AN: This is a slice of life story dealing with the growing of of Nemu & Kuuderika, it begins after the Sorcerer King leaves Kuuderika in Enri's care in 'The Lemurian Paradox' from the chapter, 'Return to Carne'. This is a rather new type of story for me, so I'm hoping I do a proper job of it. If not...well shit, I tried. :) Reviews welcome of course.
Nemu woke up, she felt wide awake. The Sun however, evidently didn't as it had yet to appear over the horizon. That made Nemu smile, after all, it wasn't every day somebody outraced the Sun. She enjoyed the darkness anyway, preferred it. Last night she'd had no nightmares, she'd slept peacefully and not awakened drenched in sweat.
She stretched out on her bed, it was a wonderful bed, it was wonderful even to have a bed. She looked at the shape next to her, Kuuderika was asleep still. They were sharing the bed for now while skeleton laborers built an addition onto their home. The skeletons stopped at sunset and simply stood around, thus allowing peace and quiet to reign supreme. Most people would have felt fear at having an undead skeleton standing outside looking mindlessly through their window. But Nemu Emmot was not one of those people.
She gently, slowly, exited the bed and stretched before she waved to the skeleton, it did not wave back, it never did. Nemu wasn't bothered by the skeleton because she knew the real danger was from the living. Living human knights killed her parents before her eyes, living human knights had chased her off into a forest of monsters and cut her precious Enri even while her desperate sister begged them not to hurt her and cried for Nemu to run, to leave her to die.
She thought about her savior, the undead King who killed the knights and healed her sister and saved her village. She snorted at the fear of monsters, demihumans, and undead, all the danger she'd ever known had come from human hands.
She went to the kitchen and quietly began to prepare the place to cook food, it was a very small thing to do, but it was one less thing for Enri to tend to when she got up, and Nemu never flinched at it. The memory of her sister holding her and bleeding was not far from her young mind.
She returned to her room and looked out the window into the darkness, and she heard a stirring not far away, Kuuderika was rubbing one eye as she sat up on the side of the bed. She stretched out herself, but rather than rise, shef lung herself out so that she now took up the entire thing.
"Where am I supposed to sleep?" Nemu asked somewhat sarcastically.
"Can't hear you, I'm asleep, can't be my fault if I'm not awake." Kuuderika's voice came out, muffled through the pillow.
Nemu frowned a little at this, but decided to play alone. "If you're asleep, how are you answering?" She asked the girl in the shadows.
"Ahhhh...ninth tier magic caster?" Kuuderika said tentatively.
"Ahhhh...nope." Nemu said and crossed her arms.
"Magic item from the Sorcerer King?" She tried again.
"No again." Nemu said and started tapping her foot.
"Talent?" She tried once more.
"For taking all of the bed up...yes...for holding conversations while you sleep, no." Nemu replied and chortled at her...(sort of adoptive sister?) and her attempt at excuses.
"OK fine you caught me, I was awake, you want the bed?" Kuuderika asked.
"Oh no, I'm awake for the day, I just wanted you to think you had to move." Nemu replied with a laugh.
Kuuderika laughed in return and slowly rolled herself off the bed. "Well I might as well be up too."
The two dressed quickly enough in the darkness and Nemu decided to walk outside, the moon was bright in the sky, in all its glorious fullness it was a sight to behold.
Kuuderika was beside her a moment later and two just stood out in the dark in front of the house.
"I like the darkness." Nemu said.
"Why?" Kuuderika asked.
"Everything bad that happened to me, happened in the light where anyone could have seen it, and it was because it was in the light of day that I couldn't escape it, I couldn't do anything to stop it. Here in the darkness, I can avoid most of the dangers that humans pose." She said softly.
"I get it." Kuuderika said, her small girl voice barely above a hushed whisper... "The bad things that happened to me...happened from other people too, worse, it was the people I loved. My sister was going to rescue me, but on what was going to be her last job she went and disappeared. She died and I never knew what happened to her, but then my parents spent themselves into a hole and tried to use my sister and I as stepping stones to climb out of it. She and I were sold off like meat and worked without rest and barely any food. The overseers hurt us when we slowed down, and then my twin sister and I simply collapsed, they threw us in a hole with other slave bodies and forgot about us, I lived and made my way out, she didn't. Humans did all of that, and they did it with the sun in the sky where everybody could see...and nobody cared."
Kuuderika bit her lip, "Meeting the Sorcerer King was the first good thing to happen in a long time, as terrifying as he was, I felt safer around him because he was not a human being. That is why I could even speak when called upon...now here I am." She said, her voice containing a hushed awe as the two girls looked at the place where the Sun would rise.
"Yup, here you are!" A cheerful voice announced and a soft feeling hand patted each of their heads. They jumped and turned around, and found themselves staring at the giant smile on the face of Lupusregina Beta who was crouching behind them.
Her long braided redhair and winning smile charmed Nemu from the moment they met, and now it charmed Kuuderika. "So pretty!"
Kuuderika said with excitement.
Lupusregina patted her head twice more and said, "So right!" and she stood up, "You two shouldn't be out this early without someone looking after you."
"We've got someone looking out for us." Nemu said politely.
Lupusregina looked around, she couldn't sense or see anyone else, for a moment she wondered if Lord Ainz had sent personal guards for the two and not mentioned it to her, that was his prerogative...but it was still unlike him.
"Ahhh...who?" She finally asked the girls.
"You." Nemu said and took her hand.
"Oh." Lupusregina Beta took her free hand and looked up at the sky and touched her cheek just below her lips as she thought that over. "Yes I suppose you do. Fair enough, but now that you're out here...what do you want to do? Just standing around is boring. Do you want me to teach you how to throw knives?"
"Well, we are supposed to have school." Nemu said doubtfully.
"Wait...this...village has a school?" Kuuderika asked in disbelief.
"Uh huh. The Sorcerer King had a building built just to see that we all learned how to read, write, and do other things." Nemu said and puffed out her chest proudly.
"I can read, I can write, and I can add and subtract numbers." Her face looked a little crestfallen for a moment and her hands came together and her fingers tapped at one another. "Not as good as my sister...but still!" She said and her enthusiastic and proud expression beamed out again.
"Wow." Kuuderika said, "Any magic education available?" She asked.
Lupusregina spoke up, "Actually...yes, the mages guild sends people around every year to do a talent inspection, and just your luck, they'll be arriving today. If you have any of those talent thingies at all, they'll find it, whether it be for magic or for knowing exactly how much alcohol it takes to get someone drunk...they will find it."
The girls looked at one another and rolled their eyes. Nemu had known Lupusregina for years, Kuuderika for no time at all, but it did not take long to realize she was utterly hopeless about staying serious for more than a minute or two at a time.
"So...first we throw knives, then I take you back here, you go to school, the magic guy shows up, he says whatcha can do, then I teach you more about throwing sharp stuff. Sound fun?" She said and tilted her head to the side and gave them her winning smile.
Knife throwing sounded...so deliciously badass that they could not resist, they nodded enthusiastically, and a few minutes later they found themselves looking at a large tree and Lupusregina marked off various intervals of distance.
Lupusregina reached into the pocket dimension she used for storage, and drew out a bundle of the expected sharp and pointies. They were solid black and obviously made of something similar to steel, but they did not recognize just what. They were wrapped in an apron like piece of cloth, each one sheathed inside its own small pocket, and the maid demon unrolled it on the grass where they stood, she crouched down and picked one out at random. She held it up to them by the handle.
"Touch the edge." She said, and the two girls reached out and found no sharpness. "Now look at the tip." She said, they reached out to touch, and she drew it back. "Do you have eyeballs on your fingers?" She asked them.
They looked at each other in confusion. "Ahhhh...no?" They said together.
"Then use the ones in your heads, look, don't touch." Lupusregina said, "I don't want to explain to Lord Ainz why I sent two of his special ones back home bleeding from my knives." She pulled a horrified face at the very prospect, and the two looked a little ashamed of themselves.
Lupusregina grinned again, "OK, so, notice the tip, the point is sharp, and just like the goal of stabbing someone is to put the pointy end into the other person, the goal of knife throwing here is to put the pointy end into the tree, got it?"
They grinned and nodded enthusiastically and with vigor.
"Now, take them by the handle, and feel the weight." The red haired maid demon said, and handed one to each of them. They hefted the knives, both had held knives before...but for common and ordinary reasons...this felt different...darker, they imagined themselves as mighty warriors, adventurers out to save the world, hunting some twisted nightmare in the forgotten regions of the world.
"Ahhh you two have spirit, dontya?" Lupus said when she saw their faces take on a slightly predatory look, her eyes went narrow, and the playful Lupusregina had all but vanished for a moment. "I like those eyes, you keep those, you'll go far. Now, you have to get used to that weight, its about two hundred grams, you can throw heavier things, but this is ideal, heavier things require more strength to keep the same accuracy, you have to be able to control your weapon, or your weapon will control you." She said as the two girls raised and lowered their hands, getting a feel for the simply deadly looking little things.
The blades were simple, rounded handles at the pommel, no holes or perforations, simply smooth black metal that curved like a grown woman's waist in the center. Nemu looked down at the blade in fascination. "She's beautiful."
"She?" Kuuderika asked.
"The curves." Nemu said with a giggle, prompting Lupusregina to laugh so hard she grabbed her belly and bent over, and Kuuderika to blush a cherry red shade all over her face.
"Now, safety, don't want to explain any other injuries..." Lupus said, and looked around, then she looked down at the shoes the girls were wearing. She frowned, "Your shoes won't do." She said.
"Huh?" Nemu asked.
Lupus reached back into her pocket dimension and pulled out two pairs of enchanted boots. "Put these on unless you want a hole in your feet when you drop those knives." She said bluntly.
"Oh...ahhh...yes." Nemu said, and both she and Kuuderika handed their knives back and put on the clothing, which quickly adjusted to fit them.
"Now, take a relaxed stance, if you're tense, you'll overthrow, and you won't reliably hit the target." Lupusregina said, and the two girls rotated their arms, stretched out, and shook any stiffness from their bodies.
"Now stand up straight and align yourself to the target, right foot forward if throwing with your right hand, left food forward if throwing with your left, and keep your other foot just a little behind it." The two girls tried to follow her directions, but Lupusregina had to help them out periodically along the way poking a foot in or up or back.
When she looked over both their stances and gave a nod of approval, she took out the first blade and handed it to Nemu. "M'kay...now you've held hammers right Nemu?" Lupusregina asked.
"Yes..." She said curiously.
"Hold it like that, thumb over top of your other fingers, make sure your other fingers won't change the direction of your throw, now these are just your practice blades, if you've got something like a hunting knife, make sure you leave room between the edge of the blade and your hand when you hold the knife." She said as the girls as Nemu adjusted her hold on the blade.
"Lets start with a half rotation throw." Lupus said, and then she took up one of the blades, quickly assumed a stance, and threw it into the target, punching her blade through to the other side, she executed all the things she'd been teaching for minutes, in a matter of moments with one fluid expert motion.
"Like that." She said, and began to instruct them in the fine points, Nemu proved to be adept at it, within a short span of time she was getting her blade to hit the tree, and she was able to do so with her right or left hand stances.
Kuuderika...not so much, though she could hit the target occasionally, it was not a consistent success as quickly as it was for Nemu, and it wasn't long before Lupus was demonstrating more complex throws to the very proud Nemu...which was unfortunately only for a brief time before Nemu announced their need to depart for school.
The handed their knives back...somewhat reluctantly, and Lupusregina put them away back in her pocket dimension and waved goodbye.
They returned to their home and found the skeletons had resumed their reconstruction work and Enri was outside calling for them.
"Breakfast is ready, you two hurry up and eat and then head off to school!" She said sweetly, a brief but filling meal of eggs, bacon, and porridge was wolfed down by the two hungry preteen girls, who rushed right back out the door waving goodbye to Enri who stood at the doorway.
Lupusregina approached Enri as the girls were leaving, and had her customary sweet grin on her face. "Those two're kinda fun." she said happily.
"Oh were you with the girls this morning Lupusregina?" Enri asked with a sigh of relief.
"Yes, and that Nemu has a talent for knives, I'll have to teach her more advanced things soon." Lupusregina said, rotating her throwing arm as if she were throwing a blade.
"Is that...safe?" Enri asked with some concern.
"Not to worry, I gave both her and Kuuderika enchanted boots to protect their feet, they used practice knives, but also..." Her eyes went narrow and predatory, "Wouldn't you have liked to have been able to throw a knife into the face of the knights who killed your parents?" She asked.
There was a time when Enri would have perhaps fainted, or at least wilted, but the years had made her stronger than her youth, and so she mustered up an iron, "Yes."
She thought about it after her answer and said, "I suppose it is less dangerous to know something than it is to be helpless by knowing nothing. Go ahead and keep at it...just don't take away from their school time." She said, reminding herself very much of her own mother at that moment.
She put the thought out of her head and went out to check on the goblin army and the human volunteers, a war's end might be decided in a day, but its beginnings required many more of them, at least it was going to be a nice day out.
...Village school, recess hour...
Kuuderika and Nemu found a nearby tree and began throwing rocks at it, aiming for a single notch that stuck out from the center. Nemu was doing quite well and Kuuderika...acceptably, and it began to draw the attention of some of the other children, soon they were taking turns and an impromptu game of 'king of the hill' emerged, in which two would compete to strike the center notch three times, with the first one to do so staying up, while the other person got out of line and was replaced by the next person up, and the competition resumed.
Nemu as it turned out, had taken well to her lessons and was quickly undefeated, Kuuderika did not seem to mind the loss, and she cheered her on from the sidelines until Nemu routed an older boy who blushed with shame at his loss. "You cheated!" He snapped.
"How, by being just better than you?" Nemu snapped out, "How is it cheating to be better than you at it?" She asked.
His face turned red, "She was distracting me!" He yelled and pointed at Kuuderika, who quickly went quiet.
He whirled on Kuuderika and snapped, "Why don't you shut up and stop trying to help your friend win, you think just cause you're new here you can do whatever you want! Well you can't!" The boy was getting more agitated by his loss of both the game and then the loss of face, and he had apparently decided that since Kuuderika was the one he'd blamed...and she had no parents to run to, she was the one he could target.
"I ah...wasn't trying, I was just cheering..." She said a little bit nervously.
"You mean cheating! No wonder you got no parents! I'll bet your they left you just because they hated their cheater daughter!" He shouted angrily as he stood only inches away.
There was a collective gasp from the other children, Kuuderika's eyes went wet with hurt as her parent's sale of her body to support themselves became sharper than the knives she'd practiced with. While there was no way he could have known what happened exactly, the way he said it was close enough to her memory that it was everything she could do not to cry right then and there.
Which is why it was somewhat blurry when he was knocked to the ground. Her face expressed utter disbelief, but there was Nemu on top of him, pounding away at his face, scratching at his eyes and neck, he tried to struggle and get a hold of her, but she was quick and she was relentless, screaming at him like a thousand whistling arrows in flight as she left her mark on him, it was a savage two minutes before the instructor arrived to pull her apart from her victim, and there was only one person left crying over that game.
Kuuderika couldn't speak, but what she could do, and did do while the adults were helping the would be bully to his feet, she approached Nemu, gave her a hug, and mouthed the words, "Thank you."
AN: Well this is the first chapter of 'Bone Daddy's Daughters' going to be a relatively short slice of life type story detailing with how these two come to deal with the complexities of the times in which they live, and the course that life takes them down as they come into adulthood. This is another kind of story that is something of an experiment for me, so please, if you have criticisms and suggestions, let me know.
Also... there is an author/reader discord: /hJrfday
I do chapter readings there, apparently I do a pretty decent job of that, assuming my audience is not full of flatterers. :)
And by the way...if you ever do any fan art of any of the characters...either in the canonical series, or in terms of the characters I've created to expand this Universe, please feel free to share it there. Got to admit I really want to see some scenes drawn out in particular.