socket as it reforms with a sickening squelching sound. "Murderer! Bitch! Give her back!" Each demand, each verbal assault is paired with a physical one.
Nozomi continues to keep the area around them clear with Sumino at her side, the two of them cutting down the reinforcements as they arrive so that Kurara can have her moment. Somewhere back by the shield generator, Aotsuki eliminates anything that gets too close and occasionally fires a healing ampoule to keep Kurara up and running.
The noxious-colored booster drug dribbles out of one of the many holes in her sagging, rotted head, flooding the floor around her with drowning insects and blood and putrescence mixed with the drug, hissing like a chemical spill as it leaves a rainbow trail in the dirt beneath her boots.
"You come into my school—" an impact, the fake's eye popping out and rolling across the ground only to get intentionally crushed by Kurara's heel, "—wearing my friend's skin—" another strike that shatters something in the Invader's collarbone—or whatever they might have, if their anatomy is similar enough to a human's, "—and use her voice—" again, a hit and again, something snapping and cracking and shattering, the Commander shrieking in what sounds like genuine pain at long last, "—to lie to me!" There, the crux of it all. Beneath everything, beneath all the bluster, Kurara is as scared as Nozomi—maybe even moreso—but she does a good job at hiding it with fury that Nozomi wishes she could express. Unpalatable, unkind, irritable Kurara still has friends and Nozomi—
"Khhk..." The thing pretending to be Moko tries to speak around what must be a mouthful of shattered teeth, blood, and a dislocated jaw. "Ku...ra....ra..."
"Shut up!" A swing down. The Commander is on its knees, blood-soaked and incapable of recovering fast enough to defend itself. "Shut up shut up shut up!!!" Kurara's shrieking demands are punctuated with a meaty sound as she drives the blade of her shovel into the Commander over and over and over again.
Jealousy curdles lemon rind in her gut. Nozomi forces herself to watch the brutality. Internalize the horror and anger. Remember that her friends are not good people but they are better than her.
Sumino finally intervenes. "I think it's done." He interposes himself between Kurara and the broken Commander—who has dropped Moko's Class Armor in favor of her regular clothes, body still wreathed in the writhing indigo goop and shadows in Nozomi's borrowed eyes—and calmly speaks to her. Careful, like he's soothing a wild animal, he doesn't back down when her fist clenches her weapon so tight the wood starts to protest. "We need to get as much information out of it as we can. Then you can have it, okay Oosuzuki?"
"Fine." It's as good as acceptance from Kurara. She shoves the spade of her shovel into the dirt and looks back at Aotsuki by the shield generator. "What's the damage, Nozomi?"
"Barely six percent."
Over the comms, Kawana breathlessly adds in, "Clearing out the stragglers here but they're retreating."
Sumino nods and turns to loom over the fallen Commander. "Meet up when you're done."
"Roger dodger Takkers!" Amemiya chirps, the sound of something near her dying the only other indicator of combat.
Eventually everyone gathers up around the Commander, the fallen members of the Special Defense Unit returning with vigor. The thing hasn't bothered to drop its disguise but it also doesn't move to attack again. Has it realized how futile its attempt was? Or is it still weighing the cost of surrender against the permanency of death?
"So mean," the Commander sighs and pouts. Nobody says a word in response. It frowns. "You guys aren't any fun."
"Forgive us for being un-fun," Sumino says with all the vitriol he can muster, "but you did infiltrate us under the guise of one of our friends and then tried to kill us."
"Can't take a joke." It sniffs. "Boys."
"Joke?!" Kyoshika has to physically restrain Kurara. "Where is Moko you Invader bitch?!"
"Right here!" Omokage quickly strikes, his hand moving so fast it's a blur to Nozoki's eyes, and the Commander hisses as blood beads on its cheek. "I'm not lying!"
"Where is the real Moko-dono?" Kyoshika asserts.
"Oh?" Something almost cruel crosses the Commander's face. It's not an emotion that Nozomi has ever seen Moko wear and it sends chills up her spine. "Why should I tell you? You're just going to kill me."
"We could put you in a cage, like the other one." Omokage points out. Behind him, the melted mass of garbage that is Ginzaki stiffens slightly, the edges of his amorphous form quivering with some emotion Nozomi can't parse. "And then you'd have all the time in the world to tell us everything you know, willingly or otherwise. You'll find I'm very persuasive and I'm sure our beloved leader won't begrudge me playing with this prisoner, since the other one has been so well-behaved?"
Sumino nods—a strangled noise escaping Ginzaki—and fixes the Commander with dozens of red eyes narrowed to thin slits of distrust and fury. "You've seen how we treat our prisoners. You have options."
"Do I?" It pouts as if it's thinking, tilting its head. "My options are to either let myself become an animal in a cage for a bunch of filthy invaders to toy with or let you cannibalize me, taking all my secrets with me. I think I'd rather do the latter, if you don't mind."
"And what if we do mind?" Omokage asks.
"You don't get a choice." It answers. "After all: I won't be able to hold this form for much longer anyway. And I wouldn't tell you shit even if you tortured me."
"What—?"
"If I had more time," it talks over Sumino's question, refusing to let him interrupt, "I probably could have done more. I'm the best at what I do, after all, but because Nozomi decided that Moko was too sick to leave alone for any amount of time, I had to change my tactics." It glares at Aotsuki, who stiffens and startles appropriately.
"What do you mean by more time?" Aotsuki pushes.
"I had to prioritize information over physical stability." The ease at which it admits to the minutiae of its plan makes Nozomi ill. If it's so willing to tell them this, then none of it will help them. That is the fear that writhes in her stomach and forces her to maintain eye-contact with this wretched thing. "The fever was a side-effect of rapidly processing this one's memory so that I could properly pretend to be it. And because of that, I was incapable of faking the more physical aspects of it. I couldn't fight, couldn't even pretend to be half as strong as it was. So I had to lie. And I was found out."
"That's why..." Aotsuki trails off, brows furrowing. The unending trail of blood that usually cascades down his chin thins to a trickle, jaw clenching enough to hold back the deluge in his punctured throat and glass-filled mouth.
"So thank you oh-so-much Nozomi-babe for ruining my careful plans." The thing affects its voice with Moko's genuine sweetness, saccharine and nauseating. "You're the best."
"Where the fuck is Moko?!" Kurara breaks free of Kyoshika's hold and closes distance with the Commander. She grabs it by the straps of Moko's top and hoists it up so that it's eye-to-eye with her, the host of flies inside her head swarming and buzzing angrily, like bees ready to attack. "What did you do to her?"
"I didn't do anything." It smiles a very Moko smile. "But I doubt that it's still alive. Our Supreme Commander detests waste, after all." Everyone reels at this casual and cruel reveal.
Dead. Moko is dead. Likely has been dead for a very long time.
"Before we kill you," Sumino discards any pretense, all the gentleness he can express replaced with cold steel and burning fire in the face of something so unrepentant, "tell us what your Supreme Commander's goal is. What your goal is. Why you're so hell-bent on attacking us."
"I don't think I will." The Commander's smile splits its face in a very literal way. "In fact, I think I'm done here. The Supreme Commander will appreciate my efforts, at the very least."
"Wait—!"
"Your language is so disgusting," it muses as its face bubbles and melts, "and speaking it makes me sick. I hope every last one of you dies a horrid, pointless death, just like Moko did." And then, in one last attempt to sow discord among their numbers and twist the knife, it turns to look at Aotsuki and smiles. This smile is so much like Moko that it makes Nozomi's chest ache. As it speaks, voice breaking and burbling as it discards its stolen form, it simply says, "Thank you for all your help, Nozomi. I really couldn't have done this without you. Love you, babe."
When the last of the indigo-colored goop has sloughed off of the Commander's body, what remains is a humanoid being wearing a mask that seems to be constructed with the bones of a horse. It says something in the Invaders' strange language, tone sharp and mocking.
Nobody stops Kurara as she plunges her Infuser into its chest and absorbs every last drop of its blood, stomping on the desiccated corpse until it crumbles to dust beneath her heel. Nozomi pretends—same as everyone else—that they don't hear the furious sobbing coming from within her mask. She—and everyone else—turn their focus to other things instead.
"What now?" For the first time since the Commander began gloating, someone other than the second campus unit speaks. Yakushiji seems put-off and uncomfortable by what they had just witnessed but, unlike a lot of the others, capable of pushing past it to discuss the future.
"What do you mean 'what now'?!" Kurara snaps.
"I mean," Yakushiji explains, careful to temper his tone so that he doesn't upset Kurara further, "we just learned somethin', didn't we? What do we do with that info?"
"About the Invaders?" Omokage probes. Yakushiji nods and Omokage's eye squints in amusement, antennae twitching. "We didn't learn much, if anything at all."
"We learned they're capable of lyin' and plottin' shit." Yakushiji counters. "N' more than that: we learned that they got a leader and some kinda big plot, plan, whatever. That...Commander bitch said as much."
"All it said is that it had been sent here to infiltrate and likely gather information, if not disrupt our working from the inside."
"Ain't that some kinda plan though?"
"No, Yakushiji's right," Sumino interrupts the back-and-forth.
"Oh?" Omokage turns his torso towards Sumino, hissing in delight. "Do tell."
"It said that it would rather die than be taken prisoner but it had, at one point, interacted with and asked a lot about the Commander we have prisoner in the Courtyard." Oh... "There's a non-zero chance that they were or are colluding."
"So kill the fucking thing!" Kurara snaps, her focus laser-sight. All the sorrow is gone from her voice, replaced with fury and Nozomi doesn't blame her. She, too, feels so hollow at the revelation of Moko's death that fury fills her chest like a gas explosion. "Don't take any chances. We should have done that from the get-go but mister sob-story here got our leader so limp-dicked about the whole thing that we willingly let a snake in our bed. Let's rectify that mistake now and give it no fucking quarter. Every Invader needs to die before Moko is avenged."
"What?! No!" An uncharacteristically loud rebuttal issues from Ginzaki, his mass pulled tall and clumps of detritus forming a grimace only Nozomi can see. "I - I won't let you!"
"Won't let me?" Kurara hisses, the flies surrounding her head buzzing dangerously as she looms over the shorter boy. Chunks of her rotting head spew out of her mouth and fall into his mass, absorbing into him with a sucking sound. "Are you sure you want to say that, Ginzaki? Really think about it, now."
"N-now, guys..." Aotsuki tries to calm Kurara down only to be cut off by Ima, of all people.
"No, I think Oosuzuki-senpai is right!" Beside him, Kako makes an indignant noise and frowns at her brother. "That sure sounds like insubordination, if not collusion to me, doesn't it Sumino-senpai?"
"I—" Sumino stalls out.
This gives Amemiya enough time to chime in with inanity of her own. "Infighting. The perfect lit match for an explosive start to a death game!" Her cackling echoes wind chimes of glass.
"Shut up." Maruko croaks. One of his webbed hands massages his temple. "This is bullshit. Why are we even arguing about it?"
"Because somebody," Ima makes intense and intent eye-contact (Nozomi presumes) with Ginzaki, who doesn't shrink away, "is soft and somebody else," this time he turns his attention to Sumino, who returns his sly grin with a stern frown of his own, "is an easy mark."
"I still think we shouldn't kill her!"
"And I think you should stop thinking with your dick for five fucking seconds before I remove it and your larger head with extreme prejudice."
"Kurara-dono! That is a step too far, even for you!"
"Shut up, Kyoshika, and go shove your sword in your second mouth you mentally-deficient idiot."
"Surely you don't mean that! Have I not proven myself to you as of late?"
"We can argue in circles all we want, but the point remains that the prisoner is a problem, isn't it?"
"Twist his dick off! Give him the ol' dick twist!"
"I ain't sayin' we should outright kill it or anythin', just that we should probably think it over."
"Guys we can't just decide to kill the prisoner on a whim!"
"Why not? We saved it on a whim."
"And look where that got us! I demand blood!"
"Kill! Kill! Kill!"
"Shut up!" Everyone who had been arguing stops, the squabbling screeching to a halt as Aotsuki's demand fades to silence. The air feels heavy, thick with tension. "Sorry," he apologizes, "but we were getting nowhere with all the arguing." On that, they could agree. "We need to rest. It's late, we're all a little punch-drunk and amped up on adrenaline, and we can't make clear decisions like this. If we decide what to do with the prisoner now, we're going to regret it later."
"But—"
Aotsuki cuts Kurara off with a stern glare that Nozomi is certain she's never made in her life. It's surprisingly effective. "But nothing. We just had a strenuous battle. Physically and emotionally everyone is very worn out. We shouldn't make decisions without letting ourselves cool down and reset. So I'm suggesting we put a moratorium on this debate until tomorrow, after we've all had a good night's rest and some food to fuel up, okay?"
Sumino nods in agreement, something like relief visible in the set of his shoulders. "Y-yeah. Kirifuji is right. We need to rest and think it over. This is...we're too keyed up right now."
"Is that an order?" When Sumino doesn't back down under the weight of her glare, Kurara sighs through her nose, spewing maggots all over his clothes. "Fine. But we aren't putting it off any further than that, got it?"
"Kurara-dono, we said we would defer to his leadership—"
"And I am," she interrupts, "but my patience only lasts so long. I don't mind breaking rank if I think my leader is an inept idiot with a bleeding heart, do I make myself clear?"
"Crystal."
With that, everyone makes their way back into the school except for Sumino and Nozomi, who are staring at the piles of Invader corpses being ferried to the Wall of Fire by the drones. Sumino shifts in place, nervous energy palpable. Then he finally speaks up.
"Thanks for helping with M— with the Commander without asking any questions." He sounds shy, in a way, and immensely grateful. It makes Nozomi's stomach twist in knots.
"Why wouldn't I?" And she finds that she genuinely does want to know why he thinks she wouldn't have. "You're a good leader, you haven't led us astray so far, and you're my friend." That last word has to be forced through her teeth, a raw falsehood for Aotsuki's sake.
Sumino stiffens, his outline spiking and bristling with surprise, a flash of heat striking Nozomi's face. "I mean...thanks. I just...it's hard sometimes. Being the leader. I didn't ask for this, of course, but it's my job and I—"
"Everyone is very colorful." It's a kind way to describe their eclectic unit. "So I can't imagine the kind of stress that juggling everyone's various quirks and demands must put you under. But you don't ever complain and you do your best for everyone."
He chuckles and several arms scratch at his head and pull at his hair in embarrassment. "Thanks. I just was worried that you would think I was attacking her or that I had decided she needed to die or something. It helped that it was falling apart and looked like...that, but still." So it must have looked pretty horrible for Sumino to be relieved its disguise was failing. "But you didn't ask any questions I couldn't answer and you helped hold it off until everyone else arrived. Thanks for that."
"I mean..." It's not as if she has a leg to stand on regarding listening in on conversations she wasn't a part of, but the fact that he had eavesdropped on Aotsuki confronting Moko rankled her a fair amount. But... "You took a death blow for me. You didn't have to do that."
He blinks. There's only one pair of eyes in his head at the moment—exactly where they should be, were he human—and her mind can't help but conjure up the memory of the stark relief on his face as he died for her. Something soft and vulnerable shows itself in his expression then, the edges of his shadowy form loose and fluffy, the heat from his body comforting and calming, as he tugs on his hair a bit with a singular arm from the only pair he's currently manifested. "Oh, uh, yeah. I just, uh, didn't really think much when it was happening."
"You didn't think about how you would die instead of me?" Her incredulity bites on the way out. Everyone here has gotten too used to death. Desensitized. It's nauseating at the best of times. "Really, Takumi?"
"Shut up!" He laughs and shoves her. His hands don't burn this time, though they leave sooty residue on her jacket. A dark-colored handprint that remains warm long after he did it. "Look, I just...forget sometimes. That death doesn't really..." Matter.
"It matters to me." Maybe she shouldn't say that aloud. Maybe she should keep that thought close to her chest but she just—
He smiled at her. Smiled at 'Aotsuki'. Looked so happy that she was okay.
Maybe she was as much of a pushover as Aotsuki had insinuated. Maybe she was spineless. It hardly matters in the moment.
"I think that's why I did it." He admits. "Because you always look so upset when someone dies. Like - like today, when Magadori and Omokage both blew themselves up. I could see it on your face."
You're too expressive, Aotsuki hisses from inside her skull. "I just...why us? Why child soldiers? Why not wait or perform whatever experiments they did to us on adults or—" Or what? She knows why. She knows that the transfusion killed every adult who was subjected to it. She knows that she's the only surviving subject of that study. She knows that the rest of the Special Defense Unit are special somehow and they survived with none of the drawbacks that Nozomi deals with. But she can't tell him that, can she?
She can't even tell Aotsuki.
Sumino sighs, weary and older than his seventeen years. "Who knows? I mean, Sirei probably knew, and so did Nigou, but neither of them are around anymore so..."
Right. "For what it's worth: I think you're doing a good job leading us. It can't be easy."
"It isn't." His laughter is wry and self-deprecating. "But it's not like I have much of a choice. Who else would do it?"
Nobody, she realizes. Maruko doesn't do anything he won't get paid for and nobody would trust his judgement. Kurara is too hot-headed, even if she is much more militaristic than Sumino. Ginzaki is confrontation-averse to a literally physical degree. Kawana is anxious and, while she can take charge, it always takes a lot out of her. Ima is selfish and sharp, too canny for his own good, but he would rather exert control over the group as a whole than guide them as a leader. Kako, conversely, seems to be barely getting her footing as her own person and would likely be talked over at every avenue. Kyoshika, for all her bluster and combat ability, is impulsive and a little too simple-minded to order a whole army around. Omokage would be a good backup choice but he prefers to remain in the background like a good assassin. Amemiya is too volatile to trust with any form of power. Yakushiji is capable of leadership, but he has such a strong moral compass that he would chafe against what would need to be done to win a war. Aotsuki would be good at it but she's Aotsuki at the moment and she isn't good at leading in the slightest.
"You still deserve praise where it's due," she settles on saying. He snorts.
"Thanks."
"Any time." And, for once, she actually means it. Whether or not it's because he died for her, something about Sumino's presence doesn't chafe as much as it used to. What was once an oppressive shadow is now a companion. What was once furnace-like blistering heat is the warmth of a campfire. What was once a looming horror is now an awkward, unsure boy trying to make the best of the situation he's found himself in. "Just try not to throw your life away for mine. We're equal in this war, okay?"
"Okay." She can practically hear him roll his eyes.
None of that matters as sleep grabs at her senses, smothering them in a suffocating blanket of fuzzy blood loss and post-combat crash. She stifles a yawn.
Sumino fails to cover his own. "Sorry," he yawns again. "I should probably shower before I pass out. See you in the morning, Aotsuki."
"See you in the morning, Takumi." Tomorrow they'll decide the prisoner's fate. For now...she's just beginning to feel the exhaustion of the day press down on her. She should probably also shower before bed.
She brushes a gloved hand against the sooty handprint on her jacket sleeve, surprised at how little she hates the smell of ash and fire and wood.
She could do without the burnt flesh, but they can't all be winners.
She wonders if Aotsuki got used to everyone just as quickly as she did, or if their swapping bodies interrupted his acclimation. She wonders—not for the first time—if, when they switch back, he'll be capable of adjusting to having his cognitive disorder again or if it will cause him as much distress as it had her.
She wonders if the prisoner would look as human to him as it does to her.
She wonders if that would stop him from pragmatically determining that the best course of action would be to kill it after all.
Nozomi stares at Kyoshika as she spoons porridge into the gaping mass of blades that makes up her mouth. Stares harder as sloppy globs of food dribble down and splatter against her heart, taking on a ruddy hue as it beats and bleeds all over the inside of her gi.
"Good morning, Kyoshika." She manages to force out a polite greeting, trying her best to not let her perception of everyone put her off eating again. She needs food. The fight took it out of her and, even though it's been a couple days now, she can't neglect Aotsuki's health just because she's too weak to stomach the sight of her friends. "Eating late?" Normally Kyoshika eats after their morning exercise, so this is late for her. Even with the second campus students taking shifts watching Moko, usually Kurara or Aotsuki take the morning shift.
Kyoshika inclines what Nozomi presumes is her head and swallows. The food splatters against the floor and some of it hits Aotsuki's shoes. She stifles a grimace. "Verily! We had an emergency earlier but, thanks to Takumi-dono's benevolent leadership, t'was dealt with in a matter most agreeable to all parties. I am taking a momentary break from watching Moko-dono to eat, but I cannot tarry long, lest her situation worsen in ways that this one cannot deal with alone."
That gives Nozomi pause. "No one else is watching her?"
Kyoshika tilts her head in confusion. Nozomi can almost see the way she must be pursing her lips, brows pinched in a guileless way. "Naught but I this morn. Kurara-dono, Yugamu-dono, Nozomi-dono, and Takumi-dono all went out to search for medicine."
"She's sick?" Fear floods Nozomi's lungs with cold fluid.
Kyoshika parries her concern with zero wasted movement. "She is ill, yes, but it does not appear to be life-threatening. And, as I mentioned: the others have gone out to quest for materials to soothe her fever."
A fever. A fever. Moko has a fever.
But, as much as she would love to help take care of Moko— "If you need anything, do let me know, alright?" She promised. She needs to sell the lie to everyone left. She can't falter now...
"Should anything arise, you shall be the first person I seek out." Kyoshika hurriedly shovels more food into her mouth. "You're v'ry respons'bl 'n sm'rt. You'd kn'w wh' to do to h'lp."
Nozomi pastes a thin smile on her face and tries not to retch. "Of course. Thank you for the praise." She walks to the Ration-o-Matic and retrieves her breakfast, clutching the tray so hard that the metal creaks and dents with pressure. "I hope she recovers soon, with or without an antipyretic."
"'S do I."
As Kyoshika wolfs down the last of her food and quickly gathers her dishes up to toss them in the chute for cleaning, the sound of thundering feet and a roaring engine catches Nozomi's attention. Then the door to the Cafeteria slams open and a tsunami of wretched scents immediately puts Nozomi off of her meal. Struggling against her gag reflex, slamming a hand over her mouth as she turns to look at whoever has just entered, Nozomi watches as Kawana stands there, heaving into her sick bag. Slobber and vomit bubble from between the metal bolts holding her face together as she pants, hot, sick-scented air fouling up the Cafeteria.
"Hhhhhhh...Magadori! Aotsuki!" Her voice pitches and shrieks, the sharp sound of metal whirring, vomit and gasoline fumes belching out from between her metal teeth.
"What?!" Kyoshika's hand is immediately on the hilt of the Holy Jumonji Sword, prepped to quick-draw her blade and come to the aid of her dear friends.
Nozomi, meanwhile, just gives Kawana an incline of her head as indication she's listening, unsure she can speak without spewing herself.
It's awful how someone who is so kind and so sweet can be so impossible to be around.
"It's—" Kawana takes a shuddering inhale, snot and spit bubbling and burning against the hot parts of her skin as she tries to compose herself again. "It's Mojiro!"
"Moko-dono?!" As if she had spoken the magic words, Kyoshika and Nozomi both leapt to attention. "What happened?"
"She—"
"Wow, it really does look just like our school!" Before Kawana can finish her statement, another voice interrupts, cheerfully and brightly.
Nozomi almost starts crying because it's Moko. It's Moko. Moko is—
Standing behind Kawana—looming, due to the difference in size—Moko peers at the Cafeteria with a hand cupped over her eyes. The red-tinted shapes squint in delight and she bares her skeleton teeth in a chipper smile, skin bubbling and rolling with the same shadowy goop as before. Still, Nozomi could never mistake Moko's voice and...to hear it so clearly in a sea of distorted noises is disconcerting and relieving in equal measures.
She can't cry because Aotsuki wouldn't cry but—
"Moko-dono!" Kyoshika wails and throws herself bodily into Moko's arms. With no effort on her part, Moko handily catches and princess-carries her in such a way that none of her errant edges cut her in the slightest. Kyoshika's heart cascades blood as though she is weeping—and, judging by the stuffed-up way she's talking, she probably is—and the crimson liquid soaks Moko's uniform and paints her strange skin almost solidly red.
"Awww, babygirl, c'mon Kyoshika, it's okay!" Moko coos and presses her forehead to Kyoshika's as she talks. "I'm here now! Thank you so, so very much for taking care of me when I wasn't feeling up to snuff. Really sweet of you."
"Wasn't just me!" Kyoshika sobs. "Kurara-dono, Yugamu-dono, and Nozomi-dono also took turns keeping an eye on your condition. They deserve as much credit. More so, for they went out to look for medicine while I remained behind instead."
"Aw, don't say that hun." Moko gently soothes. "You staying with me was a good idea coz what if I got more sick? And, like, I was out for a while, right?"
Kyoshika nods, snottily inhaling before responding, "And suffered a foul fever for six days." What?
"Six days? No wonder everyone else went out to try and find a cure." Moko sets Kyoshika down and turns to face Kawana and Nozomi, a small bit of wariness crossing her skeletal face, eyeballs bubbling up like boba pearls only to disappear just as quickly as they show up. "You guys are from this school, huh?"
Kawana swallows heavily and nods. Smoking puke and something that looks like motor oil dribbles down her chin even as she scrubs it off her cheeks. "Y-yeah. Kawana Tsubasa," she shakily gives Moko a closed-lip smile. "Your friends have told us about you."
"Aotsuki Eito," Nozomi forces the words out around her heart, trying to keep her composure. Is she crying? Are her eyes tearing up? Is this an appropriate time for Aotsuki to be crying? "It's a pleasure to meet you, Moko."
A beat. Silence that feels as heavy as one of Moko's body-presses across their sternums. Then she giggles and winks. "Nice to meet you! Thanks for taking care of my girls!"
"Of course," Nozomi manages, "they have been nothing but a pleasure." She can feel Kawana's incredulity burning a hole in Aotsuki's jacket. It's fine. Moko doesn't need to know about the whole incident with Ginzaki and Kurara just yet, nor does she need to know about the rocky introduction between Sumino and Nozomi herself. Not when she's just woken up. Not when she might still be sick.
Moko looks around the Cafeteria and, after a moment, asks, "This surely isn't everyone, is it? Where are the rest of my girls, Kyoshika?" The way she pouts is so...Moko.
It makes Nozomi almost ill.
"Verily, this isn't everyone. Kurara-dono, Yugamu-dono, and Nozomi-dono are with our reluctant leader, Takumi-dono, looking for medicine for your ailment. As for the rest of this school's students: they are likely out and about doing whatever it is they might be doing normally between defensive battles."
Kawana speaks up, surprisingly strong for how genuinely nervous she seems at this moment. "I...I could call for everyone to gather up if you wanted introductions?"
"Would you?" Moko clutches at Kawana's hands, hearts in her eyes. The smaller girl doesn't pull away but even Nozomi can see her go slightly limp in surprise. "That would be totes amaze! Genuinely, huge thanks if so. I would love to meet our new friends!"
"Yeah..." She gently peels her hands out of Moko's and ducks her head. "Uh...the Gym okay?"
"No complaints from me, girlie!" With a wink and a peace-sign, Moko strikes a pose.
Kawana weakly laughs and gently extricates herself from the room, the lingering wafting stench of her presence staying in her absence. Nozomi can hear her engines screaming as she sprints to the War Room to make the announcement using the PA system.
Kyoshika, meanwhile, is too busy weeping over Moko to notice Nozomi pushing her food around in her bowl while trying to not throw up from anxiety, horror, and the overall overwhelming experience of being surrounded by monsters.
She hates this. That is her friend, her best friend, that's Moko. Moko is alive and up and about and Nozomi can't even be happy about it in the way she wants to be. She wants to throw herself into Moko's arms and weep until she exhausts herself. She wants to hold her friend and thank her for being alive. She wants to be held. She wants—
She wants a lot of things. She's a selfish horrid brat.
—
Everyone loves Moko. Of course they do—she's Moko! But they accept her so readily and pepper her with questions about her talents and her history and this, that, and the other, all the while Nozomi stands in the back of the Gym and tries to not throw up or cry. Or both.
She isn't the only person avoiding actually being near Moko. Maruko is keeping his distance because he made one off-color comment about Moko not looking what he considers to be 'cute' and she threatened to pop his head off his neck. Ginzaki is sitting in another far corner—away from everyone else—indistinguishable from moss or rotting garbage left behind, insistent that he isn't worth paying attention to but staring at Moko with his beady eyes as though she's the answer to all of his problems. Ima is watching his sister talk to Moko with stars in her eyes, his own painted mouth curled thin in disgust, shadowy insides leaking out from within and giving away his actual feelings, even as he plays at politeness. Amemiya is gnawing on her thumb, muttering to herself like an echo chamber of irritation.
Others are crowding Moko, making a mess and mass of shapes and sounds and smells and fluids that almost resembles a censored blur of gore and viscera. Takemaru keeps asking her about her routine and her diet, how she keeps her physique so strong. Kako is starry-eyed and gazes up at Moko with the same adoration that Nozomi herself feels every time she thinks about her dear friend. Kyoshika is clinging as tightly as she can to Moko without overstepping her bounds. Even Kawana is asking things of her, the bubbly fluid in her lungs and throat making her words inaudible and incomprehensible.
And just as everything seems to be wrapping up, the school rattles as a loud clap of thunder rolls across the sky. Maruko and Kawana both shriek in surprise. Then a bright flash of light and another peal of thunder.
"What the hell?!" Maruko's pitchy croaks are almost inaudible for how high they arrive. His face is a pasty yellowish-white color, all saturation leeched away with fear. "Are we under attack?! I didn't hear the alarm go off!"
"No," before things can get any more loud or any more chaotic, Nozomi cuts in to try and mitigate the panic, "that's just thunder."
Moko nods in agreement. "Yeah!"
"Thunder?" Maruko wheels to fix Nozomi with his boggling eyes, disbelief visible in the way he sneers at her.
"Thunder is a weather phenomenon. Usually accompanying rainfall, it's the sound caused by lightning as it streaks from cloud to cloud or cloud to ground. You can calculate how far the strike is based on counting time between the flash of light and loud noise. We are perfectly safe indoors."
Kyoshika, however, had a realization that slipped past Nozomi. "What about those outside, seeking medicine for Moko-dono?" Oh. Right. "Are they not in danger of being struck by this accursed lightning?"
"Th-they should be fine." An assumption at best, though the storm likely isn't on top of them or anywhere within walking distance to the school. "Even if they are caught in the rain, if they wait out the more dangerous aspects of the storm by seeking shelter, they shouldn't be in any danger."
"What of any Invaders that might come across them while they shelter?" Kyoshika pushes.
A fair point. "Uh..."
"Sumino said they were going to travel in pairs," Kawana offers in response. She swallows a gobbet of boiling hot bile and clenches her jaw so hard that something in the inner workings snaps and starts leaking some kind of pressurized air. "They can take care of themselves...I think."
"Better them than me," Ginzaki adds on, his piteous voice almost inaudible beneath the roaring of everyone else clamoring to be heard.
"But to think Yugamu-dono, Kurara-dono, Nozomi-dono, and Takumi-dono would be caught outside in their attempt to heal Moko-dono's illness! If they were to come down with a cold in the process, would it not be ironic?"
"I didn't think the word irony was in her vocabulary," Ima raises an eyebrow in surprise.
"It would," Nozomi concedes, "but the odds are slim. Kurara, Yugamu, and Nozomi seem like they know how to care for their health and Takumi is...lucky." Because how else do you describe someone who was unconscious in the ruins of a city from blunt-force-trauma after a fair period of slow starvation being perfectly fine after a few days of redress? Lucky or hardy or impossible to kill and she's seen him go down in combat with enough frequency to know he isn't the latter. "They're more likely to just come back late."
"Or sopping fucking wet." Everyone turns to greet Kurara and whoever she was paired with, her acerbic comment nothing more than a justified complaint about her state of being. Her clothes drip with water like she took a swim in the pool without changing, her rotted skull full of drowning maggots. Every time she opens her mouth a brackish flood of fluid gushes out and the puddle of brownish-reddish water she's leaving at her feet is dotted with writhing insects and gobbets of her decaying head. Nozomi turns to look at Omokage instead, choosing his uncanny features over Kurara's vile rot and decay.
He meets her eyes and smiles wide, a glittering mass of razor-sharp teeth in a mouth that shouldn't have any, mandibles parting to let them glitter in the light of the Gym. A flash of lightning illuminates his carapace with brilliant purple-blue light and the scales covering his eerie hands glimmer like stars. "Were we supposed to find out dear Moko had woken up when we came back or were you going to send someone to call off the search?"
Kurara likely would have had something to say in addition but she had already thrown herself into Moko's arms, splattering the larger girl with her filth and incoherently saying something with her face pressed firmly into Moko's chest.
In her silence, Nozomi offers Omokage a half-assed excuse. "She woke up about an hour or so after you had left so we weren't sure if we could get back in contact with you without spreading ourselves too thin. Our apologies, Yugamu."
"No need to apologize, Eito." Even with the way his visible eye squints, a brilliant sapphire cabochon set in a jet and ivory sea of keratin on keratin on keratin, flickering rivers of teal ichor sealing years-old cracks closed, Nozomi can feel him probing her with his gaze. "We wouldn't want anyone to get hurt, would we? And besides..." He turns his attention to Moko and Kurara and Kyoshika, the latter two already arguing back and forth while the former laughs fondly. "I think this is a welcome surprise, regardless of the weather."
"Perhaps in spite of it." Nozomi finds herself commenting before she can catch the thought and determine if it's Eito enough.
Apparently Omokage doesn't find her slip-up odd because he just titters and makes his way to greet his friend with a warm hug and lascivious comment about vivisection that is met just as easily with the threat of an arm-bar strong enough to remove one of his many limbs. Nozomi watches them as vicious green envy bubbles acid in her stomach, curling and churning as the various monsters of the Special Defense Unit press a little too close.
Lightning flashes. Thunder claps. Amemiya gently sidles up to Nozomi and rolls her kaleidoscope eyes. "Normies."
"Do you not like Moko?" Of the main campus fighters, Amemiya is one of the few whose presence doesn't come with any ill effects past some mild visual and auditory pain due to the way her distorted voice and appearance demands focus that Eito's brain can't always offer. So, when given the choice between any of the people whose presence makes her want to vomit and Amemiya, Nozomi prefers Amemiyato solitude. "I find her to be gregarious and somewhat agreeable. I can see why the others missed her so much."
"She's so..." Amemiya waves her hand in a roundabout gesture, the lagging echo of the gesture glittering brightly. "Yanno?" Her whining carries the sound of car keys scraping down a mirror, her blurry outline crackling and wobbling.
"I can't say that I do?" Nozomi turns her gaze back to her friends; watches them joke and laugh and be happy without her. "But I can understand being overwhelmed."
"Right?!" Shattering glass. A baseball bat against a mirror right up by her ears. Amemiya smiles a dozen grins full of shards shoved into crumpled paper mouths. "It's too much. She's too much."
She can't fault Amemiya for it. It's just too much...
"Are you going to bed?" She asks instead.
"Probably? Not to sleep of course," she snickers at her own little private joke, "but Amemiya's gonna make like a dam foreman and scatter."
"Sleep well." And Nozomi finds that she means it. "I might not be too far behind you."
"Don't slip in the rain and crack your skull open! Who knows if the water would dilute your blood too much to put you back together!" She means it as a joke—a morbid joke in poor taste, but a joke nonetheless—but it falls so flat that Nozomi almost reels from the thought.
Could that actually—?
But she doesn't have a second more to entertain that thought because Amemiya is gone and not even her afterimages remain, only glittering glass fibers left in her wake, refracting the light as small glittering motes of deadly residue. And then, same as Amemiya, she takes herself to bed.
It isn't until she's closing her eyes to rest that she realizes that neither Sumino nor Aotsuki returned, which means that not only were they paired up—a prospect that makes Nozomi's skin crawl with the thought of Sumino in close proximity to her body after such heavy rain for extended periods of time—but that there is a non-zero chance that something might have happened to Aotsuki and she wouldn't know.
Tomorrow, she decides, too tired to actually move from Aotsuki's bed. Resentment settles lead in her gut and she tries to not think about how much of a brat she's being. If she wasn't such a coward, she would go out there now and find them herself but—
Moko.
Sumino.
Aotsuki.
Something in the back of her mind—the niggling bit of hindbrain that once warned her that if she left for school she might never see her mom again the day her mom hung herself—is screaming for her to pay attention and not leave and...
And...
—
Sumino's shadowy body is oddly dry, the crackling sound of his voice as he chats calmly with Aotsuki out of place compared to how sodden Kurara and Omokage had been the night before. Aotsuki, on the other hand, is as viscous as always, though no more wet than usual. Perhaps that's why Nozomi manages to steel herself and step into the Entrance Hall to greet them.
"You just got back?" A note of incredulity seeps into her voice, pulling Aotsuki's normally calm tone into something pitchy and irritable. "The morning announcements haven't even gone off."
"Why are you up Aotsuki?" Aotsuki asks with a cheer she knows he doesn't feel. "Did you sleep poorly?"
"Somewhat." And it's not even a lie. Her sleep had been fitful and restless, her dreams a car crash and brilliant magenta flames and someone shoving a blade into her abdomen as she chokes on lungfuls of her own blood, cooking from the inside out like steak tartare bastardized to hamburg steak. "But I do have something to tell you since you both are here."
"Can it wait?" Sumino whines, a pitchy noise, as he bends almost double backwards, spine shattering with a sound like a tree exploding from heat. "I'm exhausted and starving. Kirifuji and I were going to go get a bite and then pass out."
"After a shower and change of clothes," Aotsuki sternly amends.
"After a change of clothes." He rolls a dozen eyes and sighs a fog of hickory-scented frustration.
"I don't think this is something that can necessarily wait." She worries at her hands, picking at the seams of Aotsuki's gloves with her nails, trying her best to not look at Aotsuki or Sumino. But she has to. She has to look at them or else—
Her gaze meets Aotsuki's. His bloody mouth twists into a thoughtful frown, a wash of glass and teeth and blood spilling down the front of his shirt. She watches him, prays he will react accordingly. "Moko is awake."
—
The Cafeteria is crowded. The hoards swarm around Moko, clamoring in a cacophonous roar as they all seek her attention and affection. Nozomi steps aside as Sumino joins them to greet their newly-awakened comrade and as Aotsuki plays at being Nozomi for everyone, wide eyes glimmering with expertly created crocodile tears.
Off to the side—like before, like always—are the odd ones out. Watching with eyes that flicker, sparkle like light passing through a kaleidoscope, Amemiya makes herself small in a corner and gnaws at her paper texture nailbeds until smears of chromatic aberration blood stains her lips. Painted features unmoving, shadows writhing beneath the delicately sewn uniform he's wearing, Ima stares more at his sister than the masses, something unknowable in his already difficult to parse expression. And, the oddest one out, Shouma sits at the edge of the outcasts and those wanting Moko to look at them, his sticky and horrid mass undulating as though he wants to be seen but is too terrified to take up space.
Nozomi slots herself among them, closer to Amemiya than Ima or Shouma, and listens as she mutters and hisses around her fingers. "Stupid ray of sunshine. Loud and bright and too busy..."
Sumino introduces himself stutteringly. When Moko laughs and claps him on the back, a shock of charcoal dust flies away from where her hand sinks into his form and dissipates into the air with the scent of agony. He laughs too, a myriad of eyes squinted in amusement, and leans the head part of him away from her in awkward deference.
And then Aotsuki—
"They sure came back late." Ima's hissing clattering squeaking voice—porcelain on porcelain, the bump in the night fear of something out there given voice, monster under the bed if it was a bratty kid—cuts through Amemiya's repetitive speech-jammer complaints.
Maybe it's because she knows herself better than anyone or maybe it's because she's spent time looking at Aotsuki's face in the mirror, trying to reign in the way her every thought comes across without fail, but she can see how hard he's having to try to be okay with the noise and attention. His eyes won't focus on any one person, glancing away from Moko to dance from monster to monster, trying to pretend like he's not blinking just to keep from passing out. The way he's speaking—almost sobbing with forced laughter and fake relief—reminds her of the bad days when her lungs wouldn't fill all the way and her bones and joints screamed for her to go back to sleep just so she didn't feel it. He's in pain and pretending that he isn't.
"Ehh," Amemiya choruses, pulling a bouquet of bloody thumbs away from her uncountable teeth, "if they were gonna sneak off to boink, wouldn't they have picked a better time than 'literal middle of a storm'? Major death flags."
He flinches when Moko grabs him. Pulls in on himself and goes limp like he knows that fighting it will only make things worse. He surrenders himself to the embrace. Nozomi's chest clenches as she watches Moko's indigo-tinted arms squeeze Nozomi's organs out of the gaping wound in her stomach, Aotsuki's refusal to struggle almost worse than the splattering noise of her intestines meeting the Cafeteria floor.
"Isn't there a whole thing about warming someone up with your body heat?" Ima turns his pointed amusement to Amemiya, scoffing. "What better time to have a quick fuck than with the excuse of inclement weather?"
Her mouth floods with spit.
Amemiya clucks her tongue, the sound a full-automatic burst in the enclosed space. "Yeah, but like that's also a huge death flag. I mean...one or both parties usually get got once they've sealed the deal, so to speak."
Moko puts Aotsuki back down and wipes away a tear. Then she turns to Sumino again and happily begins to regale him with one of her stories but Sumino cuts her off, asking a genuinely pertinent question. "How did you escape?"
That was something she wanted to hear herself. Even with the horror clenching and clutching at her borrowed chest and tearing at her borrowed lungs, Nozomi needed to know how Moko had survived because—
Because—
"Super soz!" Moko winks and sticks out her tongue. "Dunno if it's because of the fever or the sleeping or whatevs, but I can't remember!"
"I—"
Before Sumino can continue whatever question he had, Aotsuki cuts him off with a sharp smile. It looks cold on Nozomi's face but it's the most Aotsuki expression she's seen him wear since—
"Regardless of how, I'm just so, so glad you're okay Moko!" He turns his head towards the door—towards Sumino—and grins a cascade of glass and blood. "But Sumino and myself just came back and—"
"Of course! Sorry for keeping you!" Moko nods. A bubble or two pop against the surface of her skin, eyeballs fading in and out of existence. Her skeletal teeth glitter crimson in the fluorescent lights of the Cafeteria. "Fuel up! Go take a nap! Have a lie down! We can have a chat sesh later and talk all about it, yeah?"
"I—" Sumino begins to protest but something seems to occur to him. Or, perhaps, he just genuinely felt the exhaustion that had been plaguing Aotsuki for the whole conversation. "Sure. Thanks, Mojiro."
"Any time! Now where was I?"
"Hell-in-a-Cell!" Yakushiji bellows.
"Right! So there I was, locked in with my arch-rival at the time, and we had both traded back and forth for a good couple minutes—"
Watching Aotsuki and Sumino tiredly grab plain meals, quietly eating as the rest of the Special Defense Unit swarmed Moko, feels odd. Prickly. Like she's on the outside again and, for lack of a better term, she is. Sure, Aotsuki would invite her normally, but he knows her opinions regarding Sumino and they're both exhausted and—
It's all excuses in the end anyway.
She just doesn't want to admit that something is upsetting her so she's running away.
"I mean, if there was a serial killer out and about, wouldn't it be the perfect time to kill one or both of them?"
Ignoring her problems and hiding away behind fake smiles and her illness.
"Do you sincerely think Sumino-senpai would allow anything to harm Kirifuji-senpai? He'd kill for her."
Pretending, like always, that she's better than she actually is.
"Bold of you to assume that she wouldn't be the one killing him!"
She excuses herself from the Cafeteria, incapable of being around anyone any longer.
As she leaves, she can hear the tail-end of Amemiya and Ima's inane discussion, Ima's thin voice clear as day. "I wouldn't be surprised. You always have to watch out for the quiet ones, after all. They're never half as kind as they pretend to be."
Nozomi doesn't throw up until she gets back to Aotsuki's room.
—
"No, but seriously, how did you get past the Wall of Fire?"
Nozomi—like Aotsuki and Sumino—had spent all of yesterday in her room, out of sight and out of mind of any of the others. Unlike Sumino and Aotsuki—who had the excuse of having spent a solid day outside the Wall of Fire in a pretty nasty storm—Nozomi had just been running away from her problems, isolating so she could wallow in her own self-pity and frustrations.
And, unlike Nozomi, Sumino isn't letting go of his concerns just because it's Moko.
Kurara, on the other hand, fumes and stomps one of her feet. A fistful of maggots drop from her head and land in her soup, drowning in the salty broth as she snarls at their leader. "What the hell is wrong with you?! She just got back. Lay off, Sumino!"
"It is a fair question," Kyoshika points out in Sumino's defense. "I, too, have been wondering if it is perhaps some kind of flaw in our defenses."
"If it is, isn't it better to know so we can fix it?" Kawana pushes her own food around, the bubbling quality of her voice especially clear. "You didn't have a fire extinguisher on you at the time and the alarm went off like we were getting invaded, so that was a false positive. If we get too used to disregarding things like that, we could get caught unawares."
Kurara's face pales, pinches, and then twists. A low buzzing sound of insects builds in the back of her throat as she clenches her fists in tight wooden balls, the wire groaning with tension. "O-of course that's a fair concern. If Sumino had just lead with that—"
"Aw, you're being too hard on him, Kurara!" Moko waves a hand, cutting Kurara off before she can continue her threat. "It's breakfast, isn't it? Eat so you're not so hangry, okay babe?" Grumbling under her breath, Kurara shoves a spoonful of maggoty soup into her mouth and falls silent. "As to your question, um..."
The world stills, the sound of eating falling away as everyone turns their gaze towards Moko. She pauses, finger pressed to lips that give way to bared teeth beneath transparent, shadowy flesh, and hums in contemplation.
Everyone—Nozomi included—waits for her reply.
"Couldn't say!"
"What the hell do you mean?" Maruko croaks and squeaks, face ruddy as he squints his bulging eyes at her. "You walked in. Shouldn't you know?!"
"But I conked out pretty fast after that, right?" Moko shakes her head. "Dunno if it's head trauma or the fever or like some secret third thing but I remember pretty much nothing about how I got here! Been trying to dredge it up and everything."
"That's okay," Aotsuki offers, voice thin and sweet. Nozomi watches as he takes a bite of his rolled omelet and then inclines his head in thought, neck barely holding on. "Maybe some of the Invaders opened the way and you followed? That's why the alarm went off."
"Isn't the alarm meant to go off whenever the Wall of Fire is disturbed?" Kurara looks to Kawana and Omokage for confirmation. The former is too busy eating to talk, sparing Nozomi the horror of watching chunks of half-digested food pushing their way out of her improperly-sealed outer shell, but the latter dabs his mandibles with a napkin and replies.
"Correct. If Moko had followed Invaders in, that would track, although I believe that if she hadn't, it wouldn't have gone off because of the Revive-o-Matic."
"Huh?"
"We're all genetically registered to the Revive-o-Matic, which functionally operates as a corpse retrieval system, doesn't it?" According to the various instruction manuals left in both the War Room and the Infirmary: yes. At no one's protest, he continues on, hissing voice barely audible with uncontrolled delight. "If one of us crosses the threshold, it wouldn't register as an attack but a return. In the same way that a robotic vacuum maps a room as it goes, the drones and security system also consider any space inside the Wall of Fire as secure grounds. We're registered as safe to enter, safe to exit."
"Attempting to cross without a fire extinguisher would have set Mojiro-senpai ablaze, however, and we all know how powerful the Undying Flames are." Ima takes a pointed bite of his breakfast abomination, a shattered section of his face grasping for and absorbing the food into the mass of him. "So she needed to have either a hole opened for her, or a fire extinguisher of her own."
"The Invaders have been entering without an extinguisher," Aotsuki points out. "Who's to say that she couldn't have co-opted one of their methods? My Invader theory was just a theory anyway. It's not like we can prove it either way."
"No, I think you might be right Nozomi..." Moko looks at Aotsuki and smiles. A few spare eyeballs bubble to the surface of her skin, floating too close to her teeth, and pop. "That also might explain why I was so wiped. Got in a scrap before you found me! Wiped 'em all out!"
"I...suppose..." Oddly, Sumino doesn't sound convinced. Does he not trust Moko? Something bitter prickles up Nozomi's spine with myriad legs. Before she can say a word about it to him—before she can refute his distrust and affirm Moko's obvious honesty—he sighs a cloud of awful, acrid smoke over his already ashen meal and asks something else. "So you're powerful?"
"Stronger than any of you limp-dicked assholes by far!" Even without much of a face to speak of, Sumino manages to convey his exhausted resignation at Kurara's crude backhanded compliment.
Maruko, however, hasn't necessarily learned that important lesson and harrumphs as loud as physically possible. "What the hell is your problem? Seriously? What did we ever do to you?"
She fires back without a second thought. "You want to lose your incisors again, Maruko? I will knock them out of your worthless skull and then maybe you can get a couple hundred yen from the tooth fairy for your troubles."
While the two of them squabble and bicker, Omokage opts to actually answer Sumino's inquiry. "Moko is, in a similar vein to Shouma, a sturdy frontline fighter." From where he was sitting, Ginzaki's amorphous form surges upward in a strange display of uncharacteristic pride. Then he deflates again, bubbling sadly and reeking of rotten eggs and compost. "Unlike Shouma, however, she is a formidable combatant on-par with Takemaru. The more punishment she takes, the more punishment she dishes out. Isn't that lovely?"
"I can't wait to see you in action, Moko-senpai!" Kako talks around a mouthful of her breakfast abomination, painted eyes glittering with awe. "That sounds amazing!"
Maybe it's just that she's being overly critical or maybe it's just that she's overwhelmed and overstimulated, but Nozomi can't help but focus on the very subtle flinch that bit of praise elicits from Moko. She laughs—awkwardly, a little stilted and choked—and idly plays with one of her pigtails. "I mean...I'd love to, but—"
"But?" Poor Kako, about to have her heart shattered to ceramic dust.
"I'm so below even my baseline hundred and twenty percent power that I don't think I'm going to be in fighting form for a bit."
This time, Nozomi isn't the only one who hones in on how odd her attitude is; Ima scents blood and pounces like an opportunistic predator. "Define 'a bit'. Just so we don't assume anything of you, come defensive battles."
Moko's strange, shadowy face pinches and purses as she hums. Then she replies, "No idea! All I can say is that laying about really did a number on my muscle mass and I gotta really up my macros to be my perfect, adorable self again! Wouldn't want to go onstage without being in top form, right? It'd disappoint my fans."
Kako pouts and pokes at her breakfast again. Ima, however, isn't so easily placated. "Then you plan to train until you feel ready to join us again? Didn't we just have a similar issue regarding layabouts?" The pointed way he looks at Sumino speaks volumes as to his intent. He's intentionally evoking something—likely whatever draconian laws their prior leader, Shizuhara, had enacted before she disappeared—but doing so in such a vague way that Nozomi and her friends are left in the dark on purpose.
How...shrewd. And somewhat awful.
"Ima." Sumino's firm shutdown is oddly comforting.
"Sumino-senpai." Ima tries to counter with a similar tone and delivery. It doesn't work.
"Take all the time you need, Mojiro." As if to prove Ima wrong, Sumino extends a measure of magnanimity to Moko by openly telling her—and everyone else—that there will not be any issues regarding Moko needing recuperation. That, in no uncertain terms, she is allowed to recover at her own pace. That nobody is going to mess with her.
For the first time since she'd arrived at the main campus, Nozomi finds herself grateful for Sumino's nigh-compulsive protective nature. If he wasn't then—
Moko smiles brightly at Sumino. "No prob! I'm gonna' catch some zees and count some sheep and get some reps in my sleep. Sooner or later I'll be in fit fighting form again and then you'll see the might of Mojiro Moko, Apocalyptic Maiden of Destruction!" A few of Moko's new fanclub applaud her.
Aotsuki is not one of them.
Nozomi makes prolonged eye-contact with Aotsuki, maintains a deep and loaded connection with him. Why? Her eyes ask him. Why are you not—
Aotsuki reaches over Moko and retrieves her dishes. "Take it easy, alright Moko? I don't want you to strain yourself. You just woke up, after all."
"Thanks Nozomi-babe!" Moko blows Aotsuki a kiss. "I can always count on you to do what's best for me."
Aotsuki gives her a gentle, soft smile in return. "I do my best."
"You are the best!"
Nozomi's stomach roils with irritation and jealousy. How stupid, to be jealous of herself. Even if she knows—even if Aotsuki knows—nobody else does. Moko is just interacting with 'Nozomi' like she always does, flirting and laughing and smiling and—
Whatever anger and frustration she's feeling, whatever stupid, childish emotions she's beholden to, it makes her almost blind with rage. Her hands shake as she finishes her breakfast—the strong scent of natto masking the stench of the monsters she has to surround herself with—and goes to the back to wash her dishes by hand.
As she does, she passes by Aotsuki on his way coming back from the dishes chute. He watches her, unwavering, mouth working around a thought and a windshield worth of glass and blood. Then he speaks, low, so as not to be overheard. "You look unwell."
"I—" Nozomi cuts herself off and shakes her head to settle her thoughts, refusing to let her selfish, petty anger do more than bite at her insides. "Being around so many people is..."
"Hard." She can hear the smile in his voice, see it in the way he tilts his head and raises a single broken hand to touch her shoulder only to stop, hovering above the pristine white surface of his jacket. "I understand."
"I know you do." If anyone would, it's him. "But it still—"
"Don't worry about Moko," he continues, cutting her off, "she's awake and healthier now than she has been in days. Give her time."
"I'm not—"
"You're too expressive." Something vile and angry snakes its way into his voice, bubbling like the way her perforated lungs and punctured trachea choke on blood and bile and all manners of fluid. Babbling, like a poorly constructed tap, he laughs, low and humorless. "We should work on that."
Then he's gone. She blinks—time lost to the rushing blood in her ears and the fury clawing at her ribs and the indignant horror roiling in her stomach—and finds herself alone with only the drying trail of ooze he leaves behind as evidence that she wasn't always alone.
She scrubs her dishes in water so hot it cracks the skin on her knuckles, hands rubbed raw and stinging with emotion and a deep need to be clean.
(Behind her, Moko asks about the prisoner and some of the more vocal of the Special Defense Unit fill her in on the details. She gasps at the appropriate time, 'ooh's and 'aah's when she needs to, and even offers running commentary where applicable. She's the perfect audience.)
(Even as the monsters she calls her friends happily tell her about how they've caged someone up, treating her like an animal, she doesn't falter. Perfect, precise, on point.)
(Nozomi doesn't leave her room for the rest of the day. Nor the day after that. She just practices making expressions in the mirror and reads the various books and treatises she borrowed from the Library, hiding away from everyone and everything.)
(She gets lucky because there's not a defensive battle. Luckier still that no one seems to care enough to come check on 'Aotsuki'.)
(What a bitter comfort.)
—
"She actually talked to me!" Nozomi stops pushing her food around and looks at Ginzaki—really looks at him with all of her—fighting to keep her interest off her borrowed face.
"Huh?" It's actually Sumino who seems the most put-off by his admission. Their leader's outline prickles and wavers, a burst of searing heat blasting off of him and toasting the parts of Nozomi that are closest to him. "What do you mean it talked to you?"
"Well," Ginzaki draws himself up to his full height, fistfuls of him slowly succumbing to gravity even as he manages to make his short stature impressive, "I went to bring her food, like always, and I greeted her the same way it always do."
"Which is?" Sumino presses, wary.
He has every right to be wary. "I say: 'good morning; you look lovely as always'." Nozomi fights Aotsuki's face to neutral-adjacent concern, furiously trying to not express her genuine disgust at the whole situation. "And she said 'lovely' back at me!" He makes a weird screaming-grinding sound, like a bone or a fork stuck in a garbage disposal, and his amorphous form undulates with barely contained delight.
"That doesn't mean shit!" Kurara shouts from her table. "All that means is that it can parrot us. Big whoop!"
"True," Omokage nods as he taps one of his claws against his mandibles, "but if it can imitate our speech, then what else are the Invaders capable of? The actual structure of our skulls and throats and tongue are what allow us to create such noises, let alone accurately. I wonder how similar their bodies are to our own?"
"Haven't you cut open enough Invaders?" Kurara sneers, a burst of buzzing flies hissing from between her lips, carrying her derision over to Omokage.
"Not a Commander."
"Nobody is going to be cutting open the prisoner!" Uncharacteristically firm, Ginzaki shouts to be heard over the bickering between the two. From where Nozomi is sitting—a distant spot, her nearest neighbor being Amemiya, who at least only really smells of molten glass and a library and blood—she can see him rear up, the central mass of his body opening to reveal the mass of hair and bone and other growths in his mouth that create the impression of a jaw and teeth. He's grimacing, she assumes based on the way Omokage titters and Kurara is flushing and trembling. An unusual display of force for the normally meek boy.
"For the love of murder! It was just a suggestion. A dream, even." Omokage brushes off his fury with no love lost.
Kurara, on the other hand, snaps back with intent to harm. "What, suddenly we can't treat the prisoner like every other Invader just because you've got a hard-on for it? Why should we kowtow to a sick freak like yourself when all of our lives could be on the line? It's not a person, remember? It's an Invader. A monster."
"But she is a person!" Ginzaki argues. Beside her, Nozomi hears Amemiya grumble and wince.
"It is an Invader. Pull your stumpy head out of your ass long enough to get that through your overly thick skull. Just because it made goo-goo eyes at you and said it wants to suck you off doesn't mean it's any less dangerous!"
"Guys!" Sumino's shouting cuts through the argument, drawing everyone's attention. Even Amemiya stops whatever it is she was doing to focus on their leader and whatever it is he needs. "Focus up! Stop arguing."
"Don't tell me what to do." Kurara hisses but quiets down, Omokage raises a few of his hands in surrender, smiling serenely, and Ginzaki settles down again, bubbles of rancid air popping on the surface of his skin and burning in Nozomi's nostrils.
"We won't be cutting open the prisoner, Omokage, we've talked about this."
"Aww..." Omokage's disappointment is only partially performative.
"And we aren't letting the prisoner go either, Oosuzuki." Kurara just sniffs, silently sulking as Sumino turns back to Ginzaki. "You said she mimicked your greeting, right?" He nods—or so Nozomi can assume, the gesture hard to read on his blob of a body—so Sumino asks a follow-up. "Have you been talking to it about anything else? Anything sensitive?"
"No. Even if she couldn't understand me, I know there's little I can offer anyone with my horrid presence or my grating voice, so I opted to expose her to me as little as possible." Ginzaki wobbles in place, deflating somewhat in his self-deprecation. Then he straightens and bobs the central bit of himself in what Nozomi has to assume is a self-assuring nod. "But I would never talk about the war. Not around her."
Something in Sumino's shoulders relaxes. His eyes close, his outline solidifying, and he sighs. "That's...good to hear, Ginzaki. Just...keep it that way?"
"If we have some kind of leak because Ginzaki couldn't keep it in his pants, I'm going to turn you inside out like a sea cucumber!"
Ginzaki shrinks but doesn't say anything else. The viscous surface of his skin bubbles and boils, popping like molasses on high heat. He must be seething, in his own Ginzaki way, for his twisted form to reflect that so clearly.
"I think you're being too harsh on him." Kurara glares at Nozomi, who flashes her a weak, (hopefully) disarming smile.
"I'm inclined to agree." Aotsuki echoes her sentiment. "It's not as if the prisoner is doing anything wrong. It's simply learning, same as us."
"You understand how actually terrifying that fact is, don't you?"
Aotsuki looks at Kawana, brows knitting in what Nozomi can read as false concern. Why false? What is it about Kawana's statement that makes his concern false? "Howso?"
"If our prisoner of war," Kawana heaves on saying the phrase and swallows heavily, "is learning from us, then what else can it learn?"
Aotsuki's mouth hangs open, blood and gums and glass falling past his lips as he gapes at her.
Ginzaki, however, seems to take offense to what's being said. "If she's learning then maybe we can let her out of the cage!" His syrupy voice is oddly stern, the belching dumpster scent of his breath and very existence exploding in bursts of rot-hot warmth against Nozomi's skin.
"Are you fucking damaged?! You can't be just stupid, because even a brain-dead moron would understand why what you just said is bullshit." This time, nobody really jumps when Kurara's buzzing shrieks essentially batter against their ears. In fact, Nozomi is surprised that Sumino didn't jump in to correct Ginzaki a little kinder than her friend currently is.
Ginzaki doesn't back down, his amorphous spine stiffening and straightening. Again, solid masses gather and coagulate to form teeth that he bares in an agitated grimace. "Wh-what do you mean? Doesn't she deserve to be free of the cage like everyone else? If she can learn, who's to say we can't get her to help us?"
"I would rather give Kyoshika half a liter of soda water and a real firearm in the middle of the Cafeteria than ever consider letting the prisoner any modicum of freedom."
Kyoshika looks up from her food at the sound of her name, noodles shredding themselves to ribbons against the edges of her mouth. "Oro?"
"That's—"
Kurara doesn't let him get more than a single word in. "The fact that you think, even in passing, that there's a snowball's chance in hell that we would even consider trusting it, let alone arming it and allowing it to aid us in defensive battles means that maybe you're even stupider than Maruko."
"Hey!"
She ignores him and continues to lay into Ginzaki, stalking closer and closer as the swarm of flies that nest and breed endlessly in her caving skull buzz and shriek with her foul mood. "It's an Invader and our prisoner. If you want to get your dick wet so bad, sit on your hand till it goes numb and jerk it in the fucking shower. Don't you dare put all of us at risk," she waves at the collected Special Defense Unit with one wooden hand, face contorting in ruddy anger, "for a charity case led by your downstairs brain."
"Oosuzuki!" Sumino's sharp reprimand comes a moment too late. The damage is already done. Ginzaki bubbles and froths and then collapses in on himself, slithering out of the Cafeteria with surprising speed for someone his size.
The silence that is left in his wake is deafening.
"Holy shit..." Yakushiji grumbles into his breakfast.
"Kurara." Omokage sighs, shaking his head in disappointment.
"What?! We were all thinking it!" Kurara fumes in her seat, wooden hands shaking with frustration.
"You didn't have to go there." Even beneath the hissing and popping of his distorted voice, Nozomi can hear how genuinely tense and frustrated he sounds. "You know Ginzaki doesn't like this."
"Tough fucking titties." She sniffs.
Sumino pushes back. "And you yelling at him is the same shit as when you first showed up. I thought we were done with this. Didn't you agree to his terms when you lost to him?"
As Kurara and Sumino bicker and yell at each other—back and forth and back and forth, a cacophony of buzzing and burning and breaking—Nozomi looks to Moko, her voice oddly absent from the row. By now, she should have jumped in and chided Kurara for her attitude and harsh words and yet...
Moko is staring into the distance, sitting with her back to almost everyone. There's a strange quality to her expression—slack and confused—that's hard to parse when combined with how indistinct she is to Nozomi's borrowed eyes. Still, her silence is telling—as is her not eating even when her plate has food stacked on it.
Despite being healed she's still acting off...
Nozomi wants to ask her what's the matter but—
"I think everyone here is getting a little heated and needs to take a moment to cool down before someone dies." Omokage manages to sound very excited by the prospect of murder he's evoking as a deterrent, but that's nothing new.
What is new is the sound of Aotsuki interjecting with Nozomi's bubbling, choking voice. "I'll go check up on Ginzaki. Make sure he's okay."
"You will?" Sumino perks up, a starburst of eyes focusing on Aotsuki's beatific smile as he nods in affirmation. "Thanks Kirifuji."
"Of course." He exits much quieter than Ginzaki did, door closing behind him gently, leaving the Cafeteria and the Special Defense Unit to recover from the awkwardness of the initial argument. In his wake, his slime mixes with the awful garbage drain residue that Ginzaki leaves as he moves. The oily mess holds Nozomi's attention, hypnotizingly awful.
"At least someone was planning on trying to play peacekeeper," Kawana mumbles. Nozomi flicks her eyes to look at her, bouncing off as soon as her mind recognizes the disgusting fluids bubbling out of the various joints and holes in Kawana's patchwork body. Still, her discontent is...comforting in a way. "Not that I think Oosuzuki is wrong for saying what she said, just...how she said it."
Nozomi hums and pushes at her food again. "If the Invaders can learn, if they are capable of reason, then does that mean that the prisoner's surrender was more than just a bid for its life?"
Kawana makes a noise somewhere between an engine clunking, a piston out of place, and startled, fluid-filled choking. Bubbles of boiling ick splatter against Nozomi's skin and Aotsuki's jacket, scalding where they land. "Wh-huh?"
"Haven't we been operating on the assumption that the prisoner surrendered to save its own life?" That's what she assumes they think, anyway. She's done her best to avoid talking to anyone about the prisoner. Or looking at the prisoner. Or thinking about the prisoner. "If the Invaders are capable of reason—or at least the Commanders are—then there might be more to its surrender. Maybe it surrendered so that it could see its family again or maybe it always wanted to defect but being captured is a better option than deserting their army." And then, realizing that Aotsuki hasn't seen the Supreme Commander and wouldn't have anything but hearsay to go off of regarding its ruthlessness, she adds on. "According to the second campus group and Takumi, their leader is dangerous and willing to toy with us for fun, like a predator playing with its food. Who can say what it does to its own troops and Commanders if they don't fight."
(Half a table away, Kurara and Sumino are exchanging verbal barbs while Omokage watches on, amused. Maruko has already extricated himself from the mess, choosing to flee to another part of the Cafeteria to eat next to Amemiya and, due to Moko's presence in the Cafeteria, Ima. Yakushiji is talking to Kako, Ima within distance, and every so often he turns to address Moko even though she seems barely present. The noise is...discomforting and awful, a cacophonous mess of horrid fluids and mechanical smoke but it's far better than the yawning silence that tension brings. It's a twisted form of the comfort Nozomi finds in surrounding herself with people, only now it scrapes her skin raw.)
(It also masks her conversation with Kawana in the din, hiding a tree in the forest. That way nobody can comment on what must be some form of subordination.)
Kawana heaves and sputters, something in her chest rattling. She chokes and swallows, clearing her airway, and then fixes Nozomi with her full attention. "You think they have families?!"
"Why wouldn't they?" Have none of them bothered thinking about the implications of the Commanders being human-looking? Of the ruins they're surrounded by and the social hierarchy that exists in the invading forces—the Greater Invaders having sway over the Lesser, all of them beneath a singular Commander ruled over by their Supreme Commander? Has everyone just chosen to willingly turn a blind eye to how strange everything is? "They look like us, don't they? So why wouldn't they have families?"
"They're made by World Death?" A fair point. "And if they have families then—" She stops, cuts herself off and heaves again. Harder this time. Hard enough that she has to turn to the side and vomit in her sick bag. "Sorry..." Her apology is piteous, voice crackling as chunks of half-digested food slither out of gaps in her skin and muscles, cooked by the internal heat of her engines.
"It's only a theory," she soothes. Maybe she shouldn't have said that to Kawana of all people, but the people she wants to talk about this with—Kurara and Omokage—won't engage with her when she's Aotsuki. And, if she's not careful, they might recognize the way she talks and the points she's bringing up. "I didn't mean to cause you distress."
(Moko stands up and apologizes to Yakushiji and Kako, smiling widely. She drops her dishes off in the chute and slips out of the door, leaving a hole where she was sitting. Speckled with shadowy splotches dotted with red eyes, nobody moves to sit where she was. Instead, they continue on talking as if nothing has changed. To them, nothing has.)
(Nozomi can feel her absence like a pulled tooth. She grimaces and then smooths her expression to neutrality so as to not upset her conversational partner.)
"Regardless: I think it's worth considering, at any rate." Standing up, Nozomi takes her dishes to the back and pauses. Where Moko had placed her hand is a handprint-shaped splatter of indigo-black, a blinking red eye staring at her from the palm. Nozomi blinks at it and raises her hands as if to dispose of her dishes in the chute. It follows her movement.
She doesn't leave her room all day again, too busy trying to sort out her thoughts and far too worried to sort out her emotions. Like Kawana, she feels so sick she might pass out.
Nobody visits her.
Nobody cares enough about Aotsuki to check up on him.
—
"Nozomi."
Aotsuki startles and turns to face Nozomi, eyes wide with surprise. Then he twists her ruined mouth into a gentle smile and inclines his head in a greeting. "Aotsuki. What can I do for you?"
The hallway they're in feels enormous and cavernous. It yawns wide, devouring every bit of silence angels leave in their wake, leaving an ominous prickle of being watched behind. Nozomi works Aotsuki's mouth around the things she wants to say, chewing the words to paper mache. "Do you have a moment? I had a...request."
Aotsuki's eyes flick from one end of the hallway to the other, catching on the door to the connecting hallway. His eyebrows disappearing behind his fringe, thin lines blending in with the combed swoop. "Now?"
"If you wouldn't mind." Sometimes talking to Aotsuki in public is like yelling into an echo chamber. She's never certain how good she is at being Aotsuki but he's somehow managed to get her demeanor and word choice down pat to an uncanny degree. It feels...off. Shouting at her shadow, if her shadow could bleed and smelled of burning and gasoline and pain and the past best left buried. "We can actually reconvene in one of the first floor classrooms, if you would rather somewhere more isolated than the hallway."
He giggles. It's a vapid, disarming sound. Nozomi grits her teeth, choosing to focus on the way it pushes chunky blood out of his destroyed mouth and onto the floor instead of how fake it sounds. "I think having a private conversation in a public hallway defeats the purpose, doesn't it? Lead the way." He gestures with one hand and Nozomi strides past, keeping an even and slow pace so as to not leave him behind.
The sound of him behind her is disgusting and comforting in ways that she's unsure of how to unpack. On the one hand: Aotsuki's cognitive disorder has made things difficult for her. On the other: knowing that her own body looks and sounds a unique way makes it easy to pick him out of a crowd and his very presence comforts her. He's her partner in crime, in a way, and her confidant. Why wouldn't she be comforted by him being nearby?
(Sometimes he says something a certain way or looks a certain way, an edge to his words that cuts against something she's incapable of seeing. Sometimes he startles and the way he reacts makes her fear for her life. Sometimes he smiles and it feels like he'd rather bite a chunk out of the person nearest him than thank them for whatever it is they're doing—not that she doesn't understand that particular feeling. And then she pushes that concern down because he's already trusting her with so much of himself. Suspecting him of anything—even if it's vague nothings built on faint unease—is unkind and wrong. She's better than that.)
(She tries to be better than that, anyway.)
The classroom door closes behind them and they both wait for a moment longer, listening for the sound of anyone walking down the hallway or within eavesdropping distance. When nothing happens, Aotsuki turns to Nozomi and drops the smile he'd been wearing. He looks...worn down in a way that Nozomi doesn't miss.
Not for the first time since Moko came back, Nozomi feels guilt grab at her intestines and twist. She should tell him.
"What did you need that couldn't be said in the hallway?" There's a terseness to his voice, a wire pulled taut. Nozomi doesn't flinch or back down, just tilts her chin and looks at him over the top of Aotsuki's glasses, needing the clarity to steel her nerves.
"It's about Moko." His mouth flattens, blood bubbling at the corners of his lips. She can hear the glass grinding against his jaw, shards on shards on shards making fiberglass flakes that puff out in clouds every time he exhales, pink-tinted cotton candy clouds of pain.
"What about her?"
"I...something's off about her." He raises an eyebrow, shifts in place, arms crossed over the gaping wound in his torso. Nozomi doubles down, "I - I know that this sounds like maybe I'm upset that I can't talk with her like I always can but - but that's not the case! I genuinely think something is wrong with Moko and I want to ask her but..."
"Eito wouldn't have just cause to interrogate her, while Nozomi would." He finishes her thought for her, dry voice unimpressed. "Is that it?"
Guilt wrenches her intestines and crushes her trachea. "I—" How can she put it? "It's not just that she's being...weird though like— I'm...maybe this makes me an awful friend but I think she's lying about how she escaped."
That gives him pause. "Oh?"
"She's being evasive about how she got away from the Invaders, which is already odd enough. Normally she wouldn't hesitate to tell everyone the story about how she daringly escaped and the climactic fight she had to save her own skin." Babbling. She's babbling, words spewing forth after days of being dammed up behind isolation and nausea and suspicion and guilt and guilt and guilt. Now that she's actually saying it aloud, she can't stop. If she stops, it will drown her. It's too late to plug the dike back up. The water is already coming and the structural integrity of what remains is a lost cause. "She won't agree to fight, which is weird because she loves to tussle, even if she's holding back for the drama of it all. She keeps deflecting whenever anyone asks her about how she got inside the Wall of Fire—"
"Didn't we determine she followed in a group of Invaders?" Aotsuki interrupts.
"—you determined that. She couldn't back up that theory with any kind of definitive answer or evidence." Nozomi snaps at him, biting with her words even as they snowball faster and faster, avalanche burying all decorum. "I know this makes me a bad friend but I can't help but worry that they did something to her. Took her hemoanima away from her or - or hurt her in some way that makes her scared to fight or incapable of fighting and she doesn't feel like she can tell everyone but she trusts me—" Desperation claws at her insides, tears its way up her throat and screams with a voice like a wailing child. "She trusted me and you're me and I just need to know that she—"
"Calm down." His sharp command halts her downward spiral. As she breathes, trying to calm her racing heart and the too-fast blood screaming through her ears, he continues. "What is it that you even expect to get out of confronting her?"
"I don't know!" The words come out choked, clenched tight in fists too terrified to let go. "I just want her to be honest with us."
A laugh—cruel, barbed, metal through glass—escapes Aotsuki's borrowed mouth. "When we can't be honest with anyone?"
"It's not like I don't want to—"
"I know." He doesn't let her start up again. Grabs hold of her reins and yanks, halting her in her tracks. "But you can see the hypocrisy, can't you?"
"Of course I can." Anger bubbles in her gut. How dare he insinuate that she hasn't been agonizing over this for the past several days? How dare he even suggest that she's not been giving this the weight it deserves? How dare he?! "I have secrets I can't tell anyone, no matter how good a friend they are or how close we might be. But I can't not try and ask her what's going on in a situation where she can feel safer and less put on the spot than if I were to confront her in the middle of the Cafeteria, in front of the whole Special Defense Unit! Taking her aside like this—to a first floor classroom where nobody can just listen from around the corner—is a kinder option than just cornering her and demanding the truth. I just...I just want her to have the chance to explain herself."
Silence. Awful, wet, bloody, painful silence. Aotsuki asks, "And what if she still won't say what's wrong?"
"Then - then I'll drop it." A lie. It's been gnawing at her insides for days now and maybe it's the fact that Moko sounds like Moko or maybe it's the fact that Moko doesn't smell like anything or maybe it's the memory of the handprint and the eyeballs that watched her every move in the Cafeteria, but she just...can't. Until she understands what's going on, she can't rest. Won't rest. "I won't press past that point."
Aotsuki makes a good show of thinking. It's just a pity that she knows her own face too well and she's become accustomed to how he talks because she can tell that it's all performative. He's already made up his mind. He plans on humoring her paranoid request.
He's nice like that.
"I'll talk to her tomorrow in this classroom, so it's out of the way." Something unclenches in her chest. Unspools into floppy rope piled in her chest cavity; a weight she hadn't realized she'd even been carrying until now. "And when I finish talking with her, I'll come report what I learned to you, okay?"
"Thank you." Buckshot, the relief impacts Aotsuki like a kick to the chest. His thin, defensive smile is insincere but she doesn't care because even as she pulls out of a bow, guilt is already creeping back up the trellis of her spine.
Because she isn't going to let Aotsuki do this alone. It won't be too hard to listen in at a doorway, just out of sight but not out of sound.
Sorry, she thinks as they part ways, but it's not like I don't trust you. It's just for my own selfish self-interest. I'm not that good of a person.
After all: she still hasn't told him about his possible rejection symptoms. Or the experiments. Or her mother. Or how she came to join the Special Defense Unit.
"How has she been?" Speaking so politely, so kindly to Kurara is like pulling teeth but at this point in time, Eito prefers it to the alternative.
(There is a...woman in a cage in the Courtyard. An Invader, true, but one that looks human. One that looks so human that it rightfully put all the others off of killing it regardless of the possible problems that might arise from keeping it as a prisoner of war.)
(Or a pet.)
(It looks at them with wary eyes, piteously wet and pathetic. It speaks in tongues none of them understand—a foreign language, though not something others would know about outside of himself and perhaps Nozomi, though she's been mysteriously absent where the prisoner is concerned—and sounds like it's pleading with them. It doesn't eat meat and seems to acquiesce to the way Shouma cares for it.)
(It looks like all the others.)
(He can't spend more than a moment looking at it before he feels violently ill.)
"Nothing." Kurara sighs and lolls her head, the tomato mask grimacing as she picks up the various firearms she had been working on during her shift. "Rolled over once. Woke up and drank some fluids—the ones Omokage whipped up—and then went back to sleep. Groggy. Didn't seem to recognize where she was or what was going on."
Eito's eyes linger on the rise and fall of Moko's chest, the even and shallow movement the only indication she's alive some of the time. "Let Kyoshika know her turn is in a couple hours, okay?"
"Did you bring something to do?" Eito lifts the books he has in response. "Boring."
"Is it?" He titters, a practiced noise. "I already performed maintenance on my weapon and Omokage is synthesizing the stuff I need for my ammunition so why not read? It's a good use of my time."
"Astronomy? Medicine? Intricate mechanics? Why bother with textbooks?" Her derision is almost amusing.
Almost.
"Do you have any suggestions otherwise?" Her mask flushes a ripe crimson and she stammers, mouth and eyes twisting in indignant and impotent silent rage. She sputters wordlessly so Eito decides to alleviate her embarassment—because Nozomi would. "It's fine, Kurara. I like these subjects. This isn't like homework or anything. We have a whole library full of books and I picked these out."
(Nozomi taking a stack of medical journals and treatises out of the Library, clutching them to her chest like they're an anchor. She meets his eyes, her own wide and wild behind the distortion of his glasses. She looks sick—more sick than normal—and her mouth works around some memory of vomit. Then she hurries off and Eito saunters into the Library behind her, his prey already picked out for the day.)
"If you say so." She didn't sound like she believed him but it hardly matters. "I'm gonna put these up and then get some food. If I see Kyoshika I'll pass your message on."
"Thank you."
"You're most welcome." With that haughty response she leaves and it's just Eito and Moko.
Eito and the thing pretending to be Moko.
It's good at what it does. Nobody—especially not any of the second campus corps, who would know her better than those who never once saw her in person—can even tell the difference. The thing is...it's very hard to fool someone who has spent his entire life lying to people and pretending to be less dangerous than he actually is.
Her breathing is low and even. Perfectly even. Perfectly shallow. Sure, it hitches from time to time, but the impossible perfection is a dead giveaway that she's not actually asleep. And, if she's not actually asleep, why hasn't she said anything to any of her so-called friends?
Why does she keep up the ruse?
The logical conclusion to that question is: it, like Eito and Nozomi, is not what it says it is. It is something—likely an Invader Commander—pretending to be Moko.
To what end then? Infiltration is either sabotage or information gathering. It staying immobile and 'unconscious' might be a byproduct of Nozomi's demand that they nurse 'Moko' to health creating an atmosphere of undue and unwanted scrutiny regarding her movement and personality. Does it think it can't play at being Moko well enough to fool the second campus corps? Does it worry that it will be found out and devoured?
So it's likely laying low to feel out the mood and determine the best course of action. It probably wants information and it wants whatever is in the Defense Room and it wants all of the Special Defense Unit dead.
Eito can provide an opportunity and the knowledge to take advantage of said opportunity. All he has to do is talk to Nozomi's 'friend' as though he is taking care of 'her' while she's 'sick'.
So talk he does.
(He had, at the start, considered smothering Moko to save himself the trouble of one more bothersome human among the Special Defense Unit. Unfortunately, Yugamu is good at medical things and likely could perform a fairly decent autopsy if he did smother someone to death. If Moko disappeared during his watch, he would come under intense scrutiny, so he couldn't just kill her and dispose of the body in the Wall of Fire. That's even assuming that the Revive-o-Matic didn't have some kind of autopsy function to it, if it didn't try and revive her the second she died on-campus.)
(And then he realized she was pretending and he figured he could use that.)
(If 'Nozomi' had an alibi, then Eito wouldn't be suspected.)
(It made spending time watching over her...tolerable.)
"I don't know how to feel about the prisoner," Eito opens up with. He hasn't had the chance to personally talk at it about the Invader they captured and imprisoned so it's best to start with some kind of baseline. A...carrot for it to make a hasty or early move; to rescue its comrades. "We, um...took an Invader Commander prisoner. It surrendered to us when we forced it out of its transformation. And it...looks like a person? It's unsettling to think about keeping a person in a cage, like some kind of animal."
Not that that's stopped humanity before. The road to 'civilization' is paved with slavery and inhumane treatments of those they consider 'lesser'. It is in their nature.
He bites his tongue and continues on as Nozomi would, pleasant and conversational. "Sumino says that we'll have to decide what to do with it sooner or later but I'm worried that someone might...decide it doesn't deserve to live and kill it. Even if Ginzaki is the one with the key—especially because Ginzaki has the key, actually." It's an especially unkind sentiment for Nozomi but it's unlikely this Invader knows the exact nuances of Nozomi's speech to call him out on it. "Ginzaki is one of the people from this school, the main campus," he explains to the sleeping 'Moko' as if 'she' would like to get to know them personally, "and he's...he's sweet. A bit of a pushover with self-esteem issues but maybe you can help with that?"
("Moko was— is. Moko is really cheerful and good at supporting others." Nozomi had spoken like the words were fishhooks in her throat, catching on flesh and tearing as they exited her mouth. "She...gave us hope. Made it easier to try and make do. She's why we got this far.")
"He could really use your advice. I'm worried that Maruko might bully him into giving up the key so he can be weird with the prisoner." Surprising everyone, Gaku has been pretty normal about the prisoner looking like a—Eito has to assume—traditionally attractive young woman, but he knows that Nozomi specifically has issues with the way he speaks about women, so it's not too out of left field to have him catch a stray while discussing his 'concerns' regarding holding a hostage. "It never leaves his person. Maybe it doesn't hurt that Ginzaki is sturdier than everyone else, his hemoanima making him capable of enduring blows that would knock most of us unconscious, but..." He trails off, leaves the thought unspoken.
Hopefully the Invader picks up on the implications.
Judging by the way that it seems to have forgotten to breathe at all, it must be forming connections all its own. Plans it is formulating to execute at a later date.
Then, to cover its sudden silence, it snuffles and sighs, shifting in place.
How cute.
"The cages—there's two of them, by the way—are in the Courtyard. You'd like that place, I think. It's...I think it was supposed to be some kind of biotropic garden or preservation space because it has climate adjustment and various weather systems and is atmospherically controlled with pneumatic doors to account for pressure and the like. Could be nice to have a picnic there when you're better?" Then the hard part. Eito stands up and adjusts the blankets around Moko, careful to make as little skin-contact as possible, but lingers for a moment too long.
He steels himself and brushes her bangs away from her forehead, the back of his knuckles grazing her forehead. Then he makes a concerned noise and leans forward, pressing the back of his hand to her forehead. "I hope you're not running a fever." He knows—as would Nozomi—that Nozomi's body temperature is lower than average, so the heat of 'Moko's' skin is normal for her. An average human temperature. Still, he has to do this because it's an excellent way for this Invader to truly create an opportunity to escape and possibly ruin everything humanity plans to do here. "We don't have antipyretics here so we'd have to forage for the ingredients. The nearest pharmacy ruins are a day's round trip—assuming that we can even find what we need—and if we want to make our own between myself and Omokage, we still would have to forage for quite some time. We can't afford the distraction between the defensive battles and the prisoner's presence already causing a slight divide, not to mention the fact that we're keeping an eye on you. If you were to suddenly break into a fever, we might actually be spread too thin; so thin we might have to forgo caring for you, even if only for a day or two."
Eito is unsure what all the Invader pretending to be Moko is capable of. If it's a shapeshifter, then perhaps it can influence its temperature to such a degree that it can force a fever. If it isn't and this is some kind of technological cloaking, then surely it can dupe a dangerous internal temperature and fool even the most careful of the humans and machinery in the Last Defense Academy.
All it has to do is try.
Take the bait.
Be a problem.
("Do you think..." Nozomi trails off, her face pinching in deep thought, heart on her sleeve visible for anyone looking.)
("Do I think what?")
("The prisoner..." Again, she fails to finish her thought but it's obvious how she feels. It's so obvious that it's nauseating. How dare she look that way while in his body, wearing his face.)
(Nausea. Panic. Fear. Horror. Concern. The idea of taking a prisoner is already a step too far, even with the hundred day war they've been conscripted into. The idea that the prisoner looks human—looks like a person to everyone—makes it worse. It's abhorrent. Monstrous.)
(Perfectly human of them.)
(He wonders what she sees when she looks at the prisoner; what all drove her away from that battlefield, hand pressed to her heart and her mouth. He wonders what horrors she sees in the eyes of that Invader Commander.)
(He doesn't ask.)
(He just smiles at her. "I think it's awful," because it is, "but necessary.")
("Necessary?!" Angry? Affronted, perhaps. Naked disgust drips from every word.)
("It surrendered. Did you want to kill it?" Cruelty is something he wields with surgical precision, a blunt way of speaking he writes off as 'due to his upbringing' but that's a pretty lie to disguise the truth. He simply enjoys finding the small chinks in their armor and prying, making places he can worm his fingers in later. When she shakes her head, stopping to readjust his glasses when the frantic movement jostles them from their normal resting spot, he offers her a gentle smile. "Then prisoner it is. We can't let it go because it will tell whatever is above it in the command structure about what it learned from its assault. We need them to be ignorant of our workings so the only possible option is prisoner of war. And, all things considered, we're treating it rather well, are we not?")
(She didn't argue with him after that. Good.)
(But the resentment and discontent remains. He can see her seething, the rot setting in. All he has to do is let the spores fruit and the whole structure will collapse soon enough.)
The fake Moko doesn't move after this. It doesn't do anything but gently breathe, quietly faking sleep.
Be that way.
Eito sits back down in the chair at the foot of Moko's bed, curls his legs underneath him, and cracks open the book on medicinal plants where he left his bookmark. If it wasn't going to be useful, he could wait.
He's very good at waiting.
And he knows his plan is the safe bet among a million low-odd plans for infiltration. The Invader will see reason or it will spend the remaining fifty days of their service pretending to be in a coma until one or more of them bite the bullet and put 'Moko' out of her misery to see if the Revive-o-Matic will fix whatever is broken.
Nothing is broken. It will just die, and for what?
So he can wait. He has all the time in the world and rot flourishes best with stagnation.
("Just...can you make sure she's okay?" Nozomi's piteous expression of plaintive desire on his face is...saccharine. Like hospital jello, it sticks in his throat on the way down. "I—")
("Of course," he lies through her teeth. "I am honored that you trust me with your dear friend's health.")
(A smile, bright as a sunrise, blooms across from him. Has he ever smiled like that before? Or is that an expression he has forgotten how to wear, hidden beneath platitudes and simplicity? "Thank you so much Aotsuki.")
("Feel better Nozomi." He waves her off, watches her walk away, and then lets his hand fall to his side.)
(Resentment stews in his gut. He crushes it under his heel.)
(He has better things to do but if needs be—)
(He can play house for a little while.)
—
"And you're sure we don't have any?"
"For the love of murder— yes! I have checked four different times. We have no antipyretics."
"What good is a big fucking building like this, with all it's expensive bullshit, if there's no way to synthesize a fucking fever reducer at will?!"
"We can, it just requires components—"
"So does putting a body back together from blood and genetic prints but the damn Revive-o-Matic does perfectly fine every goddamn time. Why does a fever have to be worse than dying?!"
"Mayhaps we implore Takumi-dono for permission to quest for the medicine we need?"
"An Oosuzuki does not need to ask fucking permission from anyone, let alone a poor plebian like Sumino—"
"We agreed that we would concede to their command structure as part of our merger, did we not? Therefore, Takumi-dono is our superior if we speak of things as one would a military."
"Kurara, you have to stop yelling. It's not going to make anything better and, like the fever, I'm sure poor Moko has a killer headache to pair with dehydration."
"Killer. Ha! Pick your next words carefully, Omokage."
"I'm just saying—"
"Surely Takumi-dono would know the nearest place to start looking and—"
"Guys?!" The arguing stops as abruptly as it had started, the clamor leaving a ringing emptiness in its wake akin to a receding trough foretelling the destructive arrival of a tsunami. Everyone turns to stare at the person interjecting and immediately Kurara is back to being aggressive.
"Oh, look, the team leader is here to give us permission to save our friend's life. How magnanimous of him."
Yugamu just sighs and shakes his head. "Sorry for her."
Despite the furrows in his brow, Takumi seems mostly unbothered. "No worries. I know she can just...be like this sometimes. And things are extra stressful right now, aren't they?"
"Between our new pet prisoner and Moko being sick, yeah." Yugamu's visible eye squints in something Eito has come to understand is amusement. It has a different tilt than hunger or anger and the way his lips curl mean it isn't a threat, just a fact. "You could say that."
"Takumi-dono!" Kyoshika closes the distance between the two of them, pressing her forehead to the ground in a perfect dogeza, feet tucked under her and hands flat in front of her, deference obvious. "Would you please allow us to go find the medicine we need to cure our ailing friend?"
Discomfort is chased by understanding and horror. Takumi scratches at his cheek and pulls on his hair a bit as he thinks, gnawing on the inside of his cheek. "You don't - you don't have to be like that, Magadori. I'm not—"
"Aren't you our leader?" Kurara bites and Takumi flinches away.
"I mean—"
"She's asking for permission. Isn't that something you get off to? Just let us fucking go!" The threat of violence lies naked for everyone to hear.
In response, Yugamu steps between Kurara and Takumi, grabbing Kurara's shoulder and moving her away so that—should she take a swing at him—he has space to try and flee before she inevitably decks him. "We would like to go forage the necessary ingredients or possibly salvage some antipyretics from the ruins nearby. Do you think we can afford to split our forces?"
"Uh..." The sincerity of the request gives him pause but Takumi recovers nicely. "Are you sure you want to leave Mojiro behind unattended?" As Kurara bristles again, he continues on with as much velocity as he can muster. "I think we can maybe afford to send two small groups out but...we don't know when we might get attacked again."
"That's fair," Yugamu nods. "Should we just pick a handful of us?"
"One of you should probably stay back and keep an eye on Mojiro; make sure she doesn't get worse."
"I volunteer!" Kyoshika leaps up from her dogeza, hand in the air as though she's offering herself for classroom duty. "I doubt I will be helpful in identifying or discovering any relevant materials but I am capable of caring for my dear friend."
"So, what, a group of two and one poor fucker on their own? Or do we just go in one group and cover less ground?" Less aggressive but no less irritated, Kurara clicks her tongue at Takumi.
Who, against all odds, has a response for her. "I'll go with you."
What?
"What?!"
Takumi gives Kurara a weak, pathetic smile—the self-effacing one that Eito is becoming more than familiar with, the one that fills his veins with boiling rage and makes him gnash his teeth with a barely contained desire to bite down until he draws blood—and tugs on his hair again. "It's not safe for anyone to go out on their own but also two groups are going to cover way more ground than just one. The less time we spend searching, the better."
"So our glorious leader is going to offer his hands to help bear our burden? How lucky we are!" Now even Eito can tell how much Kurara is posturing.
He just gives her a thin placating smile. "Kurara," he warns, "we should be grateful. Thank you, Sumino." The first time in a long time that Eito—or, more likely, Nozomi—has initiated conversations with Takumi outside of combat communication. The effect on his mood is instantaneous and immediately visible.
He shines so bright it's like looking at the sun, grinning like he won the lottery.
As quickly as it comes, the smile is covered with a serious and stern look. "Meet up at the Entrance Hall in an hour. Get food, get ready, and be prepared for an exploration, okay?"
"Aye-aye, dear leader." Yugamu purrs, leering at Takumi as he slinks off with Kyoshika to check up on Moko one last time before he leaves the campus.
Kurara just clicks her tongue in irritation and stomps off, heels clacking as she goes, leaving Eito and Takumi alone with each other.
Eito makes the first move. "Thank you."
"Hm?"
"For letting us go get something for Moko. And for joining us." For being stupid enough to put your head on the chopping block without looking up at the guillotine blade. "You didn't have to."
"Well...I...," he can't formulate a word in the face of 'Nozomi' talking to him, all of his average intelligence melting into grey goop and leaking out his dribbling mouth, "I couldn't just say no?"
"You could," he refutes, "but you didn't. You're in a position to be any kind of leader you want but you choose to be kind and to work with us. Thank you for that, too."
"I—"
Instead of allowing Takumi to continue to try and formulate a conversational thread that doesn't garrote him, Eito just leaves, cutting the whole thing short en passant.
They'll have more than enough time to dance this waltz when Takumi inevitably pairs off with him for the search. He needs to save his energy.
There's no guarantee that both of them will make it back from this trip. Maybe this time, when Eito beats him upside the head, there won't be a whole other school of child soldiers who rescue him from the blunt force trauma and dehydration and starving.
What a novel thought.
—
"I think...there might be something like a corner store down the street here?"
Eito does his best to keep his ragged breathing consistent and even as he hikes, lungs aching as they scale the haphazard rubble that coats the road they're on. "O-oh?"
"Yeah. I remember seeing it when I was looking for a needle and thread for Ginzaki." What all had Shouma needed that required a needle and thread again? Something to do with convincing him to fight, most likely. Most of Takumi's strange little anecdotes and solo operations are built around convincing any one of the initial noncombatants to join the fray. Speaking of—
"Medical needle and thread?"
Takumi pauses and turns to look back at him, brows furrowing in confusion. "Is - is there a difference?"
"There is." A great difference. "But if it worked out, then...it worked out." They fall back into relative silence as they walk, Eito trying to focus on the beating of Nozomi's weak heart and the pushing of her weak lungs, mind busy trying to find a way to turn this situation around.
In—Takumi is right there, it would be so easy to paralyze him and slit his throat without a second thought—and out—but everyone would ask questions and Eito would have to go out of his way to dispose of the body without access to the same type of consumption he used with Hiruko. In—Takumi adores and obsesses over Nozomi, so coming up with a plausible story that sells how brave and courteous he had been would be child's play—and out—Eito is unsure if he can force Nozomi's disaffected face to properly convey the grief and guilt of living when someone gave themselves up for you properly, even if that had been part of his initial plan regarding Nozomi's friends. In—there's a non-zero chance that Kurara and Yugamu cross their paths and if Eito doesn't look suitably terrified and harrowed by the 'experience', it will end poorly for him—and out—that's not even accounting for if he can kill him fast enough, the amount of abuse a hemoanima-strengthened body can take magnitudes beyond the average person's. In—he is exhausted and there is a horrible headache brewing in the back of his skull, against the inside of his eyesockets—and out—his body feels like he's been dipped in concrete and it's finally settling.
"Kirifuji?" Eito startles and turns his attention to Takumi, who has crested the latest mountain of asphalt and rebar and glass and is turned back to look at him. "Are you alright?"
Nozomi's body is best suited for fast exertion, battles wearing her out, but no more or less than anyone else. She's good at sprinting and quick movements but the moment she starts pushing herself, exhaustion compounds into agony. A hike like this is drilling a hole in the bottom of a bucket and wondering why there's no water in the well as you draw and draw and draw. Infuriating.
Eito grits his teeth in a dull approximation of a smile and answers, "Don't mind me. I'm just a little worn out from worrying about Moko. I'll be alright."
Something in the set of Takumi's shoulders shifts and he refuses to move, waiting for him to catch up. "You don't look alright." How astute. "Have you been sleeping well?"
No. "I'm fine, Sumino." The rebuttal is a little terse, his genuine irritation leaking through a bit. Takumi winces and pulls back but continues to hover in his orbit, hands pulled against his chest as though he wants to reach out and touch him to confirm he's real. To confirm this is actually happening.
If Takumi touches him, he is going to slam the stock of Nozomi's gun into his nose and not stop until shards of his skull are in his brain, plausible deniability be damned.
"You—"
"There's just a lot going on right now and I'm a little spread thin, is all." Drop it. "You'll have to forgive me for being a little spacey."
He flinches and draws in on himself. An expression that Eito can only describe as guilt crosses his face and lingers like a shroud. When it begins to clear, beneath that is a strange determined frown. "That's not what I meant."
"Then what did you mean?" Takumi doesn't know Nozomi like the reserve corps do. He doesn't know when she's being more aggressive than usual. He knows her about as well as Eito does—although Eito can argue that he knows her better since he's not constantly conflating her with some girl in the Tokyo Residential Complex that she superficially resembles—so he doesn't need to be careful. It's not like Takumi can call him out on his bullshit.
"You just..." He waffles, indecisive. He's always so damn indecisive. Eito hates that about him—more than most things, actually. If he made a choice, if he committed, then he would at least have some kind of intent or purpose. As it is, his crimes are being human and being an indecisive little brat about everything. "...you avoid the Courtyard."
What is he actually on about? "Wouldn't you? We took someone prisoner!"
"We had to!" Conviction, finally, but at what cost? The hero stands in front of the prisoner and says 'this is for the greater good' and the ignorant masses nod their heads in mindless agreement like bobble-headed sheep. "None of us wanted to kill her and we couldn't just let her go! Even you said—"
"I know what I said." He had been the one to point out that letting it go was a bad idea. It was, and not just because he wanted it to have time to gather more information on their inner workings before he, himself, let it free. There was a non-zero chance that it just deserted in its entirety as the first Commander to genuinely beg for its life. It was a coward and he didn't want to let its fear make decisions for them. "But I can still disagree with the morals of holding someone hostage in a cage like some kind of animal. So I avoid the Courtyard because it's distressing to see."
He frowns, pretty face wrenching into an ugly expression of irritation, wrinkles and furrows creating a topographical map of his hypocrisy. "That's not it, though. You avoid me and I get that. I - the way I acted when we first met was...bad." An understatement. "But I'm trying and I would really like it if you met me halfway."
Ha. "I don't owe you anything, Sumino."
"Of course not but—"
"And while I appreciate that you've been letting me have my space so I can try and come to terms with things, do you really think this is any better? Blaming me for my discomfort and then assuming that, what, I'm doing this to hurt you? Spite you? We are at war, Sumino, and I am at the most risk because unlike the rest of you: I am not immortal. I can die in ways that matter. So forgive me if I'm too busy maintaining my weapon and armor, keeping our potions and defensive measures stocked, exercising so that I can keep up with the rest of you superhuman soldiers, all to have to deal with emotional stress on top of that."
He falls silent. Deathly so.
Maybe that was a step too far but there's been a rising ache in his bones that dug its teeth into Eito's brain and wrenched the kindness out of his grasp, holding it high above his head in a taunting manner. He can barely think around the lancing in his skull to try and cover for his attitude. Instead he just waits for the silence to take them both.
When Takumi speaks up again, he sounds sullen. "I didn't mean to insinuate that you owed me anything." How chivalrous. "I just...worry about you."
"Because of Karua." It's mean but—
"Because of Kirifuji." What? Eito stiffens and tries his best to hide the horror that flushes the pain out with ice, chasing the fog away with a deep worry. Does he know? Does he know? Has he realized? Does he know?!
"What?"
"Karua is...she's someone important to me, yeah, and you look a lot like her. A lot a lot. But you're not Karua, you're Kirifuji, and I've been thinking about what that means to me. I've been trying to separate the two of you in my head and pinpoint what Kirifuji is." Oh. Thank god.
"What conclusion have you come to then?"
Takumi waits for him to clamber over the ruins they're scaling, hand outstretched if he wants the help, a gentle, wistful look on his face. His hair is backlit by the sun, golden rays making it look like fire rings his head, an eclipse. "Kirifuji is someone who helps her friends at the detriment to herself. She's caring but protective, willing to take hits if it means that someone else doesn't have to and even more willing to enact preventative measures that others might not find as tasteful. She's a healer, yes, but she's not weak. She tries harder than anyone else to contribute and sometimes burns the candle at both ends to get things done at a level she finds satisfactory. She's diligent and serious but not without a sense of humor. She has wonderful friends and does her best to play peace-keeper—even when she knows someone is in the wrong—because discord is more upsetting than the initial argument. And she's not above telling me when I'm wrong, in no uncertain terms."
Not all of that is Nozomi. Most of that—most of the anger and bitterness and vitriol—is Eito's take on Nozomi but to think that Takumi had been watching him that closely—
It makes his borrowed skin crawl.
He opts to let the silence of the world eat them alive rather than actually talk any further. He would rather claw his borrowed skin off and pull his borrowed eyes out of his borrowed skull than actually engage with this absolutely empty drivel.
As they make their way further and further into the ruins of the town, Takumi does them both a courtesy and doesn't try to engage in any more talking. He reads the mood perfectly and makes the wise decision to let it go, proving that even half-concussed animals can be taught to drop it when their life is in danger.
Eito does his best to not let his gaze linger on him any longer than he has to.
One of the downsides to being subject to an average human's twisted perception of their species as a whole is that he's forced to deal with a picturesque ideal version of how they look. His brain is as-of-yet unused to not seeing them as the monsters they truly are and every sideways glance at their mundane features sends him into a hysterical spiral of nausea and awe.
Sumino's hair is striking against the sky, a dandelion puff burning roman-candle-bright, golden light forming a halo that casts him angelic. His blue eyes are rich sapphires that scan the horizon, thalassic pools devouring the deep hues meant for nature, delicate crimson lashes fluttering and shielding them from the sun's harsh glare. His shoulders are broad, statuesque, and despite his average build, there's something almost historically impressive about him—roman marble stern, David with his sling, Atlas holding up the sky—that sells itself in the way he holds himself when he isn't doubting every breath he takes. His stride, while slower than usual for Eito's convenience, is determined and propels him forward in a way that makes it seem as though not even a mountain would halt his advance.
He's something to behold and Eito is alone with him. He's the center of the way the Last Defense Academy runs as a social circle and a militia and his guard is down. He's astute and a problem for himself and Nozomi both and he doesn't think that perhaps he should keep an eye on the person who just bit his head off, foolishly and blindly trusting him.
He should kill Takumi right now. It's the best course of action. In fact—
Water splashes against his face. Eito is suddenly aware of the way that his ever-present nauseating pain has peaked into an almost blinding feeling. The sky is unnaturally dark.
Ah. Right. Weather.
"Shit." Takumi's hissing irritation cuts through the pattering sound of rain falling on them. "We should go back."
Now would be a perfect time to—
A crack of bright light and a rolling cacophony of noise tears through the world. Eito startles but Takumi yelps aloud, a horrid noise like he's in pain. Then a flush of red heats his cheeks, highlighting the almost invisible speckling that dust his cheekbones—freckles, they're called, a byproduct of being under a real sun that some of the Special Defense Unit have experienced during their period of service. When the embarrassment passes—water matting his hair to his forehead, stray strands curling against his jaw like climbing ivy—he turns his eyes upward at the dark clouds above them and frowns.
"We should find shelter." What vile thoughts are passing through his head regarding Nozomi? What nonsense is he thinking about with the two of them alone, away from the school?
Eito swallows his fury and revulsion and just gently inclines his head in agreement. "Judging by how quickly this came out of nowhere—" the pain in his head spikes and tears into his senses with another flash of bright light and roaring noise, "we should be able to wait this out without wasting too much time or ending our day outside the Wall of Fire."
Takumi nods in response and picks a direction. "I think I saw a building with an intact roof over this way." And off they go.
A more perfect opportunity could not have presented itself to Eito in this moment. With the inclement weather, the light and sound, and the sheets of water lowering their visibility, it would be almost comical to grab him by the back of his Class Armor and shove him to the ground while claiming innocence. Easier still to blow his brains out against the wet rock, letting the rain wash away any evidence after he's gone out of his way to drag the corpse to one of the many patches of burning Undying Flame that dot the city like vibrant violent landmarks.
And if anyone asks...well the weather had suddenly gotten really bad so what was 'Nozomi' to do when Takumi and 'herself' got separated looking for medicine for Moko? If he showed up dead days later then that's an accident. It's nobody's fault, really!
But something stills his hand. Something like the pain curling daggers into his eyes and brain. Something like the aching of his borrowed limbs and the protestations of his borrowed lungs. Something like the fluttering of his weak borrowed heart whenever he looks at Takumi, the memory of high-gloss photographs of sculptures from a bygone era interposed over his form, as if Nozomi's traitorous human senses were trying to protect her so-called friends.
The shelter Takumi finds is...passable. It's some kind of bombed-out, abandoned specialized goods store of some kind. Having scavenged from the ruins of the store, Takumi and Eito both manage to coax a small fire to life, gnawing on some kind of—likely expired—ration bar that tastes like cardboard soaked itself in vanilla extract. The wind shrieks outside, whipping small pinpricks of rain into where they're sitting but it's never enough to get them wet, even as they huddle around their small fire to dry off. Eito takes a moment to undo his hair—having dispelled his Artificial Class Armor for ease of access—and wring it out before quickly plaiting it into a loose approximation of Nozomi's usual hairstyle.
He can feel Takumi's eyes on him as he reactivates his Artificial Class Armor, feeling less naked when he has some kind of protection.
Takumi, meanwhile, has dispelled his Class Armor—far away from their resting point so the splatter of blood didn't ruin what little safety they had—and is pulling his jacket and sweatshirt off to wring out and dry by the fire. Eito just blankly stares at him, one eyebrow arched as he tries to communicate how this looks from the outside.
Is he really that dense?
He must be because when Takumi catches his eye, he frowns like he's unsure why he's being given the third degree. "What?"
"Are you sure you want to strip down when it's just the two of us?" If he sounds sharper than normal, it's just due to being wet and trapped in a room with Takumi. His patience is being pressed to its limit and he doesn't have the energy to play nice. After all: Takumi has already acknowledged that 'Nozomi' is sharp and unwilling to let him passively get away with things if she can call him out on it.
Red creeps across his face and his bare shoulders tense, creeping up towards his flushing ears. "Wh-what?! I didn't— I would never!"
"I'm aware," he placates, words a blunt force against Takumi's pathetic stammering, "but if Kurara and Omokage were to find us, any of us in a state of undress would be cause for concern, wouldn't it?"
The threat of Kurara is enough to get him to wrap his jacket back around him to have some kind of layer between his skin and 'Nozomi's', snapping the buttons closed with a sheepish kind of horror. "Sorry..."
"You don't need to apologize to me about that." In fact, he would prefer it if he didn't. The less they talk, the better, but it's hard to think around the way his head hurts and the shrieking of the wind seems to be competing with the cacophony of the storm to make it impossible to hold any kind of idea for more than a few seconds. "It was more for your benefit than mine." Because Kurara likes Nozomi and she hates any of the boys sans Yugamu.
"Thanks for that." He lets out a little self-deprecating chuckle and pulls his jacket closer around himself, picking at his sleeve.
The space between them falls silent, the sound of the weather and the fire the only noise in the emptiness.
Eventually Takumi breaks and opens his mouth. "Kirifuji?"
"Hm?" What now?
"I wanted to...apologize."
"For?" He knows but he won't let Takumi escape the gut-wrenching agony of trying to put such difficult thoughts to words. It's a small harm he can inflict on him without exerting himself.
"How we met." Hm... "And how I've treated you since. I know that it made you uncomfortable—makes you uncomfortable—but I really do want to try and, if not be your friend, form some kind of bond with you. Even if it's just like...a bond of camaraderie or whatever I just—" He trails off, gnawing at his lower lip. Blood beads where he's torn it open with his worrying, the red smearing as he continues on with the self-soothing motion.
How to spin this? How did Nozomi put it again? "It...felt like you were looking at someone else. And that - that happens sometimes but it was...awful to have you call me someone else's name and be so attached to that person that you were attached to me by proxy. It made me feel invisible. Like a ghost."
The way he presses his bleeding lips closed, thin lines of crimson and concern and shame, paints a perfect picture of penitence. He genuinely feels remorse for how he's acted until now.
Of course this isn't news to Eito. Takumi—whether it's this cherubic vision of humanity or the truth that only his eyes see—is a painfully honest person. He couldn't lie if his life was on the line, his every emotion splattered across the canvas of his form, echoing in his stance and tone and expressions, in the way his fire used to burn and flash, in the belches of smoke that erupted from his mouth, in the scattershot way that talking with him painted Eito in persistent ash that smelled of burnt flesh. In the tilt of his head that reveals the vulnerable part of his jaw, in the dusting of color that creeps across the bridge of his nose and across the tips of his ears, in the way he pulls and tugs on things to anchor himself, in the picking and gnawing pulling blood from his nailbeds and lips, in the curve of his eyelashes as he looks through them at Eito.
He's painfully earnest and that makes him easy to use. Naivete is a hole in the foundation and Eito has the patience to drip water into it every second he can to wear and erode away at the core of him.
He breaks line of sight and stares at the fire, imagines Takumi's true writhing form convulsing in the hungry element, and tries to beat his thoughts into shape against the pressure and pain and noise. His chest clenches.
"I...can see why that would upset you. That would upset anyone." Saccharine sincerity drips from every word. It's the sweetness of fermentation and rot. Eito refuses to look at him, refuses to feed into the human delusion of beauty, refuses to allow Nozomi's eyes to shape his perception of this wretched thing he's forced to share space with. His hands shake with an emotion he doesn't want to name—not out of fear, but if he clarifies it then it might make a hollow in his chest, and he wants it gone. "If I could go back in time and do that first interaction all over again, I would strive to be better. I want to meet you where you are and...if you're not willing right now then that's okay. I just wanted to communicate that to you before something happened and I wasn't able to."
Because they are at war.
Because Nozomi can die in ways that everyone else can't.
Because, even if he deludes himself with pretty words and posturing, Takumi still sees Karua in Nozomi, and the idea of being separated from her makes him so miserable that he would rather throw away any dignity he might pretend to have just to not be hated by her.
"I appreciate you telling me that. I accept your apology." Maybe it's the way clenching his jaw exacerbates the pressure in his eyes, but Eito chooses to turn his vitriol onto Nozomi instead of Takumi. Spite eases the ache and makes him feel full. "For now, let's say we're acquaintances and comrades in arms and work up from there?"
Silence. The sound of the fire, of the weather, of the wind. Eito makes the mistake of looking up to see what Takumi is doing.
He's smiling at him. It's a gentle smile, small and genuine. Even with the blood bubbling from the split in his lips, even with the way his hair has dried in an untamed cloud-like mess, even with only a jacket and pants on, the firelight paints him in a way that erases the harshness that the war has carved into his countenance.
Eito's heart leaps into his throat, chokes him with its weight and size. It burns, an ember swallowed whole. He pulls in on himself and curls closer to the fire, hands shaking as he grabs at his chest.
Takumi gently drapes his hoodie over his shoulders and sits down by the fire, tending it mindlessly.
Eito doesn't think of much after that, actively dissociating so he doesn't do something that he and Nozomi will both regret.
(Even as Takumi keeps his vulnerable back to him, his guard down, Eito doesn't bother making a move. Something heavy and hot and uncomfortably twisted stills his hand. He can't kill him.)
(Tomorrow, he assures himself, or the day after. Let him come further down this bridge before I burn it from both ends. It'll hurt more if he thinks he's been forgiven - if he thinks his friend is attacking him.)
(It's a logical fallacy to make himself feel better.)
(He doesn't know why he doesn't kill Takumi.)
(All he knows is that, as they sit at the fire and listen to the storm abate, Eito can only think about his parents and their faces.)
(Did they smile at him like this once? Was this an expression they wore before they decided that he wasn't worth the effort? How long did they look at him with such naked affection before it was replaced with irritation and frustration and disappointment?)
(He blames his indecision on the pain and pressure in his head and the way the storm made his borrowed joints lock up and his borrowed bones ache.)
(It has nothing to do with the feeling he doesn't want to name grabbing at his ribs and digging talons into Nozomi's weak heart.)
Aotsuki's clothes are like armor. The thick, downy, hydrophobic jacket that covers most of his skin; the supple leather gloves that create a layer between the outside world and himself; even the glasses that distort his vision and leave his head swimming. Every aspect of his casual wear is intended to protect him from the monsters and demons that surround him on all sides.
Nozomi just wishes she didn't find comfort in that very same armor, now that she could see how he saw the world.
The sterility of his room makes sense, in retrospect, because the air outside is foul with the various personalized stenches that come hand-in-hand with everyone's warped and twisted appearances. Of course he would clean until his hands bled, of course he would sanitize anything he touched and that touched him until it no longer carried the memory of whatever filth it had come in contact with.
Of course he fled rooms under the pretense of a heart condition.
Deep breaths. Deep breaths.
Beneath her borrowed skin, Aotsuki's cryptoglobin sings fury, flushing warmth through her extremities. Her heart pounds, her lungs suck in air, and nothing hurts.
She's miserable.
And then the alarm goes off.
Her reaction to alarms isn't as bad as it was when she was in her own body. This is a small mercy, a tiny gift from whatever being has decided that she and Aotsuki would be tormented like this. That her panic is lessened in exchange for him having to bear the brunt of her body's poor reaction to the horrible memory of that day's traumatic events is...
...she doesn't know how to feel, really. She's just glad she doesn't have to deal with that on top of everything else.
Scrambling to the War Room, she finds everyone's but Sumino—expected—and Aotsuki—also somewhat expected—frowning at the monitors. Steeling herself, she sidles up alongside the least offensive person she could find and asks, "What—?"
"Nuthin'."
She startles as Yakushiji cuts her off, his snout wrinkled in confusion and a barely-contained snarl. "H-huh?"
"There's fuckin' nuthin' there." He gestures at the screen with one of his six massive hands, the movement bringing with it a wave of blistering heat that made her skin prickle. "That's why Oosuzuki n' Omokage n' Kawana're scrubbing through the controls. Tryin' to find somethin' to explain why the hell the damn alarm went off."
A false alarm? Could that even be possible? But wasn't the alarm triggered by something passing through and disturbing the Wall of Fire? How—?
Behind them, the doors flung open and Sumino flickered in, Aotsuki slithering behind him in stuttering bursts of undulating speed. "What—?"
"Fuckall!" Yakushiji, as he had done with Nozomi, interrupts Sumino before he can finish his question.
"What?" Aotsuki's irritation seems tempered by the aftermath of his panic attack. Nozomi can't blame him for being unable to hide how frustrated he is; she also has that problem. Still, his recovery is impressive as he quickly clarifies, "So it was a false alarm?"
"Unclear!" Kurara is doubled over the control system, furiously typing at the keyboard while Kawana and Omokage offer advice and point things out.
"It's looking like something broke the Wall of Fire but—" Kawana cuts herself off and swallows a wave of bile.
Omokage takes over for her while Kurara continues to hammer at the keyboard like it insulted her curry. "But we can't find exactly what just yet."
"Well it's not a defensive battle at the very least, is it?" Aotsuki sidles up alongside Kurara and peers over her shoulder, dripping gelatinous bloody liquid into the soft cavernous holes already formed in her rotting head. "Otherwise we would mobilize the moment Sumino arrived."
"Why me?" Sumino bristles, spires of shadow flaring up like a show of dominance.
"You're always last to show up, dude," Maruko points out. "We have to wait for you." A chorus of agreement beats Sumino's confusion and consternation back to silence.
Then Kurara slams the enter key and shouts in triumph. "Got you!" On the monitors, a singular CCTV feed shows someone in the distance staggering ever forward. Nozomi squints, trying to make out a shape in the mass of purple and blue shadowy goop that makes up their body but the way Kurara, Kyoshika, and Omokage are holding their breath makes her realize who it is quick enough.
"Moko!" Her friends chorus in a mix of delight and horror.
Moko is— she's alive? Moko is alive and—
The figure on the feed staggers and collapses against the dusty earth at the edge of the Wall of Fire. Unbidden, Nozomi pushes away from the monitors and snatches Aotsuki's Infuser, transforming and launching herself close to Moko's location. She isn't thinking about how this looks—Aotsuki rushing to someone's aid when he's never met them and there are four other people who have met her and love her with all of them—because all she can think about is Moko. Moko Moko Moko Moko.
Moko is alive. The Invaders didn't kill her. She's alive and back and Nozomi can see her again and she's alive.
For the first time in forty-some-odd days, Nozomi is grateful.
At the behest (read: demand) of Kurara, Nozomi, Yakushiji, Omokage, Sumino, and Kurara—all transformed—band together to safely carry Moko back to the school and up to the roof, where they all gently deposit her on the bed of the singular spare housing unit. That would have been hers, had she not been waylaid, so it made sense. It's only after everyone else disperses, varying states of worry and confusion coloring their inhuman faces and forms, that Omokage grabs her by the elbow with one of his myriad hands.
"Eito."
She freezes but doesn't react past that, painting her face with a pleasant smile as she turns to look at him. "Yes Yugamu?"
"Why did you rush out to help Moko?" His words crawl up her neck like spiders. She suppresses a shudder.
"Why?" How to spin this? Nozomi would like to say that it's because Moko is someone important to her, someone she cares about and loves with all of her. Nozomi would like to say that Moko is the light of her life and the guilt of her choosing to give herself up so everyone else could live ate her alive every day that followed. Nozomi would like to say that it's because she's Moko. But those aren't answers Aotsuki would give and, for all she would rather not lie to Omokage, she has to. Thankfully, Omokage and the others who came from the second campus don't know Aotsuki half as well as the people on the main campus do, so she can use that to her advantage. "Because she was in trouble and because you seem to care about her quite a bit."
Her answer seems to throw Omokage off-balance for a moment—if the way his pedipalps and mandibles grind and clatter against each other is any indication of his surprise—but he recovers quickly. "Oh?" Even with the layers of cognitive distortion going on, it isn't difficult to pick up on the delight in his voice. "How magnanimous of you."
"You all are our allies and she is your friend." The recycled shounen platitude feels disgusting on the way out of her mouth but it's as true as anything else she's saying. "It's not magnanimity, just a way of showing that loyalty repaid in kind."
"Well thanks." With that said, he scuttles away, leaving Nozomi alone in front of Moko's room. For a moment she hesitates, and then she enters and stares.
Moko is—
The last time that Nozomi saw Moko, she had flashed a peace sign and one of her signature cheery grins as she handed herself over to the enemy to save them. She had burned like the sun, brilliant and vibrant.
Now she's a mess of shadows and goop in the shape of Moko, glowing red eyes closed as glowing skeletal teeth open and close with each wheezing breath. More like herself than a lot of Aotsuki's cognitive distortions of people, but still violently unsettling.
(Worse still is the lack of smell.)
But she will take what she can get because Moko is alive. Moko is alive. Moko is alive.
Nozomi presses a hand against her forehead, feeling only the cold give of the slime and ooze that makes up her distorted form. It feels...fine. Normal enough. She sighs and sits down in the chair in Moko's room, slumping down.
"What am I doing?"
"What are you doing?"
Nozomi shrieks and shoots up from the chair, looking for whoever had just spoken to her. She's still unused to how everyone sounds so trying to parse who it is without visuals is...daunting but—
"Aotsuki!" She knows the sound of her own choking voice by now.
"Nozomi," he returns, looking down at the sleeping Moko. "What are you doing?"
"What?"
"That is: what is Aotsuki doing?" He emphasizes his own name, careful to say it like she would, the implication not lost on her. There is a non-zero chance that Moko is awake or capable of hearing them at this time. They can't talk openly around her, just in case.
"Watching over Moko." She answers honestly. "Why?"
"Why are you doing this? She seems to be doing just fine." That's true but—
"I'm...worried. I don't want her to be alone again in case—" She can't say the truth: that she feels responsible for Moko having been taken in the first place. That she feels as though she should be the one in this position. That she feels guilty.
"So you're going to put her under twenty-four-hour surveillance? Like she's some kind of patient in the ICU?" Derision hides beneath his pleasant word choice. She pushes down a bristling wave of irritation. "Why you?"
"Well, Nozomi," she emphasizes her own name with as much facetious cheer as she can muster, "I would suggest that perhaps, if you're such good friends with Moko and concerned about her well-being, then maybe you should stand vigil. She seemed to be important to you and your friends, was she not?"
The sour way his face twists makes her feel...better. In an awful way.
She can't find it in herself to care. Moko is - she's safe. She's safe. She's safe.
"I'll discuss setting up shifts with Kurara, Kyoshika, and Omokage tomorrow." Aotsuki says through his teeth. "Would that make you feel better, Aotsuki?"
"I'm sure it would make you feel better, Nozomi."
"It does, does it?"
With that said, Nozomi stops at the door to Moko's room and turns back to face Aotsuki as he settles down on Moko's chair. "And Nozomi?"
"Hm?"
"We can...postpone that discussion until a later date. After you, Kurara, Kyoshika, and Yugamu have figured out the schedule for watching over Moko. Is that alright with you?" It's not really a question and both of them know it.
"Of course. That works for me!" He lies.
"Then goodnight, Nozomi. Goodnight Moko."
(In the bed, Moko shifts slightly and smacks her lips, humming in her exhausted sleep. Her voice, low and murmuring, sounds just like Nozomi remembers.)
(She isn't sure how that makes her feel.)
(She just closes the door behind her and goes to bed, her heart lighter than it's been in some time—hemoanima notwithstanding.)
—
"Aotsuki!" Nozomi flinches as Maruko sidles up to her and waves a webbed hand, grinning wide as a burst of fetid air spews from his toothless maw like a burst of exhaust. "You have a minute?"
"Hm?" She needs a moment to acclimate before she tries speaking.
"Look, hear me out—" Never a good thing to hear Maruko say; for all she doesn't know him too well, she does know that he has a broken brain-to-mouth filter in a similar vein to Kurara and, unlike Kurara, isn't her friend and isn't above being a horrid creep to women. "—but do you think I have a chance?"
After having several of his teeth apparently knocked out of his head—not that Nozomi can tell on account of Aotsuki's perception—during the defensive battle a couple days ago? "With?"
"Kawana, dude!" His bulging eyes squint, receding into his body like a frog, too-wide mouth stretching even wider as a waterfall of ooze and rancid slobber cascades to the floor and puddles beneath his feet. "You think I have a chance with her?"
Nozomi does her best to squash her immediate disgust and irritation and paint a pleasant, Aotsuki-like beatific smile on her face. Whether or not she succeeds remains to be seen but Maruko doesn't say anything so she must have managed to keep her true expression far away from him. "You like Tsubasa?" He nods, a wet, rubbery motion that makes him look like a bobblehead. "What about her?"
Violent crimson and poisonous purple paints his skin as he leers, a low choking noise joining the cacophony of his voice as blood dribbles out of the corners of his eyes and his nostrils. "I mean, look at her!" Nozomi doesn't deign that with a reaction. "She's stacked, jacked, and cute!"
She's also someone who has a severe anxiety disorder.
Out loud, Nozomi just asks, "But what about her? What non-physical attributes of Tsubasa do you like? Her personality? What are her likes and dislikes? Her hobbies? Do you know her favorite music? What does she like to eat?" Maybe it's because, of the group, Maruko is somehow more palatable than the others to be around by nature of his particular appearance, but she can hardly stop herself from actually speaking up and actually demanding an answer from him.
He hadn't been expecting that, apparently, and flinches back with bright yellow confusion. A worried noise escapes his bulbous throat as he widens his eyes in something close to confusion or being startled."What's gotten into you?"
"All I am saying," she extricates herself from the layer of mucus he excretes from his skin, "is that you would have a better 'chance' with her if you knew more about her and perhaps even cared about her as a person."
"Killjoy." Maruko clicks his tongue and sulks, walking in lockstep with her as they both head downstairs. "Can't ask a bro for girl advice."
"I gave you advice," Nozomi counters, emboldened by the disgust surging through her system. "Whether you choose to heed it or not is entirely up to you."
He just whines and plods off in the opposite direction as Nozomi heads to the Library. Good. She isn't sure how much more of his presence she can tolerate before getting sick again.
She scrapes her hand against her side, scooping fistfuls of mucus and ooze from her shoulder where Maruko had touched her, and throws it to the ground with a flick of her wrist. Even with Aotsuki's gloves on, she can feel the tackiness of the slime selfishly grabbing and clinging to her fingers. She's going to have to wash her hands before she handles any books or she might have a fit.
No wonder Aotsuki was so reclusive. Barely a handful of days into dealing with his problems and she's moments from shutting herself in his room and never leaving except to aid in defensive battles. But today she has plans so she can't sit back and do nothing.
She wants to do some research on the human condition and perhaps even Aotsuki's cognitive disorder while she still has the time. Maybe she can help him in ways she, herself, can't be helped. All-in-all, it's a way to distract herself from the ever-present worry about Moko and how, days later, she hasn't woken up.
How she can't be there for her because Aotsuki wouldn't be there for her because Aotsuki doesn't know Moko like Nozomi does.
It's a frustrating mess all around. She hates it.
The Library is as quiet as it always is, the sound of the air filtration system whirling away as Nozomi peruses the digital database for any information on neurology, agnosia, or anima. A few titles stand out and she marks their approximate locations on a slip of paper before browsing the shelves. Rigid spines part beneath inquisitive and probing fingers as she scans each shelf, looking for her prizes. The scent of paper and ink might be overpowered by the lingering remnants of Amemiya and Omokage and whichever other people might make use of the Library, but she can close her eyes and imagine that that's all she can smell. She can use force of will to drown out the unpleasant stench of her teammates with the memory of books, even as she hides away from said teammates.
In the end she only manages to find one title on the human brain and the way senses are mapped to the nervous system. It's a dense medical text but nothing she hasn't read before.
(Curling in an armchair, Nozomi reads word after word after word, sounding out difficult terms and setting down the thick paper to scan for it in a dictionary. She doesn't understand—not yet—but she wants to. It's her one link, the tether that binds her to her mother. If she can have a discussion about her mother's work without stumbling then maybe...maybe she'll be proud of her. Maybe she'll even stay for dinner this time.)
"Aotsuki?" Her concentration is broken by someone calling out to her. She glances over the top of the book, through the lenses of Aotsuki's glasses, to see who it is—even if she can already tell by the hissing overtones.
Sumino peers at her, bright eyes burning from within the looming shadow of his body. Heat blasts off him in furnace waves. He tilts his head, the sound of crackling logs snapping embers in a pit sharp in the quiet of the Library. She has to assume he is frowning—or something of the like, judging by the angle of his indistinct shoulders and the way his eyes pinch and warp in the endless darkness of his face—in confusion or concern. She simply offers him a wan smile in greeting as she puts a bookmark in the text for later. "Takumi. How can I help you?"
The eyes widen and then narrow, darting to the side in something that could be embarrassment or shame. "What makes you think I need something?" His voice hisses and crackles, steam screaming like a dying person.
"Mostly that you bothered me while I was reading." It's a long shot but—
A blast of heat strikes her in the face and Sumino waves his many hands in surprise. "No! I mean, uh...yes, but..."
Good guess. "It's not a bother." His limbs fold back into the mass of his torso, indistinct and obscured. "So?"
The pause he takes stretches into infinity, feels like a brand against her borrowed skin. She wants to stand up and flee from it all. The smell of burning hair and flesh and ash chokes her lungs but she keeps herself firmly in place. Aotsuki wouldn't run so she can't either.
When he finally speaks up, Sumino sounds almost sullen—or perhaps reticent, as those two sound similar when spoken at a hissing whisper. "Do you...think she hates me?"
"Who?" Even as the words leave her mouth, she knows who he's talking about.
"Kirifuji." Ice lances her heart. She fights to keep her face neutrally pleasant. She probably fails. "I just— she's still avoiding me."
"You did make her uncomfortable, did you not?" Extrapolating what Sumino and Aotsuki had spoken about regarding her and Sumino's initial meeting isn't difficult. Aotsuki, it seems, is Sumino's nearest and dearest friend and confidant. Of course he would tell him about her. "Have you not apologized for that?" Not like she would have accepted it. She had, for better or worse, been trying very hard to avoid being in a room alone with Sumino.
Now she has no choice.
Sumino whines, his long torso lolling to the side as he closes his eyes in what must be pain. "I was trying to but she keeps avoiding me and I don't want to make it worse by pressing the issue. It's not like I'm being pushy, am I? Is that the problem? Should I back off?"
The problem isn't that he's being pushy; he isn't. The problem is that she is unwilling to budge. She is the issue.
Also, currently 'Kirifuji' is Aotsuki but that is neither here nor there. That's a problem for her and Aotsuki, not for their de-facto team leader.
"If she is unwilling to meet with you then perhaps pulling back is the right answer." Lies spill from her borrowed lips as easily as anything else.
Sumino's outline melts slightly and half a dozen eyes open all across his mass. They squint in some kind of mix of panic and frustration, crescent shapes like frowning mouths. "But—"
"She is only going to pull away harder if you push." Get the hint. "The more you try and force things, the worse they will get."
A pause; it lasts too long and not long enough. Then Sumino speaks up, whispering burning voice quivering with some kind of choked feeling. "Do you really think that your alternate universe theory is wrong?" What?
"What?" She doesn't mean to say that aloud but—
"I know she's not Karua—I know that but—" He trails off, eyes closing en-masse, and wobbles indistinctly, shadowy hands fretfully gripping at each other, wringing and twisting with emotions she can't even begin to comprehend. "But she's so similar, at least in how she looks. Her attitude is different, as is her everything else, and letting go is so hard but—"
Nozomi's mind makes several connections in very quick succession. The name Sumino called her when he first saw her—Karua, a name he said like a prayer, clutching at her like she was his lifeline—belongs to someone she resembles so closely that he mistook her for her; he continues to have this issue even now. This Karua is someone that is so intrinsic to who Sumino is that, even though he is trying his best, he still cannot separate her from Nozomi as a person. It is so bad that, in an attempt to perhaps help his friend—a designation that Nozomi is bringing into question now that she is experiencing the world through Eito's senses—Eito suggested that perhaps Nozomi is some kind of alternate universe version of this Karua. Eventually he rescinded this theory but Sumino is still considering it.
She feels—
"If you engage with Nozomi like she is Karua, then you are only going to alienate her further." She's talking through molasses. Her mouth is full of cotton. Her ears are full of water. She hates this so much. "Discarding the notion the two are related is the only way to allow your mind to form a connection with her as a person instead of her as an extension of Karua. Nozomi is Nozomi. You are just going to hurt her and yourself if you keep at it."
He pauses. Thinks. Opens a dozen eyes. Closes a dozen more. Then his myriad hands haul himself forward, the hulking mass of his strange shapeless body wobbling and warping as he closes the distance between himself and Nozomi.
Nozomi, who refuses to flinch, let alone blink.
"I guess you're right." A beat. The sound of a cracking branch collapsing under the weight of itself, the feeling of ash and sparks against her skin, the rancid smell of burning to nothing choking. "You usually are." He sounds almost petulant.
She only offers him a pale imitation of a smile as she unkindly wishes for him to just leave her alone. "Thats nice of you to say, Takumi."
"Well," he groans, stretches to an impossible height, possibly popping his back, "I have to go see if I can figure out how to get Ima to relax."
Huh... "Kako asking for some leeway?"
"She wants to fight," he admits in confidence, "but Ima won't let her and if I can convince him to ease the fuck up, maybe we can have more hands on deck for defensive battles."
"That...would be useful." Strategically. Logically: Kako and Ima are literally children, comparatively, and their age relative to everyone else makes her almost blindingly angry to think about them fighting in earnest. A conundrum she doesn't want to touch.
(She offers herself, a lamb willingly going without need for coercion, on the altar of science. Her mother needs her. This will make her happy. She just has to take the injections, the pills, the tests, the anemia, the nausea, the pain, the aching, the dizziness, the distortion, the isolation, the anxiety with a smile and no complaints.)
(She can't complain. She has to be good.)
(Her mother leaves anyway.)
"It would." He sighs through his teeth—or so she assumes, judging by the awful shrieking-whistling sound of green wood in fire—and his eyes close until he's nothing more than an outline of a person in the darkness. "I just...if she didn't want to I wouldn't—"
"You agree with Ima?"
"Oh, hell no!" He almost sounds...offended. "I think Ima is being an extremely overprotective and obsessive little shit, but—"
"But—?"
"...they're so small..." Hm.
Nozomi wonders, in that moment, if maybe she misjudged him. Or, perhaps, she underestimated his ability to weigh costs. If he feels regret and concern about the twins joining combat then—
"If Kako wants to join in combat, I think it's her decision. None of us—Ima included—should be making that choice for her. Even if we disagree with her on principle." She shifts in her seat. "I, personally, believe that neither of them should be on the front line."
Takumi's eyes burn holes in her skin as he flatly watches her sit there. He folds a few dozen arms in something close to contempt. Maybe disappointment? Disapproval? "Aotsuki...Ima stabbed Yakushiji. With lethal intent."
He...had done that, yes. In her defense, she was too overwhelmed by the myriad of monsters crammed into the Cafeteria and too stressed out about Moko's condition to really notice any violence going on, but also Maruko started shrieking like some kind of deflating balloon and she had to excuse herself immediately due to the sudden stench making her actually physically ill. She had heard later—mainly from Amemiya, who had been not-so-subtly discussing it with Omokage in grisly detail—that Yakushiji was doing well, albeit that he was choosing to tough out the wound and heal naturally instead of letting the Revive-o-Matic do the work.
Not too dissimilar from Maruko and his missing teeth, now that she thinks about it.
"That doesn't change my opinion on the matter," she admits, "because whether or not Ima did injure Takemaru, they are younger than everyone else. They shouldn't have to fight." We shouldn't have to fight.
"We shouldn't have to fight," Sumino counters.
She grimaces. "True, but here we are."
"I just...with Shizuhara and Sirei both gone I've kinda been put in a position of..." Power? Control? Authority? Leadership? There are a dozen words for what Sumino's job is among the Last Defense Academy's teenaged meat shields but none of them are wholly true. Even Sumino seems to fail at finding the right word, just giving up and shrugging with his many shoulders. "...so I have to make decisions that nobody likes because we have to survive, right?"
They have to survive. They have to survive. They have to survive.
He's not wrong is the problem.
Nozomi hums in mild agreement. "Maybe the issue is that we don't have much of a choice."
"Rock and a hard place." Sumino's bitter laughter is like a flint striking steel, whispery and echoing, distant.
She wants him to leave her alone. She already has something weighing on her mind. She has plans for the day. She needs to go.
She doesn't want to get up so she just smiles pleasantly up at Sumino and prays he picks up on her displeasure.
"Well," again, the snapping noise of him popping his back, and a soft groan, "Wish me luck."
"Good luck." The words taste like acid coming up.
Takumi leaves like a specter, silent and leaving smoky residue and soot all over the floor. Nozomi just sits there for a moment, trying to pull herself together.
Karua. Karua Karua Karua Karua.
She hates Karua.
(She doesn't even know Karua. That's unkind of her.)
(She doesn't care about being unkind right now. Karua—whoever she is—has done nothing but made her life miserable and difficult.)
—
It's not a coincidence that Nozomi snags Aotsuki by the elbow for their talk at about the same time she knows Sumino is busy running errands for Ima. In fact, it's a completely calculated decision on her part. Sumino is, by and large, the one person she knows will actually seek either of them out without fail. If he is otherwise occupied, then he can't bother them and upset what will likely be a very intense discussion between the two of them regarding combat etiquette and roles on the battlefield.
His wanton violence using her body, disregarding supporting their comrades, isn't something that she wants to see become some kind of habit.
(The way her face had twisted into something resembling a grin, a manic bloodlust that had made her seem like a monster. The way Aotsuki had reveled in the genuinely disgusting act of gibbing and misting every Invader that came within her range, sharply boosting himself so as to further that violence and release of pent-up anger and anxiety. Yes, she understood the need for relief, but that had been—)
(She was jealous. Her own nausea held her back, Aotsuki's scythe and the monsters on all sides a chain and shackle binding her to the ground, limiting her abilities. She, too, wanted to paint herself in blood and let off steam but she couldn't. She was incapable of moving, of fighting any harder than weak struggles against her imminent death. But she—)
"I thought we were going to talk during lunch?" Aotsuki bats his eyelashes at her, innocent and doe-eyed. In response, Nozomi just grits her teeth and shakes her head, hiding her emotions behind as much placidity as she can manage.
"I figure this isn't something you want to discuss where other people can hear," she offers him, "so you will have to forgive me for moving around the timetable."
"Okay." It sounds like a dismissal. It probably is. "Where should we have this discussion then?"
"How about the woods? The ones within the Wall of Fire, on the campus grounds?"
"The two of us alone?" The implication isn't lost on her.
She smiles again, tilts her head ever-so-slightly, mimicking an expression she's seen Aotsuki make before. It's a kind smile, a mask, an expression she's realizing is likely more placation than placidity. "Do you have another suggestion?" He doesn't. It seems as though he simply wants to be contrarian. That's a facet of Aotsuki that she never would have guessed he had to him. "Then shall we?"
"Lead the way." The words sound forced. Nozomi chooses to not acknowledge that.
They walk in silence all the way to the woods. Nozomi does her best to not look at Atosuki - at her sluggish body slithering along the ground, leaving a detritus-riddled trail of blood and viscera in his wake. She does her best to block out the sound of her body's labored wheezing, of the faint stench of iron and fire and gasoline that wafts whenever the wind changes just enough. She keeps her eyes ahead, keeps her mouth pressed in a thin line, and walks.
They arrive at their destination all too soon. Nozomi turns to face Aotsuki, swallowing revulsion with a practiced smile. It feels brittle. It probably looks brittle. She doesn't care when it's just the two of them. The edifice between them is thin, there's no reason to lie to the one person in on the con.
"Aotsuki—"
"Yes Nozomi?" Aotsuki cranes her neck, a cascade of teeth and blood splattering buckshot against her chest with the movement.
"You cannot fight like that again." Uncharitable. Unkind. Violent. Like discharging her gun, like slamming his scythe into an enemy and wrenching, they come unbidden and angry.
Aotsuki gives her dead, fishy eyes that—in a face untouched by his cognitive disorder—likely are endearing and wet and innocent. As it stands, it just makes her stomach roil and rock with irritable nausea. "What do you mean?"
"Your— my job on the battlefield is to support. To heal. To help. You can't throw all that away just to - to feel better about yourself! To let off steam and - and just—"
"Is that what it looked like from the outside?" He cuts her off, cold burbling liquid nitrogen, searing and rotting flesh with its icy touch. "To you?" He cranes his neck, lolls and flops, boneless and torn open and weak. The derision is still visible, comes across like a neon sign and yet—
"Of course it did!" While nobody else might have seen what she saw, it was assigned clear as day. "You looked possessed!"
"Aren't we?"
They are, in a way, but—
"We can't let them realize that! Even if it is true—" in a sense, "they cannot realize that we are not ourselves! You said it yourself!"
"I did," Aotsuki acknowledges with a gentle—horrible—nod of his head, "and I believe that my conduct on the battlefield is well within acceptable behavior parameters. Nobody but you or I would notice."
"You can't possibly know that—"
"But I do." He cuts her off, impact, metal on metal on glass on flesh. She startles, flinches, and he moves forward like a speeding vehicle. "And it worked."
"Don't do it again."
He stares at her. Blankly.
"Don't. This isn't a request or - or a favor or anything. This is a demand. A...stipulation." Her head sings with the tinny tone of panic and horror. "If I can't ask for help, if I can't let Omokage take a look at us, then you have to play your part when defensive battles happen. You—"
"Then you have to do the same." Like his scythe, Aotsuki tears through her thoughts and halts her advance. "You can't cower. You can't falter. You have to press forward, rip at the enemy, not once flinch at the blood and violence. If you're going to deny me my relief, then I will vicariously live through your bloodshed."
A layer of the veil between them parts and, for a moment, Nozomi sees a side of Aotsuki she has never seen before. She sees a mirror, a warped anger she recognizes the same way she knows the sound of her own stuttering, hampered heartbeat. She feels seen.
It clings to her like the ooze her broken body secretes.
She silently nods. Concedes. It's a small pittance to maintain the ruse he demanded they uphold.
(She doesn't think about how it feels like losing a battle. She doesn't think about how it feels like making a deal with a devil. She doesn't think about how it feels like being strapped down, wired up, and injected. 'Just once,' her mother had said. 'One injection, one doctor's visit, one transfusion, one test...')
(Her mother lied.)
(Maybe Aotsuki is lying too. Only time would tell.)
"Will you be able to stomach it?" Her voice sounds sharp paired with his words, like an ampoule slug impacting flesh, bruising in starburst patterns against her skin. "Being so close to the violence."
Her teeth ache with a desire to gnash and pull and rip and tear and consume. Violence lights her burning blood on fire. She places a hand on her chest and feels the way Aotsuki's heart races with desire.
The way her body had frozen up in the middle of the fight, unable to step past the back line with Maruko. The way he danced around her as she tried—and failed—to become a crimson-soaked butterfly of death in the midst of a defensive battle she could have done in her sleep, had she been in her body with her weapon and her place in the pecking order. The way she watched her body shoot forward, painting himself in the gibbets of his enemies, a secretive smile only seen by her stretching the gaping wound that is his mouth into a howl of malefic ecstasy. Cackling like a witch. Raining the front in viscera.
She had been jealous, yes, but she had also been afraid.
The shaking in her hands could have been either. Who can say.
"Of course," she lies.
"Then that's that." Aotsuki smiles, a glimmering bloody mess of glass and pain. His eyes squint into lilac crescents, glinting with the same unidentifiable haze of emotions she's come to recognize as a mask far more unreadable than one would ever need normally.
Ah, but they're not normal. Therein lies the problem.
"One other thing: Sumino came to talk to me—to you—about something you had discussed before...all this." She takes a deep, full breath through her teeth, then exhales. "I want to know what that was about."
"Sumino considers me his best friend," Aotsuki airily dismisses with a floppy wave of a hand. "He talks to me about a lot of things. You need to be specific."
"About Karua," the name tastes like ash on her tongue. She wants to spit it out like something offensive but she can't. Not even in front of Aotsuki. "About alternate universes."
"Ah." The sound of her punctured lungs deflating with a soft pop. "That."
"Yes," she retorts. "That."
He doesn't elaborate.
She isn't sure why she expects him to without her pressing first. He's markedly more stubborn and petty than one would assume on first blush.
"Care to elaborate on what he meant, in case he brings it up again?" It's almost like trying to talk to a genie with Aotsuki. She has to be so specific, so particular, or he won't answer her in any meaningful way. Every conversation is a chess match and she's always on her back foot.
"That..." Aotsuki trails off, fake-thinking as he hums, many-jointed fingers pressing against his lips. "You resemble his childhood friend. To a terrifying degree."
"I am...aware." She was unaware that Karua was Sumino's childhood friend, but she was aware that he keeps confusing the two of them and she hates it.
"Knowing this and knowing that he considers me one of his dearest and closest friends, Takumi asked me for advice and I suggested—partially in jest and partially so that he would back off a little, because it looked like his attention was making you incredibly uncomfortable—that perhaps there was alternate dimensions at play." Nozomi stares at him blankly, trying her best to convince him of how inane and stupid his 'suggestion in jest' really sounds. He just continues on, sighing wistfully, ignoring her blatant displeasure. "And when that didn't seem to do much for his...attachment issues, I rescinded my theory. Nozomi is Nozomi and Karua is Karua. Takumi just needs to understand that. Why? Did he come asking for clarification on my initial idea?"
"I think..." She doesn't know how generous she wants to be with how she puts this. Does she kindly tell him that he made things worse or— "He hasn't quite figured out how he feels and he came to you for advice again."
"What did you tell him?" He almost sounds pleased, the gurgling of his borrowed voice bubbling and spluttering with an audible amusement.
"That he's only going to alienate 'Nozomi' further if he continues to conflate the two. That he needs to stop trying so hard. That 'she' will come to him on her own terms and at her own time."
"The reeds bow to the wind but the noble oak is felled in its rigidity?" He offers.
"The gentle warmth of the sun does more to remove a coat than the sharp north wind." She counters.
"What a clever response to get him to leave me alone."
"It was to get him to leave me alone," she corrects, "but in this case, one and the same."
"Eventually we will go back to our own bodies." Hopefully, he doesn't say, but she can hear the implications in how he says it. "And when that occurs you just want some space?"
"Wouldn't you?" It's rhetorical. He knows it, she knows it. Neither of them will give an inch.
"Is that all?"
"Yes." Well, actually... "Or, no. One more thing."
"Alright Columbo," by now she's gotten good at understanding how Aotsuki speaks when he's being genuine and when he's being facetious; this is the latter, "what else can I do for you today?"
"What are your relations with the other members of the Special Defense Unit? Just so I know who to talk to and how?"
Something unreadable crosses Aotsuki's borrowed face, her own expression twisting and pinching into something incomprehensible. Then it passes. "Takumi is the only one who goes out of his way to talk to me. I have initiated conversations with Gaku before, to set up the cookout that unfortunately was followed by our food stocks being destroyed but otherwise I tend to only answer if he speaks to me. Takemaru usually only comes to talk if he has a problem with someone else, as he seems to view me as Takumi's second. The twins keep to themselves—though it seems Kako does so more because she's forced to rather than Ima's distrustful isolation. Shouma doesn't usually bother me more than anyone else. Darumi seems to think I'm similar to some characters she likes and asks me to watch horror films a lot, so beware of that. Tsubasa at least only really bothers me if we're in the same room and she wants to pick my brain about something." So he doesn't talk to anyone unless they talk to him, limiting himself to responding to their queries and quandaries and small-talk if need be. Understood. "And yourself?"
"Omokage and I worked together on making my weapon work the way it does. We also developed the potions everyone uses in combat, though I functioned more like a guinea pig than a scientist in that instance." Her answers are a little more complicated than his but she doesn't - she didn't have a cognitive disorder making forming bonds with others difficult. "Kurara and I are...I would consider us best friends so she'll likely seek you out for trivial reasons more than the others. Kyoshika and I are both close to Kurara and we both like to keep fit. She might ask you to swim laps or weight lift or something because she's feeling restless. And you're likely already aware of my relationship with Moko...considering. Aside from them, the people from your campus are...we haven't had much of a chance to...bond."
"That's good!" Is it? "That means that the only concerns are the three from your campus."
"Four," she corrects.
He just smiles silently at her as she parses what all he meant by how he said things.
"...and really only Sumino for you." Because nobody really knows Aotsuki enough to notice any discrepancies. "I see."
"Do you happen to have the recipes for your weapon that you and Yugamu put together written down somewhere so I can study them?"
The question feels like something just left of what they were talking about but it manages to startle Nozomi out of her funk, if only for that moment. "Uh...there should be a notebook on my bookshelf? It's a plain lined one, written in pencil? All of my notes on my weapon, the potions, and the traps I helped Kurara with should be in there somewhere."
"Then that will be my homework during my shift watching Moko." Every word sounds as sincere as a car salesman's pitch. "Yours should be figuring out how to properly use my weapon."
"Of course." Because combat could happen at any time.
At least a VR battle will be without any of the stakes or the real people. Just simulations of them.
She can get better accustomed to them when they aren't really there.
Without another word, Aotsuki drags himself away and leaves her in the clearing with just her thoughts spinning around in her head over and over and over again.
She's wearing a hole in her head but something about how Aotsuki had described his relationships with the others stuck out to her. How every one of them was...transactional. Give and take. Distanced. Even the one he has with Sumino.
But he almost sounded—
—
Nozomi's vision goes dark as she is forcibly ejected from the VR program, the HUD flashing a bright crimson warning to accompany the blaring alarms indicating a defensive battle sending spiking panic through her body. It's all psychosomatic, all just remnants of her mind panicking with none of the physical feeling, but that doesn't stop her heartrate from spiking even in Aotsuki's body.
It's an inconvenient alarm at that. Back-to-back battles aren't uncommon but they're always unwelcome and maybe it's the fact that Aotsuki doesn't have as emotionless a face as Nozomi does but she certainly has to fight to keep her irritation from showing as she slides into the War Room. Then she has to fight the way that Aotsuki's agnosia warps her comrades into unrecognizable messes of vile sensations to appear normal.
Or...normal for Aotsuki.
"Can they pick a better time to attack us?" Maruko croaks miserably, flat face an ashen olive color with puce flickering on the edges. "I was just about to go the fuck to bed."
"Why don't you just ask them?" Kurara snaps, splattering Maruko with chunks of rotting and maggot-infested tomato. "Dear Invaders, can you pretty please only assault us at about midday? I need my beauty sleep or I look like and act like a repulsive toad. Sincerely, Maruko the Fucking Moron."
"Hey!"
Before Maruko and Kurara could get into it, Yakushiji physically interposed himself between them, his broad shoulders and multiple arms flared wide despite the fact that he should be resting, considering he had been stabbed recently. "C'mon now, this is no time to be fightin' each other."
"But—"
"Everyone's fuckin' tired," he continues, his swampy breath filling Nozomi's lungs with condensation that tastes of exhaust and alcohol, "and bitin' each other's head's off ain't gonna' fix shit. Just take your rage out on the Invaders, yeah?"
"Well said," Omokage purrs. "I, for once, can't wait to get my claws in those pretty little things." He flexes his fingers, the needle-like points of his awful inhuman claws glistening with some kind of toxic excretion. Nozomi does her best to not look too long at any of her friends because—
(A rotting greenish tomato supported on the neck of a ball-jointed doll staggering hither and thither to, herky-jerky movement unsettling even as the wailing 'face' of the thing emoted and babbled in a voice that carried the buzzing of flies with it. A looming, centipede-like being with one piercing eye and mandibles and pedipalps that somehow perfectly capture the expression he must be making, whose myriad of writhing limbs end in spindly hands with venom dripping from the claw-tipped fingers. The shape of a person made of a thousand and one gleaming blades, a bleeding, beating heart in the chest of it, like a bird trapped in a cage, her words like metal on metal, like metal on a chalkboard.)
—because she loves them and she doesn't want to not be around them but—
"Where the hell is Sumino anyway?" Kurara turns her ire outward, Maruko and Yakushiji free of her frustrations.
"Probably trying to play peace-keeper between the twins," Amemiya offers. Her layered voice echoes eerily as she cackles, "Not that it's working, of course, but he's too earnest to drop it. Like a dumb dog."
"Woof woof," Takumi's ashen voice causes everyone to jump. "And, for your information, I was trying to figure out how to help the twins, but I'm not stupid, Amemiya."
It's hard to tell with how fractured her everything is, but she seems as though she might actually feel some modicum of shame being called out like that.
Either way, Sumino walks through the crowd and looks at the monitoring system. "What's the problem? Do we have a Commander this time?"
"Probably," Kawana says around a mouthful of vomit and asphalt and tar. "It's really hard to tell through the...whatever that smoke stuff is."
"Mist," Nozomi finds herself offering, unbidden. When everyone turns to look at her—Aotsuki included, his raised eyebrow an indictment of her out of character behavior—she continues her explanation. "Like clouds but close to the ground. Just condensation. Nothing to be worried about, though it will limit visibility."
"Then let's work around that. Move out!" At Sumino's command, everyone transforms.
(Nozomi finds relief in the cocoon, the silence brought on by blood and isolation a brief comfort before she's thrown back into a room full of monsters that used to be people. She almost misses it when it's over.)
They split in two squads; Nozomi herself is on the foremost front with Sumino, Ginzaki, Amemiya, and Omokage while Aotsuki is on the right-hand front with Kurara, Kyoshika, Kawana, Maruko, and Yakushiji. The thick mist makes it easier to avoid seeing her comrades' horrific forms at the cost of making it nigh on impossible to see anything at all unless it's inches in front of them.
Whatever Commander is leading this attack force has a plan and it's a tactically sound, if not cowardly one. Judging by the way Sumino is shifting next to her, he likely is thinking something similar.
"Don't get overwhelmed!" He commands. "Find the source of the mist and take it out. There's no way this is natural!"
"Easy for you to say," Maruko snipes across the comms. "I can't see jack or shit through this mess. I'm not a close-quarters fighter either, so it's really fucking me up."
"Then break skulls until something works!" Yakushiji roars.
"Fucking meatheaded idiot..." But Kurara's irritated grumble is cut off by Kyoshika laughing and agreeing with him.
Amemiya, thankfully, seems to understand the situation they're in because she throws a knife with a lazy flick of one of her wrists and listens as it impacts something decidedly not made of flesh. "They're on the back line! Cowards!"
"Focus that then!" And they're off.
Aotsuki had demanded, in exchange for him taking a more passive and support role to maintain their ruse, that she be more proactive. So, having put in the time and effort, she does so, slamming the snathe of his weapon into the ground and feeding it hemoanima. Spires of bloody mud shoot out in an X shape, impacting the same inorganic object with the same sound as when Amemiya had caught it.
The smell of acrid mechanical smoke mixes with the rancid mix of her comrades stenches and the battlefield writ large as Nozomi lifts her weapon up and slams it down again, repeating the act.
She probably should be more careful with when and how she's spilling Aotsuki's blood but he demanded she be less cautious and the Revive-o-Matic works for him so consequences be damned.
(And maybe she's feeling a little self-destructive and frustrated with how things have been with Moko. Maybe she just wants to take her frustrations out on the enemy. Maybe she's just a bad person. It hardly matters in the moment.)
One of the machines that's creating the mist explodes in a sharp flash of fire and combustion and metal, splattering the Invaders and people in front of it in the cooked flesh of the pilot. Amemiya's cheers are cut short when one of the Lesser Invaders takes advantage of her distraction to attack.
On the other front, Yakushiji, Kurara, Aotsuki, and Gaku shriek in pain. Sumino turns to see what the problem is and is torn into by a Greater Invader while his attention is elsewhere.
Another Greater Invader strikes Nozomi and bruises a rib. She coughs on impact and turns to defend herself but the mist is too thick.
"ETA on those mist things being taken out?" Aotsuki calls out over the comms.
"One down," Nozomi answers, "but I don't have visual on the other. It's too thick and I can't see who's in front of me to try and push."
"No luck!" Amemiya answers. "Even my superb vision is pulling jack in this mess. Also I think this little thing might've hobbled me so ol' Darumi might have to make some dirty fireworks soon."
"My pathetic eyes are incapable of seeing past my own short, stubby nose. Sorry!" Ginzaki's apology sounds like he's seconds from crying. "I can't even be a proper meat shield because none of the Invaders can even see us!"
"Well some invisible bastard cut the fuck out of us on this side!" Yakushiji's voice sounds pained and, judging by the way Maruko is whimpering, it's likely that everyone who had been struck by that attack weren't doing well. "No clue when that'll happen again."
"Hurry the fuck up or we're going down!" Kurara orders. To anyone else, she would sound angry but Nozomi can pick up on the panic.
Then two new voices call out over the comms.
"Leave this to us."
A bright burst of bloody red light streaks across the battlefield from behind Nozomi, back closer to the shield generator. It blows a hole in the second mist generator and the machine spins in a circle as its remaining engine tries to overcompensate, throwing the occupant against the burning hole punctured in the side and killing it before the entire machine explodes and the mist clears from the field.
Nozomi turns to see Kako kneeling there, a large, grotesque rifle pressed against her shoulder, its angelic wings acting as a sight for her. A spiderweb of cracks spiral out from where the butt of the weapon kicked against her shoulder, shattering the porcelain and revealing the sodden hair and flesh contained within her angelic and doll-like shell.
Unbeknownst to all of them, a singular Greater Invader had broken through and flanked Kako, claws raising up as it prepared to gut their savior. Before it can so much as move, a red and black blur shoots across the quad and tears it in half, tossing the upper half of it to the side while the lower half spews blood and other multicolored fluids across Kako's hair. Ima settles behind her, a pair of black bony wings with blood feathers spread as he hovers above the ground with something akin to pride on his painted face.
"Guys!" Sumino's breathless voice carries with it a heavy sense of relief.
"Sorry it took us so long," Kako offers. "I've never transformed before." Nozomi can sympathize. The first time is always the hardest, the fear stilling your hand and causing tremors to race through your limbs. "But we're here now! Leave any of the mist machines to me!"
"And I'll watch my dear sister's back so you lot can focus on killing the Commander!" Ima adds.
"And where the hell did you come from?" For the first time since he was stabbed, Yakushiji sounds furious at Ima. It's a good thing that he's on the other front, considering how hairtrigger his temper is—even if Ima is a child and he seems to have a code of honor regarding not hitting women and children.
"Didn't we just say?" Ima's tinny reply carries his usual disinterested bite, razor blades packed into a fist, pushed against skin but never dragged down. "Clean out your ears Mister Yakushiji!"
"Stop fucking bickering and get to fighting!" Kurara snaps across the comms. Nozomi can hear the sound of her quickly assembling a turret and walls. "Your front has small fries so let us focus up or someone here's gonna bleed out."
"It's already too late for me...," Maruko groans. "Fucking shit. Can't believe the bitch took a potshot at me in the fucking mist. Goddammit..." How bad were Maruko's wounds? He could heal himself by stealing blood from enemies and yet—
Is Aotsuki not doing her - his job again?!
She doesn't have time to think about that, the Invaders aren't waiting on them to get their shit together before regrouping and attacking again. While the other front has to contend with the Commander, they have wave after wave of Invaders and, unlike the other side, they don't have Kurara to help shore up defenses.
Ginzaki, thankfully, does just fine.
As he leaps into the center of the quad and shouts out a taunting cry, the Invaders within range turn their attention to him and swarm. His mech withdraws its limbs and activates the defensive protocols, each blow glancing off his hard shell and reflecting the damage back at his attackers.
"Maruko, if you're gonna explode, do it sooner rather than later! Nozomi can't be in your pocket just because you're a fucking coward!" Kurara shrieks over the sound of her turret.
Omokage takes advantage of their frenzy to work his dangerous magic, whipping his disjointed limbs out of their sockets to strike at swaths of Invaders with extra fervor. His weapon comes back painted in Invader gore and he gently takes a taste, giggling drunkenly as he does so.
"Fear not, Gaku-dono! I shall protect you from any who would mean you harm!" Kyoshika's bright proclamation is cut off by the sound of what has to be the Commander slicing into them again, a pained whimper escaping her mouth.
To her side, Amemiya staggers slightly a bit and then draws a deep breath, "Time for Darumi to shine!" Her shriek of delight is immediately followed by her drawing her blade across her throat and an explosion of blood and knives raining down on most of the enemies surrounding Ginzaki. Her limp body collapses to the ground and is scooped up by the drones to deliver her to the Revive-o-Matic, leaving behind a crimson-soaked field and one less combatant.
"Incoming!" Aotsuki calls. From where they're standing, Nozomi can see the green cloud of her panacea gently dissolving as the wind blows. "Healing inbound." The sound of him firing her gun, the specific sound of an ampoule shot leaving the barrel. At least he's holding up his end of the bargain.
Sumino lunges, his sword piercing one of the shield Greater Invaders through the eye, removing the blade and flicking fluids off of it as he pivots to slash in a wide strike to prevent any of the Lesser Invaders from advancing.
"Look my way you goat fucker!" Yakushiji roars and slams his bat against his bike, the noise echoing even on the other front. It must work because the next noise that comes from his comms is him tearing away on his bike, the engine screaming.
Nozomi presses forward, scythe cutting through Invader after Invader, losing herself in the almost heartbeat rhythm of combat. As she spins and whirls, her body remembering how to use the weapon more than her mind does, she hears the humming buzz of Ginzaki's laser and kicks back in time to watch it mist a large line of Invaders. The machine itself sparks and whines, joints locking from the energy expenditure.
"Maruko!" Kawana shrieks in horror. From Maruko's comms comes a horrible meaty sound and shrieking. Kawana's comms are forcibly muted but not before the sound of her heaving starts.
From the rear, Kako fires off intermittent shot after intermittent shot, the pauses between her attacks indicative of some kind of kickback doing damage to her delicate form. Still, the burning bright lasers she shoots into Greater Invaders tears chunks out of them and makes them easy prey for the frontline fighters.
"Maruko, now is not the time to be a fuckin' bitch about this!" Yakushiji commands. "You're doin' worse not dyin'! Fuckin' let the Revive-o-Matic do its damn job!"
Ima dances across the battlefield on wings of blood and burnt bone, the wind he generates shoving and rearranging enemies into favorable positions for his sister or any other combatant to slaughter. His cruel, amused laughter contrasts against how delicate he looks—even as one of the ranged Greater Invaders clips him and the shadows contained within the pretty surface of his doll body peek out and grasp for the thing that did this to him.
"Fuh-fine!" Maruko's voice sounds wet and choked, like there's blood in places blood should not be. He takes a soggy breath and screams with something that sounds—to Nozomi—like violent rage. From everyone on that side's comms, the sound of a hail of bullets and blood echoes, layered over and over again from whatever angle they're catching the suicide attack from. "Bastards..." A drone flies out of the school to scoop up Maruko's corpse but it hardly matters because the Invaders stop fighting and begin to look lost, their weird expressionless faces somehow conveying confusion and concern.
"Commander's down!" Kurara barks out. "Clean up the mess while we make sure it can't do shit!"
"Roger!" Sumino nods, then turns to face everyone on his front. Without another word, they all throw themselves into combat with abandon, ready for this late-night mess to be over.
The fight is finished within seconds, Amemiya jogging back out just in time to see the last Invader fall to Kako's gun. "Awww. Darn. I missed all the fun, didn't I?"
"I don't think exploding yourself counts as 'missing' anything," Maruko whines as he plods out after her. "Shit fucking hurts."
"You have your teeth back!"
He squelches down at her observation, a flush of brown and green curling across his sticky skin. "Yeah, well, shit still fucking hurt. That Commander was mean."
"Speaking of—" Sumino straightens up and strides over to where Kurara and Yakushiji have the de-transformed Commander pinned and penned in a series of electrified walls. "What do we do with you?"
"Let me have her!" Maruko's croaking voice reaches a tree frog pitch, whining and piteous in equal measures. Nozomi holds her breath as the wafting scent of body odor and swamp bursts in her nose. "I got the worst of it!"
"Yeah, well, we had to cover your ass while you limped around trying to undo what boo-boos you had gotten," Kurara snaps back. A chunk of rotting tomato spews from her mouth and impacts the fence, frying and smelling somehow worse than ever before. "If you hadn't been such a little pussy—"
"We all know that Maruko-senpai's cowardice cost your side some time and pain, but if it soothes his bruised ego—" Ima cuts in.
"I don't wanna hear shit from you right now." Yakushiji, rightfully, didn't let him speak more than that. Fire flickers in his nostrils and he huffs with barely contained anger as he looms over the Commander, back to Ima and Kako both.
Ima backs down without so much as a word, a shadowy tendril pulling a loose chunk of his face back in place.
Aotsuki chimes in, looking down his nose at the Commander. "I think whoever gets the killing blow is up to Sumino, don't you?"
"Huh?" Kurara's ire wanes. "Why him?"
"We've put him in somewhat of a leadership position so isn't it only fair that we don't rescind leadership when we feel it's convenient?" But Nozomi isn't really paying attention to any of that. Her eyes are on the Commander.
Because the Commander looks like a person.
Granted, she's seen de-transformed Commanders before. The one who had taken Moko looked disturbingly like Kurara once it had been forced out of its more monstrous shape. The one who had attacked them as soon as they had gotten to the main campus had reminded her a bit of Yakushiji with its build and angry, defensive posture. But she hadn't been dealing with Aotsuki's unique problems at the time. She had assumed, like with all of her comrades, that a de-transformed Commander would appear monstrous still. That whatever Commander they fought would be nigh-indistinguishable from their combat form, even when not in it.
She was wrong.
Whatever this Commander had looked like in combat, it currently appears to be a young, frightened woman with a mask made of serpentine bones. It curls in on itself, looking up at its jailors, and its breathing is jagged and panicked.
As the arguing reaches a fever pitch, the Commander speaks out, a loud, unintelligible bark of some kind of language none of them know. Everyone's attention snaps back to it as it stands up, knees wobbling like a baby deer, and holds its hands up in a gesture everyone can recognize as surrender.
"Nuh-uh," Maruko sneers, "We're not falling for that shit again!" Again? Nozomi tries to make eye-contact with Aotsuki but his gaze is fixed firmly on the Commander.
"B-but I think it might actually—" Before Ginzaki can continue his thought, the Commander speaks again, hands reaching up towards its mask. Everyone tenses, reaches for their weapons, but it moves with a slow purpose and unclasps the mask and removes it.
Beneath that mask is a sad, wet-eyed woman with pigments marking her face in some kind of ritualistic way, her long hair cascading over her shoulders. She clutches her mask against her chest and speaks again.
Nozomi can't breathe.
Somewhere, muffled by the tinny sound of her panic, she can hear an argument start up and Kawana turn to the side to vomit from the stress. She can hardly think, though, because if seeing the Commander as a person had been difficult before, it is impossible now.
How can she kill someone, drink them dry and leave them a dessicated husk, if they look like a person to her? Surrounded on all sides by monsters and beasts and horrors, to be presented with a person—something human-like—is less a balm and more a punishment. This is a person, a woman, someone asking for them to spare her—even if they can't understand her words, the tone alone is loud and clear—and all the Commanders are like this?
It was easier when they were faceless monsters. When they were beasts. When they were 'it'.
Now that she can see her, see what they're doing to her, see someone as scared and hurt as they are—
Nozomi manages to steel herself just enough to feign at Aotsuki's usual gesture he makes whenever he wants to hide how badly he's affected by his company. She clutches at her chest and offers Sumino a thin, insincere smile. "Pardon me, but - I'm—"
"Huh?" Sumino turns a set of eyes towards him, the remainder fixed firmly on the Commander. "Oh, uh, yeah. No. Sorry. If you're not feeling well..."
"Thank you." And, coward that she is, she flees.
(The way the Commander looked at them reminded her of the way she had looked at the doctors. Fear, panic, horror, and begging.)
(She can't. Not now. She can always apologize to Aotsuki later.)
(Because she didn't know. None of them did. But if she can look like a person then what does that mean about her mother's experiments - about Nozomi? About cryptoglobin and hemoanima and the Special Defense Unit as a whole? What even is this war? How much of what she's been told can she trust?)
(She cries herself to sleep, too horrified to even undress.)
Her eyes are a soft lilac color, like the flower. Maybe it's obvious to everyone else, but this is the first time that Eito has ever seen her eyes with any clarity before, so it's a revelation for him. So his first thought—panic leaving his body as he pushes all memory of Takumi from his mind—is that her eyes are a very soft lilac color, sharp and cold, like painted pottery shards.
Maybe he shouldn't be spending so much time standing in front of the bathroom mirror, looking at himself, but he needs to become acclimated to the shape he's taking for the foreseeable future. He needs to not get startled every time he catches a glimpse of himself in a reflective surface.
Also, as his encounter with Nozomi's...friends had taught him: he needs to get better at presenting himself as Nozomi. That means becoming accustomed to how she emotes, what her usual manner of dress is, and even her skin and haircare routines. Hence him staring in the mirror to expose himself to the horrid truth he's trying so hard to push down.
(The nausea that rises in the back of his throat, stealing color from Nozomi's already pale face, isn't about the disgust he feels being put in a disgusting human's body. Even if he wants to lie to others for the sake of his goals, he can't and won't lie to himself. The bile that presses at his glottis is moreso related to how ordinary—or even beautiful—he finds everyone's appearances through Nozomi's eyes. But he can't falter now so he grits his teeth and soldiers on.)
Her hair isn't too dissimilar from his own, both in color and texture. It's more silver than his own ashen brown but it has the same weight and falls relatively straight, which is a relief. Her skin is an unhealthy pale—likely a side-effect of whatever caused her to have less hemoanima than the rest of the humans at either academy—and she's both unhealthily thin and has a fair bit of muscle on her. It's the lack of fat, the hard muscle replacing what should be healthy weight on her bones, and he frowns at how he can feel her lungs hitch and her heart pick up the moment he does any form of strenuous exercise. Even running up two flights of stairs to escape Takumi had winded her, the fluttering feeling finally leaving after several minutes of idle examination and resting.
It's almost paradoxical how she manages to be frail and sturdy in equal measures, her body determined to eat itself alive even as she works double-time to prevent such a fate. What remains is something akin to a statue, a defined being of ephemeral beauty, a bit like a dandelion seconds away from being blown apart in the wind.
When Eito was younger, he found solace and beauty looking at photographs of landscapes ruined by humanity's greed and ignorance. Vistas long lost to global warming and then what he later learned was World Death, preserved in film and print, his only escape from the constant onslaught of monsters on all sides.
Nozomi reminds him of one he saw of an ice-covered mountain peak, backlit by a sunset—or perhaps a sunrise, he can hardly remember after so many years—in cool colors as the sky behind it bled pink to a rich, velvety blue. The grey rock of the mountain looked almost purple in contrast, the snow scattering the sun's beams in bright bursts of blue and pink, soft clouds streaking white and orange across the front. She has the color pallet for sure; all cool tones with hardly an ounce of flush to her ensemble. She even has the stark cheekbones and jawline that makes him think of cliffsides.
She has a mole under her eye.
That final detail pushes him away from the mirror and away to fixing his appearance. While the morning announcements have barely finished playing, he can't chance being marked as 'suspicious' simply because he's incapable of at least looking the part. If he's to play at being Nozomi, he best dress like her.
Thankfully, she seems content with only one outfit in total: some kind of variation on a school uniform. Unthankfully, he's realized that she wears her hair in a braid and he is not exactly practiced in the art.
No better time than the present to learn, even if the thought alone makes his skin crawl.
Peeling Nozomi's sleep clothes off—grateful he remembered to lock her door as a sudden, horrible fear of one of the others walking in on him without warning gripped at his weak heart with vicious claws—he pauses. Not because he is in a female body in the nude—he has no interest in anything a human has going on, let alone a body he is inhabiting—but because something Nozomi said earlier makes a much larger degree of sense than before.
When he had asked her what her body looked like, expecting her to describe some kind of fetal monstrosity with bulging doe-eyes and thin hair, she had instead described some kind of macabre slug of a car wreck victim. And, namely, she had gestured across her chest as she discussed how his organs were spilling out of his open body.
A large scar runs across Nozomi's torso, along the line she had drawn as she described what she had been seeing.
A car wreck, hm? His fingers probe the long-healed wound. A smile plays across his face as he connects dots she likely hadn't intended to reveal. Perhaps that has to do with why her hemoanima is so weak. At least he can assume that her perception of everyone else through his eyes will be as colored by her own memories as his were untainted.
Without a second thought, he pulls on a bra and clean underwear and finishes dressing himself, placing her sleep clothes on her bed for later. Now for his hair.
His own hair has only ever been long enough to braid when he was in the hospital. His mother had liked his hair and, when under the care of the so-called nurses and doctors that had decided his eyes were a 'problem' that needed to be 'fixed', he hadn't been allowed control over anything, let alone his own appearance. The nurses had put their filthy, twisted fingers in his hair and had left their horrid residue behind when they'd finished winding his hair into a sturdy plait so it wouldn't get in the way of his 'activities'. So, while he has some experience with having his hair braided, he doesn't necessarily have experience with braiding hair.
Thankfully, Nozomi's braid usually falls over her shoulder so it doesn't have to really be even. He can work with that, so long as he can stomach looking in a mirror for however long it takes to finish the act.
Combing her hair and putting on her headband gives him some degree of understanding as to how much he actually has to work with. It's less than he thought but more than he's comfortable with but discomfort is nothing new.
He divides the majority of the remainder into three even chunks and begins to twine them together. Over, under, over, under. His fingers work with almost mindless dexterity as he mentally clocks out to avoid thinking about the situation.
Over, under, over, under.
Did Nozomi finally cave and put his glasses on? She had to, considering how poorly she took to her friends' appearances.
Over, under, over, under.
They never managed to discuss how to work each other's weapons before being interrupted. Knowing how dramatic irony works and how often the Invaders like to attack, they may not have enough time to figure out the differences between them before the next defensive battle. In fact, Eito would wager that it's incredibly likely that they may have to deal with a scouting party of some sort within the next few days.
Over, under, over, under.
Watching Nozomi shakily press the point of his Infuser against her chest, eyes wide and panicked, had been a novel experience. Thankfully, she was intelligent enough to grasp what he was saying as he talked her through how it felt to detransform, but it had been a sight to behold to watch her shake like a panicked animal as she froze in the face of death. Her bite had been surprising as well. He didn't expect her to be so...testy. She's always come off as a pushover and yet—
Over, under, over, under.
A knock at the door. Eito's fingers slip and his clumsy, uneven braid begins to unravel. With an irritated sigh, Eito uses a hairband to tie it off and moves to respond to whoever has decided that they want to bother 'Nozomi' so early in the morning. Surely it couldn't be Takumi again?! Not after the way Eito had...left him. He has to have more tact than that.
"One moment!" As before, Eito flattens out his irritation and lets Nozomi's weak voice do most of the work for him. The knocking stops and the silence that ensues makes him suddenly feel oddly unsafe. Or, no, not unsafe so much as exposed. Trapped.
After all: Nozomi's hemoanima is not his own and she does not have Special Fortunetelling. Luck is now a crapshoot and he can't just assume that things will work out because he is beloved by fate. Anything can happen.
(Not that it will. The Special Defense Unit is full of bleeding hearts and people who care for Nozomi. If anyone dared lay a single finger on any of their precious comrades or friends they would pay dearly, even if it was one of their own. How...trite.)
On the other side of the door is Nozomi again. This time she at least managed to dress his body up in his usual outfit. Gloves, jacket, and glasses. It seems as though she, too, has come to dislike even the thought of accidentally coming into contact with the faintest hint of humanity's filth.
"Come on in, Aotsuki." If Eito sounds terse, he doesn't care. While they can't openly call each other by their names, saying his own surname with a voice that is not his own makes him bristle with barely-contained disgust. She steps inside and he closes and locks the door behind her. Then he turns on his heel and looks up at her, barely managing to fake a smile as she stands awkwardly by her desk. "I see you decided to get dressed."
A bright flush burns across his - her face, her eyes widening behind his glasses. She still is avoiding looking at him, but she's at least not flinching when he talks. "You, uh, your glasses are really strong."
"They do their job."
This manages to get her to look at him—almost disapprovingly, at that. "You might want to be careful with that."
"I know well enough that I could ruin my eyesight." And isn't that the point? To destroy his eyesight to obfuscate the way humanity truly looks? At least then he won't have to look at them any more. "But that isn't why you came by, is it?"
She hums. It's an answer and not an answer at the same time; perfectly passive, like Nozomi often is. When she speaks again, she sounds somehow more and less sure of herself all at once. "I figured we should discuss things some more."
"We should," he agrees without any inflection.
"And you look like you need help with your - my hair." He looks down to see that the poorly-done braid he had hastily wrapped off had come undone and the overall look wound up being less 'exhausted mistake' and more 'half-assed rush job', which is a blow to his already brittle pride.
"Can you stomach it?" He couldn't, were he in her place, but she isn't seeing what he saw so perhaps her version of the monster that is Nozomi Kirifuji is more palatable.
Though, judging by the way her lips and brow twisted into a knot about her nose, probably not. "I'll manage."
"Don't throw up down my back. I don't want to have to get dressed again." He sits down on the couch and watches as she circles him like he's some kind of dangerous animal. When she finally steels her nerves, she still timidly uses her gloved hands to undo his hard work and begins to section off his hair again.
"Sorry about that."
"About what?" He hates empty apologies almost as he hates humans. Vapid words that mean nothing, deflections to push blame about. If she's going to apologize, she had better mean it.
Behind him, Eito can feel her hands tense slightly. He has to fight the instinctual urge to rip away from her grasp and go for her throat. When she does speak, it's oddly measured and stilted, as though she doesn't understand how to explain herself but she also is holding back. "Losing my composure in the Gym when my - when Kurara, Kyoshika, and Omokage arrived for our morning routine. I shouldn't have left you alone to deal with them. They can be...a lot."
That was an understatement. "I managed well enough."
"I heard you left soon after I did." She fumbles a bit longer with braiding, obviously wanting to take off her gloves but also not wanting to.
"I had places to be, things to do." His deflection is sharper than it might need to be, but he isn't going to let Nozomi lecture him on cowardice. "Like getting dressed and understanding how your weapon works."
"Right." At least she has the sense to sound embarrassed about it. There's a moment of silence, punctuated with a sort of toothy grunting noise, and then she continues to braid in earnest. Judging by the speed and sudden increase in finesse, she must have removed at least one of her gloves with her teeth. "I can explain that now, if you want."
He hums, careful to not move his head. He doesn't want her touching him any longer than he has to and undoing all of her hard work would be counterproductive.
"It's a lever-action shotgun that can hold about five shots with one primed at a time. If you need some direction on how to feed and prime it I can draw you a diagram once your hair is done." He doesn't deign to answer her, too focused on the gentle way her hands avoid touching his bare skin, knuckles skimming past the shell of his ear by centimeters but never once making contact, the tension causing the hair on the back of his neck to stand on end. "I have an ammo pouch where I keep my extra ammunition that's stored with the activator for my armor and weapon in the War Room. It should have more than enough for a full battle without needing any kind of restock."
"What kind of ammunition?" He knows what she can offer in battle, he's been on the same front as her a couple times before, but the more detail he has the better. "I know you have the healing one—"
"There's two types of slugs: ampoule and dust." The ease at which she throws around terms makes him almost interested in her. If she knows her gun this well, what kind of life had she lived before she was conscripted into this war? Is she anything like Kurara, whose family is a major arms dealer, or Yugamu, whose family are all assassins? "The ampoule slugs are just what they sound like: they're a glass ampoule filled with a liquid that shatters on impact. The splash zone is pretty large, assuming the actual slug doesn't impact someone."
Having been on the receiving end of a healing ampoule more than once, Eito knows the feeling of a glass slug filled with liquid impacting his chest. Were it not for his hemoanima bolstering his recovery and the potion doing its work, he would have likely fractured something from the blunt force alone. He must make some kind of face because Nozomi lets out a sad little laugh.
"Lucky for you, the only other ampoule slug is the paralytic. Less spread if you hit someone with it, and the agent can work its way into the open wound caused by glass shards." Over, under, over, under. "The dust slug is exclusively the bolstering agent. It's a weaker form of the drug that Omokage made for us to drink but it has a pretty good spread. The fact that it can be inhaled is good too."
"And that...cloud thing?" He won't call it 'an ultimate' like Darumi and Gaku keep insisting, finding the term gauche at best and infantile at worst. "What of that?"
"It charges automatically." Her frankness is refreshing, in an odd way. "After the mechanism has finished distilling the healing liquid and filling a shell, you load it in, fire it into the air, and it aerosolizes the panacea in a large area of effect. Less useful than chugging it yourself but more useful than the ampoule slug."
"How long does it take before it's ready?"
"Anywhere from sixty to ninety seconds?" A long time in a fight. "But it runs independent of your actions. It's constantly refilling so you don't have to manually prepare it, just load it in and fire up."
"Hmm..."
Over, under, over, under.
He wants her hands off of him.
He grins and bears it like he always does.
"There is," he broaches the topic with a falsified hesitancy, "a way to do a ranged attack with my scythe."
"Is there?" He feels her hands tense in his hair, twist and pull slightly too hard. She fumbles, picks up where she left off and resumes her monotonous pattern. "How? I just assumed that your weapon was a solely close-ranged one. Melee, I mean."
"If you focus your hemoanima—the rush of combat surging through you—into the base of the scythe, you can inject your blood into the ground and manifest it outside of your body in jagged, muddy spires." Like fingers, like fangs, grabbing and biting at the enemy. A way to kill without closing distance. "It has a maximum range but overall is useful for when you're poorly positioned and feeling fatigued."
Eito feels Nozomi tie off the braid; senses the weight of the corded hair against his shoulder; hears her slip her gloves back on with a terse little sound of disgust—almost inaudible but for how close she is to him, likely not meant for anyone but herself. He tilts his chin down and looks at the finished braid, then turns to look at her.
"Thank you." It's like pulling teeth.
A naive, hopeful smile spreads across his - her face, something foreign and sincere. How cute; it thinks it's worth loving. How nauseating. "You're welcome." Beneath that effluent burst of gratitude, a thin slime of disgust lurks. He can hear it.
He's heard it in his own voice for weeks now.
Before either of them can speak further, the alarm sounds, proving Eito to be correct when he had assumed today wouldn't be without its incidents.
Eito can't breathe. Every muscle in his body locks in place, hands shaking with tremors he hates. He hates this, hates how everything narrows in on the sounds of the sirens—not the announcement itself, but the sirens—the world muffling around the edges until it's a tinny mess. His weak blood rushes in his ears, flees from his fingers and toes and other extremities, breathing choked and uneven. He can feel his weak heart hammer sledge against his ribs, his pulse a war drum his body demands he march in time to.
They're just sirens. He's heard them dozens of times before. Why is it now that he—?!
Thinking is a struggle amidst the haze of warning lights and klaxons, panic—and it is panic, isn't it? This is a panic attack that he is experiencing, a panic attack that he is fighting control of himself for—stealing his senses and buffeting him like he's a ship in a raging storm. He bites his lip, digs his nails into his arms and palms to try and give himself an anchor.
Focus. Focus. Focus! Stop panicking and just—!
In the hazy corner of his vision he watches as Nozomi staggers a bit and turns to see him in this weakened state.
Don't look at me. Don't look at me with those eyes, that piteous expression, you filthy beast. Turn away, stop looking at me!
Nozomi's body's panic refuses to let him go. He rages against the tide of her body's pathetic pulse, animalistic fury tearing through him, rage at his own impotence and at whatever had decided to shove him into this broken human shell in the first place. It's futile.
As the sound of the sirens fades—the lights flashing still, a reminder and call for anyone who had yet to notice the alert—Eito's hearing slowly comes back. In the tinny distance he can hear Nozomi speak using his voice, saying words of encouragement with sincerity he could never imitate.
"Deep breaths, even breaths. Match what I'm doing. In—" Oh. She's trying to coach him through the panic. "Out." She's making direct eye-contact with him over the rim of his glasses. She is looking at him and not pulling away because her desire to be helpful outweighs any of the disgust his cognitive disorder might induce in her.
"I'm fine." He pulls away from her, brushes his bangs to the side, and smooths his clothes down. "I'm—"
"Aotsuki, I—"
"I am fine." He snaps. She pulls away, looking hurt. "I just...let's go to the War Room before anyone gets any ideas."
For a moment it looks like she's going to talk about it, lips pursing, brows furrowing. Then she does the wise thing and lets go. "Okay."
The walk to the War Room is done in complete silence. Neither of them say a word. Eito buzzes with tension and an energy he wants to let out through violence. Thankfully, at least Nozomi's weapon is capable of doing that—even if the girl usually delegates herself to a supporting role as healer. Him choosing to be more aggressive than she usually is won't raise too many flags.
And, in another stroke of perfectly ordinary luck, Takumi is as late as always to the War Room so Eito can take a moment to familiarize himself with how everyone looks through Nozomi's twisted human vision.
After all: it wouldn't do if he froze up every time he needed to be near someone, especially during combat—or something akin to it.
The gathered members of the Special Defense Unit all look up at Nozomi and Eito as they enter the War Room, attention drawn by the sound of the door opening. Even so, their gazes leave fresh claw marks down his skin and he fights back a shiver of disgust. Then, as quickly as they looked up, their eyes wander again and they all go back to their inane pre-combat rituals and conversations or whatever else they're wasting their time on. Eito takes this moment to try and familiarize himself with the main campus members' appearances while everyone waits on Takumi to arrive.
Humanity, he's realizing, is quite beautiful if you've never seen them as they see themselves. It's likely a mating instinct, to find members of one's own species attractive, but his labeling them beautiful has little to do with romantic or sensual appeal and more to do with a literal qualifier. In the same way that an animal or a landscape or art can be beautiful, humans are beautiful because Eito has never been able to see anything other than their true monstrous nature.
To call them 'beautiful' isn't ignoring their horror, it's a fact; one that he can truly say he keeps separate from his own knowledge of their actual forms. The packaging might have changed, but they are still humans.
They still make him sick, only in a different way.
Like Kyoshika, Tsubasa is broad-shouldered and sturdy. Her hands and arms are covered in fine scars—both cuts and burns—that have long healed but remain behind as a reminder of her love of machines and the dangers therein. Her light hair contrasts with her darker skin, gold on brass, and when she smiles, her eyes crinkle delightedly. She's wearing some kind of small bag on her hip, playing with the strap nervously as she talks with Takemaru. Even so, she seems at ease, surrounded by her companions.
Takemaru is statuesque—something Eito could have assumed based on how often everyone mentioned how big and scary he is—and riddled with ancient looking wounds. Everything about him reminds Eito of pictures of sperm whales who had survived hundreds of attempts on their lives, hides tattered but continuing on. Even as he leaned casually against a wall and gestured with one hand, the other picking at something in his teeth, there wasn't anything outwardly threatening about him. He's majestic in the same way a lion is majestic, a proud boss yawning to show off his giant fangs.
Gaku is gnawing at his nails, long lashes framing his large eyes as he scans the room nervously. Despite—or in spite of—his attitude and general demeanor, he has the same kind of delicate, frail prettiness as Kurara does. Although, unlike Kurara's obviously toned arms, he looks like he shouldn't be capable of holding his heavy Class Weapon. Yet, when he petulant flips off Takemaru when he says something he disagrees with, Eito can spot calluses on his hands that indicate that he is a laborer, despite his refusal to do anything for free. A contradictory mess of untouched and broken that form a complete picture of his lifestyle written in the grooves between his ribs—visible when his shirt rides up as he languidly stretches.
Darumi's hair is as bright as Yugamu's—though less sky blue and more an oceanic cerulean that darkens at the roots—and forms ribbons and trails as she darts around the War Room. Her painted face is startling—she is one of the few who wears such heavy makeup—but there's a strange comfort to the skeletal teeth she painstakingly pencils at the corner of her mouth. Something familiar in a sea of new sensations. The metal in her face and ears glint as she dances about, eyes glimmering with catlike mischief, cackling laugh matching her appearance. Even so, Eito can't help but recognize a liar when he sees one; even stripped of his righteous eyes as he is, Darumi's laughter is as real as Nozomi's thin smile or his own gentle demeanor.
Shouma brings to mind an extinct breed of dog that used to exist hundreds of years ago. A bug-eyed, snub-nosed, brachyphilic mess of an animal whose health issues made them difficult to care for and whose extreme gene selection was walked back to something healthier before eventually owning a dog was so prohibitively expensive and regulated that niche breeds fell out of practice for sturdier and healthier animals. Something about his flat nose and large, unblinking, wet eyes combined with his short stature and standing off in a corner by himself reminds Eito of a photo of that dog breed, the wall-eyed thing ugly and adorable in a way that made him angry that humanity had caused such issues for something for no reasons aside from aesthetic preference and showmanship. Maybe the dog comparison is bolstered by his Class Weapon's shape, but it hardly matters in this moment.
After acquainting himself with the new faces, he turns to see what everyone else is doing while they all wait for Takumi, trying to quiet the fluttering remains of his borrowed body's traitorous panic.
Kyoshika and Kurara are off to the side having an animated discussion about something inane. Yugamu is lounging languidly across a chair as he watches the advancing troops on one of the monitors. Nozomi has stepped far away from anyone else, eyes flickering across the room as she, too, catalogs everyone's appearances so she isn't stymied by being surrounded by monsters.
If there's any consolation with regards to having to fight as Nozomi instead of himself, it's that Takumi likes to keep Nozomi close to himself—Eito too, oddly enough, though sometimes he's put on one of the other fronts—on the primary defensive line so he won't have to worry too much about being startled by more than one new face.
It's a pittance but—
Takumi thunders in, sweating slightly, and ducks his head in apology. "Got held up."
"Shall we?" Eito finds himself asking, forgetting for a brief moment that he is not himself.
No one comments on what must be a slightly out of character action on 'Nozomi's' behalf and instead just grabs their Infusers and quickly transforms. Eito, too, activates Nozomi's Artificial Class Armor and puts on the ammo pouch, pulling one red and five yellow slugs to load into her weapon. The bolstering dust slug is primed into the slide and the remaining paralytic ampoules are loaded for additional shots.
Eito is ready to splatter Invader guts and brains all over the quad, if only to purge the tension that crawls along his nervous system. He wants to feel in control. He wants to know if killing an enemy feels the same at range with a gun as it does in close quarters with his scythe.
They deploy and Eito quickly surveys the battlefield before determining that this is, at best, a scouting party for a later Commander attack. The Lesser Invaders outnumber the Greater Invaders of all types five-to-one, which means that this isn't a serious attack force.
He clicks his tongue in disappointment. Takumi looks at him strangely. "You okay?"
"Hm?" Oh. He must be wearing a sour expression. "Yes, I'm alright. Thanks for asking."
When he smiles, it's nearly blinding. Eito can almost see a halo behind his head, glinting against the headpiece of his Class Armor. Eito smiles back. "That's good. You looked...really bad earlier."
"I'm fine now." The less he talks to Takumi, the better.
On the other side of him, Eito watches as Nozomi lands, followed by Gaku. She flinches and puts some distance between them, fingers clenching and unclenching around her scythe with nervous tension.
He doesn't wait for the signal, body a coiled spring. Adrenaline surges and, when the first Invader crosses the line designating the Last Defense Academy's defensive zone, he launches himself forward into the cloud of bolstering agent he had shot at the ground in his path.
Nozomi's body might not have stamina, but it does have power and control. She's built a bit like a sprinting predator, which means she's actually fairly good at running in sharp bursts. With the bolstering agent in his weak, borrowed lungs, he closes distance with the advancing line and begins to empty his gun into the enemy.
First shot. The kick is deceptively strong but the power the weapon holds is well worth it. He's going to have to learn how to handle the striking against his shoulder. Firing it one-handed like he had with the bolstering agent won't be feasible in the long run if he wants to be accurate and also not sprain or break his wrist.
Second shot. The sturdy ampoule impacting a Lesser Invader's skull—caving it in and shattering into an explosion of glass, gore, blood, and paralytic—is just like fireworks. Glittering shards, brilliant crimson, black globs, and grey-pink chunks that are coated in fluids of various other colors that mark the Invaders as alien spray starburst on the battlefield. It's not quite the same as cutting them in half with the blade of his scythe but it isn't dissatisfactory. In fact, it's like a macabre painting, the distance enjoyable in it's own right.
Third shot. Someone—likely Takumi—is standing at his side, cutting away at the army surrounding them. That means that Nozomi and Gaku are hanging back, Gaku out of cowardice and strategy while Nozomi's reticence is likely borne from her new combative role and unfamiliarity with his weapon. Whatever, that doesn't matter to Eito in the moment. What matters is the adrenaline and relieving all his pent-up aggression without raising any flags.
Fourth shot. He dodges one of the giant Greater Invader's large fists and watches as the paralytic does its work. The beast halts, gaping wounds vomiting blood down the front of its chest and out of its neck. Before Eito can fire on it a second time—or strike it with the butt of his weapon—Takumi lunges forward and skewers the thing through the eye-socket, his burning-bright blade disappearing up to the guard in the thing's skull before withdrawing with a wet sucking noise. The beast drops to the ground and a myriad of Lesser Invaders swarm over it like ravenous ants only to be cut down by Takumi's wide swings.
(It would be so easy to 'accidentally' hit Takumi and let him die.)
(It wouldn't be worth it. It wouldn't have any staying power. He'd just be scooped up, put together, and deployed again without any consequences.)
(It would only draw attention to himself.)
Fifth shot. The flying Greater Invader drops to the ground as its senses leave it and this time Eito manages to be the one to finish it off. The sensation of its strange, soft skull caving under the wide butt of his weapon is different than using his scythe, but certainly pleasant. He just could do without needing to wipe off the remains before he shoulders the gun again. Getting any liquids on his clothes is awful and irritating and he would rather die than touch anything that came from these things.
He racks the weapon to clear the slide and quickly backpedals to reload; five more paralytic ampoules with one bolstering slug primed. Lesser Invaders claw at his retreating form but he kicks to the side and fires off his second slug of the bolstering agent, taking a deep breath before jumping into the fray again.
A beep at his waist tells him that the aerosolized panacea is ready. He ignores it to fire at the enemy some more.
He can hear, through the haze of combat sounds and his own pulse, the calls of the rest of the Special Defense Unit barking across the open comms unit. Idle chitchat and back and forth that barely registers in his awareness past a mild annoyance.
"Aotsuki, behind with gun!" Followed by the sound of Maruko's weapon unloading a pint of his blood into a clump of Invaders.
"On your left you pea-brained moron!" Kurara, seconds before Kyoshika makes a pained noise. "What the fuck did I say?!"
"Let's fuckin' go!" The screaming sound of Takemaru's bike and his booming laughter.
"Defenses breached, Kurara! Goin' to halt the progression." Yugamu's calm voice didn't betray how hectic their front truly must be.
"Park your fat ass in front of my goddamn walls and do something useful you waste of fucking space!" Kurara again, likely to Shouma.
"O-on it!" And his predictable reply.
"Tsubasa-dono! A pick-me-up?" Kyoshika plaintively begs.
"Got you covered!" Despite it all, Tsubasa sounds composed.
Eito, meanwhile, is happily blowing the brains out of every Invader in his path. Holes in their heads, in their abdomens, in every available part of them. Eyeballs knocked from sockets, shards of glass gouging out and spilling organs across the ground, even limbs flopping around like severed octopus tentacles. It's cathartic. He needs this.
He needs to feel in control.
"Kirifuji! We need aid over here!" Behind him—not even across the comms but physically behind him—Takumi shouts for his attention. Gaku moans around what sounds like a mouthful of blood and he can hear Nozomi choking and coughing.
Eito turns to look at the call for aid, unsure how to proceed or if he even wants to help them.
Gaku and Nozomi have been hit hard by one of the Greater Invaders—one of the large shield breaker ones—and it looks like Nozomi might have some broken ribs by the way she's doubled over on herself as she staggers to her feet. Gaku, on the other hand, is very visibly dealing with a smashed-in face, a few loose teeth spilling from his bloodied mouth as he sobs. Nozomi props herself up on her scythe and Gaku is trying to push himself upright while Takumi fends off the hordes alone to protect his fallen comrades.
In front of Eito, the final wave advances on their front. Behind him, two of his unit are badly injured and the third is rapidly losing ground.
He could help them. That's what Nozomi's job is on the battlefield: she's the medic. And he is, for all intents and purposes, Nozomi. He is the Special Defense Unit's medic. He should help them.
He doesn't want to.
(He doesn't have a choice.)
Removing the filled shell from the device on his waist—and noting the way a second automatically feeds into the mechanism at the base from a gravity-fed rail system towards the top—he racks his gun again and feeds the panacea into the slide. Then he angles his shot and fires.
The shell flies in a wide arc. It bursts after a brief moment and a large cloud of greenish dust rains down over the area that Nozomi, Gaku, and Takumi are in. As that happens, with a mild noise of irritation, he cocks his weapon and leaps into the fray, paralyzing the closest Greater Invaders with zero wasted movement. His very presence seems to bolster the healing ability of the panacea he had just covered them in, Takumi's fatigue leaving him in time for him to quickly decapitate the Invaders Eito had incapacitated. Nozomi's breathing evens out and Gaku scrubs at his nose with the back of his hand, blood painting his gloves with snotty maroon streaks as he hoists his gun up again.
"Th-thanks, Kirifuji." Gaku doesn't even make a pass at him as he fires a direct line into some nearby Invaders, the hemoanima returning to his body with interest. "That fucking sucked!"
"Sorry it took me so long, Maruko." He isn't. He would have let them die if it hadn't been an un-Nozomi thing to do. "I'm not used to being a frontline fighter but I wanted to try and—"
"Stop kowtowing to the fucking pleb and just kill the damn Invaders! I want to actually have a moment to breathe!"
"Shut the hell up, Oosuzuki!" Gaku snaps at her over the comms. "I just got my teeth punched out of my goddamn face. Let me bitch a little!"
"I can remove the rest of them if you like," Yugamu offers. Judging by Gaku's shudder, the idea makes him nauseous and more than a little upset. "Or I can just kill you and let the Revive-o-Matic put you together with all thirty-two of them intact."
"Guys!" Takumi interrupts. "Focus up!"
"Yeah," Tsubasa adds, "our side is almost clear so if anyone needs some help, I'm running aid."
"Tsubasa Crazy Taxi Service, featuring the Hit and Run style gameplay you all know and love!" Darumi's loud excitement is so sharp that everyone flinches. "Mulch them, gib them, grind them into your undercarriage and against your bumper and grill! Extra points if the pedestrian is a child!"
Tsubasa stifles a heave, the comms cutting off as she manually mutes herself. Eito's attention quickly snaps back to combat as he blows the top off a flying Greater Invader, the disk lower half skidding across the dirt and leaving a wet smear as it goes. Disgusting.
Takumi cleaves a cluster of Lesser Invaders in twain and calls out, "Headcount?"
"We have seven on our end, mostly smaller Greater!" Kurara barks, having assigned herself the lead on their front.
"Two clumps of Darumarr and dropping!" Darumi chirps from her end, using her and Gaku's names for the footsoldiers.
"Down to a handful, mix of Greater and Lesser!" Takumi impales one of the ranged Greater Invaders through the chest. "Let's finish this!" With a cry, he strikes at the remaining Invaders in his reach, pulping them like meat in a blender.
To his side, Gaku braces himself and aims upwards. "Awright! Let's fucking go! Eat shit and die!" A rain of his hemoanima, sharpened into lethal spires, impales what few Invaders Takumi's attack didn't destroy, as he laughs hysterically with blood loss and his usual feverish battle-high.
In the distance, echoing across the open comms, Eito can hear Shouma yelling as a crimson laser of pure hemoanima obliterating the remaining troops on his front. And, on the third front, Darumi's mic picks up the sound of Takemaru's engine revving and Tsubasa's missiles detonating, misting the remains.
Silence follows. Eito's weak pulse stills. His breathing slows. Combat is over.
"Gen check?" Takumi asks.
"Seventy-six and solid," Kurara replies without a second's delay. "Hour's charge at worst."
"Any manual repairs needed?"
"None that I can tell!" Tsubasa finally joins back in on the conversation, voice raw from likely vomiting from stress. "Though the quad is pretty messy."
"Let the fucking drones clean up," Kurara sniffs. "I'm going to take a fucking bath. If any of you perverts try anything I'll castrate you with a fucking plastic spoon."
"Man," Gaku whines, whistling around his missing teeth, "I'm starving again but my jaw..."
"Just die!" Darumi offers, with no tact and too much delight. "That'll fix it!"
"Fuck no!" The coward predictably shoots back. "I like not being dead, thank you!"
"Your teeth won't just grow back," Yugamu points out, "and I can make it so painless you'll barely even realize you're gone."
"I said no! Christssake...fucking freak."
As everyone else breaks down into chatter and cross-talk, Eito just looks out at the mass of corpses on the battlefield and breathes. In—mouth watering with the precursor to bile and the taste of blood—and out—lungs weak and barely able to alleviate the choking hunger for more oxygen. In—red puddles beneath comic book splatterpunk corpses, viscera dark and horrible in contrast, wartime pop art made manifest—and out—in his mind's eye he tries to remember what the Special Defense Unit looked like before he lost his ability to see the truth, the ghost of their monstrous forms overwritten by the way they look to everyone else. In—he hates this—and out—he feels better though.
"Nozomi?" His own soft voice hoarsely grabs his attention; he flinches against his will. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine, Aotsuki. Thanks for asking but there's no need to worry." Is he still on open mic? Is she on open mic? He refuses to look at her in this moment, too focused on the carnage they wreaked on the invading forces and the drones grabbing corpses to drop them into the Wall of Fire, incinerating them. If he looks at her, if he makes eye-contact, then the fact of the matter will settle further and further into his borrowed bones. He needs to not think about it.
This isn't healthy but neither is her body.
How many days will he have to exist as 'Nozomi'?
(He wants to blow Nozomi's brains out, just to see what his own corpse looks like. Curiosity, surely, and maybe also rage.)
"You were certainly...aggressive..." The judgement in her voice is pointed, thorns against his skin. Irritating.
"I don't like sirens," his answer is coded and layered, "so I wanted to blow off some steam."
"You—"
"Is there a point to this, Aotsuki?" Do you have anything to say that can't be said in private? Is this the fucking time for it? "I'm a little tired."
Irritation is chased by resignation, exhaustion holding up the rear. She is so expressive with his face and he hates it. All those years learning how to school his expressions and she's failing to put any effort into it, failing at playing at being him. "What time would be good for you?"
He smiles at her with her teeth but not her eyes. "Try tomorrow. Lunchtime?" He has to train with Nozomi's friends in the morning. Breakfast will replenish his energy. He needs to make more shells for her weapon. His itinerary is packed. "We can chat while we eat." And nobody will be suspicious about the two of them spending so much time together. Nobody will look twice at them choosing to hang out in the Cafeteria.
"Of course. I look forward to it." The way the words squeeze out of her mouth makes it very clear that she would rather get their discussion over with now. Tough.
"It's a date!" The word burns coming out. He hates that this is something she would say, chipper coat of fake cheer toxic on his tongue. "Goodnight, Aotsuki."
"Sleep well, Nozomi."
His dinner tastes like ash and not even a boiling hot shower can make him feel clean. Misery wraps fingers around his throat and chokes any comfort from his body.
He is, after all, wearing an ill-fitted suit. One he can't strip out of, one sewed against his soul. It itches, burns, and he wishes he had his scythe so he could carve it away from his senses and find some modicum of relief.
Nozomi's pathetic hemoanima steals heat from her weak body as he lays in bed and begs fate that his dreams will be nothing.
(He wakes the next morning with ghosts of the Special Defense Unit haunting his room, their beautiful faces warped and broken and mixed with his own failing memory of how they truly are. Braiding his hair this time comes easier, even if it's still imperfect. Nobody notices or, if they do, nobody cares enough to comment.)
Fire. Violent violet flames that eat everything down to the atom. It burns worse than any pain before this one.
"Make it stop!" The words don't come—cracked lips splitting wide to gush evaporating blood on the dry wind—but the intent is there. The want is there. The need is there. "Please! Please make it stop!"
A hand, outreached, searching for anyone else to share the pain. Searching for anyone to understand the situation. Searching for anything to help ease the burden.
Fingers catch on fingers, hand in hand. Palm presses against palm as they disintegrate in the rain of misery and fury burning the planet alive.
Connection, a faint thread that knots and ties and tangles.
The clock rewinds. The Fates' hands slip.
Two whole stitches out of place.
It'll work out fine.
—
The first thing Eito notices when he wakes up is how strange his breathing sounds. It's almost raspy, weak and thin as he inhales and shuddering as he exhales. He sucks in air, holds it until his vision swims with colors and shapes, then expels the air in a sharp burst.
His lungs scream at him, chest heaving shaking stuttering with a weak rabbit heartbeat and nausea clenching at his ribs.
The second thing Eito notices is the smell, namely: that there is one at all. It's soft and sweet, vanilla and gardenia. Cloying, even faint as it might be. It tickles the back of his throat, agonizes his oddly weak lungs with a half-assed coughing fit. Doubled over, fist jammed against his teeth, he blinks tears from his eyes.
Pauses.
Comprehends.
Compartmentalizes.
Lays in bed a few moments more.
The third thing Eito notices is—
Banging on his door. A rapid panic, bang bang bang bang, amen break misplaced. Or, he muses gently as he doesn't bother getting up just yet, maybe more apt than I'd like.
(Bang bang bang bang!)
Weak lungs pull air in. A weak heart pumps anxiety through shaking limbs. Reprehensible body shaking as he tries to steel himself to exit bed at long, long last.
(Bang bang bang bang bang!)
Whoever is on the other side of the door better hope that Takumi is elsewhere. Wouldn't want our leader to lose his head so early in the game.
(Bang! Bang! Bang!)
"I'll be right there!" He makes sure to shout extra-loud so as to be heard.
The banging stops. Good.
As the door swings open slowly and ominously—reminding Eito of a castle gate, maintenance fallen by the wayside, hinges screaming slow, low wails of warning—a thought occurs to him:
Maybe he should have changed into something instead of opening the door as-is.
Ah well...too late to worry now.
He tilts his head up and offers the person on the other side of the door his signature masked smile. "Yes?"
Looking down at him, squinting blearily, Eito's own face scrunches up in horror. "Please let me in, N-Nozomi."
"Of course. Come on in, Aotsuki." He steps aside and Eito's body enters. The door is closed behind him.
A beat. Eito's smile tightens, thins, and flattens. "So..." Eito listens to his own voice trail off timidly, unsure of what should be said.
Standing at the desk, Eito watches himself lean a—nearly-bare, only protected from the outside by his pajama pants—hip against the furniture and fall into a heavy silence. A moment passes. Another. A third.
Eito is very patient.
Eventually, Eito's body speaks up. "Aotsuki?" That confirms it.
Eito smiles with Nozomi's mouth, her pert lips gentle where his are sharp, and offers himself a slight bow. "Yeah. Honestly, I'm glad there's not more people involved."
Nozomi winces and turns her face away from him as she replies with an almost confused, "Huh?"
"If there had been more people swapping bodies than just us, well it would have been chaos, wouldn't it?" It's far easier to sell his gentle shtick using Nozomi's thin, breathy voice. She sounds pitiful, even without his own mask plastered over the base. "If it's just the two of us, then it's self-contained."
"...True." Nozomi takes a while to respond. A thought occurs to Eito and he chances a guess.
"Are you alright?" There. Nozomi flinches when he speaks, clutching her ungloved hands against her chest in her fear. When not grabbing for her heart, they cover her mouth and nose in a way that makes Eito think about bending over a toilet to empty his stomach.
And she won't look at him. She won't use his eyes to look at her own face.
"What do you mean?" Her own forced cheer sounds plastic spilling from his mouth in his voice. Eito smothers the part of him that feels mocked. She is ignorant, not aggressive. He can hate her for what she's doing, not what he thinks she might do.
He is better than them, after all. They're aimless monsters and he has a just cause.
"You keep startling whenever I speak up. You are constantly covering my - your nose and mouth when you're not talking." Each fact laid down, a two-by-four bridging a small pit, and he crosses precariously. The line between his truth and the lie he's selling the Special Defense Unit can be thin and he's wobbling on the best of days. "You won't look at me."
Guilty—like he knew she would be—Nozomi makes shaky eye-contact with him. Without his glasses distorting the view, his blue eyes are wide and his pupils are blown with fear. A thin crust mars the corner of his mouth.
Wait.
She isn't wearing his glasses.
No wonder she won't look at him.
"I..." She begins to say, then trails off.
—
Nozomi jolts awake from a dream she can barely remember, heart hammering horror against her ribs. She takes in one shaky breath after another and keeps her eyes closed to help soothe her frayed nerves.
Her lungs fill and fill and fill in a way that they haven't since she first agreed to help her mother. Her chest is suddenly missing the heavy stone that is her cryptoglobin transfusion crushing her ribs and lungs and heart into flat things that struggle to operate on the best of days. Her body feels flush and warm—not feverish but certainly more alive than her own cooler pallor—and there's an almost comforting heat to her pulse. It distracts herself from the way she woke up.
Then she opens her eyes.
White, sterile, and empty. It isn't her room. It can't be her room because where are her things? The smell of sanitizer, of germ-free cleanliness and impersonal emptiness fills her nose and her burning strong heart picks back up, a centipede of ice gripping her spine even as her ears rush with gouts of fear like fire. Phantom sirens scream as she tries to remember where—
It's not her room because the stuffed animals that Moko had made her as gifts weren't by her side. It's not the hospital because there's no IV in her arm, no tubes in her nose, no clamp on her finger to measure her rampaging pulse.
But it smells—
It looks like—
Nozomi bolts from the bed and empties her stomach in the toilet, mouth watering in the aftershocks while she coughs pathetic strands of vomit-flecked spittle against a bleach-scented bowl. Sweat mats her bangs against her forehead. She coughs again and again and again, stomach clenching around emptiness as her panic ebbs and flows like the ocean tide. Is she still dreaming? Had the dream been prophetic? Or something else?
(Fire and heat. Dying and begging for comfort. Someone gently brushing sweat-slicked bangs away from a feverish forehead. Whispering gentle kindness, love and affection. A hand in hers, even as the world ended. Heat and light, like an atom bomb tinged with regret and an apology.)
When the nausea subsides, snot dripping down her nose, she staggers to the sink and starts to rinse her mouth out and scrub at her skin. She feels vile and shaky, like a newborn deer, hands trembling even as she scoops water out of the flowing tap to rinse the taste of anxiety and stomach acid away. Idly, she peels her bangs away from her forehead, finally looking up at the bathroom mirror to see if she needs a shower before she leaves to train with her friends.
In the mirror she sees Aotsuki, pale and sweaty, spit and vomit crusted at the corner of his mouth, gently trying to peel his bangs away from his forehead. His eyes move with her vision, flickering in confusion. As she expresses the disorientation she's feeling on her face, the reflection of Aotsuki also frowns, brows furrowing and pinching as his lips twists into an ugly knot.
She tears out of Aotsuki's room moments after, chased by questions she doesn't have the answer to.
Free from the sterility of Aotsuki's room, the Last Defense Academy feels wonderful in the cool morning air. Nobody is awake just yet—Nozomi is an early riser on the best of days and she had just suffered a pretty awful nightmare—so it's her, the breaking dawn, any life within the Wall of Fire, and her thoughts. Lingering on the gentle breeze is a pervasive scent of rot and filth. Garbage, motor oil, fecal matter, burning hair, roadkill, vinegar, all faint wafts that makes her almost want to stop and figure out what she's smelling even as she power-walks her way back to her own room.
She doesn't have time to chase specters. She's not even in her own body.
She has to make sure that this isn't some kind of Invader plot.
Hammering on her own door feels novel. She knows she doesn't lock her door—a holdover from when she was at Second to Last Defense Academy, where the five of them trusted each other implicitly—but it feels...rude to just barge in on someone. Especially considering if someone was watching, they'd see Aotsuki forcing his way into Nozomi's room, and that's a bad look.
Nobody answers. She knocks harder.
"I'll be right there!" Her own voice, unbothered and clear, answers her panic. The shock is enough to halt her frenzy, another thought blossoming to life and spreading climbing vines across every corner of her mind, stealing nutrients away to draw attention to itself.
Kyoshika had once told her about a manga she had read that had helped her understand some of the nuanced aspects of her own gender. It was about a man who was enamored with a girl who came to the convenience store he worked at with regularity and how, one day, he woke up in her body and didn't know how to cope. Being a girl was horrifying and new and the societal pressures and social demands of being perceived female wrung him out. He wanted to know if she was okay, if everything was fine, so eventually he tracked down his body at the convenience store he worked at and realized something horrible.
He wasn't who he thought he was. He was, in fact, a fragment of the girl made to shelter her from the crushing demands of being a girl. He had never swapped bodies, he just was taking charge of their body while she recovered from the depression that was threatening her life.
Was she Nozomi or was she an aspect of Nozomi that Aotsuki had made in a moment of weakness to shelter himself from something she was unaware of? Is she who she thinks she is or is she a fictional being, a mask being worn by someone else?
The door opens and all of those thoughts leave her once more, fleeing in the face of herself.
Through the door, her own voice had sounded papery and wheezing, bubbly, as though she had lungfuls of fluid choking the words before they left her mouth. They'd been intelligible but muffled and Nozomi had assumed it had been the door itself that was the problem.
It isn't the door.
Describing what she's seeing is like trying to explain what her mother's research did on a technical level without being able to use technical words. It looks like a person should. It has a head covered in Nozomi's own purple-silver hair. Nozomi's lilac eyes stare up at her, emphasizing the height difference between her and Aotsuki. It has arms and legs—or she can assume it has legs, as they're indistinguishable from the mass of meat and flesh and metal that it drags beneath it like a macabre slug. Its lungs and intestines hang outside its stomach, torn along the wound she got all those years ago. Blood cascades down its mouth as it smiles a very Nozomi smile. Even that is an incomplete explanation of its mirage-like warbling form, impossible and incomprehensible in a way she struggles to even articulate to herself.
It smells like gasoline and medical-grade antiseptic and metal and fire and blood. She has to fight another wave of bile as it knocks against the back of her throat.
Its head tilts. From its bleeding mouth, a question bubbles forth, "Yes?" That's her voice, distorted with liquid and death and the sounds of metal on metal and screaming.
Nozomi flinches and prays whoever is in her body doesn't notice. Now isn't the time to falter. "Please let me in, N-Nozomi." Her voice catches on her own name, doing her best to not let her confusion or fear catch and pull the statement into a question.
The thing in her room nods, splattering the ground in fluids too foul to name. Nozomi covers her mouth and nose, praying she won't break in front of whoever this is. "Of course. Come on in, Aotsuki." It steps further in, leaving the door wide open. The doorknob is coated in slime and blood, the stench of the thing lingering even as it rapidly dries, making Nozomi's stomach roil and turn.
Once inside, she doesn't know how to proceed. It is her room. She can see her stuffed animals, her desk, her things. All of her possessions covered in the same viscous, noxious fluid that the thing secretes. The air is choked in its smell and it makes her lightheaded trying to breathe through her mouth so she doesn't hold her breath to escape the rancid miasma. "So..." How does she even ask? How do you ask 'Are you Aotsuki? Did we swap bodies?' It's like a cosmic joke.
It's almost cosmic horror.
She leans against her desk and looks at anything that isn't whatever the thing that is supposedly her. It doesn't help. Silence joins the slime coating her room and Nozomi breathes slowly to try and lower her heartbeat.
Eventually she just goes for it. "Aotsuki?"
The thing that might be her smiles with a mouth like hers and grins a mouthful of shattered, bloody glass. "Yeah. Honestly, I'm glad there's not more people involved."
What? "Huh?"
"If there had been more people swapping bodies than just us, well it would have been chaos, wouldn't it?" The idea that it was more than just herself and Aotsuki hadn't occurred to her in her panic but, as Aotsuki lays it out as if it has been a real possibility, the thought alone causes ice to creep up her spine. Thinking about it now, if everyone had swapped around, it would be almost impossible to coordinate and fight defensive battles. "If it's just the two of us, then it's self-contained." Again, a calm and objective truth.
What's wrong with her? Why is she so incapable of getting herself together? Why does her body look like a horrible monster, a reminder of the day she lost so much of herself? Aotsuki is put-together, already figuring out their situation. Why can't she do the same?
Wait. Aotsuki had said something and she's been quiet the whole time. She forces Aotsuki's mouth around words and begs that she doesn't heave again. "...True."
Aotsuki tilts the thing's head, mouth pulling into an exaggerated frown. Blood-crusted lashes narrow as he bubbles out a question. "Are you alright?"
Shit. He must have noticed the way she's been acting, flinching away every time he talks. She needs to recover and save face. "What do you mean?" Maybe he will—
"You keep startling whenever I speak up. You are constantly covering my - your nose and mouth when you're not talking. You won't look at me." The way he cuts through to the meat of her makes her clench Aotsuki's teeth so hard she's worried they might crack. A tension headache plays at the back of her skull. To be so obviously seen is...
She tries to make eye-contact with what must be herself. It's hard. It's agonizing, like pulling teeth. Like pulling fingernails. Every part of this thing she's seeing is almost tailor-made to upset her, a moment from her past that haunts her on the best of days made manifest as a shambling corpse. "I..."
"Why aren't you wearing my glasses?" He cuts her off before she can even try and formulate an excuse.
It's a good thing too. The confusion Nozomi is feeling stops her from spiraling into a self loathing nosedive. "You - glasses? Your vision is fine."
The smile that Aotsuki puts on her face is unkind. Even with all of the monstrosity of whatever is going on, somehow there is enough of Nozomi in the thing for her to feel disconcerted seeing an expression that vicious on it. "It is," he concedes, "but that's not the point of my glasses."
Wearing glasses you don't need makes it harder to see.
Harder to see...
"Oh!" Wait. "Oh?"
"What does this body look like to you, Nozomi?" Something in Aotsuki's tone changes. It becomes brittle and almost pointed, a scalpel cutting to the meat of the problem. If she pressed, would it snap? Would the shrapnel injure them both?
"It—" If what he's asking is any indication, then maybe... "A bit like the victim of a car accident. Torn like this," Nozomi gestures down the gash where her scar should be on her body, "organs falling out. Lower half is a mess, slimy and..." Aotsuki's smile tightens. "Blood everywhere. Everywhere." She emphasizes.
"I assume the smell and sound is also awful?" She blinks in surprise, too confused to be afraid of or nauseated by him in this moment. "I thought so."
"What do you mean?" She closes the distance between them, grabs at him with her bare hands then recoils as the sensation and overwhelming smell makes her immediately regret it.
"Well, I assumed since we had switched bodies that perhaps it would have followed my brain, but it seems as though this is less logical than I would have first thought." He hums, unbothered by her reaction to touching him. "I believe you know that I was hospitalized for a lot of my childhood?"
She didn't. Her group barely got along with the rest of the Special Defense Unit, even after the whole mess with Kurara and Ginzaki and the curry. She hasn't had a chance to learn anything about them past how they fight. There hasn't been a need yet.
He takes her silence for a negative. "I suffer from a...particular cognitive disorder. It's a type of agnosia that makes humans appear like revolting monsters, their scent and sound alone enough to put me off eating, let alone spending extended periods of time around them. I am the only person I have ever been able to properly perceive as normal. And now you are suffering from that very same disorder because you are inhabiting my brain."
"A-agnosia?" Agnosia is an inability to distinguish things through one's senses. That his senses are so specifically distorted that it's only humans that trigger this specific revulsion is strange but— "We've always looked like this to you?"
He doesn't answer. He just smiles, silent and pleasant.
The emotion that presses against her chest in that moment isn't pity. It isn't even in the neighborhood. Instead she feels anger, frustration. Did he not trust the Special Defense Unit enough to ask for accommodations, like they seem to have given to Tsubasa for her nausea? He's been here for a month now. Had it never once occurred to him that his unit would work with him to make his time at Last Defense Academy easier? Is he so stubborn that he would—
Aotsuki sighs. It's like a bubbling pot of stew, thick and wet. "Don't make that face." What face is she making? Normally she has such fine control over her expressions and still right now she... "I chose not to tell everyone. How would I explain all of that without having to describe how revolting and abhorrent it is to be in a room full of them? I mean," he waves a hand about, shattered wrist hanging limply and flopping with the movement, "I had years to get used to tolerating it. You are only dealing with 'me' and look how fast you've fallen apart."
His cutting words smart. She fights her first urge to fight back, choosing instead to be kind, nice, understanding. "I see." The smile he gives her somehow lets her know exactly what he thinks of that blasé dismissal.
"But that does beg the question of how this happened in the first place. And why us?" He gently curls his dripping fingers beneath his blood-soaked chin, humming gently in thought. "If it was everyone, I could definitively say it was some sort of hemoanima-related mess, but two of us?"
"It wouldn't be hemoanima anyway." Nozomi is surprised when she interjects. She didn't think before she spoke, the words slipping out almost involuntarily. Maybe it's her nerves, maybe it's the tension of the whole situation, and maybe it's that she's looking at her stuffed animals and frustrated that the coat of agnosia-induced slime and ooze makes holding them for comfort nigh impossible. Regardless, her mouth moves before her mind can comb through her words, make them more palatable, not interrupt Aotsuki when he's speaking.
He seems to not mind, instead just raising an eyebrow and making a gross, phlegmy rattling noise that must be a hum of interest. "Oh?"
"My hemoanima isn't—" now that she's actively speaking, now that her head is in the game, she stops herself from tipping her hand too far, "—it's weaker than everyone else's. It's why I have the Artificial Class Armor and weapon that Nigou made. If it was something related to hemoanima, it wouldn't have included me." Just because Aotsuki had shared something personal—revealed his condition to her out of some measure of necessity—didn't mean he was privy to her life's story.
Her mother's experiments with cryptoglobin and its immediate differences marking her as Other from the rest of the Special Defense Unit were hers and hers alone. Although...she might need to inform him about rejection symptoms if he starts to look too wan.
Not that she's really capable of gauging that at this time.
Aotsuki clutches at his heart, mottled and bruising fist disappearing into a softened, rotting patê of muscle and fat as he processes what she's just said. "I had wondered what was off when I woke up. The difference is oddly noticeable." She stares at a point above his head, the focus point allowing her to feign as though she's looking at him without actually taking in too much of the monster in front of her. "It's all in the heart, really. And the lungs."
That would track. "Yeah..."
The fire in her veins, the way her heart hammers a drumbeat tempo against her ribs; it's hemoanima. Tears well in her eyes and she pushes them down with even breaths.
The room hums with ambience and the awful sound of Nozomi's body's crushed and bubbly breathing. Her nose is flooded with the scent of metal and meat and fire and sepsis and bleach. She does her best to try and steel herself.
If Nozomi's own body looks, sounds, and smells like this, the rest must be as horrific, and she's going to have to deal with it.
"What do we tell Sumino?" They can't just stand here forever, idly trying to figure out what the problem is with just the two of them. Many hands make light work and two minds are better than one. Bringing everyone into the fold—especially their de facto leader—would surely reduce the load.
"Nothing." The way the word leaves his mouth paralyzes her like a single shot from her gun. She actually snaps her eyes back onto his messy, agonized face to try and figure out why. "There is no reason to involve Takumi or the others. I highly doubt they could help us, all things considered."
"What does that mean?" She feels thin and brittle, worn out and stretched over Aotsuki's larger frame, her emotions torn to the breaking point. Maybe that's why she's just incapable of being nice.
Aotsuki seems to be unbothered by her rudeness at least. He smiles at her, broken glass spilling blood and chunks of gum and tongue all down his chin, and cordially answers her as if she hadn't just been unbearably sharp and aggressive. "If we tell everyone that the two of us have swapped bodies, what do you think would happen?"
"They would help us find a solution, surely?"
The way his eyes become crescents, thin and sharp daggers of lilac and silver, gives her pause. "Which would take away from our daily efforts to defend the Academy. That, in turn, could lead to further conflict within our ranks, further collapse of the already tenuous structure we have established, and then the Invaders would wipe us all out and kill all of humanity." There's something strange there, in the hissing-screaming-bubbling of Aotsuki's borrowed voice, that almost sounds hungry. Like he had said something he had strong opinions about but she just is incapable of properly parsing through the visceral overstimulation.
"What if they found a solution?" She counters. "Omokage is well-versed in the medical field and, while I am part of the problem, I have no qualms about both aiding in research or experimentation and in volunteering myself as a test subject."
"First off," Aotsuki counters, jaw clenched tight enough to spill a waterfall of blood down his neck, "that is my body you would be volunteering to be subject to Yugamu's tendencies." She wants to interrupt, bristling at his callous dismissal of her friend's talents by way of his proclivities, but he barely gives her a crack to worm her way into the discussion as he barrels onward. "Second, even if it wound up only being Yugamu and yourself distracted by the whole...situation we have going on, he is one of the best people we have at crowd control and you, while in my body, are almost necessary to help in thinning the numbers of whatever front you are on. Both of you wearing yourselves out trying to solve a problem that may resolve itself on its own is foolish."
"And third?" She can't argue his desire to not have her volunteer his body for medical testing. That's fair enough. But to dismiss the idea of asking for help on the basis of 'it would draw attention away from focusing on our survival' is—
"What makes you think I have a third point?"
"Because you—!" Nozomi almost can't see for the way that anger digs its ugly claws into her ribs and wrenches. Carefully, slowly, she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. In. Out. When she opens her eyes again, she's greeted by the same horrors as before, only the horrors seem to be watching her with a measure of bemused confusion on his borrowed face. "Never mind. What do you suggest we do then, since talking to the others is out of the question?"
"Wait it out."
What is she supposed to say to that? "Sit back and do nothing?"
"Oh, you misunderstand," Aotsuki corrects her, distorted voice gentle as though she's a child, over-enunciating for the sake of clarity, "we will be doing something, we just also will be waiting out whatever caused this. It happened so suddenly, so surely it will be fixed as abruptly, right?"
"That's an assumption though."
"Assumptions are all we have right now. The best we can do is go on with our new normal and hope that, before day one hundred rolls around, we will be put back in our own bodies."
As much as she wants to argue—the uglier parts of her rearing their heads, clawing at their cage and screaming of unfairness and irritation—she can't find fault in his logic. If asking for aid is inviting distraction then letting things run their course is their best option. "And we, what, pretend to be each other in the meantime?"
He nods, vertebrae breaking with the movement. "We have to prevent the others from becoming aware that anything is wrong. Masquerading around as each other is going to be necessary."
Again, silence coats her room with the same slimy, bloody mucus that oozes from Nozomi's distorted body like a slug trail. She isn't sure how to even have this conversation with Aotsuki, unsure how to bridge the vast gap between them with anything other than force and frustration. Surely he doesn't have that good of an impression of her anyway, considering the trouble her group had caused when they first joined. She shouldn't make it worse.
When Aotsuki speaks again, it's so sudden and matter-of-fact that Nozomi can barely stifle the noise of surprise that squeaks out of her. "Have you ever killed yourself?"
"What?!" She can't even be bothered to hide her genuine emotions.
Aotsuki repeats himself, placing a hand over his exposed, pulsating heart. "Have you ever killed yourself? Your Artificial Class Armor functions differently from our Infusers so I assume you haven't ever tried to use a proper Infuser, but I need to gauge how difficult it will be to break past your self-preservation instincts just to fight."
Oh. He meant using an Infuser. "No, Nigou wouldn't let me try when I mentioned my hemoanima was too weak. Especially after he realized I couldn't be registered in the Revive-o-Matic. Hence the Artificial Class Armor."
"Then we should practice." The ease at which he suggests that is—
"How?" She gestures between the two of them. "Kyoshika, Kurara, and Omokage are going to want to use the Gym as soon as they wake up. It's our...morning routine." Suddenly the realization that Aotsuki will be in her body for that time period, that she will miss out on time with her friends drops the bottom out of her stomach. "If we're in the Gym when they arrive then I'm fairly certain that Kurara will have something...unkind to say to you - to me - to this body about being alone with 'Nozomi'."
The idea seems to upset Aotsuki as much as it upsets her. Maybe even more. His face twists into a bitter sneer. She's never seen herself make such an expression, nor has she seen Aotsuki look like that. It's a foreign and violent thing. "Then we had better hurry, so they don't catch us. We can hammer out the other's mannerisms on the way there."
She wants to protest. She wants to call out to him, grab at his twisted limbs and demand they stay out of the public light but something else occurs to her. "...Sumino..."
"What about Takumi?" Eito glances at her, eyebrows in his fringe.
"He has this...thing about me." It's the kindest way to speak about whatever strange problem Sumino has regarding her. He is...obsessed, in a way, but likely not with her. With whoever she reminds him of. It makes her uncomfortable and, for what it's worth, he has been keeping his distance since she expressed discomfort with his familiarity. Still— "Will you be alright if he decides to, um, try and get close?"
Again, Aotsuki smiles in a way that looks horribly foreign on Nozomi's face. Again, it makes her feel...uncomfortable. "Don't worry too much about Takumi. I can handle him." She nods. "Now let's go."
The two of them slink out of Nozomi's bedroom as quietly as they can, their footfalls—or, in Aotsuki's case, the awful slithering scraping sucking sound of him dragging himself along the rooftop—echoing loudly in the early morning air. Aotsuki leads the charge as if he isn't even aware of the trail of gore and ooze he's leaving in his wake or the blood and chunks of burnt flesh that remain on any surface he touches, too accustomed to taking the lead to accommodate for his condition to change now.
Nozomi, too used to keeping her head down and her mouth shut for the betterment of the team, says nothing of how badly it makes her want to scrub the upper layer of her skin off. After all: they have to play at being each other, don't they? It wouldn't do if she threw a childish tantrum over something as small as some discomfort.
If Aotsuki could live like this for seventeen years, she can live like this for a few measly days without complaint.
(It's nauseating and awful, the way her body sounds like someone dragging themselves by their arms, metal and bone and blood and organs trailing behind like a tail. The pulpy remains left behind are chunky reminders of pain, the smoky gasoline tinge agonizingly acrid. Nozomi fights to keep her hands away from her nose, struggles to keep her eyes somewhere near Aotsuki's borrowed head, strains to hear the words behind the bubbling choking sounds that drown out what was her voice come out of lips that look like her father's had. She swallows bile and breathes—in, out—trying to keep her composure.)
(She won't fail. She can't fail. She can't. She can't!)
(Aotsuki is depending on her.)
Aotsuki presses an Infuser in her hands. She blinks down at the clear window in the scabbard that shows off his name inscribed beneath the number four on his blade, turning it back and forth in her dazed grip. The way that the clinical choice of numbering their weapons contrasts with how pretty Aotsuki Eito looks written on the blood-red blade holds her attention as she wonders what number they would have given her, had she not been a failure. Likely the same as was stamped on her Artificial Class Armor but to see it carved into such a delicate thing as an Infuser is different, isn't it?
"Keep going." His command draws her attention and she looks at him without remembering what's going on. The expression that greets her—her own ruined face contorted like it always is in her own worst nightmares—is cold and distant. Porcelain. Fake.
Does she look like that to everyone? Cold and aloof, not the way that Kurara is but in a worse way, not dissimilar to the bullies in her school were? Fake and two-faced? Has she always smiled like her happiness was a lie balancing on razor wire?
"O-okay." She mutters, unsure if Aotsuki can hear her—or even cares—the nausea pushing against her throat less about the horror of her form now and more something like understanding. Clarity.
Outside looking in, has she ever been anything other than a pretty porcelain doll? Or has she—
The Gym is wide and dark, blissfully empty. Aotsuki turns around and looks dryly at the activator for her Artificial Class Armor in his hand, turning a cold eye to Nozomi and the Infuser gripped in her fist. "Would you like to start?"
His Infuser feels like ice in her hands now, the metal burning her borrowed too-hot skin. "With k—" the word catches, chokes her. He just smiles, patient.
It still feels fake somehow, like there's a veneer that holds the smile plastered on her face in place, plasticine and high-gloss paint bright and shiny to distract from— "I could learn how to use your Artificial Class Armor first so that I can heal you if you mess up but...if you have my body and my hemoanima, it likely won't be an issue."
"Howso?"
He sighs, phlegm and blood and chunks of some unidentifiable gore falling impotently from his lips and splattering against the Gym's wooden flooring, disappointment barely concealed. "My Specialist Skill."
What was his Specialist Skill again? Special...something to do with fortune?
"Special Fortunetelling, while it gives me an edge in combat, has a wider application in everyday life. Namely: I am extremely lucky." The patient way he spells it out for her, the words bludgeoning her thoughts back into her head, makes her hackles rise. She feels patronized to, and yet it's necessary because she can't seem to pull herself together long enough to think critically for even a second. "You are, while inhabiting my body, far more likely to achieve your goals if they rely on some modicum of chance." Like stabbing a blade into your heart and not dying of hemorrhagic shock, he doesn't say, but she can read between the lines. She's not stupid. "I can't fault you for wanting some kind of assurance you won't bleed out, however, even if you would be put back together by the Revive-o-Matic without much fuss."
Right...because Aotsuki's body has enough hemoanima to use the Revive-o-Matic. She isn't as mortal as she was before.
The fear of death stills her hand regardless. Her eyes stay fixed on the horrid, gaping wound in his torso, the way his intestines spill out and all over the floor, puddles of incardanine fluid sending spidery tendrils out to grasp at her feet with lonely hands intent on pullling her deep into the grave to join her parents. She's supposed to shove a blade into her heart? She's supposed to touch the very thing keeping her alive with the point of a weapon and that will allow her to fight?
Her breathing must have picked up in an audible way because Aotsuki turns over her activator in his malformed hands and scrutinizes it in detail, looking for how to operate it. When he speaks, his choked voice is pleasant but distant, cold and clinical—the way his room had been. "You're allowed to be afraid," he says, though it almost sounds like he's dismissing her instead of comforting her, "but after all the fights you've been in—without the access to the Revive-o-Matic at that—you're balking now?" Coward.
"I—"
"The human brain does have a powerful survival instinct," he notes. He affixes the activator to his chest and gently presses the center button, the Artificial Class Armor manifesting as it always did for her. Through her borrowed eyes, it almost appears as though the mass of his body is wrapped in a shell like a rigid body bag, the armor acting to hold in some of the spilling mess and pushing other things out of alignment. An explosion of blood and fat and intestinal fluids coats the Gym floor and Nozomi loses the fight against her nausea, doubling over with the overwhelming scent and sight of her body being compressed like a malformed sausage. Unbothered—or perhaps unwilling to let the conversation drift from his original point—Aotsuki continues on unperturbed. "But it isn't as hard as you think it is. You just find the gap between the ribs, a little left of your sternum." He presses a hand against the hard plating holding his body together, many-jointed fingers splaying like crushed insects. "Right. About. Here."
She knows where the heart is. She can feel it beating, screaming, pulsing as it pushes cryptoglobin rich blood through her borrowed body, screaming through her ears and causing her extremities to tingle. Still...her hand doesn't move. Still...she can't—
The noise Aotsuki lets out is a bit like unsealing a container of yogurt, sticky and chunky but wet. Disapproving. He closes the distance between them and wraps a slimy hand around hers. She tries to jerk away but his grip is stronger than she expected and she can't escape. "It only hurts for a moment. And it's only really scary the first time." His words are meant to be soothing but—
(The shadow of her mother in their apartment. Her legs not touching the floor. The sight of an asphyxiated corpse nothing compared to the horrid stench of a body relaxing every sphincter at once and painting what was a happy home in every fluid contained within the now empty shell.)
(Folded over her, metal shoved into his heart, her father looks at her with sightless eyes and smiles. His last thought, his last wish had been to save her. A blade of rubble impaling him, carving a gash up her stomach. Through his heart. His heart. His heart.)
It feels like a shot. Then it feels like a flood. She's bleeding—she knows she's bleeding, that's what happens when you puncture the heart—but it doesn't feel like it should. It feels like a relief, like her body is letting off pressure, and the blood doesn't pool so much as it curls around her in a protective embrace. Like a hug, warm and comforting. Within the cocoon, it paints her skin with hardened cryptoglobin, the black and white of the standard Class Armor curling over her body in place of the thin nightclothes she had been wearing before, the Infuser blade itself sinking into her heart and bursting into bright white fire that scorches the pectoral muscles to carbonized spires that form part of the unified look of the Special Defense Unit. Then, as it unfurls and gently sets her down on the Gym floor again, the remainder of the blood solidifies into Aotsuki's horse-headed scythe, the spines hungrily nipping at her gloved hands. The grey inactive blade curves wickedly, the crimson eyes of the skull that the blade protrudes from glinting as it watches the two of them stand in the aftermath.
Aotsuki blithely smiles at Nozomi, whose panic meets the shore of adrenaline, crashing and cutting her senses to dull sand and messy nonsense.
Now that it's over and done with, blood no longer spewing from her punctured heart, the tide recedes somewhat and she can breathe. In. Out.
It hadn't been so bad.
In. Out.
Like Aotsuki had said: it only hurt for a moment.
In. Out.
She can do this.
"There." She leans on Aotsuki's scythe as he nods his head in appreciation. "Now dispel it and do it again. On your own."
She frowns at him. "Dispel it?"
Aotsuki reaches up and taps the centerpiece of Nozomi's Artificial Class Armor, disabling it. His mass spills out, slopping across the floor like an upended food tray. Nozomi's nose wrinkles at the smell, she flinches at the sound, but she holds her ground. "Undo the transformation." Then he reactivates the Artificial Class Armor, squeezing the majority of his car wreck corpse of a body back into the metal and cloth shape of a person, oozing violently out the bottom like a burst burrito. "And redo it."
"How?" Maybe she shouldn't be so sharp about this but he is being very obtuse and she is not happy about how vague he's being. "How do I—?"
"Like killing yourself in reverse." The way he smiles—all teeth and no eyes—makes her shiver slightly. Still, his tone is pleasant, even if what he's saying is incredibly pointed. "Let go of your death."
"Mindfulness?" He laughs, a horrid snorting choking coughing sound, glass and chunks of lung and blood splattering past cracked lips. "How?!"
"How did it feel to die? To activate your - my hemoanima?" Deactivate. Reactivate. He almost fiddles with the mechanism of Nozomi's Artificial Class Armor, squelching horribly as he talks. "Think about that."
Helpful.
But...
A blade. A point. Heat. A rush.
All of that in reverse.
Think about her death, only backwards.
When she opens her eyes she feels winded. Drained. Aotsuki is watching her with eyes that feel sharper than they should, an uncomfortably dull razor across her skin, pulling hair out more than cutting it close. His smile is painted on, his head tilted in perfect imitation of her own neutral stance but it feels...off. Wrong. Maybe it's something about seeing someone else using her face, her voice, her body in this way, but she just wants to—
His scythe is in her hand before she realizes it, blade drinking in weeping blood as she points his - her weapon at her - at him. She trembles with an emotion she can't seem to understand as her instincts scream that whatever is in her body is wrong.
Unperturbed, his eyes watch her; trace the blade to the grinning skull, the hilt to her shaking hands, her arms to her panicked face. What expression is she making? Why is he smiling wider?
"There." He presses a finger to the activator and disables her Artificial Class Armor. "You did it all by yourself. Hardly painful, was it? You barely even noticed it had happened."
That was true. She hadn't even realized she'd transformed until she had leveled his scythe at him, the hooked blade wrapping around the back of her neck like the arm of an old friend. Like a promise.
"I-I'm so sorry!" In her panic, she drops the weapon and transformation both. Blood drips from her pierced palms as she steps away from Aotsuki, unsure of how to fix this or make it better. "I just—"
"Did what was asked of you," he finishes for her. He almost seems amused that she's so bothered. Does he not understand—?
"But—"
"Nozomi," cold ice cuts through the watery wheezing of his borrowed voice, the sudden feeling of a scythe pressed into the curve of her neck. She stops speaking, a strange fear gripping at her too-loud heart, crushing her too-fast pulse into a whine that screams in her ears. "It's okay."
She doesn't respond. She can't respond. Is it kindness that sees him deferring her concerns? Or something else entirely?
Behind them, the Gym door opens. Unthinking, Nozomi turns to see who it could be at this hour.
She had forgotten.
—
Eito watches as Nozomi turns tail and flees with his body, curled in on herself like a terrified child, barely holding it together. How pathetic she must look to the others, ashen, sweat-soaked, and slobbering from the aftereffects of emptying her stomach all over the pristine Gym floor. He suppresses a sneer, keeps his mouth pulled in a picture perfect imitation of concern and worry, eyes lingering carefully on the puddle of vomit on the ground.
He can't look up at the three people sharing his space. He isn't sure he can handle that in his current condition.
Watching Nozomi struggle with something as simple as using an Infuser had been an interesting diversion to distract him from the skin crawling horror of inhabiting her body. The mere thought of his mind and soul being packed into a vile human's shell against his will, his righteous eyes stolen from him and given to the wretch wearing his body like an ill-fitting suit, makes him almost blind with fury. And so, while they did need to become accustomed to how the other's body prepares for combat, perhaps he had less...polite intentions behind how forcefully he demanded she force the transformation.
(The speed at which she became accustomed to the act surprised him—despite only activating her Class Armor on her own once—though he had been amused when she pressed his own weapon against his borrowed throat, eyes wide in instinctual horror. Had she seen something in his face that terrified her, that told her he was a threat that needed to die? It was...gratifying in a way, to know that someone else in his position would fight against his natural urges just as much as he did.)
And so, in his attempt to perhaps draw blood in his education of how to use an Infuser, he forgot that the two of them were disheveled and in a public place. Hence the situation he's dealing with now.
What did Nozomi's friends look like to her? Filtered through his righteous eyes and her own perception of who they are, what new fresh hell was she subjected to before she fled? After all, she already confirmed that her perception of the body he's in is vastly different from his own had been.
Perhaps it's because she knows her own face—knows what she looks like without the lies of humanity stripped away—that she sees herself relatively undistorted. And, in that same vein, perhaps she sees her friends more human than he ever did. Either way, their very presence tipped her over the edge and she fled.
Coward.
"What the hell were you two doing?" Kurara's shrill voice pierces through the slowly growing headache Eito is fighting off, a lance of noise and irritation. "That whitewashed pervert took off like we caught him with his dick in his hands." Classy.
"If we had caught him with his...dick in his hands," Kyoshika chokes on the word, "surely Nozomi-dono would have blown it off with her Class Weapon. They are practicing here, or were before we arrived, and she looks far more composed than Eito-dono did, therein nothing untoward must have occurred!"
"Stuff your sword in it," Kurara snaps. "He's in his nightclothes, she's in her nightclothes, they both look like they've been rolling around on the floor. Class Armor or not, she's missing her weapon. What else could have happened?"
Perhaps Eito should step in and correct her vulgar misunderstanding but he doesn't trust himself to properly play his part without practice—and certainly not around the three people who know her better than anyone else at this academy.
"Judging by how hard he threw up, it must have been a killer time." Yugamu's amusement is what pushes him over the edge, the lascivious way he implies some foul deed coated in paraphilia and fetish makes his borrowed skin crawl and the hair on the back of his borrowed neck stand on end. Rising nausea threatens his - her dinner joining Eito's watery bile on the Gym floor.
"It wasn't like that!" Nozomi doesn't speak sharply, she's kind and soft and a pushover. That doesn't mean she doesn't have an edge—speaking with her the way he has, Eito is certain she's as fake as he is in places—but in situations like this, she would be more placating and mildly distressed than genuinely furious. "Aotsuki and I were practicing drills!"
Kurara snorts derisively. "Yeah, I'll bet." And then, as a vicious aside. "I'm going to shoot his dick clean off."
"Now, now, let's not be so hasty." Eito wouldn't have pegged Yugamu for the peacekeeper but he quickly reigns in Kurara before she can get too wound up. "If Nozomi says that they were running drills, we can trust her, can't we?"
Even though he's not looking at them, he can feel his gaze burn holes in his skin. It feels awful and vile, like being touched by a hot poker. He wants to go back to Nozomi's room and shower until his skin is raw and clean, boiled and disinfected.
Kyoshika makes some strange noise of agreement, a soft harrumph, but Kurara remains obstinately silent. When she speaks again, her voice strikes a vulnerable bit of Eito's brain that lances pain up his spine. "If he really didn't do anything, why won't you look at us?"
"Perhaps Nozomi-dono is still dizzy from running drills with Eito-dono!"
"I wasn't asking you!" Eito can feel her turn her attention back to him, can imagine her rotted head dripping with a scowl, flies buzzing around it in droves. Maggots must spill from the decaying mass of fruit that makes up her so-called head, hollow sockets squinted in irritation. "If it was really nothing, if you don't want me to go track down Aotsuki and punch him right to the end of this fucking war, then look me in the eyes and tell me it was just a drill."
How cute. She cares enough about 'Nozomi' to threaten 'Eito' with bodily harm.
He swallows heavily and looks up, puts on a smile he hopes is convincing enough. "It really is fine," he lies, "we were only running practice drills to increase our response time."
He stops and stares. Tries not to throw up. Almost fails.
Human memory is a fickle thing. It will sometimes hold on to images for long after they've ever been a presence in your life. And, in the same vein, it will sometimes quickly purge the original sight of something and replace it with its current appearance. As Eito looks out at the reserve squad, he finds it difficult to remember how he had perceived them the day before through his righteous eyes, their current appearances burning into his short and long term memory like a flash bulb snapped against his retinas.
Kurara, front and center in his vision, is strangely plain looking. Tomato mask aside—and maybe that helps make her more palatable to behold than if she hadn't been wearing something that covered her entire face—she's a slight, well-toned girl in an all-black uniform and platform boots. The expression on her tomato mask—likely the basis for his own initial understanding of her, a decaying mess of mold and slop that must have been drawn from the association borne between her mask and her personality and existence as a human being—shifting in strangely minute ways that shouldn't be possible and yet...
Beside her, looming like some kind of perverse prey animal, Yugamu smiles with his mouth, his one visible eye cutting to the meat of Eito in a way that makes him feel small and vulnerable. He's pretty in an androgynous way, lithe and delicate in ways Eito isn't, but there's something about his posture and the way he holds himself that brings to mind images of predatory insects or venomous serpents, offsetting the sudden recognition of the self that Eito is hit with.
It's Kyoshika that is the hardest to look at, not because she is objectionable or ugly—more ugly than humans usually look, filthy, vile beings that they are—but because she just...is. A muscular young woman with strong features and guileless grey eyes that watch him without malice or suspicion. Her smile curls the edges of her mouth, her gloved hands tucked against her sides, arms folded in a display of patience. Her long hair frames her face, lashes curving gently in a way that makes her seem almost angelic.
Eito has to swallow a hysterical, gasping laugh.
For most of his life, his is the only face he's ever seen. As such, he has grown accustomed to reading the facial expressions of beasts and monsters, parsing context through body language and muffled and garbled tone of voice. He practiced expressions in the mirror, taught himself to pretend, and held conversations with himself in the bathroom so that he could convincingly play the part.
Seeing a smile on a real human face that wasn't his own is—
Kurara's expression twists, pinches, and she sighs. "Fine." Behind her, Kyoshika lights up and her guileless smile widens in delight. "I won't punch his lights out. You're welcome..."
Eito wants to say thank you, to acknowledge what has been said and move the conversation to something else but his words stick in his throat. He worries—no, not worries, is certain—that if he opens his mouth, he'll vomit as well. It wouldn't be a good look and that's why he remains silent.
Nothing else.
"You sure made a mess of the place though." Yugamu notes, craning his neck at an inhuman angle to peer at the blood and bile on the floor. "Are you sure it wasn't something more fun than drills? This looks like far too much fluid for just a few uses of an Infuser." The way his mouth curls, the implication singing in his voice, is infuriating. It's nauseating.
I'm certain, he wants to reply. He doesn't trust himself to speak without his voice cracking and breaking. He holds still like a statue, silent as a grave, praying they'll assume he isn't feeling well. Hoping they'll draw their own incorrect conclusions.
"Should we perhaps postpone our run until after the Gym has been disinfected?" Kyoshika asks the others. Stripped of any affect his disorder applies to it, her voice is strong and clear like the shounen manga heroes she so clearly admires. And, in the same vein, her question is without malice, a sincerity there that is inhuman.
Eito can feel the smile he's wearing thin and fray.
"Do you want to get on your knees and scrub Aotsuki's pervert puke out of the cracks in the floor?" Kurara scoffs. "That's poor people work. I wouldn't be caught dead doing it."
"That can be arranged," Yugamu purrs. Kurara hisses and punches him in the shoulder. It dislocates with a sickening popping noise but Yugamu quickly sets it without so much as flinching. "It was only a suggestion."
"I would rather pay Maruko to lick it up than spend another second smelling whatever it is Aotsuki had for dinner."
"Actually, it's mostly stomach acid at this point. He must have already thrown up once before."
"Poor Eito-dono..."
"I'm sorry—" The words spew out unbidden, the panic painting them more real than he'd like to admit. "I - I'm not feeling well. I know we were going to—"
"Don't feed me those excuses," Kurara sniffs, waving a hand at Eito. "Go lay down and rest before you get me sick too. I don't want to catch your plebian cold or step in your puke or whatever."
Kyoshika's eyes practically sparkle as she looks at Kurara. "As Kurara-dono said: rest up! And, should you still be feeling unwell come lunch, I'll bring you a simple meal and feed you so that you can recover your strength." Red coats her cheeks as she mutters the last bit, twiddling her fingers in a way Eito can only assume is shyly. It's hard to tell through the tinny noise in his ears and the way his vision is wobbling.
Yugamu, on the other hand, never once turns his gaze away from Eito, silently smiling pleasantly at him. "Sleep well, Nozomi."
He flees the Gym in much the same manner as Nozomi had. Perhaps with a bit more grace and dignity, not outright running away with tears in his eyes and a hand covering his nose and mouth, but certainly no less shamefully.
He just...couldn't be in a room with them for a moment longer. It was unbearable.
As he climbs the stairs back to the roof, Eito tries to remember what they really look like, stripped of their false likeness by his righteous eyes. He tries to cut away at the facade of unnatural beauty that Nozomi's perception of the others has shown him to reveal the ugliness lying within. He tries all this in vain.
All he can see when he thinks about Yugamu is the way that his delicate lips had curled into a smile that Eito can only call caring. All he can remember when he tries to recall Kurara is the worry her mask projected as she tried her best to pretend like she wasn't asking after his health. All he can think of when he imagines Kyoshika is the earnest way she closed the distance between them, eyes wide with concern.
They're monsters. Humans. They shouldn't look like he does. They shouldn't look like how everyone else sees them. He was the one person who could truly see everyone for what they really are and now—
The way Nozomi had paled—the color leaving her borrowed face moments before the contents left her stomach for what had to be the second, if not third or fourth time—upon seeing her friends. The way she refused to look up from the floor as she fled, white-knuckling her Infuser. The way everyone had stared after her, confusion palpable, then turned their myriad gazes back onto Eito.
She could see the truth and it disgusted her. He could only see the lie and it disgusted him.
Waiting out whatever it is that has happened to them is slowly becoming something of a horror show. An ordeal he is unsure he can actually tolerate to its conclusion if everyone in the Special Defense Unit looks the same as those three did.
After all: he hasn't even looked in the mirror.
Maybe it's hypocritical of him but no one can blame him for wanting to delay any kind of revelation regarding what kind of horrid human guise he's wearing. If he sees what Nozomi looks like to herself and to every other wretched human in the world, then he has to contend with his own understanding of the body he's found himself in—weak hemoanima aside.
It's not as though being trapped in a human body is going to deter his plans. Granted, it means that disposing of the others becomes more...difficult, as Nozomi can't actually process hemoanima the same as everyone else, and ingesting another human's hemoanima might send her into some kind of hemoanima-based arrest or perhaps it would even burn her alive from the inside out—her mention of how warm Eito's body felt compared to her own and the way he's constantly startled by how passively warm things are in comparison to Nozomi's body's temperature a clue that hemoanima did actually impact internal temperature. Still, he has other avenues of disposal and disappearance. The Wall of Fire, for instance. And Nozomi has access to the reserve corps in a way that Eito didn't.
Additionally, Nozomi is passive enough and people-pleasing enough to weasel her way into all the various floating social cliques that have formed in the Last Defense Academy. This affords him some new measures of freedom that being himself didn't.
A fair trade for a lack of power and the conditional immortality that the Revive-o-Matic affords those with sufficient hemoanima.
He can work with this. He doesn't have to let it push back his plans. He just has to adjust his strategy on the fly. He—
"Kirifuji?"
Eito stops dead in his tracks, dread sinking a stone in his gut. While unfamiliar in some ways, he's fairly sure he knows who's talking to him. The one person they had both tried their hardest to avoid.
What a karmic joke.
"Yes, Sumino?" He doesn't turn to look. He can't look. It's almost like a horror movie, like the type of thing where acknowledging the existence of something makes it real. If he sees Takumi then—
"Is everything okay?" He sounds concerned. Without the filter of his own cognition, Takumi's voice is oddly normal. It's almost familiar, enough like his own that a sudden flush of terror rips through him. "I saw Aotsuki running back to the roof looking like he was sick or something and you — I know you have your thing with your group and all but you also look bad? I just want to make sure neither of you are sick." He laughs, this awkward thing that makes Eito's heart race. "We can't afford to lose both of you, just in case there's a defensive battle or whatever, but also...you're—" Don't say it.
"Aotsuki and I were practicing transforming for defensive battles and just overdid it a little." The lie comes easily. A good lie has the basis of truth in it as a foundation and, like a good foundation, it runs deep. If his lie isn't consistent across the board, someone will get suspicious. "Thank you for worrying, though. I'm just going back to my room to rest after I take a quick shower."
"O-oh..." He can imagine, revulsion crawling insectile over his skin, the way Takumi is blushing as he unconsciously imagines Nozomi in the shower. Disgusting. "But—"
"Really," he can't afford to tarry. He needs to get back to his - Nozomi's room so he can collect himself and ready himself for the fight to come. "Thank you for your concern but I should—"
Takumi grabs him by the wrist to prevent him from leaving. Without thinking, Eito turns to look at him, eyes wide in panic. He sees Takumi for the first time without the protection of his eyes.
He's blinding.
By all accounts, Takumi is a normal young man. There's nothing special about him. He's as plain as Kyoshika is. But there is an intensity to his stare that gives him some otherworldly presence. His red hair frames his face in a halo of fire, blue eyes bright and without suspicion, crimson lashes making the overall effect akin to the way illuminated manuscripts painted angels. Gone is the burnt, twiggy, shambling corpse that Eito knew him to be. In its place is a funhouse mirror reflection of Eito himself; a boy who is by all accounts completely unremarkable but in that everyman way and, as such, becomes something ethereally beautiful in return.
Eito wrenches his arm free of Takumi's clutch, unsure of the expression he's making. Surely it's one of panic and horror. Judging by how horrified Takumi looks in return, it must be something to behold because he looks like Eito slapped him. Good.
Without another word, he runs the remaining distance between where he was and Nozomi's room, locking the door behind him. He breathes (in, out) and tries to collect himself.
Might start crossposting kaleidoscope to tumblr as a motivational thing. Like a 1/day queued thing. Maybe this will make the heat bearable. Maybe this will make my job hurt less.
vaporwave
romaincrisis
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