And so the big sister of the year goes to…
It was the end of a very long and annoying day, and the only thing that was keeping Natsuki awake and out of bed was a dauntingly tall stack of reports she was required to look over, sign, and stamp with the Seal of Authority before the next morning. Some were requisitions for backup or supplies; others were new decrees; still others were notifications to the public about how the war was faring.
Which, all in all, was notas well as the headmistress and her retinue had expected. That annoying Avatar and his ragtag army of hooligans were getting to be an enormous pain in the tail. Garderobe was losing good soldiers by the day, morale was at an all-time low, and the stacks of forms on Natsuki's desk each night just kept getting higher and higher.
Worst still, her wife, Shizuru Viola, who always did Natsuki'spaperwork with considerable speed, was nowhere to be seen.
Natsuki glared at the papers balefully, then moaned and slammed her head on the table. And she'd thought that her duties had been bad when she'd just ascendedthe position as headmistress… if she'd known it would've gotten like this, she would have just taken Shizuru and run off like Mai did before she'd gotten stuck with authority.
Because the truth had finally hit home: Authority wasn't as fun as it seemed from the outside. It SUCKED,in all capitals.
The Ice Sliver Crystal glanced sideways at the full-length mirror propped on the far wall and made a face. Her usually firm and serious blue gaze was pathetically bleary, and made even worse by the fact that all these late nights were giving her raccoon eyes. She'd pulled her dishevelled black hair into a braid so that it wouldn't get tangled once she eventually went to bed; tufts and strands were already starting to fly from confinement. And, as she'd suspected, the black tank shirt and pants she always wore—which had fitted snugly against her slender body only last month—looked loose. She was losing weight. How mortifying was that?
"I… hate… my… life," Natsuki sulked into the surface of her desk. She never admitted it in public, but it was getting to be a regular thing while she was alone. Headmistresses couldn't look self-pitying in front of their people, their students or their armies, who would absolutely lose heart if they saw him like this; But still…
There was oneperson who she thought might be able to watch her throw her limited version of a conniption fit without completely freaking out and screaming…
"Neesama?"
As if cued by the very thought, there was Alyssa at the door.
Natsuki straightened up with a groan, realizing in annoyance that her back was starting to hurt. She wanted a more comfortable chair if she was going to have to sit around finishing stupid reports until the freaking crack of dawn, 'dammit' "What is it?"
"Neesama…" Alyssa was giving her a piteously teary look. "I…"
Natsuki sighed and motioned for her to come in and close the door. "You can tell me."
"I… can't find my teddy," the young girl confessed, looking somewhere between heartbroken and embarrassed. Despite her age, Alyssa seemed to consider herself too old for stuffed animals (probably due to her position as the Headmistress's little sister and daughter to the President of Aries), but she'd never been able to give up her favourite—an old and battered teddy bear that her cyborg attendant Miyu, made for her since she was a baby. It was hard for her even to get to sleep without it.
Natsuki turned to face her. "…Do you have any idea where you might've lost her?"
Alyssa shook her head no. "I didn't notice she was missing 'til we got back from the fight at the Black Valley…"
"Did you bring her with you to the Black Valley the other day?" Natsuki asked with a frown.
"I don't know… maybe…" Alyssa fidgeted, looking distressed. "What if somebody…?"
Natsuki gave herself a facepalm and thought privately that even the Avatar wouldn't sink so low as to steal a kid's stuffed animal, then that if they had,she would personally beat the crap out of every one of them for messing with her sister like that. "…well, we can't do anything about it right now. But tomorrow, the two of us can go looking, okay?"
"…Okay." Natsuki gave her a wavering smile.
"And…" Natsuki sighed, averted her eyes from her sister's face, and ran a hand through her hair. "Well, just this once… you can stay in here tonight if you want."
Alyssa squealed and hugged her. "You are the best big sister in the entire world."
"…Yeah, whatever." Thoroughly embarrassed now, Natsuki patted her hair. "…But not a word to anybody else, understand?"
The next morning, Shizuru returned to Garderobe and peeked into their room and noted Alyssa still curled in a little ball in the middle of the giant canopy bed, grinned, and elbowed Natsuki in the ribs.
"Looks like somebody's cruising for a Big Sister of the Year award." she jokingly commented, her voice jolted awake Natsuki from her sleep.
Promptly going as red as the red cap of her mayonnaise bottle, Natsuki gave her wife the evil eye. "…just shut up…"
…Natsuki Kruger
Diend