Disclaimer: AMG is not mine. The song Urd sings is "Bonny Portmore." I wanted a song that had the same haunting melody as the song Belldandy sings but with a more depressing bent. "Back in Black" is by ACDC.
Ah! My Goddess!
Haloes
Chapter 11
The Oak and the Ash Tree - Part 1
"And how did hearing that make you feel?" Belldandy asked as the two came to a stop across the street from an elementary school.
Urd looked up at the school. Classes hadn't let out yet. It was obvious she was stalling.
"Does this look like a good school?" she asked Belldandy. "I think it must be a good school."
Belldandy looked down at the sidewalk. "How did you feel?" she pressed firmly.
"Actually... I laughed at her," Urd confessed. "It was just so ridiculous. First, the idea that he would even consider that..." Her voice turned harsh in self reproach. "And the idea that I would betray you like that..."
She paused, perhaps waiting for Belldandy to throw in that she had. When Belldandy said nothing, she continued on.
"I didn't give it much thought at first," she said. "As time went on, and he got better, it grew more and more in my head to the point where it started to preoccupy me."
Nine years ago...
Sif stepped outside and shut the door behind her, watching her breath become foggy mist in the cold before her eyes. Adjusting her coat, she hopped down the temple steps and walked through the fresh snow on the temple grounds.
She took stock of the amount of snow and decided it would have to be shoveled today. Keiichi was out this morning and had been since about two a.m. when the call came from Hotaru that the civil auxiliary had been activated. Some hikers had gotten lost in the woods, and every plane in the area was asked to help search. Keiichi would be in the back seat of the Shinden for a few more hours most likely. Which meant that Sif was shoveling today.
She sighed and shivered to herself. December in Nekomi was quite chilly. The goddess was about to turn back and go make herself a hot cup of tea when she heard it.
Singing.
Her mind went immediately back to Heaven, to her childhood playing with Belldandy at her family's home in Elysium. She started toward the sound, walking toward the stand of trees at the north side of the residence.
"Oh, bonny Portmore, you shine where you stand...
And the more I think on you... the more I think long..."
She stepped a little faster, thinking perhaps the impossible had happened and Belldandy had returned. The similarity in the voice as uncanny. With the leaves off the trees, she could see through the stand easily, and it didn't take long before she saw the voice's owner.
"If I had you now as... I had once before...
All the lords in old England... would not purchase Portmore."
Sif watched Urd, standing before a large oak tree still clinging to a few yellow leaves, her voice reaching out to it in a tone so sad it made Sif's heart break. It was obvious something was on the Norn's mind. She never heard her sing.
"All the birds in the forest... they bitterly weep...
Sighing, 'Where shall we shelter? Where shall we sleep?'"
Moved, Sif closed her eyes and let the melody flow over her.
"For the oak and the ash tree...are all cutten down...
And the walls of bonny Portmore... are all down to the ground.
Oh, bonny Portmore, you shine where you stand,
And the more I think on you... the more I think long...
If I had you now as... I had once before...
All the lords in old England... would not purchase Portmore..."
Sif opened her eyes and found Urd still staring at the tree, a green bud popping up here and there. She stepped forward, her boots making a crunching sound as she crushed the snow beneath them.
"Urd san?" she asked tentatively. She knew something was bothering her. Urd was never up this early. "Are you okay?"
The Norn finally turned to her. "Oh... Hey," she said as if realizing the other goddess was there.
Sif studied her intently, trying to guess the goddess's worry. "Are you concerned for Keiichi sama?" she asked. At Urd's start, she guessed she must be right and continued. "I don't think you need to be. The snowfall is very light, and Hotaru san is an accomplished pilot."
"Oh," Urd said, rubbing her hands together for warmth as she started for the house. "Yeah. I'm sure he's fine."
The blonde blinked at her, more confused now than ever. "Are you worried about his state of mind, then?" This would make even less sense. In the last six months, Keiichi had made an incredible recovery. His hope and faith and had returned to him... even as Urd's seemed to decline.
"I just have a lot on my mind," Urd told her.
"Ah!" Sif said, falling into step beside her. "Are you trying to come up with Christmas gifts?"
"Gifts?" Urd asked absently.
"Indeed!" Sif replied. "You haven't gone shopping yet. Are you still trying to decide what to get him?"
"Yeah," Urd lied. "Still looking for ideas. You got any?"
"A sweater!" Sif answered immediately, without thinking.
Urd froze. "I'm not getting him a sweater."
"But why not?" Sif asked. "It's chilly out."
"Belldandy knit him a sweater," Urd said. "A great sweater that traveled across destiny to find him after we lost it. No sweaters."
Sif studied her face, saw Urd biting her lip as she walked.
"You know what you want to get him," Sif told her. "You just don't want to say."
Urd stopped. Sif waited patiently for her to go on.
The Norn met her eyes, a very serious look on her face, as if she was about to announce that she put a hit out on Keiichi.
"I want to get him a girlfriend," she said.
Sif was so shocked, she took a step back. Her hand went to her mouth while her face turned rosy, and not from the cold.
"You... you want..." she whispered. She leaned in and continued. "You want to pay a girl to... with Keiichi sama?"
"No!" Urd cried. "Are you nuts?!"
"Well, I just mean..." Sif said, embarrassed. "I just... I thought..."
Urd shook her head and continued walking. "He's twenty-two, and he's withdrawing."
"Withdrawing?" Sif repeated. She didn't get that impression. "But he seems happier now."
"He's happier because he's convinced Belldandy's coming back," Urd told her. "So he's not even trying."
"He can't try, Urd san," Sif reminded her. "If he does, the System Force becomes irritated. That's why they call him... oh, what is it?" she tried to remember. "Curse?"
"Jinx," the Norn supplied with a sigh. Cake wasn't the only girl to make a pass at Keiichi, and after the third girl made a run at him and ended up with a mouthful of concrete for her trouble, rumors started to fly around the Aeronautics Club. At first, suspicion fell on Urd as a potential evil rival, but after awhile, it was concluded that Keiichi was simply jinxed, hence the callsign.
Urd chewed the inside of her cheek. "But he's not even thinking along those lines anymore. He's not in the right mindset. I mean, if he meets a nice girl that he really likes, I'd give up the contract and let him live happily ever after, you know?" She paused and shook her head. "He's a good guy. He should have a girlfriend." Her voice lowered to just above a whisper. "As long as he's waiting for Belldandy, he'll never have the opportunity."
"But isn't that a good thing?" Sif asked. "I mean, when Belldandy comes back..."
"Belldandy's not coming back!" Urd shouted at her.
Sif blinked. "Well, that's absurd," she said. "That gypsy told him..."
"The gypsy's a fraud, Sif," Urd told her, omitting the things it had told her. "She tells you what you want to hear because you give her money. Nobody pays to hear about what a sad, shitty life you're going to have!"
The blonde thought on this. It didn't seem very nice to lie about the future. Even so...
"Then... what makes you think she's never coming back?" Sif asked. "Heaven is still negotiating with Hild. It's within the realm of possibility."
Urd tensed. Yes, she knew for certain how things were going to be, but she couldn't explain that without undercutting what she had just said about Desdemona. Her lies had boxed her in. She chastised herself silently. She was a better liar than that.
"I just know," she whispered.
Sif looked at her sympathetically, but nevertheless drew the wrong conclusion. "I think you're internalizing this."
"What?"
The blonde goddess smiled for her benefit. "You're taking too much of this on yourself," she went on. "You're not expected to grant all his wishes. You don't have to try so hard. All a mortal can do is make the best of the wish he was granted. It's not your job to guarantee his happiness."
Urd looked at her with pain-filled eyes, and Sif wondered what she had said to cause such a look.
"No," Urd finally said. "It's not. It's Belldandy's."
888
Keiichi winced as a blast of winter wind rocked the Shinden again. The weather over the national nature preserve was getting worse with snow and clouds making it almost impossible to see, the world itself covered in a blanket of white. The bumps caused by turbulence weren't new to him; training to be a demo pilot meant Hotaru taking him up in the Shinden with the express purpose of kicking his ass almost daily. He just wished she'd turn the music down.
"I've been look'n at the sky, 'cause it's getting me high,
Forget the hearse, 'cause I never die!"
Listening to Hotaru sing along with ACDC wouldn't be so bad if he couldn't also hear the Shinden doing it too. Instead, he focused on the monitor on the right side of his panel. The infrared camera, or FLIR, was sensitive enough to pick up a person's body heat, even in this weather.
Somewhere out there were three hikers who went out before this sudden storm popped up. Keiichi hoped they were okay.
He blinked as something popped up on the FLIR, just for a second, but he would swear he saw something.
"Hey!" he shouted to the pilot. "Hey, Razor!"
"Baaaack in blaaaack! Baaaack in blaaack!"
He reached up and smacked the back of her headset.
"Oi, prick!" she cried. "What's all that for?!"
Keiichi shouted over the music. "I think I saw something! Do a one-eighty and veer left!"
She turned the Shinden, and Keiichi watched the screen. There! A heat source, but very faint.
"I think we got something!" he shouted up to her.
Like someone hit a switch, Hotaru suddenly turned serious. She cut the music and clicked her mic. "Rescue Control, this is Nevada One-Two-One-Papa-Papa," she said. "We got a contact."
"Roger, Nevada One-Two-One-Papa-Papa," Cake's voice came over the headset. "Give me your GPS coordinates."
Keiichi read the coordinates to her and paused. "We're going to circle until the helicopter gets here," he told her. "Is that okay, Razor?"
Hotaru nodded. "Yeah, we got fuel for that."
888
The Shinden beat the helicopter back to the airfield by forty-five minutes. Jiroo and the Brothers Z were pushing the airplane into the hangar and out of the weather when the JASDF HH-60 landed nearby. Keiichi watched as two women and a pair of paramedics ran up to the helicopter to pull three men from the chopper and into the ambulance.
"They going to be okay, you think?" Keiichi asked Hotaru as the maintainers started closing the hangar doors.
"Maybe," she said. "Got a better chance in that ambulance than out in that soup." She slapped his back. "Good catch, Jinx."
"Thanks," he said, still watching them. One of the women who had run out to the helicopter paused and caught sight of him. She quickly bowed, perhaps in thanks, before running to the ambulance. Keiichi surmised she was probably family, a daughter or a sister.
He shivered and stepped back into the hangar.
888
Keiichi looked at the review question and smiled, knowing the answer before he was even finished.
A jet engine recovered from a crash is found to have dirt inside it. What does this indicate?
He selected the right answer and moved on. The student had bombed the classes he was taking when Belldandy was sealed, too emotionally screwed up to put in the work necessary. The following semester, he changed his major to aeronautical engineering and had attacked the course material with a convert's zeal. With exams next week, he could confidently say he was ready.
Keiichi looked up at the sound of the knock on his door and found Sif standing there, a cup and saucer in her hand.
"I made you some cocoa," she announced. "May I come in?"
"Sure," he said, indicating the seat on the other side of the small table he was sitting at.
Sif placed the cup of cocoa before him and sat down. "Keiichi sama," she began without preamble. "I am concerned about Urd's emotional health."
Keiichi's eyes widened at the statement. For the last nine months Urd had been his oak, his strength. "What makes you say that?" he asked her.
The goddess paused, trying to find the best words to describe her concern. "She misses Belldandy a great deal," she told him quietly. "She is determined to fill the gaps she left behind one way or another. This morning, I heard her singing to the trees outside. I know Belldandy used to do that, but I had never known Urd to do such a thing. And then there's you..."
"Me?" Keiichi asked. "What about me?"
"She is so concerned for you, Keiichi sama," Sif went on. "She has taken all of it on her shoulders. She also believes..." She went quiet for a moment, not sure she should speak more of it. "She also believes that you place too much faith in the words of that gypsy."
Keiichi looked away for a moment and took a breath. "Sif, I don't believe Belldandy will come back because Desdemona said so," he told her. "I believe it because I have to, because I know we're supposed to be together. Hearing Desdemona confirm it just reinforced it, that's all."
"Nevertheless, Urd is concerned for you," Sif went on. "To the point where I fear for her emotional state."
The boy nodded. "What can I do?"
Sif licked her lips. Reaching across the table, she took his hands in her own. "Trust her," she said. "She sees herself as your guardian or your caretaker. No matter what, know that she has your best interest at heart. Trust in her."
He gave her a sardonic smile. "Trust Urd?" he asked. "A year ago trusting Urd would get me in soooooo much trouble." He trailed off and nodded. "But okay. I'll keep an open mind."
"She may attempt to... um... interfere... in the future," Sif warned him.
"Gee, there's a switch," Keiichi replied, rolling his eyes. "But I promise, Sif. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt. She's been there for me for the last nine months. She hasn't turned her back on me, and I won't turn mine on her."
Sif smiled brightly. "Good! Thank you, Keiichi sama!"
It was at that moment that Urd poked her head around the corner. "Hey, I got a shoot," she said. "See you tonight."
"Wait," Keiichi told her, rising to his feet. "I'll give you a lift."
"The Beemer in this weather?" Urd asked with an arched eyebrow. "Thanks, but no thanks. I'll walk."
"Then I'll walk you there," he replied.
Urd looked uncomfortable for half a second before her old defenses kicked back in. "Okay, whatever." She started down the hall.
Keiichi grabbed his coat and threw Sif a wink as he followed her.
888
The sun was starting to go down as they left the temple and started for the train station. At first, Keiichi remained silent, waiting for Urd to speak, hoping he'd be able to gauge her emotional state from her tone, but the goddess was silent. Finally, he decided to break the ice.
"I think it's warming up," he said, shivering a bit.
"Then you're insane," she replied. "It's freezing."
"Heck, next to Hokkaido this is a summer day at the beach," he told her with a smile. "You've never been there, but..."
"I was there," she said, cutting him off. "With Belldandy and Skuld. Back when Hild tried to take you from Belldandy." Like mother, like daughter, a voice whispered in her head. She bit her lip angrily and kept her mouth shut.
"Well, then you know what I mean," he said, keeping things light. They walked quietly for another few minutes before he tried again. "What are you getting Sif for Christmas?" he asked.
"A sweater," she replied without thinking. "She keeps mentioning them."
He nodded. "I want to get her something nice, you know. Kinda say thanks for all the stuff she does."
She didn't answer, absorbed in her own thoughts. For six months she'd been fighting this battle with herself. Someone said there were stages or levels of acceptance. Denial, anger and such. She started with disbelief, outright calling Desdemona a liar to her face.
The gypsy didn't seem to care, only shrugging and returning to her nails. Urd remembered something about her mother at that point, something that was difficult for an outsider to believe. Hild didn't really care for lying. She preferred the truth. Lying took effort, planning, and once you were caught, the game was over. The truth, however, could hurt just as much when applied in the right ways at the right times. The truth could kill and had the added benefit of being undeniable.
She supposed denial was next, if that was any different from disbelief. Perhaps the difference was that disbelief was where she assumed Desdemona was lying as opposed to later when she just assumed she was wrong.
What was next? Anger? Or was it depression? She believed she was now in a little of both, but in some sort of weird cycle that repeated itself over and over again. Because no matter how much she refused to believe in the possibility, it was also very difficult to shake the eerie feeling that accompanied knowing such a thing about the future. It was a tingling, seductive feeling to look across the dinner table at an unsuspecting man and know that he was going to marry you, that he was going to fall in love with you. That feeling led to a warmth in her stomach.
Then she'd catch herself and get angry for allowing herself that betrayal, however slight, of her sister. What kind of woman, what kind of slut, thinks and feels that about her sister's boyfriend?
Then the depression would fall on her like a filthy blanket, wrapping her in guilt, as she tried to find some other way to feel.
"Urd?"
"Huh?" she replied suddenly.
Keiichi was looking at her in concern. "I was saying maybe we should all go shopping this weekend," he said. "Pick up some Christmas stuff."
"Yeah," she said, with a quick nod. "Yeah, that's a good idea." She licked her lips and turned to him again. "What do you want for Christmas?" she asked.
He smiled. "You don't have to get me anything, Urd," he said. "You're paying for my flying lessons, and after everything you've done this year, I couldn't ask for anything more."
"That wasn't the question," she told him pointedly.
The college student shrugged. "Get me anything," he said. "I trust you."
"Do you really?" she asked suddenly.
"What's bothering you?" he came out directly. "You've been acting off for awhile now."
"I'm fine," she said. She turned and found themselves just outside the train station. "Thanks for walking me here," she said. "I'll see you tonight." She started for the door.
"Urd..."
"I'm fine," she said defiantly. "Really, Keiichi. I am. Go home. Study. You have exams next week."
With that, she disappeared inside.
Keiichi sighed. "Dammit."
888
Hotaru held the bar over his head and hissed down at him. "Come on, you whinging, yobbo whacker root rat! Stop whinging and push, ya big baby! I bet your little sister could bench this, wussy little perv!"
Lying on the bench under her, Keiichi pushed, trying not to laugh at the string of expletives he couldn't even understand.
"You think flying demo is just sitting in a chair pushing buttons?" she asked. "You're getting your arse knocked around while flipped upside down and fucked inside and out," she went on. "So push!"
Keiichi extended his arms all the way, and Hotaru grabbed the bar and guided it back to the brackets.
"Good onya, mate," she said as he rested. He sat up and stretched his arms, rotating his shoulders. Hotaru nodded appreciatively. "Improving. Bet the ladies at your house like the new guns."
Keiichi chuckled. "BB guns, maybe," he said. "Never been the muscular type. Tamiya tried to get me to work out with him, but I just never got into it."
"Yeah, well you need to," she told him. "I'm not kidding about flying demo. It's like you're getting beat up every time you fly a set."
"Hey, Razor, Jinx," Jiroo called from the doorway of the hangar's makeshift weight room. "You got a visitor."
"It ain't the booze bus, is it?" Hotaru asked.
"Nah, it's some girl," Jiroo said, chucking his thumb behind him.
They walked out of the weight room and across the hangar where a well-dressed young woman about Keiichi's age stood, a fruit basket in one hand and a bouquet of roses in the other. She looked familiar to Keiichi, her hair pulled back into a braid while a pair of glasses framed her eyes. She was a very pretty girl, and something about her, something around the eyes, made him think of Belldandy.
"G'day!" Hotaru greeted her. "I'm Hotaru Woodward. This is Keiichi Morisato. You looking for lessons?"
"No," the woman replied in a musical contralto. She bowed to them. "My name is Kiyoshi Takeda. You're the pilots who found my father and brothers?"
"Oh, them!" Hotaru replied. "That's us."
Kiyoshi bowed again and offered the flowers to Hotaru, who took them with a smile. She turned and held the fruit out to Keiichi, who took the basket with a bow.
"I know this isn't much," she said. "But please accept them and my sincerest thanks for saving their lives."
"Oh... well..." Hotaru blushed, unused to such praise. "That's right nice of you. Thank you."
"Is this the plane you found them in?" she asked, looking up at the Shinden.
"Yeah, that's her," Keiichi said.
"It's so... different," Kiyoshi commented. "I've never seen anything like it. Were you the one flying it?" she asked the young man.
"Oh, no, that was Razor," Keiichi told her, gesturing to Hotaru.
"Don't let him off that easy," Hotaru threw in. "He's the only reason we found them at all. They only showed up on FLIR for a hot second and that was it. Anyone else would've missed them for sure."
"Oh, then I must thank you again," Kiyoshi told him with another bow.
"Well, I..."
"Will you show me more of your airplane?" she asked him.
Standing nearby, Jiroo traded alarmed looks with the other maintainers.
"M...Maybe that's not such a good idea," Hotaru injected, catching wind of what was happening.
"It's not?" Kiyoshi asked. "I'm sorry... did I do something wrong?"
"No," Keiichi said, totally missing what everyone else was seeing. "Not at all. It looks different because it was an ex..."
As lead maintainer, Jiroo felt it was his duty to protect his hangar, his bird and his fellow mechanics. The boy pushed between them and faced Kiyoshi.
"I'm sorry, Ma'am," he said, all business. "But I'm going to have to ask you to not flirt with our demo pilot."
Called out in such an abrupt and crass manner, Kiyoshi turned beet red in embarrassment.
"Ex... Excuse me!?" she cried, anger starting to rise into her voice.
"Jiroo, what..." Keiichi began, aghast.
"Sorry, Jinx," Jiroo told him. "But last time this happened, a propeller spun off a Cessna and put a hole in the hangar wall." He turned back to Kiyoshi. "Keiichi here is real flattered that you're into him and all," he explained. "But for the safety of everyone here, I'm going to have to ask that you refrain from trying to pick him up."
"Jiroo, what the hell!?" Keiichi cried. "Hotaru are you..." He turned and saw Hotaru through the open hangar door, hopping into her jeep and driving away as fast as she could. "Hotaru! You coward!" he shouted.
Kiyoshi balled her hands into fists, the light refracting through her glasses gave her eyes an evil glint to them.
"Excuse me, sir," she bit out. "But I was having a private conversation with Keiichi san. And whether that conversation involves flirting or an illicit drug transaction, it is no business of yours!"
"Ma'am, it's a safety issue," Jiroo argued, backing up a pace.
"A safety issue?!" Kiyoshi cried. "That's absurd! Are you trying to tell me that just me talking to Keiichi san is a cause of concern?!"
"Um... yes?" Jiroo replied.
Kiyoshi's hand shot out and snagged Keiichi's. Looking up into his eyes, she caught his full attention.
"Keiichi san, would you have dinner with me tomorrow night so that I can thank you properly for rescuing my father and brothers?"
Every maintainer in the hangar cried out in panic and dived behind whatever cover they could find.
Yet, miraculously, nothing happened.
Keiichi stood there like a man who just stepped on a landmine only to find it was a dud. The System Force, despite being given a clear and present danger to him and Urd staying together, had done nothing.
"Um... well... um..." he stammered.
The girl seemed to think her honor was at stake and squeezed his hand. "I cannot accept no for an answer," she told him. "Please let me take you to dinner."
Peeking up over a crate, Kit Kat interjected. "Could you please take this conversation outside before you kill us all?"
Kiyoshi squeezed his hand again, her eyes imploring him.
"Yeah," he blurted. "Okay."
As if a storm had passed, she smiled and released his hand. "Wonderful! Shall we meet here tomorrow night? Seven o'clock?"
"O...Okay," he stammered.
She bowed to him again. Turning, she threw Jiroo a look of pure venom before walking out of the hangar.
From behind a stack of crates, Cake's tiny voice piped up.
"Is it okay to come out? Is she gone?"
888
Keiichi stepped through the front door and removed his shoes and jacket, still reeling from what he had done. Agreeing to go out with Kiyoshi felt like a betrayal of Belldandy, no matter how it had come about.
Dammit, if Jiroo had just kept his mouth shut...
He sighed. "I'm home," he called.
"Welcome home, Keiichi sama," Sif greeted, poking her head into the hallway from the kitchen. "How was school?"
Keiichi walked into the kitchen and found Urd sitting at the table. He knew she was going to take this badly, probably demand that he break off the date. She wouldn't let him do this to Belldandy.
"It was... weird," he answered, sitting down. "Something... well... something happened."
Urd's eyebrows arched at this statement. "Weird how?" she asked.
"Well, um, this girl came to the hangar," he explained. "She's the daughter and sister of the guys we helped rescue. She came by to thank us and then... um... insisted that I let her take me to dinner."
Urd sat straight up in her chair as if electrocuted.
"Oh, the poor dear," Sif said sympathetically. "Do you know what hospital she's in. We should send flowers."
"No, that's just it," Keiichi went on, casting a wary look at Urd. "Nothing happened. No System Force, nothing."
"That's not possible," Urd told him. "So... wait," she continued. "So what did you say?"
"Um... 'yes?'" he replied, bracing himself. Before Urd could answer, he pushed forward. "But I'm going to call her and cancel. Things just happened so fast, and we had an audience, and I really think she would have been insulted if I turned her down in front of..."
"You should go," Urd told him firmly.
Keiichi's thought pattern screeched to a halt. "I should?"
"You should," Urd repeated.
He looked from one goddess to another, suspecting a trap. Urd kept her eyes locked firmly on him while Sif was blinking at Urd in puzzlement.
"Why?" he drawled out suspiciously.
Urd shrugged and turned away, feigning indifference. "You have to think of it as practice," she told him. "Dating is just like any other skill. If you don't practice, you get rusty. You don't want to be rusty when Belldandy comes back, do you?"
The offered reason was ludicrous on its face, but then Sif came and offered another one.
"Also, Keiichi sama, how do you think she would feel?" she asked him. "It's obvious that she feels this is important, both to salve her honor and thank you for helping her family."
"Yeah, but Belldandy..."
"You're not going to marry this girl, are you?" Sif asked with a smile.
"No, of course not!"
"Then where is the harm?" Sif asked. "She wishes to thank you. Let her thank you. Perhaps in the process you'll make a new friend." She saw his uncertainty and continued. "A woman takes these things quite seriously, Keiichi sama."
Urd nodded with a smile.
He couldn't believe what he was hearing.
The Norn saw his hesitation and spoke again. "Keiichi, you should do this. Everything else aside, you need to get out more. Go have some fun with a girl your age."
"Yeah, but... what if..."
Urd smiled at him. "Keiichi, unless she's some kind of raging succubus, I doubt you're going to do anything that would count as betraying Belldandy. Also, if the System Force really is giving this girl a pass, this might be the only opportunity you get a for a long time."
"Speaking of which," Sif broke in, "It does seem odd, don't you think?"
"Yeah, speaking of that..." the Norn replied, rising to her feet. They watched as she picked up the phone in the hallway and dialed. A moment later, she spoke to the person at the other end.
"Urd, two-oh-four-oh-four-one-seven-four-seven," she said. "I need a status update.... System Force... Goddess Urd and Mortal Keiichi Morisato...."
She listened for another few moment and then hung up.
"They say it's working fine," she told them. "Which is just one more reason to go. Obviously, the System Force doesn't see this girl as a threat. So go."
"Well... you're really okay with it?"
"I'm fine with it," Urd told him. "Seriously, go!"
Keiichi looked to Sif to see what the other goddess thought. Sif smiled and made a shoo-ing motion with her hands.
"Well... okay," he said, almost sullenly. "I'm going to go take a quick bath before dinner."
"It'll be ready in about twenty minutes," Sif told him.
"Thanks."
They watched him walk out of the room and waited three heartbeats before turning on one another.
"What did you do?!" they both cried. "Me!? Nothing!"
They both sighed. "What did the NOSC really say?" Sif asked.
"That everything's working fine," Urd repeated. "I didn't make it up. Everything is status quo."
"Then how is this girl exempt?" Sif asked. "Do you think... she's one of them?"
"A demon?" Urd asked. "What's the point? And the System Force would work just as hard against them."
"We need more information," Sif said, stroking her chin. "I wish we had thought to ask her name."
"So ask," Urd said.
"But he'll get suspicious!" Sif cried.
Urd rolled her eyes. "You just have to know how to throw Keiichi off. Watch and learn." She leaned into the hallway and called out to him. "Oi! Keiichi! What's this girl's name?!"
"Why do you want to know?" he called back.
Sif started to panic.
"We want to look her up on the internet and make sure she's not a transvestite!" Urd called back.
Dead silence.
"Kiyoshi Takeda!" he called back. "And... um.... thanks!"
"Don't mention it!" Urd replied. "See? He suspects nothing." She turned and found Sif's eyes wide with terror. "Hey, come on!" Urd cried defensively. "It's not that bad..."
Sif's hand went to her heart, and Urd started to suspect that she wasn't reacting to the Norn's uncouth nature. "Sif? What is it?"
The blonde goddess swallowed. "Kiyoshi Takeda... This... I mean... This is my fault..."
Urd blinked. "Your fault?" she asked. "How?"
"Kiyoshi Takeda is a client," Sif whispered to her.
"A client?" Urd asked. "So you granted her a wish..."
The blonde nodded. "About three years ago."
"Okay, small world," Urd said with a shrug. "I still don't get how this is your fault."
Sif looked up at her with a look of regret and pain etched into her features.
"Because... I... I may have unintentionally promised her Keiichi."
