Pain...
Pain...
Clutching something close...
Holding her hurts more...
Can't let go...
Can't let her go...
So tired...
More tired by the moment...
Why? Not doing anything...
Pain...
Can't let go...
###
Pain...
Less pain though...
Something woke me again...
So tired...
Sound of something moving...
Something above me...
Grinding of stone on stone... Then light...
Silhouette of somebody above me, tossing aside one of the stones of the castle...
Cait starts to shift...
I clutch her harder...
Pain...
Can't let go...
###
The gentle sound of churring geckos sings me into consciousness.
Which means I'm back in Hawaii again. I'm laying in my bed in Pua's house, and I feel a lot better. I ache everywhere, but I don't hurt any more. I'm also no longer in my armor, which is good. It's comfortable as armor goes, but it's still armor. Sclamhaire is in her sheath leaning against the bed next to my head. It takes me a moment to realize that the light from the windows is hitting me directly in the face, and it's not bothering me at all.
A side effect of what I stole from the Burner?
Must be, I'll need to test and examine this.
Slowly I start tensing each muscle in my body individually, testing to make sure everything is still working. Feeling a slight tug on one arm, I pull it out from under the sheets and discover an intravenous drip plugged into my elbow. Tracing the medical tubing with my eyes I find it connected to a bag of Pua's distilled life potion hanging over my head.
I spend a moment to take it all in, then settle back into my bed and sigh. What the hell happened? Last thing I remember is... Áillen blowing himself up out of spite, and the castle landing on us.
God damned load bearing villains.
With a groan I sit up and drag my way out of bed, pulling the IV out of my arm as I go. First thing I need are clothes, since somebody took my armor off while I was unconscious. So I shuffle my way over to my dresser and find myself grinding to a halt halfway there, staring. Sitting in a pile in front of the dresser is my armor, haphazardly stacked in a heap.
I stagger forward a few steps to reach it and pick up the breast plate. I stare at it, running a finger along the crack that runs diagonally across the plate. Setting the armor piece aside I go through the rest of my armor finding more damage. A pauldron bent, a crease in a bracer.
Slowly I match damage on the armor to places where I still ache... I think I've found a new downside of having armor forged from my soul. When the armor is damaged my soul is damaged as well.
No wonder I still feel like crap.
Though I'm not missing any parts this time, so I don't feel nearly as bad as I did when my gear was made. Or as debilitated. It's like the difference between a hairline fracture and a missing limb. Probably won't be able to use the armor until it gets fixed though.
I continue and get dressed in a loose shirt and shorts... only to pause part way through glancing back at the armor. It's still black, which means it's absorbing qualities are still working...
Can it be fixed?
Would it even heat if it were put back in a forge?
I shudder at the idea.
I really hope that I haven't somehow destroyed one of my artifacts before I've even finished paying for it.
Pushing that thought out of my mind for the moment, I finish dressing and head downstairs to find somebody who can give me answers.
I find people almost as soon as I reach the bottom of the stairs. Voices from the living room lead me forward and I find everybody talking quietly. Pua is perched on her wife's lap in one of two chairs in the room, probably because Ku is taking up almost all of the couch in a sprawl. Not that either Thea or Pua looked terribly upset about their 'forced' arrangement. Vivain is there as well, perched elegantly in the other chair with a tea cup and saucer held in her hands. Her elegant demeanor in her seat and with the tea cup clash delightfully with her worn jeans and t-shirt. Finally, I find Cait in her human shape sprawled out in a patch of tropical sunlight.
I get spotted pretty quickly as I half stagger into the room. Ku sits up as I come in, Pua and Cait shoot to their feet, while Vivain simply sips her tea, smiling behind the cup. I only have eyes for Cait though. I stagger forward nearly crashing into her, hugging her tightly. She wrapped her arms around me tightly in turn. My hug testing her fae durability, while she does her best to make my troll bones bend.
I don't cry, but only through sheer force of will. The relief I feel at finally having Cait back and safe may produce an extreme emotional/physical reaction though. I manage to hold it together until I catch just softly the rumbling sound of Cait purring.
At that point the battle is lost, and the tears come. I manage to keep from sobbing though, and if my shirt is a little wetter where Cait has her face pressed into my chest, well I'm not going to say anything.
###
Once Cait and I calm down a bit, I take advantage of Ku's now more upright position and steal one end of the couch. Cait returns to a more feline shape, only slightly bigger than a normal cat, and sets herself onto my lap with a sort of finality.
At this point I finally get some explanations. The last thing I remember clearly is the castle collapsing. As it turns out, we were found by Vivain. As I had assumed at the time Vivain had stormed off, quite literally at that, she had gone to find Cait when I'd told her what had happened. Her method was pretty simple. There are apparently a number of faerie lords on both sides of the Summer/Winter divide who are known to be looking for Iron Blooded. Vivain had started at the top of this list, and started working her way down. Visiting each in turn, and demanding to know if they had Cait and if they didn't, any information they might have on who did.
Apparently, she did this in a full suit of armor, wielding a very large axe, and loaded down with magical gadgets like a mystical Batman. I'm assuming that a number of faerie lords had a very bad time. I look at her more than a little wide eyed when she tells us this, which gets a smirk from her.
"Honestly, that 'top ten' list that everybody is so enamored with is extremely misleading." She explains around sips of her tea, "I should probably be on it somewhere. I'm not, partially, because my power rests in my craft. Without my tools I'm much closer to what most think of me. Partially because the last time I fought seriously was when Nuada fell. Longarm and I are the only ones who were in that battle who are still alive. How am I to be judged? They," She waves an arm at the Ke'Kua'Okolani siblings, "are another example. Together they have an ability in combat that far out strips their power. There are others with the power who simply... don't fight." the Lady of the Lake shrugged, "Everybody in the 'top ten' earned their place there, and are among the most powerful in the world, no doubt. But that list isn't the be and end all that many treat it as."
Well... that explains why she never seems worried about everybody that will come after her when she's got all the pieces of Excalibur back.
The Burner turned out to be number ten on her list. She arrived to find the castle collapsed and through some mechanism that pointedly isn't explained, detected Cait in the fresh ruins. So after some digging she found me still wrapped around Cait. I had managed to tuck us as close as possible to the base of one of the larger stone blocks. So when the castle collapsed the falling stones formed a small shelter that kept the rest of the castle off of us. A very small space which wasn't quite big enough for the both of us. I managed to take the brunt of the castle landing on us though. Which would be why my armor is so fucked up.
"Which reminds me, can I get that fixed?" I take the opportunity to ask.
"The armor cannot be repaired as normal armor would be. However it will heal as your soul does. Quicker if you keep it with the rest of your soul while you recover."
"Great." My tone is very dry, "I don't suppose you have any tips on how I do that?"
The answer is no. Of course she doesn't.
###
Pua doesn't let me go for a week. Mostly just because she wants to make sure that my soul will actually heal fine on its own, which it appears to be doing. I also spend a good ten minutes arguing with Cait about what she's going to be doing next. She insists that she needs to stay with me to explain and deal with whatever is up with me and cats. I refuse to let her out of my sight as apparently the moment I leave her alone, she'll be kidnapped by something. Not to mention my home is a much more secure place for her to be while trying to figure out how somebody managed to elfstrike fae.
Eventually, we finish our discussion, and agree to never admit to how long it took the both of us to figure out that we were basically aggressively agreeing with each other for the whole argument. It's embarrassing and not something that anybody else needs to know about.
I suspect Pua and Ku know something, just by how they smirk at us after we finish. They're not saying anything though, and as long as it stays that way, I don't care.
Once we get everything settled Cait and I head back to Kuoh.
Mia is still missing... or possibly just gone again. Either way it stokes my paranoia slightly given recent events. Especially since while I've only been gone for two weeks, one week in faerie and one in Hawaii, as far as the rest of the world is concerned I've been gone for five weeks.
Really, I got off lightly given the way Faerie can fuck with time.
There isn't a lot I can do about Mia though. If Cait was difficult to find, the clever bird will be downright impossible unless she advertises her presence with fireworks or something. I wouldn't put it past her, but I'm not really holding my breath either.
Settling Cait into the guest room doesn't take long, she doesn't exactly travel with a lot of luggage. I do end up having to drag her out of the room afterwards though. Cait tries to curl up in a beam of sunlight coming through a window that bisects the bed. After trying to just talk to her for a moment or two, I give up and drag her into the living room, depositing her on the couch.
"Don't pout at me." I tell her, taking a few steps back and crossing my arms, giving her a look I want to be 'determined', but might be irritated at this point.
"I'm not pouting." She pouts, crossing her arms back at me, "Why did you drag me out here? I was going to have a nice nap."
"You owe me a conversation." I remind her, raising an eyebrow, "About why I'm hearing words when cats meow at me? Why Shirone, the nice nekoshu I've been teaching, insists I'm a cat myself? Remember that?"
Cait winces and mumbles something.
"What was that?"
The queen of cats sighs, "I said I might have adopted you." What? "Just a little bit?"
"How do you adopt somebody 'just a little bit'?" I don't quite shout, "That seems like it would be a binary sort of thing, either you have or haven't!"
"In some cases maybe." Cait drops her more silly behaviors, and slumps into the couch with a shrug, "I refer to you as my kitten, I let you hold my tail as I kept you safe, and took you places. When your family rejected you, you came to me and I treated you like my own. Fae can not lie, and my every word and action claimed you as mine." She gives me a small smile, which I can't help but return, "That makes you, at least in some small measure, a cat." Her smile gets wider.
It's her proud smile.
I've missed it.
"Does this make me a princess?" I may have never been a proper child in this life, but I didn't entirely escape being a little girl either. I'm pretty sure I asked my parents for a pony at least once, and what little girl doesn't want to be a princess?
"No." Wow, crush my hopes and dreams why don't you, "The way I treat you is enough to make you my kitten, not enough to make you a princess, or my heir. Honestly I doubt you'd want to be my heir."
"Why's that?"
"You tend to take your responsibilities seriously. Unless something has changed I doubt you intend to stick around where you could carry those duties out."
I grimace, suddenly feeling guilty, "You know my original plan was to keep from getting attached to anybody, or letting anybody get attached to me. Make the pain of leaving as small as possible."
Cait makes a cooing sound and stands, walking up to me. Reaching up she wipes a tear that I didn't notice shedding off of my cheek with her thumb. With a deep purr Cait pulls me down onto the couch, laying my head in her lap, "Don't feel bad Kitten. Not on my account. We fae are creatures of stories, and yours is going to grow so much bigger than this world could possibly hold. Even if I never get to hear it, what more could I possibly want for my child?"
I sniff slightly as she pats my head, "I do have a plan to let me come back and visit, you know." I point out to her, "I don't have it working yet, but in order to leave I'll have had to solve most of the problems I'm having with it. I'll tell you all about all of it then." I tell her, glancing up at her face.
She smiles down at me and hums noncommittally.
I want to reassure her, but I also wonder what she thinks she knows that I don't, and why she's not telling me.
Before I can start really interrogating her though, her purring and petting along with the relief of being home behind my wards with Cait sends me drifting off to sleep.
###
With five weeks having gone by I managed to miss not only the entirety of the training montage, but the actual rating game, and the celebration afterwards. I couldn't have done better if I'd tried. Really, the only downside is that I couldn't watch my students train and instead had to just trust that they would follow instructions well.
Or I would until after the fact. Now I can test the two of them into the ground to make sure they haven't picked up any bad habits.
It takes a couple of hours sparring with both of them to get them to the point where they'll start making sloppy mistakes. Really I'm proud of both of them. They've come a long way from when we started.
Kiba's priority in a fight is now clearly the fight. He still has an unfortunate tendency to take shots to land them, but it's not his go to tactic anymore. And with the decrease of his flourishes he feels the need to resort to that approach less and less. He even tried to trap my blade with his cross guard once!
Now if I can just get him to acknowledge that he's got a back edge...
Shirone has actual form, and is slowly growing something that could be called a style. She's gotten very evasive, slipping around punches and using her small stature to maneuver around opponents. As she embraces more and more of her nekoshou heritage she grows quicker and quicker. At this rate, with another few months of work, she'll be out pacing me. Of course, she still has the problem that her striking technique starts lapsing when the adrenaline starts really getting to her, and I still haven't managed to get her to do anything but punch people. If she'd just use her elbows, knees, and feet she'd be much more flexible.
After sparring them into the ground, revealing both of their need to work on endurance more, we take a break and I finally get a breakdown on how the rating game went.
"Riser spent most of the pregame meeting trying to figure out where you were." Kiba says with a smile, "Shirone managed to prevent Rias from explaining that you weren't actually a part of the peerage by just repeating that you were 'around'." He barks out a laugh, "He eventually stopped asking and made his own assumptions."
"The pervert chicken thought you were on the field somewhere, so I said you were circling around, looking for targets of opportunity. The idiot ordered his peerage to clump up like chumps. Rias and Akeno fried half the peerage that way." Shirone explains, her face still in her usual deadpan, but the flicking of her tails and ears are more than expressive enough to make up the difference. She's clearly enjoying the memories the story brings up.
"So after that disaster, he compounded his mistake by ordering them to scatter, letting me and Shirone take them apart one by one. We were taking them down as fast you normally do to us." Kiba grinned, "It was... entertaining being on your end of things for a change. They weren't bad..."
"They fought exactly like you said devils do." Shirone finishes from where she lays on the ground, sprawled out on the grass comfortably, "All power applied directly ahead. No precision, no skill." She lifts her head to look at me, "Tell me we weren't that bad?"
I pointedly don't respond to her, which has her letting her head thump back to the ground with a groan.
I smile briefly, "So I take that means you won?"
Kiba nods, "Between the four of us we took care of Riser's peerage. Issei ended up in a duel with Riser himself." Of course he did. "He intercepted Riser on his way to Rias."
I raise an eyebrow, "Is he still alive?" I'm not sure what I'm hoping for the answer to be. On one hand, less Issei would be great. On the other, I need him to keep saving the world after I'm gone to keep my friends and family safe. The conflict results in my voice actually sounding impressively indifferent.
"Yes." On the other hand Shirone isn't indifferent at all, "Buchou and Akeno have been fawning all over Pervert since then. It's disgusting."
I raise an eyebrow, "Akeno too?" I had thought she was more in my camp when it came to Issei. That he's a tragic necessity.
Kiba looks distinctly uncomfortable, "He appears to be willing to let Akeno... 'play' with him."
It takes me a long moment for what that must mean to register, but when it does I shudder.
"Exactly." Shirone agrees, and Kiba nods.
"Ew." I mutter, "Well, enough of that, I'm changing the subject. I think we're done for the day, you've both improved and we'll keep working on things. Shirone, at some point this week I want you to drop by my place when you have some free time. A friend of mine is visiting, and I think the two of you should meet."
Shrione looks confused but agrees, and she and Kiba head off together heading back towards the high school. No doubt to rejoin the rest of Rias' peerage.
I don't have a lot of time left before the Excalibur shards get here. In fact I don't think there are any more major events between the rating game and Kokabiel...
Something to do with the devil who set up Asia, I think, but that's already been derailed...
Yeah. That's it I'm pretty sure. So... It's almost time.
Finally.
###
A feeling of dread hits me as I put my hand on the doorknob to my house. It feels like... not like I've forgotten something. More like I missed something incredibly obvious. Something I'd be kicking myself over in just a few moments.
I really don't like that feeling.
I hesitate on the doorstep trying desperately to figure out what I could be missing.
It doesn't come to me, though.
With a sigh I push the door open and immediately despair washes over me. My living room is a mess. Chairs toppled, the couch cut in half. Furniture has been overturned, the TV has somehow ended up across the room from where it had been when I saw it before I left that morning, and feathers are everywhere. Standing in the midst of the chaos, is what I'd missed.
On one side of the room is Mia in all her tengu glory with both of her swords drawn and panting like a mundane human who'd just run a marathon. Her feathers are in disarray, and she looks more frustrated than I've ever seen her. Cait meanwhile is standing perched on one of the legs of an upside down chair, hands behind her back and tails gently swishing back and forth, looking smug like only a cat can.
"Ericka, who's this?" Mia demands.
At the same time, "Kitten, you didn't mention a roommate." Cait comments.
I groan, "Yes I did, Cait. This is Mia, I'm sure I've mentioned her."
"Ah, then you failed to mention she's a tengu." Cait comments, looking completely at ease.
"Ericka?!" Mia croaks in a demanding tone.
I sigh, "Cait, this is Mia, my tengu roommate. Mia, this is Caitríona the Queen of Cats, and my..." I glance at Cait, not quite sure how to deal with recent revelations regarding my relationship with Cait, or how much she wants advertised. Cait just smirks at me, and raises an eyebrow. I sigh, "And my adopted mother." Cait's smirk turns into a contented smile, I can actually hear her purring from where I'm standing.
"What?" Mia croaks.
I ignore the question, "What the hell happened to my living room... and did you two hooligans destroy any other part of my house?"
"I heard somebody enter the house and came to investigate. I found this one setting up some sort of montage on your TV. A montage of artwork centering on a character resembling yourself. When I asked her what she was doing, she produced a sword and took a swing at me. Then one thing led to another." Cait waved a hand encompassing the destroyed room.
My gaze turns to Mia, who's relaxed slightly with the introductions, or at least lowered her swords from guard position. She's looking more than a little embarrassed now though, "It was a fanart shipping montage of your character and Levi-tan."
Of course it was. I groan and drag a hand down my face, "And what justified taking a swing at her?" Mia mutters something that I don't catch even with my hearing, "What was that?"
"I said she surprised me!" Mia squawks, "Snuck up on me."
This actually gets a double take from me, "What?"
"Shut up. And you can shut up too!" Mia caws at the audibly giggling Cait.
"Right. I've decided I don't care anymore. The two of you fix all of this, I don't want to be able to tell anything happened here when you two are done. I'm going to my workshop." I really should have considered what forcing cats and birds to live in a small house together would cause.
If my life turns into a Loony Toons cartoon, I'm going to murder one of them. Not sure which. I swear I just finished a vacation, and I already feel like I need another break. At least nothing else major is going to happen any time soon.
Of course, two days later the golden dot representing a Phenex shows up on my Kuoh map heading for the high school.