Chapter 3
Dancing Blue
Kiriko woke the next morning to find a little girl standing over her, changing the wet cloth that was on her forehead. She blinked, shaking her head slightly as the image came into view. "H-Hello…?" The girl jumped. She lifted her hands, eyes wide.
"Oh, thank goodness you're awake!"
She had long brown hair and wore an orange jacket. Her large green eyes regarded Kiri with wonderment. But all Kiri could think was, who was this kid? She couldn't be older than 9 or 10. And one thing she was sure of was she'd never met her before. She sat up, holding her head and staring confusedly at the girl. She took the cloth off her forehead and held it in her hand awkwardly. "Who are you?"
"My…my name is Kanami." The little girl took Kiri's hands in hers, causing her to go stiff, her eyes wide at the touch. "How are you feeling? Anything hurt? Are you hungry?"
Kiri didn't understand. "Sorry…where am I?" She asked, running a hand through the hair.
"Oh, sorry, I bet you're really confused right now." The girl took the cloth from her and put it in a bowl of warm water on a table next to the bed she was on. "You were asleep when you got here last night."
Slowly, memory began to return to Kiriko. What had been the last thing she remembered seeing? What was the last thing she'd heard?
It came back in flashes. She saw fire. Her eyes widened. A man. A knife. Her hand went stiff, gripping the bed. What did I do? She thought frantically. What the hell did I do?
And then June came into the room. She was smiling at first. "Kanami, how's Kirik—" She saw Kiri and hesitated at the look of fear and confusion that was clearly plastered on her face, embedded into her cold blue eyes. "Kiri-chan? What's wrong?"
Not thinking, Kiri stood up, gripping June's shirt, her mouth tight, and her eyes unblinking. "I didn't hurt anyone, did I?" She could hear her heart pumping in her chest, so loud she was sure the rest of the people in the room could hear it as well.
"N-No. No! Kiriko, calm down, everything's fine…what are you…" Recognition dawned in June's eyes. "Oh, no, Kiri. It's not what you think."
"All I know is the last thing I remember is seeing red in my flames and a man with a knife." Kiri's voice was shaking.
She felt June's hands on her shoulders, pushing her down towards the bed and forcing her to sit. "Nothing happened. I promise."
The blue eyed girl just sat and looked at the ground.
June grabbed her by her chin, forcing her to look at her. "Hey. Trust me." She paused for a few seconds, choosing the right words for what she was going to say next. "We got into a little fight with some of the Inners in the restaurant we were in."
"Right. I remember that."
"And that's it."
"What about the guy with the knife?"
"You didn't touch him. Kimishima showed up. And we left."
"Promise?" Kiri was shaking slightly.
"I promise."
Kiriko breathed softly, calming. She knew what must have happened next. June had done what she always did. She'd snapped Kiri out of it. And that had been the end of things. No need to worry. June was right. She needed to trust her friend. Trust that she was there to make sure nothing got out of control.
And that was that.
June explained everything that had happened to Kiri after she had fallen asleep. Sitting at the kitchen table that morning in Kanami's and Kazuma's house, she was curious to see just who this "Kazuma the Shellbullet" was. She was just running her expectations of him through her head when a bed-headed teenager padded into the room in a red, long sleeved shirt and black pants. He ran fingers through his hair, as though they were combs, and blinked sluggishly, collapsing in a chair at the table across from her.
Kiri looked up from the bowl of cereal in front of her, surprised. She was about to say something like "Hello" or "Good morning", but there was no room for that as the boy yawned sleepily, grabbed the cereal box and filled his bowl. Kiri was just about to add some milk to her own bowl when he snatched the milk jug, not noticing her hand, and put the final touches on his cereal. He dug in. He was stuffing his face when Kiri cocked her eyebrow at him and said, "Are you going to introduce yourself, mystery boy?"
He looked up finally. His mouth was full of Frosty Flakes when he attempted a snotty reply. "Eventually, yeah." However, instead of getting his point across, his words just came out all wishy washy and Kiri only just barely understood what he was trying to say at all.
She laughed. "Try chewing before you talk. It comes out better that way."
He gulped, glaring at her. "I knew that."
"You ready to tell me your name?" Kiri took another bite of cereal, clearly having fun. She eyed the boy curiously as he sneered at her.
"I'm Kazuma. And you're that…Kiro…Kiru…"
"You're Kazuma?" She was almost dumbfounded. This was the legendary Shellbullet? This was the famous alter user who couldn't lose a match? He was just a stupid kid. He didn't even have table manners. Since when did that translate to a work ethic? Since when did that translate to good fighting skills?
"What? You got a problem with my name?"
"No, it's just, I thought you'd be a lot more impressive than this." She said, chuckling a little. "My name's Kiriko by the way."
Kazuma looked furious. His eye twitched and he gritted his teeth. His eyes were locked onto hers. But what actually shocked her was when she heard a small screeching noise and looked down to see that the spoon in Kazuma's hand was bending under the pressure of his thumb. "K-Kazuma!" Her eyes went wide.
At that moment, June and Kanami walked in. Kazuma scrambled to bend the spoon back into place before Kanami saw.
What an interesting guy… Kiri couldn't help thinking as she spooned cereal into her mouth.
June saw the way Kiri and Kazuma were staring each other down as she came to sit down at the table with Kanami. "Uh…Kiri? What's up? I see you met Kazuma."
Kanami seemed to see it, too. She smiled sweetly at Kazuma. "Good morning, Kaza-kun! Did you try the pastries I made? I used a new recipe."
Kazuma, whose foot was tapping impatiently, glanced at her for a second, hardly noticing the girl. "Yeah." He was still in a deathly staring contest with the blue eyed devil across the table from him. This girl is crazy. She almost reminds me of myself. "It was okay."
Kanami seemed to deflate at this. "Oh…"
Kazuma stood up and was about to leave, having finished his cereal, when Kiri spoke up. "Hey! That was mean! Kanami was trying to be nice, and you just turn her away? That's not right! Complement her cooking!"
The messy haired teenager stopped in his tracks. "What did you just say?" He asked, not turning around.
"You heard me." She said in a mocking voice. "Mr. Kazuma the Shellb—"
Kazuma turned in the blink of an eye and reached all the way over the table, shoving his hand over Kiriko's mouth and silencing her mid-sentence. Kiri gasped in shock. Kanami went silent. She'd never seen Kazuma act this way. What was wrong?
June stood up. "Hey! You two just need to cal—"
"We need to talk." He turned to June. "All three of us."
Kazuma took both Kiriko and June outside the house, only seeming to calm down and loose the uptight glare on his face when the door was shut and he was sure that Kanami couldn't hear them. Kiri was fuming. She definitely hadn't liked being shut up by Kazuma. And June was a little on edge. She didn't like not understanding what was going on. Maybe she'd been right to be suspicious of Kazuma after all.
"Look. You two need to know something." He said, slicking his hair back by running a few fingers through it. It just fell back into place, but he didn't seem to be focusing on that at the moment anyway.
"You bet we need to know something. What happened back there?" Kiriko demanded, her face only a couple of feet from Kazuma's, her hands in fists.
"I'm just going to say this simply. It'll be easier that way." He took a deep breath, sighing. "Kanami doesn't know I'm an alter user."
"She what?! You mean you didn't tell her? Kazuma!" Kiri yelled.
"So you can't go around saying stuff like 'Kazuma the Shellbullet' in the house when she's home, okay? And I can't show you guys my alter unless we're somewhere else." He said that last part looking at June.
"Do you have any idea what kind of danger you're putting her in, not letting her know?!" Kiri grabbed a hold of Kazuma's sleeve. "She's just a little girl!"
Kazuma looked down on Kiri. His eyes turned dark, and the condescending sneer left his lips entirely, replaced by a menacing glare. His hair hung in his eyes, casting shadows over his face. For the first time since she'd met him, he looked terrifying. "Don't you think I know that? Telling her would only put her in more danger. That's why she can't know who I am. As long as she's ignorant, she's safe. We're safe."
"That's bullsh—"
There was a chuckle from behind them. June was leaning against the house next to Kazuma. She sighed, letting her head hang forward slightly. "Poor girl. She really looks up to you, you know?" She said, eyeing Kazuma. When she looked at him, her eyes locked directly onto his. She always looked people in the eyes when she spoke. It only gave her words that much more effect. It made Kazuma go stiff. "I wonder what she'd say if she knew what you really were. I sincerely hope that you're not the violent, always-ready-to-fight alter user that I hear you are, Kazuma, because that girl in there is a gentle soul and if it turned out you were a killer, something tells me it would break that child's heart."
Kazuma went silent.
Kiri's grip on Kazuma's sleeve disintegrated. "J-June…"
There was about a minute's worth of time when the world halted in its tracks and June thought that the three of them might be at a standstill. She knew she'd said words that Kazuma hadn't wanted to hear, and Kiri had already been pretty angry. But she didn't know Kazuma well enough to know what he'd do next.
It looked like they still had a lot to learn about him, though, because while her best guess might have been that he would loose his temper, after all she'd seen of the guy, and after having heard Kimishima call him hotheaded—he just stood up and walked away.
Didn't even stop to say "I can't believe this." or "I'm outta here."
He just left. And then he was gone.
June and Kiriko continued staying at Kanami's and Kazuma's house. He hadn't really spoken at all about that first day since. In fact, he'd just magically reappeared later that night as if nothing had happened at all.
He didn't make a big deal about it, so neither did either of the girls.
Life was pretty calm for the next several days. Kiri and June spent their days helping Kanami around the house and exploring the surrounding town, which was a small farming village full of housewives a lot older than Kanami but just as friendly. It wasn't long, though, before Kiri started to get thoroughly bored. Kimishima hadn't returned yet and she was starting to wonder just how long he expected them to stay there. It wasn't like she disliked the place, she just wanted something to do. Kazuma was probably the most exciting thing that had ever happened to that town. He seemed constantly shrouded in mystery to Kiriko. She knew he was an alter user, but she'd never seen his power. And he was constantly disappearing, coming back late in the night when nobody else but Kiri was awake. She never said anything when she heard him sneak back into the house, only to collapse on his usual barber chair. But she knew something big was up.
They'd been in the town for about a week when Kanami came into the room, carrying a bucket with a wet towel and a scrubber in her hand. "Well, I'm going down to the farm to work." She said, smiling and wiping her bangs out of her face with her free hand.
Kiriko looked up from her puddle of boredom, groaning. "Let me come!"
Kanami looked a little surprised. "What? No, you're a guest in our house. I couldn't ask you to—"
"Please, Kanami-chan. I'm dying with nothing to do. I'll do anything if it gets me out of the house."
She laughed her child's laugh. "Well, if you really want to, I guess I don't mind. It would sure be a help. We could always use an extra set of hands."
Kiri turned excitedly to her friend. "Come with me, June! Let's get some fresh air! I know you're just screaming to get out and experience nature~"
June looked sarcastically up at her friend from a large book. "Actually, no. But I'm not assuming you're going to give me an option so I'll make it easy for both of us and agree to go." She smirked.
Kazuma threw the door open just as June was finishing her sentence. "Hey Kanami! Got any of those pastries left in the cupboard?" He said, wiping sweat off his forehead. He looked a little exhausted, as if he'd just run a few laps in the sun. His hair was pushed back, wet. His shirt hung loose on his muscular arms. He glared daggers at Kiriko, still talking to Kanami. "Because your pastries are so amazing, I just had to ask."
"Um…" Kanami hesitated. She glanced down at the bucket in her hands. "Actually, we were all about to go down to the farm. Do you want to come, Kaza-kun?"
"Yeah, Kaza-kun," Kiri said cockily, grinning ear to ear. "Why don't you come with us?"
Kazuma groaned. "But I thought I helped out just last week."
"You left early again!" Kanami scolded him. She put her free hand on her hip in a way that made her look just slightly more threatening than her small feminine frame suggested. "Like you always do."
"Oh, Kazuma, don't tell me you can't handle the work load of a young girl." Kiri laughed.
Kazuma gritted his teeth. "What did you say?"
"How about you get off your—" She glanced at Kanami and decided to rephrase. "How about you come with us, just to get out of the house, oh pretty please, Kaza-kun?"
Kazuma's left eye twitched at the name. It made Kiri's life.
"Fine."
That afternoon, as the sun was beginning to set, Kiriko Kaname sat on the edge of a river in the forest just beyond the small town. In the distance, she could see the rooftops of the farm. And behind her, a small patch of forest gave way to more of the barren wasteland that was the Lost Ground.
Working had been fun. It had given her a chance to stretch her legs and live a little, which she felt she'd been missing since getting to this place. No, it wasn't as though she didn't like settling down a little and catching her breath. Life with Kanami and Kazuma was fun. But she still liked adventure in her life.
She almost envied Kazuma, who got to leave whenever he want, going off to who knew where and coming back at all hours of the night.
Poor Kanami. Whether that boy knew it or not, she worried about Kazuma every minute he was gone.
Kazuma was a useless teenager. Working with him had been a blast, though. They'd been fixing up one of the barn roofs, nailing tiles down. He kept trying to ditch, so when he went to get some water, she put some glue on the handle of his hammer just to see what would happen. And when he came back a few minutes later and started hammering nails, he stopped dead in his tracks when he realized he couldn't put his hammer down.
"Um…Kiri?"
"Yes?" Kiri asked, paying attention to her own work.
"What the hell is this?" He held his hammer up. His hand was outstretched, but there stuck the hammer in the middle of his palm, not detaching from his skin.
Kiri frowned. "That's strange. Isn't gravity just wacky like that?"
Of course, he'd flipped out trying to pull the hammer off. He'd probably hurt his poor palm doing so, too. Poor boy. And of course, she wasn't the least bit sorry.
Eventually, in the chaos, she'd slipped out on her own. And that was how she'd found herself on the side of this little river in the afternoon sun, the clouds bathed in orange above her.
She'd just needed some time to herself. It wasn't that she didn't like Kazuma. But for some reason she couldn't stop thinking about the restaurant fiasco that had started this whole business. She didn't like thinking that she'd lost control of her flames so easily. It scared her. It had been over a year since something remotely like that had happened and, well, she'd almost started to believed that she'd finally learned to control these damned flames.
I guess that was a lie too…
She snapped her fingers and in the palm of her hand, a small white flame ignited in a ball of matching light. The flames danced and swirled within the circle of her fingers. She watched sadly as the flames turned from white to blue. A deep, navy blue that, as always, matched her emotions perfectly.
These darn flames just didn't lie.
And she couldn't lie to them.
She couldn't say she was happy, or just a little tired, or bored, even. Not when the flames sitting patiently in the center of her hand danced a dark blue dance.
Sadness.
She gasped as, out of nowhere, an inhuman red and orange hand appeared from behind her. "Aahh!" Kiri stumbled back, but before her flames extinguished in surprise, the hand lowered over hers. It was huge. Many times larger than her own. The center was red, its fingers a deep orange hue, and each one tipped in what could almost be considered a claw. It looked almost robotic. The hand enclosed over her own, and as her hand closed, she saw her flames do something she'd never seen them do before.
Separate and apart from her own will, apart from anything she had control over, not of her own will and certainly not by accident…they went out.
It wasn't painful. In fact, her flames didn't even flicker the lightest hint of red that would have clearly signaled outside control or some type of uncalled for manipulation.
She looked up in shock to see that she was gazing into the eyes of the useless teenager she'd been thinking of just a few moments ago. "K-Kazuma?"
He didn't say anything. He just stared at her.
How had he done that? How had he just put out her flames as if it wasn't even a problem?
She looked down at his arm. Her eyes widened, dilating. Alter power. So this was it.
Kazuma the Shellbullet.
"Omniscient Pyre, huh?" Kazuma smirked condescendingly. "I had a feeling you were the fiery type."
