The prompt was if NEXT were like the Contractors from Darker Than Black. Every time a Hero uses their power, a cost must be paid.
Second chapter: Blue Rose
Some NEXT succeed despite their Remunerations: those who have to do extensive tasks, or self-harm, or other unproductive requirements, like the compulsion to punch someone, anyone (even one's self) in the face after making a metal fist.
Blue Rose's Remuneration compliments her power. Every time Blue Rose makes and maintains ice, she loses her sense of feeling that lasts as long as the ice.
Instant, easy, simultaneous. So cold she can't feel cold, no pain, no hindrance. Just the freedom to use her power without feeling a thing…
…as if that were desirable. There is a reason that tactile sensation is so important, for your own sake.
Karina has to be careful after she uses her powers. The difference between feeling nothing and there being nothing to feel is slippery, even more so when you're used to both. To not feel pain is not the same as to not be hurt: the list of 'accidents' that she had never noticed until later is too long. Her parents' doting isn't simply affection, but the real concern that she might have chewed into the side of her mouth again. At some point or another, every other Hero, even Dragon Kid, has been asked to ensure she is never left alone: they don't know the Remuneration itself, but they know to keep an eye out on and for her.
But the isolation of the body is only second to the isolation of the mind: there is good reason that sensory deprivation can be considered torture. Losing any of the senses is… disorienting. You have to rely on those others sense to carry the weight. The more you lose, the worse it is, and Karina is already at a one sense disadvantage.
You'd think it wouldn't matter often. It doesn't matter often.
But now, deep in the subway of Stern Bild, it does. As pillars of ice hold back a far worse fate for millions above and two people below, she's shivering in the vast cold darkness that she can neither see or feel. Her balance is swimming, and she can't even feel what her own arms are desperately clinging to by memory alone. Only three sense remain to secure her sanity in this endless darkness, and two are ruined by circumstance: the flu has ruined her smell, and taste as well.
The only lifeline from total oblivion is Tiger's voice. The rambling and repetition, so annoying normally, sounds more precious than her best performance. He's probably figured it out: his voice has grown raspy but still continues, just as it had ever since she cried for him not to leave despite his arms apparently having been around her. A position she might have fantasized about a day ago is now a desperate clinging to anything else in the darkness of senses, and with a grip she can't even feel. It's like cradling sand in a glove, never knowing when it was sliding off.
Even with someone as implicitly reliable as Tiger to hold her… it doesn't change how frightening it actually is to lose that sense. There are times Karina's Remuneration terrifies her.
