Passages, Chapter Twenty Six
Author's note - So I took a crash course on how to be a psychopath and watched all of Code Geass - and then I learned what an epic love can feel like while watching Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha (and A's). Beautiful stories, both of these universes are. I liked Nanoha more, but that was just because it was a Mai-Otome-Fate/Stay Night-Card Captor Sakura-Sailor Moon-Pokemon fusion. The best kind. :D
Also, this chapter is hereby renamed 'The Epic Bowling Chapter of Plot Advancement' because of the crazy fucking hoops I had to go through to get my Japanese professor's assistant (a recent import) to explain to me how bowling works in Japan. Her English is about as wonky as my Japanese, so between the two of us had a very interesting discussion how just HOW MUCH one can run by computer. Bowling in Japan is very busy, and from what Suzuki-sensei told me, you can actually reserve lanes in advance without it being a birthday party - but you don't always get your lanes. Nao deals with this quite nicely.
also, wtf is up with the new document manager? I hate it. Always inserting question marks in where I don't need them.
I'm worried for Nao, something tells me that this is not going to end well for her; even though that means that it will not end well for me also. Jun keeps on giving me these long looks as I sit looking out the window sighing. He doesn't understand what's happening to his family, the one thing that he's ever wanted. We're falling apart, and as much as I try and stick us back together, I don't think that we can simply go back to normal when this fore is defeated, the way that we could last time. But even that time, when you really think about it, was an illusion. We were given another chance at life that many of us did not deserve, and I want to say that we have truly risen to the occasion. The only problem is that now we're faced with the same sort of enemy with no real way of fighting it.
Back then we were teenagers with nothing solid that we could lose. Now the stakes are so, so much higher.
I worry that we might be forgetting just how high the stakes really are, because we're too lost in the small details of what is really going on in our lives. We're so focused on the little things to imagine the big picture. If we die this time, we're not coming back until the carnival starts anew and our souls are reborn into the cycle.
Somehow, I think that we're supposed to be dead right now, that Mai somehow managed to alter the carnival enough to make it so that we could live and love on in this life time.
Maybe that is why everything is so messed up now.
At any rate, Mai's still missing and I've no one solid to talk to about my fears for the future. Or what I'm going to do about the royal mess I've made of my friendships.
Nao is still mistakenly in love with me and fostering the delusion that I am the most important person in the world to her. I don't know how to fix that without sending Nao into some sort of homicidal rampage similar to the one that Shizuru went into when she thought that I'd rejected her. I need to tread carefully there, or I'm going to get bitten in the ass by something that I desperately want to ignore.
Shizuru's still convinced that somehow the Obsidian Lord and Munakata Shiho are in cahoots to make our lives miserable. I know that the Obsidian Lord can never be gone for good, because an entity like that simply doesn't die, but the idea that he's in league with Shiho of all people seems a little odd. I agree that Shiho wasn't telling me everything when I met with her to speak about the Ikusahime legend; as Midori's own version of events is far more detailed and accurate to what we are going though at the moment; but I genuinely think that she simply wants to be left alone. Her beloved did betray her, after all, and married her worst enemy. I cannot think of anything that could make a person bear a grudge better than that. We Japanese are famous for just that, after all. We carry the wrongdoings of events long past in our psyches until they eat away at us.
Some of us have spent our whole lives consumed by revenge. I was lucky to escape that. Really I was.
Nao's proposed that since we can't all meet at Mai's place, that we should find somewhere else to talk. She picked a public bowling alley, as it would make sense for a large group of us to gather without turning too many heads. I think it's a bad idea, for we're exposing civilians to a large group of us in one place, almost baiting the enemy to come and get us. I hope that she's right about this being a good idea, because we've got no one to watch Jun, and so he's coming with us.
I hope to god that we're not going to get attacked.
I don't know how I'll explain it to Jun.
Same time.
Yuuki Nao checked her watch one more time and frowned. There was a birthday party at the bowling alley and the computer that was used for lane reservation said that there were no lanes available for close to an hour. People were going to start arriving soon and she had no idea what she was going to tell them, since her brilliant idea had fallen through. She'd called in advance, too, and had been promised that at the designated meeting time, only half the lanes had been reserved.
Nao bit her lip, and shoved her hands into her jacket pockets. She had to figure something out, and quickly, or else they were going to wind up in some tiny karaoke room trying to deal with the lack of space on top of the lack of breathable air. She had an idea how to get the annoyingly Americanized bowling stewards to listen to her – but she seriously thought that she had more self-respect than to stoop that low. But considering that ever since she'd consulted the computer they'd been trying to shoo her towards the door in that amazingly non-confrontational way that the Japanese were so famous for, she decided that it might just be worth it to mess with them a little.
"Excuse me," Nao said, extracting a hand from her pocket and fixing the nearest bowling steward with an angry glare. "I telephoned barely three hours ago, and I was informed by the manager that there would be two lanes free right now." She fixed the man with her best predatory stare and was suddenly grateful for the fact that after work she'd undone the buttons on her shirt to a point where she could count on sex appeal as a weapon. She hated doing things like this, because it reminded her, once again of all the reasons why she hated men in general. "I was wondering, since I have a large group of people that are going to be assembling on your doorstep in a few minutes, if there was any way that there could be a lane or two free in... say... half an hour?" Nao stared hard at the man, her nails digging into the soft flesh on his shoulder with a relish that Nao had not felt since those times in junior high, when she was going after men for being the lecherous pigs that they all were. She could get used to this, for men were so much easier to manipulate than the women that Nao spent her life struggling to please.
She had to get what she wanted here, however, because she did not want the embarrassment of having to explain to anyone, Kuga in particular, that she had failed in completing so simple a task. She leaned forward, practically touching the man's ear as she whispered in that low, sultry voice that she'd discovered to open far more doors than it closed. "It would not be in your best interest to deny me this," she purred. "Do not force me to do something that you'd later regret." She squeezed harder, the quiet trickle of liquid under her nails telling her that she'd finally made her mark on the man for the time being.
She guessed that his wife would not appreciate the marks any more than he would in the morning. Nao bit back a laugh, knowing that her part in this play was to be the temptress, and then the seductress. She could play this role in her sleep, even though the degradation of the actions was almost too much for her to handle most of the time.
The bowling steward reached up to loosen the collar on his brightly colored short, his brow was covered in sweat. Nao felt her smirk deepen as he nodded weakly, "Thank you."
The man bowed slightly and raced back behind the counter as Nao inspected her nails. She smiled, and blew him a kiss. She did love playing the game, and she was so, so good at it.
Still, her skill at the game was only matched by her prey's seeming ability to ignore it all together. No amount of skill could explain how she was unable to catch the one fly in her web that she so desperately wanted to sample.
Nao frowned and stalked over to the computer that handled lane reservations once more and lazily plugged the information that their group would need into the machine, content to wait for the others to arrive now, before she acted once again.
"Are you sure that this is a good idea?" Natsuki asked as she helped Jun into his thick winter jacket that they'd gotten him the previous year. She was a little alarmed to see that the jacket still fit the boy, as she would have expected the boy to grow at least a little around the arms and shoulders. Perhaps Shizuru had gotten him a new coat at the end of the season sales last year and she'd somehow missed it. That could have explained why the coat still fit him so well. Jun had definitely grown in the past year. The notches on the doorframe into his bedroom clearly showed at least three inches of growth.
It had to be a new coat.
Shizuru paused in the process of pulling one of her shoes on, and looked up at Natsuki with a rather unreadable expression on her face. "I don't see why not," she said simply before going back to the apparently very complicated task of pulling on one shoe and then the other.
Natsuki watched her move with the practiced motions of someone who had years of experience under their belt. Shizuru wasn't telling her something, but Natsuki knew what it was that was left unsaid between them. She'd dropped Shizuru off at the school after their lunch time conversation earlier, and Natsuki knew that she would have had to be a fool to not notice what was eating at Shizuru. She didn't know how to fix that, however. She knew that if Shizuru was left alone with Nao, they'd come to have words, maybe even exchange blows, but Natsuki was sure that as long as Nao thought that Natsuki was her most precious person, there was no danger of Nao getting killed by a rather irate Shizuru. There were just too many risks and Shizuru, while a bit of a daredevil, also respected the fact that there were certain things in life that were inevitable.
"It's just that with so many of us together it seems as though we're just asking the enemy to attack us," Natsuki muttered as she leaned down next to Shizuru to retrieve her boots. They were still being discrete as they could about the attacks around Jun, but he was a perceptive child and Natsuki knew that it was only a matter of time before he decided to ask what exactly it was that was bothering his parents to much. She didn't know what she would tell him then, and her sinking suspicion was that no matter what she said to him, it would not be enough. She didn't have a lie convincing enough to cover this.
Shizuru shrugged and Natsuki pulled on her boots. Shizuru was making sure that Jun's sneakers were tied properly. "Are we ready to go?" Natsuki asked, standing once again.
Shizuru smiled at her, and Jun giggled. "Yes!" he shouted, practically jumping up and down with excitement. Natsuki felt a pang of guilt as she picked up her keys and led them out of the apartment. They'd been doing next to nothing special for Jun these past few weeks, more so since Mai'd gone missing. There was just no way that they could really know when their next moment together would be. This would have to make up for it, even though Nao would be there and Natsuki was positive that she'd be spending most of her time protecting Shizuru and Nao from themselves and simply forcing them to avoid conflict.
It was all she could do, really.
They headed up the side street towards the train station. Nao lived across town, and so they'd all agreed to meet somewhere in the middle - which meant traveling into the heart of the city to the one place that Natsuki had never expected Nao to propose for a meeting space. It was a public place, which annoyed Natsuki, for they would not have the privacy that they so desperately needed while talking about HiME business.
The train came quickly and Jun excitedly stared out the window as it lurched forward, heading into the city. He was such a good kid, really, and Natsuki couldn't help but swell with pride as he turned himself around after a few long moments of excited chatter to Shizuru and sat quietly. He was finally getting the hang of being on the train, after four years of working with him on his over excitability when it came to being on trains.
"Kuga!" Someone called, and Natsuki let go of the hand rail she was holding and turned to look around. Two people had just gotten onto the train, and Natsuki found herself grinning at them. She hadn't seen Tokiha Takumi in a very long time, since he generally didn't come to the HiME meetings, and Natsuki had not had a lot of cause to hang around Mai's restaurant during the lunch time rush when Takumi covered the kitchen so that Mai could get some sleep.
"Ah," Shizuru said, moving closer to Jun so that Takumi could sit down on the train's seat beside her. The two of them exchanged a look after that, but both of them knew that Takumi's heart was still on the mend after the numerous surgeries that he'd undergone as a young adult. The stress of his sister suddenly going missing was bound to bring him to a state of constant stress that had to but strain on his heart that hadn't existed since before he'd gotten the surgeries in the first place. Taking care of him was paramount, because Mai would never forgive them if something happened to them. "Takumi, Akira, we weren't expecting you to show up to Yuuki's little extravaganza."
Natsuki flinched at the way that Shizuru said Nao's name. She should have known better than to think that she could actually get away with having the two of them in the same place. This was going to end poorly, she just knew it.
Akira grabbed the handrail next to Natsuki and frowned, "I don't think it's a good idea."
Natsuki nodded her agreement, knowing that their reasons were very different but the end result would be the same. Disaster.
She shook her head when Akira started to talk once again, jerking her head in Jun's direction. They couldn't talk about these things until they were sure that he was properly distracted. Akira nodded her assent and they passed the rest of the trip into the city in silence. There was nothing for them to really talk about, they were HiME, they had a duty to fight this battle through and make sure that nothing bad happened in the process. Their spiritual leader - as Mai sort of was, the more that Natsuki thought about it, had gone missing. They needed her, desperately, for without Mai, they were just a rag-tag bunch of warriors with nothing to show for their work. Mai, somehow, through her presence, made everything seem to work in such a way that Natsuki felt as though she could actually fill the official capacity of leader without much difficulty. Mai was the fire to Natsuki's ice, and it had to stay that way if they were to ever get anything from the massive amounts of fighting that they would most likely have to see through before this thing was done.
The train arrived at the central station, and Natsuki helped Shizuru herd Jun out of the train and onto the busy street. They both took one of his hands and lead him the three blocks to the bowling alley's address - as per the directions on Akira's phone.
"You guys really fit the part," Akira muttered to Natsuki after a block of walking.
Natsuki frowned, not really understanding what she was talking about. "What do you mean?" she asked.
Akira shrugged, the gesture making her hair fall into her eyes and obscure her face. It made her look, once again, like a boy. Over and over again, Shizuru had joked to Natsuki about how it was rather impossible to tell that Akira had been a girl for most of their time in school, but as the carnival started to hit a higher note she'd started to notice some signs that implied, pretty heavily, that Okuzaki Akira was a girl. "You just look like the perfect family, that's all," she said at length.
Natsuki didn't know how to respond to that, for there were so many biting retorts to such a well-intended compliment like that. They were far from perfect. They were broken in the worst way, and Natsuki didn't know how to come out and say that. She sighed, dropping Jun's hand and causing him to look up at her with a confused expression on his face. "I guess so," she said, looping her fingers behind her head and stretching a little.
Akira made a non-committal sound and they pressed on. The bowling alley loomed into view and Natsuki's eyes narrowed as she saw Nao waiting outside for them.
"Ah, Nao!" Takumi smiled. They'd been in the same class in school for the whole of their high school career, so Natsuki assumed that they must have had some sort of relationship outside of the cool indifference that Nao tried to force on everyone that she interacted with.
Natsuki sighed; this was going to be a very long, very stressful meeting.
She didn't understand this. It was so stupidly ridiculous. They were bowling, of all things, when they could have been doing so much more. She narrowed her eyes and watched Yuuki with the strange sort of twisted interest that she watched Natsuki with most of the time. There was just something about that girl that made her so very, very angry.
She actually understood, on some primal level that Yuuki was not actually stomping on her territory, she was just trying to sort out her feelings towards someone who had played a very important role in her life for a long time. She could remember her own crises of faith - in those months after the carnival, where she wasn't sure what Natsuki was doing, sleeping in the same bed with her and yet refusing to touch her.
They'd shared what they knew, all of them. She'd done her part and rambled on in front of Kanzaki Reito about how he was sporadically being possessed by the Obsidian Lord, and she'd explained her theory on why the entity was not dead. What she found most intriguing, however, was that he didn't disagree with her. If anything, he seemed to agree with her allocations and was trying to find a way to capitalize upon them.
"This isn't his fight," Kanzaki said, looking far more tired than Shizuru had ever seen him. He ran his hands through his hair. "He doesn't know what's going on - for the carnival is always supposed to end with the winner becoming his wife - no one expected that Mai would make the selfless decision that she did. And now you all are alive when technically the legend dictates that you should be dead."
Midori had objected to that, going on into a long explanation of myth and legend that she had not bothered to listen to. Kazuya and his wife were giggling behind their hands about something, and the action was making Natsuki's brow twitch in that truly adorable way that it did from time to time when Natsuki was really frustrated. She smiled politely at Midori and turned her attention to the one person that she actually interested at this meeting.
Yuuki, from her observation, was also fairly bored with the whole thing, for Midori did tend to go on a bit. After a few long moments, she caught the redhead's gaze. Their eyes met and she could practically see the sparks flying back and forth. This was what she wanted, she knew, this battle was the one thing that could perhaps make things go back to the way they were before.
"Natsuki, take my turn," she said quietly to the woman sitting next to her. She met Natsuki's questioning gaze with a pensive look of her own. She knew what she was asking, and Natsuki would not agree to it. Still, she had to do it, and her gaze was resolute as Natsuki gave her a look that warned her against dangerous actions.
Natsuki didn't understand why she did this, for it was something that she barely understood herself. Kiyohime had told her long ago that this was what she needed to do, protect Natsuki at all costs, or Natsuki would disappear into the either when she was least expecting it.
Natsuki had to understand that she wasn't going to do anything, unless Yuuki pushed her to action. Even then, putting her down would not take long. Natsuki really should know better than to push her towards something that they both knew would really present no problem.
Their gaze met one last time, and she was certain that Natsuki would not stop her unless she had to.
She hoped that it would not come to that.
She didn't want to fight Yuuki if she didn't have to, after all, the girl was practically family to Natsuki and it would make her lover sad if she somehow killed the younger girl.
Natsuki nodded and picked up the purple ball that she'd picked out at the beginning of their game and walked to the end of the lane. She cast a final look back over her shoulder before turning her attention back to what she was doing.
Shizuru paused and placed a hand on Yuuki's shoulder and jerked her head towards the bathrooms. She left then, knowing that Yuuki would follow her in good time. No one else would pick up on the fact that they were at odds with each other any more than usual. They were, after all, very good actors, the two of them.