Hello again. Just putting up another chapter and waiting for responses.
Mai-Hime and related belong to Sunrise.
II
The phone always tends to ring at the worst opportunities.
When you need to get the laundry...
When you're in the bathroom...
When you've just started cooking dinner...
And in the case of Kuga Natsuki, it begins to ring in a shrill J-pop tune as she is busy burying her knuckles into the face of a man nearly twice her height and easily three times her weight. He takes a blind swing in response, which she neatly ducks under considering she can easily fit under his armpit when they stand side-by-side. She pauses to allow him let go of the momentum of his punch, watches the man slump to his knees, and plants a foot onto his collarbone to quickly shove him down to the ground. He fails to put up a fight, instead choosing to slump over and play dead briefly which is excellent news for her. The ring-tone is driving her nuts and she makes a mental note to strangle Yuuki Nao the next time she sees the delinquent running around town.. Through her murderous thoughts the phone is still ringing and the corner of her lips twitch as she massages the knuckles of her right hand. She gives it another five seconds and the man beside her groans almost in annoyance. Annoyance? Natsuki gives the man a smart kick in the ribs.
"I'll have you know that I didn't program this ring-tone in," she says in an almost conversational tone.
The man says nothing in response, now allowing Natsuki to fish her phone out of the front pocket of her jeans.
"Yo."
She looks down at the body next to her feet and she nudges it experimentally with the toe of her sneakers.
"Yep, he's down for the count."
She winces at the torrent of yelling that cascades into her ear.
"Okay, look here. It's not like he wanted to come quietly, so I kinda had to soften him up a little."
A pause.
"... Oh no, that ain't fair at all! This is some bullshit, you never told me that roughing him up was going to end up costing me money! You better remember that I'm picking up the slack that you decided to load on me for tonight!"
An aggravated groan punctuates the end of the conversation and Natsuki shoves the phone back into her pocket. A reedy sigh escapes her lips as she surveys the damage done, first to herself. Her hand will heal by the morning, although it would probably be a little sore for a few days at the least. Her attention then spans over towards the more unfortunate of the two. The man isn't going to wake up anytime soon, and she is in no mood to go spelunking through his pockets in order to at least find some cash to make up for what is supposedly her mistake. Robbing someone blind is messy in her opinion. She ultimately decides to let the man sleep off his injuries. The longer she stays, the more likely she will get caught, and it would take more than a pretty penny to bail Kuga Natsuki out of jail.
Her musing mind and fast feet bring her to a spacious rooftop, the reconstructed rooftop of Fuuka Gakuen. At the recognition of her new settings her auto-pilot shuts off and she breathes for the first time in relative peace. She shoves her hands into her pockets and kneels down at the edge of the rooftop, piercing the night sky with those cloudless emerald eyes of hers. Fuuka is a sleepy town, as usual, but one can never be too careful when the sun goes down. She watches the night silently, an unmoving gargoyle dressed in jeans, a modest t-shirt, and a leather jacket with a collar fringed with white fur. The cold fails to bother her anymore even without the presence of the wolf-child that used to glimmer in the darkness of her mind. Indeed, even her breath fails to mist in the subzero temperatures as she wordlessly views the town from her perch.
She isn't the first to rediscover these abilities that were thought to be lost forever with the exit of their Carnival. After all it is Nao who gleefully skipped around telling the others that she was not out of a job. On the contrary she is nearly bogged down by the abrupt increase in opportunities. Those creepers who shamelessly lust after her are still tied up in impossible knots, writhing in their inevitable shame of being discovered. So on, and so forth.
What good is there to have abilities and be unable to use them properly? Natsuki for once is in agreement with Nao over this sentiment despite the hesitation the others showed from this revelation. It doesn't really matter what the others think. Besides, it is all Natsuki wants to do now. Her brains will lie forever more with the science and math textbooks laid aside in her apartment, brimming with logic and equations, but her hands will never stop twitching until they are exposed accordingly. This feeling can only be quenched by one thing, and it is this thing that causes Natsuki to wear the darkness like a favorite cloak that has just been returned. She is now the watcher over the destitute and the punishment sent for the unworthy. It is a strange thing to label Kuga Natsuki as a hero, but there is really no other way to name her current occupation.
The wind whistles through her hair and she closes her eyes for a second. The wind always carries fickle messages. Some days it carries the endings and beginnings of wistful conversations spoken between couples. Some days it carries the screams of injustice and Natsuki listens to those the most fervently. But today the wind carries with it nothing but a calm silence. Natsuki once mistook a silent wind as a message of peace.
Peace, written through violence. And it is such a thankless occupation. Natsuki can feel her muscles groan in protest as she thinks on this. The wind slowly stops blowing, giving Natsuki nothing to work on. But it is times like this where Natsuki tends to settle on one thought, and one thought only.
She just wants to go home.
Home? But where on earth is that?
Crimson eyes flit into her vision and she finds herself smiling despite the growing cold in her heart.
"Oh... I just wanna go home, sometimes. Is it too much to ask?"
The night sky is silent in its musings. She remembers earlier today, that fateful meeting on the rail that failed to save the life of her mother. She understands, she goes through the motions, but those hollow eyes that stared at her earlier today cause her to bite her lip and ball her hands into fists.
"They don't have to understand this... they don't have to understand us."
She seems momentarily placated by her own statement.
She is a warrior, always has been. Even when thinking of past lives she always imagines herself to be something of a soldier, following a mission and fighting on her own terms, but always for something she believes in. It is one of the few comforting thoughts that allow her raging heart to still and her nerves to calm down.
"This school, this town, I'll watch over it. I'll watch over it until you're stronger again."
She leaps from her perch in a glorious arc, blue and black seemingly racing towards the stars only to be brought back by force of gravity. Gravity is merely a nuisance to her as her feet land squarely on the ground, the slight crouch only implemented to absorb shock. She looks up and stares at the school's clock before offering a small salute in acknowledgment. Her smile is almost playful despite the severity of her mission.
"I promise... Kaichou."
Natsuki is not alone in her vigilante ways, nor are her reasons out of the ordinary. It is the Sister who is several continents and only a heartbeat away who is struck down first, several months ago. They receive the notice of her death in the mail and are at once staring at each other like they are rivals once more. It is not to blame one another for the death of their comrade, but in order to silently measure each other up. There is going to be another battle. The deadly dance of death has resumed its song, and the participants have been asked to join together back in this dance floor of carnage. And this time there will be no deadline before the end of the world occurs.
This thought alone occupies the mind of Tokiha Mai as she sits in the still darkness of her—their—dorm room.
She is used to this sitting and waiting business. Natsuki is never back when she says she will be. But the patrols take longer now that their numbers are scarce and alliances are lost in the tides of confusion and outright refusal to revisit the past. So far it's been a tame affair, just a few punks here and there that need to be taught a lesson—that they would vastly prefer being left alone. Natsuki seems to be the only one with a clue on what is going on and why they keep being targeted, but it does not settle Mai's conscience even if she is privy to the information. As the de facto winner of the Carnival, it is she who should be outside patrolling the streets in order to protect her home, not the wild card who would rather do nothing but race her motorcycle against the wind. But Mai's hands have abstained from violence for a long time, now, and the blood lust has left her violet eyes with each passing winter day.
She looks over at the wooden box on the table beside her. With a soft frown she grabs the box and opens its contents. A pair of golden handcuffs gleam in the dimly-lit dorm room, and for a second she traces the dragons' heads that adorn the locks of the handcuffs. With a sigh she shuts the box and puts it back on the table, refusing to look at it.
The handcuffs arrived several days ago in an unmarked box, dropped off at the front door. Natsuki of course is still suspicious of the package, but Mai seems more unnerved than she over the contents of the box itself. The handcuffs have no obvious hinges, no key to unlock them should they accidentally be used, and the overall design is a bit too ancient for comfort... much like their weapons in the past. Mai shudders.
She is not fit to be their leader. They all know that. Frankly she is surprised they haven't turned on her first.
But it is Mai who Natsuki dutifully reports to every morning when she finally arrives, tired but still so full of vigor that Mai can only wonder where it comes from. Then comes the interesting leftovers of their once seemingly limitless powers. It is winter, after all, and Natsuki will never be as strong as she is now while the temperatures dip below the freezing mark. When summer begins to show its face, then it will be Mai's turn to shine through the beams of sunlight that cut through this dark and dreary cold. But for now she wonders if summer will ever come before whatever it is they are watching for will finally show its face.
The handcuffs seem to smirk at her thoughts, writing them off as outrageously foolish.
Haruka and Yukino have already spent days tinkering over the device in question, but the open mouths of the dragon-locks seem to only laugh at the futile efforts. Their experiments stopped when Haruka threatened to take a hammer to the handcuffs, but even with that threat paid in full the handcuffs had yet to yield its mystery to the waiting crowd. So the laughing dragons with ruby eyes continue to sit in their box, relatively undisturbed while Yukino agonizes over search results into the wee hours of the morning. Mai has no idea how Yukino manages to sit herself down in front of a blinking screen for so long over something so fruitless—she easily gets a headache just looking at the closed box.
The door opens as quietly as it can, but Mai's ears pick up the small squeak that never fails to betray it at the last second. Immediately her senses, dulled as they are by the weather, kick into overdrive and she unconsciously grips a pen left on the desk. The plastic warms immediately to her touch, but a blast of familiar cold air hits her face and she drops the pen, failing to notice the soft indents of her fingers against the softened plastic. But Natsuki notices, and she raises an eyebrow in the darkness. Her eyes carry an unearthly glow to them, but they are mirrored by violet orbs that look up at her.
"I told you that you didn't have to stay up, I can report to you in the morning," Natsuki says, breaking the silence with her usual gruff tones. "The information isn't going to change, not too much anyway."
"Did you find anything?" Mai asks in the stillness.
Natsuki takes off her jacket wordlessly, tossing it against the couch that Mai is sitting on. She twists her arms, feeling the joints of her elbows pop in response. It has been a rough night, and now her body is ready to relax. But she keeps her mind alert as she eyes the kitchen for a moment.
"I did. Turns out he's an ex-worker for Searrs. It seems we are too precious for them to leave us alone."
Natsuki walks towards the kitchen and flips on a light, momentarily blinding Mai with the sudden flash. A brief rummage in the fridge reveals a bottle of orange juice, and Natsuki finally remembers to bring a cup back with her. If it is one thing Mai cannot stand, it's that Natsuki tends to ignore social etiquette in the house and drink straight from the carton. But it must be something serious, now, to prompt Natsuki to remember not to piss Mai off. The older girl catches Mai's unsure glance and more or less nods.
"It's not looking too good," Natsuki admits after drinking half the glass. "Nao's doing god-knows-what in the city and I can barely even keep in contact with her, so I'm kinda up shit creek without a paddle in terms of manpower. Going after targets one at a time is going to arouse their suspicion quicker, and they'll have enough time to formulate a counter-attack. We need to think of something else, a better plan."
"And with Akane-chan and Midori-san outside of Fuuka, we've had little luck in contacting them and telling them what's been going on," Mai adds as an afterthought.
Natsuki offers no reply for a moment, choosing instead to refill her glass.
"Like I said, we're kinda out of luck now."
"... And Fujino-san?"
Natsuki stops drinking from her glass, fixing Mai with a steady look.
"... What about Shizuru?"
"I mean... wouldn't it be easier if she helped us?" Mai asks, her voice taking on a pleading tone that even she hates to use.
"It's not that simple," Natsuki argues in a tone that clearly tells Mai to drop it.
"But—"
"Just drop it."
Natsuki gets up abruptly and puts the carton of juice away, flipping off the light to the kitchen when finished. They are washed in darkness once more as Natsuki stares down at her sitting roommate who has now gone back to staring at the box.
"We are going to take care of things, until all of us are in a condition to band together and fight," Natsuki says firmly, allowing no argument to pass. "Until then, we are going to watch and wait."
Mai offers none, instead staring pointedly at the box. Natsuki finally allows herself to look at it.
"We still don't know what to do with that, do we?" Natsuki mutters softly.
"No, I'm afraid not."
"Hm... another mystery, I suppose."
Natsuki sighs and shakes her head, mumbling something about having a good night. Mai squints over at the blinds, noticing the first rays of sunlight starting to peak through the haze.
"Yeah... go get some sleep, Natsuki."
Mai stands up and stretches. It would do no good to dwell too long on the thoughts that were now ebbing away with the sight of the sun. She raises the blinds and takes in a deep breath, noticing not for the first time the burning red mark in the skies above. It is not the sun, for the sun is still a slowly-rising disc in the horizon. No, this is an angry red mark, a star that burns fiercely in the heavens above, only to be seen by those who seek it out. Natsuki pointedly refuses to look at it, thinking that she mght lose herself in the fiery mark. And this time, not even Mai can quench the burning feeling at the pit of her stomach. Her eyes slowly travel down the length of hallway Natsuki has just taken to go to her room.
Oh... it would just be so easy.
The blood rushes to her ears, drowning her thoughts with the sound of her own heartbeat. In her reflection her eyes are taking on a curious glow that burns from within. It seeps out from her heart and towards her hands. Her fingertips are now glowing with a white light as if someone has flicked on a flashlight and shone it through the skin, only this glowing is surely stemming from within her hands. Just as soon as it registers, however, so does her conscience, and she roughly shakes her head to rid herself of the sensation. Her fingertips cool but she does not trust herself to touch anything just yet, instead settling for balling her hands into fists.
"... It's getting harder to keep this down."
Her own words sound tired to her despite having had a solid eight hours of sleep.
"... Definitely a lot harder, now."
AN: I am trying to establish a timeline without making it too set in stone. I want to say it's been at least half a year after the Carnival.
As for the plot... eh. It'll probably weave itself into something resembling a plot within the next few chapters. It's not going to be a rehash of the Hime system like Winter's Road. If anything it could be more of a story of human emotions set up against inhuman forces.
Hopefully by the next chapter Shizuru and Natsuki's relationship will be better-understood. Hopefully.
Cheers.
